Tag Archives: American cinema

RIP Doris Day (1922 – 2019)

Doris Day was an American actress and singer, a vivacious blonde with a wholesome image, she was one of the most prolific actresses of the 1950s and 1960s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q3VVFhDT4k
Excerpts from the film Pillow Talk (1959) starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. With the songs, “Move Over Darling” and “Possess Me” performed by Doris Day.

Dubbed the “eternal virgin”, she thrived in “no sex sex comedies” full of double entendres and sexual innuendo in the final days of the  Hays Code-era but her popularity waned with the arrival the more explicit films of the sexual revolution.

RIP Larry Cohen (1941 – 2019)

Full version of ‘Q’

Larry Cohen was an American film director and screenwriter.

He is best known as a B-movie auteur of horror and science-fiction films such as It’s Alive (1974), God Told Me To(1976), Q (1982), Special Effects (1984) and The Stuff (1985), which were full of satirical social commentary.

Later in his career, he concentrated mainly on screenwriting, most successfully with the very cleverPhone Booth (2002).

RIP Dick Miller (1928 – 2019)


The Little Shop of Horrors

Dick Miller was an American actor (GremlinsThe Little Shop of HorrorsDeath Race 2000) known for his films with Roger Corman. He later appeared in the films of directors who began their careers with Corman, including James Cameron and Joe Dante.

He was, in the words of Cult Movie Stars (1991) a “scene-stealer in low-budget horror films”.

Above is the enormously amusing film The Little Shop of Horrors (1960, above) in which Miller plays a carnation-eating (“I’m crazy about kosher flowers”) regular customer of the florist in which the film is set.

Minute 34:48 has Jack Nicholson come in as a masochistic client to the dentist. That scene was later done by [1] with Steve Martin as the dentist and Bill Murray as the client.

I’ve seen quite some films with mister Miller, all entertaining, unassuming and unpretentious.