Paul Rogers Movies

Author Tom Sharpe's outrageous best-seller about the power struggle that emerges when the dean of a Cambridge University dies before naming his successor gets the big screen treatment in director Robert Knights' four-part comedy. Porterhouse College is an institute of higher education steeped in five hundred-years of tradition, so when the Head Master passes away and his reform-minded replacement Sir Godber Evans (Ian Richardson) arrives to take his place the staff is outraged. Head Porter Skullion (David Jason) in particular seems hell-bent on subverting Sir Evans' every decree. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The trial of a Jew accused of killing a Nazi is held many years after the event. ~ All Movie Guide

The musical Mr. Quilp was based on one of Dickens' grimmest works, The Old Curiosity Shop, which has as its highlight the death of its heroine. The principal character is a villain, a hunchbacked usurer who wishes to take over the business of an antique dealer. Anthony Newley plays the horrid Mr. Quilp, and is also responsible for the music. Mr. Quilp was produced by Readers Digest Magazine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In The Homecoming, adapted from the play by Harold Pinter, Michael Jayston brings his wife Vivien Merchant home to visit his long-estranged family. Jayston's father Paul Rogers is a washout, his uncle Cyril Cusack is on the edge of senility, and his brothers Ian Holm and Terence Rigby are, respectively, a slimy pimp and a brutish boxer. The sparser the dialogue, the thicker the tension in the air. Though British in origin, The Homecoming was presented as part of the American Film Theatre series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

British director Peter Hall's 1968 filmization of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, starring the Royal Shakespeare Company, is faithful to the text and to the main plot, which involves the "bewitching" of several groups of mortals by a covey of mischievous invisible fairies. So why did critics complain? Hall's handling of Shakespeare's prose and iambic pentameter didn't bother the purists as much as the director's visual choices. Hall was criticized for staging the film in a typically rainy British winter rather than the mid-Summer alluded to in the play's title. The director responded by pointing out that the fairies, led by Oberon and Titania, were deliberately toying with the expectations and sensibilities of the Mortals -- thus, it made sense to confuse the "human" characters by playing havoc with the weather. Other stylistic alterations included updating the story to the 19th century, and the near-nudity of Judi Dench as Titania. Most of the film is shot in close-up (most effectively during the soliloquies of Diana Rigg, as Helena), not so much to hide budgetary deficiencies as to play better on television. Also featuring Ian Holm (as Puck) Barbara Jefford, Helen Mirren, Michael Jayston, Paul Rogers, Ian Richardson and David Warner, this Midsummer Night's Dream premiered in the U.S. on the CBS TV network on Sunday evening, February 9, 1969. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tom Bell stars in this tight little British thriller as a mercurial cat burglar. So long as things are going his way, Bell is calm and collected. Let anything upset his equilibrium, and he's an accident waiting to happen. Bell's one chance at redemption is his romance with pretty social-worker Judi Dench. When she rejects him, Bell returns to his crime spree, telling Dench to get lost when she offers to give him a second chance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Stolen Hours is the overlong, overglamorized 1963 remake of the 1939 Bette Davis vehicle Dark Victory. Susan Hayward plays a rich, neurotic socialite who discovers that she only has a year to live. Acting resentfully at first--especially towards handsome doctor Michael Craig, who withheld this information from her "for her own good"--Hayward eventually adopts a philosophical attitude towards her fate. By the time she begins slipping into "that undiscovered uncountry," Hayward is practically a candidate for sainthood. A plot device not utilized in the original involves Hayward's virtual adoption of a young boy (Robert Bacon), who is neglected by his own mother. Novelist Jessamyn West and playwright Joseph Hayes did their best to "contemporize" the outdated elements of the original Dark Victory, even unto having Susan Hayward learn to dance the Twist! Stolen Hours was filmed in England, affording us lovely Technicolor glimpses of the Cornish coast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Also titled The Wild and the Willing, this is a British production about a rebellious young man of the early 1960s. Harry Brown (Ian McShane) is a lower-class troublemaker at an upscale provincial university. He is brilliant but frequently drunk, and he constantly criticizes the elitism of his professors. Harry becomes the reluctant protégé of Professor Chown (Paul Rogers), who sees the boy's potential and hopes to tame him. Harry soon abandons his girlfriend Josie (Samantha Eggar) for a fling with Chown's wife Virginia (Virginia Maskell), a woman who frequently fools around with her husband's students. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

In a different type of comedy-drama based on a play by Mike Watts, director Peter Graham Scott looks at life in a British prison. Rainbow (Paul Massie) has just been sent into the slammer for a year for duking it out in a brutal fight over his girlfriend Wendy (Carole Lesley). He knows he is in for a miserable time of it, so much so that after being assigned kitchen duty he joins up with the rest of his co-workers in wheeling and dealing the food they can snitch for various sundries stolen from other parts of the prison's supply chain. This racket is well-organized, but one day its prime mover is framed and threatened with an extended sentence unless Rainbow can come up with a way to save him. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A British officer is slated to parachute into Normandy. What he doesn't know is that he is being set up by British Intelligence to be captured by the enemy and reveal erroneous information to the Nazis. Officer Raine (Bradford Dillman) is the unknowing soldier who has intentionally been given false information. His superiors justify the expenditure of one man verses the thousands of lives that will be saved by his mission. The unlucky officer faces capture, brutal torture and debilitating guilt leading to alcoholism over his perceived "failure" to keep the information secret. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Graham Greene wrote this witty comedy inspired by Cold War paranoia. Jim Wormald (Alec Guiness) is an Englishman selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba on the cusp of the revolution. Hawthorne (Noel Coward), a British intelligence agent, is looking for information on Cuban affairs and recruits Jim to act as a spy. Jim has no experience in espionage and no useful knowledge to pass along, but Hawthorne is willing to pay for his services, and since Jim's daughter Milly (Jo Morrow) has expensive tastes, he can use the money. To keep Hawthorne happy (and his paychecks coming in), he turns in reports on the Cuban revolution that are copied from public documents, "hires" additional agents who don't exist, and presents blueprints of secret weapons that are actually schematics of his carpet sweepers. However, Hawthorne and associate "C" (Ralph Richardson) think that Jim is doing splendid work and encourage him to continue; meanwhile, Capt. Segura (Ernie Kovacs), the elegantly corrupt chief of police, has been fooled by Jim's charade into believing he's a real spy -- and has also become attracted to Milly. Our Man in Havana also features Burl Ives and Maureen O'Hara in supporting roles. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Peter Finch plays Johnnie Byrne, a British member of parliament. When Johnnie loses out on an important cabinet post, he's hardly surprised; he's been a loser so long that it's par for the course. Treated shabbily by his communistic wife Rosalie Crutchley, Johnnie begins an affair with fashion-model Mary Peach. His ardor causes him to miss an important House of Commons meeting, which subsequently leads to his disgrace in the eyes of his leftist political associates. A chance at a reconciliation with his wife is scuttled when Johnnie finds that he will lose a much-coveted cabinet seat if he does not sever his communist ties, both professional and personal. No Love for Johnnie was based on a novel by Wilfred Fienburgh, himself a Socialist MP who evidently knew whereof he spoke. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide