Nov 29th  
The Card**        
(GB 1952)  

In the 19th century industrial Potteries, a plucky young man makes his way up the social ladder.
Enjoyable and quite easy going Ealing-style social comedy, unevenly adapted but with the the same zestful approach to the films of David Lean, and similar also in tone to the later Hobson's Choice.  

Written by: Eric Ambler, from the novel by Arnold Bennett.
Producer: John Bryan.
Director: Ronald Neame.
Starring: Alec Guinness, Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson, Petula Clark, Edward Chapman, Harold Goodwin, Wilfrid Hyde-White.
Photography: Oswald Morris.
Music: William Alwyn.

+ the Guinness character as a young boy is played by his 11-year old son Matthew

Preceded by:

Tom and Jerry in
The Mouse Comes to Dinner*
(US 1945. 7m.; d: William Hannah, Joseph Barbera; p: Fred Quimby.)                               

Nov 24th  
The Terrornauts  
(GB 1967)     
Amicus. 75m.

Astronomers pick up warning signals from a lost civilisation that has been doing battle with a primitive enemy.
Cheap Amicus production values soon derail this piece of sci-fi hokum, with a Flash Gordon-style finale; the sort of subject that had a better imagination or scope on radio than in pictures.

w: John Brunner, from the story "The Wailing Asteroid" by Murray Leinster
p: Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky
d: Montgomery Tully
s: Simon Oates, Zena Marshall, Charles Hawtrey, Stanley Meadows, Max Adrian, Max Adrian,Patricia Hayes
ph: Geoffrey Faithfull
m: Elisabeth Lutyens

THE TERRORNAUTS. A curious Amicus precursor of Star Wars in some ways, with Zena Marshall as Princess Leia, Simon Oates and Stanley Meadows (far right) as Han and Luke,or vice versa. The more instantly recognisable Charles Hawtrey and Patricia Hayes would quite easily pass off as human versions of C-3PO and R2-D2 - although the robot in the background has echoes of Robby from Forbidden Planet.

Nov 19th  
Macbeth**       
(GB 1971)                       
Columbia/Playboy/Caliban. 140. Todd-AO

Macbeth, Thane of Glamis mistakes the words of witches as prophecy, and subsequently murders his way to the Scottish kingdom before his eventual downfall.
Suitably atmospheric and bloodthirsty adaptation of a bloodthirsty play. The settings are suitably dour, damp and Medieval, and Polanski's touches and moments of sometimes excessive gore help to overcome the slight Royal Shakespeare Company feel of the acting.

Written by: Roman Polanski, Kenneth Tynan, from the play by William Shakespeare.
Producer: Andrew Braunsberg.
Director: Roman Polanski.
Starring: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, Terence Bayler, John Stride, Nicholas Selby, Stephen Chase, Paul Shelley, Keith Chegwin, Sydney Bromley, Richard Pearson.
Photography: Gilbert Taylor.
Music: The Third Ear Band.

MACBETH (1971). The DVD and video covers curiously promote not Macbeth, but Martin Shaw as Banquo.

Nov 7th 
Von Richtofen and Brown**
aka: The Red Baron
(GB 1971)     
United Artists/The Corman Company. 97m.

In World War I the aristocrat Mannfred Von Richtfen flies with distinction and kills many of the enemy, but the attrition of the war soon overwhelms honour, as espoused by his Canadian adversary Roy Brown.
Semi-apocryphal war drama with well shot airborne and clearly defined airborne sequences. On the ground level things are more uncertain with some variable moral sympathies, but Corman gets his anti-war point across.

Written by: John Carrington, Joyce Carrington.
Producer: Gene Corman.
Director: Roger Corman.
Starring: John Philip Law, Don Stroud, Corin Redgrave, Barry Primus (as Goering), Hurd Hatfield, Tom Adams, Maureen Cusack, Lorraine Rainer, Karen Huston.
Photography: Michael Reed.
Music: Hugo Friedhofer.                  
Editing: Alan Collins.

Preceded by:
Dream Flight
(US 2018. 11m.; On his flight home a man ruminates about being jilted at the altar - bizarrely, the whole experience truns out to be a dream after his successful wedding.; w: Ben Solenberger, Ari Schneider; d: Ann Hearn Tobolowsky; s: Ben Solenberger. Marguerite Moreau, George Wendt, Ari Schneider, Stephen Tobolowsky; ph: Dennis Zanatta; m: Robby Elfman.)

 Nov 2nd  
The Terror**  
(GB 1938)                                      
ABPC. 73m. bw

A maniacal gold thief lurks within an old country house.
Enjoyably creaky mystery, with some interesting future familiar faces.

w: William Freshman, from the play by Edgar Wallace
p: Walter C. Mycroft
d: Richard Bird
s: Wilfrid Lawson, Bernard Lee, Linden Travers, Arthur Wontner, Alastair Sim, Henry Oscar, Iris Hoey, Edward Lexy, Richard Murdoch, Kathleen Harrison, Irene Handl
ph: Walter J. Harvey
m: Marr Mackie