1950s

Brief Synopsis:
A hot-shot reporter risks his life to land an interview with a notorious crook.

Quote:
Hot Summer Night is an out-of-the-ordinary crime yarn from the TV/radio production team of Morton Fine and David Friedkin. Unemployed journalist William Joel Pertain (Leslie Nielsen) hopes to reestablish himself by capitalizing on a recent wave of bank robberies. Pertain has a “lead” to the gang’s leader Tom Ellis (Robert Wilke), and intends to parlay this into a hot news story. Instead, he places the lives of himself and his wife Irene (Colleen Miller) in dire peril. Of interest is the fact that the villain is portrayed with a modicum of sympathy, while the reporter comes off as a bit of a jerk. — Hal EricksonRead More »

Plot Synopsis by Sandra Brennan
In this off-beat, tuneful psychological thriller, an ailing pregnant woman is in the hospital when she inadvertently eavesdrops on a conversation between a pianist and his wife. Later, after losing her baby, the woman’s husband convinces her to convalesce in a nice country house he has rented. Later she learns that the house is owned by the pianist whose wife died. The poor confused girl then begins believing that she has been possessed by the spirit of the musician’s late wife.Read More »

Nigel Dennis publishes a scandal magazine. But for each story he writes, he first approaches the person whose scandalous behavior is described (or rather implied, to avoid any libel suit) and says he will suppress the story in return for money. Several of his victims first decide individually to kill him instead of paying, but fail in amusing ways. Then they find that to protect their various secrets they must now join forces for a rather different purpose…Read More »

In a desolate, destroyed landscape – bearing now irrelevant traces of technological society – a man and a boy try to find their way under a fierce sun.Read More »

Synopsis:
Sixty-one year old widower Will Varner (Orson Welles), in ill health, owns many businesses and property in Frenchman’s Bend, Mississippi, including a plantation. To him, his children are a disappointment, who he sees as not being able to carry on the Varner name in the style to which he has built around it. Son Jody (Anthony Francoisa) has no ambition and does not work, spending much of his time fooling around with his seductive wife, Eula (Lee Remick). He finds twenty-three-year-old daughter Clara (Joanne Woodward) clever, but he feels she also wastes her time on more contemplative pursuits. Read More »

Phil Karlson (“The Phenix City Story”/”Kansas City Confidential”/”Scandal Sheet”) directs with verve this gripping caper thriller based on a Good Housekeeping serialized magazine story that was based on the novel by Jack Finney and is well-written by John Barnwell, William Bowers, Stirling Silliphant and Frank Tashlin.Read More »

Summary:
Movie company wants to shoot a science-fiction film using an Army barracks as location, and its soldiers as actors. Of course, the Commander doesn’t like it a bit, and persuades the crew to use a nearby haunted house instead. -imdb-Read More »

Third-billed Lee Marvin dominates the proceedings in A Life in the Balance. Marvin plays a psycho killer, whose trail is dogged by inquistive young Jose Perez. Jose’s father, musician Ricardo Montalban, has been accused of a series of murders. The boy is convinced that Marvin is the guilty party, and trails the man in hopes of bringing him to justice. No dummy he, Perez leaves a trail for the authorities to follow–a series of smashed-up police call boxes (a similar plot device was deployed for comic purposes by Harold Lloyd in Professor Beware). A Life in the Balance was filmed on location in Mexico City, with a great deal of screen time devoted to a colorful carnival.
Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

Steve Daley is in the Abilene jail waiting to be hanged when Judge Carr brings Cheyenne O’Malley into his cell and says that Daley can go free if he marries the girl without knowing her name. She must have a husband to claim an estate. Daley agrees and gets a letter of pardon from the Judge, who plans to kill him, but Daley, with the help of his friend Podo escapes the jail and the Judge’s hired killer, “Slow” Karp. Daley sets out to find his new bride but is captured and taken to the mansion of John Parnell who tells Daley that Cheyenne is actually a half-breed who runs a fur-trading company and needed a husband because of provisions in her father’s will. Parnell is also a fur-trader but he wants Daley to take over Cheyenne’s business so he and Daley can work together. Daley agrees, trails the wagon train and takes over but not before Cheyenne bull-whips him…Read More »