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Category Archives: Courtroom
TRIAL AND ERROR (1937) by Anthony Berkeley
It’s time for a guest post from my blogging buddy Livius, who writes about movies at his marvellous blog, Riding the High Country. And now it’s over to the man himself: The inverted crime story is one where the perpetrator … Continue reading
Hitchcock in the 1940s – vote now!
With the success of The Lady Vanishes, Hitchcock got a contract with producer David O Selznick and headed to Hollywood to make the Oscar-winning Rebecca – and never looked back. This period saw the director blossom as he got to … Continue reading
Posted in 'In praise of ...', Alfred Hitchcock, Amnesia, Anthony Berkeley, Australia, California, Cold War, Courtroom, Daphne Du Maurier, England, Espionage, Film Poll, Francis Beeding, London, Los Angeles, New York, Noir, Patrick Hamilton, Philip MacDonald, Screwball, Spy movies, The Netherlands, World War II
59 Comments
INNOCENT by Scott Turow
I don’t read a lot of modern legal thrillers, despite a) being a confirmed mystery addict, b) loving courtroom dramas on film and TV and c) someone who got a law degree at university. Why? Well, despite several notable examples … Continue reading
Posted in Courtroom, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
25 Comments
HOSTILE WITNESS (1968) by Jack Roffey
Simon Crawford is a highly successful barrister whose world comes crashing down when his daughter Joanne is killed in a hit-and-run accident. He suffers a nervous breakdown when he is unable to find out who was responsible and spends months … Continue reading
Posted in 2015 Vintage Mystery Challenge, Courtroom, London, Ray Milland, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
Tagged Sylvia Syms
28 Comments
BURY ME DEEP (1947) by Harold Q. Masur
This was the first in the series featuring New York lawyer Scott Jordan. It opens with a great screwball variant on that hardboiled cliché of a man waking up with a hangover and an unknown dead blonde in his bed. … Continue reading
THE LETTER (1927) by Somerset Maugham
At night on a Malaya rubber plantation a gunshot rings out. A man stumbles out of a bungalow, pursued by a woman, who empties all the chambers of her revolver into him. The moonlight reveals a distraught, gun-toting Bette Davis … Continue reading
Conduct Unbecoming (1975) – Tuesday’s Overlooked Film
This highly unusual military drama is set in 1880s India and stars Stacy Keach, Richard Attenborough and Christopher Plummer with Susannah York as the widow of a regimental hero who accuses an unpopular new recruit of assault. Michael York is the … Continue reading
IF I DIE BEFORE I WAKE (1938) by Sherwood King
Later adapted by Orson Welles into The Lady from Shanghai starring Rita Hayworth, this was one of a pair of pre-war mysteries by Raymond Sherwood King. Set among the wealthy elite of Long Island, it is narrated by Laurence Planter, … Continue reading
Sergeant Rutledge (1960)
John Ford was one of the great directors of the studio system, winner of four Oscars, a tyrant on the set, and maker of many classic Westerns – but he also made dozens of films in other genres including comedies, … Continue reading
The Perry Mason movies (1934-37)
Before the hugely popular TV show of the 1950s and 60s starring Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale (not to mention the long running reunion TV-movies they embarked on two decades later), the cases of Erle Stanley Gardner’s ultra-sharp defence attorney … Continue reading
The Case of the Curious Bride (1935) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
This stylish and fast-paced thriller, adapted from the eponymous Perry Mason novel by Erle Stanley Gardner, was just one of the fifty movies made in the 1930s by Warner Bros. auteur Michael Curtiz, a director still under-appreciated despite regular periods … Continue reading