Ruth Springford Movies

The inadvertent theft of a valuable Renoir force an actor and an unemployed salesman into the limelight in this crime comedy. ~ Rovi

Peter Medak's The Changeling is among a handful of films, including The Haunting (1963), Ghost Story (1981), and Lady in White (1988), that have successfully recreated the intimate, drawing-room atmosphere of supernatural horror fiction. After his wife and daughter are killed in a snowbound car accident, classical composer John Russell (George C. Scott) relocates from New York to Seattle to teach at his alma mater. Looking for a quiet place to rest and continue writing music, he is referred Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere) at the Seattle Historical Preservation Society. Claire shows John a large, sparsely furnished estate in the outlying countryside. He takes the house, appreciating its remoteness and the solitude it might afford, and diverts himself by renovating and settling in. He even starts to compose, putting aside his older work in favor of a new, sentimental piece for the piano. It is not long, however, before he begins having nightmares about the accident that killed his wife and daughter. Possibly because of this trauma, he is open to communications from the house's ghostly occupants. Pursuing a loud, repetitive pounding noise in an upper room, he stumbles on the apparition of a young boy drowning in a tub. Working together with Claire, John discovers frightening parallels between this vision and buried events from the house's past. Horror writer M.R. James once said that his goal as a writer was to make the reader feel "pleasantly uncomfortable." Those looking for a similar experience in movies will appreciate The Changeling as a gem in the horror genre. ~ Anthony Reed, Rovi

The first CBC dramatic series to be telecast in color, Hatch's Mill was set in the Ontario of the 1830s. The emphasis was on a family of homesteaders, whose father, Noah Hatch (Robert Christie) ran a combination general story and town meeting hall called Hatch's Mill. The series chronicled in boisterous, seriocomic fashion the efforts made by Noah to bring "civilization" to the community, efforts that often as not culminated in a contest, a race, or a knock-down-drag-out brawl. An impressive supporting cast and a stellar list of guest performances kept the lively proceedings even livelier. Filmed on location in the Northern Ontario town of Kleinberg, the series was created by George Salverson. Thanks to the merciless drubbing of Canada's most prominent TV critics, the run of Hatch's Mill was short indeed, lasting only ten episodes, which aired from October 24 to December 26, 1967. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi