Billion Dollar Brain (1967) ***
Could have been the greatest espionage movie of all time except for one thing – excess. Now director Ken Russell would soon make his reputation based on sexual excess – Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971) etc – but here he takes self-indulgence in a different direction. The plot is labyrinthine to say the…
80,000 Suspects (1963) ***
Eschews the X-cert terror of some of the end-of-the-world efforts of the period such as The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) and Day of the Triffids (1963) in favor of a more solid documentary-style approach and focusing on the tangled love lives of the main characters. There’s a distinctly British tone. People form long,…
Behind the Scenes: Book into Film – “Airport” (1970)
You might think director George Seaton wearing his screenwriter’s hat had his work cut out adapting Arthur Hailey’s 500-page tome for a lean two-hour picture. But Hailey’s book was anything but lean and the fat was easily trimmed away. The author had little idea of dramatic tension and there’s a clear example here that what…
Behind the Scenes: “Airport” (1970)
Ross Hunter had been a big wheel in the production business for the best part of two decades, shepherding home hits like Midnight Lace (1960), remakes of universal weepies like Back St (1961) and Madame X (1966), play adaptations such as The Chalk Garden (1964), the Tammy movie series and Julie Andrews musical Thoroughly Modern…
Airport (1970) ****
Thundering entertainment from an era when they made movies to appeal to audiences and not to placate the overweening ego of over-entitled directors. I first saw this in 1970 when it was selected as one of three films (the others being Cromwell and The Virgin and the Gypsy) to open the new Odeon triplex in…
Run Wild, Run Free (1969) ****
Surprisingly absorbing, precisely because of the distinct lack of the soppiness or mawkishness associated with the genre. Nature “red in tooth and claw” scarcely puts in an appearance and even then is a good bit less dangerous than a wanton child unable to understand or control his emotions. Parents are very well-drawn, too, in an…
Zulu Dawn (1979) ****
You’d wonder why anyone would want to make a film about this calamitous military disaster, the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879. Yet, such subjects have always attracted Hollywood, especially if some kind of triumph can be snatched from defeat – Dunkirk (1958 and 2017) – or some charismatic figure of the order of General Custer…
Countess Dracula (1971) ****
You wouldn’t go looking to British studio Hammer for a subtle treatise on the perils of ageing. Nor might you expect a predator to be so cruelly, and consistently, punished. Nor, for that matter, for a mirror to provide revelation given that in the traditional vampire movie one of the signs you have a bloodsucker…
Shelter (2026) **
Even though it’s easily one of the worst in the Jason Statham canon, I feel duty bound to review this because a) it’s set in a remote Scottish location, the Outer Hebrides, famed for the likes of Whisky Galore (1949) and its sequel and b) because I’ve been a paid-up member (possibly one of the…
Saltburn (2023) **
With the arrival of Emerald Fennell’s latest epic Wuthering Heights (or to give it it’s full title “Wuthering Heights” – yes, don’t ask me!) imminent I thought I’d go back to Saltburn and see if my second impression was any better than my first. Alas, I was right first time. Another “visionary” director disappearing up…
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The Magnificent 60s 