Eunice Blalck Movies
- 1990
- R
A hectic caper flick with farcical overtones, Bullseye! doesn't quite hit the....oh, you know. Government scientist Michael Caine and his titled pal Roger Moore plan to auction off a cold fusion formula to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, a pair of con artists-also played by Caine and Moore-impersonate the scientist and his friends in hopes of getting a piece of the action. This leads to an unending supply of comic complications, deadly encounters, wacky recurring characters and Sennett-style chases. Is louder and faster really funnier? You be the judge (but you'll have to catch the film on home video, since it never received a US theatrical release). Roger Moore's real-life daughter Deborah Barrymore shows up as a CIA agent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Caine, Roger Moore, (more)
While most people are familiar only with the Lon Chaney Sr. and Charles Laughton versions of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, this 1982 TV adaptation was the fourteenth filmization of the Hugo novel. Anthony Hopkins, barely recognizable under mounds of disfiguring body makeup, plays Quasimodo, the deformed 15th-century bellringer of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. Leslie-Anne Down plays Esmerelda, the gypsy girl who wins Quasimodo's unswerving loyalty when she offers him water after he is publicly flogged. And Derek Jacobi plays Dom Claude Frollo, the hypocritically pious archdeacon of Notre Dame, who'll do anything to claim Esmerelda for himself. Produced by Norman Rosemont, The Hunchback of Notre Dame originally aired February 4, 1982, as a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, (more)
- 1966
This uneven black comedy went into production as My Last Duchess. It then went through three title changes, representing, in the words of historian Leslie Halliwell, "a descending order of wit": Arrividerci, Baby, Drop Dead, Darling, and You Just Kill Me! Tony Curtis plays a charming contemporary Bluebeard who murders a succession of wives in order to fatten his bank account. At the beginning of the film, the 42-year-old Curtis, decked out in Buster Browns, does in his own stepmother. The remaining murders alternate between moderately amusing and just plain silly; our favorite scene is the disposal of Zsa Zsa Gabor, but that's just on basic principles. Curtis finally meets his match in a much-married widow who plots his demise (a plot point which, incidentally, was planned and abandoned for Chaplin's far superior Monsieur Verdoux). Director Ken Hughes and Ronald Harwood based their screenplay upon the Richard Deming novel The Careful Man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tony Curtis, Rosanna Schiaffino, (more)
- 1961
Director Tony Richardson adapted the screenplay of A Taste of Honey from the "kitchen sink" stage play by Shelagh Delaney. Rita Tushingham plays a working-class British teenager, living with her drink-sodden, libertine mother Dora Bryan. Denied affection by her selfish mother, Tushingham is pushed further in the background when Bryan impulsively marries her latest boyfriend Robert Stephens. The girl takes a job at a shoe store, then moves in with her kindly homosexual employer Murray Melvin. The two lost souls live in harmony until Tushingham becomes pregnant after a casual affair with black sailor Paul Danquah. Melvin comes to the rescue by offering to look after the baby. This relatively blissful state of affairs is short-lived; before long, Tushingham's hateful mother, having been kicked out by Stephens, descends upon her daughter and her "family," with all her debilitating emotional baggage intact. A poignant denouement caps this riveting slice-of-life drama. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dora Bryan, Rita Tushingham, (more)
