Rock Never Dies, Unlike Those Who Play It

This seems like as good a time as any, if I'm going to get really thorough about "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan", to discuss one of the few very sympathetic characters it has: aspiring rocker and probable Joan Jett doppelganger JJ Jarrett. She kind of looks like Jett, and her first name is Jett's initials. She's not a terrible person to imitate. She even seems like a half-way realistic person to exist as a teenager, I think.

JJ is about a million miles away from the center of the story. She has no direct connection to the male or female lead, and no direct connection to anyone with a direct connection to them. She's friends with Wayne, who you may rest assured I'll get to, but Wayne ties only to Tamara (who ties to the female lead and to McCulloch). She doesn't have time to connect to anyone else, or have many moments for herself, which is a shame.

Ladies Bulk And Skull

It seems worth discussing the two heel girls I mentioned yesterday in my ongoing coverage of "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan". I think that the first time Tamara and Eva (whose names I never really knew until I looked them up for this) are seen is looking in on the boxing match through a skylight. Their characters aren't laid out incredibly badly in that introduction. We see well enough that Tamara is the alpha, more loose, and that Eva is the follower, more hung up on responsibility. It's a regrettably stereotypical setup.

Tamara expresses her eagerness to have sex with star boxer Julius, and Eva seems willing to go along with that, to say nothing of their shared interest in cocaine. I think that Tamara stands alone in her willingness to go to any lengths to mitigate the consequences of being caught doing cocaine and of, apparently, failing to complete her biology project. Tamara is a terrible, terrible person. It's hard to say that anyone on the ship outside of Jason himself is worse. The film takes the curious approach of making almost every person who gets killed exceptionally unsympathetic, but even Principal McCulloch is more likable than Tamara.

Orange You Glad You're Not Julius?

Yesterday I mentioned a few of the recreational activities available to the doomed teens about the cruise ship in "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan". One of them is a boxing match between Julius, who is fairly prominent in the film, and another student who is not. It's not a terrible moment in the movie, as I said before. There's some iffy stuff to it, but as far as first act scenes in the series go, it's a pretty good one that most of the other entries would benefit from having.

It of course has the effect of investing in Julius's character. We see that he is both physically formidable and confident. Of all the characters in the film, he is the one most likely to handle himself well in a physical confrontation- more than our male lead, who is all petulant and angsty, more than our cerebral and tortured female lead and more than any other student or member of the crew. Second place would probably go to his rival in the match. He has no rival for bravado.

Fun For All

I could give a thumbnail sketch of every character in "Friday The Thirteenth 8: Jason Takes Manhattan", as well as the actor who plays them but I'm sure at this point that we can just take those as they come. What I'm thinking about right now are the activities we're shown to persuade us that the small, old virtually crew-less ship which hosts most of the movie is a fun, active place. I must confess that their efforts along those lines were not effective.

I think the first activity is shuffleboard. That is a staple of cruise ships, I admit it. Is is something that 18 year olds relish while at sea? I rather doubt it. I think I would have a good time playing that game, but I'm long past my teens and I don't know how long I acted as if I wasn't anyway. The point is that I see shuffleboard as an improbably magnet for hedonistic teens. Sure, it might be there, but would it draw anyone but the school's faculty? I rather doubt it.

Leading Man

As I described the leading lady of "Friday The Thirteenth part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan" yesterday, it seems wise to do likewise today for the film's leading man. I found it necessary to search through the film's IMDB page to find actor Scott Reeves and his character's name (Sean). Consider that some evidence of how memorable he was in the film. In that sense he is not a terrible match for Jensen Daggett, who plays Rennie.

Sean Robertson is a curious character. He is the son of the cruise ship's captain. Actually, what I meant to say is that he's the son of the ADMIRAL. The senior crewmember on the ship is designated an ADMIRAL.Let's please bear in mind that this is ostensibly a civilian cruise ship, and that civilian or not, the person in charge of a single ship is a CAPTAIN. A commodore might be in charge of several ships, and an admiral in charge of a fleet (or elsewise positioned significantly higher in responsibility than a single ship. I can't overstate how absurd it is to me that he's somehow an admiral.

Leading Lady

Since I'm exhaustively going through "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan", now is as good a time as any to address the ostensible protagonist, Rennie. Her name reminded me of Dracula's Renfield, which I guess is not flattering. She is a troubled soul, just as was her predecessor in Part 7. Indeed, she and McCulloch in this one are the same as the young woman and Terry Kiser in that film. It's odd that they should have judged that such an effective component of that movie as to warrent being brought back as a virtual carbon copy.

Rennie is some kind of creative type, and her teacher gives her something she says was used by author Stephen King in his youth. It's what looks to be a 200 year old fountain pen, and the moment got quite a laugh from the audience in the theater where I saw it. I don't think it's supposed to be funny, but my guess is that at any time in his life when Stephen King was not using a typewriter or computer, he was probably using a BALLPOINT pen.

Mad Man

Yesterday I mentioned how in "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan", the villain Jason was revived by a rather over the top electrical jolt. He then proceeds to kill the two horny teens aboard the boat that actually was responsible for reviving him, and not in a terribly interesting way. I'll therefore move on to the next thing that struck me as being worthwhile, which is where we start meeting characters we're actually meant to grow attached to (not that it's effective).

The cruise ship that the two aforementioned killed teens were supposed to be headed for is about to shove off, and the senior class is boarding. Acting very much as if someone's pissed in his cereal is principal Charles McCulloch, who plays the same role more or less as Terry Kiser in Part 7. Everywhere McCulloch looks, he sees something that arouses his ire. A band of heavenly angels would probably draw some nonsensical rebuke from him.

Power Filmmaking

Yesterday, I perseverated on who owned the boat in the first real scene of "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan".  There are these two horny teenagers who horse around and have sex. Unfortunately, the anchor damages a power line (and one might well wonder whether it's necessary to lay power lines across a lake, but I don't pretend to know), and what should happen to be there but the corpse of Jason Voorhees.

Naturally the power line electrocutes Jason's lifeless body, bringing it back to life. By this time, Jason had long since abandoned any notion of being a human being of any kind. It's a soggy, badly deteriorated stiff of a man (writing that word feels wrong) who climbs aboard the boat like a walking breathing (?) wet shoe. I thought at first that there's no good reason for him to board the boat when he could go straight to land, but he has traditionally hung around that lake. What's odd is that he moves on after.

"Who Own The Chiefs?"

After the fake-out opening of "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan", we come back to familiar ground, which is to say Crystal Lake. We meet a couple of horny teenagers getting into it aboard a boat. That's a novel locale for the series, which I don't think had previously employed any boat larger than a canoe. Unfortunately, since the bulk of this film takes place aboard a boat, the novelty is ill-timed. Like I said yesterday, it's par for the course.

Indeed, the two teens are supposed to be join the other kids on this cruise to New York, so this ought to be as odd for them as it is for us. Assuming that they regularly have access to this boat, you have to wonder why, of all nights, they would use it the night before they get on a boat that I think is supposed to take days to reach its destination (although the distance of Crystal Lake from New York is ill-defined). If I were them, I'd spend the night on land.

A Dees With A Tease

The first thing you hear in "Friday The Thirteenth Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan", it occurs to me, is a radio host waxing philosophical about the big, bad city of New York. I have to say I like it. It's a fun moment. It grants identity to the city that feels a little more real than the punks, thugs and jaded citizens we see, but it doesn't ground us in too much reality the way a straightforward news report or something would. It's kind of fantastical, which is appropriate considering Jason is coming.

The radio host is a real tease though, since it's about an hour until we see New York again after he fades away. He's so good that it heightens the disappointment. The best thing would have been to make the movie where it's in the city most of the film or all of it, but since they couldn't afford to do that, they probably should have found a way to do something that invests in what they do have, which is a cruise ship. Cruise ships don't have on board radio stations (so far as I know).

Prelude To An Obsessive Dissection

On Saturday, I went to a midnight screening of "Friday The Thirteenth Part Eight: Jason Takes Manhattan" at Quentin Tarantino's New Beverly Theater. I had always been a fan of the series, and of that entry in particular. As a teenager, it looked better to me somehow (in spite of my having mainly seen it censored for basic cable, which sanitized it even beyond what was done to put it in theaters with an R rating). Today I still like it, but some things are more evident now.

