May 27th    
The Long Arm**       

(GB 1956)                        

A Scotland Yard detective investigates a series of cunning safe robberies.
Above average police drama of a kind very fashionable at the time, professionally put together in a no-nonsense style (like the police detectives themselves), with an exemplary cast and a climax in the Royal Festival Hall.

Written by: Robert Barr, Janet Green.
Producer: Tom Morahan.
Director: Charles Frend.
Starring: Jack Hawkins, John Stratton, Dorothy Allison, Michael Brooke, Geoffrey Keen, Sidney Tafler, Ursula Howells, Meredith Edwards, Ian Bannen, Richard Leech.
Photography: Gordon Dines.
Music: Gerbrand Schurmann.

May 23rd   
The Hollywood Revue of 1929       

(US 1929)                
MGM. 118m. bw(Technicolor sequences)

Extremely sluggish theatre-style revue complete with slowly parting curtains and total silent audience appreciation, one of MGM's more economical spectaculars using mostly mid-division stars in slightly out-of-character spots, including Laurel and Hardy, whose guest appearance is all too brief.

Written by: Al Boasberg, Robert E. Hopkins.
Producer: Harry Rapf.
Director: Charles F. Reisner.
Starring: Jack Benny, Conrad Nagel, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, Bessie Love, Buster Keaton, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Lionel Barrymore, Gus Edwards, Ukelele Ike, and others.
Photography: John Arnold, Irving Ries, Maximilian Fabian.

May 16th    
The Man Who Knew Too Much*   

(US 1955)                            

An American family on holiday in Marrakesh stumble into an assassination plot at London's Albert Hall.
Leisurely, surprisingly laborious and indulgent Hitchcock remake of his own 1934 original (qv), with varied locations and a good star teaming of James Stewart and Doris Day, but otherwise the best scenes were those from the original anyway.

Written by: John Michael Hayes, Angus MacPhail.
Producer/Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Starring: James Stewart, Doris Day, Bernard Miles, Brenda de Banzie, Daniel Gelin, Ralph Truman, Alan Mowbray, Carolyn Jones, Christopher Olsen.
Photography: Robert Burks.
Music: Bernard Herrmann, Arthur Benjamin.

Preceded by:
Pathe News (1954)
(Jordan's Arab Legion Parade - Comet III - The Queen Comes Home.)

May 13th
The Wind and the Lion**      

(US 1975)                                          

In 1904 a rogue Arab kidnaps an American writer and her children, to cause ructions not only in Morocco but also internationally.
Stylish and evocatively made (hankering obviously after Lawrence of Arabia) historical adventure, with some interesting parallels with America's intervention in Vietnam then (in 1975), and its later involvement in the Middle East now - although the style, it has to be said, is very much Saturday Evening Post hyperbole, with action scenes rather thoughtlessly executed with little reason or meaning, in between Milius clearly enjoying his historical preaching from both Old world and New.

Written and Directed by: John Milius.
Producers: Herb Jaffe, Phil Rawlins.
Starring: Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith (as Theodore Roosevelt), Vladek Sheybal, Geoffrey Lewis, John Huston, Steve Kanaly, Nadim Sawalha.
Photography: Billy Williams.
Music: Jerry Goldsmith.
Editing: Robert L. Woolfe.

May 1st
Kiss Me Deadly**     

(US 1955)                      

A small-time Los Angeles detective stumbles onto a sinister plot, with literally explosive results.
One of the best adaptations of Mickey Spillane's slightly thuggish detective Mike Hammer, a cult item for its paranoid atmosphere with a deliberately unsettling plot reflecting the atomic menace of the time, and some quirky touches (such as credits sloping upwards), that brought this director's name to the major attention of Hollywood.

Written by: A.I. Bezzirides, from the novel by Mickey Spillane.
Producer/Director: Robert Aldrich.
Starring: Ralph Meeker, Maxine Cooper, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Gaby Rodgers, Wesley Addy, Juano Hernandez, Cloris Leachman.
Photography: Ernest Laszlo.
Music: Frank DeVol.

KISS ME DEADLY. Gaby Rodgers opens the proverbial Pandora's Box. This image was famous enough for Tarantino to reference it in Pulp Fiction.