I’m still bingeing on horror films during this last week before Halloween: I had a recording session last night but before I ran to the studio I caught the second half of the original Child’s Play film and the opening of its sequel. The Chucky marathon was part of AMC’s Fearfest scary cinema programming, and tonight I caught the end of the original Annabelle film from The Conjuring franchise before watching one of my favorite horror movies of all time.

Carrie (1976) is one of the best horror movies ever made. It’s also one of Brian De Palma’s best films, and it’s probably the best adaptation of a Stephen King book that the author likes — King actually thinks the movie is better than his book. There’s a lot to like about seeing Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving and John Travolta when they’re just babies, and Carrie‘s one of the only horror movies nominated for multiple Academy Awards including Best Actress for Spacek and Best Supporting Actress for Piper Laurie who played Carrie’s repressive, evangelical mother. Carrie was a breakthrough hit for De Palma, and the director’s signature split screens and overhead shots look great here. But I think I like Carrie for the same reason I like Taxi Driver: it’s a poetic but cathartic portrait of a person who comes into their own after being pushed over an existential brink.

Here’s a great making-of featurette that tells the story behind the film. Carrie White forever…

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Continuing our celebration of Taxi Driver at 40, here’s 70 plus minutes of analysis by Lewis of Channel Criswell. He’s a budding filmmaker and I enjoyed his understanding of the Scorsese classic, and I wanted to share it with y’all. It’s also a great opportunity to revisit the movie along with behind the scenes bits from the filmmakers….

Stay Awake!

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Three years ago I reviewed Steve Schapiro’s book of Taxi Driver photographs. Here are some of those words…

Of all the brilliant gems of 1970′s America’s New Hollywood Cinema, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver may be the grimiest and goriest. Beyond Paul Schrader’s loneliness-crazed script or Scorsese’s street-level shooting, it’s Robert DeNiro’s portrait of the mohawked, gun-wielding avenger Travis Bickle that continues to make this film crackle with energy and danger decades later.

Steve Schapiro was the special photographer on the film’s set and his black-and-white and color snaps captured the making of the film both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Schapiro shot the then-dangerous setting of Times Square at night in lurid spectra that captured everything from the shining black of the rain-slicked streets to the painted cheeks of the prostitutes to the blazing white glow of the porno theater marquees to the orange/red orgy of bloody violence at the film’s climax. His black-and-white stills are the perfect comment on a character like Bickle who can see only dichotomous extremes from his self-inflicted isolation: saints and sinners, beauty and ugliness, the fallen and the redeemed.

This year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Taxi Driver. Here’s a documentary that gives viewers a street level perspective at the making of this unlikely American classic…

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Little Big Man, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Scanners, Amadeus — the makeup and practical effects of master artist Dick Smith have made some of American cinema’s scenes, characters and stories come to life with thrilling realism and to chilling affect. Smith started out in TV, but his work in film literally created modern make-up as we know it.

I had Smith’s monster makeup kit when I was a kid and the man gave me a lifelong passion for movie monsters and the craft behind their becoming. Continuing our spooky October posts, here’s a neat little interview with Smith, discussing his storied career and sharing the secrets behind his most memorable monsters and characters.

We lost Smith earlier this year, but his movies will live forever…

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My favorite photography book of 2013 was probably Steve Schapiro’s Taxi Driver, but one of the most surprising was Terry O’Neill’s eponymous career retrospective published by ACC Editions.

O’Neill first made his mark in the 1960′s. The young British photographer snapped everyone from The Beatles to The Stones to Janis Joplin to Jean Luc Godard’s then-muse, Anna Karina. The stunning black-and-white portrait of Brigitte Bardot that graces the book’s cover is pure O’Neill — an iconic image of celebrity from the era he helped to define.

However, in another sense, Bardot’s sexy, open lips barely balancing a raggedy cigar seem posed in light of the fact that O’Neill helped to pioneer a more candid, off-the-cuff style of star-snapping that stripped away glamor and glitz in favor of instants of intimacy. And while some contemporary photographers use similar techniques to demean their subjects, O’Neill caught rock stars backstage and film icons in their trailers in a manner that brought human depth to their two-dimensional images.

Given the hit-and-run paparazzi photographs we see today, O’Neill’s images stand-out for their proximity to their subjects and the details that nearness reveals. An essay by fashion editor and music author Dylan Jones recounts O’Neill’s days as a young drummer in a jazz band. As the photographer recalls, “When I was playing jazz I was always part of the rhythm section…while the stars were up front, so I got accustomed to dealing with egos…” Perhaps that’s the key to O’Neill’s success: a sense of timing, and the good discretion to capture the limelight by staying out of it.

Here’s O’Neill at an exhibition of his work, speaking with the Irish Examiner about his early days as a musician and a photographer:

Stay Awake!

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Of all the brilliant gems of 1970′s America’s New Hollywood Cinema, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver may be the grimiest and goriest. Beyond Paul Schrader’s loneliness-crazed script or Scorsese’s street-level shooting, it’s Robert DeNiro’s portrait of the mohawked, gun-wielding avenger Travis Bickle that continues to make this film crackle with energy and danger decades later.

Steve Schapiro was the special photographer on the film’s set and his black-and-white and color snaps captured the making of the film both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Schapiro shot the then-dangerous setting of Times Square at night in lurid spectra that captured everything from the shining black of the rain-slicked streets to the painted cheeks of the prostitutes to the blazing white glow of the porno theater marquees to the orange/red orgy of bloody violence at the film’s climax. His black-and-white stills are the perfect comment on a character like Bickle who can see only dichotomous extremes from his self-inflicted isolation: saints and sinners, beauty and ugliness, the fallen and the redeemed.

Featuring 100′s of unseen photographs, this is more than a movie stills collection. Schapiro’s work reveals the dark impulses at the center of the film — it practically reads as an new edit of the movie — and it also captures the obsessive, personal intensity of the creative crucible in which it was created.

Published by Taschen, the book includes a foreword by Martin Scorsese and collects contemporaneous interviews with Scorsese, DeNiro and Jodi Foster from After Dark, Playboy, The New Yorker and more. The book includes French and German translations.