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Saverio Costanzo’s stunning-looking period drama, Finally Dawn, may look like a straightforward film on the surface, but quite a lot is going under the hood. The bizarre ending scene, in particular, is bound to leave some of you baffled. Although the lion – which may or may not be real, we’re gonna get to that, in a while – didn’t just abruptly appear outside of the plaza hotel, if you think about it. While that I thought to be audacious and praiseworthy, where the film falters is when it comes to having a proper narrative focus. It is also a bit too long for its own good, which implies the editing has not been up to the mark. Anyway, the point of this article is mainly to explain the ending. But before that, let us talk a bit about the setup and the story.

Spoilers Ahead

What Happens in the Movie?...

The Criterion Collection‘s October line-up is stacked with genre heavy hitters: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Eyes Without a Face, The Shrouds, A History of Violence, Altered States, Deep Crimson, and Nightmare Alley.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray on October 7.

Serving a prequel to “Twin Peaks,” the 1992 psychological horror film is directed by David Lynch from a script he co-wrote with Robert Engels.

Director-approved special features:

4K digital restoration, with 7.1 surround DTS-hd Master Audio soundtrack, both supervised by director David Lynch Alternate original 2.0 surround DTS-hd Master Audio soundtrack One 4K Uhd disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features The Missing Pieces, ninety minutes of deleted and alternate takes from the film, assembled by Lynch Interview by Lynch with actors Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, and Grace Zabriskie Interviews with Lee and composer Angelo Badalamenti...

Like Netflix and HBO Max, Amazon’s Prime Video has a film and TV library that is vast and deeper than most of its subscribers may realize. Hidden beneath its most easily accessible recommendations are underrated, oft-forgotten movies that you likely have never seen before. These films run the complete genre gamut, which means that, regardless of whether you are in the mood for a light-hearted Hollywood adventure or a darker thriller, you can always find exactly the kind of movie you’re looking for on the platform.

With all that in mind, here are seven great hidden gem movies that are streaming on Prime Video right now.

“The Third Man” (Selznick Releasing Organization) “The Third Man (1949)

Rightly regarded as one of cinema’s greatest films, director Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” is a jovially constructed noir about betrayal, justice and loss. Written by Graham Greene, it follows an...

“My face frightens me. My mask frightens me even more.”

Does appearance create identity or is it the other way around? How do we show our true selves to the world and what happens when that image is taken away? In short, are we still the same person when wearing a mask? On the surface, this seems like an obvious question, but Georges Franju’s 1960 film Eyes Without a Face causes us to dig a little bit deeper. What power does a face have to project identity and can we steal that identity from someone else?

Franju’s film opens in the midst of a crime. Louise (Alida Valli) is a glamorous woman with an elegant pearl choker who drags a dead body into the river. She does this at the behest of Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur), a transplant and graft specialist desperate to find a new face for his...

Courtesy of StudioCanal

by James Cameron-wilson

I think it’s fair to say that if you poll any film critic or historian and asked them what were the five most notable films to have come out of this country last century, they would count Brief Encounter, A Matter of Life and Death, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Lawrence of Arabia and The Third Man. As such then, it is always a welcome opportunity to return to any one of the gilded quintet, particularly if they have been painstakingly restored to their former glory, as well as top-loaded with reams of informative and educational bonus material, of which the extras here are an embarrassment of riches. In short, released to celebrate the film’s 75th anniversary as part of StudioCanal’s Vintage Classics Collection, this 4K Uhd package is a gift to film buffs: the picture quality is so sharp you can...

Carol Reeds iconic noir feature The Third Man is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year in style. The film often considered among the best films ever made starring Joseph Cotton and Alida Valli among others will entertain fans and a new generation of viewers in 4K with a stunning new box set. While details about the bonus content is scarce, the renewed format will be a valuable addition to anyones collection.

Whatever acclaim––nay, outright-legendary status––is foisted upon Michelangelo Antonioni typically comes from a small selection of films produced in the 1960s. While I continue awaiting just desserts for Mystery of Oberwald and Beyond the Clouds, we can now cross off Il Grido, his 1957 feature that’s been restored by The Film Foundation, Cineteca di Bologna, and Compass Film, and which is receiving a theatrical release from Janus Films starting at Film Forum on November 8 (before an inevitable Criterion). Ahead of this, there’s a new trailer in which Antonioni’s early triumph looks crisp as ever.

Here’s the new synopsis: “Years before L’avventura, his international breakthrough, Michelangelo Antonioni crafted his first masterpiece with Il grido, a raw expression of anguish that remains one of Italian cinema’s great underappreciated gems. Bridging Antonioni’s early, neorealism-inspired work and his hallmark stories of existential rootlessness Il Grido centers on...

Michelangelo Antonioni, the iconic Italian auteur, has been immortalized in cinema history thanks to his acclaimed classics “L’Avventura,” “Blow-Up,” and “The Passenger,” which redefined film grammar.

Yet three years prior to his international breakthrough with “L’Avventura,” which won the Cannes Jury

Prize, Antonioni directed his lesser-known feature “Il Grido.” The 1957 drama is relatively obscure and has rarely been screened stateside; however, the film is an early look at the themes of loneliness and fractured relationships that Antonioni later became synonymous with.

The official synopsis for “Il Grido” reads: “Michelangelo Antonioni crafted his first masterpiece with ‘Il Grido,’ a raw expression of anguish that remains one of Italian cinema’s great under-appreciated gems. Bridging Antonioni’s early, neorealism-inspired work and his hallmark stories of existential rootlessness, ‘Il Grido’ centers on Aldo (Steve Cochran), a sugar-refinery worker in the Po Valley. When Irma (Alida Valli), his lover of seven years, learns that...

To celebrate the 75th Anniversary of much-loved British Classic The Third Man which arrives on 4K Uhd for the first time on 4 November, we are giving away a 4K Uhd to a lucky winner!

Written by Graham Greene (Brighton Rock, The Fallen Idol), directed by Carol Reed and featuring iconic performances from Joseph Cotten (Gaslight), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Alida Valli (Eyes Without a Face) and Trevor Howard (Brief Encounters, Sons and Lovers), The Third Man is celebrated for its endlessly quotable lines, superb Oscar-winning cinematography, iconic musical score and for so many wonderfully entertaining, quintessentially cinematic moments.

Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp Westerns, arrives in a bombed-out, post-war Vienna at the invitation of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find him recently dead. His suspicions are raised after learning of a ‘third man’ present at the time of Harry’s death, and...

Countless horror films rely on the inherent terror of a masked figure, and the trope is nothing new. Gaston Leroux horrified audiences with Le Fantme de lOpra, and the subsequent 1925 silent film edition was enough to make audiences faint. In 1933, the silver screen adaptation of H. G. Wells The Invisible Man glued audiences to their seats. The unsettling qualities of a mask, the thin veil between the archetypal villain and their prey, give it global appeal.

While its easy to argue that Lon Chaneys riveting performance in The Phantom of the Opera may be the catalyst for modern horrors obsession with masks, theres another French inspiration for this classic trope. Thirty-five years after Mary Philbin lifted Chaneys cloth veil, director Georges Franju released Les Yeux Sans Visage or, in English, Eyes Without a Face to an unsuspecting world. Upon release, Franjus ninety-minute horror classic was, in most respects, universally panned.

Alberto De Martino’s The Antichrist is easy to dismiss as a shameless rip-off of The Exorcist. But that would be to diminish the stylistic verve that De Martino brings to the project. In fact, aside from the more overt story elements relating to the occult, De Martino’s direction owes more to other Euro contemporaries like Walerian Borowczyk and Sergio Martino than to William Friedkin.

Densely plotted, if overlong, The Antichrist proves more enamored with matters of sexual repression than demonic possession. As the film opens, Ippolita (Carla Gravina) attends a madhouse religious ceremony—featuring snakes, writhing bodies, and a possessed man (Ernesto Colli) who hurls himself from a cliff to his death—alongside her aristocratic father (Mel Ferrer), in an effort to try and walk again. She’s been paralyzed since she was 12, the result of a car accident that also killed her mother. Needless to say, her...

"As soon as I get to the bottom of this, I'll get the next plane." Studiocanal has unveiled a brand new trailer to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the noir cinema classic The Third Man, long considered Carol Reed's all-timer masterpiece that has remained prominent all these years later. This black & white film noir thriller is set in Vienna, Austria, following a pulp novelist from America who's investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime. Written by Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed and featuring iconic performances from Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli, and Trevor Howard. 1949 Cannes Film Festival winner The Third Man is celebrated for its endlessly quotable lines, the Oscar-winning cinematography, iconic musical score and for so many wonderfully entertaining, quintessentially cinematic moments. With a 4K re-release in UK theaters this fall - plus a 4K Blu-ray release. "Screening in beautifully restored 4K, the...

Many native critics have bemoaned the invasion of English-speaking actors turning their hand to the Italian tongue at this year’s Venice Film Festival, easy to spot not, this time, by their proclivity for adding both onion and garlic to a sugo or cream to a carbonara. In this case, it’s Joe Keery, Willem Dafoe, and Lily James in the baffling competition title “Finalmente l’alba,” (“Finally Dawn”), which mixes Italian and American actors in Rome’s booming “Hollywood on the Tiber” era, during which the Cinecittà Studios was a breeding ground for large-scale productions of the 1950s and ’60s such as “Ben Hur” and “Cleopatra.”

Beginning as a “Babylon”-esque tale about the unmitigated heft and mania of epic filmmaking in Rome before becoming a quasi-murder mystery, and then, ultimately, a loss-of-innocence bildungsroman for one of cinema’s least memorable protagonists, Saverio Costanzo’s driverless feature seems to constantly...

When cameras rolled on the Viennese location shoot of "The Third Man" in October 1948, director Carol Reed's villain wasn't even in the city. Orson Welles had signed on to play shady racketeer Harry Lime, but in a bid to raise his fee (via BBC Four), he wouldn't agree to arrive until absolutely necessary. With Welles' reputation as an unreliable troublemaker, Reed might have been forgiven for privately wondering if he was going to show up at all. In the meantime, he shot around him, using a body double and hiding the character in the film's celebrated shadows (via Financial Times). Would Reed's decision to fight powerful producer David O. Selznick on casting the maverick come back to haunt him?

Thankfully, Welles kept to his word and arrived by train in Vienna on the date agreed -- Reed said in an interview with journalist and author Charles Thomas Samuels for...

Leave it to Edgar Allan Poe. While many probably associate the mercurial author and poet with horror milestones like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” he’s also widely credited with inventing the detective story with his 1841 publication, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Since then the genre of detective fiction has spanned untold numbers of short stories, novels, plays, radio shows, TV series, and of course, movies.

One of the subsets of detective fiction, the whodunit, remains almost interchangeable with the genre itself and one of its most popular variations. From the urbane, eccentric likes of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot to the more grizzled Sam Spade and Mike Hammer, to the shapeshifting meta-detective Ellery Queen, stories that allow the reader or viewer to solve the mystery right alongside the protagonist are an entertainment staple to this day, as borne out by...

A new episode of The Arrow in the Head Show has just been released, and in this one our hosts John “The Arrow” Fallon and Lance Vlcek are looking back at a 1977 film that is often named as one of the all-time great horror classics: Dario Argento’s Suspiria (get it Here) and they also debate the remake! Director/Actor Joe Cornet also drops by to talk about his upcoming Giallo inspired film Night of the Caregiver and sexy thriller Kaleidoscope.

To hear Mr. Cornet discuss his films and find out what The Arrow and Lance had to say about Suspiria and its remake, check out the video embedded above.

Directed by Argento from a screenplay he wrote with Daria Nicolodi, inspired by Thomas De Quincey’s Suspiria de Profundis, Suspiria has the following synopsis:

Suzy travels to Germany to attend ballet school. When she arrives, late on a stormy night,...

Hey everyone! We’re back with a whole new batch of home media releases that will be arriving on Tuesday, and it includes quite an eclectic array of titles that genre fans are going to want to check out. If you missed out on the previous edition, Arrow is releasing the Standard Special Edition of Legend this week which is absolutely worth checking out, and for all you cult film fans, Severin Films is showing some love to Don’t Go Into the House with their Special Edition presentation.

Kino Lorber is resurrecting Alberto De Martino’s The Antichrist on Blu-ray this Tuesday, and if you’re looking to catch up on some recent horror, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and Student Body are both being released on multiple formats as well.

Other releases for February 8th include Santo: El Enmascarado De Plata Box Set, Bloody Mary, Hiruko the Goblin,...

It has been awhile since I’ve written about Italian legend, Mario Bava. I have no idea why, but every so often images from his films dance through my mind and spin off into the ether. That’s the way phantasms work, I suppose. And now I have the troubled, confusing, and intoxicating Lisa and the Devil (1974) to add to my collection of Bava ghostery.

The film opened in Cannes in 1973, then played overseas the following year. Lisa, a languid, lurid, fever dream, was a dud. Producer Alfredo Leone and Bava’s burgeoning filmmaker son Lamberto shot and added exorcism footage of Lisa (all the rage at the time) while removing some of Papa Bava’s original film. Re-released in 1975 as The House of Exorcism, it too was dud. And bad.

Whereas Lisa and the Devil is not bad. In fact, it is quite good, different, and unique; the original...

by Brent Calderwood

Alida Valli, who was born 100 years ago today in Pola, Italy (now part of Croatia), became a legend of Italian cinema in classics ranging in style from Luchino Visconti’s operatic epic Senso to Dario Argento’s supernatural slasher Suspiria. In a career that spanned 68 years, international directors were repeatedly drawn to her dark, inscrutable beauty and haunted green eyes. She's still admired by film lovers worldwide for three noir-tinged movies she made while abroad: The Third Man opposite Orson Welles (where she gets one of the most famous screen exits in history), Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case, and the French horror film Eyes Without a Face.

In 1947, producer David O. Selznick invited Valli to Hollywood, hoping to repeat the success he’d had with two of his other European “discoveries,” Ingrid Bergman and Vivien Leigh. He gave her the full star treatment, even briefly abbreviating...

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Fear is the universal language. Terror is, as we have sadly seen so often, a global phenomenon. And monsters inhabit every crevice of this small world, from the deepest recesses of the South Pacific to the most remote peaks of the North Pole. So it should hardly be a surprise that horror films are and have been a component of cinema in just about every country that embraced the art form. Along with love, fear is the most profound human emotion, and any art — especially filmmaking — is the way in which we express those feelings to the rest of the world.

While the U.S., Canada and the U.K. (along with other primarily English-language nations like Australia and New Zealand) have produced healthy shares of the world’s catalog of horror movies, there is a vast, deep, diverse library of genre output that...

The year 1960 was a very interesting time for American horror. Giant monster movies were losing their popularity, either because the threat of nuclear war wasn’t as acute as it had been in the ’50s or everyone had become so collectively numb over the years that the metaphor just no longer held their attention the way it once did. People were ready for something on a smaller scale, with movies that showed the horrible things that regular old humans were capable of doing to one another. Of course, the benchmark for this exploration of the damaged human psyche is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psyho, a film that pushed boundaries with glimpses of nudity, implications of incest, and toilets. But if America was looking to push the cinematic envelope, France was looking to tear it to pieces. Such was the case for director George Franju’s surreal, brutal thriller Eyes Without a Face...

Anita Ekberg in Killer Nun will be available on Blu-ray October 15th from Arrow Video

Aging blonde-bombshell Anita Ekberg gives a full-bodied performance as a sex-crazed sister with some seriously bad habits in the lurid cult classic Killer Nun.

One of the most notorious nunsploitation films, Killer Nun tells the sordid story of Sister Gertrude, a disturbed woman of the cloth who degenerates into a perverse mire of drug taking, sexual perversion, sadistic torture and murder. Joe Dallesandro, Alida Valli and the ample Paola Morra (Behind Convent Walls) offer spirited performances and able support to Ekberg, in this outrageous tale based on real events.

Boasting an incongruously classy score by legendary composer Alessandro Alessandroni (Women’s Camp 119) and stylishly rendered scenes of sex and murder, Killer Nun takes the viewer on a hair-raising journey from the heights of religious ecstasy to the depths of devilish degeneracy. Now Giulio Berruti s...

"You never should've gone to the police, you know." Studiocanal UK has debuted a brand new trailer for the 70th anniversary re-release of the film noir classic The Third Man. Directed by Carol Reed from an original script by Graham Greene, and first released in 1949, this film has gone on to become known as one of the most iconic mystery thrillers ever made. In the film, Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime. Orson Welles stars as Harry Lime, with Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Paul Hörbiger, and Ernst Deutsch. The B&w film is getting re-released in UK cinemas this September, but we haven't heard about anything in the Us yet (check Fathom Events). We also featured a new trailer for the 4K re-release of The Third Man a few years ago.

By Todd Garbarini

The year 1976 was a phenomenal time for films that went into production. George Lucas’s space opera, Star Wars began principal photography in March; Steven Spielberg, fresh off the success of Jaws, was given carte blanche to bring Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the screen and began shooting in May; and Dario Argento, who became emboldened by the financial success of his latest and arguably best film to date, Profundo Rosso (known in the U.S. as Deep Red), embarked upon Suspiria, a murder mystery involving a dance school hiding in plain sight while housing a coven of witches, which began filming in July. Horror author Clive Barker once described this supernatural extravaganza as what you would imagine a horror film to be like if you weren’t allowed to see it. I believe that this is a good description of what is unquestionably one of the most frightening,...

When lauded Italian director Luchino Visconti first conceived of his big screen adaptation of Camillo Boito’s novella “Senso,” the “La Terra Trema” filmmaker aimed high: he wanted to cast no less than Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando in the film’s lead roles, a conspiring contessa and an Austrian deserter who woo amidst the dying embers of the Risorgimento. Both casting plans were waylaid by strange industry politics — Bergman’s then-husband Roberto Rossellini didn’t want the actress to work with other directors, while the film’s producers weren’t sold on the star power of Brando.

Still, “Senso” managed to make it to the big screen with some serious talent behind it: prolific Italian actress Alida Valli snagged the lead role, while Hollywood heavy hitter Farley Granger came on as her jilted lover. Behind the scenes, Visconti lined up eventual directors Franco Zeffirelli and Francesco Rosi as his own assistants.

Suspiria

Blu ray

Synapse

1977 / 2:35 / Street Date March 13, 2018

Starring Jessica Harper, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett

Cinematography by Luciano Tovoli

Production Design by Giuseppe Bassan

Directed by Dario Argento

The story of a ballet school staffed by devil-worshipping harridans, Dario Argento’s Suspiria opened at New York City’s Criterion in the dog days of ’77. A friend was at one of those early matinees when, 26 minutes into the film, his companion leaned over and whispered, “This movie is evil.”

Jessica Harper plays Suzy Bannion, a transplanted New Yorker taking up residence at a German dance academy – just landed in the alpine splendor of Baden-Württemberg, the doll-faced ballerina makes her entrance emerging from an airport lounge lit like a broadway production of Dante’s Inferno.

A windswept taxi ride bombarded by a neon-colored thunderstorm is no less melodramatic but it can’t prepare Suzy for the stark sight waiting at journey’s...

Though she’s not quite the household name that her contemporaries Anna Magnani and Alida Valli are, Italian actress Valentina Cortese had an impressive career both on screen and on stage. Besides her romantic and professional relationship with Italian theater legend Giorgio Strehler, she worked with such film luminaries as Robert Wise, Jules Dassin, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Terry Gilliam, William Dieterle — as well as Fellini, Antonioni and Truffaut — even garnering an Oscar nomination for her supporting part as an alcoholic and aging actress in Truffaut’s Day for Night.

Italian director Francesco Patierno pays homage to her life, talent and...

The first time I ever saw Dario Argento’s Suspiria, I was very young—somewhere between eight and ten (I’m gettin’ old, so my memories are fuzzy from time to time). Regardless of whatever exact number that age might have been, I just know I was definitely too damned young, because Suspiria shattered my budding cinematic sensibilities and screwed with my tender psyche in ways that would stick with me for my entire life. It’s a movie I’ve spent a long time loving, which means I’ve been patiently waiting for Synapse’s restoration of the landmark giallo film from one of Italy’s premier Maestros of Horror.

And after three arduous years (for Synapse, not for me, obviously), the 4K restoration version of Suspiria has finally arrived, and it is absolutely well worth the wait. Not only is watching every single frame like bearing witness to a work of art,...

By Jeremy Carr

Alfred Hitchcock may have directed The Paradine Case, the 1947 adaptation of Robert Smythe Hichens’ 1933 novel, but the film is most clearly a David O. Selznick production. It was his coveted property, he wrote the screenplay (with contributions from Alma Reville, James Bridie, and an uncredited Ben Hecht), and the movie itself discloses far more of its producer’s temperament than it does its director’s. The Paradine Case was, in fact, the last film made by the British-born master as part of his seven-year contract with Selznick, and by most accounts, Hitchcock’s heart just wasn’t in it. Unfortunately, it shows.

But this is no slipshod motion picture. Selznick spared no expense—the completed film cost almost as much as Gone with the Wind—and the entire project is built on quality and class. Set in London, in “the recent past,” The Paradine Case stars an...

This isn’t the only Alfred Hitchcock film for which the love does not flow freely, but his 1947 final spin on the David O. Selznick-go-round is more a subject for study than Hitch’s usual fun suspense ride. Gregory Peck looks unhappy opposite Selznick ‘discovery’ Alida Valli, while an utterly top-flight cast tries to bring life to mostly irrelevant characters. Who comes off best? Young Louis Jourdan, that’s who.

The Paradine Case

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 125 min. / Street Date May 30, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring Gregory Peck, Alida Valli, Ann Todd, Charles Laughton, Louis Jourdan, Ethel Barrymore, Joan Tetzel.

Cinematography Lee Garmes

Production Designer J. McMillan Johnson

Film Editors John Faure, Hal C. Kern

Original Music Franz Waxman

Writing credits James Bridie, Alma Reville, David O. Selznick from the novel by Robert Hichens

Produced by David O. Selznick

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

There...

Born on Halloween night (in the Us, although it was already November 1st in Yugoslavia), actor Massimo Dobrovic has shared a link with the horror genre since his birth, and he's strengthened that connection over the years with memorable roles in a wide range of films and TV series. After stepping into the world of vampires in Nocturna, Massimo turns his attention to zombies with key roles in two upcoming TV series, Age of the Living Dead and Feel the Dead. For our latest Q&A feature, we caught up with Massimo to discuss both series, as well as working with Brendan Fraser on Behind the Curtain of Night, his new cookbook, and much more.

Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us, Massimo. You’ve acted in a lot of projects in recent years, including several in the horror genre. What do you enjoy the most...

“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!”

The Third Man screens Wednesday May 3rd at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar in ‘The Loop’) as part of their new ‘Classics in the Loop’ Crime & Noir film series. The movie starts at 7pm and admission is $7. It will be on The Tivoli’s big screen.

Roger Ebert called Harry Lime, the character played by Orson Welles in the 1949 classic The Third Man, his favorite screen villain of all time. Fittingly, he gets one of the great movie character introductions — an unforgettable one involving a doorway, a cat, and a sudden beam of light.

New Wave director Claude Chabrol goes off in an odd direction with this Francophone adaptation of Hamlet. Convinced that his father was murdered, the heir to an estate behaves like a madman as he sets out to unmask the killers. The ‘castle’ is a country manse guarded by thugs as a precaution against the signeur’s striking union workers. Special added attraction: the stars to see are Alida Valli and Juliette Mayniel of Eyes without a Face.

Ophélia

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1963 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95

Starring: Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Claude Cerval, André Jocelyn, Robert Burnier, Jean-Louis Maury, Sacha Briquet, Liliane Dreyfus (David), Pierre Vernier.

Cinematography: Jacques Rabier, Jean Rabier

Film Editor: Jacques Gaillard

Original Music: Pierre Jansen

Written by Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff, Martial Matthieu from a play by William Shakespeare

Produced and Directed by Claude Chabrol

I suppose...

Sometimes a movie is simply too good for just one special edition… Savant reached out to nab a British Region B import of Georges Franju’s horror masterpiece, to sample its enticing extras. And this also gives me the chance to ramble on with more thoughts about this 1959 show that inspired a score of copycats.

Eyes Without a Face (Bfi — U.K.)

Region B Blu-ray + Pal DVD

Bfi

1959 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 90 min. / The Horror Chamber of

Dr. Faustus, House of Dr. Rasanoff, Occhi senza volto / Street Date August 24, 2015 / presently £10.99

Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Edith Scob, Alida Valli, Francois Guérin,

Béatrice Altariba, Juliette Mayniel

Cinematography: Eugen Schüfftan

Production Designer: Auguste Capelier

Special Effects: Charles-Henri Assola

Film Editor: Gilbert Natot

Original Music: Maurice Jarre

Written by Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac, Pierre Gascar, Claude Sautet from a novel by Jean Redon

Produced by Jules Borkon

Directed by Georges Franju

Savant has reviewed Eyes Without a Face twice,...

There’s nothing more fun than getting to watch classic movies the way they were intended–on the big screen!

Now, I understand plenty of people don’t want to go to a theater, spend a fortune on tickets, popcorn, and a drink just to see the glow of cell phones and hear people rudely talking while someone kicks your seat from behind, but that’s not the experience you’ll get at Landmark theaters affordable ‘Crime & Noir’ film series. St. Louis movie buffs are in for a treat as Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater will return with it’s ‘Classics on the Loop’ every Wednesday beginning April 5th at 7pm. This season, the Tivoli will screen, on their big screen (which seats 320 btw), eight crime and noir masterpiece that need to be seen in a theater with an audience. Admission is only $7.

One benefits of the big screen is...

Jason from Mnpp here, tackling one of my favoirte movies of all-time for this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- unless it's Halloween-time I mostly try to lean away from horror films for this series but I gotta make an exception this week, for Wednesday marks the 40th anniversary of Dario Argento's fairy-tale giallo Suspiria getting released in Italy. I love that the movie came out just in time for Valentine's Day - with its lurid reds (not to mention a character being stabbed directly in the heart) it feels tremulously appropriate for the season.

It's also a timely moment to celebrate the movie because as you might've heard A Bigger Splash and I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino is currently right this minute in the process of remaking the film, with a starry cast including Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson and Chloe Grace Moretz. Oh and Jessica Harper,...

This time on the podcast, Ryan is joined by West Anthony to discuss George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face.

At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance—at a horrifying price.

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Episode Links Eyes Without a Face (1960) – The Criterion Collection Eyes Without a Face on iTunes Watch Eyes Without a Face Online at Hulu Eyes Without a Face: The Unreal Reality – From the Current – The Criterion Collection Appearances to the Contrary: Eyes Without a Face – From the Current – The Criterion Collection The Woman Behind the Mask – From the Current – The Criterion Collection Eyes Without a Face – Wikipedia Eyes Without a Face (1960) – IMDb Eyes Without a Face (1962) – Rotten Tomatoes Eyes Without a Face Movie Review...

Tony Sokol Oct 4, 2016

Chloe Moretz, Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton are all joining the remake of Dario Argento's Suspiria...

“Bad luck isn't brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds”. And a new generation of horror fans will get their brains broken in the upcoming remake of Dario Argento’s atmospheric giallo classic Suspiria.

Frenesy Film Company and Mythology Entertainment. the companies behind the new movie, have announced that Chloe Moretz will co-star with Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton and Mia Goth in the upcoming thriller.

Suspiria will be directed by A Bigger Splash’s Luca Guadagnino. The screenplay is being written by David Kajganich. The film will be distributed and produced by Amazon Studios.

The original 1977 Suspiria, which was written by Argento and Dario Nicoladi, told the story of a young American ballet dancer, played by Jessica Harper, who gets accepted at a prestigious dance academy in Germany. Shortly after she enrolls,...

Halloween doesn’t have to be over once the last trick-or-treater has crept back into the shadows of the night. You may still be possessed by the spirit of the holiday and in desperate need of some real scares. In an effort to address that need and help you find a choice that goes beyond the usual iconography of the season, I’ve picked three titles that may not immediately jump to mind when it comes to autumn-tinged chills and terror. They are not self-consciously seasonal choices, like John Carpenter’s Halloween or Michael Dougherty’s 2007 anthology Trick ‘R Treat, both excellent choices for cinematic fear on the pumpkin circuit. Two of them rely more on mood, creeping dread, an insinuating style and, dare I say, even a poetic approach to storytelling than the usual Samhain-appropriate fare. And one has an inexplicably bad reputation in the halls of conventional wisdom,...

Here we are at what is a surprisingly modern list. At the beginning of this, I didn’t expect to see so much cultural impact coming from films so recently made, but that’s the way it goes. The films that define the horror genre aren’t necessarily the scariest or the most expensive or even the best. The films that define the genre point to a movement – movies that changed the game and influenced all the films after it. Movies that transcend the horror genre. Movies that broke the mold and changed the way horror can be created.

10. El laberinto del fauno (2006)

English Language Title: Pan’s Labyrinth

Directed by: Gullermo del Toro

It’s more a dark fantasy film than a horror film, but it would be tough to make a list of 50 of those. Plus, it has enough graphic, nightmarish images to push it over the threshold.

★★★★☆ If you only know Eyes Without a Face (1960) from the Billy Idol rock ballad, then you are in for a treat. Georges Franju's Gallic body horror is a complex atmospheric chiller which balances graphic shocks with subtle characterisation. A woman Louise (Alida Valli) drives through the French countryside at night. In the backseat, a passenger sways unconscious. Parking by a river, the woman drags the passenger down the muddy bank and drops her in the water. The celebrated Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) is called to the morgue to identify a body which might be his missing daughter. He does so and a funeral follows but all is not as it seems as his assistant Louise stands by his side.

“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!”

The restored, 4k update of The Third Man opens Friday, August 7th in St. Louis at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Theater

Roger Ebert called Harry Lime, the character played by Orson Welles in the 1949 classic The Third Man, his favorite screen villain of all time. Fittingly, he gets one of the great movie character introductions — an unforgettable one involving a doorway, a cat, and a sudden beam of light. There’s a reason that the only Academy Award won by The Third Man, one of the most beloved films of all time,...

This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett to discuss Luchino Visconti’s Senso.

About the film:

This lush, Technicolor tragic romance from Luchino Visconti stars Alida Valli as a nineteenth-century Italian countess who, during the Austrian occupation of her country, puts her marriage and political principles on the line by engaging in a torrid affair with a dashing Austrian lieutenant, played by Farley Granger. Gilded with ornate costumes and sets and a rich classical soundtrack, and featuring fearless performances, this operatic melodrama is an extraordinary evocation of reckless emotions and deranged lust, from one of the cinema’s great sensualists.

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Senso (1954) – The Criterion Collection Senso and Sensibility – The Criterion Collection Senso (1954) – IMDb Senso – Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia Roger Ebert’s Great...

Der dritte Mann, De Derde Man, Le Troisième Homme, El Tercer Hombre, Il Terzo Uomo, Den Tredie Mand... One of the deathless classics of world cinema, Carol Reed’s oft-revived The Third Man is being revived once again at Film Forum starting today, this time in what is apparently its first major restoration. The poster above, the original UK one sheet for the film, is included in the exhibition of posters from Martin Scorsese’s personal collection currently running at MoMA. What is interesting about some of the earliest posters for The Third Man, especially the American ones, is how they fail to capitalize on what has become the most enduring iconography of the film: the ferris wheel or Orson Welles’ face lit up in an alleyway. The British posters (a variation of the design appears below) at least include the arches of the Vienna sewer tunnels but feature none of the film's stars.

"Heard of Harry Lime?" Rialto Pictures has debuted a new trailer for the 4K restoration of Carol Reed's classic film noir The Third Man, which will be premiering as a Cannes Classic selection later this month at the festival in France. This just looks so unbelievably stunning in 4K, all the cinematography is fabulous, it looks gorgeous seeing so much depth in the shadows. The cast includes Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard and Bernard Lee. This is one of those classics that if you haven't ever seen, it's always the right time to watch. Or in this case, catch it on the big screen looking better than ever before. Trailer for the Cannes Classics 4K restoration of Carol Reed's The Third Man, found via The Playlist: Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend,...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Top 100 horror movies of all time: Chicago Film Critics' choices (photo: Sigourney Weaver and Alien creature show us that life is less horrific if you don't hold grudges) See previous post: A look at the Chicago Film Critics Association's Scariest Movies Ever Made. Below is the list of the Chicago Film Critics's Top 100 Horror Movies of All Time, including their directors and key cast members. Note: this list was first published in October 2006. (See also: Fay Wray, Lee Patrick, and Mary Philbin among the "Top Ten Scream Queens.") 1. Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock; with Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam. 2. The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin; with Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow (and the voice of Mercedes McCambridge). 3. Halloween (1978) John Carpenter; with Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Tony Moran. 4. Alien (1979) Ridley Scott; with Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt. 5. Night of the Living Dead (1968) George A. Romero; with Marilyn Eastman,...

Best British movies of all time? (Image: a young Michael Caine in 'Get Carter') Ten years ago, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine as a dangerous-looking London gangster (see photo above), was selected as the United Kingdom's very best movie of all time according to 25 British film critics polled by Total Film magazine. To say that Mike Hodges' 1971 thriller was a surprising choice would be an understatement. I mean, not a David Lean epic or an early Alfred Hitchcock thriller? What a difference ten years make. On Total Film's 2014 list, published last May, Get Carter was no. 44 among the magazine's Top 50 best British movies of all time. How could that be? Well, first of all, people would be very naive if they took such lists seriously, whether we're talking Total Film, the British Film Institute, or, to keep things British, Sight & Sound magazine. Second, whereas Total Film's 2004 list was the result of a 25-critic consensus,...

Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...