film is pitched couldn’t possibly be disappointed by the ever-in- tensifying charnel-house effect provided by director Dave Parker (THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING!) over the relatively brief running time. Derivative or not, THE HILLS RUN RED is certainly more satisfying than something like RETURN TO HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (appropriately for this company, a clip from the William Castle original can be seen on television in the early going). VW’s own David J. Schow adapted John Dombrow’s origi- nal screenplay (from a story by John Carchietta). Schow, Parker and producer Robert Meyer Burnett join forces for a lively fea- ture audio commentary: this and a 28m “Making of” featurette account for the extras.


THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY


1949, VCI,


$19.99, 91m 46s, DVD By Tim Lucas


Based on a 1910 novel by H.G. Wells, this British produc- tion is not expressly fantastic in nature, though the story’s univer- sality and sense of fate give it a magic realist edge at times. John Mills plays Alfred Polly, a young man more interested in books than in attending to his dreary duties as a draper’s assistant. (One imagines Rod Serling must have been summoning memo- ries of this when he wrote “Time Enough At Last.”) The sudden death of Polly’s father invites an abrasive outturn of family, includ- ing female cousins seeking a husband, but he’s not ready to settle down. His £500 inheritance allows him to quit his job, buy a bicycle and see a bit of the world. His life takes a sudden turn to- ward enchantment when he en- counters a beautiful schoolgirl named Christabel (Sally Ann


Howes, evoking Jean Simmons in Mills’ breakout film GREAT EXPECTATIONS), but when his fantasy of her is shattered by some not-so-pretty behavior, he retreats too far in the other di- rection, pedalling back to his home in Fishbourne in Kent and engaging himself to his plain, practical cousin Miriam (Betty Ann Davies). The film must be working because we’re pained by his decision and laugh as their sour honeymoon kiss cuts to the legend “Fifteen years later...” Miriam has aged into a bitter har- ridan and Polly, spending all their shop’s profits on books that bring him closer to a world he’s never seen, determines to commit sui- cide. His plan backfires like a wink from Above, nevertheless freeing him in middle age to pur- sue a new life in another town with another woman (Megs Jenkins) who, in another nod to David Lean’s great film, is tor- mented by recurring visits from Finlay Currie, playing her oft- jailed, footloose husband Jim. One expects the other shoe might drop with Christabel’s


return, but she never does, which is why the story feels so genuine; it’s less about chasing dreams than accepting comfort, about identifying what we really need to live and prosper.


The first feature by writer-di- rector Anthony Pelissier (THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER), who previously scripted Alex- ander Korda’s similarly themed VACATION FROM MARRIAGE (1945), it’s a faithful, sufficiently charming adaptation of Wells, with vivid performances and fine cinematography by Desmond Dickinson (later Herman Cohen’s cameraman of choice), but errati- cally paced and with too forced a sense of eccentricity (the well- read Polly is forever using words like “gesticulacious” and “bi- cepital”). John’s daughter Juliet Mills (then 7 years old) appears as the innkeeper’s child, and Hammer regulars Miles Malleson and Michael Ripper turn up in bit parts.


Part of VCI’s “The Rank Col- lection,” the 1.37:1 presentation is clean, slightly soft (assisting the illusion of Mills’ youth in the early


A reunion of actors Finlay Currie and John Mills


inspire great expectations of the H.G. Wells adaptation THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY.


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