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The Gamma People (1956)
Gamma-Ray Creatures Loose!
Filmmaker(s): John Gilling

An American reporter smells a story when he is stranded in an Iron Curtain country where the local dictator is using gamma rays to transform children into mutated henchmen.

Women, Trained story here is a bit interesting, deriving from Nazi experiments with children and indicating a trend actually well supported in the US. But the production is ho hum and it has no value for what it is. But it is an example of something...


Published July 23, 2025
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Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Blood red kisses! White hot thrills! Mickey Spillane’s latest H-bomb!
Filmmaker(s): Robert Aldrich

One evening, Hammer gives a ride to Christina, an attractive hitchhiker on a lonely country road, who has escaped from the nearby lunatic asylum. Thugs waylay them and force his car to crash. When Hammer returns to semi-consciousness, he hears Christina being tortured until she dies. Hammer, both for vengeance and in hopes that "something big" is behind it all, decides to pursue the case.

Who Knows? i s nothing more invigorating like true noir, and there are very, very few of those. This is one that ranks with “Touch of Evil“ and “The Long Goodbye.” Good noir is not a matter of tough talk and dark shadows. It is a...


Published March 4, 2023
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I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
The frank, revealing story of Lillian Roth's life! Best-seller now a film sensation.
Filmmaker(s): Daniel Mann

Deprived of a normal childhood by her ambitious mother, Lillian Roth becomes a star of Broadway and Hollywood before she is twenty. Shortly before her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, David Tredman, he dies and Lillian takes her first drink of many down the road of becoming an alcoholic.

Drunk on Acting love movies. I love getting caught up in the all the cinematic flows that filmmakers know how to weave. But the things I value and study in film are the things that are cinematic. Some movies aren’t movies. They’re distributed and displayed as...


Published December 1, 2022
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Killers From Space (1954)
The last word in science-fiction thrills!
Filmmaker(s): W. Lee Wilder

Atomic scientist/pilot Doug Martin is missing after his plane crashes on an reconnaissance mission after a nuclear test. Miraculously appearing unhurt at the base later, he is given sodium amethol, but authorities are skeptical of his story that he was captured by aliens determined to conquer the Earth with giant monsters and insects. Martin vows to use existing technology to destroy them.

Fools You, You Fools know, slogging through 50’s scifi through the same stuff in the seventies is a dreary business unless you invent your own film on top. Most of the viewers who do this, simply hoot at the silliness and bad production. But there...


Published March 4, 2023
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Sherlock Holmes (1954-1955)

The first American television series of Sherlock Holmes adventures aired in syndication in the fall of 1954. The 39 half-hour mostly original stories were produced by Sheldon Reynolds and filmed in France by Guild Films, starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and Howard Marion Crawford as Watson. Archie Duncan appeared in many episodes as Inspector Lestrade. Richard Larke, billed as Kenneth Richards, played Sgt. Wilkins in about fifteen episodes. The series' associate producer, Nicole Milinaire, was one of the first women to attain a senior production role in a television series.

Sluggo another appropriation of the Holmes character. In this case, they had 23 minutes to fill with enough attractiveness to sell stuff. The form demands light banter, very simple plots and secondary characters, and lots of slugging. Slugging is required. Like other appropriations of the Holmes...


Published March 4, 2023
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An Inspector Calls (1954)
Is he real... or the creature of conscience?
Filmmaker(s): Guy Hamilton

An upper-crust family dinner is interrupted by a police inspector who brings news that a girl known to everyone present has died in suspicious circumstances. It seems that any or all of them could have had a hand in her death. But who is the mysterious Inspector and what can he want of them?

Inspecting the Story you want to understand film, the first thing on the list is narrative structure, specifically cinematically structured narrative. If I were teaching in film school, I would introduce this subject in a semester’s worth of detective narrative. Nowhere are more tricks pulled, more...


Published November 24, 2022
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Rear Window (1954)
It only takes one witness to spoil the perfect crime.
Filmmaker(s): Alfred Hitchcock

A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

Copernican Cinema just don't like Hitchcock. I admit that he ‘delivered value' in his day, but as I review his films today, I find them trite, badly dated. The style of acting he used now looks ’actorly.' His camera framing is well considered but unimaginative...


Published December 10, 2024
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The Band Wagon (1953)
Get Aboard!
Filmmaker(s): Vincente Minnelli

A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.

42nd Street in the Rain colour musical film is a strange beast. Hollywood explored many of its possibilities. And people did buy lots of tickets. But until very recently, musicals were all but dead. That’s because they were never able to create a self sustaining...


Published May 17, 2023
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From Here to Eternity (1953)
The boldest book of our time… honestly, fearlessly on the screen!
Filmmaker(s): Fred Zinnemann

In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.

The Rule of Threes own estimation is that this is a pretty poor movie cinematically, with the exeption of the then-shocking juicy exuberance of the beach scene. But it is crackling good storytelling and that overcomes the wooden direction and uninspired acting. I’m a believer in the...


Published December 24, 2022
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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953)
The Wonder Musical of the Future!
Filmmaker(s): Roy Rowland

Young Bart Collins lives with his widowed mother Heloise. The major blight on Bart's existence is the hated piano lessons he is forced to endure under the tutelage of the autocratic Dr. Terwilliker. Bart feels that his mother has fallen under Terwilliker's sinister influence, and gripes to visiting plumber August Zabladowski, without much result. While grimly hammering away at his lessons, Bart dozes off and enters a fantastical musical dream.

Green Eggs watch so many bad films that I’m worn out for any try at campiness. I never recommend films as jokes, and many seemingly bad films are really good ones with bad production values. But this one is such a disaster it deserves all the...


Published December 15, 2022
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