Classic and James Bond films unite
The Brontë Sisters are incredibly famous. I don’t think this point can be overstated. Their contribution to the English literary canon, especially Gothic literature, has influenced countless authors, filmmakers and musicians (I’m looking at you, Kate Bush.) They revolutionised a genre that had been seen as low brow, melodramatic trash for almost a century, and… Continue reading Jane, Jane: Timothy Dalton in Jane Eyre (1983)
The Boys Next Door follows in the footsteps of Rebel Without A Cause in its exploration of a disillusioned youth that are raging against the system, but it cranks the violence and cynicism up to a level that endeavours to show the crumbling facade of the American Dream. It has fallen into relative obscurity since… Continue reading Disillusioned Youth: “The Boys Next Door” (1985)
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)
In 1968, Mia Farrow showed that she could play a character that required both exhaustive physical and psychological realisation. In Rosemary's Baby, she played a young woman who has the unimaginable happen to her, and she was rightly nominated for a BAFTA and Academy Award for her efforts. A year before that, in 1967, Audrey Hepburn would… Continue reading A Sightless Evil: Mia Farrow in “See No Evil” (1971)
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)
The film starts with a visual representation of Edward "Teddy" Bare's (played by Dirk Bogarde) mind. A stark, dark, confusing labyrinth, with the face of a screaming woman. The things in the labyrinth: a stuffed ape, a clown, would be mundane in the sunlight, in the sane world, but in this place they are representations… Continue reading The Chamber: Dirk Bogarde in “Cast a Dark Shadow” (1955)
Watching a film where Bette Davis plays the female lead is really something. From Now Voyager to Jezebel, Bette never put a foot wrong. But seeing her play both female leads. Well that's really something. And she did it twice, almost twenty years apart, in A Stolen Life and Dead Ringer, in which she played identical twin sisters. And while both of these… Continue reading Walking through the looking glass: Bette Davis in ‘A Stolen Life’ and ‘Dead Ringer’
Pale Writer 