Tag Archives: Richard Burton

The story of British prime minister Winston Churchill, focusing on his place in British life just prior to World War II. Read More »

At a Catholic public school, Benjamin Stanfield is tired of being the teacher’s pet and decides to play a practical joke on his form master Father Goddard. Read More »

Candy Christian is an innocent young girl when she first hears NcPhito, an alcoholic Welsh poet, talk of love and self-sacrifice. Read More »

Baron von Sepper is an Austrian aristocrat noted for his blue-toned beard, and his appetite for beautiful wives. Read More »

Rich American socialite Lady Edwina Esketh, who obtained her title by marrying English Lord Albert Esketh, travels to Ranchipur where Albert hopes to buy a prize stallion from the Maharani.
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In 1942, a cargo ship jammed with British evacuees from Singapore is sunk by a Japanese sub. A small lifeboat carries a beautiful woman, an army officer, a bigoted administrator, and a black seaman. Only the seaman knows the woman is a nun. The men reveal their true selves under the hardships of survival. Told in a too-long flashback frame.
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Sidney Lumet directed this film version of Peter Shaffer’s dramatic play, transforming theatrical symbolism into cinematic realism. Richard Burton received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance as Martin Dysert, a psychiatrist determined to unravel the disturbed mind of Alan Strang (Peter Firth), a young stableboy. In a fit of rage, Strang has blinded a stable of six horses. The court then assigns Dysert to probe the young man’s mind in order to understand why he committed such a violent act. But the doctor, who is battling demons of his own, wonders if he can save the boy–and whether saving him at all is the right thing to do. Joan Plowright stands out as Dora Strang, the young boy’s mother.
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Faustus is a scholar at the University of Wittenberg when he earns his doctorate degree. His insatiable appetite for knowledge and power leads him to employ necromancy to conjure Mephistopheles out of hell. He bargains away his soul to Lucifer in exchange for living 24 years during which Mephistopheles will be his slave. Faustus signs the pact in his own blood and Mephistopheles reveals the works of the devil to Faustus.
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Murderous, sadistic London gang leader Vic Dakin, a mother-obsessed homosexual modeled on real-life gangster Ronnie Kray, is worried about potential stool pigeons that may bring down his criminal empire. The brutal Vic cuts the throat of one bloke who has been a little too loose-lipped, afraid that his gossiping may turn into a grand operatic performance for the coppers. Vic, who enjoys playing at rough trade with his sidekick Wolfe, plans a payroll robbery and directs the blackmailing of Members of Parliament with a taste for unorthodox sex. Scotland Yard Police Inspector Matthews, playing Javert to Vic’s Jean Valjean, is moving in on him and the gang. Gang-member Edgar is hospitalized for an ulcer, and Inspector Matthews might be able to make him sing. Will Edgar spill the beans to the coppers before Vic can silence him?
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Set in the Haiti of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, The Comedians tells the story of a sardonic Welsh hotel owner and his encroaching fatalism as he watches Haiti sink into barbarism and poverty. Complications include his inability to sell the hotel so he can leave, a friendship with a rebel leader, some politically “charged” hotel guests, an affair with the German-born wife of a South American ambassador, and the manipulations of a British arms dealer who’s in over his head.
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Film version of playwright Tennessee Williams’ “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” involves very wealthy Flora ‘Sissy’ Goforth, supposedly dying, and living in a large mansion on a secluded island with her servants and nurses; into her life comes a mysterious man, Angelo Del Morte and “the Witch of Capri.” The mysterious man may or may not be “The Angel of Death”.
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