George Hoellering's powerful adaptation of TS Eliot's classic verse drama is a stark and highly atypical example of British historical cinema. Little-seen despite winning a top prize at the Venice Film Festival, the film recounts - entirely in verse - the clash between King Henry II and Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, over the limits of church authority. As Becket finds his resolve tested by four ‘tempters' (the last of which is voice by an unseen Eliot), the film takes on a mystical atmosphere reminiscent of the great religious cinema of Carl Th. Dreyer and Ingmar Bergman.
Asked by director David Lean to write a script about the development of new high speed jet aircraft, esteemed playwright Terence Rattigan (The Browning Version) was reluctant. But a visit to Farnborough Air Display and meeting test pilots fired his imagination. The result, about the troubled rela...
A sequel to the 1973 adaptation of The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers covers the second half of Dumas' classic novel. Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) has another evil plot, this time ordering the kidnap of Constance de Bonancieux (Racquel Welch), dressmaker of the Queen of France. The...
Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) promises his guests a night of horror only a mad poet can deliver and after partaking in hallucinogens, the guests tell ghost stories while exploring the dark corridors of his home - and of their minds. If any director is suited to retelling the wild night that conjured...
