Quote of the Day! Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950)

Stage Fright (1950)

“Every time I think I know the color of your eyes you disappear”–Michael Wilding as Ordinary Smith to Jane Wyman’s Eve Gill.

**Michael Wilding and Jane Wyman in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright**

Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller starring Jane Wyman, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd ,( just watched him taunt Ann Baxter in Chase a Crooked Shadow 1958– Â he’s terribly handsome but plays one hell of a sociopath).

Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, and the smoking hot Marlene Dietrich Â as actress/singer Charlotte Inwood who wears Christian Dior gowns and sings the languid torch song- “Laziest Girl in Town.”

Jane Wyman is adorable as always playing a young aspiring actress who tries to help prove her friend, Richard Todd’s innocence in the murder of performer Marlene Dietrich’s husband. One of Hitchcock’s best!- Adapted for the screen by Whitfield Cook (Strangers on a Train) and Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville. (Suspicion 1941, Shadow of a Doubt 1943) Based on the novel by Selwyn Jepson. With Fabulously nuanced cinematography by Wilkie Cooper (Jason and the Argonauts.)

Your ever-lovin’ MonsterGirl

Quote of the Day! Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

MONSIEUR VERDOUX 1947

Superb black comedy directed by Charlie Chaplin about an urbane cynical vegetarian, cat-loving bigamist Bluebeard who supports his invalid wife Mona (Mady Correll) and little boy by committing amorous adventures with women whom he then kills and takes their fortunes. Having lost his job of thirty years during a financial depression, he moralizes that this is the only way he can serve to take care of his family.

Chaplin is brilliant as he travels between the ‘object’ of his next bit of income as Henri Verdoux, Alias Varnay, Bonheur, and Floray. The ladies are hilariously diverse and not without ridicule… The rowboat scene is a riot!

I’ll be doing an extensive post on this film as it has caught my heart like the delirious flu… Co-stars Isobel Elsom as Marie Grosnay, Martha Raye is absolutely priceless as his lottery-winning dame Annabella Bonheur, Audrey Betz as the stodgy Martha his other wife, Marjorie Bennett as Marie’s maid, and Marilyn Nash as the young homeless girl…

it's a blundering world and very sad one yet a little kindness can make it beautiful — **Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Nash-Â Monsieur Verdoux ’47**

The Girl- “It’s a blundering world and a very sad one yet a little kindness can make it beautiful…”

I bid you all adieu for now – Le MonsterGirl

Quote of the Day! Between Two Worlds (1944)

“You’re dead… you boobs!” – Tom prior (John Garfield)

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS 1944

Fantasy Melodrama based on Sutton Vane’s play Outward Bound. with a stellar ensemble cast directed by Edward A. Blatt starring John Garfield, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, Eleanor Parker, Edmund Gwenn, George Tobias, George Coulouris Faye Emerson, Sara Algood, and Isobel Elsom.

A group of passengers aboard a ship are bound toward their destinies as they come to realize that they are all recently deceased…

See ya between blog posts-MonsterGirl

Quote of the Day! Stolen Identity (1953)

STOLEN IDENTITY (1953)

Joan Camden is the hostage, wife Karen Manelli prisoner to jealous, mad, and murderous concert pianist husband Claude Manelli (Francis Lederer)Handsome Donald Buka (Street With No Name 1948) plays an American in Vienna in search of a passport to freedom and happiness. He steals the identity of the dead man in his cab, and fate throws him and Karen together. The film is produced by actor Turhan Bey and directed by Gunther Von Fritsch who co-directed with Robert Wise on The Curse of The Cat People 1944.

“Claude has one great love… himself. His love is like a religion and his God asks for human sacrifices!”

MonsterGirl

Quote of the day! The File on Thelma Jordon (1950)”I’m no good for any man for any longer than a kiss!”

..SHE’LL LIE…KILL OR KISS HER WAY OUT OF ANYTHING!

THE FILE ON THELMA JORDON (1950)

CapturFiles_5 — Barbara Stanwyck and Wendell Corey in Robert Siodmak’s The File on Thelma Jordon
*photo courtesy of Doctor Macro

Directed by Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase 1945, The Killers 1946, Criss Cross 1949) this is a slick film-noir crime thriller with the ballsy Stanwyck as femme fatale Thelma Jordon in love with jewel thief Tony Laredo (Richard Rober) who gets her to steal from her rich aunt, and winds up shooting her, then making it look like a robbery. Wendell Corey plays gullible Cleve Marshall the assistant district attorney who manages to get Thelma an acquittal at trial. They start a passionate affair but Thelma is no good, and Tony reappears back in the picture… these things never end well…

“I’m no good for any man for any longer than a kiss!”

CapturFiles_4 — photo courtesy of Doctor Macro

“Maybe I am just a dame and didn’t know it!”

Maybe I’m just a dame and thought I was a MonsterGirl…

Quote of the Day! Lon Chaney Jr. as Bruno The Chauffeur: Spider Baby (1968)

Lon Chaney Jr. is the sympathetic Bruno the chauffeur, who teaches the kids a little bit about ethics in Jack Hill’s sublime cult horror gem Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told (1968)

“Just because something isn’t good doesn’t mean its bad.”

That’s right Bruno-MonsterGirl

Quote of The Day!-The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI 1947

Orson Welles is the black Irish seaman chump Michael O’Hara who falls head long into a web of desire, subterfuge and murder, when he stumbles across (Everette Sloane) Arthur Bannister’s wife Mrs. Elsa Bannister (the exquisite Rita Hayworth) out for a carriage ride in the park one night. With one of the most staggering climaxes in Film Noir!

“I never make up my mind until it’s over and done with.”- Michael O’Hara

-MonsterGirl

MonsterGirl’s Father’s Day: Quote of the day! The Red House (1947) Edgar G. Robinson as Pete Morgan

The Red House 1947

Pete Morgan: “I picked up the whip and beat him till he wasn’t handsome anymore, till he was dead, finished.”

Written for the screen and directed by Delmer Daves (Dark Passage 1947) this is a tautly wound horror/thriller featuring one of my favorites, the gruff everyman Edgar G Robinson as Peter Morgan, a very ‘unbalanced’ guy.

Pete ( Edgar G Robinson) and sister Ellen Morgan ( Dame Judith Anderson) have raised pretty Meg ( Allene Roberts) as their own child after her parents ran off and abandon her as a baby.

Meg now a young woman gets her friend Nath (Lon McCallister) to come help out doing odd jobs on the farm because her father Pete has a wooden leg and is getting on in years.

One night, Nath decides to use a shortcut home through the woods, which enrages Pete who warns him to stay clear of the red house, for fear of the unspeakable horrors associated with the dilapidated old wreck.

But like all great horror thrillers, Meg and Nath ignore his warnings and start digging around anyway and of course, the two begin falling in love, which is not only a problem for Meg’s mysterious caretaker, but for Nath’s sexy girlfriend Tibby played by a very young Julie London.

What is the dark secret of the red house, and what is deranged father Pete Morgan hiding after all these years?

Happy Father’s Day from MonsterGirl!

MonsterGirl’s Quote of the Day! The Glass Key (1942)

The Glass Key 1942

CLYDE MATTHEWS: “Isn’t all this beating likely to be fatal?

NICK VARNA: “Not unless we want it to be“

Directed by Stuart Heisler (Tulsa 1949, The Star 1952), penned for the screen by Jonathan Latimer based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett.

Alan Ladd is Ed Beaumont who sets out to find the truth behind his friend’s murder, and the divine sylph Veronica Lake is Janet Henry in this classic Noir Crime Drama!

Brain Donlevy (Kiss of Death 1947, Dangerous Assignment 1952)plays Paul Madvig who decides to clean up his past while running for re-election. He refuses to take any muscle from gangster Nick Varna (Joseph Calleia Gilda 1946, Touch of Evil 1958) Instead he throws his support behind politician Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen)

Things heat up when Ralph’s gambling son, Taylor Henry played by Richard Denning,Â who loves Paul’s sister Opal Madvig, (Bonita Granville)is murdered.

Nick Varna takes advantage of the dire financial situation of The Observer to strong-arm publisher Clyde Matthews (Arthur Loft) to use his newspaper to crucify and create suspicion around Paul Madvig’s involvement in the murder. Also starring William Bendix.

MonsterGirl’s Quote of the Day! Creation of the Humanoids (1962)

A Cyborg or “Clicker” – “My circuits are unoffended”

In this post-nuclear holocaust society, there are underlying social ramifications for humans engaging ‘in rapport’ with cyborgs. The end of civilization is near and there are shadow groups like The Flesh and Blooders who want to keep the world pure. Is merging machine, artificial intelligence, the soul, memory, and our very species being moral and is it imperative?

How will man survive, with an inability to bare children, their race inevitably dying out, will the cyborgs be the next evolutionary process?

Creation of the Humanoids is a mind-blowing philosophical sci-fi experience with not-so-covert racial and class implications embedded in the narrative.