Shameless Self Expression

Kirk Douglas plays an arrogant fugitive gunman who finds work driving cattle to Texas for well-meaning alcoholic rancher Joseph Cotten. Dorothy Malone is Cotten’s wife, who just so happens to be the embittered former flame of Douglas…and her wants her back. Things are further complicated by the arrival of sheriff Rock Hudson, who is looking to bring Douglas in for his crimes. Carol Lynley plays Malone’s daughter who develops feelings for Douglas. Regis Toomey plays an aging cattle hand, whilst Neville Brand and Jack Elam play a couple of unfriendly types.   Director Robert Aldrich ( “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte” , “The Dirty Dozen” ), screenwriter Dalton Trumbo ( “A Guy Named Joe” , “Spartacus” ) and an excellent cast turn out a seriously underrated 1961 western. Top-billed Rock Hudson is perfectly fine, but Kirk Douglas is on another level here as basically a charismatic rogue. In fact, as is often the case the more amoral character is far more interesting than the ‘hero’ here....

All-American architect Oliver (Kent Smith) falls for a cute Serbian girl named Irena (Simone Simon), and for a while they’re happy. However, Irena is a troubled girl. She’s come to believe that her family is under a bizarre curse whereby they morph into cats when angered. Oliver thinks she’s being a silly little girl, but Irena is unable to be swayed on the matter, causing Oliver to seek counsel from co-worker Alice (Jane Randolph), who would very much like to be more than just friends and co-workers. When Irena jealously suspects something is going on between them…well, look out! Tom Conway turns up as a dry psychiatrist whom Irena goes to see, whilst Alan Napier is a friend of Oliver.   One of the best horror films of the 1940s, this Val Lewton chiller from director Jacques Tourneur ( “Out of the Past” , “Night of the Demon” , “The Comedy of Terrors” ) is at times beautiful, bizarre, haunting, creepy, and sad. There are at least three classic creepy scenes; 1) The brief but u...

Nigel Green plays Scotland Yard’s Nayland Smith, who witnesses the execution of master criminal Fu Manchu (Sir Christopher Lee). Or does he? Several years later the mysterious disappearance of a biochemist (Walter Rilla) seems to arouse the veteran lawman’s suspicions. Tsai Chin plays Fu Manchu’s evil daughter/helper Lin Tang, Karin Dor plays Rilla’s daughter.   Campy mystery-thriller nonsense from 1965 is not really my thing, but for the most part it’s pretty watchable. Directed by Don Sharp ( “Rasputin – The Mad Monk” , “Bear Island” ) and scripted by producer Harry Alan Towers ( “The Girl From Rio” , “The Bloody Judge” ) under his Peter Welbeck pseudonym, it gets a lot of its merit from a pretty damn good cast. Nigel Green got his first leading role here and couldn’t be more perfectly cast in a Peter Cushing-esque hero role. I don’t know why he didn’t get more lead roles, because he’s clearly got the chops for it. Hell, he would’ve made for a very fine Sherlock Holmes I thin...

A research scientist at Oxford jumps off a moving train to his death, a whole lot of money is also found. An agent named Maj. Hall (John Clements) investigates the man and finds that he was apparently researching sensory deprivation. When Maj. Hall suspects the late scientist of being a Communist traitor passing secrets to the Soviets, colleague Dr. Longman (Dirk Bogarde) volunteers to go under sensory deprivation in an isolation tank, to prove that it was the sensory deprivation tank that caused the scientist to break. Dr. Longman’s last stint in the tank apparently left him greatly uneasy about such practices, and although this second stint does indeed have rather numbing effects, Maj. Hall still needs more proof. In order to prove Dr. Longman’s theory right, Maj. Hall and research assistant Dr. Tate (Michael Bryant) resort to using Longman’s wife (Mary Ure) to utterly shatter any beliefs he holds, to brainwash him into thinking she is both unstable and untrustworthy.   Somet...

In “The Telephone” , Michele Mercier plays a young woman who receives creepy and threatening phone calls from someone who appears to be able to see her in her small apartment. “The Wurdulak” – In 19 th century Russia, nobleman Mark Damon seeks refuge with a local family in a small village when their father (Boris Karloff) comes back after being bitten by a vampire (or Wurdulak). Finally there is “A Drop of Water” , in which a nurse (Jacqueline Perreiex) in an apartment building is asked to attend to the body of a medium who died during a séance. The nurse decides to nick a ring off the medium’s corpse…an action that literally comes back to haunt her.   One of the best films from director Mario Bava ( “Black Sunday” , “Kill, Baby…Kill” , “Hatchet for the Honeymoon” ), and easily one of the best horror anthologies of all-time, this 1963 horror omnibus is based on the works of Tolstoy, Chekov, and Guy de Maupassant. OK so two of those names are a lot more famous than the third, ...