Before He Was James Bond and Lord Sinclair, He Was a Maverick Don McGregor May 25, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun Warner Archives have come fast and furious with the release of new Maverick DVDs! As I write this piece, the company has just let fans have...
Searching Search for Leslie Stevens Don McGregor May 14, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun Trying to find writer/producer Leslie Stevens in his 1972-73 TV series Search is like trying to navigate the twisting labyrinths of his...
Gently at the Crossroads of Life and Violent Death Don McGregor April 26, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun George Gently stands at the side of a rural English road, staring at the icy expanse of water below, cold and with dark, fathomless depths, in the...
I Coulda Had Dinner with the Shadow Don McGregor April 10, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun Sometimes, no matter what choice you make, you just can’t win.You might do the right thing, for the right reason, but not without a measure...
How the Shadow and Popeye Are the Same (and What Does This Have To Do with the Shadow on Blu-ray?) Don McGregor April 4, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun When you take the Shadow out of Walter Gibson's pulp paper playground and hurl him into comics or movies, the major question that creators...
No Robin Hood Is Going To Save This 'Lady in a Cage' Don McGregor March 29, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun Violence, sex, brutality and gore became common images on American movie screens in the 1960s. One of the first films to sell explicit blood and...
Hopalong Cassidy Vs. The Venutian Ymir Don McGregor March 14, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun When I was twelve years old, my backyard was narrow and thin, with grass spouting between clumps of dirt, a long strip like a rural prop...
A Riding Shotgun Double Feature: The Beast of Hollow Mountain Devours More Than Sugar Pops Don McGregor March 12, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun Cowboys and dinosaurs.Nowadays it's cowboys and aliens.In the 1950s, though, for creature movie stop motion animation specialists like Ray...
Jack Benny Meets Raoul Walsh: The Horn Blows White Heat at Midnight Don McGregor February 10, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun Jack Benny meets Raoul Walsh at the top of the world: Heaven. This pairing of two such disparate talents, the collaboration of the inimitable...
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: A Haunting Echo, A Fading Validation of a Disintegrating Woman Don McGregor January 27, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun Can you hear someone calling your name?Twice?Like a haunting echo?The double-calling of Mary Hartman's name at the beginning of every episode...
Zatoichi – The Scintillating Sword-blade Stained with Blood is the Blu-ray Set Of 2013 Don McGregor January 11, 2014 Columns, Riding Shotgun You know how many damned years and how much of a quest it was for me to finally manage to get a full set of the Zatoichi: the Blind Swordsman...
Cheyenne – Season 7: The Quintessential ‘Quiet Until Riled’ Loner Cowboy Rides into the Last Sunset Don McGregor December 16, 2013 Columns, Riding Shotgun It has been noted that when Cheyenne premiered on September 20, 1955, as part of an anthology series, Warner Brothers Presents which contained three...
Shout at the Bipolar Devil & Bad Scorchy Gets Her Fire Put Out (A Midnight Riding Shotgun Double Feature) Don McGregor December 2, 2013 Columns, Riding Shotgun Just like they sometimes do in movie theaters, I decided that for this column I would write a double feature. Cult films often had midnight runs...
Night, Dawn, Day of the Walking Dead: The Demarcation Points of Gut-spilling and Women’s Nipples in Pop Culture Don McGregor November 15, 2013 Columns, Riding Shotgun Richard Matheson was a legend to many readers and writers because of his novel I Am Legend. Whenever Hollywood has tried to film that seminal book...
Dobie Gillis: "I Gotta Kill that Boy!" A Cult Series Makes its Way to DVD Don McGregor October 21, 2013 Columns, Riding Shotgun On the television screens in America in 1959, a harried grocery store owner shouts out at his son's cavalier leave from their home with the...