Desert Nights with John Gilbert and Mary Nolan: Enjoyable Sahara-set adventure – which happened to be Gilbert's last silent film – dares to ask the age-old philosophical question, “Is there honor among thieves?” John Gilbert late silent adventure 'Desert Nights' asks a question for the ages: Is there honor among thieves? The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release Desert Nights arrived in theaters at the tail end of the silent era. By 1929, audiences wanted lots of singing and dancing – talkies! And they might have been impatient to hear John Gilbert's speaking voice. I can't tell whether sound would have improved it or not, but Desert Nights has a lot of title cards filled with dialogue. Directed by the prolific William Nigh,[1] the film tells the story of diamond thieves who get stranded in the Sahara and almost die of thirst. (At first, Desert Nights' was appropriately titled Thirst.) Cinematographer James Wong Howe perfectly captures the hot, dry...
- 8/7/2017
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
(See previous post: Fourth of July Movies: Escapism During a Weird Year.) On the evening of the Fourth of July, besides fireworks, fire hazards, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, if you're watching TCM in the U.S. and Canada, there's the following: Peter H. Hunt's 1776 (1972), a largely forgotten film musical based on the Broadway hit with music by Sherman Edwards. William Daniels, who was recently on TCM talking about 1776 and a couple of other movies (A Thousand Clowns, Dodsworth), has one of the key roles as John Adams. Howard Da Silva, blacklisted for over a decade after being named a communist during the House Un-American Committee hearings of the early 1950s (Robert Taylor was one who mentioned him in his testimony), plays Benjamin Franklin. Ken Howard is Thomas Jefferson, a role he would reprise in John Huston's 1976 short Independence. (In the short, Pat Hingle was cast as John Adams; Eli Wallach was Benjamin Franklin.) Warner...
- 7/5/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Chamber of Horrors
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
1940 / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date March 21, 2017
Starring: Lilli Palmer, Leslie Banks.
Cinematography: Alex Bryce, Ernest Palmer
Film Editor: Ted Richards
Written by Gilbert Gunn, Norman Lee
Produced by John Argyle
Directed by Norman Lee
Near the turn of the century a struggling war correspondent named Edgar Wallace began churning out detective stories for British monthlies like Detective Story Magazine to help make the rent. Creative to a fault, his preposterously prolific output (exacerbated by ongoing gambling debts) soon earned him a legion of fans along with a pointedly ambiguous sobriquet, “The Man Who Wrote Too Much.”
A reader new to Wallace’s work could be excused for thinking the busy writer was making it up as he went along… because that’s pretty much what he did. He dictated his narratives, unedited, into a dictaphone for transcription by his secretary where they would then...
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
1940 / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date March 21, 2017
Starring: Lilli Palmer, Leslie Banks.
Cinematography: Alex Bryce, Ernest Palmer
Film Editor: Ted Richards
Written by Gilbert Gunn, Norman Lee
Produced by John Argyle
Directed by Norman Lee
Near the turn of the century a struggling war correspondent named Edgar Wallace began churning out detective stories for British monthlies like Detective Story Magazine to help make the rent. Creative to a fault, his preposterously prolific output (exacerbated by ongoing gambling debts) soon earned him a legion of fans along with a pointedly ambiguous sobriquet, “The Man Who Wrote Too Much.”
A reader new to Wallace’s work could be excused for thinking the busy writer was making it up as he went along… because that’s pretty much what he did. He dictated his narratives, unedited, into a dictaphone for transcription by his secretary where they would then...
- 4/17/2017
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Audrey Long, actress in B film noirs and Westerns, and widow of author Leslie Charteris, dead at 92 (photo: Audrey Long publicity shot ca. late '40s) Actress Audrey Long, a leading lady in mostly B crime dramas and Westerns of the '40s and early '50s, and the widow of The Saint creator Leslie Charteris, died "after a long illness" on September 19, 2014, in Virginia Water, Surrey, England. Long was 92. Her death was first reported by Ian Dickerson on the website LeslieCharteris.com. Born on April 14 (some sources claim April 12), 1922, in Orlando, Florida, Audrey Long was the daughter of an English-born Episcopal minister, who later became a U.S. Navy Chaplain. Her early years were spent moving about North America, in addition to some time in Honolulu. According to Dickerson's Audrey Long tribute on the Leslie Charteris site, following acting lessons with coach Dorothea Johnson, whose pupils had also included...
- 9/24/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Audrey Long, who starred opposite John Wayne in the 1944 Western Tall in the Saddle and in a pair of film noir favorites directed by Anthony Mann and Robert Wise three years later, has died. She was 92. Long, who was married to Leslie Charteris, the author of The Saint adventure books, from 1952 until his death in 1993, died Sept. 19 after a long illness, according to Ian Dickerson of the website LeslieCharteris.com. With her husband (played by Steve Brodie), Long's character fled from the cops and a crook (Raymond Burr) in Mann’s 1947 crime thriller Desperate. Also in May
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- 9/23/2014
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Born to Kill
Written by Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay
Directed by Robert Wise
U.S.A., 1947
Helen Brent (Claire Trevor) is in Reno, Nevada for a few days to settle a divorce. She stays at a nearby ‘bed and breakfast’ type establishment where the fun natured caretaker Mrs. Kraft (Esther Howard) and neighbor Laurey Palmer (Isabel Jewell) seem to spend more time drinking and laughing than anything else. Upon visiting a casino one evening, Helen makes eye contact with a tall, square-jawed handsome man named Sam Wilde (Lawrence Tierney), whose family name suites him perfectly. Sam, prone to violent outbursts driven by jealousy and lust, knows Laurey too, even having dated her. When discovering she has a new boyfriend, Sam murders them both in cold blood in a manner that would make Jason Voorhees proud. Sam them follows Helen to San Francisco, hoping to cozy up with the her as well.
