Irene Prador Movies

Christopher Lee stars in this weak occult melodrama as Father Michael Rayner, an excommunicated priest who decides to save the world from its decadence by teaming up with Satan. Richard Widmark is on hand as John Verney, out to stop Rayner's satanic rituals and helped along on the path of goodness by friends Anna Fountain (Honor Blackman) and David (Anthony Valentine). The plot centers on distraught father Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliott), who has signed over his daughter Catherine (Nastassja Kinski) to Rayner in order to save his own skin and now regrets it. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Noted novelist and sometime film director James Clavell, wrote, directed, and produced this adaptation of J.B. Pick's novel, set during the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648. During the chaotic confrontations and shifting alliances of the war, a hidden valley protected from the outside world becomes an oasis of peace. Vogel (Omar Sharif), a one-time school teacher now on the run, travels into the peaceful valley. Following Vogel a short time later is a rag-tag and exhausted army, led by The Captain (Michael Caine). Utilizing Vogel as a mediator, the Captain arranges a truce with the valley population -- pledging to protect the people of the valley from invasion in return for food and shelter during the cold winter months. At the end of the season, the army leaves to fight another battle, Vogel is asked to depart from the hidden valley, and the valley and its population continues on and endures. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this detective film, a Chinese detective breaks up a drug smuggling ring and tries to find the "Daffodil Killer." The drug smugglers had devised the ingenious method of smuggling heroin from Hong Kong in the stems of daffodils. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Paul Decker (Peter Van Eyck) arranges what seems to be the perfect murder of his wife, while at her home in Italy. Lightly drugging her into unconsciousness, he seals the room she is in and turns on the gas, and then dons a diving snorkel with hoses drawing air from the outside -- he remains hidden in the room beneath the floorboards even as the police investigate the crime scene. As far as they know, he was just over the border in France when Mrs. Decker committed what appears to be suicide -- and there is no reason to investigate further, beyond a routine inquest. But he doesn't bargain on Candy (Mandy Miller), his wife's daughter by her previous marriage -- she has long believed that Paul killed her own father, and is positive that he was responsible for her mother's death. Try as those around her -- including her guardian (Betts St. John) -- do to convince her otherwise, she won't let go of this idea. And when Paul kills Candy's dog Toto, she tells him he will have to kill her, because otherwise she will kill him. From that moment on, they are on a collision course, as Paul tries at once to protect himself, covering tracks that he never thought anyone would trace -- not having bargained on the obsessive girl -- and to discredit her in preparation for possibly having to kill her. Meanwhile, Candy waits, watches, and asks question after question, hoping for one clue or slip that will allow all of her suspicions to fall into place. And finally, after several rounds of cat-and-mouse, and a near-fatal encounter, they meet face-to-face at the scene of the crime. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The British Something Money Can't Buy offers a few smaller-scale variations on themes previously explored in the 1946 Hollywood Oscar-winner The Best Years of Our Lives. Harry Wilding (Anthony Steel), a high-ranking wartime military officer, has trouble adjusting to his go-nowhere civilian job and the monotony of his home life. Harry's wife Anne (Patricia Roc) tries to make things easier for her husband, but there are no easy answers to his plight. The inherent drama of the situation is leavened by moments of gentle humor, not to mention the warm rapport between stars. The supporting cast includes hirsute comic actor (and longtime David Niven crony) Michael Trubshawe and the venerable A. E. Mathews, at the time billed as England's oldest working actor. Director Pat Jackson co-authored the perceptive screenplay of Something Money Can't Buy with James Lonsdale Hudson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

James Hadley Chase's 1939 bestseller reached the screen for the first time -- which a lot of critics of the book would have said was one time too many -- in 1948, in somewhat bowdlerized form, under the aegis of Renown Pictures and screenwriter St. John Legh Clowes, making his sole bow as director. Filmed in England but set in New York, No Orchids For Miss Blandish tells of a sheltered heiress (Linden Travers) who is abducted on her wedding night by a trio of cheap hoods, in what starts out as a jewel robbery and turns into a kidnapping/murder when one of them (Richard Nielson) kills the bridegroom. More mayhem ensues as the three kidnappers soon end up dead, and Miss Blandish falls into the hands of the Grisson mob, led by Slim Grisson (Jack LaRue), who are pros at what they do, throwing their weight around the underworld at will and not too afraid of the police, either. Slim Grisson isn't really better than any of those around him, but he's smart enough to restrain his worst impulses, which makes him start to look very good to Miss Blandish, who finds herself strangely attracted to him, as the first real man she's ever seen, and also a way out of the sheltered existence she's known all of her life. He's as amazed as anyone around him -- including his own mother (Lili Molnar), who runs the gang in tandem with him -- that he doesn't want to ransom Miss Blandish, or plan on killing her because she knows too much; or that she'll testify on his behalf, if necessary, that the one killing she did see by him was, in fact, a matter of self-defense. They plan to run off together, but neither Grisson's mother nor the rest of the gang can see parting with a potential million dollar ransom, or leaving a witness alive -- even if it means killing Slim Grisson to get to her. And when a nosy reporter named Fenner (Hugh McDermott) starts putting the police on the trail of the gang, Slim himself isn't above committing a few more murders to bury any witnesses. The movie was so violent and amoral, that it appalled critics and social observers on both sides of the Atlantic, whose agonizing over its content actually helped turn the picture into a bigger hit than it might otherwise have been. This was especially true in America, where the movie enjoyed a five week run in one of New York's bigger movie palaces to sell-out business, though it was edited considerably and re-cut twice for US release (the second time, a couple of years later, as Black Dice). Robert Aldrich filmed the same story as The Grissom Gang (1971), with Kim Darby, Scott Wilson, and Irene Dailey. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide