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Category Archives: Jimmy Sangster
PAINKILLER by NJ Fountain
“You wrote my note! My suicide note! You want to kill me!” Although the term ‘gaslighting’ has existed for decades, it is very popular at present to describe stories in which men manipulate the minds of women – and this … Continue reading
The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (1970)
Dagmar Lassander is a bored housewife who has been relying too much on drink to keep herself together. Her husband knows he has been neglecting her but his business (underwater diving equipment) is at a critical stage. One night she … Continue reading
Posted in Film Noir, Giallo, Hammer Studios, Italy, Jimmy Sangster, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
40 Comments
Top 20 Amnesia Mystery Movies
Whether it’s the intrigue of Jason Bourne adventures or the farcical escapades of the Hangover films, memory loss remains a popular narrative device in fiction in general and at the cinema in particular. Here is a guide to my top 20 favourite … Continue reading
Posted in 'Best of' lists, Alfred Hitchcock, Amnesia, Billy Wilder, Boileau-Narcejac, Charlie Chan, England, Eric Ambler, France, Greece, Hammer Studios, James Hilton, Jimmy Sangster, John Frankenheimer, Len Deighton, London, Los Angeles, LP Davies, New York, Orson Welles, San Francisco, Spain, Tuesday's Overlooked Film
Tagged Robert Ludlum
88 Comments
Side Effects
The thriller genre can be so capacious and seductive that filmmakers often use the form to smuggle in less commercial content on its coat-tails. Successful examples of this include the debate on Britain’s antiquated homosexuality laws found in Victim (1961), … Continue reading
Douglas Slocombe – 100 years old today
OK movie buffs, here’s a fun pop quiz for you: what do Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sean Connery’s last Bond movie, Michael Caine in The Italian Job, Montgomery Clift’s turn as Sigmund Freud and several classic Ealing comedies such … Continue reading
Edgar Wallace Mysteries (1960–65)
Between September 1960 and October 1965 cinemas in the UK screened 47 films produced by Anglo Amalgamated as part of their Edgar Wallace Mysteries series. These low-budget movies, more or less based on the works of the celebrated mystery author, … Continue reading
BRAT FARRAR (1949) by Josephine Tey
Imposture lies at the heart of this well constructed suspense novel by Elizabeth Mackintosh, the Scottish author best known today for the mysteries she published as ‘Josephine Tey’, though she also wrote books and plays using her own name and … Continue reading
Fear in the Night (1972)
Joan Collins plays a sexy sculptress with a taste for blood and the grotesque in this ‘old school’ thriller from Hammer productions. The star though is topbilled Judy Geeson as Peggy, a mentally fragile newlywed who plans to join her … Continue reading
Crescendo (1970) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
Hammer made a return to the thriller genre after a break of several years by dusting off an old script by Alfred Shaughnessy that originally had been intended as a possible vehicle for Joan Crawford with Michael Reeves to direct. … Continue reading
The Nanny (1965) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
Bette Davis gives a subtle and nuanced performance as the title character in this small-scale suspense movie that deserves to be much better known. It is easy to succumb to the temptation to lump it together with What Ever Happened … Continue reading
Hysteria (1965) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
The Hammer company stopped acting as its own distributor from the late 1950s, instead making deals with virtually all the Hollywood majors to handle (and bankroll) their output. This film is one of the few made for distribution by that … Continue reading
Paranoiac (1963) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
The young Oliver Reed was under contract at Hammer Studios just before becoming a major star and Paranoiac is among his best films of the period, providing the actor with one of his earliest chances to play the kind of … Continue reading
Nightmare (1964) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
A teenage girl in her nightie walks down an eerie and dark corridor, apparently lost. Becoming increasingly uneasy and hearing voices, she fearfully open a door and finds her mother, grinning, apparently waiting for her. It’s the inside of a … Continue reading
Maniac (1963) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
In the movies it seems that the ‘Rural South’, irrespective of where it may actually be in the world, is synonymous with savage attitudes and retrograde customs; an atavistic haven where old customs die-hard; and where outsiders, usually from the … Continue reading
Taste of Fear (1961) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
This film, released more prosaically in the US as Scream of Fear, is a psychological suspense yarn plainly inspired by Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) but offering several neat twists and turns of its own. A superior Hammer movie – from … Continue reading
The Snorkel (1958) – Tuesday’s Forgotten Film
This oddly titled movie is an inverted mystery about a husband who comes up with a seemingly fool-proof method to bump off his wife. As such we know the identity of the villain right from the start, though there is … Continue reading
Jimmy Sangster (1927 – 2011)
The British writer-producer-director Jimmy Sangster (James Henry Kinmel Sangster) has died aged 83. Long associated with the films made at Hammer Studios, where he first had a long career as an assistant director before moving on to writing, he is … Continue reading
Posted in Hammer Studios, Jimmy Sangster, RIP
14 Comments
