Actors: Keith David

Keith David was born Keith David Williams on June 4^th 1956 in Harlem to Lester and Delores Williams. His parents, who'd watched David perform in high school plays in public school, sent their son to Manhattan's School of Performing Arts to learn real stagecraft. Acting kept a young Keith David away from gangs, drugs and violence in the city and also allowed him to vent the tremendous frustration that comes with being smart, poor and black in America. This frustration became a strength in his roles as soldiers, vets, freedom fighters and underworld figures.

David honed his skills as an actor travelling the country with the venerable John Houseman's Acting Company where he appeared in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot. After putting his weight on it in an uncredited role in Rudy Ray "Dolomite" Moore's Avenging Disco Godfather (1979) David went on to star as Childs, opposite Kurt Russell in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) which made him much sought after by Hollywood. His lengthy on-screen career had begun but undoubtably owed much thanks to William "Blacula" Marshall.

Keith David's balance of a tough, commanding presence and a high emotional IQ allowed the roles to roll in, so to speak, in the same way that William Marshall's talent for him did (however briefly) almost 20 years prior - with Marshall making room for talented black actors in more dynamic roles on national television in NBC's Star Trek in the early 1960's.

Keith, to date, has appeared in Oliver Stone's Platoon, John Carpenter's They Live, Road House(!), Men at Work, Marked for Death, Pitch Black and There's Something About Mary. In one of his most impressive roles, David played the character of Kirby, a one-legged Korean war veteran and neighborhood club owner, in the acclaimed 1995 Hughes Brothers film Dead Presidents. The film was not a traditional feel-good bankrobber or war film. It touched directly on racism, war, economic warfare and the nature of good and evil - all of this set in Viet Nam era New York.

Keith's voice-acting resume is just as long as his on screen performances including: the title role in Todd McFarlene's Spawn, Disney's Gargoyles and The Princess And The Frog (2009), Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Ken Davis' The War in which David won an Emmy for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance. Keith also acted as the voice of the Navy on tv and radio for 5 years.

Keith David currently has parts in 15 films that are due out in 2010.



References:
Wikipedia, Keith David
IMDB, Keith David

Flicks: TNT Jackson (1975)

Professor T demonstrates the theory of blaxploitation to a group of students.

TNT Jackson stars the lovely Jeannie Bell as foxy karate expert Cleopatra "TNT" Jackson searching for her strung-out junkie brother's killer in 1975 Hong Kong.

As TNT, a no nonsense Pam Grier type w/a heart as big as the Great Outdoors, Jeannie demonstrates a natural refinement as an actress. Jeannie Bell, during promotions for the film, was billed by Roger Corman's New World Pictures as a "One Mama Execution Squad" - and it's no shock to yer ol' pal the Sleaze-A-Saurus that Jeannie was Playboy Playmate of the Month in October of 1969.

Jeannie's bodacious bod and acting skills set the stage for her to appear in this film pulling an topless Ocho fighting sequence. In the scene, Jeannie darts in and out of frame heartily snappin' chinese chicken necks and flippin' cats to the floor as the lights go on and off in a bit involving badly orchestrated lighting and fight choreography.

The fight scenes towards the end of the film should have you wondering whether to laugh or cry - although Jeannie pulls one or two acrobatic moves without the benefit of a body-double and long before wire-assisted crane kicks.

Belle, who won an award from Ebony Magazine for her role, was known for some gutsy career decisions by appearing in the Marvin Gaye scored Trouble Man (1972), in Policewoman (1974) and in the brutal and unforgiving Klansmen (1974) (shot in Italy!) with Lee Marvin in 1974. Unfortunately for kung fu and Playmate enthusiasts, Jeannie Bell left acting completely in 1977.



References:
IMDB, TNT Jackson (1975)
IMDB, Jeannie Bell
Feast of 1000 Beasts, Call Me TNT, Sugar
Grindhouse DB, TNT Jackson

TNT Jackson is available from Amazon:

Flicks: Fatal Beauty (1987)

Brad Dourif, Sam Elliot and Whoopi Goldberg shoot up the silver screen in Fatal Beauty (1987)

Cracksploitation. This genre is made up of several late 80's and early 90's films such as Sugar Hill, New Jack City and New Jersey Drive. These flicks take a cliche, like most exploitation genres, in this case "Duh Hood", and build it into an even bigger cliche. Add some derivative dialogue such as Ice Cube's lackluster "We're jus' boyz in da hood, dawg" in Boyz In Da Hood and suddenly - Hollywood director are sitting on a big ass pile of 'burb loot in their Beverly Hills mansions. Ta-dow-zee!

