Formerly Known As Cinema

‘Scream Of Fear’ (1961)

Susan Strasberg lets loose with more than one ear-shattering “Scream of Fear” over the course of director Seth Holt’s neat and nasty little chiller, which, despite its modest budget and small cast, manages to thoroughly entertain with its creepy jump scares and a series of marvelously jaw-dropping surprise twists.

Playing Penny Appleby, a wheelchair bound young woman who’s come to live with her estranged father (Fred Johnson) and his icy new wife (a smooth and sinister Ann Todd), Strasberg brings a combination of sensual warmth and off-the-chain panic to her role.

One minute she’s flirting shamelessly with the chauffeur (a smoldering Robert Lewis), the next she’s bumping into the corpse of her dead father. Repeatedly. Cue the titular scream.

Is he dead or is she just imagining things? Enter Christopher Lee as an oily doctor with the hots for step mom and a nice cozy sanitarium for Penny.

The romance between Strasberg and Lewis is a nice counterpoint to the Gothic melodrama of it all, and builds to a particularly steamy scene where the chauffeur appears out of the darkness wearing the skimpiest pair of underpants imaginable. It’s weird and sexy and, strangest of all, actually sweet.

Best of all, the final ten minutes are breathlessly unexpected and absolutely bonkers. And only 81 minutes long! ~Justin Tanner

Streaming on Tubi

Trailer 'Scream of Fear' (1961)

“The Strange Woman” (1946)

Though Edward G. Ulmer directed dozens of Poverty Row cheapies in his career, his reputation primarily rests on two films: “Detour” (1945), a short and brilliant exercise in B-movie nastiness, starring the thoroughly unhinged Ann Savage as a thuggish hitchhiker out for blood, and “The Black Cat” (1934), a deliriously perverse hunk of Art Deco sadism in which Boris Karloff straps Bela Lugosi to an embalming table in order to skin him alive. Fun stuff.

But there’s another Ulmer film that’s hardly ever mentioned by cinephiles: 1946’s historical melodrama set in 19th Century Bangor, Maine, “The Strange Woman,” in which Hedy Lamarr portrays Jenny Hager, a gorgeous sociopath who can’t stop trying to upgrade her life by luring and discarding men with breezy, malevolent abandon.

As a little girl, played by Jo Anne Marlowe (the sweet-natured Kay in 1945’s Joan Crawford film “Mildred Pierce”), Jenny attempts to cheerfully drown one of her friends before taking credit for his rescue.

Later, the older Jenny (Lamarr) stays out all night with a sailor, then smiles with twisted delight as her father beats her half to death with a horsewhip.

By the time George Sanders shows up as the last in a series of lovestruck puppets that Lamarr toys with, we’ve witnessed enough lurid melodrama for a dozen Noirs.

It’s not deep stuff, and the ending is much too abrupt, but the sheer pleasure of watching Lamarr vamp her way across the screen, clearly enjoying her opportunity to play the villain, is priceless. ~Justin Tanner

Full Film: The Strange Woman (1946), Directors: Edgar G. Ulmer, Douglas Sirk

“This Was a Woman” (1948)

Sonia Dresdel gives an astoundingly visceral performance as Sylvia Russell, the power-mad matriarch of a prosaic British family who, in order to amuse herself (and keep from going quietly mad), engages in psychological torture as a default form of motherly love.

When she’s not destroying her daughter’s marriage or plotting against the family dog, she’s reading up on toxicology just in case she might need to poison someone.

The movie suffers from a bit of Freudian armchair psychoanalysis, the literate screenplay occasionally shows its stage play roots and one could wish for less of Mischa Spoliansky's repetitive score.

But the crisp chiaroscuro lighting, with its rich greys and impenetrable blacks, provides a cloak of creeping dread that penetrates every frame. And the performances are all pitch perfect.

And Dresdel’s chilling final scene where she gloats with an almost sensual delight about her bottomless love of power is a chilling, twisted barnburner. ~Justin Tanner

Full Film: “This Was a Woman” (1948)

In 'The Oxbow Incident' directed by William Wellman, Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan get caught in the crossfire when an angry posse, out for blood, decide to play judge and jury to three men accused of a crime they didn’t commit.

The large cast includes Jane Darwell, Dana Andrews and Anthony Quinn, who all shine in supporting roles.

But it’s the relatively unknown William Eythe, as the sweet-natured son of a vicious military man, that carries the emotional heft of the film. When his martinet father snaps “I'll have no female boys bearing my name,” the look of quiet anguish on Eythe’s face resonates like a physical blow.

And keep the tissues handy for Fonda’s heartrending final monologue ~Justin Tanner

'The Oxbow Incident'

Not only is 'Dodsworth' (1936) my favorite film, directed by my favorite director (William Wyler) and starring my favorite actor (Mary Astor), it is also a surprisingly potent examination of a disintegrating marriage that has lost none of its sophisticated bite even 80 years later.

Lead Walter Huston gives one of his finest performances opposite the delicious Ruth Chatterton as a small town American couple who lose their way during a European vacation. ~Justin Tanner

"Dodsworth" Nominated for Multiple Oscars and One of the Top Box Office Grossing Films of 1936

‘The Claim’ directed by Michael Winterbottom in (2000) is a great adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” set during the gold rush of the 1850s.

Peter Mullan plays a prospector who sells his wife and infant daughter in exchange for a mining claim, then strikes it rich and builds a thriving community in the mountains of Northern California.

Twenty years later, his grown daughter (Sarah Polley) and ailing wife (Nastassja Kinski) return, setting in motion a series of emotionally wrenching events that turn the prospector’s world upside down.

Gorgeously shot by Alwin H. Küchler, and with a stirring score by Michael Nyman (The Piano), ‘The Claim’ is a rollercoaster of heartbreak and redemption, with an ending that had me weeping into my popcorn. ~Justin Tanner


Trailer: ‘The Claim’ (2000) Starring Peter Mullan, Milla Jovovich, Wes Bentley, Nastassja Kinski and Sarah Polley

‘Two For the Road,’ directed by Stanley Donen in 1967, stars Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney who play a deliriously happy couple falling out of love with each other during a series of road trips through Europe.

The non-linear story nimbly jumps back and forth through time, showing us the sweet beginnings, the fractious middle and the devastating end of a great romance.

Eleanor Bron and William Daniels show up for the film’s best sequence as a vacationing couple who’ve brought the world’s most obnoxious child (Gabrielle Middleton) along for the ride. ~Justin Tanner


Trailer: ‘Two for the Road' (1967)

‘Strange Cargo,’ Frank Borzage’s 1940, wackadoo romance-drama-action movie, plays like an unholy three-way marriage between “Rain,” “Lifeboat,” and “I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang.”

Joan Crawford has one of her finest roles as Julie, a tough-as-nails prostitute working her trade in a small town right outside the Devil’s Island Penal Colony.

Clark Gable is at his swaggering best as Verne, a sweaty and sexy escaped prisoner who tries to wheedle his way into Julie’s heart. If only she had one.

Peter Lorre is extra scuzzy as a leering stool pigeon named Pig and Paul Lukas applies his unctuous charms to the role of Hessler, a wife-murdering serial killer.

But it’s Ian Hunter as Cambreau, a blatantly Christ-like figure who offers the promise of spiritual redemption, that supplies the film its off-kilter strangeness.

Wholly unpredictable, full of unintentional laughs and sharp turns into maudlin piety, “Strange Cargo” shouldn’t work at all. But somehow the sheer energy of its stars, especially the smoldering heat between Crawford and Gable, allows this bonkers melodrama to transcend its goofy storyline and reach a genuinely moving finish.


Trailer: 'Strange Cargo' (1940)

An LA-based playwright, JUSTIN TANNER has more than twenty produced plays to his credit, including Voice Lessons, Day Drinkers, Space Therapy, Wife Swappers, and Coyote Woman. His Pot Mom received the PEN-West Award for Best Play.

He has written for the TV shows Gilmore Girls, My So-Called Life and the short-lived Love Monkey. He wrote, directed and edited 88 episodes of the web series Ave 43, available on YouTube.

Tanner is the current Playwright in Residence for the Rogue Machine Theatre in Hollywood, where his most recent play Little Theatre, of December of 2022, was met with rave reviews. Charles McNulty of the LA Times writes, "Engrossing... a comedy à clef... “Little Theatre” is invaluable.'"