Angela Lansbury

A Life at Stake

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Doris and Edward stare into each other's eyes

Angela Lansbury Sex Kitten is the offer in A Life at Stake, a short and atmospheric noir from 1955 with a looser attitude to sex than was usual at the time. But before we meet Angela’s minxy Doris (not the sexiest name in the world, but hey), we get an eyeful of our star, Keith Andes, stripped to the waist and showing off the physique that got him movie work in the 1950s. He’s playing Edward Shaw, a down-on-his-luck property developer introduced to rich, married and bored Doris Hillman by a go-between lawyer. In scenes thick with flirtatiousness, all set by a swimming pool where Doris is sunning herself in a skimpy swimsuit, … Read more

The Manchurian Candidate

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A sweaty, brainwashed Raymond Shaw

Thrillers generally work backwards, towards who done it or why. The Manchurian Candidate doesn’t do it that way at all. We know that something’s wrong from the opening scenes of John Frankenheimer’s chilly Cold War thriller, but we’ve no idea where everything is headed. And Frankenheimer keeps it that way until the film’s dying (literally) moments. The Day of the Jackal borrowed quite a bit of The Manchurian Candidate’s cold deliberate approach, but we always knew that the hitman in that movie was aiming to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle. Here we know next to nothing, though early scenes make clear that a platoon of US soldiers in Korea has been abducted … Read more