Film Reviews by Steve

Title tells all in this ultra low budget sci-fi which boasts flying saucers created by visual effects legend Ray Harryhausen. It aims for a documentary style realism, with voice over narration and lots of pseudo-science, adapted from a non fiction book by Major Donald Keyhoe, formerly of the US marines, who headed up a national committee on UFOs! 

But of course it's just entertaining escapism. It's a B film, but it had the advantage in being made for Columbia pictures who had Harryhausen under contract. He creates a good space ship though his models of the collapsing landmarks of Washington DC are no more than ok.

The story mimics the cold war in that it depicts a rapid escalation of military capability, though there is no nuclear. The humanoid invaders (their home planet is left vague) have an effective ultra-sonic weapon and the Americans invent an electro-magnetic ray gun which interferes with their engines. Although at times a six shooter has to do.

Hugh Marlowe is careworn enough to play a research scientist, but perhaps not sufficiently charismatic for an action hero. But he does have an exceptionally sexy assistant/wife in Joan Taylor. This is pioneering sci-fi. Anyone now showing a sky full of UFOs over the monuments of a world famous city owes a debt to Fred Sears and Harryhausen. It's a must-see for fans of fifties sci-fi.

After editing Red River for Howard Hawks, Christian Nyby got the job of directing this proto-alien invasion classic. But  Hawks produced, and this is typical of his work. The military scientists camped in the Arctic Circle express themselves in tough guy crosstalk. There's even a fast talking dame, Margaret Sheridan, doing a fabulous impression of Lauren Bacall.

The long introduction is fine, but the film only really comes to life when the alien (played by the imposing James Arness) defrosts and reanimates. The last half hour is thrilling. The intruder is nominally humanoid, but analysis proves that it is actually intelligent vegetation which feeds on the blood of mammals. It is more intelligent than us and reproduces with frightening rapidity...

It is tremendous to watch the laws of fifties sci-fi being created before our eyes: the alien that is brought back to life through human error; the attempt to confront the invasion with science; and the megalomaniac boffin who foolishly aids the creature because of its value to science. Arness has a fine presence as the first alien monster of the '50s, with its strange luminous aura and thorny skin.

There's a witty script from screwball specialist Charles Lederer, and an all time great action score from Dimitri Tiomkin. The fifties science fiction wave starts here at the North Pole. At the end of the film, the dome headed newspaper reporter (Douglas Spencer) shouts his article down the phone line to his editor: 'Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!'.

Enduring science fiction classic that benefits hugely from the approach of grounding its fantastical premise in an ultra-realistic environment, which boosts the story's credibility. The alien encounter is observed against the familiar monuments of Washington DC, as well as ordinary suburban streets.

Michael Rennie plays Klaatu, a humanoid space-traveller who parks his flying saucer outside the White House and informs mankind that in the nuclear age, it presents a threat to the rest of the universe and must pull back from the edge. Or else. The tall, angular Rennie is wonderful casting as the Christ-like visitor, an alien who presents an intellectual otherness that didn't need hours in makeup..

Bernard Herrmann's influential, futuristic score- featuring theremin- is atmospheric and eerie. The visual effects are superb. Robert Wise presents our political leaders as suspicious, territorial, insecure and narrow-minded. When Klaatu goes among the ordinary people, he finds they are the same!

Rennie/Klaatu is a fabled figure in science fiction and his instructions to Patricia Neal, Klaatu barada nikto, live on in other books and films. Curiously the solution of the other civilisations of the universe to the threat of nuclear war is basically Mutually Assured Destruction, which is where mankind was heading anyway!

Whimsical and spooky fantasy/ghost story produced by David Selznick to star his soon-to-be wife Jennifer Jones in the title role. It's a hyper-romance about how some people are destined to be together, no matter what, even if it breaks the laws that bind the universe.

Joseph Cotten plays a struggling artist who sketches Jennie as a child. And begins a portrait... He occasionally meets her again but makes the unsettling discovery that she seems to come back to him from the past, and always a few years older. They fall in love even though it appears she died in an accident at sea many years ago.

This is sweet, crazy hokum with the kind of lush orchestral score (Dimitri Tiomkin) typical of Hollywood romantic fantasies. There's even a choir of angels. It is all atmosphere. Jennie's theme (by Bernard Herrmann) is suitably haunting. Cotten and Jones are glamorous as the lovers who find each other across time. 

The b&w photography is lovely with fine locations. William Dieterle sometimes shoots through gauze which makes the picture look like a canvas. The climax with a tsunami off the coast of Massachusetts is evocative and powerful. And the final shot of the portrait- in colour- of the sad/lovely Jennie hung on the wall of a gallery, is a heartbreaker.

This only cost $30000 and was shot guerrilla style in the street with hand-held cameras by a five person crew. Maybe the audio and overdubs aren't professionally recorded, but their strange resonance just makes the film more detached and dreamlike. If the director had spent his budget processing the sound to give this effect, it would have been money well spent.

A car drives off a bridge and emergency services can't recover the passengers in the muddy river. Hours later, a girl (Candace Hillgoss) pulls herself from the water. She starts work as a church organist, but her reality is distorted. Some people don't see her. At dusk she is attracted to a deserted amusement park where ghostly apparitions congregate and freakishly waltz.

This looks like German expressionism. There are distorted close ups and long shots of eerie stillness. Figures appear and move unnaturally. One of its great merits is an amazingly gloomy and oppressive organ score. Hilligoss is ethereal as the living ghost who has cheated death- the only professional actor in the film.

The only strand which doesn't really work is the uncomfortable attention of a predatory man towards the girl. He is rather too effectively repellant. But this is one of the great horror films. Herk Harvey was an industrial documentary film maker. This was his only feature film, and it wasn't even released. It found an audience on tv. Its existence feels like a small miracle

The popular image of this film seems to have been swallowed up by the long public dispute of its two elderly stars. A legend has grown around the rivalry of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford which nourishes the film's eccentric horror, which in turn fortifies the myth of their enmity.

Baby Jane is a child star in the era of vaudeville, the sort of awful, sentimentalised poppet popular in America between the wars. Later on, sister Blanche becomes a famous actor in '30s Hollywood making the women's pictures that Bette and Joan appeared in back then. So the story goes, Jane paralysed Blanche in car crash when she was drunk. Out of jealousy. But maybe Blanche has something to hide.

Thirty years on, Jane (Davis) is going crazy. She torments Blanche (Crawford) who is trapped in a wheelchair within a room of her Hollywood mansion. They are freakish curiosities, hidden away from the California sun in their dusty mausoleum. Like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd. Joan suffers effectively, but Bette is phenomenal as a dissolute, spiteful monster who never really stopped being Baby Jane.

 Robert Aldrich creates an airless, antiquated cage for the former stars to inhabit, sheltered from the sunlit materialism of the real world. Victor Bueno is lavish as another grotesque, the venal, obsequious pianist Jane enlists to recreate her old musical act. To be her new daddy. But this is Bette's film. She gives an uninhibited, once in a lifetime performance, making Baby Jane Hudson one of the legends of American Gothic.

Musical version of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom which was adapted by Frank Borzage and Fritz Lang in the '30s. Gordon MacRae stars as a fairground barker of superficial charm and foul disposition who ill treats his new wife (Shirley Jones). He dies while robbing a local big shot, leaving her pregnant and alone. In the afterlife, and with his family in peril, he gets the chance to live for one more day...

There's a lot that doesn't work in Carousel. The main role is such an unrepentant and contemptible lowlife that it's hard to care about his redemption. His wife is too sweetly virtuous to easily accept as a working girl growing up in poverty. The beautiful locations in Maine carry no impression of a realistic, working fishing port where lives are traded for a few dirty coins...

The film retains too much of the play's realism  to be credible within the conventions of a fifties Hollywood musical. And its acquiescence of domestic abuse makes it too difficult to want to suspend disbelief. The story is too dark for this kind of treatment.

Of course the songs are excellent, and You'll Never Walk Alone is one of the great showstoppers. It is performed twice. The Cinemascope is thrilling, particularly in accommodating the dance routines. The locations are lovely and the colour is bright and deep and luxurious. But none of that is really harmonious with the story that's being told. 

Jack Finney's timeless science fiction concept is often assumed to be an allegory for Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunts in post-war USA. Others suggest a near opposite, that it was intended to be a warning of the spread of communism. Don Siegel testified that he intended his film to comment on the brainwashing effect of materialism in the contemporary economic boom.

