HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL

 Unintentionally hilarious exploitation picture on the dangers of drugs in American high schools in the late fifties populated by high school kids played by actors who were at least ten years too old for their roles. Russ Tamblyn is the new student who's really an undercover cop planted in the school to find out who the dealers are. Jan Sterling is the glamorous and liberal teacher, Mamie Van Doren is Tamblyn's sex-pot of an 'aunt' while John Drew Barrymore is one of the bad guys.

Albert Zugsmith produced and Jack Arnold directed "High School Confidential" in 1958 and it was dated almost before it hit the screen. On the plus side it was very handsomely photographed in Black and White Cinemascope and the drag race sequence is certainly effective as is the climatic fight scene between the villains and some more civic-minded students lead by a very handsome and youthful Michael Landon before he built his little house on the prairie.

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE.

 One of the better sci-fi movies of the fifties with intelligent direction, (by the great Jack Arnold), and an above average script making up for the lack of sophisticated special effects. OK, so the monsters look like wobbly jellies with one big eye and the acting is as wooden as we might expect from the likes of Richard Carlson and Charles Drake but at least at the time of the 'Red Menace' in an age of paranoia here was a sci-fi movie that said the invaders might not wish us harm after all. Originally filmed in 3D, though it hardly merited the use of the new technology, it has since gone on to be something of a cult classic.

HAMLET GOES BUSINESS

 The plot of "Hamlet" transferred to contemporary Finland then filmed in the style of a forties film noir with its tongue lodged firmly in its cheek. Aki Kaurismaki's "Hamlet Goes Business" is yet another of his many multifaceted treats exploring in large part the bizarre relationships between men and women only this time fleshing it out with yet another cod-thriller plot. So what if it steals from Shakespeare, (I can think of no better man), and at least this one clocks in at under ninety minutes rather than four hours. Good fun even if it lacks the emotional density we associate with the very best of its director.

KWAIDAN

 Masaki Kobayashi's ""Kwaidan" comprises of four ghost stories, each told in the kind of Kabuki-style that many Japanese films are famous for and all are visually highly attractive if a little on the predictable side, (only the third one really stands out from the others). Indeed, this is a movie in which style dominates with many of the frames looking like old prints but in terms of content the film is sadly lacking in substance. The cast, however, go at it as if they were performing some sacred text even if Kobayashi doesn't want to do anything as crude as breathe life into the proceedings, Still, as portmanteau pictures about ghosts go, it's definitely a cut above average. It's also, I feel, highly overrated.

DONOVAN'S REEF

 Unfairly dismissed at the time of its release "Donovan's Reef" now feels like, if not quite a late masterpiece, still something of a classic piece of Fordian hokum and an opportunity for a bunch of actors to enjoy themselves on, as Jack Warden's character describes it, "one of the most beautiful islands on earth". It's virtually plotless and on a formal level it hasn't moved on from the kind of films Ford was turning out in the forties and fifties and it might have been negligible had it been directed by anyone else but frame to frame Ford imbues it with all the affection and Fordian 'touches', including some spectacular Fordian brawls, that made him perhaps the primary director in American cinema.

Naturally, it's highly sentimental, quite misogynist and also highly ambivalent on the issue of race, (the Chinese get short shrift but Ford handles the issue of miscegenation with a lot more sensitivity than might have been expected), and it has in Elizabeth Allen a properly feisty Fordian heroine. Indeed the cast is first-rate. John Wayne, (who else), is Donovan who runs the local saloon, (hence the title), Lee Marvin is his sidekick, Jack Warden the local doctor and Allen's father, (her presence on the island and their relationship is as near to a plot as the film gets), while the supporting cast includes Marcel Dalio, Cesar Romero and Dorothy Lamour. You might call it a holiday film, particularly for the cast and crew, but if it is then you just might wish all holiday films were directed by Ford.