Rachel Thomas Movies

Happy As the Grass Was Green still stands as one of the few Mennonite-related films ever made. Graham Beckel plays an aimless hippie who visits his friend's Pennsylvania home town on the occasion of his friend's brother's death. The community is primarily Mennonite, whose lifestyle intrigues Beckel. Slowly undergoing a religious conversion, Beckel elects to renounce beads and bongs to join the small, devoutly religious community. While the cast includes such recognizable favorites as Pat Hingle and Geraldine Page, most of the cast of Happy As the Grass Was Green consists of genuine Pennsylvanian Mennonites. The film was based on a novel by Merle Good. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gypsy Girl was originally released in England as Sky West and Crooked. With this production, John Mills became a one-time film director, guiding his daughter Hayley through a screenplay written by Mills' wife Mary Hayley Bell. Radically cast against type, Hayley plays a mentally traumatized young lady living in a remote North Country rural community. She falls in love with a handsome gypsy (Ian McShane), which stirs up the prejudices of her family and neighbors. In the end, it is the gypsy boy who rescues Hayley from being institutionalized. Less grim than one might expect, Gypsy Girl takes its time telling its story, though the acting makes up for any lulls. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Twelve-year-old Hayley Mills made her film starring debut in the location-filmed melodrama Tiger Bay. Horst Buchholz plays a Polish sailor who, while docked in Cardiff, jealously murders his ex-girlfriend Yvonne Mitchell. The killing is witnessed by Hayley, a lonely, hoydenish preteen whose only interest in the crime is Buccholz' abandoned gun. Hayley picks up the weapon, intending to impress the other kids in town. She succeeds only in attracting the attention of police inspector John Mills (Hayley's real life father), who wants to know where she found the gun and under what circumstances. An experienced liar, Hayley drives the inspector crazy with her fabrications. Sent home with a stern reprimand, Hayley is kidnapped by Buccholz, who doesn't want to kill the child, but doesn't want to be revealed to the police, either. Convinced that Buchholz means her no harm, Hayley offers to help him escape. He returns the favor by rescuing her from a watery grave, at the cost of his own freedom. On the basis of her performance in Tiger Bay, Hayley Mills not only won a special prize at the Berlin Film Festival, but was invited to star in Disney's Pollyanna (1960). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Handel's "Messiah" becomes a bone-of-contention in a tiny Welsh community in this comedy. The trouble begins when the choirmaster chooses a new contralto to sing the solo. Unfortunately, this leaves out the soloist who has sung the part for the past 15 years. This precipitates a family feud the women belong to the wealthiest family's in town. To reunite the warring factions, a young couple put off their elopement, but the real solution comes when the choirmaster turns the solo into a duet. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Captive Heart is set in a German POW camp for British soldiers. Michael Redgrave plays a Czech patriot, who has assumed the identity of a deceased British officer to avoid being executed by the Nazis. When captured and placed in the camp, the British prisoners suspect the still-incognito Redgrave of being a spy. Only his conspicuous courage during an escape sequence vindicates the secretive Redgrave. The film's tinderbox tension is relieved with a joyous finale, which utilizes a fireworks display as adroitly as Hitchcock did in To Catch a Thief. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Undercover is a British-made WWII picture glorifying the efforts of a small group of Yugoslavian resistance fighters who struggled against the Nazis. In the tradition of Hollywood, virtually all the Slavic characters are played by such doggedly British types as Tom Walls, Michael Wilding and John Clements. As was customary, the Nazi invaders are shown to be the products of an evil totalitarian regime (quite true) while the Yugoslavs are freedom-loving individuals treated with equanimity by their expansive Communist government (not quite true). After the war, it became common knowledge that many supposedly patriotic Yugoslavian partisans, notably those commandeered by General Mihajlovic, were actually pro-Nazi. As a result, films like Undercover and Hollywood's Chetniks were hastily, and without explanation, withdrawn from circulation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide