Author Archive: Retro

On their honeymoon at a place in the country, this is an amusing comedy in which James Dunn and Florence Rice race through hidden passages and secret panels trying to stay a step ahead of gangsters who had been using the house as a hideaway. Fun script was penned by Morey Amsterdam.

To draw attention to a popular show, a publicity expert hires a former carnival character, not knowing that the man is on the run from the law.

Cleef heads a commando operation against Rommel’s forces in North Africa during World War 11.

You’re at the drive-in watching intermission spots and previews.

Passport to Pimlico is one of the most charmingly whimsical Ealing Studios comedies of the late 1940s-early 1950s. As a result of wartime bombing, an ancient parchment is uncovered, proving that the Pimlico section of London belongs to Burgundy, France. Long taken for granted by other Londoners, the tiny Pimlico populace decides to take advantage of its “foreign” status.

The young lady Panthea Vyne falls in love with the handsome highwayman who saves her from her brutal husband. He kills him in a fair duel. Later on when Charles the 2nd is reinstated as King of England she attends the royal court. But here she becomes the enemy of the kings former mistress and the plot against her thickens. Great performances by Oliver Reed, Michael York, and of course the red-headed vixen, Emma Samms.

In this film, secret agent Roger Pryor is dispatched below the border to protect an important scientific formula. Believe it or don’t, this mixture has the ability to render things invisible. However, enemy agents Lionel Royce and Lucien Prival want to get their mitts on this vital secret.

The gang pretends to be Leo Gorcey’s siblings in order to impress a rich uncle from Texas. Features the two-fisted boys from Dead End in the comedy/drama series. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabe Dell and Billy Benedict.

One of the early color near-nudie films and was re-shown often by, mostly, drive-in theatre owners in need of a quick cash fix. They would hang out the “Adults Only” sign, thereby ensuring that every high school and junior high boy (and more than a few dads) within an hour’s drive would storm the gate, and turn on the pop corn machine and then hot-foot it to the night-deposit at the bank. “Not Tonight, Henry” (the actual title and not an alternate title as some seem to think) was a large step up in quality for director W. Merle Connell in that it was in color and also not just a static-camera filming of a burlesque show inside of one of L. A.’s smoky, grind house burlesques. The girls were still out of burlesque, as were Hank Henry and Little Jack Little: Hank Henry is more than a little frustrated at the “lack of attention” [...]