After the last couple of weeks, when I didn’t have a lot to do except watch movies, this past week, I only watched the normal half dozen:
- William Powell is charm personified, and he’s well-teamed with Kay Francis—with whom he co-starred an incredible total of twenty-one times—but One Way Passage is a little forgettable.
- Tales of Terror isn’t the best of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, but it’s got a fun performance by Peter Lorre and at least a couple by Vincent Price.
- While The Suspect maybe acts more as a character study than a tense thriller, Charles Laughton is very good in the title role.
- There are a lot of reasons to watch the terrific noir The Big Heat, but the best might be Gloria Grahame’s energetic performance.
- Hell Drivers would be interesting just for all the British actors early in their careers—William Hartnell, Patrick McGoohan, David McCallum, Sean Connery—but it’s also a terrifically exciting working-class British noir.
- The Petrified Forest held fewer surprises than I expected, but it has a really nice central performance by Leslie Howard and a nice villain turn by Humphrey Bogart, in the movie that arguably made him a star.
