The Magic Sword

Bert I Gordon
Los Angeles CA 1962

A typical kids film of the era in most respects, but with inventively cheap effects that Bert Gordon was known for.  He liked to play with scale, and so do I, so I enjoy looking at how he did things.  I like the way his seams show.  I also enjoy the very pleasing actor in the lead, Gary Lockwood, who went on to 2001 and Model Shop.  It was his eighty first birthday, the other day, that prompted me to watch it again.  He gets to show how superior a beefcake star he could have been had he chose that route.

Isle of Forgotten Sins

Edgar Ulmer 
Hollywood CA 1943 
starring Gale Sondergaard
& John Carradine

In honor of her hundred nineteenth birthday, a few shots from the opening of Ulmer's take on Das Rheingold, where Gale Sondergaard gives her morning instructions to her Rheinmaidens as another ship full of sailors makes dock.

Oliver Reed at Hammer Films

1960 - 1965

1&2.the Two Faces of Dr Jekyll

 3&4.the Pirates of Blood River

5&6.the Curse of the Werewolf

7&8.the Scarlet Blade

9&10.Night Creatures

11&12.the Brigand of Kandahar

I don’t know how many films Reed made at Hammer, but he went without credit on most of his early roles, including the first pictured above, Terence Fisher’s the Two Faces of Dr Jekyll.  He got to work with the three best directors at Hammer: Terence Fisher, Freddie Francis and John Gilling.  He learned his craft as a film actor working with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Lionel Jeffries, Jack MacGowran and their like.