What was the last movie you saw?

Criminal Court (1946) Steve Barnes (Tom Conway) is an incorruptible defense attorney, running for district attorney. His girlfriend Georgia Gale (Martha O'Driscoll) is a singer in a nightclub owned by mobster Vic Wright (Robert Armstrong), himself employed by mob boss Marquette (Robert Warwick).

Interesting crime film, 8/10.

The Great McGinty (1940) Daniel McGinty (Brian Donlevy) has to look up to see the gutter. He takes a job persuading people to vote for a certain candidate. eventually he is the governor. But, he goes against the Boss (Akim Tamiroff) and loses everything. His one minute of honesty cost him everything, while a different goy's one minute of dishonesty cost him everything.

Supporting cast/characters:
Skeeters (William Demarest) the guy who fixes problems.

Thoroughly entertaining! 8/10

The Devil's Men aka Land of the Minotaur 1976 -- Yet another rewatch. I remember seeing it advertised at the drive-in. Not good but helped by Cushing and Pleasence and some interesting Greek locations. The detective or whoever he is supposed to be--Milo--is such a buffoon he provides comedy value.

I watched Mary on Netflix. To say I was underwhelmed would be putting in mildly. It had only the vaguest resemblance to the biblical story and instead of being less "magical" it was more. It looked like a second rate Fantasy writer got hold of this story and thought it needed to be jazzed up.

Avoid --- Not Recommended --- Flawed --- Okay --- Good --- Recommended --- Shouldn’t be Missed

Star Wars (1977) - this morning Number One Daughter had never seen the original Star Wars. Tonight she has. A few years since I had seen it - the original cinema release not one of the 'tarted up with added needless additions' editions. I had forgotten how funny it is. There are a lot of pretty funny jokes in there.

Broadway Jungle (1955)

Phil Tucker, who brought us the infamous Robot Monster, shows us how bad he could really be with with this Hollywood melodrama. Yes, Hollywood, despite the title.

Plot? Would-be movie director gets money from a crook in exchange for the affection of the leading lady. The crook stole the money from the big crook, so the big crook sends a mute hit man after him.

Meanwhile, the would-be director interviews potential cast members. This is played for broad comedy.

This fails to convey the fact that every technical aspect of this thing is abysmal. Acting, directing, lighting, sound, cinematography, you name it. This hour-long turkey is shamelessly padded with folks walking around, etc. The music is wildly inappropriate; bombastic when the scene is just a guy sitting on a couch smoking. Robot Monster is much better, technically.

THE EXQUISITE CADAVER - 1969 - A Spanish book publisher (who has pictures of Superman, Batman and Robin in the office -"Holy Toledo" is rather apt in this case) receives a severed hand in a parcel and gets entangled in a mystery which involves the mysterious figure of Capucine. You know you are in for something different when the single name stars appear. It's a dreamy kind of slow-burning film with some relation to VERTIGO.

Saturday Night Bath in Apple Valley (1965)

Weird little low budget comedy. There's a plot (rich guy tries to buy the little town of Apple Valley [a fictional, pseudo-Old West version of the real California town by that name, where this was filmed] to make it into a gambling city) but it's really just an excuse for completely random attempts at jokes.

There's a guy with a Viking horned helmet and a sword, who wears shorts. There's a guy dressed up as an "Indian" who speaks German. There's a guy dressed as a Nazi officer. There's an elderly Hispanic woman who asks everybody if they've seen her son, the bullfighter. A guy in a tank shows up out of nowhere during the chaotic climax. Cliff Arquette is around in his "Charley Weaver" persona, and also plays a second role in drag (looking a lot like Jonathan Winters as Maude Frickert.) There's a sexy exotic dancer named "Poopsie Patata."

It's hard to describe, but it's sort of like a cheap, amateurish attempt to be Hellzapoppin' or Laugh-In. Not good at all, but weirdly fascinating.

Operation Mincemeat (2021)

"We're surrounded by them!"
"Germans?"
"No, writers!"

The Cosmic Man (1959) - a kind of cheapo Bronson Canyon version of The Day the World Stood Still, with John Carradine as the Klaatu figure and Bruce Bennet as the crusading, idealistic scientist, guilt-ridden by his contribution to the development of the A Bomb, determined to stop the military from ballsing it all up. A bit static, and talky but a lot less paranoid and anti-science than a lot of low budget SF of the period.

Schwarzer Kies / Black Gravel (1961) NOIR ALLEY. Muller described this film as bleak, & I must agree. What an ending! Enjoy this, but do not look into it; best if the end is a surprise!

Shortly after WWII, West Germans are rebuilding their cities, etc. Robert Neidhardt (Helmut Wildt) owns a dump truck and takes side jobs stealing gravel from an American Air force base that is expanding.



8/10+

The Seventh Commandment (1961)

Short review: Elmer Gantry + Detour

Guy just graduating from night school hops in a car with his girlfriend, who is very obviously our femme fatale from the very start. Making out while driving, they get in a car wreck. She's unconscious, he's shaken up but OK, and the driver of the other car seems to be dead. This shocks the guy into total amnesia. He wanders off and gets picked up by a traveling evangelist. Next thing you know, he's a preacher himself, even able to heal children. Years later, the girlfriend and her new boyfriend (who beats her up now and then) see his picture in the paper. She blackmails the preacher, going so far as to get married to him while he's dead drunk, courtesy of a sleazy justice of the peace or some such. Let's just say that everybody is doomed.

Obviously very low budget, but it has an overheated, frenzied mood, a truly striking femme fatale, and a sense that fate is against everybody. Worth a look.

The Godfather and the Lady or (6 Champions Go Wild) (filmed 1966; released 1970 as Cauliflower Cupids; rereleased 1975 under the current awkward title)

Cartoonish farce. The basic plot involves a gangster wanting his daughter to marry a guy, but the guy's aunt (Jane Russell!) thinks that will make the family's wealthy, elderly fellow change his will so they won't get any money. Rich fellow dies but doesn't really, gangster imitates the dead fellow who isn't dead in order to change the will.

The gimmick is that six champion boxers (Jake "Raging Bull" LaMotta, Rocky Graziano, etc.) are in the cast as the gangster's minions. Everything is played as broadly as possible. Wacky music, overacting, sound effects, speeding up the camera, etc. Pretty bad stuff. The boxers turned actors deliver performances ranging from so-so to very poor.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring (Korean with English subtitles)
A Bhuddist monk raises a young boy on a temple floating in the middle of a lake. One day, the monk witnesses the mischevious child tie rocks to a snake, a frog and a fish, laughing as they labour to exist with these extra weights attached to them. The monk scolds the boy and tells him to free the creatures but, if any of them should die before he can release them, he will be fated to carry the burden of a rock in his heart.

Through the changing seasons of the world, we see the changing seasons of a man and we understand what the rock is that he carries with him.

A beautiful, thought provoking movie about the circle of life and how our actions have consequences.

I watched this film many years ago and I wondered if it was as good as I remembered. It was

Spectre (2015) - Excellent intense drama in the James Bond series. Not what I expected, but it still intrigued me.

A Christmas Story Christmas (2022) - Outstanding follow-up to the original 1983 movie, A Christmas Story. I know it's not for everyone, but I'm still a fan of the original.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (2023) - Not bad. It was entertaining and had it's moments. I wasn't too thrilled seeing Adam Warlock as a child-like adult. Hopefully in the future Warlock will regenerate into the Marvel Comic character I enjoyed in the books years ago.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) - The multiple re-shot scenes did help this heap off the ground. The film makers did their best at trying to make this a movie about Dr Jones rather than passing the torch to that nauseating character Helen. Overall, it was good, but not great.

ABBY - 1974 - AKA The Black Exorcist. Rewatch. Released during Christmas just like the original inspiration, there are a couple of creepy scenes especially a shower sequence, but more often is unintentionally funny with the wife of a minister being possessed by a Nigerian demon. She starts cussing in a voice that is a cross between Red Foxx and James Brown. The cast treats it seriously however. There were a number of Exorcist rip-offs but this is the only one that was stricken with a lawsuit that AFAIK has prevented it from being released on dvd in an official capacity.

Mr. Angel (1966)

Very cheap, very obscure (never released) and very bad crime/suspense thing, sort of. A pointless introductory scene introduces Brad Angel, self-described "man for hire." (Apparently this is because he runs a charter boat/plane service.) I got the vague feeling he's supposed to be something like a Travis McGee character. (Filmed in Florida.) He beats up a couple of guys harassing another guy. This has nothing to do with the plot.

Mr. Angel flies around and sees a topless woman (filmed from the back, of course) waving at him from an island. He makes a poor landing in his seaplane, breaking a pontoon. (This looks real, as if it was a genuine accident and had to be written into the script. Somehow he'll be able to repair the pontoon, we're told.)

The woman, now wearing what seems to be a cloth brassiere and the world's tiniest denim shorts gives him some story about how she's a prisoner and needs her "papers" to escape. A lot of time is wasted with wandering around, swimming, and a dream sequence that lasts a full ten minutes. Bald guy and the woman chase each other around. Mr. Angel finds a dead guy in one of the many death traps set up around the island. We get two deliberately inconsistent flashbacks to a party with go-go dancers on a boat where something bad happened. It all leads up to our Shocking Twist Ending.

Although an American production, everybody sounds as if they're as badly dubbed as any Godzilla movie. Mr. Angel does almost nothing that changes the plot in anyway. There's maybe enough plot (if it were done a lot more competently) for a twenty-odd minute episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. There's an ending scene that's even more meaningless than the opening. A couple of women in bikinis show up on Mr. Angel's boat, but he tells them they've made a mistake and chartered it for a different day. They leave. That's the whole scene! Hardly worth the closing voiceover narration from our designated hero that "You never know what to expect when you're a man for hire and your name is Angel."

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Man of Steel (1967)

Canadian evangelical film. Boss of a steel company (hence the title) goes off to the Yukon with his teenage son to go hunting with a stereotypical French-Canadian fellow called "Klondike Joe." (Mom is back at the hotel while they do man stuff.) It seems that Klondike Joe used to be a hard-drinking sinner, but found religion. We get a tiny bit of preaching. (There's really very little in the whole film.) Son gets mauled by a bear. (It's Janos Prohaska, who played the Horta and the Mugato on Star Trek, along with many other monster and animal roles!)

Back home, the Man of Steel faces a hostile takeover by one of his executives. Meanwhile, son gets involved with drinking, eventually coming home drunk. He's also got a girlfriend from a working class family. Her Dad doesn't approve of her being with a rich guy's son. We see their home life (a house full of bratty kids) but this subplot doesn't lead to much.

About on the level of a typical low budget B movie of the time, as far as acting and production go. Ends as expected, with a little bit more preaching. The whole outdoor adventure segment really seems out of place with the rest of what it mostly a domestic drama.

Black Dynamite (2008) - an affectionate (very accurate) parody pastiche hommage to all those Blaxploitation film of the 70. It's even funnier than I remember and has some of the best-timed and written blink and miss it, deliberate mistakes built in to the script. Moments which look like cockups and flubs but were deliberately put in to make it look like the editors only had the one take to work from so had to include it. Daughter #1 who has never seen any Blaxpoitation flicks (but lots of chop-socky) was giggling along.