Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is known for its outer space special effects, prehistoric monkeys and a nefarious computer. As for humans there are two British actors (Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood) and one American as that pair of astronauts' chief...
This is a tale of two films. The 2-D version is a decent 1950's film noir.
With Fathers Day coming up I started looking round for movies that my dad would enjoy. Speaking to a DVD seller,I found out that they had recently tracked down a Film Noir starring Hammer Horror Queen Barbara Shelley,which led to me shaking hands with the man in the dark.
The 3D "Bwana Devil" had proved a surprising success and Hollywood now felt it had a secret weapon in it's fight against the infiltration of television. "Man in the Dark" was one of only two noirs filmed in 3D (the other being "I, the Jury") and it was quite an expensive process for what was really just a programmer.
B film-noir from Columbia Pictures and director Lew Landers. Dependable character actor Edmond O'Brien plays Steve Rawley, a gangster who agrees to undergo experimental brain surgery to alter his criminal activities and erase his memories.
By coincidence I was reading the iconography of Lance Comfort in the British filmmakers series when I came to view this film.Lance Comfort started directing A films in the early 1940s and drifted down to B features and TV work.
An incredibly slow moving plot, where nothing happens for what seems like hours, is somewhat salvaged by a disarming final twenty minutes or so, where we find out that things are not what they seem. Adulterous wife, Anne, of blind composer, Paul, openly flaunts her affair with Ricky, a painter of unsaleable art works.
This is a really excellent black and white film from 1963... everything top notch...
Dumb script, cheap sets, black-and-white, second bananas. They all add up to the question: why did Columbia bother with this project at all?
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