This one was on TV very recently and was shown in wide screen Cinemascope format which I like to see, and in glorious Technicolor.

Jeffrey Hunter (Little Dog) portrays a fiery young Cheyenne  Indian brave in a story of a peace mission by the US Cavalry to the Cheyenne  Indians in Wyoming during the 1870’s. The peace treaty negotiation with the  Cheyenne (and other local Indian tribes) has the goal of relocating the tribes,  in order to open up the territory to gold prospectors.  The peace treaty is  threatened when a surveyor (Robert Wagner), there to map out the town that is  planned for the gold miners, falls in love with the chief’s daughter (Debra  Paget). Also starring John Lund, Virginia Leith, and Eduard Franz.

Above :-   JEFFREY HUNTER.

A great still from the film – above

Well this film programme would have been a ‘must’ for cinemagoers at the time I reckon.

A real Double Bill of Classic Hammer Horror Films.

Although I think the one below would be even better :-

This time Dracula and The Mummy.

                   Above in The Mummy  – Peter Cushing prepares for action !!!

As as long term film fan, I always seem to look out for locations that I feel would be great for use in a movie.

This is one of them – Scotney Castle at Lamberhurst,  Near Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN3 8JN   in England.

We visited in June 2013.

If anyone is not familiar with this enchanting place,  then please go and have a look.    Wonderful place to visit

Just come across this on Youtube – the trailer to the thrilling Walt Disney adventure film ‘Treasure Island’

See the trailer on the Link below – it is VERY good :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVX5ZfTcGNU&feature=player_detailpage#t=8

I love the scene above. Jim Hawkins escapes the clutches of Long John Silver and runs through the water onto the island and then hides. Filmed of course at the legendary Denham Film Studios.   One of the first films I ever saw at the cinema – and one of the very best too. Colour unsurpassed !!!

It s really exciting just to see this – and of course it makes you want to go and see the film. It was and is a great movie.

This is a film I have been after  for ages and located it on DVD in a most unlikely place. Watched it the other evening and it is a good film – made in wide screen and Black and White with Peter Cushing on brilliant acting form. This was a Hammer Film which came out only weeks before the one that made Hammer a world movie name – The Curse of Frankenstein – so maybe it didn’t get the chance it should have got at the Box Office being overshadowed by that one.

Doctor John Rollason played by Peter Cushing, a botanist, is on a Himalayan expedition with his wife Helen, and assistant Peter Fox.
They have been staying at the monastery of Rong-ruk, high in the mountains, where the Lhama has shown them great kindness and granted every facility for their work.
But the Lhama is aware – through a mysterious power of mind transference – that a second expedition, led by a ruthless adventurer called Tom Friend played by Forrest Tucker is advancing towards the monastery. Rollason, too, is aware of this expedition – and its mission. He has kept secret from his wife Helen played by Maureen Connell his ambition to join it – and he politely disregards the warning of the Lhama when he tries to dissuade him from linking forces with Friend. Friend’s party arrives. It consists of a tough ex-trapper, Ed Shelley, a Sherpa guide named Kusang and a likeable Scots photographer, McNee.

