Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950)
As I stated with our review of Ma and Pa Kettle (1949), the Kettle movies helped a struggling Universal pivot from the horror films that kept the studio in the chips through the 40s as…
Universally Loved
Tremors (1990)
It’s not a secret that my favorite film of no time is Jaws. I have Jaws puzzles. I have Jaws posters by the score. I have stuffed sharks, a shark poster in the garage where…
Freaky (2020)
Body swap movies have been around longer than you may think. Films like Turnabout and Here Comes Mr. Jordan came out in the 40’s. However, most point to 1976’s Freaky Friday as the popularization of…
Billy Elliot (2000)
Generally in this column, and in the Universal library for that point, we have been examining what I would call fantastic cinema. Fantasy, sci-fi, horror; outlandish and lavish productions outside the natural world. This week…
Psycho II (1983)
Alfred Hitchcock, arguably, created the slasher genre in the 60’s with his sublime film Psycho based on Robert Bloch’s shocking (for the time) book of the same name. You would need to be a psycho…
Nightmares (1983)
Nightmares is a strange bird of a horror anthology. First of all, it was made in the wrong decade. Not many of these came out when Nightmares did. Then, it decided not to have a…
Doctor Detroit (1983)
Dan Aykroyd was on the rise. He had left SNL four years earlier. John Belushi and he started the Blues Brothers band that also fronted one of the most expensive comedy films ever made. In…
Love Actually (2003)
Something you may not be aware of: Universal has made an awful lot of Christmas films. We’ve already reviewed Holiday Inn, Last Christmas, and It Happened One Christmas in this column before. Universal’s connection to…
It Happened One Christmas (1977)
In 1977, Universal/MCA decided it would be a great idea to remake It’s a Wonderful Life as a TV Special Movie event starring Marlo Thomas (“That Girl”) in the George Bailey-type role and Orson Welles…
Holiday Inn (1942)
When lazy Bing Crosby decides to leave show business for the easy life of running a Connecticut farm, things take a left turn when he decides that’s even more work. His solution is to open…