Gothic (1986)

 

GOTHIC  (1986)  ¢ ¢

    D: Ken Russell

    Gabriel Byrne, Natasha Richardson Julian Sands,

    Timothy Spall, Myriam Cyr, Alec Mango,

    Andreas Wisniewski, Dexter Fletcher, Pascal King

On a famously dark and stormy night in 1816, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Percy's pal Mary and two others act out, dream, or hallucinate their most terrifying fantasies. It's 90 minutes of overwrought lunacy, reminiscent of Peter Brooks' "Marat/Sade", and like some other Ken Russell movies, it's both too much and not enough. The three key players - Lord Byron and the Shelleys - turn up in the introduction to James Whale's "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) in a segment that's a lot more concise, a lot less hysterical, and just s artistic as anything Russell does here. Plus, with that one, you get a Frankenstein movie.

Julian Sands

(1958-2023)

High School Big Shot (1959)

HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT  (1959)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Joel Rapp

    Tom Pittman, Virginia Aldridge, Howard Veit,

    Malcolm Atterbury, Stanley Adams, Byron Foulger

A smart but impoverished high-school kid, the only one in his class who digs Shakespeare, engineers a heist that could net $1 million and (he thinks) solve all of his problems. Considering its title and the fact that it once showed up on MST3K, this is a better movie than you might expect, or at least a more interesting one: a juvenile film noir with a teen protagonist and a teen femme fatale. Tom Pittman, who plays the lead, has real presence and an instinct for understatement that make you wonder where his career might've gone if he hadn't died in a car crash before the movie's release. Malcolm Atterbury, who plays the kid's troubled dad, would get a moment of immortality that same year, as the man at the prairie crossing in "North By Northwest" who spots the crop-duster and observes that it's dusting crops where there ain't no crops. 

He Walked By Night (1948)

 

HE WALKED BY NIGHT  (1948)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Alfred L. Werker

    Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts,

    Whit Bissell, James Cardwell, Jack Webb

A noir procedural with the cops out to get an elusive criminal who uses the storm drains under Los Angeles to make his getaways. Apparently, Anthony Mann directed about half of this (the noir stuff with Richard Basehart) and Alfred L. Werker did the rest. The difference really shows. Basehart gives a chilling performance as the stickup artist/cop killer/crook, and a pre-"Dragnet" Jack Webb plays the LAPD's tech guy. The climactic chase through the storm-drain tunnels would seem to foreshadow "The Third Man".

Naked Edge / Take 8

 

Demi Moore in "Striptease"

Melinda Dillon in "Slap Shot"

Charlotte Gainsbourg in "Dark Crimes"

Jane Birkin in "Je T'aime Moi Non Plus"

Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat"

Melanie Griffith in "Night Moves"

Jennifer Lawrence in "Red Sparrow"

Lea Seydoux in "The French Dispatch"

Kate Beckinsale in "Uncovered"

Noomi Rapace in "Lamb"

Hell Drivers (1957)

HELL DRIVERS  (1957)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Cy Endfield

    Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins,

    Patrick McGoohan, Sidney James, Jill Ireland,

    Sean Connery, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson,

    William Hartnell, Wilfred Lawson, Alfie Bass

A guy just out of prison gets a job driving a gravel truck for a company whose workers have even fewer benefits than the average Amazon warehouse employee. A gritty, kitchen-sink film noir (except that nobody in it has a kitchen), with a fine cast of soon-to-be stars and longtime character players. Made in England, where director Cy Endfield was working after being blacklisted. Keep an eye on Stanley Baker and see if you don't think he and Sean Connery look enough alike to be brothers. 

Hopscotch (1980)

HOPSCOTCH  (1980)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ronald Neame

    Walter Matthau, Glenda Jackson, Sam Waterston,

    Ned Beatty, Herbert Lom, Severn Darden 

A cloak-and-dagger comedy starring Walter Matthau as a veteran CIA op who refuses to go away quietly when he's removed from the field. Instead, he goes off the grid and starts writing his memoirs, dispatching them from various locations a chapter at a time, while eluding the ex-colleagues who are now out to eliminate him. There's no real suspense in this, and you can't help wishing Glenda Jackson had more to do, but the writing's clever enough, and Matthau makes playing a spy on the run look as easy as drinking a beer. He makes that look easy, too. 

Glenda Jackson

(1936-2023)

Guilty Hands (1931)

 

GUILTY HANDS  (1931)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: W.S. Van Dyke

    Lionel Barrymore, Kay Francis, Madge Evans,

    William Bakewell, C. Aubrey Smith, Polly Moran,

    Alan Mobray, Forrester Harvey, Charles Crockett

Lionel Barrymore plays an attorney who believes that in certain circumstances murder can not only be justified, but gotten away with. When his daughter announces her engagement to a womanizer twice her age, he decides to put his theory to the test. So the mystery's not much of a mystery, but the ending's playfully twisted, the morals are pre-Code, and with Woody Van Dyke at the helm and a running time of 70 minutes, the pace is brisk.