Hot Date with Dan and Vicky

1945's Scarlet Street reunited director Fritz Lang with stars Joan Bennett, Edward G. Robinson, and Dan Duryea and cinematographer Milton Krasner from the previous year's The Woman in the Window. Unl…

Coming off the success of 2010's Lionsgate thriller The Last Exorcism, director Daniel Stamm brought his script for 13 Sins, a remake of a Thai film, to the producers at Blumhouse.  The 4 million dol…

For the first time in Hot Date history, an episode was lost to the computer gods as our original 76th show became a casualty of Dan's misguided efforts to clean off his desktop.  That film would have…

Director Taylor Hackford's (An Officer And A Gentleman, Dolores Clairborne) first cut of his Chicano epic Blood In Blood Out was nearly five hours long but distributor Disney, already skittish about …

After a three month recording hiatus, Dan and Vicky are back to sink their teeth into the Hammer horror entry Scars of Dracula.  The 1970 British production was the sixth entry in the studio's Dracul…

Essentially an immigrant story set in the 1950's New York music scene, The Mambo Kings is also one of the few mainstream Hollywood films to highlight the Cuban/American experience, albeit without act…

Director Russ Meyer was a World War II newsreel cameraman and Playboy photographer before writing, producing and directing his own feature films. But his early work directly influenced the way he app…

Gene Kelly, on loan to Columbia from MGM for 1944's Cover Girl, was finally able to put his talents to full use as the main choreographer for the film.  With assist from dancer friend Stanley Donen, …

Hot Date has reached 70 and you know what that means:  A Top Ten episode!  For this one, we take a shocking trip around the world for our favorite foreign horror films.  We'll make stops in France, J…

In the late 80's, Pierce Brosnan was approached to assume the mantle of legendary British movie spy James Bond from Roger Moore.  But his contract with NBC and the TV show Remington Steele prohibited…

Star Warwick Davis was only eighteen when he was cast as the lead in the Ron Howard directed, George Lucas produced fantasy epic Willow. He gamely and charismatically carries the film, often stealing…

The 1977 infection-on-a-train movie The Cassandra Crossing was an international affair fraught with potential pitfalls.  Funded with British, Italian, and West German money, the movie shot in Italy, …

Inspired by the theatrical Noh dramas he loved so much, Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress became a cultural and financial touchstone in 1958.  Despite being dismissed in Japan as a lesser Kurosawa…

The Velocity of Gary was only director Dan Ireland's second directing assignment.  He was primarily a film producer before that, co-founding the Seattle International Film Festival and producing movi…

Director Danny Boyle (Steve Jobs, Slumdog Millionaire) has said his inspiration for Millions, the only PG rated film in the filmmaker's oeuvre, was to take a complete left turn from his previous film…

Hitchcock's second to final British film before he returned to the UK in 1972 to make Frenzy, The Lady Vanishes broke UK box office records to become the highest grossing British film to date.  It wa…

In 1954, Japanese film production company Toho was looking to cash in on the monster movie mania inspired by the American film Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.  They conceived of Godzilla, named Gojira loc…

Elia Kazan had meant to direct Tennessee Williams' original screenplay, Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, with Julie Harris as his leading lady back in 1957.  But Kazan dropped the project and it wouldn't …

Hot Date 60 will be music to your ears -- movie music that is.  Dan and Vicky offer their top ten lists for favorite movie soundtracks and scores.  A misunderstanding about the topic yielded some fas…

Censored and banned around the world for it's frank depiction of the anonymous sexual relationship between a middle age hotel owner and a 19 year old actress, Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango In Pari…