Writers: Robert Buckner, Don Ryan, Kenneth Gamet, Lewis E. Lawes, Jonathan Finn
Composer: Heinz Roemheld
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Gale Page, Billy Halop, John Litel, Henry Travers, Harvey Stephens, Harold Huber, Joe Sawyer, Joe Downing, George E. Stone, Joe King, Joseph Crehan
Tagline: AMERICA'S TWO-FISTER ANSWER to the Gun-Mad Rats Who Rule the Underworld!
Plot: Youthful tough Johnnie Stone has fallen under the influence of petty
crook Frank Wilson, who involves him and robbery and murder using his
sister's boyfriend's stolen gun.
My rating: 6/10
Will I watch it again? Nah.
The Bogart of THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) (and beyond) is the Bogart I love. A lot of what he did prior to that, mostly his really early stuff, he was stiff and the stuff caricatures are made of. But here he is just two years away from being memorialized as Sam Spade that he's not just a cookie cutter bad guy and not just some other run of the mill actor walking the walk and talking the talk like any low rent stiff could do. He, as Frank Wilson, does a great job manipulating Johnnie (Billy Halop) and he keeps on doing it until he's physically unable to, and by that time the damage is done. I liked the film but it was painful watching Halop play the anguishing Johnnie. The kid, as an actor, was trying too hard which meant his acting chops weren't up to the task of filling the role. It doesn't help him that he's got a lot of screen time. Besides, Johnnie was pissing me off to almost getting Fred killed by the electric chair. All he had to do was tell the truth. I suppose that was a big part of building suspense. It just frustrated me and I was glad when it was finally over and Johnnie was finished. It was a pleasant surprise hearing and then seeing Eddie "Rochester" Anderson pop up as a convict. I love that guy. It's an OK flick where you have to take the bad with the good.
Starring: Thomas Hunter, James Shigeta, Nadir Moretti, Gianna Serra, Delia Boccardo, Umberto D'Orsi, Femi Benussi, Ferruccio De Ceresa, Vittorio Bonos, Adriana Ambesi, Gino Bardi, Gianluigi Crescenzi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Nicola Di Gioia, Jose Galera Balazote
Plot: A gunman teams up with his long-lost brothers--a French hypnotist and a
Japanese kung-fu expert--to fight a villain who is obsessed with Roman
emperor Julius Caesar, to the point of having built a palace, complete
with slave girls, a huge sunken bath and his own "Praetorian Guard", and
who is trying to cheat them out of a gold mine left to them by their
father.
My rating: 6/10
Will I watch it again? No.
You read the plot right. It's kind of bonkers which makes it more watchable than most of your B-grade spags. For starters meet your villain, Julius Cesar Fuller!
Yup. He lives in opulence, like the Caesar of old in a Roman style mansion in the middle of the desert (here the American West as portrayed by location filming in Algeria!), complete with a bevy of beautiful women and the world's largest bathtub (or a big pool for us peasants). The story has three men come together who all have something in common, they all the same father who was a notorious lothario. By the end of the movie you find out they're not the only ones and by far! Each of these three men are distinctive in that one has tricked-out, James Bondian weapons like a multi-barreled pistol that can kill four men at once as well as a pair of pistols that can fire from the butts. Another brother knows karate (poorly as judged by the fight choreography) and another is a hypnotist with an uncanny, supernatural ability to stop people cold in their tracks! They're all going to their dead father's homestead to claim their property. But Fuller has taken it and the town for his own.
As fuckin' fun as that sounds, it doesn't live up to the potential. The action is OK, the humor is light, the villain is weak, dull and only has his gimmick lifestyle and a cloudy right eye to stand apart from other Spaghetti Western baddies, and the 82 minute length is further shortened by three, yes THREE musical/dance numbers that waste some time. Star Thomas Hunter does a fine job. He looks at home in a Western much like Clint or some of the other big names of the Italian Westerns. I was surprised to see that his movie career lasted about 11 years from '66 to '76 with 20 features and that's it. Based on this picture I would've expected more. The music is pretty good. As a fan of the genre I've been listening to Spaghetti Western scores for decades and I instantly recognized the theme song and sang along with it. That was fun. this is one of the better middle-of-the-road Spags and it's worth checking out if you've seen all the great films in the genre but want to avoid the dregs (and there are a lot of those).
Starring: Jeannie Bell, Stan Shaw, Pat Anderson, Ken Metcalfe, Max Alvarado, Chiquito, Percy Gordon, Imelda Ilanan, Chris Cruz, Leo Martinez, Joonee Gamboa
Tagline: Spine Shattering. Bone Blasting. She's a One Mama Massacre Squad!
Plot: A young karate expert searches for her brother's killer in Hong Kong.
My rating: 6.5/10
Will I watch it again? Maybe.
This Blaxploitation flick, co-written by Dick Miller (!), has some clumsy but fun fights, bad acting, nudity and a short enough run time (72 minutes) that it's a no-brainer when looking for a cheesy double feature to watch with your friends. This movie isn't made by slouches. The crew behind the camera are professionals and, at the very least, the director and cinematographer had dozens of credits under their belt before taking this assignment. Even with this being a mid-level B movie, there are moments where it looks better than it should. The standout scene for me is when Diana (Bell) is watching an exotic dancer at the club and the camera slowly moves closer to her, cutting in between what her eyes are fixed upon. It was so nice of a shot that it took me out of the picture for a moment, which was not a bad thing.
The color of the room plus the slow pull-in was a really nice touch.
Stan Shaw (as Charlie), who I recognized from HARLEM NIGHTS (1989), was the only actor I knew until I saw this guy
who played one of the main villains from the Filipino classic, FOR Y'UR HEIGHT ONLY (1980). It's no surprise that you're not going to get anyone earning an MVP for acting in this picture. It's largely below average but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the lead actors' acting is just bad enough that you can enjoy it. It also helps that the pacing in this movie is pretty fast. There's barely a dull moment.
The fighting is clumsy and you can tell the actors are fighting with little-to-no knowledge of martial arts or they're being too careful and slow to look like they do. The camera only sometimes finds proper angles to hide that fact and it does most cleverly in the final showdown between Diana and Charlie. There's a batshit funny scene where the bad guys show up to put the beat down on Ms. TNT. She says something like
"You can't see black!"
and then she turns out the light, throws her robe off
and proceeds to kick everybody's ass in the room nearly naked!
Except the bad guys get the idea to turn the light on...
until she turns it off again (rinse and repeat).
One thing I really liked is the technique of the slight speeding up of certain bits of the fights as well as removing a frame here and there to give the hits more impact. Most people probably think those things are dumb and clumsy but I love 'em when they're used well. I'm pretty sure that Jeannie Bell had a stunt double for most of her more difficult work. She goes from amateur kung fu to some kick ass flips and flying kicks and the difference in skill is stark. But that's just one more thing that adds to the fun. It's an odd combination of competence and amateurishness that works well together to form a fun movie for a Saturday night with friends and liquor.
Starring: Margot Kidder, Geoffrey Lewis, Christopher Walken, Bo Brundin, A Martinez, Ivan Naranjo, Bert Santos, Sacheen Littlefeather, Jorge Cervera Jr., Michael Eiland, Ben Zeller
Tagline: The American West...a burning desert awash with bushwackers, scalphunters and adventurers in search of forgotten gold...
Plot: In this adventurous western set in 1836, four misanthropic people band
together to find a golden treasure. But as they go out, they begin
double and triple-crossing each other in hopes of getting the gold for
themselves.
My rating: 6.5/10
Will I watch it again? No.
I'm gonna want more cow.
After watching the movie I read a few reviews and nearly all of them shit all over it. It's not THAT bad. Geez! The picture looks fantastic! And with cinematographer Michael Chapman behind the camera, it's no doubt. A couple of years earlier he shot TAXI DRIVER (1976) and a couple of years later he shot RAGING BULL (1980). The guy's no slouch. There are some truly beautiful shots in this picture. It looks so good at times that you get the idea this film is somewhere in between an arthouse and a Spaghetti Western. I don't know what you'd call that but I kind of dug it.
I like the cast with the exception of Walken. I'm a fan of his but he's just miscast. I see that he's in the movie but I don't feel it. He's really out of place in a gritty western where the great Geoffrey Lewis shares the screen. Now Lewis knows what movie he's in and he's one of the best things about it. Kidder did a fine job. One odd thing about this movie is that it's halfway in that you start to get an idea of what the Captain is up to which ends up being the main thrust of the story. How did he know where to look for the treasure, having traveled from England? Beats me. The large gold nugget he has seems to have something to do with it. Why is it he as a nugget with the same composition as the one Scalphunter (Lewis) has? No idea. Maybe I missed something but there are a few little things that would make more sense, on a grander scale, if we could connect the dots more easily. By leaving big pieces of the puzzle out, I reckon it makes it more 'artsy'. I'm not looking for deep thought in this one. With one foot in the arthouse and one in the Spaghetti Western where they'll stab you in the back just for snorin', I'll take the latter.
When it's all said and done, though, The 100 pretty to look at minutes moved pretty quickly. It's a shame this was Leeds' sole venture into film making. I would love to see what else he was capable of. This is one hell of a start, albeit an uneven one. Side note: even with no money left over for the poster budget, surely someone could've done better than what they went with. Just terrible.
Writers: Martin Ransohoff, Irene Kamp, Louis Kamp, Dalton Trumbo, Michael Wilson
Composer: Johnny Mandel
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bronson, Robert Webber, James Edwards, Torin Thatcher, Tom Drake, Douglas Henderson, Morgan Mason
BRONSON'S AGE: 44 LEVEL OF BADASSICITY (10 being the highest): 9. He.Creates.Women!
Watch the trailer. It's dreadfully dull and screams, "DON'T WATCH THIS!". Now, the movie isn't nearly as bad as the trailer makes out. It's no all that good but it is watchable and there are some things worth watching for. Taylor is great. She pulls some much needed life out out of that script. The cast does a fine job. Burton...well, he's Richard Burton which means he's brooding, dramatic and a party pooper that doesn't smile (at least I don't recall him once smiling). You don't watch movies like this to be surprised. You know Edward (Burton) is going to fall for Laura (Taylor) against his better judgement and you know where that's going to lead and it 'tisn't going to end well. Despite Burton playing the character as he does, he is commanding. That man can recite shit dialogue better than most and I'll always buy a ticket, front row seat watching him do it.
Then there's the rest of the cast. Eva Marie Saint's role as Claire, Edward's wife, is about what you'd expect from a character that's just there for the eventual conflict when it blows up on the screen. Robert Webber, as Edward's friend and donation machine to the church school, Ward, is great. I've always dug this guy's work and he goes from charming to rapist asshole at the drop of a hat. I really dug his character's role in the big scheme of things. His was one of the more interesting roles. And then there's Charles Bronson!
When we first meet him, he's working on a nude wooden sculpture of Elizabeth Taylor. Why? Because of course he is, that's why. He's got the maker's touch. He can literally make women out of shit you can find lying around the beach. Hell, he could probably do it anywhere with any material. He's just that good! If that's not enough, he goes toe to toe with Edward, a mouthpiece for God, and stands his own! Take that Jesus, you glorified birthday party magician!
Here he is with more of his creations.
I know what you're saying, "Hey, why does Charles Bronson need to make women when there are billions of them on this planet alone?" Yeah, I thought you'd say something like that. Well, you see, it's because THAT'S NOT ENOUGH WOMEN; he needs to make more to satisfy his gargantuan lust! And what's wrong with having them look like Liz Fucking Taylor? Fuck me sideways, that woman was a piece of work. What a talent!
I mentioned that the movie is predictable. On an early meeting between Edward and Laura, she gets him to help her mend a broken wing on a young sandpiper (bird). Right then and there you know exactly where this is going and it goes exactly there. You see, the wounded bird represents her son which she is having to let slowly leave the comfortable nest she's made for them, and by the end of the movie she'll have to accept that he's movie on, just as the bird is ready to move on and be with other birds. They come back to the bird a few times before the end and each time it's like getting hit on the head with the foreshadowing hammer. It gets even worse and more ham-fisted when Edward even spells it out in dialogue near the end. Now, I have no doubt that this included in the novel the film is based on and I get that this was now 56 years ago but for the love of Pete, this surely had to be just as obvious to audiences then almost as it is now. OMFG it was so painful to go through. For the most part, this was a good movie, but shit like that really takes it down a peg or two. This is a soft recommend as there's just enough in it to be entertained but there are speed bumps along the way that will slow you down, and running over that sandpiper isn't one of them.
Plot: Rome chafes under the rule of the Emperor Domitian and his Egyptian
mistress, Artamne. A mysterious champion arises to fight against the
Emperor -- a masked man known as the Red Wolf. In fact, the Red Wolf is
Valerius Rufus, one of the Emperor's trusted centurions who's aided by
none other than the Emperor's court jester, the diminutive Elpidion.
Rebels in league with Valerius kidnap Artamne, planning to exchange her
for two of their imprisoned colleagues, but Artamne escapes and soon
both Valerius, (now exposed as the Red Wolf), and his fiancee, Lucilla,
are sentenced to be immersed in a cauldron of molten lead. Valerius's
friends, however, rise up to rescue him and to liberate Rome.
My rating: 6/10
Will I watch it again? Nah.
This is one of better lower-tiere Sword & Sandal pictures the Italians churned out in the 1960s so I'd say that's not a bad recommendation. It's not bad and it's not great but it has a comfortable seat at the S&S table. They were able to take the simple story and not pad it with a bunch of boring nonsense. There's a good deal of action and it's pretty liberally sprinkled throughout. The group fighting suffers from the typical lazy choreography of the time, but you see that in even the biggest of budgeted pictures. If you change your focus off the main fighting and look at the background fighters, you'll see what I mean. But then when you get to where it's just Richard Harrison fighting, that's almost an entirely different sport. This guy is very physical and he the the actor/stuntman against him really put on a show. It also helps that the camera gets a lot of shots of the entire mano-a-mano fight in the frame. It's not without quick closeup cutaways that look fake as hell but it's a treat just to see chunks of a fight in glorious widescreen and mostly without one note of music (nice!).
This picture must've had a better budget than most because the sets look better and more lavish. The acting is better, too, although it's hard to tell sometimes when it's dubbed in English and most of the cast are Italian. If you're into this genre then it's worth a look. If not, then go for the big budget Hollywood S&S flicks like SPARTACUS (1960) and BEN-HUR (1959).
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