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When putting together a list of the 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, it’s like plunging into a spectacular alternate universe of wit, verve, and style. The director of “Rear Window,” “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho” has a body of work so deep there are endless ways you can parse it: Maybe you could focus on his obsession with mothers, his approach to time, or the way food and painting pop up throughout his films.

But on a basic level, you also run into a challenge with Hitchcock you face with few other filmmakers, full-stop: The Master of Suspense is one of the rare directors to have a filmography with both the volume and the quality to credibly field a Top 25. With what other filmmakers can you do that? John Ford, certainly (Ford had the most films in our recent list of the 100 Greatest Westerns). Godard or Fassbinder perhaps? They...

There must be few things more daunting to a filmmaker than taking on the mantle of directing a new James Bond movie. Bond movies are cinema’s equivalent of a Philippe Petit-level highwire balancing act. Over 25 films, fans have carved out an understanding of what they expect from 007. There must be action, adventure, romance, and a dash of comedy. Yet for all the expectations surrounding the world’s most famous secret agent, the recipe isn’t set in stone; in fact, it’s forever evolving.

Where once Bond might have been defined by the wry humor and slapstick gags of Roger Moore, the more modern 007 of Daniel Craig played it straight. Bond has been known to take forays into the world of science fiction, either in an attempt to match box office rivals like Star Wars or in an attempt to address the concerns of an ever evolving technological world.

John Barry’s elegiac score and Freddie Young’s improbably beautiful photography combine to make Lewis Gilbert’s 1967 film the most glamorous of Sean Connery’s Bond outings. An action-packed travelogue set within neon-soaked Tokyo and the storybook environs of the Japanese countryside, 007 plays cat and mouse with Donald Pleasance’s Blofeld in a volcano that doubles as a launching pad. Godzilla fans will recognize Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama while Krimi aficianados are treated to Karin Dor as a duplicitous femme fatale.

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Lexington Books

222 pages

Illustrated

Hardback

January 2022

Isbn: 978-1-4985-7072-5

Rrp: £73.00

By Adrian Smith

British author Edgar Wallace, aside from the London pub bearing his name, is now largely forgotten in his home country, and is perhaps best remembered, if at all, for his contribution to Rko’s King Kong (1933), although he sadly died before the film was completed. During his immensely prolific career as a journalist, author, poet, playwright, historian, film producer and director, screenwriter and chairman of the British Lion Film Corporation, he published around two hundred novels, almost a thousand short stories and twenty stage plays. It was said that at one point around a quarter of all books being read in the UK were written by Wallace. He was best known for his crime novels, particularly ‘The Four Just Men’ series and the amateur detective J.G. Reeder,...

The EuroCrypt of Christopher Lee

Blu ray – Region Free

Severin Films

1962-72

Starring Christopher Lee, Thorley Walters, Karin Dor

Cinematography by Ernst W. Kalinke, Angelo Baistrocchi

Directed by Terence Fisher, Harald Reinl

While Hammer Studios depended on bosoms and blood to rejuvenate a listless horror industry, their new contract player had some high octane ideas of his own. His name was Christopher Lee and though the hulking actor towered above the crew and co-stars, he proved shockingly agile as the newborn creature in 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein. No matter how hospitable or well-tailored, his Dracula was a clear and present danger—fleet of foot and supernaturally strong. And in 1959’s The Mummy, he turned the slow-moving immortal into an Olympian killing machine, outpacing his victims like an undead Usain Bolt.

Making the scene just as the sixties were racing into view, Lee’s express lane monsters ignored musty gothic...

“From Dracula to Jedi master, Bond villain to a Metal god, Christopher Lee’s 70-year career was rich, varied and often, pretty weird.”

—The Guardian

The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee Blu-ray Collection is now available from Severin. The set can be ordered directly from Severin Here.

8 Blu-ray Collection Featuring 5 Classic European Films, A TV Anthology, Disc Of Rare Interviews + Book & Soundtrack CD

He remains one of the most beloved horror/fantasy icons in US/UK pop culture history, but Christopher Lee delivered several of the most compelling, acclaimed and bizarre performances of his entire career in 1960s Europe. The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee brings together five of these Lee classics – the 1964 gothic shocker Crypt Of The Vampire; the 1964 cult hit Castle Of The Living Dead co-starring an unknown Donald Sutherland; 1962’s celebrated Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace; 1967’s lurid favorite The Torture Chamber Of Dr. Sadism and the rarely-seen...

Rhonda Fleming died last Wednesday in Santa Monica, California. The 97-year-old actress, who had left a successful 15-year career as a leading lady in studio films 60 years ago, was correctly noted in her obituaries as “the Queen of Technicolor” because of her flaming red hair, as well as her significant presence as a film noir actress, particularly in Jacques Tourneur’s masterpiece “Out of the Past” (1947).

Her films included a number of now-acclaimed auteurist titles like Budd Boetticher’s “The Killer Is Loose,” Allan Dwan’s “Slightly Scarlet” and “Tennessee’s Partner,” and Fritz Lang’s “While the City Sleeps,” to go along with more mainstream titles like “The Spiral Staircase” and “The Gunfight at O.K. Corral.”

Unlike actresses like Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren, and others who made multiple films with Alfred Hitchcock, Fleming is less identified with the master. But he provided her with her breakout role in 1945’s “Spellbound.

Oh, have you reached the right page? We know you were looking for the review of Aunt Minerva’s Hymns of Faith in 3-D. We instead have uncovered a blistering, too-too spicy duo of ‘adult movies,’ created for dirty old men in the prehistoric days before humanity was transformed by X-rated porn. The first show may be the professional screen directing debut of Francis Coppola, moonlighting from UCLA. It’s something of a wreck, but he was not one to miss an opportunity to write and direct. The second picture, in gorgeous color and eye-popping 3-D, is so good as to suggest an art revival, if today’s PC culture wasn’t so likely to condemn a vintage girlie entertainment out of hand. But then again, the sub-genre is supposed to be forbidden and Taboo. Blu-ray 3-D conquers all!

The 3-D Nudie-Cuties Collection

3-D Blu-ray

The Bellboy and the Playgirls...

Actor best known as a Bond girl in You Only Live Twice

No matter what roles she played in films, on stage or on television throughout the rest of her career, the German actor Karin Dor, who has died aged 79, was labelled a Bond girl. Her induction as a member of this exclusive group of beautiful women who have provided James Bond with a love interest came in You Only Live Twice (1967), in which she met a memorably grisly end.

Dor played the seductive, titian-haired Helga Brandt, an operative of the criminal organisation Spectre ordered to kill 007 (Sean Connery), who has been conveniently tied up for her. “I’ve got you now,” she states ambivalently. “Well, enjoy yourself!” he replies. She slaps his face and threatens him with a surgical knife, which he wrestles from her, using it to cut the strap on her black dress.

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By Lee Pfeiffer

German actress Karin Dor has died at age 79. She had been in a nursing home since suffering the severe aftereffects of a fall last year. Dor was a popular presence in European cinema. She began acting in the 1950s and became a well-known star in the 1960s. She frequently collaborated with her husband, Austrian director Harald Reinl. She appeared in several of the popular German "Winnetou"  westerns and well as German crime programs on television. In 1967 she achieved a new level of fame when she was cast as Helga Brandt, the sultry Spectre agent who seduces Sean Connery's James Bond before attempting to kill him in the 1967 blockbuster "You Only Live Twice". Dor's character suffered a memorable fate when her employer, Spectre chieftain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) ensures she drops into his piranha-filled moat. She later had a leading role in Alfred Hitchcock's 1969 spy...

Karin Dor, who played the red-haired villainess Helga Brandt in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice, died Monday in a nursing home in Munich, her son told the Bild newspaper. She was 79.

The German beauty also had a key role as a revolutionary in the Alfred Hitchcock Cuban missile crisis thriller Topaz (1969) and appeared opposite Christopher Lee in The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (1962), one of more than a dozen films she made with her then-husband, Austrian director Harald Reinl.

In her most famous role, Dor worked for the evil Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) as...

Cinema Retro issue #39 has now shipped worldwide. For subscribers, this is the final issue of Season 13. Please renew for Season 14 (see below) and keep supporting the world's most unique movie magazine. 

Issue #39 devotes a full 32 pages to celebrating the 50th anniversary of the James Bond film "You Only Live Twice", which starred Sean Connery as 007 and introduced Donald Pleasence as the immortal villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Why did we dedicate half of the pages in this issue to the film? Largely because of the outpouring of contributions from talented writers from around the world, not to mention esteemed names like composer David Arnold, actress Karin Dor, who played the villainous femme fatale Helga Brandt, Tsai Chin who played Bond's bedmate in the pre-credits scene, legendary lyricist Leslie Bricusse, assistant director William Cartlidge, future Oscar-winning production designer Peter Lamont and Nancy Sinatra, who recalls the nerve-wracking experience of singing the title song.

You Only Live Twice opened in UK cinemas 50 years ago today (on the 13th in America), and to celebrate the release of the biggest Bond of all Cinema Retro's September issue pays tribute to this cinematic extravaganza with a 32-page 'Film in Focus' special. Apart from Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury's interview with Nancy Sinatra (a rare in-print interview about her involvement with the film), we feature many rare and never-seen-before stills and behind-the-scenes photos, features on props and collectibles, and exclusive interviews with Karin Dor, Leslie Bricusse, Julie Rogers (the singer who was originally contracted to record the title song) and Mark Cerulli catches up with Tsai Chin for her memories of the film. And that's not all - Bond composer David Arnold discusses how the music to You Only Live Twice changed his life forever, and we have an exclusive interview with the late Ken Wallis, the...

This Story Has Been Updated.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Molly Peters, who began her career as a nude "glamour girl" model before starting a short-lived film career, has passed away at age 78.  She had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer according to her husband but it was a stroke to which she succumbed. Peters' voluptuous appearance made her one of the more popular of the provocative models who posed for men's magazines in the 1960s. She posed for England's legendary photographer of nudes, Harrison Marks. She landed the only memorable role of her career in the 1965 James Bond blockbuster "Thunderball". In the film, Bond (Sean Connery) was sent to the Shrublands health spa to recuperate from some wear-and-tear. Here he encounters nurse Pat (Peters), a sexy blonde who conveniently is assigned to look after Bond's needs. Within short order Bond has her naked in a steam room. In another scene, Bond...

Chamber of Horrors

Blu-ray

Kino Lorber

1940 / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date March 21, 2017

Starring: Lilli Palmer, Leslie Banks.

Cinematography: Alex Bryce, Ernest Palmer

Film Editor: Ted Richards

Written by Gilbert Gunn, Norman Lee

Produced by John Argyle

Directed by Norman Lee

Near the turn of the century a struggling war correspondent named Edgar Wallace began churning out detective stories for British monthlies like Detective Story Magazine to help make the rent. Creative to a fault, his preposterously prolific output (exacerbated by ongoing gambling debts) soon earned him a legion of fans along with a pointedly ambiguous sobriquet, “The Man Who Wrote Too Much.”

A reader new to Wallace’s work could be excused for thinking the busy writer was making it up as he went along… because that’s pretty much what he did. He dictated his narratives, unedited, into a dictaphone for transcription by his secretary where they would then...

She's beautiful, desired and enjoys a social mobility in the improving Italian economy... but she's also a pawn of cruel materialist values. Stefania Sandrelli personifies a liberated spirit who lives for the moment, but who can't form the relationships we call 'living.' Antonio Pietrangeli and Ettore Scola slip an insightful drama into the young Sandrelli's lineup of comedy roles. I Knew Her Well Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 801 1965 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 115 min. / Io la conoscevo bene / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 23, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Stefania Sandrelli, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Brialy, Joachim Fuchsberger, Nino Manfredi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Ugo Tognazzi, Karin Dor, Franco Nero. Cinematography Armando Nannuzzi Production design Maurizio Chiari Film Editor Franco Fraticelli Original Music Piero Picconi Written by Antonio Pietrangeli, Ruggero Maccari, Etore Scola Produced by Turi Vasile Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Did a new kind of woman emerge in the 1960s?...

From death by shark to fatal ingestion of air pellet, here's a run-down of the James Bond movies' grisliest deaths...

The James Bond franchise has entertained (most of) the whole family for generations, with one-liners like “shocking” and “I think he got the point” delivered while some poor soul is electrocuted or shot with a harpoon gun. But they were bad guys, so it was all okay.

However, regardless of how downplayed they might have been, we were shown some pretty disturbing ways to dispense with an evil henchman, the kind of thing that gave us nightmares when we were kids.

With work now underway on the latest latest Bond movie, Spectre, here's our look at the top 10 macabre ways 007 has dispatched evildoers in masterful fashion.

This feature contains spoilers for lots of James Bond films.

Goldfinger (1964)

Victim: Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe)

Scene: having defeated Goldfinger’s dastardly plan, Bond...

James Bond 007 Declassified File #5:  "You Only Live Twice" This series will trace the cinema history of James Bond, while also examining Ian Fleming's original novels as source material and examining how faithful (or not) the films have been to his work. Directed by Lewis Gilbert Screenplay by Roald Dahl Produced by Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli Characters / Cast James Bond / Sean Connery Ernst Stavro Blofeld / Donald Pleasance Aki / Akiko Wakabayashi Kissy Suzuki / Mie Hama Tiger Tanaka / Tetsuro Tanba Mr. Osato / Teru Shimada Helga Brandt / Karin Dor "M" / Bernard Lee "Q" /...

To mark the 50th Anniversary of one of the most successful movie franchises of all time and as James Bond prepares for his 23rd official outing in Skyfall later this year, I have been tasked with taking a retrospective look at the films that turned author Ian Fleming’s creation into one of the most recognised and iconic characters in film history.

After the phenomenal box-office success of Thunderball in 1965 the Bond series producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were left looking for an out of this world adventure for Bond’s fifth outing, You Only Live Twice. When Richard Maibaum the screenwriter of all the previous films became unavailable the producers hired popular short story and children’s writer Roald Dahl to pen the screenplay. Dahl had been a close friend of Fleming but described the original novel as “Fleming’s worst book”. Taking only a handful of ideas from the story,...

Fu Manchu for Mayor! Joe Dante explains.

Just look at this:

Click to make huuuuuuge.

Classic FemJep stuff, huh? (That’s females-in-jeopardy for you non-industry types.)

Karin Dor grapples with one of Fu Manchu’s dacoit assassins in the first and best of the sixties Fu Manchu series starring Christopher Lee, The Face of Fu Manchu, based on the Oriental arch-villain character created by Sax Rohmer in 1913 and continued in a series of novels through 1959.

“Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, … one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present … Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.” – Rohmer in The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu

For obvious reasons, this yellow peril stuff has gone out of fashion, to say the least, although Rohmer...