Frederick Schiller Movies

In this espionage thriller, Dan Slater (Yul Brynner) is a CIA agent who travels to Austria after his son dies in a skiiing mishap. Slater begins to suspect that his son's death wasn't an accident and begins investigating the matter on his own. Slater finds that fellow agent Frank Wheatley (Clive Revill) is of little help to him. Beautiful Gina (Britt Ekland), the companion of prominent socialite Mrs. Carrington (Moira Lister), then slowly draws Slater into her web. In time, he discovers that his son's death was all part of a diabolical plan to lure him to Austria; Soviet agents led by Bethold (Anton Diffring) have performed extensive plastic surgery on one of their top spies until he's identical to Slater, and they intend to send him back in Slater's place, giving them an insider at the highest levels of U.S. intelligence. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The title of this Avengers episode refers to a new liquid rocket fuel. Assigned to rendezvous with the man delivering the fuel to the Government, Steed and Cathy discover that the man has been murdered. They spend the rest of the episode trying to wrest the fuel from the hands of enemy agents, cornering their quarry in a bakery where Cathy deploys a most unusual concealed weapon. Written by Jon Manchip White, "Propellent 23" was originally telecast in England on October 6, 1962; its first American appearance didn't take place until January 28, 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A musical and comedic bit of fluff without any other pretensions, The Lady Is a Square plays off the popularity of Frankie Vaughan to help carry the story as Johnny Burns, a young man with a passion for pop music. He insinuates his way into the home of the widowed Frances Baring (Anna Neagle) by pretending to be a piano tuner, in reality, he has fallen for her daughter Joanna (Janette Scott). He soon learns that the widow, dedicated to promoting a series of classical music concerts, has no cash. More than willing to help out, he takes on the job of butler and then sets his sights on getting his own hit recording out. In spite of the widow's aversion to pop music, and her aversion to his interest in her daughter, Johnny keeps at his goal of stardom. Notable in this stock storyline is the character of Johnny's brash manager, played by up-and-coming Anthony Newley, about to make it big with Stop the World - I Want to Get Off. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The Trollenberg Terror, authored by Peter Key and directed by Quentin Lawrence, started life on British television as a six-part installment of ITV's Saturday Serial in late 1956 and early 1957. The big-screen version, was adapted by Jimmy Sangster, who compressed most of the best horrific and mystery elements of the original into an under-90-minute vehicle, which Lawrence directed. At a remote Alpine village, mountaineers suddenly start dying, their bodies horribly multilated -- at first, these incidents seem like they could just be accidents. But the arrival of a pair of sisters (Janet Munro, Jennifer Jayne), one of whom feels an almost telepathic connection with someone or something on the mountain, attracts the interest of American Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker), a trouble-shooter for the United Nations. He and Prof. Crevett (Warren Mitchell), who has been monitoring the radiation levels in the area from a research station set up by the government, determine that there is a pattern to these deaths that Brooks has seen before, in a prior incident in the Andes Mountains. They determine that the Earth has been invaded, at high altitude, by a race of gigantic, tentacled aliens who live in thin atmosphere and at extremely low temperatures. Camouflaging themselves in a dense radioactive cloud, they've been content up until now to hide their existence while experimenting with the inhabitants of their new world -- they've taken over some human subjects telepathically, and also re-animated dead bodies. And they've killed those -- such as the hapless mountaineers who have stumbled upon their new lair, or those few humans whose stronger-than-usual mental powers have allow them to sense the aliens' presence -- who threaten to discover them. But now Crevett sees that the aliens are adapting and moving down the mountain, the cloud bringing their necessary cold temperatures with them, and threatening to engulf the village as prelude to an attack on it and all that lies beyond. The Trollenberg Terror was retitled The Crawling Eye when it was released in the United States, in an obvious attempt to draw the same audience that had made the previous year's British film adaptation of a tv serial -- The Quatermass Xperiment, renamed The Creeping Unknown -- into a huge hit in the US. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

In this British comedy, a young man resorts to spying, extortion and just plain begging after he learns that he is to be replaced as headwaiter by a young woman. The story is based on a popular play. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

During World War II, the impenetrable Colditz castle in Germany was selected as the site for a POW camp. The Germans reason that, since Colditz has been virtually impossible to get into or out of for centuries, it is ideal for housing the most contentious allied prisoners. British officer John Mills doesn't agree, and leads an escape through a subterranean tunnel. Only three of the prisoners (Mills included) survive the escape; the next step is to get out of Germany itself. Colditz Story is based on the reminiscences of P. R. "Pat" Reid, the real-life English officer portrayed in this film by John Mills. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The title character of Albert, R.N is portrayed by-well, by no one. Albert is a papier-mache dummy, constructed by the British inmates of a German POW camp. The dummy is used as a diversion in a daring escape plan. Anthony Steel plays the mastermind of the getaway scheme, while Anton Diffring costars as the shrewd-and utterly despicable-Nazi commandant. Albert, R.N was released in the US under the unimaginative title Break to Freedom. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Nazi war criminal Bruckner (Mervyn Johns) manages to escape capture at the end of WW II. Bruckner sets up shop in England, where he continues his diabolical germ-warfare experiments. Murdering an Australian physician, the regenerate Nazi assumes the dead man's identity to escape detection. His downfall comes when he falls in love with pretty lab assistant Tracy Shaw (Nova Pilbeam), and he refuses to murder her when ordered to do so by his superiors. The ending is right of the "hoist on his own petard" school of dramatics. Devil's Plot was released in the U.S. in mid-1953, and within a few months was making the TV Late-Show rounds. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Though a top-billed British stage star, Feliz Aylmer seldom rose above the supporting cast in films: Mr. Emmanuel is a rare exception. Aylmer plays the title role, an elderly European Jew living in Manchester, England. Honoring a promise to a young refugee, Mr. Emmanuel makes a perilous journey to Nazi Germany to search for the boy's mother. The gentle, even-tempered old man is subject to all manner of persecution by the jack-booted Gestapo thugs, but he is saved from the Concentration Camps through the intervention of Greta Gynt, a British woman who is the mistress of a high-ranking Nazi. While Mr. Emmanuel himself emerges from Germany intact, his mission ends on an unexpectedly melancholy note. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi