Quote:
A fun-filled camp fantasy melodrama about cobra worshipers on an exotic secret tropical island. It was shot in appealing Technicolor on Universal’s back lot. Sarong-draped beauty Maria Montez has a dual role as both the good and evil twin sister. Director Robert Siodmak (“People on Sunday”/”Son of Dracula”/”Phantom Lady”) keeps the hokum going at a fast pace. It’s based on a story by W. Scott Darling and is written by Gene Lewis and Richard Brooks.

On a peaceful South Sea island local native beauty Tollea (Maria Montez) is kidnapped on the day she’s to marry Ramu (Jon Hall) by a mute giant Hava (Lon Chaney) and brought back to Cobra Island on orders of the island’s queen (Mary Nash), her grandmother. MacDonald (Morsoni Olsen) is a Scotsman adventurer living on the island, who tells Ramu that he raised Tollea as his daughter since she was a one-year-old stowaway on his ship after he was tortured and released from Cobra Island when he was shipwrecked on the forbidden island. Ramu learns that Tollea has been taken back to Cobra Island and pursues her despite warnings from MacDonald that strangers are killed on the island according to tribal law. Kado (Sabu), the goofy loyal teenage servant of Ramu, tags along uninvited.

On the island, her grandmother queen tells Tollea that she was brought back to her people to be the rightful ruler. We learn that Tollea’s younger twin sister Naja now rules the island as the high priestess and is a cruel despot. Naja is set to marry the evil priest Martok (Edgar Barrier), and the evil duo try to eliminate rescuers Ramu and Kado and their playful pet chimp Coco. The outsiders try to help the queen restore the rightful oldest ruler Tollea to her place on the throne, but must first eliminate the opposition.

It’s nutty fun, the sets are a visual treat, the hammy acting is fitting for such a wacky tale, the action is fast and loose, there are snake dances in the holy temple that look like a lounge act and you can’t beat the thrill of witnessing a rumbling volcano be a signal if the gods approve or don’t of the island ruler. — Dennis Schwartz (Ozus’ World Movie Reviews)

Robert Siodmak - (1944) Cobra Woman.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 10 min
Size: 	1.82 GiB
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Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	790x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
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Bit rate: 	3 311 kb/s
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Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s
#2:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Commentary by Film Historian Phillipa Berry)

https://nitro.download/view/9FC0F269C8BBE82/Robert_Siodmak_-_(1944)_Cobra_Woman.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Robert Siodmak – Cobra Woman (1944) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Mexico, 1864. The country is divided by the struggle against the French occupation and emperor Maximilian. The German doctor Karl Sternau and his friend Andreas Hasenpfeffer come to love the country and support the cause of the proud Mexicans, so the Republican cause finally turns out to be victorious.

The Pyramid of the Sun God (German: Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes is a 1965 West German and Italian western film adventure directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Lex Barker, Gérard Barray and Michèle Girardon. It is based on a book by Karl May, and was part of a boom of Karl May adaptations during the decade. It follows on from The Treasure of the Aztecs, also directed by Siodmak and featuring the same cast.

It was shot at the Spandau Studios in Berlin. The film’s sets were designed by the art directors Veljko Despotovic and Hertha Hareiter and Otto Pischinger.
wiki

Pyramid.of.the.Sun.God.1965.DVDRip.x264.AC3.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 34mn
Size:	1.18 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Not met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	712x296
Aspect ratio:	2.40:1
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	1 550 Kbps
Audio
German 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/64DEB77BBFAD18C/Pyramid.of.the.Sun.God.1965.DVDRip.x264.AC3.mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English, Dutch, Romanian

The post Robert Siodmak – Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes AKA Pyramid of the Sun God (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Bachelor Harry Quincey, head designer in a small-town cloth factory, lives with his selfish sisters, glamorous hypochondriac Lettie and querulous widow Hester. His developing relationship with new colleague Deborah Brown promises happiness at last…thwarted by passive, then increasingly active opposition from one sister. Will Harry resort to desperate measures?

The.Strange.Affair.of.Uncle.Harry.1945.Robert.Siodmak.1080p.BluRay.FLAC1.0.x264.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 20 min
Size: 	8.88 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1480x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	1.370
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	15.6 Mb/s
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#1:  	English 1.0ch FLAC @ 246 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/79CF01A2922CF82/The.Strange.Affair.of.Uncle.Harry.1945.Robert.Siodmak.1080p.BluRay.FLAC1.0.x264.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/E9F6E9E9B5D4ECC/The.Strange.Affair.of.Uncle.Harry.1945.Robert.Siodmak.1080p.BluRay.FLAC1.0.x264.srt

Language(s):English
Subtitles:French, English

The post Robert Siodmak – The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Dr. Karl Sternau supports the Mexican national president Juarez against the army of Austrian Maximilian who have occupied the country. Karl and Juarez hope to fund their fight with the recently discovered, legendary treasure of the Aztecs.

Der Schatz Der Azteken.1965.576p.BDRip-AVC.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 40 min
Size: 	2.27 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x434 
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.282
Audio
#1:  	German 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/00FF4E630852611/Der_Schatz_Der_Azteken.1965.576p.BDRip-AVC.mkv

https://ddownload.com/xcu523avrf45/Der_Schatz_Der_Azteken.1965.576p.BDRip-AVC.mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Siodmak – Der Schatz der Azteken AKA Treasure of the Aztecs (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles’ allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he’ll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?

Cry.of.the.City.1948.Robert.Siodmak.FLAC1.0.x264.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 35 min
Size: 	3.56 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	790x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	5 032 kb/s
BPP: 	0.461
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch FLAC @ 228 kb/s
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 78.3 kb/s (Commentary by film historian Adrian Martin)

https://nitro.download/view/9C2D727766615E0/Cry.of.the.City.1948.Robert.Siodmak.FLAC1.0.x264.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, French, English [SDH]

The post Robert Siodmak – Cry of the City (1948) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Phantom Lady (1944) is one of the high points of ’40s film noir, the title alone evoking a potent mythology of this era. At the center of its narrative is the seemingly hopeless search for the title character who potentially serves as the only reliable witness in the murder trial for Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis), falsely accused of killing his wife. But the search is frustrated by Henderson’s inability to remember any details about the woman outside of a flamboyant hat she wore during the night they spent together, an unlikely memory lapse that only intensifies his apparent guilt. Furthermore, no one else who saw Henderson and the woman together will admit to the police that they had seen her. It is up to his assistant, Carol (Ella Raines), to initiate an investigation of her own. This implausible journey takes her on a tour of a decaying 1940s New York, during which Carol undergoes some implausible transformations of her own before the true murderer is revealed: in a complicated twist, Henderson’s close friend, Marlowe (Franchot Tone), performed the deed.

Perhaps what is most interesting about Phantom Lady is its relationship to a strain of ’40s cinema in which traditional narrative logic is subservient to a primarily poetic or lyrical approach. In this regard, the film is not simply of its moment but also anticipates certain aspects of post-war modernist cinema, in particular narratives revolving around the search for an elusive figure who may be alive or dead and who may have existed in reality or be a figment of someone’s imagination. Here we find narratives built less around traditional cause-and-effect, character driven investigations than narratives dominated by an obsessive form of stalking and trailing (see, for example the work of Antonioni, Resnais, Duras and Robbe-Grillet). Two creative figures behind Phantom Lady are central here: its director, Robert Siodmak, and the author of the novel upon which the film was based, Cornell Woolrich.

Woolrich’s crime novels consistently challenge the fetish for plausibility and pull us into a nightmarish world which follows its own internal drives, with the protagonists at the mercy of irrational forces. The construction of a Woolrich novel constitutes a ruin of classical detective fiction in which traditional explanations and resolutions are offered but almost invariably seem insufficient in relation to what has preceded it. Furthermore, the appeal of the novels has to do not simply with their intoxicating illogic but also their phenomenological detail and descriptions of urban spaces in a state of sweltering decay. Siodmak is an ideal candidate for this kind of story material and Phantom Lady is the film that established his Hollywood reputation. His origins in Weimar cinema (and the six years after this spent in France) allowed him to develop his superb and sensuously textured attention to details in mise en scène. But it also allowed him to absorb certain lessons from Expressionist and Surrealist cinema. Specifically, we see an approach to filmmaking concerned less with creating a fluid and organic environment than with one that obeys a poetic logic of its own. In this regard, the urban spaces of Phantom Lady resemble both the claustrophobic Weimar street film and the seductively decaying urban space of chance encounters beloved by the Surrealists. (Henderson’s meeting with the phantom lady suggests a fumbled version of this type of encounter.) In Siodmak, the characters are torn between irrational, repressive social forces and their own strong physical and romantic desires which pose a threat to that social order. In one of the major set pieces of the film, Carol attempts to stare down a bartender who refuses to remember seeing the ‘phantom lady’ and then stalks him through wet, humid streets and an elevated railway station. But nothing we see of Carol prior to this could prepare us for the shift from the modern working woman we see early in the film to this Medusa (Woolrich employs the name directly), as immobile as a statue sitting at the bar, vengefully attempting to break down this man through the sheer power of her gaze. Carol’s transformation here (as well as in the second set piece, when she becomes a sluttish hep-cat, attempting to seduce a drummer in the midst of a frenzied, erotic jam session) makes little conventional psychological sense. However, her function in the film is almost entirely symbolic, by turns Henderson’s gal Friday, a fairy tale princess (Henderson’s nickname for her, Kansas, suggests that her story may be read as a variation on The Wizard of Oz in which Carol undergoes a form of fairy-tale descent marked by bizarre metamorphoses) and a Surrealist heroine, mysteriously wandering city streets, alternately still and sensuously mobile, and disregarding any kind of logic outside of those of her own desires. But these transformations (and the bartender sequence as a whole) tap into something else.

