1998 - SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, as usual 'War Is Hell'

You can't fault the technical aspects of this film.  Steven Spielberg is at the height of his film making skill.  His cinematographer Janusz Kamiński brilliantly photographed this film draining the color and  making it look at times like a black and white World War II film.  The decision to shot the film with a hand held camera added a stunning immediacy to the fighting.  Spielberg's long time editor Michael Kahn cut the film together for maximum impact.  Considering this was a large scale and expense film with complicated battle scenes Spielberg was such an experienced director he brought the film in under schedule, an impressive achievement.

Saving Private Ryan was clearly inspired by the real life tragedy of the five Sullivan brothers.  They were sailors serving on the same ship which was torpedoed by the Japanese killing all five of them.   This incident so traumatized the country the United States Navy changed their policy of letting family members serve together on the same ship.

I haven't viewed this film since it was originally released and while the battle scenes were still as intense as I remember I had some reservations about the actual story.  In many ways this is just a hyped up 1940's World War II film with a lot more graphic violence.  One of the messages of Saving Private Ryan is the emotionally draining effect that war has on soldiers.  The problem I always have with these anti-war films it that they tend to exploit the very thing they are trying to condemn the fighting.  Saving Private Ryan definitely has a this is a cool combat scene vibe.  I just feel that the audience is kind of being manipulated to enjoy how impressive the fighting scenes are at the expense of the anti-war message.

As far as the cast goes it's the usual group of soldier boy character exaggerations.  Tom Hanks is the Captain in charge of the mission to find Private Ryan.  He's a resourceful leader of men but underneath a sensitive soul who in a previous life was a teacher.  Tom Sizemore is the battle hardened sergeant who has a philosophical side to him.  Jeremy Davis is the private who has never been in battle before.  Barry Pepper is a Bible quoting sniper.  A young Matt Damon is Private Ryan the soldier Hanks has been looking for to bring home.  However he won't leave his platoon because he has bonded with them in this "profession of arms."  One of the oddest casting choices is Ted "Sam the Bartender" Danson as an army captain.  I half expected to see Cliff and Norm from Cheers to pop up at any moment.

Saving Private Ryan is almost three hours long and towards the end it kind of drags as we wait for the final big battle scene which in many ways is like one of those big musical production numbers.  In this case it's Hank's platoon vs some German tanks and what seems like a whole regiment of German soldiers.  Fighting these Germans against overwhelming odds is about as big a fantasy as anything found in any other war film.  If you are looking for a good film about the effect of war on the foot soldier I would probably go with A Walk in the Sun or The Big Red One.

The film was written by Robert Rodat, with uncredited contributions from Frank Darabont and Scott Frank.  The running time is 170 minutes.  

1932 - BLESSED EVENT, a very funny pre-code film

Where has this hilarious comedy been hiding and why isn't it better known?  A gossip columnist in New York City has carved out a  successful career running stories that don't exactly endear him to the people he is reporting on.  He has an informant in a maternity ward  giving him the scoop on women giving  birth some of who are unwed mothers.  He has a hit man finking out the criminal activities of his boss. Finally he's in a media war with a crooner (played by Dick Powell) of a radio program which he has taken a major dislike too.  

The columnist is played by the actor Lee Tracy.  Tracy was in the original Broadway production of The Front Page.  He played Hildy Johnson the fast talking and barely ethical reporter for a sleazy newspaper called "The Examiner."  The play was a big hit and Tracy was a big part of it's success.  When The Front Page made it's way to Hollywood Tracy wasn't considered for the part because he was too much of an unknown.  The role of Hildy Johnson instead went to Pat O'Brien.  

However Tracy essentially got to repeat his Hildy Johnson character in several other newspaper comedies.  He's something to see in action, rattling off dialog at breakneck speed.  He talks his way in and out of one crazy situation after another.  He's completely mesmerizing in every scene he's in and that's the whole film. 

Lee Tracy was a hard living actor with a big fondness for the bottle.  His film career was moving along until he was hired to play what else a reporter in MGM's big production Viva Villa.  Whatever happened on location is still somewhat of a mystery.  Supposedly Tracy was drunk and urinated on a passing Mexican military parade or he gave them the finger.  In any case he was fired off of the film which did serious harm to his career

 Blessed Event is a very funny film pre-code film and it's well worth a look.  Lee Tracy never won an Academy Award but he had an equally great honor, a star on Hollywood Boulvard.

Blessed Event was written by Howard J. Green, the running time is 80 minutes.      

2025 - EPIC: ELVIS PRESLEY IN CONCERT, see the title.

Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann got his hands on a bunch of films of Elvis performing in concert.  Most of the footage seems to have been shot during one of his last efforts, his appearances in Las Vegas.  It's always impressive when they find this old color footage and digitally restore the picture and sound.  The footage of Elvis performing from this period is quite remarkable. 

In this film Elvis is about 8 years from the beginning of the end when his health issues and his drug intake catches up with him.  The footage in this film shows that Elvis was still an engaging performer.  He interacts with his band during rehearsals and the fans in the audience still respond to his stage presence.  All well and good.

However I have to say he does not look to be in all that great of shape.  Elvis is starting to be a bloated mess.  He seems to favor wearing gaudy form fitting jump suits and it doesn't make him look exactly like  a "Skinny Minny."  He's constantly wearing sun glasses and his haircut and sideburns gave him a weird pageboy look.  Some critics at the time called Elvis's appearances in Vegas as "the ultimate lounge act."  This was not a compliment.

If you want to see Elvis Presley in his sort of performing prime during the twilight of his career you can give this film a look.  This footage is almost his last hurrah before he goes over the precipice and comes crashing down.

The running time is 96 minutes. 

1922 - THE FROZEN NORTH, Buster Keaton's spoof of Western films

Western films have been around since almost the beginning of narrative cinema.  John Ford and Raoul Walsh started their careers directing silent westerns.  The silent movie days fostered some big stars, Tom Mix, George O'Brien and William S. Hart actors who have faded in time except to the rabid silent film scholars I guess.

The background on this film is very interesting.  Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle a silent comedian had been accused of the rape and death of an actress at a Hollywood party.  Although Arbuckle had been acquitted for her death not one but three times he was convicted in the press which finished off his career.  One of the chief accusers of Arbuckle was actor William S. Hart who had never meet Arbuckle or was even familiar with the Arbuckle trials.  This angered Buster Keaton, he owed his start in film to Arbuckle.  Keaton decided to go after Hart.  What better way than to ridicule him in a movie. Thus we have the genesis for The Frozen North.

This is another amusing short film from Keaton who is at the peak of his talents.  Even in the early days of silent film western films had already settled into a series of cliches.  Keaton took these cliches and used them for some amusing gags.  Keaton plays a western character who frequently shoots first and asks questions later if at all.  The Frozen North is up to Keaton's usual high standards with his famous deadpan humor.

What is kind of fascinating about this film is Keaton's spoof of William S. Hart.  I've seen a couple of Hart's films (Hell's Hinges was actually quite a good one) and can say that Keaton's mockery of Hart is right on the mark.  Keaton wears a shrunken version of Hart's famous cowboy hat.  Keaton even has a cut out of Hart from a poster that figures into a very funny bit in a saloon.  Apparently William S. Haft was not amused.  Of course these insider jokes don't really mean much anymore but overall The Frozen North has some very funny stuff in it.  The Frozen North is available on YouTube.

The film was written by Buster Keaton and Edward Cline, the running time is 18 minutes. 

1964 - THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRE, interesting ghost story

This is a ghost story that was originally a pilot for a Twilight Zone type series about the supernatural.  The creator/writer/director was a man called Joseph Stefano who mostly worked in television and when given the chance made some very interesting offbeat films.  On the television side of the entertainment business he was the creator of the original Outer Limits TV series and wrote a very strange pilot for an anthology series The Unknown called The Forms of Things Unknown.  If you can find a copy of it it's worth a look.  Stefano also wrote for series like Star Trek the Next Generation and Marcus Welby M.D. 

On the feature film side Stefano's outstanding film credit was for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.  He wrote the screenplay for Gary Cooper's final film the psycho killer on the loose The Naked Edge, (spoiler Cooper is not the razor slicing madman).  Stefano also has a writing credit on the weird Eye of the Cat a kitty-cat horror film.

