Frank Hawkins Movies
- 1986
- R
Rhoda used to be a model but suffered some disfiguring burns in a defective tanning box. She used her savings to open a health spa catering to the beautiful people and those who aspire to be like them. Someone is fatally stabbing the patrons of her establishment, and it is up to a rather slow-witted policeman to figure out what is happening. In this oddly unexploitational routine thriller, the lovelier a woman's physique is, the less screen time is given to showing her in revealing states of undress. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcia Karr, David James Campbell, (more)
- 1962
In this British drama, a seventeen-year-old girl flees from her dreadful home and hitchhikes to London's Soho district. There, a carnival fortune teller befriends her and helps her get a job waiting tables. Her new boss makes sexual advances and the girl rejects him. She in turn makes a successful play for an aspiring singer. He impregnates her and they marry. They decide to move to Canada, but they need cash so the singer burglarizes their employer's home. Unfortunately, the employer awakens during the theft and shoots the singer. The wounded singer retaliates and kills his boss; he then steals a car, grabs his wife, and flees with the police in hot pursuit. They move in closer and the cornered killer tries to hold them at bay until he drops dead from blood loss. His wife sobs beside his crumpled form. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 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)
- 1961
In this spy thriller clever reporters outfox Communist spies who have come to Geneva to learn more about Western nuclear science. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1960
This is a routine tale about the vice squad versus pornographer and blackmailer Augie Cortona (Terence Morgan). After the petty criminal gets out of prison, he discovers his old partners in crime are not interested in him anymore, and the prostitution ring he once bossed is controlled by someone else. His solution is to set up a fake photographer's and model's studio during the day that becomes a place where porno photo men can do their work at night, as call girls engage in their trade with unsuspecting customers. The photographs bring in extra lucre through a blackmail scheme -- Cortona makes the hookers' clients pay to keep their activities quiet. As he is building up this racket, a gangland boss is out to get him -- and so is the vice squad. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Terence Morgan, Hazel Court, (more)
- 1959
In this thriller, a novelist is quite upset to discover himself awakening with a gun in his hand. He is more dismayed to find a dead relative nearby. Now he wonders: did he do it? He is assisted by a lady hitchhiker in discovering that the real killer is a female impersonator. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1958
The Diplomatic Corpse has been rendered lifeless by a couple of foreign diplomats. London reporter Robin Phillips suspects much, but can prove little. Going beyond the law, Phillips unearths a sinister conspiracy (there's a nice conspiracy?) He also rescues girlfriend Susan Shaw from the villains. Montgomery Tully could direct a film like Diplomatic Corpse in his sleep, which may well have been the case. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1958
Ex-mental patient Jeff Martin (Griffth Jones) holds his loving wife Kay (Maureen Connell) responsible for all his troubles. He'd like to murder Kay, but knows full well that he'd never get away with it. Fate intervenes in the form of Connors (Marc Lawrence) and Svenson (George Mikell), two escaped convicts who invade the Martin household. Taking advantage of the situation, Martin offers to help Connors and Svenson elude the law, if they will kill his wife in exchange. But the scheme doesn't go off as planned, partly because one of the convicts happens to have the glimmer of a conscience. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marc Lawrence, George Mikell, (more)
- 1958
When the English Civil War is winding down but the Roundheads and Royalists are still at odds with each other, it is decided that the King, Raymond, should be moved from England to France for safekeeping. When the Cavalier assigned the task is thwarted by the discovery of the scheme, other measures must be taken. Good action scenes with a smidgen of romance thrown in for good measure. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Baker, Sylvia Syms, (more)
Adapted by Norman Krasna from his play Kind Sir, Indiscreet stars Ingrid Bergman as a wealthy actress and Cary Grant as an international financial wizard. While Grant is visiting London, Bergman's sister Phyllis Calvert and brother-in-law Cecil Parker introduce Grant to Bergman. Because he feels he has no time for marriage, Grant pretends to be married to avoid romantic tangles. Bergman, however, finds the prospect of an affair with a married man to be quite exhilarating. When she discovers the truth, Bergman gets even with the now-smitten Grant by faking a romance with an ex-boy friend--ordering luckless chauffeur David Kossoff to pose as her beau. A comedy by grownups, about grownups and for grownups (at least by 1958 standards), Indiscreet proved to be far more successful as a film than as a stage play. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, (more)
- 1957
In this suspenseful, convoluted crime drama, the wife of a wrongly-condemned murderer begins looking for the real killer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1957
Looking rather spent, Tom Conway walks through the British programmer Operation Murder. Conway is a poverty-stricken doctor who happens to have a rich cousin. Conspiring with his partner Patrick Holt, Conway schemes to kill his cousin, passing off the death as a mishap on the operation table. The plan is almost foolproof, but.....Operation Murder was another of the multitude of inexpensive Danzinger Brothers productions, released throughout the English-speaking world by United Artists. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1957
