The Deadly Affair and Harper
James Mason as Charles Dobbs.The Deadly Affair (1967). James Mason stars as Charles Dobbs--a renamed George Smiley--in Sidney Lumet's moderately successful adaptation of John Le Carre's novel Call for the Dead. The plot is more mystery than e...
Lon Chaney, Jr. Makes a Strange Confession
Chaney Jr. and the black bag.
The most incongruent entry in Universal's six-film Inner Sanctum series is also one of the best. Whereas its brethren are psychological suspense tales, Strange Confession (1945) is a straight drama with a subtly gr...
The Alternate Movie Title Game (Musicals Edition)
Here are the rules: We will provide an "alternate title" for a movie musical and ask you to name the actual film. Most of these are pretty easy. Please answer no more than three questions per day so others can play. You may have an answer other than th...
Rod Serling Saddles the Wind
John Cassavetes glares.The opening of notes of Jay Livingston and Ray Evans's title tune--a torch song whispered intimately by Julie London--lets you know that Saddle the Wind (1958) won't be a conventional Western. But if you start to doubt ...
12 Great World War II Movies of the 1960s…and How to Watch Them for Free
Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen.Last year, I asked my 27,000 (awesome) Twitter followers to rate eleven of the finest World War II films of the 1960s. I wanted to keep my survey to a reasonable length, but it was tough to cut off the list at eleven. In f...
The Alternate Movie Title Game (Private Eye Edition)
Here are the rules: We will provide an "alternate title" for a private eye film and ask you to name it. Most of these are pretty easy. Please answer no more than three questions per day so others can play. You may have an answer other than the intended...
Seven Things to Know About "The Jimmy Stewart Show"
In support of National Classic Movie Day on May 16th, we are participating in the Classic Movie Blog Association's Big Stars on the Small Screen blogathon. This blogathon focuses on classic film stars who appeared in TV series, miniseries, variety show...
John Wayne in 3D in Hondo!
John Wayne as Hondo.
With John Wayne's 1953 3D Western Hondo, you actually get two movies in one. The first is an interesting love story between an tough dispatch rider for the U.S. Cavalry and a lonely woman--with a worthless husband--who operates ...
The Alternate Movie Title Game (Burt Lancaster Edition)
Here are the rules: We will provide an "alternate title" for a film that starred Burt Lancaster and ask you to name the actual film. Most of these are pretty easy. Please answer no more than three questions per day so others can play. You may hav...
Seven Classic Made-for-TV Movies…that you can watch for free!
In an interview in its February 2023 newsletter CMBA Today, the Classic Movie Blog Association asked me an intriguing question: "If you could program a perfect day of classic movies for TCM, what would be the seven films on your schedule?"I tried to th...