Retrovision Internet TV

Here’s about a dozen examples of classic 1950’s soap operas. A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction on television or radio. Programs described as soap operas have existed as an entertainment long enough for audiences to recognize…

The 39 Steps is a 1935 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the adventure novel The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan. The film stars Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll.
There have been four major film versions of…

Set in Europe during World War I, the plot focuses on the tragic romance between Frederick Henry (Gary Cooper), an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian Army, and English Red Cross nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes). Major Rinaldi envies…

A River Runs Through It is an Academy Award winning 1992 American film directed by Robert Redford and starring Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer, Tom Skerritt, Brenda Blethyn, and Emily Lloyd. It is a period drama based on the semi-autobiographical novella…

A Star Is Born (1937) is a romantic drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William A. Wellman, with a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. It stars Janet Gaynor as an aspiring…

Jimmy is a hard-working young man who lives in the tough streets of New York City with dreams of becoming a lawyer. Abraham Lincoln is his role model. Jimmy tries to keep the neighborhood waifs out of trouble as he…

Adaptation stars Nicolas Cage (as both Charlie and Donald Kaufman), as well as Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Cara Seymour, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Ron Livingston and Maggie Gyllenhaal. The film tells the story of Charlie Kaufman’s difficult struggle to adapt…

Originally 30 minutes per episode, the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents was expanded to 60 minutes in 1962 and retitled The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Hitchcock himself only directed 17 of the 270 filmed episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and only one…

Charles Laughton plays Edward C. Wilson Esq, who despite his title, is the town character. His drunken debauchery puts him at odds with Mr. Gray, the resident in charge of the welcome islands. It also puts him at odds with…

There are only two public domain Bogart films that I am aware of. This is one of them and it’s a real gem. It was so good, I even digitally restored it, so watching it right here is going to…

A city boy arrives in his late mother’s birthplace to discover the locals have been pestered by drought, old feuds and “the Big Cat”. A cougar with a bad attitude.

FBI and ATF agents on a pursuit to stop a truck carrying illegal guns as part of an illegal arms operation. The driver is killed, which leads to a disagreement with FBI and ATF agents, which would carry on throughout…

The Society of the Black Dragons sends Bela Lugosi (Dr. Melcher) to transform 6 japanese into indentical likenesses of American industrialists forming a 5th column. This is at the behest of the Nazis. This film isn’t as good as British…

Gang violence and racism among high school kids is the order of the day in this juvenile delinquent film with Rita Moreno making an appearece that Pre-dates her role in “West Side Story”. Also known as “This Rebel Breed”.

This is a digest version of the Rudolf Valentino movie for the TV series “Silent’s Please”. It features Rudolph Valentino in Ibanez’s classic romantic tragedy about the rise and fall of a matador.
Blood and Sand (1922) is a silent…

“The Bremen Town Musicians” is a German made kid’s show that is based on a fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm. Despite the title of the fairy tale the animals never actually arrive in Bremen.
In the story a…

Deep in the South American jungles, plantation manager Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) kills his elderly employer in order to get to his beautiful wife Dina Van Gleder (Payton). However, an old native witch witnesses the crime and puts a curse…

The Buddy Holly Story is a 1978 biographical film which tells the life story of rock musician Buddy Holly. It stars Gary Busey, Don Stroud, Charles Martin Smith, Conrad Janis, William Jordan, and Maria Richwine, who played Maria Elena Holly.…

In this adventure, John Barrymore replaces H.B. Warner as Col. Nielsen and shadows Drummond in various guises as he tries to rescue his beloved Phyllis from arch-criminals seeking revenge against him. As usual, the story is fast-paced and full of…

The intended wedding of Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond (John Howard) to Phyllis Clavering (Louise Campbell) at her villa in Switzerland is stopped short (once again) when someone murders the Swiss policeman who is guarding their wedding presents. The killer makes…

In the South Seas, Bill Jones, captain of the schooner “Marigold”, is known as Captain Calamity as he is quick to fight or frolic. Stone broke on the island of Quica and with his ship in need or re-stocking, Bill…

This historical drama recounts the events that led up to the rule of Russia’s 18th-century Catherine the Great. Arriving from Germany as a young woman who is to wed Grand Duke Peter, she soon becomes caught up in the court…

Martin Sheen plays a priest who must enforce the church doctrine that the Mass should be said in native languages. The monks of a remote monastery disagree and think that the Mass should remain prayed in Latin.

Chaplin is a 1992 British biographical film about the life of English comedian Charlie Chaplin. It was produced and directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Robert Downey, Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Kevin Kline, and Anthony Hopkins. It also features Geraldine Chaplin…

Chaplin is a 1992 British biographical film about the life of English comedian Charlie Chaplin. It was produced and directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Robert Downey, Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Kevin Kline, and Anthony Hopkins. It also features Geraldine Chaplin…

The documentary film about Christian the Lion has had several titles applied to it.
“The Lion At World’s End”, “The Lion Who Thought He Was People”, but most commonly it is called “Christian the Lion”.
The story is about a…

Charles Bronson plays Joe Martin. Joe has a jaded past, but has settled down and become a fisherman married to Lee Remick Liv Ullman. Some of his old army buddies look him up and want him to smuggle heroin in…

Chester Morris and Thelma Todd star in this 1931 film about a football coach who became a stock broker, but didn’t have the heart for stealing from widows and orphans. To ease his conscience, while still making a ton of money, he becomes a high seas pirate.

Cyrano de Bergerac (1950) is a black-and-white feature film based on the 1897 French Alexandrine verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. It uses poet Brian Hooker’s 1923 English blank verse translation as the basis for its screenplay. The…

David Copperfield is a 1969 American television film based on the novel by Charles Dickens made in the UK.
The movie starred Robin Phillips in the title role and Ralph Richardson as Micawber. Among other well-known actors and actresses featured,…

A piano player, Al (Neal), sets off hitchhiking his way to California to be with his girl. Along the way, a stranger in a convertible gives him a ride. While driving, Al stops to put the top up during a…

Sylvia Walton (Ida James) of Harlem inherits a Jamaican banana plantation and returns to manage it. Since her arrival, there’s been no sign of her disinherited half-sister Isabelle (Nina Mae McKinney), who ran the plantation until their father’s death. But…

Ralph Byrd, who had played the square-jawed sleuth in all four Republic movie serials, and in two of the RKO feature length films, reprised his role in a short-lived live-action Dick Tracy series that ran on ABC from 1950 to…

Dick Tracy graduated to four feature films, produced by RKO Radio Pictures. Dick Tracy (aka Dick Tracy, Detective) (1945) was followed by Dick Tracy vs. Cueball in 1946, both with Morgan Conway as Tracy. Ralph Byrd returned for the last…

Dick Tracy is a long-running comic strip featuring a popular and familiar character in American pop culture. Dick Tracy is a hard-hitting, fast-shooting, and supremely intelligent police detective who has matched wits with a variety of often grotesquely ugly villains.…

I liked this movie. Hedy Lamar plays fashion editor Madeleine Damien who’s social life has given her a questionable reputation. Finally she succumbs to the pressures of work and a tarnished image and suffers an emotional breakdown. She seeks professional…

Woman’s love…Man’s hate…Blazing romance in a city aflame with carnival pleasures! This is a early talkie musical with a lot of energy starring lovely Bebe Daniels in the title role. I thought it was fun.

Cyrus Wentworth is upset by an accident involving his ocean liner that is carrying a shipment of illegal chinese bonds. He is shot in his office and his future son-in-law is arrested for the murder. Reporter Bobby Logan is convinced…

Dr. James Kildare was a fictional character, the primary character in a series of American theatrical films in the late 1930s and early 1940s, an early 1950s radio series, a 1960s television series of the same name and a comic…

Emergency! was a medical drama television series that was produced by Mark VII Limited (Jack Webb’s company) and distributed by Universal Studios. It debuted as a midseason replacement on January 15, 1972, on NBC, replacing the short-lived series The Good…

Nick Allen comes to the rescue when a gun moll Jo Elliot gets hassled on the street. Spudsy, Red and Jo take it on the lam and Nick ends up going along. They get stranded because of car trouble and end up staying with old, blind Pop Regan. After weeks with Pop Regan, all of them seem to like the rural lifestyle better and start to think about going straight.

Escape from Sobibor is a made-for-TV film which aired in 1987 on CBS. It deals with the extermination camp at Sobibor, the site of the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination camps (there were two other uprisings,…

Falling in Love is a 1984 American romantic-drama film starring Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro and directed by Ulu Grosbard. Its plot is based on (or inspired by) the 1945 British film Brief Encounter.
Two married strangers meet randomly, become…

Before it became a long-running original television show, Fantasy Island was introduced to viewers in 1977 through two highly-rated made-for-television films in which Mr. Roarke and Tattoo played relatively minor roles. Airing from 1978 to 1984, the original series starred…

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a 1998 film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. The film, directed by Terry Gilliam, stars…

This is a 1995 remake of  the 1960’s show “Flipper” updated for 1995.  It has beautiful Florida landscapes and great cinematography.  You could like it just for beautiful Jessica Alba. It qualifies as wholesome family entertainment, just as the original…

Four Star Playhouse is a television anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1956. The original premise was that Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven and Dick Powell would take turns starring in episodes. However, several other performers took the…

Go for Broke! is a war film released in 1951. It was directed by Robert Pirosh, produced by Dore Schary and starred Van Johnson, several veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and Henry Nakamura.
The film dramatizes the real-life…

Charlton Heston brings to the island a shipload of Chinese slaves to work the plantation fields. With Asian Tina Chen at his side, Heston creates a thriving pineapple plantation.

The Hitch-Hiker (1953) is a film noir directed by Ida Lupino about two hunting buddies who pick up a mysterious hitchhiker. The movie was written by Robert L. Joseph, Lupino and her husband Collier Young based on a story by…