You know, I’ve never really liked Warren Beatty and then this movie — and several others on the Through the Decades: 1960s Collection like Lilith and Mickey One — totally changed my mind.

A Hamburg, West Germany bank has privacy laws that are quite favorable to an entire rogue’s gallery of criminals who need a place to keep their money safe from the government. Meanwhile, bank security consultant Joe Collins (Beatty) has been planning on stealing all of their cash along with sex worker Dawn Divine (Goldie Hawn).

From there, the criminals — like Las Vegas mobsters, military men who’ve just made money off an illicit drug deal and a brutal killer known only as the Candy Man — start hunting Joe and Dawn for their money across nearly all of Europe.

This was directed and written by Richard Brooks, who also wrote Key Largo and directed and wrote Blackboard Jungle, In Cold Blood and Waiting for Mr. Goodbar. This isn’t as successful as those, but Beatty and Hawn have a fun chemistry and are both filled with such charm that I couldn’t dislike this movie.

Through the Decades: 1970s Collection is new from Mill Creek. It also has A Walk In the Spring Rain, Fun With Dick and Jane, The Owl and Pussycat, For Pete’s Sake, The Anderson Tapes, The Horsemen, The Stone Killer, Brother John, Gumshoe and The Last Detail. You can learn more on their site and order it from Deep Discount.

Producer Stirling Silliphant wrote the screenplay for this movie, based on novel A Walk in the Spring Rain by Rachel Maddux. Silliphant’s best known works are In the Heat of the Night, The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, but he also created Route 66 and did the screenplays for Village of the Damned, The Swarm, Charly and Circle of Iron amongst many other movies. And oh yeah — Over the Top.

He was also close friends with Bruce Lee, who he studied from and included in movies he wrote like Marlow and the TV series Longstreet. Together, they worked on The SIlent Flute, which was eventually made as Circle of Iron. Lee would coordinate the fight scene in this movie between one of the leads, Will Cade (Anthony Quinn), and his son.

Cade is the next door neighbor of writer Roger Meredith (Fritz Weaver) and his wife Libby (Ingrid Bergman), who soon finds her way into his bed due to the lack of interest of her husband. Everything seems perfect, but the city calls the Merediths back, just as Will’s son stalks and assaults Libby in the woods, which ends up with the aforementioned fight between father and son that ends up costing son his life.

Perhaps most amazingly, the actor who plays the son is Tom Fielding, who we know today as Tom Holland. Yes, the same Tom Holland who wrote The Beast Within, Class of 1984, Psycho II, Cloak & Dagger and created the Fright Night and Child’s Play films.

In the end, the city wins out over true love. And this movie didn’t do well with audiences or critics. But  hey — Quinn and Bergman are awesome, as you’d expect. 

Through the Decades: 1970s Collection is new from Mill Creek. It also has Dollars, Fun With Dick and Jane, The Owl and Pussycat, For Pete’s Sake, The Anderson Tapes, The Horsemen, The Stone Killer, Brother John, Gumshoe and The Last Detail. You can learn more on their site and order it from Deep Discount.

Both the last movie that Jerry Lewis would make for Columbia Pictures and the last movie directed by George Marshall, who directed his first film in 1916, Hook, Line & Sinker comes at a strange time in Hollywood, when studios were trying to find something, anything to save their bottom line.

Shot on the Columbia Ranch using the exterior of TV’s Gidget’s house and the interior soundstages of Bewitched, part of this film feels like a TV movie. And another part is some kind of quasi-giallo where Lewis’ goofball character steals money and fakes his own death.

You read that right.

And much like an Italian psychosexual detective story, the movie begins at the end, where Peter Ingersoll (Lewis) is on an operating table, surrounded by doctors, stunned by what they are seeing. Yet to explain how he got here, he has to tell how his supposed best friend Dr. Scott Carter (Peter Lawford) told him he had a month to live and how his wife Nancy (Anne Francis, Forbidden Planet) told him to use his company credit cards to fish out his last days and he told none of them that this was a bad idea.

