Suspense | Cagey Films

Murder, witchcraft, doppelgangers and stranded astronauts from Imprint

Posted on August 21, 2024August 20, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Flora Carr (Margaret Johnston) uses magic to destroy her husband's rival in Sidney Hayers' Night of the Eagle (1962)

A batch of new releases from Imprint in Australia introduced me to the first feature of Gordon Hessler, a noirish mystery called Catacombs (1965), and provided an opportunity to revisit Sidney Hayers’ excellent supernatural tale Night of the Eagle (1962), Basil Dearden’s doppelganger thriller The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), and for the first time since its theatrical release in 1970 John Sturges’ Marooned, a movie which bridges the gap between science fiction and naturalistic drama which happens to involve a space mission.

Columbia Noir #6: The Whistler: Indicator Blu-ray review

Posted on August 14, 2024August 11, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Things go very wrong for trucker Steve Reynolds (Richard Dix) in William Clemens' The Thirteenth Hour (1947)

Indicator’s latest box set of noir B-movies is devoted to Columbia’s series adapted from a popular radio show in which the mysterious Whistler observes and comments on the fates of various characters whose lives go off the rails. In the first seven movies, character actor Richard Dix suffers a variety of situations, sometimes as victim, sometimes as the perpetrator of murder; after the actor’s death, the studio made one more film, replacing him with the bland Michael Duane, before retiring the Whistler for good.

Aussie horror and Mexican luchadores and luchadoras from Indicator

Posted on August 7, 2024August 7, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Masked women wrestlers combat a cult of shape-changing witches in Rene Cardona's The Panther Women (1967)

Indicator continue to raise Mexican genre movies from obscurity with three recent limited editions of films by the prolific Rene Cardona Sr.: The Panther Women (1967), The Bat Woman (1968) and Santo vs the Riders of Terror (1970). In addition, they give substantial upgrades to a pair of early Ozploitation features – Richard Franklin’s Patrick (1978) and Simon Wincer’s Snapshot (1979).

Winter 2024 viewing, part four: More other labels

Posted on March 13, 2024March 11, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

An enigmatic gunman (Jean-Louis Trintignant) seeks revenge in Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence (1968)

Yet more wide-ranging genre viewing – from classic and modern samurai to spaghetti western and ’40s supernatural noir and ’70s hard-boiled romance, ’50s exploitation horror to Hitler, Bigfoot and haunted 12″ vinyl.

Movies and reality intersect in two recent releases

Posted on January 24, 2024January 22, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

The sociologist (Flavio Bucci) grasps the metaphysical mystery in Giuliano Montaldo's Closed Circuit (1978)

Our relationship to movies is complex; we know that we’re watching illusions, yet the intellectual and emotional responses we experience are very real. Movies give us access to a seemingly infinite range of experiences which take us out of out immediate lives. Two recent releases delve into this phenomenon in visceral ways — Giuliano Montaldo’s Closed Circuit (1978) addresses the metaphysics of movie watching with humour and suspense, while Charlie Victor Romeo (2013) provides disturbing access to an aspect of real life we might prefer not to think about: the moments during which flight crews try to deal with catastrophic technical failures immediately preceding air crashes.

Fall 2023 viewing: Arrow Video

Posted on November 15, 2023November 13, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cloistermouth (Nicholas Hoye) panics when he realizes his privileged position is threatened in John Mackenzie's Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971)

A selection of new and slightly older Arrow releases range from ’70s Japanese gangster movies by Kinji Fukasaku to David Cronenberg’s icy adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s Crash (1996), from an early feature by John Mackenzie combining a satire of class with psychological suspense to a sampler of sci-fi and horror movies produced in the ’80s by Charles Band’s Empire International Pictures.

Fall 2023 viewing, part two

Posted on October 18, 2023October 20, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Amnesiac Johnny McBride (Anthony Quinn) investigates his own past in Victor Saville’s The Long Wait (1954)

This week marks the thirteenth anniversary of the blog and there’s still no clear pattern to what I watch and write about! The first post went up on October 22, 2010. Hard to believe it’s been going this long, with almost 900 posts and over 3200 reviews so far. I don’t think I’ve ever stuck with anything this faithfully in my entire life! Thanks for reading!

The Pemini Organisation on Blu-ray from Indicator

Posted on October 5, 2022October 4, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

John Drummond (Edward Woodward) expresses his grief through violence in Peter Crane's Hunted (1972)

Indicator unearth an obscure corner of ’70s British cinema with a box set of the three movies made by recent filmschool graduates who formed a production company called The Pemini Organisation. Despite extremely low budgets, director Peter Crane and writer Michael Sloan benefited from skilled technicians and high-profile casts who give the films professional polish; but the vagaries of commercial distribution made them disappear until this revival on disk fifty years later.

Unearthing memories: BBC’s Maigret and rural Canadian violence

Posted on July 20, 2022July 18, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

A couple of things seen long ago have resurfaced on disk, tugging at vague memories: Network’s 11-disk set of all 52 episodes of the BBC’s classic series based on Georges Simenon’s novels about Superintendent Maigret (1960-63), and Brian Damude’s scrappy Canadian thriller Sudden Fury (1975) from Vinegar Syndrome reveal just how flawed my memory is.

Winter viewing 2: Vinegar Syndrome partners

Posted on April 9, 2022January 20, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Misanthropic scientist Herbert Von Krantz (Daniel Emilfork) invents an anti-nuclear device in Jean-Louis Roy's The Unknown Man of Shandigor (1967)

Recent releases from various Vinegar Syndrome partner labels offer a wide range of styles, from low-budget direct-to-video horror (Ronnie Sortor’s Sinistre [1995], Charles Pinion’s Red Spirit Lake [1993] and We Await [1996]) to a rediscovered slice of Cold War sci-fi/espionage from Switzerland (Jean-Louis Roy’s The Unknown Man of Shandigor [1967]).

Tag: Suspense