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A review for a movie not on video disc. CineSavant bears down hard on a now-obscure UK thriller that proves a crossroads for several key themes of modern terror: Nazis, bacteriological warfare and paranoid conspiracies. ‘007’– associated writer Jack Whittingham scripted a tale that connects old-school espionage to visionary super-crimes against humanity, the thriller genre of ‘The Unthinkable.’ Who’s the threat? An innocuous little doctor with a horrendous secret background and a somewhat preposterous ability to go undetected as he kills to assume and protect a new identity. The techno-chiller was released in 1948 yet seems screamingly relevant now.

Counterblast

Blu-ray

Savant Revival Screening Review

1948 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98, 90 min. / The Devil’s Plot / Not On Home Video

Starring: Robert Beatty, Mervyn Johns, Nova Pilbeam, Margaretta Scott, Sybille Binder, Marie Lohr, Karel Stepanek, Alan Wheatley, Gladys Henson, John Salew, Anthony Eustrel, Peter Madden, Archie Duncan, Olive Sloane.

Cinematography: Moray Grant, James Wilson...

Rex Harrison hat on TCM: ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Anna and the King of Siam’ Rex Harrison is Turner Classic Movies’ final "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 31, 2013. TCM is currently showing George Cukor’s lavish My Fair Lady (1964), an Academy Award-winning musical that has (in my humble opinion) unfairly lost quite a bit of its prestige in the last several decades. Rex Harrison, invariably a major ham whether playing Saladin, the King of Siam, Julius Caesar, the ghost of a dead sea captain, or Richard Burton’s lover, is for once flawlessly cast as Professor Henry Higgins, who on stage transformed Julie Andrews from cockney duckling to diction-master swan and who in the movie version does the same for Audrey Hepburn. Harrison, by the way, was the year’s Best Actor Oscar winner. (See also: "Audrey Hepburn vs. Julie Andrews: Biggest Oscar Snubs.") Following My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison...

Alec Guinness: Before Obi-Wan Kenobi, there were the eight D’Ascoyne family members (photo: Alec Guiness, Dennis Price in ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’) (See previous post: “Alec Guinness Movies: Pre-Star Wars Career.”) TCM won’t be showing The Bridge on the River Kwai on Alec Guinness day, though obviously not because the cable network programmers believe that one four-hour David Lean epic per day should be enough. After all, prior to Lawrence of Arabia TCM will be presenting the three-and-a-half-hour-long Doctor Zhivago (1965), a great-looking but never-ending romantic drama in which Guinness — quite poorly — plays a Kgb official. He’s slightly less miscast as a mere Englishman — one much too young for the then 32-year-old actor — in Lean’s Great Expectations (1946), a movie that fully belongs to boy-loving (in a chaste, fatherly manner) fugitive Finlay Currie. And finally, make sure to watch Robert Hamer’s dark comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets...