At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

Is there a cooler actor in the history of cinema than Vincent Price? The answer is no! Vincent Price had the magical ability to transform the most putrid of scripts into something watchable; his presence alone often elevated many of the films he starred in.  He was a fun actor to watch and one never got the impression that he simply phoned in his performance, regardless of the material.  The Bat is not a Vincent Price vehicle, despite his top billing. He is relegated to the thankless red herring role of Dr. Malcolm Wells; a character that we are constantly lead to believe is the villain of the title. There's a lot of damning evidence against him, which means that he cannot possibly be The Bat. The Bat was the third adaptation of the 1920 Broadway play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, and it is by far the weakest out of the three. The play was adapted twice by Roland West in 1926 (as The Bat) and 1930 (as The Bat Whispers) .  The first version is probably the

Even if you have never seen any of his films, you probably have heard of the name Lon Chaney. He left his stamp on the cinema starring in the definitive version of The Phantom of the Opera (sorry Gerald Butler fans). With the exception of The Hunchback of Notre Dame most of his films are fairly unknown to the average movie goer. This is due in large part to the fact that they are extremely hard to find; both The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame managed to fall into the public domain, hence they have been readily available in stores across the country. I first saw The Phantom of the Opera on PBS when I was a kid. Despite the poor quality of the print, it was still a rather powerful experience. Not even a bad print could ruin the unmasking scene. I like it so much that I bought it on VHS, which was of even worse quality than the PBS print.  More importantly, it turned me into a life long Lon Chaney fan. When my family got a satellite dish in the 90s, one of the pe

James Bond is one of the few characters that has transcended his literary origins to become a world wide phenomenon. You rarely hear anyone complaining about how the latest James Bond film has a desecrated Ian Fleming's original vision. The movies have taken on a life of their own.  It wasn't until my teens that I became  familiar with the world of James Bond. I vaguely remember catching bits and pieces of the Roger Moore films on television as a child, but for the most part I knew very little about the character. In 1995, my dad broke down and got us a satellite dish, Primestar was the company, and now we had access to countless channels, one of which happened to be TBS, which coincidentally was having a week long marathon of James Bond movies. I immensely enjoyed all the Bond films,   but for some reason I was in absolute awe of You Only Live Twice , probably because of my immense crush on Akiko Wakabayashi, though Mie Hama is fairly attractive as well. Hey, I was SIX