Category: Reviews

Stranger On the Third Floor (1940)

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I freaking love me some Peter Lorre. I am a huge film noir fan. Stranger on the Third Floor stars Peter Lorre and is often cited as the very first noir. Several times now I’ve gotten all sorts of excited thinking about that and put this movie on only to be disappointed by it. 

It isn’t a terrible film, but it is definitely a B-movie that never expected to be talked about some seventy years after it first appeared on screens. And Peter Lorre is in it for less than ten minutes.  He’s great, and there is a pretty cool dream sequence in the middle, but other than that it is kind of dull.  Anyway, you can read my full review here.

Spencer Tracy 4-Film Collection

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Spencer Tracy is one of those actors whom I like in just about everything but that I’ve never really gravitated towards. I have no idea why. I got this four-film set the other day and quite enjoyed it (well, three of the films, anyways).

You can read my review of the entire set here.

Red Dust (1932)

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Warner Archive and Kino Lorber both put out a lot of what you might call second-tier classic films. These are movies with big-name stars or directors that, for one reason or another, are not all that well known all these decades later. 

I quite enjoy watching and reviewing them because you never know what you are going to get. Sure, most of them are not the greatest films, but usually they aren’t bad, and once in a while you find a real gem.

Red Dust is a very enjoyable little film. It stars Clark Gable as a rubber plantation owner in Asia and Jean Harlow as the no-nonsense sex worker he falls in love with. Mary Astor also appears as the prim and proper lady Gable’s character initially falls for.  Anyways, I quite enjoyed it, and you can read my review here.

The Sin of Nora Moran (1933)

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I love it when a low-budget film that should have been forgotten about weeks after its release and completely forgotten by time manages to do something completely different and become a classic. Remembered nearly one hundred years after it was released.

The Sin of Nora Moran was a poverty row drama whose story was a dime-a-dozen, but they did something in the editing room that made it interesting and different, and here we are with a new Blu-ray release of it in 2026. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

James Stewart Collection

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James Stewart is one of my favorite classic actors. He made a ton of great movies and is always good in them. I recently reviewed a boxed set of four of his films – The Naked Spur, The Shop Around the Corner, How the West Was Won, and The Mortal Storm – for Cinema Sentries. It is a great set and I mostly loved the movie. You can read the full review here.

Fackham Hall (2025)

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Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I request review copies just for my wife. I’m on record as stating I’m weird about comedies. I don’t like movies or shows that are just joke factories. I want a story and characters first and then jokes.

But she’s a fan of silliness, and she had mentioned wanting to see this film, so when I got offered a Blu-ray, I took it. 

It took me a little while to warm up to Fackham Hall, but once I got into its groove, I found it to be very funny. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

The Verdict (1946)

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Peter Greenstreet and Peter Lorre starred in nine films together including two absolute bangers – The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. The Verdict was their final collaboration, and sadly it isn’t great. But it isn’t terrible and it was the first film ever directed by Don Siegel so it has that going for it. You can read my full review here.

The Sunday Woman (1975)

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I feel like I grouse a little too much about not having much of a readership. In truth, it isn’t that big of a deal. Sure, I wish more people read my stuff, but I’m not actually trying all that hard to gain a readership. I write because I like to write.

But I also realize that I tend to write about relatively obscure stuff. I don’t go to the movies every week and catch the hot movies. I don’t even tend to watch them at home and write about them. I watch stuff like this – an obscure Italian murder mystery that wasn’t likely known in the US when it came out, much less 50 years later.

Sometimes I tell myself to write about new things, or at least popular ones, but I can’t help myself. I watch what I like, and I write about that.

Oh well. This film may be obscure, it is certainly strange, but it was also pretty good. You can read my full review here.

Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968)

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I’ve written over 1,300 articles for Cinema Sentries. I don’t know what the breakdown is between reviews and other things like Picks of the Week and Five Cool Things. I regularly try and do a post on this site with a link to my Cinema Sentries articles, but I’ve still got a ways to go.

I try to keep up with my new writings, but sometimes I get distracted. And when I have caught up, I try to dig into much older posts. I know none of this matters to anyone, but I’m kind of astounded I’ve written that many articles for Cinema Sentries. I really ought to branch out and write for some other publications.

Anyway, I forgot to post this review when I wrote it in August. Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror isn’t a Frankenstein movie at all, but rather it is Paul Naschy’s first werewolf film. He directed and starred in a whole bunch of werewolf films back in the day. I actually got a collection of them for Christmas. They are a lot of fun, as you can read in my review.