Author Archives: rarefilm

Back Street (1961) David Miller, Susan Hayward, John Gavin, Vera Miles, Drama

Back Street (1961)
Ambitious but thwarted, Rae Smith meets handsome Marine Paul Saxon, (of the Saxon department store chain), as he passes through Lincoln, Nebraska, on his way home from World War II. There’s a definite spark between them but circumstances intervene and he leaves town without her. Later she learns he’s married. Determined to make it as a fashion designer, Rae moves to New York and becomes a great success. One day she happens to meet Paul again and again there’s that spark but he’s still married so, as a form of escape, Rae moves to Rome to set up shop. Once again she meets Paul and finally they begin an actual affair since Paul’s shrewish, drunken wife, Liz, won’t give him a divorce. Time passes, the affair continues whenever time and place permit, but then, Paul’s young son finds out about Rae and Rae’s back-street world begins to crumble.
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Screaming Mimi (1958) Gerd Oswald, Anita Ekberg, Philip Carey, Gypsy Rose Lee, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller

Screaming Mimi (1958)
Exotic dancer Virginia Wilson sees a man get shot moments after he tries to knife her in a shower, so she goes to Dr. Greenwood a psychiatrist for therapy. He falls in love with her and takes over her life, although she insists on continuing her career at the El Madhouse nightclub. The club’s tough owner is none other than Gypsy Rose Lee who plays ‘Gypsy’ and sings an incredibly bad song (“Put the Blame on Mame”) when Virginia is late one night. The traumatized Virginia is suspected of a series of murders. Each victim had purchased a contorted sculpture of a woman called the Screaming Mimi, which was created by her step-brother Charlie who was also responsible for shooting her attacker. It’s up to a handsome columnist Bill Sweeny to figure it all out.
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Walk on Water (2004) Eytan Fox, Lior Ashkenazi, Knut Berger, Caroline Peters, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Walk on Water (2004)
Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide, he befriends his grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia. The two men set out on a tour of the country during which, Axel challenges Eyal’s values.
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Driftwood (1947) Allan Dwan, Ruth Warrick, Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger, Drama

Driftwood (1947)
Six-year-old Jenny rescues a collie dog, the only survivor of a plane wreck. A tag on the dog’s neck states that it is en route to a medical laboratory where its blood will be used for spotted fever vaccine. Dr. Steven Webster meets both Jenny and the dog and “adopts” them both. His fiancée Susan isn’t too fond of either the girl or the dog. Webster wants to get a hospital for the town but he is suppressed by the town mayor. In the arguments that follow, Webster’s lab is wrecked and ticks infected with spotted fever escape. The town is in a panic and all want to be vaccinated. Jenny is infected and is about to die.
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Kingsajz / King Size (1988) Juliusz Machulski, Jacek Chmielnik, Jerzy Stuhr, Katarzyna Figura, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy

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A comedy. The story follows a young scientist in the contemporary world, who actually came from the world of dwarves, thanks to a magic potion, held by the Big Eater, ruler of the dwarves. The dwarf kingdom, Shuflandia, exists in a cellar of a library, and only the most obedient get the chance to grow to king size and inhabit the larger world. Once there, nobody wants to return to Shuflandia. Also, there are no women in Shuflandia.
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Schachnovelle / Brainwashed (1960) Gerd Oswald, Curd Jürgens, Claire Bloom, Hansjörg Felmy, Drama

Schachnovelle (1960)
In 1938 Austria shortly after the Nazi occupation, a prominent Viennese intellectual, Werner von Basil, is arrested for smuggling art treatures out of the country and imprisoned by the Gestapo in a hotel room without any mental sustence of any kind to break him down to make him talk while a young ballerina, named Irene Adreny whom is the lover of the SS officer Berger playing mind games on von Basil, tries to intervene and help the poor intellectual keep his mind intact.
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Night of the Lepus (1972) William F. Claxton, Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Night of the Lepus (1972)
Cole Hillman’s Arizona ranch is plagued with ‘mongrel’ rabbits, and he wants to employ an ecologically sound control method. As a favor to college benefactor Hillman, college president Elgin Clark calls in zoologist Roy Bennett to help. Bennett immediately begins injecting rabbits with hormones and genetically mutated blood in an effort to develop a method of disrupting rabbit reproduction. One of the test subjects escapes, resulting in a race of bloodthirsty, wolf-sized, man-, horse-, and cow-eating bunnies. Eventually the National Guard is called in for a final showdown with the terrorizing rabbits.
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Prom Night (1980) Paul Lynch, Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Stevens, Horror

Prom Night (1980)
For six long years, Hamilton High School seniors Kelly Lynch, Jude Cunningham, Wendy Richards and Nick McBride have been hiding the truth of what happened to ten-year-old Robin Hammond the day her broken body was discovered near an abandoned convent. The foursome kept secret of how they taunted Robin – backed her into a corner until, frightened, she stood on a window ledge… and fell to her death. Though an accident, the then-twelve-year-olds feared they would be held responsible and vowed never to tell. But someone else was there that day… watching, and now, that someone is ready to exact murderous revenge on prom night.
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