William Sylvester Movies
American-born actor William Sylvester relocated to England just after World War II. For the next quarter of a century, Sylvester was a fixture in British radio, TV and films, graduating from roles of the "two-bit hood" variety to full-leading man status. His most famous movie assignments included the lead in the ventriloquist-controlled-by-dummy yarn The Devil Doll (1964), and the crucial expository role of Dr. Heywood Floyd in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Returning to the U.S. in the late 1970s, William Sylvester continued essaying secondary character parts in films, and was seen as Dr. Leonard Driscoll on the 1976 TVer Gemini Man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
On the outs in Hollywood due to the blacklist, director Edward Dmytryk briefly operated in England in the late 1940s. Though filmed in its entirety in London, Dmytryk's Give Us This Day is set in New York during the depression. Fellow blacklistee Sam Wanamaker is starred as the head of an Italian immigrant family struggling to survive the economic crisis. Perhaps had it been made in Hollywood as intended, Give Us This Day would not have been allowed to run on for 120 minutes, nor would the actors have been permitted to indulge in terminal sanctimony. Based on Pietro di Donato's novel Christ in Concrete, Give Us This Day was released in the US under the intriguing title Salt to the Devil. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Wanamaker, Lea Padovani, (more)
- 1953
Set in 1943, Appointment in London stars Dirk Bogarde as Wing Commander Tim Mason. It is Mason's hope to complete 90 bombing missions before his automatic rotation to a desk job. After the 89th mission, however, he is grounded and ordered to remain so by his superior officer. When a bomber pilot is injured, Mason defies his orders and takes the pilot's place. By rights, he should be court-martialed for this, but the outcome is rather different that what he and the audience are led to expect. Somewhat similar in tone to the Hollywood production 12 O'Clock High, Appointment in London proved to be a moneymaker on both sides of the Big Pond. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dirk Bogarde, Ian Hunter, (more)
- 1953
Twelve-year old Frankie (Andrew Ray) feels guilty after his best friend falls to his death when they are playing in a bombed-out London building. Len (Sylvester) is a petty thief who has just become a murderer by killing the pub owner in a botched robbery. Frankie and Len's paths cross, and Len learns Frankie's secret then poses as the boy's friend to blackmail the lad into stealing from his parents to finance Len's escape. When the crook suspects that Frankie knows enough to link him to the murder, he tries to silence the boy in a tense, "hide-and-seek" chase played out in a bomb- damaged, highly perilous underground station. The initial idea for this movie may well have been borrowed from The Window (1949), but several intriguing plot twists and effective use of the post-war London location make The Yellow Balloon a unique entertainment in itself. ~ Michael P. Rogers, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Andrew Ray, Kathleen Ryan, (more)
- 1953
When a hitchhiker gets a ride with a woman driving to meet a blackmailer, the hitchhiker is blamed for the murder of the blackmailer when he dies due to electrocution by high tension wires. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1953
The title character of Albert, R.N is portrayed by-well, by no one. Albert is a papier-mache dummy, constructed by the British inmates of a German POW camp. The dummy is used as a diversion in a daring escape plan. Anthony Steel plays the mastermind of the getaway scheme, while Anton Diffring costars as the shrewd-and utterly despicable-Nazi commandant. Albert, R.N was released in the US under the unimaginative title Break to Freedom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Steel, Jack Warner, (more)
- 1954
What Every Woman Wants!, at least according to this British comedy-drama, is a roof over her head. Elsy Albin and Patric Doonan play Jane and Mark, a newlywed couple with no home of their own. Forced to live with Jane's parents, the young marrieds are never permitted a moment's privacy. Complicating matters is the arrival of returning soldier Jim Barnes (William Sylvester), whom Mark thick-headedly regards as a romantic rival. Also gumming up the works is a local labor dispute which results in several heated family arguments. What Every Woman Wants! is based on Edwin Lewis' short story Relations are Best Apart. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Sylvester, Elsy Albiin, (more)
- 1954