Maureen Connell  as Helen – below

Helen quarrels bitterly with Rollason when she learns that he and Friend plan to climb into the high valleys in search of the mysterious half-beast , half-human monster known as the Yeti or Abominable Snowman. She denies its existence, but Friend shows them a strange silver flask containing an enormous human tooth – the tooth of a Yeti.
The Lhama confirms that the flask was stolen from the monastery many years ago but Rollason is not satisfied with the gentle monk’s deliberately misleading explanation of the tooth, and is convinced that the Yeti really exist when the Lhama eventually hints at ‘A race of super-intelligent Beings who will take over the world when humanity has destroyed itself’. The five men leave Helen and Fox at the monastery and set out for the high peaks, existing on food and supplies cached by Friend along the same route a year before.
After a long hard climb, the party discover the giant footprints of a Yeti.
At this point – almost it seems by an unseen influence – disaster strikes at the party. McNee’s leg is badly injured in one of Shelley’s bear traps and at the same time, Rollason discovers that Friend’s interest in the Yeti is only a commercial one.
The squabble between Friend and Rollason ends in an ugly fight and, not long after, the half-crazed McNee is killed in a fall and Kusang the guide flees in panic from the camp to make his way safely back to the monastery.But Friend is determined to carry on – especially when Ed Shelley actually succeeds in shooting a Yeti – a gigantic creature almost eleven feet high, but with a curiously wise and gentle expression even in death.
It is obvious to them that the other Yeti to revenge their slain comrade – and Friend persuades Shelley to act as live bait in an ice-cave rigged with a steel net to trap the invading creatures. But the trap fails. Shelley opens fire but Friend has loaded his gun with blanks – his greed has been too strong even for friendship – and Shelley dies horribly…
Weather conditions are now appalling. Menaced by a blizzard and terrorised by the strange and unearthly powers of the Yeti, even the rugged Friend is ready to pull out – taking the dead Yeti with them on a sled.
But the Yeti are relentlessly closing in – separating the two men by their uncanny powers. Demented with panic, Friend tries to shoot down the Yeti as they come for him, but his gunfire only starts an avalanche that buries him forever in the frozen wasteland.
From his refuge in the cave, Rollason watches as the huge, dim shapes of the yeti gently pick up the bodies of their comrade and depart.At the monastery, Helen and fox realise that the expedition has failed as Kusang staggers into the courtyard.
They set out with a relief party to rescue Rollason and the others and Helen is overjoyed when she finds her husband is still alive. Wearily they help him back to the monastery and it is here that Rollason shows he understands the mysterious mission of the Yeti – and the need to protect them from civilisation until their time comes to rule the world.
In the final frames of the film the Lhama asks Peter Cushings character what evidence he has found of the Yeti and he answers that they have found nothing.

Nigel Kneale – above –  that great TV and film playwright was responsible for the script and of course he had dome the famous Quatermass TV serials late made into films.

I recently visited Herberton just inland of Cairns in Queensland Australia – and there is a wonderful tourist attraction –  a village back in the time of the old mining settlement of the town and among the many many attractions such as houses shops, school etc was a display of items of memorabilia of which  this one caught my eye, from the 50s or maybe slightly earlier. 

 A Hopalong Cassidy radio set  – so this actually may date back to the 40s. It was certainly an early marketing of the famous western star and the promotion of this radio by using his name. Quite clever stuff at the time no doubt.

I have since found out this information below :-

The Arvin Model 441-T or “Hopalong Cassidy” radio, originally priced at $16.95, was manufactured in 1950 using two styles of embossed, paper-backed, aluminum foil fronts. One “Hoppy” front shows his horse Topper rearing with both forelegs in the air, as shown in Figure 1. The other style, shown in Figure 2, has Topper with one foot on the ground and the other in the air. The Topper with two legs in the air version was the earliest design and was ordered by Arvin on February 22, 1950.

Good cast in this Western – Dale Robertson, Robert Wagner and  Rory Calhoun.

The story involves

THE SILVER WHIP.  20th Century-Fox, 1953.  Dale Robertson, Rory Calhoun, Robert Wagner, Kathleen Crowley, James Millican, Lola Albright.  Based on the novel First Blood (1953) by Jack Schaefer.  Director: Harmon Jones.

Rory Calhoun was not a Great Actor by any stretch of imagination, but within his range quite competent and even memorable on occasion. He appeared with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum in The River of No Return

Later on he did cameos in  B-movies like Angel, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Motel Hell, and Roller Blade Warriors, all of which are better than they sound. They’re worth a look, as is:

The Silver Whip, an occasionally interesting western with Calhoun as a rough but proper Sheriff, Dale Robertson  as his less legal-minded but heroic buddy, and Robert Wagner as the identity-seeking youth torn between the two role models.

The Silver Whip (1953).

