The Creature From The Black Lagoon was the last major Universal monster. Released in 1954, the movie was shot and originally released in 3D. It spawned two direct sequels and the Creature (aka ‘The Gill Man’) has become a beloved horror icon. He was played for the underwater sequences by champion swimmer Ricou Browning. The…
Roman Holiday
If you’ve ever dreamed of zipping around Rome on a Vespa (hello, Emily In Paris), you are probably consciously following in the tracks of Audrey Heburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday. That’s probably the most famous scene in this classic 1953 love story, as a spoiled princess escapes to explore the city incognito with…
Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors
Dr Terror was the first of Amicus’ studios portmanteau horror movies. These were based on the format of Ealing Studios’ classic Dead Of Night. They all began with a tenuous linking device to bring together a disparate group of people, which would then lead into individual short stories told by or about each person, and…
Moulin Rouge
John Huston’s 1952 Moulin Rouge is, frankly, quite a boring movie. I watched it on YouTube last year and was expecting something of the pizzazz of Baz Luhrmann’s jukebox musical version, but its a rather serious affair, centred around Toulouse Lautrec (Jose Ferrer). Yes, there is some can-can dancing, and it has some nice atmospheric…
Foreign Correspondent
1940s Foreign Correspondent isn’t one of the best known Hitchcocks but it’s one of my favourites of all his movies. Joel McCrea stars as the wise-cracking US correspondent sent to Europe in the days before World War II who encounters kidnapping, murder and treachery across the continent. There is also fine and funny support from…
Dr Who And The Daleks / Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 AD
For any British kid growing up in the 70s, Dr Who was a TV touchstone. I first came across the Jon Pertwee iteration of the Doctor, then Tom Baker’s flamboyant, scarf-wearing version. Some of the episodes I remember as being relatively scary for young kids, not least those featuring the Doctor’s most famous adversaries –…
The Phantom Of The Opera
The 1943 version of The Phantom Of The Opera is perhaps a bit unfairly overlooked. Its one of the original run of Universal Studios classic horrors, but there’s no Karloff or Lugosi this time around. The Phantom is played by Claude Rains, who is third billed behind crooner Nelson Eddy. His disfiguration is just a…
Dumbo
“I be done seen about everything when I see an elephant fly.” Dumbo is, I think, one of the most charming of the classic Walt Disney animations. The movie was produced on a relatively low budget after the financial failures of the expensive Pinocchio and Fantasia. Its a brisk 64 minute fable of a baby…
Cool Hand Luke
“What we have here is a failure to communicate….” These are the last words spoken by Paul Newman’s Luke, a fiercely disruptive convict, whom the authorities are determined to crush in 1967’s classic prison drama. Unbroken to the last, he parodies the exact words spoken to him by the warden before being shot. Cool Hand…
The Italian Job
The Italian Job has so many great moments, its one of the most memorable British films of the 60s, I reckon. Who doesn’t love the endlessly quotable dialogue (“You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”), or cheeky thief Michael Caine and his gang’s escape from a gridlocked Turin in a fleet of Mini…