Jason Takes Manhattan, like the others, is not very graphic, really. The violence is largely implied. No doubt a better version could be made from more graphic takes that were done in the first place to make slightly tamer ones look all right by comparison. Still, there are some decent kills for the connoisseur of such things. That stopped being good enough for me years ago, but I'm not above appreciating one of the staples of the genre.

Say The Wrong Thing

It happens often that I'm reading some item on the internet and they lose me. I don't mean by that I fail to understand anything. They'll say something that, more than just rubbing me the wrong way, makes me lose all faith in their ability to credibly convey the information they purport to have. I think to myself, "if they're dumb enough to say that, the rest of this is a waste of time that I'm inflicting on myself." I had one of those the other day.

I got into it because of a comment on some other article I wanted to prove was wrong. There would have been no point in proving it to the idiot who said it, of course. It was only worth proving to myself. The comment I respected no more than a loose dog on the street, and a loose dog on the street I would not consent to engaging in a debate with. Now, this point concerned the new San Francisco 49ers football stadium. I wanted to prove, if possible, that it was not publicly financed. The answer on that is complex, although the team would have you believe it's more simple, I think.

Poached!

I was upset the other day by something that could happen all the time to me, but which luckily happens almost never. I had reserved a couple of books by Harry Crews, an author of note. His books are dark, funny and disturbing. I'd read one of his books a while back, and was eager for more. Finally I got back to him (after reading a number of other books that I was also very eager for), and really liked "Feast Of Snakes".

The Los Angeles Public Library does not have a lot of Crews' books. For many of them, only one copy is in the system and it is a reference copy at the main branch downtown.The others will have, at best, one copy that can actually be checked out. I guess that shows their estimate of what the demand is for Crews' work here. They maybe aren't so far off. He's not JK Rowling. It would be nice if they had a couple copies of each of his books for a city of millions.

Not Me

Yesterday's news brought fresh tragedy, and the bar keeps getting higher. I don't know if it's possible for anything to be big enough to stun people into respect, but I haven't seen anything lately. Yesterday a plane went down over the Ukraine. Ukraine has had problems enough without the likes of this, but then so has the air carrier, Malaysian Airlines. No one can be left alone with sadness enough to reach a breaking point these days.

They say, incredibly enough, that the plane seems to have been shot down by a surface to air missile. Who did it remains unknown, and I confess I can't help but wonder why it would be done. I would understand if there'd been some kind of warning- a ransom demand seems logical. If terms weren't met, then I'd understand why the plane was shot down. If the plane posed some kind of threat (at least a perceived one), I'd understand. If someone fessed up and declared it a horrible accident, I'd understand. I don't understand yet. Maybe I will.

Something else I don't understand is how people react to a thing like this. That there should be jokes within hours of such horror is beyond me. Perhaps some mustered it up in minutes. I felt too dispirited to make jokes about much of anything yesterday, but others were apparently eager to take on this plane getting shot down. Maybe they felt the urge to help by neutralizing something very horrifying with humor. I don't think what I saw worked for that.

It does work to use jokes to ease a sad or scary situation. It helps if you don't aim at the people who are suffering. I saw a joke about the airline not being able to deliver passengers to their destination alive. I would have thought an airline with two disasters horrifically high in casualties has had enough, especially when the cause of the second- a damn missile- is not the kind of thing that diligent mechanics can do much about. I thought it was a lousy, mean joke.

Not that any joke would have been ok to me yesterday. I must be some kind of minority. I'm not very interesting in jumping on top of every tragedy and wringing a joke out of it like it's some kind of daredevil challenge. When a thing like this happens, I get very sad, and I let myself feel that way as long as I must. The next day I may feel well enough to make jokes, although probably not about that thing. I wish other people would wait a while even if they don't feel any human sadness inside over something as awful as this. I guess that's just not possible anymore.

What For Why?

There's something on my mind. I can't figure it out, but maybe if I think it through here, the answer will present itself. There's this street I walk over to, as the library's on it. If I go to the library straight from home, I take Magnolia. If I stop off at the post office first, I take Chandler. If I take the former, it's all good. It's a quick walk and the intersections are fine. The sidewalk's a little narrow on one side, but the other is fine. It's the ideal way to go.