It is a brilliant vehicle for critiquing any kind of conformity. There is an alien invasion from seeds blown in from space which grow into pods which mimic the exact appearance of the hosts.  Once established, they take over their being and memories. Then the pod-people attack the freedom of others, claiming they will be happier without individuality or emotion.

This is the start of a wave of sci-fi films about conspiracies which tap into paranoia about a perceived hidden threat. By the end, Kevin McCarthy is running on the freeway shouting about the danger to us all: 'you're next, you're next'. But no one stops to listen. Is he insane? Or is it true? Sadly, the studio insisted on a couple of framing scenes which remove that ambiguity.

Seigel's only science fiction film is a legend, and part of our cultural language. It has a stylish film noir look and while the meagre budget may have left limited funds for special effects, they are still good. Kevin McCarthy has become exclusively famous just for this role, and with the beautiful Dana Wynter forms an unusually permissive relationship for the '50s.

Psychological ghost story set in New England, though shot in UK. Robert Wise is obviously influenced by head of RKO horror in the '40s, Val Lewton, who gave Wise his debut as director. The idea is that terror conjured up in the mind of the audience is more daunting than any screen monster. So the horror is offscreen, mostly suggested by sound.

 The set design of the haunted stately home and the expressionist shot compositions are brilliantly unsettling. But we don't see any ghosts. In fact, the ambiguous script implies that the haunting may be happening inside the fractured psyche of the pale, neurotic medium (Julie Harris), who is an unreliable narrator.

Richard Johnson plays an academic who wants to prove the existence (or otherwise) of the paranormal, so enlists two women who have experience of the supernatural, Claire Bloom plays the other, a chic socialite who has the gift of ESP, so knows what everyone is thinking. Russ Tamblyn is a sceptic, who brings the wisecracks and the martinis.

This isn't unlike the kind of B horror William Castle was famous for in the 50s-60s. But there's a bigger budget, and it's more sophisticated... And scarier. The ensemble cast is excellent, but Harris excels as the lonely, unstable conduit for the spirits who possess the old house. Who want her to remain. It's her vulnerability and suffering that stays in the memory.

Zero budget cult horror fantasy, shot along the California coast, and set in an empty amusement park, which evokes a dreamy maritime ambience. It is slow with a bare, prosaic script, but it has that strange, ethereal mood that amateur productions sometimes have because they are made in unconventional ways.

There's a cast of mostly tv support actors, but Dennis Hopper leads as Johnny, a sailor in the US navy who falls in love with a mysterious stranger (Linda Lawson), who poses as a mermaid in the fair. She is being investigated by the police as two of her boyfriends have been found dead...

The old sailor who runs the mermaid attraction (Gavin Muir) tells Johnny that the girl is a siren from the sea who tempts men to their death... The fortune teller thinks the sailor is in deep peril. So who is crazy? Maybe it's even Johnny who keeps having nightmares about the sea.

This is an atmospheric, homemade film which demonstrates what can be done with very little money but plenty of imagination. The eerie music is effective, particularly the echoey flute themes. The lack of budget for extras makes this a deserted, lonely world, with a melancholy that stays in the memory..

This was adapted from a 1961 tv play, also starring Cliff Robertson. His role in the film version won an Oscar, as a lonely, blue collar worker with learning disabilities who is chosen for an experimental operation which will make him more intelligent. More than that, he becomes a genius. But the process is only temporary...

For an hour, it is a feelgood fantasy, shot in a documentary style. But when the dream begins to unravel, the picture is fragmented, telling much of the story through hallucinogenic split screen montages, scored by Ravi Shankar. It all gets very summer-of-love. This method tells the story quickly, but avoids following up any thematic proposals.

It relates a uniquely human experience. We are educated until we understand the fact of our mortality, and nothing we can learn afterwards can change this truth. But the film overlooks the complications. What if everyone had the operation? Surely it is more likely it  would be sold to the rich rather than given to those in need? What are the ethics of using this man as an experiment?

Robertson plays an outsider, someone who sees the world having first experienced its cruelty. There's a very strong scene where he word associates with scientists at a press conference and we glimpse his subconscious trauma. It feels credible that one day, something like this could be attempted. And that's what good sci-fi does; it draws on the almost believable

This has an epic dimension, particularly in the early scenes of the exhumation of a satanic statue in Iraq. William Friekin was hot property and the visual effects are state of the art. The sound is extraordinary. It is from the era when horror began to attract big budgets and went on to make a fortune for Warner Brothers. 

