Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

rsternesq This may not be the greatest film ever made and to those who don't like the lesson it teaches it may seem to be propaganda (a negative implication) but for those who are receptive and consider what the story tells and what is its intended purpose, it is a valuable lesson beautifully presented. We are faced with a similar perfect storm as I write this brief note and yet most people who are not directly engaged refuse to see what is happening and the inevitable consequences of such refusal. Like the Redgrave character, we think that a personal disengagement will be a solution but it is not and never can be. Courage then is the lesson learned at Thunder Rock and any film that teaches it is worthy and a film that teaches it well is especially worthy. It is our loss that today's movie makers lack the perspective to make such a film for us in our time but then, if one did, he might be in personal danger so it is easier for them to decline. Therefore we are left with an old film that preaches us to have courage against a different enemy but the lesson holds. Watch it and think how it resonates. More than a worthy film, a necessary reminder and a lesson to us all.

MartinHafer This was one weird film....and I mean REALLY, REALLY weird! Yet, despite being so weird as well as being such an obvious propaganda piece, it is still very watchable today. Plus, I know that when the original play and this movie debuted in Britain, they were extremely successful, so it was obviously an important film for the morale of the British people.The film begins with a whole lot of obviously British actors trying to fake American accents and doing a terrible job--so badly that it made me laugh to think that the British saw us that way and I now wonder if Americans doing British accents sound that bad to the Brits (I assume we must). Oddly, some of the actors (such as the very English James Mason) didn't even attempt accents and I wonder how many people noticed this at the time. I'm sure American audiences would have noticed. This is not a major problem, but it sure was noticeable.The story is about a disenchanted newspaper reporter (Michael Redgrave). Well before the war, he traveled the globe documenting all the signs that a war was approaching. However, despite the rise of militarism in Japan, Italy and Germany, the people at home were sick of war following the last one and just didn't want to listen (which was definitely true). So, when the war finally arrived, Redgrave left the UK and moved to the most isolated place he could find--a lonely lighthouse on a tiny island in the Great Lakes. However, and here's the really weird part, he wasn't alone as the ghost-like memories of the victims of a shipwreck near the lighthouse were his constant companions! No books, no TV and no radio--just him and his imaginary dead friends! The most exciting and wonderful actor among these dead imaginary friends was the Captain, played by Finlay Currie--a wonderful actor you might have seen in IVANHOE, WHISKY GALORE! or BEN HUR. While his name is NOT well-known, this very prolific and exceptional actor really made an impossibly silly plot come to life. Currie and Redgrave both introduce several of the dead passengers from the long-lost ship (from 1849) and both had their own unique perspective. Redgrave imagined their deaths to be both meaningless and bigger than life, while Currie showed that all these people were running from something--something bigger than them--just like Redgrave. By the end of the film, Currie (who was imaginary) convinced Redgrave to stop being a hermit and do his part for the war effort against Fascism--a not especially subtle but very rousing ending indeed! Good acting made this silly stage production come to life. A very interesting yet preachy film from WWII.

whpratt1 Enjoyed this film from 1942 which I have never seen over the years and it captured my attention from the beginning to the very end. It concerns an anti-fascist journalist named David Charleston, (Michael Redgrave) who is a reporter for a newspaper in Canada and he has traveled in Europe and has discovered that Hitler is starting trouble in Germany and there is reason to believe that Japan is also starting problems in China. David has great insight and tries to tell the English people about the threat of Hitler's Germany and to prepare for war in the early 1930's. David writes many books trying to tell the world that they are in big trouble and then decides to retire to a lighthouse in Michigan on the Great Lakes. A good friend of David, named Streeter, (James Mason) visits David at the lighthouse and wants to find out why David never cashes his pay checks for months. Streeter gets upset with the way that David is acting and finds out that he is communicating with dead people that had a shipwreck ninety years ago in the great lakes and in his own mind they are alive and talking to him. These people were European immigrants who wanted to come to America and at the lighthouse there is a Commemorative Tablet speaking about this shipwrecked crew members. This is a very deep and wonderful film with a great story to tell.

ShoPea I saw Thunder Rock as a student in Toronto (Canada)when it came out in about 1942. Thought the plot has faded somewhat in my memory, the acting, the allegorical inferences and the very remarkable optical distortions that said far more than words--all of these have stayed with me for the sixty years since that time.I'd love to see it revived for viewing.