input: Like many people on this site, I saw this movie only once, when it was first televised in 1971. Certain scenes linger in my memory and an overall feeling of disquiet is how I remember being affected by it. I would be fascinated to see it again, if it was ever made available for home video.

Possible spoiler: I wonder if anyone else would agree that the basic plot setup and characters might have been derived from a 1960 British movie, originally titled City of the Dead, retitled Horror Hotel for the American release? There are some similarities also to a later British film The Wicker Man.

One detail remains with me years after seeing the film. It's a small but significant moment near the beginning of the film. As I recall, a minister and his wife have stopped to aid some people by the side of the road, circa 1870, somewhere out West. The friendly seeming Ray Milland introduces himself and his ( daughter?), Yvette Mimieux, a beautiful young mute woman. While the preacher is helping Ray Milland with the wagon, a rattlesnake slithers into view and coils menacingly, unobserved by any of the characters except Yvette Mimieux. She doesn't look scared at all, but stares at the snake with silent concentration, until it goes away. With this strange little moment, we already realize there's something highly unusual about these seemingly normal folks, though the possible danger to the minister and his wife remains vague and uncertain for a long time.

That one little scene stays with me vividly after all these years, along with many others. The film has a haunting quality about it that won't let go, and it's not surprising that people remember it so vividly. Someone ought to make this available for home video!

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input: This is the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. This is saying quite a bit, considering some of the choices I've made in film rentals.

I got this on netflix based entirely on the fact that someone I went to high school with is topless in it. The topless scene lasted all of about 5 seconds and the rest of the movie was about as much fun as having pungee sticks driven underneath my toenails whilst being forced to listen to Roseanne sing Big Spender.

The "skits" are stupid and consist of the worst kind of juvenile bathroom humor and locker-room gags, and it's such a blatant (and poor) rip-off of The Kentucky Fried Movie that you'll be begging for Big Jim Slade to crash through the wall and save us from the stupidity of "Vince Offer" (whoever that is).

Unless you are a masochist, avoid this pile of rubbish.

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input: The original DeMille movie was made in 1938 with Frederic March. A very good film indeed. Hollywood's love of remakes brings us a fairly interesting movie starring Yul Brynner. He of course was brilliant as he almost always seemed to be in all of his movies. Charlton Heston as Andrew Jackson was a stroke of genius. However, the movie did tend to get a little long in places. It does not move at the pace of the 1938 version. Still, it is a fun movie that should be seen at least once.

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input: Melvyn Douglas once more gives a polished performance in which, this time, he inhabits the role of a detective who can't place love before duty and adventure, and the warmly beautiful Joan Blondell (who, far from being illiterate, as one reviewer suggested, wrote a novel about her early life) is as enjoyable as ever as his ever-suffering sweetheart.It's almost a screwball comedy, almost a Thin Man-type movie, almost a series, I guess, that didn't quite make it to a sequel. It doesn't quite reach classic status, but it has all the ingredients for a fun 85 minutes with an episodic but pacey script, fine character actors, and direction that keeps it all moving fast enough so that you nearly don't notice that Williams (Douglas) isn't exactly Columbo when it comes to detecting. I wish there were more films like this.

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positive