Classic and James Bond films unite
This review contains major plot point spoilers. Don’t read any further if you haven’t seen the film. Frenzy is, in my humble opinion, Hitchcock’s most intense and disturbing film. Because it was made long after the production code had folded, it has all the graphic imagery that the 1970s, with its lack of overarching censorship,… Continue reading The intensity of “Frenzy” (1972)
Rathbone, Bruce and Brookes perviously starred in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death together Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce's third last outing in the series of films they made as Holmes and Watson between 1939 and 1946, is one of the best. Atmospheric, cerebral and quite disturbing in some ways, it's a film that is saved from… Continue reading Hypnotic Pools: The Woman in Green (1945)
A few months ago I undertook the task of watching all fourteen of the Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies. I am very glad to say that I was successful in my little quest. Like most classic film fans, my feelings about the series are mixed. I feel that the majority of the… Continue reading A Glowing Mist: Sherlock Holmes and The Scarlet Claw (1944)
It is rare that an adaptation of a novel gets things right. Often one feels that they shouldn't have bothered to buy the rights to the book at all if they were just going to change everything. Thankfully, that is not what ITV does in the 1997 adaptation of du Maurier's most famous novel, Rebecca. This is the third… Continue reading Je Reviens: Rebecca (1997)
As with Love Story, I had never heard of Footsteps in the Fog. Perhaps this is because the film has been overshadowed by similar outings such as Gaslight (1944), The Lodger (1944) and Dragonwyck (1946). But this should not be so, as Footsteps in the Fog is just as impressive as its similarly gothic predecessors. It has the same paranoid, moody atmosphere, the same intensely psychological storyline,… Continue reading The Poison of Thine Lips: Stewart Granger in Footsteps in the Fog (1955)
The Mirror Crack'd (1980) was adapted from Agatha Christie's 1964 novel, The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side. The film boasts some of the most famous actors of the 1950s and 1960s, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Curtis, Kim Novak, Angela Lansbury, and of course, Rock Hudson. This would be Rock Hudson's second last theatrically released film, made five years… Continue reading An Ill Fated Kiss: Rock Hudson in The Mirror Crack’d
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