Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Violet Venable (Katherine Hepburn) has a problem. Several problems really. But the biggest one is her niece, Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor). Catherine has gone mad. It happened during the previous summer. She was in Spain with Violet's son, Sebastian. Something happened. Sebastian died. Catherine began raving madly. The things she said were disturbing to say the least. The fact that she said them about Sebastian was unforgivable. Sebastian was Violet's darling. From the moment he was born, she doted on him. Nothing was too good for him. No one was good enough for him. Except Violet, that is. Mother and son were inseparable. They traveled the world over, always together, more like husband and wife than mother and son. Until, that is, last summer. Violet was sick and couldn't travel. So, Sebastian took Catherine with him. And that's when everything started to go south for her. Having been raped at her first Mardi Gras ball just a month or so prior to their trip, she was already in an unstable condition. Then came the trip last summer, when Sebastian suddenly died. Of a heart attack, they say. But, why then does Catherine rave? And why does Violet want her out of the way? For good? Enter Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift). He's a Psychiatrist and brain surgeon at the state mental hospital, which is badly in need of cash. Violet promises to give them one million dollars, if the good doctor will perform a little surgery on Catherine, one that's guaranteed to cure her lunacy, to shut her up for good. Dr. Cukrowicz isn't so sure that Catherine really is insane. He gains Catherine's trust. Then he gets her to tell her secret. They went to sunny Spain. The beautiful and fine Sebastian was using Catherine as bait. She attracted lots of fine and beautiful young men. Well, just boys really. But Sebastian would find the ones whose proclivities swung in his direction, or the ones who were just so hungry that they'd do anything for a little money. But the boys got angry with Sebastian. Who knows why. Maybe they just got fed up with being used. At any rate, they took revenge on him. Let's just say, they satisfied their hunger. And poor Catherine saw it all. No wonder she broke down. No wonder Violet wouldn't listen.

Joseph L. Mankewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer is a film about insanity, about sexual deviancy, about twisted familial relationships and the lengths that some people will go to keep them a secret. It's a film about a woman who twists her son into a monster, and the monster who uses his mother - and later his cousin - to procure his victims. And it's a film about the way that people choose not to talk about things that are too unpleasant, about the way that people cover up the unpleasant things and let them fester into madness. And it's a story about appetites, and the ways - not always healthy - that we go about satisfying those appetites. Suddenly, Last Summer is a masterpiece, with one of the best casts assembled. Katherine Hepburn is wonderful as the wealthy, aloof and slightly disturbing Violet Venable. Elizabeth Taylor turns in a fine performance as the tragically disturbed and misunderstood Catherine Holly. And Montgomery Clift, with those intense eyes and that too-too fragile demeanor, is brilliant as young Dr. Cukrowicz, who's frustrated at the primitive conditions in the hospital he has to work in and the primitive mindset of the people who he works with, a mindset that says it's all right to lobotomize someone just because you don't like what she's saying. We see the treatment of the mentally ill only a few steps away from old Bedlam. Of course, even that may be better than the way we don't treat the mentally ill today. Makes you wonder how much things really have changed.

Suddenly, Last Summer is UNRATED and is filmed in glorious black and white. Running time is 114 minutes.

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Everybody knows the big Bogart films: Casablanca, The African Queen, Key Largo, To Have and Have Not. But Bogart made a lot of other films during his thrity year career in Hollywood. A few of those are stinkers. Most are pot boilers. And some are absolute gems. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa falls into the latter category. At least in my book it does. And let's face it, my book is the only one I care about. Bogart plays Harry Dawes, a washed up movie director hired by millionaire Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens), who fancies himself an artistic kind of a guy and wants to produce a movie. They fly to Madrid along with Oscar Muldoon (Edmund O'Brien), Kirk's PR maven, to audition a dancer they've heard about named Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner). Maria turns down all of Kirk's and Oscar's propositions, then changes her mind when Harry comes to talk to her. She makes the movie, she becomes a star, and she and Harry become best friends. Watch where you're going now. It really is possible for a man and a woman to be just friends. Besides, Harry has met and married the lovely Jerry (Elizabeth Sellars), and she's helped him get his life and his career back on track. Well, after several major movie hits, Maria begins to tire of both Hollywood and Kirk Edwards. So she and Oscar give Kirk the bum's rush and take up with millionaire playboy Alberto Bravano (Marius Goring). They go yachting about the Mediterranean for a while, until Maria begins to tire of Bravano too. He is, after all, a consummate bore. When Bravano starts abusing Maria in a Monte Carlo casino, she's rescued by Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi). He soon falls for Maria, and the feeling is mutual. Before you can say noblesse oblige, wedding bells are ringing. But marriage to the count isn't all that she dreamed it would be. The count has a secret of his own. Seems his equipment isn't quite in working order. Something to do with a grenade during the war. And he neglected to tell Maria before they were married. Ooopsy! And all those hunky young pool boys and Gypsies hanging about. What's a countess to do? Conclusions? Draw your own. Let's just say that the entire film is narrated in flashbacks from Maria's funeral. And the count's the guy wearing the cuffs. Jealousy, alcohol and a shotgun are always a bad mixture.

For Humphrey Bogart fans, The Barefoot Contessa is something of an anomaly. Here, Bogie isn't playing a gangster, or a bum, or a prisoner, or a good man gone wrong trying to do the right thing. Harry Dawes is just a nice guy who happens to work in a not very nice world. Along the way, he tries to be nice to, and help out, other people. He befriends and makes a star out of a lovely girl from Madrid. Ava Gardner sizzles as Maria, the barefoot dancer who never wanted anything more than to be truly loved. She gets just about everything in life but that. Edmund O'brien does a great job as the ever-worried Oscar, always hustling, always looking for an angle, always trying to keep one step ahead of his clients and the vox populi. Warren Stevens is delightful as the money-obsessed Kirk Edwards, who thinks he can buy anything, including love. And Rossano Brazzi puts in a memorable performance as the world-weary count, carrying his dirty little secret around with him, until it drives him crazy in the end. And here's where the film makes an interesting departure from a lot of movies that preceded it - Mankiewicz casts real Europeans to play Europeans. This is one of the hallmarks that sets movies of the 1950s apart from those of the 30s and 40s. Had The Barefoot Contessa been made a decade earlier, all of the parts would have probably been played by American or English actors. Think of Britishers Claude Reins and Sydney Greenstreet as the French Inspector Renault and the Italian Farari in Casablana. You get the picture. But realism was finally starting to creep into Hollywood. America's isolationism was over. People wanted real, foreign locales and real foreigners in them. About time too. Makes for much better movies.

The Barefoot Contessa is rated G and is filmed in Technicolor. Running time is 128 minutes.

Red Dirt (1932)

Victor Flemming's Red Dirt is a saucy little pre-code romp about a no-nonsense plantation owner and a prostitute on the run. Although it is laughably tame by today's standards of "show it all and let the public sort it out," this was pretty risqué stuff for it 1932. For those of you who don't know, the Production Code was a lengthy set of guidelines and restrictions that governed what you could and couldn't show in a motion picture. It included such things as how long a kiss could last, how much of a woman's body could be uncovered and even moral issues such as the fact that all murderers had to receive their just deserts by the movie's end. The code was in effect from 1930 to 1968; although, the strictest version of it was in force from 1934 to 1955. Red Dirt is one of the films that helped create the stricter version of the code. It also helped make the careers of Clark Gable and Gene Harlow. This movie is all about sex. That's the only way to put it. Every scene drips with innuendo, as Harlow, Astor and Gable do a sexual dance so carefully choreographed that not one inch too much skin is shown, not a single scene of actual intercourse. But we're left with no doubt whatsoever about what's going on off camera.

Set in French Indo-China (Viet Nam), the Red Dirt centers on Dennis Carson (Clark Gable), the owner of a rubber plantation. Denny is struggling through a dusty, dry monsoon season, and not feeling any too happy about his prospects for the coming year. When the monthly supply boat arrives from Saigon, it brings with it Vantine (Gene Harlow), a prostitute who got in trouble with the law and decided to head up river until things cooled off. When Vantine first arrives at the plantation, Denny is angry at her for barging in and wants nothing to do with her. But there's no denying the electricity between these two. The air around them is practically crackling with it. Soon, with the help of the primitive bathing facilities at the plantation, Denny succumbs to Vantine's rather obvious charms, and they engage in a romance that's so hot it threatens to burn the jungle down. The fun is short lived though. The next supply boat brings a wet blanket to throw all over the party. Gary Willis (Gene Raymond), Carson's new surveyor, arrives with his sleek, sophisticated wife Barbara (Mary Astor) in tow. Well, Gary wastes no time in coming down with malaria, and Denny wastes no time trying to get Barbara to come to his room and check out his etchings, much to Vantine's dismay. By the time Gary has recovered, Denny has stolen Barbara from him. His only problem now is how to get rid of the useless husband. The answer presents itself in a tiger hunt. Denny will take Gary with him to hunt a tiger that's been terrorizing the locals. At the crucial moment, Denny will delay firing for just a second or two, while el tigre does his dirty work for him. Problem is that Denny's really a descent guy at heart, and he can't bring himself to let Gary take one for the team. In the end, Gary and Barbara head for home, and Denny and Vantine settle back into their scorching affair once more.

I love this film. I know I say that a lot, but that's only because I mean it. I love any film with Gable in it. And Red Dirt is one of his best. It lifted him above the pack of "actors" and made him a "movie star." Didn't hurt Harlow's career any either. Both of them are fun to watch as they trade insults and innuendos, barbs and embraces. Mary Astor is both aloof and alluring as the high-society gal who decides to go slumming withe her husband as visits the wilderness and leaves her lover with a bullet to remember her by. Nothing says "I Love You" like a well-placed slug! And Gene Raymond is appropriately sexless and ineffective as the cuckolded Gary, who's simply no match for Gable's virile manliness. After all, who's gonna want a surveyor who drops like a rock whenever anyone sneezes, when they can have the muscly guy who chopped a plantation out of the jungle single handed? Well, maybe he did have a little help. Like several hundred Viet Namese peasants. But still, you get the idea. Which brings me to another interesting thing about this film - it shows an image of Viet Nam from the Western perspective, when it was a French colony to be exploited for its resources. Always interesting to see what folks here in sunny SoCal thought was really going on in places like that back in the day. You can see where a lot of the world's current problems began. Interestingly, Red Dirt was remade in 1953 as Mogambo, with Gable reprising his earlier role, and Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly playing the parts of the prostitute and the society dame. I'll leave it to you to guess which of the two is the better film.

Red Dirt is unrated and is presented in its original black and white format. Running time is 83 minutes.

Le Notti Bianche (1957)

Le Notti Bianche, which translates into English as "sleepless nights," is an exquisite little movie from Luchino Visconti about two lonely people who meet, who dance the dance and part again in a strange city. I'm not an expert on Visconti's work, but I do know a good film when I see one, and this is one of my favs. Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is new in town. He's come here for work, has no family in town, and no friends outside of work. He lives by himself in one room of a boarding house and spends his nights walking the streets, watching other people interacting with their friends and family. One night, he sees a young girl standing on a bridge, weeping. Mario approaches her, is smitten by her, introduces himself, and starts trying to court her. Natalia (Maria Schell) isn't interested in being courted though. She's in love with a man who used to rent the attic room in the building where she lives. He went away a year ago, but he promised to return. So Natalia waits for him every night on the bridge. But Mario is desperate, and he's sure he can steal Natalia from the past. So he amuses her. He distracts her. He tries to get her to fall in love with him. They go dancing. The dance turns into a wild, sexual act. Many have compared it to the party scene in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. Visconti places the dance in a public space though, and it ends in a brawl outside. In the end, Mario loses, and Natalia's love returns. Mario stands alone, and as the snow begins to fall, so do his tears.

Le Notti Bianche is a slow and deliberate movie. Those who are accustomed to faced-paced movies, full of snappy dialogue and car chases and the obligatory bedroom scene will be quite disappointed in this film. The only bedroom scenes involve Mario getting ready for work - all striped pajamas and toothpaste - and Mario sick in bed. Not very sexy, but terribly realistic. And that's one of the things I love about this movie - the way in which Visconti places the starkly realistic right alongside the utterly dreamlike. Mario is a real person, with a real personality, and with very real problems. We all understand loneliness and the desperation to find someone to belong to. Visconti gives that loneliness and desperation form in the character of Mario. You can feel the ache in him as he walks along the city street, jostled by the other people out having a good time. You can feel it in him as he struggles with whether or not to go with the prostitute - it would be so easy, a moments pleasure, the illusion of a relationship. That's something, isn't it? No, not for Mario. He wants the real thing, and he's found a girl that he thinks he can have it with. In the end, he's left with only himself and the snow and the empty city.

And speaking of the city, I love this one. It reminded me very much of The City of Lost Children - the bridges, the water, the stairs, the constant fog. This set was a work of art. I read that Visconti had the multilayered city set built on the sound stage. No CGI city here. This one is real. It has texture, brick and mortar, water and glass. You can feel the city as the camera moves through it. There's grime here, and perpetual damp. There are homeless people and rats and garbage. This is a real city, designed for the real people who will inhabit it for the space of time that it takes to watch the film. But in that space of time, I came to love this place. And against the backdrop of this gritty town, Visconti performs a love story - always a work of fantasy and imagination - using these realistic people. The result is a purely fascinating movie about the nature of love in the modern world.

Le Notti Bianche is rated G and has been restored to glorious black and white. Running time is 97 minutes.

The Trouble with Harry (1955)

The trouble with Harry Worp isn't so much that he's dead; it's that no one's quite sure how he died. Or who killed him. Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) thinks he might have shot Harry. Jennifer Rogers (Shirley McClaine in her film debut) hit him over the head. So did Miss Gravely (Mildred Natwick). Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe), a local artist, stumbles upon the body, just as Captain Wiles is trying to drag him into the woods. Sam is sympathetic. He's even willing to help get rid of the corpus delicti. Shovels are procured. The digging begins. Soon Harry is safely tucked away underground. But not for long. When the good captain accounts for all of his bullets and realizes that he didn't shoot Harry, he insists they dig him back up. And so they do. Then Sam meets Jennifer, and it's love at first sight. Jennifer tells Sam that Harry was her husband. She's been trying to get away from him. He's been quite insistent that they stay together. While he was insisting his way into her house, she whacked him over the head, and he stumbled away. Jennifer thinks the hit on the head must have killed Harry. She thinks they should just put him back in the ground and forget about him. So Jennifer and Sam and Captain Wiles bury Harry again. Then Miss Gravely tells the captain that she thinks that she might have killed Harry. He stumbled toward her while she was hiking, grabbing at her, knocking her down. She pulled off her hiking boot and clubbed him over the head with it. She's worried that she killed Harry. She wants him dug back up so that she can go to the police. Sam decides that they need to find out exactly how Harry died first. So they dig him up, clean him up, and call the doctor. He'll tell them how Harry really died. I won't though.

The Trouble with Harry was one of director Alfred Hitchcock's favorite movies, and it's easy to see why. It's and absolutely delightful film; although, American audiences didn't feel that way in 1955. It received poor reviews here. Europe received it better. The film ran for a year in England and Italy, for a year and a half in France. This is not a fast-paced movie, filled with intrigue and chase scenes and shoot-outs and explosions. It's a deliberate film that takes its time unfolding its story. The Trouble with Harry is more about the characters than it is about the crime, and the characters are wonderful. Sam is a bohemian artist who doesn't give a fig for conventions. Captain Wiles talks of his life sailing the world when in fact he was merely a tug boat captain on the East River. Miss Gravely is a middle-aged spinster who proves that you're never too old to fall head-over-heels in love. And Jennifer is a quirky young mother who wants to live her life in her own way. All four of these are brought together over the corpse of Jennifer's husband. The Technicolor cinematography brings the beautiful New Hampshire countryside to life. Interestingly, after the long exterior shots were filmed, the weather turned bad, so the rest of the filming had to be done on a sound stage. The crew collected as many of the Autumn leaves as they could and shipped them back to Hollywood, where they were painstakingly glued onto artificial trees to capture the feel of a New Hampshire Autumn. If you're in the mood for a quirky, romantic murder mystery, this one should fill the bill. Call it a black comedy or a morbid romance. Either way, The Trouble with Harry is a great movie.

The Trouble with Harry is rated G. Running time is 99 minutes.

Man's Favorite Sport (1964)

When it comes to the great outdoors, no one knows more than Roger Willoughby (Rock Hudson). Willoughby is the country's premiere expert on outdoors sports. He work's for Abercrombie & Fitch (the original A&F that sold high-end sporting goods, not the modern teen fashion shack). He teaches customers how to camp and hunt. He's written a best-selling book about fishing. Willoughby is the go-to guy for anything to do with nature. There's only one slight problem. Willoughby has never set foot in the woods. He lives in San Francisco. He's never been camping, doesn't hunt, and can't fish. In fact, he couldn't tell a trout from a salmon if his life depended on it. But as long as he can keep up the pretense of knowing, he'll be fine. Or so he thinks. Enter Abigail Page (Paula Prentiss) and Easy Mueller (Maria Perschy). These two finagle Willoughby's boss, Mr. Cadwalader (John McGiver) into entering Willoughby in a fishing contest to drum up business for the store. Sure that willoughby can't possibly lose, Cadwalader informs his outdoors expert that he's going into the outdoors.

Willoughby knows, of course, that he can't fish. He confides in Abigail. She tells him not to worry, that she and Easy will go along and help him out. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell just which of the three is more inept in the woods. Willoughby arrives at the lake loaded for bear, and runs smack into John Screaming Eagle (Norman Alden) a wise-cracking Native American who tries to make a touch on Willoughby. From here, the antics really get going. Willoughby can't do anything right. He can't even set up a tent, so he stays in a cabin at the lodge instead. When he tries to fish, he gets his line tangled in the trees, snags dead branches in the water, and nearly drowns himself on several occasions. Abigail and Easy devise a way to get Willoughby out of the tournament by pretending that he's got a broken arm. Unfortunately, when the cast dries, he can't lower his arm. Abigail removes the cast with a skill saw! And right in the middle of the whole mess, Willoughby's fiance shows up from Texas, wanting to know what he's doing with Abigail and Easy.

The biggest shocker of all, though, is that Willoughby actually wins the tournament with no help at all. Of course, he didn't actually catch the fish. They more or less committed suicide, by jumping on his hook when the line was tangled in some branches, by getting caught in his waders when he fell in the water, and several other means that have nothing to do with fishing. Because of this, Willoughby feels he can't accept the trophy. It just wouldn't be sporting. So he confesses everything. Of course, Cadwalader fires him on the spot, much to the dismay of his best customers. They lobby for Willoughby's reinstatement. Cadwalader finally gives in. But where's Willoughby? And where's Abigail?

Howard Hawks' Man's Favorite Sport is one of my favorite movies. It's one of the last in a long line of screwball comedies that stretch all the way back tot he advent of talking film. The dialog is fast-paced and witty, and the situations that Willoughby finds himself in are hilarious. Rock Hudson puts in a solid performance as the beleaguered Roger Willoughby, but the true star of the show - in my opinion - is Paula Prentiss, who gives one of the best performances of her career. She does sexy and funny at the same time and pulls off both brilliantly. Most of the rest of the actors are simply caricatures who act as foils for Abigail and Willoughby. If you're looking for a movie that's lighthearted and just plain fun, I highly recommend Man's Favorite Sport. I first saw it forty-one years ago and fell in love with it. It hasn't lost any of its appeal since then. See if you don't agree.

Man's Favorite Sport is rated G and is filmed in Technicolor. Running time is 120 minutes.

King Kong (1933)

Okay, I know. Who hasn't seen this movie? Show of hands. All right, so maybe you haven't seen this movie, but you've surely seen Peter Jackson's CGI-fest from 2005. Or maybe you saw that stinker they did back in the 70s with Jessica Lange and Jeff Bridges. At any rate, you know the story, right? Show man Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong, in 1933) sails off to the south seas with a film crew including Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) and Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). They sail to the mysterious Skull Island, where they find that the natives have built a colossal wall to protect themselves from the creatures that live on the island. Chief among these is Kong, the 24-foot tall gorilla. Ann - being white and blond - is soon kidnapped by the natives and sacrificed to Kong, who takes her to his jungle lair. But Kong doesn't eat her, as he has done with all of the unfortunate native girls. No, he's completely enamoured of her, and protects her from all danger. Well, the boys from the ship naturally go after Ann, and a good many of them are killed in the process. Only Jack succeeds in reaching her. Together, they escape from Kong, while he's busy fending off a pterodactyl. When Kong realizes that Ann is gone, he pursues them, reaching the giant wall just as they're closing the gate behind Ann and Jack. But Kong's not gonna let a little thing like a stone wall stand in the way of true love. He bashes through the gate and stomps the snot out of the native village in his search for Ann. Eventually, he's felled by "gas bombs," which apparently are hand grenades fill with sleeping gas. Never heard of them before. Oh well. Kong is down, and Denham has a new exhibit for his show. When we next see Kong, he's chained to a post in an auditorium. Kong makes quick work of the chains and storms out of the theater in search of Ann. Along the way, he pauses to take in the sights, to terrorize a few innocent bystanders, and crush an elevated train. But true love leads Kong to Ann's window, and the long arm of Kong reaches in and gets her (talk about stalkers - he's the greatest). Kong climbs to the top of the Empire State Building with Ann in tow. There, we have the iconic battle between Kong and the airplanes. Kong may have been king of the jungle, but he's no match again modern air power. Mortally wounded, Kong plummets to his death just as Jack reaches the top of the Empire State Building and rescues Ann. When someone says to Denham, "Looks like the planes got him," Denham replies, "It was beauty killed the beast."

Does any of that sound familiar? It should. The movie's only been made three times now. Why? Cuz it's a darn good story, and that's one thing that Hollywood seems to be in short supply of these days. So they just keep remaking older movies and turning old cartoons into movies. But, in my humble opinion, nine times out of ten, the remake cannot compete with the original. Such is the case with King Kong. Don't get me wrong. Those other versions are fine movies in their own right, but they are copies of something that was done so well that it not only revolutionized the movie industry, but it also changed what the public would accept from movies. You gotta remember that when this thing first came out back in 1933, the people thought they were actually seeing a real 24-foot tall gorilla tramping around New York City. Admittedly, folks were a bit more naive back then, and they had were not used to special effects of this caliber. I mean, the effects by Willis H. O'Brien are so good that they still stand up today. Interestingly, Jackson's crew decided that they would try to recreate a missing scene from the original movie using the exact same methods that O'Brien employed in 1933. Jackson's team couldn't believe how difficult it was to create these effects, how much time went into them, and how much they cost to do. But those old effects are wonderful. Take the fight between Kong and the T-Rex. It is unbelievable. The way both Kong and Rex move, and the gore as Kong rips Rex's head apart. Then there was the famous scene on the log bridge, where Kong shakes all of the men off and they fall to their deaths in the gorge below. I'm still amazed at the level of detail and realism when I watch this today. All of the jungle scenes in this film are incredible. They used mattes and cutouts to give the jungle a depth that you don't acheive with a few potted plants and a cyclorama.

As I pointed out above, I'm not comparing the 1933 King Kong to the remakes because the original film stands alone. It is without peer. Made just five years after Al Jolson made talking films the standard, Merian C. Cooper and Willis H. O'Brien created a masterpiece of cinematography. They pushed the boundaries of what could be done in film and paved the way for the likes of George Pal, George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg and John Carpenter. King Kong has a wonderful look to it. The velvety black and white images lend the film a dreamlike quality, though many would say it's a nightmare rather than a dream. The acting is a little bit wooden, but then, you must remember that we're only five short years away from the silent era, with it's highly stylized acting. All things considered, the actors do a pretty good job. But of course, the star of the show is Kong, the 18" model gorilla. Amazingly, that little model wins our hearts in the end. We feel for him, root for him, and are sad when he finally falls. It's telling when a movie can produce that much pathos from an audience. If you need more proof of King Kong's worth as a movie, you need only remember that we're still watching and talking about it 78 years after it first premiered. It takes a mighty big movie to last that long. King Kong is about as big as they come.

King Kong is rated G and is filmed in black and white.

The Mummy (1932)

I cannot, today, begin to adequately describe to anyone the terror and the thrill I felt when I saw Karl Freund's The Mummy for the first time. I was ten years old. Spending the night at my cousins house in southwestern New York State. Dairy country, ya know. We made popcorn and fudge, and had staked out positions around my uncle's living room, because the Friday Night Creature Feature was coming on at 10:30 PM. There we sat in that darkened room as the mummy of Im-ho-tep, majestically played by Boris Karloff, came to life, his bandage-clad hand reaching out to take the sacred scroll that reanimated him, while the poor young anthropologist goes stark staring mad. The shivers that ran up and down my spine as Im-ho-tep, disguised as modern-day Egyptian Ardath Bey explains how Im-ho-tep was buried alive to Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann), the modern-day reincarnation of his ancient lover, Princess Anck-es-en-Amon. I had nightmares about being buried alive for months afterwards. There was the incredible tension as Dr. Muller (Edward Van Sloan) and Frank Whemple (David Manners) race to save Helen from the clutches of the evil Im-ho-tep. And who could forget that last shot of Im-ho-tep's decaying corpse with half of the skull collapsed. *shudder* This was the stuff that fired little boys' imaginations back in 1970. Watching this movie, I dreamed of going to Egypt, wearing a pith helmet, digging for long-buried Egyptian cities.

The Mummy was produced by Carl Leammle, Jr. The son of Universal Studios founder Carl Laemmle, Carl, Jr. was responsible for turning Universal into the horror movie studio and for raising horror movies to the level of art. He was responsible for such classic films as Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Old Dark House, and many more. It's safe to say that without him, horror movies would never have become the important genre that they are today, and names like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi would be little more than footnotes in movie history. Karl Freund began his career as a cinematographer working on German expressionist films of the 1920s. He directed Lugosi in the 1931 classic Dracula, before turning his hand to The Mummy. Freund is responsible for making Universal's monsters tragic figures instead of simply frightening ghouls. Dracula and Im-ho-tep, under Freund's direction, are sympathetic characters, lonely old men who long to have someone to share their immortality with them. Sure, we're frightened of them, but we also feel for them. In their isolation, Freund's monsters are the ultimate Others, outsiders who will never be allowed admittance into the club, sub-humans who will always be driven out and killed.

Boris Karloff had been making movies since 1919, but it was Frankenstein in 1931 that made him famous. Still, he didn't often get to speak. In The Mummy, he finally does, and his voice is mesmerizing. It would become iconic apart from the man behind it. Everyone knows that Frankenstein sounds like Karloff, just as everyone knows that vampires sound like Lugosi. Edward Van Sloan had also been around Hollywood for quite some time, and had already made appearances in Frankenstein and Dracula. Sloan was the go-to guy in the 1930s for the slightly eccentric scientist who apparently got his PhD in monsterology. Zita Johann only made eight movies during her life, the last one being a low-budget horror flick in 1983. But she did a lot of theater work over the years, and starred with John Houseman (to whom she was once married) and Orson Welles. She brings to The Mummy a freshness and beauty to stand in stark contrast with Karloff's dusty, crackly makeup. If Karloff is Death, Johann is Rebirth. The rest of the actors are all merely types, set there to help move the plot forward. As such, though, they do a very good job.

Many people, when watching The Mummy and other films of this time period, comment on how very stylized the acting appears. But one must remember that these movies came only a couple of years after talking pictures came into being. In silent films, actors had to convey everything they were feeling through body movements and facial gestures. Everything had to be exaggerated. It took Hollywood a few years to break out of that mindset. If you can look beyond that - or even learn to love it as I do - you will see what a visually stunning film this is. The velvety black and white photography lends it a distance that only adds to the mystique of the story. It happened "back then" the film seems to say, when magical things were still possible, even if only just. And all of the special effects are done without computers. This was true movie-making genius.

The Mummy is rated G and is filmed in black and white. Colorized versions are not permitted.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008)

London, 1939. Guinevere Pettigrew (Francis McDormand) is a governess with no one to govern. She also has nothing to eat. In desperation, she steals a client card from her agency and shows up at the apratment of Delysia LaFosse (Amy Adams), a young singer and actress who's looking for a social secretary. She's also looking for a part in a new play that's being produced, and she's sleeping with the producer, Phil (Tom Payne) in order to get it. The only problem is, she's doing her interview in the apartment of her lover, Nick (Mark Strong). He also owns the nightclub where Delysia performs. He's also a tad bit on the shady side, and a whole lot on the jealous side. Miss Pettigrew scoots the bewildered Phil out the door and cleans up the apartment just as Nick walks through the door. Delysia is taken by the frumpy Miss Pettigrew. She hires her on the spot and gives her a complete makeover. All Miss Pettigrew wants, though, is a good dinner. Meanwhile, Michael (Lee Pace) enters the picture. He's Delysia's former boyfriend, and he wants her back. Delysia loves him, but she wants that part in that play too. While Miss Pettigrew tries to help Delysia sort out her love quadrangle, she starts to fall in love with a lingerie designer named Joe (Ciaran Hinds). After a wild party at Nick's apartment and a brawl between Michael and Nick during an air raid, everything works out the way it's supposed to. Happy ending.

Yeah, that's what I like about these kinds of movies. They have happy endings. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a wonderful little film, one of those that managed to slip under the radar, and miss most of the multiplexes. One reviewer called it a "mediocre film." I couldn't disagree more. This is a fun, snappy little comedy, much like the great screwball comedies of the 1930s. I'd rank it right up there with My Man Godfrey and His Girl Friday. The action moves quickly along, with never a dull moment, and the dialogue is witty. Amy Adams is wonderful as the fickle and irrepressible Delysia trying to decide between true love on the one hand and fame and fortune on the other. Frances McDormand is incredible as the dowdy Miss Pettigrew, and her transformation into Delysia's elegant social secretary is great. There are also some wonderfully poignant scenes between Miss Pettigrew and Joe, as they commiserate with each other about the coming war. The sets are great, as are the props and costumes. Everything is 1930s; there's nothing out of place. And the movie is filmed in luscious color, with the camera taking full advantage of the gorgeous art deco world of 1930s London. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a delightful little RomCom that will put a smile on everyone's face.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is rated PG-13.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the cinema's great adventure stories, remembered now - if it's remembered at all - for two oft-misquoted lines: "We don't need no stinking badges," and "Could you spare a dime for a fellow American who's down on his luck." I've lamented before on this blog how I think it's sad that so many people today have never seen these classic films and most probably wouldn't appreciate them if they did see them. That this movie could have been reduced to a couple of quotes is a prime example of that. There is so much more to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre than could possibly be summed up by two lines. This movie is filled with adventure, with romance, with desperation, with greed, with madness, with deceit, with kindness, with generosity, with murder, with life. It is, in short, a picture of the world as we know it today, a picture of life in the post-modern world encapsulated into a two-hour-long strip of celluloid that contains the story of three down-and-out men hoping to strike it rich searching for gold in Old Mexico. Gold they find, and all that comes with it. As Dan Fogleburg once wrote, "Balance the cost of the soul you've lost and the dreams you lightly sold, and tell me if you're free from the power of gold."

Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is drifting around Tampico, Mexico, when he runs into Bob Curtin (Tim Holt). The two take a job working on an oil rig, but the boss tries to get away without paying them. This leads to a brutal fist fight between Dobbs, Curtin and their boss. They beat him senseless and take what's owed them, but soon the money runs out and they're destitute again. One night, in a flop house, Dobbs and Curtin meet an old prospector named Howard (Walter Huston). He knows of a gold vein ripe for the taking, but he needs partners to help him get it. Dobbs and Curtin sign on for the job. Before long they are heading up into the Sierra Madre with pack mules laden with tools and supplies. After weeks of trudging across deserts and through jungles, they finally reach the place they're looking for. They build a sluice and start digging. Sure enough, they find gold. Soon the bags start filling up with gold dust, and their minds start filling up with suspicion. Dobbs is the worst. He becomes convinced that everyone is out to take his share from him. He even threatens to kill Curtin on more than one occasion. Into the middle of this powder keg stumbles Cody (Bruce Bennett), another American looking to find his fortune digging for gold in Mexico. He wants to join our trio. Howard and Curtin don't mind. They think there's enough for everyone. Dobbs doesn't agree. He wants to kill Cody. As they're arguing this out, all four of them are set upon by bandits. After some tense negotiating, in which the infamous line is quoted, a gunfight breaks out. The bandits are routed, but Cody is killed in the battle. They bury him, and Curtin says he's going to give some of his gold to Cody's widow back in the Texas. Howard decides to also. But not Dobbs. As they pack up and head back toward civilization, Dobbs descends deeper and deeper into madness. When Howard turns aside to save the life of an injured boy, Dobbs attacks Curtin and runs off with all of the mules and the gold. Unfortunately, he runs right into the arms of the bandits they had run off. On his own now, Dobbs is outnumbered. The bandits make quick work of him. Then they steel his boots, his guns and his mules. Foolishly, they mistake the gold for sand, which they pour out on the ground. Curtin finds Howard, and the two of them go after Dobbs. All they find, however, is his corpse. The gold dust blew away in a sand storm.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the finest films that either John Huston or Humphrey Bogart ever made. Bogart is at his best as the lunatic Dobbs. It's fascinating to watch how he begins to unravel, how little things begin to wear on him, how he becomes increasingly suspicious of every move, every gesture made by his partners, until he finally cracks. Bogart would play another neurotic - Capt. Queeg - six years later in The Caine Mutiny, but Dobbs is a much more interesting character than Queeg. Queeg is slightly nuts to begin with, so his break isn't unexpected. In Treasure, Bogart must take the apparently sane Dobbs down into his madness by slow degrees. He does a job with it too. We feel the tension ratcheting up as Dobbs slips ever further into his paranoia. When the break comes, it's almost a relief. Walter Huston (the director's brother) plays Howard as the elder statesmen of the desert. He's the voice of reason, wisdom personified, seldom getting angry, always dealing with the mishaps with a serenity that drives Dobbs mad. Howard has seen every side of men, and nothing they do surprises him. Gold does not drive him mad. It only seems to make him more generous towards the failings of Dobbs and Curtin. Tim Holt usually played nice guys in Hollywood, and Curtin is no exception. He's Dobbs' foil, always looking for the good in things and people. If Dobbs suspects everyone of trying to cheat them, Curtin never really does. In the end, even his anger at Dobbs' treachery is assuaged at the thought of doing something good for someone else. John Huston even makes a cameo appearance in the film, in true Hitchcockian style, as the American businessman that Dobbs keeps hitting up for money on the streets of Tampico. It's a rare light moment in an otherwise deadly serious film.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is rated G and is filmed in luscious black and white.

Morning Glory (2010)

When Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams) gets laid off from her job as the producer of a local TV morning show, she lands a new job as executive producer for "Daybreak," the lowest rated morning show on national TV. Becky has been tasked with improving the ratings of a show that's so bad that it's circling the drain, but the effusive Becky is undaunted. Her first act is to fire the shows arrogant anchor. Then she strong arms a reluctant Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) into the vacant chair. Mike was once a world class reporter, but he's been sidelined by people with more showmanship. "Daybreak" is everything that Mike has come to loathe about TV news. He also loathes his co-anchor, Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton). The feeling is mutual. When the studio head, Jerry Barnes (Jeff Goldblum), informs Becky that she has only six weeks to raise the ratings or he'll cancel the show, she pulls out all of the stops. She sticks the weather reporter onto roller coasters and throws him out of airplanes, has Colleen playing with wild animals and dancing in a tutu, anything to raise the ratings. When Mike and Colleen start insulting each other on air, ratings begin to go up. Ever surly, Mike refuses every story that he concludes is "not news," until he finally scoops a story about the governor being indicted and manages to get to the governor's house just as the police are pulling up to arrest him. Becky is thrilled with Mike and tries to get him to do more human interest pieces, but Mike is still Mike, still hates the show he's being forced to do, and still refuses to do stories that are too fluffy. When Becky gets a job offer from "Good Morning America," though, the great Mike Pomeroy does an impromptu cooking lesson on national TV, to persuade her not to leave. He even uses the word "fluffy."

I gotta tell you, I was very hesitant about watching this film. I figured Morning Glory was just another rom-com. I couldn't have been more wrong. While there is a romance in the film, it's coincidental to the rest of the plot. The main focus is on Becky and Mike and how one person's faith in what they are doing can change another person's outlook on themselves and the world around them. Rachel MacAdams is wonderful as the over-enthusiastic, workaholic Becky, who runs circles around everyone else and gets her way because of her irrepressible joie de vie. Harrison Ford is perfect as the curmudgeonly Mike Pomeroy, a man who feels that his career has abandoned him and all that he held dear. He eventually succumbs to Becky's charm and enthusiasm, but - and this is what made the movie work for me - he doesn't become a whole new person. He remains a curmudgeon, only now he's a slightly less prickly one. Diane Keaton is great as the prima dona Colleen Peck, who catches Becky's spirit and throws her all into the program. And Jeff Goldblum plays Jerry Barnes as a cold, no-nonsense business man who needs to meet his ratings quotas. The show left me feeling good about myself, an odd thing for a movie to do, but it's true. When Morning Glory ended, I felt happy, upbeat and enthusiastic, like I could go out and accomplish anything. And that's a good thing for any film to do.

Morning Glory is rated PG-13 and is filmed in color.

The Big Sleep (1946)

"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was."

That's how Philip Marlowe sums up all that's gone before in the final pages of Raymond Chandler's novel The Big Sleep. I include it here because the one thing I have always felt that Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep lacked was the internal monologue that narrates the novel. The film ends on an upbeat note, with Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) falling in love. The novel ends with Marlowe walking off by himself, leaving the corrupt Rutledges behind him. The novel is more effective. But 1946 was a different era. People wanted a happy ending - the bad guys all killed or jailed, the hero and heroine walking off together hand in hand, the world spinning in greased grooves once again. It was the effect of the war, I guess. The need for normalcy and happy endings. It's too bad too, because the film suffered on account of the lack of the monologue. Don't get me wrong though. I love this movie. It's one of my favorites. I just wish Hawks and screenwriter William Faulkner hadn't changed the story so much.

In the film, Marlowe is called to the home of dying millionare General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). Sternwood's being blackmailed. His youngest daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) has been gambling. General Sternwood wants Marlowe to take care of it. The conversation rolls around to Sean Regan, Sternwood's right hand man. Seems he's gone missing. There's talk he ran off with Mona Mars (Peggy Knudsen), the wife of big-time raketeer Eddie Mars (John Ridgely). As Marlowe is leaving, Vivan asks him if her father hired him to find Sean. Soon, Marlowe realizes that a lot of people would like to know what happened to Sean. Later, Marlowe discovers Carmen drugged and half naked with a dead man lying at her feet. Marlowe takes her home and returns to the scene of the crime, only to find that the dead man is gone. At this point, all hell breaks loose. The Sternwood's chaufer is murdered and dumped into the ocean. Eddie Mars seems to be everywhere. Carmen keeps popping up like a Whack-a-Mole. Marlowe finds out that he's being followed by Harry Jones (Elisha Cooke, Jr.). He's trying to help out Agnes (Sonia Darrin) who used to work for the guy who was killed at Carmen's feet. Then a couple of more people get dead. Sound confusing? It is. In fact, the novel is so confusing that Faulkner and co-writer Leigh Bracket couldn't figure out who killed one of the characters. They asked Chandler to tell them who done it, and Chandler himself was unable to point the finger at the culprit. But it all works out in the end. As I stated above - a happy ending for all of the good guys and gals.

Part of what makes The Big Sleep work, in spite of its transgressions, is the incredibly snappy dialogue written by Faulkner and Bracket. There is a lot of reparte' in this film. Consider Marlowe's first exchange with Eddie Mars:

Mars: Convenient the door being open when you didn't have a key.
Marlowe: Yeah, wasn't it? By the way, how did you happen to have one?
Mars: Is it any of your business?
Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Mars: I could make your business mine.
Marlowe: But you wouldn't like it. The pay's too small.
Mars: All right, I own this house. Geiger's my tenant. Now what do you think of me?
Marlowe: You know some nice people.
Mars: I take it as they come.

Or Marlowe's explanation of how the first two murders took place:

"You see, the dead man was Owen Taylor, Sternwood's chauffeur. He went up to Geiger's place 'cause he was sweet on Carmen. He didn't like the kind of games Geiger was playing. He got himself in the back way with a jimmy and he had a gun. And the gun went off as guns will, and Geiger fell down dead."

It's this snappy dialogue that sets this movie apart and really saves it. The film's other saving grace is Humphrey Bogart. Bogart had already established himself as the tough guy with his own code of honor in such films as The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and The Petrified Forest. He cashes in on that persona here, playing Marlowe as smart and tough, yet sensitive to the needs of others who get caught up in the web of deceit that he finds himself tangled up in. Marlowe, is genuinely concerned for General Sternwood, as well as for Harry Jones and Agnes, two people who don't deserve the hand they get dealt. Hired to solve a minor blackmail case, Marlowe goes on to bring down Eddie Mars and discover how Sean got killed and who killed him, if for no other reason than to give the general some closure.

The Big Sleep is rated G and is filmed in Glorious black and white.

Apollo 18 (2011)

Let's call it The Blair Witch Meets Alien on the Moon. That just about sums up everything you need to know about this low-budget stinker from the Weinstein Brothers. Here's the premise. There were actually 18 Apollo missions, not 17. Recently declassified film footage from 1972 reveals that Apollo 18 was a top secret mission designed to do...something. I think they were placing some transmitter doo-hickeys on the moon to monitor something or other. Once on the moon, though, our intrepid astroboys are attacked by...um...rocks...I think. Or was it strange crab-like creatures? Or was it rocks that turn into crab-like creatures? Or was it the alien? After all, one of the rocks did insert itself into Lloyd Owen, turning him into a goggle-eyed maniac. So maybe it was the alien. Or something else. If I sound unsure of myself, that's because the movie never really seemed to make it clear just what the alien was or what it had against the friendly, visiting delegates from Earth. Well, anyway, Lloyd and fellow moonwalker Ryan Robbins discover a Soviet moonlander. It's abandoned, but otherwise fairly intact. Nearby, in a dark and spooky crater lit only by the strobes of Ryan's camera flash (we spent all that money to send men to the moon, but we forgot to give them flashlights?) they find the corpse of the cosmonaut. Decayed. The movie never gets around to explaining how he decayed in an airless, sub-zero environment, so just work with me here, okay? He's all decayed. Soon after Lloyd starts showing the effects of his own contamination. It's the usual stuff - rapid movement, bulging eyes, wild ranting. After trying to trash the lander, Lloyd escapes and runs off into the night. Ryan tries to follow him into yet another dark and spooky crater, where he is assaulted by crab-like creatures. He escapes, makes his way to the Soviet lander and takes off, only to find that the Soviet lander is full of rocks...that turn into crab-like creatures... and eat him. Of course, everyone dies in the end which presents one slight continuity problem. If the astroboys are filming everything on these handheld cameras that take film cartridges, and they are all killed on the moon, and no one else ever went back to the moon, then how did the film cartridges end up in the super top secret vault at NASA? Oh, but film makers hate people like me. At any rate, as I have already pointed out, Apollo 18 purports to be recently discovered film footage from 1972, and at that, at least, director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego did a very good job of recreating the look of NASA film stock. That both helps and hinders the film. Remember when Neil Armstrong stepped onto Lunar soil for the first time? Remember how fuzzy everything was, as Neil's form, almost a palimpsest of a human being, moved around the Lunar landscape, dragging ghosts of his own image about with him? Okay, now imagine watching a whole movie that was done just like that, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what this movie was like. That and the whole shaky-shaky camera thing gets a little tiresome after a while. I'd have much preferred straight, old-fashioned camera work to this "I gotta camera and I'm gonna film everything I see" garbage. Finally, I found that the astroboys lost their cool extraordinarily fast. I mean, these are guys who are trained for years to keep their cool under any situation, yet they practically fly to pieces at the first corpse they come across. I would expect cooler heads on the moon. After all, it was only one corpse. Still, I suppose that some will find Apollo 18 entertaining. Some may even find it scary. It just failed to scare or entertain me.

Apollo 18 is rated PG-13 and is filmed in grainy, shaky color.

The Innocents (1961)

Jack Clayton's The Innocents is a wonderful Gothic horror story, the likes of which we seldom see in our day of CGI ghosts and ghouls. Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) is hired by a wealthy gentleman (Michael Redgrave) to serve as the governess of his young niece Flora (Pamela Franklin) and nephew Miles (Martin Stephens). The uncle gives Miss Giddens complete authority to deal with any problem, telling her that she must never bother him under any circumstances. Miss Giddens arrives at the country estate where the children live and meets Flora, who appears to be a sweet little girl. Soon after her arrival, Miles arrives, having been expelled from boarding school. Seems he corrupted the other boys. Nothing more is said. The housekeeper, kindly old Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins), can't believe it. She maintains that Miles and Flora are innocents. Miss Giddens isn't so sure. She becomes obsessed with the former governess, Miss Jessel (Clytie Jessop). There's some dark secret surrounding her. Miss Giddens pries it out of Mrs. Grose. Seems there was a valet who ran the estate. Peter Quint (Peter Wyngarde) was a cruel and domineering man. Miss Jessel was devoted to him. Turns out, so was Miles. Quint treated Miss Jessel like his slave. Used her for whatever he wanted. Wherever he wanted. No matter who was watching. Right in front of Miles and Flora. They got an early education in things they should never have known. Then Quint died in an accident. Miles was distraught. So was Miss Jessel. After pining away for several months she drowned herself in the lake. Trouble is, as in all good Gothic horror stories, the dead don't stay in their graves. Quint's and Miss Jessel's hunger and desire drive their spirits to use Flora and Miles to fulfill their beastly desires. Miss Giddens is determined to stop this, to save the children, at any cost. The price turns out to be higher than she imagined.

The Innocents is not just another ghost story though. It deals with some subjects that were simply not dealt with in movies in 1961. Sexual perversion. Domination and submission. Child abuse. These things aren't talked about outright. You couldn't do that in 1961. Instead, they're hinted at. Alluded to. Suggested. It's not hard to miss the implications and allusions. These children were enthralled to a man who abused them, who abused their governess, who still cannot let them go. His hold on their young minds extends beyond the grave. But is it a real ghost? Or is it all in the mind of Miss Giddens. Mrs. Grose claims she doesn't see the ghosts, even when Miss Giddens is looking straight at them. Flora and Miles deny the presence of ghosts too, but they would. This calls into question Miss Giddens' sanity. Has she taken the stories told to her by Mrs. Grose and created in her own mind something that did not exist? Has she summoned up the ghosts from her own self-conscience? Does her insistence that the children face their demons cause them more damage by forcing them to relive again the horrors they endured while Quint and Miss Jessel were alive and rampaging through the house? None of these questions are answered in the film. The audience is left to draw their own conclusions. Three possibilities exist: 1) the children were abused and there are ghosts trying to possess them; 2) the children were abused and Miss Giddins thinks the Quint's and Miss Jessel's influence over the children are ghosts trying to possess them; 3) the cheese done slipped off Miss Giddins' cracker. In any case, it all makes for one mighty good story, with a few hair raising moments.

The Innocents was adapted from William Archibald's 1950 Broadway play of the same title, which was in turn adapted from Henry James' novella, "The Turn of the Screw." The movie is filmed in starkly contrasted black and white, with plenty of deep, deep shadows where anything could be lurking. The country estate house is expansive, and the film is shot in wide screen, but Clayton fills the scenes with darkness, crowding the actors, hemming them in and creating that wonderfully claustrophobic atmosphere that every good horror movie needs. Interestingly, most of the images of the "ghosts" appear not at night in darkened hallways, but in broad daylight, standing atop a tower, standing in the middle of a lake, sitting at a school desk. The juxtaposition of the dead under the bright sunlight lends a creepiness that would not exist had they appeared out of the shadows. Quint's ghost also appears at night in the window, leering, smirking, laughing, mocking Miss Giddens' attempts to pry the children out of his grasp. Then there are the voices and the laughing that Miss Giddens hears at night. Or does she hear them? No one else seems to. Not even Mrs. Grose. All of this combines to create a wonderful ghost story or a great psychological thriller, or both. It's hard to say. But I'll guarantee that it'll send a chill or two up your spine.

The Innocents is unrated, but I'd rate it PG on account of mature subject matter and disturbing scenes.