Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 24th, 2006
Synopsis
Staid middle-class couple Brad and Janet (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) wind up, one stormy night, at the gothic mansion of the cross-dressing Dr. Frank N. Further (Tim Curry). Many songs and sexual awakenings ensue. Seriously, people, if you are reading this and require a summary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, then the movie is probably not for you. Shock Treatment, however, is less well-known. Once again we have Brad and Janet (this time played by Cliff De Young and J...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 18th, 2006
Synopsis
Michael Caine plays Nicholas Urfe, a self-centred, cynical Englishman who arrives on the Greek island of Phraxos to take a teaching post. He meets Maurice Conchis (Anthony Quinn), a mysterious individual who ensnares Urfe in a complex, psychologically violent mind game, where Urfe is increasingly unable to distinguish truth from lies, reality from illusion.
John Fowles wrote the script, adapting his own novel, and while the story is recognizable, the result is not encouraging. The ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 5th, 2006
Synopsis
Fred MacMurray (whose line in match-lighting is so cool, I’d take up smoking just to be able to do that) is an insurance salesman. Edwards G. Robinson is a claims investigator with an infallible nose for fraud. MacMurray stops by the home of Barbara Stanwyck (as fatale as any a femme ever was) to make a sale. Instead, he’s sold on the idea of killing her husband for a massive insurance payoff. He concocts a scheme for what should be the perfect murder. But nothing in this life is perfect.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on September 1st, 2006
Synopsis
Young bride Anabel Shaw arrives at a San Francisco hotel to meet her husband, on his way back from a POW camp. His plane is late, and as she anxiously awaits him, she witnesses Vincent Price kill his wife in the next room over. She lapses into shock, and is found in this state when her husband arrives. The best psychiatrist around is summoned, and uh-oh, that turns out to be Price, who realizes why Shaw is in shock. He has her carted off to his private clinic, where he and lover Lynn Bari pl...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 16th, 2006
Valley of the Dolls is a musical that way way ahead of its time. Based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann, the film tells the story of three aspiring actresses and their attempts at becoming stars. Sure, this is an age old tale, but it had not been told as bluntly an honestly until now. The film starts Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke and Sharon Tate as the actresses in question. Audiences must have been shocked upon going to the theater, as they were much more used to rags to riches musicals such as A Star is Bo...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 11th, 2006
Gregory Peck plays Francis Chisholm. After losing his parents as a young boy, and then his sweetheart (to moral turpitude, it seems), Francis enters the priesthood. His unorthodox ways make him a failure initially, but kindly bishop and mentor Edmund Gwenn sees potential in the man, and sends him off to China to be a missionary. There too, things get off to a rocky start, but a turnaround happens when he saves the son of a local mandarin. His struggles are far from over, but through it all, he remains a triumphantly decent man.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 10th, 2006
Career criminal Ray Milland shows up at the ranch of Korean vet Anthony Quinn, looking for his old flame, Debra Paget. She is now married to Quinn, but she hasn't adapted well to country life, still carries a torch for Milland, and is in the very process of leaving Quinn. She and Milland rekindle their romance, and are planning to leave town with the million dollars Milland has just scored. When Milland runs over a state trooper, he forces Quinn to guide them through the wilderness to the Mexican border. A struggle for both survival and Paget's love ensues.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 7th, 2006
Tyrone Power has been plying his trade as a pirate in the waters near Jamaica. When his former captain becomes the governor of Jamaica, Power goes straight. He has his eye on Maureen O'Hara, who is engaged to a duplicitous aristocrat who is feeding information to unreformed pirate George Sanders (utterly unrecognizable in shaggy red hair and beard). There will be many complications before Power can claim the resisting O'Hara as his own.Compared to the Errol Flynn pirate movies Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, this one is a bit light on the action, really only getting down to the buckling of swashes in the final act.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 1st, 2006
God bless producer Irwin Allen for aiming high in just about everything he did. He would make large scale productions, some focused on disasters (like his next film after this, The Towering Inferno), but he also produced Lost in Space for TV and made other contributions like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and an incarnation of The Lost World. He may not have had a DeMille-like grip on his project because the studios had so much control still in the early '70s, but he sure dreamt big, which is always a good thing.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 28th, 2006
I’m a lucky guy. I was able to witness the game of baseball before we all became so jaded. While I wasn’t born early enough to have enjoyed Mantle, The Babe, or Joltin’ Joe, I was fortunate enough to watch the likes of Mike Schmidt. Mike stayed 18 years with one team. He never held out and was always responsible in his public persona. Oh, and he ended up being considered the best 3rd baseman of all time in nearly every millennium poll conducted. It is this experience growing up with Schmitty and his like that make these stories feel much closer to home than younger kids are likely to feel.