Carter compounds the problem by explaining that now Peter isn’t going to die, but he will go to jail because he used company funds to pay his bills and if he fakes his death, his wife will get $150,000. All he has to do is hide seven years until the statute of limitations is up, but there are immediate problems, like Dr. Carter and Anne getting married.

Which is how Peter got to Chile, as he went on vacation after he ruined their plans and ended up with a swordfish stuck in his chest.

Writer David Davis would go on to create The Bob Newhart Show and Taxi, as well as develop Rhoda. He worked on this with Rod Amateau, who would go on to direct The Statue, episodes of Supertrain and Enos and perhaps most importantly, produce, direct and write The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.

Mill Creek’s new Through the Decades: 1960s Collection has twelve movies: How to Ruin a Marriage and Save Your Life, The Notorious Landlady, Under the Yum Yum Tree, The Chase, Good Neighbor Sam, Baby the Rain Must Fall, Lilith, Genghis Khan, Mickey One, Who Was That Lady? and Luv. You can get it from Deep Discount.

As a kid, I only saw the end of Clive Donner’s directing career — TV movies like Babes In Toyland and Spectre and weird stuff like Old Dracula, The Nude Bomb and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen.

At one point, he was a big part of the British New Wave, making movies like What’s New Pussycat?, Nothing but the Best and The Caretaker.

Luv wasn’t well-received by critics, but I think it was just the inevitable backlash against what the old guard was told was the next new thing.

The story begins with Harry Berlin (Jack Lemmon) about to jump off of a bridge before he is distracted by an old friend he barely remembers, Milt Manville (Peter Falk), who can’t stop bragging about how good his life is. Harry has a plan, though. He plans on leaving his wife Ellen Manville (Elaine May, who went on to write many a romantic comedy) and hopes that Harry can take care of her when he’s gone.

The problem? Milt and Ellen love each other more than they love their new spouses, so they try and get Harry to fall for Milt’s Linda. Either that or he’s going to have to really jump off the bridge.

I kind of love the poster for this, which panders to hippies, who were all either avoiding theaters or waiting for Easy Rider.

Mill Creek’s new Through the Decades: 1960s Collection has twelve movies: How to Ruin a Marriage and Save Your Life, The Notorious Landlady, Under the Yum Yum Tree, The Chase, Good Neighbor Sam, Baby the Rain Must Fall, Lilith, Genghis Khan, Mickey One, Who Was That Lady? and Hook, Line and Sinker. You can get it from Deep Discount.

I was not ready for this movie.

After angering the mob, a stand-up comic (Warren Beatty) runs away to Chicago, taking the name Mickey One, works in a diner and hides in a flop house. But the lure of the stage is too strong. As he becomes more successful, he worries that each move upward is one closer to his death, as he has no idea who owns him, what he did wrong or how to make it right, so he stays in the spotlight.

Mickey says at one point, “I’m the king of silent movies hiding out till the talkies blow over,” but he’s also standing firmly within the genre of French New Wave in the middle of America. It’s like jazz on film, a movie about a comedian who never seems to be funny, a man standing against the blazing and blinding spotlight unsure if he’s in the crosshairs.

Penn and Beatty fought throughout the making of this movie, with the actor saying, “We had a lot of trouble on that film, because I didn’t know what the hell Arthur was trying to do and I tried to find out. I’m not sure that he knew himself.”  Somehow they got along enough to make the movie that would be a breakthrough for both, Bonnie and Clyde.

A must-see and the most interesting film — next to Lilith — on Mill Creek’s Through the Decades: 1960s Collection.

Mill Creek’s new Through the Decades: 1960s Collection has twelve movies: How to Ruin a Marriage and Save Your Life, The Notorious Landlady, Under the Yum Yum Tree, The Chase, Good Neighbor Sam, Baby the Rain Must Fall, Lilith, Genghis Khan, Luv, Who Was That Lady? and Hook, Line and Sinker. You can get it from Deep Discount.

