Black Sabbath guitarist Tony / SUN 9-6-26 / Loudmouth's lack, perhaps / Vegan brand with the logo of a cow wearing a fake mustache / Fandom identities often with fluffy tails and ears / Dog hybrid with thick, low-shedding fur / "Rock of Ages" or "Stand by Me" / Lincoln Laboratory operator, in brief

Constructor: John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Crossover Films" — picture clues depicting theoretical titles of movies whose titles have been fused together:

Theme answers:

FLASH [DANCES WITH WOLVES]

THE LIGHT[HOUSE OF GUCCI]

THE LION [KINGPIN]

BAD [BOYS DON'T CRY]

A SHOT IN [THE DARK KNIGHT]

TWELVE ANGRY [MEN IN BLACK]

Word of the Day: The Lighthouse (see 39A) —

The Lighthouse is a 2019 film directed and produced by Robert Eggers, from a screenplay he wrote with his brother Max Eggers. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as turmoiled nineteenth-century lighthouse keepers stranded at a remote New England outpost by a violent storm. The film has defied genre categorization in media, leading to multiple interpretations from critics.

The idea of The Lighthouse originated from a script based on Edgar Allan Poe's incomplete short story "The Light-House", which was written by Max. Eggers researched for source material and developed the plot from a nineteenth-century legend of an accident at a Welsh lighthouse. The Lighthouse draws visually from photography of 1890s New England, maritime-themed French films from the 1930s, and symbolist art. Principal photography took place in Nova Scotia, Canada, beginning in April 2018 and lasting slightly over a month. It was shot in black-and-white, with a nearly-square 1.19:1 aspect ratio to express the lighthouse's vertical orientation and isolation of the characters. Mark Korven developed the film's score, evoking the sounds and mythologies of the sea.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States by A24 on October 18, 2019. It grossed over $18 million, against an $11 million budget, and received critical acclaim, with particular praise for the direction, visuals, and performances of Dafoe and Pattinson. Among its numerous accolades, the film was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 92nd Academy Awards and the 73rd British Academy Film Awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

When a puzzle relies heavily on visual clues, I always assume it's trying to distract me from the fact that it's either bad or essentially boring. I don't think this one was either bad or boring, but the puzzle falters a bit, both because the illustrations are silly / cartoonish without being that funny, and (more annoyingly) because the movie titles are widely (widely!) varying in terms of how recognizable / iconic they are. I watch a lot of movies, but ... The Lighthouse? You want to put that on the same plane as Flashdance, Men in Black, The Dark Knight, etc.????????? The Lighthouse made ~$18M in 2019 ...  it looks like it was well regarded and got some awards show recognition, but still, how in the world can you justify putting that title in this puzzle? Also, A Shot in the Dark??? Unless you are a huge Peter Sellers fan and somehow know that that is the second installment in the Pink Panther series, I have to imagine you were either shrugging your shoulders or else confusing this movie with the much more famous / much better Audrey Hepburn / Alan Arkin movie Wait Until Dark (as I was, briefly). I'm also not entirely certain how famous House of Gucci or Kingpin are (the latter is very well known to me, but I am the right age for a '90s bowling comedy by the Farrelly brothers). Looks like House of Gucci did pretty well, but honestly, until I looked it up, I thought it was a TV movie. All the other movies are massive hits and classics, so they work fine, but when four of your ten movies are, UMM, less than legendary, that kinda makes the theme seem desperate. LOL I only realized just now that the Bad Boys in this puzzle probably refers to the Will Smith/Martin Lawrence movie (a big hit in 1995 that spawned three sequels)—before this realization, I was thinking, "Are people going to remember that? That's pretty early Sean Penn...."

[co-starring ESAI Morales!]

And yet, despite the fact that the theme is only hit-or-miss for me, I do appreciate that it's at least trying to be interesting, trying to do new things, unlike so many Sundays, and it's doing so in a simple, whimsical, reasonably accessible way. I should say that my solving software couldn't really handle the visual clues. I mean, they were there, but they were sized in such a way that they wouldn't display completely, and I couldn't figure out how to remedy the situation. Still, the clues were easy enough, and I know movie titles (mostly) well enough, that the partial glimpse of the clues was generally enough for me to get the answer with only a few crosses. I actually really like the execution of both TWELVE ANGRY MEN IN BLACK and THE LION KINGPIN. Movies I know, images that work. As for FLASH DANCES WITH WOLVES ... isn't it THE FLASH? (the superhero who's depicted, I mean). Maybe people call him just plain old "Flash"? Anyway, the dancing wolves look so stupid in that clue that I can't enjoy it. And I don't really get why the crying boys are "bad." Because they have skulls on their t-shirts? Weird. There must be something I'm not getting. 

