All aboard for The Ghost Train 1941
by Barry Kenyon
You would never think that the popular night market in Cambodia’s Siem Reap, not far from the Angkor Wat temple complex, would have two DVD shops both offering Arthur Askey’s wartime gem for sale. But you’d be wrong. And selling for one US dollar. “It’s a popular [...]
by Barry Kenyon
It’s fairly obvious that the 1966 spectacular “Khartoum” was tryng to cash on David Lean’s earlier offering “Lawrence of Arabia”. Both movies are about men of action who took on better equipped and much larger adversaries, although it’s true that Khartoum’s hero was killed in the final battle whilst Lawrence had a more [...]
Stand by with the rubber swords
by Barry Kenyon
In the early 1950s, MGM did a triology of medieval action movies with Robert Taylor. The first was the hugely successful Ivanhoe, all about Saxons and Normans, and the last was the somewhat bizarre The Adventures of Quentin Durward which tracked a wandering Scot interfering in French politics [...]
Mildred Pierce one of the best
by Barry Kenyon
The 1945 movie Mildred Pierce, one of the best Hollywood efforts ever, is much more than a high powered soap opera tinged with film-noir. It both reflects and then shatters the American dream – the desperate search for identity and property as the keys to happiness.
The tale started [...]
by Barry Kenyon
“Victim” was a controversial 1961 film which dealt with the then taboo subject of male homosexuality. In fact, it was the first film in the English language to dare to use the word “homosexual”. The UK director Basil Dearden deliberately set out to challenge his audience by pushing the boundaries of social acceptability [...]
It always has and always will
by Barry Kenyon
In his later years Lewis Gilbert, director of the 1969 big screen disappointment The Adventurers, appeared on Desert Island Discs and freely admitted this was the worst movie he had ever made. The acting and the storyline were crap, he claimed, but the music was OK.
Based on a [...]
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
by Barry Kenyon
This favourite movie of 1962 begins with a car wreck which is fine and dandy. The movie itself is a car wreck and you just can’t look away even for a moment.
The two aging divas – Bette Davis and Joan Crawford – play out their rivalry and hatred which [...]
by Barry Kenyon
Unlike Frankenstein and Dracula, there’s no novel or literary tradition to help us pinpoint the origin of the werewolf. What’s certainly true is that tales of wolves interacting with humans go back centuries. The founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were suckled by a she-wolf and Red Riding Hood was unlucky enough to [...]
by Barry Kenyon
The 1942 movie is two hours of heartache as Boston heiress Miss Davis lays bare for us all the morbidities of a repressed ugly duckling on the verge of a nervous breakdown who finally finds herself as a complete woman. Er, well, sort of!
Bette Davis lobbied hard for the part of Charlotte Vale, [...]
Quentin Durward not too serious
by Barry Kenyon
The Adventures of Quentin Durward in 1955 was Robert Taylor’s third offering in the trio of movies which also included Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table, all made in MGM’s British studios. For more than 30 years Taylor remained one of the studio’s principal leading men, usually playing [...]
1 - 15 May 2012
