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The title of Mitchell Leisen’s classic 1939 screwball comedy Midnight is a clear allusion to Cinderella, foreshadowing the penniless American showgirl Eve Peabody’s (Claudette Colbert) inevitable entry into high society. It’s within the opening 10 minutes that Eve will meet her prince—or rather, two of them. First, she’s whisked away by the cabbie Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche), with whom she shares an instant attraction as he takes her to some working-class hotspots around Paris before she accidentally finds herself being escorted into a socialite’s swanky party. It’s there, during a game of bridge, that she captures the attention of the wealthy playboy Jacques Picot (Francis Lederer), much to the chagrin of his lover, Helene (Mary Astor), and to the delight of her husband, Georges Flammarion (John Barrymore), who sees Eve, the charming imposter, as the means to breaking up his wife’s affair.

As with many a screwball comedy,...

Louise Brooks’s famous bobbed hairstyle guaranteed her eternal inimitability, its razor-sharp aesthetic a marker of her essence. G.W. Pabst understood this, which is why when Brooks’s doomed flapper from Pandora’s Box flees a courtroom after a murder conviction, she cuts her hair to become almost unidentifiable—to be like other women, except perhaps for the curly-blond gal pal who longs for her affections. (One sign of the film’s coolness is its refusal to waltz Alice Roberts into the celluloid closet.) It’s an act of desperate self-preservation in a film wickedly chockablock with exciting displays of amorous exaltation and domination.

This 1929 German silent drama is a stirring vision of the world gripped by a sinister moral vice—a nosedive into a carnal abyss of despair lined with visionary chiaroscuro sights and thorny mythological reference. With a voracious Lulu at the gilded controls, the vibrantly in-the-moment Pandora’s Box...

To celebrate the release of Pandora’s Box coming to Blu-Ray on 30th October we have not 1, not 2 but 3 Blu-Rays to give away!

Eureka Entertainment to release G. W. Pabst’s sordid melodrama Pandora’S Box, one of silent cinema’s great masterworks, starring Louise Brooks. Presented on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, from a new restoration as part of The Masters of Cinema Series. Available from 30 October 2023, the Limited-edition set (3000 copies only) will feature a Hardbound Slipcase & 60-page Collectors Book.

Adapted from a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, Pandora’s Box tells the story of prostitute Lulu (Louise Brooks), a free spirit whose open sexuality breeds chaos in its wake. When Lulu’s latest lover, the newspaper editor Dr Ludwig Schon, announces plans to leave her to marry a more respectable woman, Lulu is devastated. Cast in a musical revue written by Schon’s son, Alwa,...

Bram Stoker once envisioned his most successful novel, Dracula, as a stage play. The actor he wanted to play the title role, Sir Henry Irving, walked out of the table read, yawning and griping about wordiness. It was probably the most auspicious walkout in horror entertainment history. Had Irving starred in a bomb, Bela Lugosi, Frank Langella, Gary Oldman, and quite a few other actors wouldn’t have been able to don the cape.

Dracula wasn’t the first book about vampires, but it was the first time Vlad “the Impaler” Tepes was portrayed as one. Until then, people thought of him as a cruel tyrant who nailed hats onto the heads of monks, and dipped his bread in the blood of vanquished soldiers. That is if they thought of him at all, outside of Romania, which celebrates him with pride as a freedom fighter and national protector, the “son...

Ray Milland produces, directs and stars in this odd, forgotten travelogue / adventure / romance /crime tale filmed in Portugal’s beautiful capital. Claude Rains is magnificent, Maureen O’Hara is okay and relative newcomer Yvonne Furneaux is a knockout. Most remembered is Nelson Riddle’s adaptation of the film’s title theme, one of the most admired pop instrumentals of the 1950s. Filmed in Republic’s ‘Naturama’ and ‘Trucolor,’ both of which prompt plenty of fuzzy man Savant-‘splaining.

Lisbon

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 90 min. / Street Date November 6, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Ray Milland, Maureen O’Hara, Claude Rains, Yvonne Furneaux, Francis Lederer, Percy Marmont, Jay Novello, Edward Chapman, Harold Jamieson, Robie Lester.

Cinematography: Jack Marta (Naturama and Trucolor)

Film Editor: Richard L. Van Enger

Original Music: Nelson Riddle

Written by John Tucker Battle, story by Martin Rackin

Associate-Produced and Directed by R. Milland

Lisbon is one...

By Hank Reineke

The first thing you note when reading the sleeve notes for 100 Years of Horror (Mill Creek Entertainment) is the three-disc set’s staggering running time: ten hours and fifty-five minutes. It’s a somewhat daunting task to review such a monumentally staged effort as this, one at least partially conceived as a labor-of-love. The series makes a noble effort to trace the history and the development of the horror film from the silent era through the slasher films of the 1980s and a bit beyond, not always neatly or logically compartmentalizing sub-genres as “Dinosaurs,” “Aliens” “Gore,” “Mutants,” Scream Queens” etc. along the way. It’s a bit difficult to precisely date when host and horror film icon Christopher Lee’s commentaries and introductory segments were filmed. The set itself carries a 1996 copyright, but Lee makes an off-hand mention of the “new” Dracula film starring Gary Oldman… which...

Greta Thyssen, the Danish beauty who doubled for Marilyn Monroe, dated Cary Grant and starred opposite the Three Stooges, has died. She was 90.

Thyssen died Saturday night at her Manhattan apartment after a bout with pneumonia, her daughter, Genevieve Guenther, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Thyssen also starred in several "B" movies, including the horror pic Terror Is a Man (1959), a loose adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. On a mystery island (it was filmed in the Philippines), she played the wife of a scientist (Francis Lederer) "tormented by unsatisfied...

Expatriate Francis Lederer is a cultured menace in UA's revisit of the Dracula myth, made just before Hammer Films staked its claim on the horror genre. Avid Hitchcock fans may find the storyline very familiar, when European cousin Bellac strikes up a 'special' relationship with his American cousin Rachel. The Return of Dracula Blu-ray Olive Films 1958 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 77 min. / Street Date October 18, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Francis Lederer, Norma Eberhardt, Ray Stricklyn, Virginia Vincent, John Wengraf. Cinematography Jack MacKenzie Film Editor Sherman A. Rose Original Music Gerald Fried Written by Pat Fielder Produced by Arthur Gardner, Jules V. Levy Directed by Paul Landres

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Levy-Gardner-Laven producing combo, minus Arnold Laven this time out, assemble what was probably their most successful drive-in cheapie for United Artists. Promoting their secretary Pat Fielder to screenwriter, they had already done okay with a contemporary, non-Gothic vampire story...

Joop van den Berg's 1929 poster for AtlanticE.A. Dupont achieved early fame for Varieté (1925), a grimly saucy slice of Weimar doom and spiciness, and followed it up with prestigious British productions Moulin Rouge (1928) and Piccadilly (1929), the latter starring Anna May Wong—but just as his career was on the upswing he fell prey to the advent of sound, producing a big-budget version of the Titanic disaster in English and German versions.Atlantic, or Atlantik, became something of a laughing-stock in Britain, owing to Dupont's unfortunate combination of Teutonic tendencies and technical trepidation. The actors were directed to communicate as slowly as possible, perhaps so that Dupont could follow what they were saying. His desire to inflect each syllable with suitable weight and portent robbed the film of any sense of urgency, despite it being set on a ship that starts sinking around twenty minutes in (none of the ninety-minute time-wasting...

It's the final Hollywood film by the legendary Ziegfeld star Marilyn Miller, and it's also a terrific talkie feature debut for W.C. Fields -- with one of his dazzling juggling bits. But the real star is director William Dieterle, whose moving camera and creative edits rescue the talkie musical from dreary operetta staging. Her Majesty, Love DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 75 min. / Street Date January 19, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Marilyn Miller, Ben Lyon, W.C. Fields, Leon Errol, Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin, Clarence Wilson, Ruth Hall, Virginia Sale, Oscar Apfel. Cinematography Robert Kurrie Film Editor Ralph Dawson Songs Walter Jurmann, Al Dubin Written by Robert Lord, Arthur Caesar from story by Rudolph Bernauer, Rudolf Österreicher Directed by William Dieterle

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Warner Archive Collection has been kind to fans of early talkies. We've been able to discover dramatic actresses like Jeanne Eagels...

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Best Foreign Language Film Oscar 2016: 'Viva' with Héctor Medina. Multicultural Best Foreign Language Film Oscar 2016 submissions Nearly ten years ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences changed a key rule regarding entries for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar;* since then, things have gotten quite colorful. Just yesterday, Sept. 16, '15, Ireland submitted Paddy Breathnach's Viva – a Cuban-set drama spoken in Spanish. And why not? To name a couple more “multicultural and multinational” entries this year alone: China's submission, with dialogue in Mandarin and Mongolian, is Wolf Totem, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud – a Frenchman. And Germany's entry, Labyrinth of Lies, was directed by Giulio Ricciarelli, who happens to be a German-based, Italian-born stage and TV actor. 'Viva': Sexual identity in 21st-century Cuba Executive produced by Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro (Traffic), Viva tells the story of an 18-year-old Havana drag-club worker,...

Joan Lorring, 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee, dead at 88: One of the earliest surviving Academy Award nominees in the acting categories, Lorring was best known for holding her own against Bette Davis in ‘The Corn Is Green’ (photo: Joan Lorring in ‘Three Strangers’) Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee Joan Lorring, who stole the 1945 film version of The Corn Is Green from none other than Warner Bros. reigning queen Bette Davis, died Friday, May 30, 2014, in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow. So far, online obits haven’t mentioned the cause of death. Lorring, one of the earliest surviving Oscar nominees in the acting categories, was 88. Directed by Irving Rapper, who had also handled one of Bette Davis’ biggest hits, the 1942 sudsy soap opera Now, Voyager, Warners’ The Corn Is Green was a decent if uninspired film version of Emlyn Williams’ semi-autobiographical 1938 hit play about an English schoolteacher,...

‘Gilda,’ ‘Pulp Fiction’: 2013 National Film Registry movies (photo: Rita Hayworth in ‘Gilda’) See previous post: “‘Mary Poppins’ in National Film Registry: Good Timing for Disney’s ‘Saving Mr. Banks.’” Billy Woodberry’s UCLA thesis film Bless Their Little Hearts (1984). Stanton Kaye’s Brandy in the Wilderness (1969). The Film Group’s Cicero March (1966), about a Civil Rights march in an all-white Chicago suburb. Norbert A. Myles’ Daughter of Dawn (1920), with Hunting Horse, Oscar Yellow Wolf, Esther Labarre. Bill Morrison’s Decasia (2002), featuring decomposing archival footage. Alfred E. Green’s Ella Cinders (1926), with Colleen Moore, Lloyd Hughes, Vera Lewis. Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956), with Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens, Jack Kelly, Robby the Robot. Charles Vidor’s Gilda (1946), with Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready. John and Faith Hubley’s Oscar-winning animated short The Hole (1962). Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), with Best Actor Oscar winner Maximilian Schell,...

Tony Sokol Oct 21, 2019

While variations on the Dracula legend are among the most oft-told tales in movies and television, some stand out from the pack.

Dracula, the name is legendary. The First Vampire of both literature and film, he also rose to dominate pages of history. Dracula has been vilified for years. Vlad Tepes is painted as a cruel tyrant who impaled people who defied him, nailed hats onto the heads of monks who didn’t deify him, and who dipped his bread in the blood of armies defeated by him.

Cruel? Maybe. But not when you remember that after Spartacus’ slave rebellion was put down, Rome lined miles of roads with crucified dissidents. There was no internet back then and when you wanted to send a message you had to make it big. The Turks knew enough not to fuck with Vlad the Impaler or they’d get a...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 26, 2013

Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Olive Films

Paulette Goddard (r.) is Celestine in Diary of a Chambermaid.

Legendary director Jean Renoir’s (The Rules of the Game) 1946 drama-romance film of Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel Diary of a Chambermaid was adapted for the screen by one of its co-stars, Burgess Meredith of Rocky fame. We imagine that Rocky himself would utter an enthusiastic “Yo!” if he heard the Renoir classic was finally making its official DVD and Blu-ray debut!

Paulette Goddard (Modern Times) plays the title character, a sexy and saucy servant named Celestine, whose forthrightness has a curious effect on a wealthy Parisian household. Determined to elevate her lot in life, Celestine uses her unsubtle charms to beguile the master of the household. Meredith is on board as Captain Mauger, the bizarre and shell-shocked neighbor, while Judith Anderson (Rebecca) appears as the mistress of the household.

William Wyler was one of the greatest film directors Hollywood — or any other film industry — has ever produced. Today, Wyler lacks the following of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Frank Capra, or even Howard Hawks most likely because, unlike Hitchcock, Ford, or Capra (and to a lesser extent Hawks), Wyler never focused on a particular genre, while his films were hardly as male-centered as those of the aforementioned four directors. Dumb but true: Films about women and their issues tend to be perceived as inferior to those about men — especially tough men — and their issues. The German-born Wyler (1902, in Alsace, now part of France) immigrated to the United States in his late teens. Following a stint at Universal's New York office, he moved to Hollywood and by the mid-'20s was directing Western shorts. His ascent was quick; by 1929 Wyler was directing Universal's top female star, Laura La Plante in the...

Since 1928, Warner Bros. has produced thousands of films and television shows at the studio's 110-acre “film factory” in Burbank, California. A new pictorial book, Early Warner Bros. Studios, tells the story of this remarkable locale.This collection of evocative images concentrates on the Warner Bros. studio from the late 1920s through the 1950s, when such timely and timeless classics such as Captian Blood (1935), Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939, with Francis Lederer), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and East of Eden (1955) were made. It also looks at WB's...

If you have Netflix and are a horror fan in need of something to watch this Labor Day weekend, one look at this gargantuan list I compiled of the new terror titles Netflix has added for instant streaming in just the first three days of this month should keep you busy until Labor Day next year. You'll find something for everyone, from older titles to recent releases, famous to obscure, classic to not-so-classic, monsters to maniacs - you name it.

For the record, I considered compiling this list in alphabetical order or by year of the film's release, but then I realized I had already spent well over an hour just sorting through the massive catalogue of titles Netflix has now made available for instant streaming and realized Labor Day would be over by the time I finished arranging this list in any kind of order. Ready? Here you go.

Packard Campus’ November Series Intro Schedule and film information from the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus website: Thursday, November 05 (7:30 pm.) The Miracle Worker (United Artists, 1962) The story of Anne Sullivan’s struggle to teach the blind and deaf Helen Keller how to communicate. Directed by Arthur Penn. With Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. 35 mm, black & white, 106 minutes. Copyright collection print. Friday, November 06 (7:30 pm.) Confessions Of A Nazi Spy (Warner Bros., 1939) An FBI agent risks his life to infiltrate Nazi sympathizers in the U.S. Directed by Anatole Litvak. With Edward G. Robinson and Francis Lederer. 35mm, black & white, 104 minutes. Print preserved by the Library of Congress. Saturday, November 07 (7:30 pm.) Ride The High Country (MGM, 1962) Two aging gunslingers sign on to [...]...