Film Reviews by Steve

Social realist crime story which owes plenty to the tough American heist films of the fifties. Four career criminals down on their luck hold up an armoured van. When the guns start to go off, the caper falls apart. Then the story segues into a revenge drama as the wife (Billie Whitelaw) of the dead security guard goes vigilante in search of his killers.

So it's a genre film, with a familiar theme of the futility of greed. It's mainly interesting for the location shoot around Newcastle, particularly the industrial regions and the shipyards. Which makes it feel like a forerunner to Get Carter and offers a great snapshot of the period. The workers live in the nice new suburban homes built since the war.

Michael Craig leads the gang, and he was usually one of Rank's pretty boys, but he makes a credible ruthless hoodlum. And the film gets a huge boost from French actor Françoise Prévost who plays the sexy, disappointed wife of the inside man who becomes Craig's rather mercenary moll. She turns out to want the stolen goods worst of all.

It isn't noir. There's a flat documentary look and it is mostly shot in the streets. The big band jazz score is a period standard, though still pretty good. The hold up is capably directed but there is little style and few surprises. Still, it's a lot of fun to see how far Craig's cold hearted villain will go for a suitcase full of money. Which is all the way.

Critically adored Victorian ghost story adapted from Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Deborah Kerr is the repressed, unworldly governess responsible for two children in a majestic, isolated country home. The film poses the classic supernatural dilemma: is the newly appointed tutor insane, or is the elaborate mansion really possessed by malevolent spirits.

Though the themes run much darker, including a psycho-sexual angle which implies abuse. No surprise that this film is so loved by film makers, because the direction by Jack Clayton is extraordinary. Every instrument of screen craft is employed to make this the most eerie experience imaginable; especially the sound, music, costumes and set decoration.

And credit is due to cinematographer Freddie Francis for his creative use of CinemaScope. But there is little narrative. The same static situation is repeated from a number of perspectives while the audience decides whether the tutor is crazy. Which is interesting, but it occasionally gets stuck, at least until the exquisitely chilling climax.

Deborah Kerr thought this her best performance, with good reason. Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin, both 11 years old, are impeccable support. Many horror directors have ripped this off. There are no jump scares or big musical cues. This is a sensual, immersive experience. And a subtle, haunting work of cinematic art.

One of the key films of the British new wave, which documents provincial working class life of the period through a realist approach. It tells a candid story drawn from the commonplace; the courtship and complications of a young couple who come together and marry when she gets pregnant. But which leads to a crisis when she miscarries.

Otherwise, this is a film of little dramatic incident. The working class man (Alan Bates) is looking for sex. The woman (June Ritchie) wants marriage and materialism. If these sound like dated stereotypes, then this is a period piece which captures a fascinating moment in British social history, just before the sexual liberation of the sixties.

This is the generation who missed out. The cinéma vérité is enriched by John Schlesinger's observant and eloquent direction. The social realism, shot around industrial Manchester is authentic. But it's his ability to use technique to explain these characters and their unspoken desires starkly but sympathetically which makes the film special.

The performances are genuine. Alan Bates is the nucleus, and he exposes the heart of a flawed everyman; not always sympathetic, but real. The support characters are archetypes, played by a gallery of soon-to-be television stars. In 1962, just hearing those working class voices- and accents- was a revolution. This film keeps them alive.

Understated satire on the British legal system based on a play by former lawyer John Mortimer, who went on to write Rumpole. A quiet, clean living drudge (Richard Attenborough) has murdered his wife. For his defence, the court appoints an empty headed, elderly barrister (Peter Sellers), for his first ever case.

The play was a two hander, but in the film there are flashbacks to scenes of conflict between the mild mannered husband and his raucous spouse (Beryl Reid). He is browbeaten and numbed by domesticity. Whereas she laughs like a hyena at everything. Every single thing.

The dialogue between the accused and his counsel is splendidly dry, like little crackles of irony that spark in every sentence. Sellers and Attenborough make a superb comical team. Dickie's hangdog, henpecked husband is perfect. In the context of all this deadpan drollery, the wife's cacophonous ribaldry is riotously, laugh-out-loud hilarious.

It's not all that cinematic. It could have been done as a radio play. And the fizz doesn't quite last until the fadeout. But the sly script is deft and sharply sardonic. The humour sounds like a precursor for the comedy double act of John Fortune and John Bird. It's a cultish curiosity and a quintessentially British experience.

