One of the most highly regarded haunted house films ever produced, Robert Wise's The Haunting (based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House) weaves the dark tale of a questionably sane young woman and a sinister house which holds a terrifying past. Invited to join anthropologist Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), ESP expert Theodora ...
"The German Air Force is not at all what it used to be," says Anne Bancroft's Countess, about 16 minutes into The Hindenburg, pausing and then adding, "But then, nothing is these days." That seems to sum up the ponderous, irony-laden script and plot of Robert Wise's movie, which is posited -- in true post-Watergate fashion -- upon notions of ...
The contrasting acting styles of Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster serve to increase the already high tension level of the WW2 drama Run Silent, Run Deep. Gable plays submarine commander "Rich" Richardson, who assumes command of the USS Nerka. Because his previous sub was sunk by the Japanese under highly suspect circumstances, Richardson inspires ...
The "Andromeda Strain" is a deadly extraterrestrial virus. It is brought to Earth when a research satellite crashes near a tiny Arizona town. Everyone in the community dies within days, except for a baby and an "insulated" drunkard. Recruited from labs all over North America, doctors Charles Dutton (David Wayne), Jeremy Stone (Arthur Hill), Ruth ...
One of the most popular movie musicals of all time, The Sound of Music is based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers. Julie Andrews stars as Maria, a young nun in an Austrian convent who regularly misses her morning prayers because she enjoys going to the hills to sing the title song. Deciding that Maria needs to learn something about the ...
Romeo and Juliet is updated to the tenements of New York City in this Oscar-winning musical landmark. Adapted by Ernest Lehman from the Broadway production, the movie opens with an overhead shot of Manhattan, an effect that director Robert Wise would repeat over the Alps in The Sound of Music four years later. We are introduced to two rival street ...
Set in the Manhattan street milieu that served him well in West Side Story, Robert Wise?s Rooftops tells the story of T, a quiet, soft-spoken teen-ager who has left his broken home and is living in a makeshift shelter in an old water tower on top of an abandoned tenement building. There are other kids like him, including Squeak, a talented ...
Rossana Podesta may not quite possess the face that would launch a thousand ships, but she is otherwise convincing in the title role of Helen of Troy. Filmed in Italy, this super-epic costars Jacques Sernas as Paris of Troy, who sails to Sparta to secure a peace treaty between the two powerful Greek city-states. When he falls in love with Helen, ...
Grim, almost unbearably intense, I Want To Live is the story of the life and execution of Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward) a perjurer, prostitute, liar and drug addict. The product of a broken home, Graham works as a shill, luring gullible men into crooked card games. She attempts to go straight, marries the wrong man, and has a baby. When her life ...
As shown by the clock face that opens and closes the film, The Set-Up takes place within a compact 72 minutes, with the action played out in "real time." Robert Ryan plays Bill "Stoker" Thompson, a washed-up boxer who refuses to give up his career despite the pleas of his wife Julie (Audrey Totter). There's little chance that he's going to win ...
Once you get past the fact that handsome Paul Newman could never pass for plug-ugly boxer Rocky Graziano in real life, you will be able to accept Somebody Up Their Likes Me as one of the more accomplished movie biopics of the 1950s. Based on Graziano's autobiography (co-written with Rowland Barber), the film accurately depicts the teen-aged Rocky ...
A rare comedy effort by director Robert Wise, This Could Be the Night is based on a series of short stories Cordelia Baird Gross. Jean Simmons stars as Anne Leeds, a prim, proper and very level-headed grade-school teacher who takes a night job as secretary to rough-and-tumble nightclub owner Rocco (Paul Douglas). Despite his raffish exterior, ...
All of Washington, D.C., is thrown into a panic when an extraterrestrial spacecraft lands near the White House. Out steps Klaatu (Michael Rennie, in a role intended for Claude Rains), a handsome and soft-spoken interplanetary traveler, whose "bodyguard" is Gort (Lock Martin), a huge robot who spews forth laser-like death rays when danger threatens ...
After years of dumb-blonde and best-friend roles, Jane Wyman proved her skills as a dramatic actress -- and won an Academy Award in the bargain -- in Johnny Belinda. Adapted from a stage play by Elmer Harris, the story takes place in Nova Scotia, where deaf-mute Belinda (Wyman) leads a lonely existence on the hardscrabble farm of her father Black ...
Harry Belafonte was both producer and star of this hard-edged film noir crime drama. Dave Burke (Ed Begley, Sr.) is an ex-cop who has been kicked off the force for refusing to inform on his colleagues to the State Crime Committee. Short on money, the former policeman jumps to the other side of the law and plans to knock over a bank in upstate ...
When plans to launch a second Star Trek television series in the late 1970s were scrapped by Paramount Pictures, the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, instead transformed the aborted program's 2-hour pilot into this big budget theatrical feature. Five years after the legendary voyages of the starship Enterprise, James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is ...
Cameron Hawley's novel Executive Suite appeared around the same time as two other tales of big-business intrigue, the 1954 film A Woman's World and the 1955 Rod Serling teleplay Patterns. Elements of all three properties inevitably overlap. In Executive Suite, a furniture-store executive dies suddenly, resulting in a power play between five of his ...
Robert Wise brings his distinguished name and considerable directorial skill to this remake of a 1970 Rod Serling TV drama. Set in 1969, Abel Shaddick (Peter Falk), a crotchety deli owner, has a grudge against virtually everyone in his upstate New York town of Fairview, particularly against his slacker nephew Stanley (Andrew McCarthy) who lives ...
Steve McQueen received his only Academy Award nomination for his performance in this epic-scale war drama, based on the novel by Richard McKenna. In 1926, as China teeters on the edge of political revolution in the midst of a civil war, the USS San Pablo , is ordered to patrol the Yangtze River to represent and protect American interests. While ...
Somehow the titles of the films of hardcase actor Lawrence Tierney seemed to be extensions of the man's personality, as witness such films as The Devil Thumbs a Ride and Born to Kill. In the latter picture, Tierney starts the ball rolling by committing a double murder in a jealous pique. Claire Trevor discovers the bodies, but says nothing to the ...
Officially a sequel to Val Lewton's psychological-horror classic Cat People (1942), Curse of the Cat People is in fact an engrossing and oftimes charming fantasy, told from a child's point of view. Six-year-old Ann Carter plays Amy Reed, the lonely daughter of eternally preoccupied Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). Amy's vivid imagination and inability to ...
One of the best "psychological" westerns of the 1940s, RKO Radio's Blood on the Moon stars Robert Mitchum as itinerant cowboy Jim Garry. Riding into a Texas Indian reservation, Garry finds himself embroiled in a deadly feud between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. He befriends both Amy Lufton (Barbara Bel Geddes), daughter of wealthy cattle man ...
Adapted by Robert Anderson from a story by James A. Michener, the Robert Wise-directed soaper Until They Sail is set in World-War-II New Zealand. Paul Newman plays been-there-done-that U.S. marine captain Jack Harding, assigned to investigate servicemen's requests to marry local girls. An unemotional cipher, Harding begins to warm up when he meets ...
The Desert Rats was a quickly assembled follow-up to 20th Century-Fox's successful war film The Desert Fox. Richard Burton plays an officer in the British Eighth Army, battling Rommel's forces in defense of Tobruk. Put in charge of an Australian unit, Burton rides his men ruthlessly, with laudatory results. He is briefly captured by the Nazis and ...
Audrey Rose is a "thinking man's" horror film, which in a way is unfortunate, since it tended to be ignored amidst the many spell-it-all-out scarefests of the late '70s. Marsha Mason and John Beck play Janice and Bill Templeton, a happily married couple, the parents of well-adjusted preteen Ivy (Susan Swift). Their family security is disrupted by ...
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide or All Movie Guide. © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide and All Movie Guide are registered Trademarks of All Media Guide, LLC.