The Ninth Configuration (1980)

A castle surrounded by a forrest that is swamped by a slowly creeping fog. A dream of an astronaut on the moon looking away from the American flag to see Jesus on the cross. Stacy Keach’s face, serious and seething, eyes bulging red with rage. A few of the key images from William Peter Blatty’s […]

Seven Days In May (1964)

After experiencing the fantastic WW2 action thriller The Train, I was keen to see more of the movies that director John Frankenheimer and actor Burt Lancaster made together. Seven Days In May (1964) was filmed in 1963 before The Train was made, but experienced a delayed release after the assassination of JFK. A political thriller […]

Castle Keep (1969)

While the posters might make Castle Keep (1969) look like a World War II action movie, it’s actually a very strange, oddball experience. Right from the opening sequence where a jeep of tired soldiers travelling through a forest is cross-cut in the editing with two stately people – a Count (Jean-Pierre Aumont) and a Countess […]

The Train (1964)

A friend, Daniel St. Vincent, recommended checking out The Train (1964), a black-and-white WW2 action drama directed by John Frankenheimer (Seconds, Ronin) and starring Burt Lancaster. For some reason, with that title, I thought the majority of the movie took place on a train like Runaway Train or Unstoppable. Rather, the train is like a […]

The Stranger (1946)

The Orson Welles film, The Stranger (1946), which he directed and starred in, has always been around. Without a copyright holder, it’s long been in the public domain, and has shown up on public access TV, cheap DVDs, different streaming sites, and uploaded on YouTube. Held up as a classic film noir, the first that […]