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by Jason Adams

Tell me if you've heard this plot before: a closed-minded outsider with a sordid spiritual history comes to a rural UK village where they slowly unravel a plot involving each and every member of the town being in on the ritual sacrifice of a virginal young woman, with a twist. You're thinking The Wicker Man, right? Well seven years before Christopher Lee did his exuberant little dance beside that infamous flaming totem Joan Fontaine got there first in 1966's The Witches, an actual Hammer production (I always think The Wicker Man is from Hammer, but it ain't) that really doesn't get the love it earns...

Curious about all those Region B Hammer Blu-rays from overseas, the ones requiring a region-free player? As a public service, Savant has solicited an expert opinion (you'll have to take my word for that) of a film restoration/transfer specialist who is also an informed fan of the filmic output of the little horror studio at Bray. I know, real Hammer fans buy first and worry about quality later, but this little guide might be of help to the rest of us budget-conscious collectors.

A 'Guest' article Written by a trusted Savant correspondent.

(Note: I receive plenty of emails asking for advice about the quality of Region B Blu-rays, most of which I don't see. I have access to industry people qualified to compare and judge the discs, but they stay off the record, because their employers forbid them to go online with their opinions. They must sometimes simmer in...

Fontaine, who died aged 96 only hours after Peter O'Toole, was the prototype 'Hitchcock blonde' – attractive, malleable, neurotic

On a sad weekend for the film world, the news of the death of Lawrence of Arabia star Peter O'Toole was swiftly followed by that of the passing away of a leading light of an earlier generation: Joan Fontaine. Fontaine, perhaps best remembered as the prototype of the "Hitchcock blonde" – attractive, malleable, neurotic – died only a few hours after O'Toole, at the age of 96 on Sunday morning at home in Carmel in California.

Fontaine's most notable role was arguably that of the "second Mrs de Winter" in Rebecca, the 1940 adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's gothic novel that marked Alfred Hitchcock's Hollywood debut. he would go on to gain an Oscar nomination for the role in 1940 – and actually win the best actress award a year later for a second Hitchcock film, Suspicion.

It has been a very sad weekend, as two of cinema's most revered talents have passed away. On Saturday, it was Peter O'Toole, and just a day later, Joan Fontaine has left us at the age of 96. While her big screen career was relatively brief—her last theatrical role was in the 1966 film "The Witches"—her impact was undeniable. In the span of three years, she was nominated for an Oscar three times, winning for Best Actress in Alfred Hitchcock's classic "Suspicion" (she was nominated in the same category for "Rebecca" in 1940 and "The Constant Nymph" in 1943). And in general, the 1940s found her doing some of her most memorable work including roles in Robert Stevenson's "Jane Eyre" opposite Orson Welles, Max Ophuls' "Letter From An Unknown Woman" and "Ivy." By the '60s, Fontaine had begun working more steadily in television and on stage, where she...

First Peter O'Toole, and now Joan Fontaine (née Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland)? It's going to be a rough week. Hollywood lost another of its living giants this weekend when Ms Fontaine passed away of natural causes at 96 years of age. The two-time Hitchcock heroine, bizarrely the only actor to ever win an Oscar in one of his films, is survived by her daughter Debbie and her older estranged sister Olivia. Though Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland are the most successful sister movie stars of all time (both A listers, Oscar winners, and stars of at least one immortal classic) they were famously competitive, never got on well, and haven't spoken since 1975!

The actress would undoubtedly shoot us one of those delicious cocked eyebrow looks to hear her sister mentioned so prominently in all of her obituaries but Old Hollywood Mythology is too enticing to ignore. 

Though her career was very successful in the 40s,...

Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine has died, per the AP and multiple news reports. She was 97. Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland to British parents in Japan, Fontaine began her film career under contract with Rko in films like The Man Who Found Himself (1937), her official onscreen “introduction,” A Damsel in Distress (1937) opposite Fred Astaire, and George Cukor’s The Women (1939). A year after leaving Rko, Fontaine starred in the gothic thriller Rebecca as a woman haunted by her new husband’s (Laurence Olivier) dead wife. The film, Alfred Hitchcock‘s American debut, was nominated for 11 Oscars and won two including Best Picture. Fontaine earned her first Best Actress nod and reteamed with Hitch the following year for another domestic thriller, Suspicion, which won her the Academy Award over sister Olivia de Havilland, who was herself nominated for Hold Back The Dawn. Fontaine’s third Best Actress nomination was awarded for 1943′s The Constant Nymph.

Academy Award-winning actress Joan Fontaine, the leading lady known for her string of roles as demure, well-mannered and often well-bred heroines in the 1940s, and the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, died today at her home in Carmel, California; she was 96.

Known best for her back-to-back roles in two Alfred Hitchcock thrillers -- the 1940 Best Picture winner Rebecca and the 1941 film Suspicion, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar, making her the ony actor in a Hitchcock film to receive an Academy Award -- she and her sister were enshrined in Hollywood lore as intense rivals, and their rivalry reached a peak of sorts when Fontaine beat de Havilland for the 1941 Best Actress Oscar.

Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in 1917 in Tokyo, Japan, Fontaine suffered from recurring ailments throughout her childhood, resulting in her mother moving both her and Olivia to California. While her mother, stage actress Lillian Fontaine, desired for both her daughters to be actresses, it was only Olivia who initially pursued an acting career, as Fontaine returned to Japan for two years when she was 15 years old to live with her father, who divorced Lillian in 1919. Upon returning to the states, Fontaine found that Olivia was already becoming an established actress, and began to embark on her own career. Starting out in theater, Joan initially changed her name to Joan Burfield, then Joan Fontaine (so as to avoid confusion with her sister), and soon found herself in moderately noteworthy parts in such films as You Can't Beat Love (1937), A Damsel in Distress (1937, opposite Fred Astaire) and Gunga Din (1939, alongside Cary Grant, her future leading man in Suspicion). Though she garnered more notice in 1939 in the supporting part of naive newlywed Peggy Day in the classic comedy The Women, she was far eclipsed in fame and reputation by her sister, who had already starred along Errol Flynn in a number of romance adventures, and who received her first Oscar nomination for the blockbuster Gone With the Wind.

It was the same man who cast de Havilland in Gone With the Wind who would make Fontaine into a major star. Looking to follow up the monstrous success of Gone With the Wind with another noteworthy literary adapation, producer David O. Selnick snapped up the rights to the Daphne du Maurier bestseller Rebecca, in which an unnamed, demure heroine -- known only as "the second Mrs. de Winter" -- is taunted by the memory of her husband's first wife, the beautiful and seductive title character. Selznick brought director Alfred Hitchcock over for his first American production, cast matinee idol and rising star Laurence Olivier as moody, mysterious husband Maxim de Winter, and embarked on a Scarlett O'Hara-style talent search for his leading lady. Rejecting Loretta Young, Margaret Sullavan, Vivian Leigh (then Olivier's wife), and a then-unknown Anne Baxter along with hundreds of other actresses, Selznick decided on Fontaine, who though not an established star projected the right mix of beauty, insecurity, and tenacity needed for the part. Fontaine's insecurity, however, was heightened by Olivier's sometimes cruel treatment of her on set, as he had lobbied aggressively for Leigh to get the role, and Hitchcock capitalized on her inferiority complex to shape her performance. The resulting film, released in 1940, was an unqualified critical and financial success, catapulting Fontaine into the tier of top Hollywood leading ladies, establishing Hitchcock firmly in the United States, and nabbing the film 11 Academy Award nominations, includine ones for both Fontaine and Olivier; it would go on to win Best Picture.

Selznick, pleased with the combination of Hitchcock and Fontaine, signed the two on for a follow-up about a demure heiress who begins to suspect that her playboy husband is out to murder her for her money. Initially titled Before the Fact, it would later be retitled Suspicion, and Cary Grant was cast as the charming but caddish husband. Though the final ending of the film was tinkered with -- studio heads thought making Grant guilty would be bad for box office, and insisted on a twist to make him actually heroic -- it was another success, earning three Oscar nominations, including Fontaine's second Best Actress nod. It was at the 1941 Academy Awards that Fontaine, once considered the also-ran to her movie star sister, beat Olivia de Havilland for the Best Actress Oscar (de Havilland had been nominated for Hold Back the Dawn). In what became part of Hollywood and Academy Award legend, Fontaine coolly rejected her sister's efforts at congratulations, and What had always been a fractious relationship since childhood became officially estranged. Hollywood wags often reported that because de Havilland lost to her sister, she would retaliate by winning two Oscars -- in 1946 for To Each His Own and 1949 for The Heiress -- in order to top Fontaine. The two would officially stop speaking to one another in 1975.

Fontaine received a third Oscar nomination in 1943, for the music melodrama The Constant Nymph, and that same year essayed the title role in the commercially successful if moderately well-regarded version of Jane Eyre opposite Orson Welles. She remained a star throughout the 1940s, appearing in the comedy The Affairs of Susan (1945), the thriller Ivy (1947), and opposite Bing Crosby in The Emperor Waltz (1948). Fontaine also gave what many consider to be her best performance in 1948's Letters from an Unknown Woman, Max Ophuls' romantic drama opposite Louis Jourdan. In 1945 she divorced her first husband, actor Brian Aherne, and in 1946 married producer William Dozier, whom she would divorce in 1951. Two years later, she was embroiled in a bitter custody battle with him over their daughter, Debbie, and the ongoing lawsuit would prevent Fontaine from accepting the role of frustrated military wife Karen Holmes in the Oscar-winning drama From Here to Eternity -- Deborah Kerr was instead cast, and received an Oscar nomination for the part.

Though she continued to work throughout the 1950s, most notably in the lavish Technicolor adaptation of Ivanhoe (1952), Ida Lupino's film noir The Bigamist (1953), and in the pioneering if often campy racial drama Island in the Sun (1957), her work in both film and television lessened, and her last film appearance was in Hammer Films horror movie The Devil's Own (1966). Television work followed in the 1970s and 1980s, and Fontaine received a Daytime Emmy nomination for the soap opera Ryan's Hope. She published an autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978, and after the television film Good King Wenceslas (1994), retired officially to her home in Carmel, California.

Fontaine is survived by her daughter, Debbie Dozier.

Admired actress Joan Fontaine, best known for her roles in the Hitchcock films Suspicion and Rebecca, has passed away, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She was 96.

Fontaine, who was born "Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland" to British parents—her father: a patent attorney; her mother: a stage actress, whose stage name was Lillian Fontaine— in Tokyo, Japan in 1917.

After her parents divorced, Fontaine, her mother, and her older sister, Olivia, moved to California. She made her acting debut in a stage production of Call It a Day at 18 and soon after made her film debut with a small role in the 1935 comedy No More Ladies.

Six years later, Fontaine was nominated for her first Oscar for starring opposite Laurence Olivier in the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock-directed mystery thriller Rebecca. She didn't have to wait long to take home her first Oscar, as she was granted the award for Best Actress the following year at the 1942 Oscars for [link...

Legendary actress Joan Fontaine has died. She was 96. No details are immediately available.

Born in Japan to British parents in 1917, she and her sister Olivia de Havilland moved to California as toddlers and began working for Rko Pictures by 1935. Early roles include the likes of "Quality Street" and "The Women," "Gunga Din," "The Man Who Found Himself," and "Damsel in Distress".

Fontaine achieved stardom in the early 1940s when she scored an Oscar nomination for Alfred Hitchcock's Best Picture winner "Rebecca" (underrated and one of my personal favorite Hitchcocks).

The following year she went on to win the Oscar for "Suspicion," her second team-up with Hitchcock and the only actress to ever win for a Hitchcock film. Fontaine beat her sister that year at the Oscars, and a rejected attempt to congratulate her added to an already frictional relationship - the pair having not spoken since the 1970s. De Havilland currently lives in Paris.

★★★☆☆ Cyril Frankel's The Witches (1966) has long been one of the overlooked works in Hammer's horror stable. Though attention may be drawn by the presence of writer Nigel Kneale in adapting Norah Lofts' novel The Devil's Own for the big screen, the lack of the studio's regular star talent (Cushing, Lee et al.) made it something of a curio. Kneale's subsequent criticism of the film for abandoning his humorous treatment in favour of conventional horror fare may also have led to its neglect. It is perhaps deserving of a little more attention, however, and StudioCanal are on hand to deliver a beautiful new restoration.

Joan Fontaine makes her final big screen appearance in the film playing the part of Gwen, a teacher convalescing in the pastoral British countryside. After a mental breakdown brought on by witch doctors plaguing an African missionary school at which she worked, she takes a...

To mark the release of The Witches on October 21st we’ve been given three copies to give away on Blu-ray.

Following the releases of the fully restored Hammer classics, The Devil Rides Out, The Mummy’S Shroud and Rasputin The Mad Monk last year, Studiocanal are delighted to announce the release of The Witches fully restored just in time for Halloween! This new restoration will have 2 screenings at the 57th BFI London Film Festival on October 11th and 16th, and will be out on DVD/Blu-ray Double play on October 21st.

Originally released in 1966, The Witches is an unforgettably chilling pastoral horror from legendary British production company Hammer. Adapted for the screen by Nigel Kneale (The Quatermass Experiment) it also stars Joan Fontaine (Rebecca, Suspicion) in her last major film role.

Gwen Mayfield, an English schoolteacher working as a missionary in Africa, suddenly finds herself being victimised by a tribe of local witch doctors.

The 57th BFI London Film Festival line-up has officially been revealed, and it is led by a slew of incredibly promising films, many of which have already been buzzing on the festival circuit, and a number of which will be making their debuts here in London.

As previously announced, Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips will open the festival next month, and John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr. Banks will close it, book-ending the festival with Tom Hanks leading two highly prominent, Oscar-primed movies.

Stephen Frears’ Philomena was also previously announced as the Lff American Express Gala, with The Epic of Everest announced as the Lff Archive Gala.

And leading the line-up alongside them this year will be some of the most Oscar-buzzed movies of 2013, including Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, Jason Reitman’s Labor Day, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (in 3D), Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis, Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem,...

"I'll see you in another life when we are both cats." –Tom Cruise, 'Vanilla Sky'

Greetings from the apocalypse! You might think that this particular Mad Max would enjoy watching Tom Cruise fight evil robots in a future nuclear-blasted wasteland, but Nope! "Oblivion" is a dud, though that doesn't mean we can't make it through the next few days as long as we stick together and don't cross the Dmz. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em, troops, we're goin' in …

Friday, April 19

Pow! In Theaters

Xenu's own Tom Cruise returns to comfortable sci-fi territory this week with "Oblivion," which I will henceforth refer to as "The Matrix Redressed." Cruise is the only living boy in post-apocalyptic New York, where he and a stuffy British chick (Andrea Riseborough, natch) maintain giant water vacuums when they're not having PG-13 swimming pool sex … that is, until the mysterious Olga Kurylenko arrives from outer space.

“My name is Bond - James Bond". That classic introduction to the cinema’s greatest secret agent is as famous as “I am Dracula, I bid you welcome.” When the box office success of Dr No (1962) turned the unknown Sean Connery into a movie legend, Hammer was never far away from the franchise. With their own films running parallel to the Bond series, Hammer and Eon Productions often made use of the same talent.

Dr No also marked the debuts of Bernard Lee (the first of 11 films as M) and Lois Maxwell (the first of 14 as Miss Moneypenny). Lee had a brief turn as Tarmut in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973) and despite never starring in a Hammer horror, Maxwell turned up in their early fifties thrillers Lady in the Fog (1953) and Mantrap (1954).

As doomed double-agent Professor Dent, Anthony Dawson is best known as the vile Marquis in Curse...

Oh, what a wonderful world! Not only is Hammer alive and kicking as a movie studio, but now they're also looking to bring their unique flavor to the bookshelves of fans everywhere!

According to the official Hammer website the studio will launch its new publishing imprint on March 10th with the release of two novels.

Francis Cottam has penned the novelization of The Resident (film review here), the new Hammer thriller starring Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Christopher Lee. The cover features distinctive photographic artwork based on the UK advertising.

Hammer's classic catalogue is also represented, with a brand new edition of Peter Curtis' source novel of The Witches, the 1966 horror starring Joan Fontaine and scripted by Nigel Kneale. Curtis' novel was first published in 1960 as The Devil's Own.

More soon!

- Uncle Creepy

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Hollywood veteran Clint Eastwood's prized 1966 Berlinetta Ferrari will be auctioned this weekend. Movie producer Dino De Laurentiis, the man behind hits including Death Wish and Hannibal, gave Eastwood the luxury vehicle while he filmed The Witches in Rome in 1966. The customized Ferrari will be sold to the highest bidder at Bonham's auction house in Gstaad, Switzerland, on Saturday. It is expected to fetch between $446,500 and $475,000. A spokesman for Bonham's says, "Imagine the reaction of Rome's female population when Hollywood's coolest star rode into town in a Ferrari. It probably made their day."...