In a strange house, strange people await a new spiritual life … or will it be a new imprisonment? Orson Welles’ Cassavius may be dying, but his will holds the secret lair called Malpertuis under a strange spell. A young man is offered the job of ‘new keeper’ for what might be a strange menagerie…
A philosophical animated film about animals in peril? This thoughtfully conceived, beautifully-crafted winner for Best Animated Film gives us something new in a genre dominated by safe family fare with jokes and songs: a rumination on the life struggle in an unstable world. Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis builds a fascinating fantasy environment, in which a…
It’s part film noir, part haunted house movie and a 100% atmospheric triumph for director Bernard Vorhaus and cameraman John Alton. Eagle-Lion’s spooky tale of a spiritualist conning a widow and her daring younger sister works up a nice charge of suspense. Turhan Bey stars as the smooth soothsayer, and Lynn Bari and Cathy O’Donnell…
It was the impossible, intolerable taboo horror of its day … does it still shock as it once did, or are audiences now too jaded to appreciate its brilliance? George Franju & Eugen Schüfftan ride the divide between clinical brutality and dreamy surrealism. Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli and Edith Scob brought horror up to date…
An ‘almost’ icon and a vivid memory from the New York cinema front of the early ’80s, Zoë Tamerlis graced exploitation screens in Abel Ferrara’s minimalist ode to sisterly vigilantism. The victim of two brutal rapes in one night, a meek mute seamstress is transformed into an avenging angel — ambushing the men that would…
The independent-minded Hedy Lamarr put this ‘Americana noir’ into motion with director Edgar G. Ulmer and excellent talent on both sides of the camera; the result is a superior, fairly uncompromised tale of beauty and ambition, spun into the realm of the ‘Evil Woman’ genre. It has a telling resemblance to a similar film from…
Underdog Warners actress Ida Lupino could hold her head high, turning out pictures like this — a Bette Davis reject that proved a winner. It’s an overachieving backstage musical soaper using some of the studio’s ‘A-minus’ talent. Lupino moves heaven and earth to carve out a starring showbiz career for her younger sister Joan Leslie,…
This New Zealand pirate adventure had bad luck theatrically, but we welcomed its old-fashioned thrills when it appeared on cable TV. It now looks super on widescreen Blu-ray. A young Tommy Lee Jones is Bully Hayes, a South Seas adventurer competing with Michael O’Keefe for the hand of Jenny (sigh) Seagrove. His piratical crew fights…
This impressive import collection of ‘Archers’ pictures is just one classic after another, including three of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Technicolor masterpieces. The boxed set also carries good extras, new input from experts plus a selection of the best existing documentaries on P&P. Plus, a couple of the transfers are big improvements on older…
Wonder of wonders — Hammer’s massive boxed sets seem unreasonable until one sees the depth and breadth of the extras. Nigel Kneale’s original ‘organic invasion’ scare show hasn’t lost its power, thanks to Richard Wordsworth’s compelling performance and the dogged intensity of Brian Donlevy. The 4K encoding is superb; they’ve added the U.S. version plus…
Akira Kurosawa’s modern crime masterpiece takes the leap to 4K. It’s a kidnapping tale in a context of social friction — the perpetrator is maddened by the gap between haves and have nots. A superb detective story balances that irony with the commitment of an ethical businessman and a police force we wish we had…
Here we take a ‘Missing on Blu’ Review break thanks to the Public Domain availability of a show we aren’t convinced was ever given a legit disc release, legit as in ‘authorized.’ England’s 1956 Michael Anderson version of George Orwell’s legendary book dropped (mostly) out of sight long ago, and this was the first time…
It’s a chronicle of defeat and doom, hopelessness and horror … yet director Kon Ichikawa turns it into an engrossing experience. Foot soldier Tamura is one of thousands of Japanese troops left behind after military defeats; surrender risks execution by partisan Philippinos, and the alternative is slow starvation in the hills. Desperation and madness take…
