David Cairns

PAPA KNOWS BEST: D is for ‘Douce’ PAPA KNOWS BEST An A-Z of French Cinema Before the New Wave D is for ‘Douce’ “I won’t threaten you with Hell. You can get there on your own.” ~ A priest to Odette Joyeux in Douce At the opening of …

Another Cinema de Papa classic - Claude Autant-Lara's DOUCE: dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/p...

Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf-Aids No, we’re not doing noirs all month, that might get monotonous. I do love a good noir, though. By way of a change, I just finished watching THE BEATLES GET BACK which I’d have to admit …

THE BEATLES GET BACK. In which Peter Jackson swallows Michael Lindsay-Hogg and tries to digest him. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/12/c...

I WALK ALONE interestingly anticipates some more modern crime flicks -- Leone, Boorman... dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/11/n...

Jacob Elordi is good and all, but he's not, like, better than Peter Hinwood.

Aldrich's first feature, though he'd done quite a lot of TV. Startled to discover he continued working with this editor, because it seems to be spliced together with woeful insensitivity.

Aldrich Night I was always keen to see Robert Aldrich’s WORLD FOR RANSOM in hopes that it would have at least some of the interest of KISS ME DEADLY and, now that I’m finally watching it (haven&#8217…

Strange blend of style and incompetence in an Aldrich.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/08/a...

Yeah, I was looking at his credits and thinking "How would THAT work?" but clearly it did.

11/7/52: B #filmnoir maestro Phil Karlson w/Kansas City Confidential - #noirvember
More:
Crowther, unhappy: nytimes.com/1952/11/29/a...
@dcairns.bsky.social: dcairns.wordpress.com/tag/kansas-c...
Manny Farber: archive.org/details/nati...

I just knew I'd like MURDER BY CONTRACT this time, even though I didn't last time. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/07/h...

A Touch of “Touch” So yes, TOUCH OF EVIL. A single shot. No, not that one. I thought I’d try closely analysing a little bit of it I always enjoyed, but I quickly found so much detail there that I’ll have …

I look at a single take from TOUCH OF EVIL. But not the usual one.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/06/a...

THE DEVIL'S RAIN is a bad movie with a good movie trying to get out, but the good movie is treated like Whack-a-Mole. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/i...

Better than Quantick of Solace.

It Takes Courage I was going to make this a special Noirvember trailer mashup using only classic noir titles, but it kind of got away from me. Maybe next week…

Trailer time! dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/i...

Noirvember Nights Starting the gloomy season with Julien Duvivier’s PANIQUE (1946) which I first saw on a grey-market VHS. The Criterion edition is a whole other movie. With subtitles by my late friend Lenny B…

Noirvember seems odd...
dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/02/n...

The Dawn of Man it ain't.

I'm still reeling from the bit I saw of Griffith's HEARTS OF THE WORLD in which Gish looks horrified and we cut to some real war footage, it looks like, showing half a corpse lying in the road.

Mushroom Cloudy with No Chance of Meatballs Thanks to Scout Tafoya for recommending Ishiro Honda’s MATANGO aka MATANGO FUNGUS OF TERROR, one of the GOJIRA director’s relatively rare non-kaiju works from his, er, mature period. It…

It takes two to MATANGO.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/02/m...

#DiadelosMuertos #Samhain #Halloween A long time ago in #Scotland, #Halloween wasn't anything like its current iteration. We went with the old Celtic tradition of 'guising.' According to AI Overview 'guising' comprises - 'children dressing up in costumes to go door-to-door,

Rhymes with “Blacken” Arthur Machen is really terrific. And according to the IMDb, unless I’m much deceived, he’s never been adapted to film. Ambrose Bierce has countless adaptationsm the Inaccurate Movie Da…

Strangely, there seem to be no movies of Arthur Machen's work. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/11/01/r...

Film people please follow my wife @monsterfromid66.bsky.social In a nice way, I mean.

Tabanga Baranga Matango? I’d never seen FROM HELL IT CAME and the only review I’d read is the famous Ed Naha line “And to hell it can go,” but I still knew it was a tree monster film. I wasn’t…

Tree fellers wanted. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...

Chanbara Raiders KAIKI EDOGAWA RAN-SAN (1937) is a Japanese spookshow of considerable atmosphere. Written and directed by Kenji Shimomura, its title seems to reference author Edogawa Rampo, and its mood is certainl…

A Japanese ghost story - with swordplay.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/10/28/c...

Yes, my favourite film! Though I personally heard the late Pierre Rissient describe Alloy Orchestra's score as "Fucking shit!" Excited to hear Antonio Coppola's alternative accompaniment, as he errs more on the side of subtlety.

And a very clear forerunner of THE BED SITTING ROOM's design asthetic!

Page 66: The Crimson Toe Here’s an original ghost story constructed from random passages chosen from twenty-five different page sixty-sixes (and a couple of sixrty-fives where sixty-six was blank) in numerous differe…

"Again there was a silence — a silence as of consummated Evil brooding above its unnameable triumph." An original ghost story, comprised of 25 different paragraphs swiped from the page 66s of 25 different collections. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/10/27/p...

NOSFERATU: better in German? dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/10/24/r...

When did Dario Argento's DEEP RED acquire this new (to me) scene? dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/10/23/j...

More seasonal scariness. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/u...

An important message... from Mars!

Kill it with Fire So, EL BARON DEL TERROR / THE BRAINIAC ends abruptly after 74 minutes when the stooge cops run into the Baron’s castle (castle?) and blast him with flame-throwers (frame-throwers?). The VFX a…

Concluding THE BRAINIAC. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/10/21/k...