"Val Lewton's name is synonymous with the subtlest, most mysterious brand of horror filmmaking in Hollywood's golden age, and the nine horror classics he produced at RKO between 1942 and 1946 constitute the most remarkable cycle of creativity in B-movie history. He and director Jacques Tourneur scored with both a popular hit and a masterpiece in 1942: Cat People. The story involves a pretty young Serbian woman in Manhattan (Simone Simon) ..."
"An unusual suspense film, The Spiral Staircase tells the story of a mute servant girl threatened by a murderer who has a penchant for killing the handicapped. Ethel Barrymore, Elsa Lanchester, and George Brent co-star, while Dorothy McGuire expertly captures the dilemma of the mute Helen Capel. Capel, who has not been able to speak since childhood, must somehow call for help before becoming the killer's next victim. McGuire's performanc ..."
"An unusual suspense film, The Spiral Staircase tells the story of a mute servant girl threatened by a murderer who has a penchant for killing the handicapped. Ethel Barrymore, Elsa Lanchester, and George Brent co-star, while Dorothy McGuire expertly captures the dilemma of the mute Helen Capel. Capel, who has not been able to speak since childhood, must somehow call for help before becoming the killer's next victim. McGuire's performanc ..."
"Mae Doyle is a good-time girl but now times are bad. Weary of too much booze and too many men she returns to her girlhood home the fishing village of Monterey California. There she finds security as the wife of a devoted and dull fisherman - and passion in the arms of his provocative best friend. Film noir master Fritz Lang (The Big Heat Ministry of Fear) directs four towering talents - Barbara Stanwyck Paul Douglas Robert Ryan and risi ..."
"I Remember Mama (DVD)Barbara Bel Geddes and Irene Dunn star in this reminiscence of a daughter for the mother holding their family together with love and discipline in the heartwarming I Remember Mama. Mama (Dunn--The Awful Truth, Life with Father) emigrated from Norway to early 20th century San Francisco, where she has devoted her life to her children, including Katrin (Bel Geddes--"Dallas," Vertigo), keeping her house in order and rei ..."
""You remind me of a man." "What man?" "The man with the power...." Ah, so you remember the lovely nonsense of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. This lighter-than-air comedy puts playboy writer Cary Grant in company with 17-year-old schoolgirl Shirley Temple, although he's more interested in older sister Myrna Loy. (She's as sober as a judge, and indeed is one.) The Oscar®- winning script by future bestselling novelist Sidney Sheldon ..."
" Everything you want in a film noir you'll find in Out of the Past. A tenacious detective (Robert Mitchum) spinning his wheels to make good. A drop-dead beauty (Jane Greer) up to no good. A moneyed mobster (Kirk Douglas) with a shark's grin. Plus double-crosses and fall-guys. Shadowy rooms and bleak souls. Mitchum solidified his tough-guy persona in this archetypal film noir directed with memorable style by Jacques Tourneur (Cat People ..."
""You remind me of a man." "What man?" "The man with the power...." Ah, so you remember the lovely nonsense of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. This lighter-than-air comedy puts playboy writer Cary Grant in company with 17-year-old schoolgirl Shirley Temple, although he's more interested in older sister Myrna Loy. (She's as sober as a judge, and indeed is one.) The Oscar®- winning script by future bestselling novelist Sidney Sheldon ..."
"An unusual suspense film, The Spiral Staircase tells the story of a mute servant girl threatened by a murderer who has a penchant for killing the handicapped. Ethel Barrymore, Elsa Lanchester, and George Brent co-star, while Dorothy McGuire expertly captures the dilemma of the mute Helen Capel. Capel, who has not been able to speak since childhood, must somehow call for help before becoming the killer's next victim. McGuire's performanc ..."
"The only true "film noir" ever directed by a woman, this tour de force thriller (considered by many, including Lupino herself, to be her best film) is a classic, tension-packed, three-way dance of death about two middle-class American homebodies (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) on vacation in Mexico on a long-awaited fishing trip. Suddenly their car and their very lives are commandeered by psychopathic serial killer Emmett Myers (Will ..."
"Ida Lupino, Hollywood's sole female filmmaker of the 1950s, directs an all-male cast in a taut, 70-minute thriller. Frank Lovejoy and Edmund O'Brien are two war buddies taking a break from the wives for a Mexican fishing trip; a hitchhiker they pick up turns out to be a crazed killer wanted in nine states (William Talman, later the perennially defeated district attorney on Perry Mason) who forces them at gunpoint to drive him through th ..."
"This high point in the 1940s vogue for movies about family life at the turn of the century was directed by George Stevens (Shane), and stars Irene Dunne as the matriarch of a Norwegian family that faces hard knocks with grace in 1910 (or so) San Francisco. Based on John Van Druten's hit play (derived from Kathryn Forbes's autobiographical memoir), the film is gorgeously rendered and quite moving as an act of memory. The sterling cast of ..."
"With its title inspired by the notorious Black Dahlia murder case, The Blue Gardenia throws a twist into the story by making the mystery woman not the victim but the suspect in a lurid murder case. Anne Baxter, playing a virginal blonde with almost breathless innocence, impulsively accepts a blind date after receiving a "Dear Jane" letter from her boyfriend in Korea. Raymond Burr oozes slime as the lothario who plots his seduction with ..."
"Allegheny Uprising is an engaging blend of historical fiction, boisterous backwoods comedy, and pretty much nonstop rowdydow that qualifies as one of John Wayne's more offbeat vehicles. Made half a year after his stellar breakout in Stagecoach, the picture re-teams Wayne with Claire Trevor as a frontier tomboy who supplies feisty love interest. A decade and a half before the Revolutionary War, a community in south-central Pennsylvania ..."
"John Wayne and Anthony Quinn star in this touching 1945 drama inspired by real-life heroism in the Philippines following General MacArthur's withdrawal in 1942 and the islands' subsequent conquest by the Japanese army. Wayne plays Colonel Joe Madden, an American who stays behind to organize a ragtag guerrilla army in the forests and hills. At his side is Captain Andres Bonifacio (Quinn), grandson of a legendary revolutionary martyred in ..."