Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

Cast: Colin Clive, Mae Clark, Boris Karloff
Director: James Whale

The original, and still one of the best of its kind, with Clive as the scientist who creates a "monster" from dead tissues and body parts, but inadvertently gives him a criminal brain. This film, along with 1931's "Dracula," paved the way for Universal Studios to become the master horror film factor of the '30s. Plus "Spook Louder", a Three Stooges short!

Cast: Peter Cushing, Francis Matthews, Lionel Jeffries
Director: Terence Fisher

Proving that you can't keep a good monster down, Britain's Hammer Film studios in the '50s and '60s picked up the torch from Universal with a series of richly atmospheric horror films. In this one, Dr. Frankenstein escapes the guillotine, moves to Germany, changes his name and resumes those nasty experiments. "Star Wars" fans will relish Peter (Grand Moff Tarkin) Cushing as Dr. F. New print! Plus "Skeleton Frolics" cartoon!

Cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn
Director: Robert Wise

Chilling adaptation of the novel "The Haunting of Hill House." It's what you don't see in this one that is terrifying. A true nerve-jangler.

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry
Director: Roman Polanski

First-rate psychological shocker, with Deneuve memorable as a sexually repressed young woman left alone in her sister's apartment for several days. Polanski's first English-language film. New print!

Cast: Howard da Silva, William Daniels, Ken Howard, Blythe Danner
Director: Peter H. Hunt

Who would have thought that the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence could be the stuff of a Broadway musical? Well, it was, and the show was a hit. The film version faithfully brings this imaginative show to the screen. Perfect entertainment for the holiday weekend. Restored print!

Cast: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains
Director: Frank Capra

Stewart is an idealistic young Senator who takes on Washington corruption. Smashing entertainment, with a knockout performance by Stewart. Will put a lump in your throat, and then have you cheering.

Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Angela Lansbury, Van Johnson
Director: Frank Capra

This rarely screened gem has Tracy playing a wealthy industrialist caught up in the machinery of running for President. Hepburn is his wife and conscience. Lansbury, barely in her 20s, plays a rich, power-grabbing campaign backer. As relevant as ever.

Cast: Henry Fonda, Alice Brady
Director: John Ford

Fonda as Lincoln in his early days as a struggling young lawyer, and the forces that shaped him into the President he would become. Solid period piece.

Cast: Henry Fonda, Claudette Colbert, John Carradine, Ward Bond
Director: John Ford

Exciting story of courageous settlers in upstate New York at the time of the Revolutionary War. Also a stunning use of early Technicolor.

Cast: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas
Director: H.C. Potter

Cary Grant is at his comedic peak in this breezy comedy of a city couple building a house in the country, with a myriad of complications. Grant & Loy are a delightful screen team. Plus a Warner Bros. cartoon!

Cast: Jack Benny, Ann Sheridan, Charles Coburn, Hattie McDaniel
Director: William Keighley

The great Jack Benny didn't make a lot of movies and is virtually unknown to today's younger audiences, so this chance to see him in fine comic form shouldn't be missed. He's the city-loving husband of the beautiful Sheridan, who surprises her husband by purchasing a wreck of a country house with makeover potential. Tart-tongued Hattie McDaniel (GWTW's "Mammy") gets her share of laughs playing yet another domestic servant. Plus a Warner Bros. cartoon!

Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers
Director: George Stevens

It's Astaire & Rogers at their best, with a Jerome Kern score. What other definition of musical bliss do you need? Features Astaire's classic Bojangles number.

Cast: Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers
Director: Mervyn Leroy

Busby Berkeley's spectacular choreography highlights this energetic backstage musical, which opens with Ginger singing "We're in the Money" (including a verse in Pig Latin!) The stark "Remember My Forgotten Man" number at the show's finale is a startling wake-up to the frivolity that precedes it. Perhaps no other musical of the era so perfectly captures that escapism/cynicism duality of the Depression.

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Cybil Shepherd, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, Randy Quaid, Ben Johnson
Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Brilliant film of a dying small Texas town put Bogdanovich on the map (nothing he has done since has equaled it, but few filmmakers hit this kind of high) and stardom to many of its cast. Top-notch writing, direction, acting and beautiful black-and-white cinematography. A true classic. Director's Cut!

Cast: Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Melvyn Douglas
Director: Martin Ritt

Stunning, superbly acted portrayal of moral degradation in the modern West, adapted from McMurtry's novel "Horseman, Pass By." Newman never better. Best Actress Oscar to Neal as an earthy housekeeper determined to resist Newman's charms, and Best Supporting Actor to Douglas as Newman's righteous father.

Cast: Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Harold Russell
Director: William Wyler

Superb, Oscar-winning tale of WWII veterans returning home to those who love them and the readjustments everyone must make. Deeply moving and beautifully performed. Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actor (March) and supporting actor Russell, an actual veteran who lost his hands in the war and portrays a man of similar fate in the film. A film whose relevance is (alas) fresh again.

Cast: William Holden, Kim Novak, Rosalind Russell, Arthur O'Connell, Cliff Robertson
Director: Joshua Logan

A handsome young drifter (Holden) arrives in a small Kansas town in time for the Labor Day picnic, and hearts begin to flutter, especially the frustrated Novak's. All sorts of passions are unleashed, including those of Russell as a spinster schoolteacher desperate for marriage. Excellent adaptation of William Inge play, with a particularly memorable score. Restored print!

Cast: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa, Orson Welles, Lee Remick, Angela Lansbury
Director: Martin Ritt

Amazing cast in sizzling story of lusty young drifter (yes, another one), played by Newman, and befriended by Southern patriarch Welles, who decides to play matchmaker for his schoolteacher daughter Woodward. Based on a series of short stories by William Faulkner. Newman and Woodward's first screen pairing, and the film that established Newman as sex symbol (quickly reinforced by "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" later that year.) Restored print!

Cast: The Rolling Stones
Director: David Maysles and Alfred Maysles

Stunning documentary of the legendary Stones concert at the Altamont speedway that produced not only great music, but also mayhem and murder. One of those incredible instances where the filmmakers got much more than they bargained for. Music includes "Satisfaction," "Sympathy for the Devil," "Brown Sugar" and "Under My Thumb." Re-mastered for digital stereo.

Cast: George Segal, Elliot Gould, Jeff Goldblum
Director: Robert Altman

One of Altman's best and most underrated films, a compelling story of two compulsive gamblers and the emptiness of winning. New print!

Cast: Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret, Edward G. Robinson, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld, Joan Blondell, Rip Torn, Jack Weston
Director: Norman Jewison

First-rate cast in colorful story of roving card sharks who assemble in New Orleans for the big poker game, with a little romance on the side. McQueen approaching the peak of his cool-dom.

Cast: Beau Bridges, Pearl Bailey, Diana Sands, Louis Gossettt, Lee Grant
Director: Hal Ashby

A rich kid buys a Brooklyn tenement with dreams of gentrification on his mind, but those change when he meets and begins to understand the less affluent black tenants. Perceptive comedy/drama, with superb cast. Ashby's first feature film, and one that has been unjustly forgotten over the years. New print!

Cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Carrie Fisher
Director: Hal Ashby

Razor-sharp satire of '70s sexual attitudes -- particularly in the Southern California lifestyle -- and political attitudes of the time. Beatty plays a libidinous hairdresser who seduces his female clients right-and-left, but the husbands never seem to notice because he's a hairdresser and must be gay, right? Nobody seems to notice the major elections going on in the background either. Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Lee Grant. Carrie Fisher's film debut. Essential viewing.

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Jane Alexander
Director: Alan J. Pakula

The story that gripped the nation over 30 years ago -- the break-in at DC's Watergate Hotel and the ties to the Nixon White House that were eventually uncovered by reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward -- was transformed into an equally gripping movie that now stands as one of the finest portrayals of investigative journalism ever put on film. A "must."

Cast: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max von Sydow
Director: Sydney Pollack

Working for the U.S. Intelligence office, Redford learns more than he should and soon becomes a hunted man. Good suspense drama, with top cast.