Crime movies have grown a lot more vicious since 1971, but few pack the hard crime impact of Mike Hodges’ gangster revenge tale. Michael Caine’s Jack Carter is a London hit man who returns to his roots in Newcastle, to sort out the sudden death of his brother. It leads to the expected trail of…
The blizzard looks real and the big stars are flashy, but Ross Hunter’s 70mm ode to supermarket best sellers still plays like a TV movie. Both airport manager Burt Lancaster and pilot Dean Martin are straying from their marriages, with Jean Seberg (sigh!) and Jacqueline Bisset (wow!). But the direction dotes on cute geriatric stowaway…
Is this the best teleplay ever written by Rod Serling? It’s almost too good, even for him. Van Heflin, Everett Sloane and Ed Begley square off at the center of a business power squeeze, in a business world adopting ruthless new ground rules. Is it all about staying competitive, or is it corporate criminality? It’s…
A striking digital Technicolor restoration brings Ealing Films’ unique costume romance to vivid life. The tragedy of Princess Sophie Dorothea has a fine cast: Stewart Granger, Françoise Rosay, Frederick Valk, Peter Bull, Anthony Quayle, Michael Gough, Megs Jenkins, Miles Malleson, Guy Rolfe — plus superb work from ‘the voice’ Joan Greenwood, and a performance by…
Whoa! We saw this endlessly as kids and pretty much set it aside in favor of later revisionist westerns of the 1950s. Raoul Walsh’s pseudobio of George Armstrong Custer is nevertheless a stunning, action-filled epic with humor, romance and a smashing star performance by Errol Flynn. Olivia de Havilland bounces back as the faithful wife,…
This atom fear thriller grabbed audiences by the Conelrads. Albert Zugsmith spun Cold War hysteria into gold with this cheap but effective exploitation of nuclear war jitters. For once it really happens — ‘unnamed enemies’ overrun America with atom bombs, parachuting troops into cities even as the bombs fall. The absurd script sees excellent work…
Irwin Allen started a franchise with his 1965 TV show: there has even been a second TV series with Parker Posey as Dr. Smith. This very, very expensive 1998 space opera must be the result of millions of hours of digital labor, as the whole thing is a digital effect just as CGI wiped out…
Now back in a dazzling remaster, John Ford’s final feature is a ‘problematic masterpiece.’ The director reaches back to the expressionist 1930s for a grim tale of a Christian mission outpost overrun by savage bandits. His cranky traditionalism in this case sides 100% with core feminist values, thanks to Anne Bancroft’s sterling performance as an…
Aviation buffs will see plenty to admire in Basil Dearden’s drama of events at London’s Heathrow Airport. The show comes off as a low-stress precursor to our Airport, back when the notion of routine air travel was a glamorous and romantic novelty. It also functions as an institutional advert for British aviation and good PR…
Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet shine as Jane Austen heroines that endeavor to maintain their composure while swooning over the highly eligible swains Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. Please don’t tell us that nobody got along on this production, because the result seems all so pleasant. Emma Thompson’s adaptation could hardly be improved, and Ang…
William Gibson’s multi-character soap about a psychiatric clinic has a severe case of Caligari Syndrome: the doctors need more counseling than do the patients. Richard Widmark leads an impressive cast (Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Gloria Grahame, Lillian Gish, John Kerr, Susan Strasberg, Oscar Levant, Paul Stewart) as everybody goes crazy over various manias, staff rivalries,…
Cy Endfield’s intense African survival adventure purports to teach lessons about the Territorial Imperative and the easy slide to savagery when civilization is far away. Plane-wreck survivors in a remote African desert must fight the local baboon population for food and water. Stuart Whitman, Stanley Baker and Nigel Davenport are tempted by the female castaway,…
The early pre-Code era yields two star vehicles from the dawn of Sylvia Sidney’s long career. In Confessions of a Co-Ed her college girl falls for Phillips Holmes’ thoughtless student and gets herself ‘in a family way.’ In Ladies of the Big House she and her new husband Gene Raymond are framed by a gangster…