The Cracksploitation genre is glaringly missing the poignant relevance of movies like Dead Presidents: "I will beat yer ass with this fake leg, son! (sez Sleaze-A-Saur favorite Keith "Kirby" David) or any of the depth of real life events lived by LA political activist Bobby Seale or deceased firebrand Malcolm X. Cracksploitation is Reality Lite masqarading as a tale of urban Robin Hood while glamorizing death in crystal form.

Enter Whoopi Goldberg, whose talents in Telephone (1988) have been parlayed into 114 films and counting. Goldberg stars with Sam Elliot and Brad Dourif in Fatal Beauty, part zombie film and part crime drama. It's the story of a fatal form of narcotics that combines PCP (sherm) and powder Cocaine. Fatal Beauty, within seconds, turns it's users into a blood-thirsty trolls right before killing them. The 100% fatality rate of the drug makes it a target of LA cops looking for it's dealers and origins.



On second thought my dude, yep - it's exactly what it looks like.

The squib work in this film is out-standing! The explosives that stunt men wear to make it look like they've been shot are called squibs. They simulate a gunshot tearing into the flesh but can very easily backfire. A backfire can turn a stunt man's squib jacket into suicide bomber's vest with the smallest margin of error. Squib work is dangerous - especially when it comes to simulating automatic weapons fire erupting by the dozen and Swisscheesin' crackheads.

Ignore all the misleading marketing for this movie - it tries to market Fatal Beauty like a Beverly Hills Cop film with a black female lead - it is not. What it really is: a strong anti-narcotics film with shoot-out after shoot-out that perforates zombified tweakers who erupt blood and profanity for two hours.

References:
IMDB, Whoopi Goldberg
IMDB, Fatal Beauty (1987)



Fatal Beauty is available at:

Actors: Tom Sizemore

Tom Sizemore, born September 29^th1964, is almost as famous for being a fucked-up coke/meth head as he is an actor - which is pretty sketchy even by Hollywood standards. Sizemore's acting career has seen a number of high intenisty, full-throttle and gritty portrayals of crooked cops, grizzled veterans and unhinged criminals. Sizemore's roles have been stand-out performances in the films he's had time to appear in while not in drug treatment or a guest of the state of California in county jail.

Before his troubles started, Sizemore attended Michigan State University for a year as well as Wayne State University. He earned a Master's degree in Theater from Temple University in 1986 and subsequently moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. Since then, he's worked with Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese, Oliver Stone, Tom Hanks, Stephen Spielberg and Michael "Miami Vice" Mann.

Selected Filmography:
China Beach (TV series 1989-1990)
Sgt. Vinnie Ventresca

Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Villa Dulce

True Romance (1993)
Cody "Nickel" Nicholson

Natural Born Killers (1994)
Detective Jack Scagnetti

Heat (1995)
Michael "Slick" Cheritto

Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Sgt. Micheal "Mike" Horvath

Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Paramedic Tom Wolls

Sizemore, in spite of a dependence on the old Bolivian Marching Powder, has been featured in crime dramas (Heat w/ Al Pacino), war films (Saving Private Ryan), horror films (The Relic), sci-fi flicks (Red Planet w/Val Kilmer) and has also been done V.O. for several video games.



References:
Wikipedia, Tom Sizemore
IMDB, Tom Sizemore

Flicks: Subspecies (1991)

Three sequels later and guess what, ladies? That handsome ol' sumbitch Radu is still single! Hard to believe ain't it?

Horror movies are all about the viewer finding a unique subtext in the plot. Some could say Wes Craven's The Hill Have Eyes (1977) is not so much about a family of mutant cannibals (a real Atomic family - yuk, yuk) eating a "normal" family as much as it is about the break down of typical American families' power dynamics. Some could say Psycho (1960) was more about sexual repression and identity than it was killing poor ol' Janet Leigh in the shower - peeling back the curtain on more than a murder. This is one way to read a horror film among many, many others.


Hands, hands, hands! Aw, shucks, I never know what to do with these awkward hands!

So, why can't Subspecies be about a lovable eccentric and his nutty religion? A nice fella, who worships with his fangs. He's just a fun-lovin' Fangstafarian. A deeply religious person that just so happens to love to drink the blood of the living. Now, just because his favorite food comes from the veins of adorable brunettes who don't meet his high dating standards doesn't make him a bad guy. Does it?

For the purposes of this review, Radu the vampire (Anders Hove) or rather Radu-mon should be simply viewed as a wandering Fangstafarian. He's a bachelor from Transylvania who is scouring the world with his "fangs" in order to sink them into the perfect set of "veins". See? Subtext works, mon.


Radu-mon dates around because he's looking for that special lady. A special lady with a Type O blood type. Preferably.

Radu-mon goes through four movies, starting with this one, dating a series of confused women who, in turn, take every opportunity to burn him, beat him, shoot him, sun him and splash around some holy water until Radu-mon, quite understandably, begins to get the message. Radu-mon crawls back in his coffin, no doubt to await another sequel, crying: "Fangstafari!" and praying for the day he encounters the perfect ghoul just as the sepulcher slams shut.

Fangs and subtext aside, mon - decent minion stop-motion animation, location shots in Bucharest, and Hove's performance made this first installment of the Subspecies series, in a series of four progressively worse films with decaying production values, a mild stand out in another one of Full Moon Entertainment's stable of direct-to-video titles.



References:
Spookhouse, The Subspecies Series
Cavalcade of Schlock, Subspecies at Twilight
Taliesin Meets the Vampire, Subspecies 3: Bloodlust

Subspecies is available at:

Flicks: Surf Nazis Must Die! (1987)

Nazis boldly unveil their terrifying mastery of propaganda in Surf Nazis Must Die!

Troma, Lloyd Kaufman's infamous production company whose Toxic Avenger series made it synonymous with campy B movies, released this deranged, tasteless and deliberately stupid tale of Surfin' and Seig Heilin' set in the not-too-distant future on a radically changed southern California coast.


Axis powers do battle as Herr Hook prepares to gut the competition in Surf Nazis Must Die!

Rival gangs, the Samurai Surfers and the Surf Nazis, wage a turf war in a post-apocayptic California on the beach. Adolf, Eva, Mengele, Hook and Smeg face down Leroy's Mama, "Mama" Washington (Gail Neely). Seeking revenge for the murder of her son Mama Washington, after arming herself properly with a handgun and grenades, breaks out of the retirement home and sets out to exact bloody vengeance upon the evil Surf Nazis. The stuff hits the fan when Mama Washington tracks down the killers of her son in Surf Nazi's Must Die!


Burning hatred is always at the height of fashion in Surf Nazis Must Die!

This is among the first of infamous modern b-movie filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman's, the founder and president of Troma Pictures, movies. His company bears the dubious distinction of releasing the Toxic Avenger series, Tromeo and Juliet, Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D and Poultrygeist upon an unwary world. Troma is still alive and very well - usually with one of the best stocked, best attended tables at any horror con in the Midwest.


References:
Wikipedia, Surf Nazis Must Die
IMDB, Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)
Troma, Surf Nazis Must Die

Surf Nazis Must Die is available at:

Flicks: Avenging Disco Godfather (1980)

Disco Godfather: Bad-Ass Mofo by Day, DJ with hella bitchin' perm by Night.

"Put yo weight on it, put yo weight on it, put yo weight on it!" So proclaims former cop and current bad ass disco club owner, played by veteran blaxploitation actor Rudy Ray "Dolemite" Moore, who takes his fight against the evils of Angeldust to the greasy streets of New York City.


This is a pretty big reason why not to do Angeldust, suckas.

This movie, like many b-movies, is so painfully bad that it becomes mesmerizingly hilarious. It's rumored that in 2008 Rudy Ray succame to a fatal brain hemorrage after screening this film for the first time in nearly 30 years. His last words?

"Put yo weight on it!"

So we will Rudy Ray, so we will.



References:
Wikipedia, Disco Godfather
IMDB, Avenging Disco Godfather
Exploitation Films, Avenging Disco Godfather
Chud, Disco Godfather

Avenging Disco Godfather is available at:

Rants: Breaking The Horror Code

Oh, Jeezus H Cripes, is the Sleaze-A-Saurus really ticked off this time. Someone broke the code. The thing that keeps horror films together as a legitimate genre and not a snuff film. That thing.

See, there are a few practical rules to any kind of movie making, especially horror films. They're basic. They are not complicated and not long.

These simple, practical rules do not come in the form of phone book sized guidelines. The most important and unspoken rule of all is this simple: Humans Have Got It Comin'. Animals, which apparently needed to be killed due to a lack of an effects budget, do not. That is not entertainment.

Humans = Evil. Animals = Good. It's that simple. Even Ozzy knows that. And he's got 4 and half brain cells.

This rule is observed by many of the individuals who make and watch horror movies. These people are, almost without fail, bright and warm people who grew tired of being sold progressively worse versions of Titanic or Mannequin 2 each year by shallow corporate hacks. However, Hollywood yuppies continue to greenlight souless, vapid films that make Biodome look like Citizen Kane.

For example A-Films, Avatar, Twilight, Valentine's Day, Wolverine and The Vampire's Apprentice all have the emotional depth of a puddle of luke warm puke - yet they rake in millions.

For horror film-makers, it's either A) Go as crazy bullshit as the shallow society around them or B) Make better movies. Again, it's simple.

However, there's was a tendency in some of the zombie B-films made by Italian and Spanish horror directors in the 1970's and 1980's that seemed to turn the clock back to the 1880's and make movies the exact same way a brainless, cross-eyed schoolyard bully would strangle a puppy for laughs on YouTube. Bitter betrayal!

Back in the 1880's, the American film making industry regularly rolled right over animals (and stunt men) and called it entertainment. Men were killed or intentionally badly injured. Animals were butchered for the sake of a quickie thrill by humans on the silver screen for shock value alone. Newsreels featured bison twisting under locomotives and wolves shot for sport as Buster Keaton and Lee Van Clef lost fingers in badly concieved of stunts - all while the camera rolled for slack-jawed twats.

This isn't entertainment.

Careless stunts, and especially animal cruelty, re-inforce the central rule that Humans Have Got It Comin'. Snuffing animals makes a film-maker look like an ugly big-shot gamehunter on safari while cradling bloody zebra foals in his fat, sweaty arms. Many of these kinds of Italian giallos and Spanish horror films were shot outside of Europe to avoid prosecution for the butchery of snakes, monkeys and wild pigs. All of this was done for entertainment's sake and bankrolled with "refined" European bread.

There's a disturbing tendency for "animal snuff" in Italian giallo movies - which is a poor reflection of European people. Although it's a bit late to pimp slap Spanish film-maker Jesus "Jess" Franco (Blood Saw, 99 Women) he certainly has it coming. His Wikipedia bio completely omits his part in portraying animal cruelty as heroic.

While watching a perfectly good zombie or giallo flick, as a bouncy bosom is dreamily heaving and endangered by actors covered in red oatmeal "gore", right out of the blue I'm presented with a cut-a-way of a small mammal under a rusty machete squirming like crazy to futilely avoid the brutal hacks into it's spine, it's stomach and it's neck - spilling real fucking animal guts all over the fucking place. The animal, still living, twitches around in pain and shock, wondering as I am: how the fuck is this selling movie tickets?

Why isn't this happening to the human characters? Why not the dumb frat boy, the loudmouth buxom wench, the wrinkled and insufferable shrew? Answer: flat out laziness. All the special effects are already inside the unsuspecting bunny, snake, pig or monkey - there's no need to pay a guy to make up a bucket of fake blood and foam core organs. It's laziness. Or, as in the arguably worst scenes of the universality maligned Faces of Death series it's one asshole guy with a camera filming more assholes do asshole shit. This is un-fucking-acceptable.

You, dear 30-second web surfer, may think I'm being disingenuous or facetious but animal cruelty goes against every fiber of my being as a horror-buff. To pay any amount of money to see an real animal get hacked into real pieces in the middle of a fake film is a cold and gutless type of retarded that only re-inforces rule #1: Humans Have Got It Comin'.

Humans, sure. Frickin' sock it to us. We, as a species, are responsible for hatred, destruction and endless confusion - we have fake death coming to us in these films for reasons that are all too apparent.

There are several sequences in Slave of The Cannibal God, Zombi and one particularly repulsive scene in Jesus "Jess" Franco's Blood Saw that have completely broken this cardinal rule of horror film while disregarding the same rules that were put in place in Hollywood 100 years ago - mostly for the lazy, the dim-witted and the sadistic: Everyone Goes Home and It's All In Fun.

