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Who Shot Barney? Or should we say, who is going to shoot Barney? Chalk up another excellent Noir Rescue by The Film Noir Foundation, the UCLA Film & Television Archive and Flicker Alley: Joan Leslie is a Broadway star in a group of ‘difficult’ actors, writers, lovers and cheats, trying to prevent a ‘repeat’ cycle of deception and murder. Richard Basehart makes a strong film debut as her confidante, a conflicted poet. The story twists tweak the noir format with supernatural content, almost like the ironic fantasies of The Twilight Zone. The choice extras double our interest in this very different noir.

Repeat Performance

Blu-ray + DVD

Flicker Alley

1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 93 min. / Street Date February 18, 2022 / Available from Flicker Alley / 39.95

Starring: Louis Hayward, Joan Leslie, Virginia Field, Tom Conway, Richard Basehart, Natalie Schafer, Benay Venuta, Ilka Grüning, Keefe Brasselle. John Ireland (narrator).

Cinematography: Lew W. O’Connell

Art Director: Edward C. Jewell...

Okay, the title The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) may be all the way on the nose at the moment, but that shouldn’t discourage anyone from checking it out. After all, you have Hammer legend Terence Fisher directing a small cast through a post apocalyptic adventure with shiny robot aliens walking around. Sounds dodgy you say? It is! But it’s also only 62 minutes short, and in Fisher’s more than capable hands, becomes a taut little gasser.

Released by Twentieth Century Fox, this British production was hampered by an extremely low budget, at least according to critics; the truth is that The Earth Dies Screaming is a Z grade concept dragged up to a B by the sheer magnitude of Fisher’s talent, and a bigger budget may have erased its unique charm.

We open in the English countryside; things appear tranquil until: a train derails, a plane dovetails into a field,...

Happy October, everyone! As expected, our favorite month is kicking off with a ton of horror and sci-fi home releases – 25 to be precise – and there’s a great selection of new and old titles coming our way on October 4th. As far as recent movies, The Purge: Election Year, The Mind’s Eye, Swiss Army Man and Fender Bender all arrive on both Blu and DVD this week, as well as the stunning South Korean horror film The Wailing. Several great cult classics are getting the HD treatment on Tuesday, including Terence Fisher’s The Earth Dies Screaming and Richard Wenk’s Vamp (both hugely underrated films, in my opinion).

Other notable Blu-ray and DVD releases for October 4th include X-Men: Apocalypse, House of Manson, Daughter of Dracula, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, They’re Watching and Chosen Survivors.

The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray)

Their target: Humanity.

It's a minor -- very minor -- Terence Fisher Sci-Fi suspenser that reaches the bare genre minimum and nothing more. Love the title and love those great stills, but when it's finished you're going to be saying, 'Now all I need is a good alien invasion movie!' The Earth Dies Screaming Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1964 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 62 excruciating minutes of horror / Street Date October 4, 2016 / available through Kl Studio Classics / 29.95 Starring Willard Parker, Virginia Field, Dennis Price, Thorley Walters, Vanda Godsell, David Spenser, Anna Palk. Cinematography Arthur Lavis Film Editor Robert Winter Makeup Harold Fletcher Original Music Elisabeth Lutyens Written by Henry Cross (Harry Spalding) Produced by Robert L. Lippert, Jack Parsons Directed by Terence Fisher

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

So I guess we have to add a third choice for the end of the world: a Bang, a Whimper... and now a Scream. Low-budget science fiction didn't...

Damn the aliens! Save planet Earth! Directed by Terence Fisher, The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) takes place in the UK, where alien robots reanimate dead bodies in an attempt to invade planet Earth. Kino Lorber will give the film the Blu-ray treatment on October 4th.

From Kino Lorber: “Coming October 4th on Blu-ray!

The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) Starring Willard Parker, Virginia Field, Dennis Price and Thorley Walters – Directed by Terence Fisher.”

Synopsis (via Blu-ray.com): “The United Kingdom is invaded by alien-controlled robots, which re-animate dead human bodies. Survivors of the invasion are besieged by the walking corpses of slain friends and neighbors. A crack space pilot returns to Earth to find the planet has been devastated by some unknown forces; so he organizes the survivors in a plan to ward off control by a the killer androids…”

Trailer via ScAYREdotCOM:

The post The Earth Dies Screaming Blu-ray Announced...

Vivien Leigh ca. late 1940s. Vivien Leigh movies: now controversial 'Gone with the Wind,' little-seen '21 Days Together' on TCM Vivien Leigh is Turner Classic Movies' star today, Aug. 18, '15, as TCM's “Summer Under the Stars” series continues. Mostly a stage actress, Leigh was seen in only 19 films – in about 15 of which as a leading lady or star – in a movie career spanning three decades. Good for the relatively few who saw her on stage; bad for all those who have access to only a few performances of one of the most remarkable acting talents of the 20th century. This evening, TCM is showing three Vivien Leigh movies: Gone with the Wind (1939), 21 Days Together (1940), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). Leigh won Best Actress Academy Awards for the first and the third title. The little-remembered film in-between is a TCM premiere. 'Gone with the Wind' Seemingly all...

'Father of the Bride': Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams. Top Five Father's Day Movies? From giant Gregory Peck to tyrant John Gielgud What would be the Top Five Father's Day movies ever made? Well, there have been countless films about fathers and/or featuring fathers of various sizes, shapes, and inclinations. In terms of quality, these range from the amusing – e.g., the 1950 version of Cheaper by the Dozen; the Oscar-nominated The Grandfather – to the nauseating – e.g., the 1950 version of Father of the Bride; its atrocious sequel, Father's Little Dividend. Although I'm unable to come up with the absolute Top Five Father's Day Movies – or rather, just plain Father Movies – ever made, below are the first five (actually six, including a remake) "quality" patriarch-centered films that come to mind. Now, the fathers portrayed in these films aren't all heroic, loving, and/or saintly paternal figures. Several are...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Joan Fontaine-Charles Boyer in Rare The Constant Nymph on TCM. [Photo: Miriam Jordan, Neil Hamilton in Two Heads on a Pillow.] Besides the Edmund Goulding-directed Joan Fontaine-Charles Boyer-Alexis Smith movie The Constant Nymph, other Library of Congress Film Archive entries on Turner Classic Movies tonight include Two Heads on a Pillow (1934), a B comedy directed by William Nigh, an important late silent-era director (Lon Chaney's Mr. Wu, Ramon Novarro's Across to Singapore) later stuck with second-rate fare. Apparently a sort of Adam's Rib predecessor, Two Heads on a Pillow features former silent-era leading man Neil Hamilton (Batman's Commissioner Gordon) and minor leading lady Miriam Jordan as once-married attorneys involved in a divorce case. It's probably worth watching even if only because of its cast, which also includes silent-era veterans Betty Blythe (the title role in the now-lost The Queen of Sheba) and Claire McDowell (Ramon Novarro's leprosy-stricken mom in Ben-Hur,...

Film Noir Classic Collection: Vol. 5, has dusted off eight films of the celebrated genre and adapted them to DVD format. Collections like these, which bring older films to newer light, are godsends regardless (to a degree) of which films are selected, because as timeless as some of these stories and performances might be, the barrier of being stuck in an old format can bury them forever. And these stories deserve to be told. If you watch a few well made noir thrillers you will no doubt see the seeds that were planted in the heads of crime-thriller filmmakers the likes of Martin Scorsese or Michael Mann. Though there are better films in the noir genre that this collection could have culminated, there are also a lot worse. Any fan of noir films or old mysteries and thrillers will be pleased at what this box set has to offer.

Desperate (1947)

Directed...

Robert Taylor, Greta Garbo Camille Robert Taylor on TCM: Waterloo Bridge, Escape, When Ladies Meet 9:00pm [Drama] Waterloo Bridge (1940) A ballerina turns to prostitution when her fiance is reported killed in World War I. Cast: Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Lucile Watson, Virginia Field Dir: Mervyn LeRoy Bw-109 mins. 11:00pm [Western] Billy The Kid (1941) A misunderstood youngster turns into one of the West’s most notorious outlaws. Cast: Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy, Ian Hunter, Mary Howard Dir: David Miller C-94 mins. 12:45am [Comedy] When Ladies Meet (1941) A female novelist doesn’t realize her new friend is the wife whose husband she’s trying to steal. Cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, Herbert Marshall Dir: Robert Z. Leonard Bw-105 mins, 2:45am [Adventure] Flight Command (1940) A cocky cadet tries to prove himself [...]...