Director and writer Robert Rossen (All the King’s Men, The Hustler) made this his last movie, as he was disillusioned with Hollywood*. What a film to go out on, a bleak and sullen meditation on mental health and lost love.

Vincent Bruce (Warren Beatty) has returned from the war, but perhaps not all of him mentally has, but he finds work at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. There, he seeks to help — and becomes obsessed by — an artistic patient named Lilith (Jean Seberg, an icon of the French New Wave and a woman so hounded by the FBI that she had a miscarriage and continually tried to kill herself on every anniversary of her lost child’s birthday until she succeeded).

Lilith is seduction incarnate, as though she secludes herself inside her room, her mind is at the same level as her outward appearance. Every person she encounters wants her and she also has no compunction over seducing everyone she meets, no matter their age. This begins to upset Bruce as they become lovers and he becomes more jealous of her multiple affections, even causing another patient, Stephen Evshevsky (Peter Fonda) to kill himself after he learns that the man has romantic feelings for Lilith.

That death takes Lilith back into her world of seclusion, reminding her of the moment that her life would never be the same again: her brother killed himself after she made incestuous attempts to make love to him.

With appearances by Gene Hackman, Jessica Walter and Kim Hunter, this is a movie that may haunt me for some time, much like the woman at the center of this story. It doesn’t end happily at all and actually has quite an open close, if that is an actual phrase.

I wondered what “hiara pirlu resh kavawn” written above Lilith’s bed meant. According to the book, it’s her own language and says, “If you can read this, you will know I love you.”

*Kim Hunter said, “The tensions on the set contributed to his (Rossen’s) death. I don’t think I want to talk about it.”

Mill Creek’s new Through the Decades: 1960s Collection has twelve movies: How to Ruin a Marriage and Save Your Life, The Notorious Landlady, Under the Yum Yum Tree, The Chase, Good Neighbor Sam, Baby the Rain Must Fall, Mickey One, Genghis Khan, Luv, Who Was That Lady? and Hook, Line and Sinker. You can get it from Deep Discount.

Harold Gimble was the first man to be infected with Onset Rigors Disease and unliked everyone else, he hasn’t become a zombie yet, unlike everyone else. He’s just growing old, but inevitably, he’s going to become one of the undead, unless a nurse helps him. Or the scientists trying cure after cure. Or, most probably, he’s beaten to undeath by a gang of vigilante zombie killers.

This is a movie that really stands out in the zombie genre, using it to tell a story about how we treat the aging, how nationalism destroys the innocent and about the inevitability of death. The fact that it does this within a humorous zombie film is a major achievement, breathing some life into what has become a moribund collection of films.

Director, writer and editor Keith Wright hasn’t made anything since this movie. Here’s hoping that he’s planning something else, because I ended up really enjoying this.

The Mill Creek Zombie Collection has four different comedic zombie films, including Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies, Granny of the Dead and Attack of the Killer Donuts. You can learn more on the official page and buy it at Deep Discount.

By no stretch of the imagination should a movie called Attack of the Killer Donuts be any good, but somehow, someway, I found myself liking this. It’s definitely the best undead donut or pastry movie I’ve ever seen, but that said, it’s also the only one.

Also — I have no idea how they got C. Thomas Howell to play a cop in this, but they did, and then they also made the donuts look vaguely like vagina dentata, which is very horrifying and somehow, as bad as the effects are, I found them kind of charming.

I usually hate the Troma films that are so aware of how stupid they are, but you know, sometimes I am very forgiving. This would be one of those rare times, so…get a dozen and watch this with someone understanding.

The Mill Creek Zombie Collection has four different comedic zombie films, including Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies, Granny of the Dead and Harold’s Going Stiff. You can learn more on the official page and buy it at Deep Discount.