News

Clint Eastwood is known for his Western films, but his World War II drama, Where Eagles Dare, was so popular that it inspired a hit heavy metal song. The Western star Eastwood has appeared in and directed many films in his almost seven-decade career. While some of Clint Eastwood's movies are underrated, many have been major box-office hits with pop-culture influences, reflecting his versatility and enduring appeal as a filmmaker.

Though Clint Eastwood's career-defining roles have undeniably impacted the Western genre, he's also influenced other aspects of media beyond cinema. Eastwood's 1968 war movie was the basis for a famous band's song 15 years later. Though it wasn't intended to inspire music, Where Eagles Dare became a classic heavy metal song, proving his work could go beyond film and resonate with both audiences and musicians.

.

Clint Eastwood's Where Eagles Dare Directly Inspired A Song By Iron Maiden The 1983 Song Has The Same...

Moms loved actor Robert Shaw. He wasn’t traditionally handsome, but he was sexy with his piercing blue eyes and forceful British accent. There was a gravatas to his performances, a danger that was appealing to women of a certain age. And he knew how to make an entrance on the big screen. Who could forget his introduction as the fanatical shark hunter Quint in the 1975 blockbuster “Jaws” when he runs his fingernails down the blackboard. He was the bad boy of many a mother’s dreams in the 1970s.

Let’s face it, they don’t make them like Shaw anymore. In its 1978 obit of the British actor, the Washington Post declared him as “one of the most forceful and successful character actors on the contemporary English-speaking screen.” He was also a true renaissance man having written five novels and three plays. He was writing his sixth novel when...

It’s been nearly five decades since Jaws hit movie screens in the summer of 1975 and still the image of three men trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean at the mercy of a great white shark remains potent in our collective consciousness. A new play on Broadway, The Shark Is Broken, evokes memories of the classic Steven Spielberg blockbuster—minus the shark. The comedy drama, now playing at the Golden Theatre, relates the behind-the-scenes story of how the film’s three lead actors—Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss—spent their imposed breaks in between takes over the long weeks when shooting was frequently stalled whenever one of the several animatronic shark models invariably malfunctioned.

The Shark Is Broken is the brainchild of Ian Shaw. His charismatic father, Robert, is the Oscar-nominated actor who’s best remembered for his portrayal in Jaws of Quint, the...

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: A man goes to make a movie about a shark.

He decides to shoot on the ocean instead of a tank on a soundstage, to give it that extra sense of realism. Virtually everything that can go wrong does go wrong, including the fact that the main mechanical shark built by the special-effects team has a nagging tendency to either sink or simply not work. The crew nearly mutinies. The locals become hostile. The shoot goes over-schedule and over-budget. The consensus...

‘Teach your children well’ they say, but Sondra Locke’s young girl in this show is the victim of parenting so bad it verges on criminal … John Lewis Carlino’s adult murder mystery has excellent imagery courtesy of director William A. Fraker and cameraman László Kovács. But the studio ‘made changes,’ removing explicit adult content and selling the show as horror even though it’s PG and has little to shock an audience. That leaves us with a carefully underplayed drama courtesy of Robert Shaw, Mary Ure, Sally Kellerman and Signe Hasso — and a twisted sex mystery that seems obvious from the get-go. The HD transfer restores Fraker’s elaborate imagery, making us wonder what his intended version might have been.

A Reflection of Fear

All-Region Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 84

1972 / Color / 1:85 / 89 min. / Street Date October 27, 2021 / available from Amazon.au / 34.95

Starring: Robert Shaw, Sally Kellerman, Mary Ure, Sondra Locke, Signe Hasso,...

Some movies, performances and moviemakers are so iconic that it’s easy to assume the Academy recognized them at some point, and it can be astounding to find out that some of them failed to take home a statue. Such is the case with the 33rd annual Academy Awards ceremony, helmed by iconic host Bob Hope on April 17, 1961. Whereas a deserving picture did win, a few equally memorable movies and performances were left out, a legendary director would lose his last chance at the statue and it was both the first and last year for some Oscar traditions.

Prolific writer and director Billy Wilder was no stranger to the Academy – in fact, he already had 17 nominations and three wins prior to 1960. However, this would prove to be an historic year for him, as he became the first individual to win Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Original) all in the same year,...

Two years after John Ireland (“All the King’s Men”) became the first supporting Oscar nominee to deliver a longer performance than a lead nominee from the same film (Broderick Crawford) in 1949, Kim Hunter (“A Streetcar Named Desire”) did the same versus Marlon Brando. Since then, nine more Best Supporting Actress nominees have had higher screen time totals than a co-star nominated in a lead rce. Here is a look at each instance, in order from lowest screen time difference to highest.

1961: Mary Ure (“Sons and Lovers”) – 21 minutes, 4 seconds

0 minutes, 50 seconds over Trevor Howard

Although she is absent from nearly all of the first half of “Sons and Lovers,” Ure still manages to appear in over 20% of the film. Up to that point, less than half of all Best Supporting Actress-nominated performances had reached that mark. Howard’s performance, on the other hand, did not reach that percentage, but he received a lead nomination regardless.

This strange picture goes forth in search of a genre, mainly because its theme — the destruction of the human personality — had previously seen light only in movies about brainwashing and alien possession. The Michael Relph and Basil Dearden team may not be as slick as The Archers, but they do peg this sober Isolation Chamber drama — even if we wonder if Dirk Bogarde will start talking like Paddy Chayefsky, and then shape-shift into an ape man. The real issue here is scientific ethics, of which Bogarde’s associates seem to have zero.

The Mind Benders

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1963 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 109 min. / Street Date October 15, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Mary Ure, John Clements, Michael Bryant, Wendy Craig, Harold Goldblatt, Geoffrey Keen.

Cinematography: Denys N. Coop

Film Editor: John D. Guthridge

Original Music: Georges Auric

Written by James Kennaway

Produced by Michael Relph

Directed by Basil...

A lusty bar owner, a vengeful hooker, a teenage wallflower, a doomed secretary, and a sexually liberated suffragette made up the Best Supporting Actress quintet for 1960.

That shortlist found room for two established Hollywood stars (Glynis Johns and Janet Leigh), both overdue for their first nominations, two rising starlets named Shirley (Jones & Knight) and an acclaimed Scottish import (Mary Ure). They all caught Oscar's attention and it didn't hurt that their films were so popular. This resulted in one of the most homogenous lineups ever -- all blondes (though Glynis was a redhead for her role) and from their early 20s to mid 30s (average age: 29).

This Month's Panelists    

Here to talk about these five nominated turns and the movies that housed them are writer/director Leslye Headland (Russian Doll, Bachelorette), theater and screenwriter Peter Duchan (Dogfight), freelance critic Kyle Turner, and your Film Experience co-hosts Murtada Elfadl  and Nathaniel...

It was the one that got away. "In 1960, I was offered a [movie] called Sons and Lovers, with Dean Stockwell," Joan Collins recently recalled to Town & Country. "I wanted to do it, and I don't think it was bad. However, I was living with and engaged to a young actor called Warren Beatty, who said, 'This is absolute crap.' So I turned it down." She soon came to regret that decision. "Mary Ure did it and was nominated for an Oscar," Joan said. "At that time I was more influenced by men." That didn't last long, though. "Everybody said to me, 'You'll be through by the time you're 24,'" Joan, 85 — who has just been cast opposite Jessica Lange in American Horror Story: Apocalypse, the next season of FX's Emmy-winning hit — shared. Joan and Warren in 1959. (Photo Credit: Getty Images) "My father, all these guys in Hollywood... over and over again,...

Movie adaptations of classic texts can be disappointing. Transitioning from one form to the next is dangerous, particularly when nothing original arises from the outgoing medium. Sometimes it’s as if the filmmakers have left the camera pointed at a stage-play or between the pages of a book. But the 1958 film adaptation of Look Back in Anger is a masterful translation of John Osborne’s (now-)classic play – incorporating the essence of the newly-emerging British New Wave and continuing the legacy of the “angry young men” literary movement.

Set in the grey and wet city of Derby, sweet-seller Jimmy Porter (Richard Burton) lives with his wife Alison (Mary Ure) and best friend Cliff (Gary Raymond). He is a stern, explosive individual – consistently aggressive and searingly misogynistic, even by the standards of 1958. Alison feels tired and trapped by him, never finding the right opportunity to say she’s carrying his child.

Memorial Day is that time Americans set aside each year to remember and honor the sacrifices of our fallen military veterans. But it's also a day off from work, and for those who want to spend the day in front of their TV without feeling unpatriotic or ungrateful — relax, we've got you've covered. We've scoured the streaming services and digital rental outlets, and we've found nine movies (and one mini-series) that'll fill your entire holiday with thoughtful, provocative, appropriate entertainment. By the time you're done, our nation's fighting forces may...

Part I. Anger, Suez and Archie Rice

“There they are,” George Devine told John Osborne, surveying The Entertainer‘s opening night audience. “All waiting for you…Same old pack of c***s, fashionable assholes. Just more of them than usual.” The Royal Court had arrived: no longer outcasts, they were London’s main attraction.

Look Back in Anger vindicated Devine’s model of a writer’s-based theater. Osborne’s success attracted a host of dramatists to Sloane Square. There’s Shelagh Delaney, whose A Taste of Honey featured a working-class girl pregnant from an interracial dalliance; Harold Pinter’s The Room, a bizarre “comedy of menace”; and John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, which aimed a Gatling gun at its audience. Devine encouraged them, however bold or experimental. “You always knew he was on the writer’s side,” Osborne said.

Peter O’Toole called the Royal Court actors “an...

Teresa Wright and Matt Damon in 'The Rainmaker' Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright vs. Samuel Goldwyn: Nasty Falling Out.") "I'd rather have luck than brains!" Teresa Wright was quoted as saying in the early 1950s. That's understandable, considering her post-Samuel Goldwyn choice of movie roles, some of which may have seemed promising on paper.[1] Wright was Marlon Brando's first Hollywood leading lady, but that didn't help her to bounce back following the very public spat with her former boss. After all, The Men was released before Elia Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire turned Brando into a major international star. Chances are that good film offers were scarce. After Wright's brief 1950 comeback, for the third time in less than a decade she would be gone from the big screen for more than a year.

I. The Landmine

In August 1955, George Devine, director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, ventured to meet a promising writer, living on a Thames houseboat. “I had to borrow a dinghy… wade out to it and row myself to my new playwright,” he recalled. Thus began a partnership between Devine, who sought to rescue the English stage from stale commercialism, and the 26 year old tyro, John Osborne. Together, they’d revolutionize modern theater.

Born in London but raised in Stoneleigh, Surrey, Osborne lost his father at age 12, resented his low-born mother and was expelled from school for striking a headmaster. While acting for Anthony Creighton’s repertory company, his mercurial temper and violent language appeared. In 1951 he wed actress Pamela Lane, only to divorce six years later. Osborne soon immortalized their marriage: their cramped apartment, with invasive friends and intruding in-laws, John and Pamela’s pet names and verbal abuse,...

War is hell, for sure, but war can make for undeniably brilliant movie-making. Here, the Guardian and Observer's critics pick the ten best

• Top 10 action movies

• Top 10 comedy movies

• Top 10 horror movies

• Top 10 sci-fi movies

• Top 10 crime movies

• Top 10 arthouse movies

• Top 10 family movies

10. Where Eagles Dare

As the second world war thriller became bogged down during the mid-60s in plodding epics like Operation Crossbow and The Heroes of Telemark, someone was needed to reintroduce a little sang-froid, some post-Le Carré espionage, and for heaven's sake, some proper macho thrills into the genre. Alistair Maclean stepped up, writing the screenplay and the novel of Where Eagles Dare simultaneously, and Brian G Hutton summoned up a better than usual cast headed by Richard Burton (Major Jonathan Smith), a still fresh-faced Clint Eastwood (Lieutenant Morris Schaffer), and the late Mary Ure (Mary Elison).

Parachuted into the German Alps, they have one...

Feature Aliya Whiteley 19 Aug 2013 - 07:32

We pay tribute to Mary Yre, the star of stage and big-screen classics including Look Back In Anger and Where Eagles Dare...

There was something remote about Mary Ure that came across on screen so clearly. She looked untouchable, distant; she had great poise and enormous eyes that always contained a hint of wariness. A theatre actress in the main, she made very few films, but she always brought deeper meaning to the movies she was in, from action thrillers to science fiction, social drama or literary adaptations.

Always the supporting actress, her quiet ability to wring emotion from few words added a huge amount to these films. It’s so sad that she left behind only a few cinematic performances when she died at a young age, but here are five of her very best roles, and a reminder of how talented she was.

Chosen to direct The Empire Strikes Back, he turned in one of the best sequels – and highest box-office earners – of all time

The film director Irvin Kershner, who has died aged 87, was known in the trade as a hired gun. His most famous film, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the fifth episode in the Star Wars saga, is most commonly linked to its executive producer, George Lucas. Never Say Never Again (1983) is celebrated as the film in which Sean Connery made his comeback as James Bond after 12 years away from the role, the director merely providing the vehicle. Kershner's first feature, Stakeout On Dope Street (1958), was made under the aegis of Roger Corman, who usually gained the main credit for the films he produced. Yet, eclectic as Kershner seemed, his best films reveal a visual flair, with an eye for the telling detail and a sympathy for the rebel.

The Philadelphia...

Mark celebrates one of his favourite movies. It's the union of Clint Eastwood, Richard Burton and Ingrid Pitt in Where Eagles Dare...

This movie holds a very special place in my heart, because, when I first saw it, it was the first film I was taken to that was intended for adults and not kids. I remember my father explaining before we went that there might be some scenes of violence, which only served to heighten my already considerable expectations. For my part, I promised not to have nightmares or try to join the SS afterwards.

The lights went down, the curtains withdrew and that classic day for night shot of the Junkers Ju 52 over the Alps came into view, and those iconic drums began to that repetitive beat. Instantly I was transported to WWII. The crisp cold winter air caused me a sharp intake of breath and, armed to the teeth,...

Brian G Hutton, 1968

I keep waiting for the day when Where Eagles Dare begins to pall. I mean, how many films can stand up to multiple viewings over such a vast span of time (about 40 years)? In fact, the opposite seems to be happening – it gets better, yields deeper layers of meaning, every time I see it.

Adapted from the novel by Em Forster… no, hang on, that's Where Angels Fear to Tread, but there's a point to be made here. Where Eagles Dare is a great title, anticipating the widespread popularity of the Sas motto "Who Dares Wins", even though it was made years before the storming of the Iranian embassy in 1980, of which the film could be seen either as a prophetic allegory or a direct inspiration. And the title is not just a sonorous bit of rhetoric plucked from Shakespeare. No, the castle scaled by Richard Burton,...

Last Remaining Copies! Order Now - This Will Never Be Reprinted!

"Broadsword Calling Danny Boy... Cinema Retro's Where Eagles Dare Issue Is Now Shipping Worldwide!"

At the risk of imitating Alfred Hitchcock's classic tag-line "The Birds is coming!" , we can now say "The Eagles has landed!" The Cinema Retro Movie Classics special edition tribute to Where Eagles Dare has arrived in our U.S. office. If you pre-ordered the issue, it's winging its way to you right now. If you have a copy on reserve, please send in your payment right away. We want to thank our readers worldwide for their extraordinary response to our first Movie Classics edition, which is shaping up to be our fastest-selling issue ever. If you haven't ordered yet, please don't hesitate...supplies are rapidly dwindling and this is certain to be a valuable collector's item. Spend a night with Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood...