News

Classic horror anthologies Flesh and Fantasy and Dead of Night will be released in a limited edition Blu-ray box set on April 30 via Australia’s Imprint.

Julien Duvivier helms 1943’s Flesh and Fantasy. Charles Boyer, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Betty Field, Robert Cummings, Robert Benchley, Thomas Mitchell, Charles Winninger, and Anna Lee star.

When a jittery businessman complains of a disturbing dream, a friend relates three stories to help calm his nerves. A homely dressmaker wears a mask of beauty to attract a man on Mardi Gras night; a fortune teller predicts an eminent lawyer will commit a murder; and a high-wire artist, haunted by a nightmare in which he suffers a fall, romances a woman who resembles the one he had seen in his dream.

Flesh and Fantasy special features:

Audio commentary by film historians Rodney Barnett and Adrian Smith (new) Video essay by film scholar Joseph Dwyer...

As the nights grow longer and the air turns crisp, it’s the perfect time to settle in with some of the best spooky films ever made. From eerie silent classics to modern horror hits, spooky cinema has evolved across decades, yet each era has its own spine-tingling gems. Whether you love atmospheric terror or heart-pounding scares, here’s a journey through the best films from the 1920s to today that will give you chills. Things to do: Subscribe to The Hollywood Insider’s YouTube Channel, by clicking here. Limited Time Offer – Free Subscription to The Hollywood Insider Click here to read more on The Hollywood Insider’s vision, values and mission statement here – Media has the responsibility to better our world – The Hollywood Insider fully focuses on substance and meaningful entertainment, against gossip and scandal, by combining entertainment, education, and philanthropy. 1920s - 1980s ‘The Haunting’ (1963) Cast: Julie Harris,...

To celebrate the release of The Ship That Died of Shame coming to Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital on September 11th we have 2 Blu-Rays to give away!

The ‘1087’ is a British Royal Navy boat that navigates its crew through the worst that World War II can throw at them. With war over, George Hoskins (Richard Attenborough) convinces former skipper Bill Randall (George Baker) and Birdie (Bill Owen) to buy their old boat and use it for what he persuades them is some ‘harmless’ smuggling to supply the black market.

Soon, however, the crew find themselves mixed up with the corrupt Major Fordyce (Roland Culver) who leads them to transport ever-more sinister cargoes, including counterfeit currency and weapons. As the jobs become more nefarious, the once robust and reliable 1087 begins to protest and frequently breaks down, seemingly mirroring the crew’s descent into the criminal underworld…

Produced by the great Ealing Studios...

This very traditional chamber murder mystery starring David Farrar and Geraldine Fitzgerald has been beautifully restored by Studiocanal and bears the original U.K. title The Late Edwina Black. When the sickly wife Edwina dies in bed the bitter housekeeper accuses the husband and another very attractive servant; all the Scotland Yard Inspector need do is stir the pot, and paranoid suspicions take over. Is Edwina’s spirit still present in the house? The housekeeper thinks she communicates through a wind chime by the window . . .

Obsessed

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1951 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 78 min. / Street Date February 28, 2023 / The Late Edwina Black / Available from / 29.99

Starring: David Farrar, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Roland Culver, Jean Cadell, Mary Merrall, Harcourt Williams, Charles Heslop, Ronald Adam.

Cinematography: Stephen Dade

Art Direction: George Provis

Costume Designer: Elizabeth Haffenden

Film Editor: Douglas Myers

Original Music: Allan Gray

Screenplay by Charles Frank, David Evans from the play by William Dinner, William Morum...

To mark the release of the brand new 4K restorations of The Teckman Mystery and We Joined The Navy, out now, we’ve been given a bundle of both films to give away on Blu-ray.

The Teckman Mystery

The Teckman Mystery is a 1954 British crime mystery, directed by Wendy Toye and starring Margaret Leighton, John Justin, Roland Culver and Michael Medwin. Philip Chance is commissioned by his publisher to write the biography of Martin Teckman, a young airman who crashed and died whilst testing a new plane. But from the moment he arrives home, Philip Chance is beset by a series of ‘accidents’ which indicate strongly that there are people who do not want to see Teckman’s past investigated.

We Joined the Navy

We Joined The Navy is a 1962 British naval comedy starring British film icon Kenneth More, Lloyd Nolan, Joan O’Brien and Mischa Auer Directed by award-winning Wendy Toye.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Charles Cohen, the founder of the Cohen Film Collection, not only finances and distributes acclaimed independent films, but he also controls the rights to an impressive number of largely forgotten British films. Instead of letting them languish, Cohen has invested in bringing some of these titles to Blu-ray with stunning new transfers. The latest release is a Blu-ray double feature consisting of two modestly-budgeted murder-themed sagas. First- and most impressive- is "Cast a Dark Shadow", a 1955 noirish production with up-and-comer Dirk Bogarde in the lead role. He plays Edward Bare, a handsome and charismatic young man who, when we first meet him, is improbably newly wed to Monica (Mona Washbourne), an elderly woman with a sizable fortune who Edward dotes over and manipulates. Monica's lawyer Phillip Mortimer (Robert Flemyng) smells a rat but Monica is too delusional to believe Edward is manipulating her. When she turns up...

Billy Wilder always more or less disowned his one real musical, which leaves the enthusiast with a choice: keep re-watching the classic Wilder films, of which there are many, or probe into the obscure, disreputable corners of the great man's oeuvre?The year was 1948. Wilder had been involved with the war effort. Lost Weekend had belatedly come out in 1945 and won an Oscar for Ray Milland. And while the rest of Hollywood was churning out movies that developed the film noir genre Wilder had helped launch with Double Indemnity, he made a Bing Crosby musical set in Austria. He claimed it was offered to him, but the script is credited to Wilder and Charles Brackett, so he can't distance himself that easily."On a December night, some forty-odd years ago, His Majesty Franz Joseph the First, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia,...

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger officially become ‘The Archers’ for this sterling morale-propaganda picture lauding the help of the valiant Dutch resistance. It’s a joyful show of spirit, terrific casting (with a couple of surprises) and first-class English filmmaking.

One of Our Aircraft is Missing

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1942 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy /103 82 min. / Street Date November 15, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman, Hugh Williams, Bernard Miles, Hugh Burden, Emrys Jones, Pamela Brown, Joyce Redman, Googie Withers, Hay Petrie, Arnold Marlé, Robert Helpmann, Peter Ustinov, Roland Culver, Robert Beatty, Michael Powell.

Cinematography Ronald Neame

Film Editor David Lean

Camera Crew Robert Krasker, Guy Green

Written by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Produced by The Archers

Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

There are still a few more key Powell-Pressburger ‘Archer’ films waiting for a quality disc release, Contraband and Gone to Earth for just two.

Modern spy movies have nothing on this Brit thriller produced just as war broke out -- Rex Harrison, Margaret Lockwood and Paul Henried clash with Nazi agents, and risk a daring escape to Switzerland. The witty screenplay is by the writers of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and the director is Carol Reed, in terrific form. Night Train to Munich Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 523 1940 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September, 2016 / Starring Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison, Paul von Hernried, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, James Harcourt, Felix Aylmer, Roland Culver, Raymond Huntley, Fritz (Frederick) Valk. Cinematography Otto Kanturek Film Editor R. E. Dearing Written by Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder story by Gordon Wellesley Produced by Edward Black Directed by Carol Reed

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Alfred Hitchcock's successful series of 1930s spy chase thrillers -- The Man Who Knew Too Much; The 39 Steps --...

'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

'To Each His Own' movie with Olivia de Havilland and John Lund 'To Each His Own' movie review: Best Actress Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland stars in Mother Love tearjerker Olivia de Havilland, who had starred in the 1941 melodrama Hold Back the Dawn, returns to the wartime milieu in To Each His Own (1946), once again under the direction of Mitchell Leisen, who guides the proceedings with his characteristic sincerity while cleverly skirting the Production Code's restrictive guidelines. In To Each His Own, de Havilland plays Jody Norris, a small-town woman who falls quickly in love – much like her character in Hold Back the Dawn – but this time during World War I, when Jody's brief liaison with daredevil flying ace Captain Cosgrove (John Lund) results in an out-of-wedlock child. When Cosgrove is killed in battle, the young mother anonymously gives up her baby to a childless couple in her hometown, remaining...

Here's another installment featuring Joe Dante's reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!

Well done haunted house chiller offers plenty for the shiver‑and‑shock fans. A fitting swan song for [Aip co-founder] Jim Nicholson, this could roll up good grosses in general, ballyhoo, drive‑in markets if Fox gives it an appropriately strong sell. Rating: PG.

"This house... it knows we're here!" Of such ominous dialogue are classic style horror pictures made and The Legend Of Hell House, while no classic, is spookily amusing, sometimes scary stuff with plenty of mass appeal for summer playdates. In fact, this maiden effort from the late James Nicholson's Academy Pictures is slick and entertaining enough to register as one of the season's better attractions, if 20th Century‑Fox capitalizes on its considerable ballyhoo potential.

A...

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the TCM Festival in Hollywood. I had a full weekend and got to enjoy the true movie experience---great movies projected on big screens with enthusiastic and appreciative audiences. Between films we'd emerge onto Hollywood Boulevard with its own movie being created live and in the moment. As comedian Dana Gould said in his introduction to Freaks "the Boulevard was the only place you are likely to stand next to Cher at the urinal in the men's room. Take a look at the schedule, Here

Among the celebrities I saw on the red carpet and clicked photos of were Maureen O'Hara (still gorgeous), Kim Novak, Shirley Jones and Margaret O'Brien---and in the background were Chaplins, Marilyns, Elvis, Michael Jackson and multiple copies of Spiderman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, Star Wars characters, Transformers, Pirates (I heard one woman excitedly say, "Oh my god...it's Johnny Depp."), Mickey and Minnies and Elmo. In the parking lot elevator one night I stood next to a tall African American male, his Elmo head ticked under his arm next to his furry red body. I asked if he had a long and hot day. He told me that he comes around 4pm when it isn't so warm and works until midnight. "Do you do ok?"

"An average weekend brings in $700-800 and it is fun." I asked him what he does the rest of the week and he told me he created movie money props for films and sells copies on ebay.

I saw 17 films and three special events. What a pleasure to see classics projected on the big screen (a mix of 35mm and Dcp) to packed houses of appreciative fans. Once again I was impressed with the diversity of the audiences. Couples, young people and people of color far out-numbered the stereotype of middle aged white film geek guys. And they knew their movies.

I saw a few classics I had never seen --- Mary Poppins (when it came out in 1964 a left-leaning high school kid would not be caught dead seeing that) and The Best Years of Our Lives (I just never saw it--no excuses). Both were great for different reasons.

There were rare discoveries such as the pre-code Hat Check Girl (racy Ginger Rogers) and the powerful and all but forgotten The Stranger's Return directed by King Vidor withLionel Barrymore and Miriam Hopkins (when will someone do a major tribute?)

But the true revelation was the 1944 British comedy of mannersOn Approval . This was a joy of witty banter, great acting and certainly one of the most bizarre finales I have ever experienced with stuffed animal heads coming to life among other visions you have never seen. The first show sold out so an extra screening was scheduled and it too was full. Lucky or me I got in after being turned away from the first one. The film was restored by that hero of lost cinema, David Shepard.

I just got an email from Jessica Rosner that she will have a 35mm print available. There is also a BluRay and if there is enough demand the owners might consider making a Dcp.

She wrote:

“It is about two couples in Victorian England ( and Scotland) who try a shocking experiment in living together to see if they are "compatible" before marriage. The magnificent foursome is led by Clive Brook who also directed and adapted the famous play upon which it is based. The extraordinary Beatrice Lillie co-stars in one of her very few film appearances and she is aided by the lovely if oddly named Googie Withers and the always fine Roland Culver.

This Brand New print is from a negative made from a nitrate fine grain at the BFI. It is not flawless but it looks excellent.

Below is a link to the write up on the fest site about On Approval and audience reaction to it. I urge you to read it as it really captures the film much better than my write up.

http://filmfestival.tcm.com/on-approval-sparkles-with-wit/

This second link is for local news station festival write up highlighting On Approval as fest fave

(scroll down till you see the still) http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/apr/14/rants-and-raves-tcm-film-festival/

===========

Thanks Jessica. After the screening I wanted to know how the film could be shown in cinemas and you have answered my question.

And here are some good articles about the movie.

http://www.examiner.com/article/clive-brook-adapts-directs-and-stars-on-approval-1944

http://www.examiner.com/article/classic-films-focus-on-approval-1944

Anthony Slide writes: http://books.google.com/books?id=Rf5CCA7_Lv4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false...

Shirley MacLaine, Irma la Douce on TCM Shirley MacLaine is Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" star of the day today, August 10. This evening, TCM is presenting its last four Shirley MacLaine movies: Billy Wilder's Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), which is on right now; Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running (1958), which earned MacLaine her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination; Lewis Milestone's Ocean's Eleven (1960), in which MacLaine has a mere cameo; and Anthony Asquith's omnibus feature The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964), in which MacLaine is one of about a dozen stars in several individual stories. [Shirley MacLaine Movie Schedule.] It's too late for me to recommend The Apartment, though recommendable it is. For one thing, this collaboration between Billy Wilder and screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond features what is, in my view, Fred MacMurray's best performance by far. Usually an intolerable leading man — macho, reactionary, humorless, unsexy, dull — MacMurray could be a fascinating slimeball,...

"He's a chin." Such was Josef von Sternberg's summation of Clive Brook, delivered when Marlene Dietrich asked what her leading man in Shanghai Express(1932) was like. Since Brook had already given a sympathetic and subtle performance for Sternberg in Underworld (1927), and since he was one of the few actors who actually liked Sternberg, this remark should perhaps be taken less as an insult, and more as a statement of intent: in Shanghai Express, Sternberg reduces his chum to a chin, rigid and inexpressive.

The real Brook was different, as his sole film as director attests. On Approval (1944) climaxed Brook's acting career (he returned to the screen in 1963 for John Huston, in The List of Adrian Messenger: the rest is silence) and serves as a definitive rebuttal to Sternberg's put-down, as it's a gay, wildly creative, consistently funny comedy. Being based on a play that was then fifty years...