If I stop off at the post office, it's fine until get to where Chandler intersects with the library's street. There can be found one of the worst intersections in the neighborhood. It's not as spectacularly bad as the five way intersection to the south, but in its own way, it's nearly as unpleasant. For whatever reason, the cycle takes much longer than any other four way intersection around. I don't really know why that is, but I know that I hate it.

Dress Ups

I find myself with the need to assemble a costume. There's a horror film trivia night, and while they don't usually do this, they're encouraging people to dress in costume. Specifically they're looking for 80's horror costumes. I'm not consumed with the need to wear costumes. The main thing is that I'm lazy. I can think up costumes it would be neat to wear all day, but I do not relish the effort or the expense. I could say I don't have a psychological need to cover myself in that way, which could be true, but it's really not relevant.

There used to be all these costume parties, but those dried up. Maybe all at once we got weary of doing that, when we could drink and eat snacks without it. Maybe also my lack of commitment was noticed, these parties are still happening and I am merely not invited. There still are several costume-requiring events around Halloween, and auditions also call for some level of costume, but the burden is less. This costume will be more involved.

Romanced

I watched "Romancing The Stone" the other day. I'd first heard of it through jokes that were made about its title. I think it might have been an episode of "Roseanne" that alluded to an adult film called "Romancing The Bone". I didn't know the film it was a reference to, and I'm not altogether sure at the time that I understood the meaning the words would have in the context of and adult film either. I eventually learned some about both.

I eventually gathered that Romancing The Stone was supposed to be a pretty good movie, and so it proved to be. Kathleen Turner plays a romance novelist who, not so unlike me, has not lived an incredible amount. Her work expresses the aspiration to change that. Change it she does when a crisis erupts with her sister, and she meets up with bedraggled rogue Michael Douglass. They wind up contending with a few rough characters.

Put To Bed

I have in recent days addressed aspects of the leadup to my fifth sketch with iO West's "Top Story Weekly" news-based sketch show. The sketch has happened and I am glad to, without having even been asked, say just how it went. The whole thing began rather inauspiciously when everyone I invited had to pull out due to one conflict or another. That was quite disappointing (for everyone involved I'm sure). I managed to not be very lonely thanks to the friends I've made through the show and other endeavors there at the theater.

After chatting with friends, securing my ticket and dropping off a wig needed for another sketch (worthy of being written up here itself), it was time for the show. I though of sitting with friends from the show in the balcony where I often do, but decided I wanted to sit down on the floor where I'd better be able to feel how the crowd was, and better be able to see my sketch and the rest of the show as well. That is just how the order of things was, as my sketch was first. I'd never gotten to see my stuff without waiting before, so that was gratifying.

Not So Much

I found myself watching a movie last night that was not of my choosing. It is fine that I see movies from time that I am not eager to. Nothing will change for me if I don't change anything ever. Change is not inherently good, though. It's just different. This movie was different, but in my eyes it wasn't good. It was called "Rigor Mortis", I think, and I think also that it was from Hong Kong. I didn't go crazy for it, I'll say.

It concerned some people living in a building and working at a restaurant. The first act, which established their live at those places, held me ok. Midway through it lost me, and my perception of it from then on is inextricably tied to my perception of my phone and social networks. Anyway, these people wind up having a whole dramatic incident with vampires and stabbing and so forth, and there were aspects of that I admit I liked.

Another Sketch

With yet another day passing without any post, it becomes more evident than ever how diminished my ability to follow through on planned goals has become, but why dwell on that? No one is interested in hearing any such thing, and anyway there are more useful ways of filling this post even in such a dire moment. As we speak, after all, I am eagerly anticipating the staging of my fifth sketch at iO West's "Top Story Weekly!" here in Los Angeles.

It came about in interesting fashion. I'd had some idea about a news story that would make a good sketch. I passive aggressively pitched it to a friend I know would be on staff (since I myself am not), and she encouraged me to send it out to the whole of the show's writing apparatus, or even better to inquire whether my services as a writer might be helpful given that the show had slightly fewer writers on hand this particular week than is usually the case.

Slow Death

I was in the worst kind of fix the other night, That is to say that it felt like it at the time, but it was the sort of thing where perspective was hard to come by. This is what happened. I'd gotten the opportunity to be a guest writer on Top Story Weekly, of which I've written in the past. This was the second time for me, and it was even more special this time that I got to do it. The way it works is that you go to a pitch session to present your ideas. After some feedback, you develop some into sketches, some of which are picked to actually do after a read through. So this thing happened while I was headed to the pitch session.

