It's the holiday season and we are watching movies. Why don't you join us? RODNEY BOWCOCK : A few small-time crooks (Edward G. Robinson and Broderick Crawford) learn of an easy mark of a bank to rob while in prison and upon their release they purchase the leather goods store next to said bank with the plans to dig a tunnel underneath the bank into the vault. Soon however, business starts improving on the struggling store and Pressure Maxwell finds himself becoming a distingui

It's the holiday season and we are watching movies. Why don't you join us? RODNEY BOWCOCK : Mr. Soft Touch is a noirish Christmas comedy (but not really a comedy, just kind of lighter in tone) about a complicated con-man named Joe Miracle (Glenn Ford) who takes refuge in a settlement house run by Jenny Jones (Evelyn Keyes). There’s a series of amusing situations as Joe tries to acclimate himself to his new surroundings, but there’s also an ominous tone as the mob and a shady

Light in the Piazza is a romantic film adapted from a novella of the same name written by Elizabeth Spencer. It follows a mother (Olivia de Havilland) and daughter (Yvette Mimieux) on vacation in Italy. The daughter is in her 20s but a head injury in childhood caused her maturity to stop advancing, so she has the mentality of a pre-teen. The mother is ultra protective of her daughter, but she cannot keep a young Italian man (George Hamilton) from becoming interested. Variety

RODNEY BOWCOCK : Night Must Fall centers on a small English village shook with the news of a missing woman, and zeroes in on the home of a hypochondriac and her team of servants. One of these servants has found herself pregnant by a worker in the town who claims to want to marry her. When Danny (Robert Montgomery), the aforementioned layabout finally appears, he quickly ingrates himself into the household winning the affections of the old dowager (Dame May Whitty) and sets h

RODNEY BOWCOCK : He Walked By Night is a semi-documentary film noir directed by Alfred Werker ( Moon Over Her Shoulder amongst many, many others) and an uncredited Anthony Mann (who may have shot a few scenes of the movie, or may have shot as much as a third, although some reviewers have an unplausible theory that Mann reshot the ENTIRE film), this is the gritty, dirty story of Roy Martin (Richard Basehart), an unscrupulous burglar turned cop-killer and the lengths that the

RODNEY BOWCOCK : Tonight and Every Night is a story based around the Blitz in London, focusing primarily on Rita Hayworth, Janet Blair and Marc Platt as the stars of the Music Box Theatre, a music hall that never missed a performance. The story is told to a photographer from Life magazine (Jim Bannon), and in between the story of the theater is a romance story between Hayworth and Lee Bowman. SAMANTHA GLASSER : Tonight and Every Night is based on a real theater called the W

Halloween and old-time radio are synonymous in our house, so, naturally, I had to take advantage of the opportunity to present a few programs that you may not have heard before. First up, we have an episode of Inner Sanctum Mysteries. This is one of those shows that people that were alive in the radio era remember very fondly, but in spite of its popularity, it was not particularly well preserved. As such, quite a few of the episodes that we have available today exist because

To celebrate spooky season, we view and review lesser-known scary movies from the golden age. RODNEY BOWCOCK : Near the swampy mansion of Kurt Ingston (Ralph Morgan) there have been a string of unexplained murders and weird happenings. Ingston’s sister, Margaret (Fay Helm), claims that she is being falsely imprisoned under false accusations of mental illness. Millie Carson (Janet Shaw), a maid, abruptly quits and disappears under mysterious circumstances. Meanwhile, Ingston h

RODNEY BOWCOCK : Brenda Joyce stars as Elizabeth Woods, the niece of a murdered pirate. The pirate has left her a decrepit ship in his will and she is determined to discover how and why he was murdered. Meanwhile, Milton Berle has his own reasons for solving the murder. SAMANTHA GLASSER: Berle has a true-crime radio program that delves into the stories of unsolved murders and attempts to reveal the truth. The case he is currently unraveling is also of interest to the police

To celebrate spooky season, we view and review lesser-known scary movies from the golden age. RODNEY BOWCOCK :  There’s no better place to start except for the beginning, so here we go.  An astronaut is coming back from a successful moon landing though things aren’t going well.  He’s run out of oxygen and while he can communicate with mission control, the video monitors show him in bad shape, begging to ship to be blown up as his hand is making him “do things…kill…kill”. Mean

To celebrate spooky season, we view and review lesser-known scary movies from the golden age. RODNEY BOWCOCK : The film opens as a book on the history of vampires is tossed into a fire while a head comes into focus, warning us not to be flippant with the powers of the dark arts. This leads us to a funeral in progress for Dr Elywn Clayton (George Zucco), a town misfit with a penchant for the occult. Attending the funeral is Elywn’s twin brother Dr Lloyd Clayton (Zucco again, n

This month we watch films featuring the final performance of a beloved star. This week we examine the last movie featuring Rags Ragland and Slim Summerville, The Hoodlum Saint. RODNEY BOWCOCK : Returning home from WWI we meet Major Terry O’Neill (William Powell), who was a newspaper reporter before he left for overseas. He returns home to find himself out of a job and unable to get a new one, along with many other returning soldiers. Terry has reunited with a group of small t

This month we watch films featuring the final performance of a beloved star. This week we examine Clara Bow in Hoopla. RODNEY BOWCOCK :  It’s old-timey carnival time when this movie opens as we meet Nifty Miller (Preston Foster) and his son Chris (Richard Cromwell).  Nifty manages the carnival and Chris is his bumpkin son who shows up to the carnival hoping for work and spoiling his dad’s relationship with his lover Carrie (Minna Gombell).  This ticks Carrie off but good so s

This month we watch films featuring the final performance of a beloved star. This week we witness William Powell's work in Mister Roberts. RODNEY BOWCOCK : The film is set on a navy cargo ship, The Reluctant , perched in the Pacific Ocean far from any of the conflicts that we are used to being thrust into in these sorts of films. It centers on Doug Roberts (Henry Fonda), the cargo chief of the ship, who is thirsty to see more of the battle action that he fantasizes about, his

Black Narcissus is the story of a cloister of nuns who are gifted the use of a palace in a remote part of India. They intend to turn it...

There are some actors who seem to be great in everything they do without exception. This month we explore some of Jean Arthur’s...

There are some actors who seem to be great in everything they do without exception. This month we explore some of Jean Arthur’s...

There are some actors who seem to be great in everything they do without exception. This month we explore some of Jean Arthur’s...

There are some actors who seem to be great in everything they do without exception. This month we explore some of Jean Arthur’s...

It's the dog days of summer, and if you are in the midwest like we are, it's been a steamy one. This week, we present a trio of classic...