Reviews (1)

Great Classic Swashbuckler Movie!!
This is a great classic 50's swashbuckler movie concerning a soldier of fortune.It's a must see!!! ... Read more

Reviews (29)

Snap that mainspring
Of all the whacked-out, loopy, unhinged and nutso stories that have made it to the sci-fi screen, this one takes the cake. It's the ultimate, the greatest science fiction movie ever made in English. Seeing it is what you might expect an episode of schizophrenia to be like: you just get drawn further and further away from reality and you're helpless to resist. H. G. Wells reportedly had a close hand in fashioning this pre-vision of what World War Two and its aftermath might be like and his eccentricity just adds to the enjoyment. Ralph Richardson lets it all hang out as only the English can do when they get unbuttoned, and Raymond Massey is equally fine. His eagle-like profile gazing into the heavens while a choir sings "Which Will It Be?" is an image you won't forget in a hurry.

GREAT movie, LOUSY video transfer
"Things to Come" was the "2001" of its day.

In the late sixties, I saw a clean print of this movie in a New York theatre and it blew me away. Although it is in black-and-white, it is visually spectacular; the story is exciting; and it has a wonderful score. The sound was mono optical sound, but it was crisp and clear and capable of delivering the impact of the Arthur Bliss music.

For years, I've owned a disappointing VHS copy, which looks as if it were made made from a dirty, blurry, over-contrasty 16mm print, and the sound quality is poor. I've yearned to see a clean copy.

So when I got my DVD player, one of the first things I did was to buy this release, which says that it "features a pristine new film-to-video transfer from original source materials."

I am sorry to say it looks EXACTLY like the cruddy old VHS version, and the mushy sound is completely unworthy of the composer and music director.

So, I don't know what to say. If you've never seen the movie _Things to Come_, I recommend the movie highly. But the image quality and sound on this DVD have, alas, that "lousy old 16mm print look."

Eerie, but worthwhile
Okay, enough already about the transfers, let's talk about the film itself.

In a nutshell, this 1936 Brit sci-fi feature deals with war and progress. Everytown (London?) is shown in 1940 about to celebrate Christmas amidst blaring headlines of war (in a nifty bit of symbolism, the children play with war toys around the Christmas tree). Then war hits the city (in an eerily accurate foretelling of the German blitz that DID rock England in 1940). As time goes on, the war drags into decades ending up in a post-apocalyptic society in 1966.

Because of the war, Everytown/London has regressed into a crude, medieval type society without electricity which wastes its resources on senseless wars and is led by a Hitler-type warlord ogre called "The Boss." The world is also famished by a deadly, incurable disease called "Wandering Sickenss" whose victims are shot by the boss (reminds you of Castro's quarantine of AIDS patients). John Cabal (Raymond Massey) is a leader of scientists who return to civilize Everytown/London and establish a scientific technocracy. But the Boss demands the technology to wage more war, which he tells his followers is necessary for the peace (he begins to sound frighteningly like George Bush Jr. during such speeches). Anyway, the Boss and Cabal face off, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. A moon shot and some anti-progress protesters (simialr to today's anti WTO protesters) play major parts in the latter third of the story.

For those of us who are into history, this film is extremely eerie, yet fascinating and worthwhile to watch. It's scary in that some of what H.G. Wells prophesized did indeed come true in ways that are even more so than what I just mentioned. (Think of some of today's so-called Third World countries whose resources are wasted by boss-like dictators among other things). Basically, this film, despite the overtly speechike dialogue (Raymond Massey's soliloquy about the need for progress near the film's end is a bit hard to take), is an eloquent sermon on the hindrance that war makes on the progress of humanity and the need for education to triumph over ignorance. It would be great for a high school or college history teacher to show and have a discussion with their classes about this film.

An exceptional period piece
This movie, made between the two World Wars, preserves a complex and varied view of its time. The movie opens on a holiday, with family scenes, caroling, and the rest. The background, however, is a constant threat of war, blared from the news media. In an uncomfortable foreshadowing of 1984, the aggressor is never identified clearly, even when the bombs start to fall.

The next scenes were, I'm sure, as horrific a the director could make them, within the standards of the time. The city, the families in it, and the civilization that it stood for were bombed to the ground and the wreckage gassed. This must have had a special horror at the time. WW-I was still strong in living memory, and the veterans crippled by gas were still alive. But this movie's war went on for decades, long after were no more weapons left to fight it with.

The post-war population was slashed by plague - again, something vivid to people who still remembered the deadly Spanish Flu. Society collapsed into village-states, each governed by the biggest bully around.

New hope for the world came from pure technological optimism, the belief that scientists and engineers could create a moral society in their Buck Rogers laboratories and factories. Don't get me wrong - it is not possible to create a humane society without the labs and factories. We now know that it takes a lot more, as well. The arrogance, techno-tyrrany, and 'weapons of peace' in that new order seemed natural, even proper in that era. They chill a modern viewer, since we now know that a lab coat isn't a mantle of moral authority. That technological utopia was not perfect. It carried its own inherent vices, the easy life and the sense of entitlement to every comfort imaginable.

This movie is a time capsule. It recorded the beliefs and hopes of its age, and plays them back for us 60+ years later. I am boggled by what was then the most advanced thinking; it now seems so naive. We've had a chance to the predictions that came true (mostly, the negative ones) and the predictions that failed miserably in practice (most of the positive ones).

The science fiction aspects of this film will seem hopelessly dated to today's effects-junkies. Even the style of acting will seem stilted. No matter, this one is worth watching and re-watching. It makes me wonder which of today's hopes and fears will come true, and how they'll look half a century from now.

Historical pageantry fast-forwarded
The British, for some reason, were obsessed with historical pageants in the 1930s, and this peculiar product (one of the most expensive films made in Britian up to that time) is an odd by-product of that obsession. It plays like Noel Coward's CAVALCADE in reverse. It opens in 1940, when war against a foreign power is declared at Christmastime (these are the best and most famous sequences, and are performed nearly like a kind of pantomime). Then the film advances episodically at first about decade at a time, showing the devastation wrought by war and plague, the barbarian society that becomes built over the carnage, and finally the superscientific cryptofascistic organization that defeats the barbarian power and its own problems.

Aside from Alfred Hitchcock's work, british cinema just wasn't very good prior to the Second World War, and this film shows why: everyone from the evil barbarian dictator and his Lady MacBeth to the children in the street speak with absurdly posh BBC accents, and there's a ridiculous amount of posturing and posing. The film is mostly of interest today as a kind of curio, especially in its relaization onscreen of the popular futuristic fantsies of the period: giant Art Deco turbines, and oversized flying wing aircrafts that sweep the skies. The striking visualization of the Wings over the World society, with its towers and plazas, and its citizenry bedecked in caped togas with plastic tubing (the costumes were co-designed by the Marchioness of Queensbury!) clearly provided the inspiration for DC Comics illustrators in the United States in their depictions of Superman's Krypton for the next fifty years or so. ... Read more

Reviews (29)

Snap that mainspring
Of all the whacked-out, loopy, unhinged and nutso stories that have made it to the sci-fi screen, this one takes the cake. It's the ultimate, the greatest science fiction movie ever made in English. Seeing it is what you might expect an episode of schizophrenia to be like: you just get drawn further and further away from reality and you're helpless to resist. H. G. Wells reportedly had a close hand in fashioning this pre-vision of what World War Two and its aftermath might be like and his eccentricity just adds to the enjoyment. Ralph Richardson lets it all hang out as only the English can do when they get unbuttoned, and Raymond Massey is equally fine. His eagle-like profile gazing into the heavens while a choir sings "Which Will It Be?" is an image you won't forget in a hurry.

