82% (3) Rope 80 min, PG, [Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller] [Alfred Hitchcock] [25 Sep 1948]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 80%, Rotten Tomatoes: 93%, Metacritic: 73%, External Reviews
Awards: 3 nominations.
Actors: Dick Hogan, Edith Evanson, Farley Granger, James Stewart, John Dall
Writer: Hume Cronyn (adapted by), Patrick Hamilton (from the play by), Arthur Laurents (screenplay)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Brandon and Philip are two young men who share a New York apartment. They consider themselves intellectually superior to their friend David Kentley and as a consequence decide to murder him. Together they strangle David with a rope and placing the body in an old chest, they proceed to hold a small party. The guests include David's father, his fiancée Janet and their old schoolteacher Rupert from whom they mistakenly took their ideas. As Brandon becomes increasingly more daring, Rupert begins to suspect.
Rotten Tomatoes: Rope, Alfred Hitchcock's first color film, was adapted from Patrick Hamilton's stage play Rope's End by no less than Hume Cronyn. Loosely inspired by the Leopold-Loeb case, the plot concerns two implicitly homosexual college chums, played by Farley Granger and John Dall. Their heads filled with Nietzschean philosophy by their kindly professor James Stewart, Granger and Dall kill a third friend just for the thrill of it. The boys hide the body in an antique chest in the middle of their posh apartment, then perversely arrange to hold a dinner party around the chest, inviting the victim's family, friends and fiancee (Joan Chandler), as well as their intellectual role-model Stewart. As the guests wander obliviously around the sealed chest, the killers make snippy, veiled comments about their deed--never going so far as to reveal the existence of the body nor their involvement in the murder. As all the guests file out, however, professor Stewart begins to suspect that something is amiss. In Rope, Hitchcock attempted the daunting technical challenge of filming the entire picture in one long, seemingly uninterrupted take. Actually, there are several edits in the movie: since a reel of film was divided into two ten-minute minireels back in 1948, the internal reel-breaks are "fudged" by having a dark object briefly obscure the camera lens, sustaining the illusion that no editing has taken place.
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87% (2) Gun Crazy 87 min, Passed, [Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Romance, Thriller] [Joseph H. Lewis] [20 Jan 1950]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 77%, Rotten Tomatoes: 97%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 win.
Actors: Berry Kroeger, John Dall, Morris Carnovsky, Peggy Cummins
Writer: MacKinlay Kantor (screenplay), Dalton Trumbo (screenplay), MacKinlay Kantor (story "Gun Crazy"), Millard Kaufman (front for Dalton Trumbo)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Since he was a child, Bart Tare has always loved guns. After leaving the army, his friends take him to a carnival, where he meets the perfect girl; Annie, a sharp-shooting sideshow performer who loves guns as much as he. The 2 run off and marry, but Annie isn't happy with their financial situation, so at her behest the couple begins a cross-country string of daring robberies. Never one to use guns for killing, Bart's dragged down into oblivion by the greedy and violent nature of the woman he loves.
Rotten Tomatoes: The definitive Joseph H. Lewis-directed melodrama, Gun Crazy is the "Bonnie and Clyde" story retooled for the disillusioned postwar generation. John Dall plays a timorous, emotionally disturbed World War II veteran who has had a lifelong fixation with guns. He meets a kindred spirit in carnival sharpshooter Peggy Cummins, who is equally disturbed -- but a lot smarter, and hence a lot more dangerous. Beyond their physical attraction to one another, both Dall and Cummins are obsessed with firearms. They embark on a crime spree, with Cummins as the brains and Dall as the trigger man. As sociopathic a duo as are likely to be found in a 1940s film, Dall and Cummins are also perversely fascinating. As they dance their last dance before dying in a hail of police bullets, the audience is half hoping that somehow they'll escape the Inevitable. Some critics have complained that Dall is far too effeminate and Cummins too butch, but Joseph H. Lewis was never known to draw anything in less than broad strokes: recall the climax of Terror in a Texas Town, wherein Sterling Hayden participates in a western showdown armed with a whaler's harpoon. The best and most talked-about scene in Gun Crazy is the bank robbery sequence, shot in "real time" from the back seat of Dall and Cummins' getaway car. Originally slated for Monogram release, Gun Crazy enjoyed a wider exposure when its producers, the enterprising King Brothers, chose United Artists as the distributor. The film was based on a magazine article by MacKinlay Kantor; one of the scenarists was uncredited blacklistee Dalton Trumbo.
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76% (1) The Corn Is Green 115 min, Not Rated, [Drama] [Irving Rapper] [14 Jul 1945]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 76%, External Reviews
Actors: Bette Davis, John Dall, Nigel Bruce, Rhys Williams, Rosalind Ivan
Writer: Casey Robinson (screenplay), Frank Cavett (screenplay), Emlyn Williams (stage play)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, Welsh, Latin, French Country: USA
Plot: Schoolteacher Lilly Moffat is dismayed by conditions in a Welsh mining town. She sets up a school to teach fundamental education to the villagers. Her housekeeper and daughter oppose the project, as does the local Squire who will not rent her space. Using part of her own home, she goes ahead with Miss Moffat's School. One of her students Morgan Evans turns from bully to brilliant student.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this 1945 filmization of Emlyn Williams' semi-autobiographical 1938 play +The Corn is Green, Bette Davis steps into the role originated on Broadway by Ethel Barrymore. Davis plays Miss Moffat, a turn-of-the-century schoolteacher in a Welsh mining town. She has opened her own school in hopes of lowering the town's illiteracy rate, thus enabling the younger residents to seek out more fulfilling lives than merely sweating away in the mines until they drop. She runs into a great deal of resistance from mine-owner Nigel Bruce, who realizes that as soon as the citizens can read and write, they'll rebel against his benevolent despotry. Even Miss Moffat concludes that her mission is hopeless until she is visited by young miner John Dall, who wants to know "what is behind all those books". Within two years, Dall has made so much progress that he has qualified for Oxford. A last-minute snag involving Dall's illegitimate child is solved when Miss Moffet herself agrees to adopt the baby so that her student can complete his education. Emlyn Williams himself came from a backward mining town, and was himself inspired to better things by a compassionate schoolteacher; the pregnancy angle was (probably) added to provide the story with a third act. The Corn is Green was remade for television in 1978, with Katharine Hepburn as Miss Moffat. Watch for one amusing gaffe in the original: despite carefully setting up the premise that the villagers are illiterate, they are shown hovering around a poster and reading it out loud in an early scene.
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69% (1) The Man Who Cheated Himself 81 min, [Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery] [Felix E. Feist] [26 Dec 1950]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 69%, External Reviews
Actors: Jane Wyatt, John Dall, Lee J. Cobb, Lisa Howard
Writer: Seton I. Miller (screenplay), Philip MacDonald (screenplay), Seton I. Miller (story)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, Italian Country: USA
Plot: A veteran homicide detective who has witnessed his socialite girlfriend kill her husband sees his inexperienced brother assigned to the case.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this film, Lee J. Cobb stars as Ed Cullen, a San Francisco police lieutenant embroiled in a clandestine romance with married socialite Lois Frazer. When Lois kills her husband Howard, the flustered Cullen vows to cover for her. Things get sticky when Cullen is assigned to investigate the case.
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68% (1) Something in the Wind 94 min, APPROVED, [Comedy, Musical] [Irving Pichel] [21 Jul 1947]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 68%, External Reviews
Actors: Charles Winninger, Deanna Durbin, Donald O'Connor, John Dall
Writer: Harry Kurnitz (screenplay), William Bowers (screenplay), Fritz Rotter (story), Charles O'Neal (story)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: A grandson of a recently deceased millionaire mistakes a beautiful female disc jockey for her aunt, who once dated the grandfather.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this musical comedy of errors, a female DJ is kidnapped by a fellow who believes that she is the ex-lover of his rich uncle. The woman soon finds herself falling in love with her captor. Later, a lively young fellow comes to her rescue and happiness ensues.
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55% (1) Atlantis: The Lost Continent 90 min, Approved, [Adventure, Sci-Fi] [George Pal] [03 May 1961]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 55%, External Reviews
Actors: John Dall, Joyce Taylor, Sal Ponti, William Smith
Writer: Daniel Mainwaring (screenplay), Gerald Hargreaves (play)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Website Language: English Country: USA
Plot: A Greek Fisherman brings an Atlantean Princess back to her homeland which is the mythical city of Atlantis. He is enslaved for his trouble. The King is being manipulated by an evil sorcerer who is bent on using a natural resource of Atlantis to take over the world. The Atlanteans, or rather the slaves of Atlantis, are forced to mine a crystalline material which absorbs the suns rays. These crystals can then be used for warmth. The misuse of science has created weapons out of the crystals that can fire a heat ray to destroy whatever it touches.
Rotten Tomatoes: Anthony Hall is the Greek sailor Demetrius who saves a princess and follows her back to Atlantis where he's locked up by the evil ruler Zaren. Demetrius organizes the other slaves and takes Zaren on. The tussle results in an atomic-powered explosion that sends the famed city to the bottom of the sea.
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