Night Watch a suspenseful, under-rated thriller tells the story of a lonely, unhappily married woman who believes that she sees a murder committed in the deserted house across her courtyard. Ellen Wheeler (Elizabeth Taylor) spends her nights alone, drinking, wandering around her living room, and looking out the window. One night she witnesses a murder. She calls the police, who investigate, but find nothing. Her husband John (Laurence Harvey) believes that she has imagined the entire thing, but her friend Sarah (Billie Whitelaw), while skeptical, is sympathetic to her deeply troubled friend.

Back in business once more is Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), who finds his fabled monster (Kiwi Kingston) frozen in a block of ice. Once the creature is thawed out, the Baron, worried that the big lug might develop a mind of his own, engages the services of a hypnotist (Peter Woodthorpe). Instead of keeping the monster docile, the hypnotist decides to use old "Frankie" for his own evil designs, and we're off and running again.

Shy Brenda Thompson writes naive children's stories to amuse herself. Stifled and desperate for a man of her own, she leaves Liverpool, telling her mom she's pregnant, and gets a job in a boutique in London. She moves in with the promiscuous but good-hearted Caroline but the mod set shuns her for her plain looks. Then she kidnaps a strange young man's dog, so as to perhaps get to know him while returning it. The young man turns out to be Peter, a psychopath with a predilection for killing beautiful things. He renames Brenda Wendy, and they start a hopeful, if strange, relationship. It might have a chance, if it weren't for Peter's murderous secrets.

In The Green Man Alistair Sim plays a mild, innocuous little watchmaker who spends his off-hours as a professional assassin. His present target is windbag cabinet member Raymond Huntley. After various misfire attempts, Sim plants a bomb in a small radio and waits for the tube to warm up--but the authorities by now are on to him. The Green Man has some excellent setpieces, notably a droll snatch of black humor involving a body stuffed in a piano.

Above Suspicion is a brisk and lightly likeable spy thriller, from a novel by Helen MacInnes, with Fred MacMurray and Joan Crawford as newly-weds on honeymoon in Europe (hence the title), persuaded by Britain to do a bit of spying. Basil Rathbone contributes his characteristic flair as the Nazi villain, and the whole thing gallops along in pleasant, undemanding and totally incredible fashion.

This offbeat take on the Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde archetype was considered a misfire in its day but time has been kind to its unorthodox take on this familiar story. Wolf Mankowitz's script downplays thrills and chills for a psychological exploration of the Jekyll/Hyde duality and uses this story to create a pointed critique of the repression and hypocrisy of the Victorian era. Terence Fisher directs the complex tale with energy and verve, ably selling both the glittery temptation of the "sins" that Hyde craves and the inevitable, demoralizing comedown that Jekyll suffers.

The "Scarlet Pimpernel" legend is updated to WW2 in the breathless actioner Pimpernel Smith. Leslie Howard (who also directed) plays bespectacled and seemingly mild-mannered Professor Smith, who under cover of darkness transforms into a tireless defender of democracy. With the help of several loyal companions, Smith makes several forays into Nazi-occupied territories to rescue the oppressed victims of the Third Reich, using a phony archeological expedition to throw the villains off the track.

Nineteenth century England. When Nicholas Nickleby's father dies and leaves his family destitute, his uncle, the greedy moneylender, Ralph Nickleby, finds Nicholas a job teaching in a repulsive school in Yorkshire. Nicholas flees the school taking with him one of the persecuted boys, Smike, and they join a troop of actors. Nicholas then has to protect Smike, while trying to stop his Uncle Ralph taking advantage of his sister Kate, and later his sweetheart, Madeline Bray, whose father is in debtors prison.

Hammer's trademark gothic style permeates this suspenseful thriller, considered one of the acclaimed British studio's superior efforts, thanks largely to the directorial skills of Peter Sasdy. This marked his last feature-length collaboration with the studio until 1980, when he returned to direct installments of the Hammer House of Horror television series. In the film's prologue, young Anna, the infant daughter of the notorious Jack the Ripper, witnesses her mother's brutal murder at her father's hands. Years later, the lovely teenage Anna (Angharad Rees) is plagued by traumatic memories of the incident and repressed impulses in which love and death are inextricably linked. These impulses finally turn homicidal when her emotions are stirred, spelling doom for anyone who arouses her.

Set in England, The Executioner stars American actor George Peppard as John Shay, a British spy. Shay is convinced that there's a double agent at large, and he's further convinced that it's his former colleague Adam Booth (Keith Michell). Having set himself up as judge and jury, Shay now intends to act the part of executioner. Also figuring into the proceedings (and displaying various degrees of guilt and innocence) are Joan Collins, Judy Geeson and Oscar Homolka.

Noel Coward's favorite play was certainly a departure for David Lean, best known for adapting Dickens in the '40s. While it's the director's only comedy, the result is a delightful gem. Rex Harrison is an acerbic author haunted by the ghost of first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond), who tries to seduce him all over again. This throws his second wife (Constance Cummings) into a panic, second-guessing her lack of passion. It's a celestial sex romp that hasn't lost its bite. Margaret Rutherford, as always, steals the show as the sardonic medium.

An international collection of character actors grace the cast of this low budget western. Terence Stamp stars as Azul, the son of evil Mexican bandit Ortega (Ricardo Montalban). Although Azul is a mean, low-down, varmint like Ortega's three other sons, there is a slight glimmer of goodness in his soul since he is adopted. He proves it when he kills one of his brothers who was attempting to rape beautiful Texan maid Joanne (Joanna Pettet). Renouncing his adopted family and claiming a new moniker by the name of Blue, he helps Joanne and her father on their farm, and soon Blue and Joanne are in love. Remorseful at the loss of Blue, Ortega tracks him down to regain his love.

The life story of the legendary Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin gets the highly fictionalized Hammer Films treatment with this liberal mix of horror and history that presents the mysterious sage as a demonic, otherworldly creature. Christopher Lee stars as the titular monk, who gains entrée to the world of the tsar by casting a hypnotic spell on two courtiers, Dr. Zargo (Richard Pasco) and the beautiful Sonia (Barbara Shelley). Becoming a trusted aide and confidant of the tsarina (Renee Ashershon), Rasputin threatens the national power structure.

John Ford's beautiful, heartfelt drama about a close-knit family of Welsh coal miners is one of the greatest films of Hollywood's golden age--a gentle masterpiece that beat Citizen Kane in the Best Picture race for the 1941 Academy Awards. The picture also won Oscars for Best Director (Ford), Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography; all of those awards were richly deserved, even if they came at the expense of Kane and Orson Welles. Based on the novel by Richard Llewellyn, the film focuses its eventful story on 10-year-old Huw (Roddy McDowall), youngest of seven children to Mr. and Mrs. Morgan (Donald Crisp, Sarah Allgood), a hardy couple who've seen the best and worst of times in their South Wales mining town.

Dear Murderer is a complex Gainsborough thriller directed by the reliable Arthur Crabtree. The intelligent script is presented by a cast of deeply unpleasant and unsympathetic characters, chief amongst them Oslo-born Greta Gynt as a footloose wife and Eric Portman’s cruel spouse. It comes as something to rejoice when both get their comeuppance.