The first cinematic teaming of horror greats Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi is a bizarre, haunting, and relentlessly eerie film that was surprisingly morbid and perverse for its time. Peter (David Manners) and Joan Allison (Julie Bishop) are honeymooning in Budapest when they meet mysterious scientist Dr. Vitus Verdegast (Lugosi) aboard a train. ...
Auteur theorists who've charted the career of "cult" director Edgar G. Ulmer have seldom mentioned Carnegie Hall, simply because it was more expensive than most of Ulmer's films and thus can't be regarded a "low-budget masterpiece." The wafer-thin plotline concerns a young immigrant woman (Marsha Hunt) who takes a job as a Carnegie Hall cleaning ...
An inexpensive but atmospheric sci-fi film, Man from Planet X takes place on a lonely Scottish island. Science professor Raymond Bond is monitoring the orbit of the mysterious "Planet X," which has entered the solar system and is travelling close to Earth. A spaceship lands from this planet, out of which pops a strange little man who looks ...
Bluebeard casts the saturnine John Carradine as Gaston, a popular painter in 19th century Paris. Unbeknownst to the authorities, Gaston is also the serial killer of beautiful young women that they have been seeking for several months. Whenever a girl fails to come up to Gaston's standards of perfection, she is summarily strangled and tossed into ...
Yet another in a spate of historical costume dramas by Italian filmmakers, Hannibal tells the story of the famous general's battles and his ill-advised march across the snowy Alps. To make life that much more interesting, violence, gore, sex, love, and personal issues are thrown in for good measure. The great general is played by Victor Mature and ...
B-movie auteur Edgar G. Ulmer managed to direct a few A-pictures during his long career; he was personally selected by Hedy Lamarr to helm this big-budget thriller, a project she put together to change her image as a starlet whose sex appeal outweighed her acting abilities. Set in the early 19th century, The Strange Woman takes place in Bangor, ...
Although venereal disease was considered as delicate a subject then as it is now, this was nonetheless the third filmed version of Eugène Brieux' 1901 play Les Avariés, known in English-speaking lands as Damaged Lives. Don is a shallow, naïve former ship's officer trying to make the transition to an executive position in the shipping company. He ...
My Son, the Hero was a rare comedy from the PRC studio mills-and rarer still, it was directed by melodrama specialist Edgar G. Ulmer. Roscoe Karns plays a third-rate fight manager misleadingly known as Big Time. Justifiably proud of his war-correspondent son Michael (Joseph Allen Jr.), Big Time tries to measure up to his son's accomplishments by ...
This appallingly bad sci-fi film about an invisible bank-robber (Douglas Kennedy) was shot back-to-back with Beyond the Time Barrier on the grounds of the Texas State Fair in Dallas. The usual cackling and crime is included, most of which was done better in The Invisible Man. Marguerite Chapman is the film's one bright spot as Kennedy's lowlife ...
Strange Illusion is really several movies in one, part dark psychological chiller, part unsettling murder mystery, and part breezy B-movie thriller, although most of its plot is derived from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Jimmy Lydon, best-known to audiences for his screen portrayal of Henry Aldrich during the early '40s, plays Paul Cartwright, the son of ...
Disciples of "B"-picture stylist Edgar Ulmer will not be disappointed with Pirates of Capri. Lensed in Italy, the film stars Louis Hayward as swashbuckling Captain Sirocco. Posing as a foppish nobleman by day, Sirocco tirelessly works on behalf of a group of insurgents bent on deposing the wicked Queen Carolina (Binnie Barnes, endearingly miscast) ...
A crime lord with the ability to mesmerize and manipulate others forces an old ex-convict to do his evil bidding. When the reformed crook's daughter finds out, she starts working to save him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
German immigrant Edgar G. Ulmer directed this melodrama with an all-black cast (including jazz legend Sidney Bechet), and shot the film in just four days. The story concerns a rich widow seduced by a gangster, and the man's attempts to get her money. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
Filmed very cheaply in New York, St. Benny the Dip (British title: Escape Me If You Can) has a charm and appeal that transcends its modest production trappings. Dick Haymes, Roland Young and Lionel Stander star as Benny, Matthew and Monk, three confidence tricksters forced by circumstance to pose as priests, tending to a slum mission. While ...
Sharkishly handsome Zachary Scott is right in his element in the Eagle-Lion melodrama Ruthless. Told in flashback, this is the story of the rise and fall of unscrupulous financier Horace Vendig (Scott). Hiding behind a veneer of respectability, Vendig steps on and rolls over anyone who stands in his way, including his lifelong friend Vic Lambdin ...
Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour begins when hitchhiker Al Roberts (Tom Neal) accepts a ride from affable gambler Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald). When Haskell suffers a fatal heart attack, Roberts, afraid that he'll be accused of murder, disposes of the body, takes the man's clothes and wallet, and begins driving the car himself. He picks up ...
Cult-favorite director Edgar G. Ulmer has quite a disparate cast to work with in Isle of Forgotten Sins. The story is typically brawny adventure fare, concerning a band of hardy South Sea pearl divers. But instead of a group of he-man protagonists, the leading players include the likes of pudgy Frank Fenton, scrawny John Carradine and ...
Edgar G. Ulmer directed this silly but fun low-budgeter about young English heiress and bride-to-be Janet (Gloria Talbott), who arrives at the family estate on her 21st birthday. There she is informed by her guardian that her father was none other than the notorious Dr. Henry Jekyll, the inventor of a formula which transformed him into an ill ...
The first of five Guinn "Big Boy" Williams Westerns produced by low-budget Beacon Pictures, Thunder Over Texas remains one of the decade's more obscure sagebrush melodramas. Written by Sherle Castle, the film was directed by her soon-to-be husband, legendary cult figure Edgar G. Ulmer, who moonlighted as "John Warner" in order to fool his ...
In this unique murder mystery, that reveals the killer at the beginning of the film. The story concerns some women living in a prison reformatory and centers around a vengeful teacher who works there. With the help of a detective, an inmate endeavors to get her corrupt brother-in-law arrested and put in jail. Her sister is a teacher who recently ...
With a title like Jive Junction, this just has to be a wartime musical. In one of his few top-billed roles, teenaged actor Dickie Moore plays Peter, a student in a hidebound music conservatory. Rebelling against his old-fogey teachers, Peter organizes an all-girl swing band. When his father dies in the war, Peter overcomes his grief in true ...
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