Let's take a trip in the Cinema Retro time machine to August of 1970. Here were the big films that were playing in London at the time. Among the titles playing: "Paint Your Wagon", "The Lion in Winter" (in its 78th week!), "Airport", "Battle of Britain", "Patton" (under the UK title "Patton: Lust for Glory"), "M*A*S*H", the star-studded remake of "Julius Caesar", "Woodstock", "Hello Dolly" and John Wayne as "Chisum". Best of all, you could go on a date to a first rate theater in those days without applying for a second mortgage.  (Data from Kine Weekly film trade magazine).

To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant.

Click here to read a complete list of Hitchcock cameo film appearances as well as the opportunity to view them. 

Those were the days! This entertainment section from the Dallas Morning News of May 3, 1964, shows a wealth of great movies in theaters that week- along with a stage appearance by cast members of The Beverly Hilllibillies! Among the movies you could check out this week were Tom Jones, Lilies of the Field, Move Over, Darling, Seven Days in May, The Silence and The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. (Courtesy of Jim Kroeper collection)

We're not sure how many readers might still find movies dealing with the destruction of mankind by biological agents to be entertaining, but if you're in the mood, check out this complete version of "The Last Man on Earth", a 1964 Italian adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend". The film stars Vincent Price and, despite its obvious budget limitations, it's an effective chiller- and truer to the novel than the two other screen versions, "The Omega Man" starring Charlton Heston and "I Am Legend" starring Will Smith. Both of those films were boxoffice hits but that doesn't diminish the value of Price's lesser-known contribution to the Matheson canon. (Watch Joe Dante analyze the trailer on the Trailers from Hell site.)

In a 2018 essay that coincided with the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", Owen Gleiberman, writing in Variety, analyzes the impact of the movie and what it all really meant. (His theory is that it was less about space travel than the fact that technology could now mimic the intimacies of human feeling.) The film seemed poised to be a boxoffice flop but an imaginative new marketing campaign aimed at younger audiences clicked and paid off handsomely. Today, of course, it is regarded as a classic for the ages, even though some posture that anyone who thinks they really know what it is all about doesn't know what it's all about. It remains a fascinating puzzle that each of us can interpret in our own way.

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