GREAT movie, LOUSY video transfer
"Things to Come" was the "2001" of its day.

In the late sixties, I saw a clean print of this movie in a New York theatre and it blew me away. Although it is in black-and-white, it is visually spectacular; the story is exciting; and it has a wonderful score. The sound was mono optical sound, but it was crisp and clear and capable of delivering the impact of the Arthur Bliss music.

For years, I've owned a disappointing VHS copy, which looks as if it were made made from a dirty, blurry, over-contrasty 16mm print, and the sound quality is poor. I've yearned to see a clean copy.

So when I got my DVD player, one of the first things I did was to buy this release, which says that it "features a pristine new film-to-video transfer from original source materials."

I am sorry to say it looks EXACTLY like the cruddy old VHS version, and the mushy sound is completely unworthy of the composer and music director.

So, I don't know what to say. If you've never seen the movie _Things to Come_, I recommend the movie highly. But the image quality and sound on this DVD have, alas, that "lousy old 16mm print look."

Eerie, but worthwhile
Okay, enough already about the transfers, let's talk about the film itself.

In a nutshell, this 1936 Brit sci-fi feature deals with war and progress. Everytown (London?) is shown in 1940 about to celebrate Christmas amidst blaring headlines of war (in a nifty bit of symbolism, the children play with war toys around the Christmas tree). Then war hits the city (in an eerily accurate foretelling of the German blitz that DID rock England in 1940). As time goes on, the war drags into decades ending up in a post-apocalyptic society in 1966.

Because of the war, Everytown/London has regressed into a crude, medieval type society without electricity which wastes its resources on senseless wars and is led by a Hitler-type warlord ogre called "The Boss." The world is also famished by a deadly, incurable disease called "Wandering Sickenss" whose victims are shot by the boss (reminds you of Castro's quarantine of AIDS patients). John Cabal (Raymond Massey) is a leader of scientists who return to civilize Everytown/London and establish a scientific technocracy. But the Boss demands the technology to wage more war, which he tells his followers is necessary for the peace (he begins to sound frighteningly like George Bush Jr. during such speeches). Anyway, the Boss and Cabal face off, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. A moon shot and some anti-progress protesters (simialr to today's anti WTO protesters) play major parts in the latter third of the story.

For those of us who are into history, this film is extremely eerie, yet fascinating and worthwhile to watch. It's scary in that some of what H.G. Wells prophesized did indeed come true in ways that are even more so than what I just mentioned. (Think of some of today's so-called Third World countries whose resources are wasted by boss-like dictators among other things). Basically, this film, despite the overtly speechike dialogue (Raymond Massey's soliloquy about the need for progress near the film's end is a bit hard to take), is an eloquent sermon on the hindrance that war makes on the progress of humanity and the need for education to triumph over ignorance. It would be great for a high school or college history teacher to show and have a discussion with their classes about this film.

An exceptional period piece
This movie, made between the two World Wars, preserves a complex and varied view of its time. The movie opens on a holiday, with family scenes, caroling, and the rest. The background, however, is a constant threat of war, blared from the news media. In an uncomfortable foreshadowing of 1984, the aggressor is never identified clearly, even when the bombs start to fall.

The next scenes were, I'm sure, as horrific a the director could make them, within the standards of the time. The city, the families in it, and the civilization that it stood for were bombed to the ground and the wreckage gassed. This must have had a special horror at the time. WW-I was still strong in living memory, and the veterans crippled by gas were still alive. But this movie's war went on for decades, long after were no more weapons left to fight it with.

The post-war population was slashed by plague - again, something vivid to people who still remembered the deadly Spanish Flu. Society collapsed into village-states, each governed by the biggest bully around.

New hope for the world came from pure technological optimism, the belief that scientists and engineers could create a moral society in their Buck Rogers laboratories and factories. Don't get me wrong - it is not possible to create a humane society without the labs and factories. We now know that it takes a lot more, as well. The arrogance, techno-tyrrany, and 'weapons of peace' in that new order seemed natural, even proper in that era. They chill a modern viewer, since we now know that a lab coat isn't a mantle of moral authority. That technological utopia was not perfect. It carried its own inherent vices, the easy life and the sense of entitlement to every comfort imaginable.

This movie is a time capsule. It recorded the beliefs and hopes of its age, and plays them back for us 60+ years later. I am boggled by what was then the most advanced thinking; it now seems so naive. We've had a chance to the predictions that came true (mostly, the negative ones) and the predictions that failed miserably in practice (most of the positive ones).

The science fiction aspects of this film will seem hopelessly dated to today's effects-junkies. Even the style of acting will seem stilted. No matter, this one is worth watching and re-watching. It makes me wonder which of today's hopes and fears will come true, and how they'll look half a century from now.

Historical pageantry fast-forwarded
The British, for some reason, were obsessed with historical pageants in the 1930s, and this peculiar product (one of the most expensive films made in Britian up to that time) is an odd by-product of that obsession. It plays like Noel Coward's CAVALCADE in reverse. It opens in 1940, when war against a foreign power is declared at Christmastime (these are the best and most famous sequences, and are performed nearly like a kind of pantomime). Then the film advances episodically at first about decade at a time, showing the devastation wrought by war and plague, the barbarian society that becomes built over the carnage, and finally the superscientific cryptofascistic organization that defeats the barbarian power and its own problems.

Aside from Alfred Hitchcock's work, british cinema just wasn't very good prior to the Second World War, and this film shows why: everyone from the evil barbarian dictator and his Lady MacBeth to the children in the street speak with absurdly posh BBC accents, and there's a ridiculous amount of posturing and posing. The film is mostly of interest today as a kind of curio, especially in its relaization onscreen of the popular futuristic fantsies of the period: giant Art Deco turbines, and oversized flying wing aircrafts that sweep the skies. The striking visualization of the Wings over the World society, with its towers and plazas, and its citizenry bedecked in caped togas with plastic tubing (the costumes were co-designed by the Marchioness of Queensbury!) clearly provided the inspiration for DC Comics illustrators in the United States in their depictions of Superman's Krypton for the next fifty years or so. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

A TIMELESS TALE
Somerset Maugham's "The Moon and Sixpence" was definitively brought to screen life by George Sanders and Herbert Marshall.

Sanders' portrayal of the brilliant but obsessed artist Paul Gauguin is nothing short of mesmerizing, and Herbert Marshall holds his own in the understated urbane manner for which he became known.

This is a timeless tale that moves compellingly to the inevitable denouement.

I've found Ivy Classics Video of Charlotte, North Carolina, makes some of the finest VHS releases - classics all and well worth keeping in a collection.

