The Secret of the Loch (1934)

Director:  Milton Rosmer

Writers: Charles Bennett, Billie Bristow

Composer:  Peter Mendoza

Starring:  Seymour Hicks, Nancy O'Neil, Gibson Gowland, Frederick Peisley, Eric Hales, Ben Field, Hubert Harben, Rosamund John, Robb Wilton, Fewlass Llewellyn

More info:  IMDb

Plot:  A batty Scottish professor attempts to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, but everyone thinks he's crazy. Meanwhile, a foolish young reporter attempts to get a scoop on the story.

My rating:   5.5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

At 71 minutes long, this flick moves fast and that's evident in the first few minutes when there's a meeting of science-types poo-pooing Professor Heggie's (Hicks) claims that the Loch Ness Monster is real.  It quickly establishes that everyone thinks he's batshit crazy and it throws in some silly humor to let you know what kind of picture this is.  They don't tamp the brakes just yet because an unnaturally energetic young London reporter, Jimmy (Peisley), is freaking the fuck out because he's going to Scotland for the big scoop.  When he arrives he meets Professor Heggie's granddaughter, Angela (Gowland) by climbing into her bedroom window (instead of granddad) by mistake, whereupon he falls in love with her.  Hours later he's ready to marry her.  Ah, love...

Gimme some sugar, Baby!

He soon loses his job for no reason at all except to move the plot along faster.  Now the only way he can keep his job is to prove the professor is right.  If he can find the monster, he'll get to keep his job AND Angela agreed to marry him on that one condition.  Jesus, folks, this is right out of real life, huh?!  Of course it ends happily and the monster is a gila monster in slow motion made to look like it's underwater.   Did you expect more?  They had a budget to consider.  This silly little comedy has a few mild laughs but the pacing makes it go by painlessly enough.  There's not much of value here so it's OK to skip it.  I'm sure you can find this on YouTube or elsewhere free to watch.  There is one thing to note and that's that David "Mutha Fuckin' Lawrence of Arabia" Lean edited this picture!!!  Put that in your haggis pipe and smoke it!  Can you tell it's him?  Nope.  But it's an interesting piece of trivia nonetheless.

 

House on Bare Mountain (1962)

Directors:  Lee Frost, Wes Bishop

Writer:  Denver Scott

Composer:  Pierre Martel

Starring:  Bob Cresse, Laine Carlin, Leticia Cooper, Laura Eden, Connie Hudson, Dan Hyland, William Kirk, Ingrid Lind, Virginia Mark, Ann Perry, Angela Webster, Warren Ames, Jeffrey Smithers, William Engesser

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  See Frankenstein do the twist with Miss Hollywood!

Plot:  Granny Good runs a school for girls.  What they don't know is Granny has a 7'2" wolfman in the basement working her illegal still and the cops have planted one of their beautiful, busty officers in her school to find out more.



My rating:   5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

Nudie Cuties are good for one thing only and that's for showing lots of naked women.  They're known for also being unfunny and badly acted.  Knowing these things going in helps a lot.  If you set your expectations in the basement, there's no where to go but up, right?  This one actually made me laugh out loud a little.  That's something positive to say.  And then I was struck by the quality of "acting" from the girls.  The guys are terrible but the girls do a great job.  Usually everyone in these kinds of pictures is pretty bad but there seemed to be more talent in these gals than what rests on their chests.  Talk about a refreshing change and I loved it for that!

At Grannie's school, we get to see the girls study...

Exercise - jumping rope is a favorite!

They study the arts!

And we get to study them studying the arts!  There's a lot of talent on display!!!

All of the gals are getting ready for the annual costume party and this young lady didn't spend much time on hers.

Granny scolded her for wearing so little so she returned fully costumed.

I know what you're thinkin', pal.

The jig is up, Granny!

She just finished memorizing the dictionary she started at the beginning of the movie.

The story is as simple and dumb as it needs to be and there are exactly the number of bare boobs there needs to be as well.   Trust me, I counted each and every one.  Despite this being only 62 minutes long, there is A TON of padding, mostly during the party scene where there's lots and lots of dancing footage.  That kind of thing is usually dull but it's mildly entertaining here because of the goofiness of it all and, uh, more boobs.  The monsters on the poster don't really figure into it except for Granny's 7'2" tall werewolf slaving away at the still.  He growls every once in a while and Granny interprets this to let us know he's complaining about getting .13 an hour and he wants to unionize.  It gets an earned laugh at the end when Granny thinks it's the law that shows up (which they do but that's another part of the story) when it turns out it's a union official investigating claims of poor working conditions.

Of particular note (mostly to me) is this is Lee Frost's second directorial gig.  His first, SURTIDE 77 (1962), is my favorite movie of his (so far).  It's hilarious and worth checking out.   It's also got Bob Cresse playing this same granny character, easily ripping off Jonathan Winters' similar character.  However, he is pretty good at it and manages to get a few laughs.

Only Two Can Play (1962)

Director:  Sidney Gilliat

Writers:  Bryan Forbes, Kingsley Amis

Composer:  Richard Rodney Bennett

Starring:  Peter Sellers, Mai Zetterling, Virginia Maskell, Kenneth Griffith, Raymond Huntley, David Davies, Maudie Edwards, Meredith Edwards, John Le Mesurier, Richard Attenborough

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Peter Sellers' Newest Record-Breaking Comedy That's Rocking All England With Laughter!

Plot:  John Lewis is bored by his librarian's job and henpecked at home. Then Liz, wife of a local councillor, sets her sights on him. But this is risky stuff in a Welsh valleys town - if he and Liz ever manage to consummate their affair, that is.

My rating:   7/10

Will I watch it again?   Probably not.

As a big fan of British comedy TV and movies, I find a majority of the films to be amusing while the TV shows are often knee-slappers.  This is especially true with Peter Sellers pictures.  I don't think I laughed out loud once at this picture but it was charming and amusing.  Sellers is in fine form here as John, a conflicted family man whose eyes stray frequently with all the pretty girls that surround him.  It's cute at first until you get some hints dropped by his wife, Jean (wonderfully played by Virginia Maskell), that he's cheated on her several times before.  With that new information, I'm looking at John a lot less favorably and I don't like him.  It's a Peter Sellers flick so you're expecting some slapstick and he delivers.  The physical gags are pretty run of the mill and don't add all that much to the entertainment value.  What I did enjoy from Sellers was watching him work his way into and out of awkward situations.  He's masterful at that.

 

It's also a joy seeing Sellers simply being a charming person.  He was a talented actor that rarely made movies that truly showed his abilities.  Anyway, Mai Zetterling (as Liz, the object of John's affection) is delightful and fun.  Always the optimist, she knows what she wants and she always gets it.   Her and John are well-written characters and they have the benefit of being handled so beautifully by Zetterling and Sellers.  I've got to get back to Virginia Maskell as John's wife, Jean.  She's fabulous and she plays Jean with such depth and character.  She's not just playing what would usually be a thankless role.  There's some genuine chemistry between her and the camera.  At an hour and forty-six minutes long, you'd think it would wear out its welcome after a while but it doesn't.  It's exactly as long as it needed to be.  It also didn't hurt to show a little skin to break up, uh, the, um, amusement.  Yeah, that's it.  Amusement!

 

And there's just one more thing to mention that MUST be mentioned and that's Richard Attenborough as the annoying artist playwright, Gareth L. Probert.  He's fucking hysterical and the tit-for-tat between he and John is worth the price of admission.

 

 

The Devil Is a Sissy (1936)

Directors:  W.S. Van Dyke, Rowland Brown

Writers:  John Lee Mahin, Richard Schayer, Rowland Brown

Composer:  Herbert Stothart

Starring:  Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney, Ian Hunter, Peggy Conklin, Katharine Alexander, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart, Jonathan Hale

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Greatest Human Drama

Plot:  A well-bred young English lad living in lower Manhattan tries to gain acceptance from his not-so-well-bred peers at school.

My rating:   7.5/10

Will I watch it again?   Maybe.

Man, can these kids act!  All three of these guys (Bartholomew, Cooper and Rooney) were three of the top male child actors of the 30s and with good reason.  Check out Cooper's early work with the OUR GANG shorts and you'll see what I mean.  It's incredible seeing these three in the same picture together.  I'll admit it, I was bawling my eyes out at the end.  There's no shame in that, no sir-ee.  I also choked up a few times when some of the characters did nice things for other people.  I know, THAT was weird.  My emotions were running pretty high for some reason.  The acting skills of these kids fucking sold it.  What these kids were going through is akin to something I experienced way back when so maybe there was that connection.  Claude's (Bartholomew) home life seemed like a fantasy world that most kids would never be able to relate to but you take that kind of storytelling in stride.  You don't find out how much of an asshole his mother is until the end and it plays heavily on the plot.  

The story moves pretty quickly but somehow it felt like it was longer than the 92 minutes it was.  Watch out for that last act because it's a doozy and an emotional one at that.  That's in stark contrast to the overly happy and upbeat note the picture starts on.  The ending is earned.  Enough can't be said about the three lead kid actors.  They are magnificent and a stark contrast to what we see today.  I couldn't help but feel that I'd seen Bartholomew in something before until it hit me.  The very next year after this picture he starred alongside Spencer Tracy with another wonderful performance in CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS (1937).  If I remember right, that's another one that had me crying at the end.  They made some great shit back then.

Gunless (2010)

Director: William Phillips

Writer: William Phillips

Composer: Greg Keelor

Starring: Paul Gross, Sienna Guillory, Dustin Milligan, Tyler Mane, Callum Keith Rennie, Graham Greene, Jay Brazeau, Michael Eklund, Alex Zahara, Jody Racicot, Shawn Campbell, Paul Coeur, Melody B. Choi, Tseng Chang

More info:  IMDb

Tagline: Fastest draw in the North... kinda.

Plot: A hardened American gunslinger is repeatedly thwarted in his attempts to mount a showdown in a friendly town in Canada where no one seems to understand or appreciate the brutal code of the American Wild West.

 My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes

 

 

Well this was refreshingly fun!  The tone is set as soon as The Montana Kid opens his mouth.  He sounds menacing and talks the tough talk but it's when no one around him gives a shit that he's disarmed of being a badass.  Brilliant!  The cast does a fine job all the way around, especially Gross.

 

So who is this guy?  I'd never heard of him but he's charismatic, likable and fun.  Looking at his credits I didn't see but one thing I recognized and that's the 90s show, DUE SOUTH.  I remember it being a thing 25 years ago but I never saw it.  Now I'll have to and just because of him.  He's wonderful.  

Writer/director William Phillips does a wonderful job with the characters and their dialogue.  The scenes flow together nicely and there didn't seem to be any fat on the bone.  It's a lean story the nicely sees The Kid transform from his gruff, killer persona to where he ends up.  I would've liked the villain of the picture, Ben Cutter (Rennie), to be something more than a stock bad guy who does mean things to animals and people to show us in as little time as possible that he's a bad man and must be stopped.  

 

Boo, hiss!

The romance between The Kid and Jane (Guillory) is nicely handled without much of the romance-y crap that sometimes bogs down these pictures.  It's not subtle by any stretch but it's also not a drag on the story by focusing too much time on it.  I really appreciated that.  The picture feels like it slows down a bit during the social dance but it gives a lot of the characters moments to flesh themselves out enough to make a difference to the picture as a whole which is a good thing.  There aren't too many Western comedies that work for me but this one does and in a big way.  I'm so glad I took the time out to give it a shot.

 

And starring a cast of about a dozen.

 

The Exotic Dreams of Casanova (1971)

Director: Dwayne Avery

Writer: Dwayne Avery

Composer: Vic Lance

Starring: Johnny Rocco , Jane Tsentas, John Vincent, Uschi Digard, James Brand, Jay Edwards, Vic Lance, Veada Van Ness, John Tull

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The Hilarious Escapades of an Infamous Lover!

Plot: During a huge sex party at his place, spaghetti western star and the greatest lover's descendant Joe Casanova is knocked unconscious. He dreams that he's put on trial which quickly turns into another orgy.

My rating: 3/10

Will I watch it again? No.

#52 on the Uschi Digard Needs to Have My Babies Project

Once again I've been betrayed by a movie poster (SHOCKER!).  This is disappointing in so many ways.  First of all, I was in the mood for a sexy, silly costume period piece.  Instead, it's about a descendant of the famous lover who gets hit on the head while hosting a sexy party.  While unconscious, he dreams about being on trial as a sex freak who learns that he's a conceited asshole that doesn't appreciate those around him that love him.  Naturally he wakes up at the end a changed man and promises to be a better friend and lover.  Ho-fucking-hum!  At least Uschi's in it!

 

That lackluster plot device is just here to show that the film makers tried to have a story creative enough to showcase A LOT of female nudity.  Someone should've told them that they could've achieved the same goal by starting the picture with Casanova announcing to a room full of naked women, "Who wants to fuck?" and let the adventure begin.  What's here is a smattering of weak humor, some lame music (but not all of it), stale technical merits and an exercise in padding the run time.  

 

Man, this guy gets ALL the pussy!

It does have a smidgen of entertainment value but it's often dull and uninteresting.  It at least picks up some steam once Casanova goes into dreamland but there's no reason it needs to be 90 minutes which is much too long.  At least we got a big drum solo sexy dance!