Any Gun Can Play (1967)

Original title: Vado...L'ammazzo e Torno

Director: Enzo G. Castellari

Writers: Tito Carpi, Enzo G. Castellari, Romolo Guerrieri, John Davis Hart, Sauro Scavolini, Giovanni Simonelli

Composers: Alessandro Alessandroni, Francesco De Masi

Starring: Edd Byrnes, George Hilton, Gilbert Roland, Stefania Careddu, Jose Torres, Ivano Staccioli, Gerard Herter, Ignazio Spalla, Adriana Gluffre, Valentino Macchi, Riccardo Pizzuti, Rodolfo Valadier, Marco Mariani

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A million dollars is the prize ... but the game is deadly.

Plot: A gang of bandits rob a train of it's $300,000 gold shipment. Once the gang's leader makes off with the pot he's pursued by a bounty hunter, a banker, and a lone bandit. Once word gets around about the missing shipment of gold mayhem ensues.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.

For starters, Gilbert Roland is a badass and should have been in every Spaghetti Western.  He did a few in the late 60s and this is the only one I've seen and I've seen it twice now. He was in his early 60s when he made this one and he looks fantastic.  What a great look he had.  It's got some nice moments and the scenery is gorgeous (I have GOT to visit this region of Spain some day).  One thing that brings it down for me is the sometimes silly, comedic music, the kind you get with the extended bar brawl.  It's so idiotic during that scene I about reached for the remote to fast forward through it...but I didn't.  One thing I REALLY dig about this picture is the end.  It's a got a fantastic finish to a 3-way duel/faceoff.  It's a pretty good picture.  I've had the VCI DVD since it came out around 2001. Back then I had a 32" CRT TV so the widescreen image was great.  Now that I've got a screen more than twice that, it's awful.  I don't mind dirty prints but it's the transfer that's bad.  It's filled with digital artifacts AND it's not 16:9 so you have to zoom in and it still doesn't fill the screen.  The only extras are trailer for this film and A BULLET FOR SANDOVAL (1969).  I don't even see this version on Amazon.  It might be out of print. If I watch it again I'll have to find a better transfer.  By that time I'll probably have an even larger screen which will be even worse for this picture.  Woof.

Feast (2005)

Director: John Gulager

Writers: Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton

Composer: Stephen Edwards

Starring: Balthazar Getty, Henry Rollins, Navi Rawat, Judah Friendlander, Josh Zuckerman, Jason Mewes, Jenny Wade, Krista Allen, Clu Gulager

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They're Hungry. You're Dinner.

Plot: Patrons locked inside of a bar are forced to fight monsters.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

If you like your horror mixed with some black humor then this might fit the bill for you.  It's gory, the creature effects are good, there's lots of monster action, you've got a few familiar faces in the cast and there are some pretty good laughs.  People die and a lot of them don't last long which I dug.  It's also tedious and after the first half of the picture my attention started to wain.  It felt like it was one ordeal after another as if it had to reach that 90 minute running time.  A little less would have helped.  Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for it.  I've heard a lot of good things about it but it didn't gel for me.  It is cool that the director is the son of Clu Gulager.  

Under Southern Stars (1937)

Director: Nick Grinde

Writer: Forrest Barnes

Composer: ???

Starring: Fritz Leiber, Fred Lawrence, Jane Bryan, Gordon Hart, John Sheehan, Wayne Morris, Pierre Watkin, Olive Tel, Myrtle Stedman, Harry Davenport, Al Haskell, Stuart Holmes, Dennis Moore, Jack Mower, Paul Panzer, Blackie Whiteford

More info: IMDb

Plot: Set in the springtime of 1863 in Chancellorsville, Virginia during the War Between the States, this colorful short profiles the heroic Confederate General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson the night before he would meet his fate in battle.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

This is part of the 'Warner Bros. Night at the Movies' extras that lead up to the DVD's feature film, BLACK LEGION (1937) (starring Humphrey Bogart).  It was used to show off the Technicolor process.  Why this little flick opens with Fred Lawrence crooning the title song is beyond me.  It's pretty cheesy.  Maybe songs sound better in color (hahaha).  There are some battle scenes which are kind of neat but it abruptly cuts from the action to General Jackson lying in bed, dying.  Back to the fight for a couple of minutes and let's end it with Fred bringing it home with one more chorus from "Under Southern Stars".  Hmmmmm.  It's a fun diversion from the other extras on the disc but it's not the kind of thing you'll probably revisit unless you tend to do the 'Warner...Movies' from start to finish on every release of theirs that has it. 

