Film Reviews by Steve

Musical version of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom which was adapted by Frank Borzage and Fritz Lang in the '30s. Gordon MacRae stars as a fairground barker of superficial charm and foul disposition who ill treats his new wife (Shirley Jones). He dies while robbing a local big shot, leaving her pregnant and alone. In the afterlife, and with his family in peril, he gets the chance to live for one more day...

There's a lot that doesn't work in Carousel. The main role is such an unrepentant and contemptible lowlife that it's hard to care about his redemption. His wife is too sweetly virtuous to easily accept as a working girl growing up in poverty. The beautiful locations in Maine carry no impression of a realistic, working fishing port where lives are traded for a few dirty coins...

The film retains too much of the play's realism  to be credible within the conventions of a fifties Hollywood musical. And its acquiescence of domestic abuse makes it too difficult to want to suspend disbelief. The story is too dark for this kind of treatment.

Of course the songs are excellent, and You'll Never Walk Alone is one of the great showstoppers. It is performed twice. The Cinemascope is thrilling, particularly in accommodating the dance routines. The locations are lovely and the colour is bright and deep and luxurious. But none of that is really harmonious with the story that's being told. 

Jack Finney's timeless science fiction concept is often assumed to be an allegory for Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunts in post-war USA. Others suggest a near opposite, that it was intended to be a warning of the spread of communism. Don Siegel testified that he intended his film to comment on the brainwashing effect of materialism in the contemporary economic boom.

It is a brilliant vehicle for critiquing any kind of conformity. There is an alien invasion from seeds blown in from space which grow into pods which mimic the exact appearance of the hosts.  Once established, they take over their being and memories. Then the pod-people attack the freedom of others, claiming they will be happier without individuality or emotion.

This is the start of a wave of sci-fi films about conspiracies which tap into paranoia about a perceived hidden threat. By the end, Kevin McCarthy is running on the freeway shouting about the danger to us all: 'you're next, you're next'. But no one stops to listen. Is he insane? Or is it true? Sadly, the studio insisted on a couple of framing scenes which remove that ambiguity.

Seigel's only science fiction film is a legend, and part of our cultural language. It has a stylish film noir look and while the meagre budget may have left limited funds for special effects, they are still good. Kevin McCarthy has become exclusively famous just for this role, and with the beautiful Dana Wynter forms an unusually permissive relationship for the '50s.

Psychological ghost story set in New England, though shot in UK. Robert Wise is obviously influenced by head of RKO horror in the '40s, Val Lewton, who gave Wise his debut as director. The idea is that terror conjured up in the mind of the audience is more daunting than any screen monster. So the horror is offscreen, mostly suggested by sound.

 The set design of the haunted stately home and the expressionist shot compositions are brilliantly unsettling. But we don't see any ghosts. In fact, the ambiguous script implies that the haunting may be happening inside the fractured psyche of the pale, neurotic medium (Julie Harris), who is an unreliable narrator.

Richard Johnson plays an academic who wants to prove the existence (or otherwise) of the paranormal, so enlists two women who have experience of the supernatural, Claire Bloom plays the other, a chic socialite who has the gift of ESP, so knows what everyone is thinking. Russ Tamblyn is a sceptic, who brings the wisecracks and the martinis.

This isn't unlike the kind of B horror William Castle was famous for in the 50s-60s. But there's a bigger budget, and it's more sophisticated... And scarier. The ensemble cast is excellent, but Harris excels as the lonely, unstable conduit for the spirits who possess the old house. Who want her to remain. It's her vulnerability and suffering that stays in the memory.

Zero budget cult horror fantasy, shot along the California coast, and set in an empty amusement park, which evokes a dreamy maritime ambience. It is slow with a bare, prosaic script, but it has that strange, ethereal mood that amateur productions sometimes have because they are made in unconventional ways.

There's a cast of mostly tv support actors, but Dennis Hopper leads as Johnny, a sailor in the US navy who falls in love with a mysterious stranger (Linda Lawson), who poses as a mermaid in the fair. She is being investigated by the police as two of her boyfriends have been found dead...

The old sailor who runs the mermaid attraction (Gavin Muir) tells Johnny that the girl is a siren from the sea who tempts men to their death... The fortune teller thinks the sailor is in deep peril. So who is crazy? Maybe it's even Johnny who keeps having nightmares about the sea.

This is an atmospheric, homemade film which demonstrates what can be done with very little money but plenty of imagination. The eerie music is effective, particularly the echoey flute themes. The lack of budget for extras makes this a deserted, lonely world, with a melancholy that stays in the memory..

This was adapted from a 1961 tv play, also starring Cliff Robertson. His role in the film version won an Oscar, as a lonely, blue collar worker with learning disabilities who is chosen for an experimental operation which will make him more intelligent. More than that, he becomes a genius. But the process is only temporary...

For an hour, it is a feelgood fantasy, shot in a documentary style. But when the dream begins to unravel, the picture is fragmented, telling much of the story through hallucinogenic split screen montages, scored by Ravi Shankar. It all gets very summer-of-love. This method tells the story quickly, but avoids following up any thematic proposals.

It relates a uniquely human experience. We are educated until we understand the fact of our mortality, and nothing we can learn afterwards can change this truth. But the film overlooks the complications. What if everyone had the operation? Surely it is more likely it  would be sold to the rich rather than given to those in need? What are the ethics of using this man as an experiment?

Robertson plays an outsider, someone who sees the world having first experienced its cruelty. There's a very strong scene where he word associates with scientists at a press conference and we glimpse his subconscious trauma. It feels credible that one day, something like this could be attempted. And that's what good sci-fi does; it draws on the almost believable

This has an epic dimension, particularly in the early scenes of the exhumation of a satanic statue in Iraq. William Friekin was hot property and the visual effects are state of the art. The sound is extraordinary. It is from the era when horror began to attract big budgets and went on to make a fortune for Warner Brothers. 

Divorced from the hype, it no longer disturbs as it once did. We are an audience who has lived through its influence. But the profanities are startling. The ritualistic traditions of catholicism, with its medieval imagery and Latin ceremonies are unsettling. And the film draws on primal images of satan which are part of our communal childhood fears. The genre motifs still work.

It is interesting how much time is spent creating an impression of America in crisis. The poor man begging in a subway, the student protests. The US is socially and politically divided. The family is falling apart and there is a crisis of faith. And now the youth is going to hell... There is an impression that in the west, it's the right time for an anti-christ to re-enter the stage.

Max von Sydow is exceptional in the title role, going head to head with his satanic majesty. The 14 year old Linda Blair is also astonishing as the possessed child. And it feels like the demon has a personality. It's a key film of the '70s and new kind of horror. We been introduced to the devil before, but nowhere near as viscerally or explicitly. 

The final part of John Frankenheimer's paranoia trilogy. A middle aged banker (John Randolph) who feels life has passed him by, pays a shady organisation a huge sum for a second chance. He gets extensive cosmetic surgery, a phoney back story and the company provides a corpse to allow the wage slave to shed his old existence.  After his transformation he is played by Rock Hudson!

He was from the generation born into the depression,  and sent to fight in WWII, who returned to the sexually and socially inhibited America of the '50s. In the '60s, young people reject those values, get the contraceptive pill and discover free love. Who wouldn't want another go around?

But he doesn't change inside. Rock Hudson is just a frightening, unknowable mask. In his new identity, he begins to question who he used to be.  A lot of this feeling of paranoia is created visually with the distorting lenses, and by the gloomy progressive score.    

It is a chilling story of a rapacious corporation whose mission- to provide a service to the rich-has been swallowed by the capitalist obligation to create wealth. Anything can be justified in the pursuit of profit. The client's self doubt is exploited and he becomes paralysed in a terrifying web of ruthless, inexorable business ethics. Don't miss this one.

It's evidence of the increased prestige of science fiction in the late sixties that this was assigned an A list director- Franklin Schaffner- for what looks a B film premise. An astronaut (able to traverse time as well as space) lands on a planet with a habitable atmosphere in the distant future, where the great apes are the dominant species-and speak English!

Humans are the mute, unreasoning beasts. Charlton Heston discovers an earth-like environment, but because his instruments are telling him that he is way over the other side of space, he doesn't draw the obvious conclusion... at least until the famous ending.

Schaffner gets more from his budget than just a major star. The visuals are fabulous, particularly the location shots in the Utah desert. There is a classy score. There are no noirish atmospherics. This is in bright, colourful Panavision, but the irregular, jagged constructions of the ape city give the film an unsettling, distorted look. Best of all are the ape costumes and make-up effects.

For an action film there is quite a lot of thematic content. It touches on the conflict between evolution and religious dogma. The schism between the gorillas and chimpanzees encourage reflection on contemporary American racial conflict. It is about the social and political realities of 1968, the year of revolution on campus, with prejudice, belligerence and superstition ascendent over reason.

Title tells all in this thoughtful and faithful adaptation of Daniel Defoe's classic adventure... except it's science fiction! It was a clever idea to adapt a story about colonialism to the final frontier, though The Forbidden Planet (1956) got there first.

Paul Mantee plays an astronaut who crashes onto the surface of the red planet. He adapts to his new home (Mars has a breathable atmosphere in this film) and changes his environment to support himself. The film establishes a hierarchy of the space-wrecked castaway's physical, psychological and then social needs.  

 He finds a companion (Victor Lundin) who is viciously exploited by inter-planetary slave traders. The astronaut seeks to impose his own values on his new companion; they become master and servant. Only under duress can he accept an equality based on mutual respect and common interest. Presumably this alludes to the contemporary civil rights movement.

It benefits from the location shoot in Death Valley, California. The matte effects of the red sky, and the ruined remains of a Martian civilisation are clearly limited by budget but are still ok. The most poignant theme is straight from Defoe; a human alone in space exposed to the vastness of the universe. It is a potent, enduring image.

Roger Corman's series of historical horror releases from 1960-65 is clearly influenced by the early Hammer horrors and copies their successful formula: colour, castles, cleavage and classic text. The claim these are based Edgar Allan Poe doesn't always stand up to scrutiny. This takes its title from a verse by Poe but is an adaptation of a story by HP Lovecraft.

 It's my pick of the best of the 'Poe' series shot in America. It has a more interesting and detailed story, as well as sumptuous colour and beautiful, spacious sets. Vincent Price, rich of oratorical voice, is on board of course, and Debra Paget supplies classier female support than is customary. And it has dark, genuinely perverse themes.

 Price plays a necromancer in 17th century New England, experimenting on the reanimation of corpses and some malevolent breeding projects which aren't fully explained because we 'wouldn't understand'. He is set alight by the local menfolk and dies while cursing their descendants. His sorcery leaves behind a community of 'mutants' born from his hideous satanism.

A hundred years later, his heir- still played by Price- arrives to take up his inheritance. He is possessed by his ancestor and the whole process begins again... until finally Paget is being terrified by the grotesque demon her husband employs in his genetic investigations.  Warning! This a film of potent, transgressive horror.

Passionate and philosophical adaptation of Tennessee WIlliams' last great play. It is set on the photogenic coast of the remote Mexican rain forest where wandering strays assemble by chance. It's a location where cinema rarely goes; not just on a map, but in the human heart.

Richard Burton plays a disgraced priest. And he is the image in the title, tied up and hysterical and essentially saved by a nomadic artist (Deborah Kerr). This is like alcoholics anonymous, but for people who can't outrun their demons. She has been there herself and knows what it takes to survive, to endure.

The reverend has been locked out of his church in America. Working as a tour operator, he leads a religious party headed by a repressed middle aged woman more interested in finding the comforts of home than the secrets of Mexico. He is tempted by a sexually precocious young woman (Sue Lyon) which is what got him into trouble in the first place.

There is an amazing cast: Burton, Kerr and Ava Gardner are all believable despite all the poetic mysticism. It's funny in the early scenes with Burton particularly good, driven loco by his frailty until he discovers that in the absence of god, we can only be saved by the kindness of strangers.

Intense drama about the suppressed memories of a holocaust survivor (Rod Steiger) living among the violence and squalor of Harlem, NY. This was groundbreaking in its presentation of the Jewish survivors of the concentration camps in contemporary America.  

Steiger's performance feels authentic as the pawnbroker haunted by terrifying subliminal flashbacks. We also glimpse in these suppressed images, his present day traumas. The brutality of the streets. But his shop is a hub for laundering crooked money. In seeking to be passive, and desensitised to cruelty, he helps to sustain it.

He has become detached from society. A simple remark about his religion can only be answered in terms of 7000 years of struggle. But he is unable to relate to the historic suffering of black Americans. He is so numb he can no longer see the humanity in himself, or others.

Most of the film is shot in the pawnshop, with Steiger captive in the wire security cages. So it's a classic Sidney Lumet format set in a limited interior space. It is a powerful, very depressing film which gives an identity to a hidden, voiceless demographic through Steiger's potent, unreachable anguish.

Faithful adaptation of Edward Albee's waspish Broadway sensation. It's hardly opened up from the stage and mostly set in George and Martha's rather scruffy campus residence as they take us on a tour of their esoteric fantasy life while they initiate a couple of new arrivals.

George (Richard Burton) is in history and married to Martha (ElizabethTaylor) the daughter of the university chancellor.  They entertain an assertive biology teacher (George Segal), burdened by his frail, irksome, alcoholic wife (Sandy Dennis). The games the foursome play through the long, boozy night are irresistible.

 And Albee's dialogue is intelligent and very funny. Burton and Taylor ruined the play for any other actors. This is her best performance, as the aggressive, insolent, yet hugely vulnerable woman stuck in middle age with an unambitious husband. He is particularly adept at the coruscating verbal sparring.

It's so much fun just watching the Burtons warming up in the opening scenes. What unfolds is astonishing. They are like two warring civilisations. Segal and Dennis are actually very good but they get blown away in the storm. This is a dazzling intellectual experience made definitive by its brilliant stars.

From the period when Paul Newman emerged from the shadow of Marlon Brando and the myth cast by James Dean's death.  Melvyn Douglas plays a patriarch, an old school cattleman who lives by a rigid moral code which conflicts with his unprincipled son-Newman as Hud- who is worshipped by Douglas' naive, orphaned grandchild (Brandon de Wilde).. 

Hud isn't so much an anti-hero as an irredeemably contemptuous villain with a charming, attractive façade. In the era of the sixties counterculture He was taken as a role model for the way he stood up to and contested the rules of his his father. They admired his individualism, however corrupt.

Patricia Neal is sympathetic as the sassy housekeeper with a past, who occasionally enters the crosshairs of Hud's licentious gaze. There is a very elegant score from Elmer Bernstein. But the triumph of the film is James Wong Howe's photography in Panavision, dominated by the epic, white, Texan skies.  

Hud is a rapacious capitalist who intends to flatten his father's ranch and produce oil. It is a landscape where sickness is endemic, and the future uncertain. This is an elegiac lament to the passing of the old west, But it is political too; the old men have let us down. It's time their institutions and conventions were challenged.

This political allegory from Sam Fuller is characteristically original and incisive and dynamic. A hot shot journalist (Peter Breck) goes in pursuit of the Pulitzer Prize by faking insanity, which allows him access to a mental hospital and potentially discover who committed the murder of one of its patients.  

Only once admitted, the writer's real mental frailties start to unravel. The film adopts the notion that insanity is a reasonable response to an abnormal circumstance. This is what caused the mental illness of the three witnesses. And the news man soon conforms to the delirium of his environment.

Fuller uses the corridor where the patients congregate as a metaphor for America. He asserts that the country has become unbalanced by ignorance and prejudice and inevitably when people conform to its rules, they become irrational themselves. Which still resonates.

Though sensationalist, this is a clever and convincing film, shot to good effect in a single studio interior. The budget must have been tiny, but Fuller gives it plenty of visual clout; particularly the surreal rainstorms which sweep the corridor and terrorise the journalist in his psychotic state.