Dennis Price Movies

Bill Fraser and Raymond Huntley star in the raucous British farce That's Your Funeral. Fraser and Huntley play Bullstrode and Holroyd, rival undertakers. The animosity between the two is amplified when drug traffickers attempt to use coffins and hearses to smuggle their wares. David Battley and John Ronane co-star in the sitcomish goings-on. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A star-studded cast highlights this musical adaptation of the classic fantasy tales of Lewis Carroll. One day young Alice (Fiona Fullerton) takes a nasty spill down the rabbit-hole and finds herself in the bizarre kingdom of Wonderland, where she encounters a number of strange and enchanted characters, including the playful White Rabbit (Michael Crawford), the manic March Hare (Peter Sellers), the mysterious Caterpillar (Ralph Richardson), the Doormouse (Dudley Moore), the imperious Queen of Hearts (Flora Robson), and the quizzical Mad Hatter (Robert Helpmann). The cast also includes Spike Milligan, Peter Bull, Roy Kinnear, and Michael Jayston as Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland won two prizes at the 1973 British Academy of Film and Theatre Awards -- for Georfrey Unsworth's photography and Anthony Mendelson's costume design. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A year after Get Carter (1971), director Mike Hodges and star Michael Caine reunited for this comic crime thriller. Caine stars as Mickey King, a writer of cheap paperback detective novels, living in Rome and cranking one noir book after another. King is approached by Ben Dinuccio (Lionel Stander) and offered an abnormally large sum to ghost write the autobiography of a mystery celebrity. The intrigued King agrees and is transported to a remote island where he meets his subject, Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a one-time movie star known for playing gangsters and notorious for hanging out with real-life mobsters off the set (a sly jab at Frank Sinatra and George Raft). Now dying of cancer, Gilbert wants King to jot down his life story before he dies. Although he's an abusive jerk, Gilbert's had an interesting life and King sets about getting it all down on paper, but then the star is murdered at a party, leaving King with no conclusion to his tale. Playing detective like the heroes of his stories, King pieces together a mystery involving Gilbert's past, his ex-wife, a transvestite who's supposed to be dead, and an Italian prince running for office. Though largely dismissed at the time of its release by fans and critics disappointed at its dissimilarity to Get Carter, Pulp (1972) was championed by a few and became something of a cult favorite over subsequent decades. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

This entry in Hammer Films' long-running vampire series of the '60s and '70s is one of the most evocative and original. The story features voluptuous twin Playboy centerfolds Madeleine and Mary Collinson as sisters who, without parents, are sent to stay with their oppressive uncle (Peter Cushing, looking more emaciated than ever), who happens to live near the sinister Karnstein Castle, the locale of countless vampiric happenings in two prequels (The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire). One of the twins wanders over and meets the dashing Count Karstein (Damien Thomas), a vampire who later uses the girl's blood to awaken his long-lost ancestor from the dead. Of course, the uncle predictably gives chase once trouble starts, but there is a clever plot twist as the count switches the twins before one is about to be burned at the stake for her supposed satanic involvements. Twins of Evil unabashedly exploits the twins' assets to pump up the film's sex appeal; it also seems to cater to viewers with a vampire fetish. Still, neither is necessarily a bad thing in a vampire film; Twins of Evil does create an effectively sensuous mood while also managing to sustain a fair amount of tension throughout the picture. Although Universal Pictures, the U.S. distributor, extracted nearly all of the flesh and bloodletting from its release, the original British cut retains everything and is the usual copy found on video. Like its predecessors, the script for Twins of Evil is loosely based on LeFanu's classic vampire story Carmilla. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

Director Jesus Franco's surrealistic reworking of Bram Stoker's short story "Dracula's Guest" has acquired a substantial cult following due to its hallucinatory erotic imagery and a sexy performance by Soledad Miranda as vampiric Princess Nadine Korody. Ewa Stroemberg stars as Lucy Westinghouse, an American working in a Turkish legal firm. Lucy is plagued and thrilled by a series of erotic dreams concerning a mysterious vampire woman who seduces her before feeding on her blood. When she travels to an island to settle Princess Korody's inheritance, Lucy recognizes the beautiful woman as the vampire from her dreams. A poetic, arty horror film which begs comparison to the work of French director Jean Rollin and Spaniard Jose Larraz, Vampyros Lesbos is an ode to indulgent, funereal excess and is among the most peculiar, gripping films of Franco's career. Dennis Price and Paul Muller co-star, while Franco appears as a hotel porter. Various versions run 89, 82, and 78 minutes. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

This exotically titled Avengers episode is a working of the 1962 "Cathy Gale" installment "The Big Thinker." The title character is a highly advanced computer that is "murdered" by a shotgun blast. The perpetrator of this outrage would seem to be the creator of the computer, but Steed thinks otherwise; as a result, Tara poses as the creator's American niece, in hopes of rooting out the actual culprit. Written by Tony Williamson, "Whoever Shot Poor George Oblique Stroke XR40?" made its TV debut in America on October 30, 1968, followed by its British TV bow on December 9 of that same year. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a singer on her husband's weekly television show suddenly decides to begin a new life without him. She then quits her job and moves into the house of another man, a good friend, not a lover. When she learns that her husband is looking for a replacement singer, she does her best to stop him. The couple eventually reunites after the husband saves her from the attack of a lascivious drunken Australian during a wild party. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The third of many film and TV adaptations of the popular Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians is the title of the American edition, the hit play, and most of the movies), this 1965 version moves the action from a remote island to an isolated ski resort and otherwise rearranges the plot. The basic premise, however, remains the same. Ten strangers, eight of them guests and two of them servants, are lured to a dinner party and then trapped there to be killed one at a time by an unseen host who wishes to punish them for their disparate perceived crimes. The old nursery rhyme provides both the framing device, and, in the source material, the method of execution for each victim. In this version, however, the revised murder scenes include a hapless servant (Marianne Hoppe) falling to her death from a booby-trapped ski lift. Ten Little Indians features a varied cast that ranges from future Bond girls Shirley Eaton and Daliah Lavi to former teen idol Fabian and former Wyatt Earp TV star Hugh O'Brian. It also reunites My Fair Lady co-stars Stanley Holloway and Wilfrid Hyde-White. The film was the final directorial effort of George Pollock, who had previously helmed several adaptations of Christie's popular Miss Marple mysteries, starting with 1962's Murder, She Said. Christopher Lee makes an uncredited appearance as the recorded voice of absentee host/villain Mr. Owen. Despite its mountain setting, the picture was filmed in Ireland. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

The BBC comedy series World of Wooster was based on P.G. Wodehouse's whimsical short stories about upper-class twit Bertie Wooster (Ian Carmichael) and his ever-resourceful (and infinitely more intelligent) butler Jeeves (Dennis Price). Most of the stories dealt with Bertie's desultory romances, with Jeeves forever coming to the rescue of his master when things threatened to go beyond the point of no return. Debuting May 30, 1965, the series ran for three seasons; by the time of its final telecast on November 16, 1967, the title had been changed to The World of Wodehouse so that those P.G. Wodehouse stories not featuring Jeeves and Wooster could be utilized. Alas, of the series' 20 videotaped episodes, only two are currently known to exist in the BBC vaults. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this confused parody, a lovely South Seas island girl travels to England following her father's death and becomes the ward of her cousin. The women is exotically beautiful and men turn into fools whenever she passes by. But the innocent lass has no idea that she is so lovely and seductive. At one point she poses nude for an artist and nearly starts a riot amongst the normally staid upper-crust gentlemen. In the end, the beautiful native girl marries the son of her kindly cousin who eventually becomes the head of his father's school. Meanwhile his father moves to the girl's native island. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Kenneth More is The Comedy Man in this cinemazation of Douglas Hayes' novel. Having spent most of his life playing the provinces in obscurity, More gives the London TV scene a try. He fails at attaining stardom on his own terms, but becomes a celebrity on TV commercials. After basking in fame for a while, More decides that he's sold out and returns to regional repertory. Matching More's terrific starring performance are such British "regulars" as Dennis Price, Billie Whitelaw, Cecil Parker, Norm Rossington, and Frank Finlay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this dark comedy, a Yankee goes to visit a family of British eccentrics to ask for the hand of one of their daughters in marriage. He soon finds himself in the midst of a really odd family. One of them talks like Bela Lugosi, another believes herself to be a vampire, while a third is locked away in a padded cell. Another family member is thrilled when he finally invents a horseless carriage (50 years after Ford), and the family grandfather is found reading Playboy just before he dies. Trouble begins when members of the family begin to be mysteriously murdered. The American suitor must then discover which member of the strange family is in line to inherit the family fortune. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide