| MovieSteve

When Strangers Marry

2025-11-24 by Steve

A peculiar, interesting and not entirely coherent crime thriller about a woman who marries a man she barely knows and then starts wondering if he’s a killer. When Strangers Marry makes more sense as a title than Betrayed, which is the flag it flew under when it was re-released in 1949, five years after its debut. The re-release also allowed a bit of rejigging of the pecking order. Third-billed Robert Mitchum – who’d become a star in the interim – is top-billed second time round. To be fair to everyone, Mitchum is in it more than Dean Jagger, who plays the mysterious salesman Kim Hunter’s wide-eyed Millie Baxter has married more or less … Read more

Fort Ti

2025-05-17 by Steve

Fort Ti is a 3D western and it really wants you to know it. Everything that can come the audience’s way does – a tomahawk, an Indian, a cannonball, more Indians, more cannonballs, bats, bullets, yet more Indians. In the action sequences at least it keeps coming. It’s the first 3D western and shot in Technicolor just to make the whole thing stick out in more ways than one and stars good old dependable George Montgomery as a captain in the Rogers Rangers getting caught up in a conflict with Indians and then the French. There are not just two enemies but two potential love interests too – Joan Vohs as Fortune Mallory, … Read more

I Saw What You Did

2023-08-03 by Steve

Master of the kitsch gimmick William Castle’s 1965 shocker I Saw What You Did is a cautionary tale about the terrible things that happen to nice teenage girls who make prank phone calls. It’s also notable for being the last appearance in an American film by Joan Crawford. Though not her last film – 1967’s Berserk and 1970’s Trog were shot in the UK – it is like them a horror film, as befits a star who had been around since the 1920s and had become along the way a bit of a gargoyle. However, it’s not really about her. Instead attention focuses on Libby and Kit, two teenagers having a fun night … Read more

House on Haunted Hill

2023-10-312013-04-01 by Steve

When you buy a Bentley – as you do – you’re not looking for a holographic dashboard, an in-car virtual chauffeur, or an ejector seat. You want walnut and leather everywhere. The same is true of some horror movies. House on Haunted Hill was originally directed in 1958 by William Castle, the man who fitted cinemas seats with buzzers, had skeletons drop from the ceiling. Castle was – in the best sense of the word, a horrible man. In 1958 wonderful Vincent Price was the star. In 1999 for this remake it’s the magnificent Geoffrey Rush – as a crazy millionaire called Price – complete with pencil moustache, cravat and lop-sided leer. The … Read more