God Will Forgive My Pistol (1969)

Original title:  Dio Perdoni la Mia Pistola

Directors:  Mario Gariazzo, Leopoldo Savona

Writers:  Mario Gariazzo, Leopoldo Savona

Composers:  Vasili Kojucharov, Elsio Mancuso

Starring:  Wayde Preston, Loredana Nusciak, Jose Torres, Dan Vadis, Livio Lorenzon, Giuseppe De Santis, Giuseppe Addobbati, ARturo Dominici

More info:  IMDb

Plot:  Johnny Texas is asked to inquire about the death of Prescott, a rich landowner accused of having robbed a postal wagon. His investigation upsets Prescott's neighbor, Martin, who will use all possible means to stop him.

My rating:  4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Ugh, was this slow and boring and it took about twenty minutes of it before I realized that this probably wasn't going to get better but I stuck to it.  Every aspect of this was just below average.  Even Johnny Texas' multiple disguises and trick weapons/props (like his crutch with a built-in gun) didn't help much.  The disguises were high school theater quality.  The bad guys were morons for not seeing through them.  This picture smacks of low rent at every turn.  The comic relief from the mute and the dwarf are too broadly played (as was the norm back then) and the horrible "funny" music in those scenes makes it more excruciating.  The audible noise was too much, man.  I'm a big Spaghetti Western fan and this is one of the many that needs to be avoided.  

The Bloody Hands of the Law (1973)

Original title:  La Mano Spietata Della Legge

AKA:  Anti Terror Squad, The Law Enforcers, Execution Squad

Director:  Mario Gariazzo

Writer:  Mario Gariazzo

Composer:  Stelvio Cipriani

Starring:  Philippe Leroy, Antonio Monselesan, Silvia Monti, Klaus Kinski, Fausto Tozzi, Pia Giancaro, Cyril Cusack

More info:  IMDb

Plot:  A crime boss is assassinated and witnesses to the crime are subsequently killed. A no-nonsense policeman decides to take the law into his own hands in bringing these criminals to justice.

My rating:  5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Meh.  Klaus Kinski's creepy-ass mug makes for a great villainous look.  He and his team are efficient in killing mofos.  It's tough to judge the acting because this is an Italian production dubbed in English.  I'd prefer to see this in the original language with English subs but you take what you can get, right?  Anyway, it's got its moments I guess but there are spots that drag, and some of them are partly because they don't have music.  Sometimes that's exactly what a scene needs but not for this flick, it needed more music and something that would punch it up a bit.  I'm in the middle of a 60s Eurospy movie and that one suffers the same problem.  There's a some action and nudity but it's not enough to make up for the slowness of the other bits.  I did like the ending being somewhat of a downer.  I like surprises.

Pages of Death (1962)

Director:  ?

Writer:  ?

Composer:  ?

Starring:  Tom Harmon, Vivi Janiss, John Larch, Paul Picerni

More info:  IMDb

Plot:  A 12 year old girl doesn't come home from school.  She turns up day.  Was the murder a teenager addicted to pornographic magazines he purchased at the newsstand?

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

This needs to be seen by everyone, lest you or someone you know goes into a frenzy of smut-inspired rage.

I've seen a lot of scare/classroom films in my day and there are some bad ones despite the brief runtime.  This one's about a half hour and it's quite entertaining, not to mention it's got an impressive cast - just look at their credits.  Here's a fun tidbit.  The narrator, Tom Harmon, is the father of actor Mark Harmon.

The two detectives are mad as hell that the local drugstores and newsstands are carrying smutty books and they won't stop for anything until the city is rid of this scourge.  After the young girl's body is discovered, they soon make their way to the suspect's (Paul's) house.  His mother is keeping her trap shut because they think he had something to do with it and of course her son couldn't possibly be involved.  So naturally she leaves them alone in his room for them to rummage through his dresser where they find lots of magazines, paperback novels, 8mm films and even slides!  Paul's father, George, is played by John Larch, an actor who's recognizable in tons of movies.

My favorite character is hands down is Baker, the shop owner.  He brings the most energy and seems to revel in the role and he's a nice contrast to the often deadpan, DRAGNET-ish coppers.  You can watch it on YouTube above.  If you don't watch the whole thing (and what's wrong with you that you can't give up a half hour of your time for art?) then just hit the final five minutes at the store.  The artistry involved with the dialogue exchange and how the camera pans left to see the two detectives exit the store and into the shot we see a teen reading a book, presumably a book of smut.  That's some next level shit right there.

Jackson County Jail (1976)

Director:  Michael Miller

Writer:  Donald E. Stewart

Composer:  L. Loren Newkirk

Starring:  Yvette Mimieux, Tommy Lee Jones, Howard Hesseman, Betty Thomas, Robert Carradine, Nancy Lee Noble, Severn Darden, Gus Peters, Mary Woronov, Hal Needham

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  What they do to her in the Jackson County Jail is a crime!

Plot:  Fed-up advertising executive Dinah Hunter quits her job and goes on a cross-country car trip from Los Angeles to New York en route to another job. Along the way, she meets up with two psychotic hitchhikers and they steal her car. Ditched and stranded in the middle of nowhere, she seeks refuge in a rural bar run by a drunken lout. After a misunderstanding, she is thrown overnight into the cells of a local jail where her bad trip continues to take a turn for the worse.

My rating:  7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.

What a nice surprise.  I went into to this thinking it was another Roger Corman produced  exploitation picture when it turned out to be a serious drama.  The poster and trailer betray the tone of the film.  The performances from the leads are fantastic.  Hell, I can't think of any of the actors that didn't bring it.  It's only 84 minutes which is precisely how long it needed to be.  There really isn't any fat and it flies by at a reasonable clip.  Dinah's journey until she leaves the jail is just awful.  What happens to that poor woman is just mean.  It's one tragic event after another.  Nearly the only man she meets that treats her as an equal is Coley (Jones) and he's a hardcore criminal.  The ending stops before resolving a main character, leaving someone's fate unknown and I liked that a lot.  Find a nice widescreen print and check this one out.  It subverted my expectations in such a positive way. 

The Nest (1988)

Director: Terence H. Winkless

Writers: Eli Cantor, Robert King

Composer: Rick Conrad

Starring: Robert Lansing, Lisa Langlois, Franc Luz, Terri Treas, Stephen Davies, Diana Bellamy, Jack Collins, Nancy Morgan, Jeff Winkless, Steve Tannen, Heidi Helmer

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Roaches have never tasted flesh... until now. She's just an appetizer.

Plot:  A biological experiment goes haywire when meat-eating mutant roaches invade an island community, terrorizing a peaceful New England fishing village and hideously butchering its citizens.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Maybe this is one of those movies that, when being made, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  This low budget flick looks great in widescreen and there are some good performances but that's about all I can think of that I liked about it.  This isn't without some lessor acting.  Terri Treas overacts her ass off as Dr. Hubbard.  She would've been great if the rest of the film followed her lead and went total camp and ineptitude.  But it didn't and this is what we've stuck with.  The synthesizer score is your standard low budget fare which hurts.  The biggest problem with this flick is that it's too slow.  90 minutes is far too much for this.  Almost from the beginning people are dying from these mutated roaches (that make a loud radioactive sizzle sound but only when the characters see them and not before).  An hour into this most of the town has been killed and the recently resigned Sheriff Johnson goes to Dr. Hubbard and threatens her to do something about it.  Wow, now there's only thirty minutes left for the skeleton crew of a cast to get picked off one by one until we're left with whoever's left.  And you pretty much know who's going to snuff it and who's going to survive.  I don't mind by-the-numbers scripts, bad acting, adequate special effects and so on because you can still have an enjoyable movie with some or all of those ingredients.  This isn't one of them. 

The Young Graduates (1971)

Director:  Robert Anderson

Writers:  Robert Anderson, Terry Anderson, Dave Dixon

Composer:  Ray Martin

Starring:  Patricia Wymer, Steven Stewart, Gary Rist, Bruno Kirby, Jennifer Ritt, Dennis Christopher, Marly Holiday

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  The Hot Pants Generation is Loose!

Plot:  Spunky and precocious high school senior Mindy Evans spurns her decent, but frustrated boyfriend Bill and has a fling with hunky married nice guy teacher Jack Thompson. Midy finds out that she might be pregnant. While waiting for the results of her pregnancy test, Mindy decides to alleviate the tension by embarking on an impromptu road trip to Big Sur, California with her loyal best gal pal Sandy.

My rating:  4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

This coming of age-ish picture feels like it's happening in real time.  That is, IT'S WAY TO FUCKING LONG!  Take a high school teenage drama, add some sex & nudity, students banging teachers and each other, drugs, road trips, bad news bikers, hippies and a shitload of car/bike traveling and montages and you'd think you'd have a fun exploitation flick.  Nope.  It's a light drama that dips its toe into exploitation but it ends up being plain ole boring.  About halfway through the picture, Mindy decides to take a road trip now that she's just turned 18 and thinks she's pregnant with her teacher's baby.

So she and her friend take off in a dune buggy, pick up a hitchhiker Mindy recognizes, run out of gas, get picked up by some no good bikers and get mixed up in lots of nasty things.  So halfway through the drama it wants to be something different.  The problem is, the movie just got a lot bigger and longer.  Add in A LOT of montages, many of them traveling, and some bad pop music.  The only reason I gave this a shot is because it's Bruno Kirby's first moveie.

He's fun and he has a decent sized role being a first timer and all.  I can't believe this movie is almost an hour and forty minutes long.  It should've ended much sooner.  It wouldn't have been difficult to have made this into two movies.  There was probably enough footage to do it.  And to make sure that everyone who stuck it out until the end knew they were still watching the same movie, writer/director bookends the film as it started, with a groovy school dance.  OK, it's not exactly a horrible movie but it's just overlong by a lot and it's heavily padded.  Your mileage may vary.

Corridors of Blood (1958)

Director:  Robert Day

Writer:  Jean Scott Rogers

Composer:  Buxton Orr

Starring:  Boris Karloff, Betta St. John, Christopher Lee, Finlay Currie, Adrienne Corri, Francis De Wolff, Francis Matthews, Nigel Green, Desmond Llewelyn

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Tops in Terror!

Plot:  Dr. Thomas Bolton fights for the use of anesthetic in surgery and uses himself as a guinea pig, but soon finds himself addicted.

My rating:  7/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

The posters and trailer portray this as a horror movie.  It has horror elements but it's not a horror movie.  It's a pseudo-biography about the doctor who discovered anesthesia.  I doubt there's much fact in it but that's the gist of the film.  There are other sub-plots are added like Burke & Hare-like characters who kill and sell the bodies to hospitals and a romance (of sorts) threadline.  The performances are well done.  Karloff presents such a sympathetic character that I was genuinely concerned when he was taken advantage of and headed down a dark and dangerous path.  The picture looks great and it checks off all of the boxes needed for a quality production but despite the horror setting/elements (plus the subpar scar makeup on Christopher Lee's Resurrection Joe), most of the film is dramatic and feels a bit slow.  Nevertheless, it's a good movie.