DIRECTED BY: Peter Bogdanovich (using the pseudonym Derek Thomas)
FEATURING: Mamie van Doren
PLOT: Three cosmo—I mean, astro-nauts—are sent to Venus to rescue two missing
comrades,while Venusian blondes in seashell bras pester them from afar by sending volcanoes, thunderstorms and dinosaurs to hinder them.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Prehistoric Women is a classic Frankenstein-film stitched together [...]
Ed. note: The movies of Rustam Khamdamov are impossible to find in the West, and for the most part in his native Russia as well. Read this article (to our knowledge the most extensive retrospective of Khamdamov to be found on the Internet in English) to discover how this legendary, and very weird, director has [...]
“My dear, our world is hopelessly boring. Therefore, there can be no telepathy, or apparitions, or flying saucers, nothing like that. The world is ruled by cast-iron laws, and it’s insufferably boring. Alas, those laws are never violated. They don’t know how to be violated…. To live in the Middle Ages was interesting. Every home [...]
“I wanted the film to be about the fatal attachment of Russians to their national roots, an attachment which they will carry with them for their entire lives, regardless of where destiny may fling them. How could I have imagined as I was making Nostalghia that the stifling sense of longing that fills the screen [...]
AKA Viy, Spirit of Evil; Vij
DIRECTED BY: Georgi Kropachyov & Konstantin Yershov
FEATURING: Leonid Kuravlyov, Natalya Varley
PLOT: In medieval Ukraine, a seminarian must spend three nights praying over the
corpse of a witch.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: This faithful adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s 1835 short story is a classic of world horror, deserving a place alongside the [...]
