China Gate (1957)

Title: China Gate (1957)
Director/Writer: Samuel Fuller/Samuel Fuller
Cast: Angie Dickinson, Nat "King" Cole, Paul Dubov, Lee Van Cleef.
Genre: War/Drama/Romance
Duration: 97 minutes.
Languages: English; no subtitles.
Description: Writer-director Samuel Fuller applies his kino-fist to this raw-boned war drama -- one of the first American films to deal with Vietnam. The film concerns the battle between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, through the efforts of a small band of soldiers to locate and destroy a hidden communist arms depot. Gene Barry stars as Sgt. Johnny Brock, the cynical leader of the patrol, who is an American Korean War veteran. Leading the expedition to find the munitions dump is the half-Asian Lucky Legs (Angie Dickinson), Brock's ex-wife. One of Brock's less-endearing qualities is his rabid racism -- he can't accept the fact that their five-year-old son is completely Oriental in appearance. The other members of the patrol are also haunted by past memories -- Goldie (Nat "King" Cole) is a veteran of Korea and World war II who hates war and wants to see peace at all costs; Corporal Pigalle (George Givot) is an ex-French gendarme who doesn't like taking orders; and Private Andreades (Gerald Milton), is a hard-nosed Greek expatriate. When the patrol arrives at the compound, they are greeted by Major Cham (Lee Van Cleef), the communist commander who immediately falls in love with Lucky Legs -- complicating the situation immensely.

By most accounts, a marginal Fuller film -- Rosenbaum's quote from Farber about China Gate: "The movie is sincere about inexplicable mush" -- so I figure this will be mostly for completists.

Also: a pan-and-scan job, if you didn't notice.

Source: DVDRip. Not mine.
File size: 699MB | Resolution: 512 x 384 (4:3 or 1.333)
Video: 946kbps XviD 23.976fps
Audio: 48kHz 60kbps 1-channel Mono mp3

Screenshot

http://rapidshare.com/files/278439415/china.gate.1957.avi.001
http://rapidshare.com/files/278441389/china.gate.1957.avi.002
http://rapidshare.com/files/278443513/china.gate.1957.avi.003
http://rapidshare.com/files/278444760/china.gate.1957.avi.004

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) [DC]

Title: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) [DC]
Director/Writers: Peter Weir/Joan Lindsay & Cliff Green
Cast: Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child, Anne Lambert, etc.
Genre: Horror/Fantasy/Drama
Duration: 107 minutes. (Director's Cut)
Languages: English; no subtitles.
Description: Peter Weir's haunting and evocative mystery is set in the Australia of 1900, a mystical place where the British have attempted to impose their Christian culture with such tweedy refinements as a girls' boarding school. After gauzily-photographed, nicely underplayed scenes of the girls' budding sexuality being restrained in Victorian corsets, the uptight headmistress takes them on a Valentine's Day picnic into the countryside, and several of the girls, led by the lovely Miranda, decide to explore a nearby volcanic rock formation. It's a desolate, primitive, vaguely menacing place, where one can almost feel the presence of ancient pagan spirits. Something -- and there is an unspoken but palpable emphasis on the inherent carnality of the place -- draws four of the girls to explore the rock. Three never return. No one ever finds out why.

You won't find another film with a comparable sense of dread. Seriously: not possible. The second half is pretty bland, though.

Source: DVDRip. Director's Cut from Criterion DVD.
File size: 700MB | Resolution: 512 x 288 (16:9 or 1.778)
Video: 801kbps XviD 23.976fps
Audio: 48kHz 99kbps 2-channel Joint stereo mp3

Screenshot

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=145f51cb02c66a5a95af63b7d44918aa7eb3427b459debef