Thriller

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A union organizing demolition worker and a friend of his decide to blackmail the corrupt company they work for setting up a fake accident.Read More »

The real-life career of the notorious female spy known as “Fraulein Doktor” inspired several films of the 1930s. Stamboul Quest stars Myrna Loy as a seductive espionage agent, working on behalf of the Kaiser in 1915 Istanbul. American medical student George Brent crosses Loy’s path, and the two fall in love. Divided between romance and duty, Loy opts for the latter, and apparently causes Brent’s death. She goes mad with grief, and is packed away to a mental institution, where her fevered reminiscences provide the lengthy flashback sequences in this film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

Plot: Jack Moffitt’s original story deals with the realities of work for 1930s fliers. Jim Blane (Richard Barthelmess) is booted from his job as a commercial pilot when investigators fault him for an airliner crash in rough weather. He meets circus barnstormer Jill Collins (Sally Eilers) just as her pilot brother crashes to his death, and becomes her partner both in the air and in bed. They check into hotels separately but always take adjoining rooms.
Jim doesn’t believe in marriage for fliers, and Jill soon takes up with his younger brother Bud (Tom Brown), also a pilot. And Jim’s timing is also off … although Jill loves him, she accepts Bud’s offer of marriage. Jim takes off for dangerous jobs in parts unknown, but we know he’ll have to come back to claim what’s his. Plot summary by ethanedwards.Read More »

Secret agent Casey Reed (Gene Barry) goes undercover as a smarmy lounge singer (replete with cheezy white jacket!) in Hong Kong to find a missing arab prince.

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Director Edward L. Cahn always knew how to make lemonade from a lemon; his B pictures of the late 1950s displayed a raw energy that many of his higher-budgeted films of the 1930s lacked. Hong Kong Confidential is a backlot cheapie starring Gene Barry and second-feature stalwarts Beverly Tyler and Allison Hayes. Barry plays a secret agent, in Hong Kong to rescue an Arabian prince from his kidnappers. The villains, of course, are Soviet spies, easily recognizable by their baggy suits and flabby accents. Also in the cast of Hong Kong Confidential is Ed Kemmer, who’d once starred in that baby-boomer favorite Space Patrol.Read More »

Frenzy is a 1972 thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and is the penultimate feature film of his extensive career. The film is based upon the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Arthur La Bern, and was adapted for the screen by Anthony Shaffer. La Bern later expressed his dissatisfaction with Shaffer’s adaptation.[1] The film stars Jon Finch, Alec McCowen and Barry Foster and features Billie Whitelaw, Anna Massey, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Bernard Cribbins and Vivien Merchant. The original music score was composed by Ron Goodwin.

Frenzy was Hitchcock’s first film to earn an R-rating in the United States, as Psycho was originally released unrated.Read More »

Amos Vogel in Film as a Subversive Art:
A censorship landmark case: the entire plot pivots on an act of intercourse, during which the woman accidentally discovers the vital clue to the film’s mystery. The complete absence of nudity and total relevance of the scene to the plot posed an impossible problem for the American censors, and led, upon appeals against its prohibition, to the abolition by the Supreme Court of the entire system of American state censorship in 1967. This development contributed significantly to the later era of sexual permissiveness in the American cinema.Read More »

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User Reviews

Amsterdam: city of pigeons, karate and dirty movies
12 November 2004 | by Chip_douglas (Rijswijk, ZH, Netherlands)

This 1973 film is based on one of six ‘Srillers’ (short for sarcastic thriller) by Rinus Ferdinandusse, who also co-wrote the screenplay and appears in the film. It stars Rijk de Gooijer as Rutger Maria Lemming, or Rick for short. Lemming suffers from Angela Lansbury syndrome: murder mysteries regularly cross his part even though he is happy milking pigeons and running a pinball arcade. When his loyal but gullible friend and former karate champ Ed Swaan (John Blumming) finds himself involved with some pornographers, the two of them set about getting their hands on the embarrassing footage.Read More »

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France, 1936-37. The Popular Front wins elections, the Spanish Civil War begins, and Hitler and Stalin are manipulating and spying. The brilliant exile, Fiodor Voronin, a general at 20, is the deputy at the White Russian Military Union, probably slated to replace the aging Général Dobrinsky soon. Fiodor’s Greek wife, Arsinoé, paints and stays away from politics, befriending Communist neighbors. Her health declines; the attentive Fiodor arranges care and, against the backdrop of Stalin’s Great Purge, considers his options. He plays a chess game in which love of country, love of Arsinoé, ideology, petty jealousies, and the machinations of power roil in matters of life and death.Read More »

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A pulse-pounding political thriller, Greek expatriate director Costa-Gavras’s Z was one of the cinematic sensations of the late sixties, and remains among the most vital dispatches from that hallowed era of filmmaking. This Academy Award winner—loosely based on the 1963 assassination of Greek left-wing activist Gregoris Lambrakis—stars Yves Montand as a prominent politician and doctor whose public murder amid a violent demonstration is covered up by military and government officials; Jean-Louis Trintignant is the tenacious magistrate who’s determined not to let them get away with it. Featuring kinetic, rhythmic editing, Raoul Coutard’s expressive vérité photography, and Mikis Theodorakis’s unforgettable, propulsive score, Z is a technically audacious and emotionally gripping masterpiece.Read More »