Film Reviews by Steve

This film is so tightly knotted to its theme of vanity that it eventually becomes a moral fable. Bette Davis plays a high society coquette who marries a modest but rich businessman (Claude Rains) to keep her crooked brother out of jail. Her marriage is no impediment to having a good time in the company of fast men. So Mr. Skeffington toils without love, filling her life with riches.

The unfaithful wife loses her looks after a bout of diphtheria, and learns valuable life lessons. By 1944, in a lifetime of heavy smoking, Bette looked middle aged and she is hardly convincing as a famous beauty. In fact there is a premonition of Baby Jane Hudson in her heavy makeup, even before the illness. But credit to Davis for allowing her later grotesque appearance.

She dominates the film, and haunts your nightmares. Rains gives a more subtle and touching performance as her rejected husband, a Jewish man who takes his daughter to Germany as the Nazis come to power. The film starts just before WWI and concludes with the world about to be again consumed by war. Bette gets to wear a compilation of classic frocks from the first half of the century.

There's quite a lot of humour (from Julius & Philip Epstein). The witty script keeps the drama fairly superficial. Almost nothing is done with the theme of anti-semitism. This is an epochal film in the history of classic cinema, because it was the final release of Bette's hated contract with Warner Brothers. And while not her best, it's a significant entry in that body of work.

Culture clash comedy which is a nice memento of the star appeal of Ivor Novello in early British cinema. He plays an exiled Russian prince of no fixed address who moves into the home of a conventional English middle class family and changes their lives. It was adapted from Novello's own stage play.

The strength of the film is the humour which deals in the usual motifs of the sitcom, like social climbing and class etiquette. And the ensemble work of the cast sparkles. Remarkable to see a barely recognisable, and very young Ida Lupino as a shopgirl shacked up with her boss...

Novello stands out as the languid, decadent aristocrat who introduces the family to unfamiliar freedoms, mostly sexual, as he transforms their suburban home with his balalaika, exotic cigarettes and Russian gimcracks. And vodka. He is charming, handsome and elegant under the makeup. And just a little camp.

His comic timing is exceptional. It's easy to see why he was such a big star. Some of the acting in smaller roles is theatrical, but still, very funny and the cast squeeze all the laughs out of a pretty good script. The main negative is that when they pull the message together at the fade out, it seems to be- know your place! But it's fun getting there.

Intelligent and very funny social comedy which was a massive box office hit. It looks a knockout with the pop art visuals, stunning use of widescreen, quirky editing, striking Technicolor... And directed by Mike Nichols with an innovative and surreal imagination.

Dustin Hoffman (in a star making role) is home from college and seduced by a friend of the family (Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson), which proves an impediment when he wants to marry her daughter (Katherine Ross). It is labelled a counterculture film, but that's not really what is on screen.

The graduate may be experiencing generational friction with his parents and their bourgeois pals. But he is not rebelling against their wealth or hypocrisy. He is a product of them. He has no causes. He is just drifting. He has as little to communicate as his materialistic relatives.

It's a generational film, but Hoffman is not playing a hero/anti-hero. He's just another thwarted American life, alienated, inarticulate and lost within his own familiar subculture. A landmark second film by Nichols, with standout use of brilliant Simon and Garfunkel songs.

Punishingly energetic High School musical from the Broadway stage which made a star of Ann-Margret. She's a girl from Sweet Apple, Ohio who wins a competition to kiss a popular rock and roll bad boy (Jesse Pearson) before he goes in the army. And, that's pretty much it. Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh were nominal stars, but it's a showcase for Ann-Margret.

Not only for her astonishingly dynamic dancing and faux-naif vocals but her alluring freshness. And abundant sex appeal. The film is kinetically directed in primary colours and widescreen by musical veteran George Sydney. Including split screen effects. The huge peak is the extended Lot of Livin' to Do, which belongs among the great ensemble dance routines in cinema.

The song everyone remembers is Dick and Janet's duet on Put On a Happy Face. He complained there was too much Ann-Margaret, but actually the screen misses her when she is absent. Of the rest of the cast, Maureen Stapleton is funny as Van Dyke's incredibly passive-aggressive mother. It's a surprisingly sophisticated topical comedy.

And it's a satire of small town America and rock and roll hysteria. Pearson is unambiguously Elvis Presley. Some of the routines are filler, especially a dance number for Janet Leigh which feels like it was included to pump up her screen time. It's the bright, shiny surface of this joyful film that attracts. And Ann-Margret's magnetic, vibrant performance.

This is a very funny social comedy which makes satirical observations about English class system. It is compassionate about the suffering of the poor and critical of the pitiless entitlement of the rich. It's difficult to watch without comparing it to the musical remake, My Fair Lady. But Pygmalion is too good to be lost in its shadow..

Phonetics expert Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) makes a wager that he can pass off grubby flower seller/beggar Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) as a lady at a grand ball... But this isn't really a romance, and the pair do not become a convincing couple. Eliza has no status and her modified accent prevents her from rejoining the working poor, so she no longer has any home.

Howard is excellent as the arrogant, careless Professor. But it's Hiller's film and she is both extremely moving, and really very funny. The bath scene, when the housekeeper scrubs the filth off the indignant pupil is hysterical. Eliza has her own moral code, and an awareness of her social position, which is a notch above a prostitute.

And that difference is crucial to her self respect. Hence her catchphrase: 'I'm a good girl I am!' It's a kind of fairytale, but while Pygmalion is clearly not social realism, there is far more care for the realities of poverty than in My Fair Lady. It's a handsome production with an Oscar winning script and wonderful cast performances. And Wendy Hiller is a sensational Eliza.

This popular Ealing comedy is an early draft of national myth making about London's response to the blitz. During the hardship that follows the war, the explosion of a dormant bomb reveals buried medieval treasure... and a deed which indicates that Pimlico isn't part of Britain at all, but a fiefdom of the Duke of Burgundy...

And therefore isn't subject to the austerity laws of postwar Britain. So the locals rip up their ration books and identity cards. The action is staged around the bomb site and the film builds a perverse nostalgia for the war years, when people pulled together. 

Given opportunity, leaders emerge. Stanley Holloway wants to use the windfall to develop social projects. Raymond Huntley turns his bank branch into the treasury. Margaret Rutherford shines as the excitable Professor who explains the historical back story. Ultimately the locals accept that deregulation leads to anarchy, and rejoin the UK.

There are the standard motifs of Ealing comedy, like the dreaded men from the Ministry, and the resourcefulness of the community, but the politics is muted. Though a shortish film, the interesting set up is overextended, and the satire is very gentle. However the ensemble cast makes it fun.  Don't miss those Brexit parallels!

This is an independent production intended to imitate the popular Gainsborough melodramas of the forties. So there is a tyrannical aristocracy, a band of troublesome gypsies, intense, transgressive passions and illicit meetings in the stables as the protagonists struggle for the wealth and privilege that comes with land and status.

There is a detailed and colourful recreation of a historic English country estate, but the revenge narrative is so sordid it could be film noir. The events are loosely based on a real case from Victorian times. Valerie Hobson plays the poor cousin of rich relations, who takes a position as their family governess.

While she is quietly ambitious and marries the creepy heir (Michael Gough), she longs for the manager of the estate (Stewart Granger) who is tormented by the awful burden of being an illegitimate offspring. He looks after the horses while making plans to seize his thwarted inheritance. Leading to a sweet plot twist at the climax.

The colour photography is dramatic, especially of Hobson and Granger who sparkle darkly together. Valerie gets to wear some luxurious gowns once she is established in the master's bedroom. Everything is overstated and degenerate, and invariably set on horseback. Gainsborough couldn't have done it better.

This was only briefly shown in cinemas as a charge of plagiarism was filed and it wasn't seen for fifty years, until it fell out of copyright. Whatever the validity of the legal challenge, this is a typical Val Lewton horror, rich with atmosphere: of shadows and fog, and sea shanties; of arcane traditions of the sea and dense emotional anxiety.

RKO asked Lewton- the producer- to get some use out of the studio's water tank and a ship already built for another production. The Ghost Ship examines the deepest fear of its main character; Russell Wade plays an inexperienced Third Officer on his maiden voyage on a cargo ship, concerned that he lacks practical knowledge.

The captain (Richard Dix) is a martinet obsessed with authority, but also he lacks moral will. He always fails to act, resulting in death or danger, but has built a weird, crazy philosophy justifying his negligence. The novice begins to suspect the captain's sanity, but is isolated because everyone else on the ship is blind to these misfortunes, and he doubts his own judgement.

The tale is narrated by sailor who is mute; his poetic commentary is extremely pessimistic. There are extraordinary action sequences; when the anchor is returned to its locker, a labourer (debuting Laurence Tierney) gets shut inside by the skipper and slowly crushed to death. There is that touch of the peculiar that is characteristic of the Lewton horrors. It's a shame this brief, hallucinatory film isn't better known.

Frantic but dated sex comedy is a good candidate for the ultimate sixties swinging London film. It's a vehicle for Oscar nominated Lynn Redgrave as the goodhearted but frumpy Georgy, alienated by the contemporary scene, and in particular, Charlotte Rampling's chic, slumming superbabe. Dressed by Mary Quant.

The humour has a few sharp edges, particularly regarding the glamour girl's rejection of her new baby. And perhaps Georgy's inner beauty is too defined by her potential for domesticity, to please modern audiences. But the film has incredible energy and is brilliantly photographed and edited.

The characters are eccentric rather than mere period archetypes. What they most have is spontaneity, particularly Alan Bates' kinetic performance as the lover of both women. James Mason is a northern millionaire who wants to set up Georgy as his mistress. He is a sort of stand-in father figure, but the film glosses over this ambiguity.

It's a quirky romcom which offers a nice snapshot of the London Ray Davies sang about. Though Georgy's fear of missing out is timeless. She only wants love, but it turns out to be too much to ask for. The mood is captured perfectly in the title single by The Seekers; lively, winsome and a bit homespun. Both were huge hits.

In 1955, the release of the French thriller Les Diaboliques reset the genre for the next ten years, with its mood of psychological uncertainty, and the ostentatiously twisty plot capped by a big final reveal which hopefully upends the audience's expectations. No studio ploughed this furrow deeper than Hammer.

And no film ripped off the motifs of Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic as audaciously as Taste of Fear. There's even a body hidden in a swimming pool... But no matter, the illusion works again and this is the best of the Hammer psychological suspense films. The performances are persuasive and director Seth Holt evokes a pleasing noir sensibility.

Susan Strasbourg calls on the luxurious coastal mansion of her estranged, wealthy father only to be informed by his new wife (Ann Todd) that he has been suddenly called away. The teenager is vulnerable because she is confined to a wheelchair, and soon she begins to be confronted by her father's corpse. Is she crazy, or is the stepmother...

Well, the audience is requested by the management of the cinema not to divulge the ending of this exciting suspense thriller. It's a woman in peril film which benefits from a quietly menacing portrayal by Ann Todd. Aspects of the plot are contrived, and don't work at all on a second viewing. But, it remains a fun, entertaining shocker.

This sleazy British science fiction draws on the long history of American B horror, but is regenerated by its transfer to swinging London and the glorious stunt casting of Boris Karloff as the scientist. Yes, they used to call him mad. He invents a machine which allows him and his wife to live vicariously through Ian Ogilvy's decadent playboy.

There is a poignancy in seeing the elderly Karloff in such a familiar role, but fallen on hard times. Living in the squalor of a damp slum. But Catherine Lacey absolutely steals the film as the elderly wife who seeks to exploit the machine to satisfy her grotesque megalomania. Soon she has Ogilvy killing sexually available Bohemian girls.

Which makes it feel like satire on the prurient hypocrisy of the readers of British tabloids, getting their kicks from the perceived horror of the modern world. What could be more British!? The film looks like a tacky bootleg, with gaudy colour, cheap lighting setups and homemade effects, which adds to the guilty pleasure.

This heady rush of mod-psychedelia was the second of only three film made by Michael Reeves. It's an auspicious effort which overcomes the limitation of its meagre funds with imagination and a deep understanding of the genre. It's a weird acid trip, a cheapo head movie. It takes a tired old genre and gives it new life.

The original and the archetypal haunted house comedy-thriller. It establishes nearly all of the genre conventions. It's not exactly horror because there is ultimately no supernatural element, but it uses typical motifs from the fright film, particularly its wonderful expressionist look and the spooky sets full of shadows and cobwebs and secret passages.

The much imitated set up is very cute. A family meets in an old castle to hear the reading of a will. The fortune goes to the lead, Laura La Plante, but only if she is considered sane by the psychiatrist who will arrive in the morning. Otherwise it will go to... and then a hairy hand comes out of the wall to snatch away the family lawyer. But whoever it is, they have until dawn to drive the heir clear out of her mind!

Then there are some hidden diamonds and a killer who has escaped from a psychiatric hospital. La Plante looks a little matronly for a horror star now, but thankfully she gives a restrained performance while being scared witless. Creigthon Hall plays the frightened fop who saves her, without being irritating. And there is a long list of the usual suspects.

It works as an exciting thriller, but the comedy (and farce) is effective too and doesn't slow down the action. This is still an enjoyable film which never drags and is told with visual flamboyance by German director Paul Leni making his American debut. When Creigthon Hall is hiding under a bed watching a jazz babe get undressed it's possible to wonder if the horror film has moved on at all!

Minor but engaging film noir loosely adapted from Emlyn Williams' unsuccessful stage play. The premise is familiar from many postwar British thrillers; a desperate arrival at Heathrow has 24 hours to save an innocent man from the gallows. But Joseph Losey lifts it above the ordinary with some visual style and multiple thematic layers.

Michael Redgrave is an alcoholic novelist who was in detox while his son was tried for the murder of his unfaithful girlfriend. But the youngster resents his old man and seems to have accepted his fate. And while the writer investigates, he must deal with the withdrawal symptoms that trigger hallucination and memory loss.

The father searches for redemption to make good on years of drunken neglect, and Redgrave is poignant in a characteristic portrayal of a weak, traumatised man. There is also vilification of the death penalty, and Losey, in exile from McCarthyism, takes care to disapprove of every facet of the English establishment. Particularly the hostile capitalist.

Having seen this plot repurposed repeatedly, perhaps Losey's most impressive achievement is to tell the story so well. Not just coherently, but to create tension out of such commonplace situations. The clocks! Renee Houston catches the eye in a small role as a boozy freeloader. It's not peak Losey, but still an interesting British noir.

Rugged and emotionally rancorous social realism, adapted by David Storey from his own debut novel. This is one of the key films of the British New Wave; a raw, dour account of a violent and immature outsider who makes a career in Rugby League rather than go down the pit. It was shot on location around Wakefield with a documentary approach.

Storey had been a miner and a rugby pro, and there is an impression that he knows his territory. And for the first hour while the film plugs away at rendering the lawless violence on the field of play as an allegory for a wider presentation of a hard knock life, this works well, boosted by Richard Harris' candid performance as the angry young man.

If it ultimately disappoints, the responsibility probably rests with Lindsay Anderson, who directs his first feature film. The drama eventually congests with humdrum, sclerotic dialogue which pads out the characters, but has no real dramatic purpose. In the later scenes Harris is allowed to perform an incongruous tribute to Marlon Brando.

And it goes on way past the final point of interest. The jumbled up timeline stifles the momentum. There is some good photography, and a memorable performance from William Hartnell as the scout who discovers the rugby star, but is soon forgotten. It's pretty stodgy, though sure to be of interest to fans of sixties kitchen sink realism.

A plot switch so ludicrously gratifying that it's astonishing the public had to wait 75 years after the publication of Robert Louis Stevenson's short gothic novel to see it. Henry Jekyll uses female glands in his basement experiments to extend the human lifespan. So, of course, when he drinks from the exploratory elixir himself... he turns into a sexy woman.

Much of the film's attraction lies in the perfect casting of Martine Beswick as Edwina Hyde. She had been a Hammer glamour girl, and got the part because of a resemblance to Ralph Bates' mad doctor. They are so right together. Maybe it's a shame that Brian Clemens' script didn't make more of the gender themes, but this is Hammer Studios, not Virago Press.

Instead, we get brief nudity. The foggy East End of Victorian London is constructed on elaborate sets. There's plenty of period atmosphere and historic folklore, including skilfully working Jack the Ripper and Burke and Hare into the narrative. There is some gore, and big shock moments and some episodes feel quite transgressive.

So the studio brings its usual virtues to the demented premise. There is too much clumsy innuendo, and the suspense unwinds towards the end. But director Roy Ward Baker assembles each scene with considerable craft. It's not as good as many faithful presentations of Stevenson's classic, because the original story is immortal. But it's a satisfying alternative.