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)

Director: Norman Taurog

Writers: Robert Kaufman, James H. Nicholson, Elwood Ullman, Louis M. Heyward

Composer: Les Baxter

Starring: Vincent Price, Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, Susan Hart, Jack Mullaney, Fred Clark, Annette Funicello, Deborah Walley, Harvey Lembeck

More info: IMDb

Tagline: See Cuddly BIKINI GIRLS Made To Order!

Plot: Dr. Goldfoot has invented an army of bikini-clad robots who are programmed to seek out wealthy men and charm them into signing over their assets. Craig Gamble and Todd Armstrong set out to foil the fiendish plot.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

A dozen years ago I tried to watch this and turned it off after a half hour and moved onto something else.  That's rare for me not to finish a movie but I was watching it with friends and we were all having the same reaction.  It was dumb, unfunny and boring. I watched it last night with another group of friends and on a much bigger screen and something was different. It's still a dumb picture but I found myself laughing every once in a while.  I'm a fan of Price and Hickman (I used to watch DOBIE GILLIS a lot when I was a kid) and Price is hamming it up but this time the hamming adds to the fun.  Only a few of the jokes land well but they are pretty damn funny.  The whole thing is just ridiculous but it's mid-60s goofiness and you probably need to view it in that context to get the most out of it.  I can still understand why I turned it off all those years ago but I have a better appreciation for it now.  That doesn't mean I'll watch it again but, being the Price fan I am, I'll watch the sequel, DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS (1966) for better or worse. 

Black Legion (1937)

Director: Archie Mayo

Writers: Abem Finkel, William Wister Haines, Robert Lord

Composer: ???

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien-Moore, Ann Sheridan, Helen Flint, Joe Sawyer, Clifford Soubier, Alonzo Price, Paul Harvey, Dickie Jones, Samuel S. Hinds, Addison Richards, Eddie Acuff

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They murdered at midnight!

Plot: When a hard-working machinist loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker, he is seduced into joining the secretive Black Legion, which intimidates foreigners through violence.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

If you watch some of Bogart's earlier work, and I'm talking about the pictures he made in the early-to-mid 30s where he was largely a bit player, you couldn't see much in his performances that would lead you to believe he'd be one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.  He played a lot of thugs and criminal lowlifes.  In fairness, he wasn't given much of an opportunity to show off his acting chops. That's why it's so refreshing to see him stretch a bit in one of his first top-billed roles.  He makes a fine go at it, too, with a range of emotions, breathing life into the character of Frank Taylor.  At first he's a loving family man but that all changes when he loses his big promotion to a...FOREIGNER!!!  OH, NO!!!!  It's time for a KKK-esque group, The Black Legion, to step in and make things right for Frank and his fellow 'patriots'.

 

Naturally this is the wrong path for Frank but he's going to have to learn that lesson for himself.  There are lots of fine performances in this moral tale of bonehead groups like this.  The pacing is pretty quick until it gets to the last eleven minutes of the trial but even that has a few surprises left to spring on us. It's a good picture and probably one that most fans of Bogart will dig.  Warner Bros. knows how to treat their films right (but not all the time).  With this minor Bogart effort they give us a commentary (with Patricia King Hanson and Anthony Slide), the film's trailer and their 'Warner Night at the Movies' which has a trailer for THE PERFECT SPECIMEN (), a newsreel, a soundie (old timey music video) of Cab Calloway singing Hi De Ho, the 17 minute short film UNDER SOUTHERN STARS (1937), and a cartoon short PORKY AND GABBY (1937) which leads into the film. 

Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)

Director: William Asher

Writers: William Asher, Leo Townsend

Composer: Les Baxter

Starring: Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Deborah Walley, Harvey Lembeck, John Ashley, Jody McCrea, Donna Loren, Marta Kristen, Linda Evans, Timothy Carey, Don Rickles, Paul Lynde, Buster Keaton, The Hondells, Earl Wilson, Bobby Shaw

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Any number can play...but it's better with just two!

Plot: In the fourth of the highly successful Frankie and Annette beach party movies, a motorcycle gang led by Eric Von Zipper kidnaps singing star Sugar Kane managed by Bullets, who hires sky-diving surfers Steve and Bonnie from Big Drop for a publicity stunt. With the usual gang of kids and a mermaid named Lorelei.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Dumb, silly, idiotic and sometimes fun, but it's the interesting cast that can't let me pass it up.  It's great seeing Rickles, Lynde, Carey, Lembeck and Keaton (who's got some really funny bits) in one picture.  The humor is way over the top.  I dig slapstick but I wasn't partial to what this picture was serving up.  In fact, I was wondering who was diggin' this stuff 50 years ago.  We watched the film outside on a big screen in my backyard and hung out in the pool which was fun.  It's a film that plays much better when you're watching it with friends.  I wouldn't recommend seeing it alone.  I think the only times I laughed were at the ridiculousness of it all.  Was Avalon wearing a toupee?  The songs are bad to OK with one standout sung by Jackie Ward (lip synced by Linda Evans)...

The end credits were fun and the song was catchy (we were all singing the tune for a few minutes after it was over but quickly forgot it when the second movie started).  It's pretty tame (no surprise) and most of the jokes fall flat but it's an over the top product of its time and it was popular, making lots of dough.  There are a few other films made by the same folks and I'll eventually watch them all and mostly because they're sprinkled with actors I dig. 

Poor White Trash (1957)

Original title: Bayou

Director: Harold Daniels

Writer: Edward I. Fessler

Composer: Gerald Fried

Starring: Peter Graves, Lita Milan, Douglas Fowley, Jonathan Haze, Ed Nelson, Eugene Sonfield, Evelyn Hendrickson, Milton Schneider, Michael Romano, Timothy Carey

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Somewhere, a 15-year old girl may be a teenager... in the Cajun country, she's a woman full-grown! ...and every Bayou man knows it!

Plot: A community of Cajun fishermen living around a remote bayou includes one authentic beauty, Marie, who wants to better herself but must deal with the unwelcome attentions of storekeeper Ulysses. When she meets Martin Davis, visiting New York architect, they hit it off at once; but the sinister Ulysses is not inclined to suffer a Yankee rival.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I kinda figured, this being from '57, it wasn't going to deliver what the title suggested.  The story is pretty simple.  Ulysses (Carey) is a dangerous asshole that takes what he wants and no one in this little Cajun community will stand up to him.  He rapes Marie (Milan) and gets jealous as hell when Martin (Graves), an architect from NYC, takes a liking to her but there's a hurricane a-brewin' that's sure to shake things up even further.  There isn't much reason to see this except that it's got Peter Graves, Jonathan Haze (Seymour from THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960)) and a wild performance from Kramer!

Nope.  It's Timothy Carey but he is definitely a wild card when it comes to acting. This 6'4" guy often times acted his way into being the oddest or most memorable character in a lot of the pictures he did.  In this one he's off the charts again (did you see that dance in the video above?) as the asshole rapist.  He definitely stands out, that's for sure.  Here's something salacious for you, Marie is 15 years old and the adult Martin never questions her age; he just goes along with the flow...even when that river moves him down to nailin' her during a hurricane.  That scene is just awful, too.  The lovemaking (mostly kissing from what I can see) is superimposed with the rough, crashing waves created by the hurricane.  And there's the horrendous trumpet/mariachi-esque music where the theme lasts a few seconds but it's repeated at least 10-20 times.  It's an assault on the eyes and the ears. That's the hurricane sex scene.  After that Martin finally shows some balls (he's a pacifist that doesn't want to fight) when he's forced into battling it out with Ulysses.  There's no surprise who wins.  There's a tiny bit of nudity near the beginning when Ulyysses is chasing Marie and rips a piece of clothing off her as he catches up to her two or three times.  You see her backside but that's it.  Everything else is cleverly concealed even though the chase lasts a lot longer than you'd expect.  Great job on the editing.  I'm a sucker for these sleazy Southern pictures so it was worth my 83 minutes.