Hello!

If the news from Film Masters is true, we’re in for a pleasant surprise. A series of Roger Corman films are going to be shown at Cannes this year, and it looks like Film Masters is behind the recent restoration of Corman’s gangland saga Machine Gun Kelly. The 1958 feature stars Charles Bronson, Susan Cabot, Barboura Morris, Morey Amsterdam, Richard Devon and Jack Lambert. It’s quite a kick.

In the link to the original (very good) trailer one can see the blurb for a process called ‘Superama.’ It’s not a dodge, like American-International’s misleading ‘Wide Screen’ logos … it’s a variation on the film format SuperScope, grabbing a 2:1 slot out of the middle of a flat image. I saw a 35mm print of Machine Gun Kelly projected at Warners in 1978, when James Ursini was hired to do research for a film company. The anamorphic re-position cropped out at least one hand-held gun positioned low in the frame.

We assume that A.I.P. also made flat prints available … old 16mm TV prints were flat, with lots of ‘free space’ top and bottom. Film Masters says A.I.P. released two features format-adjusted for Superama in 1958, but there is actually a third.

Film Masters promises a ‘larger announcement,’ which we hope will mean a disc release. It’s a nice movie to book-end with Roger Corman’s later studio picture  The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Next up, Joe Dante circulated this link to the “Missing Movies Newsletter” for Spring 2026, which celebrates two re-found movies —

The first is a 1989 adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel, The Kill-Off, directed by Maggie Greenwald. The page has a link in which Ms. Greenwald herself explains what happened to her movie, and how she found it.

The second movie is a ‘gritty independent action film’ by Sam Firstenberg, Riverbend, also from 1989. We get to learn the story of the recovery of that film as well.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson