News

Norman Spencer, the British producer, production manager and screenwriter who worked alongside famed director David Lean on films including Blithe Spirit, Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, has died. He was 110.

Spencer died Aug. 16 in Wimbledon three days after his birthday, the European Supercentenarian Organisation announced.

Apart from Lean, Spencer produced Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn; Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (1971), the car chase movie that starred Barry Newman; and Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), starring Denzel Washington.

Spencer was Lean’s unit manager on the ghost comedy Blithe Spirit (1945), based on the Noël Coward play, and served as his production manager on his adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).

He produced Lean’s The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Hepburn-starring, Venice-set Summertime (1955); worked on a rewrite of the script for...

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By Doug Oswald

Rock Hudson and George Peppard are WWII commandos in “Tobruk,” available on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Hudson is Major Donald Craig, a Canadian prisoner of war on board a German transport ship anchored off an Italian controlled port in North Africa sometime in late 1942. A group of frogmen surface near the ship and sneak on board with silencers fixed to their guns in order to kidnap Craig. The frogmen are led by Captain Bergman (George Peppard) who is part of a team of German commandos. They take Craig to a German airfield and fly him to a desert landing strip. They’re unexpectedly greeted by a group of British soldiers led by Colonel Harker (Nigel Green). It turns out Bergman is the leader of German Jews who fled Nazi Germany for obvious reasons and are now part of...

Season’s Greetings, everyone! ’Tis the season to be busy and you’ll stay that way snatching up Blu-rays if Severin Films has anything to say about it. Here are two recent releases to consider:

Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory (1961): It’s an early giallo! No, it’s a monster movie! Actually, it’s both. Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory is a stone-cold gas; beautiful, evocative photography from Renato Del Frate (The Holy Nun) and solid direction by Paolo Heusch (Violent Life) highlight this tale of a reform school for girls that has enough red herrings and blackmail amongst its tale of lycanthropic dread. When a new teacher (Carl Schell – The Blue Max) arrives at the school, some of the girls begin to turn up dead, and are thought to have arrived at their station due to wolf attacks. But you and I know better; and with a clever...

Joseph Losey’s fortunes as an expatriate director took an upswing with this efficient, nervous and somewhat overcooked thriller with a daunting ticking-bomb deadline story gimmick — alcoholic wreck Michael Redgrave has only twenty hours to save his son from execution for murder. Losey racks up the tension, but he doesn’t give a hoot for Ben Barzman’s whodunnit scripting. Just the same, it’s good to see the director finally gaining traction — from this point forward most every Losey picture received serious international attention.

Time Without Pity

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1957 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 89 min. / Street Date October 28, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK (Region Free) / £15.99

Starring: Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern, Ann Todd, Peter Cushing, Alec McCowen, Lois Maxwell, Richard Wordsworth, Joan Plowright.

Cinematography: Freddie Francis

Film Editor: Alan Osbiston

Original Music: Tristram Cary

Written by Ben Barzman from a play by Emlyn Williams

Produced by John Arnold, Leon Clore,...

Freshly divorced from American-International Pictures, Roger Corman leaps into the filmic mainstream with a fairly large-scale World War One aviation picture. He competes with the big studios but retains his nonconformist attitude: his retelling of the story of the Red Baron fixates on the theme of the death of chivalry in combat. For his star player Corman picks John Phillip Law, whose on-screen persona is a good fit for one of the first warrior aces of the sky.

Von Richthofen and Brown

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date May 21, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: John Phillip Law, Don Stroud, Barry Primus, Corin Redgrave, Stephen McHattie, Hurd Hatfield

Robert La Tourneaux, Ferdy Mayne, Peter Masterson, Clint Kimbrough, George Armitage.

Cinematography: Michael Reed

Film Editor: Alan Collins

Original Music: Hugo Friedhofer

Written by John William Corrington, Joyce H. Corrington

Produced by Gene Corman, Jimmy T. Murakami

Directed by...