Everything was fine as I left the house. I had my needed writing materials, the most precious of which were the ideas I had to present. I had left in enough time to get there- just enough time. The bus itinerary I'd worked out would get me there a few minutes before I needed to be there. Things started going awry quickly, though. The first bus was a bit late. It finally showed up just in time to still get me to the second bus in time. At least if it had not become even more late it would have been in time.

To Get It Right

I was reminded again yesterday of how difficult it is to do what "The Onion" does. It is, of course, a satirical news site- something that didn't really exist before it did, so far as I know- and it's fantastic. Whether it's as good now as it has been in the past is debatable, but they are still very good at doing the critical things that all imitators I've seen so far fail at. Someone eventually will manage it, but for one reason or another, they all fail catastrophically somehow.

A big thing is that you have to have some kind of real world grounding. You can get crazy, but it has to fit into some kind of realistic framework, if that makes any sense. The Onion had an article where Obama is an Anti-Christ figure bringing about a dark age of hell on Earth, but it worked because it was playing on an incredibly heightened version of how some people see him. Obama was not acting or sound like he would, but since the joke was not on him, it worked.

Hassle With A Passel

Recent months have seen me cool the jets on VHS tape collecting and viewing, letting the thirty or so tapes I had left to watch sit in idleness with few new ones joining them. I had decided there were enough there without adding any more, and also adding more was curtailed by the expense. With that last issue eased somewhat, I reasoned that picking up a few tapes was a fine spark to get me excited about my tapes again, and off the persnickety habit of watching streaming movies online.

I bought ten tapes after an audition recently at the cost of about fifteen dollars, which on a per-unit basis is really very cheap. Among them were three Steven Seagal movies. I recently have grown very enthusiastic about Seagal, who is terrible, but who also is fascinating to think about and whose films are mostly very watchable even if they are generally not very good. There's his big hit "Under Siege" as well as a couple of the films he made just before really cratering.

Rather Be Draining The Lizard

One of the movies I watched a couple days ago- in a true fit of masochism- was a science fiction film entitled "Aberrations". The premise had real promise in it. A woman comes to some small snow-stricken town hiding out from the Russian mob, but finds herself under assault by a vicious strain of killer lizards. I put it on with hardly a thought. I find that thought slows things down too much. I just get the movie going- at which time I'm committed- and then there's the whole running time of the film to feel regret.

Make no mistake, I felt great regret over this film, which was truly terrible. Most of it was a brutal, painfully slow slog. The film's cast includes six names, one of which is a cat. The other five are used, shall we say, judiciously, which means that sub-professional grade actors are often counted on to carry scenes by themselves. It's like if the classic "Twilight Zone" episode employing a similar premise was executed with someone unfit to even speak the name of Agnes Moorehead.

Don't Sweat

Yesterday I was watching a pretty lousy thriller called "Cold Sweat". I'm getting down to the bottom of the barrel on what Netflix calls 'steamy thrillers', so I'm resorting to less and less promising titles and lowering my bar severely in hopes of still being content. This one basically got there, although I do have a lot of problems with it. Some of those are fun problems, and some of them are more my problem than the film's, but a lot of problems are there.

The movie is a little unfocused. Every time I think I'm sure which character to say it's about, I grow uncertain. Let's just start with the hitman, who seems like the main guy for a while as the film invests in the emotional turmoil that flows from his most recent killing. He isn't guilt ridden about the guy he killed, but the girl who was having sex with him just before. The woman keeps appearing to him as a ghost, often in a state of undress. Figures that he wouldn't be tormented by killing the guy.

Well Worth The Slog

The other night, I watched a whole pile of movies, most of them not fantastic. I was, for whatever reason, on an erotic thriller kick. I'd watched the one I described the other day, then there was another one that wasn't very erotica and wasn't very thrilling. The night closed out with the wonderful "Marked For Murder". I had noticed that it seemed to be directed by the same man behind the infamous "Hobgoblins", and so how could I resist that?

It seemed to be a little like "Three Days Of The Condor". A couple of low level employees of a TV station get ensnared in intrigue when a police operation is captured on tape and various players start angling for possession of the recording. There are cops, FBI agents, underworld figures and seamy locales like dance clubs and strip joints. It's a promising setup, to be sure, except that it's in the hands of Rick Sloane.