Four friends go on a friendly fishing trip but only three return. This suspenseful drama chronicles the fate of the fourth who returns home an amnesiac after a three year absence to get revenge upon the "buddy" who knocked him out and left him to die. Any one of the remaining three could be a suspect as all of them are interested in pursuing his lovely widow. Unfortunately, the man's return coincides with a murder and he ends up blamed. Fortunately, his wife helps him solve the mystery and clear his name. The British title was A Stranger Came Home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paulette Goddard, William Sylvester, (more)
- 1955
Escape from a German POW camp is the goal of the rescourceful Allied prisoners in this war film. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Postmark for Danger was filmed in England, where it was released as Portrait of Alison. Terry Moore stars as an American actress who becomes the unwitting dupe in a diamond-smuggling schemes. Ingredients essential to the action are a beautiful strangulation victim (Josephine Green), an unusual charm bracelet, a curiously labelled bottle of chianti, and a hastily sketched drawing on the back of a postcard. The screenplay, by cinematographer Guy Green (who also directed), was adapted from a popular British TV serial. Released stateside by RKO Radio, Postmark for Danger was produced by Tony Owen, the husband of actress Donna Reed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Terry Moore, Robert Beatty, (more)
- 1957
A rugged, isolated island off the coast of Nova Scotia provides the setting for this drama. Much of the island is owned by one person, the other inhabitants, primarily lobster fishermen, rent from him. One of the lobster men begins romancing the wealthy owner's daughter and marries her. After the wedding, the bride is disturbed to learn that her hubby is a compulsive gambler who quickly squanders their small savings. The impoverished couple has no choice but to leave the island and live on the mainland. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Sylvester, Michael Craig, (more)
- 1958
Befitting its title, Dublin Nightmare deals with the activities of the Irish Republican Army. British photographer John Kevin (William Sylvester) arrives in Dublin to attend the funeral of his friend. It turns, out however, that the friend isn't dead at all. Moreover, the "decedent" is an IRA leader, preparing for a bloody all-out offensive. John Tully's screenplay tries to cram way too much into a 64-minute running time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1959
An uneven, bland tale of escape and capture on the River Rhine, Whirlpool features Juliette Greco as Lora, the girlfriend of a petty criminal. She wants to leave him but does not make the desperate effort leaving requires, until after he shoots a policeman. Then she escapes him by boarding a German tanker. Her obvious charms captivate the captain (O.W. Fischer), his First Mate, and another deck hand, but after her last experience she shuns all of them. Trouble brews as one of the wives on board is overcome with jealousy, and worse yet, as Lora's old boyfriend, now on the run from the police, decides to join her on the tanker. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Juliette Greco, O.W. Fischer, (more)
- 1961
In this mystery, a Scotland Yard agent must break up a ring of jewel thieves. He goes undercover and successfully infiltrates the gang, but trouble begins when he finds himself falling for one of the late gang members' widows, and she learns his real identity. She threatens to expose him until he decides to quit the Yard and become a real criminal. Fortunately, Fate intervenes, and he accidentally leads the gang to the waiting police. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Sylvester, Mai Zetterling, (more)
- 1961
Gorgo is an attempt to make a Japanese-style "giant reptile" flick in an English setting. The story begins when underwater volcanic activity in the Irish Sea brings forth a 65-foot monster called Gorgo. Enterprising Joe (Bill Travers) and Sam (William Sylvester) capture the beast and transport it to London, where Gorgo is put on display as a seaside carnival attraction. This proves to be a major mistake when Gorgo's even larger mother lumbers to the surface in search of her cute li'l baby. In short order, London is trampled and trashed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Travers, William Sylvester, (more)
- 1962
In this crime drama, a band of robbers hire a Yankee safecracker but he is captured and arrested by Scotland Yard before he gets there. The robbers then free him from prison. They do not realize that the inmate is really a decoy. They take him to the home of a married couple. After the wife kills her husband she tries to frame the decoy who escapes and ends up hiding in someone else's home. There he calls the head robber. He later cracks the save and retrieves secret government plans. The head robber then plans to kill the safecracker and take off with the murderous wife. Fortunately, the Yard intervenes and the decoy reveals himself. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sabina Sesselmann, William Sylvester, (more)
