NEAR MINT - UNSEALED - ONLY ONE AVAILABLE

Great horror scores from Hollywood's Golden Age.

Moscow Symphony Orchestra conducted by William T. Stromberg.

Arranged and reconstructed by John W. Morgan.

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (16:24)
Max Steiner
1. Main Title/Tarantella 2:03
2. Chaconne (Piano Solo) - Romance 3:23
3. Storm 2:25
4. Walking 0:36
5. Fear 3:11
6. The Hand 2:27
7. Finale 1:46
8. End Cast 0:24

THE LODGER (19:22)
Hugo Friedhofer
9. Fox Trade-Mark Fanfare (Alfred Newman) 0:17
10. Prologue 1:10
11. Murder 2:00
12. Mr Slade Moves In 3:35
13. Mr Slade Explains 2:11
14. Mr Slade Has Nerves 1:21
15. The Ripper 0:18
16. Alarms and Excursions 2:30
17. A Note for Mr Slade 1:46
18. Mr Slade Is Cornered 3:11
19. Epilogue 1:02

THE UNINVITED (24:09)
Victor Young
20. Prelude 1:33
21. Squirrel Chase 1:25
22. The Village 0:47
23. The Sobbing Ghost 4:21
24. Sunday Morning-Stella's Emotions 3:08
25. The Cliff 2:34
26. Grandfather and the Cliff 4:44
27. End of Ghost-Finale 5:31

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS - This movie is an early horror film classic and certainly one that a well-rounded horror movie aficionado should not miss. An invalid concert pianist dies, leaving a will that does not include his personal secretary Hilary Cummins (Peter Lorre) as a beneficiary. Furious, the left-out yes-man cuts off a hand from the corpse and plots revenge. Unfortunately for Hilary, the hand inherits a life of its own and relentlessly stalks the wild-eyed Lorre as he flees in vain. Special effects keep the audience jumping as they dread the next appearance of this gruesome walking hand. The film is directed by Robert Florey, who also directed "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1932).

THE LODGER - "The Lodger" was the third film version of Mrs. Marie Belloc-Lowndes' classic "Jack the Ripper" novel, and in many eyes it was the best (even allowing for the excellence of the 1925 Alfred Hitchcock adaptation). Laird Cregar stars as the title character, a mysterious, secretive young man who rents a flat in the heart of London's Whitechapel district. The Lodger's arrival coincides with a series of brutal murders, in which the victims are all female stage performers. None of this phases Kitty (Merle Oberon), the daughter of a "good family" who insists upon pursuing a singing and dancing career. Scotland Yard inspector John Warwick (George Sanders), in love with Kitty, worries about her safety and works day and night to solve the murders. All the while, Kitty draws inexorably closer to The Lodger, who seems to have some sort of vendetta on his mind?..Some slight anachronisms aside (for example, the villain falls off a bridge that hadn't yet been built at the time of the story), "The Lodger" is pulse-pounding entertainment, with a disturbingly brilliant performance by the late, great Laird Cregar. 1944

THE UNINVITED - "The Uninvited" is one of the rare Hollywood ghost stories that does not cop out with a "logical" ending. In fact, the film has more in common with British ghost tales of the period, in that the characters calmly accept spectral visitations as though they were everyday occurrences. Ray Milland and his sister Ruth Hussey buy a house on the Cornish seacoast, never suspecting that it is a "bad" house, subject to haunting. Before long, Milland and Hussey are visited by Gail Russell, whose late mother, it is said, is the house ghost. It is further supposed that the ghost means to do Russell harm. Russell's grandfather Donald Crisp is close-mouthed on the issue, but it is clear he knows something that he isn't telling. Sure enough, there is a secret to the manor: it is inhabited by not one but two ghosts, one of whom is merely trying to shield Russell from harm. Once the film's Deep Dark Secret is revealed (courtesy of a virtuoso "mad speech" by supporting actress Cornelia Otis Skinner), Milland is able to single-handedly exorcise the estate and claim Gail as his bride. Based on the novel by Dorothy Macardle (with a few uncredited "lifts" from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca), "The Uninvited" remains one of the spookiest Old Dark House films ever made, even after years of inundation by computer-generated special effects. Less effective was the 1945 sequel "The Unseen," which starts well but degenerates into a substandard murder mystery. 1944