Reel Classics - Where Black Meets White

Director Jack Arnold was Universal’s go-to guy when they wanted a quick hit.  He proved himself mightily as he churned out classics like It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955), Tarantula (1955), and The Incredible Shrinking  ...

Loretta Young is a wholesome brunette no more!  As a naive blonde bombshell, this one-time gangster’s moll finds herself with a deep, dark secret.  Because of You is the film that launched Tony Bennett's career as the title song became his first Number 1 hit, but it is also progressive for its era ...

Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan was, at one time, a place of filth and absolute poverty.  Back then, it was known as one of the roughest neighborhoods in Manhattan; a better place to be from than to be in.  Bordered by the Hudson River on the west, Eighth Avenue on the east, 59th Street on the  ...

Think it’s just the rainy day blues that has this mind reader down in the dumps?  Think again.  Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, Night Has A Thousand Eyes might be classic B-movie material (due to its supernatural sources), but the film is both poetic and engaging as one mind reader  ...

“Immoral women shouldn't work in banks, you know. They might corrupt the young dollar bills.” Small towns can be so wonderful, can’t they? Everybody knows one another so well. It can be like having one giant family with the sense of comfort and love gushing from the community. Well, why  ...

Sometimes the good country air can be harmful to your health.  Such is the frightening territory of this atmospheric thriller which sees a small-town recluse turn murderer.  The woman projects nothing but EVIL while, at the same time, being nothing but pleasant in conversation.  She’s a  ...

“The mob doesn’t think. It has a mind of its own.” In 1933, some loud-mouthed man with a tiny mustache and a weird haircut rose to power in the country of Germany. His name, I believe, was Adolf Hitler. You may have heard of him, no? Well, he established a dictatorship to replace ...

“You stinkin’ rat!” For crime flicks, High Sierra, directed by Raoul Walsh, is indeed a watershed moment as the gangster pictures of the 1930s gave way to the fatalism found in Film Noir, which would dominate the 1940s.  Making spectacular use of its locations ...

Metallic hands and dark glasses!  There can be only one Dr. Gogol!   Maybe it is the warning that is issued as the film begins in total blackness or maybe it is the way that Peter Lorre is lit and filmed throughout this horror film, but Mad Love absolutely works its twisted ways in a modern viewing and ...

Lon Chaney as Quasimodo.  Need I say anymore?  I don’t really think so, but I’ll flex.  The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a certified REEL CLASSIC of silent, cinematic horror and it begins right there with Chaney’s performance as the deaf, half-blind, hunchbacked bell-ringer of the famous Cathedral of ...