SunnyHello Nice effects though.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Wizard-8 I did see the MGM remake years ago, but so much time has passed since I saw it that I have forgotten what it was like. I suspect that this original version is a lot better. For one thing, it runs at a lean 84 minutes while the MGM remake runs about a half hour longer. There is no padding - every scene serves a purpose. The story telling here keeps you interested even though viewers who have not heard what the movie is about before sitting down to watch it may be a bit confused at first as to just what is going on. (To those viewers, don't worry - everything becomes clear eventually.) The movie is well directed, with production values that stand up to major Hollywood studio movies of the time, and with a great deal of tension throughout. A lot of this tension has to be credited to actor Anton Walbrook - he is incredibly cold and heartless as the lead, and you'll find him simultaneously creepy and hateful... and hope he'll get what's coming to him. By the way, though the movie contains some themes mature for the time, by today's standards it's quite safe for kids, so it may be a good choice if you want to introduce classic cinema to your children - they won't be bored.

bkoganbing From what I've been reading we're fortunate to have this film at all much less showing for rent on Amazon. Not unlike what Paramount did with Frank Capra's Broadway Bill when that studio made Riding High, MGM destroyed this original British made version of Gaslight that came out four years before MGM remade it with Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten, that classic that won Ingrid Bergman her first Oscar. Fortunately MGM was not thorough and we can enjoy Diana Wynyard and Anton Walbrook in this original film version of the play Angel Street.It might have been nice to have a version of that surviving as well. On stage Vincent Price played the suave husband who is trying to get his wife to question her sanity, he co-starred with Judith Evelyn in the Patrick Hamilton play that ran 1295 performances on Broadway from 1941 to 1944. I can see Price easily doing this part.Of course it would be without the continental suavity of both Charles Boyer and here, Anton Walbrook. Walbrook is one both cold and cool and cruel customer as he tries to drive Wynyard out of her mind. She's at a loss to explain his change toward her. In point of fact she's accidentally discovered a clue to his real identity and he's had history with her family before. She doesn't know what she's discovered which makes her all the more frightened. Wynyard is every bit as good as Bergman in the remake.The major change that MGM made was in the policeman's role. In fact there is some reason to speculate that Scotland Yard man Joseph Cotten may end up with Bergman in the MGM version. Here the dogged detective is British character actor Frank Pettengill who's strictly business. He recognizes Walbrook, but can't prove anything without positive identification.Gaslight remains firmly fixed in the Victorian era it is set. Today what involved an elaborate scheme of deception by Pettengill could be remedied easily with fax and telephotos to Australia where Walbrook presumably was staying for many years.This version of Gaslight is every bit the equal of the finely mounted MGM version and since it is closer to what author Hamilton had in mind, many consider it superior. It's pretty darn good any way you slice it.

Tim Kidner This original 1940 version of Gaslight is occasionally shown on U.K. TV - I watched it this time as part of Film 4's Movies for Life series, though shown about lunchtime, so many would have missed it.Which is a pity. It's got tons of atmosphere, even more hiss and crackles and the fog clings to everything like a favourite old overcoat. Rather than the sheen and shine of the always gleaming Ingrid Bergman in the 1944 re-make, this looks and feels like the creepy horror film that it is.But remake they obviously did and I, for one, would not say either is better than the other. They're both very similar but also very different and each has virtues the other doesn't. The obvious star appeal of the later one is the real draw, along with the polish of George Cukor's direction, but that somehow detracts from the ordinariness of the original. There it's the story and the surroundings plus the real atmosphere that are the stars.It must have seemed like strange fare for its time, though as we don't usually associate early WW2 cinema-goers having a liking for such dark stuff.I have always enjoyed the story; how under posh middle class Pimlico town-house roofs lie madness, murder and sadistic mental torture, though rather more subtly done than my list might suggest.Others have written longer reviews with every plot twist, so I'm purposefully keeping my short. I would say that if you've seen and enjoyed the 1944 one, keep an eye out for this one, whether on TV (get your recording device ready) or any other method, as it's certain you'll love this one too.My five stars are a little generous, but Gaslight mk 1 is definitely an un-flaunted and underrated - and overshadowed classic.

mhesselius This is the first film adaptation of the British stage drama "Angel Street," and in many instances it betters it's famous Hollywood counterpart. Diana Wynyard, Frank Pettingell, and Cathleen Cordell don't have the acting chops of Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, and Angela Lansbury, but Anton Walbrook's performance as the sinister Paul Mallen blows away Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton. Where Boyer comes across as an obsessed schemer trying to find the missing rubies of Alice Alquist, Walbrook is quite mad, always walking on the edge of the abyss. It's basically the same role he would play nine years later in the fine supernatural thriller "Queen of Spades," also directed by Thorold Dickinson with a surer hand. Whenever Walbrook is on screen he is fascinating to watch, and commands our attention in the way Peter Lorre often did.There are no scenes in the 1944 Hollywood remake as suspenseful as the opening of the 1940 version where an unknown assailant strangles Alice Barlow then savagely knifes the chair cushions in his search for - what? Or even at the end where Mallen's wife grips a knife with which she seems about to stab her husband. In the middle of the film, however, we must sit through some rather stiff direction and mechanical plot devices. Still MGM thought enough of this version to purchase and suppress it in advance of their own production.Unlike the slick Hollywood version that provides a gratuitous romantic interlude to showcase Boyer's and Bergman's sex-appeal, the British film doesn't need to explain why the abused wife found her husband appealing in the first place. It focuses rather on the story's Victorian milieu, in which husbands are tyrants who treat their wives as possessions like the gaudy furnishings that clutter their rooms.The one change in the Hollywood version that makes sense is the inclusion of Joseph Cotten as a romantic hero. It seems necessary if only to give him a plausible reason for taking a personal interest in Bergman's plight.