Tag Archives: english

The Snow Creature (1954) W. Lee Wilder, Paul Langton, Leslie Denison, Teru Shimada, Horror

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Botanist Frank Parrish leads an expedition to the Himalayas to seek out new flora, accompanied by hardboiled news photographer Peter Wells. When their lead guide, Subra, learns his wife has been kidnapped by a Yeti, Parrish disbelieves him, so the sherpas commandeer the expedition at gunpoint and turn it into a search-and-rescue party. To Parrish’s surprise, they discover a whole family of Yetis in a cave, and are able to subdue the male and carry it back to civilization, to ship to the USA for study. Subra is forgiven his acts because he was right after all. Wells, meanwhile, phones in the story and Parrish finds his discovery – shipped upright in a meat cooler to maintain its natural environment – detained in the US because Wells’ story refers to it as a snowMAN, and a decision must be made whether this is a customs or immigration matter. During this bureaucratic snafu, the creature escapes its containers and disappears into Los Angeles, mysteriously appearing in different parts of …
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That’s Sexploitation! (2013) Frank Henenlotter, Albert Cadabra, Gal Friday, David F. Friedman, Documentary, Erotic

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Before the advent of modern-day pornography, a vast and rapidly-paced world of smut peddling was the norm, complete with its own secret history. This documentary reveals the untold story of American cinema’s gloriously sordid cinematic past. Starting in the 1920s, expert exploiteer David F. Friedman and Henenlotter navigate us through more than five salacious decades of skin flicks. It’s the true story of dirty movies, traced in elegant detail from the bizarre locations where these nudie shorts were screened to the ongoing legal battles fought by their promoters. And of course there are the stories of the innovators themselves, people who often risked their own security and livelihood to make these films, believing in some way that what they were doing wasn’t a ‘bad’ thing – and that it could rake in some dough.
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Davy (1958) Michael Relph, Harry Secombe, Ron Randell, George Relph, Comedy, Drama

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The Mad Morgans are more than an increasingly popular variety act; they are a family team. But one of them aspires to greater things, and is in a dilemmaas to whether he should go it alone or stick with the group. Despite setbacks and obstacles, Davy finally gets his offer from the top. The entertainment world is his oyster but can the ties of flesh and blood stop him from achieveing his dreams?
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Fräulein (1958) Henry Koster, Dana Wynter, Mel Ferrer, Dolores Michaels, Romance, War, Drama

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In melodramatic fashion, the film tells the tale of a young German woman who finds herself alone in the world when the rest of her family is killed in a WWII air raid. Helping an American military man escape the Gestapo, she finds herself on the run from the Russian Army. Escaping to the American (and safe) side of Berlin, she registers herself as a prostitute (unknowingly) and finds herself caught between the German officer who thinks she is for sale and the American officer who she saved and is now in love with her.
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Force of Arms (1951) Michael Curtiz, William Holden, Nancy Olson, Frank Lovejoy, Romance, War, Drama

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Winter, 1943. The German army has halted the American advance in the mountains of Italy; back-and-forth combat decimates Joe Peterson’s platoon. On leave in Naples, Joe meets WAC lieutenant Eleanor MacKay; initially cool, she begins to melt during a bombing raid. Their romance develops despite Joe’s periodic returns to the front. But whether he’ll come back in the end becomes more than doubtful…
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Family Plot (1976) Alfred Hitchcock, Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, Comedy, Thriller

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The trickster Madam Blanche Tyler lures the elder millionaire Julia Rainbird that believes she is a spiritualist. After a séance, she discovers that Julia is tormented by her past, when she forced her sister and single mother Harriet to deliver her baby for adoption to avoid a family scandal. Julia promises the small fortune of ten thousand-dollar to Blanche if she finds her nephew and heir of her fortune using her phony powers. Blanche asks her boyfriend George Lumley, who is an unemployed actor working as cab driver, to investigate the whereabouts of Julia’s nephew. Meanwhile, the greedy jeweler and collector Arthur Adamson kidnaps wealthy people with his girlfriend Fran to increase his collection of diamonds with the ransom. When George concludes that Arthur Adamson might be the heir of Julia Rainbird, the reckless Blanche gets in trouble with the kidnappers.
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Dracula (1931) Tod Browning, Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Fantasy, Horror

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After a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina’s health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina’s fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.
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Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951) Victor Saville, Walter Pidgeon, Margaret Leighton, Robert Beatty, Crime, Mystery

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All the various Bulldog Drummond movie series had run their courses by 1951; nonetheless, MGM decided to revive the property (and simultaneously liquidate some “frozen funds”) with the British-filmed Calling Bulldog Drummond. Walter Pidgeon stars as novelist Sapper’s soldier-of-fortune, here retooled as a respectable retired military officer. Summoned to London by Scotland Yard, Drummond is assigned to break up a dangerous criminal gang. He is aided by female undercover officer Helen Smith (Margaret Leighton), who turns out to be not much help at all. Trapped in a bombed-out building and surrounded by hulking henchmen, Drummond seems to have run out of luck. Some of the film’s brightest moments are provided by David Tomlinson as a traditional “silly ass” type who is lot smarter than he seems. Bernard Lee, the future “M” in the James Bond films of the 1960s, appears as a secondary villain.
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A Night to Remember (1958) Roy Ward Baker, Kenneth More, Ronald Allen, Robert Ayres, Action, Drama, History

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On April 14, 1912, just before midnight, the “unsinkable” Titanic struck an iceberg. In less than three hours, it had plunged to the bottom of the sea, taking with it more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers. In his unforgettable render­ing of Walter Lord’s book of the same name, the acclaimed British director Roy Ward Baker depicts with sensitivity, awe, and a fine sense of tragedy the ship’s last hours. Featuring remarkably restrained performances, A Night to Remember is cinema’s subtlest and best dramatization of this monumental twentieth-century catastrophe.
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