Apr 25th
Taste of Fear**
GB 1961. Columbia/Hammer. 82m. bw

A beautiful paraplegic's sanity is threatened by her deceitful stepmother.
Well acted psychological thriller with minor elements of Les Diaboliques and The Lady Vanishes, which sets its stall out from the start plotwise, so that the ultimate sting in the tail is quite well concealed.

Written and Produced by: Jimmy Sangster.
Director: Seth Holt.
Starring: Susan Strasberg, Ann Todd, Ronald Lewis, Christopher Lee, Leonard Sachs, Anne Blake, John Serrett, Fred Johnson.
Photography: Douglas Slocombe.
Music: Clifton Parker.

Apr 18th
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein** US 1948. Universal-International. 83m. bw

…as well as, more accurately, Count Dracula who tussles with the Wolf Man to resurrect Frankenstein's monster by transplanting it with Lou Costello's brain…
Universal's horrors had come full cycle by now in this lively comedy horror with a lot of Scooby Doo-type humour – Now you see him, Now you don't, etc. The guest stars are commendably straight faced, and the film still has some genuine creepy elements of the old Universal magic. It also led to another mini-cycle where this comedy pair met other Universal horrors (The Mummy, Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, ­and others).

Written by: Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, John Grant.
Producer: Robert Arthur.
Director: Charles Barton.
Starring: Lou Costello, Bud Abbott, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Glenn Strange, Lenore Aubert, Jane Randolph, Charles Bradstreet, Frank Ferguson.
Photography: Charles Van Enger.
Music: Frank Skinner.

+ Vincent Price also makes a guest "appearance"

Preceded by:
The Cruise of the Zaca**(US 1951. Warner Bros. 20m.; Errol Flynn sails on his yacht from the Pacific to Atlantic Oceans, taking along some oceanographers with him, including his father. An unaccomplished film in itself, but the very sample of Flynn's cavalier lifestyle is still fascinating to watch.; d, narr: Errol Flynn; m: Howard Jackson.)

+ another gem to be found among the extras on The Adventures of Robin Hood 2-disc DVD.

Apr 7th
Letters from Iwo Jima***
(Ipswich Film Theatre)

Archaeologists in present day Iwo Jima unearth secret letters written by Japanese soldiers during their defence of the island against the Americans in 1944.
Audacious follow-up to Flags of Our Fathers spoken mostly in Japanese with subtitles, deliberately shot in very poor colour with the now fashionable hand-held camera during most of the action scenes, but Eastwood's sensibilities give extra dimension to the characters which the mostly Japanese cast bring to life brilliantly.

d: Clint Eastwood
s: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase, Shido Nakamura

Apr 6th
The Greatest Story Ever Told**
US 1965. United Artists. 195m. Super Panavision 70

The life of Jesus.
Self-reverential epic which earnestly tries to portray a credible central character without descending into something resembling a series of religious lobby cards - which alas, it ultimately does. The infamous casting of stars in bit parts is not as bad as might be supposed (only John Wayne's cameo is truly risible) as some of the performances are actually quite moving, and the film is often stunning to look at, but also very pedestrian, shot like a very sombre Western, on a scale that seems rather rushed and studio-bound by the end.

Written by: James Lee Barrett, George Stevens, from the book by Fulton Oursler.
Producer/Director: George Stevens.
Starring: Max Von Sydow, Dorothy McGuire, Charlton Heston, Jose Ferrer, Claude Rains (his last film), Donald Pleasence, David McCallum, Sal Mineo, Gary Raymond, Ed Wynn, Van Heflin, Martin Landau, Roddy McDowall, Telly Savalas, Carroll Baker, Sidney Poitier, Shelley Winters, John Wayne, and others.
Photography: Loyal Griggs, William C. Mellor.
Music: Alfred Newman.

+ the early scenes with Claude Rains as Herod were directed by David Lean

Apr 5th
The Clandestine Marriage*
GB 1999. Portman/BBC Films/Gunner and Stables Group/Milesian Films/Stanway Films. 90m.

The eccentric Lord Ogleby spends a weekend at a mansion intending to marry off his son to one of the daughters of the house, but the son has eyes for another who has secretly married the footman...
Good looking adaptation of an old Regency farce with some of the stars overplaying their material and others fitting into the scenario quite well.

Written by: Trevor Bentham, from the play by George Coleman the elder, David Garrick.
Producers: Steve Clark-Hall, Rod Gunner, Jonathan B. Stables.
Director: Christopher Miles.
Starring: Nigel Hawthorne, Joan Collins, Timothy Spall, Paul Nicholls, Natasha Little, Tom Hollander, Emma Chambers, Cyril Shaps, Ray Fearon, Mark Burns, Hugh Lloyd, Timothy Bateson.
Photography: Denis Crossan.
Music: Stanislav Syrewicz.

Apr 4th
The Asphalt Jungle*** (Electric Palace, Harwich)

Local criminals are gathered together by a criminal mastermind just out of prison to stage a jewel heist, but double-crossing brings about their downfall.
Thoroughly convincing crime caper drama told mostly from the criminals' perspective (one of the first of its kind at the time, and a later model for the likes of Reservoir Dogs and others), riveting from first scene to last, with strong performances, a water-tight scrript, and seamless direction.

d: John Huston
s: Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe, Louis Calhern, Marc Lawrence, Anthony Caruso, Jean Hagen, John McIntire, Marilyn Monroe, James Whitmore, Brad Dexter, Barry Kelley, Dorothy Tree

Mar 31st
The Good German*
(Cineworld Birmingham)

US 2006. Warner Bros/Virtual Studios/Section Eight. 108m. bw

In 1945 a US Army war correspondent covering the Pottsdam conference discovers that his driver is dating an ex-lover of his, and the three of them are all embroiled in conspiracy and murder in post-war-torn Berlin.
A nostalgic pastiche of 1940s Warner Brothers black-and-white thrillers, complete with knowing references to certain well known classics, a little rough at the edges however with some modern trimmings. The look of the film is brilliantly evocative, as if made in the "Hollywood" studio style, and the likes of Michael Curtiz and Hal Wallis in their day would have made a film with a much more clearly defined plot and engaging characters than in this convoluted tale.

Written by: Paul Attanasio, from the novel by Joseph Kanon.
Producers: Ben Cosgrove, Gregory Jacobs.
Director: Steven Soderbergh.
Starring: George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire, Beau Bridges, Tony Curran, Leland Orser, Jack Thompson, Robin Weigert, Ravil Isyanov, Christian Oliver.
Photography: Peter Andrews (Steven Soderbergh).
Music: Thomas Newman.
Editing: Mary Ann Bernard (Steven Soderbergh).

Mar 30th
K-19: The Widowmaker* US/GB/Ger/Canada 2002. Paramount/Intermedia/National Geographic/Palomar/First Light/IMF. 138m. Panavision

In 1961 the pride of the Soviet submarine fleet suffers nuclear reactor meltdown, and the crew have a battle to prevent World War III at the cost of their own lives.
A moving true story about survival and self-sacrifice underwater is turned into an irritating Cold War submarine thriller at first, with added plot elements of The Caine Mutiny and The Hunt for Red October thrown in, but what follows in the latter half is often thoughtful and powerful, in spite of the relentless music soundtrack and central miscasting. Commercially it nobly sank without trace.

Written by: Christopher Kyle, Louis Nowra.
Producers: Kathryn Bigelow, Joni Sighvatsson, Christine Whitaker, Edward S. Feldman.
Director: Kathryn Bigelow.
Starring: Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard, Tim Woodward, Steve Nicolson, Ravil Isyanov, Christian Camargo, Joss Ackland, John Shrapnel, Donald Sumpter, Natalia Vintilova.
Photography: Jeff Cronenweth.
Music: Klaus Badelt.
Production Design: Karl Juliusson, Michael Novotny.
Editing: Walter Murch.