Night of the demon/Curse of the demon 1957 - The significant horror classic

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IMDB Rating: 7,6

Director: Jacques Tourneur
Main Cast: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham

"One of the finest horror films ever made, Curse of the Demon is a frightening, fast-paced, and unrelenting chiller that only gets better with passing years and repeated viewings. Directed by Jacques Tourneur from the M.R. James story Casting the Runes, Curse stars Dana Andrews as a psychologist out to disprove the black magic of co-star Niall MacGinnis. Peggy Cummings also stars as the daughter of a scientist killed by the title creature during the shocking opening. Tourneur was a master at scaring an audience by the power of suggestion, and Curse accomplished this with one exception: the producer insisted the 'demon' had to make its appearance at the beginning and ending of the film. That aside, the film is a masterful collage of fine filmmaking from its sharply written story, characters, and dialogue to Clifton Parker's spine-tingling score and the spectacular special effects, highlighted by production designer Ken Adams' terrifying demon. The performances are excellent across the board, with Andrews solid as the boorish non-believer who refuses to become convinced of the curse placed on him. MacGinnis' character is the real gem, a devilish trickster whose devious delight in the black arts hides a surprisingly bratty and less-than-sinister bad guy. This character was loosely based on the famed occultist, Aleister Crowley." - www.allmovie.com

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The best years of our lives 1946 - The postwar classic

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IMDB rating: 8,2

Director: William Wyler
Main Cast: Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Cathy O'Donnell, Hoagy Carmichael

"When Samuel Goldwyn decided to make The Best Years of Our Lives, Hollywood was running away from World War II-related scripts as though the subject itself had the plague -- movies about men in uniform had been box-office poison since early 1945. The assumption was that returning veterans would be even less willing than those who'd stayed on the home front to shell out money to be reminded of their service. Goldwyn, director William Wyler, and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood (working from MacKinlay Kantor's blank verse novel Glory for Me), and a cast from heaven (some of them, like Dana Andrews and Virginia Mayo, giving the greatest performances of their careers) proved the industry wrong, and they opened up a whole new subject area by focusing on the men giving up their uniforms, the women and children around them, and even the men who hadn't served. They ended up with a 170-minute movie whose every shot was dramatically and psychically spellbinding, embracing the relief, anxiety, pain, joy, and doubts that Americans could now express. The setting of the movie in a small city somewhere in the middle of the country gave it a Norman Rockwell veneer, while the script melded that background with some healthy cynicism and emotional honesty borne out of the movie world's new awareness of modern psychology. Thus, the film had its feet in both pre-war and post-war consciousness, appealing to two generations of filmgoers (or even three, as the World War I-era audience was still around and had hardly been served well in its own time).
Profoundly relevant in 1946, the film still offers a surprisingly intricate and ambivalent exploration of American daily life; and it features landmark deep-focus cinematography from Gregg Toland, who also shot Citizen Kane. The film won Oscars for, among others, Best Picture, Best Director for the legendary William Wyler, Best Actor for March, and Best Supporting Actor for Harold Russell, a real-life double amputee whose hands had been blown off in a training accident." - www.allmovie.com

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Laura 1944 - An elegantly crafted classic film noir

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IMDB rating: 8,2

Director: Otto Preminger
Main Cast: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson

"This adaptation of Vera Caspary's suspense novel was begun by director Rouben Mamoulien and cinematographer Lucien Ballard, but thanks to a complex series of backstage intrigues and hostilities, the film was ultimately credited to director Otto Preminger and cameraman Joseph LaShelle. Preminger's low-key approach to a story of lethal obsession allows the suggestions of sexual deviance emanating from Clifton Webb's epicene critic Lydecker, Dana Andrews's cynical yet besotted necrophiliac cop, and the pragmatic Vincent Price-Judith Anderson couple to permeate the seductively cool atmosphere. David Raksin's famously bewitching theme invokes titular mysterious beauty Gene Tierney, but it is questionable if the real woman can measure up to the power of portraiture and Lydecker's memory. 'Proper' love may triumph but it is a compromised victory. One of the most popular suspense films of the 1940s, Laura earned Oscar nominations for Best Director, Supporting Actor for Webb, Interior (now Art) Direction, and the sharp screenplay, winning the prize for Joseph LaShelle's black and white cinematography. Released the same year as Billy Wilder's caustic noir Double Indemnity, Laura was another intimation of the wave of cinematic darkness that would crest post-World War II." - www.allmovie.com

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