Energetic occult thriller which overcomes its familiar set up to deliver an adrenaline rush which never lets up. Peter Wyngarde plays an erudite psychology professor on campus at a British university who has a rigid belief in rationality. But after he gets his credulous wife (Janet Blair) to burn her voodoo paraphernalia, his world starts to fall apart.

This is the third version of the novel The Conjurer Wife, and the premise of the scientific mind in conflict with the supernatural has been explored many times; including the similarly titled Night of the Demon. This isn't quite as good, but there is an intelligent script and Sidney Hayers' kinetic direction- plus a rousing score- make it an exhilarating spellbinder.

Wyngarde was a late substitute for Peter Cushing. Which was an advantage as the replacement brought a muscular vitality. Hard to imagine the lean, wan Hammer star being chased around the quad by a paranormal eagle in the rousing climax. Margaret Johnson gives a wonderfully strange performance as the conjurer wife's rival.

There's a transatlantic feel to the production, perhaps because the adaptation was by veterans of The Twilight Zone. The limited sets suggest a small budget but this gives the film a feeling of entrapment, enhanced by the web of noirish shadows. The effects and stunts are fine. There's nothing new here, but it's rarely done as well.

Cheerful period horror which has zero scares, but is full of the kind of sexy decadence which was standard in Hammer films around 1960. Much of the salacious subtext of Robert Louis Stevenson's eternal classic is turned into sterile dialogue in the first few minutes, after which Wolf Mankowitz's script shuffles the deck to good effect.

So while Dr. Jekyll is a bearded Victorian gentleman, his alter ego is clean shaved and blue eyed, because, of course, beauty is no guarantee of virtue. And there is the implication that Mr. Hyde's philosophical egotism equates him with fascism. But no matter, it's fun to see the mad scientist slumming around the degenerate London underworld.

There is exotic dancing with a snake and much imaginative murder. Oliver Reed is a rowdy pimp last seen having his head staved in by the angry medic. Paul Massie is too respectable to play the debauched beast of the unbridled human id, but Christopher Lee is reptilian enough as his slippery rival/victim. And Dawn Addams is deliciously hedonistic as Mrs. Jekyll.

It's a bit of a lurid romp, but well directed by the studio's main man Terence Fisher, with excellent sets and costumes. But it's a Jekyll and Hyde which omits any transformation scene. And while the vulgar cruelty of Victorian London is more conspicuous than in Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 classic, the pre-code version is far more transgressive, and disturbing.

Jaw-dropping teenage exploitation flick, which borrows a few conventions from the Hollywood juvenile delinquent films of the rock and roll era, but this quirky British variation on youth gone wild is a different beast. The Beat Girl is sixteen year old Gillian Hills, who explodes onto the screen like a Kensington Bardot.

The rich father of an alienated teenager brings his sexy new wife home to his modernist penthouse. The stepmother is an older version of the girl, who feels challenged and tries to undermine her dad's new found happiness by getting wild for kicks in a Soho jazz cellar with her beatnik pals. Including a surly rocker played by Adam Faith.

And the naive art-school kid gets drawn into a nearby strip club run by a predatory Christopher Lee. To a degree, this is dated and absurd. But the film keeps turning up moments of quality, or extraordinary eccentricity. Mostly it's Gillian Hills, who isn't much of an actor, but she is astonishing. Then there's the strange aura of atomic era nihilism.

And a (still) steamy strip routine (by 'Pascaline'). But the film survives because it is so stylishly directed by Edmond Gréville, and elevated by John Barry's big band-rock and roll score; particularly the Beat Girl theme. Of course, the beatnik dialogue is corny, but so outré that it attracted a cult. As has the film. It sends me. Over and out- daddi-o.

Faithful adaptation of John Wyndham's classic science fiction novel The Midwich Cuckoo's. Wolf Rilla was a B film stalwart, but given a better budget than usual, he directs easily his best film, with acceptable effects. Though he lacks the flair to make the most of its inspired premise.

The residents of a small rural village are rendered unconscious while emergency services are unable to gain access. Afterwards all the young local women are inexplicably pregnant. An incident repeated across the world. The blond offspring have a similar, synthetic look and share a hive mentality. And can read the minds of dumb earthlings.

Clearly these kids represent an existential threat to mankind. A local Professor (George Sanders) is given a year to appeal to their better natures, but they are cold, impassive intellects. The film mostly follows the novel. It begins auspiciously with the mysterious coma, and builds to a thrilling climax as the mentor attempts to outwit the invulnerable invaders.

The idea of a generation of young people incompatible with the values of their parents entered the culture from Wyndham's story. The philosophical entitlement of the kids also echoes the recent scourge of fascism. Today, it's the concept that a destructive elite threatens life on earth which resonates. Like the best sci-fi, it keeps on shape-shifting.

Subdued, low budget moral tale set around a US air base and the nearby English village during WWII. It is not a war film, but an intimate staging of personal insecurities. The director Sidney J. Furie came from broadcasting and this looks like the television plays of the period, except for the sexual themes and brief nudity.

Don Borisenko plays an American bomber pilot in England faced with one last mission. His natural anxiety reaches a crisis when his buddy kills himself after being emasculated in a raid. The flyer is unbalanced by the fear he may die on his final flight while still a virgin. It's mostly a two-hander with Susan Hampshire as the compassionate girl who tries to reach him.

The two teenagers share a long night of the soul. The dialogue is scarcely frank, but the themes are unusual. The boy is damaged by having to continually pretend everything is ok. While inevitably wordy, this is an unusually sensitive drama. Some attitudes now feel dated, as does Borisenko's laborious channeling of the Method.

While the acting is clumsy, it conveys a touching impression of vulnerability. There's a haunting harmonica score which accentuates the sadness of their experiences. These are lost spirits, traumatised by history. It's Furie's British debut and he wrote, produced and directed a melancholy chamber piece which is raw and sincere.

Perceptive psychological drama set in the barracks of a Highland regiment some time after World War II. It's a character study of the conflict between two uncompromising officers during peacetime, when there is no external enemy to fight. And so, they destroy each other instead.

Alec Guinness is an officer who commands through personality and favouritism with a kind of ebullient tyranny. He showed uncommon bravery in the desert war, but conceals a brittle self doubt due to his lack of education and rank. The passionate Scot is replaced by an eligible Oxford man played by John Mills, who is uncharismatic and leads by enforcing the rules.

And the film is their personal combat for authority, which ends in tragedy. Both must be ascendent at any cost. To compromise is defeat. Gordon Jackson is the go-between operating on the edge of the officers' fanatical egomania. And it is clear these men have been psychologically damaged by the recent war.

Tunes of Glory refers to the ceremonial bagpipes that provides the score, which won't be to all tastes. The production is mostly staged within the camp, like a play, with few distractions from the primacy of the key performances. Guinness wins the battle of the legends, though he has a flashier role. The ending is a letdown, but the two stars make this an actors masterclass.

Simplified and condensed version of DH Lawrence's epic autobiographical novel directed by legendary cameraman Jack Cardiff. Stripped of the author's prose, this is quite a conventional historical saga of a working class boy from a Nottinghamshire coalfield who cannot find artistic or sexual freedom within the confines of his class.

It's a domestic drama with American Dean Stockwell playing the angry young man as a kind of Edwardian James Dean. The acting is generally strong, with Trevor Howard as the father, a crude, drunken miner, and particularly Wendy Hiller as the suffering mother who finds comfort through her cultured, brooding child.

Its main virtue is the stark black and white photography of grimy Nottinghamshire mining towns, shot around the pit where Lawrence grew up. It was a big box office hit, maybe because there was a vogue for working class realism when released, and for stories about conflict between generations. And it's quite sexually frank for the period.

The script is uninspired, but most aspects of the production are fine. It's a well made and entertaining literary adaptation, but Cardiff doesn't create anything perceptive or enduring out of his material. It's surprising that it was nominated for seven Oscars, though not that it actually won for the cinematography.

Complex slasher prototype which was buried by the critics in 1960 who were horrified by the perverse violence and compassion for its psychopathic murderer. And it finished Michael Powell as a director in his homeland. Over time it became a cult item and now has acquired legend status, particularly among film makers. This is horror as art-film.

