Author Archive: Retro

A winner in the “Best Family Film” category at the 1959 San Francisco Film Festival, this fantasy story from Mexico about a good-hearted Saint Nick is geared primarily to the younger set. Santa Claus (José Moreno) is working hard way out in space somewhere, helped along by children from all over dressed in their own national manner and singing songs from their own countries. Santa has a plethora of gadgets to keep kiddies amused, everything from a dreamscope to a master eye, and he himself is given special powers by a magician — he can make himself invisible and keep children asleep, of course. When he runs into trouble from a literal little demon who tempts children into behaving badly, Santa also has his own way of conquering evil and giving love and appropriate gifts where they are needed the most.

An eccentric woman learns she is not dying of radium poisoning as earlier assumed, but when she meets a reporter looking for a story, she feigns sickness again for her own profit.

Beautiful orphan girl goes to stay with her uncle at a creepy hotel, not realizing that her uncle is involved with cut-throats and smugglers. Based on the book by Daphne Du Maurier. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock

During World War I, a German spy and a French spy meet and fall in love.

Based on a successful comic book that began in 1941, the Blackhawks were seven flyers who banded together during WW II to fight the Nazis. After the war, they continued to fight evil where ever they find it. In this movie, they are battling a group of spies and saboteurs bent on destroying democracy. The Blackhawks foil a succession of plots, with a cliff hanger ending in each episode.

Abbott & Costello’s version of the famous fairy tale, about a young boy who trades the family cow for magic beans.

A man and his wife receive a clue to an imminent assassination attempt, only to learn that their daughter has been kidnapped to keep them quiet.

Escaped convict returns home to visit his former girlfriend who is now married and has a family. Written by Robert Hamer. Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer.

Down and out piano player hitches a ride with a man who mysteriously dies, and when a femme fatale threatens to turn him in for the “murder”, he is forced to assume the identity of the dead man to collect an inheritance.