Divorced from the hype, it no longer disturbs as it once did. We are an audience who has lived through its influence. But the profanities are startling. The ritualistic traditions of catholicism, with its medieval imagery and Latin ceremonies are unsettling. And the film draws on primal images of satan which are part of our communal childhood fears. The genre motifs still work.

It is interesting how much time is spent creating an impression of America in crisis. The poor man begging in a subway, the student protests. The US is socially and politically divided. The family is falling apart and there is a crisis of faith. And now the youth is going to hell... There is an impression that in the west, it's the right time for an anti-christ to re-enter the stage.

Max von Sydow is exceptional in the title role, going head to head with his satanic majesty. The 14 year old Linda Blair is also astonishing as the possessed child. And it feels like the demon has a personality. It's a key film of the '70s and new kind of horror. We been introduced to the devil before, but nowhere near as viscerally or explicitly. 

The final part of John Frankenheimer's paranoia trilogy. A middle aged banker (John Randolph) who feels life has passed him by, pays a shady organisation a huge sum for a second chance. He gets extensive cosmetic surgery, a phoney back story and the company provides a corpse to allow the wage slave to shed his old existence.  After his transformation he is played by Rock Hudson!

He was from the generation born into the depression,  and sent to fight in WWII, who returned to the sexually and socially inhibited America of the '50s. In the '60s, young people reject those values, get the contraceptive pill and discover free love. Who wouldn't want another go around?

But he doesn't change inside. Rock Hudson is just a frightening, unknowable mask. In his new identity, he begins to question who he used to be.  A lot of this feeling of paranoia is created visually with the distorting lenses, and by the gloomy progressive score.    

It is a chilling story of a rapacious corporation whose mission- to provide a service to the rich-has been swallowed by the capitalist obligation to create wealth. Anything can be justified in the pursuit of profit. The client's self doubt is exploited and he becomes paralysed in a terrifying web of ruthless, inexorable business ethics. Don't miss this one.

It's evidence of the increased prestige of science fiction in the late sixties that this was assigned an A list director- Franklin Schaffner- for what looks a B film premise. An astronaut (able to traverse time as well as space) lands on a planet with a habitable atmosphere in the distant future, where the great apes are the dominant species-and speak English!

Humans are the mute, unreasoning beasts. Charlton Heston discovers an earth-like environment, but because his instruments are telling him that he is way over the other side of space, he doesn't draw the obvious conclusion... at least until the famous ending.

Schaffner gets more from his budget than just a major star. The visuals are fabulous, particularly the location shots in the Utah desert. There is a classy score. There are no noirish atmospherics. This is in bright, colourful Panavision, but the irregular, jagged constructions of the ape city give the film an unsettling, distorted look. Best of all are the ape costumes and make-up effects.

For an action film there is quite a lot of thematic content. It touches on the conflict between evolution and religious dogma. The schism between the gorillas and chimpanzees encourage reflection on contemporary American racial conflict. It is about the social and political realities of 1968, the year of revolution on campus, with prejudice, belligerence and superstition ascendent over reason.

Title tells all in this thoughtful and faithful adaptation of Daniel Defoe's classic adventure... except it's science fiction! It was a clever idea to adapt a story about colonialism to the final frontier, though The Forbidden Planet (1956) got there first.

Paul Mantee plays an astronaut who crashes onto the surface of the red planet. He adapts to his new home (Mars has a breathable atmosphere in this film) and changes his environment to support himself. The film establishes a hierarchy of the space-wrecked castaway's physical, psychological and then social needs.  

 He finds a companion (Victor Lundin) who is viciously exploited by inter-planetary slave traders. The astronaut seeks to impose his own values on his new companion; they become master and servant. Only under duress can he accept an equality based on mutual respect and common interest. Presumably this alludes to the contemporary civil rights movement.

It benefits from the location shoot in Death Valley, California. The matte effects of the red sky, and the ruined remains of a Martian civilisation are clearly limited by budget but are still ok. The most poignant theme is straight from Defoe; a human alone in space exposed to the vastness of the universe. It is a potent, enduring image.