Friday, July 31, 2020

Thursday, July 30 - Uptight

Uptight (1968)

Black revolutionaries are betrayed by one of their own. Based on the 1935 classic, "The Informer."

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Wednesday, July 29 - Sunday in New York

Sunday in New York (1963)

Eileen Tyler (Fonda), a 22-year-old music critic for the Albany Times Union, is suffering from her breakup with Russ (Robert Culp) from a rich Albany family. She comes to New York City to visit her brother Adam (Robertson), who is an airline pilot. Eileen confides to her brother that she thinks she may be the only 22-year-old virgin left in the world. Adam assures her that sex is not what all men look for and insists he hasn't slept around. Of course, Adam is lying and is in hot pursuit of a tryst with his occasional girlfriend Mona. However, Adam's date with Mona has a series of job-related interruptions. Meanwhile, Eileen decides to see if she can have some fun in New York, and seems to find the perfect candidate in Mike (Taylor), a man she meets on the bus. But things get complicated when Russ pops in with a proposal and a mistaken assumption. Mike later confesses to Eileen his feelings whereby she has a change of heart.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Tuesday, July 28 - Baffled!

Baffled! (1972)

Race car driver Tom Kovack (played by Leonard Nimoy) suddenly begins to experience psychic visions (while he's driving in a race). He meets Michelle Brent (played by Susan Hampshire), an expert on the paranormal, and the two form an unlikely partnership. Kovack's visions draw them into an occult-themed mystery at a remote inn on the English coast.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Monday, July 27 - Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Conversation Over a Corpse

Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1962): Conversation Over a Corpse (Season 2 | Episode 8 aired 18 November 1956)

Two spinsters (Carmen Matthews and Dorothy Stickney) have agreed to sell their house to a property developer (Ray Collins) but, regretting it, plan to kill him.

Mr. Brenner threatens to take sisters Cissie (Stickney) and Joanna (Matthews) to court unless they sell him their home. The domineering Joanna orders Cissie to poison Brenner, but Cissie allows him to live just long enough so that he can kill Joanna before succumbing to the poison, thus leaving Cissie alone with the house.

Monday, July 27, 2020

Sunday, July 26 - The Devil Pays Off

The Devil Pays Off (1941)

Chris Waring is a cashiered navy man (and ladies' man) who redeems his honor by exposing a shipping tycoon's efforts to sell his ships to an enemy government.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Saturday, July 25 - Behind Green Lights

Behind Green Lights (1946)

It's the graveyard shift, with night commander William Gargan holding down the fort. A car rolls up right in front of the station. Someone opens the car and a corpse falls out. It's Bernard Nedell with a bullet hole in him. He was a P.I. and blackmailer by trade, and one of the suspects is Carole Landis, whose father is up for election, so there's pressure to put her behind bars. Soon the case becomes ever more tangled...

Saturday, July 25, 2020

Friday, July 24 - Unmasked

Unmasked (1950)

Raymond Burr, the editor of a sleazy tabloid newspaper, has been borrowing money from his lover, the wife of a rich theatrical producer, and promises to marry her when she gets a divorce. However, the husband refuses to grant her a divorce, and takes back all the jewelry he has given her. The editor sees her husband leaving her apartment and, seeing his opportunity, kills her, burns his IOUs, takes the jewelry, and frames the husband for the murder...

Thursday, July 23 - The Counterfeit Plan

The Counterfeit Plan (1957)

An escaped murderer (Zachary Scott) flees France to England, where he forces an ex-forger (Mervyn Johns) to copy 5-pound notes.

Thursday, July 23, 2020

Wednesday, July 22 - The Explosive Generation

The Explosive Generation (1961)

Peter Gifford is a likable, dedicated schoolteacher that teaches a senior life skills class. When student Janet Sommers brings up the topic of sex and dating, he asks students to write questions on the topic, and will cover them in the next class. The parents get wind of what Gifford is about to do, notify the principal, and he warns Peter not to read the questions in class. Gifford decides to go against this and is suspended. The whole student body protests, and the administration gets worried on what to do.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Monday, July 20 - Chicago Deadline

Chicago Deadline (1949)

When reporter Ed Adams (Alan Ladd) finds himself in the same hotel as the beautiful but dead Rosita Jean d'Ur (Donna Reed), he becomes obsessed with her and takes her diary (it's her address book). Although Rosita seems to have died from tuberculosis, Ed keeps digging, discovering that there were many men in Rosita's life, and some of them were from the wrong side of the law. Ed starts to put together the pieces of Rosita's life but also finds his own in danger.

Monday, July 20, 2020

Sunday, July 19 - Personal Affair

Personal Affair (1953)

Teenager Barbara Vining (Glynis Johns) has an unrequited crush on her Latin-language teacher, Stephen Barlow (Leo Genn). When Barlow's wife Kay (Gene Tierney) finds out, she confronts Barbara, who is humiliated and runs off. Stephen chases after her (he calls and asks her to meet him) near a river to try to calm her down.

Barbara does not return home to her parents Henry (Walter Fitzgerald) and Vi (Megs Jenkins) for three days. During that time Stephen is accused by the community, without any evidence, of causing her death, causing him to lose his job and almost his marriage. Barbara's gossipy spinster Aunt Evelyn (Pamela Brown), who lives with the family, makes the situation worse with her innuendo.

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Saturday, July 18 - Vince Giordano: There's a Future in the Past

Vince Giordano: There's a Future in the Past (2016)

An intimate portrait of the hot jazz bandleader Vince Giordano and his Nighthawks, including a behind-the-scenes look at the recording of the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack for the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire."

Saturday, July 18, 2020

Friday, July 17 - The Seventh Veil

The Seventh Veil (1945)

Francesca Cunningham is a suicidal mental patient under the care of Dr. Larsen. Under hypnosis, Larsen leads her to describe her life events that brought her to attempt suicide. The film largely consists of a series of flashbacks in which Francesca talks about her life, removing successive "veils" to recover memories.

Only her second cousin and guardian, Nicholas, a crippled musician, is interested in her. Nicholas, though, is a bitter man, faintly jealous of her talent and misogynistic, with a difficult relationship with his mother. However, he is a brilliant music teacher who encourages Francesca to excel, but also to avoid all emotional entanglements. At the Royal College of Music, Peter, an American studying in London, becomes romantically interested in Francesca. Although she is initially unresponsive, Francesca and Peter later become engaged, but she has not yet reached her maturity (then 21) and Nicholas, as her guardian, withholds his consent and insists she leave for Paris with him the next morning. She completes her education and begins her music career on the continent.

Years pass. Nicholas and Francesca return to Britain when she is invited to perform at the Royal Albert Hall, but she discovers Peter has married someone else. An artist, Maxwell Leyden, is invited by Nicholas to paint her portrait; they soon fall in love and agree to live together. Still apparently her guardian, Nicholas becomes angry at the news and strikes her hands with his cane while she plays. She flees from him, but, while with Max, is involved in a serious car accident and suffers burns to her hands. Francesca becomes convinced she will never play again.

After therapy—and now cured, according to Dr Larsen—Francesca realizes that Nicholas is her real love rather than Peter (now divorced) or Max.

Friday, July 17, 2020

Thursday, July 16 - Eight O'Clock Walk

Eight O'Clock Walk (1954)

Taxicab driver Tom Banning is led to an abandoned bomb-site by an eight-year-old girl as an April-fool prank. The girl is later found murdered and Manning is picked up by Scotland Yard for questioning and is later arrested and charged with murder.

The trial is scheduled for London's Old Bailey. Manning's wife, Jill, convinced he is innocent, fights for and wins the sympathy of Council-for-the-Defense Peter Tanner, and he is opposed at the trial by his father, prosecuting-attorney Geoffrey Tanner. The trail is presided over by Justice Harrington, whose wife is in the hospital undergoing an operation.

It soon becomes evident, following the testimony of prosecution-witness Horace Clifford, that the evidence points to Manning's guilt. During a recess, Peter Tanner sees Clifford outside the courthouse, giving candy to a young girl. Farr identifies the candy as being the same brand as that found on the murdered girl.

The judge's wife has died, but the trial resumes with Tanner recalling Clifford for cross-examination.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Wednesday, July 15 - A Boy, a Girl and a Bike

A Boy, a Girl and a Bike (1949)

Young couple Sue (Honor Blackman) and Sam (Patrick Holt) are members of a Yorkshire cycling club, the ‘Wakeford Wheelers’. Romantic complications ensue when wealthy David (John McCallum) becomes smitten with Sue, and joins the club to pursue her, much to Sam's dismay.

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Tuesday, July 14 - Hells Angels on Wheels

Hells Angels on Wheels (1967)

The Angels first take note of "Poet" (Jack Nicholson) after one of them inadvertently damages his motorcycle and breaks its headlight. Poet, with far more guts than brains, challenges the Angel that hit his motorcycle. This is an act that would traditionally result in every Angel present participating in a group beating of the attacker. "When a non-Angel hits an Angel, all Angels retaliate." But the leader of the Angels, Buddy (Adam Roarke), intervenes and tells Poet that the Angels will replace the headlight. In the meantime, he's welcome to ride with them while they take care of business—which turns out to be going to a bar and beating up the members of another club who previously beat an Angel.

Poet is told to wait outside, but ends up helping the Angels. Later that night, the Angels return the favor by hunting down and beating four sailors who beat Poet four-against-one after he parted company with the group. Poet accidentally bumps into one of the sailors and speaks rudely to him before he realizes that the sailor has three other sailors with him. The four sailors then refuse to accept his apology—but the Angels only know that four sailors beat up Poet, and he doesn't tell them how the earlier fight started. One of the sailors pulls a knife on the Angels and is then killed accidentally in the fight that follows.

Poet is allowed to ride with the Angels and is eventually elevated to "prospect" status. He is attracted to Buddy's some-time girlfriend (Sabrina Scharf) who toys with him while remaining hopelessly committed to Buddy.

Much of the story that follows consists of scenes of the Angels partying or being provoked to violence by "squares." Although the Angels are shown as being loud and generally irreverent, they are never shown starting trouble except when taking revenge on members of other motorcycle clubs. Eventually, Buddy's girlfriend succeeds in provoking a confrontation between Buddy and Poet with only one surviving.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Monday, July 13 - Cafe Society

Cafe Society (1939)

Madeleine Carroll's coming out was eight years ago, and society editor Allyn Joslyn tells her she's a back number; she can't do anything that will get her in his column. So she marries Fred MacMurray. They immediately realize what a mistake they've made. She wants to get an immediate divorce, but her grandfather, Claude Gillingwater talks them into remaining married and publicly amiable until the talk dies down and they can get a quiet annulment. MacMurray doesn't like her friends, and she's incensed at his friendship with Shirley Ross.

Monday, July 13, 2020

Sunday, July 12 - The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre: Number Six

The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre (1959–1965): Number Six (Season 3 | Episode 1 - aired February 1962)

An international criminal, Charles Valentine, arrives in London, and a detective is anxious to pin something on him for some unprovable murders of former lovers. The villain starts to suspect servants and henchmen of being a police spy known as "Number Six".

Valentine is planning a major new crooked property deal involving a wealthy heiress which he believes will score a lot of money but as the situation begins to get complicated he starts to have his suspicions about his newest recruit Jimmy Gale.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Saturday, July 11 - Decoy: Scape Goat & Two Days to Kill

Decoy (1957–1958): Scape Goat (Season 1 | Episode 10 - aired 16 December 1957)

Feeling sorry for her handcuffed prisoner Dorothy, policewoman Casey does a good turn that unfortunately lets her prisoner escape. As Casey now finds out, Dorothy is a troubled young woman with a retarded son she can't deal with. Now Casey and Det. Hopkins must find Dorothy before she injures her child (before she throws him to his death, in other words).

Decoy (1957–1958): Two Days to Kill (Season 1 | Episode 11 - aired 23 December 1957)

Casey must protect a teenage girl - the only witness to a murder committed by her ex-boyfriend.

Selma's (the teenage girl's) testimony could put the murderer on the loose into prison, but there's a problem. Selma is in love with him. Although the two women couldn't be anymore different, Casey is assigned to stay in a hotel room with Selma until they're able to locate the culprit. Selma's split conscious results in her aiding the murderer in locating the hotel room the women are staying at. When he arrives It's up to Casey to protect Selma from her killer.

Saturday, July 11, 2020

Friday, July 10 - The Young Lovers

The Young Lovers (1964)

Eddie Slocum (Peter Fonda) is a carefree art student who falls for the lovely Pam Burns (Sharon Hugueny), an attractive teacher's assistant. The two have an intense fling, but things take a dramatic turn when Pam reveals that she's pregnant, and Eddie indicates that he has no interest in being tied down to a wife and child. Meanwhile, Eddie's friends Tarragoo (Nick Adams) and Debbie (Deborah Walley) must deal with their own romantic entanglements.

Friday, July 10, 2020

Thursday, July 9 - I Lived with You

I Lived with You (1933)

In London a young lady meets a homeless and apparently penniless Russian prince. She introduces him to her middle-class Fulham family and he moves in. It turns out he still has a number of diamonds given him by the last czar, and he is persuaded to start selling them. The resulting money, and his princely notoriety, soon cause changes in everyone's lives.

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Wednesday, July 8 - Time to Kill

Time to Kill (1942)

Mrs. Murdock hires Shayne to find her daughter-in-law, a chorus girl who she accuses of having stolen a precious coin from her home. Murdock's son is an odd sort of fellow who appears now and then to create a sense that Shayne is being watched, not the sort of guy that could be trusted. When Shayne meets the daughter-in-law, aptly named Miss Conquest, he discovers a beautiful girl just as eager to get out of the Murdock family as Mrs. Murdock is to get her out...

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Tuesday, July 7 - Live Fast, Die Young

Live Fast, Die Young (1958)

Jill Winters leaves home and school for the big time in a life of petty crime. That lifestyle leads to her hooking up with a gang of mail and jewel thieves who plan to knock off the local post office of a package that contains $150,000.00 in diamonds.

Jill starts out rolling costumers in bars all along the California coast after getting them drunk. Jill has the customers buy her as well as themselves drinks, thinking that she'll go to bed with them, and then taking their money. In one case their car Jill ends up fencing some jewelry that she took off one of her victims and the fence tells her that she can get a job working with a gang of crooks led by Rick & Artie, Mike Connors & Troy Donahue. The two hoods specialize in stolen jewelry and electrical equipment selling the items to an eager public for a steep discount.

Arti and Jill get themselves jobs as Christmas help at the local post office where they can disarm the security alarm. Rick is later to barge in at closing time to rob the place of a package of $150,000.00 in diamonds thats being sent to that facility as registered mail. Meanwhile Jill's older sister Kim, Mary Murphy, leaves her drunken dad Pop Winters, Gordon Jones, behind and goes out looking for her little sister before she ends up in the clink or even worse.

Finding where Jill is with the help of a kindly and handsome truck driver Jerry, Sheridan Comerate, who earlier in the movie gave Jill a lift Kim finds her way to the town where Jill is staying at. Kim then together with Jill and Artie gets a job at the local post office for Christmas not to rob the place but to prevent her kid sister from doing it and ending up in a federal jail with a long prison sentence.

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Monday, July 6 - All of Me

All of Me (1934)

Engineering college professor Don Ellis (Fredric March) and his student, Lyda Darrow (Miriam Hopkins), are in love, but she refuses his proposal on the grounds that marriage destroys true love. Nonetheless, Lyda takes Don home to meet her wealthy mother, who happily accepts Don into the family.

Lyda and Don spend a night out on the town and, at a speakeasy, overhear Eve Haron (Helen Mack) and Honey Rogers (George Raft) professing their love for each other. When Eve faints, Lyda helps her outside and hails a cab for her. On the way home, Lyda realizes that Honey stole her purse and tells Don about it to deglamorize Honey's declaration that he is going "straight" so he can marry Eve.

Not wanting to marry Don and move to Colorado, where he dreams of building a dam, but afraid to lose him, Lyda lies and tells him she is pregnant. When he discovers her lie, he leaves her. Despondent, Lyda gets a letter from Eve and visits her at a home for wayward women. At Eve's request, Lyda visits Honey in prison and later helps Honey and Eve escape. Unfortunately, Honey accidentally kills a guard in the process. Alarmed by Lyda's disappearance, Don arrives to help her mother search for her. Eventually, the police track Eve and Honey to an apartment.

Unable to bear another separation, they commit suicide, leaving Lyda to take the rap for harboring fugitives. She is arrested, but the district attorney agrees to drop the charges if she signs an agreement saying she was forced into her actions. Finally convinced of Eve and Honey's total devotion, Lyda refuses to sign, and Don promises to stand by her no matter the consequences.

Monday, July 6, 2020

Sunday, July 5 - For Them That Trespass

For Them That Trespass (1949)

An aspiring young writer, "Christy", goes slumming to broaden his experiences and becomes smitten with a bar floozy, who's carrying on with a couple of other guys. After a narrow escape from one of these lovers at her apartment the night before, he reads in the morning paper that she's been murdered but does nothing when he learns that the wrong man has been accused.

Herb is the one accused of the murder and spends 15 years in prison, narrowly escaping hanging. When he gets out, clues lead him to "Christy," but he finally proves the other bloke, Jim, to be the real killer, based on a clue provided to him by "Christy," now a famous writer.

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Saturday, July 4 - Three on a Ticket

Three on a Ticket (1947)

Michael Shayne (Hugh Beaumont) has discovered more than one dead body in his office, but he never saw one walk in before. That is what happened however, when a fellow private investigator stumbled into Shayne’s office and dropped dead without so much as a single word. As it turned out, the man had been shot and Shayne found little in terms of clues, but he was able to discover [a piece of] a baggage claim ticket in one of the dead man’s pockets. Of course, Shayne knows the local cops would love to pin a murder on him, so he has to evade the authorities as he looks into the case, but things soon become a little more complicated. A woman seeks to hire him, not for his skills of deduction, but to knock off her husband. That might not be in Shayne’s wheelhouse, but the woman’s presence seems to be trouble no matter he does, as he tries to crack the murder while dealing with the cops and some mysterious thugs.

Saturday, July 4, 2020

Friday, July 3 - Decoy: Necklace of Glass

Decoy (1957–1958): Necklace of Glass (Season 1 | Episode 9 - aired 9 December 1957)

In order to lure a successful burglar (actually, she's trying to identify the jewel robbers' inside tipster) into a trap, Casey poses as a wealthy woman with an expensive jewelry collection (one necklace is the extent of her collection - and it's glass).

Friday, July 3, 2020

Thursday, July 2 - The Tattered Dress

The Tattered Dress (1957)

In a California resort community, the wealthy Michael Reston is charged with the murder of a man he claimed attacked his wife, Charleen.

Reston hires a high-priced lawyer, James Gordon Blane, a man known to do anything it takes to win a case. Blane makes few friends in the community because the victim was a popular figure while the Restons are not popular with anyone. But his skillful cross-examination of a sheriff, Nick Hoak, results in Blane's client being found not guilty.

Hoak decides to get even. He claims to have evidence that Blane bribed a woman on the jury. Now it is Blane who goes on trial, with only his estranged wife, Diane, coming to his aid. While defending himself, Blane begins to feel remorse over having won acquittals for so many guilty clients.

Blane ultimately is vindicated when the juror, Carol Morrow, turns out to be romantically involved with Hoak, the sheriff. Enraged by the outcome, the sheriff watches Blane going down the Court-House steps. Standing in the shadows he draws his gun intent on murdering Blane in cold blood. He is stopped when Morrow gets some revenge of her own by shooting him. As she is arrested for her actions, the Blanes reconcile and leave town for good.

Thursday, July 2, 2020

Wednesday, July 1 - The Whisperer in Darkness

The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)

Based on the H. P. Lovecraft story of the same name, a folklorist investigates reports of unusual creatures in Vermont only to uncover more than he bargained for.

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Tuesday, June 30 - Rider on the Rain

Rider on the Rain (1970) Le passager de la pluie (original title)

Melancolie Mau (Marlène Jobert) is a lonely woman on the French seaside who becomes the victim of a horrific rape, but then manages to turn the tables and shoot her attacker dead. She chooses not to tell anyone about the event and dumps the body, but this decision comes back to haunt her when a U.S. colonel (Charles Bronson) shows up and mysteriously knows everything about her ordeal. However, he seems to have his own agenda, and it may concern Melancolie's absent husband.