The Ghost of Sierra De Cobre TV pilot was not picked up by any television network so Stefano being a clever fellow took the pilot rewrote some of it and turned it into an actual film.  The film looks very good for what was originally a television show.  The photography was by Conrad Hall one of the absolute best cinematographers who could work in black and white and color with great skill.  The cast was interesting to say the least. Martin Landau is the psychic investigator, Diane Baker is a woman apparently haunted by the ghost and "Mrs Danvers" herself Judith Anderson is a woman who knows the secret of the ghost.

As befits a film originally made for television this is a modest but effective ghost story.  No question the photography really contributes to the eerie mood of the film and the on location filming on the beaches of Malibu make for a striking location.  The Ghost of Sierra De Cobre is available for rent on YouTube.  Worth a look for horror fans.

The film runs 80 minutes. 

1959 - MAIGRET AND THE SAINT-FIACRE CASE aka Maigret Goes Home

Jean Gabin returns in his 2nd appearance as police inspector Julies Maigret.  Gabin's first shot as Maigret was in the film Maigret Sets a Trap which frankly wasn't much of a mystery but was watchable due to Gabin's excellent performance.  In Maigret and the Saint-Fiarce case Maigret actually has a decent mystery story line this time.

In this film Maigret returns to his hometown to help an old friend of his a countess who is living in a dilapidated chateau.  She has received a mysterious letter saying she will soon be dead.  Well as they say in the movies "we was too late."  The countess ends up dead during a church service and Maigret has to figure out if this is a murder or natural causes. Nothing like an unending Catholic Mass in Latin to kill off a member of the congregation.

The director was a man named Jean Delannoy, to say this guy was prolific is an understatement.  Delannoy started working in the French film business in 1928 and his last film was in 2003. Delannoy was apparently the working definition of a professional filmmaker.  He may not have cranked out a lot of masterpieces but he was usually a proficient craftsman.  Delannoy lived to be 100 years old.

Maigret and the Saint-Fiarce case is a good looking and well made film.  It has an excellent supporting cast who are in the service of Jean Gabin.  What can you say about Jean Gabin?  In a 50 year career in film he went from romantic lead to impressive character actor.  He worked with major directors like Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier and Marcel Carne.  In many ways Gabin was French cinema.

The film was written by, Jean Delannoy, Rodolphe-Maurice Arlaud  and Michel Audiard, the running time is 101 minutes. 

1954 - GORILLA AT LARGE, entertaining murder mystery with a great gimmick

Yes examine the title.  The film features a guy in a monkey suit but that's not all.  There are actually two people in monkey suits.  The film also has an amazing cast of actors who I thought I would never see in a movie called Gorilla at Large.

Anne Bancroft a two time Tony award, one time Academy award, three time BAFTA award and two time Emmy award winning actress is in full femme-fatale mode.  She's a circus acrobatic working at a seaside carnival.  She runs around in tiny sparkling costumes and vamps any male she can.  She's married to Raymond Burr the owner of the carnival who at this point in his career was usually cast as bad guys.  Bancroft's trapeze act has her performing above a wild gorilla to titillate the audience.  Admittedly this film is very early in her career and I would like to say Gorilla at Large is a companion piece to The Miracle Worker but that would probably be pushing it a bit.

The gorilla is played by George Barrows who specialized in wearing gorilla suits.  Barrows was the gorilla in Robot Monster, Tarzan and His Mate, The Adventures of Captain Africa, Hillbillys in a Haunted House and that unforgettable episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., My Friend the Gorilla. 

Well there's a murder at the carnival so let's call in detective Lee J. Cobb to solve it.  Cobb had worked with Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, George Cukor and Sidney Lumet.  Cobb has to unravel the murder while constantly chewing on a big gross cigar and firing off the "one-liner" gorilla jokes.  He acts like he is doing stand-up at some comedy club. Also a call out to Lee Marvin as a really stupid cop who is clearly the comedy relief in this film. 

Well it all comes down to the gorilla escaping and terrorizing the crowd on the carnival midway, while carrying Bancroft around.  It's in the great tradition of the ending of King Kong and it you are going to steal from a classic gorilla movie you might as well steal from one of the best.

 Needless to say this film was shot in 3-D so we get lots of shots of things flying at you which of course means nothing on a TV screen.  Gorilla at Large is an extremely entertaining show in the great lore of the B-movie.

The film was written by Leonard Praskins and and Barney Slater, the running time is a brisk 83 minutes. 

2025 - ETERNITY, another afterlife comedy/romance/fantasy

Apparently in these Hollywood movies about the afterlife you just don't get to go to heaven and enjoy yourself you still are faced with all sorts of decisions about what kind of eternity you are going to enjoy and who you are going to enjoy it with.  This is the dilemma for The Scarlett Witch herself Elizabeth Olsen who has passed on and has to pick who she will spend eternity with her last husband who she was married to for 65 years or her first husband who was the passionate love of her life before he died early.

There's a whole bunch of these afterlife films.  The weird Robin Williams film What Dreams May Come which has a love story/suicide plot line.  Albert Brook's very funny Defending Your Life with Brooks as an advertising executive who ends up in Judgement City.  At time of his death he was screwing around with the CD player in his car instead of paying attention to the road.  

Made in Heaven has Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis as a couple of unborn souls who fall in love and have to find each other when they are on Earth or else they will get yanked back to Heaven.  Made in Heaven was directed by Alan Rudolph so you can be sure it's going to be on the strange side.  

A quick shout out to Powell and Pressburger's Stairway to Heaven a very impressive World War II film made at the peak of their skills.  That should go near the top of the list. 

For my money the best afterlife film is Heaven Can Wait the Ernest Lubitsch film. This is not strictly an afterlife film although it starts in the afterlife.  Don Ameche is a philandering husband who has to relate the story of his life to the Devil before he goes to hell.  This is a terrific film filmed in beautiful 1940's technicolor. 

 Let's get back to Eternity.  Yeah it's okay, the actors are decent the world building of the afterlife is some sort of train station.  That's kind of interesting.  It drags in the middle as we have to wait for Elizabeth Olsen to make her husband decision although it's fairly apparent who she will pick.

Eternity was written by Pat Cunnane and David Freyne, the running time is 114 minutes. 

2026 - THE ODYSSEY, on the big screen is long and very loud

This is the big summer movie filmed in 70mm with a big budget and a big Hollywood cast.  It has it's good points and not so good points.  As a high school student who along time ago was forced to read the Robert Fagles translation of Homer's poem I can say that Christopher Nolan changed a lot of stuff.  But there have been so many translations and interpretations of this epic Nolan certainly has the right to create his version.  The biggest change is the addition of the Trojan horse and the siege of Troy which I believe are not mentioned in the poem.  Odysseus is also now a doubting leader racked by guilt about his role in the war and haunted by the deaths of his men  He's a candidate for some serious mental health counseling and maybe a prescription of Prozac.

The film includes all the greatest hits of The Odyssey.  The encounter with Polyphemus the cyclops (probably the best scene in the film) who munches on his crew like they were after dinner mints.  A battle with the Laestrygonians, some giants that attack and destroy his ships. We are spared the scene from the book where they also eat some of Odysseus's men.  Apparently one cannibal scene was enough for this film.  Circe and Calypso are here and there's a side trip to Hades.  The final slaughter of the suitors in the banquet hall is for the most part unchanged.  About the only mythological character Nolan missed was Bobo from Clash of the Titans. 

The cast much to my surprise was fairly decent.  Matt Damon isn't bad as Odysseus and doesn't look to silly with that broom helmet on his head.  Anne Hathaway is his wife the faithful Penelope.  She's actually very effective in her scenes.   Robert Pattinson is one of the suitors of Penelope he makes a good hissable villain in the great tradition of these "sword and sandal" epics.  Tom Holland an actor now in his 30's is also good playing Odysseus's young son Telemachus.  Every time he refers to Odysseus with the anachronistic name of "Dad," that played a little cringy for me.  Tom Holland's wife Zendaya is Athena the muse of Odysseus.  However Zendaya makes absolutely no impression in this very small role. 

Yes the production is impressive considering the challenges of filming with 70mm cameras.  The Odyssey does have plenty of fighting and battle scenes to satisfy the action fans.  For a 2700 year old poem a lot of the story still works fairly well.  The soundtrack on this film is very LOUD.  I actually sat in my car for a few minutes after the film to wind down.

I will give Christopher Nolan credit this guy isn't afraid to think big and go over the top in his film making.  If he doesn't always succeed with his approach at times at the very least he is trying to go there with his large scale approach to storytelling.  Nolan's in the great tradition of super epic filmmakers like David Lean and Sergei Bondarchuk, directors who worked on a large canvas. 

 The running time is 173 minutes, screenplay by Christopher Nolan.

1936 - LIBELED LADY, a big MGM all star comedy

This is a big and very popular comedy from MGM.  It's got four top stars, Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy.  Since it's an MGM production the sets are elaborate and the fashions particularly the women's clothes are really glamorous.  MGM wasn't the number one studio in the 1930's for nothing.  If the film has a drawback it's with the screenplay that sets up a wacky situation and then doesn't seem to know how to resolve it.

Lets go to the videotape as they used to say.  Myrna Loy is a heiress who has been wrongly slandered by managing editor Spencer Tracy's newspaper.  Loy decides to sue the paper for five million dollars.  Tracy gets the big idea to hire William Powell to set her up in an actual scandal.  Throw in Tracy's fiancee played by Jean Harlow and you have lots of running around and lots of misunderstandings.  Libeled Lady is a screwball comedy since these top performers were put through some really silly situations.

This film has a real 1930's cast.  Myrna Loy was a good looking performer who as it turned out was also a very good comedian.  Spencer Tracy was one of MGM's top stars and was considered an actor's actor.  Then there was the interesting case of William Powell and Jean Harlow.  At the time of this film Powell and Jean Harlow were romantically involved.  The romance didn't have a happy ending when Harlow died in 1937. 

Watching Libeled Lady today I was struck by the professionalism of the cast.  Talk about squeezing blood out of a rock.  This is not what I would call a film with a real clever and funny screenplay.  However the actors milk every bit of humor out of the story that they can find.   A measure of the unsatisfactory nature of the film is that the film literally just stops and fades to black without an ending.

The film was written by Maurine Dallas Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers and George S. Oppenheimer.  

The running time is 98 minutes.   

2026 - THE SHEEP DETECTIVES, bah bah (what else).

Hugh Jackman is a sheep herder who lives in a caravan in some rural town in England.  He spends all  his days tending to a flock of sheep.  In the evening the sheep gather round and Jackman reads mystery stories to them.  Well surprise surprise when the sheep are by themselves they talk in the Queen's English.  Jackman is murdered and suspicion falls on his estranged daughter from America who has come for a visit.  It's up to the sheep to solve the murder of Jackman and somehow communicate to the police whodunit. 

This is sort of a family film which has a lot of whimsy make that a whole lot of whimsy.  The sheep all have individual personalities and they are voiced by actors British and American actors.  Besides Jackman, Emma Thompson, Nicholas Braun and Conleth Hill are the actual human actors. 

Obviously the sheep are animated.  The director Kyle Balba started his career in film working for Industrial Light and Magic and had animated films like A Bug's Life, Mars Attacks and Monster's Inc. so he knew his way around integrating computer animation with live action. 

There's nothing particularly bad about this film although I have to say I didn't particularly care for it.  The Sheep Detectives just seems to have a very serious case of "the cutes.''  The film at times wallows in it's own sentimentality and cleverness.  Yes it has some funny stuff in it.  However you also have to endure a lot of sheep talk about their place in the universe.  I enjoy fantasy films as much as the next film nerd but even I have my limits.  And come on, this is a film about talking sheep.

 As an aside, I've spent some time around actual sheep and I can state that they are very stupid creatures.

 The film was written by Craig Mazin, the running time is 109 minutes.  

1979 - CITY ON FIRE, aka burning people

Why review a film called City on Fire?  Well it's a nostalgic look back to a time in my life when I was younger and forced to watch movies on television which were loaded with lots of commercials.  Well to get to the point, City On Fire was one on the earliest films that got the Mystery Science Theater 3000 comedic voice over treatment. 

MST3K originally aired on a Twin Cities UHF channel KTMA 23.  At the time much of the show's comedy revolved around references to Minneapolis and St. Paul.  Being a resident and younger I found all of this stuff quite funny.  Well the rest is history as they say.  The show got picked up and they were off and running.   Watching the unaltered (original) version of this movie was a chance to see if it was as dumb as it seemed in 1989.  The answer is a resounding yes.  

An extremely disgruntled employee of a large metropolitan city sabotages an oil refinery which ignites a fire that basically consumes the entire city.  Coming to the rescue is a group of television and past their prime actors trying to save the day.

And what a cast.  Henry Fonda in a where's my paycheck role is the fire chief.  Fonda probably shot this film in a couple of days since he never leaves the command center set.  Whoa, Ava Gardner one time screen queen is a television reporter and she's looking mighty rough after years of partying.  Leslie Nielson is the slimy mayor of the city.  Nielson was a Canadian by birth and that's only right because this film was shot in Canada.  Hammy actor Shelly Winters is a nurse.  

Finally there are the supposed leads of this film.  Barry Newman's career started out strong with the cult film Vanishing Point but descended into mediocre made for television films.  He's the lead playing the ER doctor running around saving people's lives.  His leading lady was played by Susan Clark who I swear was in just about every other piece of junk Universal Studios cranked out.  Seeing her in a television show was like visiting an old friend.  Clark actually started her career playing in the classics on the stage.

This post could go on and on but it's safe to say the plot, the dialog and the acting are shall we say not exactly something Harold Pinter would write.  Actually the burning city fire effects are fairy well done for this poor man's version of The Towering Inferno.

It took three writers to put this together,  Jack Hill, Dave Lewis and Céline La Frenière^.  

The running time is 106 minutes.

1957 - HELL DRIVERS, the world of macho British truck drivers

Stanley Baker is an ex-con looking for work.  He ends up getting a job at a company that hauls gravel for a road construction project.  The catch is that the drivers are expected to drive really fast in order to meet their daily quota.  A young Patrick McGoohan is the leader of the truck drivers.  He's a nasty bully and we know this because he always has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.  Peggy Cummins is the office secretary who knows where all the dirty secrets are buried at the trucking company,  Sean Connery and Gordon Jackson are also in the cast as truck drivers in smaller roles. 

As some critics pointed out at the time this was an unusual film since it was filled with lots of macho posturing and tough action.  Usually British films had a more shall we say refined approach to excitement as in the boring film The Scarlet Pimpernel.  For a change Hell Drivers was a rare film at this time that focused on the lives of the British working class.

The film was directed by a blacklisted American writer/director Cy Enfield.  Enfield relocated to England and filmed some tough crime and action films.  Enfield's big picture was Zulu which he produced with Stanley Baker.

Peggy Cummins had an aborted career in Hollywood after being recast in Forever Amber is in this film to sex it up.  Cummins most memorable film was the classic Gun Crazy.  Perennial British character actor Herbert Lom shows up playing Baker's Italian friend.  Ace cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth shot the exciting driving scenes.  Overall an entertaining action film. This film is dripping with testosterone and mano a mano fighting.  The action is rough and exciting.

The screenplay is by Cy Enfield and John Kruse, the running time is 108 minutes.

1960 - CIRCUS OF HORRORS, what passed for a horror film in the early 1960's.

Well they really went for it with Circus of Horrors.  Or went for it as about as much as they could for an early 1960's horror film,  A maniacal plastic surgeon has developed a new surgical technique that unfortunately has a side effect of disfiguring one of his patients.  He goes on the run and ends up at a defunct circus.  He gets the brilliant idea of performing plastic surgery on criminals to hide them from the police.  Lots of plot later the circus ends up in London where the plastic surgeon who now runs the circus kills off anyone who might reveal him to the police.

We get lots of scenes of women getting transformed into beautiful babes before that are knocked off by the surgeon.  For good measure there is a nasty bear in the circus who occasionally gets out of his cage so he can maul someone.  There's also a knife throwing act that doesn't end well for the woman on the receiving end of the knives.  

The film has quite a cast.  Perennial bad guy Anton Differing plays the plastic surgeon.  Donald Pleasence plays the original owner of the circus and he's not around very long.  Yvonne Romaine was in a lot of Hammer films.  She's a lion tamer who doesn't have much luck taming one of the lions.  Yvonne Monlaur played the daughter of Donald Pleasence.  I remember her as one of the future brides in Brides of Dracula.    

Circus of Horrors was photographed in very bright colors by Douglas Slocombe.  Slocombe went on to work with Steven Spielberg on the first three Indiana Jones films.  He was a major factor in the success of that series.

The screenplay was by George Baxt, the running time is 87 minutes.