- 1963
Man in the Dark is a quickie British suspenser geared for double-feature bills. William Sylvester stars as a blind composer of hit songs. Sylvester's wife Barbara Shelley hates him beyond measure. She contrives with her lover, artist Rickie Seldon, to kill Sylvester, but the composer has the last ha-ha. The so-called popular songs heard on the soundtrack of Man in the Dark, including the title number, suggest that William Sylvester is not only blind but tone-deaf. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Sylvester, Barbara Shelley, (more)
Hugo is mad as heck, and he's not going to take it any more! Hugo is the dummy used by the Great Vorelli, a ventriloquist and hypnotist who wows London with his amazing act. Hugo can walk as well as talk, and he does other interesting things. Neglecting his statuesque mistress Magda, Vorelli pursues a pretty volunteer from the audience named Marianne; he know she is a wealthy heiress, and is after her money as well as her charms. Following a charity concert at Marianne's country estate, he mesmerizes the girl, who then falls into a baffling coma. When (in one of the movie's best sequences) a jealous Magda challenges the hypnotist over his attentions to the younger woman, Vorelli lulls her into submission, then gets rid of her, using Hugo to ensure his own alibi. Marianne's journalist boyfriend Mark investigates the mysterious murder and discovers another killing in Vorelli's past with interesting connections to the present. This underrated British horror story could be the best filmed variation on the "dummy with a soul" theme inaugurated by a brief sequence in Alberto Cavalcanti's classic 1945 anthology Dead of Night and continuing more recently with Magic (1978.) Fine photography by Gerald Gibbs, convincing performances by Bryant Halliday, Sandra Dorne and Yvonne Romain and flawless animation and editing of Hugo's scenes provide a galvanizing elaboration of the original, somewhat skeletal, concept. A rental video is hard to find, but available. ~ Michael P. Rogers, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bryant Halliday, William Sylvester, (more)
- 1964
Bernard Lee plays an irresponsible British warrant officer who loses his post in Warsaw. Lee is reassigned to a navy underwater weapons establishment in Portland. Humiliated, he falls for the entreaties of enemy spy William Sylvester, who recruits him to steal secret papers. Lee convinces a female coworker (Margaret Tyzack) that Sylvester is a NATO agent; thus, the woman is unwittingly sucked into the spy ring. The British turncoat outsmarts himself when he begins spending more money than he makes, arousing the suspicions of the government. Ring of Spies was based on the real-life Portland espionage scandal which dominated British headlines throughout the very early 1960s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bernard Lee, William Sylvester, (more)
- 1964
In this medical drama, a doctor loses his medical license after his addiction to drugs is discovered. Trouble ensues when he sees an ex-Nazi who is secretly leading the local drug ring. The police get wind of the operation and destroy it. The Nazi is killed too. Meanwhile the doctor overcomes his addiction and regains his license. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1965
An Englishman finds himself on the holiday from hell in this horror movie. He had gone to Britanny for rest and relaxation. Instead he finds himself involved in a satanic cult run by a sophisticated vampire. Two of the man's friends are killed there because the cult requires human sacrifices. The man really gets mad when the vampire kidnaps his girlfriend. The angered Englishman soon exposes the creature's identity leaving the bereft vampire to wander through a cemetery. There, he stumbles upon a cross and dies. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1966
William Sylvester, the "Token Yank" in several low-budget British horror films of the 1960's (before his rise to fame as Dr. Heywood Floyd in 2001: A Space Odyssey), stars as a grieving widower (both his wife and child were killed in a car accident) who takes an unusual and hazardous job accompanying an archaeologist (Edward Underdown) and his daughter (Diane Clare) on a North African tomb-hunting expedition. After their arrival in Morocco, they learn of legends involving a Moorish vampire who haunts the tomb. Before long, the lonely Sylvester has succumbed to the seductive wiles of a mysterious woman (Alizia Gur), who begins to bend him to her will. It is left to Clare to come to his rescue, but her attempts place her in even greater jeopardy; ultimately it is Sylvester who must break free of Gur's evil clutches and destroy her himself. This passable vampire yarn makes good use of the exotic location but suffers from lethargic performances and a slack pace. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
