Sailor of the King (1953)

Director:  Roy Boulting

Writers:  C.S. Forester, Valentine Davies

Composer:  Clifton Parker

Starring:  Jeffrey Hunter, Michael Rennie, Wendy Hiller, Bernard Lee, Peter van Eyck, Victor Maddern, John Horsley, Patrick Barr, Robin Bailey

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  The greatest story of the sea by today's greatest storyteller!

Plot:  In 1940, Canadian sailor Andrew Brown is prisoner on a battle damaged German raider and he plans to delay the raider's at-sea repairs until a British naval task-force can destroy it.

My rating:   7.5/10

Will I watch it again?   YES!

SNIPIN' SPOILERS AHEAD!!!  YARRRRRRR!!!

The film starts out during WWI with a sappy romance when a soldier (Rennie as Richard Saville) meets a girl (Hiller as Lucinda Bentley) before going abroad with the two falling in love in the hours/days before his departure.  They speak of marriage but it never happens.  Did they do the nasty?  It's possible but not all that hinted at.  This happens in the first fifteen minutes and it's pretty by the numbers lovey-dovey stuff of its time.  Cut to more than twenty years later and Saville is an admiral commanding a fleet in WWII.  This is where the film kicks into gear and gets interesting.  Saville is hell-bent on sinking a German warship, the Essen, and he makes the call for one of his ships to hold their position until the fleet arrives.  That ship is destroyed, leaving only two survivors that end up as prisoners on the Essen in sick bay, Earnshaw (Maddern) and Brown (Hunter).  The Essen is damaged and seeks shelter in a small cove, hidden from the sea and Brown gets the crazy idea to steal a rifle and an inflatable boat and secure himself on the cliff overlooking the Essen, shooting those who attempt at repairing the ship in an effort to delay them long enough for the rest of the fleet to find them.  THIS is pretty damn intense and makes for one hell of a show!  

The first, short, act is by the numbers romantic BS.  Get past that and you've got yourself a pretty damn good action thriller.  The performances are very good, especially from Hunter (who goes shirtless and hunky from the time he ditches the German vessel).  

 

 

The direction during the standoff is tight and tense.  This is some really good shit and well worth a watch.  It is weird, though, with the first act feeling tacked on considering the rest of the movie ALMOST has nothing to do with it.  The ending is upbeat and only slightly hints at something possibly relating to Hiller as it's said by Brown that he has a mother and Hiller was in the beginning of the film which are the only two time a woman is either shown or spoken of.  Are we supposed to draw the conclusion that Brown is Saville's son?  Yeah, I think so.  It's really driven home (and emotionally so) when you watch the alternate ending found on the DVD which changes Brown's fate.  Yeah, I choked up a bit.  The alternate ending at least ties her to the story in such a way that more so justifies the first fifteen minutes.  Without it, you're left scratching your head a little bit wondering what the point was except either it was bad writing, filler or studio intervention.  All of those things are still possible but it makes more sense that there's a bigger, more intimate story here.  Regardless, the action/standoff portion is well-handled and worth watching.   Drop the opening BS and this is easily an 8/10.

 

 

Salome (1953)

Director: William Dieterle

Writers: Harry Kleiner, Jesse Lasky Jr.

Composer: George Duning

Starring: Rita Hayworth, Stewart Granger, Charles Laughton, Judith Anderson, Cedric Hardwicke, Basil Sydney, Maurice Schwartz, Arnold Moss, Alan Badel

More info: IMDb

Plot: After her banishment from Rome, Jewish Princess Salome returns to her Roman-ruled native land of Galilee, where prophet John the Baptist preaches against Salome's parents, King Herod and Queen Herodias.

My rating:  5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

Watching these cheesy religious epics is a mixed bag.  On one hand, you've got the beautiful costumes, lavish set dressing, big musical score and usually with a large cast loaded with big time Hollywood stars.  On the other hand, they're loaded with religious propaganda that'll make your eyes roll right out of sockets.  This non-believer watches them for the Ancient Roman spectacle and the cast and this one's at least got a decent cast.  I'll watch anything Charles Laughton did and this qualifies.  And I've been a fan of Stewart Granger since seeing him in SCARAMOUCHE (1952), one of my all time favorites.  I've seen very little of Rita Hayworth's catalog but I like what I've seen.  This flick is OK at best but it suffers from the hit-you-on-the-head propaganda that these pictures are loaded with.  What's more, nearly the entire film is shot on indoor sets.  That gets old and quick.  They're nice sets and well-lit and decorated but they're sets nonetheless and it's obvious that almost whenever they're supposed to be outdoors, they're on a soundstage; fake rocks abound!  Over-the-top melodrama abound!

Charles Laughton is mentally eye-fucking a woman, his step-daughter no less!  

Now THAT'S acting!

Give this mall all the awards!

 

I wasn't into it much until the final act when Princess Salome's (Hayworth) mother (Queen Herodias played by Judith Anderson) offers her up to  King Herod (with Charles Laughton having a good time hamming it up)!  Herodias wants John the Baptist dead for slandering her name so she convinces Salome to dance at Herod's birthday party.  It's already been established that Herod has the hots for Salome but he doesn't want John harmed.  Once Salome's dance begins, Herodias tells Herod he can have her for the price of John's head.  Herod wants a piece of that pie and quickly motions to make it happen.  FUCKING NICE!!!!!  This got dark pretty fucking fast, but then there's only a few scant minutes left and of course they have to throw in some Jesus-y bits to close out the film.  Does Herod get his pie and eat it, too?  Nope.  So, I guess you could say it ends on a down note.

I'm listening...

And one more thing, this is the movie debut of Alan Badel, playing John the Baptist.  He must come from the bug eyes school of acting...

...because he does that thing for most of his screen time.  But the payoff in the end is great!

 

 

Sorry about that bug eyes thing.

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.

 

Halloween 8: Resurrection (2002)

Director:  Rick Rosenthal

Writers:  Larry Brand, Sean Hood

Composer:  Danny Lux

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Brad Loree, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Sean Patrick Thomas, Daisy McCrackin, Katee Sackhoff, Luke Kirby, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Ryan Merriman, Tyra Banks

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Michael Myers is back...and he's ready to clean house!

Plot:  Three years after he last terrorized his sister, Michael Myers confronts her again, before traveling to Haddonfield to deal with the cast and crew of a reality show which is being broadcast from his old home.

My rating:   4.5/10

Will I watch it again?    No.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!! YARRRRRRRR!

I fucking LOVE the first fifteen minutes with Jamie Lee Curtis' literal kiss goodbye!  

Well, that is until 2018 when the Hollywood showed up at her house with the Brinks truck, shoveling sweet green leafy spendy monies onto her front lawn.  The end of that opening pre-credits sequence was dumb as fuck and I loved it!  The rest of the movie was just full of stupid.  One of the few things that I liked was seeing Katee Sakhoff in an early role.  She's got charisma that helps the picture but not enough to save it.  The music?  I guess it worked.  I can't remember anything about it one way or the other.  There's so much dumb shit in this thing like how the six participants have shitty cameras that look horrible to us but are crystal clear on the in-movie bank of monitors.  Cutting between the horribly fuzzy video from those cameras to the actual movie footage was annoying and distracting.  I was ready for this picture to end halfway through but I persisted since I'm determined to get through the rest of this series.  I can see why this movie was the last one until 2007.  Since I've seen the two Rob Zombie pictures (which I really enjoyed), it's the 2018 film next and then I'll sit down and remember something about HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) which I watched a couple of weeks ago.  After that I'll wash my hands of all this and move onto something else.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

Director:  Steve Miner

Writers:  Robert Zappia, Matt Greenberg

Composer:  John Ottman

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, Janet Leigh, Josh Hartnett, LL Cool J, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chris Durand

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  It's going to be one hell of a family reunion.

Plot:  Laurie Strode, now the dean of a Northern California private school with an assumed name, must battle the Shape one last time, as the life of her own son hangs in the balance. 

 

My rating:   6/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Wait, I thought Laurie Strode was dead.  How silly; no one ever really dies.  It's a movie and you can do whatever you want.  For this series, I've learned to check my brains at the door and just go with it.  On one hand, this feels more like a Halloween picture because Jamie Lee Curtis is back but on the other, it's less of one.  That's not to say I don't like it.  It's fine I suppose and I kind of like it.  One big departure from the rest of the series is the music, this time from the wonderful John Ottman.  Gone are the synth vibes from twenty years earlier.  Ottman's score has a SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) vibe and I LOVED it!  There are some fun kills but the film has too many jump scares.  The only one I dug was this one.

Nice!  The ending was great.   When Michael was pinned down and unable to escape, I was thinking that one sure-fire way to put this fucker down would be to decapitate him.  And then Laurie goes and does just that.  But just before that she and Michael seemed to share a moment when he reached out to her.  I found it a little touching.  It would've really tugged hard at my heart strings if Michael had groaned a bit in a sad way like a wounded animal.  It was a nice touch...you know, just before the beheading.  While there was a lot here that played by the numbers, there's enough here to like to at least give it a watch.  Watching it again?  I can't see that happening.  The way this series is going, I'm probably going to stick to re-watching the first and third films.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Director:  Joe Chappelle

Writer:  Daniel Farrands

Composers:  Alan Howarth, Paul Rabjohns

Starring:  Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan, Mitchell Ryan, Kim Darby, Bradford English, Keith Bogart, Mariah O'Brien

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  True Terror Never Dies!

Plot:  Six years after Michael Myers last terrorized Haddonfield, he returns there in pursuit of his niece, Jamie Lloyd, who has escaped with her newborn child, for which Michael and a mysterious cult have sinister plans.

My rating:   5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

The continuity in this serious is pretty fucking bad.  This is the first one (of the Michael Myers Halloweens) that feels less like a Halloween picture and more like a typical horror movie.  There are jump scares all over this thing and that's not something I remember the previous entries relying on.  I can't think of much to say about it which is neither good nor bad.  It's OK at best.  There seemed to be less music than in previous films and that takes away from building any much-needed atmosphere.  It's just 90 minutes of mostly meh.  I guess they introduced the cult angle to explain how Michael is un-killable.  My mind wandered a lot while watching this and I found myself asking questions like what does Michael do in the off-season?  Where does he hang out, what does he like for breakfast, does he have an exercise plan to keep in tip top knife-lunging shape?  I reckon he must hibernate or something.  He is the definition of evil according to Loomis and the rest of the cast so there's definitely a supernatural thing going on.  This is a notable entry in that Pleasence died shortly after filming and Paul Rudd makes his film debut.  Hey, at least they're getting a little more consistent with continuity by not having any when Jamie Lee Curtis shows up in the next one.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard 

Writers: Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othernin-Girard, Shem Bitterman 

Composer: Alan Howarth 

Starring: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr, Jeffrey Landman, Tamara Glynn, Jonathan Chapin, Matthew Walker, Wendy Foxworth, Don Shanks 

More info: IMDb 

Tagline: He's Back With A Vengeance 

Plot:  One year after the events of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), the Shape returns to Haddonfield once again in an attempt to kill his now-mute niece.

 My rating:  6

Will I watch it again?  Doubtful.

After watching HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) the other night, it seemed like a good time to finish this series since I've only ever seen the first four. 

I don't know what else you can do with a simple character like Michael Myers but this isn't all that bad of a direction.  All you do is change the person he's going after and let a shitload of people around them get slaughtered.   Start the film off by eating up time with a re-cap of the previous film and change a little here and there, and then jump into the present-day story establishing everything you need to in order for the plot to happen.   Donald Pleasence has some batshit crazy moments that make this worth watching.  There are some fun kills and Howarth does a serviceable job with the score.  The laundry chute was a nice sequence so at least there's that.  Oh, jesus.  I almost forgot about the two idiot cops and the horrible Mickey Mouse silly music Howarth vomits up when they're on screen.  It's just terrible and is very much out of place.  At least they died, albeit offscreen which robbed me of cheering Michael on.  Shame, that.