For our 2024 Halloween Special Subject we watched two films in the German Expressionist tradition starring one of the greatest actors to be relegated to Hollywood character actor status, Peter Lorre: Fritz Lang's masterpiece M (1931), through which Lorre came to international recognition playing a child murderer, and Lorre's first Hollywood film, Karl Freund's Mad Love (1935), to which he also brought his special blend of pathos and perversion. We discuss serial killers, scapegoats, sadism, cyberpunk zombies, love, sex, and other topics certain to terrify.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: M (1931) [dir. Fritz Lang]

0h 32m 07s: MAD LOVE (1935) [dir. Karl Freund]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

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Things are looking up in this week's Paul Robeson Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, for which we watched Big Fella (directed by J. Elder Willis), in which Robeson is a dockworker who becomes involved in the search for a kidnapped rich kid, and King Solomon's Mines (directed by Robert Stevenson), the first film adaptation of the H. Rider Haggard colonial adventure epic. We make our arguments for Big Fella as an anti-Shirley Temple movie that both accomplishes and subverts its genre goals and for King Solomon's Mines' Verhoevening of its reactionary source material.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: BIG FELLA (1937) [dir. J. Elder Willis]

0h 28m 30s: KING SOLOMON’S MINES [dir. Robert Stevenson]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Our MGM 1948 Studios Year by Year episode is a Freed Unit double feature: the great Irving Berlin musical Easter Parade, starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, and Summer Holiday, a Mickey Rooney coming-of-age story based on a play by Eugene O'Neill, directed by studio-era "art director" Rouben Mamoulian. We discuss Easter Parade as a vehicle for presenting Judy Garland's "problematic" anti-star star persona and Summer Holiday's envelope-pushing leftist politics and middle-class sexual repression plot, wrapped up in cozy turn-of-the-century nostalgia.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: SUMMER HOLIDAY [dir. Rouben Mamoulian]

0h 36m 24s: EASTER PARADE [dir. Charles Walters]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!