Happily engaged to her handsome fiance, Charles, Fanny is soon hit with one misfortune after another until eventually she is forced to turn to the streets to survive. As she turns to a life of humiliation she wonders if she will ever regain her pride and find happiness in life once again.
Night Creatures is a Peter Cushing period piece that was retitled for the US market from "Captain Clegg". Cushing plays the vicar in a town full of smugglers. Clegg was a pirate in the region who was ultimately caught, executed and buried in the town. Using "marsh phantoms" to scare away those who might be interested in their smuggling activities, the town is investigated when a man who had betrayed Clegg is found by the King's Navy.
"Paranoic" features Oliver Reed in a clever thriller with as many plot twists as "Psycho". Featuring a script by Jimmy Sangster and sharp direction by Freddie Francis, it's a memorable thriller but derivative thriller. It doesn't measure up to Hitchcock's classic but has a number of marvelous sequences in it and a great performance by Oliver Reed. A very nice transfer with rich blacks, "Paranoic" and "Nightmare" (another Jimmy Sangster "Psycho" knock off of sorts) both look positively beautiful in this presentation.
"Curse of the Werewolf" features Oliver Reed in the title role. Set in Spain, Reed plays Leon a young man adopted when his mother a mute servant girl dies giving birth. We know very little about the father except that the girl was raped. As a youth Leon exhibits the traits of the werewolf while hunting and the curse continues to haunt him as he grows older.
A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes moviemaking back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marveling at the glory that was Rome, when you're not marveling at the glory that is Russell Crowe.
