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“It’s Alive!”: Revisiting 'Young Frankenstein' for Halloween

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This Halloween, our Cinema Club dimmed the lights and dialed up the laughter with Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein (1974) — the rare comedy as lovingly crafted as the classics it lampoons. Shot in luminous black and white, the film bridges two traditions — horror and farce — and reminds us that parody, when done right, is an act of affection. Brooks and his co-writer and star Gene Wilder clearly adore the Gothic world of James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), borrowing everything from the jagged laboratory machinery to the chiaroscuro lighting and ornate sets that look as though they’ve been lifted straight from Universal’s vaults. Brooks even secured some of the original lab equipment designed by Kenneth Strickfaden for Whale’s film, giving his spoof an authenticity most comedies never attempt. Just as vital to that authenticity is the film’s sweeping score by John Morris, Brooks’s longtime musical collaborator. Morris composed for all of Brooks’s classi...
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'Jaws' at 50: The Shark That Changed Movies Forever

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                                       Half a Century Later  Jaws Still Bites Last spring, our Cinema Club kicked off with Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps —a tight little thriller that showed us the roots of cinematic suspense. For our second screening, our “summer edition,” we went in a very different direction: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). And really, what better way to mark the movie’s fiftieth anniversary than by revisiting the film that didn’t just terrify beachgoers but transformed Hollywood itself? When Jaws opened in 1975, it redefined what a movie release could look like. Before then, summer was considered a slow season for studios. Universal flipped the script with a wide release, heavy national advertising and a marketing blitz that built anticipation in a way no film had done before. The result was staggering success and a new model: the “su...
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Altman in the Making: 'That Cold Day in the Park' (1969)

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Robert Altman has always been my favorite of the so-called “New Hollywood” directors. His movies breathe — sprawling, unpredictable, buzzing with overlapping voices. But until recently, I had no idea That Cold Day in the Park (1969) even existed. Discovering it felt like stumbling on a secret sketchbook from an artist you thought you knew — raw, strange and brimming with ideas that would later define his style. Released just before MASH made him famous, the film doesn’t swagger in with satire or spectacle. Instead, it seeps in, like the damp Vancouver fog. By the end, you’re left asking “what just happened?” — and that’s the unsettling magic. Even here, before his breakout, you can sense the techniques that would define Altman’s career: overlapping dialogue, ambiguous characters and an uncanny knack for turning setting into a psychological force. At the center is Frances Austen, a lonely, repressed woman whose only companions are the elderly friends of her late mother and a few ser...
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'The 39 Steps' (1935): A Masterclass in Suspense, Style and Screwball Charm

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  The 39 Steps (1935) is probably my second favorite Alfred Hitchcock film (after Vertigo ). It’s the movie I usually use to introduce my peers to vintage cinema. In fact, it was the first title we screened in May at my school’s newly launched Cinema Club—founded by my two best friends and me, a trio we affectionately call “The Three Musketeers.” This early Hitchcock thriller blends suspense with sharp wit, and it’s best experienced without too many spoilers. So I’ll tread lightly on plot details. The 39 Steps was adapted from John Buchan’s 1915 novel The Thirty-Nine Steps , but Hitchcock, along with screenwriters Charles Bennett and Ian Hay, reimagined it into something far more cinematic—and, in my opinion, narratively stronger. Take the opening in the London music hall: the crowd is transfixed by a man called “Mr. Memory,” whose photographic recall is both amusing and, ultimately, crucial. This entire setup, including the character of Mr. Memory, was an invention of the film...
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Clara Bow, Queer Visibility and the Wild Ride That Is 'Call Her Savage' (1932)

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In my recent dive into Hollywood’s Pre-Code era—the brief, glorious window between the dawn of sound and the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934—I stumbled upon Call Her Savage , a 1932 talkie starring the one and only Clara Bow. I went in expecting melodrama, scandal and a bit of Pre-Code spice. What I didn’t expect was one of the earliest onscreen depictions of a queer-friendly space in a mainstream Hollywood film. And discovering this during Pride Month felt serendipitous in the best way. (More on that in a moment—trust me, it’s worth sticking around.) But first let’s talk about Clara Bow. If you're not already familiar, Bow was the “It Girl” of the 1920s—the original one, in fact. Her breakout performance in the 1927 silent comedy It earned her that moniker, and she quickly became a symbol of modern womanhood, sexual independence and flapper-era glamour. From 1927 to 1930, she  consistently ranked among the top two box-office stars in the U.S. Bow’s distinctive look—bo...
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