By Lee Pfeiffer
Charles Cohen, the founder of the Cohen Film Collection, not only finances and distributes acclaimed independent films, but he also controls the rights to an impressive number of largely forgotten British films. Instead of letting them languish, Cohen has invested in bringing some of these titles to Blu-ray with stunning new transfers. The latest release is a Blu-ray double feature consisting of two modestly-budgeted murder-themed sagas. First- and most impressive- is "Cast a Dark Shadow", a 1955 noirish production with up-and-comer Dirk Bogarde in the lead role. He plays Edward Bare, a handsome and charismatic young man who, when we first meet him, is improbably newly wed to Monica (Mona Washbourne), an elderly woman with a sizable fortune who Edward dotes over and manipulates. Monica's lawyer Phillip Mortimer (Robert Flemyng) smells a rat but Monica is too delusional to believe Edward is manipulating her. When she turns up...
Charles Cohen, the founder of the Cohen Film Collection, not only finances and distributes acclaimed independent films, but he also controls the rights to an impressive number of largely forgotten British films. Instead of letting them languish, Cohen has invested in bringing some of these titles to Blu-ray with stunning new transfers. The latest release is a Blu-ray double feature consisting of two modestly-budgeted murder-themed sagas. First- and most impressive- is "Cast a Dark Shadow", a 1955 noirish production with up-and-comer Dirk Bogarde in the lead role. He plays Edward Bare, a handsome and charismatic young man who, when we first meet him, is improbably newly wed to Monica (Mona Washbourne), an elderly woman with a sizable fortune who Edward dotes over and manipulates. Monica's lawyer Phillip Mortimer (Robert Flemyng) smells a rat but Monica is too delusional to believe Edward is manipulating her. When she turns up...
- 5/11/2021
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Universal’s explosion of the horror genre in the 1930s gave us two legendary actors in Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Lugosi, who I’ve covered before in this column, was the leading-man type in that whomever he played, he was still pretty much Bela Lugosi (arguments could be made either way as to whether this was to his benefit or his detriment). Karloff, however, often had a tendency to get lost in his roles. Granted, part of this was done via the magic of FX. In movies like Frankenstein and The Mummy, Jack Pierce covered Karloff in enough prosthetics to make him unrecognizable. But credit must also be given to Karloff’s performances. Few people could pull off his take as Frankenstein’s monster where even with his face completely covered, and not a word of dialogue in script, he still managed to make this hulking monster come across as sympathetic.
- 6/28/2017
- by Bryan Christopher
- DailyDead
Alec Guinness: Before Obi-Wan Kenobi, there were the eight D’Ascoyne family members (photo: Alec Guiness, Dennis Price in ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’) (See previous post: “Alec Guinness Movies: Pre-Star Wars Career.”) TCM won’t be showing The Bridge on the River Kwai on Alec Guinness day, though obviously not because the cable network programmers believe that one four-hour David Lean epic per day should be enough. After all, prior to Lawrence of Arabia TCM will be presenting the three-and-a-half-hour-long Doctor Zhivago (1965), a great-looking but never-ending romantic drama in which Guinness — quite poorly — plays a Kgb official. He’s slightly less miscast as a mere Englishman — one much too young for the then 32-year-old actor — in Lean’s Great Expectations (1946), a movie that fully belongs to boy-loving (in a chaste, fatherly manner) fugitive Finlay Currie. And finally, make sure to watch Robert Hamer’s dark comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets...
- 8/3/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The Ghost Train
Directed by Walter Forde
Written by J.O.C. Orton, Val Guest, & Marriott Edgar
Starring Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch, Kathleen Harrison, and Carole Lynne
UK, 85 min – 1941.
“I say, I wonder if I could teach you to talk. I wonder if you could say ‘Heil Hitler.’ Eh? No, not with a beak like that.”
A train speeds down the railroad, with nothing but dark, shadowed tracks ahead. Suspenseful nondiegetic music plays. The train accelerates, approaches and passes through the names of people involved in making the film – producers, stars, writers, and the director. This continues, until the audience no longer sees the journey from the train’s perspective. The train materializes out of a tunnel and the audience is placed at a safe distance from the suspenseful ride. These are the opening credits of Walter Forde’s The Ghost Train.
The basic plot follows the story of a group of train passengers,...
Directed by Walter Forde
Written by J.O.C. Orton, Val Guest, & Marriott Edgar
Starring Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch, Kathleen Harrison, and Carole Lynne
UK, 85 min – 1941.
“I say, I wonder if I could teach you to talk. I wonder if you could say ‘Heil Hitler.’ Eh? No, not with a beak like that.”
A train speeds down the railroad, with nothing but dark, shadowed tracks ahead. Suspenseful nondiegetic music plays. The train accelerates, approaches and passes through the names of people involved in making the film – producers, stars, writers, and the director. This continues, until the audience no longer sees the journey from the train’s perspective. The train materializes out of a tunnel and the audience is placed at a safe distance from the suspenseful ride. These are the opening credits of Walter Forde’s The Ghost Train.
The basic plot follows the story of a group of train passengers,...
- 3/11/2013
- by Karen Bacellar
- SoundOnSight
Ken Annakin, best remembered for directing the big-budget 1965 adventure comedy Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, died of natural causes on Wednesday, April 22, at his home in Beverly Hills. He had suffered a stroke and a heart attack in February, and had been in poor health since. Like fellow British filmmaker Jack Cardiff, who also died on April 22, Annakin was 94. Born Kenneth Cooper Annakin in Beverley, Yorkshire, in England, on Aug. 10, 1914, Annakin began his film career working as a cameraman on training films for the Royal Air Force in World War II. His first feature as a director was the 1947 family vacation comedy Holiday Camp, starring numerous stalwarts of the British film industry, among them Flora Robson, Dennis Price, Esmond Knight, Hazel Court, and Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison as the vacationing Huggetts. The following year saw the release of one of Annakin’s biggest British [...]...
- 4/24/2009
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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