Anna Neagle stars as the humble orange seller Nell Gwyn who captures the heart of a king in this bawdy and controversial British historical drama. In a 17th century England revelling in its freedom after years of Puritan domination King Charles II (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) promises to restore to the nation ""its old good nature its old good manners and its old good humour"". Wild and free Nell Gwyn captures his imagination like no other woman. She becomes his mistress and in effect th
A perennial afternoon telly treat, Carlton-Browne of the F.O. is a little less tart and smart in its assault on British diplomacy than the earlier John and Roy Boulting satires. The much-loved Terry Thomas, is the idiot son of a great ambassador, given a sinecure in the Foreign Office that becomes a hot seat when crises rock the almost-forgotten former colony of Gaillardia. Clod-hopping "dance troupes" of every world power dig for cobalt, a line of partition is painted across the entire island, and the young King (Ian Bannen) is undermined by his wicked uncle (John le Mesurier) and unscrupulous Prime Minister Amphibulos (Peter Sellers). There's a touch of Royal romance as the King gets together with a rival princess (the winning Luciana Paoluzzi), but it's mostly mild laughs at the expense of British ineptitude, with Thorley Walters as the dim army officer who sends his men to put down a rebellion with orders that lead them to turn in a circle and capture his own command post, Miles Malleson as the gouty consul who should have come home in 1916, and a snarling Raymond Huntley as the minister appalled that the new monarch of a British ally was a member of the Labour Party at Oxford. The film finds Sellers' non-specific foreign accent unusually upstaged, with Terry Thomas walking off with most of the comedy scenes, blithely inspecting a line of shabby crack troops who keep passing out at his feet. It fumbles a bit with obvious targets, especially in comparison with similar films like Passport to Pimlico and The Mouse That Roared, but you can't argue with a cast like this. Down in the ranks are: John Van Eyssen, Irene Handl, Nicholas Parsons, Kenneth Griffith, Sam Kydd and Kynaston Reeves. On the DVD: Carlton-Browne of the F.O. comes to disc in fullscreen, with a decent-ish quality print. The film is also available as part of the four-disc Peter Sellers Collection.--Kim Newman
A boxing promoter who shares a church hall with a prudish reverend is the knockout formula for this sparkling Brian Rix farce.
While horror conventions may change from generation to generation, there are ideas that will scare us no matter what time period we inhabit. Dead of Night is a classic horror anthology that effectively plays on those timeless fears. Mervyn Johns stars as a man who has been summoned to a house with a group of strangers he has never met but has seen in his dreams. As they convene, he predicts certain events will happen as they do in his dreams and when they do, the other guests relate their own experiences with the supernatural, including tales of a possessed mirror, a sinister ventriloquist's dummy and an eerie premonition of death. Throughout the group meeting, the protagonist fears something horrible will happen to him and we are left to wonder what it might be. The film's final, revelatory sequence offers an unexpectedly horrific surprise. It may have been made in 1945 but Dead of Night is still spooky. --Bryan Reesman
A small coastal village is the setting for smuggling and ship wrecking. Only the Squire's son is prepared to speak out against the man responsible...
The Speckled Band (Dir. Jack Raymond 1931): Helen Stoner becomes concerned when she hears a mysterious whistle - a sound her sister complained about right before her death. Sounds like a case of Holmes (Raymond Massey) and Watson (Athole Stewart). The Sign Of Four (Dir. Graham Cutts 1932): In this classic murder-mystery an escaped killer embarks on a ruthless quest to track down a missing treasure as well as the man who cheated him out of it.
The timeless 1952 version of Oscar Wilde's comedy of errors in a Special Collectors' Edition.
Typically British comedy with three London gentlemen taking holiday rowing down the Thames encountering various mishaps and misadventures along the way.
Captain of an international ferry Henry St. James (Guinness) enjoys life on the waves dashing between one wife in Gibraltar and one in Tangiers. However when each wife finds out about the other St. James finds himself all at sea!
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