Vincent Price is a successful horror movie actor whose young wife is murdered and he may be the murderer. More murdering ensues in this fairly by-the-book horror flick with the twists and turns being projected a mile away. But it has Vincent Price and his over-the-top look of horror whenever he discovers a body is worth the watch. It’s very similar to his turn on The Snoop Sisters and like that episode, there’s a bit of his older film footage to be seen interspersed in this film. 

Like The Bicycle Thief, this film has you questioning to whom the titular character is referring. Evelyn Keyes is a woman who gets more than she bargained for when she calls the police after seeing a prowler outsider her bathroom window. The story takes some interesting twists and turns from Los Angeles to an old abandoned mining town. There’s also a rather creepy Van Heflin as one of the officers who arrive to investigate the prowling. Unfortunately, Keyes’s character is a bit of a dope whose motivations don’t make a whole lot of sense which brings the intrigue down a notch.

This really feels like a vanity project for Sean Connery playing a police harboring his own dark predilections who brutally attacks a suspected child molester under his watch. It’s a very bare bones production, set almost entirely in an interrogation room, and relies wholly on Connery’s performance. It’s very dark and difficult to watch. It’s also rather talky, as many stage adaptations are, which makes it a little less riveting than I’d hope, but Connery does give his all in his portrayal with a depth that isn’t seen in many of his later films.

A fairly recently discovered love for Lesley Manville and really enjoying Secrets & Lies, my last Mike Leigh film, made me want to check this out when I saw that it was leaving Amazon Prime this month. This is a completely dreary story of British three working class who interact and drudge through life together. It’s tiring to watch as it seems none of these characters will ever find any joy and are just destined to grind through their days until the end, from one generation to the next. It is well acted, with Timothy Spall as Manville’s cab driving husband giving a particularly wearied performance.

I didn’t have a lot of expectations for this, thinking that Walter Matthau couldn’t possibly lead in a worthwhile thriller about a subway train hijacking, but I was completely wrong. Robert Shaw, Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman, and Martin Balsam are fantastic as the diverse hijackers, strangers who come together to perform the job very reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs, color names included. The movie doesn’t bother getting bogged into the details of how or why these gentlemen got together, just that they have a job to do and they intend to succeed. Matthau is a member of the Transit Police whose day is ruined by their activities. He seems mostly annoyed that unlike his normal day, he’s required to use his smarts to thwart their plans. There’s also James Broderick, Jerry Stiller, and Dick O’Neill in fabulous supporting roles. The story is tight and not flashy, totally relying on the excitement and danger inherent to the crime itself.

Jeff Bridges is the recently orphaned heir of a prominent Alabama family. Ostensibly as part of a shady real estate deal, he’s drawn to a body building gym in Birmingham, filled with an array of odd characters: Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his earliest roles, super adorable Sally Field, and Robert Englund as someone who is not Freddy Krueger. The tone is all over the place as Bridges tries to balance his two lives: the ritzy country club crowd and his quirky new gym friends. There is a side plot regarding the Mr. Universe pageant, which makes this. if nothing else. a nice companion piece to Pumping Iron.