Few films capture the haunting ambiguity of Gothic horror quite like 1961’s The Innocents. Directed by Jack Clayton and shot with eerie precision by cinematographer Freddie Francis, this adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw turns repression, loneliness, and madness into an elegant fever dream. It’s not just a ghost story; it’s a…
Category: Film
Movies
Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960) – Review
Richard Greene returns as Robin Hood in Sword of Sherwood Forest, bringing his television incarnation from The Adventures of Robin Hood to the big screen for Hammer Films. Directed by Terence Fisher, the film trades the television series’ half-hour adventures for a compact feature-length conspiracy involving crooked nobles, a threatened Archbishop and Peter Cushing looking…
Mill of the Stone Women (1960) – Review
Italian cinema of the early ’60s had a flair for grand horror melodrama. Still, Mill of the Stone Women (Il mulino delle donne di pietra) might be its most baroquely unhinged example. It’s beautiful, bizarre, and far too committed to its premise to be brushed off as just another knockoff. This is a film that…
The City of the Dead (1960) – Review
If you’ve ever dreamed of taking a scenic New England vacation filled with Satanic cults, human sacrifices, and enough fog to choke a lighthouse keeper, then The City of the Dead (also known as Horror Hotel) is your dream destination. Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey and starring Christopher Lee in full “professor of malevolence” mode,…
The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952) – Review
Walt Disney’s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men is what happens when a studio famous for singing animals decides to behave like a respectable purveyor of English folklore. The result is earnest, handsomely mounted, and just a little too polite for its own good. It’s Robin Hood scrubbed clean for family viewing,…