greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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Professor Jekyll (Ralph Bates), an earnest scientist, obsessively works day and night haunted by the fear that one lifetime will not be enough to complete his research; sidetracked from his objective he becomes consumed with developing an immortality serum.

Once convinced his findings are complete, he consumes the potion only to discover that he is to become two as he turns into half Jekyll and half Hyde. Desperate to cover up his new found identity he calls her his sister, but things take a turn for the worse when he realises that he needs female hormones if he is to maintain this existence. Before long he is battling with his alter ego Mrs. Hyde, as a number of young girls begin to go missing in the streets of London...

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To the cry of "all for one and one for all" comes a version of the Dumas classic that's fun for all - a rousing, swashbuckling adaptation that was Gene Kelly's favorite among his non-musical movies.

Kelly plays country lad D'Artagnan, who comes to Paris with heady ambition and finds his way into the ranks of King Louis XIII's musketeers. He swashes-and-buckles with brio, bringing to action scenes the virile athleticism that set him apart as a dancer in movie musicals. A top cast - Vincent Price as unctuous Cardinal Richlieu, Lana Turner as villainous Lady de Winter, June Allyson as Constance, Van Hefflin as Athos, Robert Coote as Aramis, Gig Young as Porthos and Frank Morgan and Angela Landbury as King Louis and Queen Anne - joins Kelly in this exuberant tale.

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The Great Maximus (Claude Rains) has got a new act for the music halls where he makes his living. Working with his beautiful wife Rene (Fay Wray), he poses as a mind reader. It's all a trick, of course: he certainly doesn't have the gift for real. Or so he thinks...

When he correctly predicts a terrible train crash, Maximus becomes an instant celebrity. But his new-found fame - and his friendship with sultry Christine Shawn (Jane Baxter) - threatens his marriage. Worse is to come: he is accused not of foreseeing accidents but actually causing them...

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Professor Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde) seemingly has it all - a great job, the envy of his colleagues, the perfect wife and a healthy skepticism when it comes to all things supernatural.

However, over the course of a weekend, Taylor discovers that his wife Tansy (Janet Blair) is a witch and that she has been practicing witchcraft ever since their honeymoon - apparently in an effort to protect him from jealous colleagues and assist his rise within the department. Despite her anguished protestations and warnings, he insists on destroying all the magic paraphernalia in the house and tries to carry on as normal, turning a blind eye to the possibility that his wife and her black magic could in some way have been behind his success. That is until the very next day when things in his life start going badly wrong...

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Claude Rains delivers a remarkable performance in his screen debut as a mysterious doctor who discovers a serum that makes him invisible. Covered by bandages and dark glasses, Rains arrives at a small English village and attempts to hide his amazing discovery.

But the same drug which renders him invisible slowly drives him to commit acts of unspeakable terror.

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Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) a naive writer of pulp westerns, arrives in Vienna to meet his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) but finds that Lime has apparently been killed in a suspicious accident.

Martins, too, curious for his own good, hears contradictory stories about the circumstances of Limes' death and as witnesses disappear he finds himself chased by unknown assailants. Complicating matters are the sardonic Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), head of the British forces, and Limes' stage actress mistress, Anna (Alida Valli). Will Martin's curiosity lead him to discover things about his old friend that he'd rather not know?

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American psychologist John Holden (Dana Andrews) arrives in England to discover that his colleague, Henry Harrington (Maurice Denham), has suddenly died following his efforts to discredit notorious occultist Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnls).

The cynical Holden dismisses Karswell's warnings as supernatural nonsense, even when he and Harrington's niece, Joanna (Peggy Cummins), are confronted by a series of bizarre and inexplicable events. Holden discovers that Karswell has slipped him a parchment featuring ancient runic symbols - a sign that, like Harrington before him, he has been marked for imminent destruction by a fire-breathing demon.

While investigating the bizarre murder of a writer in a small seaside village, Larvardin (Jean Poiret) uncovers more than he bargained when he realises that the victim's widow is an old flame. What follows is a stylish and first-rate thriller from the master of suspense - Claude Chabrol.

