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DISC TWO
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THE SNORKEL
(Guy Green; 1958, 90 min.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052207/
An incredibly inventive thriller about a husband (Peter Van Eyck) who gases his wife to death, but stages it like a suicide – hiding under the floorboards and wearing a scuba mask to protect himself. Even the doors to her room are locked which convinces the police investigating that it was suicide. But things go south for Van Eyck when his wife's daughter suspects he might have committed the crime. While it's obvious to most modern audiences how this story will play out, the execution is perfectly tense, with solid performances from Peter Van Eyck and Mandy Miller. The story might feel a little stale at times, but it's refreshed by its clever ingenuity.
MANIAC
(Michael Carreras, 1963, 86 min.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056219/
A rather strange title for a such a bizarre thriller, the film follows a drifter who finds himself caught in ad odd love triangle between himself, an older woman and her daughter – and deception is the name of the game. He's coaxed into staging an escape of a mental patient who, upon his release, starts killing people with an acetylene blowtorch (his preferred killing tool). While the story sounds somewhat grim, the film is fairly harmless, and not particularly graphic. The film boasts a heavy dose of Hitchcock suspense and murder well blended with the film noir aesthetics of the era. While the movie is often a little meandering, the end results are compelling nonetheless.
BONUS:
# Trailers for each feature.
