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Stars: Susan George, Leo Genn, Judy Huxtable, Barry Evans, Christopher Sandford, Alan Curtis | Written by Murray Smith | Directed by Pete Walker

Directed by Pete Walker, Die Screaming Marianne is a British exploitation thriller that blends psychological tension with elements of a family drama and a hint of sleazy horror. The film revolves around Marianne (Susan George), a go-go dancer on the run from her corrupt father, a retired judge (Leo Genn), and her manipulative half-sister Hildegarde (Judy Huxtable), both of whom are desperate to get their hands on a hidden fortune that Marianne unknowingly controls.

The film’s storyline is thin but serviceable, with much of its appeal relying on the suspense and cat-and-mouse chase between Marianne and her family. Marianne’s dance sequences, while not particularly central to the plot, set a suggestive tone that emphasizes her vulnerability. The Mediterranean setting adds a layer of exotic danger, but the...

By David Comfort

At Eastertime, 1994, Kurt Cobain was found in a storage room, a gunshot hole in his head, a heroin hypodermic hole in each arm. Suicide or murder? After 16 years of heated argument, authorities and amateur sleuths are no less divided on the question. Supporters of the Seattle Police Department’s suicide ruling include Cobain biographers, Charles R. Cross and Christopher Sandford, as well as journalists Charles Rawlins, Bradley Spears, and many others. Supporters of a murder conspiracy include biographers Max Wallace and Ian Halperin, as well as Courtney Love’s private detective, T...

For a portrait of an unfinished life, Christopher Sandford's biography of director Roman Polanski feels unnaturally cyclical. While Sandford certainly isn't the first to connect Polanski's 2002 Oscar win for the Holocaust tale The Pianist with his childhood in Nazi-occupied Poland, he couples that scene of triumph and several others with a hopeful repetition of tabloid rumors that Polanski will soon settle his legal troubles with America connected with his 1977 sexual assault on a minor. Mostly, it feels like a device that Polanski would never use, and at odds with Sandford's largely cool and even-handed appraisal of his life. Sandford's unauthorized Polanski: A Biography relies on hundreds of interviews in retelling Polanski's life, beginning in wartime Warsaw. His old friends suggest that the duplicity he used to evade capture also helped preserve his reputation as the enfant terrible of the state's film school as he plotted his...