What was the last movie you saw?

[Jeffbert]

I Escaped From the Gestapo / NO ESCAPE (1943) Torgut Lane (Dean Jagger) is a counterfeiter who finds himself broken out of prison by a gang he assumes is just out to literally make money. He finds himself in a prison again, and required to forge documents along with the paper money. Eventually, he realizes he is working for Nazis. Fritz Martin (John Carradine), the gang leader, is eventually identified as a Gestapo Agent. Though in America, they hold the lives of Lane's mother and sister as leverage to force his cooperation.

The title, I Escaped From the Gestapo is inaccurate, because he is rescued.

Ran in a block of John Carradine films. Not great, but I have seen much worse.

Spoiler

Located on a boardwalk arcade, the spies use audio recordings (vinyl records) of Servicemen sending messages to their loved ones, to find items of interest.

Oops, forgot to mention the paperboy portrayed by Spanky McFarland! easily recognized him, though at about 14-15 years old.

 

[AE35Unit]

Scream 2
And that's as far as I want to go with that particular franchise, lol. Awful

 

[AE35Unit]

Halloween (1979)
Cool music, lousy film.

 

[Dave]

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Howard Fry

A man in south Devon goes out to post a letter to a dying friend in Berwick-upon-Tweed, then he decides to walk there instead. It's based on a book my wife has read, but unusually, the screenplay is by the author herself. With Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton. Not quite as odd as it might appear when written down like that..

It has similar themes to the Stephen King book I'm just finishing off - faith, the need people have to believe in something, death, aging, addiction, aspiration, morality, conflict, redemption and forgiveness - the human condition.

Also anyone who has ever been on a long walk will appreciate how that clears the mind, allows you to think a lot, and get it straightened out.

 

[Foxbat]

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Howard Fry

A man in south Devon goes out to post a letter to a dying friend in Berwick-upon-Tweed, then he decides to walk there instead. It's based on a book my wife has read, but unusually, the screenplay is by the author herself. With Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton. Not quite as odd as it might appear when written down like that..

It has similar themes to the Stephen King book I'm just finishing off - faith, the need people have to believe in something, death, aging, addiction, aspiration, morality, conflict, redemption and forgiveness - the human condition.

Also anyone who has ever been on a long walk will appreciate how that clears the mind, allows you to think a lot, and get it straightened out.

Sounds pretty similar to The Straight Story (1999) except the main character makes his journey on a lawnmower.

I watched The Maggie (1954). Gentle Ealing comedy based on the stories of The Vital Spark.

 

[KGeo777]

APRIL FOOL'S DAY - 1986 - As I generally dislike slashers this was one of many that I never saw before. It had some suspenseful sequences towards the end and I have to admit--I was fooled more than once.

 

[HareBrain]

Downfall: the Case Against Boeing (2022). Horrifying indictment of Wall Street-driven corporate culture leading to two fatal crashes.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Name of the Game is Kill! (1968)

Psychological shocker features Jack Lord as a Hungarian (!) walking along a desert road in the American West. A pretty young woman picks him up and brings him to the lonely place in the middle of nowhere where she lives with tough-as-nails older sister (tried to run over a guy), schoolgirl younger sister (expelled for setting a cat on fire and pushing a boy down the stairs), and Mom. We've already seen the pretty woman's previous boyfriend bludgeoned to death by an unseen killer. Somebody tries to kill Lord by running him over, but he hangs around anyway. Everybody in this dysfunctional family gives Lord a different story about what happened to Dad. Can you guess that it all leads up to a Shocking Twist Ending?

Notable for a constant mood of uneasiness and the weirdness of the family rather than the plot. Worth a look if you're into this kind of thing.

 

[KGeo777]

The Name of the Game is Kill! (1968)

The surprise in this was done in an episode of THE WILD WILD WEST beforehand-with the same actor. Because I had seen this movie first--when I watched the WWW episode I had a sense of deja vu so guessed the mystery.


CHARLEY VARRICK - 1973 This is a quasi 70s noir which holds up in repeat viewings. Walter Matthau is very good as the bank robber who must find a way to avoid being killed by the mafia for accidentally stealing their laundered money from a small town bank. Premiered 50 years ago...damn I got the day wrong but it premiered this week.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Secrets of Chinatown (1935)

I wasn't expecting this low budget B mystery/thriller to be as outrageous as it was. Set in Vancouver's Chinatown (the movie is obviously proud of being a Canadian production), the convoluted plot involves opium smuggled in duck eggs, a cult of hooded figures performing their rituals with a brainwashed blonde woman as their high priestess (or something) in this really nifty (and kind of goofy) white gown and headdress, a guy given a drug that turns him into a zombie-like killer under the control of the cultists, an amateur detective who, for no reason I can see, disguises himself with dark make-up, turban, and cape as some kind of "Oriental" (but definitely not Chinese, so why the disguise?), a visit to a yogi who helps recover the memory of the zombie-like guy, etc. Wow. Apparently about ten minutes of footage are missing from the copy I saw, so it's less than an hour long. That keeps things moving! Despite the cheapness, there are some visually striking scenes. Of course, it's full of "Yellow Peril" racism. Not a good film, really, but the fact that it seems like an old "weird menace" pulp magazine come to life kept my attention.

 

[KGeo777]

Secrets of Chinatown (1935)

I wasn't expecting this low budget B mystery/thriller to be as outrageous as it was. Set in Vancouver's Chinatown (the movie is obviously proud of being a Canadian production), the convoluted plot involves opium smuggled in duck eggs, a cult of hooded figures performing their rituals with a brainwashed blonde woman as their high priestess (or something) in this really nifty (and kind of goofy) white gown and headdress, a guy given a drug that turns him into a zombie-like killer under the control of the cultists, an amateur detective who, for no reason I can see, disguises himself with dark make-up, turban, and cape as some kind of "Oriental" (but definitely not Chinese, so why the disguise?), a visit to a yogi who helps recover the memory of the zombie-like guy, etc. Wow. Apparently about ten minutes of footage are missing from the copy I saw, so it's less than an hour long. That keeps things moving! Despite the cheapness, there are some visually striking scenes. Of course, it's full of "Yellow Peril" racism. Not a good film, really, but the fact that it seems like an old "weird menace" pulp magazine come to life kept my attention.

Oh my--I need to see this.
It was actually made on Vancouver Island which I don't think had any kind of Chinatown.

Sounds like it must be a "quota quickie," a film Hollywood shot in Canada to get around UK export restrictions. There is another one with the same cast called FIGHTING PLAYBOY from 2 years earlier which is claimed to be the first Canadian talkie.
Kind of surprised it would be made in Vancouver Island and not someplace like Montreal which was the first location in North America to screen a motion picture.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Fear in the Night (1972)

Psychological shocker from Hammer with a fine cast. Judy Geeson is a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown who is newly married to a teacher (Ralph Bates) at a boys' school. Just before she leaves her place of residence to join her husband at the school, somebody with giallo-style black gloves enters her bathroom and attacks her, knocking her out, but not before she pulls out a prosthetic arm. Nobody believes her story, of course. At the school, the charming and dapper but eccentric headmaster (Peter Cushing) proves to have a strong interest in knots (including nooses) and in Geeson's hair. He also has a prosthetic arm. He's married to a much younger, beautiful woman (Joan Collins) who hunts small game, even giving Geeson a bloody dead rabbit as a gift.

You may figure out some of the plot twists, and it takes quite a while to get going, but the latter section of the film creates a great deal of tension and suspense. You'll also find out, at the very end, why the beginning of the film shows, from about the knees down, a dead man hanging from a tree.

 

[Randy M.]

Suspiria (1977) dir. Dario Argento

I know I saw this 30+ years ago but remembered little except that Jessica Harper was in it. Late '70s, early '80s, she was on a roll, then seemed to disappear by the mid-'80s. Seeing this again, I think that's a shame. She has a naturalness in front of the camera that makes this work, especially since so many of the European actors seem to be over-acting. Joan Bennett and Alida Valli also star, and come off pretty good, too.

Young dancer goes to prestigious dancing school in Germany. As she enters on a rainy, wind-swept night, another student is running out and away. The latter dies in a visually spectacular and slightly nauseating manner, and we're off to the races. Seems the woman who started this school was a witch of great power. One wonders, could that have anything to do with the murder?

Not sure the sense of this holds up, but it does have a fever dream intensity.

Please excuse me talking to myself, but I watched this again yesterday, and it still comes across as a fever dream. The music is intense and suitably weird, the screen is flooded with color -- early on the reds are almost overwhelming (exterior of dance school, interior of apartment house [hotel?]) -- and a sense of wrongness steadily implied. I wouldn't say there's a misstep, but the info-dump about witches toward the end comes close. Still, the ending stems from the phantasmagoria experienced up to that point and provides a satisfying conclusion.


Blacula (1972) dir. William Crain; starring William Prince, Vonetta McGee, Denise Nicholas

So very early '70s, not just in hair styles and clothing, but in film stock, lighting, location shooting and especially music. Not exactly scary anymore, if it ever was, but a surprisingly engaging story all the same. Pulls out the old plot of an immortal finding the reincarnation of his lost love (see also, The Mummy [1932], among many others). Mamuwalde (Prince) crosses Dracula who, in a racist rant, bites him, stuffs him in a coffin and locks the coffin so he will be tormented by his thirst. About a century later a couple of antique collectors buy out Drac's castle and all it contains, including the coffin. (The film is not gay-friendly; the antique collectors are very much '70s stereotypes.) Upon opening it, they become noshes. Shortly after, Blacula sees Tina (McGee), the spittin' image of his wife and knows he has to have her.

The movie proceeds as usual. A young doctor plays Van Helsing, he's a friend of Tina's, he has suspicions about this tall, handsome guy who only comes around at night while any number of drained people end up at the morgue. Eventually, there's confrontation. What distinguishes this is Prince's performance. He is, no joke intended, princely, and his dignity and bearing -- along with one of the best voices in movies of the time -- make him very watchable.

 

[smellincoffee]

Scream 2
And that's as far as I want to go with that particular franchise, lol. Awful

I rewatch the first film for nostalgia, but have never seen a point in continuing!

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Spanish film from 1988 about a voice actress named Pepa who urgently needs to tell her steady fella (who just dumped & ghosted her) something, at the same time that his crazy ex-wife is hunting for him with a gun, and meanwhile Pepa is oblivious to her BFF who is freaking out because her boyfriend was a terrorist and she thinks the police are looking for her as an accomplice.

 

[hitmouse]

I rewatch the first film for nostalgia, but have never seen a point in continuing!

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Spanish film from 1988 about a voice actress named Pepa who urgently needs to tell her steady fella (who just dumped & ghosted her) something, at the same time that his crazy ex-wife is hunting for him with a gun, and meanwhile Pepa is oblivious to her BFF who is freaking out because her boyfriend was a terrorist and she thinks the police are looking for her as an accomplice.

Woman on the Verge is great. One of several quite stylish films by Pedro Almodovar that I watched as a student at an arthouse cinema jn Bristol in the late 1980s. They all seemed to star a very young Antonio Banderas and an impossibly glamorous Vitoria Abril.

 

[Jeffbert]

Please excuse me talking to myself, but I watched this again yesterday, and it still comes across as a fever dream. The music is intense and suitably weird, the screen is flooded with color -- early on the reds are almost overwhelming (exterior of dance school, interior of apartment house [hotel?]) -- and a sense of wrongness steadily implied. I wouldn't say there's a misstep, but the info-dump about witches toward the end comes close. Still, the ending stems from the phantasmagoria experienced up to that point and provides a satisfying conclusion.


Blacula (1972) dir. William Crain; starring William Prince, Vonetta McGee, Denise Nicholas

So very early '70s, not just in hair styles and clothing, but in film stock, lighting, location shooting and especially music. Not exactly scary anymore, if it ever was, but a surprisingly engaging story all the same. Pulls out the old plot of an immortal finding the reincarnation of his lost love (see also, The Mummy [1932], among many others). Mamuwalde (Prince) crosses Dracula who, in a racist rant, bites him, stuffs him in a coffin and locks the coffin so he will be tormented by his thirst. About a century later a couple of antique collectors buy out Drac's castle and all it contains, including the coffin. (The film is not gay-friendly; the antique collectors are very much '70s stereotypes.) Upon opening it, they become noshes. Shortly after, Blacula sees Tina (McGee), the spittin' image of his wife and knows he has to have her.

The movie proceeds as usual. A young doctor plays Van Helsing, he's a friend of Tina's, he has suspicions about this tall, handsome guy who only comes around at night while any number of drained people end up at the morgue. Eventually, there's confrontation. What distinguishes this is Prince's performance. He is, no joke intended, princely, and his dignity and bearing -- along with one of the best voices in movies of the time -- make him very watchable.

'prince'? Don't you mean William Marshall? What a voice! Four mighty starships, toys to be crushed! Not a quote, but my paraphrase.


The Violent Men (1955) Western; Lew Wilkison (Edward G. Robinson) owns a very large ranch, and wants to buy out the other ranchers and also the farmers in the valley. He was severely wounded, and has no use of his legs. His brother Cole Wilkison (Brian Keith) actually runs the business, and has no qualms about using violence, including murder, to achieve his goals. He keeps his methods from his brother. Martha Wilkison (Barbara Stanwyck) is Lew's wife, but loathes him, if, for no better reason, than that she regards him as half a man. She is having an affair with Cole. Judith (Dianne Foster) is the innocent daughter of Lew and Martha, and knows of the affair mama is having with uncle.

John Parrish (Glenn Ford) is one of the other ranchers, whose property the Wilkerson's covet. The hero of the film.

So, the thing is about the violent tactics used against the owners of the smaller ranches, etc. Wade Matlock (Richard Jaeckel) is the quick draw thug employed by Wilkerson. He murders one of Parrish's men; Parrish goes to the Wilkerson's ranch, assuming that Lew is behind the violence; learns otherwise. Lew is furious about the murder, demands Matlock be fired.

Just for starters. Interesting to see Stanwyck as a villainess. I am usually not interested in Westerns, until lately. This film does have one very unlikely element, towards the end. Other than that, 7/10- 8/10.

 

[hitmouse]

Hellboy 3. Completely fails to charm like I & II. Lacks the humour or the personality.

 

[Jeffbert]

James Stewart day on TCM included

Firecreek (1968) Johnny Cobb (James Stewart) is a part-time town Marshall in a very small town visited by Bob Larkin (Henry Fonda) and his gang of ruffians. They arrive in the late afternoon, and decide to stay the night. As darkness falls, the rowdiness begins. Townsfolk beg Cobb to arrest the newcomers, but he merely asks Larkin to control his men etc. Eventually, like Popeye, he has had enough.

Larkin's gang includes Norman (Jack Elam); Drew (James Best); Earl (Gary Lockwood).

The town moron/halfwit, Arthur (J. Robert Porter) sees Drew attempting to rape Evelyn Pittman (Inger Stevens), and when Drew, who confronts the boy with insults, turns away, pulls Drew's gun, and shoots him in the back. Now the gang demand justice. The lynch mob variety.


In the opening scene, the gang encounters Portman at a creek, and in roughhousing she falls in. Her white dress clings to her backside in a very sexy way. She seems to be wearing a G-string under the dress. Only when writing this, did I realize this was made in 1968; but should have figured as much after seeing that fanny!

 

[J Riff]

The Meg 2 - as expected, lots action and Jason Statham will kill the giant Megalodon shark but oh, there's a few of them this time, plus some mean giant lizards and throw in a super-giant octopus for good measure. That's it.

 

[Jeffbert]

The Meg 2 - as expected, lots action and Jason Statham will kill the giant Megalodon shark but oh, there's a few of them this time, plus some mean giant lizards and throw in a super-giant octopus for good measure. That's it.

Sounds like fun!