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“It takes a good man to prevent a catastrophe, milady, and a great man to make use of one.”

Gene Kelly, Van Heflin, Lana Turner and Vincent Price in The Three Musketeers (1948) will available on Blu-ray February 15th from Warner Archive. It can be purchased at the Warner Archive Amazon Store Here

Gene Kelly stars as the swashbuckling young French nobleman D’Artagnan who, possessing nothing more than his title, travels to Paris to join The Three Musketeers. D’Artagnan no sooner arrives in the capital, than he insults Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Academy Award winner Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote), the most feared of the musketeers. Challenged to a duel by each, D’Artagnan earns their respect with his courage, if not by his fighting prowess. But his courage, skill and wit are quickly needed to help the musketeers thwart a plot by the powerful Prime Minister Richelieu...

Join Cinema St. Louis Executive Director Cliff Froehlich in their new collaboration with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis to present Shakespeare & Chill. Every Wednesday at 8pm Cliff will moderate 20-30 minute panel discussion of a Shakespeare-related movie conversations between Shakespeare aficionados and industry professionals. Stay tuned to the Cinema St. Louis Facebook page for updates on the event!

A discussion of the 1973 classic Vincent Price film Theatre Of Blood will take place between Cliff and Shakespeare and Vincent Price enthusiasts Chris Limber, Ben Ritchie, Kevin Townley, and We Are Movie Geeks own Tom Stockman Facebook on Wednesday May 13th at 8Pm. The discussion will post on the Cinema St. Louis and Shakespeare Festival St. Louis Facebook pages.

In the early 1970’s Vincent Price’s career was at a high point. The Doctor Phibes films were unexpected hits. How would he capitalize on these? In 1973 he took on a role in a...

Stars: Orson Welles, Micheál MacLiammóir, Suzanne Cloutier, Robert Coote, Fay Compton, Michael Laurence | Written by William Shakespeare, Orson Welles, Jean Sacha | Directed by Orson Welles

We open with a funeral. For whom we’re not sure, but by the end of Orson Welles’ 1952 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Moorish tragedy Othello we can be certain that more than one of the main characters will be dead.

The location is Cyprus, and Venetian General Othello (Welles) is married to Desdemona, much to the chagrin of Othello’s supposedly loyal ensign, Iago (Micheál MacLiammóir). The latter sets about bringing ruin to his master through a convoluted campaign of rumour and hearsay. Specifically, he makes Othello believe that one of his captains, Cassio (Michael Laurence), is romantically involved with Desdemona. In all of literature a simple handkerchief has never held such power.

MacLiammóir is having an absolute riot in the upsetter role (the painted-on...

The wonder movie of 1946 sees the Archers infusing the ‘Film Blanc’ fantasy with amazing images and powerful emotions. Imagination and resourcefulness accomplishes miracles on a Stairway to Heaven, with visual effects never bettered in the pre-cgi era. Michael Powell’s command of the screen overpowers a soon-obsoleted theme about U.S.- British relations.

A Matter of Life and Death

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 939

1946 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 104 min. / Stairway to Heaven / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 26, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring, Roger Livesey, Robert Coote, Kathleen Byron, Richard Attenborough, Bonar Colleano, Joan Maude.

Cinematography: Jack Cardiff

Film Editor: Reginald Mills

Production Design: Alfred Junge

Original Music: Allan Gray

Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger came into their own making wartime movies, most of which steered far clear of the accepted definition of propaganda. After their Anglo-Dutch...

Meet the lusty Amber St. Clare, a 17th century social climber determined to sleep her way to respectability. Gorgeous Linda Darnell gets her biggest role in a lavishly appointed period epic; Otto Preminger hated the assignment but his direction and Darryl Zanuck’s production are excellent. And it has one of the all-time great Hollywood movie scores, by David Raksin.

Forever Amber

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1947 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 138 min. / Street Date December 19, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Linda Darnell, Cornel Wilde, Richard Greene, George Sanders, Glenn Langan, Richard Haydn, Jessica Tandy, Anne Revere, John Russell, Jane Ball, Robert Coote, Leo G. Carroll, Natalie Draper, Margaret Wycherly, Norma Varden.

Cinematography: Leon Shamroy

Art Direction: Lyle Wheeler

Visual Effects: Fred Sersen

Original Music: David Raksin

Written by Philip Dunne, Ring Lardner Jr. from the novel by Kathleen Winsor

Produced by William Perlberg

Directed by Otto Preminger

Three years ago,...

Othello

Blu-ray

Criterion

1952 / Black and White / 1:33 / Street Date October 10, 2017

Starring Orson Welles, Suzanne Cloutier, Micheál MacLiammóir

Cinematography by G.R. Aldo, Anchise Brizzi, George Fanto, Alberto Fusi, Oberdan Troiani

Written by William Shakespeare (Adapted by Orson Welles)

Edited by Jenö Csepreghy, Renzo Lucidi, William Morton, Jean Sacha

Produced by Orson Welles, Julien Derode

Directed by Orson Welles

Shakespeare didn’t invent Orson Welles but he did define him; it can be said that if any one director took arms against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it was the man behind Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight. The 1952 production of Othello is exhibit A.

Filmed over a turbulent three year period in and around Morocco, Venice and Rome, Welles was bedeviled by an ever-changing cast and crew resulting in reshoots by five different cinematographers and assembled by four different editors. The sound recording was a joke.

This summer, Vincent Price fans who live stateside are in for a treat, because Twilight Time will release 1973’s Theatre of Blood on Blu-ray for the first time in the Us.

According to Blu-ray.com, Twilight Time has slated their Theatre of Blood Blu-ray for an August 16th release. Special features and cover art have yet to be revealed, but based on Twilight Time’s previous releases, there will likely only be 3,000 Blu-ray copies released and they are apt to sell out quickly, so be sure to keep an eye on the Screen Archives Entertainment website for pre-order availability.

Theatre of Blood held a special place in Price’s heart for giving him a chance to perform monologues from some of Shakespeare’s most epic works. Its arrival on Blu-ray in the Us has been eagerly awaited by Price’s fans for quite some time, making August 16th one of...

Born in St. Louis on May 27, 1911, iconic actor Vincent Price retained a special fondness for his place of origin, and that love was reciprocated with Vincentennial, a celebration of his 100th birthday in his hometown back in May of 2011 (for summary of all the Vincentennial activities go Here). One of the guests of honor at Vincentennial was Vincent Price’s daughter Victoria Price. Because of their close relationship and her access to his unpublished memoirs and letters, Victoria Price was able to provide a remarkably vivid account of her father’s public and private life in her essential book, Vincent Price, a Daughter’s Biography, originally published in 1999. .In 2011, her biography of her father was out of print. but now it’s been re-issued and Victoria will be in St. Louis this weekend (October 9th – 10th) for three special events. In addition to the biography, she will also be signing...

“Do you still say my Shylock was inadequate?”

Theatre Of Blood starring St. Louis native Vincent Price will be screened Saturday October 10th, as part of Movies for Foodies, a regular film series put on by the chefs at Tenacious Eats. The event will take place at St. Louis Banquet Center located at 5700 Leona. In attendance will be special guest Victoria Price, author of Vincent Price, a Daughter’s Biography.

Tenacious Eats presents five courses and five cocktails themed to the Vincent Price masterpiece Theatre Of Blood with special guest of honor Victoria Price! Recipes will be featured from Victoria’s parents’ best-selling cookbook “A Treasury of Great Recipes” which is being re-issued for its 50th Anniversary. Cookbooks will be available for purchase that evening. This event will take place at St. Louis Banquet Center located at 5700 Leona. Get ready for a creepy good time! Live music and cash bar begin at 6:30pm.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ca. 1935. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was never as popular as his father, silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in one action-adventure blockbuster after another in the 1920s (The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad) and whose stardom dates back to the mid-1910s, when Fairbanks toplined a series of light, modern-day comedies in which he was cast as the embodiment of the enterprising, 20th century “all-American.” What this particular go-getter got was screen queen Mary Pickford as his wife and United Artists as his studio, which he co-founded with Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Charles Chaplin. Now, although Jr. never had the following of Sr., he did enjoy a solid two-decade-plus movie career. In fact, he was one of the few children of major film stars – e.g., Jane Fonda, Liza Minnelli, Angelina Jolie, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis – who had successful film careers of their own.

Cary Grant films on TCM: Gender-bending 'I Was a Male War Bride' (photo: Cary Grant not gay at all in 'I Was a Male War Bride') More Cary Grant films will be shown tonight, as Turner Classic Movies continues with its Star of the Month presentations. On TCM right now is the World War II action-drama Destination Tokyo (1943), in which Grant finds himself aboard a U.S. submarine, alongside John Garfield, Dane Clark, Robert Hutton, and Tom Tully, among others. The directorial debut of screenwriter Delmer Daves (The Petrified Forest, Love Affair) -- who, in the following decade, would direct a series of classy Westerns, e.g., 3:10 to Yuma, The Hanging Tree -- Destination Tokyo is pure flag-waving propaganda, plodding its way through the dangerous waters of Hollywood war-movie stereotypes and speechifying banalities. The film's key point of interest, in fact, is Grant himself -- not because he's any good,...

We’ll be celebrating the 5th year anniversary of Super-8 Movie Madness at The Way Out Club in St. Louis on Tuesday October 7th with an encore performance of our most popular show. It’s Super-8 Vincent Price Movie Madness in 3D, the show that we took on the road to promote Vincentennial back in 2011. We’ll be honoring the hometown horror hero by showing condensed (average length: 15 minutes) versions of several of Price’s greatest films on Super-8 sound film projected on a big screen. They are: Master Of The World, War-gods Of The Deep, Pit And The Pendulum, The Raven, Witchfinder General, Tim Burton’s Vincent, Two Vincent Price Trailer Reels, Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein and The Mad Magician in 3D (We’ll have plenty of 3D Glasses for everyone)

The non-Price movies we’re showing October 7th are The Three Stooges in Pardon My Backfire...

Arrow Video is thrilled to announce the UK Blu-ray and Blu-ray Steelbook release of Theatre of Blood, the seminal 1973 British horror classic starring Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Arthur Lowe, Robert Coote and Coral Browne. This newly restored feature will make its worldwide Blu-ray debut on 5th May 2014. Featuring a bumper crop of bonus features such as a newly recorded audio commentary with The League of Gentlemen (Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith), interviews with the likes of Victoria Price, author and film historian David Del Valle, Theatre of Blood star Madeline Smith and composer Michael J. Lewis. The release also features a reversible sleeve featuring new artwork by Sam Smith and a collectors booklet with new writing on the film by critic Cleaver Patterson and a reproduction of the original press book material, illustrated with original archive stills. Synopsis: Vincent Price gives a...

Lana Turner movies: Scandal and more scandal Lana Turner is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, Saturday, August 10, 2013. I’m a little — or rather, a lot — late in the game posting this article, but there are still three Lana Turner movies left. You can see Turner get herself embroiled in scandal right now, in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), both the director and the star’s biggest box-office hit. More scandal follows in Mark Robson’s Peyton Place (1957), the movie that earned Lana Turner her one and only Academy Award nomination. And wrapping things up is George Sidney’s lively The Three Musketeers (1948), with Turner as the ruthless, heartless, remorseless — but quite elegant — Lady de Winter. Based on Fannie Hurst’s novel and a remake of John M. Stahl’s 1934 melodrama about mother love, class disparities, racism, and good cooking, Imitation of Life was shown on...

Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...

Eleanor Parker today: Beautiful as ever in Scaramouche, Interrupted Melody Eleanor Parker, who turns 91 in ten days (June 26, 2013), can be seen at her most radiantly beautiful in several films Turner Classic Movies is showing this evening and tomorrow morning as part of their Star of the Month Eleanor Parker "tribute." Among them are the classic Scaramouche, the politically delicate Above and Beyond, and the biopic Interrupted Melody, which earned Parker her third and final Best Actress Academy Award nomination. (Photo: publicity shot of Eleanor Parker in Scaramouche.) The best of the lot is probably George Sidney’s balletic Scaramouche (1952), in which Eleanor Parker plays one of Stewart Granger’s love interests — the other one is Janet Leigh. A loose remake of Rex Ingram’s 1923 blockbuster, the George Sidney version features plenty of humor, romance, and adventure; vibrant colors (cinematography by Charles Rosher); an elaborately staged climactic swordfight; and tough dudes...

Today’s question comes from Kirk, who wants to know: Do you have any favorite “memorable moments” from otherwise forgettable films? Kirk continues: I was reminded somehow of a moment from A Man Could Get Killed, one of James Garner's lesser successes. In it there's a scene where a cargo of rice has been placed on a pier because it's suspected of having something-i-forget hidden in it. Unfortunately, it then rains and the small pile of rice bags becomes a growing mountain of rice. Robert Coote then comments, "Eerie, isn't it," in that patented Brit deadpan. That's virtually all I remember from the movie, but the visual and Coote's delivery of the line is still burned into my memory. Another one is from Merry Andrew - a lesser Danny Kaye film, but there's a musical number near the beginning 'Everything is Tickety-Boo' (sic?) that I remember quite distinctly. Don't...

Theatre Of Blood will play at the Vincentennial Vincent Price Film Festival in a 35mm print at 2:30pm on Saturday, May 21st at the Hi-Pointe Theatre. Ticket information can be found Here

In the early 1907′s Vincent Price’s career was at a high point. The Doctor Phibes films were unexpected hits. How would he capitalize on these? In 1973 he took on a role in a film with a similar plot structure. In fact, many fright film fans consider Theatre Of Blood an unofficial finale in a Phibes trilogy. Produced by United Artists rather then American International Blood differed from the Phibes film in that it was set in modern times and boasted one of the most prestigious casts that Price ever worked with. Price portrays Edward Lionheart , a stage actor thought to be dead , who returns to murder the critics that denied him a thespian award. Many of...

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, and Tom Stockman

Born in St. Louis on May 27, 1911, iconic actor Vincent Price retained a special fondness for his place of origin, and that love is now reciprocated with Vincentennial, a celebration of his 100th birthday in his hometown. Price was not only a notable St. Louisan but one of the 20th century.s most remarkable men. To do full justice to the range of his accomplishments, Vincentennial features not only a 10-day film festival but also a pair of exhibits, a stage production, two publications, and illuminating discussions by Price experts and film historians. We decided to do a special edition of Top Ten Tuesday here at We Are Movie Geeks in honor of the many great films that Vincent Price starred in, and after we had assembled the list we realized that all ten of these films will be showing at the...

Many unsuspecting cinema-goers who clearly hadn’t read the reviews got quite a shock when they went into Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan expecting a nice movie about ballet. Black Swan is a fully-fledged (pun intended) horror movie full of fantastical elements – or is it? Horror it certainly is – fantasy, it may not be, as it is entirely possible that every uncanny event in the film exists only in the protagonist’s disturbed mind. Black Swan is far from the first film to play with the line between fantasy and reality, and it won’t be the last. What follows is a subjective list of some of my favourite reality-bending fantastical films.*

A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946, known as Stairway to Heaven in the Us)

A Matter of Life and Death uses exactly the same method as Black Swan to bend reality, but to the exact opposite effect.

The Arbor, a film in which actors mime to recorded words, is part of a rich history of sonic experiments

Like all cinematic developments hailed as leaps towards verisimilitude, the advent of synchronised sound at the end of the 1920s in fact opened up a whole new dimension of illusion. The clue is in the name: despite the appearance of unity, the audio and video tracks are synchronised but separate recordings, and the space between them can be put to all sorts of cunning uses.

The latest of these is found in The Arbor, Clio Barnard's moving and ingenious cinematic profile of the young Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, which is out this Friday. Taking its cue from "verbatim theatre", in which actors speak lines taken directly from interviews with real-life people, The Arbor features actors lip-synching to interviews with Dunbar's loved ones, to emotionally compelling yet formally alienating effect...

Orson Welles' "Othello, '' one of the filmmaker's great masterpieces, has, after years of neglect in the United States, undergone a substantial and welcome restoration. Thanks to the production of a new master negative and a partially restored and partially rerecorded soundtrack, the full 91 minutes of the 1952 film will be available to American audiences in 35mm and, later, on video and laserdisc.

Previously, those lucky enough to see the film at all had to be satisfied with a foggy-looking 16mm print that had nearly unintelligible sound.

The picture restoration, done from the original camera negative, is dramatic. Welles' images are strong, stark and Crystal Clear. This is key, because although the film's compositions are vertiginously bold, the performances are deliberately subdued, and the change in facial expressions require a careful scrutiny that, in the old prints, was difficult if not impossible.

The sound restoration was apparently more difficult and, in the eyes of some critics, more problematic. The dialogue was recorded post-sync, much of it "wild'' -- that is, not to the picture. Welles himself redubbed the lines of Robert Coote's Rodrigo.

Also, since the process was done over a four-year period, due to production and financial difficulties, different equipment, with different responses, was used.

The response was, first of all, to have conductor Michael Pendowski listen to the musical score, transcribe it and rerecord it. The result is a beautiful stereo score in place of the mono original.

The dialogue, for its part, was gleaned from the original optical negative and processed digitally, so that the synchronization could be improved. Hiss was also eliminated.

The result is mighty impressive. Although still clearly dubbed, the dialogue is absolutely clear and perfectly matched to lip movements. The effect of Welles' naturalistic approach to the dialogue -- he had eliminated most of the characters' speeches -- can be fully appreciated.

There have been some complaints that Pendowski's instrumentation is quite different from the original, and that many of

There have been some complaints that Pendowski's instrumentation is quite different from the original, and that many ofWelles' effects -- ranging from a strummed piano to a bridge of Gregorian chants -- have not survived the restoration.

Apparently, the prints in Europe are based on the film's Cannes print and this restoration is a slightly different version cut for the original New York premiere. A comparison of the two could be useful.

OTHELLO

Restoration credits only:

INTERMISSION PRODUCTIONS LTD.

A CASTLE HILL PRODUCTIONS RELEASE

Producers Michael Dawson, Arnie Saks

Executive producers Donald M. Leibsker, Edward H. Stone, James J. Trainor

In association with Beatrice Welles-Smith, Christopher F. Smith

Final restoration supervisor Phillip Schopper

Final Re-Recording Mixer Lee Dichter

Final Post Production Services Sound One/New York

Orchestral Reconstrction Michael Pendowski

Nitrate Restoration Film Technology Company

Running time -- 91 minutes

NO MPAA RATING

(c) The Hollywood Reporter...