Before the Production Code Administration in 1934 clamped down with strict censorship codes, Hollywood produced a number of frank and sordid melodramas featuring tough, sinful, bawdy, naughty and fallen women, pleasure-loving golddiggers, prostitutes and ruthless divorcees - some of whom were repaid for their sinfulness and indiscretions by rejection, drug-addiction, death, or anonymity. The silent Madame X (1920) was one of the first of such films - in which a woman (Pauline Frederick) was separated from her legitimate child, and then defended by her unknowing, grown-up son when wrongly accused of murder.

The Divorcee - 1930Norma Shearer won the Best Actress Oscar for MGM's The Divorcee (1930) as a recent divorcee who finds revenge on her faithless husband by becoming a philanderer herself. Cecil B. DeMille directed the outrageous Madam Satan (1930) about a wealthy socialite (Kay Johnson) who pretends to be a sultry French vamp in order to seduce her own husband away from his mistress. (The film featured an infamous debauchery scene - a masquerade costume ball aboard a zeppelin dirigible above New York harbor.)

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Another heroine of serials was Grace Cunard (nicknamed "The Serial Queen"), who made her Hollywood debut in 1910, later joined up with actor/director/writer Francis Ford at Universal, and soon became Universal's top action heroine. [Francis Ford was the younger brother of famed director John Ford. Ford was an actor before serving an apprenticeship as a director and actor for Thomas Ince in the early 1910s. In 1913, he transferred to Universal.] Together with Ford as her screen partner, they created numerous silent film serials and westerns. Some of their best-known serials included the 15-chapter Western serial Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery (1914) - Universal's first serial, the 22-Tempest Cody Rides Wild - 1919episode The Broken Coin (1915), and the 15-episode The Adventures of Peg o' The Ring (1916).

Another female queen of the serials was Ruth Roland, who appeared in serials such as The Red Circle (1915), the 15-episode The Adventures of Ruth (1919), and the 15-episode The Timber Queen (1922). And Universal star Marie Walcamp starred in a series of "spur and saddle" tales in 1919 as the western character Tempest Cody (e.g., Tempest Cody Rides Wild (1919)).

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Greatest War Films: War films acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting or conflict (against nations or humankind) provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film. There are a significant number of influential, important, and milestone war films throughout cinematic history, outlined here.

Typical elements in the action-oriented war plots include POW camp experiences and escapes, historical recreations of major battles or war-related events, submarine warfare, spy or espionage tales, personal heroism, biopics of important war figures, "war is hell" brutalities, air dogfights, tough trench/infantry experiences, resistance movements, pre-war intrigue, veterans returning to the homeland, male-bonding buddy adventures during wartime - even black comedies about warfare. Themes explored in these war films include combat, survivor and escape stories, tales of gallant sacrifice and struggle, studies of the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and intelligent and profound explorations of the moral and human issues.

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Young Frankenstein (1974) is one of writer-producer- director Mel Brooks' best films - a nostalgic, hilarious spoof-tribute to classic horror films (with its authentic black and white cinematography and production design/set decoration), and in particular, of Mary Shelley's classic novel. This was his follow-up film to his westerns spoof (Blazing Saddles (1974)). Later, co-writer and actor Wilder attempted his own Old Dark House genre spoof, Haunted Honeymoon (1986).

Although the film had two Academy Awards nominations (that didn't win), Best Adapted Screenplay (for Mel Brooks and star Gene Wilder) and Best Sound, two deserving cast members, Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn, were un-nominated, as was the wonderfully crisp black-and-white cinematography by Gerald Hirschfeld. The film ranges from slapstick and farce to dirty, bawdy humor to irreverent satire.

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Another contemporary, wise-cracking, drawling performer was the bold, blowsy and flirtatious Mae West who enjoyed titillating and shocking audiences with double entendre dialogue, sexual innuendo and a desire for sex, especially before the advent of the Hays Production Code. [One of her typical lines was: "Listen, when women go wrong, men go right after them."] Mae West starred in her own films, notably as a buxom burlesque queen and singer in an 1890s saloon in She Done Him Wrong (1933), and as a circus floozy in I'm No Angel (1933). She also appeared with Fields in their only film together: My Little Chickadee (1940).

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Stars: Lea Thompson, Wendie Malick and Hunter Allan


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Cast
Tamer Hassan - Pat Tate
Vincent Regan - Mickey Steele
Terry Stone - Tony Tucker
Adam Deacon - Darren Nicholls
Neil Maskell -Craig Rolfe
Dave Legeno - Jack Whomes
Johnny Palmiero - Bernard O`Mahoney
Lucy Brown - Anna Richards
Kierston Wareing - Kate Smith
Susie Amy - Donna Jagger
Duncan Meadows - Vic

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A visual effects artist who worked on several Dreamworks films like "Shrek" faces more than 4 years in prison -- after he was accused of beating his neighbor's puppy to death ... with a hammer.


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Post-Harry Potter plans continued for the cast and crew of the Warner Bros. franchise phenomenon.

The latest development plans involved the female component of the Heroic Trio, Hermione, or actress Emma Watson.

First Showing reported that producer Denise Di Novi confirmed plans for a new take on the Beauty and the Beast myth with Guillermo del Toro in talks to direct and Watson to play the Beauty.

Download New BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in the works with Emma Watson!