Beyond Atlantis (1973)

Director:  Eddie Romero

Writers:  Charles Eric Johnson, Stephanie Rothman

Composer:  Ed. Norton

Starring:  Patrick Wayne, John Ashley, Leigh Christian, Sid Haig, Lenore Stevens, George Nader, Vic Diaz, Andres Centenera, Eddie Garcia, Kenneth J. Warren, Gil Arceo, Kim Ramos, Angelo Ventura

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Forgotten by nature... invaded by modern man... half human... half fish!

Plot:  A band of adventurers invade a native island determined to grab a reported fortune in buried treasure. The islanders are just as determined to keep their sacred treasure. Complications ensue.

My rating:   5.5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

It didn't take too long into this to realize I'd seen this before but it seemed to have promise plus, with Sid Haig and Vic Diaz, I couldn't say no.  As the picture wore on I started to remember more and more until it was too late; the movie was over.  This wouldn't have been that bad of a movie to see in the drive-in back in the day but it would've been better if there had been a little nudity and some bloody action.  The IMDb trivia says that star Patrick Wayne (son of The Duke) said the only way he'd sign on is if it were PG and without nudity, something the family could enjoy.  I think we'd have been better off with someone else in the lead if that's the sacrifice.  There were dozens of actors who could've easily filled that role.  Sid Haig plays a scoundrel pimp, East Eddie.  He's an asshole to just about everyone that is until he's assembled his team.  Once they're all on the island looking for the valuable pearls, he's a straight up nice guy.  His complete tonal shift can be justified by a man who's operating a business deal and does what's needed to get the job done but it is a striking, quick change in character.  I really dug the score but it's wildly different enough in places that I wonder if all of it was written specifically for this picture.  It does have some nice moments.  The story is easy to get through with few, if any, surprises.  I must say the ending was dumb and a cheap way of getting out of one last action sequence.  With a few exploitation touches, this could've been a fun night at the movies but with it being as tame as it is, it's a mild time-waster on a lazy afternoon.

The River's Edge (1957)

Director:  Allan Dwan

Writers:  Harold Jacob Smith, James Leicester

Composer:  Louis Forbes

Starring:  Ray Milland, Anthony Quinn, Debra Paget, Harry Carey Jr., Chubby Johnson, Byron Foulger, Tom McKee, Frank Gerstle, Lee Morgan, and LOTS of fake rocks

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  It was kill ... or be killed ... all the way down to The River's Edge.

Plot:  A murderous thief on the run with stolen loot forces a poor rancher to guide him across the desert into Mexico. Accompanying them is the rancher's wife, who happens to be the killer's former girlfriend.

My rating:   5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No. 

I'm down with the cast.  They're all good actors and great movie stars, especially Milland.  I've never seen a bad performance from him regardless of the movie's budget or quality.  He always shows up to win.  Quinn can be stale but he's generally a solid actor.  I'm not familiar much with Paget as I've barely seen anything of hers.  She was in SEVEN ANGRY MEN (1955) so she must be good if she could pull off playing a pissed of white guy.  I don't know what the fuck her character (Margaret) was thinking wearing heels on a desert ranch.

Milland (Nardo) can be charming but once he crosses the line of killing a cop (great scene, by the way - it's brutal), His likability factor drops until he's just weak and lot someone you want around anymore.  Quinn (Ben) does fine as the somewhat soft but tough husband to Margaret and becomes stronger as the picture nears to an end.  But he also gets sappier and sappier when it comes to his fragile relationship with his wife.  Oh, boy, do they pour the sugar on where you get that style of romantic crap where the two are talking madly in love while embracing and not looking each other in the eyes.  Yuck.

I know what you're saying.  "Hey, Scorethefilm, what about the fake rocks?  How'd they do?"  As obviously fake rocks go, they did a splendid job.  And I say, good for them for getting work.  This movie is to them as THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) was to little people - they hired A LOT of 'em!

I'm sure they re-used them at different angles and with magical lighting, but still.  They get a lot of screen time.  Good for them.  Fake rocks are a thing of the past now that computers do all the heavy lifting.  Ahahahahahahahahaha!  But seriously, there are a lot of fucking fake rocks in this movie.  

With Margaret getting syrupy sugar sweet with both of the men, there are no surprises in this picture.  You can probably figure out how this plays out because you've seen a gazillion of these pictures to just plain know.  You don't have to be a detective with a comically funny pipe to solve this case.  It's middle of the road entertainment and some bottom of the barrel-scraping by the three leads.  They all deserve better.  It's simply OK.  It's not good nor is it bad.  But those rocks acted their fucking pebbles off!

 

 

Ape (1976)

Director:  Paul Leder

Writers:  Paul Leder, Reuben Leder

Composer: Bruce MacRae

Starring:  Rod Arrants, Joanna Kerns, Alex Nicol, Nak-Hun Lee, Yeon-Jeong Woo, Jerry Harke

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  See APE *defy the jaws of giant shark *destroy a teeming city *demolish an ocean liner *vanquish monster reptile

Plot: A newly discovered 36-foot gorilla escapes from a freighter off the coast of Korea. At the same time an American actress is filming a movie in the country. Chaos ensues as the ape kidnaps her and rampages through Seoul.

My rating:  3/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

One of the things you'll read on the movie poster is, "Not To Be Confused With KING KONG".  You don't have to worry about that one bit.  There are a small handful of moments that you'll get a chuckle out of.  And these are moments where it's so bad it's good.  I'd say there were three or four.  It's not nearly enough to justify watching this movie.  The music is very repetitive, giving you plenty of chances to hear each of the three themes used over and over again.  I don't know what else composer Bruce MacRae did with his career but IMDb shows this as his only screen credit.  There are a few WTF moments that don't seem to have any relation to the rest of the picture.  Aside from those very few laughs, there's nothing all that entertaining about this.  The acting is anywhere from bad to fun.  Alex Nicol (in one of his final film roles before retiring) as Col. Davis has the most fun and he's easily giving the best performance.  APE does have the added benefit of starring Joanna Kerns in her first feature film.  I'm sure she's awfully proud of that distinction.  I would be.

The effects are cheap and shoddy which add to the entertainment value.  That there's a man in the monkey suit doing just about everything in slow motion doesn't hurt nor help.  The worst part is just how long many scenes run, dragging the picture down with it.  APE's 86 minutes can be brutal.  It feels like this is about as far from KING KONG (1933) as you can get, but then no one, and absolutely no one working on this picture had any expectations for much more than what it ended up being.  How about this cheesy dialogue at the end, after the destruction and fate of Ape?  Marilyn: Why, Tom, why?  Tom: It's just too big for a small world like ours.  Roll credits.

Action of the Tiger (1957)

Director:  Terence Young

Writers:  Robert Carson, James Wellard, Peter Myers

Composer:  Humphrey Searle

Starring:  Van Johnson, Martine Carol, Herbert Lom, Gustavo Rojo, Jose Nieto, Helen Haye, Anna Gerber, Anthony Dawson, Sean Connery, Yvonne Romain, Norman MacOwan, Brian Sunners, Helen Goss

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  How a beautiful blonde and a tough smuggler escape the net of Continental conspiracy!

Plot:  Carson is an American contraband runner approached by Tracy, a French woman who wants him to help rescue her brother from Albania where he is being held as a political prisoner.

My rating:  5.5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

With the exception of maybe BATTLEGROUND (1949), I don't think I've seen any Van Johnson movie where he was the lead.  Even if I had, judging by his performance in this film, I don't think I would've remembered.  Here, he's bland and his voice is often monotone or close to it.  I mostly watched this for an early Sean Connery performance and for Herbert Lom.  Lom has a pivotal role and has about fifteen minutes of screen time while Connery has about a minute each in the beginning and at the very end so if you blink, you'll miss him.  Connery has a lot to do in those couple of minutes but it's nothing much to speak of.  The film itself suffers from a lackluster male lead and a screenplay with some poor dialogue for Carson (Johnson).  The movie has some action but it's also got that family kind of action drama as Carson has to travel several miles on foot with Tracy (Carol), her blind brother and several children.  Carson is supposed to be a hardened and impossible man but he puts up with this lot as if it were an eye-rolling family film.  And partly because of that, you just know that Carson and Tracy are going to end up together at the end.  Ugh.

Marco the Magnificent (1965)

Original title:  La Fabuleuse Aventure de Marco Polo

Directors:  Denys de La Patelliere, Noel Howard

Writers:  Denys de La Patelliere, Raoul Levy, Jacques Remy, Jean-Paul Rappeneau

Composer:  Georges Garvarentz

Starring:  Horst Buchholz, Gregoire Aslan, Robert Hossein, Elsa Martinelli, Akim Tamiroff, Omar Sharif, Anhony Quinn, Orson Welles, Massimo Girotti

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  It's ADVENTURE at its highest with the star-studded cast of the year!

Plot:  Young Marco Polo travels to China to help Kublai Khan fight against rebels, headed by his own son, with a new invention: gunpowder.

My rating:  5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

That image wasn't meant to fool anyone into thinking this movie is worthy of being seen.  It's not.  I'm surprised this near two hour epic is as dull as it is.  The first half gets pretty damn boring.  For a while it almost seems like a longer version of the kind of films you'd see in middle school classrooms back in the 60s and 70s, where the AV kid would roll in the 16 mm projector and we'd all fight to stay awake.  That first hour has LOTS of narration by a narrator and not someone from the film.  That contributes to the school film vibe.  Marco meets a lot of people along the way and the film spends waaaayyyy too much time with The Old Man of the Mountain (as seen wearing the gold mask above).  Why they devoted so much time on this character and Marco's role with him (Marco was captured by The Old Man and briefly imprisoned) is beyond me.  I guess it was an excuse to sex up the picture a little with those sexy and definitely 13th Century slave girl outfits.  They don't look mid-60s at all.  The real meat of the story is in the last half hour (or less) when Marco finally reaches his goal of meeting with Kublai Khan (nicely played by Anthony Quinn).  That's when Khan and Marco discuss politics and philosophy.  There's a brief battle that closes the film where Khan uses gunpowder for the first time in history which is ludicrous.   He lights firework rockets at the oncoming infantry which have the effect of 20th Century mortars.  The hell was that?  Some of the dialogue is cheap but that's not as bad as the disjointed film, made up of what sometimes feels like random scenes that are either over done or under cooked.  There's little that feels like it was ready to be a part of a large epic tale of adventure.  I get the idea that whoever spearheaded this thing was ill-equipped to handle a production on this scale; at least that's how the finished product looks.

Port Sinister (1953)

Director:  Harold Daniels

Writers:  Aubrey Wisberg, Jack Pollexfen

Composer:  Albert Glasser

Starring:  James Warren, Lynne Roberts, Paul Cavanagh, William Schallert, House Peters Jr. , Marjorie Stapp, Helen Winston

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  They Wanted Treasure...And They Didn't Care How They Got It!

Plot:  A 17th-century Caribbean port rumored to have frequented by pirates rises from the ocean floor, where it came to rest after an earthquake many years before. A scientist wants to study it, some thugs want the treasure alleged to be stored there, a bunch of mutated giant crabs living there attack them all.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

This is a standard action adventure kiddie matinee flick with a beautiful movie poster.  It clocks in  at 57 minutes and it fills the time with intrigue, betrayals, villainous, greedy men, giant crab monsters, a damsel in distress, a pirate treasure and a volcanic island that rises from the ocean floor to reveal itself every few years.

SPOILERS AHEAD, MATEY!!!! YARRRRRRRR!!!!!

All six or so of the bad guys die at the end, the island sinks back into the ocean and our hero, the dame, and the happy-go-lucky pilot escape by the skin of their teeth and you just know that two of them are going to bang when they get back to land.

The print I watched was in horrible condition and it was barely watchable but I still got a little kick out of it.  William Schallert is the only name and face I'm familiar with.   He always brings it no matter how low the budget.  Everyone does a good job for what it is.  The studio system in some ways was bad for the stars but great for working actors.  There was almost always work for solid actors working on B pictures so you rarely got bad performances and this is a good example.  I'm sure not a single person who worked on this thought it was a good career move but it provided a lot of folks with a paycheck and a lot of kids with an hours worth of entertainment.

The Land Unknown (1957)

Director:  Virgil W. Vogel

Writer:  Laszlo Gorog, William N. Robson, Charles Palmer

Composer:  Henry Mancini, Heinz Roemheld, Hans J. Salter, Herman Stein

Starring:  Jock Mahoney, Shirley Patterson, William Reynolds, Henry Brandon, Douglas Kennedy, Phil Harvey

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Lost and Terrorized in Prehistoric Time.

Plot:  Three men and a woman crash-land in a deep crater in Antarctica, where they find a prehistoric world.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

This simple and mildly entertaining adventure flick checks all the right boxes for a reasonable 78-minute romp for some brainless time killing.  That's hardly a winning endorsement but it's not trying to be anything else.  The cast do a fine job with everyone filling their roles nicely.  The plot is straightforward and the dialogue serves it well enough.  See the trailer to get an idea how much money and effort were spent, although I thought the integration of the giant lizard footage was handled better than usual.  The man-in-suit T-Rex is laughable.  I was pleasantly surprised by the ending but, overall, the picture is by the numbers, goofy entertainment.  The word on the street is this was originally going to be given a much better and bigger treatment until it got downgraded to a B-level production, including being shot in color.  I do, however, like that it was shot in B&W.

Queen of the Amazons (1947)

Director:  Edward Finney

Writer:  Roger Merton

Composer:  STOCK MUSIC

Starring:  Robert Lowery, Patricia Morison, J. Edward Bromberg, John Miljan, Amira Moustafa, Keith Richards, Bruce Edwards

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  White Goddess of the Dark Jungle... She offered ECSTASY and DEATH!

Plot:  A woman's husband has disappeared on an expedition into the jungle. She hires a guide to take her into the jungle to find him. However, they discover that he has been captured by a savage female tribe.

My rating:  6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nah.


For an hour long, low budget jungle adventure picture, this one's not bad.  There's enough jungle action to keep you entertained, the actors do a better job than you'd expect, there's a little bit of humor sprinkled in (although I didn't find any of it all that funny), there's a small monkey doing small trained monkey things (big plus) and the final fight is high energy and exciting.  This film isn't trying to be anything more than entertaining for, probably, the younger audiences and I think it succeeds better than it should have.  It makes for a fun time killer on a lazy afternoon.  Watch the whole thing above.

The Count of Monte Cristo (1934)

Director: Rowland V. Lee

Writers: Alexandre Dumas, Philip Dunne, Dan Totheroh, Rowland V. Lee

Composer: Alfred Newman

Starring: Robert Donat, Elissa Landi, Louis Calhern, Sidney Blackmer, Raymond Walburn, O.P. Heggie, Irene Hervey, Georgia Caine, Walter Walker, Lawrence Grant, Luis Alberni

More info: IMDb

Tagline: An Eye For An Eye...But Three Lives Must Pay For Mine!

Plot:  After greedy men have Edmound Dantes unjustly imprisoned for 20 years for innocently delivering a letter entrusted to him, he escapes to get his revenge on them.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

It's OK.  It's got that stagy quality you'd sometimes get from epics of this era where the acting is sometimes melodramatic to a fault.  The sets and costumes look great, though.  The picture was never dull so it's got that going for it.  It's not a very rousing rendition of the classic Dumas story but I couldn't help but think that if this picture were handled by Warner Bros. instead of United Artists and then putting some better actors in the leads (like Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains), then you'd have a much more enjoyable movie.  Donat does OK but he's not bringing the vigor and charisma I think this character needs.

One Step to Hell (1968)

Original title: Caccia ai Violenti

AKA: King of Africa

Director: Giovanni Scolaro

Writers: Jack DeWitt, Sandy Howard, Eduardo Manzanos, Mario Siciliano

Composer: Gianni Marchetti

Starring: Ty Hardin, Pier Angeli, Rossano Brazzi, George Sanders, Helga Line, Dale Cummings, George Rigaud, Julio Pena, Charles Fawcett

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Hide and seek and kill in the jungles of Africa!

Plot: A British colonial policeman in Africa, circa 1900, pursues a band of escaped killers across territory so wild, it lies just "one step to hell."

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

This Italian/Spanish co-production action adventure doesn't have much to offer besides a few good looking locations but those were marred by the lousy fullscreen VHS copy I watched.  You can't really appreciate scenery much under those conditions.  George Sanders is in it for a little bit but his few scenes take place in one room and it looks like he might've spent a day or two on the set.  Fans of his won't get anything out of him; he's just there to bring some gravitas to the production.  Now Ty Hardin (who only died a few months ago at age 87) put in a bland performance that brings the picture down.  Also adding to the blandness is the run of the mill, this could've almost been directed by anyone, direction by Scolaro.  I wasn't surprised to see that he only directed one flick (but he was the assistant director on seven others).  Then there's the bland score (and sometimes inappropriate) by Marchetti.  I don't recognize any of his credits (which doesn't mean much of anything).  I can't recommend this for any reason other than George Sanders completists and the president of the Ty Hardin Fan Club.  There sure are a lot of neat movie posters for it, though.

Sandokan Against the Leopard of Sarawak (1964)

Original title: Sandokan Contro il Leopardo di Sarawak

Director: Luigi Capuano

Writers: Luigi Capuano, Arpad DeRiso, Emilio Salgari

Composer: Carlo Rustichelli

Starring: Ray Danton, Franca Bettoia, Guy Madison, Mario Petri, Alberto Farnese, Mino Doro, Aldo Bufi Landi, Giulio Marchetti

More info: IMDb

Plot:  Sandokan's main squeeze, Samoa, is kidnapped and held captive hypnotized in caves by her cousin Charles Druk, whose father has been murdered by her future husband Sandokan, lord of Malaya. Assisted by his European friend Iannis, he wants to rescue her.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Ah, to be 6 years old and see this in the theaters over 50 years ago must've been grand.  I watched a good enough looking anamorphic widescreen print (nicely dubbed in English) that I could get a sense of how great looking this would've been on a giant movie screen.  Load up a theater filled with eager popcorn-eatin', Coke-drinkin' kids and you've got yourself some good, but not great, entertainment which is I'm sure what the filmmakers were going for.   The costumes, sets, outdoor locations et al all contribute to this looking top notch.  The cinematographer, Bitto Albertini, was barely 40 years old when he switched roles to director with 64 films as DP.  The acting is good, too, and I guess you could say the story is serviceable.  I would've preferred something more complex and adventurous but I reckon I'll have to find some more Sandokan pictures and see if they'll satisfy that itch.  It's a fun movie but try to watch it in optimum conditions if possible.

The People That Time Forgot (1977)

Director: Kevin Connor

Writers: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Patrick Tilley

Composer: John Scott

Starring: Patrick Wayne, Dough McClure, Sarah Douglas, Dana Gillespie, Thorley Walters, Shane Rimmer, Tony Britton, John Hallam, David Prowse

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The 7th continent - A lost world shut off by a wall of ice, roamed by beasts unknown to science, ruled by men lost to history, doomed to vanish in a chaos of leaping flames!

Plot: In 1919, a British expedition in the Antarctica region is searching for a lost American explorer and finds a hidden prehistoric world instead.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I'm not buyin' this at all.  How the hell could time forget people like this?

It certainly wasn't called the THE CLEAVAGE THAT TIME FORGOT, that's for sure.  Almost a year ago today I watched THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975).  That was an OK picture.  I figured this one would be along the same lines of quality and it is.  It's more of the same with great looking exteriors, adequate acting and cheesy dinosaur effects.  They would've done themselves better had they stop motion dinosaurs instead of people in dino suits.  The action starts within minutes as our heroes fly to the land the time forgot and get attacked by a pterodactyl.  Then it's a hop, skip and a 30 minute jump to get to the evil skull lair where they find Bowen (McClure) who's been there since the last picture.  Fight some bad guys and escape before the island volcano destroys everything.  It's a very simple story but they managed to make a reasonably entertaining kiddie flick.  John Scott's theme is great.  It would've been nice to see what he could've done with it if they'd given him more money to hire a larger orchestra.  Patrick Wayne (John's son) does well in the lead and he'd go on to play a much bigger fantasy role that same year in SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER.  At least that film had the budget it deserved.  I guess you could say that about this one, too.  Like LAND, the MGM print of this is anamorphic widescreen (looking goo, too) and the sole extra is the theatrical trailer (also anamorphic wide).