Hot Cha Cha

I'm always panicking and picking a movie that there's no great urgency to watch. I guess I need it to be a very light, spontaneous act (which is what movie watching really is anyway). The other day, I had "True Detective" on blu-ray as well as other movies that I want very much to have seen, but instead of any of those I opted for "Hot Target". Something tends to draw me towards obscure erotic thrillers. The obscurity of this one was thrown into sharp relief by appearing in a small box through the opening credits and full screen instead of widescreen later.

I was surprised to find it was set in New Zealand (as I'd expected in advance that it would be American and thought while watching it that it was British). After it got going, sure enough people were speaking in fancy accents and driving on the other side of the road. Once I got over that, a story developed of a bored (but exceptionally hot) housewife who spends all too much time in the park, where she meets an American with a flair for line-crossing conversations. By this time I was in all the way for this story of a dalliance that of course goes too far and a paramour who proves to be something darker.

30 To 60

Commercials are a fascinating art form. Most people maybe wouldn't even consider them eligible for art, saying they're too compromised by their objective. I can't think of any art that isn't compromised by commercial aims except maybe chainsaw sculptures or something.Commercials are as capable of being really pleasing artistically as anything else, and if they fail at that, at least they're over pretty fast. I'm not at all sorry to work in commercials when the chance comes up.

I was listening to some of the old Bud Light radio commercials the other day. They began as "Real American Heroes", and switched to "Real Men Of Genius" after 9/11 made it briefly seem unwise to throw around words like hero. The commercials are uniformly brilliant. They are these wonderfully bombastic, overheated tributes to people and things that are at best dubious recipients of such praise. This fantastic narrator lavishes praise on Chinese food deliverymen, golf ball washer and more.

Re-Do

I was thinking while watching "In The Name Of The King" about what I would do to fix it. Often when I entertain these thoughts, it's some relatively minor stuff- largely matters concerning the script. These are, then, small and cheap fixes so long as they are made in time. With this film, as it drew on I became convinced that larger and larger measures would be necessary if anything was ever to have been made of this awful piece of work.

I hardly know whether to begin with the casting or the script. Both are egregiously bad. I suppose the word comes first. I'll say first that there came a moment when the good guys had triumphed in battle and Statham was have a tender moment with the wounded king that I assumed the film was about to be over. This was nearly at the 90 minute mark, which is where I reasonably though a film like this one would end. A big budget fantasy film could go long, but a cheap one is like a bomber that made the trip from Germany all the way to London during the blitz: you just don't have long to make an impact. What I thought was the closing scene turned out to have about forty minutes more behind it, and when I learned that I was TRULY demoralized.

War Is Hellish Films

The same night I watched "Escape In The Fog", I also watched a slightly higher profile film of the same era (which is to say the mid-40's) entitled "Wing And A Prayer". I commented that the name sounded like it belonged on some insipid inspiring sports drama. Instead it tells the tale of Navy flyers who wind up fighting at the battle of Midway. As we were on a full head of steam from watching the other film, it seemed worth knocking out this one, late as it was.

With Dana Andrews and Don Ameche (in addition to Harry Morgan of MASH and Dragnet, practically young by comparison with how he looked in his better known roles), I kind of figured the movie had some promise. The highlights seen in the channel's promos (for we were watching it on TV) helped further that impression. Regrettably, the movie did not reach the high bar set by "Escape In The Fog", but then what film could?

Foch Does It

A roommate and I were watching some TV after I'd returned from a sketch comedy show (which is a story in itself), and I saw he had on Carson Daly's awful show that follows "Late Night". In response to my question, he affirmed that he wasn't married to it and I quickly started flipping through the channels, ultimately settling on the intriguingly-titled "Escape In The Fog". It had been on for a little bit at this point, but I think we caught most of it.

It featured an actress who I really love, Nina Foch. She was in a lot of big movies, "Spartacus" and "The Ten Commandments" among them, but my favorite is "Executive Suite". In this film, she plays a military nurse recovering from some kind of breakdown (as I learned later from looking the movie up). She has some dreams of a guy getting killed, then meets that guy and winds up entangled in a whole cloak and dagger operation.