There’s no history of the Golden Age of Hollywood that doesn’t feature the distinctive face of Peter Lorre – those bulging eyes, that clammy visage. Yet it’s his own history that hovers over the last two films in AFS Cinema’s tribute to this émigré master of the small screen. Is it too much to imagine that he saw his own father, a former WWI prison camp superintendent, when he inflicted sadistic punishments on the convicts confined to the Island of Doomed Men (Thu. 21 & Sat. 23)? Or that audiences wouldn’t wonder that he’d made two films about hands with lethal minds of their own, 1935’s Mad Love and this season’s inclusion, 1946’s The Beast With Five Fingers (Tue. 26 & Sat. 30)? – Richard Whittaker
Through Nov. 30