Double Feature: Rosemary’s Baby – KB’s Thoughts
Posted by
KB – January 8, 2010
Part two of a new Double Feature film review.
Based on the 1967 novel by Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby is a story about a young couple that is (voluntarily, on the part of the husband, and unwittingly on the part of the wife) lured into a satanic cult. The wife, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is unknowingly impregnated with Satan’s spawn, and she slowly figures out what is happening to her as the movie progresses. This film gave me nightmares last night. It’s pretty creepy. A warning: do not watch this film if you are pregnant!!
Image courtesy of FrockTalk.com
The young couple, Rosemary and Guy (John Cassavetes), moves into a beautiful Gothic apartment building (The Bramford) in New York City. The building has a shady history according to their old neighbor Hutch (Maurice Evans) – tales of witches’ covens, children being cooked and eaten, people dying and the like. Undaunted, they move in. Rosemary stays at home while her actor husband goes to work. She makes the home comfortable, and soon meets Terri (Angela Dorian), a former junkie who was saved by, and now lives with, the neighbors, Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman (Sidney Blackmer) Castevet. Terri wears an amulet (given to her by Minnie) that contains a stinky substance.
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Double Feature Review: Beetle Juice – KB’s Thoughts
Posted by
KB – October 31, 2009
Part two of a new Double Feature film review.
Beetle Juice (1988) is one of the landmark films in my life. There is “Before Beetle Juice” and there is “After Beetle Juice”. The film is important to me because it was the first film to reflect a subculture that I recognized firsthand: goth.
I was a teenager in 1988, and the gothic movement had started (on the West Coast of California, in any case) in about 1984 – 1985. It wasn’t called goth, or gothic, at that point. In fact, I don’t even remember hearing the term ‘goth’ to describe this look until the mid-nineties, when the movement had gone totally mainstream with Marilyn Manson and Hot Topic. Let me say for the record that I think ‘goth’ is the wrong word to describe the look of 1987.
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Double Feature Review: Saturday Night Fever
Posted by
KB – August 10, 2009
Establishing a new feature at Clothes on Film, the following review is written in collaboration with costume designer Kristin M. Burke (Death Sentence, Crossing Over); the intention being to provide a deeper, more balanced analysis of the film in question. For a detailed synopsis of the plot from Saturday Night Fever (1977), visit Kristin’s own site Frocktalk.
Kristin’s Thoughts:
I love this movie. It is so dark, and at the time it was released, taped into the zeitgeist of a large, young part of our population. In a post-hippie reality, with a culture embracing its own diversity at last, along comes a movie that talks about all of it. In Saturday Night Fever, we find forums for discussion about everything from women’s lib to racism – hot topics at the time – and yes, these issues are carried out, expressed and explored in the costumes.
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