The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die/Catacombs (1965) ***
Gordon Hessler (The Oblong Box, 1969) makes his directorial debut with this neat horror thriller. It starts with a twist exceptional for the times. Ellen (Georgina Cookson) is the shrewd and shrewish millionaire businesswoman, her husband Raymond (Gary Merrill), from whom she demands frequent sex, the eye candy, a kept man. “I married a lover,…
Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) ***
What with Jessie Buckley putting on her best Joker-style smile in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Looney Tunes version of The Bride (2026) and Oscar Isaac going as high-tech as the 19th century would allow in Guillermo del Toro’s excellent Frankenstein (2025), Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein now appears tame in comparison though at the time its sexuality…
The Unfinished Task / I’ll Give My Life (1960) ***
For completists only. Fans of Anglie Dickinson have responded to reviews of Jessica (1962) and several others. This should round off your Angie Dickinson collection with the bonus that it’s a long-lost number. Almost unrecognizable as a brunette, Dickinson carries much of the emotional weight of this tale about an outsider rejecting a chosen career.…
The Night Walker (1964) ****
Deserves its spot in the cult pantheon, hints of Spellbound (1945) and Vertigo (1958), mesmeric atmosphere of dream/nightmare held together by a hypnotic performance by Barbara Stanwyck, tonsils in overdrive. But no point screaming at the unseen, at the unknown, when it invades reality, no point trying to escape a dream when you’re trapped inside.…
Experiment in Terror / The Grip of Fear (1962) ****
For a modern audience any film that contains mention of “Twin Peaks” and “Tarantino” either shows amazing prescience and/or an indication of what is to come. This classy thriller does not disappoint. Part police procedural, part portrait of a killer, part clever heist and part women in peril, it has you wondering why director Blake…
Obsession (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema
Didn’t realize I was sitting in on a piece of history. I was conscious of enjoying an unusual experience but for a different reason – first time I can remember in all my years of moviegoing of each of the three films I had chosen to be full up, in fact for my last film…
The Other Side of Midnight (1977) ****
I was settling in for what I thought was an evening of high-class trash when the unexpected occurred. This wasn’t a mushy World War Two romance but a tale of revenge on a par with that wreaked by the legendary Count of Monte Cristo or by the more recent The Housemaid (2026). Except for throwing…
Behind the Scenes: Whispering Smith Hits London / Whispering Smith vs Scotland Yard (1952)
Contemporary audiences will be accustomed to studios playing fast and loose with a successful IP, all sorts of tricks to keep a series alive; although maybe the most famous occurred in TV soap Dallas when the death of a major character turned out to be only a dream. Still, British studio Hammer, in its pre-horror…
Whispering Smith Hits London / Whispering Smith vs Scotland Yard (1952) ***
“In a change to the advertised program” is probably the best place to start, since in writing nearly 2,000 reviews I’ve only, from memory, dipped into the pre-1960 era a couple of times. So let me explain. First of all when I was diving through my trove of Pressbooks, deciding what to select for the…
The Birds (1963) *****
Years ago I was asked to write a book on the six best Hitchcock films and from those choose the one I considered his very best. My choice was The Birds (1963). And it is for these reasons. Firstly, unusually in the master’s work, there is a proper meet-cute. In most of his films, the…
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The Magnificent 60s 