Tag Archives: 1950s

Tony successful fighter pilot during World War II marries into the family of a wealthy oil magnate who also designs airplanes. The movie traces the company’s attempt to break the sound barrier, as well as tensions between father and daughter. Lots of footage of early 50s jet aviation in Great Britain as well as shots of the Comet airliner, world’s first jet passenger plane.
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Ex-marshal Billy Reynolds, sent to state prison for killing two men in self defense, learns that killer Jessie Gorman, brother of the two men Billy shot, is in the same prison and vows revenge. Complicating matters further is the incarceration of Gorman’s girlfriend Abby who helps Gorman plan an escape while at the same time is unsuccessful hiding her feelings for Reynolds.
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A truck driver stops on a rainy road at night to help a stranded motorist, but it turns out to be a ruse–he is attacked, knocked out and his truck stolen. Since he has a criminal record, the police immediately suspect he’s involved in the hijacking, and their suspicions are reinforced later when he is discovered–unknown to him–to be hauling stolen merchandise. He realizes he is being set up as a fall guy by the organization behind the truck hijackings, and he and a friend set out to determine who is trying to set him up, and why.
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The film follows an American captain searching for sunken treasure who becomes entangled with criminals and is arrested by the Dutch police.
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Joe Cardos, a death row inmate in some unidentified country, is to face the gallows in the morning for strangling three women. Filled with bitterness at the world, and perhaps himself, Joe lashes out at the warden and guards’ attempts at making his final hours a little easier, and refuses to see either his sister or the prison chaplain. However, Joe does change his mind about being granted a last request, one the prison is obligated by law to fulfill: He asks for a woman’s company so he can have some “fun” in the time that’s left. After asking around, two police detectives show up at the prison with a down-on-her-luck former “waitress” named Dora, who earlier that night had tried to drown herself. Dora, totally broke and feeling she has nothing to lose, has agreed to spend the night with Joe in his cell. As she sees it, the money she’s being offered should be enough for “a decent funeral.”
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Frenchie Fontaine sells her successful business in New Orleans to come West. Her reason? Find the men who killed her father, Frank Dawson. But she only knows one of the two who did and she’s determined to find out the other.
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A man is brutally murdered and his famed shamisen (a three-stringed musical instrument) called the “Yamabiko” stolen. Prince Kogenta swears to avenge his father-in-law’s death and retrieve the family heirloom.
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A partisan comes secretly to town to find about what happened to his little son who barely remembers him. He is horrified when he finds out that his son is raised in a colaborators’ orphanage, brought up to hate communists and partisans. He decides to take his son to the freed territory with him, but will he manage to escape the police checkings?
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George Fowler is drawn into a gang planning to rob a bank in St. Louis that they expect will have a $100,000 on hand on an upcoming Friday. George is drawn into the plan as the gang’s driver by Gino, an old girlfriend’s older brother. As the gang goes about its planning, George and Gino have to find a way to live for the next two weeks and they turn to Gino’s sister, Ann, for help. George is hoping to go back to college and the money he would make would go a long way to helping him do that. Not trusting George to keep his nerve, the gang’s leader John Egan moves him to the inside, but the robbery doesn’t go off as planned.
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Lizzie Curry is on the verge of becoming a hopeless old maid. Her wit and intelligence and skills as a homemaker can’t make up for the fact that she’s just plain plain! Even the town sheriff, File, for whom she harbors a secrect yen, won’t take a chance –- until the town suffers a drought and into the lives of Lizzie and her brothers and father comes one Bill Starbuck … profession: Rainmaker!
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A Major noted for advancing with his mouth before thinking is given a choice: to be drummed out of the Army, or take command of and shape up the ROTC program at Sheridan Academy before it fails its next inspection. At Sheridan he encounters three hundred pre-teen cadets who range from rascally to adorable, and a female doctor who has just the right prescription for him.
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Jaded movie star Vanessa Windsor, saved from a studio accident by handsome extra Chris Farley, pursues him, and soon he’s the ‘caretaker’ of her beach house. Vanessa’s sexy, alcoholic adult daughter Penny accidentally meets Chris, who rescues her from an ‘octopus’ boyfriend. Before you know it, Chris is involved with both mother and daughter, and his only way out is to take a job in a Mexican picture about man-eating orchids…
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Steve is a Government Agent looking for the gang that stole the U.S. Mail. When Old Henry kills an outlaw trying to rob the stage, the outlaws gun down Henry at his home. His son Jack, just back from the East, is taught to shoot by the Durango Kid. Steve appears to join the gang in order to catch them.
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A female ex-convict meets a handsome man and they begin seeing one another. Jeopardizing their relationship is her not telling him she was in prison and he not revealing his involvement with her parole officer.
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Adapted by Don M. Mankiewicz from his own novel, Trial is a surprisingly timely story of how justice can sometimes be compromised by “special interests”. It all begins when Mexican youth Angelo Chavez (Rafael Campos) is placed on trial for the murder of a white teenaged girl. Battling the lynch-mob mentality in and out of the courtroom is relatively inexperienced defense attorney David Blake (Glenn Ford). Believing that anything done on behalf of his client is for the common good, Blake approves the organization of an “Angelo Chavez Society” to pay the boy’s court costs and ostensibly see that justice is done in the face of small-town prejudice. Soon, however, Blake discovers that both he and his client are being used as dupes by a Communist lawyer, who hopes that Chavez will be found guilty and executed, thereby creating a martyr for the Red cause. Much was made in 1955 of the fact that the presiding judge is a black man, played by Juano Hernandez. A bit creaky at times, Trial nonetheless still packs a wallop when shown today.
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