Bruce Dern Archives

Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Rating: ★★★★

Apr 12, 2003Southern Gothic Psycho-Thriller

Robert Aldrich's successor to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with Bette Davis on the receiving end this time. This is arguably a superior film with a tightly contorted psycho-thriller plot and a decaying Southern setting

Director: Robert Aldrich

Actors: Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, …

Category: Horror

12 April 20031 April 2026 by Roog

The Trip (1967)

Rating: ★★★★

Aug 12, 2000LSD Trip

LSD film from Roger Corman featuring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper and full of hilariously surreal and trippily psychedelic moments

Director: Roger Corman

Actors: Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, Susan Strasberg

Category: Fantasy

12 August 20008 May 2025 by Roog

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

Rating: ★

May 11, 1999Two-Headed Transplant/Mad Scientist

Mad scientist Bruce Dern creates a two-headed transplant. Unlike The Thing with Two Heads from the same company, this lacks an appreciable sense of its own absurdity

Director: Anthony M. Lanza

Actors: Bruce Dern, John Bloom, Berry Kroeger, Casey Kasem

Category: Horror

11 May 199911 October 2022 by Roog

Silent Running (1972)

Rating: ★★½

Apr 27, 2003Saving the World's Last Forest in Space

Classic SF film from effects man Douglas Trumbull, one that spins 2001: A Space Odyssey with a conservationist bent. Slightly loopy in terms of its science, the design and effects have a grandeur

Director: Douglas Trumbull

Actors: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint

Category: Science Fiction

27 April 200313 November 2021 by Roog

The Laughing Policeman (1973)

Rating: ★★

Sep 4, 2001Detective Thriller/Serial Killer

A gritty US-made adaptation of a Swedish thriller with Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern as detectives investigating a machine-gun murder spree aboard a bus

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Actors: Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, Louis Gossett Jr, Anthony Zerbe, …

Category: Horror

4 September 20013 July 2026 by Roog

The ‘Burbs (1989)

Rating: ★★

Jan 3, 2000Suburban Paranoia Black Comedy

Joe Dante black comedy about a neighbourhood where everybody becomes paranoid about the weird new people moved in. The film's bite gets lots amid everything being pitched at a clumsily shrill level of hysteria

Director: Joe Dante

Actors: Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Rick Ducommun, …

Category: Horror

3 January 200026 May 2020 by Roog

Perfect Prey (1998)

Rating: ★★

Jun 24, 2014Serial Killer Thriller

When the Bough Breaks was one of the better 1990s serial killer thrillers; though it didn't need it, this is a sequel, albeit with a completely different cast. While the original was clever, this falls into drawing too much from The Silence of the Lambs, the inspiration behind both films

Director: Howard McCain

Actors: Kelly McGillis, Bruce Dern, David Keith, D.W. Moffett, …

Category: Horror

24 June 20144 February 2025 by Roog

Small Soldiers (1998)

Rating: ★★

Nov 5, 1999War Between Toys

Joe Dante has resorted to a rehash of his biggest hit Gremlins, seemingly conceptually slung together with Toy Story - concerning an army of malevolent toy soldiers come to life

Director: Joe Dante

Actors: Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Tommy Lee Jones, Gregory Smith, …

Category: Science Fiction

5 November 199926 May 2026 by Roog

The Haunting (1999)

Rating: ★

Jul 25, 1999Haunted House

The original 1963 version of The Haunting was a masterpiece of unseen psychological horrors. This, in which all of the psychological horrors are replaced by loud and unsubtle CGI bombast, is one of the worst remakes of all time

Director: Jan De Bont

Actors: Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liam Neeson, Owen Wilson, …

Category: Horror

25 July 19993 November 2025 by Roog

The Glass House (2001)

Rating: ★★★

Sep 16, 2001Evil Foster Parents Psycho-Thriller

A modest and reasonably effective psycho-thriller about a brother and sister who are adopted after the death of their parents only to find their step-parents have sinister intent

Director: Daniel Sackheim

Actors: Leelee Sobieski, Stellan Skarsgård, Diane Lane, Trevor Morgan, …

Category: Horror

16 September 200128 October 2025 by Roog

Monster (2003)

Rating: ★★★★

Apr 19, 2004True-Life Serial Killer

Patty Jenkins and Charlize Theron combine forces on their portrait of female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. The result won Theron, who undergoes an amazing transformation, an Academy Award for Best Actress

Director: Patty Jenkins

Actors: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen, …

Category: Horror

19 April 200410 December 2025 by Roog

The Astronaut Farmer (2006)

Rating: ★★★★

Mar 20, 2009Man Builds His Own Rocket

The Polish Brothers are a greatly underrated force in US filmmaking. Here they make a fine film with Billy Bob Thornton as an everyday farmer who decides to build and launch his own space rocket

Director: Michael Polish

Actors: Billy Bob Thornton, Virginia Madsen, Max Thieriot, Bruce Dern, …

Category: Science Fiction

20 March 200924 November 2025 by Roog

The Hole (2009)

Rating: ★★★

Feb 21, 2018Kids Open a Portal/Young Adult Horror

One of the less known films of Joe Dante. A 3D work that just predates Avatar, it is a YA horror story in the vein of The Goonies or Dante's own Explorers crafted with care and an affection for the characters

Director: Joe Dante

Actors: Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Nathan Gamble, Teri Polo, …

Category: Horror

21 February 20183 November 2025 by Roog

Twixt (2011)

Rating: ★★

Jan 26, 2013Ghost Story/Vampire Film

Francis Ford Coppola makes what may be a ghost story or a vampire film but things are so confused you are never sure what. Less like the mature work of one of the great American filmmakers than an ingenue effort from director straight out of film school with a head full of muddled pretensions

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Actors: Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning, Ben Chaplin, …

Category: Horror

26 January 201321 November 2024 by Roog

Freaks (2018)

Rating: ★★★★

Dec 15, 2019Psychic Powers

Not to be confused with Tod Browning's shock classic, this starts with a mind-bending quality that leaves you wondering WTF is going on, before logically and ingeniously unfolding as a psychic powers film

Director: Adam Stein, Zach Lipovsky

Actors: Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Grace Park, Amanda Crew, …

Category: Science Fiction

15 December 201923 October 2025 by Roog