Crime

When a US intelligence agent is unable to bring a ruthless drug baron to justice, he resorts to hiring a contract killer. But the man he is put in contact with turns out to be an old friend.
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Unexpectedly widowed, prim and proper housewife Grace Trevethyn finds herself in dire financial straits when she inherits massive debts her late husband had been accruing for years. Faced with losing her house, she decides to use her talent for horticulture and hatches a plan to grow potent marijuana which can be sold at an astronomical price, thus solving her financial crisis. Grace and her gardener’s efforts to hide their illegal enterprise from the quaint and curious townsfolk and market their product comprise the remainder of the film.
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Set in Cornwall where a young orphan, Mary, is sent to live with Aunt Patience and Uncle Joss who are the landlords of the Jamaica Inn. Mary soon realizes that her uncle’s inn is the base of a gang of ship wreckers who lure ships to their doom on the rocky coast. The girl starts fearing for her life.
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The career of horror icon Paul Toombes (Vincent Price) ends in scandal when his fiancée dies under mysterious circumstances. Freed from the mental hospital where he had been committed, the recovered Toombes and screenwriter Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing) intend to revive his most popular character, Dr. Death, for a television series. But the dead bodies start piling up – all of them killed in ways that mimic the victims in Toombes’ films – and to clear his name he must find the real killer.
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Headline serves as a vehicle for handsome David Farrar, who in 1943 was Britain’s fastest-rising leading man. Farrar is cast as Broogle, a crime reporter who’ll do anything-ANYTHING-for a story. When the wife of the publisher disappears after witnessing a murder, Broogle ignores Scotland Yard’s warnings to “lay off” and endeavors to solve the mystery himself. The film’s best performance is rendered by BBC radio favorite Richard Goolden, cast as a self-styled “psychological” detective. While genuine journalists howled at the innacuracies in Headline, audiences ate it up.
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Franck Poupart is a slightly neurotic door-to-door salesman in a sinister part of Paris’ suburbs. He meets Mona, a teenager, who’s been made a prostitute by her own aunt. Franck would like to change his life and also save Mona from her aunt. Murder is the only solution he finds to achieve his goal… A very gloomy movie, exuding dispair and uneasiness, with pathetic characters.
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Pepe Le Moko leads a gang of jewel thieves in the Casbah of Algiers, where he has exiled himself to escape imprisonment in his native France. Inez, his girl friend, is infuriated when Pepe flirts with Gaby, a French visitor, but Pepe tells her to mind her own business. Detective Slimane is trying to lure Pepe out of the Casbah so he can be jailed. Against Slimane’s advice, Police Chief Louvain capture Pepe in a dragnet, but his followers free him. Inez realizes that Pepe has fallen in love with Gaby and intends to follow her to Europe. Slimane knows the same and uses her as the bait to lure Pepe out of the Casbah.
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Ex-tennis pro Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) wants to have his wealthy wife, Margot (Grace Kelly), murdered so he can get his hands on her inheritance. When he discovers her affair with Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), he comes up with the perfect plan to kill her. He blackmails an old acquaintance into carrying out the murder, but the carefully-orchestrated set-up goes awry, and Margot stays alive. Now Wendice must frantically scheme to outwit the police and avoid having his plot detected.
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As Christmas break approaches, the dormitories at Billingsley University are restless with sex-crazed students. Although eager to relinquish his burdensome virginity, Booker (Chris Owen) has thus far failed in this endeavor. His charitable older brother, Styles (Patrick Renna), does the sensible thing and hires a prostitute (Boti Bliss) to usher Booker into the realm of manhood. Unfortunately, some misunderstandings complicate this procedure, prompting sophomoric shenanigans.
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Cape Fear is a 1991 thriller film, directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a remake of the 1962 film of the same name and tells the story of a family man, a former public defender, whose family is threatened by a convicted rapist who wants vengeance for having been imprisoned for 14 years because of the lawyer’s purposefully faulty defense tactics, prejudicing the accused. It received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor (Robert De Niro) and Best Supporting Actress (Juliette Lewis). The two were also nominated for Golden Globe Awards.
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This film follows one day in the lives of three unemployed young men who live on a housing estate in a deprived suburb of Paris. They are Vinz, a Jew busting with pent-up anger, Saïd a talkative Arab obsessed with “getting laid” and Hubert, a well-built black man who dreams of being a professional boxer. They mull over the events of the day before, when there was a violent confrontation between police and rioters, which arose after a young Arab was brutally attacked by a policeman. Vinz swears that if the Arab dies, he will find a policeman and kill him. He reveals that he managed to purloin a loaded gun during the riot. The three young men spend the evening in Paris, killing time and generally making a nuisance. When they return home the following day, they are picked on by the police, with disastrous consequences…
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Given a bigger budget than usual, cult director Edgar G. Ulmer rises to the occasion in The Naked Dawn. Filmed in Mexico, the story focuses on a poor but proud farmer named Manuel (Eugene Iglesias) and his wife Maria (Betta St. John). When glib-tongued drifter Santiago (Arthur Kennedy) tries to get Manuel mixed up in a train robbery, the farmer is at first resistant, but is goaded into joining Santiago by the covetous Maria. Corrupted by the prospect of untold wealth, Manuel begins plotting the murder of Santiago; meanwhile, Maria makes plans to bump off Manuel and run off with the handsome stranger. There’s a moral in all this, and Ulmer makes certain that we don’t miss it.
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A win on the football pools in postwar Britain changes lives. A happy family is turned into an unhappy argumentative lot until it is discovered the coupon apparently didn’t get posted. A mild-mannered clerk worries about how to tell his overbearing boss he is quitting. A double-bass player finds life without the orchestra lacks something. The lure of the big money even turns some people into criminals, as when a coupon checker is tempted by his night-club singer girlfriend to cheat the company.
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In Falls City, Nebraska, Brandon Teena arrives to start a new future for himself. The local community falls for his charms and everyone becomes drawn to his innocence and wit. However, behind the charming persona is a totally different person – Brandon is actually a woman. After falling for a local karaoke singer, Brandon moves in with her family and wins them over. But when Brandon’s secret is finally out, the rest of the family all turn against him, branding him sick and evil.
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This adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel ‘Farewell, My Lovely’, renamed for the American market to prevent filmgoers mistaking it for a musical (for which Powell was already famous) has private eye Philip Marlowe hired by Moose Malloy, a petty crook just out of prison after a seven year stretch, to look for his former girlfriend, Velma, who has not been seen for the last six years. The case is tougher than Marlowe expected as his initially promising enquiries lead to a complex web of deceit involving bribery, perjury and theft, and where no one’s motivation is obvious, least of all Marlowe’s.
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