1950’s

[6] Gordon Scott’s second outing at Tarzan is far better than his first, and it’s also the first Tarzan film to be shot in color! This time around, the loinclothed lord is tasked with helping five passengers of a crashed airplane safely out of the jungle. Along the way, our heroes have to contend with a traitorous big game hunter and a reclusive tribe of …

[5] Vincent Price headlines as a millionairre who offers $10,000 to five people if they’ll spend the night with him and his wife in their haunted hilltop mansion. The house is the site of countless murders and is supposed to be haunted by ghosts. But is it the paranormal the guests should be afriad of? Or is it Price and his wife, who seem to …

[7] The residents of a small California town are slowly being replaced by otherworldly “pod people” and it’s up to Kevin McCarthy and Carolyn Jones to warn the rest of the world about the invasion. This original film version is a modestly-budgeted but effective sci-fi/horror flick. It’s emblematic of the ’50s for its allegorical use of the Red Scare, but it also suffers from some …

[6] Peter Cushing returns for Hammer’s first sequel to their highly successful Curse of Frankenstein. Cushing’s mad doctor escapes the guillotine and sets up camp in a new town, where he transplants the brain of his deformed assistant into a reanimated corpse. For campy horror fun, Revenge of Frankenstein begins and ends well, but the middle portion is pretty unremarkable — an uninspired rehash of …

[6] An army rocket returning from Venus crash lands in the Mediterranean, releasing a Venusian creature that wreaks havoc in Italy. This matinee monster movie is better than most of its kind. The first thirty minutes are surprisingly strong, building mystery and suspense very nicely. After that, the movie becomes a bit of a King Kong knock off. Effects master Ray Harryhausen once again succeeds …

[5] This monster romp was the first solo effort by effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. All the stop-motion animation has the usual Harryhausen charm, including a famous scene where the dinosaur rages down Wall Street and chomps on a policeman. Unfortunately, there’s not much else going for this creature feature until that point. The story is one of the earliest to feature atomic mutation, but the …

[8] To say this movie is an expose on the horrors of war is an understatement and an oversimplification. War is just a backdrop, and the indictment is a broader one of man’s inhumanity to man. What makes Paths of Glory different from other anti-war films is that the injustice comes not from the enemy, but from within. After French soliders refuse a suicide mission …

[6] Frank Sinatra plays an unhappy writer and WWII veteran who has trouble readjusting to life in his scenic Indiana hometown. The screenplay, based on a novel by James Jones, gets lackadaisical in the middle, but Vincent Minnelli does a good job capturing both the quaint and stifling qualities of small-town life. Sinatra is good, but he’s easily outshined by his colorful costars. Shirley MacLaine …

[6] Vincente Minnelli sheds a bright light on gender politics in this story of a bullied teenager who finds solace with his college housemaster’s wife. It is fascinating to watch a film deal with mysogyny and homophobia at a time when these words were barely in our collective vocabulary. It’s even more remarkable that this film, made during the height of rigid gender codes, asks …

[7] The ever-versatile Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo, Bringing Up Baby) returns to screwball comedy with Monkey Business, pairing Cary Grant with Ginger Rogers as a couple whose marriage is put to the test when they take a ‘fountain of youth’ potion that regresses them to teenaged states of mind. Grant and Rogers have definite chemistry and do hilariously well here, especially when they begin behaving …

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