The Body Snatcher
Robert Wise—director of the two best Broadway-on-celluloid adaptations in human history—attempts and achieves the improbable here: he sets a Robert Louis Stevenson short story about literal skullduggery in a world as inclined toward the music hiding in midair as a space written by Rodgers, Hammerstein, or Sondheim.
The Devil’s Rejects
The trick of the classic-rock guitar solo depends on what came before it. The best—which is to say, the most exemplary in this least-relevant, most exuberantly puerile sub-art form—are emergences after transformations, moments when edging balladry finally gives way to real ascendence. Some skin is cracked open.
Ed Wood
Movies don’t save lives, but they do relitigate memory and imagination. The beloved suddenly reappears in frame, reanimated through some alchemical bargain of light and motion. Isn’t he dead? Yes, in 1978, at the age of 54, Edward D. Wood Jr. died—where else?—in Hollywood. But then, there he is, up on the screen in Ed Wood (1994).
Ernest R. Dickerson
The DP and director on the fantastic potential in image-making/-seeing, learning to photograph the world, and the possibility of a Demon Knight sequel.
Gremlins
Joe Dante, who got his start in show business cutting trailers for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, has always placed a premium on the momentary turbulence that exists between shots.
Brad Dourif
Movie and life revelations from the actor behind Chucky and other iconic roles of darkness.