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Based on Ira Woldert's true account, the movie casts Tyrone Power as an American Navy officer stranded after the wreck of Bataan.

Along with harassed local - Jeanne Martinez (Micheline Prelle) - he leads a small, heroic band in feats of espionage until General MacArthur's famous return to the Philippines at the end of WWII.

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From the writer of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation comes this hilarious comedy about sexual manners and the perils of conformity. Nathan is a mild mannered scientist with an ambitious mission.

After enduring a strange upbringing due to his parents' obsession with social etiquette, he becomes in turn obsessed with conducting experiments to teach mice table manners! When Lila, another victim of an unhappy past with a dark secret comes into his life, he falls in love. Together they discover a man who has been living alone in the wilds since childhood, and Nathan brings him home to be educated, which could be his greatest triumph. But things get more complicated when Nathan's fetching French assistant tries to snare him into romance, and the consequences are hilarious and unexpected

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Crime novelist Philip Chance (John Justin) is commissioned by his publisher to write the biography of Martin Teckman (Michael Medwin), a young airman who crashed and died whilst testing a new plane.

From the moment he arrives home, however, Chance is beset by a series of 'accidents' - leaving him in no doubt that there are people who do not want Teckman's past investigated...

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Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

As head of RKO's B-horror-movie unit during the 1940s, Lewton, working with directors such as Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson, brought a new sophistication to the genre by wringing chills not from conventional movie monsters but from brooding atmosphere, suggestion, and psychosexual unease. Suffused with ritual, mysticism, and the occult, the poetically hypnotic 'I Walked with a Zombie' and the shockingly subversive 'The Seventh Victim' are still-tantalizing dreams of death that dare to embrace the darkness.

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From Marcel Carne, a comic masterpiece set in England circa 1900. Unassuming botanist Irvin Molyneux hides a dark secret: he writes lurid novels using the pseudonym Felix Chapel.

His cousin, the Bishop of Bedford, Archibald Soper condemns the books (without realising a family member has written them) and invites himself to the Molyneux house for dinner. Panic ensues as the cook has walked out leaving Irvin's wife to act like the cook to avoid social ignominy. When Irvin can't explain his wife's absence the Bishop assumes he has killed her and calls Scotland Yard and the newspaper reporters. The Molyneux' escape to a cheap local hotel where psychopath William Kramps is holed up: he being a specialist in killing butchers and blaming novelist Felix Chapel for turning him into a killer and vowing to murder him. Molyneux returns to his home to attend to his houseplants, a big mistake as Kramps is waiting in the living room...

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One of the all time classic French films. Made in 1931, this is one of the first French talkies.

Pre dating Chaplin's Modern Times by 5 years (and the subject of a bitter court case stopped when Rene Clair stated that imitation is the finest form of flattery) and leading the way in a satirical attack on the machine age, Rene Clair created a wicked comedy on the dehumanisation of industrial workers. When Louis (Raymond Cordy) and Emile (Henri Marchand), two prison inmates, attempt to escape, Louis is caught and returned to his cell, while Emile succeeds and becomes a successful businessman. On Louis' release he goes to work for Emile but finds the industrial world no better than the prison regime. When Emile is recognised as an escaped convict he and Louis decide to escape the confines of the factory by taking to the road as tramps.

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In America, can a man be guilty until proven innocent? Suppose you picked up this morning's newspaper and your life was a front page headline... and everything they said was accurate but not true. This is the dilemma that must be faced in this timely drama about the incredible power of the press.

Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman) reads in the paper that he is the subject of a criminal investigation. Suddenly, everything he has ever worked for is in jeopardy. He confronts the author, Megan Carter (Sally Field), a relentless investigative reporter. Together they learn that the story was purposely leaked to Carter as part of a plot by the chief investigator. Gallagher's life hangs in the balance as he and Carter try to uncover the truth.