Showing posts with label (1966). Show all posts
Showing posts with label (1966). Show all posts

Friday, 14 October 2016

(1966) The Night Before the Morning After


The night before the wedding, the Bride-to-be can't stop worrying about foolish doubts about her future husband, keeping her parents up all night. Meanwhile, the Groom is having second thoughts as his flatmate and a party girl distract him. A comedy episode that was broadcast as part of the Armchair Theatre series from the 60s.

Saturday, 8 October 2016

Cathy Come Home (The Wednesday Play) 1966


Cathy Come Home is a 1966 BBC television play by Jeremy Sandford, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach, about homelessness. A 1998 Radio Times readers' poll voted it the "best single television drama" and a 2000 industry poll rated it as the second best British television programme ever made. Filmed in a gritty, realistic drama documentary style, it was first broadcast on 16 November 1966 on BBC1. The play was shown in the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology strand, which often tackled social issues.

The play tells the story of a young couple, Cathy (played by Carol White) and Reg (Ray Brooks), and their descent into poverty and homelessness. At the start of the film, Cathy leaves her parents' overcrowded rural home and hitchhikes to the city, where she finds work and meets Reg, a well-paid lorry driver. They fall in love, marry, and rent a modern apartment in a building that does not allow children. Cathy soon becomes pregnant and must stop working, and Reg is injured on the job and becomes unemployed. The loss of income and birth of the baby force them to leave their apartment, and they are unable to find another affordable place to live that permits children.

They move in with Reg's mother, until tensions develop between her and Cathy in the crowded flat. A kind elderly landlady, Mrs. Alley, rents to them for a while, during which time Cathy has two more children. Mrs. Alley even allows them to stay when they fall behind on the rent. However, she dies suddenly and her son and heir has the family evicted by bailiffs. The family then moves to a caravan parked in a camp where several other families are already living in caravans, but the local residents object to the camp and set it on fire, killing several children. Cathy, Reg and their children are forced to illegally squat in a wrecked, abandoned building. They repeatedly try to get decent housing through the local council, but are not helped because of their many moves and the long list of other people also seeking housing assistance.

Cathy and Reg decide to temporarily separate so that Cathy and the children can move into an emergency homeless shelter where husbands are not allowed to stay. Reg leaves the area to seek employment. Cathy's loneliness and frustration finally boil over and she becomes belligerent with the shelter authorities, who are often cold and judgmental towards the women living in the shelter. Cathy's allotted time at the shelter expires while Reg is away, and she and her two remaining children (one having been sent to live with Reg's mother) have no place to go. They go to a railway station, where Cathy's children are taken away from her by social services.

Thursday, 23 June 2016

(1966) The Reptile

The Reptile is a 1966 horror film made by Hammer Film Productions. It was directed by John Gilling, and starred Noel Willman, Jacqueline Pearce, Ray Barrett, Jennifer Daniel, and Michael Ripper.

At the turn of the 20th century in the fictional village of Clagmoor Heath in Cornwall several locals are dying from what is deemed to be the "Black Death". Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) inherits his late brother’s cottage and arrives with his new bride, Valerie (Jennifer Daniel) . The inhabitants of the village keep clear of the newly arrived couple, and only the publican, Tom Bailey (Michael Ripper), befriends them. Bailey explains that the hostility exhibited by the townspeople is the result of many mysterious deaths in the community.
The sinister Dr. Franklyn (Noel Willman), the owner of the nearby Well House, is the only resident in the vicinity of the cottage, and he lives with his daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce). The Doctor treats his daughter with cruel contempt, and she is attended by a silent Malay servant (Marne Maitland).

Hoping to learn something of the deaths, Harry invites the local eccentric, Mad Peter (John Laurie), home for dinner. After warning them that their lives are in danger, Mad Peter quickly departs only to return later that evening foaming at the mouth, with his face blackened and swollen. He dies within a few minutes. The Spaldings attempt to alert Dr. Franklyn, but Franklyn arrogantly states that Peter's death is not his concern.
In an attempt to help Harry clear up the mystery, Tom Bailey illegally unearths Mad Peter’s corpse and discovers a strange neck wound like a snake bite. Harry and Tom dig up the coffin of Harry's dead brother, Charles, and find that corpse also has those same strange marks. Realizing that they are threatened by something far worse than they had ever imagined, Harry is quick to answer an urgent message from the Well House. There he is bitten by a mysterious reptilian creature, but still he manages to return to his home and recover from the bite.

Meanwhile, at the eerie abode, Valerie witnesses Dr. Franklyn’s attempt to kill his own cursed daughter (who was changed into the Reptile creature after joining a Malay snake cult that included the doctor's own servant). She also witnesses a fierce struggle between the doctor and the deranged Malay servant. During the battle, a lantern is overturned and Dr. Franklyn is bitten by the venomous fangs of his Reptilian daughter. Both the doctor and the Reptile die in the fire and the Well House crumbles in flames with Harry and Valerie fleeing for their lives.

Wednesday, 22 June 2016

(1966) Rasputin: The Mad Monk

Rasputin, the Mad Monk is a 1966 Hammer film directed by Don Sharp. It stars Christopher Lee as Grigori Rasputin, the Russian peasant-mystic who gained great influence with the Tsars prior to the Russian Revolution. It also features Barbara Shelley, Francis Matthews, Suzan Farmer, Richard Pasco, Dinsdale Landen and Renée Asherson. The story is largely fictionalized, although some of the events leading up to Rasputin's assassination are very loosely based on Prince Yusupov's account of the story. For legal reasons, the character of Yusupov was replaced by Ivan (Matthews). Yusupov was still alive when the film was released, dying on 27 September 1967.

The emphasis is on Rasputin's terrifying powers both to work magic and to seduce women.

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

(1966) Preet Na Jane Reet

Preet Na Jane Reet is a 1966 film directed by S.Banerjee starring Shammi Kapoor and Saroja Devi as the romantic lead.

(1966) The Plague of the Zombies

The Plague of the Zombies is a 1966 Hammer film directed by John Gilling. It stars André Morell, John Carson, Jacqueline Pearce, Brook Williams and Michael Ripper. The film's imagery influenced many later films in the zombie genre.

In a Cornish village in August 1860, the inhabitants of the town are dying from a mysterious plague that seems to be spreading at an accelerated rate. Even the local doctor, Peter Tompson (Brook Williams), cannot combat the disease. Alarmed, Tompson sends for outside help from his friend Sir James Forbes (André Morell). Accompanying Sir James is his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare). In an attempt to learn more about the disease, Sir James and Dr. Thompson disinter the corpses that were recently buried. To their surprise, the men find all the coffins empty. Conducting further investigations on the mystery lead the doctors to encounter zombies walking near an old, deserted tin mine on the estate of Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson). Sir James is informed that the squire lived in Haiti for several years and practiced voodoo rituals, as well as black magic. This information leads him to research on the subject of the black arts.

Later that evening, Squire Hamilton pays Sylvia a visit. Purposely, Hamilton manages to shatter a wine glass, and Sylvia happens to cut her finger on one of the sharp edges of the glass. Secretly, the Squire conceals a piece of the blood-stained glass into his coat pocket and departs. With a vestige of Sylvia's blood, Hamilton uses his voodoo magic to lure the heroine into venturing in the dark woods. She is led to the abandoned tin mine by an army of walking zombies for a voodoo ceremony that will transform her into one of the walking dead.

While Tompson follows Sylvia to the mines, Sir James investigates the Squire's house and finds some small figures in coffins the Squire uses for his voodoo. After a struggle with one of the Squire's henchmen the room is accidentally set ablaze, Sir James barely managing to escape after threatening a servant who notices the inferno for information on the mine. He races to the mines to join Tompson, while in the mansion the figures in the coffins catch fire, causing their zombie counterparts to do the same and go crazy. Using the distraction caused by the burning crazed zombies Sir James and the doctor rescue Sylvia and flee from the burning flames as they listen to the anguished screams of Hamilton and his zombies; thus the plague is ended.

Monday, 20 June 2016

(1966) One Million Years B.C.

One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch and John Richardson, set in a fictional age of cavemen and dinosaurs. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions and Seven Arts, and is a remake of the Hollywood film One Million B.C. (1940). It recreates many of the scenes of the earlier film, such as an Allosaurus attacking a tree full of children. Location scenes were filmed on the Canary Islands in the middle of winter, in late 1965. The British release prints of this film were printed in dye transfer Technicolor. The film was released censored in the United States in 1967, printed in DeLuxe Color.

Like the original film, this remake is largely ahistorical. It portrays dinosaurs and humans living together, whereas, according to the geologic time scale, it is assumed the last dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years BC, and it is assumed Homo sapiens (modern humans) did not exist until about 200,000 years BC. Ray Harryhausen, who animated all of the dinosaur attacks using stop motion techniques, commented on the US King Kong DVD that he did not make One Million Years B.C. for "professors... [who] probably don't go to see these kinds of movies anyway."



Monday, 30 May 2016

(1966) The Good the Bad and the Ugly

In the Southwest during the Civil War, a mysterious stranger, Joe (Clint Eastwood), and a Mexican outlaw, Tuco (Eli Wallach), form an uneasy partnership -- Joe turns in the bandit for the reward money, then rescues him just as he is being hanged. When Joe's shot at the noose goes awry during one escapade, a furious Tuco tries to have him murdered. The men re-team abruptly, however, to beat out a sadistic criminal and the Union army and find $20,000 that a soldier has buried in the desert.

Thursday, 19 May 2016

(1966) Dracula: Prince of Darkness

Hammer's second outing for the notorious vampire after their hugely successful Dracula (1958), with Christopher Lee returning as the demonic Count. Here he is revived by a devoted servant using the blood of an unwary guest and so begins his reign of terror once more.