Tag Archives: USA

Desert Fury (1947) Lewis Allen, John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Desert Fury (Lewis Allen, 1947)
Fritzi Haller is a powerful casino owner in Chuckawalla, Nevada. Her daughter Paula (having quit school) returns at the same time as racketeer Eddie Bendix, who left under suspicion of murdering his wife. Paula and Eddie become involved; each for their own reasons, Fritzi, Paula’s old beau Tom, and Eddie’s pal Johnny try to break up the relationship. Then Eddie’s past catches up with him in an unexpected way.
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Un uomo, un cavallo, una pistola / The Stranger Returns (1967) Luigi Vanzi, Tony Anthony, Daniele Vargas, Ettore Manni, Western

Un uomo, un cavallo, una pistola (1967)
Taking the identity of a dead postal inspector found on the trail, a stranger rides into a small western town and finds himself in the middle of a stagecoach robbery perpetrated by a gang of twenty ruthless desperados. Finding out the object of the heist was not a strongbox as it seemed but a solid gold stagecoach, he enlists the aid of a down-and-out old preacher and tracks down the dangerous gang and their unsuspected ally.
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I Dream Too Much (1935) John Cromwell, Lily Pons, Henry Fonda, Eric Blore, Comedy, Romance, Musical

I Dream Too Much (John Cromwell, 1935)
Jonathan Street is a struggling composer when he meets and marries Annette. The problem is that Jonathan was drunk and does not want to be married. Annette does go with him to Paris and does the cooking and cleaning. To get his music published, Annette takes it to Paul and he is won over – by her voice and not the music. So he manages her career and she becomes a star as an opera singer everywhere she goes. Since Jonathan cannot sell anything he writes, he leaves Annette and that makes Annette sad as she wants only to be his wife.
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Great St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959) Charles Guggenheim, John Stix, Steve McQueen, Crahan Denton, David Clarke, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Great St. Louis Bank Robbery (Charles Guggenheim & John Stix, 1959)
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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Serial Killers: The Real Life Hannibal Lecters (2001) Sean Buckley, Richard Morgan, Melanie Porter, Jennifer Franks, Documentary, Crime

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In the 2001 documentary Serial Killers: Real Life Hannibal Lecters, director Sean Buckley profiles five of the most infamous and deadly serial killers of the 20th century, each of whom has inspired a number of big-screen fictional murderers. Featuring interviews with experts as well as the monsters themselves, the film attempts to offer insight into the minds and lives of John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Andrei Chikatilo, and Albert Fish.
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Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) Nicholas Stoller, Kristen Bell, Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Comedy, Drama, Romance

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Peter is a composer and a likable sad sack who’s devastated when his girlfriend of five years, Sarah Marshall, the star of a cheesy CSI-style crime show, dumps him. He weeps, he rails, he mopes. Finally, his step-brother Brian suggests Hawaii, so Peter heads for a resort on Oahu where, as he’s checking in, he sees Sarah and her new beau, Aldous, a polymorphously perverse English rocker. The weeping and moping start again, until Peter is rescued by Rachel, a thoughtful hotel clerk who invites him to a luau and to hang out. Although he constantly runs into Sarah and Aldous, Peter starts to come alive again. Will Sarah realize what she’s lost, and what about Rachel?
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The Rainmaker (1956) Joseph Anthony, Burt Lancaster, Katharine Hepburn, Wendell Corey, Romance, Western

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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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The Private War of Major Benson (1955) Jerry Hopper, Charlton Heston, Julie Adams, William Demarest, Comedy, Family, Romance

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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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The Female Animal (1958) Harry Keller, Hedy Lamarr, Jane Powell, Jan Sterling, Drama

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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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A Message to Garcia (1936) George Marshall, Wallace Beery, Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Drama, Romance

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The real “message to Garcia” was delivered by an American lieutenant to Cuban rebel General Garcia, asking for the General’s help in the Spanish-American war. The fact that the lieutenant made his way to Garcia in absolute safety was ignored in 20th Century-Fox’s Message to Garcia–which is just as well, since otherwise the movie would have been eight minutes long. In the film version, lieutenant John Boles is guided through the treacherous Cuban jungle by Barbara Stanwyck, doing her best to convince us that she’s an Hispanic senorita. Also along for the trip is renegade marine Wallace Beery, who may not be as friendly as he seems. Fighting off Spaniards and spies at every turn, Boles successfully completes his mission. As history, Message to Garcia is about as reliable as the Hearst newspaper dispatches which triggered the Spanish-American war in the first place.
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The Psycho Lover / The Lovely Touch (1970) Robert Vincent O’Neill, Lawrence Montaigne, Jo Anne Meredith, Elizabeth Plumb, Crime, Horror

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The only thing worse than being a homicidal maniac is being treated by a doctor who’s just as crazy! Marco, a Psycho Lover who strangles women that “threaten his maleness,” becomes a patient of lizard-like Dr. Kenneth Alden, who uses wacky nightmares to brainwash Marco into killing the doc’s nasty wife who won’t give him a divorce. A gaudy mix of sex, violence, pop-psych, and even some quick necrophilia, this drive-in shocker is a fun descent into B-movie psychosis.
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Nightmare Circus / Terror Circus (1974) Alan Rudolph, Andrew Prine, Manuela Thiess, Sherry Alberoni, Horror

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Three showgirls on their way to Las Vegas have car trouble and are stuck all night out in the desert. The next morning cheerful Andre offers them help in fixing their car. However, Andre is really a maniac with a lot of family problems; his mother ran out on him when he was a child so now he keeps kidnapped women chained up in his barn and trains them to perform circus tricks. Andre’s father is still around of course, but because the old homestead is next to a nuclear test site he has been transformed into a raving homicidal mutant that Andre keeps locked up in a shed.
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