All in Double Feature
William Castle (1914-1977) was a pioneering filmmaker who was often called the, “king of gimmicks.” Before screenings of his directorial debut, Macabre (1958), Castle handed out $1,000 life insurance policies. The film became a hit and he continued creating gimmicks for his films’ releases over the next twenty years.
There are almost too many similarities between these two films to list, but here goes: Both were produced and released by MGM, both were made in the fifties, both were musicals, and both feature women who performed with the Ziegfield Follies…
Eddie Mannix is a complicated historical figure who becomes increasingly interesting as you learn more about his life. Several films have tried to encapsulate and explain his role with MGM, as a general manager and comptroller, but it’s difficult. To come out and say what he did, and to who, and why, is still tricky business, even if his reign ended some fifty years ago with his 1963 death.
The Women was a 1936 play written by Clara Boothe Luce that ran for 657 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York. Besides being known as a comedy of manners, the play utilized an all-important and rare gimmick: the entire cast, down to the background players, animals, and set decoration, only featured women.
Two different films, two different directors, many similarities. Both of these men have dabbled in the fantasy genre, both of these films come later in their careers, and both try to subvert the norms of classic storytelling...
The film is surprisingly funny, charming, and a great romantic comedy that utilizes Tom Hanks comedic range aptly. This is also being a great commentary about yuppies, the New York City housing market, the American Dream, and relationship politics.
Comparing their films wouldn’t make much sense, because there is no clear winner when it comes to who was the greater visionary, and who came out on top in the next hundred or so years of study. What I want to talk about instead is the comparison between each when it comes to their more problematic and offensive films, which have not aged well in the realms of film history.
On the other side of the spectrum is one of the biggest music documentaries of the last twenty years: “Madonna: Truth or Dare.” Madonna was at her peak in popularity, already boasted as an icon in many ways. She was provocative, smart, edgy, and lacked the humility of any America’s sweetheart
There’s a fierce debate within the feminist community as to whether pornography is exploitative, woman-hating, and offensive, or a tool to express one’s sexuality. From this ruckus have come two documentaries, each made by women, each showcasing a different side of pornography’s vast reach
It took me an astounding five years to find these two rarities. While their names may seem synonymous, they have nothing to do with one another, other than that they both have cat in the title, they were both made for very little money, were exploitative for their time.
What followed was a production that was filled with weird, ridiculous, fraught interchanges between the new director, Frankenheimer, and the actors. What came of it was a horrible film that has been universally detested
