Favorite Films (lists up to participating site members)

[Mayerling]

Hello Jeff. Thanks.

Ah! William Daniels. Great actor. Think he's still alive and married to same spouse?

Cheers.
LC

Hi LC,

I have liked Daniels ever since I first really watched him as "John Adams" in the film "1776". His performance as "Dr. Craig", the sarcastic and rude heart surgeon in "St. Elsewhere" cemented my enjoyment of him. Since then I look around for his film and television appearances (like his pompous family man with the bratty daughter in the film "Two For the Road").

His wife's first name is "Bonnie" I believe - she is still married to him, and she played "Mrs. Craig" on "St. Elsewhere".*

*"St. Elsewhere" had a great many in-jokes and cultural references in it regarding it's cast members. In one episode the Craigs are on vacation and not in Boston but in Philadelphia, and Daniels starts singing (while they are out strolling on a street), "It's hot as hell in Philadelphia!" from "1776".

Jeff

[Robert]

Hi Lynn

There was a BBC version of 'Lost Hearts' around that time. Is that the one?

The one that really sticks in my mind is the "Mystery and Imagination" version a few years before. I remember the heart being dumped in the brazier at the end.

Jeff, re precognition, didn't Claude Rains do one as well?

[Rosella]

I don't really go for slasher movies. I did enjoy The Others (2001) with Nicole Kidman. I've never been able to watch 'The Blair Witch Project' all the way through since the first time I saw it in 1999.
I thought The Ring (2002) was very good and The Orphanage (2007) was excellent. There is apparently a new film in the offing, called, in English 'Goodnight Mommy,' which looks promising. I think it's a French or German production.

[lynn cates]

O'Connor

Hello Robert. I'm with you on "The Haunting."

What of John O'Connor's version of "Lost Hearts"--about 1973?

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

Daniels

Hello Jeff. Thanks.

Ah! William Daniels. Great actor. Think he's still alive and married to same spouse?

Cheers.
LC

[Mayerling]

Creepy or Paranormal Films:

The Wicker Man (the original one, with Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward)

Eye of the Devil (1966) - This film is often, unjustly overlooked. It has a cast of real pros in it: David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Donald Pleasance, Emlyn Williams, John Le Mesurier, Edward Mulhare). Set in the French vineyard countryside, it shows a dark underside highly reminiscent of "The Wicker Man" but this film was made first.

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1947) - with Edward G. Robinson, Gail Patrick, John Lund, William Demerest, Jerome Cowan, George Alexander. Rocky Sullivan on this thread loves the Robinson "tough guy" parts as a gangster, like "Little Caesar", but Robinson was good in most parts. Here, based on a story by "William Irish"/Cornell Woolrich, Robinson is one of his regular men who discovers he has an unwanted power. Heading a vaudeville act where he is a fake mentalist he finds out he actually can tell the future. Unfortunately the price of this is it is always news involving death - even when it is good news. When the daughter of his former business partner is left the heiress to an oil fortune, Robinson has visions of great danger facing her, and contacts her and her boy-friend (Lund) to warn her. But Detective Demerest has a sharp suspicion here about what Robinson is possibly trying to do - you see, Cowan's private airplane was tampered with. Woolrich's story is marvelous, see-sawing back and forth between the implausible occult and the plausible, ugly reality. The conclusion of this ultimately tragic film makes me think of the end of several Shakespearean tragedies.

Three Strangers (1946) - the greatest of the trio of films co-starring Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, here joined by Geraldine Fitzgerald (with the great name "Crystal Shackelford" - it just drips venomous femme fatale). Fitzgerald is a believer in the occult, and worships the Chinese God of fate, and she has gone out of her way to find two strangers to share fate with her - Lorre, an impish ne'er-do-well, and Greenstreet, an APPARENTLY proper British solicitor. She will join with them, if they agree, in the purchase of a sweepstake ticket for the winner of the Grand National. They agree, although Fitzgerald (when buying the ticket) only puts her name down on it. The film's script was written by John Huston, in the wake of his successful teaming of Greenstreet and Lorre in supporting parts in the film, "The Maltese Falcon". But Huston is not the director (I believe it's Jean Negulesco). The screenplay is about the vagaries of fate, as all three of its leads are buffeted about by it until the climax. One curious thing I have noticed about this fine film - most viewers consider the three stars as the "Three Strangers", and this is understandable. What many people don't notice is the frequent smaller triangles of interrelated characters in the film, such as Fitzgerald, her estranged husband (Alan Napier), and the girl he wants to marry. It is a wonderful film, not shown enough, and gave it's leads and the supporting cast terrific moments to act.

Jeff

[Robert]

One of the creepiest films I've seen is The Haunting (1963). I can't say that I go for the slasher, violent sort of stuff. For instance, in any dramatization of M.R. James's short story "Lost Hearts," I don't want to see the heart being ripped out at the end. It's unpleasant and adds nothing to the original story.

[sdreid]

My top "slasher" films roughly in order of release:

1-Psycho-1960
2-Peeping Tom-1960
3-Homicidal-1961
4-Last House on the Left-1972
5-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-1974
6-Black Christmas-1974
7-Halloween-1978
8-Friday the 13th-1980
9-The Demon-1981
10-Scream-1996

[Steadmund Brand]

As horror movie director Wes Craven just passed made me think of a new list,

Wes will probably be best remembered for A Nightmare on Elm Street, however I will always think of him as the writer and director of what may be the most disturbing horror film I ever watched, 1972's the Last House on the Left.. so let's put together a list of the most disturbing films you ever saw... doesn't have to be horror. But something that really hit you while watching or after viewing..I’ll start with a short list that I'm sure we will all be able to add too

1- The Last House of the Left- 1972--very hard to watch...was a take on Bergman’s classic the Virgin Spring... which is almost worthy of making this list as well.

2-Johnny Got His Gun- 1971- this film I watched once, and cannot bring myself to watch it again....yet I thought it was fantastic.. there is a great Radio Play made long before the film written by Arch Obler.

3- Titicut Follies- 1967- Documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman ( I believe his 1st) in and about the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane.

4-Night And Fog- 1955- French documentary, it may be only 30 minutes long...but it is 30 minutes you will NEVER FORGET!!

5-Salo- the film Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed for making...this may be the only film that can cause PTSD (that's not a joke, there have been people who claim to have it from watching this film), It is a film that can attack your subconscious days after first seeing it...this was to be the first in Pasolini's trilogy of death ( he had completed the Trilogy of Life :The Decameron, the Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights) As disturbing a film as this is, there is no denying Pasolini's talent as a film maker.. this is the ultimate proof that art doesn't have to be pleasing!!!!


Steadmund Brand

[curious4]

Whisky Galore?

C4

[Robert]

This is from a film called The Love Match :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeR78KFYjYo

[Mayerling]

Hi LC and GUT,

I saw part of the film UB 7 years ago, but I did not see it to the conclusion. I guess I did not like the "experiments" discussed as being performed by Hopkins in the camps. They were similar to what Monty Cliff has to discuss in "Judgment at Nuremburg".

There was a "fictional" might-have-been 19th Century television movie in the 1970s, "The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer", in which the Indians decide to show their contempt for Custer by not killing or maiming him, but leaving him dazed on the Little Bighorn surrounded by his massacred command. Returned to the care of his wife Libbie, he has to go through a public court martial at "Governor's Island" in New York Harbor, under the eye of the head of the Department of the East, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock. I don't remember the whole cast, but Custer is defended by Brian Keith, and General in Chief William Sherman is played by J.C. Cannon. William Daniels portrays a barely sober and steady Major Marcus Reno.

Jeff

[lynn cates]

great film

Hello GUT. Thanks.

Yes. It's also a great film--albeit far too long--for perusal in an ethics class: for obvious reasons.

Cheers.
LC

[GUT]

Hello Jeff. What of QB 7? Sir Anthony Hopkins is brilliant in that one--especially when he breaks down in the dock.

Cheers.
LC

QB VII was great.

[Robert]

In the UK, there was a series called Kavanagh QC starring John Thaw ('Inspector Morse').

Back in the 60s there was one called Boyd QC.