Billie Whitelaw
John Calder, Samuel Beckett’s British publisher, moved to Montreuil, a town to the east of Paris, where Calder met with Billie Whitelaw, the muse, so to speak, of Beckett’s stage work, who is now relegated to a nursing home for actors.
As a former London constable, Nicholas Angel finds it difficult to adapt to his new assignment in the sleepy British village of Sandford. Not only does he miss the excitement of the big city, but he also has a well-meaning oaf for a partner. However, when a series of grisly accidents rocks Sandford, Angel smells something rotten in the idyllic village.
The filming of "The Omen" (1976) was plagued by tragedy and bizarre incidents. "The devil was at work and he didn't want that film made" - Producer Harvey Bernhard.
After taking his young son Roddy to a remote Northumberland village, Peter Greenbank meets a violent death, leaving the boy alone with no family to speak of. Roddy is adopted and raised by Kate Makepeace, a good friend of his father’s, and develops a close friendship with Hal and Mary Ellen. But their sibling bond is put to the test as they become adults. The hidden secrets of the past are painfully unearthed as their lives are intertwined by a tragic destiny.
A nobleman with a literary flair, the Marquis de Sade lives in a madhouse where a beautiful laundry maid smuggles his erotic stories to a printer, defying orders from the asylum's resident priest. The titillating passages whip all of France into a sexual frenzy, until a fiercely conservative doctor tries to put an end to the fun.
After Elizabeth's husband dies, she begins to play her tenor saxophone again, and remembers when she was 15 and a member of the Blonde Bombshells, an all-girl (with one exception) swing band. Accompanied by the exception and urged on by her grand-daughter, Elizabeth hunts up all the old members of the band and urges them to perform, and in doing so, learns more than she knew about the band, its members, the roses on the drum set, and herself--the last of the Blonde Bombshells.
A US property developer realises that he has a battle on his hands when he tries to renovate a London building containing a vast photographic collection and discovers that the library employees will resort to anything to thwart him.
Xavier Lombard is a world-weary private eye in London, in exile from his native Paris; his best friend is Nathalie, a high-class call girl. He gets a call from an old friend from the Paris police department, now a businessman whose brother-in-law is missing. The missing man's parents hire Xavier over their daughter's objections, and quickly he finds himself in the realm of children's sexual slavery.
Merlin is a television miniseries which originally aired in 1998 that retells the legend of King Arthur from the perspective of the wizard Merlin. Sam Neill stars in the title role in a story that covers not only the rise and fall of Camelot but also the phase in the legendary history of Britain that precedes it. The film deviates from more traditional versions of the legend, notably by including new characters such as Queen Mab and by keeping Merlin through the whole reign of King Arthur over Britain. The film was followed by a sequel in 2006, Merlin's Apprentice, which was more loosely connected with traditional Arthurian legend.
Byron Flitch is not enjoying his anniversary party. Instead of making him a partner in their classic car business, his father Burke has demanded he work harder. His mistress Judith could arrive to gate crash the celebrations at any moment and to top things off midway through the line 'I'm going to live forever' from his karaoke Fame rendition, Burke keels over with a heart attack. Amidst this chaos, Burke's wife Lili sees a chance to make her escape and ducks out of the party to leave for an impromptu holiday in Tenerife. When she returns, she is a changed woman and intent on taking up marathon running. With Burke critically ill and Lili off guard, the rest of the family squabble for control of the business.
A two-part biography of the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. The first part covers the traumas of his formative years: his ill-fated love affair with his first cousin, the death of his father, and his decorated service with the French Resistance. He had settled in France before the Second World War, met fellow Irishman James Joyce, and begun writing. Patrick Magee's television performance of `Krapp's Last Tape' (1972) is interwoven with key landscapes and personalities from Beckett's life. The second part concludes the story of how Beckett finally began to connect with his audience, principally through `Waiting for Godot'. Includes an interview with the actress Billie Whitelaw, a celebrated interpreter of his work.
Back in the 'bad old days' when the physically and mentally disabled were locked away in institutions a legend grew of someone who could stand up to the authorities and help them. This charming story is how a group of disabled people went to chase that legend. To assist them John is forced to come to terms with his daughter and her friends.
Mother rules the house with an iron hand and has such power over her daughters that they see themselves as becoming old unmarried, maids. Jodie has feelings for the local doctor, a man much older than her, for which her mother strongly disapproves. Beth finds a relationship with a male stripper in Bristol, but sees nothing in the future with Mother around. While both girls would like to be rid of Mother, nothing happens until Jodie sees images of H. R. Armstrong, the man who put the town on the map by dispatching his un-loving wife
Joanna once was married to Carl May, a very rich and powerful nuclear energy magnate. They love each other, but had to divorce after Joanna was caught on an incidental love affair. Since then Carl has made Joanna's life impossible. 10 years later she's fed up with the situation and decides to visit him, only to find that once he made three copies of her
Lady Caroline Faye meets Lord Vane Brecon and is attracted to him. When she finds out that he is being accused of a murder he did not commit, she sets out to prove him innocent
At the request of his old war time colleague Ailsa Brimley, George Smiley agrees to look into the murder of Stella Rode. Brimley had only just received a letter from her saying she feared for her life at her husband's hand. The husband, Stanley Rode teaches at Carne School, but Smiley is doubtful that he had anything to do with his wife's death. As Smiley investigates, he learns that Stella was a nosy busybody who loved to learn other's little secrets and then gossip about them - or possibly blackmail them. When a student is killed and Smiley unearths a secret, he has the evidence to name the killer.Based on John Le Carré's 1962 thriller (his first) in which George Smiley is brought out of spy retirement to solve a murder in a British public school. The setting is based on Le Carre"s own schooldays in Sherborne and his brief experience teaching at Eton.
Hulmerist is a VHS and DVD release that includes seven promotional films by Morrissey, released initially on VHS, in 1990, and then on DVD in 2004. It was certified Gold by the RIAA on 18 January 1991. The title refers to Morrissey's childhood home in Hulme, Manchester. The L is silent, so it sounds like "humourist". The promotional films are 'The Last of the Famous International Playboys', 'Sister I'm a Poet', 'Everyday is Like Sunday', 'Interesting Drug', 'Suedehead', 'Ouija Board, Ouija Board' and 'November Spawned a Monster'.
When a spoiled English girl living in 19th century India loses both parents in a cholera epidemic, she is sent back to England to live in a country mansion. The lord is a strange old man-- frail and deformed, immensely kind but so melancholy. She wishes to discover what has caused him so much sorrow and to bring joy back to the household. It all must have something to do with the screams and wails which echo through the house at night and no one wants to talk about.
A feisty 17th-century Scotswoman falls in love with a despised landowner, to the dismay of her father.
In northern England around 1900, the worker John O'Brien lives near poverty in a small house in the worker's district. He falls in love with Mary, the teacher of his highly intelligent younger sister Kathy and daughter of a rich family. Their love is doomed by the social difference, but the vigorous Mary refuses to allow outer circumstances destroying their love.
'I, Margie Starling, am perfectly, perfectly happy, right now!' ...and why not? An adoring young husband, a grown-up daughter who'll soon adjust to having a stepfather her own age, and now a birthday picnic by the river. Why shouldn't Margie be happy?
In England during World War II, a repressed dressmaker and her sister struggle looking after their 17-year-old niece, who is having a delusional affair with an American soldier.
The elusive author of Waiting for Godot cooperated in the production of this portrait, which traces Beckett’s artistic life through his prose, plays, and poetry. Billie Whitelaw, Jack McGowran, and Patrick Magee—Beckett’s great dramatic interpreters—appear in selected extracts from the plays; Beckett specialist David Warrilow narrates a variety of texts.
An English woman (Ali MacGraw) returns to her homeland after losing her fortune in America, and is stalked by a serial killer.
Camille is a courtesan in Paris. She falls deeply in love with a young man of promise, Armand Duval. When Armand's father begs her not to ruin his hope of a career and position by marrying Armand, she acquiesces and leaves her lover. However, when poverty and terminal illness overwhelm her, Camille discovers that Armand has not lost his love for her.
Stone (Peter Coyote) hits an armored truck without his usual driver. The ensuing getaway leads to the death of an innocent. The payback is swift and brutal. The wronged father hires a twisted, sociopathic assassin to avenge his loss. One by one the offenders are punished through grisly executions. Stone uses his wits to find a reclusive friend Terry (Mel Smith) just in time for a psychedelic funhouse showdown with his stalker.
On another planet in the distant past, a Gelfling embarks on a quest to find the missing shard of a magical crystal and restore order to his world, before the grotesque race of Skeksis find and use the crystal for evil.
After finding her boss, a private detective, has committed suicide and has left her his agency, Cordelia Gray is asked to investigate the suicide of the man's son. During the course of her investigation, Cordelia becomes obsessed with the young man's memory and his increasingly suspicious death.
A one-woman play written by Samuel Beckett at the request of Daniel Labeille. The piece was produced by Labeille on behalf of the State University of New York's Programs in the Arts for a festival and symposium in commemoration of Beckett's 75th birthday (Wikipedia). A self-reflective drama of a figure, W, rocking "to and fro" in her dead mother's rocking chair wearing her mother's sequined funereal garment. With the aid of her pre-recorded voice, W recounts the different phases of a single memory in a bid to connect with "another creature like herself" before rocking herself into an eternal sleep.
Dissolute barrister Sydney Carton becomes enchanted and then hopelessly in love with the beautiful Lucie Manette. But Lucie loves and marries Charles Darnay, and remains oblivious to Carton's undimmed devotion to her. When Darnay is ensnared in the deadly web of the French Revolution and condemned to die by the guillotine, Sydney Carton concocts a dangerous plot to free the husband of the woman he loves.
A tender romance develops between an attractive young woman and a famous race car driver who lives incognito after supposedly being killed in an auto accident.
This children's fantasy tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who discovers a complex underwater world where young children are held prisoner by an evil shark and an eel.
A female voice identifies a lone man in a room. The shots cut closer, revealing he is holding a cassette recorder, playing Beethoven's "Ghost" Piano Trio no. 5. The film repeats the imagery, and then shows what he has been reacting to.
Ellen Wheeler, a rich widow, is recovering from a nervous breakdown. One day, while staring out the window, she witnesses a murder. But does anybody believe her?
Jack Black is a disturbed actor who believes himself to be trapped in a television play, followed around by an invisible camera.
In this sad world where words unspoken do more damage than words spoken too much, a woman and her lodger are destined to stay on separate paths.
Prince Leo, last in the line of rulers of a long-deposed monarchy on continental Europe and jaded with the frenetic search for kicks with the European jet-set, returns to his father's London town house for rest.
An account of the adventures of two sets of identical twins, badly scrambled at birth, on the eve of the French Revolution. One set is haughty and aristocratic, the other poor and somewhat dim. They find themselves involved in palace intrigues as history happens around them. Based, very loosely, on Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities," Dumas's "The Corsican Brothers," etc.
An accountant whose job is about to be taken over by a computer starts to re-examine his life and his priorities.
Charlie Bubbles, a writer, up from the working class of Manchester, England, who, in the course of becoming prematurely rich and famous, has mislaid a writer's basic tool – the capacity to feel and to respond. Now he must visit his estranged wife and son, whom he has set up on a farm outside his native city. His journey accidentally becomes an attempt to reestablish his connections with life, people, and his own history.
Hywel Bennett stars as Martin Durnley, a rich but damaged Oxford University drop-out with a hatred of his banker stepfather, played by Frank Finlay. His mum babies the boy, a consequence of Martin's elder brother, a Down Syndrome sufferer (or 'Mongoloid' - or even 'mentally backward' as they say here), being in full-time care, and the doctors having warned Martin's parents not to have any more children - just to be on the safe side. Too late: troubled mummy's boy Martin, with his cuddly toys and penchant for smashing his own reflection, appears to have proved the doctors misgivings.
A middle-aged stock actor goes to London to try the big time. After much frustration, he lands a job doing TV commercials, gaining wealth and recognition. He eventually gives it all up to return to stage work and keep his pride.
German actor PETER VAN EYCK stars as Droste, a mild-mannered businessman who was an intelligence expert during World War II. When Droste runs into his old friend Baron Von Straub (Christopher Lee), the two rekindle a friendship that was interrupted by the war. However, when Von Straub asks Droste to deliver a small package to a friend in West Germany, the befuddled Droste is set up for a series of complicated spy games.
A vicious gang of crooks plan to steal the wages of a local factory, but their carefully laid plans go wrong, when the factory employs an armoured van to carry the cash. The gang still go ahead with the robbery, but when the driver of the armoured van is killed in the raid, his wife plans revenge, and with the police closing in, the gang start to turn on each other.
Johnnie Byrne is a member of the British Parliament. In his 40s, he's feeling frustrated with his life and his personal as well as professional problems tower up over him. His desires to win the next election are endangered by his constant looking for love and he is faced with the choice of giving up a career in politics or giving up the woman he loves.
Mr. Topaze (Peter Sellers) is an unassuming school teacher in an unassuming small French town, who is honest to a fault. He is fired when he refuses to give a passing grade to a bad student, the grandson of a wealthy baroness. Castel Benac (Herbert Lom), a government official who runs a crooked financial business on the side, is persuaded by his mistress, Suzy (Nadia Gray), a musical comedy actress, to hire Mr. Topaze as the front man for his business. Gradually, Topaze becomes a rapacious financier who sacrifices his honesty for success and, in a final stroke of business bravado, fires Benac and acquires Suzy in the deal. An old friend and colleague, Tamise (Michael Gough) questions him and tells Topaze that what he now says and practices indicates there are no more honest men.
In a mansion block in Knightsbridge, a gang of middle-aged biddies decide to brighten up "the dullness of the tea time of life" by staging a series of robberies on furriers, then donating the proceeds to charitable concerns. Terry Thomas as a retired army officer leads the gang, which includes Athene Seyler and Hattie Jacques, on a series of capers that nearly go awry when their maid, Billie Whitelaw, an ex-con and also a resident of the block, falls for a police officer.
Edinburgh surgeon Dr. Robert Knox requires cadavers for his research into the functioning of the human body; local ne'er-do-wells Burke and Hare find ways to provide him with fresh specimens...
Set in Manchester, heartland of England's industrial north, Don Starling escapes from jail becoming England's most wanted man. Ruthless villain Starling together with his cronies engineered a robbery that resulted in the violent death of a young girl. Detective Inspector Martineau has been assigned to hunt him down and bring him in. From seedy barrooms, through gambling dens the trail leads to an explosive climax high on the rooftops of the city.
Tom, a sensitive Liverpool student, takes a job on a loading dock in a Lancashire factory town. He's smitten with a girl named Lena who works in a machine shop next door and takes her out despite a bullying driver claiming her for himself.
The dining room of the Jolly Fiddler has long been presided over by Albert, an aged but very shrewd waiter. A past master of the gentle art of fiddling, he extracts the maximum profit from his job while managing to endear himself to both the customers and staff. Then, there's a visit from Mr Finch, who feels it's time Albert was replaced.
In London's colourful but seedy Soho, Michael Morgan is working mending the road. He is unhappy, with little hope of finding happiness. Then he meets Julia Gozzi, a barmaid, and "The Miracle" happens.
Betsy Richards, a hard-working widow, tries to solve the domestic problems of her three grown-up sons.
A petty thief breaks into the home of a psychiatrist and gets caught in a web of a doctor who wishes to experiment on him and a doctor's wife who wishes to seduce him.
Someone is stealing priceless paintings from the great museums of the world and replacing them with nearly flawless forgeries. Leonardo da Vinci's "Madonna and Child" is being shipped to London's Tate Gallery for a special exhibition, and Paul Mitchell is assigned to protect it. Upon the painting's arrival, Paul realizes it has been switched. Eager to collect the museum's $50,000 reward, he teams up with Mary Mason, a Tate employee, to recover the original.