THE PAGAN LIFE OF GAUGUIN
As a movie, THE MOON AND SIXPENCE is an interesting job. To soothe the Hays office, it legalised by marriage one of Gauguin's affairs, but in general, it sticks to the Maugham novel, using the great Herbert Marshall as a narrator to speak Maugham's words. George Sanders is remarkably convincing as the painter who scorns all human relations in his demonic desire to paint. He actually seems to justify Maugham's description: "The emotions common to most of us simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd to blame him for not feeling them as for blaming the tiger because he is fierce...he was at once too great and too small for love. Outstanding among famous artists whose lives and loves have fascinated the world is the Frenchman Paul Gauguin. In 1919, a rising young author named W. Somerset Maugham wrote a novel suggested by the curious career of Gauguin; it has since become a minor classic work of fiction. In his book, Maugham never admitted that he wrote generally about Gauguin. But everyone knew he did. In 1941, when United Artists began filming the novel, they received a stern letter from the painter's eldest son, Emile Gauguin, who then lived in Philadelphia. Emile threatened to sue if any Gauguin art was used in the movie, as this would conclusively identify Maugham's disreputable hero with his father. To avoid suit, the movies created fakes.

Somerset Maugham's novel turned into a morality play
Somerset Maugham's 1919 novel suggested by the life of the French impressionist painter Paul Gauguin's life in the South Seas is turned into an . George Sanders stars as Charles Strickland, a broker who is so consumed by his passion for painting that he abandons his respectful life and takes off for Tahiti. Herbert Marshall's narration serves to denounce Strickland's unorthodox behavior allowing director Albert Lewis to get away with showing the character's immorality because it is repeatedly being condemned. Consequently, Strickland's death as a leper serves to denounce his decision to change his life and pursue his dream rather than compelling the audience to render a more sophisticated judgment about Maugham's story. The setting of "The Moon and Sixpence" allows for Lewin to provide some beautiful sequences and the acting by Sanders and the supporting players is quite good, but the insistent judgments of the film's narrator does undercut the novel's lessons. Your ability to enjoy this film may well rest on how highly your regard Maugham's writings. Lewin and Sanders would later work together on the film version of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray."

Most Underated Actor-George Sanders
A Wonderful well acted Movie with both Sanders and Herbert Marshall at their best,the rest of the cast is wonderful. I hope they put this out on DVD I'll be the first to order one. Stanley Cooper

Uninteresting film of Maugham's Gauguin novel
Herbert Marshall once again plays Maugham and George Sanders has a field day as a true cad who cares for no one and nothing but himself as he deserts wife, family, career to paint. Thinly disguised biography of Paul Gauguin. Acting is stilted, production values are quite poor. Oscar nom for Score. Original last reel with walls of paintings in Tahiti was in Color - this print is not. ... Read more

Reviews (24)

It ain't Quadrophenia!
It's something much better! This film may not have much in the way of plot or acting, but what it does have is that most intagable of film qualities-the ability to stick in your head for ever after having seen it. I myself saw it as a young'n on Elvira's tv show back in the 80's, and could never forget the sight of bikers turning to stone! Indeed, I had to ask myself if I saw what I thought I saw. What you have is a movie ripe for the Mystery Science Theater treatment, or just a good time with some friends and a bad movie you can get some good laughs out of. The rundown is: A bratty son of a Medium leads a mod gang of hooligans, "The Living Dead" (complete with skull-painted helmets) and wants mum's secret of eternal life. The butler might be the devil? We're not sure. Brat kills himself, rides his hog out of his grave and convinces his gang that ritualistic mass suicide is fun! Of course, convincing his girlfriend is another matter-hilarity ensues! 90 minutes will go by and you won't know what any of it meant, but you won't be able to forget-Psychomania!

One toad stroganoff, extra cheese, please!
Psychomania (Don Sharp, 1971)

Perhaps the most amusing thing about Psychomania is that it wasn't the first film with that title (a previous film about an axe murderer called Psychomania was released in 1964. The two are completely unrelated).

Avengers TV series director and veteran horror-film helmsman Don Sharp get behind the camera for this tale of a biker gang called The Living Dead. One wonders how, exactly, a town as small as the one in the film could sustain a biker gang, but there you go. Tom (Nicky Henson of The Conqueror Worm, There's a Girl in My Soup, etc.), the gang's leader, is almost too stereotypical for words; rich kid gone bad after catching a case of terminal hippie-dom. (Because, after all, all hippies are bikers.) Tom's mother (veteran TV and film actress Beryl Reid) and her sinister butler Shadwell (George Sanders, the voice of Shere Khan in The Jungle Book, in one of his last screen appearances) are members of an odd cult of frog worshippers who believe they know the secret to coming back from the dead, something they're quite anxious to keep from Tom. Or so we're led to believe. But he manages to trick it out of them...

To call this movie "cheesy" would be understating the case in a major way. When two people commit suicide by jumping to their deaths--one via skydiving!--they're not going to show up in the morgue all in one piece. And yet, through the magic of filmmaking, they do. Lovely. Amusing little goofs like that are scattered throughout the film. And yet, somehow, Psychomania is one of the good bad films, rather than one of the bad bad films. Perhaps it's Nicky Henson's charm. Perhaps, in hindsight, it's playing "spot the bike gang member" (one of them has been in about half the James bond films, always uncredited, always playing a different walk-on character; two others are Shakespearean actors; etc.). Perhaps it's wondering how Don Sharp got George Sanders and Beryl Reid to take these roles seriously. Perhaps it's just the oddly catchy "Riding Free," which drifts through the movie like the wind. Who knows? In any case, this is one of those rare bad films with entirely too much rewatch value for its own good.

Unfortunately, like most of the other Euroshock Collection DVDs I've encountered, this one comes with a dearth of special features (and it looks as if the film was simply transferred without any cleanup being done from a degraded master, just like Oasis of the Zombies). I know there aren't nearly enough fans of movies like this to make a major restoration project worth anyone's while, but it would have been nice to see it as a labor of love. In any case, if you've never seen Psychomania, now's your chance; don't miss it. *** ½ (lost half a star for the lackluster DVD presentation.)

A fine addition to the zombie biker genre
Ah, wait a minute....there isn't any such genre; this movie is one of a kind! How could I say no to a film with the plot premise: zombie biker gang terrorizes small town's inhabitants. To be far to the lack of quality in the movie, I didn't so much as love this film as I was fascinated by the sheer weirdness--the back acting, the occult counter-culter plot, and oh yes, the bad acting! As the Amazon review for this film pointed out, Psychomania avoids the extremes of any particular theme: it isn't particularly scary (there is no blood whatsoever), it isn't all that violent (there is lots of riding around, but that's all Tom and his gang seem to do--there is, however, a great scene where Jane (a gorgeous Ann Michelle), one of the biker members, mows over a baby carriage [that kid's going to be bitter when it grows up!]); you sure don't get much in the line of social commentary either--in fact the morality of Tom and the gang's actions isn't never directly addressed at all--so cautionary tale it is not! The believability factor is pretty extreme also. Hatchet's suicide onto the freeway should have left him a barely recognizable scrape, but lo and behold, he's in the morgue perfectly intact; ditto for the skydiver biker--eeeyouch! he wasn't even dented! As for the occult, it would've been nice to have had five minutes more of exposition devoted to the source of that frog cult or have a little more light shed onto Shadwell's identity. Still it's probably best not to look too far into these kinds of movies. Interestingly, some of the talent cast have been in many other films. As another reviewer pointed out, Nicky Henson was in many other films (I saw Conquorer Worm awhile ago, but don't remember him). I happen to be a huge Doctor Who fan, so I recognized John Levine and Beryl Reid from those shows. If you are a fan of the biker horror genre, then by all means go see Werewolves On Wheels as it has many of the same elements: the cheesy song halfway through, the surly biker gang, the nonsensical plot, and an ending even more bizarre than this movie's. But if you like your movies dark side weird, then start with Psychomania!