Written by Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay
Directed by Robert Wise
U.S.A., 1947
Helen Brent (Claire Trevor) is in Reno, Nevada for a few days to settle a divorce. She stays at a nearby ‘bed and breakfast’ type establishment where the fun natured caretaker Mrs. Kraft (Esther Howard) and neighbor Laurey Palmer (Isabel Jewell) seem to spend more time drinking and laughing than anything else. Upon visiting a casino one evening, Helen makes eye contact with a tall, square-jawed handsome man named Sam Wilde (Lawrence Tierney), whose family name suites him perfectly. Sam, prone to violent outbursts driven by jealousy and lust, knows Laurey too, even having dated her. When discovering she has a new boyfriend, Sam murders them both in cold blood in a manner that would make Jason Voorhees proud. Sam them follows Helen to San Francisco, hoping to cozy up with the her as well.
- 12/13/2013
- by Edgar Chaput
- SoundOnSight
Desperate
Directed by Anthony Mann
Screenplay by Harry Essex
U.S.A., 1947
One of film noir’s strongest, most unique qualities is its malleability. A film which fans and scholars deem as part of the genre need not be especially violent, nor especially thrilling, nor especially long, nor especially short, etc. Despite that so many take pleasure in listing the many ingredients they deem ‘essential’ for a movie to be described as noir, the reality is that the possibilities to play around with the elements allows for remarkable freedom for writers and directors. Anthony Mann is a name that should be very familiar with any self described noir buff, having directing more than a handful, among them brilliant gems such as Side Street and Border Incident. Much like in the latter of the the two mentioned pictures, the director takes noir by the horns and creates a sharp, tough story...
Directed by Anthony Mann
Screenplay by Harry Essex
U.S.A., 1947
One of film noir’s strongest, most unique qualities is its malleability. A film which fans and scholars deem as part of the genre need not be especially violent, nor especially thrilling, nor especially long, nor especially short, etc. Despite that so many take pleasure in listing the many ingredients they deem ‘essential’ for a movie to be described as noir, the reality is that the possibilities to play around with the elements allows for remarkable freedom for writers and directors. Anthony Mann is a name that should be very familiar with any self described noir buff, having directing more than a handful, among them brilliant gems such as Side Street and Border Incident. Much like in the latter of the the two mentioned pictures, the director takes noir by the horns and creates a sharp, tough story...
- 3/17/2012
- by Edgar Chaput
- SoundOnSight
The past several years have seen a resurgence in interest in the Film Noir genre, not just in recreations via a host of films, but in the classics that started it all. That interest has spawned a series of releases on DVD, and The Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 5 is filled with treats.
You might expect that we would be reaching by the time we got to the fifth installment, a set with eight films, but in some sense the opposite may be true here.
While not the biggest names in the genre, the set gives us some true favorites, as well as some great actors.
Cornered (1945):
From England to continental Europe to Buenos Aires, ex-rcaf pilot Dick Powell stalks the Nazi collaborator who murdered his bride. But one fact constantly surfaces during his quest: no one can describe the mysterious man. Joining Powell in the film shadows are...
You might expect that we would be reaching by the time we got to the fifth installment, a set with eight films, but in some sense the opposite may be true here.
While not the biggest names in the genre, the set gives us some true favorites, as well as some great actors.
Cornered (1945):
From England to continental Europe to Buenos Aires, ex-rcaf pilot Dick Powell stalks the Nazi collaborator who murdered his bride. But one fact constantly surfaces during his quest: no one can describe the mysterious man. Joining Powell in the film shadows are...
- 7/28/2010
- by Marc Eastman
- AreYouScreening.com
Film Noir Classic Collection: Vol. 5, has dusted off eight films of the celebrated genre and adapted them to DVD format. Collections like these, which bring older films to newer light, are godsends regardless (to a degree) of which films are selected, because as timeless as some of these stories and performances might be, the barrier of being stuck in an old format can bury them forever. And these stories deserve to be told. If you watch a few well made noir thrillers you will no doubt see the seeds that were planted in the heads of crime-thriller filmmakers the likes of Martin Scorsese or Michael Mann. Though there are better films in the noir genre that this collection could have culminated, there are also a lot worse. Any fan of noir films or old mysteries and thrillers will be pleased at what this box set has to offer.
Desperate (1947)
Directed...
Desperate (1947)
Directed...
- 7/20/2010
- by Ryan Katona
- JustPressPlay.net
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