Author Archives: chipkaufmann

During the 1960s there was an entire subgenre of films, most of them German, based on the works of prolific English author Edgar Wallace (1877-1933) who is best known in America for having written the original draft script of KING KONG. He was immensely popular during his lifetime but his reputation rapidly declined after hisContinue reading “PSYCHO-CIRCUS / CIRCUS OF FEAR (1966) Is An Edgar Wallace Crime Thriller Not A Horror Film”

THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES is generally described as the Abbott & Costello movie for people who don’t like Abbott & Costello. A&C made 36 movies together from 1941-1956. There are only four films where they don’t act together as a team but as separate characters. Two of them are LITTLE GIANT and this one which wereContinue reading “THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES (1946): Atypical Abbott & Costello Vehicle Is One Of Their Very Best”

My first acquaintance with the HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES was in 1963 when I was 11 years old. I read the CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED comic book and liked it because of the idea of a family curse that transcends generations. About the same time as I was enjoying my CI  version, a heavily revised and altered versionContinue reading “THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES (1940): Undervalued Adaptation Deserves Wider Recognition”

For many years I’ve been a fan of all things Hammer, and though I was aware of HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY & SUSPENSE, I’d only seen a few episodes on YouTube a few years ago. I completely missed its 1984 American TV run as FOX MYSTERY THEATRE. That’s because it went straight into syndication andContinue reading “HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY & SUSPENSE (1984): The Original Company’s Final Offering”

I first saw HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR back in 2010 on the old A&E DVDs with the green covers. At that time I was disappointed in the series, the primary reason being that it was not what I expected. I thought the look of it would be more like the Hammer movies of yore, withContinue reading “HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR (1980): Better The Second Time Around”

Although a fan of Vincent Price, especially his Edgar Allan Poe movies of the early 1960s, I did not see TWICE TOLD TALES (1963) when it first played in movie theaters but I did have the DELL comic book adaptation which I paid 12 cents for and liked very much. It would be over 20 yearsContinue reading “TWICE TOLD TALES (1963): Nathaniel Hawthorne Gets The Edgar Allan Poe Treatment”

The 1946 film noir THE BIG SLEEP with Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall is an iconic work of classic Hollywood that cemented Bogart’s reputation and confirmed Bacall’s. However the movie that everyone knows is not the original cut of the film. That version went unseen for 52 years until its rediscovery in 1997 when it was released toContinue reading “THE BIG SLEEP (1946): I Prefer The Original 1945 Version”

Beginning in the mid-1960s, there was a wave of mainstream interest in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Howard Phillips Lovecraft had been popular in the 1930s and 40s but only amongst a fringe element of readers and/or writers of what was then called “weird fiction”. Once his pulp fiction magazine copyrights expired, his storiesContinue reading “THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970): After 50+ Years It Remains As Bad As I Remembered”

Director Daniel Haller began his career as an art director for Roger Corman. He worked on all the early Edgar Allan Poe pictures and after the success of THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963), was later given his chance to direct on another adaptation of an H. P. Lovecraft story. H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a writerContinue reading “DIE, MONSTER, DIE! (1965): H.P. Lovecraft’s COLOR OUT OF SPACE In A Muddled Adaptation”

If anyone other than Alfred Hitchcock had directed JAMAICA INN, it would be considered a minor masterpiece especially considering when and where it was made. This tale of 19th century smugglers and wreckers off the coast of Cornwall is on par with anything Hollywood did in the pirate genre. The movie’s merits are clearly evidentContinue reading “JAMAICA INN (1939): Hitchcock’s Last British Film In A Stunning Transfer”