The Vanishing

I watched this when I was a kid and it remained with me. I just ended up watching it again. After a man's wife disappears from a gas station, the guy goes on an obsessive desperate search for answers. The killer teases with him. Eventually the two meet. He demands to know what happened to his wife. At times I couldn't believe the stupidity of the guy. He had to know that he was asking for his doom but obsession gets the better of him. There was an American remake that changed the spooky ending which really missed the point of this movie. I was surprised that it's just on youtube and not available for rent. This is one of the scariest films I've ever seen.

A Hole in the Wall

This was a short precode. It was one of Claudette Colbert's first movies and the first that starred Edward G. Robinson as a gangster. It was just ok. It's about a girl falsely accused of theft who becomes a psychic. Edward G. Robinson is a gangster who gets involved with her but his association with her leads to his downfall.

Whistle down the Wind

Hayley Mills stars as a child who believes the criminal hiding out in her barn is Jesus. Soon the other children believe it too. Meanwhile the adults in the movie are looking for the criminal who is kind of baffled at the attention the children are giving him. This was a pretty good movie. Hayley Mills was simply one of the best child actors ever. This was later made as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

The Phantom of the Opera

This was an ok film version of The Phantom of the Opera. The problem is that it has too much opera. This is probably because the cast has Nelson Eddy and Susanna Foster, who was one of the many actresses of her time trying to compete with Deanna Durbin. (She does a pretty good job as Christine.) The real winner in the movie is Claude Rains as the phantom though. He was such a great actor. It wasn't amazing but it was acceptable.

The Fool KIller

I watched an old VHS copy a billion years ago from my library of this. Now it's on youtube. For some reason it stayed with me. It's a typical coming of age story complete with a boogeyman plot but I don't know there's something special about it. Anthony Perkins plays the psychotic title role. Yeah he was typecast because he was so good at it. This is about a boy drifter who befriends another wanderer Perkins. He has to think of whether he is going to stay with the family who takes him in or not. I even read the book this was based on although I think the movie got it down better.

The Wizard of Oz

I haven't watched this movie for years. I watched Wicked and read the L. Frank Baum classic and decided it needed another viewing. I forgot about how the humans in Dorothy's life link up with the Oz characters. My sister remarked that Toto didn't have much personality which was something I had never thought of before. The scene where he catches Oz at the curtain is truly hilarious. The score is also pretty amazing too. This is a cinematic classic all the way and Judy Garland never looked better.

Miranda

This was a cute British comedy from the 1940s about a mermaid brought into the human world by a physician. The man tries to hide her as an invalid but it isn't before long until the neigbors and everyone else figures out something fishy is going on. One man falls madly in love with her. Glynis Johns is charming. Although she had a long career she didn't have the lead role enough.