MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE SNORKEL (1958)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2025

THE SNORKEL (1958)

From Hammer Films, but no Monsters, no Horror, no lurid TechniColor, instead a monochrome Suspense-Thriller, adapted from a novel by character actor Anthony Dawson, best known for playing Ray Milland’s hapless accomplice in Alfred Hitchcock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54. Can you guess what story it closely resembles? Right on the first try! Just not the ending. That’s straight out of tv’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. One of the ones where Hitch comes on after the action to explain that no one got away with murder after all. No great shakes, but pretty good fun under Guy Green’s direction. (His sole Hammer film?) Grey fox smoothy Peter van Eyck’s the creepy husband/step-father who makes murdering his wife look like suicide, but then has to circle back when step-daughter Mandy Mlller (dreadful) gets too close to the truth. Betta St, John is the older friend of the troubled daughter with a thing for Eyck. Ick!* More promised than delivered here, but okay for a second feature. Too bad this was meant to play first on the program.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *A year or two on, French director Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock acolyte & biographer, might have improved this by getting the sub-textural sex angle up on screen.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Trimmed to 72" for Stateside release, be sure you've got the original 90" cut.

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Tuesday, March 25, 2025

THE SNORKEL (1958)

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