THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO

Jeff Daniels and Mia Farrow

THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985). Writer/director: Woody Allen.

"In New Jersey, anything can happen."

In a dreary small town in 1935, Cecelia (Mia Farrow) has an unhappy marriage with the often out-of-work Monk (Danny Aiello of City Hall). Cecelia seeks refuge in the movies, where she especially loves a film called The Purple Rose of Cairo, and the lead character, Tom Baxter, played by actor Gil Shepherd (Jeff Daniels). In an astonishing turn of events, "Tom Baxter" walks right off the screen and into the real world, leaving the other actors/characters in the movie standing around wringing their hands. "How many times is a man so taken with a woman that he leaves the movie just to meet her," muses Tom. Just as Cecelia, who begins a romance with the charming Tom, is trying to make sense of all this, the real Gil Shepherd, who has heard what's happened, shows up in town ... This movie and its look at how influential movies can be on real life and the necessary escape they offer may not work for everyone, but I found it charming, absorbing, and ultimately moving. The actors offer sensitive and dead-on portrayals. Van Johnson, Edward Herrmann, Zoe Cladwell, and Milo O'Shea, among others, appear in the film-within-a-film.

Verdict: Not perfect perhaps, but it remains one of Allen's most likable movies. ***.

THEATER OF BLOOD

Diana Rigg and Vincent Price

THEATER OF BLOOD (1973). Director: Douglas Hickox.

"A mumbling, incoherent boy who can barely grunt his way through a speech" -- Edward Lionheart.

"It's Lionheart all right. Only he wold have the temerity to rewrite Shakespeare." -- Devlin.

Actor Edward Lionheart (Vincent Price) supposedly committed suicide after losing the coveted Critics' Circle Award, but it turns out that he is still alive and killing off those same critics -- with the help of his daughter, Edwina (Diana Rigg) -- in ways related to Shakespeare's plays. Theater of Blood followed Price's Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again and is similarly gruesome and playful -- not to mention revenge-motivated --  although perhaps not as much fun as the other pictures. Price is terrific as Lionheart, ably supported by Diana Rigg as his daughter. even if she isn't given much of a character to play. There are more than its share of over-the-top moments in this: a grotesque beheading sequence (from Cymberline) is an example of the blackest of black comedy; and the death of flamboyantly gay Meredith Merridew (Robert Morley), forced to devour his own "babies" (actually, beloved poodles) until he chokes on dog meat, as in Titus Andronicus, is unbelievably sadistic (not to mention rather homophobic). Speaking of gay stereotypes, the closeted Price has fun playing a campy hairdresser named "Butch" who fatally spit- curls critic Chloe Moon, played by Price's then-wife Coral Browne [The Legend of Lylah Clare], in a salon. Ian Hendry, Jack Hawkins [Land of the Pharaohs], Arthur Lowe, Michael Hordern, Robert Coote and Dennis Price [Your Past Is Showing] are all notable as assorted victims, as is Milo O'Shea as the baffled police inspector on the case, and Joan Hickson as the wife who wakes up with a headless corpse in her bed. One has to wonder: was Lionheart really as mediocre an actor as everyone says, or were the critics out to get him for one reason or another?

Verdict: One of the most diabolical and gruesome of revenge thrillers with many darkly amusing moments. *** out of 4.

JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN

George Maharis in "Miss Belle"

JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN. 1968 television series.

This British import ran for one season and was produced by Joan Harrison, who worked on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but if this show is any indication she had lowered her standards for scripts considerably for the later series. The majority of episodes not only would have been instantly rejected by Hitch, but are lame by any standard, with weak premises devoid of a final snap or twist. There are very few exceptions. "The New People" is an excellent, creepy, and suspenseful episode [directed by Peter Sasdy from Charles Beaumont] in which a young couple have very strange if fun-loving neighbors; the cast includes Robert Reed and a notable Milo O'Shea. "One on an Island" [from Donald Westlake] features a fine performance from Brandon De Wilde [All Fall Down] in an absorbing story of a young man shipwrecked on an isolated island. It shouldn't work at all but somehow it does. "Matakitas is Coming" stars Vera Miles as a woman who writes about murders for a magazine and finds herself locked in a library that has somehow gone back in time to the night a librarian was murdered by a maniac back in the 1920s. The murderer is creeping about, and so is the victim ... The episode has an excellent premise even if its execution is uneven and a little confusing. Also Miles is a little too perfunctory at times given her character's situation. "Somewhere in a Crowd," with David Hedison [Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea] giving one of his best performances (in a tale wherein the same group of people keep showing up at disasters), would have been one of the series' more memorable episodes were it not for the fact that it's a complete, uncredited rip-off of Ray Bradbury's 1948 short story "The Crowd." George Maharis appears in an unpleasant look at child abuse -- a woman raises her little nephew as a girl -- in "Miss Belle." And there were episodes even worse than that.NOTE: Some of the episodes from the show were strung together to make TV movies. One, Journey to the Unknown, features Joan Crawford as host and presents "Matakitas" and an episode with Patty Duke vacationing at the English seaside at an inn with a strange landlady.

Verdict: Three decent episodes does not a great series make. **.