Grey Market Cinema: College Humor (1933)

Back in October 2008, I wrote a review of a movie I had purchased from Vintage Film Buff.com entitled She Loves Me Not (1934), a breezy little musical comedy starring Miriam Hopkins as a cabaret dancer who witnesses a gangland murder and has to hide out in the college dorm room of a Princeton student played by Bing Crosby.  It’s an enjoyable little romp,…

Grey Market Cinema Double Feature: Blood Money (1933)/Pleasure Cruise (1933)

Back in October of last year, The Large Association of Movie Blogs offered up a survey to be completed amongst its members to assemble a list of the Top 10 Pre-Code films and out of 86 films (spread out among the 23 voters who participated) submitted this was the AFI-like result: 1.)    Duck Soup [1933] 2.)    Baby Face [1933] 3.)    It Happened One Night [1934]…

“Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change…”

Oh, yeah—this blog’s getting highbrow this morning with a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote…but it’s the best one I could find to title this post that also announces the winner of TDOY’s Marlene giveaway, none other than Chuckie Award champion and She Blogged by Night proprietor Stacia Jones.  While Stacia takes her victory lap I want to thank everyone for…

“You cannot bash in the head of an American citizen without written permission from the State Department…”

In Stardust Memories (1980), director-star Woody Allen has a little fun at his own expense (not to mention his fans) when he allows the filmmaker he plays in the movie, Sandy Bates, to be approached by devotees who gush that they’re huge fans of his work, especially his “early, funny movies.”  I can’t help but laugh out…

Tick…tick…tick…

Just wanted to take a brief second from being smothered by cardboard boxes to remind the TDOY faithful that the deadline for entering the giveaway to win a free copy of Charlotte Chandler’s MARLENE: Marlene Dietrich – A Personal Biography is tonight at 11:59pm EDT.  I’ll choose a winner after that time and then will send that individual his or…

Guest Review: Gun Crazy (1950; aka Deadly is the Female)

By Philip Schweier Before there was Bonnie and Clyde (1967) there was Gun Crazy (1950), the story of two young kids crazy in love. So in love they’d rather not work for a living, and so crazy they turn to crime. The story begins one rainy night as 14-year-old Bart Tare (Russ Tamblyn, before he moved to New York’s West Side…

Guest Review: The Set-Up (1949)

Frequent Thrilling Days of Yesteryear commenter/contributor Philip Schweier offers up his take on my favorite of actor Robert Ryan’s films—Phil received a DVD set of films noir for Christmas (I’m guessing it was Warner’s Film Noir Classic Collection, Volume 1) and apologizes for being so tardy in getting around to seeing them but as he told me in…

Shameless self-promotion…and an important, earth-shattering announcement!

Eighty years ago on this very date, one of the seminal films of the gangster movie genre was released to motion picture theaters…and in revisiting The Public Enemy (1931) for an essay I wrote at Edward Copeland on Film…and More, I was completely bowled over by how well this classic still holds up today.  You have James Cagney, of…

DVR-TiVo-Or whatever recording device strikes your fancy-alert!

One of the winners in TDOY’s Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: Confidential contest, David O., sent me an e-mail this morning to give me a heads-up that the once-proud American Movie Classics has for some odd reason scheduled a slate of reruns from the classic TV oater The Rifleman tomorrow (April 23) and next Saturday (April 30) beginning at 6am EDT.  April…

It was a very good year

Classic film buffs are almost unanimous in their firm belief that 1939 was the year for movies—and even dissenters from this maxim would find it hard to dispute that there were some truly extraordinary films released that year.  The Classic Movie Blog Association, of which Thrilling Days of Yesteryear is a proud member (thanks to a digital camera and a…