Maggie Wright Movies

A grim British reform school for girls provides the backdrop for this gritty drama that focuses on two young inmates. One is hoping to find security in the prison while the other is desperate to be reunited with her baby. While in the prison, they must cope with many different women, but in the end learn to survive and how to fight the system. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this ribald erotic comedy, brothers team up to promote a rock band. Even though the musicians are remarkably untalented and one of the brothers is an incredible klutz, somehow they manage to succeed. Unfortunately, the band's fall to the bottom is nearly as quick as its rise to the top, for the boys find themselves unable to resist the temptations of several, seductive and large-breasted women. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Bless This House is a feature-length spinoff of the British TV sitcom of the same name. The episodic nature of the film suggests that it was cobbled together from various half hours of the original series. Sidney James and Diana Coupland play the nonplussed owners of a "money pit" new home. Their misadventures involve fire, water, homemade booze, and angry neighbors. Most American viewers got their first chance to savor Bless This House when the featurized version was made available to cable TV in the early 1980s. ~ Hal Erickson, 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

The British/American co-production My Lover, My Son stars Romy Schneider as Frances, the unhappy wife of businessman Robert (Donald Houston). When her lover is accidentally drowned, Frances turns to her teenaged son James (Dennis Waterman) for comfort. Her husband doesn't like this set-up and bundles James off to college, but upon his return the boy enters into an affair with his own mother. Robert discovers the incestuous couple in an embrace and reacts violently, whereupon Frances kills him in self defense. Knocked unconscious during the struggle, James thinks he is the killer and takes the rap. The boy is released on the grounds of self defense and returns to his mother -- only to renounce her when he discovers that he's the illegitimate son of his mother's dead lover. MGM was the American distributor for My Lover, My Son, and that low vibration you feel is Louis B. Mayer spinning in his grave. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After the success of the Sgt. Peppers LP, the Beatles decided to hire a psychedelic bus, take a trip into the English countryside, and film the results, no matter how bizarre or boring. With a motley cast of characters, the group basically tramps about the landscape with occasional music cues to give the film a bit of flow. Though Magical Mystery Tour is an interesting document of the Beatles psychedelic period, its cinematic function is negligible. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide