News

Based on the true story of the Burke and Hare murders that terrified Scotland in 1828, Burke and Hare will be released on Blu-ray on April 1 via Kino Lorber.

The 1972 British horror-comedy is also known as The Horrors of Burke and Hare and The Body Snatchers.

The final effort from director Vernon Sewell is written by Ernle Bradford.

Special Features:

Audio Commentary by Film Historian/ Screenwriter Gary Gerani (new) Interview with Actress Françoise Pascal Grave Desires: Corpses on Film – Interview with Dr. Patricia MacCormack Theatrical Trailer

Derren Nesbitt and Glynn Edwards star as grave robbers who go into business supplying medical colleges with cadavers. Harry Andrews, Yootha Joyce, and Françoise Pascal co-star.

Kino describes the film as “a playful spin on the Irish body snatchers, blending dark comedy with bawdy eroticism, seasoning it with the grotesque, then crowning it with a playful theme song by the pop band The Scaffold.”

The...

Brian Murphy, who starred as the henpecked landlord George Roper on the 1970s British sitcoms Man About the House and George and Mildred, which were adapted for Three’s Company and The Ropers in the U.S., has died. He was 92.

Murphy died Sunday of cancer at his home in Kent, England, his agent, Thomas Bowington, announced.

Murphy also starred on the short-lived comedies The Incredible Mr. Tanner in 1981, L for Lester in 1982 and Lame Ducks in 1984-85 before joining the long-running BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine as Alvin Smedley for an eight-season run from 2003-10.

ITV’s Man About the House, from Thames Television, starred Richard O’Sullivan as student chef Robin Tripp, who moves into a London flat shared by two young women, Chrissy (Paula Wilcox) and Jo (Sally Thomsett), to enjoy a platonic relationship. The landlords, George and his sexually frustrated wife, Mildred (Yootha Joyce), are told Robin is gay.

Actor and comedian Brian Murphy, best known for his iconic roles in groundbreaking sitcoms “Man About the House” and “George and Mildred,” passed away Sunday at his home in Kent, England. He was 92.

Murphy’s agent, Thomas Bowington, confirmed his death, noting that the actor died peacefully with his wife, actress Linda Regan, by his side. “Brian was a truly joyful and profoundly good-hearted man,” Bowington said.

A veteran of British entertainment, Murphy’s career spanned over seven decades. He began in the 1950s with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, where he helped transform British theater and make it more accessible to wider audiences. His early stage work included Shakespearean productions and a memorable role in “Oh, What a Lovely War!”

Television brought Murphy his greatest recognition. After appearing in classic British series like “The Avengers” and “Z-Cars,” he found breakthrough success in 1973 with “Man About the House.” The sitcom,...

Brian Murphy, an English actor and comedian best known for his roles in the ’70s sitcoms “Man About the House” and “George and Mildred,” died on Sunday. He was 92.

Murphy’s agent confirmed the news to the BBC, calling him a “joyful and profoundly good-hearted man.” His wife, “Hi-de-Hi” star Linda Regan, posted a photo of them embracing on X with the caption: “My love for you will never die. Rip sweetheart.”

Born on the Isle of Wight on Sept. 25, 1932, Murphy completed military service at Raf Northwood before pursuing acting and becoming a member of Joan Littlewood’s legendary Theatre Workshop. After nabbing several guest appearances on spy series like “The Avengers” and “Callan” as well as police procedurals “Z-Cars” and “Dixon of Dock Green,” Murphy was cast in “Man About the House.”

The sitcom ran from 1973 to 1976 and starred Murphy as George Roper, a lazy landlord who allows a...

In the fall of ‘64, while Hollywood was gently satirizing the battle of the sexes with Send Me No Flowers and What a Way to Go!, Europe was at work in the trenches, peppering art houses with piercing dramas like François Truffaut‘s The Soft Skin and André Cayatte’s dual release, Anatomy of a Marriage: My Nights With Francoise and My Days with Jean-Marc (“One Ticket Admits You to Both Theaters”). Perhaps most unforgiving of all was Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater starring Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch and James Mason.

Bancroft plays Jo Armitage, a fragile beauty who responds to her husband’s infidelities by getting pregnant. Finch is Jake, a screenwriter whose recent success has emboldened him to walk on the wild side thereby provoking Jo to over-crowd the nursery. Mason is, once again, the odd man out, the deceptively genial husband of one of Jake’s conquests.

Starting out in 1939 as the little studio that could, Hammer would finally make their reputation in the late fifties reimagining Universal’s black and white horrors as eye-popping Technicolor gothics – their pictorial beauty, thanks to cameramen like Jack Asher and Arthur Ibbetson, was fundamental to the studio’s legacy. So it’s been more than a little frustrating to see such disrespect visited upon these films by home video companies happy to smother the market with grainy prints, incoherent cropping and under-saturated colors. The House of Hammer and the film community in general deserve far better than that.

Thanks to Indicator, the home video arm of Powerhouse films based in the UK, those wrongs are beginning to be righted, starting with their impressive new release of Hammer shockers, Fear Warning! Even better news for stateside fans; the set is region-free, ready to be relished the world over.

Hammer Vol. 1 – Fear Warning!

Patricia Neal ca. 1950. Patricia Neal movies: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' 'A Face in the Crowd' Back in 1949, few would have predicted that Gary Cooper's leading lady in King Vidor's The Fountainhead would go on to win a Best Actress Academy Award 15 years later. Patricia Neal was one of those performers – e.g., Jean Arthur, Anne Bancroft – whose film career didn't start out all that well, but who, by way of Broadway, managed to both revive and magnify their Hollywood stardom. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” series, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating Sunday, Aug. 16, '15, to Patricia Neal. This evening, TCM is showing three of her best-known films, in addition to one TCM premiere and an unusual latter-day entry. 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Robert Wise was hardly a genre director. A former editor (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons...

By Lee Pfeiffer

In the wake of unexpected critical acclaim for director Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night in 1964, studios scrambled to emulate the success of that first feature film starring The Beatles. Over a period of a few years, many bands found themselves top-lining major feature films. Most were mindless exploitation films, a few others more ambitious in their goals. Fitting snugly into the latter category was Having a Wild Weekend (released in the UK under the title Catch Us If You Can.)  The film represents the only movie starring the Dave Clark Five, one of the more popular bands to emerge during that marvelous era in the 1960s when Great Britain shed its post WWII doldrums and came to dominate international pop culture. The band was one of many who rode the coattails of The Beatles to the top of the charts, but they had their own...