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The reviews on this page are typically of the type that describe the plot in detail. So if you don't want to know then best avoid looking.

Writers: Ken Taylor, James R. Webb / Director: Clive Donner / Producer: Bernard Smith
Type: Historical Drama	Running Time: 116 mins
Set in the 9th century in the nation that will become England but which currently consists of a number of small kingdoms which have come under attack from Danish invaders. It is the year 871 and 22-year-old Prince Alfred of Wessex has grown weary of battle and decided to become a priest even though he is considered a great strategist. His elder brother Ethelred is king after their two oldest brothers died in battle. Ethelred is sickly and unsuited to the task of leading men and so when the Danes invade Wessex the noblemen turn to Alfred to lead them. Alfred reluctantly abandons his plans to enter the priesthood and returns to command the army to defend the king. Alfred devises a clever strategy that leads the overconfident Danes into an ambush and their survivors have to retreat back to their stronghold in the land they conquered in East Anglia. Their leader Guthrum vows to have his revenge. In the events that follow, Ethelred succumbs to illness and dies and Alfred becomes king; he marries Aelhswith the daughter of the king of nearby Mercia and signs a treaty with them to fight together against the Danes. When Mercia is conquered by the Danes Alfred decides he must seek to make peace with Guthrum and sign a pact. He pays a bounty to Guthrum on the agreement that neither side will attack the other. Fortunes decline for Alfred and his kingdom, he behaves like a tyrant towards his noblemen inventing laws on a whim and then punishing them harshly for transgressing those laws - he loses the nobles' support and with it the men they command. So when the Danes break their agreement and attack Alfred's kingdom, the forces of Wessex are ill-prepared and easily defeated. The Danes take over the running of his kingdom and cleverly tax the noblemen less than the poor to lessen the chance of an organised rebellion. Several years pass in which Alfred goes on the run and joins an outlaw gang. Alfred slowly starts to organise a new force to repel the Danes. He studies battle formation tactics he read about in the monastery's library that had proved successful in the past for small armies facing stronger opposition. He puts out word for his former noblemen to join with him once more to repel the Danes. But most of them have seen their standard of living rise under Danish rule and need persuading. So Alfred tells them of his plans to unite England under one rule with a book of laws that every man will be equally and fairly subject to and that not even the king can break on a whim. His words convince them and they join his side. Alfred's men are heavily outnumbered and far less well equipped but the tactics that Alfred has learned overcome the odds and the Danes are defeated and Guthrum captured. Alfred is reunited with his wife and his now four-year-old son. (And as the end-caption tells us) Alfred goes on to realise his dream of a united England and becomes known with the epitome "... The Great".

Writer: Dail Ambler / Director: Edmond T. Gréville / Producer: George Willoughby
Type: Drama	Running Time: 88 mins / 78 mins
Jennifer Linden is a 16-year old art student whose widowed father Paul has re-married to a much younger woman called Nichole. Nichole is from France and is nearer to Jennifer's age than she is to Paul's. Jennifer resents Nichole and refuses to like her despite Nichole's patient attempts to get to know her new stepdaughter. Jennifer's father is a rich architect who provides her with anything she wants. But Jennifer has a wildcat rebellious streak and prefers to seek excitement with her beatnik friends in coffee bars listening to the latest jazzy pop tunes and engaging in wild dares. Across the road from the coffee bar is a strip club called Les Girls and some of the dancers use the coffee bar. One day when Jennifer stands Nichole up on what is supposed to be a bridge-building lunch date, Nichole comes to the coffee bar to look for Jennifer and one of the stripper's recognises Nichole. Jennifer finds this revelation wonderfully intriguing and decides to delve into the shady past of her father's new wife in the hope of finding something juicy with which to embarrass her. Jennifer visits the strip club and talks to the stripper in question called Greta and discovers that Nichole had once been a stripper in Paris and possibly a whole lot more besides of an even more questionable nature. Greta is the girlfriend of sleazy club manager Kenny King and he takes a liking to Jennifer's young fresh face and says she can come back anytime despite her being underage. At home Jennifer proceeds to make life difficult for Nichole by dropping little hints about what she knows until eventually she blurts out everything after a furious row and then runs from the house. Nichole is left to explain to Paul how it was all true - an unhappy home life had caused her to run away and she had fallen into a life of striptease and prostitution and was only saved from all that when she met and fell in love with him. She is concerned that she can see the same thing happening with Jennifer. They head for town to try and find her. Jennifer has taken up Kenny King's offer to visit the club again. Alone in his office with him, Kenny turns on his sleazily seductive charm and offers her a weekend away with him in Paris as he touches her up. All of a sudden Kenny has been stabbed with a letter opener and is dead on the floor - it seems as if Jennifer suddenly snapped and killed him. The police are called although a screaming and hysterical Jennifer swears she didn't do it - and then from the shadows of the office Greta emerges - it was her doing - she was jealous that Kenny was willing to dump her for a new girl without a moments thought. Jennifer is taken home crying and being comforted by her father and Nichole with all thoughts of her rebellious misadventure gone.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Jess Franco / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 89 mins
Set in the 1950s(?). The evil Chinese criminal Fu Manchu and his daughter Lin Tang have taken up stronghold in the ancient mountain-ensconced temples of a lost city deep in the Venezuelan jungle. Here Fu Manchu has rediscovered an old Inca secret whereby a woman may be immunised from the poison of a black cobra and then bitten by the creature to make her own kiss deadly to men. The kiss renders the man instantly blind and then slowly kills him within six weeks with no known antidote. Fu Manchu has captured ten beautiful young women and initiated them with the plague and sent them out into the world to target his greatest enemies - including the most persistent of these - Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard. In London, Nayland Smith is caught unawares when a beautiful vulnerable-seeming woman named Celeste calls at his residence and gently kisses him. The poison takes immediate effect and he is blinded - the woman rushes away and is killed by a car. Smith realises he has fallen victim to an affliction he has heard rumours of in Inca legend - he has recently learnt that his nemesis Fu Manchu has turned up in South America and had sent out a young explorer called Carl Janson to locate him - and had only moments before received a cable from Carl saying he has found out where the criminal is operating from. Now he is blind and plagued to die Smith knows his only chance of finding a cure is to travel to San Cristobel with help from his friend Doctor Petrie and hope to discover a remedy. Fu Manchu becomes aware of Smith's arrival in the jungle and despite him being blinded and weak still fears him - so he forces a local bandit called Sancho Lopez to help stop Smith getting to him. Lopez is accompanied by an initiant called Carmen, whose task is to infect Lopez once Smith is captured. Smith meets up with Carl and he, together with Petrie and a young female doctor called Ursula Wagner, set out to locate Fu Manchu's hidden stronghold. Smith's blindness means he must be left behind. Eventually after a series of incidents Carl becomes the prisoner of Fu Manchu while Petrie and Ursula escape with Carmen whom they know is an inoculated plague carrier after she infects Lopez. Petrie takes Carmen back to Smith and uses the girl's blood to supply his friend with an antibody cure for the plague. Fu Manchu is almost ready for Phase II of his operation which is to send orders to his operatives in London to release a cloud of plague vapour into the capital and kill everyone - this will be his message to the world that they must bow down and obey him as their master. But just before the appointed time a now recovered Smith storms in and releases Carl and as they escape they detonate the criminal mastermind's weapon's arsenal creating a massive explosion that destroys the temple and puts paid to all Fu Manchu's well-laid plans. The fate of Fu Manchu and his daughter are undetermined but it seems fairly certain that the world shall hear from them again before too long.

Writer: Heywood Gould / Director: Franklin J. Schaffner / Producers: Martin Richards, Stanley O'Toole
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 118 mins
Set in the present day (1978). An eager young investigator called Barry Kohler is in Paraguay following up on a story about a gathering of known ex-war Nazis and by means of a radio bug he plants in their meeting place he overhears part of a bizarre-sounding plot which will involve the killing of ninety-four seemingly unconnected 65-year-old men in various locations around the world. Barry recognises the main speaker as Dr Joseph Mengele, infamous for his wartime medical experiments. Barry's bug is discovered and the Nazi's send an agent to dispose of him - but before he is killed Barry manages to get a phone call in to Ezra Lieberman in Vienna and tell him the details he overheard. Lieberman is a well-known Nazi-hunter who has dedicated his life to bringing ex-Nazis to justice. At first he does not take Barry's information too seriously because he is always receiving reports of sightings that turn out to be misinformed. But when he starts hearing a spate of reports of deaths of several men in their 65th year being suddenly killed he starts to take an interest. He visits two of the bereaved families involved in different counties and is astonished to find that they both have teenage sons that are so identical-looking they could be twins - and then the same with a third family. He discovers all the sons involved were adopted by the families when they were babies. Lieberman interviews the woman who organised the adoptions in the USA and finds out that she was sent the babies from Brazil with instructions to only place them with families that met with strict criteria concerning the exact age of the husband and wife. Lieberman finds out the name of another family (called Wheelock) with whom she placed a baby and whose father has not yet been killed - Lieberman heads off to warn them. But Lieberman is too late - the father has just been killed by Dr Mengele who is laying in wait for Lieberman whom he knows is in pursuit. Mengele intends to kill Lieberman but first he proudly boasts the details of his masterplan:- after the war Mengele had continued with his experimentations into genetics and perfected a means of creating clones of a human being using a sample of the person's blood and skin. Just over fourteen years ago he fertilised ninety-four eggs from the same single sample and implanted them into ninety-four different women to gestate. When the babies were born he took them and sent them all over the world to be adopted by families that met with a particular socio-economic background similar to the one that the subject had grown up in. The subject in question was Adolf Hitler who, before he died, had allowed Mengele to take the necessary samples so that one day he might be reborn into an age more appreciative of his views. Hitler's father had died aged 65 hence the need to kill the fathers when they reached that age. Then the Hitler-clone son of the Wheelock household named Bobby comes home and discovers his dead father - he sets the family's pet Dobermans on Mengele in revenge. Mengele tries to stop the attack by telling the boy who he really is and his noble heritage - the living duplicate of the greatest man in history. But Bobby is so incensed that he gives the dogs the kill order and Mengele dies. (Afterwards Bobby realises that he secretly revelled in wielding that power of life and death). Lieberman manages to retrieve a list of the names and locations of all the Hitler-clones from Mengele's body but burns it deciding that he does not want to start killing children.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Don Sharp / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 90 mins
Set in the 1920s(?). The relentless criminal mastermind Fu Manchu has once again devised a world-conquering plan. Over the course of the last eighteen months he has been kidnapping, from all over the world, wives and daughters of prominent scientists and forcing the men to cooperate with the construction and development of a fiendish device to facilitate his current megalomaniacal endeavour. Fu Manchu has worked out a way to transmit vast quantities of energy from the power generator in his secret base to special receivers that can be hidden anywhere in the world which will then explode with awesome destructive power. With a further kidnapping Fu Manchu has just secured the expertise of a scientist skilled in the manufacture of miniature radio receivers in order to reduce the size of the explosive receptor units. Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner Nayland Smith investigates the attempted kidnapping and soon links it into the series of worldwide abductions of the women of prominent scientists. Smith suspects Fu Manchu's involvement and this is confirmed when Fu Manchu announces a demonstration of his power. This is exemplified by the instant vaporisation of a passenger liner upon which his agents have secreted one of the new miniature receiver units. If such a blast occurred within a city the effects would be utterly devastating. A colleague of Smith's discovers the date upon which Fu Manchu is planning to make his next move and Smith realises that the date in question coincides with a world peace conference in London when all of the world's major leaders will be gathered. Smith pinpoints the location of Fu Manchu's base in the foothills of the Atlas mountains in North West Africa and heads there with some of his men to try and rescue the prisoners. Meanwhile Smith's erstwhile colleague Dr Petrie organises an attempt using BBC equipment to block the frequency of Fu Manchu's power transmission when it starts to comes through to the hidden power receptor unit hidden somewhere in London. Nayland Smith manages to get inside Fu Manchu's mountain base and help the captured women to escape. Fu Manchu begins his transmission and finds his signal is being blocked and so orders the generator's safety lock released to try and punch through the interference - but this causes the generator to overload and go into meltdown. Fu Manchu and his daughter Lin Tang realise the game is up and they run to an escape pod. Smith and the rescued women look back and see the mountain explode as the base is completely destroyed. Is Fu Manchu dead or will the world hear from him again?
COMMENT: The "Brides" part of the title is not at all suggestive of the story because Fu Manchu is kidnapping the women to ensure the cooperation of their menfolk but he is not attempting to marry them. The "Brides" title would actually have been slightly more apt for the fourth film:- The Blood of Fu Manchu.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Jess Franco / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 88 mins
Set in the 1950s(?). The megalomaniacal Chinese criminal Fu Manchu has launched his latest plan for world domination with a demonstration of his power that results in the sinking of a passenger liner in the tropical Caribbean sea when it hits an iceberg. Fu Manchu has abducted a chemist called Professor Heracles who has developed a method of super-cooling water using a crystallised essence. The crystals are made using an opium derivative and so Fu Manchu and his daughter Lin Tang have taken over a castle near Istanbul in Turkey on the Anatolian plateau which is the stronghold of the largest opium source in the world. Fu Manchu announces his demands of obedience to the world lest he punitively freeze vast oceans and the British Home Office call in Scotland Yard detective Nayland Smith and his erstwhile colleague Doctor Petrie who have successfully foiled Fu Manchu in the past. Smith and Petrie head off to Istanbul. Meanwhile Professor Heracles, upon whom Fu Manchu is dependant for the crystals, is seriously ill with a heart condition. So the criminal mastermind has a London heart specialist called Curt Kessler and his assistant Ingrid abducted and forces them to perform a heart transplant operation with a healthy man that Fu Manchu has hypnotised for that purpose. Kessler has no choice but to agree because Ingrid's life is threatened and the operation is successful. Afterwards the two of them are held prisoners with an uncertain future. Nayland Smith infiltrates the castle just as Fu Manchu has begun a countdown to freeze the Bosporus. He rescues Heracles and Kessler and Ingrid manage to get free. Fu Manchu's efforts to recapture them go wrong and his well-laid plans unravel as the massive power outlay requirements of his equipment cause an explosion which destroys the castle. The fate of Fu Manchu and Lin Tang are undetermined but it seems certain that the world shall hear from them again.

NOTES:
•	Based on the characters created by Sax Rohmer
•	The control room climax of this film when the equipment goes into overload and Fu Manchu and Lin Tang escape are scenes directly reused from The Brides of Fu Manchu. Burt Kwouk is seen in these shots as he was a featured actor in the earlier film although he is not credited for this film.
•	This was the last in a series of five 1960's Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee. Each also featured Tsai Chin as his daughter and Howard Marion Crawford as Dr Petrie the friend of Fu Manchu's greatest opponent Nayland Smith. The role of Smith himself was played by three different actors - Nigel Green played him in the first film, next Douglas Wilmer for two films and then Richard Greene for the final two. The sequence of the five films were as follows:- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).

Writer: Jack Turley / Director/Producer: Bert I. Gordon
Type: American / Horror	Running Time: 86 mins
Prologue: A disposal craft is dumping drums of radioactive waste at sea off the coast of Florida. However one drum washes to shore and over time this corrodes and oozes silver slime. Ants are seen crawling in the slime...(end of prologue) Marilyn Fryser is a real estate agent who is trying to attract investment for an isolated area of Florida coastline which is to be developed into a resort called "Dreamland Shores". A party of ten or so potential investors are taken by motor yacht up the coastline and dropped off at the beach where they are treated to a gourmet buffet before being shown around the land plot which has all the proposed (but unbuilt) facilities marked out. One investor and his wife go off on their own to look around in the surrounding woodland and are suddenly attacked and killed by murderous ants the size of ponies. And when the other investors get back to the shore they see giant ants destroying their boat. The motor yacht was their only escape route with the only other unappealing option a treacherous trek through the jungle-like everglades where these horrific ants are on the loose. They stay put on the beach and light a fire which keeps the killer ants at bay but after a flash storm the protective fire is put out and they are forced to attempt the land trek. Their numbers are reduced by ant attacks until there are only five that remain. They begin to realise that the ants are allowing them to go in one direction and only attack if they stray - almost as if they are being herded. Eventually they reach a small town and feel they are at last safe. They contact the local sheriff who appears to be helpful at first but when they try to leave town they discover they are being held prisoner. They are taken to a sugar refining plant where they discover that the queen ant has taken residence and has used the same pheromone control she has over her worker ants to enslave the town's entire human population into working to feed her ant colony with refined sugar cane. The survivors are lined up to be indoctrinated by the queen's pheromone spray - but the yacht captain Dan Stokely has a flare in his pocket and uses it to mortally wound the queen - the humans become released from their docile enslavement and the worker ants start attacking all the humans in revenge. Another of the survivors Joe Morrison drives a petrol tanker into the refinery and it blows up the ants and their main source of food - sugar. The immediate crisis is over and the survivors quickly leave town.
Comment: Four of the original party survive the terror and are able to safely leave - although not shown it seems almost certain that there would be other mutant ants elsewhere in the vast jungle-like area that did survive. Marilyn Fryser's final fate is uncertain - she was attacked by the queen as she died and sprayed with her final pheromone command - but what this was for and whether Marilyn lived or died after the explosion is not shown. One can surmise it was a set-up for a possible sequel in which Marilyn had been imbued with queen ant status and become their new leader. Marilyn is an unsympathetic character who it seems is probably trying to swindle the investors with a bogus investment opportunity into worthless land that is not actually going to be developed into a luxury resort.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Don Sharp / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 92 mins
It is the early part of the 1900s (1920s?) and in Imperial China the fiendish criminal Fu Manchu appears to have at last been brought to account. He has been tried and publicly executed by beheading and Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Nayland Smith was present to witness the final demise of his evil adversary. Months later back in London, Smith is becoming concerned about a rising crime wave across Europe which he perceives to be of an organised nature as if controlled by one mastermind - and if he didn't know him to be dead his chief suspect would be Fu Manchu. Smith makes some enquiries and discovers that a Chinese actor famous for his Fu Manchu impersonations has not been seen for many months. Smith realises that the cunning criminal must have hypnotised the actor and effected a substitution and the man seen executed was in fact the replacement. And sure enough we soon discover that Fu Manchu is alive and operating with his daughter Lin Tang from an underground base beneath the Thames. A death in London of a scientist's chauffeur leads Smith and his friend Dr Petrie into the investigation of a kidnapped scientist called Professor Muller. The professor's assistant Carl Jannsen explains to Smith that the research they were conducting involved the distillation of a liquid made from rare black berries from a Tibetan mountainside that is the most deadly poison ever created. However it only retains its lethal qualities in below freezing temperatures - above freezing it is harmless. Only the Tibetan monks knew the ancient secret of retaining its potency above freezing. The monk's secret was discovered by a British expeditioner in 1910 but that knowledge is kept safely locked away in a museum vault amongst the expedition papers. The megalomaniacal Fu Manchu announces his presence to the world declaring that he will soon be making demands that must be obeyed and to demonstrate his power he aerial sprays a small English town with the poisonous liquid on a cold morning while temperatures are still below freezing. Everyone in the town dies in an instant. But to be truly all-powerful Fu Manchu knows he cannot rely on it being cold so he steals the 1910 expedition papers from the museum and sets Professor Muller the task of utilising the ancient knowledge to adapt the liquid to retain its toxicogenic qualities at all temperatures - using the professor's captured daughter Maria to force cooperation. Elsewhere Smith and his colleagues manage to work out where Fu Manchu's base is located by triangulating recent activity. With military support they mount an attack and manage to rescue the prisoners and flood the base thereby destroying Fu Manchu's work and supply of berries. The Chinese criminal survives this set-back and heads off to Tibet to get a new supply of berries armed with the secret of how to effectively distil the devastating poison and renew his global threat. Smith and Petrie follow him to the Tibetan monks' palace temple upon the only mountainside the rare berries grow. The monks are unaware of Fu Manchu's evil intentions and are quite happy to supply him with berries. Smith and his colleagues manage to substitute themselves for some berry-gathering monks and deliver to him a casket of berries which Smith has packed with high-explosives on a timer. After delivery they quickly depart to a safe distance and watch as the palace erupts in a huge fireball explosion - destroying too in its swell the berry-rich mountainside. Moments before the blast Fu Manchu had realised that something was seriously wrong - but did he and his daughter have enough time to somehow save themselves? - inevitably if they did then the world shall hear from Fu Manchu again.

aka: Rain of Fire
Writers: Sergio Donati, Alberto De Martino / Director: Alberto De Martino / Executive Producer: Edmondo Amati
Robert Caine is head of a construction company that is planning to build a thermonuclear power plant in a third-world middle-eastern country to solve that country's energy needs. The country's Prime Minister has agreed to the project despite political opposition from his rivals. The construction requires the demolition of an ancient cave system within which was found a carving of the name of Jesus and a depiction of a seven-headed serpent. Back in England at Caine Enterprises' headquarters anti-nuclear demonstrators become very vocal in their disapproval of the project. Robert's wife Eva who is the majority shareholder tells Robert she has decided to cancel the project at the next board meeting for fear that the controversy will be the company's ruination. But before she has the chance to announce her decision she is accidentally killed by a fanatical protestor whose target had been Robert - and so Robert carries on with the project which he so fervently believes will be of great benefit. Robert's grown-up son Angel has a brilliant mind and has designed the power plant's unique and revolutionary new efficiency concepts which include seven spherical towers. Angel is eager to be helpful to his father and assist in any way he can to get the plant built. After his wife's death Robert starts a new relationship with a much younger woman called Sara Golan and before long she falls pregnant. Angel is pleased that he will have a younger brother and Robert tells him a long held secret that Angel had been a twin at birth but the first born twin had become entangled in Angel's umbilical cord and been strangled. A scientist working for Caine Enterprises called Professor Griffith is asked to double-check Angel's figures and when he feeds it into the computer it outputs the seemingly meaningless alphanumeric string "2V231" which neither Griffith or Robert can understand. However when held up to a mirror it is found to resemble the word "Jesus". Robert asks a padre called Monsignor Charrier if it means anything and is told that a reversed "Jesus" is a symbol of the anti-Christ - an evil force that represents a mirror image of Jesus. Where Christ had 12 apostles, the anti-Christ would have 21 and his teachings would lead to destruction rather than salvation resulting in the end of the world as foretold in the Apocalypse. The ancient writings speak of it raining for 1263 days and the destruction is symbolised by the appearance of a seven-headed serpent just like the painting from the cave. The anti-Christ will be born as a second son and is prophesised to appear in the second half of the 20th century and so may be born soon or perhaps is already born and waiting for the right moment. Robert has a nightmare vision of the destruction that may come and suddenly realises that all the design characteristics of the proposed power plant match numbers from the ancient prophecy - for instance the power output is to be 1263 megawatts (one example of many such numeric coincidences, the others I've not mentioned) - even the design of the plant's seven towers seem to resemble the seven headed serpent of prophesy. Robert fears that his power plant will unwittingly bring about a holocaust and that the baby that Sara is carrying will be an evil second son who will become the anti-Christ that will make it happen. Robert tries to persuade Sara to have an abortion but she refuses and so in desperation he attempts to trick her by taking her for what she thinks will be a routine gynaecological check up at a clinic but whose staff he has paid to actually perform a forced abortion on her - however Sara realises just in time what has been planned and flees the clinic. Robert's increasingly fragile mental state results him in being committed to a psychiatric hospital that specialises in religious fanatics. However what Robert had overlooked is that Angel is already a second son (his older brother being the dead twin) and we discover it is he who is the anti-Christ already. Angel has designed the power plant that when completed will bring about a rain of destruction which will wipe out all mankind and purify everything - he has hidden his evil nature behind a mask of calm inscrutability and helpfulness but has been secretly making sure that any obstacles that lay in the way of the smooth progress of the construction were quickly eliminated - such as his own mother and political agitators in the middle-eastern country.. With Robert now safely out of the way in hospital Angel takes over as company chairman. One of his first moves is to increase the number of under-executives on the board to 21 as he presses forward with the plans to build the plant on schedule...
Comment: The story is left hanging unresolved on the assumption that Angel has won and his plan will come to pass.

Writer: David Sherwin / Director: Lindsay Anderson / Producers: Michael Medwin, Lindsay Anderson
Type: Drama	Running Time: 106 mins
Set in the modern day (1968) in a boys public school run on very traditional old-fashioned values of discipline and order. The school prides itself on educating boys to the highest standard and providing the nation with its future leaders. The senior year boys are called Whips and they maintain the strict protocol of the school's disciplinary structure and are treated with reverence and fear by the younger boys who know they have to do whatever they are told or suffer unpleasant consequences. Mick Travis and his two roommates Knightley and Wallace are seniors a year below the whips and hate the codes of conduct they have to abide by. They have a barely concealed rebellious nature that no amount of punishment and humiliation from the whips is able to eradicate. Mick has a keen fascination with warfare and glorifies famous gunmen - he believes that revolution is the purest act of self-expression. Plotwise not a lot happens throughout the film as we just live out a year in capsule form witnessing Mick's growing resentment to the rigid strictures around him and the way he is being forced to behave in ways he finds reprehensible. He is biding his time until a suitable opportunity comes along to allow him to take his just revenge. The school also teaches soldiering and all the boys don cadet uniforms and take part in mock military exercises carrying rifles and dummy ammunition. Mick and his friends have difficulty taking it seriously and find the playacting ludicrous and resent taking orders from stuffy teachers and whips pretending to be generals. When Mick and his two pals take pot-shots at the Chaplain with their air rifles they are punished by having to clear out the basement storehouse underneath the chapel of its old theatrical props. While doing this they discover a secret passage into an underground room containing an arsenal of weapons and live ammunition - and a fitting revenge is plotted. At the end of term there is an assembly in the chapel with an ex-boy who has become a general giving a stirring speech about how tradition and high values are not to be scorned at. During his address a fire starts from underneath and the invited dignitaries and parents rush out into the courtyard in panic. And from the rooftops Mick and his friends open fire with machine guns and bazookas mowing down the establishment figures they despise. The general takes charge and organises a response using the cadets' live training rounds and a huge gun battle ensues between the opposing sides. THE END (consequences not revealed)

Writer: David Zelag Goodman / Director: Michael Anderson / Producer: Saul David
Type: American / Sci-Fi	Running Time: 113 mins
Set in the 23rd century where mankind have long ago taken to living in entirely self-contained, self-sufficient white-domed cities following devastating wars and pollution. The citizens live a carefree life and have no concept of what may lay outside the dome. The city is controlled by a computer that maintains an ecologically balanced environment - but this can only be achieved if people do not live beyond the age of 30. It is therefore an accepted fact-of-life that everyone has a thirty-year life span controlled by a life-clock crystal embedded in their palms and when it blinks red their time is up and they must submit to the Carrousel ritual for their "lastday" ceremony where their bodies are destroyed - the people joyously believe that as their current lives end they are reborn as babies and so complete the cycle of life. There are however a small number of citizens who are unwilling to accept the termination of their lives and prefer to go on the run. A team of special policemen called "Sandmen" are employed to track down and kill these runners. Logan is a Sandman who is dedicated to his job and thinks of runners as being mad misfits who have bizarrely foregone their chance of being gloriously reborn. Logan is given a special mission by the life-clock computer. He is told the surprising news that not all runners are killed and some get away to a place called "Sanctuary". Logan's assignment is to pretend to be a runner himself and find this "Sanctuary" and report back its location so that the 1056 missing people can be accounted for. Logan's crystal is prematurely made to blink to back-up his story of being a runner approaching his "lastday". Logan contacts a woman called Jessica who has been identified as a sympathiser connected to an underground movement that assists runners. Although Logan's status as a Sandman is cause for suspicion he manages to gain her trust and she introduces him to the people who can help and he is directed to a route under the city by which he can make his escape. Jessica is nowhere near her 30th year but she too would like to find Sanctuary and decides to go with him. Logan and Jessica follow the directions which take them through an automated hydro-powerplant under the city and then upwards on an ancient mechanical elevator to an ice cavern. There they encounter an ancient silver servo-robot called Box whose purpose was to store fish protein as food - a now superfluous requirement which was never decommissioned and has therefore continued automatically. Once the fish stocks ran out the robot's adaptive nature caused it to seize upon any form of protein that it encountered - namely the human runners. Box has therefore frozen and stored galleries of humans who have previously passed this way seeking Sanctuary. Logan manages to destroy the robot and he and Jessica continue on with their journey through the caves until they come to the mythical "outside". It becomes apparent that they are probably the first runners to ever make it this far - all previous runners must have fallen victim to Box. "Sanctuary" is just a word for hope that people have clung to but no one has ever reached. Logan and Jessica explore the outside and eventually come to an abandoned outdoor city overgrown with vegetation (it is Washington DC). It seems completely deserted until they find one sole occupant - an old man. Logan and Jessica find it hard to accept that anyone could grow to be so old. Logan and Jessica have strongly bonded during their travels and Logan has come to see that the whole life-cycle of the dome-city citizens is based on a falsehood and that people need not die at thirty when they are still young and vigorous. He realises that no one is ever reborn but just replaced by newborn to maintain a stable population number. Logan is determined to return to the city and tell the people the truth. Jessica does not want him to go because she fears no one will believe him and he will be killed - but Logan is determined to try. They travel back and find another way into the city - and just as Jessica predicted the people are not interested in Logan's words which to the peoples' ears make him sound like a raving madman. Logan is captured by Sandmen and taken to the computer room where he undergoes a mind-probe so the computer can discover what Logan has learned of Sanctuary during his mission. Logan's information that there is no such place as Sanctuary goes against the established facts with which the computer has been programmed. It cannot handle the contradictory data and it starts malfunctioning. Logan escapes and uses a weapon to blow up the computer. This causes the whole city to begin to be rocked by explosions and the citizens flee in panic and escape through the now breached dome walls to the outside. The concept of outdoors is alien to them but the people soon come to accept their new-found freedom and readily adapt to the new way of life.
Comment: Another aspect of the plot is that Logan's Sandman friend Francis gets suspicious of Logan's activities and being unaware of the special mission follows his friend outside trying to track him down and kill him thinking he has become a real runner. Francis tracks Logan to the city but is eventually killed after they have a big fight-off.

Writers: Juan Cobos, Miguel Rubio / Director: Pedro Lazaga / Executive Producers: Manuel Perez, Robert Ausnit
Type: Romantic Drama	Running Time: 91 mins
David Autager is an unmarried architect in his late 30s living in Madrid. While attending a concert recital he spots a remarkably pretty young woman from across the room - Their eyes meet and there is an intense mutual attraction - but she is with her friends and David does nothing about it. The girl is an arts student called Anna and she does not intend to let the matter rest. She finds out more about the man she saw and effects a way to meet him properly. Once they get together it is clear they are made for each other and that it is she who is most determined to make it happen. Her personality is so fresh and lively that he cannot help but be charmed by her playful zest and enthusiasm for living. David receives a commission to build a villa in Majorca and regretfully tells Anna he will be away for a while meeting his new client. When he arrives he discovers that Anna has been a bit mischievous and it is she who is his client. She has persuaded her rich father to let her build her own villa and has drawn rough designs of the way she would like her ideal home to look like. Over the coming days and weeks their romance continues - both of them are blissfully happy in each others company and it is clear they are the perfect couple. They get married and have a happy honeymoon in Venice. They settle down into married life still totally smitten with one another. Before long Anna begins to have periods of unaccountable tiredness. She is able to shake it off at first and act like her normal self. But then she begins to suffer memory lapses that come and go and it soon becomes clear that there is something seriously wrong with her. She lapses into a coma and the specialists tell David that she is suffering from a lipomatosis of the nervous system - a very rare disease for which there is no known cure. The specialist Dr Valls gives Anna less than a week to live. David is utterly devastated about the impending loss of his soul-mate and rails with despair imploring the doctor that there must be something that can be done. Seeing David's overwhelming distress Dr Valls ventures that the only thing that they can possibly do is use cryogenics to freeze Anna's body into a state of suspended animation and then wait and hope that medical science will come up with a cure for her condition some time in the future. David agrees to the measure and Anna's body is placed into frozen suspension in a cryogenics capsule. David carries on his life without Anna as best he can throwing himself into his work but always thinking about her and reliving in his memory the happy months they had together in perfect bliss. He does not enter into any new relationships with women and remains completely faithful to Anna clinging to the hope of a miracle. Forty years go by and it is now the year 2014. David is an old man in his seventies. Fashions and technology have moved on but for him there have been no positive developments - Anna is still in frozen suspension. Then David gets a visit from a specialist called Dr Aurgery with some remarkable news. Scientists have finally discovered a cure for Anna's disease and they are at long last going to treat her. Anna is successfully revived and cured. She is unchanged in age from forty years ago and is still as young and beautiful as ever. The doctor's advise David not to visit her until she is made fully aware of the enormous amount of time that has passed in the world around her. Anna comes to terms with the passing of the years and aches to see David again no matter what he looks like. When she has fully convalesced she is taken to be reunited with David. He is living in the dream villa she designed and which he went on to build. David is the most anxious not sure if Anna will accept his elderly looks. But Anna is oblivious to any change and is still deeply in love with him and overwhelmed that he waited forty years just for her. David's happiness is complete and the long-hoped for miracle has come to pass. Anna is once again full of the vitality and youthful exuberance that she always had. She thinks he is the most wonderful man ever for giving her this second chance at life. They resume their life together and are blissfully happy again for a while until David begins to feel unwell and succumbs to a sudden heart attack and dies. Anna is overcome with grief. They waited so long to be together again and now after too short a time reunited they are parted again forever. Anna has maudlin thoughts of joining him in death but vows that she will not wallow in sorrow but use the second chance he gave her to live her life anew.

NOTES:
•	Based on the novel by Germán Ubillos. English adaptation by Derek Parsons
•	This was a Spanish film that is reviewed here because the lead roles are taken by two British actors: Mark Burns and Lynne Frederick. The version reviewed was in English with the two leads speaking their own lines and the Spanish actors mostly dubbed. The credits were in English (job titles, etc) and it carried the English title of "A Long Returning". The Spanish version is titled "Largo Retorno".
•	There are no end credits showing character names so beyond the two British leads I couldn't match up the various supporting characters to the other actor names that appear in the opening credits. The surnames of "Autager" (for David) and "Dr Aurgory" (The future doctor) are not likely to be the correct spellings, but I've had to go with what they sounded like for the purposes of the plot summary.
•	The starting age of David is not stated but I've based it on the actor's real age at the time and his apparent age 40 years later.
•	Although there is a peripheral science fiction element to the story with the cryogenics and the latter portion of the story being set in the future, it would not really be apposite to class it as a science fiction film.

Writer/Producer: John Patrick / Director: Daniel Petrie
Type: Drama	Running Time: 84 mins
Eddie is an American drifter who is wandering Europe on his way to nowhere in particular. He has a talent for singing and along the way he takes jobs in bars and restaurants performing for the customers. He is a bit of a hot-head and usually ends up getting the sack and being forced to move on. Currently Eddie is working in an Italian restaurant and gets into a fight with a boisterous customer. The owner fires him but a patron called Gina takes a shine to his looks and his talent and offers him a job with the circus she works at. Gina is in her forties and has a hankering for younger men who can make her feel as if she still young and vital. Part of the arrangement is that Eddie will share her trailer and her bed and in return he will get paid work at the circus helping her in her ventriloquism act as a dashing minstrel that her cheeky manikin "Godiva" takes a liking to for the audience's entertainment. Another circus act is the equestrian Moreno Trio who perform daring horse-riding stunts. The trio consist of husband and wife Ricco and Elenora Moreno and also Tessa who is Elenora's younger sister. Tessa is young and pretty and takes quite a shine to Eddie who likes her in return. However Gina is very possessive and dislikes Eddie being around the younger woman. Ricco too is not keen on Tessa finding romance because he secretly fancies her himself although his desire is not reciprocated by Tessa who is respectful of her sister. Gina's jealousy eventually gets out of hand and she wields a knife which Eddie wrestles from her grasp - but Gina's ex-husband Bozo the clown is nearby and hears the commotion and jumps to the wrong conclusion that Eddie is attacking Gina (whom he still adores). The two men fight and Bozo ends up being stabbed in the stomach and falls down seemingly dead. Eddie knows he cannot stick around because no one will believe it was an accident and he quickly departs town on the next bus to escape whatever justice might be forthcoming. He is surprised to find Tessa on the same bus - she too is running away so that her presence will not ruin her sister's marriage. The bus is heading for Innsbruck over a snowy mountain road. When they come to a police checkpoint Eddie assumes it is for him and gets off the bus and starts making his way on foot across country - Tessa decides to go with him. They walk for ages and eventually find an isolated log cabin in a snowy mountain pass. The cabin shows signs of recent habitation but seems to have been mysteriously abandoned so they make themselves comfortable for the night. However what they do not know is that the real reason for the roadblock was to turn vehicles back because of the danger of an avalanche which this area is prone to at this time of the year. The next morning the army are due to be firing cannons into the mountains to force the accumulated snow to dislodge before it builds to dangerous levels and so the area has been evacuated as a precaution. Eddie and Tessa spend a blissful night together falling in love and next morning set out early unaware of the army's plans. When the cannon's are fired they are almost caught by the tide of avalanching snow but just manage to find cover. Tessa decides to return to the circus after Elenora and Ricco persuade her that there is no need for her to run away. Eddie also decides he must return and face whatever punishment is in store for him for Bozo's death. Upon his return he finds he had been running for nothing because Bozo is not dead after all and is on the road to recovery from the knife wound. Eddie is ever so happy and rejoins the circus act and he and Tessa soon decide to get married.

Writer: Andrew Meredith / Director: John Krish / Producer: Judd Bernard
Type: Drama	Running Time: 86 mins
Peter Reaney works for a management agency whose top act is pop megastar Barry Black who has his own TV show and a legion of young girl fans. Barry is a demanding client, but his importance to the agency is so high that every little whim he has is catered for - including arranging for any groupies that take his fancy to be smuggled discreetly into his hotel rooms. Peter's job keeps him away from home a lot when Barry is on tour and his wife Angela is fed up with it all and wants a divorce. So Peter leaves home and goes to live temporarily with his best friend Val Pringle (a man) who also works for the same agency. Val's wife Jody and Peter have been secretly having an affair behind Val's back - although Val has been carrying on with another woman himself. When a 17-year-old groupie called Mary Gray gets pregnant by Barry Black the agency boss Alfred Felix arranges for her to get a back-street abortion in order to keep any hint of scandal out of the newspapers. But Peter is outraged when Felix insists on saving money by going for the cheapest abortionist they can find and he offers his resignation - giving four weeks notice. When Val is killed in an accident Peter reassess his life and with his separation from Angela - he and Val's now-widow Jody look set to become more of an official couple - although she wants him full time and Peter's agency work is so demanding on his time. But when Felix offers him a partnership in the firm, Peter decides to give the agency another chance. However one of his first tasks is to smooth over the complications which resulted from Mary Gray's abortion. She died as a result of haemorrhaging caused by a drug-induced miscarriage carried out by the cheap doctor. Peter attends the inquest and is so appalled by the tragedy that he confronts Barry Black on the steps of a gig in front of a legion of screaming young fans telling him about the consequences of his actions. Above the noise Barry shouts back that he couldn't care less about the little scrubber and there are plenty more where she came from. The crowd hear this and fall deathly silent at his show of utter contempt for them and he falters knowing his outburst has left his career in tatters. Peter walks away quitting his job and going to take up a life with Jody.
Comment: The title of the film seems somewhat overblown for what is a fairly routine sort of film - no one has any special powers or displays any unusually high level of charisma that no women can possibly resist. Mind you it's not completely clear if the "man" referred to in the title is Barry Black or Peter Reaney - the pop star's "power" might be his star quality that lets him pick and choose from girls only too willing to sleep with him - but Barry is a peripheral character compared to Peter who has a string of affairs to his name because he has a certain special something that women fall for - but nothing that could really be classed as an especially significant "power".