Sleep-inducing campy horror
A group of frog-worshipping British bikers learn that the secret to returning from the dead is as simple as wishing you won't die really, really hard when you commit suicide. There's no gore, the zombie bikers look exactly the same as they did before they died, and there's nothing even remotely scary going on here. It's all done with a droll British manner, and is perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but it simply isn't funny enough to really care. There's a reason why movies like this were shown on late night TV - they put most people to sleep!

Call me crazy, but I liked it
I don't know what it is about Psychomania, but I'll be doggoned if I didn't enjoy this movie. This low-budget motorcycle gang horror movie made at the hands of one-time Hammer director Don Sharp looks rather cheesy, revolves around a rather porous storyline, and comes up empty in the special effects department, but it works for some reason. I hate biker movies, but this one is just kooky enough to capture my attention. Tom is not your typical motorcycle gang leader, and The Living Dead is not your typical motorcycle gang. These crazy kids like to hang out and motor around the local cemetery sporting their ridiculous skeleton-like helmets, taking periodic breaks to run drivers off the roads and to terrorize the local community. Tom himself lives in a grand manor house, though, with his séance-conducting medium mother and an ever-present serving man named Shadwell. Tom is somewhat obsessed with death, always asking his mother how to come back from the dead. He has now finally been given the key to the manor's mysterious locked room, the room in which his father died mysteriously eighteen years earlier. This is a scene that is never really explained, but soon Tom has learned the answer to the question he has been asking. It turns out that all you need to do to come back from the dead is to believe wholeheartedly that you will do so while you kill yourself. He actually manages to pull the whole thing off, and the new and even more dangerous Tom soon has the whole gang committing suicide in various ways in order to really live up to the gang's name.

Naturally, such goings-on do not take place without the devil's full knowledge, and ignorance of a debt does not preclude the devil from making his clients pay for their wrongs. The truly awful special effects put a real damper on an already less than exciting ending, but the devil and I seem to be fairly happy with the overall results. The man downstairs seems to have quite a penchant for frogs, by the way, but this is just another aspect of the film that is never really explained. As long as you don't take this film seriously and prepare yourself for some plot elements that go AWOL along the way, Psychomania is quite capable of providing you with an hour and a half of strangely satisfying, albeit rather lame, entertainment. ... Read more

Reviews (142)

A CLASSIC WITH GREAT STORYTELLING AND EXCELLENT PERFORMANCES
"All About Eve" tells the story of a group of people whose life is the theater: Margo Channing (Bette Davis) an aging diva, Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), Margo's favorite director, Lloyd Richards (Hugh Harlowe) a writer, and Karen Richards (Celeste Holm), Lloyd's wife and Margo's best friend. Joining this group of people are Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), an actress wannabe with great ambition and intelligence, and Addison De Witt (George Sanders), an aggressive theater critic.

"All About Eve" keeps the status of classic mainly for two reasons: an excellent screenplay and magnificent and unforgettable performances. The movie is entertaining from beginning to end, each scene presents great dialogues, the characters have huge depth, and if someone asks for more, Marilyn Monroe appears in a small role.

"All About Eve" is recommendable for those who enjoy good stories and classic films.

An absolute knockout of a film.
"All About Eve" is the story of an actress named Margo Channing, who has a jealous, envying fan named Eve, who maneuvers her way into Margo`s life, eventually becoming a famous actress herself. It's a flawless, brilliant film that was honored with 6 academy awards and was declared number 16 of all time on the American Film Institute's top 100 American movies list.

"All About Eve" stars Bette Davis as the delightfully sour Margo Channing and Anne Baxter as the jealous, envying Eve Harrington. Both women are perfect in their roles, as is most of the cast.

The film is a knockout. The script is sheer brilliance from start to finish and is among the greatest scripts ever written. The characters are great, the direction is outstanding and the movie maintains interest the entire time.

The movie begins with four of the main characters seated at an award night as Eve is presented with her award. We see Margo and her companions with sour looks on their faces as an old actor is making his speech. Then, we're taken back to the night where it all began. One of Margo`s closest friends Karen Richards (Celeste Holm) is walking to the back of the theatre when Eve introduces herself, explaining she is a fan of Margo`s. After they have met and heard Eve's sad story, Margo takes pity on Eve and asks her to move in with her. Then, Eve begins to maneuver her way into Margo`s life, working her way up to fame.

"All About Eve" is an outstanding movie, an excellent character study and is certainly a memorable experience with an ending that is just perfect. "All About Eve" is definitely a film worth seeing.

OVERRATED AND TALKY
I enjoy Bette Davis movies. I enjoyed this one. The DVD transfer is great. However, compared to some of the other 'classics' Bette was in I find this one to be overrated. The film is overly long with talk galore. The cast is great. But I for one always feel let down with the payoff. I think Eve should have gotten what she deserved more than she did. I think Margo should have had more guts to see through her, the way Thelma Ritter as Birdie did right from the very beginning. As for this being Bette Davis' finest hour, I beg to differ. How can one honestly compare "All About Eve" with "Now Voyager", "The Old Maid" or "All This and Heaven Too" which are my three favorite Bette Davis pictures. I don't even think Davis deserved an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in this movie. Supporting maybe as she is missing from the picture for long periods. Judy Holliday won the Oscar that year but the one who really deserved the Oscar was Gloria Swanson for her performance in "Sunset Boulevard". Bette, by this time, had made so many enemies in Hollywood by her erratic, bipolar behavior that no one wanted to vote for her. Anne Baxter deserved the Best Actress nomination because she went all through the picture.

This picture is a good picture but I don't rate it among my top five Davis pictures. It is overrought and as I said, I like to see evil characters get their just deserts....and this doesn't happen in this film. I get mad every time I see the scene with Bette, Celeste Holm and Hugh Marlowe in the car with Holm sabotaging Bette and keeping her from getting to the theater.

As I said, the payoff for this movie disappoints me. But this is just my opinion. The movie is good, not excellent and certainly doesn't rate five stars from me. If you want to see the quintessential Bette Davis try "Now Voyager" or "The Little Foxes". "Now Voyager" features Bette at her most beautiful, while "Foxes features her at her most evil.

"All About Eve" pales in comparison. Plus, the film is much, much too long!

Try 5,000 stars
By far the best movie ever made, with a flawless script, a cast that is unsurpassed, and a "what goes around, comes around" theme, this tour-de-force of acting and writing is now a cult classic. Anne Baxter has her best role ever, and Bette Davis is superb. George Sanders is also stellar. One feels that these actors are actually playing themselves most of the time, or at last digging so deeply into the characters that you're unable to tell where the star leaves off and the character begins. Couple this with some of the best lines ever written for a movie and a cameo by Marilyn Monroe and you are indeed in for "a bumpy night." If you don't like this movie, quick, get yourself to a hospital--without a doubt you need immediate medical attention.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN GRABLE VS MONROE
oh well its 1952 grable, despite losing ground a little is still the top bananna at fox for thirteen years she has reigned supreme, seen off june haver and vivien blaine and other blonde starlets, now she,s in her mid 30,s . marilyn has showed up from someones bedroom high up at fox, she wants grables spot grable got her big break from talent, marilyn from between the sheets.
well betty gets herself suspended for refusing to do pick up on south street (it was in b/w her contract stipulates Technicolor, silly girl had an easy out, but didn,t use it) mariyn climbes from the greeks bed into gentlemen prefer blondes (it was bought for grable) marilyn snatches the blonde crown from grable, betty comes back dos how to marry a millionaire with monroe "all about eve" all over again! ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Great oldie that desperately needs restoration
Dark, poor sound quality, quite scratchy (didn't they have a master to use?) Terribly disappointed in this, as I recall it from my youth and wanted to pass along a treasure. Instead, my 5-year-old only lasted about halfway before he asked for something else (he has great concentration and listened attentively while I read him the entire The Hobbit, so I know it wasn't a lacking on his part) Alas, the old treasure is not gold, but brass. Given the state of technology, someone could easily clean this up and make every viewer thrilled. As it is, I sadly say, pass it by, it's better remembered than seen in its present wretched state.

KORDA CLASSIC.
Sabu appears to be having a very good time as Mowgli, the child adopted by wolves who lives among the wild beasts as one of them; he swings from tree to tree like a nursery Tarzan. In the dark-green jungles of this lush, handsome Alexander Korda production (directed by Zoltan Korda) Mowgli has more to do with humans than in the original Kipling novel. Patricia O'Rourke is around for a suggestion of precocious romance; also Joseph Calleia is there for posterity...the screenplay by Laurence Stallings perhaps wandered a bit from Kipling, the segments concerning the python, the treasure and the ruined city are still thrilling in their way. Children will probably still love the movie, and adults will have a better time than they expected... Look for a very young, very American Rosemary DeCamp!

Late Bogie!
This stuff is great! Obviously taken from the original film and transfered to disc, this movie is the essence of black and white reel to reel cinema. Bogart's acting truly expresses why we revere this man as a legend of the big screen. Watch this on a big screen TV to get the full effect!

pure poetry
Seldom has live film so captured the mood of the original book on which it was based. The framing device of the old story teller (who turns out to be the villain of his own story) and the overvoice narration is Kipling all the way. While the cartoon versions degrade the material and put in riduculous songs, in this film the visual is poetry itself and the Rosza score is magnificent. This and its companion film are examples of movie making at its finest. And if the animals have more screen presence than do some of the actors, so be it. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Uncredited Asian actor
The name of the uncredited Asian actor who plays the fake Mr. Moto is Teru Shimada.

Not Too Bad At All!
I give this 3 stars for what it is.... a B-Grade, wartime, espionage thriller. It's also one of the better Mr. Moto movies. Peter Lorre is always good and this time he is up against wartime saboteurs George Sanders and Ricardo Cortez. John Carradine is a double agent who.... well, I wont give it away because that is one of the more exiting parts of this 71-minute feature. All-in-all, pretty good, and a neat little time killer at a decent price. The Alpha dvd has a good definition VHS-quality picture and the sound is O.K. I've seen a lot worse Alpha product, believe me. This is a cut above their usual spy/mystery/thriller movies because it was made at 20th Century Fox and NOT Monogram or PRC. If you like this sort of thing, you wont be disappointed.

Not politically correct but a good flick nevertheless
I bought the DVD because I like the who-done-its from the 30's and I like Peter Lorre. I'll have to tell you I was very skeptical of Lorre made up to be a Japanese detective. Surprisingly he pulled it off quite well. There was quite of bit of humor for a murder-mystery. The film quality was pretty good too for such an old movie.

Big Trouble For The French Fleet
In MR. MOTO'S LAST WARNING the Japanese agent is in Egypt dueling with an enemy spy who is trying to destroy the French fleet while it travels through the Suez Canal. The enemy plan calls for responsibility for the incident to be assigned to the British.

Peter Lorre has the starring role of Mr. Moto for the sixth time. A strong supporting cast includes Ricardo Cortez, John Carradine, Teru Shimada, Virginia Field and George Sanders. The movie also goes by the title of MR. MOTO IN EGYPT.

Not so great
I'm a huge fan of Peter Lorre and a huge fan of his portrayals of Mr. Moto. However, in this one, everyone seems to die for no particular purpose. Very depressing. ... Read more

Reviews (24)

It ain't Quadrophenia!
It's something much better! This film may not have much in the way of plot or acting, but what it does have is that most intagable of film qualities-the ability to stick in your head for ever after having seen it. I myself saw it as a young'n on Elvira's tv show back in the 80's, and could never forget the sight of bikers turning to stone! Indeed, I had to ask myself if I saw what I thought I saw. What you have is a movie ripe for the Mystery Science Theater treatment, or just a good time with some friends and a bad movie you can get some good laughs out of. The rundown is: A bratty son of a Medium leads a mod gang of hooligans, "The Living Dead" (complete with skull-painted helmets) and wants mum's secret of eternal life. The butler might be the devil? We're not sure. Brat kills himself, rides his hog out of his grave and convinces his gang that ritualistic mass suicide is fun! Of course, convincing his girlfriend is another matter-hilarity ensues! 90 minutes will go by and you won't know what any of it meant, but you won't be able to forget-Psychomania!

One toad stroganoff, extra cheese, please!
Psychomania (Don Sharp, 1971)

Perhaps the most amusing thing about Psychomania is that it wasn't the first film with that title (a previous film about an axe murderer called Psychomania was released in 1964. The two are completely unrelated).

Avengers TV series director and veteran horror-film helmsman Don Sharp get behind the camera for this tale of a biker gang called The Living Dead. One wonders how, exactly, a town as small as the one in the film could sustain a biker gang, but there you go. Tom (Nicky Henson of The Conqueror Worm, There's a Girl in My Soup, etc.), the gang's leader, is almost too stereotypical for words; rich kid gone bad after catching a case of terminal hippie-dom. (Because, after all, all hippies are bikers.) Tom's mother (veteran TV and film actress Beryl Reid) and her sinister butler Shadwell (George Sanders, the voice of Shere Khan in The Jungle Book, in one of his last screen appearances) are members of an odd cult of frog worshippers who believe they know the secret to coming back from the dead, something they're quite anxious to keep from Tom. Or so we're led to believe. But he manages to trick it out of them...

To call this movie "cheesy" would be understating the case in a major way. When two people commit suicide by jumping to their deaths--one via skydiving!--they're not going to show up in the morgue all in one piece. And yet, through the magic of filmmaking, they do. Lovely. Amusing little goofs like that are scattered throughout the film. And yet, somehow, Psychomania is one of the good bad films, rather than one of the bad bad films. Perhaps it's Nicky Henson's charm. Perhaps, in hindsight, it's playing "spot the bike gang member" (one of them has been in about half the James bond films, always uncredited, always playing a different walk-on character; two others are Shakespearean actors; etc.). Perhaps it's wondering how Don Sharp got George Sanders and Beryl Reid to take these roles seriously. Perhaps it's just the oddly catchy "Riding Free," which drifts through the movie like the wind. Who knows? In any case, this is one of those rare bad films with entirely too much rewatch value for its own good.

Unfortunately, like most of the other Euroshock Collection DVDs I've encountered, this one comes with a dearth of special features (and it looks as if the film was simply transferred without any cleanup being done from a degraded master, just like Oasis of the Zombies). I know there aren't nearly enough fans of movies like this to make a major restoration project worth anyone's while, but it would have been nice to see it as a labor of love. In any case, if you've never seen Psychomania, now's your chance; don't miss it. *** ½ (lost half a star for the lackluster DVD presentation.)

A fine addition to the zombie biker genre
Ah, wait a minute....there isn't any such genre; this movie is one of a kind! How could I say no to a film with the plot premise: zombie biker gang terrorizes small town's inhabitants. To be far to the lack of quality in the movie, I didn't so much as love this film as I was fascinated by the sheer weirdness--the back acting, the occult counter-culter plot, and oh yes, the bad acting! As the Amazon review for this film pointed out, Psychomania avoids the extremes of any particular theme: it isn't particularly scary (there is no blood whatsoever), it isn't all that violent (there is lots of riding around, but that's all Tom and his gang seem to do--there is, however, a great scene where Jane (a gorgeous Ann Michelle), one of the biker members, mows over a baby carriage [that kid's going to be bitter when it grows up!]); you sure don't get much in the line of social commentary either--in fact the morality of Tom and the gang's actions isn't never directly addressed at all--so cautionary tale it is not! The believability factor is pretty extreme also. Hatchet's suicide onto the freeway should have left him a barely recognizable scrape, but lo and behold, he's in the morgue perfectly intact; ditto for the skydiver biker--eeeyouch! he wasn't even dented! As for the occult, it would've been nice to have had five minutes more of exposition devoted to the source of that frog cult or have a little more light shed onto Shadwell's identity. Still it's probably best not to look too far into these kinds of movies. Interestingly, some of the talent cast have been in many other films. As another reviewer pointed out, Nicky Henson was in many other films (I saw Conquorer Worm awhile ago, but don't remember him). I happen to be a huge Doctor Who fan, so I recognized John Levine and Beryl Reid from those shows. If you are a fan of the biker horror genre, then by all means go see Werewolves On Wheels as it has many of the same elements: the cheesy song halfway through, the surly biker gang, the nonsensical plot, and an ending even more bizarre than this movie's. But if you like your movies dark side weird, then start with Psychomania!

Sleep-inducing campy horror
A group of frog-worshipping British bikers learn that the secret to returning from the dead is as simple as wishing you won't die really, really hard when you commit suicide. There's no gore, the zombie bikers look exactly the same as they did before they died, and there's nothing even remotely scary going on here. It's all done with a droll British manner, and is perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but it simply isn't funny enough to really care. There's a reason why movies like this were shown on late night TV - they put most people to sleep!

Call me crazy, but I liked it
I don't know what it is about Psychomania, but I'll be doggoned if I didn't enjoy this movie. This low-budget motorcycle gang horror movie made at the hands of one-time Hammer director Don Sharp looks rather cheesy, revolves around a rather porous storyline, and comes up empty in the special effects department, but it works for some reason. I hate biker movies, but this one is just kooky enough to capture my attention. Tom is not your typical motorcycle gang leader, and The Living Dead is not your typical motorcycle gang. These crazy kids like to hang out and motor around the local cemetery sporting their ridiculous skeleton-like helmets, taking periodic breaks to run drivers off the roads and to terrorize the local community. Tom himself lives in a grand manor house, though, with his séance-conducting medium mother and an ever-present serving man named Shadwell. Tom is somewhat obsessed with death, always asking his mother how to come back from the dead. He has now finally been given the key to the manor's mysterious locked room, the room in which his father died mysteriously eighteen years earlier. This is a scene that is never really explained, but soon Tom has learned the answer to the question he has been asking. It turns out that all you need to do to come back from the dead is to believe wholeheartedly that you will do so while you kill yourself. He actually manages to pull the whole thing off, and the new and even more dangerous Tom soon has the whole gang committing suicide in various ways in order to really live up to the gang's name.

Naturally, such goings-on do not take place without the devil's full knowledge, and ignorance of a debt does not preclude the devil from making his clients pay for their wrongs. The truly awful special effects put a real damper on an already less than exciting ending, but the devil and I seem to be fairly happy with the overall results. The man downstairs seems to have quite a penchant for frogs, by the way, but this is just another aspect of the film that is never really explained. As long as you don't take this film seriously and prepare yourself for some plot elements that go AWOL along the way, Psychomania is quite capable of providing you with an hour and a half of strangely satisfying, albeit rather lame, entertainment. ... Read more

Reviews (29)

Snap that mainspring
Of all the whacked-out, loopy, unhinged and nutso stories that have made it to the sci-fi screen, this one takes the cake. It's the ultimate, the greatest science fiction movie ever made in English. Seeing it is what you might expect an episode of schizophrenia to be like: you just get drawn further and further away from reality and you're helpless to resist. H. G. Wells reportedly had a close hand in fashioning this pre-vision of what World War Two and its aftermath might be like and his eccentricity just adds to the enjoyment. Ralph Richardson lets it all hang out as only the English can do when they get unbuttoned, and Raymond Massey is equally fine. His eagle-like profile gazing into the heavens while a choir sings "Which Will It Be?" is an image you won't forget in a hurry.

GREAT movie, LOUSY video transfer
"Things to Come" was the "2001" of its day.

In the late sixties, I saw a clean print of this movie in a New York theatre and it blew me away. Although it is in black-and-white, it is visually spectacular; the story is exciting; and it has a wonderful score. The sound was mono optical sound, but it was crisp and clear and capable of delivering the impact of the Arthur Bliss music.

For years, I've owned a disappointing VHS copy, which looks as if it were made made from a dirty, blurry, over-contrasty 16mm print, and the sound quality is poor. I've yearned to see a clean copy.

So when I got my DVD player, one of the first things I did was to buy this release, which says that it "features a pristine new film-to-video transfer from original source materials."

I am sorry to say it looks EXACTLY like the cruddy old VHS version, and the mushy sound is completely unworthy of the composer and music director.

So, I don't know what to say. If you've never seen the movie _Things to Come_, I recommend the movie highly. But the image quality and sound on this DVD have, alas, that "lousy old 16mm print look."

Eerie, but worthwhile
Okay, enough already about the transfers, let's talk about the film itself.

In a nutshell, this 1936 Brit sci-fi feature deals with war and progress. Everytown (London?) is shown in 1940 about to celebrate Christmas amidst blaring headlines of war (in a nifty bit of symbolism, the children play with war toys around the Christmas tree). Then war hits the city (in an eerily accurate foretelling of the German blitz that DID rock England in 1940). As time goes on, the war drags into decades ending up in a post-apocalyptic society in 1966.

Because of the war, Everytown/London has regressed into a crude, medieval type society without electricity which wastes its resources on senseless wars and is led by a Hitler-type warlord ogre called "The Boss." The world is also famished by a deadly, incurable disease called "Wandering Sickenss" whose victims are shot by the boss (reminds you of Castro's quarantine of AIDS patients). John Cabal (Raymond Massey) is a leader of scientists who return to civilize Everytown/London and establish a scientific technocracy. But the Boss demands the technology to wage more war, which he tells his followers is necessary for the peace (he begins to sound frighteningly like George Bush Jr. during such speeches). Anyway, the Boss and Cabal face off, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. A moon shot and some anti-progress protesters (simialr to today's anti WTO protesters) play major parts in the latter third of the story.

For those of us who are into history, this film is extremely eerie, yet fascinating and worthwhile to watch. It's scary in that some of what H.G. Wells prophesized did indeed come true in ways that are even more so than what I just mentioned. (Think of some of today's so-called Third World countries whose resources are wasted by boss-like dictators among other things). Basically, this film, despite the overtly speechike dialogue (Raymond Massey's soliloquy about the need for progress near the film's end is a bit hard to take), is an eloquent sermon on the hindrance that war makes on the progress of humanity and the need for education to triumph over ignorance. It would be great for a high school or college history teacher to show and have a discussion with their classes about this film.

An exceptional period piece
This movie, made between the two World Wars, preserves a complex and varied view of its time. The movie opens on a holiday, with family scenes, caroling, and the rest. The background, however, is a constant threat of war, blared from the news media. In an uncomfortable foreshadowing of 1984, the aggressor is never identified clearly, even when the bombs start to fall.

The next scenes were, I'm sure, as horrific a the director could make them, within the standards of the time. The city, the families in it, and the civilization that it stood for were bombed to the ground and the wreckage gassed. This must have had a special horror at the time. WW-I was still strong in living memory, and the veterans crippled by gas were still alive. But this movie's war went on for decades, long after were no more weapons left to fight it with.

The post-war population was slashed by plague - again, something vivid to people who still remembered the deadly Spanish Flu. Society collapsed into village-states, each governed by the biggest bully around.

New hope for the world came from pure technological optimism, the belief that scientists and engineers could create a moral society in their Buck Rogers laboratories and factories. Don't get me wrong - it is not possible to create a humane society without the labs and factories. We now know that it takes a lot more, as well. The arrogance, techno-tyrrany, and 'weapons of peace' in that new order seemed natural, even proper in that era. They chill a modern viewer, since we now know that a lab coat isn't a mantle of moral authority. That technological utopia was not perfect. It carried its own inherent vices, the easy life and the sense of entitlement to every comfort imaginable.

This movie is a time capsule. It recorded the beliefs and hopes of its age, and plays them back for us 60+ years later. I am boggled by what was then the most advanced thinking; it now seems so naive. We've had a chance to the predictions that came true (mostly, the negative ones) and the predictions that failed miserably in practice (most of the positive ones).

The science fiction aspects of this film will seem hopelessly dated to today's effects-junkies. Even the style of acting will seem stilted. No matter, this one is worth watching and re-watching. It makes me wonder which of today's hopes and fears will come true, and how they'll look half a century from now.

Historical pageantry fast-forwarded
The British, for some reason, were obsessed with historical pageants in the 1930s, and this peculiar product (one of the most expensive films made in Britian up to that time) is an odd by-product of that obsession. It plays like Noel Coward's CAVALCADE in reverse. It opens in 1940, when war against a foreign power is declared at Christmastime (these are the best and most famous sequences, and are performed nearly like a kind of pantomime). Then the film advances episodically at first about decade at a time, showing the devastation wrought by war and plague, the barbarian society that becomes built over the carnage, and finally the superscientific cryptofascistic organization that defeats the barbarian power and its own problems.

Aside from Alfred Hitchcock's work, british cinema just wasn't very good prior to the Second World War, and this film shows why: everyone from the evil barbarian dictator and his Lady MacBeth to the children in the street speak with absurdly posh BBC accents, and there's a ridiculous amount of posturing and posing. The film is mostly of interest today as a kind of curio, especially in its relaization onscreen of the popular futuristic fantsies of the period: giant Art Deco turbines, and oversized flying wing aircrafts that sweep the skies. The striking visualization of the Wings over the World society, with its towers and plazas, and its citizenry bedecked in caped togas with plastic tubing (the costumes were co-designed by the Marchioness of Queensbury!) clearly provided the inspiration for DC Comics illustrators in the United States in their depictions of Superman's Krypton for the next fifty years or so. ... Read more

Amazon.com essential video

Based on H.G. Wells's speculative meditation on the price of progress, this 1936 English science-fiction epic shows the painterly touch of director William Cameron Menzies, an American whose career in art direction and production design, as well as uncredited directorial work, attached him to such visual triumphs as Gone with the Wind, Alexander Korda's sumptuous 1940 Thief of Baghdad, and Menzies's better-known SF achievement as director, the original Invaders from Mars. Things to Come traces a generational saga that begins, presciently, with a global war that outlives its own political purpose, unraveling society to a Balkanized world of isolated communities. In the wake of a subsequent, devastating plague, a new technocracy arises, evolving toward Menzies's striking vision of vast, subterranean cities, rendered in matte paintings building on then-contemporaneous art-deco "streamlined" aesthetics. Driven more by theme than plot, Things to Come lacks the sheer momentum of other Wells classics brought to film (The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine, among them); but Menzies's bold look and a strong cast including Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke and a young Ann Todd explain the film's enduring appeal. --Sam Sutherland ... Read more

Reviews (29)

Snap that mainspring
Of all the whacked-out, loopy, unhinged and nutso stories that have made it to the sci-fi screen, this one takes the cake. It's the ultimate, the greatest science fiction movie ever made in English. Seeing it is what you might expect an episode of schizophrenia to be like: you just get drawn further and further away from reality and you're helpless to resist. H. G. Wells reportedly had a close hand in fashioning this pre-vision of what World War Two and its aftermath might be like and his eccentricity just adds to the enjoyment. Ralph Richardson lets it all hang out as only the English can do when they get unbuttoned, and Raymond Massey is equally fine. His eagle-like profile gazing into the heavens while a choir sings "Which Will It Be?" is an image you won't forget in a hurry.

GREAT movie, LOUSY video transfer
"Things to Come" was the "2001" of its day.

In the late sixties, I saw a clean print of this movie in a New York theatre and it blew me away. Although it is in black-and-white, it is visually spectacular; the story is exciting; and it has a wonderful score. The sound was mono optical sound, but it was crisp and clear and capable of delivering the impact of the Arthur Bliss music.

For years, I've owned a disappointing VHS copy, which looks as if it were made made from a dirty, blurry, over-contrasty 16mm print, and the sound quality is poor. I've yearned to see a clean copy.

So when I got my DVD player, one of the first things I did was to buy this release, which says that it "features a pristine new film-to-video transfer from original source materials."

I am sorry to say it looks EXACTLY like the cruddy old VHS version, and the mushy sound is completely unworthy of the composer and music director.

So, I don't know what to say. If you've never seen the movie _Things to Come_, I recommend the movie highly. But the image quality and sound on this DVD have, alas, that "lousy old 16mm print look."

Eerie, but worthwhile
Okay, enough already about the transfers, let's talk about the film itself.

In a nutshell, this 1936 Brit sci-fi feature deals with war and progress. Everytown (London?) is shown in 1940 about to celebrate Christmas amidst blaring headlines of war (in a nifty bit of symbolism, the children play with war toys around the Christmas tree). Then war hits the city (in an eerily accurate foretelling of the German blitz that DID rock England in 1940). As time goes on, the war drags into decades ending up in a post-apocalyptic society in 1966.

Because of the war, Everytown/London has regressed into a crude, medieval type society without electricity which wastes its resources on senseless wars and is led by a Hitler-type warlord ogre called "The Boss." The world is also famished by a deadly, incurable disease called "Wandering Sickenss" whose victims are shot by the boss (reminds you of Castro's quarantine of AIDS patients). John Cabal (Raymond Massey) is a leader of scientists who return to civilize Everytown/London and establish a scientific technocracy. But the Boss demands the technology to wage more war, which he tells his followers is necessary for the peace (he begins to sound frighteningly like George Bush Jr. during such speeches). Anyway, the Boss and Cabal face off, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. A moon shot and some anti-progress protesters (simialr to today's anti WTO protesters) play major parts in the latter third of the story.

For those of us who are into history, this film is extremely eerie, yet fascinating and worthwhile to watch. It's scary in that some of what H.G. Wells prophesized did indeed come true in ways that are even more so than what I just mentioned. (Think of some of today's so-called Third World countries whose resources are wasted by boss-like dictators among other things). Basically, this film, despite the overtly speechike dialogue (Raymond Massey's soliloquy about the need for progress near the film's end is a bit hard to take), is an eloquent sermon on the hindrance that war makes on the progress of humanity and the need for education to triumph over ignorance. It would be great for a high school or college history teacher to show and have a discussion with their classes about this film.

An exceptional period piece
This movie, made between the two World Wars, preserves a complex and varied view of its time. The movie opens on a holiday, with family scenes, caroling, and the rest. The background, however, is a constant threat of war, blared from the news media. In an uncomfortable foreshadowing of 1984, the aggressor is never identified clearly, even when the bombs start to fall.

The next scenes were, I'm sure, as horrific a the director could make them, within the standards of the time. The city, the families in it, and the civilization that it stood for were bombed to the ground and the wreckage gassed. This must have had a special horror at the time. WW-I was still strong in living memory, and the veterans crippled by gas were still alive. But this movie's war went on for decades, long after were no more weapons left to fight it with.

The post-war population was slashed by plague - again, something vivid to people who still remembered the deadly Spanish Flu. Society collapsed into village-states, each governed by the biggest bully around.

New hope for the world came from pure technological optimism, the belief that scientists and engineers could create a moral society in their Buck Rogers laboratories and factories. Don't get me wrong - it is not possible to create a humane society without the labs and factories. We now know that it takes a lot more, as well. The arrogance, techno-tyrrany, and 'weapons of peace' in that new order seemed natural, even proper in that era. They chill a modern viewer, since we now know that a lab coat isn't a mantle of moral authority. That technological utopia was not perfect. It carried its own inherent vices, the easy life and the sense of entitlement to every comfort imaginable.

This movie is a time capsule. It recorded the beliefs and hopes of its age, and plays them back for us 60+ years later. I am boggled by what was then the most advanced thinking; it now seems so naive. We've had a chance to the predictions that came true (mostly, the negative ones) and the predictions that failed miserably in practice (most of the positive ones).

The science fiction aspects of this film will seem hopelessly dated to today's effects-junkies. Even the style of acting will seem stilted. No matter, this one is worth watching and re-watching. It makes me wonder which of today's hopes and fears will come true, and how they'll look half a century from now.

Historical pageantry fast-forwarded
The British, for some reason, were obsessed with historical pageants in the 1930s, and this peculiar product (one of the most expensive films made in Britian up to that time) is an odd by-product of that obsession. It plays like Noel Coward's CAVALCADE in reverse. It opens in 1940, when war against a foreign power is declared at Christmastime (these are the best and most famous sequences, and are performed nearly like a kind of pantomime). Then the film advances episodically at first about decade at a time, showing the devastation wrought by war and plague, the barbarian society that becomes built over the carnage, and finally the superscientific cryptofascistic organization that defeats the barbarian power and its own problems.

Aside from Alfred Hitchcock's work, british cinema just wasn't very good prior to the Second World War, and this film shows why: everyone from the evil barbarian dictator and his Lady MacBeth to the children in the street speak with absurdly posh BBC accents, and there's a ridiculous amount of posturing and posing. The film is mostly of interest today as a kind of curio, especially in its relaization onscreen of the popular futuristic fantsies of the period: giant Art Deco turbines, and oversized flying wing aircrafts that sweep the skies. The striking visualization of the Wings over the World society, with its towers and plazas, and its citizenry bedecked in caped togas with plastic tubing (the costumes were co-designed by the Marchioness of Queensbury!) clearly provided the inspiration for DC Comics illustrators in the United States in their depictions of Superman's Krypton for the next fifty years or so. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Somewhere in the English countryside a nihilistic biker (Nicky Henson) decides to make the name of his violent motorcycle gang ("The Living Dead") more than just a slogan. With the help of his dear old mum (Beryl Reid), who just happens to be a frog-worshipping occultist, he dives to his death only to leap out of his grave (still astride his motorcycle) like a black leather bat out of hell. This is one young rebel who makes the dictum "Live hard, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse" a reality. Soon he's recruiting for his undead biker army. ("Oh man, what are we waiting for?!" exclaims a restless gang member before driving headlong into a truck.) This zombie version of The Wild Angels is less horror film than biker nightmare, and Don Sharp, a former Hammer horror director, doesn't quite know how to straddle the line. The obscure supernatural elements feel creaky next to the restless violence of the rebels without a pulse and their sadistic reign of terror. Though he revels in gallows humor (the gang's "extreme sports" suicide montage is ghoulishly hilarious), Sharp never lets it descend into camp--though at times perhaps he should have. It's an inventive if not altogether successful genre mix highlighted with a sardonic turn by George Sanders as a shady servant who seems completely bemused by the entire spectacle. --Sean Axmaker ... Read more

Reviews (24)

It ain't Quadrophenia!
It's something much better! This film may not have much in the way of plot or acting, but what it does have is that most intagable of film qualities-the ability to stick in your head for ever after having seen it. I myself saw it as a young'n on Elvira's tv show back in the 80's, and could never forget the sight of bikers turning to stone! Indeed, I had to ask myself if I saw what I thought I saw. What you have is a movie ripe for the Mystery Science Theater treatment, or just a good time with some friends and a bad movie you can get some good laughs out of. The rundown is: A bratty son of a Medium leads a mod gang of hooligans, "The Living Dead" (complete with skull-painted helmets) and wants mum's secret of eternal life. The butler might be the devil? We're not sure. Brat kills himself, rides his hog out of his grave and convinces his gang that ritualistic mass suicide is fun! Of course, convincing his girlfriend is another matter-hilarity ensues! 90 minutes will go by and you won't know what any of it meant, but you won't be able to forget-Psychomania!

One toad stroganoff, extra cheese, please!
Psychomania (Don Sharp, 1971)

Perhaps the most amusing thing about Psychomania is that it wasn't the first film with that title (a previous film about an axe murderer called Psychomania was released in 1964. The two are completely unrelated).

Avengers TV series director and veteran horror-film helmsman Don Sharp get behind the camera for this tale of a biker gang called The Living Dead. One wonders how, exactly, a town as small as the one in the film could sustain a biker gang, but there you go. Tom (Nicky Henson of The Conqueror Worm, There's a Girl in My Soup, etc.), the gang's leader, is almost too stereotypical for words; rich kid gone bad after catching a case of terminal hippie-dom. (Because, after all, all hippies are bikers.) T