The Black Sheep of the Family

A relic from an earlier era when gothic Victorian melodramas were all the rage, Uncle Silas (1947, released in the U.S. as The Inheritance) is an adaptation of Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel which was actually an elaboration of his 1851 short story, “A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess.” As you can surmise from the title, Le Fanu’s story was an earlier form of the Harlequin romance genre, steeped in an atmosphere of old dark houses, decadent aristocrats and mysterious locked rooms. Le Fanu is best known for his vampire novella, Camilla, which has enjoyed numerous film adaptations, but Uncle Silas (published in 1864) was a popular page-turner for its era.

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The First Anti-American Spy Film?

That was how director Ken Russell described his production of Billion Dollar Brain (1967). Whether that claim is true or not, Russell maintained it was the main reason the third entry in the Harry Palmer spy series failed at the box office. To be totally honest, none of the competing rivals in the film – Russia, the U.K., Latvia and the U.S. – are preferable over the other and come across as cynical, opportunistic entities that are only focused on their own agendas and self interests. Seen today, Billion Dollar Brain is easily most entertaining film in the five-movie franchise and deserves a reappraisal.   Continue reading