Imagine my delighted surprise:
Two unfindable movies, which have largely slipped into oblivion, are inexplicably both currently included in the same collection at one's local Wally-World, in the Five-Flicks-For-Five-Bucks rack.
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One is Castle Keep, a typically quirky anti-war movie from Hollyweird from about the same time (late '60s-early 70's) as flicks like M*A*S*H* and Catch-22 were all the counter-cultural rage, without being as good as either of them. Directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Burt Lancaster and Peter Falk, among others, between them having 10 nominations and three wins of Oscars back when they meant something besides just a cookie for diversity beans. Still, the flick used to be a staple of late night TV movie fare, and then disappeared forever. Until now.
The other one is the wholly worthy Young Winston, starring a cast of unknown actors including Simon Ward as the titular young Winston Churchill, and including the likes of such other obscure talents as Anne Bancroft (at the pinnacle of her talent and beauty), Robert Shaw, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Hopkins, Ian Holm, Edward Woodward, an unspeaking role by Jane Seymour, and directed by Richard Attenborough. Mayhap you've heard of some of them by now. Being a largely British affair with such nameless featured players, it slipped into and languished in unrecoverable oblivion for decades under the studied ignorance of 20-somethings running studio archives until some wit at Columbia/Sony decided to mine the vaults and let WalMart include it on this $1/movie five pack.
It's definitely worthwhile, worth the price of the DVD by itself if you like a decent flick, and if you can spare forgoing a cup of Starbuck's boiled concoctions just one time, you can catch them both, and three other bits of (well-)forgotten film fare for less than the bargain rates at Netflix.
Enjoy. Get them while they last.
And if anyone ever spots The Secret War Of Harry Frigg loose in the wild, give a holler.
Every so often a treasure will creep up unexpectedly like that.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy them.
I remember seeing Castle Keep at the local theater a year or so after it came out,along with a film called Duck You Sucker as a Sat afternoon double feature.
ReplyDeleteWe had a couple of really great area movie theaters,smallish places,old as hell,but they always had good movies at prices us kids could afford. One of them did Sat afternoon double features for 50 cents. They're gone now,one's the local DMV office/title bureau.
Duck you sucker was re-titled,probably after a bunch of housewives complained about the title of the film,I think the first re-title was A fistful of Dynamite,the film had some great actors as well.
Rod Steiger and James Coburn-(had to look that one up.)
Funny how as we get older-(I just turned 57)-we can remember shit from 30 or 40- or more years ago,but not what we ate for lunch.
Here's the wiki entry on Duck You Sucker...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_You_Sucker!
hello my friend,
ReplyDeletesecret war of harry frigg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a4sjxufDOU in 720p
enjoy!
The JG
Nice try.
ReplyDeleteThere's no movie there. It's a placeholder, and the flick isn't viewable.
bummer.
ReplyDeletei thought for a second there... oh well.
now i've a bit in my teeth, am resolved to find this movie! When I do, i'll post here.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably on some movie studio VOD site, somewhere.
ReplyDelete