Captain Casper

The Amicus poll on the front page reminded me it's been a year since I heard Peter Cushings terrible Northern accent on "From Beyond the Grave" so I dug it out last night.

Great film and a wonderful cast. Some genuinely scary bits to make one clutch the cushions too.

Joe Fraguela

Last night I watched A Touch of Love from 1969 starring Sandy Dennis, Ian McKellen, Eleanor Bron, Michael Coles, John Standing, Maurice Denham, Peggy Thorpe-Bates, Kenneth Benda , Rachel Kempson and Margaret Tyzack.

Sandy Dennis plays Rosamund Stacey a young unmarried pregnant woman making life choices. Good use of London locations, Maida Vale, Regents Park etc.

theuofc

Last night, actually over four nights since one of the films was a tv mini-series in three parts, I watched two versions of A Town Like Alice, one with Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch (1956). McKenna was wonderful as the strong but vulnerable young woman who once again finds her love. It was a treat to see Finch play a brash young Australian. Yet,my favourite remains the interesting, extended story line of the serialised version (1981) with Gordon Jackson, Helen Morse, and Bryan Brown, which was filmed in Australia and the UK.

Best,

Barbara

stevie boy

I watched Hart's War with Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell and Linus Roache. Good film and the best I have seen from Farrell

DB7

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
You can't help smiling at Finney's grin as he places the dead rat on the workbench or fires his pellet gun at the butt of his battleaxe neighbour, but his misdemeanour's do come back to haunt him in the latter part of the film. Despite the 'angry young man' tag I think the films real winner is Shirley Ann Field who gets her guy on her own terms. A shame that Finney's career is pretty forgettable after the 60s bar the odd gem like The Drtesser.

batman

A couple of episodes of the excellent Budgie, followed by a 40s melodrama called Repeat Performance with Tom Conway.

There are 31 excellent quizzes to bamboozle you on the Quiz Page. Just click on the 'Quick Links' icon and scroll down!

Chevyman

Above Us The Waves (recorded). Spotted an early appearance by Walter Gotell

"Don't tread on Greta Garbo, as you walk down the Boulevard?"

Why not visit the Quiz Section?

wadsy

The Brighton Strangler1945

RKO's version of an English thriller. John Loder, June Duprez & Miles Mander.

John Loder is good as an amnesiac with a twist & June Duprez is gorgeous.

One or two "iffy" English accents though but I enjoyed it!

DB7

Resurrected
Paul Greengrass' post-Falklands drama. Despite some strong acting from David Thewliss, Tom Bell and Rita Tushingham it's something of an aimless drama where Greengrass wants to tackle conflict and post-war trauma but can't find a theme to convey his message. MacKinnon's Regeneration conveys the horrors of war far more poigniantly but also has the benefit of drawing on the madness of WWI.

Dame Starry

I watched the late night film on BBC1 last night, Dear Frankie with the gorgeous Gerard Butler, Emily Mortimer and a wonderful 10-year-old by the name of Jack McElhone playing the young deaf boy, Frankie.
Frankie believes that his father is on a long trip on a ship and writes to him regularly - or thinks he does...but it's a PO Box that his mother (Emily Mortimer) rents and the sea voyage is a story that she made up!
When the ship turns out to be real and is due to return to dock locally, Mum has to think fast and pays a stranger to pretend to be the boy's father.

Lovely story, well cast and acted - possibly more of a 'girly' film or for a man well in touch with his feminine side!

DS x.

stevie boy

Do you remember in Softly Softly,?? he went head to head with Charlie Barlow for the top job and got it. He was a good actor.

Tom Bancroft

Earlier in the day I started watching a film called "Sky Riders". The title didn't ring any bells and I was expecting a western. It turned out to be a WW2 story about Czech pilots flying with the RAF. Annoyingly I had to go out after about 15 minutes, so I recorded it and watched it last night.

I was surprised to learn that it was released in 1968 - it was in black and white and it had the look of one of the many films of this type made in the 40's while the war was still raging.

The cast of English and Czech actors meant plenty of subtitles and the English actors were all completely unknown to me. In fact some of them didn't seem like actors at all, more like the real RAF people they used to use in those early wartime films.

There was a small amount of stock footage used in the battle scenes - (we saw the same Messerschmit in close up attacking in three different dogfights) - but there was some interesting detail. The engine fire on one bomber was put out by the release of a gunge which smothered the flames and we saw this in close up. I knew they did this, but it's the first time I remember seeing it on film.

One crew member got an upset tummy from eating dodgy tinned meat and as they were about to come under attack, he simply had to go, stripping down to his shorts! It never occured to me before that bomber crews might need the loo at some time or other.

One bomber ditched in the sea and we saw the 'dinghy release' handle pulled and the dinghy auto inflate and hit the water. A radio was stored in the dinghy and it's aerial was a wire attached to a small balloon which carried it high into the air for better reception.

These are just some of the examples of the attention to detail this film gave us.

There was no overt propaganda seen in some of the 40's films and the romantic element was minimal instead of taking over the story. All in all a film worth watching as it is a little out of the ordinary.

I am sure that some of our experts out there will know much more about this film.

"I want to be a sailor - sailing out to sea"

Harbottle

Woman of Straw (1964) DVD-R. Another of those films that always seemed to be on the box some years ago but has now vanished no doubt to satellite TV. Rather good it is too, Sir Ralph Richardson is excellent as the ruthless ailing tycoon, while Gina Lollobrigida handles her role very well indeed as nurse who thaws Sir Ralph’s ice cold blood. James Bond... sorry Sean Connery is okay if rather wooden (no changes there then). The plotting is excellent with a few twists and turns along the way, yet another film that should be available on DVD.

The Shakedown (1959) DVD-R. Rather good non nonsense crime thriller starring Terence Morgan and featuring Hazel Court, Harry H Corbett and Donald Pleasence. Philip Green’s jazz score is also a great asset to this tale of seedy goings on. Morgan dupes photographer Pleasence into fronting a studio, where the prime use is blackmail, as unknowing gents take ‘artistic’ snaps of busty models.

dpgmel

Watched Anthony Mann's 1960s epic " The Fall of the Roman Empire " starring Stephen Boyd, Christopher Plummer and Alec Guiness as a wonderful Marus Aurelius. Literate and reasonably accurate this IMHO is one of the better epic films made during the 60's

Lord Brett

At the pictures last night to watch British director Paul W S Anderson's Death Race, starring Jason Statham. Pretty good, and the early section of the film pushed the political aspects of the film in interesting ways. The steelworks Statham works in is shut down, and the angry workers are confronted with riot police in scenes deliberately remeniscent of ther miners strike.

Ian McShane gets all the best dialogue, and it's all good, violent fun, and actually a bit better than one might think.

It also earns the record for the most people texting during a film. One bloke started looking for something with a bloody torch!