Woolrich’s work often revolves around the problematic nature of memory, most often in relation to a crime which the protagonist may have committed but which their faulty memories (often aggravated by extreme trauma) cause them to either forget or be uncertain about. However, Henderson’s memory lapse is brought on by simple distraction – his anger at his wife precipitating his difficulty in fastening onto details about the ‘phantom lady.’ This is counterpointed with the unshakable certainty of the witnesses who claim never to have seen her. What, then, does Carol hope to achieve through this stare of hers except to force a memory out of a man who otherwise claims to have no memory for faces, a failure which he attributes solely to the distractions of his profession and which he finally dies for – running in front of a car – rather than confess? The all-powerful male gaze of such archetypal Weimar figures as Nosferatu and Mabuse is here passed on to a protagonist whose concerns could not be more different. In a brilliant reversal of the gender conventions of material of this nature, it is the woman who does the stalking and it is the woman who possesses the most powerful gaze of them all. But this gaze is not one that she possesses in monstrous terms but in order to uncover the truth and bring a memory into the light of day, as though Poe’s Ligeia and Lang’s Mabuse had been crossed with Hildy in Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940).

While the film retains the novel’s lackluster pickup between Henderson and the ‘phantom lady,’ it adds details strengthening the theme of memory. The ‘phantom lady’ is more melancholic than in the novel and when we first see her in the bar she is playing an instrumental version of “I’ll Remember April” on the jukebox, a song whose lyrics (which we don’t ever hear in the film) testify to the gentle appeal of remembrance: “The fire will dwindle into glowing ashes/For flames of love will live such a little while/I won’t forget but I won’t be lonely/I’ll remember April and I’ll smile.” Throughout the opening, Terry perpetually stares off into space, scarcely making eye contact with Henderson. Henderson attempts to focus that stare onto something specific, drawing her attention to the “typical New York face” of the cab driver and asking Terry if she ever walks down New York streets and looks into people’s faces. Not until they attend the Brazilian revue, where the singer onstage is wearing the same hat as Terry and the two women lock malevolent glances at one another, is this vagueness of Terry’s look temporarily broken. The significance of “I’ll Remember April” and of the ‘phantom lady’s’ behavior is not clarified until near the end of the film. Carol tracks her down (real name: Ann Terry) and finds that the woman has suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by the sudden death of her fiancée the previous April. Terry’s paralysis is the result of the traumatic memory of the revelation of this death. If memories hold too little for Henderson they hold too much for Terry. But in either case, they are typical of a certain type of protagonist for Woolrich and Siodmak, masochistically accepting their fates rather than fighting against them, neither of them able to consistently look at or focus on anything. In a New York marked by individuals who seldom make eye contact or look for very long at anything, Carol’s relentless stare in the bar becomes the nightmarish reversal of the anonymity and averted glances of urban living.

Almost everyone who sees Phantom Lady expresses disappointment with its second half in which (in a departure from the structure of the novel) Marlowe is too quickly revealed to be the murderer and turns out to be a Nietzschean paranoiac madman besides. This structural and stylistic lapse is symptomatic of little more than two undigested side-by-side influences: Hitchcockian suspense (in which the spectator is given more information about the circumstances of a crime than the protagonists in order to increase emotional involvement on the part of the spectator) and Expressionist cinema. With Marlowe’s shadow looming over his victims, it is now he and not Carol who becomes a cross between Nosferatu and Mabuse, complete with over-the-top facial and hand contortions awkwardly imposed on an actor who could not be more American and less comfortable with this type of gestural repertoire. It is also in the second half of Phantom Lady that the film attempts to recuperate itself, to offer explanations and reassuringly resolve its issues. That it does not completely succeed in this regard suggests that the heart of the film lies elsewhere, on that deserted elevated train platform with Carol and the bartender, and in the various other detours the film has taken prior to this.

Robert Siodmak - (1944) Phantom Lady.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 26 min
Size: 	1.78 GiB
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Bit rate: 	2 742 kb/s
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#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/2EC8539409EE580/Robert_Siodmak_-_(1944)_Phantom_Lady.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Siodmak – Phantom Lady (1944) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot Synopsis
from IMDB
The film opens with Karl Schroeder (Don Murray), chauffeur to an East German Major, seeing a friend killed as he tried to drive his truck through the wall, He is persuaded by the friend’s sister, Erika Jurgens (Christine Kaufmann), and his own family to engineer an attempt to make an escape to the Western sector of the city by digging a tunnel under the wall which is close to their home…
Based on a true story.

1.52GB | 1h 29m | 704×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/BDAB84988879F88/Escape_from_East_Berlin.1962.Robert_Siodmak.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Robert Siodmak – Escape from East Berlin (1962) first appeared on Cinema of the World.