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Legendary B-movie king Roger Corman, who directed and produced hundreds of low-budget films and discovered such future industry stars as Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, has died. He was 98. Corman died May 9 at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., surrounded by family members, the family confirmed to Variety. “His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that,'” the family said in a statement. Corman’s empire, which existed in several incarnations, including New World Pictures,...

Cassandra Peterson is frighteningly good at makeovers! The actress is most known for her portrayal of horror goddess Elvira Mistress of the Dark, a goth-loving character that appeared in a slew of movies and TV shows in the '80s and '90s. Now, though, she's traded in her jet black locks and dark makeup for a new role in, of all places, Rob Zombie's movie reboot of '60s TV show "The Munsters." In the film, Cassandra plays a real estate agent… a non-threatening one — and she is unrecognizable

Fans don’t like to let their favorites go, but now they don’t have to. We live in a world desperate to remake, reboot, and flat-out return to beloved franchises, hunting the closest thing to a sure audience there is. But the more beloved these continuations are, they harder they are to get right. Fans want them to somehow be exactly the same while still being fresh and new, an impossible request—except, it turns out, for the return of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The show returns today on Netflix with its 11th season, 18 years after season 10 ended in 1999....

MASTERS OF SCHLOCK The sci-fi and horror movies of the 1950s sparked a trend that continues even today of downright silly titles, ranging from 'Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!' to 'The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?' to 'Big Ass Spider!' (Yes, there also is a love affair with unnecessary punctuation.) Here, THR breaks down 50 of the best (and funniest) titles of all time.

Many don't realize that John Wayne struggled a bit to get to his famed career as a western legend. In 1926, John Wayne started his journey in the film industry by being an extra, a propman and a stuntman. His first starring role would be in a Fox Film western called "The Big Trail" (1930). He was let go from Fox after starring in three leads.

In Robert Rodriguez's new grindhouse feature "Machete," the vengeful title character uses vicious cutlery to butcher his enemies. Could something similar happen to the movie when it's released next week? "Machete's" convoluted story explicitly takes place amid the current powder keg of an immigration debate and on the heels of Arizona's controversial anti-illegal immigration legislation. Crooked politicians, powerful drug kingpins, malicious border vigilantes, antsy day laborers, conflicted customs agents and angry revolutionaries seethe along the U.S.-Mexico border in Rodriguez's film... ... about a former federale who gets mixed up in a messy conspiracy on the U.S. side of the border,...

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Most critics panned "The Da Vinci Code" on Wednesday ahead of the world premiere of the year's most eagerly awaited movie. Kicking off the annual Cannes film festival, Ron Howard's adaptation of the Dan Brown bestseller was described variously as "grim," "unwieldy" and "plodding," though one reviewer bucked the trend and said "You'll Louvre It!" The cool reception was temporarily forgotten at a glitzy opening ceremony, where screen legend Sidney Poitier and Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai joined Da Vinci Code star Tom Hanks and the normally publicity-shy Brown on the red carpet. Even before its general...

A tax accountant embezzled $10 million from a client, then used it to fund a lavish lifestyle that included a $2.2 million California mansion, a $74,000 bat mitzvah for his daughter and the production of three horror movies, authorities said Tuesday. Prosecutors said Denis I. Shusterman blew through the $10 million over eight years, spending about half on the three B movies. They said he also wrote off many of his good times as business expenses when he filed his income taxes. As Shusterman's embezzlement and fraud trial opened in federal court, prosecutors also said he gave $495,000 to one...

Ang Lee’s BrokeBack Mountain is a movie that, on one hand, follows fairly conventional and well-trodden ground to a legitimate conclusion (well, not quite a legitimate conclusion, see below) and, on the other hand, indulges in a series of contrived plot devices to turn (or at least attempt to turn) a rather pedestrian effort into something beyond its all-too-conventional story line. The plot is simple. In a relatively short period of time, two people, away from home, indulge in a summer romance of forbidden love. After that summer, they return to their homes and marry people who would, in the...

Larry Buchanan, the filmmaker who has died aged 81, specialised in the niche market for what he called "guerrilla filmmaking" - truly dreadful B-movies with such names as Zontar, the Thing from Venus; Curse of the Swamp Creature; Naughty Dallas and Mars Needs Women, a film which reputedly features in every list of the worst movies ever made. But even this last title found a market, and reached its widest audiences in a version dubbed into Yiddish. Buchanan combined the roles of producer, director, screenwriter, editor and, where appropriate, voice-over narrator. He was unashamed, even proud, of tacky production values,...

"It's actually rather scholarly, or at least as scholarly as a book written about films like ILSA, SHE-WOLF OF THE SS can be." - reader review on Amazon.com. "... the result is a book that blends fascinating pop-culture history, first-rate film criticism, and learned commentary on the stunt-vomit in The Exorcist." - today's National Review. HORROR SHOWBrigg’s Disturbing. Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History!, by Joe Bob Briggs (Universe, 256 pp., $24.95) EDITOR'S NOTE: This review appears in the September 1, 2003, issue of National Review. The title is reassuringly lurid and the cover comfortingly nasty, but, on opening...

LOS ANGELES, July 15 — Miramax Films will take the unusual and potentially risky move of releasing "Kill Bill," the much-anticipated Quentin Tarantino martial arts action-adventure film, as two movies, the first to open in the fall. Miramax will in effect be taking a three-hour film with a 200-page script and turning it into a serial. Harvey Weinstein, a co-founder of Miramax, which is financing the film, said in an interview on Monday that the first installment would be in theaters on Oct. 10. The second release date is in still being negotiated, but it could be two to six...