The Set-Up (1949)

Director:  Robert Wise

Writers:  Art Cohn, Joseph Moncure March

Composer:  Roy Webb (stock music)

Starring:  Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter, Wallace Ford, Percy Helton, Hal Baylor, Darryl Hickman, Kevin O'Morrison, James Edwards

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  I Want a Man... Not a Human Punching Bag!

Plot:  Because aging boxer Bill Thompson always lost his past fights, his corrupt manager, without telling Thompson, takes bribes from a betting gangster, to ensure Thompson's pre-arranged dive-loss in the next match.

My rating: 8.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yes!

This is one of the great ones.  Robert Wise masterfully sucks you into the picture from start to finish.  This picture moves so smoothly that it's over before you know.  The flow of this flick is remarkable.  The performances all around are top notch.  Robert Ryan (as Stoker) is so sympathetic, it hurts and you really feel for Julie (Audrey Totter) in a way that's genuine.  These actors aren't playing roles, they ARE their characters.   Even the secondary and tertiary roles are solid and from a lot of familiar faces.  The first thirty-five minutes sets the picture up.  You get the big fight for the next twenty.  Then it's the aftermath for the last fifteen.  And that soft fade out.  Nice.  The Warner Bros. DVD has a commentary track with Wise & Martin Scorcese.  For as many times as I've seen this, I can't believe I haven't listened to it yet.  I should get on it.

Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976)

Director:  Sam O'Steen

Writer:  Anthony Wilson

Composer:  Charles Bernstein

Starring:  Stephen McHattie, Patty Duke, Broderick Crawford, Ruth Gordon, Lloyd Haynes, David Huffman, Tina Louise, George Maharis, Ray Milland, Donna Mills, Beverly Sanders

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  This is the shocker you've been waiting for since the day he was born!

Plot:  Having been adopted by the madam of a southwestern brothel, a now adult Adrian must cope with the fact that he's Satan's kid, and not living up to his expectations.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Hail, Satan!

Hey, it's the 70s and Satan is all the rage, so why not make a sequel no one asked for?  I dig the cast.  Ruth Gordon is hilarious and so funny that I had to quickly look this up to see if it was a comedy.  Seriously, she delivers her lines like she later did in EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE (1978) and continues to do so from the first few minutes to the last.  Jesus, that broad was funny.  The story is OK and it works for me mostly because this is a TV movie.  That makes it a little more acceptable.  But it does cover a lot of ground over a number of years.  It's the kind of story that would probably work much better as a novel.  I swear the best part of this flick is every scene with Ruth Gordon.  She's the only connection to the original film except for the director, Sam O'Steen who was the editor on the '68 picture.  It does drag a little here and there but not much.  The only scene that needed some serious truncating was when Adrian (McHattie) goes to NYC to does some devil shit and he starts tripping balls with his face painted up like a mime or The Crow or something.  It's not nearly as bad as the internet says but it's far from being a worthy follow-up to one of the greatest horror movies, ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968).

The Fiend Who Walked the West (1958)

Director:  Gordon Douglas

Writers:  Harry Brown, Philip Yordan, Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, Eleazar Lipsky

Composer:  ?

Starring:  Hugh O'Brian, Robert Evans, Dolores Michaels, Linda Cristal, Stephen McNally, June Blair, Edward Andrews, Ron Ely, Ken Scott, Emile Meyer

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Don't turn your back on the Kooky Killer with the baby face!

Plot:  A convicted bank robber is serving his sentence, and wishing nothing more than to finish his time and get back to his family, gets involved with a psychotic, homicidal inmate who turns on him and winds up terrorizing his wife and murdering his friends.

My rating:  7/10

Will I watch it again?   Maybe.

Well, well, well, this picture is full of all kinds of surprises, and most of them are in the last half hour.  For 1958, this seems like a serious change of pace for a Western.  There's some heavy shit bandied about.  Felix (Evans) is a psychotic killer.  His murder count is probably more than 8 from what we see, not to mention what he'd done before.  It's nice that Hardy (O'Brian) has a character arc.  What he becomes in the last few minutes is bad-fuckin'-ass.  I've been aware of Hugh O'Brian's name for decades but I couldn't have told you anything about him until now.  This guy is one tall, hunky, manly badass.  Robert Evans, on the other hand, uh, I would say the less said the better. 

I'm in the camp that he's woefully miscast.  I can see what he was going for but he didn't have the acting chops to pull it off convincingly.  He's OK, I guess, but he was often distracting with his inability to sell it fully.  I can't think of anyone at the moment that would've killed it but you can see he needed more lessons or something.  It was refreshing, though, seeing a character like his in a Western.  He was brutal.  This is a remake of KISS OF DEATH (1947), a film noir that I haven't seen in over twenty years.  I need to fix that .  The only thing I remember besides the chilly performance by Richard Widmark (that laugh of his, man!) was the scene where he pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down a staircase, giggling gleefully.  I'd say give this flick a watch.  It's different and that roller coaster of a ride that is the last twenty minutes will make you glad you did.

Revolt of the Slaves (1960)

Original title:  La Rivolta degli Schiavi

Director:  Nunzio Malasomma

Writers:  Nicholas Patrick Wiseman, Duccio Tessari, Stefano Strucchi, Daniel Mainwaring

Composer:  Angelo Francesco Lavagnino

Starring:  Rhonda Fleming, Lang Jeffries, Dario Moreno, Ettore Manni, Wandisa Guida, Gino Cervi, Fernando Rey, Serge Gainsbourg, Jose Nieto

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  WANTON . . . TEMPTRESS . . . She put the torch to an empire of sin!

Plot:  During the later years of the Roman Empire, the daughter of a wealthy patrician falls in love with a Christian slave.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

Roman 1:  The slaves are revolting!
Roman 2:  You're telling me, they stink on ice!

If only this picture were rich with dialogue like that but, alas.  I was hoping this would be more of a Sword & Sandal action flick.  It has some action (with some clumsily choreographed fight scenes) but there's also a lot of Christian drama (yawn).  A nasty side effect of the latter is the overuse of cheesy church organ music.  It's so bad.  One thing you don't see in these pictures are roles for black actors.  This one has a sizeable role for Vanoye Aikens (as Iface) and Dolores Francine (as Liubaia).  That was refreshing.  Iface is one of the bad guys but still.  The overly religious story doesn't do it for me at all.  Besides the religious part of it, movies like these about the persecution of Christians in the waning days of the Roman Empire almost always follow the same overused and boring-ass tropes and this one is no different. 

How many people on this production approved of Vibio's (Jeffries) costume (on the right)?  It's awful.

For my money, the best part of the movie was the last 15 or more minutes when the Christians are in the Colosseum when the prisoners are picked off one by one and then something shocking happens to the last one.  But, naturally, this is going to end on an uplifting note to give hope and inspiration to all.  Yawn.  When looking for movie posters to add to this entry, I came across a review of the Kino Blu-ray and the widescreen print looks gorgeous.  I watched a lousy fullscreen VHS copy.  I bet I might've liked it more if I had that Blu-ray but then it would've been a waste of money ultimately since I would only watch it once and get rid of it.  Sigh.

Dracula's Dog (1977)

Director:  Albert Band

Writer:  Frank Ray Perilli

Composer:  Andrew Belling

Starring:  Michael Pataki, Jan Shutan, Libby Chase, John Levin, Reggie Nadler, Jose Ferrer

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  There's More To The Legend Than Meets... The Throat!

Plot:  Russian soldiers accidentally unleash the servant of Dracula, as well as his dog, during excavations of Romania. Together, they set out for America, to find the last descendant of the great Count.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Jesus!  Enough with the dog whining, already!  Everywhere you turn, dogs are whining and it gets old fast.  The premise is ridiculous and the film makers went the straight route instead of embracing the goofy story and have fun with it.  It's slow enough that you'll be banging your head halfway through when you find out your only halfway through.  The dog kills aren't nearly as convincing as they should be.  More time could've been spent editing something better.  Once you get past Zoltan being a vampire and after he bites and kills other dogs, they come back to life.  This sounds like winning fun but it isn't.  It drags.  We're told that Michael (Patakai) is Dracula's last living heir but Michael has a young son, so there's that.  The music is as bland as Jose Ferrer's performance.  He phones it in on someone else's dime.  At least it's got the Euro horror stalwart, Reggie Nalder.  That guy's unique mug is perfect for these pictures.   The ending is soso.  The dogs are killed and that's that.   This low budget affair isn't even worthy of a group watch with the liquor sauce flowing.  I feel zapped enough of energy as it is after watching it.

Wonder Woman (1974)

Director:  Vincent McEveety

Writer:  John D.F. Black

Composer:  Artie Butler

Starring:  Cathy Lee Crosby, Kaz Garas, Andrew Prine, Ricardo Montalban, Charlene Holt, Anitra Ford, Richard X. Slattery, Jordan Rhodes, Robert Porter

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  The Amazing Amazon Princess Comes to Television!

Plot: 

My rating:  6/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

46 years ago, this is the Wonder Woman TV movie that would have to satisfy you until the next year when the corny but fun Lynda Carter series would air.  This one is OK.  The male mysogeny is hard to watch but I think it's played up even more because we really need to see how WW deals with it and she's a real pro at destroying these people...verbally, not physically.  It's kind of ho-hum for the first 40 minutes and then it gets a little better from there.  That's when Diana FINALLY dons the super hero costume and the action kicks in with little bit of thrust, parry stick fighting!

Exciting, isn't it?

The movie is only 73 minutes long and it's not until the last 18 minutes that we finally get to the villain master-minding the evil plot, Abner smith (Ricardo Montalban).  This is really the only thing worth a spit.  He's so goddamn charming and he shows a tremendous, yet guarded respect for WW.  It's a pisser he's not in it more.  It doesn't take long before he's apprehended.  His last line is, "Wonder Woman, I love you." and I believe it.  Crosby does a good job and she's got the class to pull off the role.  Andrew Prine looks like he's having a blast which translates into a super fun performance.  It's worth a curiosity watch. 

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.