A mind-bending sci-fi symphony, Stanley Kubrick's landmark 1968 epic pushed the limits of narrative and special effects toward a meditation on technology and humanity. Based on Arthur C. Clarke's story The Sentinel, Kubrick and Clarke's screenplay is structured in four movements. At the "Dawn of Man," a group of hominids encounters a mysterious black monolith alien to their surroundings. To the strains of Strauss's 1896 Also sprach Zarathustra, a hominid invents the first weapon, using a bone to kill prey. As the hominid tosses the bone in the air, Kubrick cuts to a 21st century spacecraft hovering over the Earth, skipping ahead millions of years in technological development. U.S. scientist Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) travels to the moon to check out the discovery of a strange object on the moon's surface: a black monolith. As the sun's rays strike the stone, however, it emits a piercing, deafening sound that fills the investigators' headphones and stops them in their path.
Cutting ahead 18 months, impassive astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) head toward Jupiter on the spaceship Discovery, their only company three hibernating astronauts and the vocal, man-made HAL 9000 computer running the entire ship. When the all-too-human HAL malfunctions, however, he tries to murder the astronauts to cover his error, forcing Bowman to defend himself the only way he can. Free of HAL, and finally informed of the voyage's purpose by a recording from Floyd, Bowman journeys to "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," through the psychedelic slit-scan star-gate to an 18th century room, and the completion of the monolith's evolutionary mission.
With assistance from special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull, Kubrick spent over two years meticulously creating the most "realistic" depictions of outer space ever seen, greatly advancing cinematic technology for a story expressing grave doubts about technology itself. Despite some initial critical reservations that it was too long and too dull, 2001 became one of the most popular films of 1968, underlining the generation gap between young moviegoers who wanted to see something new and challenging and oldsters who "didn't get it." Provocatively billed as "the ultimate trip," 2001 quickly caught on with a counterculture youth audience open to a contemplative (i.e. chemically enhanced) viewing experience of a film suggesting that the way to enlightenment was to free one's mind of the U.S. military-industrial-technological complex. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Cutting ahead 18 months, impassive astronauts David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) head toward Jupiter on the spaceship Discovery, their only company three hibernating astronauts and the vocal, man-made HAL 9000 computer running the entire ship. When the all-too-human HAL malfunctions, however, he tries to murder the astronauts to cover his error, forcing Bowman to defend himself the only way he can. Free of HAL, and finally informed of the voyage's purpose by a recording from Floyd, Bowman journeys to "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite," through the psychedelic slit-scan star-gate to an 18th century room, and the completion of the monolith's evolutionary mission.
With assistance from special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull, Kubrick spent over two years meticulously creating the most "realistic" depictions of outer space ever seen, greatly advancing cinematic technology for a story expressing grave doubts about technology itself. Despite some initial critical reservations that it was too long and too dull, 2001 became one of the most popular films of 1968, underlining the generation gap between young moviegoers who wanted to see something new and challenging and oldsters who "didn't get it." Provocatively billed as "the ultimate trip," 2001 quickly caught on with a counterculture youth audience open to a contemplative (i.e. chemically enhanced) viewing experience of a film suggesting that the way to enlightenment was to free one's mind of the U.S. military-industrial-technological complex. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, (more)
- 1968
This African adventure is set upon the savannas of Kenya and chronicles the exploits of three people searching for uranium. As they go, their greed makes them dangerous and untrustworthy; mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
