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Tel E. Phone (a telephone) shows a group of reporters the members of his family who inherited his basic transmitter and receiver characteristics. The members of his family include the radio twins (“Mike” the microphone, and “Speakie” the loud speaker), the Public Address (P.A.) system, the electrical stethoscope (“Stethie”), and the talking motion picture (“Talkie”).
The song “Ring Ting a Ling” is featured, sung by a quartet of telephones.
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The post Cartoon: The Family Album, Portraying Notable Descendants of Tel E. Phone, 1930 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Jungle Jitters is a 1938 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. The short was released on February 19, 1938.
Because of the racial stereotypes of black people throughout the short, it prompted United Artists to withhold it from syndication within the United States in 1968. As such, the short was placed into the Censored Eleven, a group of eleven Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts withheld from official television distribution in the United States since 1968 due to heavy stereotyping of black people; because its copyright had already lapsed without renewal a year before this decision, it has remained publicly available through numerous unofficial distributors via secondhand prints.
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The post Cartoon: Jungle Jitters, 1938 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
“The Bored Cuckoo” is an American animated cartoon part of the series Noveltoons directed by Bill Tytla, written by Bunny Gough, Bill Turner, and Larry Riley, and produced by Famous Studios.
Noveltoons is a series of cartoons produced by Paramount Pictures’ Famous Studios from 1943 to the end of the studio during 1967. The series was known for bringing the characters from Harvey Comics to life, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey, and Baby Huey. All shorts from Baby Huey and Little Audrey are included. It was the successor to the series Color Classics produced by Fleischer Studios. Several Noveltoons feature characters which originated in Color Classics. This series was also similar to the two series from Warner Bros., Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, in that it features several recurring characters with one general title.
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The post Cartoon: The Bored Cuckoo, 1948 – Noveltoons appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
A Day at the Zoo is a 1939 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon supervised by Tex Avery.
The short was produced in 1938 and released on March 11, 1939 and features an early version of Elmer Fudd.
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The post Cartoon: A Day At The Zoo, 1939 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Mutt and Jeff was a long-running and widely popular American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Bud Fisher in 1907 about “two mismatched tinhorns”. It is commonly regarded as the first daily comic strip.
The concept of a newspaper strip featuring recurring characters in multiple panels on a six-day-a-week schedule had previously been pioneered through the short-lived A. Piker Clerk by Clare Briggs, but it was Mutt and Jeff as the first successful daily comic strip that staked out the direction of the future trend.
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The post Cartoon: Playing With Fire, 1926 starring Mutt and Jeff appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Calvin and the Colonel is an American animated sitcom about Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a shrewd fox, and Calvin T. Burnside, a dumb bear. Their lawyer was Oliver Wendell Clutch, who was a (literal) weasel. The colonel lived with his wife Maggie Belle and her sister Susan Culpepper, who did not trust the colonel at all. Colonel Klaxon was in... Read more →
The post Cartoon: Colonel Outfoxes Himself, 1962 – Calvin and the Colonel appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Feline Follies is a 1919 animated short film, distributed by Paramount Pictures. It marked the first appearance of the character Felix the Cat. The film was produced by the Pat Sullivan Studio of New York City, owned by Australian animator Pat Sullivan. It is a matter of dispute whether to attribute the film and Felix’s creation to Sullivan himself, or... Read more →
The post Cartoon: Feline Follies, 1919, first appearance of Felix the Cat appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Hollywood Capers is a 1935 short animated film of the Looney Tunes series.
It stars Beans the Cat in the character’s second solo cartoon. Porky also made a cameo.
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The post Cartoon: Hollywood Capers, 1935 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
“The Old Shell Game” is an American traditional animated short film part of the Noveltoons series directed by Seymour Kneitel, written by Joe Stultz and Larry Riley, and produced from Famous Studios. It stars Wolfie the Wolf in his appearance. Buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready to watch? Click to start your free trial. Watch... Read more →
The post Cartoon: The Old Shell Game (1948) – Noveltoons appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Outpost is an animated short film, directed by Chuck Jones and first released in August, 1944. It is part of the Private Snafu series. As in all the Snafu films, the voice of Private Snafu is performed by Mel Blanc. This is considered a transitional film in the series, with Snafu successfully able to complete a mission despite his discomfort... Read more →
The post Cartoon: The Outpost with Private Snafu, 1944 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Noveltoons is a series of cartoons produced by Paramount Pictures’ Famous Studios from 1943 to the end of the studio during 1967. The series was known for bringing the characters from Harvey Comics to life, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey, and Baby Huey. All shorts from Baby Huey and... Read more →
The post Cartoon: Much Ado About Mutton, 1947 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Noveltoons is a series of cartoons produced by Paramount Pictures’ Famous Studios from 1943 to the end of the studio during 1967. The series was known for bringing the characters from Harvey Comics to life, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey, and Baby Huey. All shorts from Baby Huey and... Read more →
The post Cartoon: Leprechaun’s Gold (1949) appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The Mummy Strikes (1943) is the fourteenth of seventeen animated Technicolor short films based upon the DC Comics character of Superman. Produced by Famous Studios, the cartoon was originally released to theaters by Paramount Pictures on February 19, 1943. Buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready to watch? Click to start your free trial. Watch anywhere.... Read more →
The post Cartoon: The Mummy Strikes, 1943 – Superman appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional adult animated shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale. Primarily, they demonstrate the... Read more →
The post Cartoon: Target Snafu – Private Snafu appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional adult animated shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale. Primarily, they demonstrate the... Read more →
The post Cartoon: Seaman Tarfu in the Navy with Private Snafu appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Have You Got Any Castles is a 1938 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Frank Tashlin. The short was released on June 25, 1938. Characters from well-known works of literary fiction come to life inside of a library that was just closed to the public (outside of the library) by the owner. Buy a subscription to watch this movie... Read more →
The post Cartoon: Have You Got Any Castles, 1938 with voice from Mel Blanc appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Battling Bosko is an American animated short film. It is a Looney Tunes cartoon, featuring Bosko, the original star of the series. Like most Looney Tunes of its day, it was directed by Hugh Harman; Frank Marsales provided musical direction. The film was released in 1932. Buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready to watch? Click... Read more →
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The Bandmaster is a 1931 short film by Walter Lantz Productions, starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. As with a few films from the series, the cartoon is in the public domain. A similarly titled short, also produced by Lantz in 1947, is still under copyright however. Buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready to watch? Click... Read more →
The post Cartoon: The Bandmaster, 1931 starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The first short produced by Warner Bros. and directed by Robert McKimson. Hook tells his fellow sailors his plans for the money he will get when he redeems his bonds after the war, such as new clothes, a home and a wedding. From this point forward, Mr. Hook is voice by Arthur Lake. Mr. Hook is the title character of... Read more →
The post Cartoon: The Return of Mr. Hook, 1945 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
“A Lamb in a Jam” is an American traditional animated short film part of the Noveltoons series directed by Isadore Sparber, written by Joe Stultz and Carl Meyer, and produced from Famous Studios. It stars Blackie the Lamb and Wolfie the Wolf. Noveltoons is a series of cartoons produced by Paramount Pictures’ Famous Studios from 1943 to the end of... Read more →
The post Cartoon: A Lamb in a Jam, 1945 (Noveltoons) appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Astronomeows is a 1928 Felix the Cat cartoon released by Educational Pictures.
Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in 1919 by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer during the silent film era. An anthropomorphic young black cat with white eyes, a black body, and a giant grin, he is often considered one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history. Felix was the first fully realized animal character in the history of American film animation.
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The post Cartoon: Felix the Cat in Astronomeous appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The Magnetic Telescope (1942) is the sixth of the seventeen animated Technicolor short films based upon the DC Comics character of Superman, originally created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
This animated short was created by the Fleischer Studios. The story runs about eight minutes and covers Superman’s adventures in saving the town from a comet drawn toward Earth by a magnetic telescope. It was originally released on April 24, 1942.
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The post Cartoon: Superman in The Magnetic Telescope (1942) appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
So Much for So Little is a 1949 American animated short documentary film directed by Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. In 1950, it won an Oscar at the 22nd Academy Awards for Documentary Short Subject, tying with A Chance to Live. It was created by Warner Bros. Cartoons for the United States Public Health Service. As a work of the United States Government, the film is in the public domain.
The Academy Film Archive preserved So Much for So Little in 2005. Produced during the Harry S. Truman administration, it attained renewed relevance during the modern Medicare for All movement in the United States nearly seven decades later.
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The post Cartoon: So Much for So Little, 1949 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional adult animated shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale. Primarily, they demonstrate the negative consequences of doing things wrong. The main character’s name is a play on the military slang acronym SNAFU, “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up”. The cleaned-up version of that phrase, usually used on radio and in print, was “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up”.
The series was directed by Chuck Jones and other prominent Hollywood animators, and the voice of Private Snafu was performed by Mel Blanc.
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The post Cartoon: Real American Zero – The Adventures of Private Snafu, 1944 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
To Spring is a 1936 animated musical short produced by Harman and Ising for the MGM cartoon studio’s Happy Harmonies series.
Although the production credit goes to Harman and Ising this short was actually the first cartoon to be directed by the future cartoon giant William Hanna, along with animator Paul Fennell.
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This is a production by Warner Bros. Cartoons, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., which mainly produced the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts.
Other animated projects were made for Warner, as well as entities such as U.S. Army (Private Snafu) and U.S. Navy (Mr. Hook).
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The post Cartoon: 90 Days Wondering, 1956 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Foney Fables is a cartoon from the Merrie Melodies series made in 1942 by Friz Freleng, diverting several tales and fables.
Original: 1 August 1942
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The post Cartoon: Foney Fables (Merrie Melodies), 1942 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Sherlock Holmes is a 1916 American silent film starring William Gillette as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Directed by Arthur Berthelet, it was produced by Essanay Studios in Chicago. The screenplay was adapted from the 1899 stage play of the same name, which in turn was based on the stories, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Final Problem,” and A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle.
All surviving prints of the 1916 film Sherlock Holmes were once thought to be lost. However, on October 1, 2014, it was announced that a copy had been discovered in a film archive in France.
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“Cheese Burglar” is an American traditional animated short film part of the Noveltoons series directed by Isadore Sparber, written by Carl Meyer and Joe Stultz, and produced from Famous Studios.
It stars Herman the Mouse.
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The post Cartoon: Cheese Burglar, 1946 (Noveltoons) appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional adult animated shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale. Primarily, they demonstrate the negative consequences of doing things wrong. The main character’s name is a play on the military slang acronym SNAFU, “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up”. The cleaned-up version of that phrase, usually used on radio and in print, was “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up”.
The series was directed by Chuck Jones and other prominent Hollywood animators, and the voice of Private Snafu was performed by Mel Blanc.
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The post Private Snafu: Target Snafu, 1944 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Mr. Hook is the title character of a series of American animated cartoon shorts produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II for the US Navy. The series included for 4 shorts with the first by Walter Lantz Productions being produced in full color and the remaining three produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons in black and white. The character was designed by Hank Ketcham. Unlike the earlier Private Snafu series, which was created as an instructional film series, Mr. Hook was created exclusively as propaganda to encourage Navy personnel to purchase war bonds.
Directed by Chuck Jones, Mr. Hook is woken up while a little angel and devil of himself argue whether he should spend or save his war bonds before he returns home. The angel soon wins the argument and tells Hook to save his bonds until he climbs back into civvies.
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The post Cartoon: The Good Egg, 1945 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Three Brothers is part of the Private Snafu series of animated shorts produced by Warner Bros. during World War II.
Screened for troops in September 1944, the cartoon was directed by Friz Freleng and features the familiar voice of Mel Blanc.
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The post Cartoon: Three Brothers, 1944 starring Private Snafu appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Billion Dollar Limited (1942) is the third of seventeen animated Technicolor short films based upon the DC Comics character Superman.
Produced by Fleischer Studios, Billion Dollar Limited centers on a train carrying one billion dollars in gold to the US mint, which is sabotaged by robbers before Superman intervenes. The short was released by Paramount Pictures on January 9, 1942.
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The post Cartoon: Billion Dollar Limited, 1942 (Superman) appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Tokio Jokio is a 1943 Looney Tunes propaganda short directed by Norman McCabe. The cartoon is notorious and controversial for its racist depictions of Japanese people. This is also noted for being the final Norman McCabe cartoon.
The name of the cartoon is a pun on “Tokyo”, the capital of Japan (Tokio is the old English romanization), and “joke”. The cartoon is possibly also a pun on Tojo’s name, with the first two syllables of each word spelling his name (Tokio Jokio).
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The post Cartoon: Tokio Jokio (1943) appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
American cartoon featuring songs sung by Art Jarrett with an appearance by Betty Boop.
American cartoon featuring songs sung by Art Jarrett with an appearance by Betty Boop
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The post Cartoon: Popular Melodies (1933) starring Betty Boop appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Making Stars is a 1935 Fleischer Studios animated short film, starring Betty Boop.
The short contains one of the earliest clear examples of the oriental riff that would become popular as a leitmotif for Asian culture following the release of the 1974 song Kung Fu Fighting.
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The post Cartoon: Betty Boop in Making Stars, 1935 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
“Naughty but Mice” is a 1947 American traditional animated short film part of the Noveltoons series directed by Seymour Kneitel, written by Bill Turner and Larry Riley, and produced by Famous Studios.
It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres by Paramount Pictures on October 10, 1947. This stars Herman the Mouse.
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The post Cartoon: Noveltoons – Naughty but Mice, 1947 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Calvin and the Colonel is an American animated sitcom about Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a shrewd fox, and Calvin T. Burnside, a dumb bear.
Their lawyer was Oliver Wendell Clutch, who was a weasel (literally). The colonel lived with his wife Maggie Belle and her sister Susan Culpepper, who did not trust the colonel at all. Colonel Klaxon was in the real estate business, but always tried get-rich-quick schemes with Calvin’s unwitting help.
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The post Cartoon: Calvin and the Colonel – Sister Sue and the Police Captain, 1962 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She was featured in 90 theatrical cartoons between 1930 and 1939. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising.
In the animated short film, “Kitty from Kansas City” (1931), the cartoon character, Betty Boop, travels by train to Rudy Valley, where, in a live-action sequence, Rudy Vallée sings the song while a bouncing ball follows the lyrics on screen.
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The post Cartoon: Kitty from Kansas City, 1931 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Screen Songs, formerly known as KoKo Song Car-Tunes, are a series of animated cartoons produced at the Fleischer Studios and distributed by Paramount Pictures between 1929 and 1938.
Paramount brought back the sing-along cartoons in 1945, now in color, and released them regularly through 1951.
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The post Cartoon: La Paloma, 1930 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Pantry Panic is the third animated cartoon short in the Woody Woodpecker series. Released theatrically on November 24, 1941, the film was produced by Walter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures.
This is the only cartoon of when Woody doesn’t say “Guess Who?”, although his trademark laugh is still present.
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The post Cartoon: Pantry Panic, 1941, a Woody Woodpecker cartoon appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
House on Haunted Hill is a 1959 American horror film directed by William Castle. The film was written by Robb White and stars Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart as eccentric millionaires Frederick Loren and Annabelle Loren, who have invited five people to the house for a “haunted house” party.
Whoever stays in the house for one night will earn $10,000. As the night progresses, all the guests are trapped inside the house with ghosts, murderers, and other terrors.
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The post House on Haunted Hill, with Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolated sequences). Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and effectively marked the end of the silent film era with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system and features six songs performed by Al Jolson. Based on the 1925 play of the same title by Samson Raphaelson, the plot was adapted from his short story “The Day of Atonement”.
The film depicts the fictional story of Jakie Rabinowitz, a young man who defies the traditions of his devout Jewish family. After singing popular tunes in a beer garden, he is punished by his father, a hazzan (cantor), prompting Jakie to run away from home. Some years later, now calling himself Jack Robin, he has become a talented jazz singer, performing in blackface. He attempts to build a career as an entertainer, but his professional ambitions ultimately come into conflict with the demands of his home and heritage.
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The post The Jazz Singer, 1927 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Christmas Comes But Once a Year is a 1936 animated short produced by Fleischer Studios and released on December 4, 1936 by Paramount Pictures. It is part of the Color Classics series.
The cartoon features Professor Grampy, a character from the Betty Boop series; this is the character’s only appearance without Betty. The cartoon was restored from the original Paramount Pictures camera negatives by Jane Fleischer Reid’s company Fabulous Fleischer Cartoons Restored.
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The post Cartoon: Christmas Comes But Once a Year, 1936 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The Gorilla is a 1939 American horror comedy film starring the Ritz Brothers, Anita Louise, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi, and Patsy Kelly.
It was based on a play of the same name by Ralph Spence.
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The post The Gorilla (1939 film) appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The King of Kings is a 1927 American silent epic film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. It depicts the last weeks of Jesus before his crucifixion and stars H. B. Warner in the lead role.
Featuring the opening and resurrection scenes in two-color Technicolor, the film is the second in DeMille’s Biblical trilogy, preceded by The Ten Commandments (1923) and followed by The Sign of the Cross (1932).
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The post The King of Kings, 1927 film directed by Cecil B. DeMille appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The Most Dangerous Game is a 1932 pre-Code adaptation of the 1924 short story of the same name by Richard Connell, the first film version of that story. The plot concerns a big game hunter on an island who hunts humans for sport.
The film stars Joel McCrea, Leslie Banks, and King Kong leads Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, and was made by a team including Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper, the co-directors of King Kong (1933). The film was shot at night on the King Kong jungle sets.
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The post The Most Dangerous Game, a big game hunter who hunts humans for sport appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (also known as Sunrise) is a 1927 American silent romantic drama directed by German director F. W. Murnau (in his American film debut) and starring George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story “The Excursion to Tilsit”, from the 1917 collection with the same title by Hermann Sudermann.
Murnau chose to use the then new Fox Movietone sound-on-film system, making Sunrise one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects soundtrack. The film incorporated Charles Gounod’s 1872 composition Funeral March of a Marionette, which was later used as the theme for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965). Frédéric Chopin’s A minor prelude also features prominently in orchestral arrangement.
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The post Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 1926 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The Big Cat is a 1949 American outdoor action film in Technicolor directed by Phil Karlson.
The cast included Lon McCallister, Peggy Ann Garner, Preston Foster, Forrest Tucker, Skip Homeier, and Gene Reynolds.
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Private Snafu is the title character of a series of black-and-white American instructional adult animated shorts, ironic and humorous in tone, that were produced between 1943 and 1945 during World War II. The films were designed to instruct service personnel about security, proper sanitation habits, booby traps and other military subjects, and to improve troop morale. Primarily, they demonstrate the negative consequences of doing things wrong. The main character’s name is a play on the military slang acronym SNAFU, “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.” The cleaned-up version of that phrase, usually used on radio and in print, was “Situation Normal: All Fouled Up.”
The series was directed by Chuck Jones and other prominent Hollywood animators, and the voice of Private Snafu was performed by Mel Blanc.
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The Phantom Empire is a 1935 American Western serial film directed by Otto Brower and B. Reeves Eason and starring Gene Autry, Frankie Darro, and Betsy King Ross. This 12-chapter Mascot Pictures serial combined the western, musical, and science fiction genres.
The first episode is 30 minutes, the rest about 20 minutes. The serial film is about a singing cowboy who stumbles upon an ancient subterranean civilization living beneath his own ranch that becomes corrupted by unscrupulous greedy speculators from the surface. In 1940, a 70-minute feature film edited from the serial was released under the titles Radio Ranch or Men with Steel Faces. This was Gene Autry’s first starring role, playing himself as a singing cowboy.
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The Woman in Green is a 1945 American film, the eleventh of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes films based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle, starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, with Hillary Brooke as the woman of the title and Henry Daniell as Professor Moriarty. The film follows an original premise inspired by “The Final Problem” and “The Adventure of the Empty House.”
This was the third and last film that Hillary Brooke and Basil Rathbone appeared in, others were also Sherlock Holmes films, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) and Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943); and Henry Daniell appeared in the last two films with Basil Rathbone also in Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943).
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Africa is a 1930 Walter Lantz cartoon short featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Plot:
Oswald is riding through the Egyptian desert on his camel. The camel, though looking real on the exterior, is actually mechanical because of the two ball-shaped pistons inside which Oswald manipulates with his feet like bike pedals. One day, a lion was running toward them. To defend himself, Oswald brought out a rifle but it malfunctioned. As a final resort, Oswald fired the ball pistons from the camel like a cannon and aimed into the lion’s mouth. Terrified by its lumpy back, the lion runs away in panic.
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A Mormon Maid is a 1917 American silent drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and written by Charles Sarver and Paul West. The film stars Mae Murray, Frank Borzage, Hobart Bosworth, Edythe Chapman, Noah Beery, Sr., and Richard Henry Cummings.
The film was released on April 22, 1917, by Paramount Pictures.
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Colonel Effingham’s Raid (UK title: Man of the Hour) is a 1946 comedy film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Irving Pichel. It is also known as Berry Fleming’s Colonel Effingham’s Raid, Everything’s Peaches Down in Georgia and Rebel Yell. The screenplay was written by Kathryn Scola, based on a 1943 novel by Berry Fleming. The music score is by Cyril J. Mockridge. The film stars Charles Coburn, Joan Bennett and William Eythe. The plot involves a retired career Army colonel who returns to his hometown, starts writing a column in a local newspaper and takes on the corrupt local politicians to not replace the historic county courthouse.
Fleming based his novel on the Cracker Party and political corruption in Richmond County, Georgia.
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The Big Wheel is a 1949 American drama sport film directed by Edward Ludwig starring Mickey Rooney, Thomas Mitchell, Mary Hatcher and Michael O’Shea. It includes the final screen appearance of Hattie McDaniel.
This film is now in the public domain.
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Delightfully Dangerous is a 1945 American musical film directed by Arthur Lubin showcasing teenage singer Jane Powell—in her second film on loan out to United Artists from MGM—and orchestra leader Morton Gould. The working titles of this film were Cinderella Goes to War, Reaching for the Stars and High Among the Stars.
It was Frank Tashlin’s first writing credit on a live action feature film.
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The Worldly Madonna is a 1922 American drama silent film directed by Harry Garson and starring Clara Kimball Young (in her last film from Equity) and William P. Carleton.
The Worldly Madonna is a 1922 American drama silent film directed by Harry Garson and starring Clara Kimball Young (in her last film from Equity) and William P. Carleton.
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White Zombie is a 1932 American Pre-Code horror film directed and independently produced by Victor and Edward Halperin. The screenplay by Garnett Weston, based on The Magic Island by William Seabrook, tells the story of a young woman’s transformation into a zombie at the hands of an evil voodoo master. Béla Lugosi stars as the antagonist, Murder Legendre, with Madge Bellamy appearing as his victim. Other cast members included Robert W. Frazer, John Harron, and Joseph Cawthorn.
Large portions of White Zombie were shot on the Universal Studios lot, borrowing many props and scenery from other horror films of the era. White Zombie opened in New York to negative reception, with reviewers criticizing the film’s over-the-top story and weak acting performances. While the film made a substantial financial profit as an independent feature, it proved to be less popular than other horror films of the time.
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The Fast and the Furious is a 1955 American crime film starring John Ireland and Dorothy Malone. It was the first film produced by American International Pictures production company.
The B movie was co-directed by the film’s leading man, John Ireland. The story was written by Roger Corman and the screenplay by Jean Howell and Jerome Odlum.
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Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942) is the fourth in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce series of 14 Sherlock Holmes films which updated the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the present day. The film is credited as an adaptation of Conan Doyle’s short story “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” though the only element from the source material is the dancing men code. Rather, it is a spy film taking place on the background of the then ongoing Second World War with an original premise.
The film concerns the kidnapping of a Swiss scientist by their nemesis Professor Moriarty, to steal a new bomb sight and sell it to Nazi Germany. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson have to crack a secret code in order to save the country. The film is one of four films in the series which are in the public domain.
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Rock, Rock, Rock! is a 1956 black-and-white motion picture conceived, co-written and co-produced by Milton Subotsky and directed by Will Price. The film is an early jukebox musical featuring performances by established rock and roll singers of the era, including Chuck Berry, LaVern Baker, Teddy Randazzo, the Moonglows, the Flamingos, and the Teenagers with Frankie Lymon as lead singer. Almost every member of the cast was signed to a record label at the time, which was credited along with each star. Later West Side Story cast member David Winters is also featured. Famed disc jockey Alan Freed made an appearance as himself.
The movie has a fairly simple plot: teenage girl Dori Graham (played by then 13-year-old Tuesday Weld, with a credited Connie Francis dubbed in as Dori’s singing voice) can’t persuade her dad to buy her a strapless gown and has to get the money together herself in time for the prom. Jack Collins plays the frustrated dad.
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The post Rock, Rock, Rock (film), with Chuck Berry, the Flamingos, and the Teenagers with Frankie Lymon appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz is a 1914 American silent fantasy adventure film directed by J. Farrell MacDonald and written and produced by L. Frank Baum. It stars Violet MacMillan, Frank Moore, Vivian Reed, Todd Wright, Pierre Couderc, and Fred Woodward.
The film had a troubled distribution history; it opened on October 14, 1914, to little success, though it was received as well above average fare by critics of the time.[1] Early in 1915, it was reissued under the title The New Wizard of Oz and was slightly more successful.
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An episode of Colonel Bleep, probably the first. Colonel Bleep is a partially found science fiction animated television series, and the first color cartoon series made for television.
All episodes of this cartoon are in the public domain due to failure to renew the copyright by 1985.
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The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a 1952 American Technicolor film based on the short story of the same name by Ernest Hemingway. The film version of the short story was directed by Henry King, written by Casey Robinson, and starred Gregory Peck as Harry, Susan Hayward as Helen, and Ava Gardner as Cynthia Green (a character invented for the film). The film’s ending does not mirror the book’s ending.
Considered by Hemingway to be one of his finest stories, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” was first published in Esquire magazine in 1936 and then republished in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938).
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A Star Is Born is a 1937 American Technicolor romantic drama film produced by David O. Selznick, directed by William A. Wellman from a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, and starring Janet Gaynor as an aspiring Hollywood actress, and Fredric March as a fading movie star who helps launch her career. The supporting cast features Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine, Lionel Stander and Owen Moore.
It was later remade three times: in 1954 starring Judy Garland and James Mason, in 1976 starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson and in 2018 starring Stefani Germanotta and Bradley Cooper.
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The Terror (1963) is a low-budget American Vistascope horror film produced and directed by Roger Corman. It is famous for being filmed on sets left over from other AIP productions, including The Haunted Palace. The movie was also released as Lady of the Shadows, The Castle of Terror, and The Haunting; it was later featured as an episode of Cinema Insomnia and Elvira’s Movie Macabre.
The movie is sometimes linked to Corman’s series of “Poe films,” which were made between 1960 and 1964 based on the public domain works of Edgar Allan Poe, but The Terror is not actually based on any text by Poe.
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Smouldering Fires is a 1925 Universal silent drama film directed by Clarence Brown and starring Pauline Frederick and Laura La Plante. The movie’s plot is similar to the 1933 talking picture Female, starring Ruth Chatterton.
Copies of this film are archived by UCLA and George Eastman House. In 1953, the film entered the public domain (in the USA) due to the claimants failure to renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication. It is available on video, and numerous prints exist in private collections.
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Road to Bali is a 1952 American comedy film directed by Hal Walker and starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. Released by Paramount Pictures on November 1, 1952, the film is the sixth of the seven Road to … movies.
It was the only such movie filmed in Technicolor and was the first to feature surprise cameo appearances from other well-known stars of the day.
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Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in 1919 by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer during the silent film era. An anthropomorphic black cat with white eyes, a black body, and a giant grin, he was one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history. Felix was the first animated character to attain a level of popularity sufficient to draw movie audiences.
Felix originated from the studio of Australian cartoonist-film entrepreneur Pat Sullivan. Either Sullivan himself or his lead animator, American Otto Messmer, created the character. What is certain is that Felix emerged from Sullivan’s studio, and cartoons featuring the character became big in popular culture. Aside from the animated shorts, Felix starred in a comic strip (drawn by Sullivan, Messmer and later Joe Oriolo) beginning in 1923, and his image soon adorned merchandise such as ceramics, toys and postcards. Several manufacturers made stuffed Felix toys. Jazz bands such as Paul Whiteman’s played songs about him (1923’s “Felix Kept on Walking” and others). In 1926, Felix became the first high school mascot for the Logansport, Indiana, Berries.
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Reefer Madness (originally made as Tell Your Children and sometimes titled as The Burning Question, Dope Addict, Doped Youth, and Love Madness) is a 1936–1939 American propaganda film revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try marijuana—from a hit and run accident, to manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, hallucinations, and descent into madness due to marijuana addiction. The film was directed by Louis Gasnier and featured a cast of mainly little known actors.
Originally financed by a church group under the title Tell Your Children, the film was intended to be shown to parents as a morality tale attempting to teach them about the dangers of cannabis use. However, soon after the film was shot, it was purchased by producer Dwain Esper, who re-cut the film for distribution on the exploitation film circuit beginning in 1938–1939 through the 1940s and 1950s.
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Rain is a 1932 South Seas drama film directed by Lewis Milestone with portions filmed at Santa Catalina Island, California. The pre-Code film stars Joan Crawford as prostitute Sadie Thompson and features Walter Huston as a conflicted missionary who wants to reform Sadie, but whose own morals start decaying. Crawford was loaned out by MGM to United Artists for this film.
The plot of the film is based on the 1922 play Rain by John Colton and Clemence Randolph, which in turn was based on the short story “Miss Thompson” (later retitled “Rain”) by W. Somerset Maugham. Actress Jeanne Eagels had played the role on stage. Other movie versions of the story include: a 1928 silent film titled Sadie Thompson starring Gloria Swanson, and the heavily sanitized Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), which starred Rita Hayworth.
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Riders of Destiny is a 1933 pre-Code Western musical film starring 26-year-old John Wayne as Singin’ Sandy Saunders, the screen’s second singing cowboy (the first being Ken Maynard in the 1929 film The Wagon Master).
It was the first of a series of Lone Star Westerns made for Monogram Pictures by Wayne and director Robert N. Bradbury and the first pairing of Wayne with George “Gabby” Hayes.
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The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 American silent horror film adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, directed by Rupert Julian and starring Lon Chaney, Sr. in the title role of the deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House, causing murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he “loves” a star. The film remains most famous for Chaney’s ghastly, self-devised make-up, which was kept a studio secret until the film’s premiere. The film was released on November 25, 1925.
The picture also features Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John St. Polis, and Snitz Edwards. The last surviving cast member was Carla Laemmle (1909–2014), niece of producer Carl Laemmle, who played a small role as “prima ballerina” in the film when she was about 15.
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Of Human Bondage is a 1934 American Pre-Code drama film directed by John Cromwell and is widely regarded by critics as the film that made Bette Davis a star.
The screenplay by Lester Cohen is based on the 1915 novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham. The film was remade in 1946 and again in 1964.
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The Outlaw is a 1943 American Western film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Thomas Mitchell, and Walter Huston. Hughes also produced the film, while Howard Hawks served as an uncredited co-director.
The film is notable as Russell’s breakthrough role, turning the young actress into a sex symbol and a Hollywood icon. Later advertising billed Russell as the sole star.
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Malice in the Palace is the 117th short film released by Columbia Pictures in 1949 starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard).
The comedians released 190 short films for the studio between 1934 and 1959.
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Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in 1919 by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer during the silent film era. An anthropomorphic black cat with white eyes, a black body, and a giant grin, he was one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history. Felix was the first animated character to attain a level of popularity sufficient to draw movie audiences.
Felix originated from the studio of Australian cartoonist-film entrepreneur Pat Sullivan. Either Sullivan himself or his lead animator, American Otto Messmer, created the character. What is certain is that Felix emerged from Sullivan’s studio, and cartoons featuring the character became big in popular culture. Aside from the animated shorts, Felix starred in a comic strip (drawn by Sullivan, Messmer and later Joe Oriolo) beginning in 1923, and his image soon adorned merchandise such as ceramics, toys and postcards. Several manufacturers made stuffed Felix toys. Jazz bands such as Paul Whiteman’s played songs about him (1923’s “Felix Kept on Walking” and others). In 1926, Felix became the first high school mascot for the Logansport, Indiana, Berries.
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The post Cartoon: Neptune Nonsense, 1936 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Manos: The Hands of Fate is a 1966 American low-budget horror film. It was written, directed, and produced by Harold P. Warren who also starred in the film. It is widely recognized to be one of the worst films ever made. In 1993, the television comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), a show based on the premise of comedically mocking B movies, featured Manos: The Hands of Fate, helping the film develop a cult status.
The film’s plot revolves primarily around a vacationing family who lose their way on a road trip. After a long drive in the Texas desert, the family finds themselves trapped at a lodge maintained by a polygamous pagan cult, and they attempt to escape as the cult’s members decide what to do with them. The film is infamous for its technical deficiencies, especially its significant editing and continuity flaws; its soundtrack and visuals not being synchronized; tedious pacing; abysmal acting; and several scenes that are seemingly inexplicable or disconnected from the overall plot, such as a couple making out in a car or The Master’s wives breaking out in catfights.
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My Japan is a 1945 American anti-Japanese propaganda short film produced to spur sale of American war bonds.
The film takes the form of a mock travelogue of Japan, presented by an impersonated Japanese narrator.
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The Last Man on Earth (Italian: L’ultimo uomo della Terra) is a 1964 Italian-American science-fiction horror film based on the 1954 Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. The film was directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow, and stars Vincent Price. The script was written in part by Matheson, but he was dissatisfied with the result and chose to be credited as “Logan Swanson”. William Leicester, Furio M. Monetti, and Ubaldo Ragona were the other writers.
It was filmed in Rome, Italy, with some location shots taken at Esposizione Universale Roma. It was released theatrically in the United States by American International Pictures and the UK in 1966. In the 1980s, the film fell into the public domain.MGM Home Video, the current owners of the AIP film catalog, released a digitally remastered widescreen print on DVD in September 2005.
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The Last Time I Saw Paris is a 1954 romantic drama made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Babylon Revisited.” It was directed by Richard Brooks, produced by Jack Cummings and filmed on locations in Paris and the MGM backlot. The screenplay was by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Richard Brooks.
The film starred Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson in his last role for MGM, with Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor, Kurt Kasznar, George Dolenz, Sandy Descher, Odette, and (a then-unknown) Roger Moore in his Hollywood debut. The film’s title song, by composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, was already a classic when the movie was made and inspired the movie’s title. Though the song had already won an Oscar after its film debut in 1941’s Lady Be Good, it is featured much more prominently in The Last Time I Saw Paris. It can be heard in many scenes, either being sung by Odette or being played as an instrumental.
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The Little Princess is a 1939 American drama film directed by Walter Lang. The screenplay by Ethel Hill and Walter Ferris is loosely based on the novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The film was the first Shirley Temple movie to be filmed completely in Technicolor. It was also her last major success as a child star.
Although it maintained the novel’s Victorian London setting, the film introduced several new characters and storylines and used the Second Boer War and the Siege of Mafeking as a backdrop to the action. Temple and Arthur Treacher had a musical number together, performing the song “Knocked ‘Em in the Old Kent Road”. Temple also appeared in an extended ballet sequence. The film’s ending was drastically different from the book.
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Last Clear Chance is a 1959 American short film produced and directed by Robert Carlisle. Sponsored by Union Pacific Railroad, Last Clear Chance is a safety film intended to warn young drivers to be careful at railroad crossings. The film’s cast consists of William Boyett, Harold Agee, Mrs. Harold Agee, Tim Bosworth, William Agee, Christine Lynch, and Lou Spraker. Written by Leland Baxter, the film was shot in parts of Idaho. Wondsel, Carlisle & Dunphy Inc, based in New York City, served as the film’s production company.
The film centers on the Dixon family, in particular Alan Dixon, who has recently received his driver’s license and is eager to begin driving a car. When local police officer Hal Jackson visits the Dixons and learns that Alan’s license has arrived, he sits down and tells Alan ways to drive safely and avoid getting into accidents. Although the film is fictional, a real family served as the inspiration for the film’s scenario. During production, assistance was provided by staff of the National Safety Council, along with the Idaho State Police and the Colorado State Patrol.
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Kept Husbands is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by Lloyd Bacon, starring Dorothy Mackaill and Joel McCrea, with major supporting roles filled by Robert McWade, Florence Roberts and Mary Carr. The original story was written by the film’s associate producer, Louis Sarecky, and adapted for the screen by Forrest Halsey and Alfred Jackson. Although primarily a drama, the film has many comedic touches to it.
The film centers around the class struggles and stereotypes between the working class and the wealthy, which was particularly striking during the Depression era when this film was made. The film also points out the stereotypical gender roles which were prevalent at that time.
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The post Kept Husbands, 1931 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor is a 1936 two-reel animated cartoon short subject film in the Popeye Color Feature series, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on November 27, 1936 by Paramount Pictures. It was produced by Max Fleischer for Fleischer Studios, Inc. and directed by Dave Fleischer, with the title song by Sammy Timberg. The voice cast includes Jack Mercer as Popeye and J. Wellington Wimpy, Mae Questel as Olive Oyl and Gus Wickie as Sindbad the Sailor.
In 2004, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
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The post Cartoon: Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, 1936 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
The Lucky Texan is a 1934 Lonestar Films B-movie Western film featuring John Wayne (five years before his breakthrough appearance in Stagecoach), Barbara Sheldon, Gabby Hayes, and the legendary stuntman and actor Yakima Canutt. It was written and directed by Robert N. Bradbury. The plot concerns Wayne finding gold and making the mistake of trusting the local assayer. Please buy... Read more →
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Indestructible Man is a 1956 American crime horror science fiction film, an original screenplay by Vy Russell and Sue Dwiggins for producer-director Jack Pollexfen and starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Ross Elliott and Robert Shayne. The picture was produced independently by C.G.K. Productions, and distributed in the United States by Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. The film was distributed theatrically in 1956... Read more →
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1923 American romantic drama film with horror elements starring Lon Chaney, directed by Wallace Worsley, and produced by Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg. The supporting cast includes Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel de Brulier, and Brandon Hurst. The film was Universal’s “Super Jewel” of 1923 and was their most successful silent film,... Read more →
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Inside the Lines is a 1930 American Pre-Code spy drama film starring Betty Compson, Ralph Forbes, and Mischa Auer. Directed by Roy Pomeroy (who also was the associate producer) from a screenplay by John Farrow and Ewart Adamson, which in turn was based on the 1915 Broadway play of the same name by Earl Derr Biggers. This version is a... Read more →
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The Devil Bat is a 1940 black-and-white American horror film produced by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) and directed by Jean Yarborough. The film stars Bela Lugosi[4] along with Suzanne Kaaren, Guy Usher, Yolande Mallott and the comic team of Dave O’Brien and Donald Kerr as the protagonists. It was the first horror film from PRC.[5] Although described as a sequel,... Read more →
The post The Devil Bat, starring Bela Lugosi in a pre-vampire movie! appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Disorder in the Court is the 15th short film released by Columbia Pictures in 1936 starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard). The comedians released 190 short films for the studio between 1934 and 1959. Please buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready to watch? Click to create... Read more →
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Blue Steel is a 1934 Pre-Code Western film in which John Wayne plays a U.S. Marshal who is trying to capture the Polka Dot Bandit, who has taken off with $4,000. The film is also sometimes referred to as An Innocent Man or Stolen Goods in the U.S. Please buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready... Read more →
The post Blue Steel (1934), film with John Wayne as U.S. Marshal appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Noveltoons is a series of cartoons produced by Paramount Pictures’ Famous Studios from 1943 to the end of the studio during 1967. The series was known for bringing to life characters from Harvey Comics, such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Herman and Katnip, Little Audrey, and Baby Huey. All shorts from Baby Huey and Little... Read more →
The post Cartoon: The Stupidstitious Cat, 1947 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Gulliver’s Travels is a 1939 American cel-animated Technicolor feature film, produced by Max Fleischer and directed by Dave Fleischer for Fleischer Studios about an explorer who helps a small kingdom who declared war after an argument over a wedding song. The film was released to cinemas in the United States on December 22, 1939[2] by Paramount Pictures, which had the... Read more →
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Hook, Line and Sinker is a 1930 American Pre-Code slapstick comedy directed by Edward F. Cline from a screenplay by Ralph Spence and Tim Whelan. It was the third starring vehicle for the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey (Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey), and also featured Dorothy Lee. It would be one of the largest financial successes for RKO... Read more →
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Half Shot at Sunrise is a 1930 American comedy film starring the comedy duo Wheeler & Woolsey and Dorothy Lee. Their fourth film together, it was the second starring vehicle for the two, following the success of The Cuckoos, which had been released earlier in 1930. Directed by Paul Sloane, from a screenplay by Anne Caldwell, James Ashmore Creelman, Ralph... Read more →
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Go for Broke! is a 1951 war film directed by Robert Pirosh, produced by Dore Schary and featured Van Johnson in the starring role, as well as several veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Henry Nakamura, Warner Anderson, and Don Haggerty amongst its large cast. The film dramatizes the real-life story of the 442nd, which was composed of Nisei... Read more →
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Father’s Little Dividend is a 1951 comedy film directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, and Elizabeth Taylor. The movie is the sequel to Father of the Bride (1950). Please buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready to watch? Click to create your membership. Watch anywhere. Cancel anytime. Monthly Subscription Yearly Subscription 5$/month... Read more →
The post Father’s Little Dividend, 1951 – starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett and Elizabeth Taylor appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Dixiana (1930) is a lavish American pre-code comedy, musical film directed by Luther Reed and produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. The final third of the picture was photographed in Technicolor. The film stars Bebe Daniels, Everett Marshall, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Joseph Cawthorn, Jobyna Howland, Ralf Harolde, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (in his film debut) and Dorothy Lee. The... Read more →
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The Fight for the Sky is a short propaganda film commissioned by the US government to highlight the victories of the Allied air forces over Europe prior to the Normandy invasion and narrated by Ronald Reagan. Opening with shots of aerial combat over Europe the film turns to footage of the airmen acting casually in their base in East Anglia,... Read more →
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Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid is a 1929 live-action/animated short film produced to sell a series of Bosko cartoons. The film was never released to theaters, and therefore not seen by a wide audience until 2000 (71 years later) on Cartoon Network’s television special Toonheads: The Lost Cartoons. The film was produced on May 29, 1929 and directed by Hugh Harman... Read more →
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The Dance of Life (1929) is the first of three film adaptations of the popular Broadway play Burlesque, the others being Swing High, Swing Low (1937) and When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948). The Dance of Life was shot at Paramount’s Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, and included Technicolor sequences, directed by John Cromwell and A. Edward Sutherland. Please... Read more →
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Conspiracy is a 1930 American pre-Code mystery melodrama film produced and distributed by RKO Pictures and directed by Christy Cabanne. It is the second adaptation of the play The Conspiracy by Robert B. Baker and John Emerson and stars Bessie Love and Ned Sparks. Please buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready to watch? Click to... Read more →
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Beau Brummel is a 1924 American silent film historical drama starring John Barrymore and Mary Astor. The film was directed by Harry Beaumont and based upon Clyde Fitch’s 1890 play, which had been performed by Richard Mansfield, and depicts the life of the British Regency dandy Beau Brummell Several years after Barrymore’s death, his daughter Diana Barrymore was shown a... Read more →
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The Monster is a 1925 American silent horror comedy film directed by Roland West, based on the play by Crane Wilbur, and starring Lon Chaney and Johnny Arthur. It is remembered as an antecedental “old dark house” movie, as well as a precedent to a number of horror film subgenres. The film has been shown on the TCM network with... Read more →
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Angel and the Badman is a 1947 American Western film written and directed by James Edward Grant and starring John Wayne, Gail Russell, Harry Carey and Bruce Cabot. The film is about an injured gunfighter who is nursed back to health by a Quaker girl and her family whose way of life influences him and his violent ways. Angel and... Read more →
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The Deadly Companions is a 1961 American Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Maureen O’Hara, Brian Keith, Steve Cochran, and Chill Wills. Based on the novel of the same name by A. S. Fleischman, the film is about an ex-army officer who accidentally kills a woman’s son, and tries to make up for it by escorting the funeral... Read more →
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Plan 9 from Outer Space (originally titled Grave Robbers from Outer Space) is a 1959 American independent black and white science fiction-horror film, written, produced, directed, and edited by Ed Wood, that stars Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson, and Vampira. The film also posthumously bills Bela Lugosi as a star (silent footage of the actor had actually been shot... Read more →
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Calvin and the Colonel is an American animated sitcom about Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon, a shrewd fox, and Calvin T. Burnside, a dumb bear. Their lawyer was Oliver Wendell Clutch, who was a weasel (literally). The colonel lived with his wife Maggie Belle and her sister Susan Culpepper, who did not trust the colonel at all. Colonel Klaxon was in... Read more →
The post Cartoon: Calvin and the Colonel: The Colonel’s Old Flame 1962 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Algiers is a 1938 American drama film directed by John Cromwell and starring Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie, and Hedy Lamarr. Written by John Howard Lawson, the film is about a notorious French jewel thief hiding in the labyrinthine native quarter of Algiers known as the Casbah. Feeling imprisoned by his self-imposed exile, he is drawn out of hiding by a... Read more →
The post Algiers (1938), with Charles Boyer appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Till The Clouds Roll By is a 1946 Technicolor American musical film made by MGM. It is a fictionalized biopic of composer Jerome Kern, portrayed by Robert Walker. Kern was originally involved with the production of it, but died before it was completed. It has a large cast of well-known musical stars of the day who appear performing Kern’s songs.... Read more →
The post Till The Clouds Roll by (1946), with Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
Abraham Lincoln, also released under the title D. W. Griffith’s “Abraham Lincoln”, is a 1930 Pre-Code biographical film about American president Abraham Lincoln directed by D. W. Griffith. It stars Walter Huston as Lincoln and Una Merkel, in her second speaking role, as Ann Rutledge. Her first speaking role was in a short film, Love’s Old Sweet Song (1923) filmed... Read more →
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Blood on the Sun is a 1945 American drama romantic thriller war film directed by Frank Lloyd starring James Cagney and Sylvia Sidney. The film is based on a fictional history behind the Tanaka Memorial document. The film won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for a Black & White (Wiard Ihnen, A. Roland Fields) film in 1945. A... Read more →
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Dementia 13 (UK title: The Haunted and the Hunted) is a 1963 horror-thriller released by American International Pictures, starring William Campbell, Patrick Magee, and Luana Anders. The film was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Roger Corman. Although Coppola had been involved in at least two nudie films previously, Dementia 13 served as his first mainstream... Read more →
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The Animal Kingdom (also known as The Woman in His House in the UK) is a 1932 American pre-Code comedy-drama film directed by Edward H. Griffith based upon a comedy of manners of the same name by Philip Barry. The film stars Leslie Howard, Ann Harding, Myrna Loy, William Gargan, Ilka Chase, and Neil Hamilton. Howard, Gargan, and Chase also... Read more →
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Love Affair is a 1939 American romantic film starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer and featuring Maria Ouspenskaya. It was directed by Leo McCarey and written by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart, based on a story by McCarey and Mildred Cram. Plot Please buy a subscription to watch this movie and hundreds more: Ready to watch? Click to create... Read more →
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A Tale of Two Kitties is a 1942 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, written by Warren Foster, and features music by Carl W. Stalling. The short was released on November 21, 1942, and features the debut of Tweety, originally named Orson until his second cartoon, who delivers the line that would become his catchphrase: “I tawt... Read more →
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A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la Lune) is a 1902 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. Inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne’s novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, the film follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the... Read more →
The post A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès, 1902) appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
90 Day Wondering is a 1956 Looney Tunes Golden Collection cartoon. The Looney Tunes Golden Collection is a series of six four-disc DVD box sets from Warner Home Video, each containing about 60 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts. The series began on October 28, 2003, and ended on October 21, 2008. Please buy a subscription to watch this... Read more →
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Danger Lights is a 1930 film starring Louis Wolheim, Robert Armstrong, and Jean Arthur. The plot concerns railroading on the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, and the movie was largely filmed along that railroad’s lines in Montana. The railway yard in Miles City, Montana was a primary setting, while rural scenes were shot along the railway line through... Read more →
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The post Becky Sharp, 1935 starring Miriam Hopkins who was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post The Love Expert, 1920 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post Why Change Your Wife?, 1920 directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Gloria Swanson appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post Lorna Doone, 1922 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post The Cradle of Courage, 1920 starring William S. Hart appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post The Symbol of the Unconquered, 1920 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post The Love Flower, 1920 by D. W. Griffith appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post The High Sign, 1921 comedy film starring Buster Keaton appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post Private Buckaroo, 1942 musical appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post The White Rose, 1923 directed by D. W. Griffith appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post Before the White Man Came, 1920 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post Monte Cristo, 1922 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The post Riders of the Law, 1922 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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American silent film. Alfred E. Green [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Info.
The post The Man Who Had Everything, 1920 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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Ashes of Vengeance is a 1923 American drama film directed by Frank Lloyd, starring Norma Talmadge and Wallace Beery. It survives at the Library of Congress and at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. Plot: At the ball celebrating the wedding of Henry of Navarre on August 23, 1572, the evil Queen Mother Catherine de’ Medici (Josephine Crowell) persuades... Read more →
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The Pride of Palomar is a 1922 American drama silent film directed by Frank Borzage and written by Grant Carpenter, Peter B. Kyne and John Lynch. The film stars Forrest Stanley, Marjorie Daw, Tote Du Crow, James O. Barrows, Joseph J. Dowling and Alfred Allen. The film was released on November 26, 1922, by Paramount Pictures. A print of this... Read more →
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American educational propaganda film. Hill, R. David Bennett. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The post The road to health and happiness, 1937 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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St. Louis Blues is a 1929 American two-reel short film starring Bessie Smith. The early sound film features Smith in an African-American speakeasy of the prohibition era singing the W. C. Handy standard, “St. Louis Blues”. Directed by Dudley Murphy, it is the only known film of Bessie Smith, and the soundtrack is her only recording not controlled by Columbia... Read more →
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Neighbors is a 1920 two-reel silent comedy film co-written, co-directed by, and starring Buster Keaton. Plot: Buster Keaton and Virginia Fox play young lovers who live in tenements, the rear of which face each other, with backyards separated by a wooden fence and with their families constantly feuding over the lovers’ relationship. Each morning Buster and Virginia exchange love letters... Read more →
The post Neighbors, 1920 starring Buster Keaton appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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Short film with Roy Atwell announcing popular radio stars Arthur Tracy, The Mills Brothers, Donald Novis, and Vincent Lopez & His Orchestra. U. M. & M. TV Corp. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Info.
The post The Little Broadcast, 1933 appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The Playhouse is a 1921 American two-reel silent comedy film written, directed by, and starring Buster Keaton. The movie runs for 22 minutes, and is most famous for an opening sequence in which Keaton plays every role. Plot: The film is set up as a series of humorous tricks on the audience, with constant doubling, and in which things are... Read more →
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Boogie-Woogie Dream (1944) is an independently made short film musical, directed by Hanus Burger, starring Lena Horne, Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Teddy Wilson and his orchestra. It is a significant film in the history of jazz for its early glimpse of Lena Horne (in her second film) and as the only film of boogie-woogie piano masters Albert Ammons and... Read more →
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The Electric House is a 1922 American short comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton. Plot: Keaton plays a botany student who is accidentally awarded an electrical engineering degree. He then attempts to wire a home using many gadgets. The man to whom the degree should have been awarded then exacts revenge by rewiring those gadgets to cause mayhem.... Read more →
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Reet, Petite, and Gone is a 1947 American musical race film directed in his feature film debut by short subject director William Forest Crouch that was produced and released by Astor Pictures. The film stars Louis Jordan and in her credited feature film debut, June Richmond. Plot: Louis Jarvis Jr is called away from his band’s radio show to visit... Read more →
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The Boat is a 1921 American two-reel silent comedy film written and directed by and starring Buster Keaton. The International Buster Keaton Society takes its name, The Damfinos, from this film. Plot: Buster is married with two children (both of whom wear the porkpie hat made famous by Keaton). He has built a large boat he has christened Damfino inside... Read more →
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My Wife’s Relations is a 1922 American short comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton. Through a judicial error Buster finds himself married to a large domineering woman with an unfriendly father and four bullying brothers. Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Info.
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Shoulder Arms is Charlie Chaplin’s second film for First National Pictures. Released in 1918, it is a silent comedy set in France during World War I. The main part of the film actually occurs in a dream. It co-starred Edna Purviance and Sydney Chaplin, Chaplin’s elder brother. It is Chaplin’s shortest feature film as well as the first feature film... Read more →
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The Frozen North is a 1922 American short comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton. The film is a parody of early western films, especially those of William S. Hart. The film was written by Keaton and Edward F. Cline (credited as Eddie Cline). The film runs for around 17 minutes. Sybil Seely and Bonnie Hill co-star in the... Read more →
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Hard Luck is a 1921 American two-reel silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. It was written and directed by Keaton and Edward F. Cline. The runtime is 22 minutes. For sixty years it was Keaton’s only major lost film until it was partially reconstructed in 1987, with the critical final scene (which Keaton called the greatest laugh-getting scene of his... Read more →
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The Goat is a 1921 American two-reel silent comedy film written, directed by, and starring Buster Keaton. Plot: Buster Keaton is walking by and peers through a barred window while captured murderer “Dead Shot Dan” is having his picture taken. Seeing that the photographer is looking away, Dan moves his head to the side and snaps a picture of Buster... Read more →
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The Haunted House is a 1921 American two-reel silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. It was written and directed by Keaton and Edward F. Cline. The runtime is 21 minutes. Plot: Keaton plays a teller at a successful bank. Unbeknownst to him, the manager at the bank and his gang are planning on pulling off a robbery and hiding in... Read more →
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The Return of Chandu is a 1934 American 12 episode fantasy film serial based on the radio series Chandu the Magician. It was produced by Sol Lesser and directed by Ray Taylor, and starred Béla Lugosi as Frank Chandler (aka Chandu the Magician). The serial was originally released to be booked by theaters in any one of three ways: as... Read more →
The post The Return of Chandu, 1934 (serial) Chapter 1: The Chosen Victim appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The Scarecrow is a 1920 American two-reel silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. It was written and directed by Keaton and Edward F. Cline. The runtime is 19 minutes. One of the more memorable scenes of the film is the opening, where Buster and Joe Roberts share a small one room house that is filled with many space- and labor-saving... Read more →
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One Week is a 1920 American two-reel silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton, the first film to be released made by Keaton on his own; Keaton had worked with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for a number of years. The film was written and directed by Keaton and Edward F. Cline, and runs for 19 minutes. Sybil Seely co-stars. The High Sign... Read more →
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The House I Live In is a ten-minute short film written by Albert Maltz, produced by Frank Ross and Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Frank Sinatra. Made to oppose anti-Semitism at the end of World War II, it received an Honorary Academy Award and a special Golden Globe Award in 1946. In 2007, this film was selected for preservation in the... Read more →
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The Paleface is a 1922 Buster Keaton two-reeler Western comedy film. Plot: Crooked “oil sharks” led by a man named Hunt have stolen an Indian tribe’s lease to their land and given them 24 hours to vacate. Furious, the Indian chief orders that the first white man who enters their encampment be killed. A butterfly collector (Keaton) unwittingly wanders in... Read more →
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The Clutching Hand (in full, The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand) is a 1936 15-episode serial produced by the Weiss Brothers based on the final Craig Kennedy novel of the 1934 same name by Arthur B. Reeve. A 70-minute feature film using a condensed version of the serial was also released in the same year. In it, the famous... Read more →
The post The Clutching Hand, 1936 (serial) Chapter 1: Who Is The Clutching Hand? appeared first on Public Domain Movies.
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The Golf Specialist is a 1930 comedy short subject from RKO Pictures, starring W. C. Fields. It was his first talkie. The film was shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey when many early film studios in America’s first motion picture industry were based there in the early part of the 20th century. The film features lines such as “I would... Read more →
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Cops is a 1922 American two-reel silent comedy film about a young man (Buster Keaton) who accidentally gets on the bad side of the entire Los Angeles Police Department during a parade and is chased all over town. It was written and directed by Edward F. Cline and Keaton. This very Kafka-esque film was filmed during the rape-and-murder trial of... Read more →
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Bubbling Over is a 1934 American musical comedy short film directed by Leigh Jason. Plot: Samson Peabody is the janitor in an apartment building where he and his wife Ethel live with a large crowd of Samson’s freeloading relatives. When more relatives come to stay, Ethel throws them out. A scheming occupant of the building reads Samson’s mail and poses... Read more →
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Here Comes Tobor (1956) was a proposed American science-fiction television series, meant as a spin-off off the 1954 film Tobor the Great. It was produced for the 1956–1957 season. However, the project was not aired and only a pilot episode was filmed. Tobor (‘Robot’ spelled backwards) was a nine-foot-tall robot that had come into the control of the U.S. government.... Read more →
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Sing a Song of Six Pants is a 1947 short film starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard). It is the 102nd short film released by Columbia Pictures starring the trio. The comedians released 190 short films for the studio between 1934 and 1959. Plot: The Stooges run a tailor shop that... Read more →
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The Dentist is a 1932 American Pre-Code comedy short, starring W. C. Fields. The film is one of four short films Fields made with the “king of comedy,” Mack Sennett, at Paramount. Although Sennett was near the end of his career, he found good use of the new medium of talking pictures for comedy, as the film demonstrates. It was... Read more →
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How to Succeed With Brunettes, a 1967 short film produced by the US Navy to instruct its officers on proper dating etiquette. Sequel to Blondes Prefer Gentlemen (1965). US Navy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Info.
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Blondes Prefer Gentlemen, 1965: This 1965 US Navy film seeks to educate young naval officers on proper dating etiquette. US Navy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Info.
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The Musketeers of Pig Alley is a 1912 American short drama and a gangster film. It is directed by D. W. Griffith and written by Griffith and Anita Loos. It is also credited for its early use of follow focus, a fundamental tool in cinematography. The film was released on October 31, 1912 and re-released on November 5, 1915 in... Read more →
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Daydreams is a 1922 American short comedy film directed by and featuring Buster Keaton. The film is most famous for a scene where Keaton finds himself on the inside of a riverboat paddle wheel. Plot: Buster wants to marry a girl, but her father disapproves. Therefore Keaton vows he will go the city and get a job, or commit suicide.... Read more →
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A Woman was Charlie Chaplin’s ninth film for Essanay Films. It was made in Los Angeles at the Majestic Studio and released in 1915. Plot: A well-to-do family of three is asleep on a park bench. The father (Charles Insley) is awakened when a pretty girl (Margie Reiger) trips over his outstretched feet. The father is an incorrigible womanizer and... Read more →
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Royal Wedding is a 1951 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical comedy film starring Fred Astaire and Jane Powell, with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. The film was directed by Stanley Donen; it was his second film and the first he directed on his own. It was released as Wedding Bells in the United Kingdom. The story is set... Read more →
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The Wizard of Oz is a 1925 American silent fantasy-adventure comedy film directed by Larry Semon, who also performs in the lead role as a Kansas farmhand and later in the story disguised as the Scarecrow. This production, which is the only completed 1920s adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, costars Dorothy Dwan as Dorothy,... Read more →
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The Silent Command is a 1923 American silent drama film directed by J. Gordon Edwards featuring Bela Lugosi as a foreign saboteur in his American film debut. The film, written by Anthony Paul Kelly and Rufus King, also stars Edmund Lowe, Alma Tell, and Martha Mansfield. The film depicts the story of Benedict Hisston (Lugosi), who is part of a... Read more →
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The Adventurer is an American short comedy film made in 1917 written and directed by Charlie Chaplin, and is the last of the twelve films made under contract for the Mutual Film Corporation. Plot: Charlie Chaplin plays an escaped convict from the state penitentiary who, clad in his striped prison uniform, is on the run from prison guards. He skillfully... Read more →
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Target for Today is a documentary film describing the preparation and mounting of a United States Army Air Forces raid on East Prussia It contains much combat footage of B-17 and B-24 bombers and named for the phrase used at briefings before air raids. The October 1943 footage was filmed during Eighth Air Force attacks on Nazi Germany industrial targets... Read more →
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Misbehaving Husbands is a 1940 American comedy of errors film directed by William Beaudine for Producers Releasing Corporation. The film had the working titles of At Your Age and Dummy Husbands. Harry Langdon, Betty Blythe, Esther Muir and others in the cast were stars in silent films. It was Gig Young’s film debut. Plot: Absent-minded department store owner Henry Butler... Read more →
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The Merry Frolics of Satan (French: Les Quat’Cents Farces du diable, literally The Four Hundred Tricks of the Devil) is a 1906 French silent film directed by and starring Georges Méliès. The film, an updated comedic adaptation of the Faust legend, follows the adventures of an engineer who barters with the Devil for superhuman powers and is forced to face... Read more →
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Buck Rogers is a 1939 Universal serial film starring Buster Crabbe (who had previously played the title character in two Flash Gordon serials and would return for a third in 1940) as the eponymous hero, Constance Moore, Jackie Moran and Anthony Warde. It was based on the Buck Rogers character created by Philip Francis Nowlan, which had appeared in magazines... Read more →
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The Phantom Planet is a 1961 independently made American black-and-white science fiction film, produced by Fred Gebhardt, directed by William Marshall, that stars Dean Fredericks, Coleen Gray, Anthony Dexter, and Francis X. Bushman. The film was released in the U.S. by American International Pictures as a double feature with Assignment Outer Space. Plot: In 1980, the United States Air Force’s... Read more →
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Cosmos: War of the Planets (also released in Europe as Year Zero: War In Space) is a 1977 Italian film directed by Alfonso Brescia and starring John Richardson. It is considered a remake of the 1965 film Planet of the Vampires. It was also released as War of the Planets (not to be confused with the 1965 Antonio Margheriti film... Read more →
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13 Frightened Girls (also known as The Candy Web) is a 1963 Pathécolor Cold War spy film directed and produced by William Castle. Kathy Dunn stars as a teenage sleuth who finds herself embroiled in international espionage. Castle, who was famous for promoting his films with gimmicks, generated publicity by advertising for girls from 13 countries to compete for parts... Read more →
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The East Is Red (simplified Chinese: 东方红; traditional Chinese: 東方紅; pinyin: Dōngfāng Hóng), is a 1965 Chinese film directed by Wang Ping. It is a “song and dance epic” dramatizing the history of the Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party under the leadership of Mao Zedong, from the beginnings of the May Fourth Movement, to the Civil War against the... Read more →
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Ghosts is a 1915 silent film drama based on the famous play Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen. It was directed by George Nichols. D. W. Griffith produced the film and Erich von Stroheim served in several capacities as technical advisor, wardrobe assistant and costume designer. George Siegmann was an assistant director. The film had an alternate or working title The Wreck.... Read more →
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Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 animated short film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. It is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur. McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act; the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCay’s employer William Randolph Hearst curtailed... Read more →
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Two Weeks to Live is a 1943 American Lum and Abner film directed by Malcolm St. Clair. Plot: This time around, Abner Peabody, proud owner of the Jot ‘Em Down general store in Pine Ridge, Arkansas, inherits railroad stock from his Uncle Ernest. Because of this, he becomes the sole owner of the C&O Railroad. He assumes that it is... Read more →
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Alice’s Wonderland is a 1923 Walt Disney short silent film, produced in Kansas City, Missouri. The black-and-white short was the first in a series of Walt Disney’s famous Alice Comedies and had a working title of Alice in Slumberland. The film was never shown theatrically, but was instead shown to prospective film distributors. It was included as a bonus feature... Read more →
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Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is a 1925 American silent epic adventure-drama film directed by Fred Niblo and written by June Mathis based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by General Lew Wallace. Starring Ramon Novarro as the title character, the film is the first feature-length adaptation of the novel and second overall, following the... Read more →
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That’s My Baby! is a 1944 American film directed by William Berke and starring Richard Arlen, Ellen Drew, and Leonid Kinskey. Plot: Phineas Moody, the head of Moody Comics is in terrible health. His worried daughter Betty calls in two doctors who discover that Phineas hasn’t laughed in decades. Betty and her future husband Tim Jones fill the Moody mansion... Read more →
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Seven Years Bad Luck is a 1921 American comedy film written and directed by, and starring Max Linder. A man about to be married becomes fearful of bad luck when he breaks a mirror. Plot: Max Linder returns home drunk after his bachelor party. The next morning, he is awakened by a loud noise. His valet John, while chasing his... Read more →
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A Farewell to Arms is a 1932 American pre-Code romance drama film directed by Frank Borzage and starring Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper, and Adolphe Menjou. Based on the 1929 semi-autobiographical novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, with a screenplay by Oliver H.P. Garrett and Benjamin Glazer, the film is about a romantic love affair between an American ambulance... Read more →
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War of the Robots (Italian title: La guerra dei robot) is a 1978 Italian film directed by Alfonso Brescia. The film was later released on DVD as both Reactor and War of the Robots. The 4 films in Alfonso Brescia’s sci-fi series are Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977, a.k.a. Year Zero War in Space), Battle of the Stars (1978,... Read more →
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Haldane of the Secret Service is a 1923 American adventure silent film directed by Harry Houdini. The film stars Harry Houdini, Gladys Leslie, William J. Humphrey, Richard Carlyle, Edward Boulden, Jane Jennings and Charles Fang. The film was released on September 30, 1923, by Film Booking Offices of America. Plot: “Heath Haldane (Houdini), son of a detective slain by a... Read more →
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Anna Christie is a 1923 silent era drama motion picture based on the 1921 play by Eugene O’Neill (first film version), starring Blanche Sweet and William Russell. Directed by John Griffith Wray and produced by Thomas H. Ince for First National Pictures, the screenplay was adapted by Bradley King from the Eugene O’Neill play of the same title. Thomas H.... Read more →
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Our Hospitality is a 1923 silent comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton. Released by Metro Pictures Corporation, the film uses slapstick and situational comedy to tell the story of Willie McKay, who gets caught in the middle of the infamous “Canfield”–”McKay” feud, an obvious satire of the real-life Hatfield–McCoy feud. It was a groundbreaking work for the comedy... Read more →
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White Tiger is a 1923 American crime film directed by Tod Browning starring Priscilla Dean and featuring Wallace Beery in a supporting role. Tod Browning [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Info.
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Wives Under Suspicion is a 1938 film noir crime film directed by James Whale, starring Warren William, Gail Patrick, Ralph Morgan, and Constance Moore, and released by Universal Pictures. In 1966, the film entered the public domain in the United States because the claimants did not renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication. Plot: A district attorney... Read more →
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The Covered Wagon is a 1923 American silent Western film released by Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by James Cruze based on a novel by Emerson Hough about a group of pioneers traveling through the old West from Kansas to Oregon. J. Warren Kerrigan starred as Will Banion and Lois Wilson as Molly Wingate. On their quest they experience... Read more →
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The Love Nest is a 1923 American short comedy silent film written and directed by and starring Buster Keaton. Plot: In order to escape from his life and his lost love, Keaton sets off on his small boat, Cupid, but runs into the whaling ship, The Love Nest. The whaler’s merciless captain (Joe Roberts) throws crew members overboard for even... Read more →
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The Balloonatic is a 1923 American short comedy film co-directed by and starring Buster Keaton. It was one of Keaton’s final short films. Plot: A young man (Keaton) has a series of encounters in an amusement area, much like Coney Island, until happening upon a group of men preparing a hot air balloon for launch. The young man assists the... Read more →
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The Shock is a 1923 American silent drama film directed by Lambert Hillyer and starring Lon Chaney as a cripple named Wilse Dilling. The film was based on a story by William Dudley Pelley. This is one of the rare Lon Chaney films where he gets the girl. Plot: In 1906, Wilse Dilling (Lon Chaney), a crippled gangster living like... Read more →
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Where the North Begins is a 1923 American silent drama film produced and distributed by Warner Bros. This was the third film for up-and-coming canine actor Rin Tin Tin. The film survives today. Production: Warner Brothers decided to invest $100,000 in producing the screenplay as written by Rin Tin Tin’s owner and trainer, Lee Duncan. Director Chester M. Franklin shot... Read more →
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Glorifying the American Girl is a 1929 American Pre-Code, musical comedy film produced by Florenz Ziegfeld that highlights Ziegfeld Follies performers. The last third of the film, which was filmed in early Technicolor, is basically a Follies production, with cameo appearances by Rudy Vallee, Helen Morgan, and Eddie Cantor. Rex Beach was paid $35,000 for the original story. The script... Read more →
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Three Ages is a 1923 black-and-white American feature-length silent comedy film starring comedian Buster Keaton and Wallace Beery. The first feature Keaton wrote, directed, produced, and starred in (unlike The Saphead (1920), in which he only acted), Keaton structured the film like three inter-cut short films. The structure also worked as a satire of D. W. Griffith’s 1916 film Intolerance.... Read more →
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Scaramouche (1923) is a silent costume adventure based on the novel Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini, directed by Rex Ingram, released by Metro Pictures, and starring Ramón Novarro, Alice Terry, Lewis Stone, and Lloyd Ingraham. Scaramouche will become public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019 Plot: André-Louis Moreau (Ramon Novarro) loves Aline de Kercadiou (Alice Terry), the niece... Read more →
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Safety Last! is a 1923 American silent romantic comedy film starring Harold Lloyd. It includes one of the most famous images from the silent film era: Lloyd clutching the hands of a large clock as he dangles from the outside of a skyscraper above moving traffic. The film was highly successful and critically hailed, and it cemented Lloyd’s status as... Read more →
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The Ten Commandments is a 1923 American silent religious, epic film and produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Written by Jeanie MacPherson, the film is divided into two parts: a prologue recreating the biblical story of the Exodus and a modern story concerning two brothers and their respective views of the Ten Commandments. Lauded for its “immense and stupendous”... Read more →
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Swing High, Swing Low is a 1937 American romantic comedy drama film directed by Mitchell Leisen and starring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray. It is the second film adaptation of the popular Broadway play Burlesque by George Manker Watters and Arthur Hopkins (after The Dance of Life (1929) and before When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948)). Plot: Working her... Read more →
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Life with Father is a 1947 Technicolor American comedy film. It tells the true story of Clarence Day, a stockbroker who wants to be master of his house, but finds his wife and his children ignoring him, until they start making demands for him to change his own life. The story draws largely on the insistence by his wife that... Read more →
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My Favorite Brunette is a 1947 American romantic comedy film and film noir parody, directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Written by Edmund Beloin and Jack Rose, the film is about a baby photographer on death row in San Quentin State Prison who tells reporters his history. While taking care of his private-eye neighbor’s office,... Read more →
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c1/The_Last_Warning_%281929%29.ogv/The_Last_Warning_%281929%29.ogv.240p.webm The Last Warning is a 1929 American mystery film directed by Paul Leni, and starring Laura La Plante, Montagu Love, and Margaret Livingston. Its plot follows a New York producer’s attempt to re-stage a play five years after one of the original cast members was murdered in the theater. The film is based on the 1922 Broadway melodrama of the same name by Thomas F. Fallon, which in turn was based on the story House of Fear by Wadsworth Camp, the father of the writer Madeleine L’Engle. Conceived as a followup to Leni’s wildly successful 1927 production The Cat and the Canary (also starring La Plante), the film was produced by Universal Pictures under Carl Laemmle. Principal photography took place in Los Angeles in the summer of 1928 on sets recycled from Univeral’s The Phantom of the Opera (1925). It premiered on Christmas Day 1928 before expanding in January 1929, and was released as both a part-sound as well as a silent film; the silent version is the only known extant version. It was the final film directed by Leni before his death from blood poisoning on September 2, 1929.
Response by critics to The Last Warning varied, with many praising its performances and cinematography, though several commented on its incoherent plot, and others criticized its integration of sound, feeling it presented optimally as a silent film. In 2016, Universal Pictures selected the film for restoration, using elements from two different prints owned by the Packard Humanities Institute and the Cinémathèque Française.
Plot:
In a Broadway production of a play entitled The Snare, one of the actors, John Woodford, inexplicably dies during a stage performance, and his body disappears. Few clues exist as to what caused his death, aside from several drops of liquid found that resembled chloroform. Rumors of a love triangle between Woodford and two cast members circulate as a possible motive for his death.
Five years after the theater’s closure, producer Mike Brody decides to solve the mystery by again staging the play with the remaining cast and re-enacting Woodford’s murder. During rehearsals in the abandoned theater, strange occurrences plague the cast, including ominous noises, falling scenery, and an unexplained fire. Doris, the lead actress, has her purse stolen from her dressing room by an unseen assailant; Josiah Bunce, the stage manager, reportedly receives a telegram warning him to drop out of the play, signed by John Woodford, and the theater’s new owner, Arthur McHugh, also receives a visit from Woodford’s ghost.
The production continues, and during the final rehearsal, Harvey Carleton inexplicably disappears from the stage during a blackout. Doris spots a mysterious masked figure in a theater box in addition to a man resembling John Woodford, but both disappear. Behind a picture hanging on the stage, a lever is discovered which opens a trap door, where the cast find Harvey incoherent. Arthur and Richard Quayle, another cast member, venture inside, where they discover a tunnel that leads to Doris’s dressing room.
Arthur has police officers appointed at the theater for the show’s opening the following night. During the performance, an electrical wire charged to 400 volts is discovered connected to a candlestick onstage, and Arthur lunges at Richard to prevent him from touching it during the final scene. The unseen masked assailant is discovered hiding inside a grandfather clock onstage, but he drops through a trap door in the floor just after shooting one of the police officers. The assailant scales the theater and throws a dummy resembling John Woodford onto the stage. He then begins swinging from a rope, but is brought back down by a stagehand who cuts it.
The masked assailant is discovered to be Josiah, who caused Woodford’s death via electrocution and had been behind the “hauntings” to prevent the theater from being used.
Leni, Paul [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Don%27t_Be_a_Sucker_%28high_resolution_35mm_transfer%29.webm Don’t Be a Sucker is a short film produced by the United States Department of War released in 1943, and adapted as a slightly shorter version in 1947. It has anti-racist and anti-fascist themes, and was made to educate viewers about prejudice and discrimination. The film was also made to make the case for the desegregation of the United States armed forces. It is held for preservation by the U.S. National Archives. Plot:
An American who has been listening to a racist and bigoted rabble-rouser, who is preaching hate speech against ethnic and religious minorities and immigrants, is warned off by a naturalized Hungarian immigrant, possibly a Holocaust survivor or escapee, who explains to him how such rhetoric and demagogy allowed the Nazis to rise to power in Weimar Germany, and warns Americans not to fall for similar demagogy propagated by American racists and bigots.
US National Archives [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Memphis_Belle_-_A_Story_of_a_Flying_Fortress.webm The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress is a 1944 documentary film which ostensibly provides an account of the final mission of the crew of the Memphis Belle, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. In May 1943 it became the first U.S. Army Air Forces heavy bomber to complete 25 missions over Europe and return to the United States. The dramatic 16 mm color film of actual battles was made by three cinematographers, including First Lieutenant Harold J. Tannenbaum. Tannenbaum, a veteran of World War I, was killed in action during the filming when the bomber he was in was shot down over France on April 16, 1943.
The film was directed by Major William Wyler, narrated by Eugene Kern, and had scenes at its station, RAF Bassingbourn, photographed by Hollywood cinematographer Captain William H. Clothier. It was made under the auspices of the First Motion Picture Unit, part of the United States Army Air Forces. The film actually depicted the next to last mission of the crew (see below) on May 15, 1943, and was made as a morale-building inspiration for the Home Front by showing the everyday courage of the men who manned these bombers.
William Wyler [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Red_Nightmare_-_Freedom_And_You_%281962%29.webm Red Nightmare is the best known title of the 1957 Armed Forces Information Film (AFIF) 120, Freedom and You. It was an anti-communist short presented as an educational film about the nature of Communism. The film’s chief use was to mold public opinion against communism. The film was later released to American television and as an educational film to American schools under the Red Nightmare title. The film is a Cold War-era drama short subject starring Jack Kelly and Jeanne Cooper. Red Nightmare was directed by George Waggner (The Wolf Man) and narrated by Jack Webb. Though made for the Department of Defense, it was shown on American television on Jack Webb’s GE True in 1962.
Plot:
A man takes his American freedoms for granted, until he wakes up one morning to find out that the United States Government has been replaced with a Communist system. The basis for this short film, narrated by Jack Webb, is the alleged Soviet re-creation of US communities for the purpose of training infiltrators, spies, and moles.
The film begins in what looks like a typical American town. The camera moves back to reveal barbed wire, barricades, and soldiers in Soviet Army uniforms. Narrator Jack Webb informs us that there are several places behind the Iron Curtain used for training Soviet espionage and sabotage forces prior to infiltrating America.
Webb introduces us to a typical American family of father Jerry (Jack Kelly), wife Helen (Jeanne Cooper), and daughter Linda (Patricia Woodell, the original Bobbie Jo on Petticoat Junction) Donovan. Her boyfriend Bill Martin (Peter Brown) has been invited to dinner but while Jerry lectures Bill on football plays, Bill only has eyes for Linda. All is not well, as Jerry’s missing his PTA meeting to go bowling, and his intention to miss his Army Reserve training does not go over well with Helen. Linda and Bill inform Jerry and Helen they wish to get married but Jerry is angered and says they are too young, but he would have no objection if they waited five years after university.
Jack Webb explains how safe Jerry is in his world, but when Jerry goes to sleep, Webb looks grim and tells the audience Jerry is going to have a Red Nightmare.
Jerry awakes to find meetings in the public square about infiltrating America to bring down Capitalism. He returns home to find his daughter going to a farm collective escorted by Bill, who is now in Russian Army uniform. Helen informs Jerry that he will have to address the PTA on the glories of communism, which Jerry refuses to do, but his wife says he has no choice. At work, Jerry’s foreman (Robert Conrad) tells him that he has not met his quota and must work through the lunch break to meet it. On Sunday morning, Jerry wakes to find his two youngest children being sent to a State Communist school against his wishes. Jerry insists on the children going to Sunday School, and takes them to their church that has been turned into a museum glorifying the Soviet Union, including many inventions made by Americans which the Soviets claim to have invented. Jerry knocks the exhibits over, and is arrested by troops led by a Commissar (Peter Breck).
Jerry is brought to trial at a Soviet tribunal (Judge, Andrew Duggan; prosecutor, Mike Road), where there is no jury nor a defense attorney. Jerry demands to know what he is charged with, but the rights Americans take for granted are long gone. After condemning testimony from several witnesses, including his own wife, Jerry is convicted and sentenced to death. When he is strapped into the execution chair, Jerry makes a speech about the Soviet people awakening one day to overthrow communism, before he gets a bullet in the head from the Commissar (the killing is offscreen).
Jerry wakes up to his freedoms and apologizes to Bill and Linda. Bill says that Jerry had a point about waiting to get married and he and Linda will do so after he finishes his enlistment in the United States Army.
By Produced by Armed Forces Information Films, directed by George Waggner. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/6f/Silent_Night%2C_Bloody_Night.ogv/Silent_Night%2C_Bloody_Night.ogv.240p.webm Silent Night, Bloody Night is a 1972 American horror film directed by Theodore Gershuny and co-produced by Lloyd Kaufman. The film stars Patrick O’Neal and cult actress Mary Woronov in leading roles, with John Carradine in a supporting performance. The plot follows a series of murders that occur in a small New England town on Christmas Eve after a man inherits a family estate which was once an insane asylum. Many of the cast and crew members were former Warhol superstars: Mary Woronov, Ondine, Candy Darling, Kristen Steen, Tally Brown, Lewis Love, filmmaker Jack Smith and artist Susan Rothenberg. It was filmed in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York in 1970 but was not released theatrically until 1972 under the alternate titles Night of the Dark Full Moon, and in 1981 as Death House (sometimes stylized as Deathouse).
Although it is attributed to Zora Investments Associates in the credits, the film was never registered with the United States Copyright Office, and thus fell into the public domain.
Plot:
On Christmas Eve 1950, a man named Wilfred Butler, engulfed in flames, runs out of his mansion near East Willard, Massachusetts. His death is ruled accidental, and the house left to his grandson Jeffrey.
Twenty years later, lawyer John Carter arrives in East Willard on Christmas Eve with his assistant and mistress Ingrid, having been charged by Jeffrey Butler to sell the house. Carter meets with the town’s leading citizens: Mayor Adams; Sheriff Bill Mason; Charlie Towman, who owns the local newspaper; and Tess Howard, who operates the town’s telephone switchboard. They all agree to buy the Butler mansion on behalf of the town for the bargain price of $50,000, which Jeffrey Butler requires to be paid in cash the next day. Carter and Ingrid stay the night at the Butler mansion, unaware that they are being watched. After dinner, they retreat to a bedroom to have sex. Their unknown stalker enters the bedroom and brutally murders them both with an ax, and then reads from a Bible before placing a crucifix in Ingrid’s hand. The killer calls the sheriff, asking him to come investigate Carter’s disappearance, and introduces himself as the house’s owner. While talking with Tess, who forwards his call, he calls himself “Marianne”.
Jeffrey Butler arrives at the mansion to meet with Carter, but finds it locked and empty. He drives to the mayor’s home, where he meets Diane, the mayor’s daughter. The mayor has gone to the county’s bank to obtain the required cash for the payment, so she redirects Jeffrey to the sheriff’s office. At the same time, the sheriff is heading to the mansion, but stops at Wilfred Butler’s disturbed gravesite, where he finds Butler’s diary, then he’s attacked and killed with a shovel.
Failing to find the sheriff, Jeffrey goes back to the mayor’s, where Diane tells him she’s received some calls for her father by a certain “Marianne”, who said to be waiting at the mansion. Puzzled by the strange events, Jeffrey and Diane decide to drive to the mansion, but stop after they find the sheriff’s abandoned car. They instead go find Towman at the newspaper. Towman, who can’t speak due to laryngectomy, manages to explain that Tess also drove to the mansion. Jeffrey and Towman go after her while Diane does more research in the archives. After a call from “Marianne” tells her to look up the events of Christmas 1935, she pieces together Wilfred’s story. In 1930, his wife died of tuberculosis. In 1933, his daughter Marianne, who was 15 at the time, was raped and got pregnant; the son she gives birth to is Jeffrey, whom was sent away to California. In 1935, Wilfred turned the mansion into a mental hospital and had Marianne committed. The rest of the story has apparently been redacted.
At the mansion, “Marianne” greets a visibly frightened Tess, then repeatedly bashes her over the head with a candlestick. After an unfruitful trip to Tess’s house, Jeffrey goes back to Diane, who fills him in about her discoveries, particularly the fact that his mother didn’t die giving birth like Jeffrey thought. They head to the mansion. On their way there, they pass Towman’s car, which has been set on fire. Further down the road, Towman throws himself at Jeffrey’s car and Jeffrey runs him over, killing him. Examining the body, he realizes somebody cut his hands off. At the mansion, Jeffrey finds his grandfather’s diary, where it’s revealed he was the one who got Marianne pregnant. The diary recounts how Wilfred grew hostile toward the complacent hospital staff, so freed the hospital’s patients, causing a massacre that resulted in Marianne’s death as well. He then ended up faking his death in 1950 and he’s been living anonymously in a nearby mental hospital ever since.
Jeffrey tells Diane that his grandfather/father is still alive, and that the sheriff, Tess, Towman and the mayor were all former inmates Wilfred sought revenge on for the death of Marianne. The mayor arrives at the mansion armed with a rifle, and he and Jeffrey open fire, killing each other. The elderly Wilfred Butler finally appears, and Diane grabs Jeffrey’s gun and shoots him. A year later, Diane takes one last look at the Butler mansion before it is destroyed by a bulldozer.
By Gershuny, Theodore (director) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/The_Prisoner_of_Zenda_%281922%29.webm The Prisoner of Zenda is a 1922 silent adventure film, one of the many adaptations of Anthony Hope’s popular 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda and the subsequent 1896 play by Hope and Edward Rose. Plot:
Englishman Rudolf Rassendyll (Lewis Stone) decides to pass the time by attending the coronation of his distant relation, King Rudolf V of Ruritania (also played by Stone) . He encounters an acquaintance on the train there, Antoinette de Mauban (Barbara La Marr), the mistress of the king’s treacherous brother, Grand Duke ‘Black’ Michael (Stuart Holmes).
The day before the coronation, Rassendyll is seen by Colonel Sapt (Robert Edeson) and Captain Fritz von Tarlenheim (Malcolm McGregor). Astounded by the uncanny resemblance between Rassendyll and their liege, they take him to meet Rudolf at a hunting lodge. The king is delighted with his double and invites him to dinner. During the meal, a servant brings in a fine bottle of wine, a present from Michael delivered by his henchman, Rupert of Hentzau (Ramon Novarro). After Rudolf tastes it, he finds it so irresistible that he drinks the entire bottle by himself.
The next morning, Sapt is unable to rouse him; the wine was drugged. Sapt is afraid that if the coronation is postponed, Michael will seize the throne. The country is dangerously divided between the supporters of Rudolf and of Michael. The colonel declares that it is Fate that brought Rassendyll to Ruritania; he can take Rudolf’s place with no one the wiser. The Englishman is less certain, but he tosses a coin, which lands in Rudolf’s favor, and Rassendyll goes through with the ceremony. Afterwards, he is driven to the palace in the company of the universally adored Princess Flavia (Alice Terry).
Later, when Rassendyll returns to the lodge to switch places with the king once more, he and Sapt find only the corpse of Josef (Snitz Edwards), the servant left to guard the king. Rassendyll is forced to continue the masquerade.
With Rudolf guarded by a handful of trusted retainers at Zenda Castle, Michael tries unsuccessfully to bribe Rassendyll into leaving. In the days that follow, Rasssendyll becomes acquainted with Flavia, and the two fall in love. Meanwhile, Rupert tries to alienate Antoinette from Michael by telling her that Michael will marry Flavia once Rudolf is out of the way. However, it has an unintended effect; Antionette reveals Michael’s plans and Rudolf’s location to von Tarlenheim.
A dwarf assassin (John George) in Michael’s pay tries to garrot Rassendyll, but Sapt interrupts him before he can finish the job. The would-be killer mistakenly signals to an anxiously waiting Michael that the deed is done, and the duke hastens to Zenda to quietly dispose of the real king. However, Rassendyll was only rendered unconscious. When von Tarlenheim arrives with his news, the three men chase after Michael.
Sapt and von Tarlenheim split up to find a way into the castle, but when Antoinette lowers the drawbridge, Rassendyll goes inside alone. Though outnumbered, he manages to kill Michael in a sword fight. Then Sapt and von Tarlenheim come to his aid. When Rupert is cornered by the three men, he chooses death over a waterfall rather than execution for treason.
In the aftermath, Rudolf resumes his rightful position, while Rassendyll hides out at the lodge. By chance, Flavia stops there to speak with Colonel Sapt. Despite Sapt’s attempt to shield the princess from heartbreak, a servant girl blurts out that the “king” is staying at the lodge. Rassendyll is forced to tell his beloved the bitter truth. When he tries to persuade her to leave with him, her sense of honour and duty to her country compel her to stay, and Rassendyll departs alone.
Cast:
Lewis Stone as Rudolf Rassendyll / King Rudolf V
Alice Terry as Princess Flavia.
Robert Edeson as Colonel Sapt
Stuart Holmes as Grand Duke Michael
Ramon Novarro as Rupert of Hentzau
Barbara La Marr as Antoinette de Mauban
Malcolm McGregor as Captain Fritz von Tarlenheim
Edward Connelly as Marshal von Strakencz
Lois Lee as Countess Helga, Flavia’s lady-in-waiting
Snitz Edwards as Josef
Johnny George as Dwarf assassin
By Rex Ingram (YouTube : 4dZ7bUjcFjY) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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The Clampetts Strike Oil (episode 1) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/4/4a/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_01_The_Clampetts_Strike_Oil.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_01_The_Clampetts_Strike_Oil.ogv.240p.webm A rural Ozark family relocates to Beverly Hills after oil is discovered on their property worth USD25 million. After finding oil on the land, the family is surprised when Mr. Brewster (Frank Wilcox) of the OK Oil Company offers to buy it. After much coaxing by Cousin Pearl (Bea Benaderet), Jed (Buddy Ebsen) sells the swamp and moves the family to a mansion in Beverly Hills. Upon their arrival, they are arrested because of a case of mistaken identity but are later returned to the mansion safely. Originally titled The Hillbillies of Beverly Hills. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Getting Settled (episode 2) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/f6/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_02_Getting_Settled.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_02_Getting_Settled.ogv.240p.webm
The rough-hewn Clampetts are mistaken for servants as they try to adapt to their new environment. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Meanwhile, Back at the Cabin (episode 3) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/3d/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_03_Meanwhile_Back_At_The_Cabin.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_03_Meanwhile_Back_At_The_Cabin.ogv.240p.webm
Jane Hathaway finds that making the Clampetts more sophisticated will be harder than expected, while Pearl Bodine tries to get the attention of Mr. Brewster. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The Clampetts Meet Mrs. Drysdale (episode 4) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/8b/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_04_The_Clampetts_Meet_Mrs_Drysdale.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_04_The_Clampetts_Meet_Mrs_Drysdale.ogv.240p.webm
Mr. Drysdale tries furiously to make the Clampetts more acceptable to his socially conscious wife. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Jed Buys Stock (episode 5) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d9/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_05_Jed_Buys_Stock.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_05_Jed_Buys_Stock.ogv.240p.webm
Upon Mr. Drysdale’s advice to buy good stock, Jed purchases cows, pigs, and chickens to raise. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Trick or Treat (episode 6) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/86/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_06_Trick_Or_Treat.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_06_Trick_Or_Treat.ogv.240p.webm
The homesick Clampetts decide to go door-to-door meeting their Beverly Hills neighbors, not knowing it is Halloween. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The Servants (episode 7) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/a1/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_07_The_Servants.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_07_The_Servants.ogv.240p.webm
Yet another Drysdale attempt to “reform” the Clampetts goes awry when he tries to loan his servants to the hard-working family. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Jethro Goes to School (episode 8) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/79/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_08_Jethro_Goes_To_School.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_08_Jethro_Goes_To_School.ogv.240p.webm
The headmistress (Eleanor Audley) of an exclusive private school for boys is astonished to find the teenaged Jethro enrolled in her fifth grade. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Elly’s First Date (episode 9) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/20/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_09_Ellys_First_Date.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_09_Ellys_First_Date.ogv.240p.webm
Misunderstandings abound as the spoiled college student Sonny Drysdale attempts to woo Elly May, only to flee to his mother in the end. Louis Nye guests as Sonny Drysdale. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Pygmalion and Elly (episode 10) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/fe/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_10_Pygmalion_And_Elly.ogv/Beverly_Hillbillies_Episode_10_Pygmalion_And_Elly.ogv.240p.webm
Sonny resumes his high-class courtship of Elly May, by playing Julius Caesar and Pygmalion. CBS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The Beverly Hillbillies is an American situation comedy television series broadcast on CBS from 1962 to 1971. The show had an ensemble cast featuring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer Jr. as the Clampetts, a poor backwoods family from the Ozarks region who move to posh Beverly Hills, California after striking oil on their land. The show was produced by Filmways and was created by writer Paul Henning. It was followed by two other Henning-inspired “country cousin” series on CBS: Petticoat Junction and its spin-off Green Acres, which reversed the rags-to-riches, country-to-city model of The Beverly Hillbillies.
The Beverly Hillbillies ranked among the top 20 most-watched programs on television for eight of its nine seasons, twice ranking as the number one series of the year, with a number of episodes that remain among the most-watched television episodes in history. It accumulated seven Emmy nominations during its run. The series remains in syndicated reruns, and its ongoing popularity spawned a 1993 film remake by 20th Century Fox.
Plot:
The series starts as Jed Clampett, an impoverished and widowed mountaineer, is living alongside an oil-rich swamp with his daughter and mother-in-law. A surveyor for the OK Oil Company realizes the size of the oil field, and the company pays him a fortune for the right to drill on his land. Patriarch Jed’s cousin Pearl Bodine prods him to move to California after being told his modest property could yield $25 million, and pressures him into taking her son Jethro along. The family moves into a mansion in wealthy Beverly Hills, California, next door to Jed’s banker, Milburn Drysdale and his wife, Margaret who has zero tolerance for hillbillies. The Clampetts bring a moral, unsophisticated, and minimalistic lifestyle to the swanky, sometimes self-obsessed and superficial community. Double entendres and cultural misconceptions are the core of the sitcom’s humor. Plots often involve the outlandish efforts Drysdale makes to keep the Clampetts’ money in his bank and his wife’s efforts to rid the neighborhood of those hillbillies. The family’s periodic attempts to return to the mountains are often prompted by Granny’s perceiving a slight from one of the “city folk”.
Fifty-five episodes of the series are in the public domain (all 36 season-one episodes and 19 season-two episodes), because Orion Television, successor to Filmways, neglected to renew their copyrights. As a result, these episodes have been released on home video and DVD on many low-budget labels and shown on low-power television stations and low-budget networks in 16-mm prints. In many video prints of the public domain episodes, the original theme music has been replaced by generic music due to copyright issues.
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Zontar_the_Thing_From_Venus.webm Zontar, the Thing from Venus (a.k.a. Zontar: The Invader from Venus) is a 1966, made for television science fiction film, directed by Larry Buchanan, and based on the teleplay by Hillman Taylor and Buchanan. It is a low-budget 16mm film color remake of Roger Corman’s It Conquered the World (1956), which also featured an alien invader from Venus. The film is arguably Buchanan’s best known.
Plot:
At a dinner party with their wives, NASA scientist Dr. Keith Ritchie (Tony Huston) reveals to his colleague Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar) that he has secretly been in communication with a three-eyed, bat-winged alien from Venus named Zontar who he claims is coming to Earth to solve all of the world’s problems. However, as soon as Zontar arrives on Earth via a fallen laser satellite it quickly becomes obvious that the skeletal black creature has a hidden agenda, as it begins causing local power outages that stop telephones, automobiles and even running water from working, and it starts taking control of people’s minds using flying lobster-like “injecto-pods” that sprout from its wings. Only after his wife is killed does Ritchie finally realize that Zontar has come not as a savior but as a conqueror, and he goes to confront the hideous alien in the sulfur spring-heated cave that it has made its secret base.
Zontar, the Thing from Venus (a.k.a. Zontar: The Invader from Venus) is a 1966, made for television science fiction film, directed by Larry Buchanan, and based on the teleplay by Hillman Taylor and Buchanan. It is a low-budget 16mm film color remake of Roger Corman’s It Conquered the World (1956), which also featured an alien invader from Venus.
The film is arguably Buchanan’s best known.
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/The_Eagle_Has_Landed_-_The_Flight_of_Apollo_11.webm This film tells the story of the historic first landing of men on the Moon in July, 1969. It depicts the principal highlight events of the mission from launching through post-recovery activities of Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Through television, motion picture and still photography, the film provides an “eye-witness” perspective of the Apollo 11 mission.
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/The_Freshman.webm The Freshman is a 1925 comedy film that tells the story of a college freshman trying to become popular by joining the school football team. It stars Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict, and James Anderson. It remains one of Lloyd’s most successful and enduring films.
The film was written by John Grey, Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan, and Ted Wilde. It was directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor.
In 1990, The Freshman was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, going in the second year of voting and being one of the first 50 films to receive such an honor.
Plot:
Harold Lamb (Harold Lloyd), a bright-eyed but naïve young man, enrolls at Tate University. On the train there, he meets Peggy (Jobyna Ralston). They are attracted to each other.
Harold decides that the best way to ensure his popularity at school is to emulate his movie idol, The College Hero, down to mimicking a little jig he does before greeting anyone, and taking his nickname, “Speedy”. However, the College Cad (Brooks Benedict) quickly makes him the butt of an ongoing joke, of which the freshman remains blissfully unaware. Harold thinks he is popular, when in fact he is the laughingstock of the whole school. His only real friend is Peggy, who turns out to be his landlady’s daughter. She is described in one of the film’s title cards as “the kind of girl your mother must have been”.
He tries out for the football team. The coach (Pat Harmon) is unimpressed, but as Harold has damaged their only practice tackle dummy, the coach uses him in its place. At the end of practice, though, he approves of Harold’s enthusiasm (undiminished after repeated tackling). The coach is about to dismiss the freshman when Chet Trask (James Anderson), the captain and star of the team, suggests making him their water boy, while letting him think he has made the squad.
Harold is persuaded to host the annual “Fall Frolic” dance. His tailor is late making his suit; with the dance well underway, it is barely being held together by basting stitches, but Harold puts it on and hopes for the best. During the party, his clothes start to fall apart, despite the efforts of the tailor (hiding in a side room) to effect repairs. When Harold sees the College Cad being too forward with Peggy, working as a hatcheck girl, Harold knocks him down. The incensed Cad then tells him just what everyone really thinks of him. Peggy advises him to stop putting on an act and be himself.
Harold is determined to prove himself by getting into the big football game. His chance comes when the other team proves too tough, injuring so many of Tate College’s players that the coach runs out of substitutes. Hounded by Harold and warned by the referee that he will forfeit if he cannot come up with another player, the coach reluctantly lets Harold go in. The first few plays are disastrous. Finally, he breaks free and is on his way to winning the game, but, mindful of a referee’s prior instruction that he is to stop playing when he hears the whistle, he drops the football just outside the end zone when a non-football whistle sounds. The other team recovers the ball with only a minute left to play. His teammates are disheartened, but Harold rouses them to make a final effort. He chases down the opposing ball carrier, knocks the football loose, scoops it up and runs it all the way back for the winning touchdown as time runs out, which at last earns him the respect and popularity he was after. To top it off, Peggy passes him a note proclaiming her love for him.
Produced by Harold Lloyd., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Beat_the_Devil_%281953%29.webm Beat the Devil is a 1953 adventure comedy film. The film was directed by John Huston, and starred Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida, and featured Robert Morley, Peter Lorre and Bernard Lee. Huston and Truman Capote wrote the screenplay, loosely based upon a novel of the same name by British journalist Claud Cockburn, writing under the pseudonym James Helvick. Huston made the film as a parody of a genre of film. Although often described as a parody of The Maltese Falcon, which Huston directed and in which Bogart and Lorre appeared, this is not the case. Capote said, “John [Huston] and I decided to kid the story, to treat it as a parody. Instead of another Maltese Falcon, we turned it into a … [spoof] on this type of film.”
The script, written on a day-to-day basis as the film was shot, concerns the adventures of a motley crew of swindlers and ne’er-do-wells trying to claim land rich in uranium deposits in Kenya as they wait in a small Italian port to travel aboard a tramp steamer en route to Mombasa.
Plot:
Billy Dannreuther (Humphrey Bogart) is a formerly-wealthy American who has fallen on hard times. He is reluctantly working with four crooks: Peterson (Robert Morley), ex-Nazi Julius O’Hara (Peter Lorre), Major Jack Ross (Ivor Barnard) and Ravello (Marco Tulli), who are trying to acquire uranium-rich land in British East Africa. Billy suspects that Major Ross murdered a British Colonial officer, who threatened to expose their plan. While waiting in Italy for passage to Africa, Billy and his wife Maria (Gina Lollobrigida) meet a British couple: Harry (Edward Underdown) and Gwendolen Chelm (Jennifer Jones), who plan to travel on the same ship. Harry is a very proper and traditional Englishman, while Gwendolen is flighty and fanciful and a compulsive liar. Billy and Gwendolen have an affair, while Maria flirts with Harry. Peterson becomes suspicious that the Chelms may be attempting to acquire the uranium themselves. His suspicions are unfounded, but they seem to him to be confirmed by Gwendolen, who lies about her husband and exaggerates his importance.
Billy and Peterson are in a car accident and wrongly reported to have been killed. In order to replace Peterson’s lost capital, Ravello approaches Harry Chelm and explains their scheme. Just then, to everyone’s surprise, Billy and Peterson return to the hotel alive and unharmed. The purser announces that the ship is at last ready to sail. On board, Harry reveals that he knows about Peterson’s scheme and intends to inform the authorities. Peterson orders Major Ross to kill Harry, but Billy thwarts the murder attempt. Harry’s outraged accusations alienate the ship’s drunken captain, who locks Harry in the brig, where he is uncomfortable, but safe from Major Ross.
The ship’s engine malfunctions and the ship sinks. When Billy goes to free Harry he finds that Harry has escaped and left the ship, intending to swim ashore. The passengers abandon the sinking ship in a lifeboat and land on an African beach, where they are arrested by Arab soldiers. They are interrogated by Ahmed (Manuel Serano), an Arab official who suspects that they may be spies or revolutionaries. Billy befriends Ahmed by talking with him about Rita Hayworth, upon whom Ahmed has a crush. Billy persuades him to send the party back to Italy. When they land, they are met and questioned by a Scotland Yard detective (Bernard Lee), who is investigating the murder of the Colonial officer. Gwendolen reveals Peterson’s scheme, his involvement in the murder, and his attempt to murder Harry to the detective, who promptly arrests Peterson, O’Hara, Major Ross, and Ravello. As the four crooks are led away in handcuffs, Gwendolen receives a telegram from British East Africa saying that Harry has acquired the land Peterson and the others meant to steal, and is now extremely rich and willing to forgive Gwendolen. Billy laughs happily, saying “This is the end, the end!”
By John Huston (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Let_There_Be_Light_%281946%29.webm Let There Be Light (1946) — known to the U.S. Army as PMF 5019 — is a documentary film directed by American filmmaker John Huston (1906–1987). It was the last in a series of three films directed by Huston while serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II. Its portrayal of soldiers suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder led to Let There Be Light being suppressed by the U.S. government; it was not released until the 1980s. Content:
Seventy-five U.S. service members — recent combat veterans suffering from various “nervous conditions” including psychoneurosis, battle neurosis, conversion disorder, amnesia, severe stammering, and anxiety states — are followed in the course of their medical management. A series of scenes chronicles their entry into the military psychiatric hospital, treatment, and eventual recovery and discharge, all typically in a period of 6 to 8 weeks. Treatments depicted include narcosynthesis, hypnosis, group psychotherapy, music therapy, and work therapy. The highlighted cases are presented as marked therapeutic successes, accompanied by upbeat musical cues, although the narrator cautions after one dramatic recovery that “the neurosis is not cured”. The patients, who explain themselves to the doctors on camera at some length, are treated soberly and with dignity, while the therapies are presented in an optimistic and flattering manner. The film ends with a number of the featured patients participating in a ceremony in which they are discharged, not just from the hospital, but from military service, and returned to civilian life.
Reception, suppression, and release:
The film was controversial in its portrayal of psychologically traumatized veterans of the war. “Twenty percent of our army casualties”, the narrator says, “suffered psychoneurotic symptoms: a sense of impending disaster, hopelessness, fear, and isolation.” Apparently due to the potentially demoralizing effects the film might have on post-war recruitment, it was subsequently banned by the Army after its production, although some unofficial copies had been made. Military police once confiscated a print Huston was about to show friends at the Museum of Modern Art. The Army claimed it invaded the privacy of the soldiers involved, and the releases Huston had obtained were lost; the War Department refused to get new ones.
The film’s eventual release in the 1980s by Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander, Jr. was attributed to his friend Jack Valenti who worked to get the ban lifted. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.[7] The copy of the film that was released was poor, with a garbled sound track that “made it almost impossible to understand the whispers and mumbles of soldiers in some scenes.
In 2010, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. The National Film Preservation Foundation then funded restoration of the print and its soundtrack. The restored version was released in May, 2012.
The National Archives now sells and rents copies of the film and, as a federal government work, it is in the public domain.
By John Huston (NFPF) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/December_7th_%281943%29.webm December 7th: The Movie is a 1943 propaganda film produced by the US Navy and directed by John Ford and Gregg Toland, about the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the event which sparked the Pacific War and American involvement in World War II. Production background:
The film begins with a chronological breakdown of the events of December 7, starting with the town of Honolulu gradually waking up and coming to life in the morning. A young private is credited with intercepting some vital information which his superiors dismiss; other sailors play baseball or attend religious services (where the chaplain immediately concludes the service with the statement, “Men, man your battle stations, and God bless you!”).
Then, “like locusts”, the Japanese planes start humming over the air above Oahu, and begin the now infamous attack on American military installations on the island, including the sinking of the Arizona, and the bombing of Hickam Field. All the while, back in Washington, Japanese diplomats are still talking with Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
An animated sequence is then shown, with radio towers over Japan, broadcasting a fictional speech by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. The narrator contradicts most of the “facts” that the Japanese leader tells his listeners in Tokyo, Nagasaki and Otaru, and Kobe (the height of the radio towers shown is assumed to be proportional to the respective station’s carrier power: 500 kW for Tokyo; 50 kW for Nagasaki and Otaru; and 10 kW for Kobe).
After the attack, Honolulu is not the same; the island is put under martial law, barbed wire and other protective barriers are set up in case of invasion and even children have to be evacuated and given gas masks. The film is notable for its sympathetic depiction of the Japanese in Hawaii, and the difficulties they now had to go through.
Censorship:
Started within days of the attack, the original film was 82 minutes long and asked some embarrassing questions, such as why there was no long-range reconnaissance and no short range air patrols. Further, the film had a lot of time devoted to the culture of the 160,000 Japanese-Americans in Hawaii and their response to the attack. For these reasons the long version of the film was censored for decades and the shorter 32-minute version released.
By Office of Strategic Services. Directed by John Ford and Gregg Toland [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/The_Cry_Of_Jazz_%281959%29.webm The Cry of Jazz is a 1959 documentary film by Ed Bland that connects jazz to African American history. It uses footage of Chicago’s black neighborhoods and performances by Sun Ra, John Gilmore, and Julian Priester interspersed with scenes of musicians and intellectuals, both black and white, conversing at a jazz club. It has been credited with predicting the urban riots of the 1960s and 70s, and has also been called the first Hip-Hop film. In 2010, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. The Library of Congress had this to say of the film and its significance: Cry of Jazz…is now recognized as an early and influential example of African-American independent filmmaking. Director Ed Bland, with the help of more than 60 volunteer crew members, intercuts scenes of life in Chicago’s black neighborhoods with interviews of interracial artists and intellectuals. Cry of Jazz argues that black life in America shares a structural identity with jazz music. With performance clips by the jazz composer, bandleader and pianist Sun Ra and his Arkestra, the film demonstrates the unifying tension between rehearsed and improvised jazz. Cry of Jazz is a historic and fascinating film that comments on racism and the appropriation of jazz by those who fail to understand its artistic and cultural origins.
Plot:
The Cry of Jazz is set in Chicago at the meeting of a jazz appreciation club of musicians and intellectuals, both Black and White. It is broken up into seven parts. Parts one, three, five, and seven center around conversations between the jazz club members. Parts two, four, and six are done in a documentary style and utilize footage of life in Chicago as well as of Sun Ra’s band performing the music. Alex, the film’s main character, serves as narrator during these sections. Although the film is nominally about jazz, jazz is utilized primarily as a metaphor through which to understand the African American experience.
Inspiration:
According to Bland, The Cry of Jazz was made in part as a reaction to the rising popularity of the cool jazz of the 1950s. In the early years of that decade, Bland, Hill, Kennedy, and Titus frequented a club in Chicago’s Southside called Jimmy’s, where they would converse with young musicians and jazz fans, both black and white. The most popular and well-known players of cool jazz were white, and in Bland’s view, the general excitement with cool jazz neglected to recognize jazz as fundamentally black music. In an interview with Waxpoetics, Bland referred specifically to the young white jazz fans he termed “jazz critics-to-be” as the primary perpetrators of this crime. In Bland’s words: “I felt there was a racial angle too; I felt they were trying to, shall we say, wipe the Blackness out of jazz. And they wouldn’t listen to us, so we decided to put it in stone.” In an introduction to The Cry of Jazz delivered at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, film critic Armond White hypothesized that Bland may also have been responding to Norman Mailer’s essay The White Negro, which reflects positively on the appropriation of African American culture and language by young white hipsters.
By Ed Bland (YouTube : gNv5l8KuoZw) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Back_pay_%281922%29.webm Back Pay is an extant 1922 silent drama film directed by Frank Borzage, produced by Cosmopolitan Productions and distributed through Paramount Pictures. It is based on a short story of the same name by Fannie Hurst, and stars Seena Owen. It was remade in 1930 as Back Pay for star Corinne Griffith.
Cast:
Seena Owen – Hester Bevins
Matt Moore – Jerry Newcombe
J. Barney Sherry – Charles G. Wheeler
Ethel Duray – Kitty
Charles Craig – Speed
Jerry Sinclair – Thomas Craig
By Franck Borzage (YouTube : 8J-thzr8td0) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/McLintock%21_%281963%29.webm McLintock! is a 1963 American western comedy film, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. The film co-stars Wayne’s son Patrick Wayne, Stefanie Powers, Jack Kruschen, Chill Wills and Yvonne DeCarlo (billed as “Special Guest Star”). Loosely based on William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, the project was filmed in Technicolor and Panavision and produced by Wayne’s company Batjac Productions. Plot:
Cattle, timber and mining baron George Washington “G.W.” McLintock (John Wayne) is living the single life on his ranch. He is estranged from wife Katherine (Maureen O’Hara), who left him two years before, suspecting him of adultery. She has been living the society life back East while their daughter Becky (Stefanie Powers) is completing her college degree.
Following a meeting with a group of homesteaders whom he cautions against trying to farm on the Mesa Verde:
“God made that land for the buffalo. It serves pretty well for cattle. But it hates the plow! And even the government should know you can’t farm six thousand feet above sea level!”
He hires one of them, attractive widow Louise Warren (Yvonne De Carlo), as his cook and housekeeper. G.W. welcomes both her and her two children into his home, including grown son Dev (Patrick Wayne), who is handy with his fists, good with cattle, and is an excellent chess player, who had to leave Purdue University on the death of his father.
Katherine (a.k.a. Katie), returns to the town of McLintock, seeking a divorce from G.W. He declines to give her one, and has no idea why she has been so angry with him for two years that she moved out.
Following a misunderstanding which leads to a Comanche subchief nearly being lynched by a hotheaded settler father who believes his daughter has been kidnapped, there is a gigantic brawl at the mud slide by one of McLintock’s mines. Significantly, Katherine is in there swinging on her estranged husband’s side as the local Indians watch the white folks make fools of themselves.
Rebecca “Becky” McLintock returns to town, along with her banjo-playing love interest, “Junior” Douglas (Jerry Van Dyke). Junior is approved of by Katherine but not G.W. However, she soon falls for Dev (of whom G.W. approves wholeheartedly), and they become engaged after he takes her across his knee and spanks her with a coal shovel following a sharp exchange between them. When they announce the engagement, G.W. and Mrs. Warren both give their blessings.
The same train that brought Becky home from college also brought back Chief Puma of the Comanche tribe, an honored enemy and blood brother of G.W., who has been released from prison by the federal government. The territorial governor is out to force the local Comanche tribe off their lands and onto a reservation near Fort Sill.
At the request of Chief Puma, McLintock acts as the spokesman for the Comanche, translating Puma’s speech into English at the kangaroo court hearing organized by Governor Humphrey. The governor announces that the Indians will be moved to Oklahoma, and Chief Puma and his subchiefs are imprisoned again. With the illicit help of G.W., a breakout is arranged and an Army train is looted of a cargo of Krag-Jorgenson rifles and ammunition. The Comanche head out on what Puma had called “the last fight of the Comanche,” hotly pursued by the local troop of U.S. Cavalry. This has the effect of bringing what Humphrey and Agard, the local Indian agent, have been doing to the attention of Washington. It is implied that both will shortly be removed from office.
At the Fourth of July celebration during which the Comanche breakout takes place, McLintock finally has enough of Katherine’s behavior. Following one insult too many, G.W. pursues Katherine through the streets and shops of the town like Nemesis, Katherine losing her clothing one piece at a time until she is down to her corset and bloomers. After an epic chase, he finally catches her, spanks her bottom with a coal shovel, and tells her that now she can have her divorce. She decides she does not want a divorce after all, and G.W. and Katherine happily reconcile.
By Andrew V. McLaglen (JDailymotion) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/The_Amazing_Adventure.webm The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss is a 1936 British romantic comedy film directed by Alfred Zeisler and starring Cary Grant. It is a remake of the 1920 film The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss. The film was re-issued in the United States in 1937 under the title The Amazing Adventure (also alternatively Romance and Riches), and was edited down from the original UK running time of 80 minutes, to 62 minutes. Most prints these days are the shorter one.
Plot:
In London, rich, idle socialite Ernest Bliss (Cary Grant) feels out of sorts for no discernible reason. He sees a doctor, Sir James Aldroyd, who bluntly informs him that he is suffering from too much money, that if he would be cured if he lived for a year on a few pounds per week. Bliss is so insulted that he makes a bet for £50,000 with Sir James that he can survive for a year, supporting himself solely on whatever he earns and not touching his inherited millions.
He takes the Underground to Stepney Green and rents an attic room. He falls behind on the rent, but landlady Mrs. Heath is sympathetic to his plight.
Finally, despite having no experience, he persuades Mr. Masters to give him a job selling Alpha stoves. After three weeks, he has not made a single sale, and Frances Clayton (Mary Brian), Masters’ secretary, tells Bliss that the company, in which Masters has invested his life savings, is in danger of closing down. Then Bliss comes up with an idea to promote the product. He takes £500 of his own money – but not for his own benefit, so the bet is still on – and offers free meals cooked on the stoves to the general public. A wholesale buyer places a trial order for 100 stoves, with the prospect of purchasing 40,000 a year if things work out. Masters is delighted and offers Bliss a partnership, but Bliss instead resigns.
After he finds another job, Bliss takes Frances to dinner. As they dance, she informs him that she too is leaving Masters; he offered her a partnership too, but of the matrimonial kind.
Late one night, Dr. Alroyd engages a car and a chauffeur for a medical emergency. That chauffeur turns out to be Bliss. After Bliss drives the doctor back to Harley Street, Bliss informs him that almost seven months have elapsed on their bet.
Dorrington, another customer, asks him to come to 11 Regents Park Gate, flat 6, which happens to be Bliss’s place. Bliss’s valet Clowes, with too much time on his hands, lost heavily betting on the dogs and let the flat to Dorrington. Dorrington has noticed the “resemblance” between the chauffeur and the absent owner. Dorrington has practiced forging Bliss’s signature and wants the chauffeur to cash a cheque for £30,000 in return for a third share. Bliss gets the cashier to give him blank pieces of paper in an envelope and returns to his flat. He reveals who he is to Dorrington and his henchman, but they do not believe him. In the ensuing fight, Dorringto slips away with the worthless envelope while Bliss struggles with the henchman. Finally a drunk Clowes emerges and hits the henchman with a bottle. Afterward, Bliss forgives his servant.
Frances gets a job with Mr. Montague; he makes it clear that he wants more than a secretary, but she needs the work. When she tells Bliss that Montague wants her to do some work outside the office at night, Bliss disables Montague’s car and has her hire him to take them to Montague’s rendezvous. After confirming that Montague’s intentions are not honourable, he takes Frances away. When his boss sacks him, he is unconcerned, but then the manager discharges mechanic Bill Bronson for standing up for him, so Bliss buys the company and orders that the manager be fired and replaced by Bill.
He persuades Frances to accept his marriage proposal. Then her mother arrives with terrible news; Frances’s sister will die unless she is taken to a winter resort in Switzerland. In desperation, Frances decides to marry Masters for the money she needs. She moves without informing Bliss. He finally tracks her down and, after learning why she broke up with him, fixes everything and marries her himself.
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/The_Hitch-Hiker_%281953%29.webm The Hitch-Hiker is a 1953 film noir directed by Ida Lupino, about two fishing buddies who pick up a mysterious hitchhiker during a trip to Mexico. Inspired by the crime spree of the psychopathic murderer Billy Cook (1928–1952), the screenplay was written by Robert L. Joseph, Lupino, and her former husband Collier Young, based on a story by blacklisted Out of the Past screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring (who did not receive screen credit). The Hitch-Hiker is regarded as the first American mainstream film noir directed by a woman and was selected in 1998 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
The film is in the public domain.
Plot:
Two men (Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy) from El Centro, California are driving toward a planned fishing trip at the Mexican town of San Felipe on the Gulf of California. Just south of Mexicali, they pick up a hitchhiker named Emmett Myers (William Talman), whose stolen car has apparently run out of gas. Myers turns out to be a psychopath who has committed multiple murders while hitch-hiking between Illinois and Southern California, and has managed to slip into Mexico at Mexicali. To evade the pursuing authorities, Myers forces the two men at gunpoint to journey deep into the heart of the Baja California Peninsula, toward the town of Santa Rosalía, where he plans to take a ferry across the Gulf of California.
Meanwhile, the men try to plot their escape from the violent, paranoid Myers. They try tactics such as sabotaging their car and leaving clues (like an engraved wedding ring) at various points on their journey. One man badly twists his ankle during an escape attempt. The sadistic Myers physically and mentally torments the men, forcing them to continue on foot and mocking their loyalty to each other by claiming that they could have escaped separately if they embraced Myers’ each-man-for-himself ethos.
Arriving at Santa Rosalía, Myers tries to conceal his identity by forcing one of the men to wear his clothes. Myers, upon discovering that the regular ferry to Guaymas has burned down, hires a fishing boat. However, while he is awaiting the fisherman, locals discover his status as a wanted murderer and contact authorities. Police surround the pier and, after some confusion over Myers’ identity, take him into custody following a brief scuffle in which the boastful Myers is revealed to be a coward.
The film ends with the weary friends agreeing to give statements to police.
Noir analysis:
While most films noir were filmed in claustrophobic cities, The Hitch-Hiker was filmed in the desert southwestern United States (territory similar to that of Baja California, where most of the story takes place), mostly in wilderness and small villages. Critics Bob Porfiero and Alain Silver, in a review and analysis of the film, praised Lupino’s use of shooting locations. They wrote, “The Hitch-Hiker’s desert locale, although not so graphically dark as a cityscape at night, isolates the protagonists in a milieu as uninviting and potentially deadly as any in film noir.”
By Ida Lupino (YouTube : kMWOKlRsDr4) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/a6/The_Ghost_Train.ogv/The_Ghost_Train.ogv.240p.webm The Ghost Train is a 1941 British mystery thriller film directed by Walter Forde based on the 1923 play of the same name written by Arnold Ridley. Plot:
Tommy Gander (Arthur Askey), a vaudeville comedian, pulls the communication cord on a GWR express train, bringing it to a stop so he can retrieve his hat. Returning to the train, he escapes an angry conductor by ducking into a compartment occupied by attractive blonde Jackie Winthrop (Carole Lynne), with whom Gander flirts. Another passenger, Teddy (Richard Murdoch), has his eye on Jackie as well, but her companion Richard Winthrop (Peter Murray-Hill) ejects both of them from the compartment.
When the train stops at Fal Vale Junction, Cornwall, these four get off to change trains, as do Herbert (Stuart Latham) and his fiancée Edna (Betty Jardine), spinster Miss Bourne (Kathleen Harrison), and the tippling Dr. Sterling (Morland Graham). However, the stationmaster, Saul Hodgkin (Herbert Lomas) tells them the last Truro-bound train has gone, and that they cannot remain at the station, as he is locking up for the night. The passengers insist on staying, as it is raining heavily and the nearest village is four miles away.
Hodgkin warns them the station is haunted. A branch line once crossed the river on a swing bridge close to the station. One night 43 years ago, then stationmaster Ted Holmes had a fatal heart attack while attempting to close the bridge, causing a train to plunge into the river. Ever since, a phantom train has been heard periodically on the abandoned track. It is said to kill anyone who looks upon it.
With that, he reluctantly leaves them. As the passengers make themselves as comfortable as they can, they hear footsteps outside. Richard opens the door, and Hodgkin collapses into the room. Dr. Sterling pronounces him dead. Later, a terrified young woman in black (Linden Travers) appears. She, Julia, pleads for help, saying that someone is pursuing her. A car spins off the road and crashes into a tree. The driver is unhurt, but his car is damaged. Back in the waiting room, he introduces himself as John Price (Raymond Huntley) and explains that he is searching for his sister Julia, who he says suffers from delusions. Julia protests that he is lying. Price further explains that she thought she had seen the ghost train, and became obsessed with it ever since. The passengers tell him that Hodgkin has died. When Price insists on seeing the body, they discover it has mysteriously vanished.
Price leaves to arrange transportation. Then an approaching train is heard. As it thunders past, Julia smashes a window to look at it, then screams and faints. They hear singing from the nearby railway tunnel mouth. Julia claims that Ben Isaacs (D. J. Williams), the sole survivor of the accident, is coming back. Teddy shoots at the “ghost”, causing it to flee back into the tunnel, leaving behind a bloodstained cloth.
Teddy shows the others the cloth and orders the others, at gunpoint, to stay put until the police arrive, but Richard punches him, knocking him out. The passengers carry him to the bus Price has obtained. When Teddy comes to, he is furious with Richard, as now there will be no one to intercept the train on its return journey. When Gander remarks that he had returned the bridge to the open position, Dr. Sterling suddenly orders the bus driver to stop, while his confederate, Price, produces his own gun. Sterling orders the driver to turn back so they can warn the train.
Meanwhile, guns are being loaded aboard the “ghost train”; a very much alive Hodgkin flags the train off and climbs aboard. Teddy explains that the train is really being used by Nazi Fifth Columnists to secretly transport arms. While Price heads down the embankment with Julia and the driver to try to stop the train, Teddy knocks Sterling out and gains control of the situation. The train plunges into the river.
By Walter Forde (https://archive.org/details/TheGhostTrain) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/THE_SADIST.webm The Sadist (also known as Profile of Terror and Sweet Baby Charlie) is a 1963 black-and-white exploitation film written and directed by James Landis, and stars Arch Hall, Jr. The film was distributed by Fairway International Pictures of the United States and Prima Film of Canada. The film is loosely based on the killing spree of Charles Starkweather, upon which the later films Badlands (1973) and Natural Born Killers (1994) were also based. It was shot by famed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond over a period of 2 weeks for $33,000 with a cast of five, one of whom doubled as the film’s production manager. It was Zsigmond’s first full-length film as a director of photography, and he is credited as “William Zsigmond.”
The film is a favorite of director Joe Dante, who owns the 35mm print that has been the source for many of the DVD releases of this film.
Plot:
Three high school teachers, Ed, Doris, and Carl, are driving through California’s Antelope Valley on their way to a Dodgers game in Los Angeles. The group’s Chevrolet Bel Air has some trouble and they are forced to pull off to a gas station/junkyard on the side of the road. After examining the vehicle Ed concludes that the fuel pump will need to be replaced. Doris and Carl search the junkyard looking for the owner, but they cannot find him.
In the residence Carl finds a warm meal with a table set for four, but oddly enough nobody is in the house. The three realize this is very peculiar and start to seriously worry about their situation. At this point Charlie Tibbs, a rather large man wielding a Colt .45, and his girlfriend Judy show up. Charlie and Judy have spent the past several days heading west from Arizona, leaving a trail of corpses behind them. Law enforcement is on the hunt for them, but Charlie has managed to stay a step ahead by changing vehicles frequently and then killing the people who offer their help.
Charlie demands that Ed finish repairing the car and informs him that he and Judy will be stealing the Belair and taking off when Ed is done. Charlie threatens that if the three don’t cooperate “it’ll be the end of them.” During the next several hours Charlie and his girlfriend torment Ed, Doris, and Carl.
By en:James Landis (https://archive.org/details/The_Sadist) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/8d/Scrooge_1935.ogv/Scrooge_1935.ogv.240p.webm Scrooge is a 1935 British fantasy film directed by Henry Edwards and starring Seymour Hicks, Donald Calthrop and Robert Cochran. Hicks appears as Ebenezer Scrooge, the miser who hates Christmas. It was the first sound version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, not counting a 1928 short subject that now appears to be lost. Hicks had previously played the role of Scrooge on the stage many times beginning in 1901, and again in a 1913 British silent film version. Plot:
On Christmas Eve in 1843 Ebenezer Scrooge (Sir Seymour Hicks) a cold-hearted and greedy elderly money-lender is seen working in his freezing counting house along with his suffering, under-paid clerk Bob Cratchit (Donald Calthrop). Two fellow business men arrive at the counting house to collect a donation for the poor from Scrooge but the old man instead supports the prisons and workhouses and goes as far to say if the poor would rather die then they ‘better do it and decrease the surplus population’. Scrooge catches Bob trying to take some coal but warns him he will be out of a job if he does not go back to work. Scrooge then refuses to dine with his only relative Fred his nephew and claims Christmas is ‘Humbug!’.
That night after work Bob goes home to celebrate the holidays with his family while Scrooge dines alone at a seedy pub while the lords and ladies of London celebrate Christmas with the Lord Mayor of London. At his house Scrooge encounters the ghost of his seven-year dead partner Jacob Marley (Who is invisible in this version) who wears a chain he ‘forged in life’ from his own wicked career. He tells Scrooge he will be haunted by three spirits in order to escape his fate.
That night as Marley warned Scrooge is haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Past (Marie Ney) who shows Scrooge when he lost his fiancée due to his greedy nature towards others including a debt-ridden couple. Scrooge then sees that his ex-fiancée is now married and has many children.
The next sprit the Ghost of Christmas Present (Oscar Asche) shows Scrooge just how poor Bob and his family are as they have a meager Christmas dinner of goose and pudding. The spirit threatens that unless the future changes Tiny Tim (Philip Frost) the youngest son who is ill will die. Scrooge then sees how others keep Christmas before seeing Fred celebrate with his wife and friends.
The Ghost of Christmas of yet to Come (C.V. France) shows Scrooge what lies in store the following year. Scrooge discovers Tim is dead and that the man that was robbed and spoken of by some businessmen was himself after seeing his grave.
Scrooge returns home a changed man and becomes a generous person. He orders a turkey for Bob and his family, gives a healthy donation to the two men from the day before and dines with Fred. The film then ends with Scrooge raising Bob’s wages and that he will be a stepfather to Tim before the two attend church together.
By Henry Edwards and Julius Hagen (Scrooge (1935) at Internet Archive) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Angel_on_my_shoulder.webm Angel on My Shoulder is a 1946 American fantasy film about a deal between the Devil and a dead man. The film was an independent production, produced by Charles R. Rogers and David W. Siegel, directed by Archie Mayo, written by Harry Segall (who also wrote the screenplay for Here Comes Mr. Jordan and the play Heaven Can Wait) and Roland Kibbee, and released by United Artists. The film was Mayo’s last before his retirement.
It starred Paul Muni, Anne Baxter and Claude Rains. The producer changed the original title, Me and Satan, when he concluded that the public would not see a film about the Devil.
Plot:
After his release from prison, gangster Eddie Kagle (Paul Muni) is killed by his partner in crime, Smiley Williams (Hardie Albright). Kagle ends up in Hell, where “Nick” (Claude Rains) offers him a chance to leave and avenge his own death in exchange for help with a problem. Kagle looks exactly like Judge Frederick Parker, an upright man who is causing Nick distress because he is entirely too honest. Nick fears that Parker/Kagle may cause him more anxiety in future, as he is running for governor of his state. Nick wants to destroy Parker’s reputation and Kagle readily agrees to have his soul transferred into Parker’s body.
As soon as Kagle appears as Parker, odd things begin to happen. Kagle pursues his goal with evil intent (though often at cross purposes with the Devil), but everything he does to ruin Judge Parker’s reputation somehow results in making Parker look better. Along the way, Kagle falls in love with Barbara Foster (Anne Baxter), the judge’s fiancée, causing him to question his whole outlook on life and eventually rebel against Nick.
Nick presents Kagle the opportunity to shoot Williams, but instead Kagle confronts the man with the truth. Shocked and frightened, Williams backs away and falls out an open window to his death.
Exasperated and defeated, Nick takes Kagle back to Hell, leaving Judge Parker in a much better position than before. Nick threatens to make the reformed man’s punishment even more painful than usual, but Kagle blackmails his would-be tormentor; in return for not revealing Nick’s blunders, Kagle wants to be made a trustee. Nick has no option but to agree to Kagle’s demand.
By Archie Mayo [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Black_raven.webm The Black Raven is a 1943 American film directed by Sam Newfield, produced and released by Producers Releasing Corporation. Cast:
George Zucco as Amos Bradford aka The Raven
Wanda McKay as Lee Winfield
Robert Livingston as Allen Bentley
Noel Madison as Mike Bardoni
Byron Foulger as Horace Weatherby
Charles B. Middleton as Sheriff
Robert Middlemass as Tim Winfield
Glenn Strange as Andy
I. Stanford Jolley as Whitey Cole
Jimmy Aubrey appears uncredited as Roadblock Watchman.
By Sam Newfield [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Scarlet_Street_%281945%29.webmScarlet Street is a 1945 drama film noir directed by Fritz Lang. The screenplay concerns two criminals who take advantage of a middle-age painter in order to steal his artwork. The film is based on the French novel La Chienne (literally The Bitch) by Georges de La Fouchardière (fr), that previously had been dramatized on stage by André Mouëzy-Éon, and cinematically as La Chienne (1931) by director Jean Renoir. The principal actors Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea had earlier appeared together in The Woman in the Window (1944) also directed by Fritz Lang. Local authorities in three cities banned Scarlet Street early in 1946 because of its dark plot and themes.
Plot:
In 1934, Christopher “Chris” Cross (Edward G. Robinson), a meek amateur painter and cashier for clothing retailer, J.J. Hogarth & Company, is fêted by his employer, honoring him for twenty-five years of service since 1909. Company head Hogarth presents him with a watch and kind words, then leaves and gets into a car with a beautiful young blonde. Chris muses to an associate that he wonders what it is like “to be loved by a young girl.”
Walking home through Greenwich Village, he helps Kitty (Joan Bennett), a young woman who is being attacked by a man, stunning the assailant with his umbrella. Chris, unaware that the attacker was Johnny (Dan Duryea), Kitty’s boyfriend, walks with her to her apartment building. She accepts his offer for a cup of coffee at a nearby bar. From Chris’s comments about art, Kitty believes him to be a wealthy painter.
Chris becomes enamored with her. He is in a loveless marriage, tormented by his shrewish wife Adele (Rosalind Ivan) who idolizes her previous husband, a policeman who drowned a “hero” while trying to rescue a woman. After Chris confesses that he is married, Johnny convinces Kitty to pursue a relationship in order to extort money from Chris. Kitty inveigles him to rent an apartment for her, one that can also be his art studio. To finance an apartment, Chris steals $500 ($9,100 today) in insurance bonds from his wife and later $1000 ($18,300) from his employer.
Unknown to Chris, Johnny unsuccessfully tries selling some of Chris’s paintings, leaving them with a Greenwich village street vendor believing them worth no more than $25.00. They unexpectedly attract the interest of art critic David Janeway (Jess Barker) who believes them exceptional art. Kitty is maneuvered by Johnny into pretending that she painted them, charming the critic with Chris’s own descriptions of his art, and Janeway promises to represent her. However, Adele sees her husband’s paintings for sale in the window of a commercial art gallery as the work of “Katherine March” and accuses Chris of having copied March’s work. Chris confronts Kitty, who claims she sold them because she needed the money. He is so delighted that his paintings are appreciated, albeit only under Kitty’s signature, that he happily lets her become the public face of his art. She becomes a huge commercial success, although Chris never receives any of the money.
Adele’s supposedly dead first husband, Higgins (Charles Kemper), suddenly appears at Chris’s office to extort money from him. He explains he had not drowned but had stolen $2,700 from the purse of the suicide he tried to save. Already suspected as corrupt for taking bribes from speakeasies, he had taken the opportunity to escape his crimes and his wife. Chris lets Higgins into his wife’s room, ostensibly so he can get the insurance money Adele has gotten after Higgins’s supposed death, but does so when she is asleep in the room, thinking that his marriage will be invalidated when his wife wakes and sees her still-living first husband.
Believing he can now marry Kitty, Chris goes to see her, but finds Johnny and Kitty embracing and now knows that she has indeed been involved with Johnny all along. He confronts Kitty, but still asks her to marry him; she scorns him for being old and, laughing in his face, refuses to marry him. Enraged, he stabs her to death. The police visit Chris at his job, not for the murder but his earlier embezzlement. Although his boss refuses to press charges, Chris is fired. Johnny is accused of Kitty’s murder.
At the trial, all of the deceptions work against Johnny, despite his attempts to implicate Chris, and Chris denies painting any of the pictures. Johnny is convicted and put to death for Kitty’s murder, Chris goes unpunished, and Kitty is erroneously recognized as a great artist.
Haunted by the murder, Chris attempts to hang himself. Although rescued, he is impoverished with no way of claiming credit for his own paintings and tormented by thoughts of Kitty and Johnny being together for eternity, loving each other.
By Fritz Lang (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Three_Ages_%281923%29.webm Three Ages is a 1923 black-and-white American feature-length silent comedy film starring comedian Buster Keaton and Wallace Beery. The first feature Keaton wrote, directed, produced, and starred in (unlike The Saphead (1920), in which he only acted), Keaton structured the film like three inter-cut short films. The structure also worked as a satire of D. W. Griffith’s 1916 film Intolerance. The film was shot in this manner as a kind of insurance for the studio. While Keaton was a proven success in the short film medium, he had yet to prove himself as a feature-length star. Had the project flopped, the film would have been broken into three short films, each covering one of the ‘Ages.’ Plot:
Three plots in three different historical periods—prehistoric times, Ancient Rome, and modern times (the Roaring Twenties)—are intercut to prove the point that man’s love for woman has not significantly changed throughout history. In all three plots, characters played by the small and slight Buster Keaton and handsome bruiser Wallace Beery compete for the attention of the same woman, played by Margaret Leahy. Each plot follows similar “arcs” in the story line in which Keaton’s character works for his beloved’s attention and eventually wins her over.
In the Stone Age story line, Keaton competes with the bigger, brutish Beery for a cavewoman Leahy. After observing another caveman drag away a woman by the hair in order to “claim” her, Keaton tries to become more assertive, but is continuously pushed back and bullied by Beery. An attempt to make Leahy jealous by flirting with another woman ends in failure. Nevertheless, Keaton grows closer to Leahy, and Beery challenges him to a fight at sunrise. Keaton wins thanks to hiding a rock in his club, but is caught and tied to the tail of an elephant to be dragged around the dirt as punishment. Upon his return, he finds Leahy about to be claimed by Beery and attempts to make off with her. Beery catches him and the two battle by tossing boulders at each other from afar, with Keaton and Leahy on a cliff together. When Beery climbs up to reclaim Leahy, Keaton dispatches Leahy’s cronies and finally defeats him. He drags a smitten Leahy off by the hair. In the epilogue, they go off for a walk with their huge family of children following them.
In the Ancient Rome segment, Keaton attempts to attract the attention of the wealthy Leahy, but is continually pushed back by Beery. Beery challenges him to a chariot race after a hard snow — Keaton wins by using sled dogs instead of horses. In revenge, Beery forces him into the lion pit belonging to Leahy’s family. Keaton survives by befriending the lion and cleaning its claws. Keaton is rescued by Leahy’s parents while Beery kidnaps Leahy. Keaton rescues her and tries to seduce her in her palanquin, which takes off without them. In the epilogue, they also go out for a walk with many children in tow.
In the “modern times” story line, Keaton is a poor man yearning for Leahy, who has rich parents. Leahy’s mother, unimpressed with Keaton’s bank account but interested in Beery’s, decides on Beery as a match for her daughter. Keaton accidentally gets drunk at a restaurant where Beery and Leahy are dining, and Beery tricks the male half of another couple into punching Keaton, who stumbles home drunk. Later, Keaton impresses Leahy by playing a football game, whereas Beery is only a coach; Beery decides to play opposite Keaton. Keaton is overwhelmed by the bigger Beery, but ends up winning the game with an impressive touchdown. An irritated Beery frames Keaton for possession of alcohol and gets him arrested, simultaneously showing him a wedding announcement between him and Leahy — Keaton will be unable to stop the wedding while in jail. While shadowed by a guard, Keaton finds a criminal file showing that Beery has been charged with bigamy and forgery. He attempts to call Leahy to warn her. He accidentally escapes when the phone booth he’s using is taken out for replacement. Keaton evades the police chasing him and make it to the church on time, dragging Leahy away from the wedding and into a cab. After showing her Beery’s criminal file, he takes Leahy home and prepares to leave, but she kisses him. He declares to the cab driver that they’re going back to the church. In the epilogue, they also go out for a walk — this time with their dog instead of children.
Buster Keaton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/e2/Bloody_Pit_Of_Horror.ogv/Bloody_Pit_Of_Horror.ogv.240p.webm Bloody Pit of Horror (Italian: Il boia scarlatto) is a 1965 gothic horror film. The film, set in Italy, stars Mickey Hargitay, Walter Brandi, Luisa Baratto and Rita Klein, and tells the story of a group of women modeling for a photo shoot at a castle when the owner of the castle becomes the Crimson Executioner, bent on their deaths. Plot:
A group of individuals including the writer Rick (Walter Bigari), Daniel Parks (Alfredo Rizzo), his publisher, his secretary, Edith (Luisa Baratto), their photographer, Dermott (Ralph Zucker) and five young models enter a seemingly deserted castle to take photos for a horror photonovel. The castle is actually occupied by a former actor, Travis Anderson (Mickey Hargitay). Anderson initially desires to send the group away, but recognizes Edith (who was once his fiancée) and changes his mind, but places the dungeon as off limits for the group. The group ignores this warning and proceed to take photos there anyway. This angers Anderson, who dons a costume and takes the identity of the Crimson Executioner, who was hanged centuries earlier for the crime of having his own private torture chamber. Anderson eventually kills each member of the group until Edith and Rick remain. Anderson succombs to his own torture devices and is killed by the poisoned barbs on the “Lover-of-Death” machine. Edith and Rick then escape with their lives.
Reception:
Critical reception for the film has been mostly negative with some critics calling it “trashy”. In his analysis of the film, Roberto Curti noted his derivation from fotoromanzi and fumetti neri, and dismissed the film as “decidedly campy.” Italian critic Roberto Guidotti marked the film as “a comic-strip movie, with a story told through a series of scenes, pictures and pacing that are more akin to comics than cinema. Inside the empty spaces, that open continually, immobilizing the story, one would often be tempted to insert a few captions and balloons.” In his book Italian Horror Film Directors, Louis Paul described the film as “a laughable yet disturbing and sadistic entry in the [horror] genre”, and “an exercise in homophobia and the debasement of women masked as entertainment.”
By Massimo Pupillo (https://archive.org/details/BloodyPitOfHorror) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/73/Things_To_Come.ogv/Things_To_Come.ogv.240p.webm Things to Come (also known in promotional material as H. G. Wells’ Things to Come) is a 1936 British black-and-white science fiction film from United Artists, produced by Alexander Korda, directed by William Cameron Menzies, and written by H. G. Wells. The film stars Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke, Pearl Argyle, and Margaretta Scott. The dialogue and plot were devised by H. G. Wells as “a new story” meant to display the “social and political forces and possibilities” that he had outlined in his 1933 story The Shape of Things to Come, a work he considered less a novel than a “discussion” in fictional form that presented itself as the notes of a 22nd-century diplomat. The film was also influenced by previous works, including his 1897 story “A Story of the Days to Come” and his 1931 work on society and economics, The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind; speculating on the future had been a stock-in-trade for Wells ever since The Time Machine (1895). The cultural historian Christopher Frayling called Things to Come “a landmark in cinematic design”.
Plot:
In the British city of “Everytown”, businessman John Cabal (Raymond Massey) cannot enjoy Christmas Day, 1940, with the news everywhere of possible war. His guest, Harding (Maurice Braddell), shares his worries, while his other friend, the over-optimistic Pippa Passworthy (Edward Chapman), believes it will not come to pass, but if it does, it will accelerate technological progress. An aerial bombing raid on the city that night results in general mobilisation and then global war.
Cabal, now piloting a biplane, shoots down a one-man enemy bomber. He lands and pulls his badly injured enemy (John Clements) from the wreckage. As they dwell on the madness of war, they have to put on their gas masks, as poison gas drifts in their direction. When a little girl runs towards them, the wounded man insists she take his mask, saying he is done for anyway. Cabal takes the girl to his aeroplane, pausing to leave the doomed man a revolver. The man dwells on the irony that he may have gassed the child’s family and yet he has saved her. A gun shot is then heard.
The war continues into the 1960s, long enough for the people of the world to have forgotten why they are fighting. Humanity enters a new Dark Age. The world is in ruins and there is little technology left, apart from the firearms used to wage war. In 1966 a biological weapon called the “wandering sickness” is used by the unnamed enemy in a final desperate bid for victory. Dr. Harding and his daughter struggle to find a cure, but with little equipment it is hopeless. The plague kills half of humanity and extinguishes the last vestiges of central government.
By 1970 a local warlord called Rudolf, but known as the “Boss” or “Chief” (Ralph Richardson) has risen to power in southern England and eradicated the sickness by killing the infected. He dreams of conquering the “hill people” to obtain coal and shale to render into oil so his biplanes can fly again.
On May Day 1970, a sleek, futuristic aeroplane lands outside of what remains of Everytown. The sole pilot, John Cabal, emerges and proclaims that the last surviving band of “engineers and mechanics” have formed a civilisation of airmen called “Wings Over the World”. They are based in Basra, Iraq and have renounced war and outlawed independent nations. The Boss takes the pilot prisoner and forces him to work for Gordon, a mechanic struggling to keep the Boss’s remaining aeroplanes flying. Together, they manage to repair one of them. When Gordon takes it up for a test flight, he leaves to alert Cabal’s friends.
Gigantic flying wing aircraft arrive over Everytown and saturate its ruins and population with sleeping gas globes. The Boss orders his biplanes to attack, but they prove to be ineffective. The people awaken shortly thereafter to find themselves under the control of the airmen of Wings Over the World and the Boss dead from a fatal reaction to the sleeping gas. Cabal observes, “Dead, and his old world dead with him … and with a new world beginning”.
A montage follows, showing decades of technological progress, beginning with Cabal explaining plans for global consolidation by Wings Over the World. By 2036, mankind lives in modern underground cities, including the new Everytown.
All is not well, however. The sculptor Theotocopulos (Cedric Hardwicke) incites the populace to demand a “rest” from all the rush of progress, symbolised by the coming first manned flight around the Moon. The modern-day Luddites are opposed by Oswald Cabal, the head of the governing council and grandson of John Cabal. Oswald Cabal’s daughter Catherine (Pearl Argyle) and Maurice Passworthy (Kenneth Villiers) insist on manning the capsule. When a mob later forms and rushes to destroy the space gun, used to propel the projectile toward the Moon, Cabal launches it ahead of schedule.
Later, after the projectile is just a tiny light in the immense night sky, Oswald Cabal delivers a stirring philosophical monologue about what is to come for mankind to his troubled and questioning friend, Raymond Passworthy (Chapman), the father of Maurice. He speaks passionately to progress and humanity’s unending quest for knowledge and advancement as it journeys out into immensity of space to conquer the stars and beyond. He concludes with the rhetorical questions, “All the universe or nothingness? Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be? …”
By London Film Productions (Things To Come – ArchiveOrg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Black_Dragons.webm Black Dragons is a 1942 American film directed by William Nigh and starring Bela Lugosi, Joan Barclay, and George Pembroke. The cast includes Clayton Moore (later famous as the Lone Ranger), who plays a handsome detective. The Black Dragon Society also appears in Let’s Get Tough! a 1942 East Side Kids film made by the same team of writer Harvey Gates and producer Sam Katzman. Plot:
It is prior to the commencement of World War II, and Japan’s fiendish Black Dragon Society is hatching an evil plot with the Nazis. They instruct a brilliant scientist, Dr. Melcher, to travel to Japan on a secret mission. There he operates on six Japanese conspirators, transforming them to resemble six American leaders. The actual leaders are murdered and replaced with their likenesses. Dr. Melcher is condemned to a lifetime of imprisonment so the secret may die with him.
Production:
The film was rushed into production following the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was to begin filming on 17 January 1941 but this was pushed back until 21 January. The original working title was The Yellow Menace.
By Jack Dietz (Black Dragons – ArchiveOrg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/My_Dear_Secretary.webm My Dear Secretary is a 1948 American comedy film directed by Charles Martin, starring Laraine Day and Kirk Douglas. Plot:
Successful novelist and playboy Owen Waterbury (Kirk Douglas) hires aspiring writer Stephanie ‘Steve’ Gaylord (Laraine Day) as his secretary; a dream come true for Steve who admires Owen and his work. Steve soon finds out that the egomaniacal Owen has gone through a series of secretaries who have left when they are fed up with his behaviour. He is constantly in debt and cannot begin to write a contracted novel that will pay his bills including a lucrative advance by his publisher. Steve perseveres until the novel, based on the events of Steve’s life and that mentions a character based on his publisher shown in an unflattering light, is refused publication.
Owen claims he cannot have a wife and a secretary so fires his wife and goes back to his old ways, hiring an admiring and attractive female to be his secretary. In the meantime Steve takes Owen’s rejected manuscript to her former companion, Charles Harris (Rudy Vallee), who is a major publisher. Harris, who now employs Elsie (Helen Walker), Owen’s former secretary before Steve, also asks to see Steve’s manuscript.
Harris finds Owen’s manuscript interesting but ordinary, but believes Steve’s manuscript to be not only worthy of publication but a serious candidate for literary prizes. Steve initially refuses publication due to hurting Owen’s fragile ego but soon changes her mind because of the philandering. She hires an attractive male secretary and the two writers compete with each other.
By Charles Martin (https://archive.org/details/my_dear_secretary) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/e/ec/The_Jackie_Robinson_Story_%281950%29.ogv/The_Jackie_Robinson_Story_%281950%29.ogv.240p.webm The Jackie Robinson Story is a 1950 biographical film directed by Alfred E. Green (who had directed The Jolson Story, “one of the biggest hits of the 40s”) and starring Jackie Robinson as himself. The film focuses on Robinson’s struggle with the abuse of bigots as he becomes the first African-American Major League Baseball player of the modern era. The film is among the list of films in the public domain in the United States. However a new copyrighted “restored and in color” version was released in conjunction with the Jackie Robinson Foundation in 2008.
Plot:
The film begins with Robinson as a boy. He is given a worn-out baseball glove by a stranger impressed by his fielding skills. As a young man, he becomes a multi-sport star at UCLA, but as he nears graduation, he worries about his future. His older brother Mack was also an outstanding college athlete and graduate, but the only job he could get was that of a lowly street cleaner.
When America enters World War II, Robinson is drafted, serving as an athletic director. Afterward, he plays baseball with a professional African-American team. However, the constant travel keeps him away from his college sweetheart, Rae.
Then one day, Brooklyn Dodgers scout Clyde Sukeforth invites him to meet Branch Rickey, president of the Major League Baseball team. At first, Robinson considers the offer to be a practical joke, as African Americans are not allowed to play in the segregated major leagues. When he is convinced that the opportunity is genuine, he and Rickey size each other up. After thinking over Rickey’s warning about the hatred and abuse he would have to endure without being able to strike back, Robinson signs with the Dodgers’ International League farm team, the Montreal Royals. Though he wants to delay marrying Rae to shield her, she insists on an immediate wedding so she can support her man in the trying times ahead.
Robinson leads the league in hitting in his first year, and despite the grave concerns expressed by the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rickey goes ahead and promotes him to the Dodgers. Reviled at first by many of the fans and some of his own teammates, Robinson gets off to a shaky start, playing out of position at first base and going through a hitting slump, but then gradually wins people over with his talent and determination. The team goes on to win the pennant, with Robinson driving in the tying run and scoring the winning run in the deciding game.
At the end, Robinson is invited to address the United States House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.
Alfred E. Green, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/70/Voyage_to_the_Prehistoric_Planet.ogv/Voyage_to_the_Prehistoric_Planet.ogv.240p.webm Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet is a 1965 American science fiction film, one of two versions adapted for Roger Corman from the Soviet science fiction movie Planeta Bur (Planet of the Storms), scripted by Aleksandr Kazantsev from his novel and directed by Pavel Klushantsev. Curtis Harrington oversaw the editing and dubbing of principal portions of the source film, and directed new principal scenes featuring Basil Rathbone and Faith Domergue. The resulting new film was then syndicated to television by American-International Television Inc. Plot:
The film essentially follows the story of the Soviet original, with Rathbone and Domergue replacing two Soviet actors in roles as space-station monitors of the primary action. The rest of the film stars the remaining Soviet players, dubbed.
In the revised telling, it is 2020 and the Moon has been colonized. After traveling 200,000,000 miles, the first group of men land on Venus, where they find a prehistoric world in which the crew are attacked by various monsters, plants, etc.
By John Sebastian [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/c/c4/Daughter_of_Horror.ogv/Daughter_of_Horror.ogv.240p.webm Dementia (also known in a slightly altered version as Daughter of Horror) is an American film by John Parker, incorporating elements of the horror film, film noir and expressionist film. Plot:
A young woman awakens from a nightmare in a run down hotel. She leaves the lodging and wanders into the night. She encounters a dwarf hawking newspapers with the bold headline “Mysterious stabbing.” She smiles enigmatically and quickly walks on. In a dark alley, a wino approaches and grabs her. A policeman rescues her and beats up the drunken man as she leaves. Along her way, a pimp, sharply dressed with a pencil-thin mustache, approaches her and cajoles her into escorting a porcine rich man in a chauffeured limousine. As they cruise the through the night, she thinks back to her tragic youth and her abusive father. She had stabbed him to death with a switchblade after he shot and killed her unfaithful mother.
The rich man takes her to bars and nightclubs and finally to his elegant high-rise apartment. He first ignores her as he feasts on an extensive meal. She tempts him, and when he advances on her, she stabs him with her switchblade, pushing the dying man out of an upper story window. As he topples, he grabs a pendant around her neck and it snaps as he plummets. The crazed woman races out of the building onto the street and confronts the body. The dead man’s hand still grasps her pendant in an iron grip! She saws it off with her knife and flees with it, as she imagines faceless passersby watching her impassively. Again, a patrol car appears. The same cop, with a strange frozen smile tracks her with a spotlight as she flees on and on. He seems to have her father’s face. She runs around a corner, hiding the severed hand in a blind flower girl’s basket. The pimp reappears and drags her into a club. An enthusiastic audience watches a jazz band playing. The smiling policeman enters, as the corpse of the rich man lies at the window pointing to his murderess with a bloody stump.
Now everyone knows! The crowd surges forward, encircling her, laughing maniacally. She passes out, reawakening in her dingy hotel room alone. Were all of her encounters a nightmare? She goes to the mirror on the dresser, searching for clues. In her top drawer, she discovers her broken pendant, clutched in the fingers of a severed hand. The camera retreats and moves out into the streets, where a horrified shriek is heard – and the film fades to black.
Production:
Dementia was shot in the studio in Hollywood and on location in Venice, California. Production, including editing, ended in 1953.
The original film had no dialogue, only music and some sound effects, such as doors slamming, dubbed laughter etc. The film’s musical score is by avant-garde composer George Antheil, vocalized by Marni Nixon–there are no lyrics as such. Jazz musician Shorty Rogers and his band, the Giants, can be seen and heard performing in a night club scene.
Producer–writer–director John Parker is only credited as producer in the titles. In later years, actor and associate producer Bruno VeSota claimed to have co-written and co-directed the film with Parker.
By John Parker (Daughter of Horror – ArchiveOrg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/TheWhiteGorilla1945.webm The White Gorilla is a 1945 American film directed by Harry L. Fraser. The film was made by re-editing the 1927 silent film Perils of the Jungle, and adding new footage as a framing plot. This was done without regard to differences in film quality or speed. Cast:
Ray Corrigan as Steve Collins / Konga, the White Gorilla / Narrator
Lorraine Miller as Ruth Stacey
Clyde Beatty as Bradford
See page for author [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/b/b9/Spooks_Run_Wild.ogv/Spooks_Run_Wild.ogv.240p.webm Spooks Run Wild is an American horror comedy film and the seventh film in the East Side Kids series, starring Bela Lugosi, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and Bobby Jordan. Released in 1941, it was directed by Phil Rosen, in his first and only outing in the series, and produced by Sam Katzman (under the company name Banner Pictures). It is based on an original script by Carl Foreman and Charles R. Marion. Plot:
Members of the New York City East Side boys club—leader Muggs (Leo Gorcey), Danny (Bobby Jordan), Glimpy (Huntz Hall), Scruno (Sunshine Sammy Morrison), Skinny (Donald Haines), and Peewee (David Gorcey)—reluctantly board a bus bound for summer camp.
The bus stops in the town of Hillside, where Muggs and his pals flirt with Margie, a soda fountain waitress (Rosemary Portia). While they are there, a radio broadcast announces that a maniacal “monster killer” is in the area. When they arrive at the camp, the counselor, Jeff Dixon (Dave O’Brien), complains to his girlfriend, camp nurse Linda Mason (Dorothy Short), that he will get no work done on his thesis because of the rowdy juvenile delinquents.
One night, Nardo (Bela Lugosi), a mysterious caped figure, and his dwarf assistant, Luigi (Angelo Rossitto), ask a local gas station attendant for directions to the hilltop Billings house, which has been deserted for years since its owner was murdered. After he leaves, another car arrives and the attendant recognizes the driver from his mystery magazines as Dr. Von Grosch (Dennis Moore). The attendant believes that Nardo is the killer and Von Grosch is hunting him, and he alerts the local constable that Nardo is a suspect. One night, Nardo and Luigi sneak into the local graveyard and are shot at by a grave digger.
That same night, Muggs slips out of camp hoping to rendezvous with the soda fountain girl, and is followed by all his pals. The East Side Kids get lost in the woods, and when they wander into the graveyard, Peewee is also shot by the digger. The boys take Peewee to the nearby Billings house, where Nardo tends to his minor injury and gives him a sedative. Nardo lets the boys spend the night, but Peewee disappears while sleepwalking. The rest of the boys are unable to sleep because of Nardo’s strangeness and Peewee’s disappearance. Linda, meanwhile, also disappears while out searching for the boys, and Jeff goes to the police for help.
When the boys confront Nardo, he claims not to know where Peewee is, but insists that the boys remain in the house. Muggs distrusts Nardo and on his command, the boys attack him and roll him into a carpet. Skinny and Glimpy disappear through a secret passage, and Scruno is spooked when Nardo reappears. At constable Jim’s office, the grave digger recalls seeing the boys, and Jim believes they may have fallen into the killer’s hands at the Billings estate. The boys, meanwhile, search for Peewee, but are continually being surprised by the appearance of coffins and objects that move themselves, and by the disappearance of their pals through walls and closets.
Linda, meanwhile, accepts a ride from Von Grosch, who takes her to the Billings house, ostensibly to help the boys. Muggs and the boys succeed in terrifying Nardo by pretending to be a ghost, and they finally find Peewee back in bed. Just after Linda and Von Grosch arrive at the house, Von Grosch attacks Linda.
The police burst in and accuse Nardo of being a killer, but Muggs has already learned that Nardo is merely a magician. When they all hear Linda screaming inside a locked room, Muggs climbs onto the roof and enters the room through a window. While he struggles with Von Grosch, who is the real “monster killer,” Linda opens the door, and the police arrest Von Grosch. Later, Nardo performs magic tricks for Jeff, Linda and the boys, and when Muggs goes into a cabinet after a disappearing girl, he emerges with Scruno in his arms.
By Phil Rosen (Spooks Run Wild – ArchiveOrg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/VengeanceValley.webm Vengeance Valley is a 1951 American western film starring Burt Lancaster and based on the novel by Luke Short. In 1979, the film entered the public domain due to the failure of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to renew the copyright registration in the 28th year after the movies’ publication. The picture was directed by Richard Thorpe with a supporting cast featuring Robert Walker, Joanne Dru, Sally Forrest, John Ireland and Ray Collins. Plot:
Fifteen years ago, wealthy but crippled Colorado cattleman Arch Strobie (Ray Collins), whose own son Lee (Robert Walker) was wild, took in young Owen Daybright (Burt Lancaster) as a foster son to help raise and control Lee. Now Owen is ranch foreman, but Lee, despite being married to Jen (Joanne Dru), is wilder than ever.
Unmarried Lily Fasken (Sally Forrest) gives birth but refuses to identify the father. After Owen gives Lily $500 to help care for the baby, her brothers Hub (John Ireland) and Dick (Hugh O’Brian) believe that he is the guilty party, but they are unaware that Owen has done this on Lee’s behalf. The brothers try to beat up Owen and he lodges a complaint against them. Sentenced to a week in jail, they vow to get even as soon as they’re out.
When Arch chides Lee for overdrawing his bank account by withdrawing $500 in gold, Jen realizes that Lee fathered Lily’s baby. She confronts him and Lee tries to lie his way out. She decides to leave him but is persuaded by Owen and Arch to stay. Lee inveigles Arch to make him a partner in the ranch by saying that he will strike out on his own unless he gets a half-interest; he gets what he wants and learns that the other half will go to Owen, once Arch retires or dies.
Jen locks Lee out of their bedroom. He gets drunk, mistakenly believing she and Owen are carrying on behind his back. He schemes to get rid of Owen and make a fortune at the same time by conspiring with Hub and Dick to ambush Owen during the spring cattle roundup. On the trail, Lee secretly sells 3,000 head of the cattle, intending to run off with it, but Owen learns of the plan.
Lee pretends to change his mind. He persuades Owen to ride in with him to stop the sale, but in fact he lures Owen into a trap. Hub and Dick, waiting in ambush, wound Owen as Lee casually rides away. In the ensuing gunfight, Owen Kills Dick. Hearing shots, a group of trailhands ride to Owen’s rescue. They chase down and shoot Hub. Owen catches up with Lee and tells him that they are both going to confess everything to Arch. Lee refuses and draws his gun, forcing Owen to kill him. Owen breaks the news to Arch and Jen.
By Richard Thorpe (https://archive.org/details/VengeanceValley) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/The_Rogue%27s_Tavern.webm The Rogues’ Tavern is a 1936 American murder mystery film directed by Robert F. Hill and starring Wallace Ford, Barbara Pepper, and Joan Woodbury. Plot:
It is a bleak and windy night when Jimmy Kelly (Wallace Ford) and Marjorie Burns (Barbara Pepper) check into the Red Rock Tavern with plans to marry as soon as possible. Everyone in the tavern is shocked when a wild dog breaks in through an open window, attacks and kills two of the guests. When they discover that the dog is not the real killer all of the guests begin to panic and suddenly find themselves trapped inside the tavern by locked doors and barred windows. Everyone frantically tries to determine who among them is the killer before another one of them is murdered.
By Robert F. Hill (https://archive.org/details/rogues_tavern) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9d/Maniac_%281934%29.ogv/Maniac_%281934%29.ogv.240p.webm Maniac, also known as Sex Maniac, is a 1934 black-and-white exploitation/horror film, directed by Dwain Esper and written by Hildagarde Stadie, Esper’s wife, as a loose adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Black Cat”, with references to his “Murders in the Rue Morgue”. Esper and Stadie also made the 1936 exploitation film Marihuana. The film, which was advertised with the tagline “He menaced women with his weird desires!”, is in the public domain. A restored version was made available in 1999, as part of a double feature with another Dwain Esper film, Narcotic! (1933). A full length RiffTrax for the movie was released on November 25, 2009, with commentary by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame. John Wilson, the founder of the Golden Raspberry Award, named Maniac as one of the “100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made” in his book The Official Razzie Movie Guide.
Plot:
Don Maxwell (William Woods) is a former vaudeville impersonator who is working as the lab assistant to Dr. Meirschultz (Horace B. Carpenter), a mad scientist attempting to bring the dead back to life. When Don kills Meirschultz, he attempts to hide his crime by “becoming” the doctor, taking over his work and copying his appearance and manner. In the process, he slowly goes insane.
The “doctor” treats a mental patient, Buckley (Ted Edwards), but accidentally injects him with adrenaline, which causes him to go into violent fits. In one of these fits, Buckley kidnaps a woman, tears her clothes off, and rapes her. Buckley’s wife (Phyllis Diller) discovers the body of the real doctor, and blackmails Don into turning her husband into a zombie. The ersatz doctor turns the tables on her by manipulating her into fighting with his estranged wife (Thea Ramsey), a former showgirl. When the cat-breeding neighbor Goof sees what’s going on, he calls the police, who stop the fight and, following the sound of Satan the cat, find the body of the real doctor hidden behind a brick wall.
By Dwain Esper (Internet Archive) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Boys_of_the_city.webm Boys of the City is a 1940 black-and-white comedy/thriller film directed by Joseph H. Lewis. It is the second East Side Kids film and the first to star Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, and Ernest Morrison. The film was also known as The Ghost Creeps.
Plot:
To escape the heat of the city and a court sentence for malicious mischief, the East Side kids agree to visit a summer camp in the Adirondacks. En route, their car breaks down and they are reluctantly given accommodations in the home of Judge Malcolm Parker (Forrest Taylor).
The Judge, under indictment for bribery, has much to fear. His life, as well as that of his niece Louise (Inna Gest) has been threatened by a gang of racketeers; his companion, Giles (Dennis Moore), has accused him of embezzling Louise’s fortune; and his sinister housekeeper, Agnes, blames him for the death of her mistress, Leonora. The Judge’s fears are compounded when he meets Knuckles Dolan (Dave O’Brien), the boys’ guardian, whom he had unjustly sentenced to death, only to have his verdict reversed and Knuckles exonerated.
Later that night, when Louise is kidnapped and the Judge found strangled, Giles and Simp (Vince Barnett), the Judge’s bodyguard, accuse Knuckles of the murder, but the boys capture Simp and Giles and determine to find the murderer themselves. Muggs (Leo Gorcey) and Danny (Bobby Jordan) discover a secret panel in the library wall and enter a passage where they find Louise’s unconscious body and glimpse the figure of a fleeing man. Knuckles captures the man, who identifies himself as Jim Harrison (Alden ‘Stephen’ Chase) of the district attorney’s office.
Amid the confusion, the real killer takes Louise captive, but the boys track him down and unmask Simp. Harrison then identifies the bodyguard as the triggerman seeking revenge on the Judge. With the crime solved, the boys can finally leave for their summer camp.
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/The_Flying_Deuces.webm The Flying Deuces, also known as Flying Aces, is a 1939 comedy film starring Laurel and Hardy, in which the duo join the French Foreign Legion. It is a partial remake of their 1931 short film Beau Hunks. Plot:
While on holiday in Paris, Ollie falls so much in love with Georgette (Jean Parker), the beautiful daughter of an innkeeper, he intends to marry her. Unfortunately, she turns down his marriage proposal because there is someone else, “very much so”. (Unbeknownst to him at the moment, a Foreign Legion officer named Francois (Reginald Gardiner) is her husband, and has returned briefly to see her.) Ollie is heartbroken to the point of committing suicide. Just as he about to jump into a river (with Stan joining him), Francois, happening to catch sight of them about to do so, convinces the duo to enlist in the Foreign Legion in order to forget Ollie’s failed romance. When Stan asks him how long it will take Ollie to forget, should they join the Foreign Legion, Francois points out it will only take a matter of a few days. Enticed by Francois’s offer, plus the fact that Ollie will completely forget his failed romance very shortly, they enlist.
Right from the start they wreak havoc in training camp, and when they are taken to see the commandant (Charles B. Middleton) to be introduced to their daily legionnaire duties, he gives them a full litany of long tasks, for which their daily wage is 100 centimes, which, translated into American currency amounts to only three cents. Hardy flatly tells the commandant neither he nor Stan will have any part of it for only three cents a day, to which Stan concurs that they don’t work for less than 25 cents a day. For this uppity attitude they are sentenced to very menial hard labor, washing and ironing a mountain of laundry, with legion officers constantly on their backs (“Go ON!! Get back to WORK!!! Whaddya think this IS?!!”). Finally and ‘miraculously’, Ollie manages to forget his broken romance completely, (thus no longer having to work in the legion) and, his and Stan’s purpose in joining the Foreign Legion fulfilled, they prepare to leave the legion and go back home to the United States…but before they do, fed up with the harsh discipline and the endless punishments they had to suffer, Ollie intends to tell off the commandant on their way out. They are unable to find the commandant and unwilling to search for him. So Ollie writes him a very insulting farewell letter and signs it.
Before long they meet Georgette again, and Ollie is at first delighted that she has seemingly changed her mind and come back to him, and proceeds to embrace and kiss her. Ollie, however, becomes un-delighted by Francois, the same Foreign Legion officer who had encouraged them to join the Legion earlier, who icily informs him that Georgette happens to be his wife and threateningly warns him to stay away from her, or else. After Francois leaves, the commandant appears on the scene and grimly tells Stan and Ollie he received their stern farewell note, and it has now become their death warrant. He then pronounces them under arrest for desertion. They are then taken to the prison, locked up and summarily sentenced to be shot at dawn. At one point the jailor forgets to lock the door. Stan amazes Ollie by playing The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise on the bedsprings. As he is about to play another piece, the jailor yells at them to be quiet. Later in the evening, someone throws a hint informing them that they can escape by means of a tunnel leading from their cell to the outside wall. Stan brings on an accidental cave-in which causes the underground path to lead to, of all places, Francois and Georgette’s dwelling. In no time at all, the whole legion engages in hot pursuit of the boys, who manage to flee to a nearby hangars and hide out in an airplane, which Stan accidentally starts up, forcing the boys to fly it until it ultimately crashes. Stan manages to emerge seemingly unharmed from the crash, but Ollie has died, seen ascending into the heavens, complete with wings. Eventually, however, he is reincarnated (earlier in the film, the duo contemplated being reincarnated) as a horse (complete with mustache and hat), which pleases Stan. In the final seconds of the film, Ollie makes his famous remark, “Well, heres another nice mess youve gotten me into”.
Public Domain:
The Flying Deuces is one of two Laurel and Hardy features in the public domain, the other being Atoll K. As such, it regularly appears on inexpensive DVD or video compilations. Turner/Warner Bros currently possess the original negative, but have not released the film.
When the film was originally released, it contained a scene featuring an escaped shark (a strange-looking model fin being pulled back and forth) in the river Stan and Ollie are planning to jump into. This was edited out of some releases of the film.
An uncut version transferred from a nitrate 35mm negative discovered in France was restored by Lobster Films and released by Kino Video in 2004. The Legend Films edition contains the edited version of the film.
In the United Kingdom, Network On Air released the film on DVD and Blu-ray in 2015. This is the uncut version, as is the U.S. 2015 DVD-R and Blu-ray releases by VCI Entertainment. Unlike previous home video versions that have generally used a snatch of the opening music during the End Titles, these releases include the correct closing music. There is also a German issued Blu-ray (With the German title Dick & Doof – In der Fremdenlegion on the Front Cover), released by Edel Germany GmbH in October 2015 that includes Blu-ray 3D and 2D versions of the film on a single disc, and has English and German audio tracks.
See page for author [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Blind_Husbands_%281919%29.webm Blind Husbands is a 1919 American drama film directed by Erich von Stroheim. The film is an adaptation of the story The Pinnacle by Stroheim. Plot:
A group of holiday-makers arrive at Cortina d’Ampezzo, an Alpine village in the Dolomites. Among them are an American Doctor who does not pay much attention to his wife and an Austrian Lieutenant, who decides to seduce her. He manages to befriend the couple so that, when the Doctor has to leave to help a local physician, he asks the Lieutenant to look after his wife. When the Lieutenant becomes too pressing, she promises to leave with him but asks him to give her more time. During the night, she puts a letter under the door of his bedroom.
The Doctor goes on a climbing expedition with the Lieutenant, who had been bragging about his exploits as a mountaineer. In fact, he is not in very good shape and the Doctor must help him to reach the summit. In the process, the Doctor finds his wife’s letter in the pocket of the Lieutenant’s jacket, but before he can read it, the Lieutenant throws it away. He asks the Lieutenant whether his wife had promised to leave with him and the Lieutenant gives a positive answer. The Doctor decides to leave him on the summit and starts his descent, despite the Lieutenant now saying that he has been lying because he thought the Doctor would not believe the truth. On his way back, the Doctor finds his wife’s letter, in which she had written that she loved only her husband and asked the Lieutenant not to bother her any longer with his attentions. While pondering whether he should go back to get the Lieutenant, he loses his balance and falls down. When the Doctor is finally saved by soldiers, he asks them to go and help the Lieutenant. Before they can reach him, the Lieutenant, attacked by vultures, falls to his death from the precipice.
By Erich von Stroheim (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Tormented.webm Tormented is a 1960 American horror film directed and produced by Bert I. Gordon for Allied Artists Pictures Corporation, and starring Richard Carlson. The film was featured in the fourth season of the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). Plot:
Jazz pianist Tom Stewart (Carlson), who lives in a Cape Cod island community, is preparing to marry his fiancée Meg Hubbard (Lugene Sanders). Shortly before the wedding, Tom’s old girlfriend Vi Mason (Juli Reding) visits and informs him that she will end his relationship with Meg, using blackmail if necessary. While she’s arguing with him atop a lighthouse, the railing she’s leaning on gives way. She manages to hang on briefly, but Tom refuses to help and watches her fall to her death.
The next day, Tom sees Vi’s body floating in the water. After he retrieves her, the body turns into seaweed. He tries to forget what he’s seen, but over the next few days, Vi’s watch washes up on the beach, strange footprints appear in the sand, Vi’s ghost appears and tells Tom that she will haunt him for the rest of his life, and when Meg’s little sister Sandy (Susan Gordon) asks to see the wedding ring Tom will give Meg, a disembodied hand makes off with it.
Soon afterward, during a party for Tom and Meg, Vi’s disembodied hand appears in a photo a guest takes of the couple. Later, when Tom’s alone, Vi taunts him that she’ll now use her voice to tell the world how Tom Stewart killed her.
To add to Tom’s dilemma, a ferry-driving beatnik comes looking for Tom, intent on collecting the $5 Vi owes him for her trip to the island. Tom’s haste to pay the fellow off causes the shifty man to stick around, and his attempts to blackmail Tom lead to his death. Unknown to Tom, Sandy has inadvertently witnessed the murder.
Sandy keeps quiet about what she’s seen. At the wedding she almost speaks up at the point in the ceremony where the minister asks if anyone objects to the marriage, but before she can speak, the church’s front doors burst open and the flowers all to wilt as the candles die out, bringing the ceremony to an abrupt, unpleasant halt.
Later that night, Tom goes to the lighthouse and tells Vi that he’s leaving the island. When he finds Sandy listening in, he realizes that he’s trapped: Sandy knows too much and could possibly tell Meg and the others. Desperately Tom leads Sandy up to the broken lighthouse railing with the intent to push her over, but Vi’s ghost swoops down on him, causing him to go over the edge as Sandy watches.
When the islanders search for Tom’s body, the first one they find is Vi’s. Shortly afterward, Tom’s body is found and placed next to Vi’s body, which somehow manages to turn and lay its arm across his body. On Vi’s dead hand is the engagement ring that was supposed to be Meg’s, signaling that Tom is now stuck forever with Vi.
Production notes:
According to an interview with Bert I. Gordon, an alternate version of the film was made for foreign release that featured some nudity on the part of actress Juli Reding.
The “ferry-driving beatnik” mentioned above was played by Joe Turkel, who appeared in two other productions from Bert I. Gordon: The Boy and the Pirates and Village of the Giants, and who would go on to play “Lloyd the bartender” in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 version of The Shining; and “Eldon Tyrell” in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, Blade Runner.
By Bert I. Gordon (https://archive.org/details/tormented) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/The_Screaming_Skull.webm The Screaming Skull is a 1958 independently made American black-and-white horror film, produced by John Kneubuhl, T. Frank Woods, and John Coots, directed by Alex Nicol, that stars John Hudson, Peggy Webber, Russ Conway, and Nicol. The Screaming Skull marked Nicol’s directorial debut; he decided to try it because he felt that he was not acting in the roles which he wanted. The film was distributed by American International Pictures on a double bill in different markets with either Earth vs. the Spider or Terror from the Year 5000. The film’s storyline concerns a neurotic newlywed woman who believes she is being haunted by the ghost of her new husband’s previous wife.
Plot:
Over a scene of an opening coffin, a narrator explains that the film’s climax is so terrifying that it may kill the viewer, while reassuring the audience that should they die of fright they will receive a free burial service. Inside the coffin is a card that reads “Reserved for You”.
Newlyweds Jenni (Peggy Webber) and Eric (John Hudson) move into Eric’s palatial country home. Jenni is Eric’s second wife; his first wife Marion died when she accidentally slipped and hit her head on the edge of a decorative pond on the estate. At the home they meet Eric’s friends, the Reverend Snow (Russ Conway) and his wife (Toni Johnson), as well as Mickey (Alex Nicol), the developmentally disabled gardener. Eric privately mentions to the Snows that Jenni spent time in an asylum following the sudden death of both her parents, and Mrs. Snow reveals that Jenni is very wealthy.
Jenni is disturbed both by Mickey’s belief that Marion’s ghost wanders the estate and by Marion’s self-portrait inside the house, which Jenni believes resembles her mother. When she begins to hear unexplained screaming noises and see skulls around her house, she believes that Marion is haunting her. Though Eric speculates to Jenni that Mickey, who was a childhood friend of Marion and thus dislikes Jenni, may be behind the trickery, Jenni worries that she is going insane. Eric suggests to remove Marion’s self-portrait from the home. Eric and Jenni take the painting outside and burn it. While they clean up the remains of the painting, a skull emerges from the ashes. Jenni panics at the sight of the skull, but Eric denies that the skull is there. Jenni faints and Eric withdraws the skull and hides it, revealing that he has been gaslighting her all along.
Believing she has finally lost her sanity, Jenni resolves to be committed. She tells Eric that the entire property will be meticulously searched for the skull as a last resort. Mickey secretly steals the skull and brings it to Snow before Eric can retrieve it. That night, Eric prepares to murder Jenni and stage it as a suicide. Jenni sees Marion’s ghost in Mickey’s greenhouse and flees back to the house, where Eric begins throttling her. The ghost appears and chases Eric outside, corners and attacks him, drowning him in the decorative pond.
After Jenni regains consciousness, the Snows arrive. Mrs. Snow comforts a hysterical Jenni and the Reverend discovers Eric’s body in the pond. Some undisclosed time later, Jenni and the Snows depart from the house. Reverend Snow declares whether or not Marion’s death was an accident will remain a mystery.
By T. Frank Woods (The Screaming Skull – ArchiveOrg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Last_woman_on_earth1960.webm Last Woman on Earth (often referred to as The Last Woman On Earth, but it appeared without The in the film’s actual title card) is a 1960 American science fiction film that was produced and directed by Roger Corman. It tells the story of three survivors of a mysterious apocalypse, which appears to have wiped out all human life on earth. The screenplay is by Robert Towne, who also appears in the film under the pseudonym Edward Wain. The music was composed and conducted by Ronald Stein. The film was originally released as a double feature with The Little Shop of Horrors.
Plot:
Harold Gern (Antony Carbone), a successful businessman from New York who is constantly in legal trouble, is spending a holiday in Puerto Rico with his attractive wife, Evelyn (Betsy Jones-Moreland), whom he married “between trials.” They are joined by Martin Joyce (Robert Towne, billed as Edward Wain), Harold’s lawyer, who has come to discuss the latest indictment.
Harold invites him along on a boat trip during which all three try out some newly bought scuba diving equipment. When they resurface, they are unable to breathe without using their scuba tanks. They climb back into their boat and find Manuel, the crewman, dead, apparently of asphyxiation. Upon rowing ashore, they enter the jungle. With their air running out, they discover that the foliage gives off oxygen that they can breathe.
When they go into town, they find nobody left alive and cannot contact anyone by radio. It dawns upon the three that they might be the only survivors in the area, maybe in the world. The domineering Harold takes charge. They becoming self-sufficient, and the two men fish, as marine creatures have survived. Later, they also find living insects and baby chicks, presumably newly hatched. Harold feels that in the long run, they will have to move north to a colder climate to avoid problems with insects and food preservation and to increase their chances of meeting other survivors.
Soon, a love triangle develops. Martin points out to Harold that neither the latter’s marriage certificate nor his money mean anything anymore. One day, while Harold is out fishing by himself, Evelyn gives in to her attraction to Martin. When Harold finds out, he beats Martin and orders him to leave. Evelyn hops in the car, and the two lovers drive off. Harold chases after them. At the harbor, another fight breaks out when Martin refuses to tell Harold where his wife is. Martin eventually runs into the church where Evelyn has been waiting. There, he dies of his injuries. The two survivors are left wondering where they will go or what they will do now.
Home media:
The film is in the public domain, and several DVD editions exist, including one by Alpha Video.[3] Most are copies of black and white 16 mm prints, struck for television, but a faded colour print is carried by the Internet Archive. The Retromedia release is transferred from a color-corrected 35 mm print and was released on DVD through Image Entertainment, featuring introductions by Corman, with commentary tracks by Jones-Moreland and Carbone. The release also features the other two films in Corman’s “Puerto Rico Trilogy,” Creature from the Haunted Sea and Battle of Blood Island, shot back to back with Last Woman.
By Roger Corman (firector) (https://archive.org/details/LastWonanOnEarthColor) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/5b/Behind_Green_Lights_%281946%29.ogv/Behind_Green_Lights_%281946%29.ogv.240p.webm Behind Green Lights is a 1946 American film noir directed by Otto Brower. Plot:
Police Lieutenant Sam Carson spots Walter Bard’s bullet-ridden corpse in a car brazenly left in front of the police station. Carson questions Janet Bradley after finding her name in the dead man’s appointment book. She admits that the Bard had been blackmailing her friend for $20,000, and that she went to see him, though she had been able to raise only half the money. When he refused to settle for that, she claims she took what she came for at gunpoint. Max Calvert, a newspaper owner, pressures Carson to arrest Bradley to hurt her father’s election campaign for mayor. Carson declines.
When Dr. Yager, the corrupt medical examiner, informs Calvert that Bard actually died from poison, Calvert orders him to get the body out of the police station and substitute another corpse for it before anyone else finds out.
Meanwhile, Carson interviews Bard’s estranged wife, Nora, who is accompanied by her lawyer and boyfriend, Arthur Templeton.
Complications ensue when a prisoner pulls his own switch, taking the place of Bard’s body to escape from the police station in an ambulance. Johnny Williams, the new reporter on the police beat, finds the missing body in a closet. He gets a scoop for his newspaper, and Carson gets his corpse back. The lieutenant notices there is very little blood for a fatal gunshot, so he orders another autopsy, by someone other than Yager.
Then Nora Bard and Arthur Templeton voluntarily confess to him that they lied before. Nora was in her husband’s apartment when he died. She had gone to plead for a divorce, and hid in another room when Janet Bradley arrived. After Janet left, Nora found Walter dying after drinking some liquor. When she ran out, she was seen by Templeton. He went into the apartment, assumed Nora had committed the crime, and staged the fake suicide to protect her.
Noticing a fresh flower among Bard’s effects, Carson questions flower seller Flossie. She mentions that when she went to try to collect what Bard owed her, she saw Yager unlock and enter Bard’s apartment. Carson confronts Yager. Knowing that Bard had been investigating Yager for a malpractice suit, the policeman guesses that Yager stole the evidence Bard had found and poisoned the liquor. Yager makes a break for it, but is caught. At Detective Oppenheimer’s suggestion, Carson then takes Janet Bradley out.
Cast:
Carole Landis as Janet Bradley
William Gargan as Lt. Sam Carson
Don Beddoe as Dr. Yager, Medical Examiner
Richard Crane as Johnny Williams, Reporter
Mary Anderson as Nora Bard
John Ireland as Det. Oppenheimer
Charles Russell as Arthur Templeton
Roy Roberts as Max Calvert
Mabel Paige as Flossie
Stanley Prager as Ruzinsky, Milkman
Charles Tannen as Ames, Reporter
By Otto Brower (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/And_Then_There_Were_None%2C_1945.webm And Then There Were None is a 1945 film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s best-selling mystery novel of the same name, directed by René Clair. It was released in the United Kingdom as Ten Little Niggers, in keeping with the original title of Christie’s novel. The cast included Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, Roland Young, June Duprez, Mischa Auer, C. Aubrey Smith, Judith Anderson, Richard Haydn and Queenie Leonard as the people stranded on the island. The film won the Golden Leopard and the Best Direction Award at the 1946 Locarno International Film Festival.
Though it was distributed by a major studio, 20th Century Fox, the copyright was allowed to lapse and the film is now in the public domain. Several different editions of varying quality have been released to home video formats.
Christie’s mystery has been filmed a number of times, including as Ten Little Indians (1965), Ten Little Indians (1974), Desyat Negrityat (1987) and Ten Little Indians (1989), with variations to its characters and locale.
Plot:
Eight people, all total strangers to each other, are invited to a small, isolated island off the coast of Devon, England, by a Mr. and Mrs. Owen. Ferried over by a sailor called Narracott, they settle in at a mansion tended by two newly hired servants, Thomas and Ethel Rogers, but their hosts are absent. When the guests sit down to dinner, they notice the centerpiece, ten figurines of Indians in a circle. Afterward, Thomas Rogers puts on a gramophone record, from which a voice accuses them all of murder:
General Sir John Mandrake (C. Aubrey Smith), of ordering his wife’s lover, a lieutenant, to his death
Emily Brent (Judith Anderson), of the death of her young nephew
Dr. Edward G. Armstrong (Walter Huston), of drunkenness which resulted in a patient dying
Prince Nikita Starloff (Mischa Auer), of killing a couple
Vera Claythorne (June Duprez), of murdering her sister’s fiancé
Judge Francis J. Quinncannon (Barry Fitzgerald), of being responsible for the hanging of an innocent man
Philip Lombard (Louis Hayward), of killing 21 East African tribesmen
William H. Blore (Roland Young), of perjury, resulting in an innocent man’s death
Thomas (Richard Haydn) and Ethel Rogers (Queenie Leonard), of the demise of their previous employer, an invalid.
It turns out that none of the ten knows or has even seen “U. N. Owen,” as he signed his instructions to Rogers; they suddenly realize it stands for “unknown.” The guests decide to leave, but Rogers informs them that the boat will not return until Monday, and it is only Friday.
Starloff admits to running down a couple while speeding. Then he takes a drink and dies from poison. The next morning, the guests learn that Mrs. Rogers has died in her sleep. Quinncannon reports that Rogers found one figurine broken after Starloff’s demise. Now another is missing. With two deaths matching the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme, they search the island for “Mr. Owen” without success. After General Mandrake is stabbed in the back, the judge arrives at the only explanation: Owen must be one of them.
Another day passes. Everyone votes secretly for whom they suspect. Only Rogers receives two votes, and is sent to spend the night in the woodshed. After locking the dining room, they give Rogers the key. The next morning, however, they find him dead, his head split open with an axe. Miss Claythorne persuades Miss Brent to reveal that she had her nephew placed in a reformatory, where he hanged himself. Later that day, Miss Brent’s body is found with a hypodermic needle nearby. Armstrong discovers that his is missing. Lombard admits he had a revolver, but it is lost as well.
At dinner, Quinncannon confesses he sentenced an innocent man to death to ruin the defending counsel’s reputation. Armstrong then admits to operating while drunk, with fatal results. Blore grudgingly discloses that he perjured himself to put an innocent man in prison, where he died. Lombard merely states that the accusation against him is true. When it is Miss Claythorne’s turn, she excuses herself to get her coat. The others hear her shriek and rush to her. In the confusion, a single gunshot is heard. They find her shaken after being brushed by seaweed hanging from the ceiling. They eventually find Lombard’s gun, and Quinncannon dead from a shot to the head.
Miss Claythorne insists she is innocent, but Armstrong contends that only a person who had not committed a crime would want to mete out “justice”, and locks her in her room. Later that night, she wakes to find Lombard outside her window. After he gives her his gun, she lets him inside. He persuades her to admit that it was her sister who killed her own fiancé, and that Miss Claythorne helped her cover up the crime and unofficially took the blame. They hear someone going downstairs. Upon investigation, they realize that Armstrong is missing.
The next morning, Blore goes outside to look for Armstrong and is struck by stonework toppled from the floor above. Lombard takes binoculars found beside the body and sees what Blore had—a corpse on the beach. It is Armstrong. Miss Claythorne pulls out the gun, now certain that Lombard is the killer. He tells her that his real name is Charles Morley, and that the real Lombard was his friend and had committed suicide. Morley has a flash of insight and urges Vera to shoot him.
Miss Claythorne fires and Morley drops. Returning to the mansion, she finds a noose hanging in the parlor and discovers who Owen is: Quinncannon, very much alive. The judge tells her that all his life he had searched for perfect justice. After learning that he was terminally ill, he concocted this plan. He persuaded Armstrong to fake his (Quinncannon’s) death, supposedly to help catch Owen, then murdered Armstrong. He tells Miss Claythorne that she can either hang herself or be sent to the gallows (as the only possible perpetrator). He drinks poisoned whiskey, and Morley suddenly appears behind him. Vera missed the shot intentionally. Seeing a shadow by the door, they think that it is Owen, but discover it is Narracott. They leave him to discover what is going on and rush to the boat.
By René Clair (YouTube : And Then There Were None 1945) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/The_Trap_%281946%29.webm The Trap is a 1946 crime film directed by Howard Bretherton. The main premise is that two members of a show troupe are murdered, and detective Charlie Chan is called in to solve the case. The title credit mentions “Charlie Chan” as appearing in the film, as if he were an actor and not a fictional character portrayed by Sidney Toler. This was Toler’s 22nd and final appearance as Chan, and his final film of any kind. Suffering from cancer during his last few films, Toler was often so weak that he could hardly walk or say his lines coherently.
Plot:
Calamity ensues at the beach villa in Malibu, California, where Cole King’s theatre ensemble resides, when one of the showgirls, Adelaide, is challenging Marcia, who is Cole’s girl and the star of the show.
Marcia retaliates by threatening to reveal Adelaide’s secret marriage to a doctor by the name of George Brandt. She also steals a letter to Adelaide from said Brandt, using one of the other showgirls, Lois, who is hiding the fact that she is under eighteen.
When Marcia vanishes and Lois’ dead body is found by one of the other members of the group, San Toy. The cause of death is strangulation, and the technique used is used by the French and the Chinese. Immediately, the French Adelaide and Chinese San Toy are placed under suspicion as possible perpetrators.
Also living under the same roof are the group’s press agent Rick Daniels and costume chief Mrs. Thorn. Daniels suggests they make Lois’ death look like drowning, but San Toy contacts her friend Jimmy, who is the son of reputed sleuth Charlie Chan, asking for help to solve the murder mystery. Chan starts his investigation, and soon both his assistant, Birmingham, and San Toy are attacked, but without a mortal ending. Another member of the theatre group, Clementine, discovers Marcia dead and strangled on the beach, with a silk cord still around her neck.
Daniels tries to get rid of Marcia’s robe, and is seen by Chan, who concludes it was the belt from the robe that was found around Marcia’s neck. Daniels claims he is innocent and that someone put the robe in King’s room to frame him for the murder. King starts to believe Daniels is the killer trying to get rid of the evidence.
Chan finds out that doctor Brandt was previously accused of murdering his ex-wife but was cleared from suspicion. However, it destroyed his future career as a physician. He changed his identity, enlisted and went to Europe, where he met Adelaide and they married.
Chan talks to Dr. Brandt, who admits to finding his wife Lois’ body, but not to killing her. To catch the real killer Chan decides to set a trap. Everything works as planned, and the killer tries to strangle San Toy that night, but Chan’s son Jimmy comes to San’s rescue and accidentally destroys foils the trap.
Chan, Birmingham and Jimmy then chase the killer, and it turns out it is Mrs. Thorn, who was previously married to King. She left him and wasn’t allowed back after that, but had to serve as head of costumes. She killed the women because they were involved with her former husband, out of jealousy and to hurt King. Brandt is cleared of all suspicion, and Chan promises to get his license back by talking to the Board of Medical Examiners.
By Howard Bretherton (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/80/The_Phantom%2C_Chapter_01%2C_The_Sign_of_the_Skull.ogv/The_Phantom%2C_Chapter_01%2C_The_Sign_of_the_Skull.ogv.240p.webm The Phantom is a 1943 Columbia Pictures 15 chapter black-and-white cliffhanger superhero serial, produced by Rudolph C. Flothow, directed B. Reeves Eason, and starring Tom Tyler in the title role. It is based on Lee Falk’s comic strip The Phantom, first syndicated to newspapers in 1936 by King Features Syndicate. The serial also features Jeanne Bates as the Phantom’s girlfriend Diana Palmer, and Ace the Wonder Dog as the Phantom’s trusty German shepherd Devil (who is a wolf in the original comic strip). Plot:
Professor Davidson plans an expedition to find the Lost City of Zoloz. The location of the city is contained on seven pieces of ivory, three of which Davidson already possesses. Doctor Bremmer, however, intends to find the lost city and use it as a secret airbase for his unnamed country. To remove him as an obstacle, he kills The Phantom, only for his recently returned son, Geoffrey Prescott, to inherit the family identity and take over the mantle of The Phantom.
Three of the remaining ivory pieces are owned by Singapore Smith, who initially steals Davidson’s pieces. The seventh, and most important, piece is missing at first but turns up in the possession of Tartar (which The Phantom acquires by wrestling Tartar’s pet gorilla).
Production:
Like most other serials, The Phantom had a relatively low budget.
For the serial, the Phantom’s real name is Geoffrey Prescott. In the comic strip, due to his real name not having yet been introduced, a different character name was used for the serial. The Phantom’s real name was eventually introduced into the comic strip as Kit Walker. The Phantom tells Singapore Smith to call him “Walker” when he covers his costume with a hat, dark glasses, and an overcoat so he can enter civilization unobtrusively.
Most of the serial was filmed in the Hollywood hills, which doubled as the African jungle.
Actor Tom Tyler had an “almost uncanny” resemblance to the comic strip character. However, he was also described as wooden in his speech and movements, “the Gary Cooper of B films”.
By B. Reeves Eason [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/The_Duke_is_Tops_%281938%29.webm The Duke Is Tops is a 1938 American musical film released by Million Dollar Productions and directed by William Nolte. The film was later released in 1943 under the title The Bronze Venus, with Lena Horne given top billing. The film was one of a number of low-budgeted musicals (or “race movies”) made in the 1930s and 1940s for the African-American market. The casts and production teams of these films were almost all black, and the music reflected current tastes in jazz and rhythm and blues. The Duke Is Tops features the film debut of singer Lena Horne, then just 20, who had yet to develop the smooth, classy style she would distinguish herself with in her later films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Notably, Horne has a major acting role in this film, something that save for 1943’s Cabin in the Sky, Stormy Weather and a few later films, she would rarely enjoy. The original top billed star, Ralph Cooper, was host of Amateur Night at the Apollo Theatre for 50 years. He also served as the movie’s production manager.
Plot:
Duke Davis (Cooper) is a stage show promoter in love with Ethel Andrews (Horne), a popular singer in his company dubbed “the Bronze Venus”. Duke finds out that big-time promoters from New York City want to propel Ethel into the big leagues, but Ethel, out of loyalty and love for Duke, refuses to leave his small-time show. Duke, in a selfless act, orchestrates a deception to force Ethel to leave his show in order to better her career. However, the loss of the Bronze Venus causes Duke’s own career to collapse and he soon finds himself working on a travelling medicine show where he goes from town to town, introducing a series of specialty musical acts and helping to sell Doc Dorando’s all-purpose elixir. But when he hears that Ethel’s New York gig is a flop, Duke goes to New York where he is reunited with her. Soon after, Duke combines his stage show, the medicine show and Ethel’s singing into a top nightclub act.
Music and Distribution
The movie includes several outstanding artists, including Lena Horne and the Cats and the Fiddle. Lena Horne as Ethel sings the Harvey Brooks & Ben Ellison composition “I Know You Remember”, with lyrics apropos of the film, “You & I have made a small beginning…” Lena also sings “Don’t Let Our Love Song Turn Me Blue” with a lyric that foreshadows one of her future great roles: “True love will guide us through stormy weather.” And she reprises “I Know You Remember.” The Cats & the Fiddle sing “Killin’ Jive.” This is a great performance, four guys harmonizing on a very jumpin’ good song. The Duke Is Tops has been released on DVD in North America. The film is in the public domain in America, and as such is available in multiple editions.
By William Nolte (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Dark_Alibi_%281946%29.webm Dark Alibi is a 1946 American film directed by Phil Karlson featuring Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan. It is also known as Charlie Chan in Alcatraz, Fatal Fingerprints and Fatal Fingertips. Thomas Harley, an ex-convict who served time in prison eight years ago, is wrongfully arrested for a bank robbery he didn’t commit. The police have found fingerprints on the crime scene, incriminating Harley, even though he was present at the Carey Theatrical Warehouse at the time of the crime.
The policemen do not believe Harley’s explanation, partly because he claims to have been called to the warehouse by a note from an old cell mate by the name of Dave Wyatt, a man that has been dead for eight years. Subsequently, Harley is sentenced to death for the robbery. He goes off to prison to wait for his execution.
Harley’s daughter June asks private investigator Charlie Chan for help to prove her father’s innocence. Hearing about the suspicious circumstances, Chan immediately agrees to take the case.
With only 9 days before Harley’s execution, Chan starts investigating the suspicious note to Harley, and find out that it was written on a typewriter belonging to Mrs. Foss, Harley’s landlady, who often rents to ex-cons. He talks to the other tenants in the building: the poor Miss Petrie, bookkeeper Mr. Johnson, salesman Mr. Danvers and showgirl Emily Evans, whose work costume was found in warehouse near the crime scene. Curiously enough, both Danvers and Evans had been in other cities at the time of bank robberies there. When Chan, his son Tommy and the chauffeur Birmingham goes to the prison to see Harley, they are shot at. This makes Chan sure that they are on the right track and believes that the fingerprints on the crime scene must have been placed there by someone else.
When Chan looks into the other robberies he finds that the modus operandi was always the same, and the perpetrators ended up in the same prison. It also turns out the quiet Miss Petrie is married to a convict who works in the prison’s fingerprint department.
Later Miss Petrie is overrun and killed by a truck outside the warehouse, and Johnson is at the scene when Chan arrives. Chan returns to the prison to check out the fingerprint department, and discovers that someone has exchanged the print cards. Miss Petrie’s husband hears of Chan’s suspicions and attempts to escape, but is shot and wounded.
Petrie’s husband dies from his wounds, and Chan demands new prints from everyone living in Harley’s building, including Johnson. He discovers that Johnson’s prints are all over one of the print cards in the prison.
Chan returns to the warehouse again, and finds the tools used to forge fingerprints in the truck that ran Petrie over. Chan is discovered by Danver at the warehouse. It turns out Danver has killed Johnson to stop him from talking, and now he tries to kill Chan for the same reason. He fails and is arrested for all the robberies. Harley us released from prison. Chan tells Harley that June’s boyfriend Kenzie was the leader of the robbers, and that he framed Harley because he did not consent to him marrying June.
By Phil Karlson (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/29/Ace_Drummond%2C_Chapter_3.ogv/Ace_Drummond%2C_Chapter_3.ogv.240p.webm Ace Drummond is a Universal Pictures 1936 film serial based on the comic strip “Ace Drummond” written by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and drawn by Clayton Knight. The serial’s cast features John King, Jean Rogers, Noah Beery, Jr. and Jackie Morrow, with Lon Chaney, Jr. in a supporting role. Plotline:
A mysterious villain who calls himself The Dragon is attempting to prevent International Airways from beginning service in Mongolia, in order to protect the secret of the mountain of jade for himself. It features a dungeon in the nearby monastery, the kidnapping of an archeologist who stumbles onto the secret, his daughter’s attempts to rescue him with Ace’s help, a death ray The Dragon uses on the airline pilots, a radio system by which The Dragon communicates with his henchmen via the rotation of Buddhist prayer wheels (each transmission concluding “The Dragon commands!”), and a squadron of his own fighter planes.
Chapter titles:
Chapter 1 – Where East Meets West
Chapter 2 – The Invisible Enemy
Chapter 3 – The Doorway of Doom
Chapter 4 – The Radio Riddle
Chapter 5 – Bullets of Sand
Chapter 6 – Evil Spirits
Chapter 7 – The Trackless Trail
Chapter 8 – The Sign in the Sky
Chapter 9 – Secret Service
Chapter 10 – The Mountain of Jade
Chapter 11 – The Dragon Commands
Chapter 12 – The Squadron of Death
Chapter 13 – The World’s Akin
By Ford Beebe, Cilfford Smith (https://archive.org/details/ace_drummond3) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/97/Ace_Drummond%2C_Chapter_2.ogv/Ace_Drummond%2C_Chapter_2.ogv.240p.webm Ace Drummond is a Universal Pictures 1936 film serial based on the comic strip “Ace Drummond” written by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and drawn by Clayton Knight. The serial’s cast features John King, Jean Rogers, Noah Beery, Jr. and Jackie Morrow, with Lon Chaney, Jr. in a supporting role. Plotline:
A mysterious villain who calls himself The Dragon is attempting to prevent International Airways from beginning service in Mongolia, in order to protect the secret of the mountain of jade for himself. It features a dungeon in the nearby monastery, the kidnapping of an archeologist who stumbles onto the secret, his daughter’s attempts to rescue him with Ace’s help, a death ray The Dragon uses on the airline pilots, a radio system by which The Dragon communicates with his henchmen via the rotation of Buddhist prayer wheels (each transmission concluding “The Dragon commands!”), and a squadron of his own fighter planes.
Chapter titles:
Chapter 1 – Where East Meets West
Chapter 2 – The Invisible Enemy
Chapter 3 – The Doorway of Doom
Chapter 4 – The Radio Riddle
Chapter 5 – Bullets of Sand
Chapter 6 – Evil Spirits
Chapter 7 – The Trackless Trail
Chapter 8 – The Sign in the Sky
Chapter 9 – Secret Service
Chapter 10 – The Mountain of Jade
Chapter 11 – The Dragon Commands
Chapter 12 – The Squadron of Death
Chapter 13 – The World’s Akin
By Ford Beebe, Cilfford Smith (https://archive.org/details/ace_drummond2) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/f/ff/Ace_Drummond%2C_Chapter_1.ogv/Ace_Drummond%2C_Chapter_1.ogv.240p.webm Ace Drummond is a Universal Pictures 1936 film serial based on the comic strip “Ace Drummond” written by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and drawn by Clayton Knight. The serial’s cast features John King, Jean Rogers, Noah Beery, Jr. and Jackie Morrow, with Lon Chaney, Jr. in a supporting role. Plotline:
A mysterious villain who calls himself The Dragon is attempting to prevent International Airways from beginning service in Mongolia, in order to protect the secret of the mountain of jade for himself. It features a dungeon in the nearby monastery, the kidnapping of an archeologist who stumbles onto the secret, his daughter’s attempts to rescue him with Ace’s help, a death ray The Dragon uses on the airline pilots, a radio system by which The Dragon communicates with his henchmen via the rotation of Buddhist prayer wheels (each transmission concluding “The Dragon commands!”), and a squadron of his own fighter planes.
Chapter titles:
Chapter 1 – Where East Meets West
Chapter 2 – The Invisible Enemy
Chapter 3 – The Doorway of Doom
Chapter 4 – The Radio Riddle
Chapter 5 – Bullets of Sand
Chapter 6 – Evil Spirits
Chapter 7 – The Trackless Trail
Chapter 8 – The Sign in the Sky
Chapter 9 – Secret Service
Chapter 10 – The Mountain of Jade
Chapter 11 – The Dragon Commands
Chapter 12 – The Squadron of Death
Chapter 13 – The World’s Akin
By Ford Beebe / Clifford Smith (https://archive.org/details/ace_drummond1) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/The_Golden_Eye_%281948%29.webm The Golden Eye is a 1948 American film directed by William Beaudine and starring Roland Winters in his fourth appearance as Charlie Chan. The film is also known as Charlie Chan in Texas (Belgian English title) and Charlie Chan in the Golden Eye (American poster title). Plot:
Manning, owner of the Golden Eye Mine in Arizona, persuades Charlie Chan to help him. To avoid alerting Manning’s murderous enemies, Chan registers as a guest at a nearby dude ranch along with his number two son, Tommy, and his black servant, Birmingham Brown. There he meets San Francisco Police Lieutenant Mike Ruark, posing as drunken fellow guest “Vincent O’Brien” to investigate why the mine has suddenly become valuable.
When Chan goes to see Manning, he finds that he has supposedly fallen down a mineshaft, leaving him in a coma. While there, he is recognized by assayer Talbot Bartlett, who knows him from a previous case.
Later, Chan guesses that prospector Pete is stealing ore from the mine, and persuades him to guide him, Tommy and Birmingham to the mine through his secret passageway. However, when they arrive, Tommy and Birmingham find Pete’s body.
Chan eventually surmises that much cheaper Mexican gold is being smuggled in and sold in the US at a huge profit by Driscoll and his men. When Driscoll makes a break for it, he is shot in the back by Bartlett. Then Chan reveals that it is Bartlett who is the boss of the smuggling ring and the killer of both Manning and Pete.
By Monogram Pictures, William Beaudine (1892 – 1970) (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Fear_and_Desire_%281953%29.webm Fear and Desire is a 1953 American anti-war film directed, produced, and edited by Stanley Kubrick, and written by Howard Sackler. With a production team of fifteen people, the film was Kubrick’s feature directorial debut. Plot:
There is a war in this forest. Not a war that has been fought, nor one that will be, but any war. And the enemies who struggle here do not exist unless we call them into being. This forest then, and all that happens now is outside history. Only the unchanging shapes of fear and doubt and death are from our world. These soldiers that you see keep our language and our time, but have no other country but the mind.
The story is set during a war between two unidentified countries. An airplane carrying four soldiers from one country has crashed six miles behind enemy lines. The soldiers come upon a river and build a raft, hoping they can use the waterway to reach their battalion. As they are building their raft, they are approached by a young peasant girl who does not speak their language. The soldiers apprehend the girl and bind her to a tree with their belts. The youngest of them is left behind to guard the girl. He starts to talk to her, but as she doesn’t understand him, he talks always more as a delirium; when he unbelts her, believing she will embrace him, she tries to escape and the young soldier shoots her dead. Mac, another of the four soldiers, persuades the commander to let him take the raft for a solo voyage, in connection with a plan to kill an enemy general at a nearby base. The remaining two soldiers successfully infiltrate the base, and the enemy general is killed. They talk and eat with their own general, and return to the river to await Mac. Sitting there, they philosophize about war and how no man is made for it.
Production:
Prior to shooting Fear and Desire, Kubrick was a Look photographer who had directed two short documentaries in 1951, Day of the Fight and Flying Padre. Both films were acquired for theatrical release by RKO Radio Pictures. From his experiences in creating short films, Kubrick felt he was ready to make a narrative feature film. Kubrick quit his full-time job with Look and set forth to create Fear and Desire.
The screenplay was written by Howard Sackler, a classmate of Kubrick’s at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx, New York; Sackler later won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 drama The Great White Hope. Paul Mazursky, who would later receive recognition as the director of such films as Harry and Tonto and An Unmarried Woman, was cast as the soldier who kills the captive peasant.
Funds for Fear and Desire were raised from Kubrick’s family and friends, with most of it coming from Martin Perveler, Kubrick’s uncle and the owner of a profitable pharmacy. The film’s original budget has been estimated at $10,000.
The production team consisted of 15 people: the director, five actors (Paul Mazursky, Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, Steve Coit, and Virginia Leith), five crew members (including Kubrick’s first wife, Toba Metz) and four Mexican laborers who transported the film equipment around California’s San Gabriel Mountains, where the film was shot. Due to budget limitations, Kubrick improvised in the use of his equipment. To create fog, Kubrick used a crop sprayer, but the cast and crew was nearly asphyxiated because the machinery still contained the insecticide used for its agricultural work. For tracking shots, Paul Mazursky recalled how Kubrick came up with a novel substitute: “There was no dolly track, just a baby carriage to move the camera”, he told an interviewer.
To reduce production costs, Kubrick had intended to make it a silent picture, but in the end the adding of sounds, effects and music brought the production over budget to around $53,000, and had to be bailed out by producer Richard de Rochemont, on condition that he help in de Rochemont’s production of a five-part television series about Abraham Lincoln on location in Hodgenville, Kentucky. Kubrick also ran into difficulty in editing a key scene where one of the soldiers throws a plate of beans to the floor and enters the frame from the wrong side. Kubrick’s blocking of the crucial scene was faulty, and his actors accidentally crossed the so-called “stage line”; this required the negative to be flipped in the printing process to preserve continuity, which was another expense.
Distribution, disappearance and restoration:
Fear and Desire was picked up for U.S. theatrical release by Joseph Burstyn, a distributor who specialized in the presentation of European art house titles. In an uncredited review following the New York premiere, The New York Times noted: “If Fear and Desire is uneven and sometimes reveals an experimental rather than a polished exterior, its overall effect is entirely worthy of the sincere effort put into it.”
Kubrick received praise for Fear and Desire from film critic and screenwriter James Agee, who reportedly took Kubrick out for a drink and told him, “There are too many good things… to call [Fear and Desire] arty.” Columbia University professor Mark Van Doren sent Kubrick a letter that stated: “The incident of the girl bound to the tree will make movie history once it is seen… Stanley Kubrick is worth watching for those who want to discover high talent at the moment it appears.”
Fear and Desire was not a box office success, and Kubrick had to take a for-hire job directing the promotional short The Seafarers on behalf of the Seafarers International Union in order to raise funds for his next planned feature, Killer’s Kiss (1954), which would be co-written by Kubrick and Howard Sackler and star Frank Silvera, one of the Fear and Desire actors.
In the years following its release, Fear and Desire seemed to have disappeared. Distributor Joseph Burstyn died in November 1953 on a trans-Atlantic flight, and his company went out of business. There were stories that Kubrick had spent years acquiring all known prints of the film, with the plan of preventing it from ever being seen again. However, some prints of the film remained in private collections.
Fear and Desire had its first retrospective screening at the 1993 Telluride Film Festival. In January 1994, the Film Forum, a nonprofit art and revival theater in lower Manhattan, announced plans to show Fear and Desire on a double bill with Killer’s Kiss. Although the film’s copyright lapsed and the property was in the public domain, thus allowing it to be shown without fear of legal actions, Kubrick tried to discourage it from gaining an audience. Through Warner Brothers, Kubrick issued a statement that severely downplayed the film’s value, and he called Fear and Desire “a bumbling amateur film exercise”.
To date, there have been very few public screenings of Fear and Desire; the only commercially available print belongs to the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Among the rare presentations were a 1993 screening at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., a 2003 one-time screening at the Two Boots Den of Cin in New York City and an August 2008 presentation at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Also, some clips from the film can be seen in the 2001 documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.
In 2010, an original copy of the film was discovered at a Puerto Rican film laboratory.
On December 14, 2011, Turner Classic Movies aired a print restored by George Eastman House.
Kino Video announced a DVD and Blu-ray release of the film in early 2012. It was released on October 23, 2012.
By Stanley Kubrick (edited by uploader to remove interview) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Parlor%2C_Bedroom_and_Bath_%281931%29.webm Parlor, Bedroom and Bath is an American pre-Code comedy film starring Buster Keaton, released by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer in 1931. It was one of Keaton’s early talking pictures, released in the aftermath of his silent career. The film was released in the United Kingdom as Romeo in Pyjamas. It is the remake of a 1920 film of the same name, based on the play by Charles William Bell and Mark Swan, which opened on Broadway in New York City on Christmas Eve, 1917 and ran for 232 performances. Parlor, Bedroom and Bath was filmed in Keaton’s own house. According to a modern source, Eugene Pallette, who starred in the 1920 film version, was believed to have been part of the production team of this film, though he was not a member of the cast. The film is now in the public domain and can be freely downloaded from the internet.
Plot:
Jeffrey Haywood (Reginald Denny) wants to get married to Virginia Embrey (Sally Eilers). However, Virginia refused to marry unless her older sister, the hard-to-please Angelica (Dorothy Christy) gets married first. Angelica, in turn, finds every man she knows too dull and predictable, and for this reason prefers to stay single. Jeff then tries to make Angelica interested in the mild-mannered and timid Reggie Irving (played by Keaton) passing him off as a notorious playboy to intrigue her. He asks his friend Polly to teach Reggie “how to treat a woman right”, but he turns out to be a disastrous learner.
By Edward Sedgwick (YouTube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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