Tarzan got a new lease on life when a film company finally went to Africa to pit the excellent ‘Lord of the Jungle’ Gordon Scott against a formidable phalanx of villains. Anthony Quayle, Sean Connery and Niall MacGinnis are perfect Dastards of the Darkest Continent. Also top-flight are the women in this jungle combat, wicked Scilla Gabel and naughty Sara Shane. Fun for adult kids of all ages!

Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1959 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 87 min. / Street Date November 13, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Gordon Scott, Anthony Quayle, Sara Shane, Niall MacGinnis, Sean Connery, Al Mulock, Scilla Gabel.

Cinematography: Edward Scaife

Film Editor: Bert Rule

Original Music: Douglas Gamley

Written by Les Crutchfield, Berne Giler, John Guillermin from the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Produced by Harvey Hayutin, Sy Weintraub

Directed by John Guillermin

Of all the big-screen Tarzans — Johnny Weissmuller, Lex Barker, Jock Mahoney,...

By Nicholas Anez

Business isn’t exactly booming for private detective Peter Joseph Detweiler, better known as P.J. His makeshift office is in a bar belonging to his only friend Charlie, his sporadic jobs include entrapping cheating wives and he is not above drowning his sorrows in liquor. So when wealthy magnate William Orbison offers him a substantial fee to be a bodyguard for his mistress, Maureen Prebble, he jumps at the chance. What P.J. doesn’t know is that Orbison has already hired someone else to commit a murder. How this murder and the shamus’s new job intersect is the crux of the terrific 1968 neo-noir from Universal, P.J. (U.K. title: New Face in Hell.)

Private detectives were prominent in the late 1960s and included Harper (1966), Tony Rome (1967), Gunn (1967), and Marlowe (1969). P.J. appeared in the midst of this surplus, which may account in part for its box office failure.

A middling entry in the genre of blow-it-up big action spectacles, Paul Wendkos’ Spain-filmed western gives us all the excitement promised by the poster, but with some cardboard characters and lumpy storytelling. George Peppard is on the job, however, and once again proves he can carry a big picture, flaws and all.

Cannon for Cordoba

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date October 31, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: George Peppard, Raf Vallone, Giovanna Ralli, Don Gordon, Pete Duel, Nico Minardos, John Russell, John Larch, Gabriele Tinti, Francine York, Lionel Murton, Hans Meyer, Aldo Sambrell, Luis Barboo.

Cinematography: Antonio Macasoli

Film Editor: Walter A. Hannemann

Special effects: Emilio Ruiz del Río

Original Music: Elmer Bernstein

Written by Stephen Kandel

Produced by Vincent M. Fennelly

Directed by Paul Wendkos

While providing backing for independent writer-producers like Billy Wilder, Walter Mirisch also shepherded various less ambitious war movies and westerns,...

What’s the best true-story WW2 combat film for pure-grit, no-nonsense tanks ‘n’ bombs ‘n’ crazy mayhem action on a giant scale? This non-stop battle epic gets my vote. George Segal and Ben Gazzara’s infantry dogs are suitably tough, cynical and desperate, especially when they’re repeatedly sent into danger. The history is fairly accurate — there was indeed a race to seize the last bridge across the River Rhine.

The Bridge at Remagen

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 117 min. / Street Date June 13, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: George Segal, Robert Vaughn, Ben Gazzara, Bradford Dillman, E.G. Marshall, Peter Van Eyck, Hans Christian Blech, Bo Hopkins, Matt Clark, G&uunl;nter Meisner.

Cinematography: Stanley Cortez

Film Editors: William Cartwright, Harry Knapp, Marshall Neilan Jr.

Original Music: Elmer Bernstein

Written by Richard Yates, William Roberts, Roger Hirson

Produced by David L. Wolper

Directed by John Guillermin

Who...

Slocombe with Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg filming "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981. (Photo: LucasFilm).

Douglas Slocombe, the acclaimed cinematographer and director of photography, has passed away at age 103. Slocombe was revered by directors over a career that extended from 1940 to 1989, when he lensed his final film, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". He had also filmed the first two entries in the Indiana Jones series, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". Slocombe never won an Oscar but was nominated for "Travels with My Aunt", "Julia" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark". He had been nominated for eleven BAFTA awards, winning three times. Slocombe's other major films include the Ealing Studios British comedy classics starring Alec Guinness, the classic chiller "Dead of Night", "The Blue Max", "The Lion in Winter", the original version of "The Italian Job", "The Fearless Vampire Killers", "The Great Gatsby...

By Doug Oswald

Released by Universal in 1967, “Tobruk” opens with the feel of a 1960s spy thriller. Rock Hudson is Major Donald Craig, a Canadian prisoner of war on board a German transport ship anchored somewhere off the North Africa coast in late 1942. A group of frogmen surface near the ship and sneak on board with silencers fixed to their guns in order to capture Craig. The frogmen are led by Captain Bergman (George Peppard) who reveal themselves to be part of a team of German commandos.

The commandos take Craig to a German airfield and fly him to a desert landing strip. They’re unexpectedly greeted by a group of British soldiers led by Colonel Harker (Nigel Green). It’s revealed that Bergman is the leader of a German-Jewish commando unit attached to a group of British commandos operating in North Africa. They secured the rescue of Craig due...

Director John Guillermin has passed away at age 89. The British director was best known for his high profile action films including the 1974 blockbuster "The Towering Inferno" and the 1976 remake of "King Kong", a production that was plagued by troubles but ended up being quite profitable. Guillermin was despised by some in the industry for his mercurial temperament and harsh methods of directing actors. However, no one could deny his talents. He was equally adept at directing scenes of intimate drama as well as explosive, large-scale action scenes. Among his best films was the 1969 production of "The Bridge at Remagen" which was interrupted by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Guillermin and producer David L. Wolper managed  to salvage the film by moving the production elsewhere, a monumental task that they completed successfully. Other Guillermin films include "Death on the Nile", "The Blue Max", "El Condor", "Shaft in Africa", "Skyjacked", "Never Let Go...

John Guillermin, the director responsible for films such as The Towering Inferno and 1976’s version of King Kong, has died at the age of 89.Guillermin was born in London in 1925, and got his education at the University of Cambridge. After his studies, he joined the Royal Air Force, then mustered out at 22 to begin a career in filmmaking. Initially studying in France and learning the art of documentaries, he moved to Los Angeles in 1950 to learn Hollywood’s film ways, though he’d already gotten his start in movies with the likes of Torment/Paper Gallows, Melody In The Dark and High Jinks In Society.He would go on to work on films including Town On Trial, The Blue Max, El Condor, Skyjacked, Shaft In Africa and even a couple of Tarzan instalments. But he was best known for entering the world of producer Irwin Allen with The Towering Inferno,...

Robert Enrico's literally searing terror tale from the French occupation is not for the faint of heart. Fearing reprisals, surgeon Philippe Noiret sends his wife Romy Schneider out of harm's way of the retreating Germans -- but things go horribly wrong. What follows is an ordeal of vengeance even more brutal than Straw Dogs, fought to the finish in a medieval castle. The Old Gun MGM Limited Edition Collection DVD-r 1975 / Color / 1:78 enhanced widescreen / 102 87 min. / Le vieux fusil / Street Date September 8, 2015 / available through Screen Archives Entertainment / 19.95 Starring Philippe Noiret, Romy Schneider, Jean Bouise, Joachim Hansen, Robert Hoffmann, Karl Michael Vogler, Madeleine Ozeray, Caroline Bonhomme, Catherine Delaporte, Daniel Breton, Jean-Paul Cisife, Antoine Saint-John. Cinematography Étienne Becker Film Editor Ava Zora Original Music François de Roubaix Written by Robert Enrico, Pascal Jardin, Claude Veillot Produced by Pierre Caro Directed by Robert Enrico

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Some of us can remember...

Twilight Time is celebrating its 4th anniversary with a major promotion that sees some of their limited edition titles reduced in price through April 3. These are the titles on sale.

Group 1

Retail price point: $24.95

Picnic

Pal Joey

Bite The Bullet

Bell, Book, And Candle

Bye Bye Birdie

In Like Flint

Major Dundee

The Blue Max

Crimes And Misdemeanors

Used Cars

Thunderbirds Are Go / Thunderbird 6

Group 2

Retail price point: $19.95

Rapture

Roots Of Heaven

Swamp Water

Demetrius And The Gladiators

Desiree

The Wayward Bus

Cover Girl

High Time

The Sound And The Fury

The Rains Of Ranchipur

Bonjour Tristesse

Beloved Infidel

Lost Horizon

The Blue Lagoon

Experiment In Terror

Nicholas And Alexandra

Pony Soldier

The Song Of Bernadette

Philadelphia

The Only Game In Town

Love Is A Many Splendored Thing

Sleepless In Seattle

The Disappearance

Sexy Beast

Drums Along The Mohawk

Alamo Bay

The Other

Mindwarp

Jane Eyre

Oliver

The Way We Were...

Stars: Patricia Gozzi, Dean Stockwell, Melvyn Douglas, Gunnel Lindblom, Leslie Sands, Murray Evans, Sylvia Kay, Peter Sallis, Ellen Pollock | Written by Stanley Mann | Directed by John Guillermin

John Guillermin, the London-born director of the classic disaster film The Towering Inferno directed this moving drama set in France called Rapture in 1965. I am familiar with some of Guillermin’s catalogue, from the aforementioned Towering Inferno to his ’76 version of King Kong to his 60’s war film The Blue Max. I hadn’t seen this though, so it was a treat to see that Masters of Cinema, Eureka’s brilliant line of classic titles, was putting a new version of the film out.

The first thing that struck me upon watching the film was the cinematography. It is just beautiful, and with the new transfer it looks even better than I can imagine it did when it was released those many years ago.

Blu-ray Release Date: Feb. 11, 2014

Price: Blu-ray $29.95

Studio: Twilight Time

George Peppard prepares to take to the skies in The Blue Max.

John Guillermin’s 1966 aerial war epic The Blue Max makes its Blu-ray debut from Twilight Time.

The film stars George Peppard (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) as Lt. Bruno Stachel, an ambitious young German soldier who, from the muck of the World War I trenches, becomes determined to join the aristocratic ranks of his country’s heroic fliers. The film details his journey as he moves up the ladder and into the skies, providing along the way some of the most thrilling sequences of aerial combat ever committed to the screen.

Also starring James Mason (Bigger Than Life) and Ursula Andress (The 10th Victim), the sumptuous-looking movie is based upon Jack Hunter’s 1964 novel and features music by Jerry Goldsmith, which is featured on this Twilight Time release as an isolated track.

Ron Howard's movie about 1970s British swashbucking F1 star James Hunt and his antler-clashing rivalry with the icy Niki Lauda is a fast and furious treat

No matter how obsessed we continue to be with the 1970s, there's always one more myth left to excavate, and this very entertaining and well-made motor racing movie from director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan brings us a meaty tale from 1976: a story of antler-clashing, engine-revving alpha-males. This was a year in which not everyone in fact was obsessed with the release of the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK. In the profoundly conservative world of Formula One, millions of TV viewers were increasingly preoccupied with an extraordinary duel developing between two drivers: the glamorous swashbuckler from Britain, James Hunt, and the icily correct Austrian Niki Lauda.

Hunt is played by the Australian star Chris Hemsworth, his shampooed mane swishing and shirt permanently open,...

Anybody who has ever been to a high school reunion (and I’ve been to my share) will tell you that the calendar and the clock can be incredibly cruel (particularly when combined with the long-term effects of gravity, but let’s not go there).

Time punishes creative works as well. Some work grows dated, stale, stiff. Time and the evolving form of the given art leaves a once vibrant and exciting work behind looking dead and obsolete.

More cruel, perhaps, is work that is simply…forgotten. Not for any good reason. Good as it was, maybe it was simply not successful enough to lodge very deeply in the popular consciousness; working well enough in its day, but soon lost among the ever-growing detritus of a lot of other pieces of yesterday.

Movie music is particularly vulnerable to the cruelties of time. Outside of the form’s devotees, it rarely...

From aerial bravery in Wwi to Tom Cruise in an F-14 Tomcat, Mark lists his top ten all-time favourite flying movies…

This is a personal list, and as such, won't please everyone. I accept that, but I wanted to look at the films that have best represented flying for me over the years.

I've also excluded helicopters in exchange for a festival of fixed wings. But as a person who loves aircraft and flying of all kinds, these are the ones that made me feel the need. The need for speed...

The Dam Busters (1955)

Gosh, what a place to start. For the most part, the film's an historically accurate retelling of the ultimate daring-do of WWII. Richard Todd plays the unflappable Guy Gibson, who lead the amazing 617 Squadron on their secret mission against the dams of the Ruhr valley.

Using the Barnes Wallis (played by Michael Redgrave) utterly inspired bouncing bomb,...

They shall beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks;

One nation shall not raise the sword against another,

neither shall they learn war any more.

Isaiah 2:4

War is a nation’s ultimate commitment of blood and treasure. As such, the stories a people tells about its wars – and don’t tell – and the ways it remembers its wars – or chooses to forget them – tells us much about the kind of people they consider themselves to be at different times in their history, as well as the kind of people they really were…and are.

For most of the 20th century, the war film was a Hollywood staple. From one era to the next, war movies documented the nation’s conflicts, reflected the national consciousness on particular combats as well as on thinking going far beyond any one, particular war. They’ve been propagandistic and revisionist,...

Part I: Super Chiefs — Calley, Evans, Zanuck and the Passing of the Studio Torches

From the 1960s into the 1980s, one by one, the legendary studios of old – MGM, United Artists, Warner Bros., Paramount, Columbia, 20th Century Fox — were gobbled up by conglomerates, some of which had had almost no previous interests in the entertainment business, such as Paramount’s acquirer, Gulf + Western (a motley collection of properties ranging from Caribbean sugar companies to auto parts), and Kinney National Service (a hodgepodge of funeral homes and parking lots which bought up Warner Bros.). This corporatization of the major studios – the once mighty fiefdoms of the old moguls subjugated by invaders with little or no practical or emotional affinity for movies – is often viewed disparagingly as a sea change signaling the end of the grand Old Hollywood; the Hollywood of Gable and Garland, of Casablanca (1942) and Gone with the Wind (1939).

Factually,...

Five years ago today, one of the greatest melodists to ever pick up the baton left us.

Jerry Goldsmith was not only a master interpreter of film, but also one of the greatest creators of film music to ever grace the medium. Goldsmith's music, whether by accident or pure purpose, was a major influence on many of us in our decisions to take on this career and try to reach even a fraction of the height that he was able to during his time at the podium.

I am of the opinion that when Jerry Goldsmith passed, so did something else... theJerry Goldsmith via last.fm

matic writing. It will surely be argued that John Williams is perhaps the last "living legend" in film music. However, I felt that once Jerry was gone, even Williams began to rest on his laurels a little, and with the latest Indiana Jones film,...

Writer Jack D. Hunter has lost his battle with cancer, aged 87.

Hunter, whose World War I novel The Blue Max was made into a 1966 movie, died in St. Augustine, Florida on 13 April. No further information regarding his illness was available as WENN went to press.

Swiss actress and Bond Girl Ursula Andress and American actor George Peppard starred in the film, based on Hunter's 1964 book about German airman who earns a high military honour called the Blue Max after shooting down enemy planes.

Hunter wrote 17 novels in his time, publishing his last in the Autumn. His wife operated a gift shop named the Blue Max in the Florida city until her death in 2006.

Hunter is survived by four children, three grandchildren and a brother.