Michael Craig

  • Brian Trenchard-Smith – Turkey Shoot (1982)

    1981-1990ActionBrian Trenchard-SmithExploitationUSA

    Experience The Year 2000…And Hope To Hell You Can Escape!

    In the near future, after an unspecified holocaust, survivors are herded into prison camps. There, they are hunted for sport by the leaders of the camp. Paul, one of the newest prisoners, is determined not to go down as quietly as the others.Read More »

  • Gerald Thomas – The Iron Maiden (1962)

    1961-1970ComedyGerald ThomasUnited Kingdom

    Storyline:
    An American airline firm plan to buy a new British passenger plane, but the deal hits trouble when the plane’s designer Jack Hopkins and Kathy Fisher the daughter of the Airline owner, take an instant dislike to each other, after crashing into each other in a quiet country lane. With each blaming the other for the accident, the arrangement looks in trouble, unless nature takes a hand.Read More »

  • Luchino Visconti – Vaghe stelle dell’Orsa… AKA Sandra of a Thousand Delights (1965)

    1961-1970ClassicsDramaItalyLuchino Visconti

    Visconti’s retelling of the Electra story starts with Sandra/Electra (Cardinale) returning to her ancestral home in Italy – and reviving an intimate involvement with her brother (Sorel) which troubles her naive American husband (Craig) – on the eve of an official ceremony commemorating the death of her Jewish father in a Nazi concentration camp. As ever with Visconti, he is ambivalently drawn to the decadent society he is ostensibly criticising; and Armando Nannuzzi’s camera lovingly caresses the creaking old mansion, set in a landscape of crumbling ruins, where the incestuous siblings determine to wreak revenge on the mother (Bell) and stepfather (Ricci) who supposedly denounced their father. Something like a Verdi opera without the music, the result may not quite achieve tragedy, but it looks marvellous. The title, culled from a poem by Leopardi, has been better rendered as ‘Twinkling Stars of the Bear’.Read More »

Back to top button