Born for Hell (1976)

Original title:  Die Hinrichtung

AKA:  Naked Massacre

Director:  Denis Heroux

Writers:  F.G. Ranger, Denis Heroux, Clenn Wood, Fred Denger, Geza von Radvanyi

Composer:  ???

Starring:  Mathieu Carriere, Debra Berger, Christine Boisson, Myriam Boyer, Leonora Fani, Ely Galleani, Carole Laure, Eva Mattes, Andree Pelletier, Ehmi Bessel, Karl-Heinz Kreienbaum, Paul Edwin Roth

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  For these nine young women, opening the door that night meant ending their lives!

Plot:  A disturbed American war veteran arrives in Belfast during the Northern Ireland conflicts, and proceeds to terrorize a household of female nursing students.

My rating:   7/10

Will I watch it again?   Maybe.

Good flick.  The first half of the picture sets it up and the second half is the home invasion.  Before the horror begins, we get to see both Cain's (played by Carriere) situation and we get to spend some time with the nine girls; all of this happening in Belfast, Northern Ireland, against the backdrop of a country torn apart by extreme violence.  For the most part, Cain is handled pretty well although I think there could've been a few more subtleties to give it a bit more nuance.  The filmmakers aren't giving Cain excuses but rather show you how this man, in his mental state, was able to find himself in a self-created situation that led to the murder of eight women over the course of one short night.   And with the set up involving the girls, that was handled masterfully, giving the audience enough information to know a little about each one to get a sense of who each are.  That was splendidly handled.

Once Cain makes his way into the girls' home, it gets ugly fast.  Cain's slippery slide to murder starts with an impulse that makes each subsequent murder easier to the point of being as natural as breathing.

 

 

The ending delivers something unexpected and still somewhat satisfying, insofar as Cain's fate is concerned.  I'm rather surprised at the low IMDb score.  I don't care to read the reviews on this one.  It's a good, well-made film, made at a time when edge was all the rage but this came from Europe whose filmmakers had a different sensibility and one that likely kept this from being the depraved exploitation film it would've been had it been made in the US.

I do have one last observation.  The version I watched was an English dub.  The dub itself was good which worked as it was set where English was spoken but the problem was with the sound levels for the music which often drowned out the dialogue.  What's more, the music, which is uncredited on IMDb, often didn't fit well with the visual.  There is one theme that did and it had a strong John Barry ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1968) vibe and it was great.  It had the right tone and unsettling vibe about it that fit well but the other cues were problematic.  Add to that the music would often stop quickly, unfinished.  I can see how that could be used as a technique to set the viewer on edge but it happened so much that, if that were the case, it ceased being effective after the umpteenth time.  I'm curious as the mixing levels and the music in general on any of the non-English versions.  Please let me know if you've seen one of them.  Fixing these issues alone would've boosted my score another point. The print I watched had no title card.

 

Triple Cross (1966)

Director:  Terence Young

Writers:  Rene Hardy, Frank Owen, William Marchant

Composer:  Georges Garvarentz

Starring:  Christopher Plummer, Romy Schneider, Trevor Howard, Gert Frobe, Claudine Auger, Yul Brynner, Anthony Dawson

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  MASTER-CRIMINAL! SUPER-SPY! AND ALL TRUE!

Plot:  During WW2, convicted bank robber Eddie Chapman becomes a triple agent working for both the British and the Germans.

My rating:   6/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

SPY SPOILERS AHEAD!  YARRRRRR!!!

I like the cast even though some of them don't sustain the level of quality they generally maintain in this picture.  For example, Brynner is does a fine job, playing his usual stern self until the end when it's time for his overly dramatic exit.  It's all too easy for him to over do it.  The rest of the cast does a fine job.  But when it comes to Plummer in the lead, he's mostly great except he sometimes comes off as a super cocky narcissist which makes him difficult to like, and he's the lead so you're kind of supposed to get behind this guy.  Plummer seems quite good at accents.  At times he sounds like a young Errol Flynn which only got me wanting to turn this off and watch a good ole Flynn adventure.  

 

As the title suggests, there's some double and triple cross action going on.  We spend more time with the Germans than with the Britich and most of the Germans aren't all that bad.  They don't display any of the evil side that we know about.  All that means is these Germans have personalities and they're not saying or doing evil things.  Maybe that's on purpose to give the audience room to suggest that maybe Chapman (Plummer) could genuinely be working for the Germans.  It really doesn't matter where his loyalties lie (except really you know he only seems to care about himself and which way the wind is blowing - he doesn't want to get stuck playing on the losing side no matter what).  

 

 Look at how shoddy this shot is?  I promise you they had a budget but they didn't always use it.

The plot moves at a nice enough pace but only once do you get a sense that he's in danger and that's on his first 'mission' for the Germans which ends up being a test that he barely catches onto in time to save his ass.  And that's part of the problem.  Aside from that tension-filled moment, there's little to no suspense.  It doesn't feel like it matters who's side he's really on.  You hope that he's really helping England more than Germany but you don't know until the end.  And by then I almost didn't care.  Speaking of not caring, what about that song playing over the end credits?  That's really out of left field.  It's more appropriate at the end of a Bond spoof.  With this being directed by Terence Young, the director behind 3 of the first 4 Bond pictures, that sounds about right but it's still beneath him.  But this isn't a spy spoof, it's based on a real guy that did these things.  There are enough ingredients in this picture that should've yielded something better and darker.  They had the opportunity to make a strong thriller taken from true events but instead they made a passable WWII spy drama that casually entertains and doesn't try too hard to not be forgettable.  

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!

 

 

Cruising (1980)

Director: William Friedkin

Writers: William Friedkin, Gerald Walker

Composer: Jack Nitzsche

Starring: Al Pacino, Paul Sorvino, Karen Allen, Richard Cox, Don Scardino, Joe Spinell, Jay Acovone, Randy Jurgensen

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Al Pacino is Cruising for a killer.

Plot:  A police detective goes undercover in the underground S&M gay subculture of New York City to catch a serial killer who is preying on gay men.

My rating:  6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I'm not sure where this film failed.  It's an interesting premise but I don't think it went far enough with Steve's (Pacino) descent into a world unlike his own and the overall investigation of solving the murders.  The picture is an hour and forty minutes and it doesn't seem nearly long enough and that another half hour would give the film time to really delve into what's important to the picture.  That's just my amateur opinion, of course, and I respect William Friedkin and his body of work that this is the story he wanted to tell.  But what I found fascinating isn't given enough serious time to develop.  It's neat seeing so many actors in early roles like Ed O'Neill, James Remar and Powers Boothe.  The ending is satisfying enough but it's what happens after Steve is done with his undercover work that blew me away.  The ambiguity was fucking insanely good.  It could've been a red herring for the audience and a way to make you go, "ooooooh!", but I loved it just the same.

Wet Job (1981)

Director:  Shaun O'Riordan

Writer:  James Mitchell

Composer:  Cyril Ornadel

Starring:  Edward Woodward, Russell Hunter, George Sewell, Angela Browne, Helen Bourne, Hugh Walters, Anthony Smee, Milos Kerek

More info:  IMDb

Plot:  Ten years after leaving the S.I.S., former agent/assassin David Callan is living a quiet life as the owner/operator of a militaria shop. He is forced out of retirement to participate in one final assignment.

My rating:  6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

For the most part, this is pretty good.  The story and dialogue, acting, direction and editing are well done.  It's the music that is all over the place from awful to suitable.  And being how this is a British TV movie, it was shot on video which is a drag since the quality isn't on par with the quality of the product.  Woodward is excellent as the former spy, Callan, and Callan is a beast of a professional.  The way he handles the Ruskies at the end when he's got the drop on him is so good that filmmakers need to watch this brief scene to see how a pro handles a gun.  There's not over-talking the situation and dragging out the moment.  He's efficient and understands not to fuck around and to quickly turn the situation in his favor.  Anyway, this has only whetted my appetite for more Callan adventures.  WET JOB was the last of three projects Woodward did as the character, preceeded by the film, CALLAN (1974) and the series of the same name which ran for 43 episodes from 1967-1972.

Bad Blood (1981)

Director:  Mike Newell

Writers:  Andrew Brown, Howard Willis

Composer:  Richard Hartley

Starring:  Jack Thompson, Carol Burns, Denis Lill, Donna Akersten, Martyn Sanderson, Marshall Napier, Cliff Wood, David Copeland, Ken Blackburn, John Bach, John Black, Karl Bradley, Greg Naughton, Alan Jervis Wilks

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  In 1941 Stan Graham ran amok with his guns and murdered 7 men....Sparking off one of the most bizarre manhunt's in history. The tragedy is that it really happened.

Plot:  During World War 2, a farmer in New Zealand murders seven people, and the police, along with local Maori trackers, hunt him in the bush country.

My rating:  7.5/10

Will I watch it again?   Yes.

Great performances, especially from Jack Thompson (Stan) and Carol Burns (his wife).  Burns really lights up once the shit hits the fan.  She completely sells it.  Thompson makes you feel like he lived it.  It's worth watching for those two alone.  But then you've also get to see a side of New Zealand you haven't seen, and a little slice of life there from 80 years ago.  The build-up to the killing is splendidly handled and the tension builds almost to a breaking point.  Richard Hartley's excellent score is used sparingly and with precision.  It makes you appreciate that moments with no music are just as important as those with it.  That's something that most people don't consider, particularly those who make movies. 

An hour and fifteen minutes in is when the things get ugly for everyone and it is intense.  What happens feels like you would imagine would happen when people get show with a low caliber rifle.   Not every shot is a lethal one.  It's harrowing how it goes down.  The next half hour is the aftermath and manhunt.  In reality, Stan alludes escape in the bush  for twelve days.  Here it feels like maybe two or three.  It was somewhat refreshing how the final act goes down but at the same time it was a little odd because we're not used to that as an audience.  You'll have to see it to understand.  I'd rather avoid spoilers on this one.  I don't want to say that I'm disappointed that the film's final half hour went the way it did but I would like to have spent more time with the Stan's ordeal and with the manhunt effort.  

Cleaner (2007)

Director:  Renny Harlin

Writer:  Matthew Aldrich

Composer:  Richard Gibbs

Starring:  Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harry, Eva Mendes, Luis Guzman, Keke Palmer, Maggie Lawson, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Robert Forster

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Solving a crime can be dirty work.

Plot:  A former cop who now earns a wage as a crime scene cleaner unknowingly participates in a cover-up at his latest job.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

I've seen this twice now because I completely forgot everything when I saw it three years ago.   That's what happens when you let yourself get behind.  The first act is great but not entirely.  Tom (Jackson) talking about his job is interesting and fun (in a dark way).  Everything's going great until Ann (Mendes) shows up in his office like something out of a hard-boiled detective movie from the 40s & 50s.  There's a slow descent in quality from that moment on.  I though the story was pretty good.  It might've done with some touch-ups but the basic plot is very workable, especially when you throw in Folks like Jackson and Harris.  They're great!  And so are Guzman, Cantillo and Forster.   Mendes?  Not so much.  She played the role OK but she seemed rather empty.  Richard Gibbs' score had that underlying moody vibe that sounded so generic that it could be used in hundreds of other movies and you'd never know it.  I dig some of the guy's work but it was only serviceable in this picture.  The camera rarely stands still (or so it seems).  I don't know what it would've taken to make this better.  What I liked most about it were some of the performances from several actors whose work I respect a lot.

Sweet Kill (1972)

AKA:  The Arousers

Director:  Curtis Hanson

Writer:  Curtis Hanson

Composer:  Charles Bernstein

Starring:  Tab Hunter, Cherie Latimer, Nadyne Turney, Isabel Jewell, Linda Leider, Roberta Collins, John Aprea, Kate McKewon, Angus Scrimm, Frank Whiteman, Harve Selsby, Josh Green, John Pearce, Sandy Kenyon

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  They take on all comers!

Plot:  A handsome and lonely gym teacher Eddie Collins can't perform sexually due to his constant watching of his mother undress while he hid in her closet as a child.  His only recourse is to kill the women he tries to sleep with and stash them in a pigeon hutch on his roof.  He hires a prostitute to dress as his dead mother,the only way he is able to achieve sexual gratification.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?   Yes.

Nice!  There's a well-told serial killer story here the has the pretense of a cheap horror movie with lots of great nudity but it does have some good psychological moments that pay off in the end.   Now I'm not saying there's a great movie in here somewhere but it is a good one.  It's also Curtis "L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997)" Hanson's first movie.  How 'bout them apples? 

And how 'bout them cantaloupes?  Tab Hunter does a good job and so does Nadyne Turney (as Barbara), the woman he frequents throughout the film and once more just before the end credits roll.  There's a lot of this that looks like typical exploitation horror stuff, and it is, but there's also something else going on that elevates this a bit higher than your typical psycho killer movie of the day.  The print I saw was a filthy fullscreen print with color issues.  It's unlikely this will get a decent restoration and released in its original 1.85 : 1 format. 

Two-Minute Warning (1976)

Director:  Larry Peerce

Writers:  George LaFountaine, Edward Hume

Composer:  Charles Fox

Starring:  Charlton Heston, John Cassavetes, Martin Balsam, Beau Bridges, Marilyn Hassett, David Janssen, Jack Klugman, Gena Rowlands, Walter Pidgeon, Brock Peters, David Groh, Mitchell Ryan, Joe Kapp, Pamela Bellwood, Andy Sidaris, Robert Ginty, Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford, Dick Enberg, Merv Griffin, Susan Backlinie

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  91,000 people. 33 exit gates. One Sniper...

Plot:  A crazed sniper is set to kill spectators at an L.A. Coliseum football championship game and the police races against time to eliminate him.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yeah.

When you watch this you need to make sure there are no interruptions and nothing to disturb you.  Give yourself to the movie and go for a ride.  If you do stop for a break or someone interrupts you, the tension is lost and so is the momentum that has been building since the opening minutes.  This flick is just about two hours and the way the director builds the tension is something all aspiring directors and editors need to study.  I was hooked from the get go and it paid off.  It does drop a little in tension once the S.W.A.T. team shows up.  It wasn't until after it was over that I thought that might've been deliberate because the final minutes when the bullets go flyin', it's off the charts carnage.  Mofos are dying.  It would be interesting to see how it would play out if the tension building never stopped.  It might be too much for some people.  The violence is pretty damn harsh for the mid-70s.  I wonder how it played with audiences.

The performances are solid and it's got quite the cast.  Director Peerce and company do a marvelous job of setting up the large cast of characters, giving them all enough screen time to define who they are.  Naturally, they're not going to go too deep with them but we at least need to know where they stand so that when the shit goes down, you might know and like them just enough to care if they are killed...and you just know some of them are going to snuff it.  It hit me early on that despite the nearly single location setting of the entire movie, this is playing out like the big budget, all-star cast disaster movies that were in vogue at the time.  This is a fine flick.  I'm just sorry I waited all the years to get around to it.

Wild Geese II (1985)

Director: Peter R. Hunt

Writers: Daniel Carney, Reginald Rose

Composer: Roy Budd

Starring: Scott Glenn, Barbara Carrera, Edward Fox, Laurence Olivier, Robert Webber, Robert Freitag, Kenneth Gaigh, Stratford Jones, Derek Thompson, Paul Antrim, John Terry, Ingrid Pitt, Patrick Stewart

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  They're back! In the most spectacular rescue mission ever filmed!