In this British detective yarn, a Yankee sleuth teams up with Scotland Yard to catch the culprits behind a successful counterfeiting ring. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1956
The Boulting Brothers enjoyed one of their biggest box-office successes of the 1950s with the wry service comedy Private's Progress. Though billed fourth, Ian Carmichael plays the central character, feckless British soldier Stanley Windrush. Interrupting his college education to serve his country, Windrush flunks out of officer's candidate school and is demoted to private. Much of the humor arises from the bookish hero's confrontation with the ruder and cruder side of army life, as represented by rough-hewn fellow private Cox (Richard Attenborough). As Major Hitchcock, Terry-Thomas offers a brilliant parody of the "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" school of military service, while Dennis Price is equally amusing as a nonplussed commanding officer named Tracepurcel (!) Also worth watching is future "Dr. Who" star William Hartnell as a loudmouthed sergeant. Halfway through the film, the plot rears its ugly head as the protagonists become involved with the covert reclamation of art treasures confiscated by the Nazis during WW2. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Attenborough, Dennis Price, (more)
- 1956
In this thriller, a man discovers that the bank notes he has just received actually belong to someone else--a man who is attempting to save his near-bankrupt fur business by buying pelts infected with anthrax. Later the shady furrier is killed. The first man discovers that he was done-in by an ex-con who is killed after his fur-filled truck crashes and explodes. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1956
This farce is the third movie version of Fred Duprez's play. A newlywed with a dominating mother-in-law attempts to surprise his wife with a baby grand piano, but when she overhears him talking about it, she mistakes it for an illegitimate child, particularly when his old flame shows up. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide
- 1953
Floating Dutchman was an early product of Merton Park Productions, a British firm best known for its "Edgar Wallace" series of the 1960s. Dermot Walsh stars as a detective who goes undercover to smash a jewel-smuggling ring. The head man is played by Victor Tafler, heretofore "untouchable" because of his connections in high places. The title refers to one of the smugglers' victims, an unfortunate Dutch gem specialist. As the film rushes to its conclusion, it appears as though the detective, too, is headed for a watery grave. The Floating Dutchman is based on a novel by Nicholas Bentley. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1953
In this children's drama, a youthful gang of cyclists find themselves wrongfully accused of stealing bikes from a manufacturer and end up barred from the local track. Unfortunately, they had been using the track to train for the big race. Fortunately, they are able to catch the real culprits. The company rewards them by repaving their track. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1952
When evil Ternce Riley (Tod Slaughter) steals some jewels, a secret formula and has a hand in a blackmail scheme, Scotland Yard Inspector Morley (Patrick Barr) is called in to solve the baffling case. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1952
Brilliant plastic surgeon Philip Ritter (Paul Henreid) loses the love of his life, concert pianist Alice Brent (Lizabeth Scott), to her manager, David (Andre Morell). As a balm to his wounded pride, Dr. Ritter Henreid makes over a hideously scarred female criminal into the spitting image of the woman who jilted him (the girl is played by Mary McKenzie "before," and, of course, by Lizabeth Scott "after"). Alas, he cannot make over her personality as well, and soon she's run off with her own crooked crowd. A not-bad precursor to Hitchcock's Vertigo, A Stolen Face was produced by Britain's Hammer Films, and distributed in the U.S. by Lippert. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Henreid, Lizabeth Scott, (more)
- 1951
Cheer the Brave is a minor British domestic comedy, good for a few laughs during its scant 62 minutes. Elsie Randolph plays the domineering wife of downtrodden Geoffrey Keen. As if wifey isn't enough of a terror, Keen has to contend with mother-in-law Marie Ault. Keen finally gets the gumption to skeedaddle when Randolph's first husband Jack McNaughton make a return appearance. Cheer the Brave was the first directorial effort of former editor Kenneth Hume, who also wrote and produced it. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1950
In this drama, a soldier comes back to his home village. There he is disturbed to find that the town has fallen upon hard times. Enlisting the aid of a good friend, he starts a small boating company. In order to attract attention, they stage a yachting race and save their peaceful home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1948
A Dutch and an English soldier team up to prevent the Nazis from capturing a precious Dutch diamond, the world's largest, in this war drama. Also included is a segment detailing how the giant gem was mined and cut. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1948
In this version of Bisson's popular melodrama, a philandering wife's affair ends when her lover is accidentally killed. Later her marriage busts up and she ends up on the street. She is then blackmailed until she shoots the extortionist. This leads her to court where she is unknowingly defended by her own son. In the end she dies. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
