Based on The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, this Hitchcock thriller is about Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood), who is traveling through Europe by train and soon learns that her fellow passenger, Miss Froy (May Whitty), has disappeared, and no one remembers her. Is Iris just seeing things? Has a hit on her head ruined her hold on reality? Will she fall in love with clarinet player Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) and leave her fiancé?
Originally called The Lost Lady, this was to be directed by Roy William Neill. A crew went to Yugoslavia to shoot some background shots, but when the police accidentally learned that the country wasn’t treated well in the story, they kicked the crew out. A year later, as Hitchcock was trying to fulfill his contract, he took on this story.
The characters of Charters and Caldicott, played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, were so popular that they would appear in three more movies: Night Train to Munich, Crook’s Tour and Millions Like Us. While not called by name, they also played versions of the characters in The Next of Kin, Dead of Night, A Girl In a Million, Quartet, It’s Not Cricket, Passport to Pimlico and Stop Press Girl as well as radio appearances. The 1979 Hammer remake featured Arthur Lowe as Charters and Ian Carmichael as Caldicott, while a modern-day TV series from 1985 starred Robin Bailey as Charters and Michael Aldridge as Caldicott.
Two tastes that you never knew never went together. It’s my favorite ape movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Operation Kid Brother. Get ready for everyone to die, including the entire planet, and Sean Connery to get upset.
Probably the best movie of Hitchcock’s British era, one he would remix and remake in 1956. Of these films, he said, “Let’s say the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional.”
Bob and Jill Lawrence (Leslie Banks and Edna Best) are on vacation in Switzerland, a serene setting that is soon disrupted by the tension of a clay shooting competition. Jill almost outshines a sharpshooter named Ramon Levine (Frank Vosper) before Mr. Abbott’s (Peter Lorre) watch distracts her. This moment of distraction leads to a sudden turn of events, as a French man by the name of Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay) is shot while dancing with Jill. The Lawrences are then forced into a dangerous game, as Abbott kidnaps their daughter, Betty, and compels them to be part of his plan to murder a leader.
The release of this film was a significant event, given the circumstances. C.M. Woolf, a powerful figure in the English cinema industry, initially opposed the film, stating that it would only be released if it was remade with a new director, different cast, and different writers. However, Hitchcock’s appeal to Isidore Ostrer, the owner of Gaumont-British, led to the film’s release. The movie’s success was a source of contention, as Woolf, who was forced to release it as a supporting feature, was left displeased.
Lorre made this soon after he had escaped from Nazi Germany. In his first meeting with Hitchcock, he smiled and laughed as the director spoke; this meant that even though Lorre barely spoke English, he made a good impression. He said most of his lines in this movie phonetically.
Dr. Cross, portrayed by the remarkably young Vincent Price, is treating a young patient for shock. She fell into a coma after witnessing a man kill his wife with a candlestick. The twist? The man she saw was Dr. Cross himself. The question remains, how will she escape this perilous situation?
Lynn Bari plays the Doctor’s lover/nurse, Elaine, and, if you know anything about noir, she’s never a leading lady but always the seductress —a “sultry, statuesque man-killer,” as Wikipedia calls her. Sadly, her career fizzled by the 1950s, “sabotaged by unresolved problems with her domineering, alcoholic mother and three marriages.”
As Dr. Cross realizes that Janet is aware of his dark secret, Elaine, his lover and nurse, persuades him to induce a coma in Janet through insulin overdose and shock therapy. Despite his reluctance to harm her, he is left with no choice but to end her life. However, Dr. Harvey intervenes just in time, saving the day and preventing a tragic end.
Based on The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes and the play Who Is He?, which was co-written by Belloc Lowndes, Hitchcock’s third movie was his first thriller and also the start of his cameo appearances.
A killer named the Avenger has already murdered seven young blondes, always on Tuesday nights. Daisy Bunting (June Tripp), a model, has taken to hiding her hair color, as many other women do. Maybe her cop boyfriend Joe (Malcolm Keen) can keep her safe.
Daisy’s parents (Marie Ault and Arthur Chesney) keep a room at the top of their home and rent it out. The new lodger, Jonathan Drew (Ivor Novello), demands they remove all the photos of young blondes. You would think that this would scare Daisy, but you know how bad boys turn on good girls. Soon, she’s dating the lodger and has left Joe behind; Joe’s convinced she’s dating a killer and even tries to arrest him.
There’s a reason: the lodger has a photo of the first victim and maps of each murder. Initially, this was supposed to end with a question about whether he really was the killer; the studio wouldn’t let that happen.
For the beginning of the film, Hitchcock wanted to show the Avenger’s murder victim being dragged out of the River Thames. Scotland Yard refused but said they would “look the other way” if he could do the filming in one night. It wasn’t to be. Hitchcock learned that his cameraman had forgotten to put the lens on the camera before filming the scene. It was replaced with a scene where the victim faces the camera and screams. She was lying on a sheet of glass, lit from underneath with the camera mounted on its side and the footage shot downward. An amazing piece of in-camera effects.
Based on “The Gold-Bug” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, this at least has a great title. In the U.S., at least, as it was sold as Calypso in Great Britain.
Directed by W. Lee Wilder (Billy’s brother) and written by his brother Myles and Joel Murcott, this begins with Inspector Warren (Jack Lewis) coming to Jamaica to arrest a criminal known only as the Professor (Victor Jory). There’s also a captain named Brannigan (John Bromfield) who has won a ship called Manfish and the service of its first mate, Swede (Lon Chaney Jr.). Brannigan notices the ring the Professor wears and links it to a treasure map he finds, sending everyone to an island in search of the booty of pirate Jean Lafitte. Also: Brannigan wants the Professor’s woman, Alita (Tessa Prendergast, who would go on to design Ursula Andress’ bikini in Dr. No). Plus, you get another good-looking lady, Mimi (Barbara Nichols, The Human Duplicators).
A lot of this movie finds the crew of the Manfish — “Big Boy” (Theodore Purcell) and Domingo (Vincent Chang) — turtle hunting. There’s also music by Clyde Hoyte and the Calypsos, and you’ll wonder, how do they get Poe into this? At least Chaney is good, all sweaty and drunk, but still wonderful.
Michael Reeves only directed three movies: this film, The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General. He also had something to do with Castle of the Living Dead* and assisted Don Siegel, worked for Jack Cardiff on The Long Ships and for Henry Levin on his movie Genghis Khan.
Made in 21 days for hardly any money — even when Barbara Steele made $1,000 for one day of work, that day was 18 hours long — and most of the crew is in the movie. Reeves also wrote the script, along with F. Amos Powell and Mel Welles (the director of Lady Frankenstein), under the name Michael Byron.
Two hundred years ago in Transylvania, a witch named Vardella was burned at the stake, but not before threatening to come back for revenge. This would end up ruining the honeymoon of Philip (Ian Ogilvy) and Veronica (Barbara Steele) and that’s not even counting the squalid hotel owned by Ladislav Groper (Welles).
As they enjoy breakfast, Count Von Helsing (John Karlsen) delights in sharing the legend of Dracula and the story Vardella. Well, those foreigners have no interest in this weird old man and blow him off. That night, Phillip catches Groper peeping on his wife and beats him into oblivion. If that doesn’t make this a rough wedding getaway, he wrecks their car into a lake and when they pull out his new bride, it’s the dead body of the witch instead of the gorgeous Steele.
Now, Phillip has to make nice with Von Helsing and be part of his plan to take this dead body, drug it and perform an exorcism to get his wife back. It seems like a lot of work, but I’ve done so much more for women who couldn’t stand in the brightness of Steele’s flawless alabaster skin.
How do you kill a witch? You drown it. That’s also how you find out if someone is a witch.
This played double features in America — distributed by American-International Pictures — with The Embalmer.
*Depending on who is asked, Reeves either did minor second unit work, a polish on the script’s dwarf character, a complete takeover of the movie or nothing at all.
After Popeye, this was the second joint Paramount production with films more mature than the expected Disney offerings. That meant Dragonslayer’s violence, themes, and even brief nudity became controversial, despite its PG rating.
Set after the Roman departure from Britain, before the arrival of Christianity, the film presents a world of sorcery unlike many others in the genre. Co-writers Hal Barwood (who also wrote The Sugarland Express, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, MacArthur and Corvette Summer, as well as writing and directing Warning Sign and creating video games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis) and Matthew Robins (who wrote Crimson Peak and wrote and directed *Batteries Not Included and I would be remiss not to mention that he also directed The Legend of Billie Jean) were inspired to make something new. Barwood said, “Our film has no knights in shining armor, no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphanous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail. Instead, we set out to create a bizarre world with a lot of weird values and customs, steeped in superstition, where the clothes and manners of the people were rough, their homes and villages primitive, and their countryside almost primeval, so that the idea of magic would be a natural part of their existence.”
Vermithrax is also one of the best dragons ever made, even forty years after the film’s release. More than 25% of the movie’s budget went to realizing the dragon. This was the first movie to use go-motion, in which parts of the mechanical dragon were programmed and filmed by computer. The forty-foot-tall beast was brought to life by sixteen puppeteers. Its full name — Vermithrax Pejorative — means The Worm of Thrace Which Makes Things Worse.
As for the story, it’s all about Galen Bradwarden (Peter MacNicol, who is embarrassed by this movie, perhaps because you can fully see his ween in it) saving Valerian (Caitlin Clarke) from being a virgin sacrifice to the dragon. She’s no damsel in distress, however, as she’d hidden her gender identity to help create the sword that can destroy the beast.
But yeah. It’s worth watching for just the dragon.
Federal Marshal William O’Niel (Sean Connery) has been assigned to the titanium ore mining outpost Con-Am 27, operated by the company Con-Amalgamate on the Jovian moon of Io. It’s rough work in a place where gravity a sixth of Earth’s with no breathable atmosphere and the men are forced to work in heavy spacesuits with hardly any air. But there is money and productivity is up ever since the new manager, Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle), was hired.
O’Niel is left behind with his wife and son leaving for Jupiter, but he does have a mission. That’s because several miners have died from getting stimulant psychosis and tearing off their suits. That may be because the miners are abusing polydichloric euthimal, a drug that allows them to stay awake for days at a time. The side effect? After ten months, they go insane.
With only one person on his side — Dr. Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) — O’Niel has to battle the corrupt mining company and their men, many of whom don’t want a chance to their way of life, no matter how wrong it is.
Outland is pretty much a Western in space, directed and written by Peter Hyams, who told Empire, “I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, “You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western.” I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was. I wrote it and by great fortune Sean Connery wanted to do it. And how many chances do you get to work with Sean Connery?”
If you love this movie, I recommend the comic book adaptation by James Steranko.
The Arrow Video 4K UHD of this film has a new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films, an archive audio commentary by writer-director Peter Hyams, a new audio commentary by film critic Chris Alexander, interviews with Hyams, director of photography Stephen Goldblatt and visual effects artist William Mesa, appreciations and visual essays by Josh Nelson and Howard S. Berger, a trailer, an image gallery, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Pye Parr, a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Pye Parr and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by film critics Priscilla Page and Brandon Streussnig.
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