To re-iterate, the "horror films" to avoid, if you aren't a brain-damaged rich kid, a sadistic ape-ling or a cowardly maniac with no soul: Slave of The Cannibal God, Blood Saw aka Bloody Moon aka Die Säge des Todes, or "The Saw of Death" and Zombi.

Have a real peach of a day: End Rant.

Flicks: Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (2006)

William Sanderson, strapped into an improvised contraption that forces him to reflect on the end of a touch-and-go career in pictures.

Although many a indie horror writer claims to worship at the altar of the England master H.P. Lovecraft very few have done anything but set his corpse spinning into high rotation. Lovecraft is the most plagarized writer in horror movie history and to prove it I present to you: Barrett J. Leigh's Beyond The Wall of Sleep (2006) based on the Lovecraft story of the same name.

"No Mish-Hand-Link Ov Der Pashunts!" Per-Nounzes, er, pronounces the inept and distinctly Germanic director of The Happy Hills Asylum, Dr. Fenton (Marco St. John). The movie begins to loose it's footing early with all the hackneyed shrieking and series of overwrought editing effects. This happens early enough to let the unsuspecting viewer know just how badly things are going to get from there.

In this 2006 Lion's Gate release, That's 70's Show Topher Grace look-a-like Fountain Yount is intern Edward Eischel, a young fella who creeps around an Appalachian mental asylum in the 1930's. Yount shambles across the screen as a dopey one-dimensional "genius" who apologetically grumbles his way through monologue after monologue in the vein of "It is now I who have the POWER! Hee-hee, ha ha, heh. Huh?"


Fountain Yount (get it? huh, huh) reflects on the nature of love and sexual gratification with his best gal, and part-time science experiment, Ardelia.

Yount butchers any and all semblence of a script while diagnosing the meek yet also inbred maniac killer Joe "Slaughter" Slaader played by William Sanderson (Deadwood and Newhart). Although Sanderson is bad in it, it's Yount who runs into frame to deliver unforgettable and gripping lines such as: "Oh. Me brains! You monsters!"

Tom Savini makes a short cameo in the opening scenes as an angry Sheriff poking mentally challenged hicks with a big-ass shot gun before making a well advised exit from the impending disaster of a film.

The next 79 minutes are devoted to a misunderstood tumor named And-Douche-Us and boy does it ever. Apparently, all anyone needs to bring the Grand Duke of Hell to Earth (And-Douche-Us) is a clock radio, intensely bad editing effects, 20 clammy actors, a dozen lens flares and paper thin script. Who woulda thunk it? Roll over, Lovecraft! Here comes Barrett J. Leigh!


References:
IMDB, Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2006)
It Came From Hollywood!, Trepanning for Beginners

Beyond The Wall Of Sleep is available at:

Flicks: Ghoulies III - Ghoulies Go To College (1991)

The Ghoulies, now endowed with the power of speech, ponder the philosophical merits of William Blake - for college credit!

The eighties saw a number of high-profile low-brow minature monster movies that included Gremlins (1984), The Munchies (1987), Puppet Master (1989) and the original Ghoulies (1985) which featured the late great Stan Winston's practicals. Clearly, the American public's hunger for blood-thirsty, satanic puppets was at all-time high.

The third installment of the Ghoulies horror-comedy series was delivered up by director and practical effects whiz John Carl Buechler (pronounced Beekler) who had previously unleashed Troll (1986) and Cellar Dweller (1982) on an unsuspecting American movie-going public. The movie was, and still is, so bad that it still hasn't been commercially released on DVD in the US in the 20 years since it landed in theaters in 1991.


Needless to say, Hope Marie Carlton's "acting lessons" really paid off in the end.

Six years after the original film, enter series anchor Professor Ragnar. Kevin McCarthy, star of the original Invasion of The Body Snatchers in 1957, with the power of a comic book embued with mystical powers (!) releases the evil Ghoulies on a dim-witted college campus.

In this chapter, the creatures have developed the ability to lip synch Three Stooges episodes where previously they had blearily growled, grunted and meowed their yuppie victims to death. Hijinks and zaniness ensues. Great racks bounce their way across the screen. Toilets are dwelled in. Yuppies are snuffed. Credits are rolled.


References:
Wikipedia, Ghoulies Series
IMDB, Ghoulies III
Self Indulgence, Ghoulies III
Ghoul Basement, Ghoulies Go To College

Ghoulies III is available at:

Flicks: Weird Woman (1944)

Weird Woman was a notable entry in a suspense genre starring Lon "Creighton" Chaney and Evelyn Ankers. In this 63 minute film, Professor Reed (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns from a visit to a South Seas island with his native wife (Anne Gwynne) and his ex-girlfriend (Evelyn Ankers) is not pleased. Chaney makes his new wife burn all her superstitous, good luck charms and fetishes. Then, everything in his life goes horribly wrong starting with Evelyn Ankers becoming progressively more and more weird.

The movie was originally part of a popular radio program in the 1940's and 1950's called the Inner Sanctum that developed into a film and television series.



The Inner Sanctum Radio Program was a popular suspense show that ran in the 1940's and 1950's before spreading into television and film. The shows were based loosely on the work of suspense and horror writers and hosted by Raymond Johnson.

The program was immensely popular due to the narration skills of guest actors such as Burgess Meredith, Orson Welles, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. Karloff was featured in an adaptation of Poe's The Telltale Heart in August of 1941. At the end of the shows run a total of 526 episodes ran from January of 1941 until October of 1952.

The popularity of the radio series of resulted in a series of six low-budget Universal Horror movies starring Lon Chaney, Jr. produced in the 1940's: Calling Dr. Death (1943), Weird Woman (1944), Dead Man's Eyes (1944), The Frozen Ghost (1945), Strange Confession (1945) and Pillow of Death (1945).


References:
Wikipedia, Inner Sanctum
Wikipedia, Weird Woman
Wikipedia, Inner Sanctum Mysteries
IMDB, Weird Woman (1944)
Himan Brown, Audio Theater

Weird Woman is available at:

Flicks: Blood Hook (1986)

Fishing Safety Hint #12: never, ever let the "slow" children near the tacklebox.

Jim Mallon, the co-creator of MST3K, had his directorial debut in a Troma release filmed in Hayward, Wisconsin in late summer of 1984. The movie was made four years prior to shooting the 14-minute pilot for Joel Hodgson's Mystery Science Theater 3000 that would set him on a strange course for a B-movie director: success.

This film, originally titled "Muskee Madness", sports the tagline of "Fishing Was Never Like This!" and features a psychotic angler whose unlikely M.O. involves hunting his unsuspecting victims with a giant fishing hook during a rural fishing contest.


Cousin Evelyn's secret to good fishin' starts and ends with two words: M-16.

Fortunately, this flick knows that it's a B-movie. In classic Troma fashion, it has it's share of laughs, bad dialogue and over-the-top performances.


References:
IMDB, Blood Hook (1986)
MST3K Temple, 1999: The Year Comedy Broke
Daddy-O's Drive-In, Blood Hook
Bad Movies.org, Blood Hook

Blood Hook is available at:

Flicks: The Thing (1951)

In 1950, director Howard Hawks was an acknowledged master of his craft. His classic films Scarface (1932), Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1946), Hemingway's To Have And To Have Not (1944) and collaborations with Bogie and Bacall had made Hawks a legendary director.

In 1951, Hawks took on The Thing from Another World, aka The Thing based on the short story Who Goes There by John Campell. The B-film utilized Hawks understanding of American military culture (Hawks previously made I Was A Male War Bride in 1949 and Air Force in 1943) to create a framework for a fantastic tale of an extraterrestrial encounter in the frozen tundra of the North Pole.


Many factors make this movie a timeless snapshot of post-WWII America: a careful eye for photographic realism in the exteriors shot in Glacier Park, Montana, the use of actual Air Force aircraft including a C-47, amazing stunts that far surpass many movies made today and Hawks' unique direction of a large and talented ensemble cast.

The 21^st century installment of The Thing, is reportedly a prequel that takes place right before the events of John Carpenter's 1982 version. This version, produced by NBC and Strike Entertainment (Strike also produced the excellent Dawn of the Dead remake) will begin shooting in March of 2010 in Toronto for a 2011 release.

References:
IMDB, The Thing From Another World (1951)
IMDB, Howard Hawks
Monster 411.com, Photo Gallery

The Thing is available at: