Sunday, April 11 - Love on the Dole

Love on the Dole (1941)

Mr Hardcastle is a miner; his son, Harry, is an apprentice at a local engineering firm and Sally, his daughter, works at a cotton mill.

As the depression takes hold, Mr Hardcastle's mine is put on a three-day week and Harry becomes unemployed when his apprenticeship ends.

The family’s plight is made worse by reductions in means tested unemployment benefits (the dole), while the unexpected pregnancy of Harry’s girlfriend, Helen, causes further tensions.

Sally has met factory worker and Labour Party activist Larry Meath, but their marriage plans are put in doubt when Larry loses his job. Larry is fatally injured when he tries to restore calm in a clash with the police during an unemployment march. Sally, reluctantly at first, becomes the mistress of a wealthy local bookmaker to help keep her unemployed family.

Saturday, April 10 - Eye of the Spider

L'occhio del ragno (1971)

Antonio Sabato plays Paul, a criminal who has spent some time in prison in Austria, after being left behind by his associates in a heist. Paul is helped to escape by Professor Krueger (Van Johnson), who needs him in order to carry out another heist. Assisted by Kruger's sexy girlfriend Gloria (Lucretia Love), Paul is to blackmail (his rightful) money from his former associates, which he is then to share with the Professor. However, Paul is more interested in vengeance than in money, primarily against his former boss (Klaus Kinski)...

Friday, April 9 - Take a Girl Like You

Take a Girl Like You (1970)

Northerner Jenny arrives in a town near London, where she has taken lodgings with a Labour candidate in order to take up a job as a teacher. She quickly meets Patrick, who knows another girl at the lodging house but shares the goal, along with his friend Julian, of having sex with as many women as possible.

After a first date which ends at Patrick's flat for coffee, Patrick is shocked when Jenny tells him she is a virgin and intends to stay that way until she meets the right man. Jenny is attracted to Patrick, so they get into a volatile relationship as Patrick tries to change Jenny's mind, without giving up his bachelor status.

Thursday, April 8 - Return from the Ashes

Return from the Ashes (1965)

Shortly before WW2 in Paris, Michelle Wolf, a doctor played by Ingrid Thulin meets a Polish refugee, Stanislaus Pilgrin played by Maximilian Schell. Although warned that he is only after her money, she falls in love with him. When the Germans capture Paris, Stanislaus – in his self-confessed, one gallant act of his life – marries Michelle, who is Jewish, to stop her being deported by the Nazis. But she is sent to a concentration camp anyway.

Years later, Michelle returns to Paris under an assumed name. But she is a changed woman emotionally and physically. Thought to be dead, no one recognises her at first. Although she is reacquainted with Stanislaus and her stepdaughter, the beautiful Fabi, played by Samantha Eggar, they believe that she simply bears a strong resemblance to the Michelle they knew. They want her to play Michelle in a complicated plot to retrieve funds that have been frozen since the war. Michelle goes along with the plan not realising that Fabi and Stanislaus have become lovers.

After revealing her true identity, Michelle moves into her old apartment with both Stanislaus and Fabi. From there the story becomes darker and darker...

Wednesday, April 7 - Black Sheep of Whitehall

Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942)

Professor Davis, who teaches at a correspondence school, discovers that a Nazi Agent is trying to prevent a trade treaty being signed between England and South America. The agent is posing as an economics expert seconded to the trade delegation. The professor must find the real economist and expose the agent.

Tuesday, April 6 - Wake in Fright

Wake in Fright (1971)

After finishing up the school term in a remote outback town, teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) looks forward to spending his holiday with his girlfriend in Sydney. But John gets waylaid in a mining town where a gambling spree leaves him completely broke. He quickly falls in with the hard-drinking locals, who constantly ply him with alcohol and force him to participate in a gruesome kangaroo hunt. Disgusted, John tries to hitchhike out of town and, when that fails, begins to contemplate suicide.

(a young schoolteacher who descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.)

Monday, April 5 - Charley Moon

Charley Moon (1956)

Charley Moon (Max Bygraves) is a country boy who, after a national service stint in the army, becomes a small-time music-hall performer. After a few lucky breaks, he finds himself popular and the star of a musical hit in London's West End. Initially successful, Moon soon decides that showbiz is a facile occupation, and he longs to return to his childhood home. He eventually finds himself back where he started.

Sunday, April 4 - Loot

Loot (1970)

This adaptation of Joe Orton's play focuses on a motley bunch of characters crammed inside a small hotel owned by Mr. McLeavy (Milo O'Shea). While the body of McLeavy's wife lies freshly dead in a nearby room, her nurse, Fay (Lee Remick), plots to become the next Mrs. McLeavy. Meanwhile, McLeavy's son and his friend try their best to hide the spoils of a bank heist. As a dim-witted priest and a crooked officer enter the fray, hilarious misplacements, trysts and shocks unfold.

Saturday, April 3 - What a Crazy World

What a Crazy World (1963)

Unemployed East End lad Alf Hitchens has an on-off relationship with his girlfriend Marilyn and a dream of hitting the big time in the music business. Cheerful pop musical with a working-class background which uses a number of genuine London locations.

Friday, April 2 - I Believe in You

I Believe in You (1952)

This is primarily the story of a retired diplomat named Mr. Phipps who decides to become a probation officer in post-war London. After an awkward period of adjustment, he starts to become emotionally invested in the various characters, old and young, under his care. Far from being jaded, the ex-diplomat finds himself taking risks and promising too much in a sincere desire to transform the lives of his clients.

Thursday, April 1 - Bedtime Story

Bedtime Story (1964)

Benson is a Casanova who despises women and invents all sorts of tricks to bed them and leave them. His favorite one is going through Germany posing as an American GI of Teutonic extraction. Whenever he spots a girl he likes, he takes a Polarod picture of her house, knocks on the door waving the photo and pretending to be on a pilgrimage to this very cottage his grandmother so vividly described. It is an infallible system for a hit-and-run seduction.

Benson seems content with his game until he meets Jameson, a real operator who has learned to combine sex with money. Jameson poses as an exiled prince and not only gets women to share his bed but also to bestow their jewels on him for the sake of the counterrevolution. Benson decides to corner Jameson's market on sex plus finance. A contest develops, and whoever wins will dominate a small Riviera resort as "King of the Mountain," the film's original title. Remade in 1988 as "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."

Wednesday, March 31 - Give Us the Moon

Give Us the Moon (1944)

Made in 1943-44, the film is set in a future peacetime Britain, after the end of World War II. Peter Pyke, the son of a millionaire hotel owner, had been a RAF pilot during the war but, much to the frustration of his hard-working father, he does not want to work for a living, and idles his time away while living in his father's hotel (named "Eisenhower Hotel"). So when Peter stumbles across a group of people, mainly White Russian émigrés who call themselves “White Elephants” and refuse to work or be of any use to society, he eagerly accepts their invitation to join them.