Classic Movie Review: Lady and the Tramp

One of the Disney animated classics that I fondly remember from childhood is Lady and the Tramp. It ws re-released to theaters when I was a kid (before widespread home video releases and before Disney put them out on VHS). It felt more monumental to me then than it does now. At only 76 minutes, it is briskly paced and spare. There’s really not much story to tell and the big romance between Lady (voiced by Barbara Luddy) and the street mutt Tramp (Larry Roberts) is developed in one brief sequence when Lady is lost away from home and Tramp saves her from some unsavory dogs and takes her on a date to an Italian restaurant for the iconic spaghetti-eating scene, which is now one of the most indelibly romantic moments in cinema history.

Classic Movie Review: The Night of the Hunter

The actor Charles Laughton directed The Night of the Hunter, based on the novel of the same name by Charles Grubb, in 1955. He never directed another movie. This was the result of poor audience and critical reaction to the film. It was considered a disaster at the time. More than half a century later, the film often finds itself on lists of the best movies of all time and in 1992 was deemed culturally significant enough to be marked for preservation by the Library of Congress.