What was the last movie you saw?

The Diary of a High School Bride (1959)

Starts with one of those serious written statements on the screen that this film is meant to inform viewers about a serious social problem; you know the kind. Then we see our High School Bride with her law student/worker in a beatnik coffee house husband driving back from being married in Las Vegas. A cop pulls them over for speeding and (for some reason) asks the guy how old he is. (24, by the way; she's 17.) Then he asks her. She freaks out, shouts "We're married! I can prove it! I have the license and the record!" while clutching a stuffed animal. By "record," she means an actual vinyl record that contains the sound of their wedding. Maybe an old Las Vegas thing?

Then we get the titles and the doo-wop style title song (!) sung by a fellow calling himself Tony Casanova, who will also do a number at the coffee house. (There's also a Spanish guitar and flamenco dance act.)

The plot mainly deals with the High School Bride's psycho ex-boyfriend, who gets in a fistfight with the husband (hubby easily defeats him) and is pretty obviously intent on having his way with the High School Bride. ("I dig married women.") He drives an Edsel, by the way.

The psycho is the son of somebody who works at a movie studio, so the big climax takes place there. Convenient place to film, I'm sure. That also gives us a chance to see poster art (without the words over the paintings) for various films. Notably, we get a big closeup of the poster art for The Screaming Skull (1958) at a dramatic moment.

(See the "Spotting old books and magazines and dummy newspapers in Tv, movies and old photos" thread for more information.)

Not a great film, but campy fun.
 
The Girl in the Kremlin (1957)

Starts with Stalin ordering that a female prisoner have her hair cut off. Shockingly, this isn't faked. We see the actress having every bit of her long, beautiful hair removed with scissors, electric razor, and straight razor until she is completely bald. I hope she got paid very, very well.

The plot actually starts with Stalin faking his death and getting plastic surgery, then running off with some minions and a whole bunch of rubles.

In Berlin, a woman hires an ex-spy/private eye to find her twin sister. Both roles are played by Zsa Zsa Gabor. This links up with the missing dictator because the Bad Sister is Stalin's personal nurse. Somehow the hero and his one-armed buddy know that Stalin has flown the coop. They broadcast their knowledge over the radio so the Bad Guys will track them down. A risky plan, as the Good Sister gets kidnapped. The hero and his buddy get captured as well. Can they triumph over Uncle Joe and the other Commies?

Notable stuff:

1. Ubiquitous character actor William Schallert as Stalin's son.
2. The one-armed guy uses his prosthetic limb as a club.
3. Attempted assassination by a guy dressed as a nun.
4. Catfight between two stunt people pretending to be Zsa Zsa and Zsa Zsa.
5. Bad Sister revealed to be bald as an egg, tying things up with the jaw-dropping opening scene.
6. Hero gets whipped by a Commie woman.
7. One-eyed Greek guy who isn't really one-eyed. Guess who he really is?

With all this craziness going on, it shouldn't be as sedate as it is. Nonetheless, worth a look as an oddity.
 
BLOOD AND DIAMONDS 1977 - A safe cracker is caught by police and vows revenge against his mafia boss (Martin Balsam) after 5 years in prison. Asa Fernando Di Leo film it has severe violence, Barbara Bouchet dancing, nude, and slapped around, and some machismo display of epic proportions. Balsam has a particularly memorable part and the ending is out of the ordinary for this sort of film.
 
Night of the Cobra Woman (1972)

Cheap, amateurish, and incoherent horror film. In what is supposed to be World War Two, a couple of nurses wander around somewhere in the Philippines looking for herbs. One gets bitten by a cobra with a red diamond on its throat. She temporarily gets a red diamond on her throat, and her eyes turn into what seem to be painted pieces of cardboard briefly. The other nurse gets raped and shot by a Japanese soldier (Victor Diaz, who has apparently been in every movie made in the Philippines.) The Cobra Woman heals her by touching her wound with the magic snake.

Cut to the present (1970's.) The two women are still young. The one who got shot has an adult son (Diaz again) who can't speak and is a hunchback. We're told this is because he had sex with the Cobra Woman.

Our protagonists are Science Girl (the wonderfully named Joy Bang) and her boyfriend. The first thing the boyfriend does when he shows up is to get himself a pet eagle, because he had one as a kid. (?) Yes, you can predict the eagle vs snake battle coming up.

When the magic snake gets killed, the Cobra Woman has to have sex with the boyfriend to stay young, absorbing his life energy or something. But he stays young, too, because she has venom in her blood. (?)

The Cobra Woman eventually develops scaly skin and quickly turns into a cobra. When in human form again, she (it?) claims to be the cobra now and wants to go back to serpent form permanently. There's some voodoo stuff and a big fire.

Badly filmed and terribly acted, it's a really lousy film.
 
House of Mystery (1961)

Modest little British ghost story. Young married couple go look at a house for sale, much cheaper than it should be. The woman there tells them about the previous young couple who lived at the place. They saw appearances of the ghost of a man who died from electrocution in his workshop. (He was an electrical engineer.) They get a "psychic investigator" and, later, a medium to check things out, leading into our flashback-within-the-flashback. This part of the film is pretty much a film noir, as the typical husband/wife/wife's lover triangle leads to a couple of elaborate murder schemes, both involving (you guessed it) electricity. Then we get our Shocking (no pun intended) Twist Ending, which you may see coming. Less than an hour long and obviously made on a very small budget, but not bad.
 
The Gay Falcon (1941)

First film in the Falcon series, which was a blatant imitation of the Saint series, even leading to a lawsuit. George Sanders and his velvet voice star as Gay "the Falcon" Laurence, playboy amateur detective. He and his comic relief sidekick get mixed up in a case involving jewel theft, insurance fraud, and murder. Lots of comedy. It's an OK way to kill a little more than an hour.
 
The Whistler (1944)

First in the Whistler series, based on the radio program of the same name. The Whistler is an anonymous narrator, but not a character in the stories. This one is about a guy who believes his wife drowned in an accident at sea. He hires a hitman through a middleman to kill him. A telegraph lets him know his wife is still alive, a prisoner of the Japanese, and about to be shipped back to the USA on a neutral vessel. The guy can't cancel the contract, because the middleman got shot dead by the cops and he doesn't know who the actual killer might be.

J. Carrol Naish has a good role as the killer, who believes he can literally scare the guy to death. The film definitely has a noir look and a dark mood. Only an hour long, and well worth a look.
 
Michael Shayne Private Detective (1940)

First in the Michael Shayne movie series. (Are you detecting a pattern here?) Lloyd Nolan is the title gumshoe. He's hired to keep an eye on a rich friend's daughter, who's involved with a guy mixed up with the rackets. She's also losing a bunch of money gambling. To scare her, he pretends that the racket guy has been murdered (covering him with ketchup.) Turns out he was really shot dead, and with Shayne's gun. The convoluted plot (it requires a lot of explanatory dialogue at the end) involves duplicate race horses and the daughter of a gambling boss. As usual for this kind of thing, there's a fair amount of comedy, particularly in the form of the aunt of the rich guy's daughter, who fancies herself an expert at solving mysteries. It's not bad.
 
Ghost Town 1988 Horror Western about two people stranded in a town haunted by ghosts in thrall of a demon gunslinger and his gang.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Michael Shayne Private Detective (1940)

First in the Michael Shayne movie series. (Are you detecting a pattern here?) Lloyd Nolan is the title gumshoe. He's hired to keep an eye on a rich friend's daughter, who's involved with a guy mixed up with the rackets. She's also losing a bunch of money gambling. To scare her, he pretends that the racket guy has been murdered (covering him with ketchup.) Turns out he was really shot dead, and with Shayne's gun. The convoluted plot (it requires a lot of explanatory dialogue at the end) involves duplicate race horses and the daughter of a gambling boss. As usual for this kind of thing, there's a fair amount of comedy, particularly in the form of the aunt of the rich guy's daughter, who fancies herself an expert at solving mysteries. It's not bad.
Click to expand...
I haven't seen much of Nolan, but I've enjoyed what I've seen. If you watch him in some of his more noir roles, there's a resemblance in his style and voice to Bogart -- see also, The Lady in the Lake.
 
Randy M. said:
I haven't seen much of Nolan, but I've enjoyed what I've seen. If you watch him in some of his more noir roles, there's a resemblance in his style and voice to Bogart -- see also, The Lady in the Lake.
Click to expand...
Nolan also did some tlevsions work too He appeared in the classic Outer Limits episode Soldier
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Michael Shayne Private Detective (1940)

First in the Michael Shayne movie series. (Are you detecting a pattern here?) Lloyd Nolan is the title gumshoe. He's hired to keep an eye on a rich friend's daughter, who's involved with a guy mixed up with the rackets. She's also losing a bunch of money gambling. To scare her, he pretends that the racket guy has been murdered (covering him with ketchup.) Turns out he was really shot dead, and with Shayne's gun. The convoluted plot (it requires a lot of explanatory dialogue at the end) involves duplicate race horses and the daughter of a gambling boss. As usual for this kind of thing, there's a fair amount of comedy, particularly in the form of the aunt of the rich guy's daughter, who fancies herself an expert at solving mysteries. It's not bad.
Click to expand...
I watched THE FALCON, BOSTON BLACKIE, THE SAINT, THE LONE WOLF, etc., but this is the 1st I have heard of Michael Shayne. Thanks for the info, Victoria.
 
Assault (1971) AKA In the Devil's Garden (US retitling, to jump in on the success of The Exorcist) AKA Tower of Terror (edited US television version, because a couple of scenes take place near an electrical power line) AKA The Devil's Playthings (much later US rerelease, in conjunction with a salacious poster to convince audiences it was a sex film)

British thriller with a touch of giallo, a touch of police procedural, a touch of damsel in distress, and a touch of whodunit. Teenage schoolgirl is raped in the woods and ends up in a comatose state. Another is raped and murdered in the same place. Art teacher sees the killer lit by the brake lights of her car. In her words, he looked like the devil and had glowing eyes. In one of those very dangerous plans to draw out the killer that only happen in the movies, the cops put an article in the newspaper that suggests she could identify him. Likely suspects include the physician treating the first victim, the head of the hospital, the pushy reporter trying to get a big scoop, and the husband of the head of the school, who is much too interested in the nubile students.

There's a big explosion at a chemist's shop to add some exciteme3nt. Overall, a fair-to-middling example of the genre. Loud, bombastic music on the soundtrack doesn't help.
 
DR. BLOOD'S COFFIN - 1961 - Seen it before. Someone is kidnapping men in an English village just as the son of the local doctor returns home. Has a Hammerish feel especially in the music although the plot isn't quite as holistic as one of theirs (the leading man is the mad scientist--which isn't a secret after the first half hour and he helps to betray it by telling co-star Hazel Court that he has a rare exotic poison as a souvenir.
 
Dr. Crippen (1962)

Based on a famous murder case of the early 20th century. Donald Pleasence stars as the title character, who was hanged for poisoning his wife and burying her torso in the basement. (The rest of her body was never found. Apparently there's still some controversy about the case, so I'll just treat the film as fiction.)

In this version, Crippen is a meek little fellow hounded by his vulgar wife. She has lovers, and he has a mistress (Samantha Eggar.) Seems like an unlikely couple? Pleasence and Eggar actually look a lot like the pair in photographs of the trial.

Done as a courtroom drama with extensive flashbacks, and ending with the execution. Includes the most dramatic aspect of the case, when Crippen and his mistress ran off together on a luxury liner, with the woman disguised as a boy. Suspicions were aroused, of course, and the two were apprehended via radio telegraphy; a first in criminology. (The mistress was put on trial for being an accessory after the fact, but was exonerated.)

Fine acting from all concerned, and the film has a documentary feel to it, regardless if it's really accurate or not. Worth a look.
 
Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

What if the actor who played the lead role in the silent movie Nosferatu were really a vampire? That's the concept of this nifty art film/drama/horror flick/dark comedy. Fine acting, particularly by Willem Dafoe, who disappears into the role of the vampire. I'm a sucker for the glamorous side of the 1920's, so it's right up my alley. Recommended.
 
Amazon Teens in the Night viewing:


Black as Night (2021) dir. Maritte Lee Go; starring Asjha Cooper, Fabrizio Guido, Mason Beauchamp, Keith David

Shawna (Cooper) is sixteen, and it’s sixteen years after Katrina in New Orleans. Shawna is the daughter of a drug addict mother who lives away from her family in what’s left of a rambling tenement. Her father keeps house for her and her older brother, but mom’s absence is never far from their thoughts. Her friend, Pedro (Guido) is loyal to a fault, the fault being when Shawna, out late one night, finds that there are vampires in NO. When her mom is killed, she vows vengeance with the help of Pedro and a local star athlete, Chris (Beauchamp).

Take a little Hammer Horror, add some of the social commentary of Candyman and Get Out, mix in a dollop of Buffy and stir into a teen movie concoction. Not bad for what it is and since it’s Blumhouse, the production values and direction are adequate, the acting good, and they carry along a sort of by-the-numbers script. Nothing to get excited about, but an okay pastime.



But much, much better:

The Vast of Night (2019) dir. Andrew Patterson; starring Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer

It’s night-time in 1950s Cayuga, New Mexico: While most of the small town is absorbed by the big high school basketball game, Fay Crocker (McCormick) the teen-age switchboard operator, and Everett Sloane (Horowitz) the night-time DJ at WOTW, begin tracking an odd noise that interrupted the radio broadcast and is also coming through a line in the switchboard – according to Wikipedia the crew found a still working switchboard for this. Several oddly broken up calls come in about something in the sky. Everett broadcasts the sound from the recording of his show and asks listeners if they know what it is. A phone call from a man named Billy informs them that he had heard the same noise while in the military, on a secret mission, in an underground bunker where something he and his fellow Pfcs never saw was covered over by a tarp.

This is an inventive s.f. movie with a limited budget put to good use. Using something like a film noir aesthetic, much of what happens is implied rather than shown. Featuring relatively unknown actors, and certainly no A-listers, leaves the viewer in suspense throughout concerning what will happen to them – and McCormick and Horowitz pay dividends on this. McCormick is excellent as a high school tech nerd and Horowitz is equally excellent as a DJ with hipster patter fast-talking everyone and obsessed with putting on “good radio.”

Note the name “Cayuga”; the movie frames the story as if it’s a ‘50s TV play, opening with a view of a very old TV set tuned to a show titled “Paradox Theater Hour,” introduced by a familiar voice over, a voice rather like Rod Serling’s: Serling’s production company was named Cayuga Productions. Note also the name Everett Sloane, which was the name of an actor known for Citizen Kane who also appeared in the movie Patterns, scripted by Serling, and an episode of Twilight Zone.

But this isn’t a movie that necessarily nods at its influences. What struck me was the realistic portrayal of how people would react when confronted with the possibility of something hovering over their town. From dismay to excitement to insatiable curiosity, the script and the actors nail it.
 
Casque d'Or (1952) A French period drama, somehow, Muller considers it NOIR. Not that I disagree, but just seems odd to put it in that genre. A turn of the century crime drama, the title refers to Marie 'Casque d'Or' (Simone Signoret) who is involved with a criminal, one of a gang.

It has been several weeks since I saw it, so much has been forgotten. 8/10.
 
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