Janet Blair

I Love Trouble

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Janet Blair and Franchot Tone publicity shot

I Love Trouble is The Rockford Files, or a dry run at it, give or take. If you don’t know what The Rockford Files is, that means you’re not ancient, so well done you. It’s the TV show where James Garner played a dog-eared detective raising a wounded eyebrow as he got beaten up week after week. Roy Huggins wrote both. I Love Trouble was his screen debut, an adaptation of his own novel, The Double Take, which S Sylvan Simon directs with half an eye on the drawing-room whodunits of yore. Huggins also wrote 77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive and Maverick (also starring Garner) – so was something of a TV colossus … Read more

Night of the Eagle

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Janet Blair and Peter Wyngarde

Everyone is on their game in Night of the Eagle, an American-financed, British-made horror movie that gets it just about all right, even though the ingredients don’t look like they’re up to much. Peter Wyngarde stars, a cult actor here one year on from The Innocents – one of the best British horror films ever made – sinking his teeth into the role of the rationalist lecturer who has all his beliefs upended when he discovers his wife is a witch. Norman Taylor (Wyngarde) is doing OK at the college where he lectures and when not instructing his students on the real underpinnings of superstition (something vaguely to do with neurosis, it’s suggested) … Read more