Plot: 

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

What's up with that low IMDb score?  I haven't read any reviews to find out but I really enjoyed this.  This is a sequel to THE WILD GEESE (1978) in name only.  None of the characters return.  Richard Burton was set to return but his death threw a monkey wrench into that situation.  Instead, they hire Edward Fox to play his brother.  Smart move.  It's the role Burton would've played and he would've been woefully miscast.  Fox was the perfect choice.

Scott Glenn (can you believe he's 81 already?) as John Haddad kills it as an emotionless (mostly; he does smile once or twice), get-things-done, mercenary who is the best there is next to Alex Faulkner (wonderfully played by Edward Fox).  These two guys are VERY good at what they do and I admire characters like that regardless of what side they're on.  The first hour has a lot of setup and even though you could justify a lot of it as filler, it's intriguing, offers some great suspense and it's entertaining.  I really loved spending time with Haddad and Faulkner.  You might think that there are too many subplots but that's one thing I dug because the scenes and layers gave us time to see how these characters think, behave and problem solve.  So then once they kidnapping happens (which the audience knows next to nothing about the details of the mission), You don't have to think about maybe how complicated the plan is.

Poor Ingrid.  How the mighty have fallen.

In the middle, there's about a twenty minute chunk devoted to the team's training.  It's not done like what you'd see in other big budget pictures that need to get the team up to speed.  Oh, no, no, no.  This one slyly shows us yet another layer or two about how many steps ahead Haddad and Faulkner are and the payoff (with someone's death) is bold.  Director Peter Hunt's fight scenes are excellent.  There's a scene early on where Haddad is kicking some ass and the scene and editing plays out like Hunt's groundbreaking sped up fighting he did in the Bond pictures of the 60s.  I really miss that technique.  As far as I can remember, this movie is the most recent one that uses it.

So what's left in the movie is removing Hess from the prison and out of the country and the aftermath.  The actual mission is good but not great.  This is the weaker moment in the film, but I still dug it.   It would've been nice had it taken place during the day.  The ending has Hess (Olivier, in one of his final roles) gives an impassioned speech to his new captors.  He makes a good argument.  The last couple of minutes are too light in tone for my taste.  After what happened over the last two hours, it would've been nice to end the film either ambiguous or on a somber note.  The cast does a marvelous job.  Stratford Johns (as the rotund and jovial, Mustapha El Ali) embodied Sydney Greenstreet so well that he would've been a perfect choice for playing Kasper Gutman in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941).  This is a very good thriller despite the actual mission not being as good as what preceded it.

The Black Windmill (1974)

Director:  Don Siegel

Writer:  Leigh Vance, Clive Egleton

Composer:  Roy Budd

Starring:  Michael Caine, Donald Pleasence, Delphine Seyrig, Clive Revill, John Vernon, Joss Ackland, Janet Suzman, Catherine Schell, Joseph O'Conor, Denis Quilley, John Rhys-Davies

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Seven days to a killing...the ultimate exercise in controlled terror.

Plot:  A British Agent's son is kidnapped and held for ransom.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I'm such a big Michael Caine fan that I'll watch everything he did before 1980.  After then, it's pick and choose time.  This one's OK.   The performances across the board are good.  I particularly liked John Vernon (McKee) as the super good at his job villain.  He had this shit thought out down to the smallest detail...until the end, that is.   The set-up and McKee's fucking with Tarrant (Caine) are most enjoyable.  Of course, it helps to have someone on the inside of the agency to help McKee with his task.   The picture is moving nicely until the final act when the tables are turning and it's a race against time for Tarrant to take care of the bad guy and save his son (all the while being hunted down by his spy agency employer as they suspect he's working for the bad guys) and for the mole to be discovered.  It's this last twenty minute or so of the movie that falls into the typical Hollywood device of "let's hurry and wrap this up".  And it's because of that, I was left underwhelmed.  I don't know what they could've done different but what's there is rushed and unsatisfactory.  But up until then, it's pretty darn good.