Tag Archives: UK

Gothic (1986) Ken Russell, Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Natasha Richardson, Horror

Gothic (Ken Russell, 1986)
Story of the night that Mary Shelley gave birth to the horror classic “Frankenstein.” Disturbed drug induced games are played and ghost stories are told one rainy night at the mad Lord Byron’s country estate. Personal horrors are revealed and the madness of the evening runs from sexual fantasy to fiercest nightmare. Mary finds herself drawn into the sick world of her lover Shelley and cousin Claire as Byron leads them all down the dark paths of their souls.
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Zarak (1956) Terence Young, Victor Mature, Michael Wilding, Anita Ekberg, Action, Adventure, Romance

Zarak (Terence Young, 1956)
On the mountainous frontier between British India and Afghanistan, circa 1860s, Zarak Khan kisses Salma, the youngest wife of his father, Haji Khan. Outraged, his father orders Zarak to be flogged to death but spares his life at the urging of an elderly Mullah. Zarak now leaves his village and becomes a notorious outlaw, prompting the British to assign a Major Ingram to capture him. Zarak and Ingram have several encounters, developing a grudging respect for each other. When Ingram is captured by Ahmad, one of Zarak’s rivals, Zarak risks his life to save the British officer.
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Snowbound (1948) David MacDonald, Dennis Price, Mila Parély, Stanley Holloway, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

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A frequent visitor to the Late Late Show, the Anglo-American Snowbound is set in the frozen Alps. Robert Newton and Dennis Price head an expedition in search of a fortune of gold, stashed away by the Nazis in the last days of the war. Snowed into an old cabin, the men quickly get on one another’s nerves. Just when tension reaches the boiling point, one of the party saves the day. He happens to be a movie screenwriter, who uses his cinematic knowhow to reach a solution to their dilemma. Snowbound is based on The Lonely Skier, a novel by Hammond Innes.
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Murder She Said (1961) George Pollock, Margaret Rutherford, Arthur Kennedy, Muriel Pavlow, Comedy, Crime, Drama

Murder, She Said (1961)
Old miss Marple is on a train ride when she witnesses a murder in a passing train. She reports it to the police but they won’t believe her: since no body can be found there can’t have been any murder, right? As always, she begins her own investigation. The murder was committed while passing Ackenthorpe Hall and miss Marple gets herself a job there, mixing cleaning and cooking with searching the house for clues.
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Zulu (1964) Cy Endfield, Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, Drama, History, War

Zulu (Cy Endfield, 1964)
Two Lieutenants, Chard of Engineers and Bromhead find that their 140 man contingent in Natal has been isolated by the destruction of the main British Army column and that 4,000 Zulu warriors will descend on them in hours. Each has a different military background in tactics and they are immediatly in conflict on how to prepare for the attack. Nearly a third of the men are in the infirmary, as the welsh company tries to somehow survive with no help in sight. Based on a true story.
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Little Red Monkey / The Case of the Red Monkey (1955) Ken Hughes, Richard Conte, Rona Anderson, Russell Napier, Action, Adventure, Crime

Little Red Monkey (1955)
Several murders of nuclear scientists, that baffles Scotland Yard, occur in London about the same time that Bill Locklin, a special officer from the United States State Department, arrives to oversee the transfer of Professor Leon Dushenko, a Russian scientist who as fled the U.S.S.R. An attempt is made on Dushenko’s life with a monkey’s paw-print found at the scene. Newspaperman reporter Harry Martin is covering the story. Duskenko is moved secretly to a nursing home, while Locklin stumbles onto the hideout of the gang behind the killings. He is captured along with Julia Jackson, niece of Superintendent John Harrington. Locklin is tortured to reveal Dushenko’s hiding place but escapes in time to avert Duskenko’s murder at the hands of the gang’s hired-killer–-a midget who is aided by a monkey.
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Our Mother’s House (1967) Jack Clayton, Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Leclere, Pamela Franklin, Drama, Thriller

Our Mother's House (1967)
Raised by their Bible-obsessed, invalid mother, seven children care for her and one another in a gloomy Victorian house. The mother dies, and the children, terrified of being separated and even more terrified of the outside world, build a graveside shrine to her in the backyard and carry on as if nothing has happened. When their long-lost father shows up, he seems to fall in with their plans. Then the children begin to realize he has a different plan altogether.
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The Road to Guantanamo (2006) Mat Whitecross, Michael Winterbottom, Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Waqar Siddiqui, Documentary, Drama, War

The Road to Guantanamo (Michael Winterbottom & Mat Whitecross, 2006)
In 2001, four Pakistani Britons, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul and another friend, Monir, travel to Pakistan for a wedding and in a urge of idealism, decide to see the situation of war torn Afganistan which is being bombed by the American forces in retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Once there, with the loss of Monir in the wartime chaos, they are captured by Northern Alliance fighters. They are then handed them over the American forces who transport them to the prison camps at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. What follows is three years of relentless imprisonment, interrogations and torture to make them submit to blatantly wrong confessions to being terrorists. In the midst of this abuse, the three struggle to keep their spirits up in that face of this grave injustice.
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The Purple Plain (1954) Robert Parrish, Gregory Peck, Bernard Lee, Win Min Than, Adventure, Drama, War

The Purple Plain (Robert Parrish, 1954)
After losing his bride in a Luftwaffe air raid, bomber pilot Forrester becomes a solitary killing machine, who doesn’t care whether he dies. The reckless Canadian pilot is both admired and feared by the rest of his squadron in World War II Burma. The squadron physician is assigned to determine the embittered Bill Forrester’s fitness for duty. To break through the nightmare-haunted man’s wall of silence, the physician drives Forrester to visit an outpost of English-speaking refugees, which includes an alluring young Burmese woman.
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The Magic Box (1951) John Boulting, Robert Donat, Maria Schell, Renée Asherson, Biography, Drama

The Magic Box (John Boulting, 1951)
Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife’s so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.
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Sands of the Kalahari (1965) Cy Endfield, Stanley Baker, Stuart Whitman, Susannah York, Adventure

Sands of the Kalahari (1965)
A small airplane crashes in the sweltering deserts of southern Africa hundreds of miles from civilization. As parallels are drawn between the stranded group of seven passengers and a nearby pack of savage baboons, one of the men’s survivalist nature gets the better of him, as he decides his chances of survival would be better if the other men were eliminated one-by-one.
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Scrooge (1970) Ronald Neame, Albert Finney, Alec Guinness, Edith Evans, Drama, Family, Fantasy

Scrooge (Ronald Neame, 1970)
In 1860, cranky old miser Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas; loathes people and defends the decrease of the surplus of poor population; runs his bank exploiting his employee Bob Cratchit and clients, giving a bitter treatment to his own nephew and acquaintances. However, on Christmas Eve, he is visited by the doomed ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley that tells him that three spirits would visit him that night. The first one, the spirit of Christmas Past, recalls his miserable youth when he lost his only love due to his greed; the spirit of Christmas Present shows him the poor situation of Bob’s family and how joyful life may be; and the spirit of Christmas Future shows his fate. Scrooge finds that life is good and time is too short and suddenly you are not there anymore, changing his behavior toward Christmas, Bob, his nephew and people in general.
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