HELLO FROM FRED & ETHEL'S HOUSE

Saturday, October 15, 2011

3:10 to Yuma (1957)

Starring Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Henry Jones, Felicia Farr, Robert Emhardt, Richard Jaeckel, Ford Rainey, and George Mitchell. Desperate for money, a frontier rancher holds an outlaw at gunpoint, intending to collect the $200 reward. While both men await the train to Yuma that will escort the outlaw to prison, he offers the rancher $10,000 if he will set him free, setting off a tense cat-and-mouse game between captive and captor.

Badman's Territory (1946)

Starring Randolph Scott, Gabby Hayes, Ben Johnson, Ray Collins, Ann Richards, Steve Brodie, Lawrence Tierney, and Emory Parnell. Directed by Tim Whelan. In an effort to locate his younger brother, a U.S. marshal chases the James Gang, the Dalton Gang, and other notorious outlaws into no-man's territory outside of U.S. jurisdiction.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Starring Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine, Dean Jagger, Anne Francis, and John Ericson. Directed by John Sturges. John MacReedy, a one-armed stranger, comes to the tiny town of Black Rock one hot summer day in 1945, the first time the train has stopped there in years. He looks for both a hotel room and a local Japanese farmer named Komoko, but his inquiries are greeted at first with open hostility, then with blunt threats and harassment, and finally with escalating violence. MacReedy soon realizes that he will not be allowed to leave Black Rock; town boss Reno Smith, who had Komoko killed because of his hatred of the Japanese, has also marked MacReedy for death. MacReedy must battle town thugs, a treacherous local woman, and finally Smith himself to stay alive.

The War of the Worlds (1953)

Starring Gene Barry, Jack Kruschen, Carolyn Jones, Ned Glass, Russ Conway, and Les Tremayne. Directed by Byron Haskin. A meteor-like object has crash-landed near a small Southern California town. Among the crowd of curious onlookers is a scientist who determines the object is too hot to approach at present. Three townspeople are left alone to guard the object. When they decide to approach the meteorite, they are evaporated. It turns out that this is no meteorite but an invading spaceship from the planet Mars and the Martians onboard plan to pursue helpless earthlings with their flying saucer equipped with heat rays.

Wait Until Dark (1967)

Starring Audrey Hepburn, Richard Crenna, Alan Arkin, Jack Weston, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and Robby Benson. Directed by Terence Young. A trio of thugs terrorizes a recently blinded woman while they search for a heroin-stuffed doll they believe is in her apartment. The dope was smuggled from Europe and stuffed inside the doll her husband brought home as a gift.

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)

Starring Buster Keaton, Sally O'Neill, Walter James, Budd Fine, Francis McDonald, and Mary O'Brien. Directed by Buster Keaton and Charles Reisner. When he is not trying to make a man out of his son, a steamboat captain is carrying on a feud with the wealthy owner of a fancy new ferryboat. The captain's son falls in love with the ferry owner's daughter and they try without success to patch up the feud.

The Blue Dahlia (1946)

Starring Alan Ladd, William Bendix, Veronica Lake, Hugh Beaumont, Howard Da Silva, Will Wright, Frank Faylen, and Harold J. Stone. Directed by George Marshall. Johnny Morrison returns from the war to find his wife Helen having a party and in the arms of another man, the owner of The Blue Dahlia nightclub. Johnny and Helen have a terrible fight and she is later found dead. Johnny must prove his innocence and he enlists the aid of Joyce Haywood, the ex-wife of Helen's lover. Pursued by the cops, and never sure if he is being set-up for the murder, Johnny finally solves the murder and clears his name.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Ward Bond, Jerome Cowan, and Barton MacLane. Directed by John Huston. A young woman hires private eye Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer to protect her from former partner Floyd Thursby. When Archer and then Thursby are murdered, Spade finds himself hounded by the police who believe he is the murderer. The woman eventually draws Spade into her plan to sell a gold-encrusted statue of a falcon reputed to contain princeless jewels to her other former partners.