Author Archive: Retro

Mr. Richard Carling is found dead in his home with a house full of suspects.

A group of impecunious Brits are stranded in a Stockholm hotel.

Rich, disdainful Greene family gathers yearly at creepy ancestral castle to discuss will. One by one, they meet untimely demises during current year’s gathering under mysterious circumstances.

Nightclub singer ‘the Canary’ blackmails acquaintances, ends up murdered. Only witness also killed. Detective Philo Vance investigates to uncover her killer among numerous suspects she had exploited.

A young photographer (Eric Linden) looks for news with his sob-sister friend (Boots Mallory).

A naive young girl is forcefully kidnapped while babysitting the son of a wealthy food mogul; she and the boy are held hostage by an ex-stuntman and a vengeful movie star.

The hippie underground newspaper is in financial trouble and might be bought by a big time publisher. The in-fighting, bickering, jealousies and bed hopping by the young, idealistic staff make up the main, simple plot of the film but the cast and the sharp script make it a pleasure to watch. The film is CHOCK FULL of some of the best, young American actors doing some of their earliest film work: Jeff Goldblum is hystercial as the constantly stoned music critic who is always dead broke, Bruno Kirby (pre-Godfather II, When Harry Met Sally) is almost unrecognizable, pre- L.A. Law Jill Eikenberry, Lindsay Crouse, Joe Morton (Terminator II, Lone Star, City of Hope), a very young pre-TAXI Marilu Henner as a stripper and TV’s 7th Heaven, Stephen Collins who plays a real jerk in the film

The two-part TV movie Hitler’s SS: Portrait in Evil crystallizes that evil by concentrating on two Berlin brothers. In 1931, Helmut Hoffman (Bill Nighy) a brilliant student and self-styled opportunist, joins Hitler’s SS. At the same time, his younger brother Karl (John Shea), a top athlete and idealist, becomes a chauffeur for the “S.A.” (storm troopers). When the SS topples the SA from power, Karl ends up in Dachau. He is rescued through his brother’s influence–if you can describe sending Karl to fight on the Russian Front a “rescue.” As he watches the Third Reich deteriorate, Helmut at long last suffers pangs of conscience. As if the story of the rise of Nazism needed any further melodrama, Hitler’s SS shoehorns in a romantic triangle involving Karl, Helmut, and beautiful nightclub-singer Lucy Gutteridge. The all-star supporting cast of Hitler’s SS includes Carroll Baker as the Hoffman brothers’ anguished mother; Tony Randall as an androgynous entertainer named Putzi (shades of Cabaret’s Joel Grey); and David Warner, repeating his Holocaust role as SS head [...]