Speaking of things I'm not getting—how does [Pushing off] mean SENDING? Is this some kind of businessspeak I don't know? Gen Z-speak? I can't make it work. I know "pushing off" as a kind of personal foul in basketball, as well as a term for setting out from shore in, like, a rowboat or canoe or something. Also, maybe it means "deferring." But SENDING? You got me.

Names galore in this one. When your entire theme is proper nouns, you really start to notice when they pile up in the fill as well, but pile up they do: TAFT ANG ANYA GOETHE ELO E.L.JAMES AOKI EMMA MILO IL DIVO and, most hilariously to me, someone called IOMMI!?!?!?! I'm LOL'ing because it seems somewhat obscure and it looks insane and if you are a constructor, you can see how IOMMI is a total desperation move, born out of the very unfortunate placement of two themers (39A and 62A), which results in an I---I pattern that is virtually impossible to land cleanly. IAMBI? IT IS I? IRANI? IRAQI? You lock yourself into very few, very poor options right away when you position your themers this way. IOMMI is maybe the most ridiculous way I can think of to make I---I "work," largely because I have no idea who that is. This is IOMMI's debut NYTXW appearance. You don't say!!! I (sincerely) hope the Black Sabbath fans among you were thrilled to see his name. Someone should be.

Bullets:

• 58A: Dog hybrid with thick, low-shedding fur (SHIH-POO) — I find all the dog hybrid names (soooooo many now) really truly embarrassing. Just get a mutt from the dog shelter, or, like, a regular dog, like a lab or something, yeesh. Speaking of portmanteaux ... FURSONAS (85D: Fandom identities often with fluffy tails and ears). That was a toughie for me. I think I tried FUR SUITS at some point. And in case you somehow needed yet another portmanteau, there's the gratuitously portmanteau clue on FUN (85A: Word combined with "-fetti" in a portmanteau). And if, at that point, your portmanteau pouch requires even further stuffing, there's a hunk of INCOGMEATO for you to chew on (75D: Vegan brand with the logo of a cow wearing a fake mustache). If I left a portmanteau off this list, please, I beg you, don't tell me.

• 55A: "Fifty Shades of Grey" author (E.L. JAMES) — totally forgot her name and wrote in E.L. JONES :(
• 82A: Bird store supply (SEED) — makes sense, but I left that first letter blank for an awful long time, thinking it might be FEED (because of the concept of a "bird feeder"???). The "S" cross, STOP, was pretty toughly clued (82D: Sign of the cross?) (because you might see a STOP sign where roads "cross").
• 105A: Quite the head-turner? (OWL) — love it. Hurray birds, hurray this clue.

• 40D: Slangy "very" (HELLA)—so ... not HECKA, then? (see 49A from Friday)
• 22A: Noteworthy (NAMABLE) — uh ... hmm. What? I can "name" lots of things. Hardly any of them are actually "noteworthy." NAMABLE is something a wordlist barfed up.
• 76D: ___ ball (rubbery toy) (KOOSH) — once I got KOOSH, I realized I do, in fact, know what they are, but it still took me forever, largely because the only "rubbery toy" I could think of that starts with a "K" is a KONG toy (dog owners know).

[Come on, look at this buddy! Gio! So patient. Give him his Kong! Labs, man. You can keep your SHIH-POOs...]

• 120A: Follows the first rule of improv (YES-ANDS) — so we're verbing this now? I guess we're verbing this now. Can't say I love it.

• 62D: Jason Seaver or Ward Cleaver, notably (TV DAD) — Ward Cleaver was the dad on Leave it to Beaver. Jason Seaver was the dad on Growing Pains, played by Alan Thicke. 

• 10D: 9-5, say (HRS) — OK, puzzle, if you insist...

Speaking of 9 to 5 ... which is to say, 9/25 ... that's the day this blog turns 20 years old. Mark your calendars! I don't know why! I have absolutely nothing planned! Just mark them!
Also on my calendar—on Thursday, September 17, at 7pm in Jersey City, NJ (just across the Hudson from Manhattan), I'm doing a little fundraising event for the world's greatest radio station, WFMU, hosted by DJ (and avid crossword solver) Evan "Funk" Davies. It's the WFMU Crossword Meet-Up! Longtime NYTXW constructor Gary Cee will also be there. We'll be sharing our WFMU-themed crosswords and talking about crosswords and generally just hanging out and having a nerdy good time, so if you're in the New York metropolitan area and have the time and inclination, please come out and say hi. More information here.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️Upcoming Crossword Tournaments✏️:

• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago, IL, Sat., Oct. 3, 2026)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)