David Byrne: ‘Thanks! Does anybody have any questions?’

Director Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert film featuring the Eighties thinking person’s top rock act, Talking Heads, is a now iconic, superbly stylish music documentary and innovative concert movie, shot at Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre, and edited together from three shows.

It builds up from lead singer and guitarist David Byrne walking on to the stage and solo strumming ‘Psycho Killer’ to the full band on fine, funky form in a total of 18 numbers.

We hardly see the audience, though they are rocking, but of course there are fine views of Byrne’s Big Suit.

It runs 88 minutes, is produced by MTV, released by Columbia-TriStar, shot by Jordan Cronenweth and produced by Gary Goetzman.

Also appearing in the film are Alex Weir o...

Director Garry Marshall’s 1988 movie is all about the ups and downs of a lifetime’s friendship between two women, which makes a refreshing change, especially with these stars. It was hugely popular among female audiences in its day and is now claimed as a gay classic.

Mary Agnes Donoghue’s expert screenplay is based on Iris Rainer’s novel, in which two little girls called Hillary Whitney Essex and C C Bloom meet on a holiday beach in Atlantic City, become fast friends and grow up to be a poor little rich girl (Barbara Hershey) and a brash, selfish singer (Bette Midler).

Hershey is extremely appealing in the vulnerable role, but this wonderfully slick, heart-tugging soap opera belongs to the astonishing Midler, who is entertaining on the grand scale, hilarious, touching and tuneful...

Director Harold Young’s chilling 1945 low-budget Inner Sanctum horror mystery again stars Lon Chaney Jr, this time as stage hypnotist/ mentalist Alex Gregor. Normally we are just metaphorically driven mad by our agents, but Gregor is literally driven mad by his agent, George Keene (Milburn Stone).

The agent lands Gregor the Great a gig in an eerie wax museum, where an enraged Gregor unfortunately causes a drunk picked out from his audience to meet an untimely death after he belittles his act.

[Spoiler alert] A guilt-ridden Gregor convinces himself that his hypnotic powers are to blame. But it turns out that the agent is in cohoots with a museum employee, who simply does not like Chaney Jr’s surprising success with the opposite sex.

This story is as bizarre as it is hard to swall...

Director Joseph Pevney’s 1957 dip into Hollywood history provides a very good biopic of silent star Lon Chaney Snr, mainly memorable for James Cagney’s rousing performance as the Man of a Thousand Faces and the Hollywood background detail.

Dorothy Malone as troubled Cleva Creighton Chaney and Jane Greer as nice Hazel Bennet give Cagney useful star support performances as the silent movie star’s two wives.

Bud Westmore’s make-up, re-creating Chaney Snr’s greatest moments, is the movie’s other main asset and it is the measure of the make-up’s success that Cagney really convinces as Chaney Snr,  even though he normally actually looks so little like him.

There is a notable score by Frank Skinner, who also scored Written on the Wind (1956).

Robert J Evans appears in his credite...

Director Richard Whorf’s striking 1946 MGM musical is a tribute to the composer/song-writer Jerome Kern, who is played by Robert Walker. The movie starts with the premiere of Show Boat and flashes back to Kern’s early days and his struggle as a young composer. James I Hessler (Van Heflin) tells Kern to ‘think big’, he hits the big time, marries, and helps Heflin’s star-gazing daughter Sally Hessler (Lucille Bremer).

The adverts promised that it was going to be a ‘mammoth musical of Jerome Kern’s dramatic life story’. But it turns out that Kern’s life is pretty dull, at least as portrayed here, though fortunately the songs are not, and the extraordinary cast gives them all it has got.

Frank Sinatra sings ‘Ol’ Man River’, Kathryn Grayson ‘Make Believe’ and Long Ago (and Far A...

Director David Butler’s 1953 classic Golden Age musical Calamity Jane stars Doris Day as the titular gun-toting, whip-cracking Wild West whirlwind, along with Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok. Sammy Fain’s haunting, show-stopping romantic number ‘Secret Love’ won a Best Song Oscar, and Day sings it quite beautifully.

‘Secret Love’ was a number 1 hit for Day in the US and in the UK. James O’Hanlon’s screenplay teases an alleged romance between the Wild West heroine and Wild Bill Hickok, though history suggests that they were no more than acquaintances.

This sparkling musical Western could arguably be Day’s finest hour in the movies as the exuberant, boyish, buckskinned Indian scout Calamity Jane, who is finally tamed by Keel’s rich, boomingly baritoned Wild Bill Hickok.

Is it...

Otis B Driftwood: ‘It’s all right, that’s in every contract. That’s what they call a sanity clause.’ Fiorello: ‘You can’t fool me! There ain’t no Santay Claus!’

Director Sam Wood’s hilarious 1935 Marx Brothers comedy A Night at the Opera features the three Marxes –  Groucho as Otis B Driftwood, Chico as Fiorello and Harpo as Tomasso (Zeppo had retired) – who make their mark on an opera company in one of their most brilliantly funny movies.

The overcrowded stateroom in A Night at the Opera.

It comes complete with one of their most inventive and hysterical sequences when they tell most of the crew of a ship to pack into a single cabin of the hilariously overcrowded stateroom...