Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.

  The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)   “Edgar Allan Poe is not the easiest writer in the world to adapt to the screen. The frenzied, hyperbolic narration of a homicidal madman, the constant air of sexual perversity and dread that throbs behind every word - these things come over strongly on the page in the hands of a gifted writer.” n Critic Zack " Marlowe " Handlen Watching Director Roger Corman's first decade of film making is like watching a precocious kid grow from Kindergarten to University. Even is his first five years (starting in 1955) when he Directed a shocking 24 features and Producer many more, his product was often (mostly?) stupid and bad, but in equal measures dynamic and groundbreaking. In 1960 he started on his Edgar Allan Poe Adaptations and achieved his first Critical praise, unexpected financial success, and proved capable of capturing the atmosphere and drive of an Author known by all but who had daunted so many other filmmakers. By 1964, these...

  Picnic at Hanging Rock  (1975)     In a Sunlight World we encounter the Darkness of a Mystery we are not Allowed to Solve. We are forced to face the Consequentialism of not being take back Control of the World through the lesser Power of Reason and Knowledge. This film almost smothering in its sense of Magic, but a Magic that has no Ancient Tome of Lore to define its Attributes, a Magic that deftly evades ever having Witnesses yet changes the lives of those it touches forever. It dances on the line where Superstition gives way to the more truly Mystical.   It's set in 1900, at Appleyard College, an All-Girls Boarding School near Woodend in Victoria, Australia. It’s a Victorian-styled outpost of Civilization surrounded by Wildness. The School’s Students are preparing of Valentine’s Day School Trip to Hanging Rock (the School is a fiction but Hanging Rock is real). The cast of Characters is huge, far longer than will be represented in my outline, and f...