2016 Centennials

I had a lot of fun in 2014 watching each of the 36 films that Charlie Chaplin made in 1914 (well, the 35 that still exist, at least). What made it most fun was watching them a hundred years to the day from their original release, so seeing them at the rate that the audiences of the time did.

A neat side effect was that I kept on task and so inherently had a book ready to proof and edit by the end of the year, so I conjured up a similar project. This one wouldn't involve the centennials of films but of people, working to the same sort of structure.

So, here's 2016 Centennials.

Each review here was posted on what would have been (or in some instances actually was) the one hundredth birthday of someone important to the film industry. The aim was to remember them with an interesting film from their career that, in the process, allows me to explore another aspect of history, whether to cinema, something wider or both.

Some of these people are famous, household names that we grew up watching. Some aren't. And some used to be, but a hundred years is a long time and things change. All, however, are important.

These carefully curated films vary by era, genre and nationality and, together, help to enrich my knowledge and maybe yours too. I collated these reviews into a book, A Hundred in 2016, which won the Alan Black Cirque du Livre Book of the Festival in 2017.

Rating System
1 - Abysmal | 2 - Bad | 3 - Poor | 4 - OK | 5 - Good | 6 - Excellent | 7 - Classic

Latest Review (19 Dec 2016)
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde	1971	5	5	Roy Ward Baker	IMDb

All 2018 Centennial Reviews
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
10 Rillington Place	1971	7	6	Richard Fleischer	IMDb
23 Paces to Baker Street	1956	5	5	Henry Hathaway	IMDb
Angel Baby	1961	5	5	Paul Wendkos	IMDb
Babies for Sale	1940	5	5	Charles Barton	IMDb
The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend	1949	4	4	Preston Sturges	IMDb
Behold a Pale Horse	1964	4	4	Fred Zinnemann	IMDb
The Brute Man	1946	4	4	Jean Yarbrough	IMDb
Bwana Devil	1952	3	3	Arch Oboler	IMDb
Carry On... Up the Khyber	1968	6	5	Gerald Thomas	IMDb
Curse of the Queerwolf	1988	5	4	Mark Pirro	IMDb
The Curse of the Werewolf	1961	5	5	Terence Fisher	IMDb
Dance of the Vampires	1967	5	4	Roman Polanski	IMDb
The Dark Eyes of London	1939	5	5	Walter Summers	IMDb
Death Car on the Freeway	1979	4	4	Hal Needham	IMDb
Deathtrap	1982	6	6	Sidney Lumet	IMDb
Doctor Syn	1937	5	5	Roy William Neill	IMDb
Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine	1965	4	4	Norman Taurog	IMDb
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde	1971	5	5	Roy Ward Baker	IMDb
The Ghost Breakers	1940	5	5	George Marshall	IMDb
Hellzapoppin'	1941	6	5	H. C. Potter	IMDb
Horrors of the Black Museum	1959	5	5	Arthur Crabtree	IMDb
The Inheritance	1962	6	6	Masaki Kobayashi	IMDb
The Iroquois Trail	1950	4	4	Phil Karlson	IMDb
Johnny O'Clock	1947	4	4	Robert Rossen	IMDb
Lady in a Cage	1964	5	6	Walter Grauman	IMDb
The Lost World	1960	3	3	Irwin Allen	IMDb
The Night of the Grizzly	1966	5	4	Joseph Pevney	IMDb
Postal Inspector	1936	4	4	Otto Brower	IMDb
Psychout for Murder	1969	5	5	Edward Ross	IMDb
The Shiralee	1957	5	5	Leslie Norman	IMDb
Skidoo	1968	2	2	Otto Preminger	IMDb
The Spiral Staircase	1945	6	6	Robert Siodmak	IMDb
The Tattered Dress	1957	6	5	Jack Arnold	IMDb
Terror in a Texas Town	1958	6	5	Joseph H. Lewis	IMDb
The Villain	1979	3	4	Hal Needham	IMDb