Karlheinz Böhm plays a photographer with daddy issues. His dead father was a psychiatrist who filmed his child for his studies into fear. And then gave the kid his own cine-camera. One day, Junior will attach to a blade so he can record the terror in the eyes of his female murder victims when he is sexually aroused. Then it gets even darker, but you get the picture...

So there's a pretty grotesque horror premise, but this is just the portal into an intricate web of subtext. It's possible to get lost in these thematic layers, but most obviously there's the connection between the voyeurism of the maniacal killer and the audience. And the manipulative dominion of the film director compared to a sick obsessive... and so on.

Maybe it wasn't what was expected in an era of social realism. Some may find it pretentious or gimmicky or offensive. But this is an immersive experience, and its lurid, trashy colour palette and discordant piano score are as much a feature of that as the unsettling themes. A personal film with an imaginative reach that never gets old or used up.

Ultra-stylish morality tale which pulls together motifs from prison and heist films into a vehicle for liberal themes typical of Joseph Losey. Particularly on greed and justice. Trauma eyed Stanley Baker is ideal casting as a violent con who leaves stir to set up a racetrack heist. Soon he's back inside, but with every villain in London after the loot.

The gangster lives without trust. He is a loner. There may be portents of the emerging swinging London in his flashy consumerism, but he is emotionally austere. Baker dominates the film. Among the exceptional support cast, Patrick Magee is a standout as a manipulative, autocratic screw. Who isn't quite right in the head.

The prisoners are mostly either mentally ill or of limited intellect. There is no rehabilitation, just perpetual horror. Losey doesn't editorialise, he merely creates a context for his sociopathic antihero. The film is stylistically unorthodox: psychedelic POV shots imply drug use; there's a great Johnny Dankworth's jazz score, and even some nudity.

And Cleo Laine's deep, melancholy Prison Ballad recurs like a chorus. These fashionable details date the film now, but also give it an elegant period mystique. Not everything works. The calypso singer who comments on the action is clunky. But, it puts a black face in the cells. The years have eroded the realism but this still excels as a cold, fatalistic noir.

Bruising cop drama influenced by the procedural docu-noirs that came out of Hollywood after WWII. And while Val Guest's revision retains stylistic riffs which have become genre clichés, once the exciting story kicks in these hardly matter. This is a gripping thriller, led by a typically laconic and impassive performance from Stanley Baker.

He plays a hard as nails detective- yes, married to his job and neglectful of his long suffering wife. While investigating the murder of a young woman in a holdup, the cop finds he is on the trail of an escaped convict (John Crawford) he sent down and who swore revenge. Now all the contacts of the killer are in danger.

There's a nice plot detail which adds a little social commentary. The stolen banknotes have been treated with a chemical which shows up on the hands of everyone who handles them; who become literally marked. The cops trace the stain of dirty money as it spreads through the criminal community. Because crime touches everyone.

This is a realist film, expressively shot on the streets of Manchester and the surrounding moors. But the title is a little misleading; the mean streets of the black and white city just provide atmosphere. This is primarily a violent, fast moving policier and an ideal vehicle for Stanley Baker as the classic crime-busting loner.

This late period British noir was bombed by the critics, but now looks like a genre classic. It was a big change of pace for its two stars. Richard Todd is a brittle middle class, middle aged wage-slave, drowning in debt and about to lose his job. Peter Sellers is a flashy, sociopathic racketeer who runs a criminal gang which steals cars to be customised in his Paddington lock-up.

When the desperate salesman gets his new motor nicked, he goes vigilante. He's tired of getting pushed around. But in fighting back, he destroys himself and his marriage. Though cast against type, this is the best performance of Todd's career, and while not realistic, Sellers is astonishing too. He literally rips up the scenery. Under pressure, both men fall apart.

This is the human jungle where the weak are exploited and the most ruthless get the rewards. The set up has been used many times, but rarely as well. Maybe best of all is the nasty, poetic script (Alun Falconer). There's an extraordinary scene when Todd's loving wife (Elizabeth Sellars) explains that he is a loser and she has settled for disappointment.

John Guillermin directs with a little unexpected style. John Barry composed the jazz soundtrack and scored the title song for Adam Faith, who plays a delinquent carjacker. Carol White is affecting as a pitiful, vulnerable teenager preyed on by the sadistic gangster. All staged in a tough, cruel London. This is one of the best British crime films of the sixties.