“The Flame and the Arrow” takes the story of Robin Hood and transfers it from England to Italy. The scene is set in twelfth-century Lombardy, at a time when that area was subject to the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The villain of the piece is Count Ulrich the Hawk, the cruel German overlord of Lombardy. The Robin Hood figure is Dardo Bartoli, a hunter and skilled archer who leads a group of rebels against Ulrich after being outlawed, with the mute Piccolo the equivalent of Little John. There is also another villain, the Marchese Alessandro di Granazia, and a Maid Marian figure in Anne of Hesse, a beautiful German aristocrat who takes the side of the Italian rebels and falls in love with Dardo.
The film which obviously inspired this one was the Errol Flynn version of “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, made twelve years earlier. Burt Lancaster, who had previously been a gymnast and a circus acrobat, was an obvious choice to play Dardo, the sort of swashbuckling role which Flynn had made his own in the late thirties and forties. (Lancaster was to go on to play similar roles in other films such as “The Crimson Pirate”). Here, he gets plenty of opportunity to display his athletic talents, doing all his own stunts, many of which (such as the scene where he swings from the chandelier) were clearly inspired by “Robin Hood”.

I absolutely love this matte shot at the opening of The Flame and the Arrow – above.  Bottom half of the picture is live action and the top of the frame a wonderful colour painting – expertly joined together as one when on screen. Brilliant technique this and one that did so much for films.

Below link to The Trailer to The Flame and the Arrow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8mwYTfuNPs&feature=player_detailpage

Unlike Robin Hood, who is normally portrayed as a Saxon nobleman leading his people against their Norman oppressors, Dardo has a personal reason for resenting the German rulers of Lombardy. His wife Francesca has left him in order to become Count Ulrich’s mistress, and much of the plot concerns Dardo’s attempts to rescue his son Rudy, whom Ulrich has kidnapped.

Just arrived in England to film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

In 1930, in the Seaport of Esperanza, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, the fishermen find the bodies of a couple trapped in the net of their fishing vessel. The historian Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender) recalls the beautiful, selfish and spoiled American singer Pandora Reynolds (Ava Gardner), who used to break the heart of her lovers. When Pandora is proposed by the British racing car pilot Stephen Cameron (Nigel Patrick), she demands that he drives his car off the cliffs to prove his love to her. Stephen does what Pandora has asked him and they schedule their wedding on September 3rd.
However when Pandora sees a yacht anchored in the bay, she impulsively swims to the vessel and meets the Dutch Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason) alone without any crew on board. Pandora immediately feels attracted by the mysterious Hendrik and introduces him to her friends. When Jeffrey finds a manuscript from the Seventeenth Century of the Flying Dutchman, he asks Hendrik to help him in the translation. Jeffrey learns that Hendrik apparently is the Flying Dutchman – a captain that stabbed to death his innocent wife believing that she was unfaithful to him. He is sentenced to death and his soul is cursed by God, doomed to sail alone for the eternity, unless he finds a woman that loves him so much that should be capable to die for him. Jeffrey is afraid that Pandora might be this woman and presses her to marry Stephen as soon as possible.

“Pandora and the Flying Dutchman” is an adorable timeless romance based on the legend of the Flying Dutchman.

The beauty of Ava Gardner shines through in the role of a woman that does not love any man until she finds the doomed captain Hendrik van der Zee, falles in love with him and becomes capable of an ultimate act of love.    James Mason gives an extraordinary performance – a very dramatic one at that.        The costumes of Ava Gardner are really beautiful. The cinematography is wonderful by Jack Cardiff who went on to direct films but was one of the great cinematographers of the golden age of films.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) directed by Albert Lewin, starring Ava Gardner, James Mason

Albert Lewin, the man behind Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, was one of the most unusual directors to come out of mid-century filmmaking. He only directed six films, all of which he wrote and produced himself. In defiance of mainstream tastes, his films were erudite, highbrow, and fiercely intellectual. Lewin was also an art collector, with a taste for the surreal (his friends included Man Ray and Max Ernst) and his films frequently reflected this fascination. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman was his fourth film and many consider it the culmination of Lewin’s obsessions: a proudly romantic, visually fascinating attempt to bring his love for myths and art to cinematic life.