Michael Redgrave in the "The Ventriloquist's Dummy" segment in Dead of Night (top); Gene Tierney in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Dragonwyck (middle); Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (bottom) Turner Classic Movies' horror/mystery/suspense Halloween marathon kicks off this evening with a showing of the 1945 British classic Dead of Night, which, 65 years later, remains one of the best efforts in the psychological-horror genre. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti ("Christmas Party" and "The Ventriloquist's Dummy"), Charles Crichton ("Golfing Story"), Basil Dearden ("Hearse Driver" and "Linking Narrative"), and Robert Hamer ("The Haunted Mirror"), Dead of Night stars a number of top players of British film and stage, among them Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Basil Radford, Sally Ann Howes, and, best of all, Michael Redgrave as an unbalanced ventriloquist. Also this evening, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, a sumptuous David O. Selznick production starring a flawless Joan Fontaine as "I" de...

To Each His Own (1946) Direction: Mitchell Leisen Screenplay: Charles Brackett and Jacques Théry; from a story by Brackett Cast: Olivia de Havilland, John Lund, Mary Anderson, Roland Culver, Phillip Terry, Bill Goodwin Olivia de Havilland, John Lund in To Each His Own Olivia de Havilland, who had starred in the 1941 melodrama Hold Back the Dawn, returns to the wartime milieu in To Each His Own (1946), once again under the direction of Mitchell Leisen, who guides the proceedings with his characteristic sincerity while cleverly skirting the Production Code’s restrictive guidelines. In To Each His Own, de Havilland plays Jody Norris, a small-town woman who falls quickly in love — much like her character in Hold Back the Dawn, but this time [...]...

Sony Pictures just released another new movie trailer from the upcoming thriller “Obsessed” by director Steve Shill (Dexter, Knight Rider) and starring Beyonce Knowles (Cadillac Records, Dream Girls), Idris Elba (The Wire, The Unborn), Ali Larter (Heroes, Resident Evil: Extinction), Bruce McGill (Sweetwater), Scout Taylor-Compton (Love at First Hiccup) and Christine Lahti (Flying Lessons). “Obsessed” from Screen Gems will be in theaters everywhere on April 24, 2009. Synopsis: A Scotland Yard inspector (Roland Culver) on a murder case has a husband (David Farrar), his mistress (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and a housekeeper for suspects. Stay tuned to Shockya.com for the latest movie news and trailers from “Obsessed”.

Sony Pictures recently released this new movie clip from the upcoming thriller “Obsessed” by director Steve Shill (Dexter, Knight Rider) and starring Beyonce Knowles (Cadillac Records, Dream Girls), Idris Elba (The Wire, The Unborn), Ali Larter (Heroes, Resident Evil: Extinction), Bruce McGill (Sweetwater), Scout Taylor-Compton (Love at First Hiccup) and Christine Lahti (Flying Lessons). “Obsessed” from Screen Gems will be in theaters everywhere on April 24, 2009. Synopsis: A Scotland Yard inspector (Roland Culver) on a murder case has a husband (David Farrar), his mistress (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and a housekeeper for suspects. Stay tuned to Shockya.com for the latest movie news and trailers from “Obsessed”.

Sony Pictures just released this new movie trailer from the upcoming thriller “Obsessed” by director Steve Shill (Dexter, Knight Rider) and starring Beyonce Knowles (Cadillac Records, Dream Girls), Idris Elba (The Wire, The Unborn), Ali Larter (Heroes, Resident Evil: Extinction), Bruce McGill (Sweetwater), Scout Taylor-Compton (Love at First Hiccup) and Christine Lahti (Flying Lessons). “Obsessed” from Screen Gems will be in theaters everywhere on April 24, 2009. Synopsis: A Scotland Yard inspector (Roland Culver) on a murder case has a husband (David Farrar), his mistress (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and a housekeeper for suspects. Stay tuned to Shockya.com for the latest movie news and trailers from “Obsessed”.

Sony Pictures recently released another new movie trailer from the upcoming thriller “Obsessed” by director Steve Shill (Dexter, Knight Rider) and starring Beyonce Knowles (Cadillac Records, Dream Girls), Idris Elba (The Wire, The Unborn), Ali Larter (Heroes, Resident Evil: Extinction), Bruce McGill (Sweetwater), Scout Taylor-Compton (Love at First Hiccup) and Christine Lahti (Flying Lessons). “Obsessed” from Screen Gems will be in theaters everywhere on April 24, 2009. Synopsis: A Scotland Yard inspector (Roland Culver) on a murder case has a husband (David Farrar), his mistress (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and a housekeeper for suspects. Stay tuned to Shockya.com for the latest movie news and trailers from “Obsessed”.