magnificent

2025

I Aim at the Stars (1960)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Could not be more controversial or contentious. But we’ve been here far more recently than six decades ago. Oppenheimer (2023) covered similar ground in terms of a scientist harnessing his brain to create a weapon of awesome destructive power. J. Robert  Oppenheimer was also condemned...…

24th June 2025
Read More

The Green Berets (1968)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Apart from attempts to justify the Vietnam War and a hot streak of sentimentality, a grimly realistic tale that doesn’t go in for the grandiosity or self-consciousnesss of the likes of Apocalypse Now (1979), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Platoon (1978). It’s been...…

21st June 2025
Read More

Mill of the Stone Women (1960)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Character has generally been replaced by gore or slaughter in the modern horror film. Ever since Hammer ruled the roost, blood-letting has assumed greater and greater significance, and ever since The Exorcist (1973) the genre has traded on shock values. Current box office...…

20th June 2025
Read More

Impasse (1969)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s The kind of desultory B-movie Burt Reynolds was relegated to before Deliverance (1972) sent him on his way into the superstar stratosphere. And you could see why he might as easily have ended up at the lower level. This was his third stab at top...…

17th June 2025
Read More

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s You can keep your Succession dramas with families squabbling over a mere business empire. And even the more woke Snow White (2025) doesn’t remotely tackle the realities of marriage in medieval times when the role of a woman, in an era when more children died in childbirth...…

15th June 2025
Read More

Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s As much as the censor would permit – would be the subtitle. While not as harsh as the Nelson Algren source novel, it’s still, wrapped up in a bitter romance, a more brutal than heretofore expose of the sex worker, far removed from...…

14th June 2025
Read More

Surprise Package (1960)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Poses two questions. Is this every bit as bad as Once More with Feeling, Stanley Donen’s previous picture? Yep, sorry, it’s every bit as wretched. The second question is: how on earth did Donen go from this mess to sublime romantic thriller Charade three years later?...…

13th June 2025
Read More

Dr Crippen (1963)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s I have to confess my ignorance of this infamous British murderer. I knew the name and that he had hacked up his wife and buried her under the floorboards, so I just assumed a nutcase in the vein of Jack the Ripper, a...…

12th June 2025
Read More

Born Free (1966)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Unusual mix of the sentimental and the unsentimental, mixing soft-centered animal features like That Darn Cat (1966) where cute beasts cause mayhem with the kind of realism espoused by Sir David Attenborough (Planet Earth, 2006) where nature is red in tooth and claw, though skipping...…

11th June 2025
Read More

Tarzan and the Great River (1967)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Tarzan (Mike Henry) has been repurposed as an international adventurer dropped into trouble spots an ocean away from his African roots. He’s the male equivalent of the bikini-clad females peppering the espionage genre, kitted out in only a loincloth, torso kept bare for...…

9th June 2025
Read More

The Finger Man / Le Doulos (1962)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Stunning tour de force combining narrative complexity with technical audacity. Set up the template for later crime epics like Reservoir Dogs (1992) and The Usual Suspects (1995) and influenced Scorsese and Coppola. For the likes of me who revels in technical achievement, a delight, long tracking shots,...…

8th June 2025
Read More

Mosquito Squadron (1969)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Surprisingly somber, unusually reflective and exceptionally well-constructed. Except for taking the easy way out at the end, could easily have found itself in the classic finale stakes in the same league as Casablanca (1942) or The Third Man (1949) where true love is thwarted. More than enough...…

6th June 2025
Read More

A New Kind of Love (1963)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Just about scrapes by, small thanks to Paul Newman’s atrocious Texan accent, Joanne Woodward’s frightful blonde wig – more Lady Penelope than classy Parisian – and Maurice Chevalier serenading a horde of drunken women. Maurice Chevalier? Well, of course this is Paris and...…

5th June 2025
Read More

Hang ‘Em High (1968)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Clint Eastwood didn’t waste much time capitalizing on the unexpected success of the Dollars Trilogy. But the first was not released in the United States till 1967 and despite the success of the series across Europe was generally dismissed as a fluke, until American audiences...…

1st June 2025
Read More

Tarzan Goes to India (1962)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Helluva fillip for reissue and credibility purposes to be able to point to the picture being helmed by the director – John Guillermin – of The Towering Inferno (1974), not to mention King Kong (1976) and The Blue Max (1966) – which suggested top-notch skills if not the budget...…

31st May 2025
Read More

The Third Alibi (1961)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than a well-plotted narrative that doesn’t overstay its welcome and comes with a sting – or two – in the tail. And in the B-picture world we can accommodate all sorts of venal characters and even hope –...…

30th May 2025
Read More

The Swinger (1966)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s As chosen by my readers, this is the most popular movie on the Blog, so I thought I’d check back and see how it stood up. Having seen it before, of course, I knew what to expect. And despite the star’s acting abilities...…

29th May 2025
Read More

Children of the Damned (1964)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s I wasn’t aware that celebrated sci fi author John Wyndham had written a sequel to his iconic novel The Midwich Cuckoos, filmed as Village of the Damned (1960). And it turned out he didn’t (he did make an attempt but abandoned it after a few chapters)....…

28th May 2025
Read More

Village of the Damned (1960)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Superb chiller that, unusually, takes time to develop several strands over a longer time frame than is normal for a genre where the immediate takes preference. Opens a new dimension of terror, too, with the brain control sub-genre that would spill over into...…

27th May 2025
Read More

Borsalino (1970)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s You wonder how much the unexpected success of this French gangster picture encouraged Paramount to invest in The Godfather (1972). The studio had gone down the Mafia route with The Brotherhood (1968) but to a significantly muted response. But where that film was heavy on family and...…

25th May 2025
Read More

The Innocents (1961)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s One description of this film’s prequel The Nightcomers (1972) was that, even with the overt sex and violence, it was an arthouse picture masquerading as a horror movie. And obviously absent the sex and violence that’s how I feel about this one. I’m of the...…

21st May 2025
Read More

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Sets the tone for the later Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood westerns in which the bad guys are the good guys and we find ourselves rooting for bounty hunters, gunslingers and bank robbers. Except this is more of a drama than...…

16th May 2025
Read More

Satan Never Sleeps (1962)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Of all the misguided sentimental anti-Communist drivel, this is a very poor swansong for triple Oscar-winning director Leo McCarey (Going My Way, 1944). A tone that’s awkward enough all the way through goes straight through the wringer when we are asked to accept...…

12th May 2025
Read More

A Dream of Kings (1969)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Sometimes great movies just disappear. Even if they pick up some critical traction on initial release, as here, they flop at the box office. And they are not revived because the production company goes bust or the rights are complicated. Or, more likely,...…

11th May 2025
Read More

The New Interns (1964)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Columbia had turned this series into a glorified New Talent Contest. It didn’t spend much cash buffing up the sequel in terms of narrative or characters, so it’s mostly enjoyable to see just how well the studio was at spotting talent. In that...…

10th May 2025
Read More

The Canadians (1961)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s You ever wondered what happened to the Native Americans after they wiped out Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Well, they scarpered north to Canada, which flew the British flag, being part of the very powerful British Commonwealth, and where...…

9th May 2025
Read More

Theatre of Death (1967)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Takes considerable brass neck to treat master of the macabre Christopher Lee as nothing more than a red herring. A very slow slow-burn with a pinch of the vampiric, quartet of characters with a mysterious past, Grand Guignol Parisian setting, some decided sleight...…

7th May 2025
Read More

I Thank a Fool (1962)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s One of those bonkers pictures whose nuttiness is initially irritating but ends up being thoroughly enjoyable once you give in to the barmy plot and overheated melodrama. Murder, suicide, madness, illicit sex, blackmail – and that’s just the start of this farrago of...…

5th May 2025
Read More

Of Love and Desire (1963)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s As contemporary as you could get with the core theme of a sexually independent woman picking and choosing her men. Otherwise, a smorgasbord of talent. Star Merle Oberon (Hotel, 1966) hadn’t appeared in a movie in seven years, for co-star Steve Cochran (Tell...…

3rd May 2025
Read More

Moon Zero Two (1969)

Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s Not much that’s redeemable from this British sci fi effort. Maybe the idea of the “dirty universe” clogged up by waste with salvage hunters retrieving bits of old satellites and space objects. Or maybe an early version of “unobtainium,” the rare mineral that’s...…

2nd May 2025
Read More