Eithne Dunne Movies
The Freakmaker is a creepy horror film about a mad scientist who abducts college students for the subjects he needs in his attempts to crossbreed plants with humans. His failures are turned over to a dwarf who runs a circus freakshow. This film is also known by the title The Mutations. ~ Rovi
A young Francis Coppola was given the job of directing this moody low-budget chiller after begging producer Roger Corman for the opportunity to reuse the sets for another film which Corman was shooting in Ireland. The story centers on the dysfunctional Haloran family, who live in a state of perpetual sorrow in a spooky Irish castle. Still mourning the death of her young daughter Kathleen -- who drowned in the lake seven years ago -- Lady Haloran (Ethne Dunn) tortures herself regularly by visiting the girl's grave (when she's not shrieking and collapsing in anguish every five minutes). When daughter-in-law Louise Haloran (Luana Anders) loses her husband to a heart attack, she manages to conceal the body for fear of being cut out of Lady Haloran's will. To further complicate matters, a mysterious interloper begins prowling the grounds with an axe to grind... a very big axe. This enjoyable, quirky psycho-thriller is enlivened by Coppola's inventive camera setups, atmospheric locations and Patrick Magee's over-the-top performance as the leering family doctor. Despite some ragged editing (probably not Coppola's doing), this has relatively high production values for a spare-change Corman project. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
- 1959
Filmed on location, Shake Hands With the Devil is set in Ireland during the "troubles" of 1921. James Cagney plays a brilliant medical professor who doubles as head of the Irish Republican Army. Cagney convinces one of his more pacifistic students, Don Murray, to join the underground struggle against British rule. Murray suffers a crisis of conscience when his sweetheart Dana Wynter is taken hostage by the IRA and is slated for execution by the zealous Cagney. Several members of Dublin's Abbey Players appear in supporting roles in Shake Hands With Devil. Watch for Richard Harris in the small part of Terence O'Brien. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- James Cagney, Don Murray, (more)
- 1958
In this gently humorous farce, an unwed Irish mother who has six children by some of the town's finest fathers finds herself bedeviled by the townsfolk who find her a liability to their sterling reputations. They try different ploys to get her to pack up her illicit clan and move. Then they pool their resources and buy the woman a farm far away from town, but before they have to move, mysterious Fate intervenes, and in the end all involved are happy, including the free-spirited young mother. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Eileen Herlie, Wilfred Downing, (more)
- 1954
The iniquities of circumstantial evidence are explored in the compact crime drama Eight O'Clock Walk. Because he was the last person to see her alive, and because his playful behavior could be misconstrued as harassment, London taxi driver Tom Manning (Richard Attenborough) is arrested for the murder of a little girl. Manning's American wife Jill (Cathy O'Donnell) has a great deal of difficulty finding a lawyer who will defend her husband in court. She finally settles upon Peter Tanner (Derek Farr), who at first is not entirely convinced that his client is innocent. Eventually he is convinced, and even manages to expose the real murderer, one of the witnesses for the prosecution. Based on a true story, Eight O'Clock Walk is one of the most oft-telecast of 1950s British films, and deservedly so. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Richard Attenborough, Cathy O'Donnell, (more)
- 1951
The brilliant British documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha made his feature-film debut with 1950's No Resting Place. Filmed on location in Ireland, the film is a lightly fictionalized study of that country's itinerant workmen. Michael Gough plays tinker Alec Kyle, whose life is thrown into turmoil when he accidentally kills a man. Kyle spends the rest of the film evading Guard Mannigan (Noel Purcell), a civil servant who relies on instinct rather than scientific deduction to get his man. Without ever trying to elicit sympathy for his characters, director Rotha manages to compellingly detail the miserable living and working conditions of Ireland's nomad artisans. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Michael Gough, Eithne Dunne, (more)
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