20 movies with JAMES MASON on FilmStruck this week!

Conduct Unbecoming (1975) / Michael Anderson
Streamed from Filmstruck

It's interesting how many movies we have to watch before we find some undiscovered gem that we had never heard of before. But this movie definitely fits in that category for me!! Based on a story by Robert Enders and a play by Barry England, here we have a movie about British Colonialism in India which combines the best of that genre with the best of courtroom drama, mystery, and made up of bizarre incidents.

Although this is fiction and Breaker Morant (1980) is based on real events, I can see many similarities between the two movies, including an officer being forced into a case with "all the cards stacked against him." That is, being forced to defend a seemingly guilty person in an antagonistic environment filled with traditions and a history unknown to the defending attorney. So, why has this movie only been given a 6.4 on the IMDb? My only guess might be that there are only 6 user reviews and this is movie should be seen by more people.

To begin with, Anderson has assembled one of the best British casts of that era (with at least 4 Oscar nominees): Michael York, Richard Attenborough, Trevor Howard, Stacy Keach (American) at his very best, Christopher Plummer (Canadian), and Susannah York.

Deathtrap (1982) / Sidney Lumet
Streamed from FlimStruck

FilmStruck is currently streaming works written by Ira Levin, and this new discovery was a real treat to watch. This movie, based on a play by Ira Levin, is about a Broadway playwright, Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine). After seeing his own latest Broadway flop and reading the reviews, he comes home to East Hampton to tell his wife, Myra (Dyan Cannon) that he needs to write a successful play.

As they talk, he comes up with the idea of using a flawless play, a play actually written by one of his students from a seminar he had given on the subject. [His student, Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve) had sent it to him for his comments and input.] When Bruhl discovers that Anderson has no relatives, friends or car, and was renting a flat in NYC; he comes upon the idea of luring him to his house with the one and only copy (the original) of the play, murdering him, and then taking credit for Anderson's play.

The play takes on so many twists and turns that we get caught up in an interesting murder mystery as the play we are watching becomes the story about the play they are writing.

This is one of those play-based movies that is so clever that it reminds me of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) or Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth (1972), in which the cast is basically two main characters trying to outsmart each other in an endless series of ploys and counter-ploys.

Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve): Would you like me to explain?

Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine): What, that you're a lunatic with a death-wish?

Clifford Anderson : Ha ha ha. I've got the same wish you have, Sidney - a success wish!

Sidney Bruhl : Clifford, my dear, in your run-ins with the law, in your infancy so to speak, did any of the doctors, policemen, shrinks, did any of them ever use... the... word...?

Clifford Anderson : What word Sidney?

Sidney Bruhl : Sociopath?

Clifford Anderson : Does that word... frighten you, Sidney?

Sidney Bruhl : No, no. It does however, give me pause.