Tag Archives: USA

The Hunting Party (1971) Don Medford, Oliver Reed, Candice Bergen, Gene Hackman, Action, Drama, Western

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The rich and ruthless rancher Brandt Ruger keeps his beautiful young wife Melissa like a part of his property, subdued to his will. But one day she’s kidnapped by the famous outlaw Frank Calder – just to teach him reading, so he tells her. Calder doesn’t know or care who’s wife she is. He takes care of her well, and eventually Melissa falls in love with him. But Ruger feels humiliated. Full of hate, he sets out to kill him – and Melissa too, if necessary. Together with his friends and the newest technology in guns, which carry 800 yards, he initiates a battue on Calder and his gang.
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Martin Luther (1953) Irving Pichel, Niall MacGinnis, John Ruddock, Pierre Lefevre, Biography, Drama, History

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This biographical account of Martin Luther’s actions that eventually created the Protestant and Lutheran religions was filmed in conjunction with the Lutheran Church. Niall MacGinnis portrays the monk who’s nailing of his list of 95 theses to the church door in Worms created a stir so large that it shook the very foundations of the Catholic Church. This film shows the struggle between Luther and the organized church and how the Catholic Church was not fully explaining things he questioned, which led him to be labeled a heretic.
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The Snow Creature (1954) W. Lee Wilder, Paul Langton, Leslie Denison, Teru Shimada, Horror

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Botanist Frank Parrish leads an expedition to the Himalayas to seek out new flora, accompanied by hardboiled news photographer Peter Wells. When their lead guide, Subra, learns his wife has been kidnapped by a Yeti, Parrish disbelieves him, so the sherpas commandeer the expedition at gunpoint and turn it into a search-and-rescue party. To Parrish’s surprise, they discover a whole family of Yetis in a cave, and are able to subdue the male and carry it back to civilization, to ship to the USA for study. Subra is forgiven his acts because he was right after all. Wells, meanwhile, phones in the story and Parrish finds his discovery – shipped upright in a meat cooler to maintain its natural environment – detained in the US because Wells’ story refers to it as a snowMAN, and a decision must be made whether this is a customs or immigration matter. During this bureaucratic snafu, the creature escapes its containers and disappears into Los Angeles, mysteriously appearing in different parts of …
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That’s Sexploitation! (2013) Frank Henenlotter, Albert Cadabra, Gal Friday, David F. Friedman, Documentary, Erotic

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Before the advent of modern-day pornography, a vast and rapidly-paced world of smut peddling was the norm, complete with its own secret history. This documentary reveals the untold story of American cinema’s gloriously sordid cinematic past. Starting in the 1920s, expert exploiteer David F. Friedman and Henenlotter navigate us through more than five salacious decades of skin flicks. It’s the true story of dirty movies, traced in elegant detail from the bizarre locations where these nudie shorts were screened to the ongoing legal battles fought by their promoters. And of course there are the stories of the innovators themselves, people who often risked their own security and livelihood to make these films, believing in some way that what they were doing wasn’t a ‘bad’ thing – and that it could rake in some dough.
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Fräulein (1958) Henry Koster, Dana Wynter, Mel Ferrer, Dolores Michaels, Romance, War, Drama

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In melodramatic fashion, the film tells the tale of a young German woman who finds herself alone in the world when the rest of her family is killed in a WWII air raid. Helping an American military man escape the Gestapo, she finds herself on the run from the Russian Army. Escaping to the American (and safe) side of Berlin, she registers herself as a prostitute (unknowingly) and finds herself caught between the German officer who thinks she is for sale and the American officer who she saved and is now in love with her.
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Force of Arms (1951) Michael Curtiz, William Holden, Nancy Olson, Frank Lovejoy, Romance, War, Drama

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Winter, 1943. The German army has halted the American advance in the mountains of Italy; back-and-forth combat decimates Joe Peterson’s platoon. On leave in Naples, Joe meets WAC lieutenant Eleanor MacKay; initially cool, she begins to melt during a bombing raid. Their romance develops despite Joe’s periodic returns to the front. But whether he’ll come back in the end becomes more than doubtful…
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