Author Archive: Retro

Public Domain Movies With Bela Lugosi

Whether one views him as an iconic master of the macabre or a troubled performer who never got the attention he deserved, Bela Lugosi's name still rings bells -- typically large ones, perched atop the spire of a weathered Gothic castle.

Bela Lugosi: Enduring Screen Icon

Born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in 1882 to a middle-class family in Lugos, Austria-Hungary, Lugosi dropped out of school at age twelve to pursue his dream of becoming a thespian. For the next two decades, Lugosi traveled throughout the continent and beyond, acting in stage productions and early silent films before eventually ending up in America, where he landed a career-making role in the 1927 Broadway production of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Though the quality of Lugosi's artistic output waxed and waned in the thirty years that followed, his on-screen image remained largely tethered to the aesthetics of Count Dracula. Nevertheless, Lugosi boasts a diverse filmography [...]

Mad scientist makes a small-time crook invisible in order to steal radium, a necessary ingredient in his invisibility formula. Unfortunately, the formula has some unpredictable side-effects… Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer

In 1960, a military test pilot is caught in a time warp that propels him to year 2024 where he finds a plague has sterilized the world’s population.

Bill, Dan, Diana and Jamie, four motorcyclists who arrived at Whiskey Mountain for a treasure hunt, are terrorized in the woods by a gang of murderous hillbilly drug dealers.

Disguised as a cautionary suspense thriller, Violated is essentially an excuse to display some strippers taking their clothes off. Lili Dawn plays an exotic dancer named Lili DeMar, who is used as bait by the police to bring a sex offender out into the open. The acting is bad and the direction worse, but there’s no denying that the film is extremely well-photographed by Pat Rich. Those uninterested in the undulations of Lili Dawn will enjoy the creative musical score by Tony Mottola, who in 1953 had achieved a measure of fame for his work on TV’s Suspense. Considered hot stuff when first released, Violated is mild to middling when seen today.

In the War’s closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.

Part Color and Black & White. Continuation of Part I, Ivan takes on the boyars in a battle for power. His wife dead from poisoning and his chief warrior, Kurbsky, defected to the Poles, Ivan is lonely as he pursues a unified Russia with no foreign occupiers.

Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. In 1547, Ivan IV (1530-1584), archduke of Moscow, crowns himself Tsar of Russia and sets about reclaiming lost Russian territory. In scenes of his coronation, his wedding to Anastasia, his campaign against the Tartars in Kazan, his illness when all think he will die, recovery, campaigns in the Baltic and Crimea, self-imposed exile in Alexandrov, and the petition of Muscovites that he return, his enemies among the boyars threaten his success.

Anti-war love story about Soviet man sent to war, leaving behind the woman he loves. Produced and Written by Mikhail Kalatozov. Dir. Mikhail Kalatozov.