Writers: Donald S. Sanford, Joyce Perry / Director: Boris Sagal / Producer: Lewis J. Rachmil
Type: War Drama	Running Time: 86 mins
During World War II, RAF Mosquito Bomber Squadron 641 is on a mission to destroy German V1 rocket launching platforms to combat the growing threat of the "flying bombs" that are terrorising London. The squadron leader of the four-plane mission is David Scott and one of his wingmen is his best friend Quint Munroe. The squadron is attacked by Messerschmitts and Scott's plane goes down. Quint sees his friend's plane explode shortly after crashing and knows that Scott could not have possibly survived. This is a crushing blow for Quint because David "Scotty" Scott had been like a brother to him. Quint had been an orphan and was virtually raised by the Scott family. It falls upon Quint to tell Scotty's wife Beth the tragic news - she is devastated by her loss. Quint is promoted to Squadron Leader just as a vital new operation is being planned. Intelligence information has revealed that the Germans are working on the development of a next generation of V rockets at an underground research lab beneath a French castle called Châteaux Charlon. Reconnaissance photos show access to the research laboratories is via a tunnel mouth that would be hard to bomb conventionally. Therefore they plan to use the bouncing bomb principal developed by the wartime inventor Barnes Wallis and bounce bombs across a field and directly into the mouth and down the tunnel to explode inside. Once that is accomplished the whole châteaux must be obliterated with a follow-up carpet-bombing raid using conventional bombs. Quint's squadron go through extensive practice to try and establish the ideal distance and altitude at which to launch the special bombs - but there are too many random elements involved to increase the success rate much beyond about 1 in 10. In off-duty hours Beth seeks the emotional support of Quint and they spend days out together and eventually this leads to a romantic affair. The Germans make a strategic move to defend the castle by turning it into a Prisoner of War camp for captured RAF men and they send the British a film to show the prisoners arriving hoping it will lower morale of the pilots if they know that any attack they make on the installation would be killing their own buddies. When the film is shown Quint is shocked to see that Scotty is amongst the prisoners. Quint decides it would be kinder not to tell Beth that Scotty is still alive. High Command order the bombing raid must go ahead despite the barbaric German tactics although the pilots are justifiably uneasy. Quint proposes an adjunct to the mission that they could use one of the bouncing bombs (called High-Balls) to destroy the castle wall and give the men inside a fighting chance to get out before the carpet-bombing. Quint's plan is approved and the POW's are informed via a French underground network to be ready to make a break for it on Sunday morning. High Command's only proviso to Quint is that the tunnel mouth is the priority and a bomb may only be used for the castle wall if there are High-Ball bombs left over after the tunnel has been successfully destroyed first - each plane in the squadron can carry two of the High Ball bombs and only four Mosquito's that can carry them. The follow-up carpet-bombing squadrons will go ahead regardless of the success of the "bonus" castle break-out mission. The raid goes ahead - one Mosquito is destroyed by German air defences, several High-Balls miss their target and the success of the mission finally hinges upon two Mosquitoes with one remaining bomb each and two targets. Quint's wingman makes his run with the penultimate bomb which MUST hit target if the final High-Ball is to be used for the castle. But he is hit by anti-aircraft fire and unable to deploy so in a final effort of bravery he flies his dying plane into the mouth of the tunnel in a suicide run and ensures the success of the first stage of the mission. Quint is then free to use the final bomb to blow up the castle wall as planned and the prisoners fight their way out into the surrounding countryside. Quint's Mosquito is hit and his plane makes an emergency crash landing - he survives and joins the men on the ground. Quint finds Scotty who has lost his memory in his crash and does not remember who he is or about Beth. The escapees become pinned down by a German tank which must be taken out if they are to get away. The French resistance are helping the airmen and have a bazooka and Scotty volunteers to head the tank off and fire it. This exposes him and he has to fire at point blank range which kills him as well as destroying the tank - just as he dies he remembers Beth. With this obstacle removed the airmen manage to get away and through underground French Resistance networks find their way back to England. When Quint arrives back at base Beth is waiting for him but he decides it would be unfair to tell her that her husband had been alive after all but has died "again" in an act of selfless bravery.

Writers: William Marchant, Jenni Hall / Director: John Newland / Producer: Wilbur Stark
Type: Drama	Running Time: 95 mins
Francesca Anderson is well-off married woman in her early 40s who lives in a mansion with her somewhat older husband Robert and their 19-year-old son James who is on the verge of going to university. James and Francesca are unusually close and they sometimes behave more like a flirting couple than mother and son. Now that James is almost a man Robert is beginning to think that their affectionate behaviour is becoming inappropriate and James himself is starting to feel he needs a girlfriend. James meets a girl called Julie and they start going out. This causes Francesca to become jealous, feeling she is losing the special bond she has with her son. When she was much younger Francesca had an affair with a man called Macer who died in an accident and in her mind James has become a substitute for her lost lover. She cannot bear the thought of losing him again. Francesca starts drinking heavily and causing Robert embarrassment - they have a bitter argument and in her ire she whispers to him a secret that makes him lose all reason and physically attack her. James has to step in to protect her and drive her away. But Robert is so incensed that he chases them and on a country road cuts them off. A fierce fight ensues between father and son in which an enraged Robert starts swinging a golf club. James grabs the club and hits Robert who falls to the ground. James sits in the car to recover while Francesca checks on Robert and soon comes to tell James that he is dead. James is arrested for murder but fortunately his story of self-defence in protecting his mother is believed and he is found not guilty. Back home Francesca is delighted to have James all to herself once more and hopes things will return to the way they had always been between them. James however is still reeling from the knowledge that he killed his own father. But Francesca tells him he shouldn’t feel guilty for two reasons:- firstly Robert didn't die when James hit him - it was actually she who finished him off when she went to check on him; and secondly Robert wasn't even really James' father. Macer was actually his father (and this was the whispered secret that sent Robert into a rage). Instead of reassuring James as she'd hoped, these revelations appal him and despite her begging him to stay he immediately leaves home and heads off to be with his girlfriend Julie, leaving Francesca in a hysterical state of sorrow.

Director/Producer: George Harrison Marks
Type: Naturist	Running Time: 59 mins
The story of five working girls who go on holiday:- secretary Petrina, shoe-shop assistant Jackie, and dancer Pamela are three chums who decide to go on a weekend away together touring South West England in their car. Meanwhile another two friends Angela and Bridget, who both work in a petrol station, also decide to take a break and go hiking down to the Cornish coast to a place they know where they can partake in their favourite pastime of naturism. The two groups of girls variously take in visits to Stonehenge; the picturesque fishing village of Clovelly; the ruins of King Arthur's castle at Tintagel; and the Minak outdoor theatre at Porthcurno. Eventually the three girls arrive at Lands End and see "The First and Last House in England". They go down to a deserted beach cove and change into their bikinis for some fun and games. Pam strays onto the neighbouring beach not realising it is part of private club owned by the Trewyn Sun Club. There she meets naturists Angela and Bridget who have the beach to themselves. Pamela calls her two pals to join them and soon the five girls become friends and Pamela, Petrina and Jackie have all shed their costumes to experience for themselves the uninhibited delights of naturism. They play on the beach for a while and then Angela and Bridget invite the other three back to the sun club itself to have a look round the facilities and meet other members. The three girls enjoy themselves immensely with the new found freedom of being naked and the film ends with them still spending a pleasant relaxing day in the sunny outdoors - as nature intended.
Comment: The film is an hour long although the first 40 minutes is a kind of travelogue of the South West of England as the girls make their way to the coast - and the nudism element of the film does not begin until the final third of the film. However the journey is not uninteresting - it is well filmed (and in colour) and the narrator delivers some suitably corny dialogue that is reasonably entertaining. There is a soundtrack with some speech heard from the girls but the story is mostly told via the narrator's words.

Writer: James Goldman / Director: Franklin J. Schaffner / Producer: Sam Spiegel
Type: Historical Drama	Running Time: 177 mins
Historical drama telling the story of the changing fortunes of the Tsar of Russia Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra. This summary only provides a brief overview of some of the key events seen in the film. It begins at the start of the 20th century with the joyous event of the birth of their first son Alexi. Nicholas and Alexandra already had four daughters but now with their first son they have assured the continuation of the Romanov dynasty which has ruled Russia for 300 years. However it soon becomes clear that Alexi is unwell and is afflicted by haemophilia meaning his blood is slow to clot and any bleeds he has could by fatal - even everyday grazes. He is therefore treated with extra care to shield him from harm and is a constant concern for the parents. Alexandra seeks the counsel of a peasant monk called Rasputin who is said to have special healing powers and an innate insight into the course of future events. She believes that Alexis will be safe as long as the monk is close to hand and she therefore overlooks the excesses of Rasputin's hedonistically corrupt lifestyle. Nicholas is a well-intentioned man who is benevolent by nature but enters Russia into a disastrous war with Japan in 1904 which leads to a crushing defeat. A growing mood of revolutionary discontent gives rise to a radical Bolshevik movement whose principal players are Stalin and Trotsky. The story moves on a decade and political unrest is rife across Europe. In 1914 war breaks out and Russia sides with England and France against Germany. Patriotism briefly overrides internal unrest, but as the war continues Nicholas makes what the people and agitators consider to be unwise decisions which result in crushing military defeats. The Bolshevik movement gains momentum and Nicholas becomes a hated figure. A politician called Lenin comes to prominence. Tsar Nicholas is eventually forced into a position where he has no choice but to abdicate and place the country in the hands of the Duma (parliament). The new leaders are indecisive about what to do with the Romanov family who are placed into custody and moved from place to place for a year. Some say they should be allowed to live abroad in exile and others demand they must be executed for the misery they brought upon the Russian people and for all the millions of brave soldiers who died in the still ongoing war. Eventually orders come through that Nicholas, Alexandra and all five of their children must be executed and this is carried out without fanfare or ceremony or any prior warning to the family by their guards in July 1918 just as the Romanov's were allowed to start becoming optimistic for their future.

Writers: Joseph Kessel, Paul Dehn / Director: Anatole Litvak / Producer: Sam Spiegel
Type: War Drama	Running Time: 138 mins
Set during the Second World War and starting in 1942 in Warsaw, Poland under German occupation. In an apartment building a young Polish prostitute is murdered. Local police investigate and they call in German Intelligence officer Major Grau because the woman was also a German agent. A witness comes forward who had heard the woman's screams and hid in fear - but from his hiding place had seen that the murderer had been wearing the uniform of a German general. Major Grau has high respect for the principals of the law and is determined to catch the murderer no matter what his rank and high privilege. He establishes that there were three generals in Warsaw on the night in question who had no solid alibis:- Generals Tanz, Kahlenberg and Seidlitz-Gabler. All three generals prove reluctant to be interviewed and consider the murder of a prostitute to be of little consequence to them as they seek to quell civilian unrest in the city. Tanz is considered a great military leader who uses the might of the German army like a bulldozer to flatten whole towns to weed out and arrest dissenting factions. Kahlenberg and Seidlitz-Gabler are engaged in some secret plot together and distrust Tanz immensely. As Major Grau's investigative persistence grows he suddenly finds himself promoted to Lt Colonel and posted to Paris upon the recommendation of General Kahlenberg. Grau is in no position to refuse and so there his investigation stalls. Time and location move on to Paris in July 1944. Generals Kahlenberg and Seidlitz-Gabler are now posted to Paris and Tanz has just arrived after fighting a successful campaign on the Russian front. Lt Colonel Grau has good connections with Inspector Morand of the French police and with all three generals back together again he decides to discretely reopen his former waylaid investigation. The conspiracy that Kahlenberg and Seidlitz-Gabler are involved in is a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. They believe the war is lost but Hitler is too fanatically obsessed to be realistic and surrender and so the generals want to seize power and salvage some dignity for their nation before it is completely destroyed by the Allies. The culmination of their plot is imminent with a bomb ready to blow up the Fuehrer at a briefing in his bunker in the next day or so. Tanz is their big problem because he is fiercely loyal to the Nazi cause and must not be allowed to suspect anything. So as senior generals the conspirators order Tanz to take an enforced rest from duties and assign a lance corporal called Kurt Hartmann to accompany him around Paris and show him the sights. During his off-duty break Tanz at times appears on the brink of madness and has a fearsomely unpredictable nature. Tanz uses his privilege to gain access to restricted decadent art which he views with a cold sweat. On the second night he instructs Hartmann to arrange a prostitute for him. Tanz then brutally kills the woman but in a chilling display of calculated cunning he makes sure that Hartmann will be implicated - Hartmann is trapped because no one will believe his word against that of a general and he goes on the run. Grau immediately notices similarities between the current murder and the one in Warsaw and does not believe the evidence that points to Hartmann being the culprit. He restarts his investigation into the generals and comes to the conclusion that Tanz is the guilty man and goes off to arrest him in his office. He confronts Tanz alone with the murder charge just as news comes through on the radio that a plot to kill Hitler with a bomb has failed and Tanz reacts by shooting Grau dead to avoid arrest and then claiming that Grau was a part of the traitorous conspiracy to kill the Fuhrer. His word is not questioned and the murders of the prostitutes go unsolved. It is now the present day (1967) in Hamburg, Germany. A prostitute has been murdered and Inspector Morand, now working for Interpol, realises it is uncannily like the one he investigated in Paris in 1944 and the one his late friend Grau investigated in Warsaw in 1942. All three ex-generals are in Hamburg. The two ex-conspirators ended their war and became normal citizens but Tanz was arrested as a war criminal and has just finished serving a 20-year sentence. He is due to attend a reunion of his ex-troops as guest of honour. Morand follows up his leads and tracks down Hartmann who went on the run in 1944 and has been living under a new name ever since. He finds out from Hartmann what really went on in 1944 and the man agrees to testify. Tanz is confronted with the evidence against him and realises the game is finally up. He asks for a gun and goes off and shoots himself dead.

Writer: Robert Dillon / Director/Producer: William Castle
Type: Comedy Horror	Running Time: 82 mins
London-based American car salesman Tom Penderel has for the last month been sharing a flat with a man called Caspar Femm after responding to an advert. The arrangement is rather odd in that Tom is allowed to have the flat at night and Caspar uses it only during the day. Tom finds out that every night Caspar goes back to his ancestral home of Femm Hall in Dartmoor even though he is in fear of his life when he is there. Caspar buys a car from Tom and asks him to drive it down to Femm Hall for him to deliver it and he can at the same time meet his errant family including his cousin Cecily who is the only nice one of the lot. Tom arrives at Femm Hall one stormy evening and finds it is a large and gloomy gothic mansion. His first grisly discovery is that Caspar has just died of a fall down the stairs. He then meets the sweet and lovely Cecily who warns Tom to leave for his own safety - but the weather has closed in and made the roads unsafe so Tom has to stay the night. The Femm family are an odd bunch:- these include the gregarious head of the family Roderick and his nervous wife Agatha who knits to calm her nerves; Potiphar, who has built a great ark in the garden ready for the great biblical-scale floods he predicts will come; and the overbearingly seductive Morganna, whose father Morgan is insanely protective if she talks to any man. The odd thing is that none of the family really seem to want to live in the old house but are obliged to by the terms of an ancient will. Roderick's great great great grandfather was a pirate captain and left a fortune but stipulated that the money would only be inherited by the last remaining Femm who adhered to his rule that every Femm who wishes to inherit must live in this house and be home by at least midnight every day for a family gathering or they automatically forfeit their claim. The family fear that one of their number has become a murderer to speed up the progress of the inheritance by eliminating all their rival beneficiaries - but which is it? Tom doesn't know since none of them seem normal except for Cecily who says she only stays because she was born and grew up here and it is the only home she has known - but she is greatly concerned how the house seems to wickedly twist people as if it is itself alive with evil. There follows a series of murders after each of which a deep male voice booms out a mocking warning from a tape recording machine. The survivors wonder who will be next - even Tom is not safe because Roderick thinks he might be a distant Femm relative as he resembles a portrait of the pirate captain. As the murders mount up killing even the most likely suspect Roderick himself, Tom realises that the tape that is being played is artificially slowed down and when he replays it at the correct speed he finds it is the voice of Cecily. She reveals herself as the murdereress who wants the money for herself and she has planted bombs all round the house to kill all those remaining and destroy the house. Tom rushes round trying to find and disable the bombs and just in time he finds the final one and lobs it randomly into the woods where it happens to land just beside Cecily who is waiting with eager anticipation to watch the house explode - she is the only one who dies. Tom is the hero of the surviving Femms and much to Tom's dismay even Morgan decides that the seductively unquenchable Morganna can have him after all.
Comment: Although the plot description might not seem to have much comedy content it is played in a light comedic way by lead actor Tom Poston as he muddles his way through the situation.

Writers: Tudor Gates, Anthony Simmons / Director: Anthony Simmons / Producers: Adrian Gaye, Victor Lyndon
Type: Drama	Running Time: 106 mins
Sam Hall is an ageing ex-music hall entertainer who is down on his luck and lives by himself in a run-down riverside slum area called "Nine Elms". He busks for a living and his only companion is a scruffy but lovable shaggy dog called Bella who is old and becoming poorly. A couple of cheeky local sibling kids called Liz and Mark taunt him with names and disrespectful rhymes but he tries to ignore them. Liz is 11 or 12ish and Mark is 6-years-old. They come from a poor working class family living in a small dilapidated home. Their mother is always busy with their baby sister and their father is always working overtime at his factory and they rarely see him. They aspire to leave their cramped rundown home and move into a council property but they are on a waiting list and have no idea when they will be re-housed. They are lonely and bored and that is why they follow the odd busker man around and poke fun at him - because they find him curious and unusual. But after a while as they see him perform for the crowds using his once sought-after talents they begin to feel some sympathy and they tag along and help him with his act. After a while they become unlikely companions and Sam regales them with his personal philosophy of the values of a bygone era. The kids become keen to see what is on the other richer side of the River Thames and Sam takes them on a bus ride to see the sites of London and later shows them a special dog cemetery at Hyde Park. The children want a dog of their own and Sam takes them to Battersea dogs home to choose one - but they need to raise a £3.50 fee which is beyond them. So they start doing odd jobs to try and raise the money and Sam eventually lends them the rest. They get their new dog whom they call "Battersea" but their mother and father are appalled at having a new mouth to feed and say she must go back - what's more the council have at last approved their re-housing and no pets are allowed at the new place. The children run away and ask Sam if they can live with him. But his dog Bella has just died and Sam is very upset and gets drunk. The children decide to take the dog's body and give it an impromptu burial in the Hyde Park cemetery. Their parents are worried sick when the children don't come home and call in the police to look for them. Sam's recent association with the children is discovered and he guesses they may have gone to Hyde Park. It is pitch dark and the children cannot be found because they are hiding. But next morning they are discovered safe and well and the family are reunited and they give Sam their new dog Battersea to replace Bella as they head off to live in their new home.

Writer: Leo Marks / Director/Producer: Michael Powell
Type: Thriller	Running Time: 97 mins
Mark Lewis is a shy young man who lives alone in the upstairs flat of a large property that he owns with the downstairs rooms occupied by tenants. His passion is photography and he not only works in a film studio but his spare time is fully occupied with trying to put together the ultimate documentary film on the nature of fear. He is so obsessed with this endeavour that he has become a killer who films his victims as he is murdering them in order to capture their expression of terror on celluloid. He then surreptitiously films the police at work investigating the murders. Mark's obsession is borne of the way his father raised him as a child. Professor Lewis had been a biologist who had treated Mark's entire childhood as an experiment subjecting him to scares and unpleasant stimuli in order to film and document his reactions. As a result of this abnormal upbringing Mark became very repressed. He never managed to have proper relationships and finds talking to women very awkward. One of his tenants is a bubbly young woman called Helen Stephens who lives with her blind mother and has just turned twenty-one. She becomes fascinated with her shy inarticulate neighbour and starts to spend time with him. She is a budding author and thinks he may be able to help her with some photographs she needs to illustrate her book. Meanwhile at the film studio, Mark murders again trying to capture the sheer look of terror in his unsuspecting victim's face when she realises she is unexpectedly about to die. Next day her body is found and the police start to investigate the studio cast and crew. Mark begins to realise that the game may soon be up and he must be prepared to quickly complete his documentary. Abandoning all caution he murders again, killing a model and the police finally realise all the clues point to him and rush round to his house. Meanwhile Helen has discovered Mark's secret. He is in love with her and cannot kill her but instead explains his methods. His camera tripod leg hides a sharp blade which he uses to kill his victims and to maximise the fear-factor he attaches a mirror to the front of the camera so the victim is forced to watch themselves as they die thereby confronting their greatest fear head on - and it is this ultimate look that Mark films to use in his documentary. Mark sees the police gathering outside and sets in motion his final pre-prepared scene in which he will kill himself by the same method impaling his throat on the tripod blade as he looks in the mirror while his camera films his dying moments for the ultimate final scene in his life's work. Helen looks in horror as he completes this gory denouement and when the police break into his room he is dead.

Writer/Director: Arnold Louis Miller / Producers: Arnold Louis Miller, Stanley A Long
Type: Documentary	Running Time: 74 mins
A documentary that takes a look at life for modern young Londoners taking as its stated theme a kind of guide to a new-born babe showing it the variety of opportunities open to it in a society that seeks to categorise everything. It starts by explaining the difference between Mods, Rockers and Beatniks and interviewing some members of each persuasion on their views of life. It then opens up and becomes a mishmash of fairly random-seeming features such as the recording of a radio commercial; the life of a busy stripper; self-defence classes; a peek inside the workings of a hat shop; an erotic revue stage show; wrestlers; a tattooist; a delicate operation on a goldfish; a battery chicken processing plant; wife-swapping party; pop-star Billy J Kramer being mobbed by adoring fans at a signing; a foot corn removal procedure; nightclub comedian Ray Martine doing his act; ten-pin bowling.
Comment: Although it shows a few tassel-wearing showgirls and strippers it does not feature any proper nudity even though the filmmakers seem to clearly know that is what the (original 1960s) audience really wanted to see because occasionally a voiceover "interrupts" the main narration complaining about the lack of girls on show with another voice promising they'll be coming soon although they never really do. The potpourri of small sequences which are supposed to offer an insight into the lifestyle of a bustling society are not especially interesting (at least looking back on it now anyway). Perhaps the only notable item is one that stands out as a bit incongruous in that it is an acted "comedy" sketch in which a voiceover artiste is recording a straightforward line of dialogue for a TV advert which the director (played by Barry Cryer) is never happy with and wants him to keep over-stressing different words. All other items were seemingly real people doing things although some were clearly staged for the camera's benefit.

Writers: Ronald Harwood, Caspar Wrede / Director: Caspar Wrede / Producer: Ben Arbeid
Type: War Drama	Running Time: 85 mins
A British army battalion stationed on a Mediterranean island are engaged in an important mission to disrupt enemy activity. The mission's success depends on a stealthy approach through the jungle to take an enemy outpost by surprise and overwhelm the occupants. But as they approach one soldier called Private Potter suddenly cries out loudly in alarm and this alerts the enemy to the impending attack and the mission objective fails. Potter is arrested on a charge of wilfully assisting the enemy. His defence is that he couldn't help it because all of a sudden he saw God and was so shocked he shouted in alarm. Potter is a quiet and sensitive man who has no religious tendencies. The battalion's brigadier wants to throw the book at him and put him up for court martial but his commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Gunyon is more understanding and wants to try and determine if Potter truly had a spiritual vision, is suffering from madness, or if he is lying. Potter is interviewed by the brigade's padre and a psychiatrist who both offer differing opinions on how to proceed. But the Brigadier regards it as a moot point because Potter must be made an example of regardless of his reasons and will spend a considerable time in prison. Potter eventually decides to retract his assertion of seeing God and face the consequences. But he confides to Gunyon that he did really see the Almighty - all his life he had fought against a belief in God and he screamed out because he was scared when faced with the truth of His existence. He considers that his time in prison will give him time to properly reconsider his beliefs.

Writers: Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach / Director: Roman Polanski / Producer: Gene Gutowski
Type: Drama	Running Time: 100 mins
Carol Ledoux is a beautiful young French woman living in London and working as a manicurist at a beauty salon. However Carol is not independently minded and has an almost childlike dependency on her older sister Helen whom she lives with in an apartment. Carol is prone to unresponsive episodes where she appears to have gone into a trance which her work colleagues put down to daydreaming. At times she seems normal enough but at others she becomes unable to fully engage with the world on anything other than a perfunctory level. Her beauty brings her many admirers including a bachelor called Colin who perceives her distant vagueness as being an exotically aloof affectation and is keen to get to know her better. Helen is planning a fortnight's holiday away with her boyfriend Michael during which Carol will be left alone. Carol can look after herself on a day-to-day basis and so Helen thinks she'll be able to cope alright. Carol dislikes Michael and hates it when he stays overnight resenting the intrusion - there is something about men in general that causes her feelings of disquiet and anxiety. Helen and Michael depart leaving Carol on her own. Without the stabilising grounding of her sister's presence Carol's mind begins to play tricks on her and her mental state quickly deteriorates. As the days of isolation go by she starts to see large cracks appearing in the apartment and imagine the walls are trying to grab at her. As her state of paranoia increases she retreats into a timid shell afraid to go out or perform any domestic tasks such as cleaning. In her fevered delusions a male intruder repeatedly rapes her. Colin tries to phone her but gets no reply so with increasing concern for her wellbeing he goes round to her apartment and has to break in. Carol panics and beats him to death with a heavy candlestick and puts his body in the bath. Some days later the landlord comes round for his rent and seeing how vulnerable she is tries to opportunistically seduce her. Carol reacts by slashing him with a razor and stabbing him to death. When Helen and Michael return home they find the apartment in a filthy unkempt mess, then find the dead bodies and finally discover Carol hiding under a bed completely withdrawn into herself in a cataleptic state of regression.

Writer: David Ambrose / Director: David Hemmings / Producer: Antony I. Ginnane
Type: Australian / Chiller	Running Time: 77 mins
David Keller is the pilot of a 747 passenger plane which crash lands in a field outside a small town shortly after take off from an Australian airport. The plane explodes and becomes a raging inferno killing all the 350 passengers and crew - except remarkably David Keller who walks away from the wreckage with barely a scratch. David has lost his memory of the incident and cannot remember how the accident occurred. Air Accident investigators led by a man called Slater try and piece together the puzzle to determine what caused the disaster whilst David agonises over events wondering why and how he managed to survive. He is contacted by a woman called Hobbs who is spiritually sensitive and feels there is something important going on that needs to be explored and asks David to help her. Meanwhile some people involved in the investigation begin to hear strange noises like people screaming and some end up dying horrible deaths. The head investigator Slater is attacked himself but seems to come through it unscathed. Hobbs suggests to David that they try to coax out his memories by visiting the recovered cockpit being stored in a warehouse and recreate the flight. David re-lives the flight in his head and remembers that there had been a bomb that one of the passengers had found planted in his briefcase - this exploded and caused decompression and it was only David's skill as a pilot that prevented the plane coming down on populated houses rather than the empty field into which he eventually crash-landed. However the memories do not inform him how he managed to survive unscathed. (Somehow) David works out that it was Slater who planted the bomb on the plane and has been killing people. Slater seems to be under the control of the deceased passengers who resent David's survival and want him to be dead with them. Slater shoots David dead and with his task complete Slater is killed by the spirits. Then back at the crash site when workers prepare to move the main fuselage David Keller's burnt lifeless body is found which has been dead for many days and no one can understand it because he was seen alive and well only hours beforehand. But Hobbs finds she can now relax and whatever was troubling the spirits is now resolved.
Comment: The above summary is rather vague on what was going on because it does not seem to be explained very well in the film and I could not really get to grips with why some things were happening or what the confusing ending was all about.

Writer: Rene Hardy / Director: Terence Young / Producer: Jacques-Paul Bertrand
Type: War Drama	Running Time: 120 mins
Starting in 1939 with war looming. Eddie Chapman is a brashly confident and resourceful cat burglar who is responsible for a successful series of daring jewel thefts around London. When he goes on holiday to Jersey the police eventually catch up with him and he is thrown into the local jail where he spends ten months in solitary with no outside news. He does not even know war has broken out until the Germans arrive and take over Jersey. Chapman demands to see the new commandant and makes an offer of his services (for a suitable fee) to work for the Germans which he views as a better alternative to rotting away in prison. The Germans view his impressive criminal record and take stock of his cocky self-assuredness and decide that he has the necessary motivation and ability to work for them as a spy. Chapman is taken to a château in France where he is given intense training in espionage skills. His commander is Baron Von Grunen and he receives special attention from beguiling beauty Countess Helle Lindstrom who helps train the English spies. After passing a test to assess his loyalty Chapman is sent on a mission to England to blow up a factory that manufactures aircraft parts. Upon arrival by parachute Chapman makes immediate contact with the British military leaders to let them know about his mission and offer his services (for a suitable fee and a full pardon) to double-cross the Germans. He also passes on what he has learnt about other spies working for the Germans. After deep consideration on his reliability the war cabinet decide to trust Chapman and use him as an asset - but to maintain his usefulness to the Germans he must successfully carry out his mission so they allow Chapman to proceed with his sabotage mission but instead destroy hastily constructed decoy buildings designed to fool German air reconnaissance photos into thinking the target is destroyed. Chapman then returns to Germany as per his orders. He is initially viewed with suspicion as it seems somewhat coincidental that a number of their valuable spies had been captured after he went to London. But Chapman manages to convince the Germans that had been nothing to do with him and he is given a medal for his bravery and becomes a trusted member of the Baron's military staff and has an affair with the Countess. During this time Chapman is able to pass back important information to London via the French resistance. (time passes) When word comes that the Allies have landed at Normandy the Baron sends Chapman on another mission to England to send back coded radio reports on troop movements. Chapman arrives back in London and briefs the war cabinet on the current state of confusion in the German command. The war chiefs use Chapman to pass back bogus troop movement information to the Germans in order to draw bombing raids into unimportant areas. When victory comes in 1945 Chapman is given a full pardon from his pre-war crimes although he is told ironically the records office was bombed early on in the war and so his records had been lost anyway!
Comment: Several years pass during the film from early on in the war to much later - although precisely what goes on in the "unseen" time is not made entirely clear.

Writer: Wolf Mankowitz / Director: Terence Fisher / Producer: Michael Carreras
Type: Horror	Running Time: 87 mins
Set in London 1874. Dr Henry Jekyll is a research scientist who is studying the nature of man's inner personality and how the rigid strictures of society might inhibit the true nature of the individual. Jekyll believes there is a hidden power within man awaiting release and it is his duty as a scientist to discover that inner potential. Jekyll's controversial theories opened him to ridicule and he resigned from professional life to devote himself to pure research. He lives in a large house and has sufficient independent means to be able to fund his work which totally consumes him. He lives like a recluse in his laboratory neglecting his wife Kitty and finding social interaction an awkward and uncomfortable process. With no affection forthcoming from her marriage Kitty has long given up on Henry and has secretly taken a lover called Paul Allen. Paul is one of Henry's only remaining friends although Henry does not know of the affair. Paul is an inveterate gambler who relies heavily on his friendship with Jekyll for loans to bail him out of trouble and support his expensive social life. Jekyll has developed a potion that he believes will release the repressed personality he has theorised. Animal testing has gone well and he is ready to try it on a human subject - himself. He injects the formula and becomes wreaked with an inner turmoil as his hidden-self is awakened. The emergence manifests itself physically as well and where once stood a heavily-bearded, gruffly-voiced and stiff-mannered scientist, now stands an unrecognisably different clean-shaven, sprightly-mannered and softer-spoken gadabout eager to have some gallivanting fun. The new side of Jekyll calls himself Edward Hyde and instructs a cabby to take him to an opulent nightspot where he can taste the highlife. At the Sphinx Club he finds his wife out with Paul Allen and realises her infidelity. But the couple don't recognise him so he introduces himself as an acquaintance of Henry's as if a stranger to them. His charm turns Kitty's head and she is drawn to his brash confidence. Hyde finds his wife desirable but to her he is a stranger and she loves Paul. Later Hyde reverts back to Jekyll when the potion's effect wears off (including his beard returning) and he writes up his experiences in his journal. As Jekyll he tries to make an emotional connection with his wife but she cold-shoulders his clumsy overtures. Jekyll carries on with his experiments and becomes Hyde every night. As Hyde he becomes addicted to hedonistic pleasures in the company of tarts but wants mostly what he cannot get - Kitty - but she still loves Paul despite his many faults. Hyde has shown himself to have a hard and calculatingly callous side concealed beneath his veneer of charm and sophistication and he embarks on a strategy to achieve his goal. He agrees to be Paul's guarantor for his gambling promissory notes. When these have mounted up considerably Hyde presents them to Kitty and says she can buy them back and save her lover from social ruin if she agrees to sleep with him in return. Kitty is appalled by this unspeakably degenerate suggestion and storms away vowing she never wants to speak to him again. When he reverts to being Jekyll the scientist is so appalled by his alter-ego's actions that he vows never to use the potion again and destroys all the supplies and formulation notes. But he finds that Hyde is still within him and is able emerge by sheer strength of will. Hyde decides he must be free of Jekyll by destroying his life. He lures Paul to a private meeting to discuss money matters and kills him. Then he allows Kitty to discover her lover's body and she is so upset she throws herself off a balcony and kills herself. Then Hyde returns to the laboratory and shoots a passing tradesman placing his body at Jekyll's desk and then setting the whole place on fire. The resulting inferno renders the body unrecognisable and as Hyde had planned it is assumed at the inquest that Jekyll had committed suicide after killing Paul Allen due to a delusional madness brought on by an addiction to experimental drugs. Hyde is at the inquest to give evidence and as the verdict is given he is inwardly triumphant that he is now free of any ties and can live out the rest of his life in a pleasure-filled luxury with Jekyll's money which as Jekyll's "friend" he had previously arranged for himself to inherit. Although Hyde is the stronger personality Jekyll is still suppressed within him. The scientist makes one final massive effort to re-manifest and thus in front of an astonished assembly of courtroom officials and despite Hyde's agonised attempts to stop it happening he changes back to Jekyll and the truth is revealed. Jekyll is arrested and has condemned himself to death for the murders his alter-ego carried out but in his self-sacrifice has assured that Hyde will die with him. (Comment] The heavy beard does admittedly make Jekyll look drastically different from Hyde but one must assume that Jekyll has always had it for his wife and friends not to have known it was still him when seen clean-shaven - unless of course the physical difference is meant to be more marked than that shown to the viewer.

Writer: Peter Welbeck / Director: Jeremy Summers / Producer: Harry Alan Towers
Type: Adventure	Running Time: 87 mins
Set in the 1920s(?). In China, Fu Manchu and his daughter Lin Tang return to their ancestral homeland in the Northern Province of Kwang-su. Once ensconced in his palace Fu Manchu begins plotting his vengeance on the man who is forever thwarting his plans - Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard. To do this he sends his agents to kidnap a world-renowned plastic surgeon called Dr Lieberson and his daughter Maria. By means of the threat of harm to Maria, the doctor is forced to operate on a hypnotised prisoner and change his features into an exact double of Nayland Smith. Meanwhile Nayland Smith himself has just helped found an international organisation of police chiefs called INTERPOL with which to combat the growing threat of world-wide criminal networks. After this he goes on a well-earned holiday to Ireland with his good friend Dr Petrie. Whilst on holiday Fu Manchu's men make the switch - kidnapping the real Smith and leaving the double in his stead. The impostor is gaunt, silent and Petrie thinks his friend has been struck down by a sudden illness that has turned him into a virtual living zombie so he quickly takes him home. Once home in England the fake Smith murders the household maid and is arrested. Smith's great reputation is publicly ruined - he is put on trial for murder, found guilty, and condemned to death by hanging in four weeks time. The real Smith has been crated up and shipped to China to be delivered to Fu Manchu's palace so that the criminal mastermind can revel in his vengeance by murdering his adversary, the real Smith, at the same time as the double is executed. Meanwhile Smith's loyal police chief friends (still unaware of the switch) plan a mission to Fu Manchu's palace believing that their colleague's massive fall from grace is the work of the evil Chinese criminal and hope to find evidence that will exonerate Smith and save him from the hangman's noose. Journey times to the remote Chinese province are long and by the time they arrive it is only a few hours until the execution. They infiltrate the palace and join up with the real Smith who has managed to free himself from a cell and begin to organise his own escape attempt. In London the fake Smith is executed and Fu Manchu calls for the real Smith to be brought before him. But unknown to Fu Manchu the guards accompanying Smith are now Smith's associates and they turn the tables on the criminal. A dynamite truck is set alight in the ensuing battle and the heroes flee leaving Fu Manchu and his daughter in stunned shock at the sudden downturn of events. The palace explodes and no one knows if Fu Manchu survived or not but Nayland Smith has the feeling that the world shall hear from him again. (We don't see Smith return to England and clear his name but must assume that once he explains what happened his reputation is quickly restored in time for the next film). {Comment] There is a secondary interwoven plot in which the major criminal organisations of the world decide to unite and ask Fu Manchu to be their leader if he can help them defeat the threat posed by the world's law enforcement agencies. This dovetails into the specific plot to discredit Nayland Smith but doesn't expand much beyond the basic premise. Fu Manchu's extended plan was to repeat the same replacement-double tactic with all of the world's major police chiefs until they were all discredited and confidence in law enforcement was eroded so much that the criminal gangs could operate more freely.

Writer: James Costigan / Director/Producer: George Schaefer
Type: Drama	Running Time: 74 mins
Set in present day Belfast, Northern Ireland (1972) during the escalating troubles between the catholic and protestant communities while occupying British troops patrol the streets trying to keep the peace. The catholic Tomelty family and protestant McCullum family have been friends for the past three years and meet up every Sunday for days out. Neither family are militant and don't let religion get in the way of their friendship. Both husbands are into pigeon racing and their two young sons Donal and Reggie are best friends. Lately however the families have been finding it hard to meet up as attitudes of hatred are becoming more entrenched and they fear being ostracised by their own neighbours if it became known they were socialising with people from the other community. Wife Nora Tomelty strongly believes in living peacefully and respecting each other's views and prefers to ignore the bigotry around her and her husband Frank is a easy-going man with no interest in getting involved in any hard-line movements. Teenage daughter Maureen Tomelty is being wooed by a cockney British private called Reg Hogg. They are forced to keep their relationship secret as the catholic based IRA have vowed to rid their country of occupying British troops by whatever means possible and catholic women fraternising with British soldiers are considered traitors. When her parents Nora and Frank find out they are content to let her continue providing her relationship is kept discrete and low-key. As inter-faith bad feeling intensifies meetings between the Tomelty's and McCullum's become impossible and Nora misses her best friend Meg McCullum. Nora defies the bigoted upholders of the religious divide and goes round to see Meg. Nora wants Meg to join her in a small women's movement intent on trying to get the two sides to reach agreement through reason rather than violence and hatred. But Meg is too scared to join her and suggests they stop seeing each other for their own mutual safety. Then one day in the middle of the night British soldiers burst into the Tomelty home and arrest Frank on suspicion of being involved with the IRA and place him in detention. Nora knows he is innocent and the activists have spread false rumours against him as a way of getting back at her for trying to be conciliatory and friendly towards protestants. This turns Nora from easygoing pacifist into a hardnosed supporter overnight as she seeks to protect her family from further retribution - she forbids Donal to have any contact with Robbie and especially tells Maureen to cut off all contact with Reg. But as the time moves on Maureen and Reg continue to meet and eventually find a discreet room to rent for a night of passion together. They are found out by the local women and Maureen is hauled out onto the streets to be tarred and feathered for consorting with the enemy - the group is led by her mother who shows no mercy or compassion for her daughter and views her with disgust. The catholic women's group find out that their detained men are being transferred to another internment centre by the army and they form a roadblock to try and stop it and liberate their men. The army are in a quandary because they cannot shoot at the woman and children pelting them with stones. Donal climbs up onto the armoured truck and a young soldier rifle butts him down and this unfortunately kills him. Nora is so radicalised with hatred that rather than show grief at her son's death she seizes on the incident as a way to score a political point as she vows to carry the boy's body into town to show the world what the British army do to children. Maureen watches in horror at the goings on and manages to sneak a word with her still even-minded father Frank in the prison van whilst it is being delayed. Frank tells her he doesn't think it'll ever change here and advises her to get out - to leave Ireland with Reg and find a place where people are not out to murder each other all the time in Jesus' name. As the story ends Nora is heading into town with her women and Reg and Maureen are driving away.

NOTES:
•	Patricia Healey receives an "introducing" credit
•	The film is predominantly in Black and White although there are a smattering of brief colour sequences (5-10 seconds or so each time).
•	The particular city they are touring never seems to be specified in the film although it was filmed in Manchester and no doubt the landmarks would be familiar to those who know them.
•	The credits show an "Antony Hopkins" was in the cast. He has been identified on IMDB as "Brechtian" which is a name for a German poetry reader. The performer in question was briefly seen during a theatre visit on the tour but seen at too great a distance to tell whether it was the well known Anthony Hopkins or not (given the different spelling of his first name).
•	The film is one part of a trilogy of shorts each made by a different director - the title sequence of this film indicate it to be the second. There are no cast crossovers between the films and probably no linked story elements (although as yet neither of the other two have been reviewed to confirm this). The other two were Red and Blue (1967) directed by Tony Richardson, and Ride of the Valkyrie (1967) directed by Peter Brook.

Coming Soon
The following is a list of films that are soon to be reviewed
Aces High (1976)
Adolf Hitler - My Part in His Downfall (1972)
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975)
Agatha (1979)
The Alf Garnett Saga (1972)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972)
All the Way Up (1970)
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Arabian Adventure (1979)
Are You Being Served? (1977)
Les Bicyclettes De Belsize (1969)
Black Christmas (1974)
The Blue Max (1966)
Boom (1968)
Born Free (1966)
Brannigan (1975)
Callan (1974)
Caravan to Vaccares (1974)
A Challenge for Robin Hood (1967)
Charlie Muffin (1979)
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Conduct Unbecoming (1975)
A Couple of Beauties (1972)
Crooks in Cloisters (1964)
A Dandy in Aspic (1968)
Danger Route (1968)
Dark of the Sun (1968)
Deadlier Than the Male (1966)
The Deadly Affair (1966)
Death Is a Woman (1966)
Deceptions (1985)
De Sade (1969)
Devils of Darkness (1965)
Diagnosis : Murder (1975)
Doctor In The House (1954)
Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)
Double Exposure (1976)
Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966)
Drum (1976)
During One Night (1961)
Dyn Amo (1972)
The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
Educating Rita (1983)
Endless Night (1971)
Escape To Athena (1979)
Every Afternoon (1972) (aka Swedish Wildcats)
Expresso Bongo (1960)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
The Family Way (1966)
The Fantasist (1986)
Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
The Fast Kill (1972)
Fear Is the Key (1972)
Ferry Cross the Mersey (1965)
Fiend Without A Face (1958)
Find The Lady (1976)
The First Great Train Robbery (1979)
The Four of the Apocalypse... (1975)
Fräulein Doktor (1969)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
The Go-Between (1970)
The Great McGonagall (1974)
The Great Riviera Bank Robbery (1979) (aka Sewers of Gold)
Grip of the Strangler (1958)
The Guru (1969)
Hammerhead (1968)
The Hand of Death (1988)
Hannie Caulder (1971)
Hell Boats (1970)
Hello-Goodbye (1970)
The Hireling (1973)
Hoffman (1970)
Hot Millions (1968)
Hotel Paradiso (1966)
The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)
In Search of Gregory (1969)
In Search of the Castaways (1962)
Inspector Clouseau (1968)
The Internecine Project (1974)
Into the Darkness (1986)
Invasion (1966)
Invitation to Hell (1982)
Island of Terror (1966)
It Happened Here (1965)
The Jokers (1967)
Jungle Street (1961)
Kes (1969)
Kidnapped (1971)
King Queen Knave (1972)
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
Krull (1983)
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981)
The Lady Vanishes (1979)
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
The Last Grenade (1970)
The Last Night (1983)
Legend of a Hero (1986)
Legend of the Werewolf (1975)
Licensed to Love and Kill (1979)
Lifeforce (1985)
The Liquidator (1965)
Living Free (1972)
Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971)
The London Nobody Knows (1967)
Loot (1970)
Mandingo (1975)
The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
Maniac (1963)
Mary Queen of Scots (1971)
The Mask (1988)
A Matter of WHO (1961)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968)
Monte Carlo Or Bust (1969)
Murder: The Ultimate Grounds for Divorce (1984)
Mysterious Island (1961)
The Nanny (1965)
Nearest and Dearest (1972)
Necromancy (1972) (aka The Witching)
Ned Kelly (1970)
Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960)
The Night Caller (1965)
Night of the Big Heat (1967)
Night of the Eagle (1962)
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (1979)
The Night Porter (1974)
Nothing But the Best (1964)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1970)
Only Two Can Play (1962)
The Orchard End Murder (1980)
Overlord (1975)
Paranoiac (1963)
The Party's Over (1965)
The Passenger (1975)
Paul Raymond's Erotica (1981)
The Perils of Mandy (1981)
The Pink Panther (1963)
Play It Cool (1962)
Please Sir! (1971)
The Pornbrokers (1973)
Power Play (1978)
Prehistoric Women (1967)
The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
The Quiller Memorandum (1966)
Radio On (1980)
Ransom (1975)
Rentadick (1972)
The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
The Riddle of the Sands (1979)
Robin and Marian (1976)
Run a Crooked Mile (1969)
Ryan's Daughter (1970)
Saturn 3 (1980)
Second Sight (1992)
The Secret of My Success (1965)
Secret Places (1984)
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)
Shout at the Devil (1976)
The Shuttered Room (1967)
Silver Bears (1977)
The Slipper and the Rose (1976)
Spasmo (1974)
Spy Story (1976)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
Stevie (1978)
Suffer Little Children (1983)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Swallows and Amazons (1974)
Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)
Symphony of Love (1978)
The Tempest (1979)
Tendre Dracula (1974)
The Terror of Dr. Hichcock (1962)
Theatre of Death (1966)
This Is My Street (1963)
This Sporting Life (1963)
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
The Time Machine (1960)
Tom Jones (1963)
Tommy (1975)
Too Late the Hero (1970)
Torment (1990)
Torture Garden (1967)
To Sir with Love (1967)
The Trap (1966)
Three Dangerous Ladies (1977)
Tuxedo Warrior (1982)
12 + 1 (1969)
Two A Penny (1967)
Two for the Road (1967)
The Uncanny (1977)
Warlords of Atlantis (1978)
The Watcher In The Woods (1980)
West 11 (1963)
Where Eagles Dare (1968)
Where Has Poor Mickey Gone? (1964)
Where the Bullets Fly (1966)
Wish You Were Here (1987)
Wonderwall (1968)
The Wrong Box (1966)
X The Unknown (1956)
The Yellow Teddy Bears (1963)
Young Cassidy (1965)
Young Winston (1972)

RARE BRITISH FILM REVIEWS
A	B	C	D	E - F	G - H
I - L	M - N	O - R	S	T	U - Z

Starring:	David Hemmings (as Alfred), Michael York (as Guthrum, leader of the Danish warriors), Prunella Ransome (as Aelhswith, Alfred's wife), Colin Blakely (as Asher, a monk), Ian McKellen (as Roger, leader of the bandits that Alfred joins)
Featuring:	Peter Vaughan (as Burrud, King of Mercia, father of Aelhswith), Sinéad Cusack (as Edith, Aelhswith's lady in waiting), Alan Dobie (as Ethelred, Alfred's elder brother), Julian Glover (as Shrdlu), Vivien Merchant (as Freda, Roger's woman), Julian Chagrin (as Ivar, Danish warrior)
Familiar Faces:	Christopher Timothy (Nobleman), Robin Askwith (Shepherd, [cameo non-speaking part, he sees the Danes arrive in opening scene])

Starring:	Gillian Hills (as Jennifer Linden), David Farrar (as Paul Linden, Jennifer's father), Noëlle Adam (as Nichole, Paul's new wife), Christopher Lee (as Kenny King, strip club manager)
Featuring:	(Jennifer's beatnik friends) Adam Faith (as Dave), Shirley-Ann Field (as Dodo), Peter McEnery (as Tony), Delphi Lawrence (as Greta, Kenny's girlfriend, [Uncredited, although she has a featured role]), Nigel Green (as Strip Club stage manager), Norman Mitchell (as Strip Club Doorman)
Familiar Faces:	Oliver Reed (as Band member, [small role only])
Starlets:	Claire Gordon (as Honey, auditioning stripper, [role reduced to non-speaking in shorter version]), Pascaline (as Strip Club Dancer, [edited out of shorter version])

Starring:	Christopher Lee (as Fu Manchu), Richard Greene (as Nayland Smith), Howard Marion Crawford (Dr Petrie, Smith's friend), Tsai Chin (as Lin Tang, daughter of Fu Manchu) Götz George (as Carl Jansen, explorer), Maria Rohm (as Ursula Wagner, doctor), Ricardo Palacios (as Sancho Lopez, bandit leader)
Featuring:	Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui (as San Cristobel's Governor), Shirley Eaton (as Fu Manchu's London agent, [short one-scene cameo, although listed on credits as a Guest Star])
Starlets:	(Fu Manchu's female agents) Loni von Friedl (as Celeste, sent to infect Smith), Isaura de Oliveira (as Yuma, sent to lure Sancho Lopez), Frances Khan (as Carmen, tasked to kill Sancho Lopez)

Director/Producer: Ringo Starr
Type: Music	Running Time: 61 mins
A presentation of concert performances by top-selling glam rock pop group T-Rex fronted by lead singer Marc Bolan. The songs are played out in full without any frills and are often longer concert versions. There are also a couple of specially staged songs shot on location like pop videos - all interspersed with occasional light-hearted linking scenes. It is not a documentary with narration or interviews or attempts to chart the history of the band or portray any behind-the-scenes glimpses into the band's life of the road. It was made and released while T-Rex were still at the height of their fame and is not a retrospective release following Marc Bolan's death in 1977.

NOTES:
•	Made in Black and White
•	Gillian Hills receives an "introducing" credit
•	Two versions were reviewed - the full 88 minute version and an edited 78 minute version. The shorter version cuts out the racier scenes and dialogue - and with all nudity removed the editing of the climatic murder scene becomes a rushed muddle because it was originally intercut with a topless stripper who stops performing when she hears the screams coming from the back office - and so there is nothing to fill the "gaps" in the office action when these bits are expurgated.

NOTES:
•	Based on the characters created by Sax Rohmer
•	This was the fourth in a series of five 1960's Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee. Each also featured Tsai Chin as his daughter and Howard Marion Crawford as Dr Petrie the friend of Fu Manchu's greatest opponent Nayland Smith. The role of Smith himself was played by three different actors - Nigel Green played him in the first film, next Douglas Wilmer for two films and then Richard Greene for the final two. The sequence of the five films were as follows:- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).

Starring:	Marc Bolan and T-Rex Ringo Starr (guest drummer), Elton John (guest pianist)
Familiar Faces:	Geoffrey Bayldon (as Waiter in location shoot)

Starring:	Laurence Olivier (as Ezra Lieberman, Nazi hunter), Gregory Peck (as Dr Josef Mengele), James Mason (as Eduard Seibert, Nazi chief)
Featuring:	Lilli Palmer (as Esther Lieberman, Ezra's sister), Steven Guttenberg (as Barry Kohler, young journalist in Paraguay), John Rubinstein (as David Bennett, friend of Barry), Denholm Elliott (as Sidney Beynon, intelligence chief), Rosemary Harris (as Mrs Doring, clone mother), John Dehner (as Henry Wheelock, clone father), Anne Meara (Mrs Curry, clone mother), Michael Gough (as Mr Harrington, clone father), Richard Marner (as Mr Doring, clone father), Prunella Scales (as Mrs Harrington, clone mother), Jeremy Black (as Clones, [Same actor playing all the various clones seen]), Uta Hagen (as Frieda Maloney, adoption agent), Bruno Ganz (as Professor Bruckner, clone specialist)
Starlets:	Linda Hayden (as Nancy, lodger at Harrington house)

NOTES:
•	Based on the novel by Ira Levin
•	Jeremy Black receives an "introducing" credit

Starring:	Christopher Lee (as Fu Manchu), Douglas Wilmer (as Nayland Smith), Howard Marion Crawford (as Dr Petrie, Smith's friend), Tsai Chin (as Lin Tang, daughter of Fu Manchu)
Featuring:	Heinz Drache (as Franz Baumer, German research chemist who aids Smith in investigations), Marie Versini (as Marie Lentz, fiancée of Franz, prisoner of Fu Manchu), Rupert Davies (as Jules Merlin, scientist, father of Michel), Kenneth Fortescue (as Sergeant Spicer, detective), Harald Leipnitz (as Nikki Sheldon, Fu Manchu's agent), Roger Hanin (as Inspector Pierre Grimaldi, French detective), Joseph Fürst (as Otto Lentz, engineer, father of Marie), Carole Gray (as Michel Merlin, daughter of Jules, prisoner of Fu Manchu), Burt Kwouk (as Feng, Fu Manchu's scientist)
Starlets:	Wendy Gifford (as Louise, Merlin's secretary), Danni Sheridan (as Shiva, prisoner who is killed by Fu Manchu as an example to the others)

NOTES:
•	Based on the characters created by Sax Rohmer
•	This was the second in a series of five 1960's Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee. Each also featured Tsai Chin as his daughter and Howard Marion Crawford as Dr Petrie the friend of Fu Manchu's greatest opponent Nayland Smith. The role of Smith himself was played by three different actors - Nigel Green played him in the first film, next Douglas Wilmer for two films and then Richard Greene for the final two. The sequence of the five films were as follows:- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).

Starring:	Joan Collins (as Marilyn Fryser, real estate agent), Robert Lansing (as Dan Stokely, captain of motor yacht), John David Carson (as Joe Morrison, guest), Jacqueline Scott (as Margaret Ellis, guest), Pamela Shoop (as Coreen Bradford, guest), Albert Salmi (as Town Sheriff)
Featuring:	Edward Power (as Charlie Pearson, Marilyn's assistant) (other guests) Robert Pine and Brooke Palance (as Mr and Mrs Graham), Harry Holcombe and Irene Tedrow (as Mr and Mrs Thompson), Jack Kosslyn and Ilse Earl (as Mr and Mrs Lawson) (in town) Norman Franklin (as The Mayor), Janie Gavin (as Car rental agent)

NOTES:
•	The film was "based on a story by H.G. Wells" although (one suspects) not very closely based. Bert I. Gordon supplied the screen story for the film.
•	This is an American film that has been reviewed here because of the starring role for British actress Joan Collins who plays her part with an American accent.

Starring:	Christopher Lee (as Fu Manchu), Nigel Green (as Nayland Smith), Howard Marion Crawford (as Dr Petrie, Smith's friend), Tsai Chin (as Lin Tang, daughter of Fu Manchu)
Featuring:	Joachim Fuchsberger (as Carl Jannssen, Professor Muller's personal assistant), Karin Dor (as Maria Muller, professor's daughter), Walter Rilla (as Professor Hans Muller, kidnapped scientist), Harry Brogan (as Professor Gaskell, academic studying expedition papers at museum)
Familiar Faces:	James Robertson Justice (as Sir Charles Fortescu, Director of Museum of Oriental Studies, [short appearance])
Starlets:	Deborah De Lacey (as Dacoit Girl who tries to defy Fu Manchu)

Starring:	Kirk Douglas (as Robert Caine), Simon Ward (as Angel Caine, Robert's grown-up son), Agostina Belli (as Sara Golan, becomes Robert's girlfriend), Anthony Quayle (as Professor Griffith, scientist at Caine Enterprises)
Featuring:	Romolo Valli (as Monsignor Charrier, padre who advises Robert on biblical matters), Alexander Knox (as Professor Enst Meyer, Nobel prize winner), Virginia McKenna (as Eva Caine, Robert's wife), Ivo Garrani (as The Prime Minister, head of middle-eastern country), Spiros Focás (as Harbin, Prime Minister's political opponent), Adolfo Celi (as Dr Kerouac, head of psychiatric hospital where religious fanatics are held, small role), Massimo Foschi (as Dung Arab, fanatical assassin)
Familiar Faces:	Geoffrey Keen (as Gynaecologist, cameo role), Caroline Langrishe (as Woman at Party, [very brief non-speaking cameo, credited as Caroline Horner])
Starlets:	Penelope Horner (as Robert's Secretary), Jenny Twigg (as Air Hostess), Joanne Dainton (as Gynaecologist's Nurse)

NOTES:
•	Based on the characters created by Sax Rohmer
•	This was the first in a series of five 1960's Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee. Each also featured Tsai Chin as his daughter and Howard Marion Crawford as Dr Petrie the friend of Fu Manchu's greatest opponent Nayland Smith. The role of Smith himself was played by three different actors - Nigel Green played him in the first film, next Douglas Wilmer for two films and then Richard Greene for the final two. The sequence of the five films were as follows:- The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).

NOTES:
•	The title of the version reviewed was Rain of Fire
•	The country in which the Atomic Plant is being built is never really stated. With the ancient biblical connections and desert setting it must be assumed to be somewhere in the Middle East

NOTES:
•	From the original script "Crusaders" by David Sherwin and John Howlett
•	Malcolm McDowell, David Wood, Richard Warwick, Robert Swann and Christine Noonan all receive "introducing" credits
•	Made in both Colour and Black and White. The film is predominantly in colour but some scenes are almost seemingly randomly presented in black and white.
•	This is the first film of a loose trilogy of Lindsay Anderson directed films in which Malcolm McDowell plays the same character of Mick Travis. The next two are O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982).

Starring:	Michael York (as Logan), Jenny Agutter (as Jessica), Richard Jordan (as Francis, Logan's Sandman friend), Peter Ustinov (as The Old Man)
Featuring:	Farrah Fawcett-Majors (as Holly, receptionist at face-change salon), Michael Anderson Jr.(as Doc, equipment operator at face change clinic), Roscoe Lee Browne (as Box, silver servo-robot in ice-cavern)

NOTES:
•	Based on the novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
•	This is an American film which is reviewed here because of the lead roles of British actors Michael York and Jenny Agutter.
•	A TV series followed from this film (also called "Logan's Run"). 14 episodes were made and were broadcast in America in 1977/78. Episode 1 retold the basic story of the film but diverged so that runners Logan and Jessica continued with their quest to find Sanctuary, meeting all manner of people on the way. Logan's former friend Francis (who doesn't die as he does in the film) remains doggedly on their trail to hunt Logan down and bring him back to the city. None of the film's cast were involved.

Starring:	Mark Burns (as David), Lynne Frederick (as Anna)
Featuring:	(in order credited) Charo López, Ricardo Merino, Jorge Rigaud, Fernando Hilbeck, Adriano Domínguez, Conchita Cuetos, Andrés Mejuto, Mayrata O'Wisiedo, Juan Diego (roles each played not known)

Starring:	Pat Boone (as Eddie), Nancy Kwan (as Tessa), Mai Zetterling (as Gina), Yvonne Mitchell (as Elenora Moreno), Kieron Moore (as Ricco Moreno)
Featuring:	John Le Mesurier (as Bozo, clown, ex-husband of Gina)

Starring:	Rod Taylor (as Peter Reaney), Penelope Horner (as Angela Reaney, Peter's wife), James Booth (as Val Pringle), Carol White (as Jody Pringle, Val's wife), Clive Francis (as Barry Black, pop star)
Featuring:	Charles Korvin (as Alfred Felix, agency boss), Alexandra Stewart (as Frances, friend of Jody and Val), Keith Barron (as Jake Braid, agency man), Magali Noël (as Mrs Franchetti, Peter's apartment hallway neighbour)
Familiar Faces:	Geoffrey Hughes (as Policeman), Jimmy Jewel (as Mr Pringle, cameo appearance at Val's funeral)
Starlets:	Geraldine Moffat (as Lydia Blake, Barry's main girlfriend), Wendy Hamilton (as Mary Gray, pregnant groupie), Marie-France Boyer (as Maggie, French singer), Diana Chance (as Stag party stripper), Valerie Leon (as Glenda, guest on Barry's TV show)

Starring:	Romy Schneider (as Francesca Anderson), Dennis Waterman (as James Anderson, Francesca's son), Donald Houston (as Robert, Francesca's husband), Patricia Brake (as Julie, James' girlfriend)
Featuring:	Peter Sallis (as Sir Sidney Brent, defence barrister), William Dexter (as Parks, prosecutor), Alexandra Bastedo (as Miss Clarkson, Robert's secretary), Michael Forrest (D.I. Chidley, detective), Peter Gilmore (as Nightclub Barman), Mark Hawkins (as Macer, Francesca's lover, [opening flashback scenes])
Familiar Faces:	Janet Brown (as Mrs Woods, woman at party)
Starlets:	Maggie Wright (as Prostitute, [non-speaking role])

NOTES:
•	Based on the novel Reputation For a Song by Edward Grierson

Starring:	Pamela Green (as Pamela), Petrina Forsyth (as Petrina), Jackie Salt (as Jackie), Angela Jones (as Angela), Bridget Leonard (as Bridget)
Featuring:	Guy Kingsley Poynter (Narrator's voice), Stuart Samuels (multiple bit-parts in different guises)

NOTES:
•	The director/producer's name is credited as just "Harrison Marks". There is no specific writer's credit for the general story of the film although this is probably de facto Harrison Marks too. The commentary dialogue is credited as being written by Gerald Holgate.
•	This is one of a string of British films from around this time that managed to get around strict censorship rules on nudity by featuring stories involving naturism activities. This one probably has the best remembered title but others were:- Nudist Paradise (1958), Travelling Light (1959), Nudist Memories (1959), The Nudist Story (1960), Some Like It Cool (1961), Nudes of the World (1961), Sunswept (1961), World Without Shame (1961), Take Your Clothes Off And Live! (1962), Eves on Skis (1963), It's A Bare, Bare World! (1963), The Reluctant Nudist (1963).

Starring:	Michael Jayston (as Tsar Nicholas II), Janet Suzman (as Empress Alexandra), Tom Baker (as Rasputin)
Featuring:	(Nicholas and Alexandra's family) Roderic Noble (as Alexei), Ania Marson (as Olga), Lynne Frederick (as Tatiana), Candace Glendenning (as Marie), Fiona Fullerton (as Anastasia), Harry Andrews (as Grand Duke Nicholas, Tsar's uncle) Timothy West (as Dr Botkin, treating Alexei), Eric Porter (as Stolypin, Prime Minister), Michael Bryant (as Lenin), Brian Cox (as Trotsky), James Hazeldine (as Stalin) (also appearing) Michael Redgrave, Maurice Denham, John McEnery, Ian Holm
Star-Turns:	Laurence Olivier (as Statesman, cameo role)

NOTES:
•	From the book by Robert K. Massie. Additional dialogue by Edward Bond

NOTES:
•	Full writing credits: Adapted for the screen by Joseph Kessel and Paul Dehn; additional dialogue by Paul Dehn; From the novel by Hans Hellmut Kirst; based on an incident written by James Hadley Chase

Starring:	Tom Poston (as Tom Penderel) (Femm Family) Robert Morley (as Roderick, head of family), Janette Scott (as Cecily, Roderick's niece), Joyce Grenfell (as Agatha, Roderick's wife), Mervyn Johns (as Potipher, Roderick's brother), Fenella Fielding (Morgana, Roderick's niece), Peter Bull (as Caspar and Jasper, twins, sons of Roderick)
Featuring:	Danny Green (as Morgan, brother of Roderick, father of Morganna)

NOTES:
•	Based on The Old Dark House by J.B. Priestley

Starring:	Peter Sellers (as Sam Hall), Donna Mullane (as Liz Ellis), John Chaffey (as Mark Ellis)
Featuring:	Marjorie Yates (as Chrissie Ellis, mother), David Daker (as Bob Ellis, father), Patricia Brake (as Battersea Dog's Home Secretary)
Familiar Faces:	Keith Chegwin (as Laundry factory teaboy, non-speaking cameo)

NOTES:
•	From the book The Optimists of Nine Elms by Anthony Simmons
•	Donna Mullane and John Chaffey both receive "introducing" credits

Starring:	Carl Boehm (as Mark Lewis), Anna Massey (as Helen Stephens), Maxine Audley (as Mrs Stephens, Helen's mother)
Featuring:	Moira Shearer (as Vivian, budding actress, Mark's 2nd victim), Shirley Ann Field (as Diane Ashley, lead actress in studio film being made), Esmond Knight (as Arthur Baden, film director), Jack Watson (as Chief Inspector Gregg), Nigel Davenport (Miller, detective), Bartlett Mullins (as Mr Peters, newsagent), Miles Malleson (as Newsagents Customer), Brenda Bruce (as Dora, prostitute, Mark's 1st victim)
Starlets:	Pamela Green (as Milly, glamour model, Mark's 3rd victim), Susan Travers (as Lorraine, glamour model)