Tag Archives: 1950s

Betty Preisser, an attractive 24 year old divorcee, works as a secretary in the hard-boiled atmosphere of Manhattan’s garment district. Her workaholic boss Jerry (Frederick March) is feeling his own mortality. He’s overworked and lonely. He’s a 56 year old widower, but still enmeshed in his family obligations. His bossy older sister Evelyn has moved in with him and he has a married daughter Lillian and grandchild who live nearby.
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Follow-up to Ed Wood’s “Plan 9 from Outer Space” about the walking dead, It opens in a cemetery. Criswell, the “real” medium, rises from his coffin to tell us of “monsters to be despised.” Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan) is a phony medium aided by Valda Hansen, a bogus ghost, and big Tor Johnson, wearing rags and horrible scar makeup as Lobo. The doctor swindles people by pretending to contact dead relatives, but then accidentally succeeds in reviving a bunch of corpses that bury him alive! Sat unreleased for 23 years because Wood couldn’t pay the lab bill!
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Professor Immanuel Rath (Curt Jurgens)is a martinet botany professor at a German high school who finds post cards bearing the likeness of Lola-Lola (May Britt), “The Blue Angel”, in the possession of his pupils. He goes to the cafe where she is appearing to see if any of his pupils are there, and spots two of them. While chasing them, he encounters Lola-Lola and the troupe manager, Kiepert (Theodore Bikel.) He returns the next evening and becomes involved with Lola. His visit to the cafe, and the fact he spent the night with Lola, becomes common knowledge and he is forced to leave his school position. Despite the protests of his friends, he marries Lola, who is intrigued by the idea of being the wife of a professor. The intrigue doesn’t last long, as Rath is unable to get work because of his wife. He becomes a broken character, reduced to performing odd jobs around the troupe and living off the earnings of his wife.
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On August 15, ten years after the Pacific War, five people meet at a station. Their purpose is to dig out a cache of morphine — now worth sixty million yen — that HASHIMOTO, an army medical officer, buried in an air-raid shelter in this city on the day the war ended. The five are: SHIMA, a beautiful woman who claims that she is HASHIMOTO’s younger sister and that her brother is dead; NAKADA, a pharmacist; ONUMA, who owns a Chinese restaurant; YAMAMOTO, a thug; and SAWAI, who says he is a junior high school teacher. But HASHIMOTO originally had only three accomplices — and hid the morphine late at night, so they did not know each other’s identities. There is one person too many in the group, but they do not know whom. A butcher shop now stands over the old air-raid shelter. The five decide to rent a vacant house across the street, and dig a tunnel to the butcher shop.
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A gunfighter, stranded in the desert, comes across the aftermath of a stage robbery, in which all the passengers were killed. He takes one of the horses to ride to town to report the massacre, but finds himself accused of it. He also finds himself accused of the murder of the local banker, and winds up hiding in the basement of a house where the local sheriff, who is very sick, lives with his daughter.
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Set in post-war Japan, The Lady of Musashino tells the story of Michiko, a disillusioned young woman trapped in a loveless marriage. She confides in her younger cousin, Tsutomo, and the two become close, but decide not to consummate their affair. He instead becomes involved with the flirtatious Tomiko, who is also conducting an affair with Michiko’s husband. When Michiko finds that her husband has abandoned her, she decides to take her fate into her own hands.
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In the fall of 1939, the German heavy cruiser (referred to as a pocket battleship) Graf Spee seems to have command of the Atlantic. Read More »

Air Force test pilot Pike Yarnell reluctantly attends the memorial service for long-dead Donald Beasley, his navigator during the Korean War; recalling, in flashbacks, their painful days together on a life raft. In Beasley’s home town, Pike is repelled at Donald’s wealthy mother’s enshrinement of her dead son; bemused at his frankly amorous pursuit by Donald’s younger sister Pat; and increasingly charmed by his attractive widow Christina. What will the final flashback reveal?
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After serving a five year prison sentence for allowing his men to destroy a town in a drunken spree, a trail boss is hired by the same town’s leading citizen to drive their cattle to Fort Clemson. Complicating matters, a rival cattle baron also hires the cattle driver to lead his herd.
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Kathy is a smart and tough 1950’s advice columnist at a San Francisco newspaper, with her name plastered on billboards all over the city. One day, Bill Doyle, a Los Angeles detective, walks into her office – it is instant attraction. After marrying Bill, Kathy gives up her career and becomes a homemaker. However, she is not your typical 1950’s homemaker. After hosting several cocktail parties in their San Fernando Valley home, she realizes that Bill is content with his position, and shows no ambition in furthering himself. Kathy will not sit idly by while everyone around her is “moving up in the world”. She personally takes upon herself the task of pushing Bill’s career along, even if it comes down to murder.
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