The Purple Plain (1954) , directed by Robert Parrish. During sweaty jungle days in Burma, pilot Gregory Peck is terrifying his crew-mates with his suicidal don't-give-a-damn courage. Having lost his wife (on their wedding day!) in a London air raid, he has no reason to live. Wouldn't you know it: j...

Cold Hands, Warm Heart , directed by Charles Haas. Astronaut William Shatner is a hero after returning from the first mission to Venus, but he was out of contact for eight minutes and now is in trouble. He can't get warm, has nightmares of a floating voodoo-doll creature, and finally develops scaly...

Soldier , directed by Gerd Oswald. In a bleak post-apocalyptic future two rigidly trained soldiers are struck by lightning and inexplicably cast back to our time. Their only purpose: seek each other and kill . Linguist Lloyd Nolan wants to deprogram killing machine Michael Ansara and introduce him ...

The Forms of Things Unknown , directed by Gerd Oswald. One man and two women in a wild drive across the countryside, a non-stop party with cruel games. He is masculine, dominating and sadistic. The women seem submissive but this doesn't stop them from poisoning him. What to do with the body? On a d...

The Chameleon , directed by Gerd Oswald. When the alien crew of a spacecraft prove both dangerous and uncommunicative, Top Men develop an exceedingly cunning plan to get inside information. A human agent will be genetically modified to become one of the aliens and join them. His cover story: he is ...

Monsieur Hire (1989) , written and directed by Patrice Leconte. When a young woman is murdered in a robbery, an odd little tailor is suspected. Why? Seemingly because he is strange and the neighbors don't like him. ("That's all right. I don't like them either"). At first he seems just bla...

Production and Decay of Strange Particles , written and directed by Leslie Stevens. A tale ripped from recent scientific literature: experimenting with subatomic particles collected from distant mysterious quasars, the scientist at the atomic lab has opened a breach to another dimension and these e...

I Confess (1953) , directed by Alfred Hitchcock. My wife asked "What was that one with Montgomery Clift as a priest...?" I might not have gotten this down for a while otherwise, but it plays better than I remember, even if not completely satisfactory. The strongest feature is Clift's wond...

A Feasibility Study , directed by Byron Haskin. A whole neighborhood is uprooted overnight and transported to planet Luminos. Despite the weird atmospherics, strange noises, and intermittent tech breakdowns, the residents carry on for a little while, trying not to notice. This is like a Twilight Zo...

The Special One , directed by Gerd Oswald. A secret alien visitor claiming to be from a government office is tutoring a young boy because he is a "favorable mutation", mom and dad having worked in an atomic lab. The boy develops strange knowledge and stranger powers. The parents find this...

Fun and Games , directed by Gerd Oswald. On the run after witnessing a gambling murder, a boxer is picked up by an alien puppet-master and given a proposition: he and an Earth woman will be sent to the Arena planet in a fight to the death against another alien couple, all for the amusement of unsee...

The Guests , directed by Paul Stanley. The convertible driving hipster -- "Drifter", they call him -- turns out to be ok because he stops to help a very old man -- Burt Mustin -- who has collapsed on the road. We have seen the man desperately escaping from an old mansion which sometimes l...

The Mutant , directed by Alan Crosland Jr. Planet Annex One seems like a perfect candidate for colonization, apart from the perpetual blinding sunlight and regular radioactive rain. Messages from the exploration team seem a bit "off" and Earth sends an investigator to check it out. "...

Billy Budd (1962) , produced and directed by Peter Ustinov. Young Billy is a good-hearted and simple-minded merchant seaman. He is illiterate and doesn't know how old he is or where he was born, but is well-liked on the friendly ship Rights of Man . Things change when he is impressed aboard the war...

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) , directed by Peter Godfrey. Humphrey Bogart is a grumpy painter showing signs of lunacy. When he meets Barbara Stanwyck he poisons his wife and remarries. Then he meets Alexis Smith and suddenly Stanwyck isn't feeling too well. During a dark and stormy night she discov...