PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 816

The Shadow Of The Cat 1961 Written by George Baxt and directed by John Gilling. A Hammer Film Production distributed by Universal International in the US.

A wealthy woman is murdered by the butler and buried in the swampy area of the estate. He's been promised a chunk of cash by the husband. The cook is in on the deal. They claim the wife left and the husband wants the police to find her.

The only witness to the crime is the cat Tabitha who quickly puts the frighteners into the trio. They try to capture the cat but she's too smart for them. The husband had made the wife sign a new will leaving all her money to him. For some reason he wants to find the old will and destroy that. Not sure why, no one outside the house would even know about the old will unless the trio told them about it.

A niece is invited to visit so the husband can keep an eye on her. She can't understand why they are all so afraid of the cat, even after it tries attacking them over and over. The body count rises as the truth comes out.

Fairly entertaining and a bit humorous. I would watch it again. You can see it on Daily Motion (see link in title), or download with the Firefox download app, there's a nicer copy you can download from the Rarelust blog.

Sabaka 1954 Written and directed by Frank Ferrin.

A film made more interesting by June Foray playing the baddie. She's the head of a Fire Cult that intimidates people into giving them cash to stay safe. Don't want your house burning down in the middle of the night? Pay up. Nico Marcel plays a young elephant handler named Gunga who's friends with the Maharajah, played by Lou Krugman. Reginald Denny plays a British guy called Sir Cedric. Other actors you might know are Victor Jory, Jay Novello, Lisa Howard, Peter Coe and Vito Scotti.

Most of those actors were part of the cast of a TV show called Andy's Gang, it was written and directed by Frank Ferrin. The character Gunga appeared on the show in serial segments set in India. The scenes with the Hollywood actors aren't shot in India, the stuff is India mostly travel footage or stock footage cut into the Hollywood shot stuff. I wonder if they feature is made up of parts of the serial but have no info on it. I didn't find much with a look at the Wikipedia or the IMDb.

It's somewhat enjoyable for what it is but it's not that good. You can check it out at the link in the titles above.

Seven Cities Of Gold 1955 Based on the novel by Isabelle Gibson Ziegler, screenplay by Richard L Breen and John C Higgins, directed by Robert D Webb.

A Spanish expedition comes to California looking for the legendary 7 cities of gold. Michael Rennie plays a Franciscan priest called Father Junipero Serra, he's been sent to establish missions in the area. He went onto establish a while bunch of missions in California. He was made a Saint.

In the modern day the Father's statues have been decapitated and/or sprayed with red paint, as current as October 2020. Not a popular guy among some, they deplore his forcing Native Americans to convert. The film portrays Serra as a gentle man but it's a Hollywood bio pic and not necessarily accurate. He was all for treating the locals like ignorant children who needed a beating now and again to be kept in line.

Anthony Quinn is the Captain of the ground expedition, he has to lead a troop through some hostile territory. Richard Egan is his Lt, later he has a rough time with the locals. He'd like nothing more than shooting a few of them to make them understand the power of muskets. When it comes to a fight the guns weren't that great a protection.

Eventually the Spanish prevail and many missions were built. The damage was done to NA culture, often the outcome when invaded, people are still mad today.

Not a bad movie but flawed by it's white washing of the past. Another that was more interesting for what it is than the story it tells.

The Black Rider 1954

The Black Rider 1954 Written by A R Rawlinson and directed by Wolf Rilla.

Nothing too special about this spy story. Jimmy Hanley plays a newspaper man who stumbles onto a small group of spies who have smuggled a tiny atom bomb into the dungeon of an old ruined castle. His actions don't go undetected and the spies kidnap his girlfriend. Jimmy's gal is played by Rona Anderson, she's the local librarian and the daughter of the editor of the newspaper. Jimmy enlists the local motorcycle club to rescue her. Entertaining with a bit of humor. You can see it on YouTube in the link above.

Friday Night Movies 808

Fortunes Of Captain Blood 1950 Based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, screenplay by Michael Hogan, Robert Libott and Frank Burt, direction by Gordon Douglas. Gordon directed nearly 100 films in his career, a good number of shorts and 69 movies. I've seen several of them, including 4 of the Great Gildersleeve films, The Falcon In Hollywood, Rogues Of Sherwood Forest, The Great Missouri Raid, Them!, Up Periscope, In Like Flint, Tony Rome, They Call Me Mister Tibbs and Slaughter's Big Rip-off.

Louis Hayward plays Captain Blood, he's a pirate in the olden days. He was a doctor who was arrested for treating a rebel soldier in the Monmouth Rebellion, he was sentenced to slavery but escaped and became a buccaneer.

When the story starts he's headed for supplies but his supplier betrays him and some of Blood's men get caught and sent to prison. Blood goes to rescue them disguised as a fruit peddler. He gets a bit of help from Dona Drake playing the flirtatious Pepita. She tells him the prisoners die frequently from the poor treatment.

Patricia Medina plays Isabella, she's the niece of the Marquis who runs the island and the prison. That's him on the right and he's a right old prick. Isabella wants to leave is island and she is having a bit of a romance with the local slave trader played by Lowell George. The Marquis finds out and puts an end to that, while telling Lowell he's too scummy to marry his niece.

Blood manages to free his men but there's a good bit of fighting along the way. He manages to slip in some romance with Isabella, offering to take her off the island. The Marquis attacks Blood's ship but fails. Isabella stays on the island promising to run the place without slaves. Blood sails off to get some peace being a buccaneer.

It's a fairly entertaining pirate movie, some fighting, some sailing, some romance, some laughs, some drama, a nice mix. The cast is fine, the sets and locations are good, the script is adequate to carry everyone along. It's the first film in the Midnight Movies double movie set. Both films come on their own DVD and the second film is the sequel to FOCB.

Captain Pirate 1952 Based on the novel Captain Blood Returns by Rafael Sabatini, screenplay by Robert Libott, Frank Burt and John Meredyth Lucas, direction by Ralph Murphy. The sequel is in color with B&W scenes from the first film as flashbacks.

Louis Hayward returns as Captain Blood and Patricia Medina returns as Dona Isabella. Blood's been pardoned, he's returned to the island to practice medicine. Secretly he's also helping the slaves escape. Blood and Isabella are planning to get married when things take a serious turn.

Someone is pirating and using the Captain Blood name. Blood is arrested but Isabella and Angus get the old crew back together. They help Blood escape and they set sail to find the imposter. The mystery of the fake Blood is fairly quickly solved. Now he must capture the man and bring him to justice.

There's plenty of pirate action and running about. The production is fine and the story fairly exciting. I enjoyed it and you can find out if you like it too, there's a link to each film on YouTube in the titles above. I'd watch both of them again someday.

The Kenneth More Collection

The Kenneth More Collection has 4 films from the 50s. I first saw Kenneth in The 39 Steps when I was a boy and that version remains a favorite of mine to this day. It was while looking for a copy of Genevieve that I noticed this 4 pack of films. It was only a couple of bucks more than the single DVD and there were two other movies I didn't have. I had already had a copy of The 39 Steps, the exact same one as in the 4 pack. All of the movies in the 4 pack had been released separately.

Genevieve 1953 William Rose wrote the story and the screenplay, Henry Cornelius is the director. William also wrote The Lady Killers, It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Henry only directed 4 other films, Next To No Time, I Am A Camera, The Galloping Major and Passport To Pimlico. I seen all of those, except for TGM but I'll watch the copy on YouTube sometime soon. Seems like I might like it.

Kenneth and John Gregson are car enthusiasts, old classic car enthusiasts, it's 1953 and they are driving cars from 1904 and 1905 in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. In the movie John's married to Dinah Sheridan and Kenneth is dating Kay Kendall. He's taking her on her first cross country motor rally. Something I would rather watch in a movie or documentary than go on. Especially in a car with no windscreen and a large St Bernard in the back seat.

The run to Brighton goes good for Kenneth but John has troubles along the way. The pair come up with a bet to see who can get across Westminster Bridge first. The bet is for their cars.

It's a nice low key comedy with plenty of driving and scenery. The jokes are OK and the cast is fine. I've seen this 3 or 4 times already and still enjoy it.

Reach For The Sky 1953 The movie is based on the book by Paul Brickhill, the screenplay is by director Lewis Gilbert with additional scenes by Vernon Harris. Lewis had a few good films in his career, Alfie, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, You Only Live Twice, Sink The Bismark! and Cast A Dark Shadow.

I really like the above advert for the film. You can see from it that the movie is the story of Douglas Bader. He was a real pilot, he joined the RAF in 1928, in 1930 he crashed and had both his legs amputated. He recovered and was certified to fly a plane but the RAF discharged him.

Bader returned to the RAF when WW2 started, fought in the Battle Of Britain and many other missions. He was shot down in 1941, he survived but was captured. He tried escaping and was transferred from one POW camp to another, finally he wound up in Colditz Castle where he stayed until it was liberated in 1945. He lead the 300 plane fly over of London in June 1945.

I saw this film when I was a teenager and liked it then. It's still a good biopic and and an entertaining story. Great cast. I know I'll watch it again some time.

Flame Over India 1957 The title of the film in the UK is North West Frontier. The title change makes sense, the US public hardly knew where India was back in 1950s, they are unlikely to have knowledge of a province within what's now Pakistan. The British public knew about it, they'd been mucking about in India for ages. If I read the IMDb right, Frank S Nugent wrote a screenplay that was adapted from, Patrick Ford and Will Price wrote the story and Robin Estridge wrote the screenplay we see in the film.

Here's an interesting bit from the IMDb trivia page:

"DVD Talk" said of this film that it " . . . has a lot in common with John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) in that it's essentially a tale of a motley mix of Anglos confined in a train car, racing across an Indian plain trying to evade 'bloodthirsty savages'. It may be a blatant reworking of Stagecoach (1939), as the original story was co-written by John Ford (I)'s son Patrick Ford and Maureen O'Hara's husband Will Price. The final screenplay was adapted from a script by screenwriter Frank S Nugent, the writer of 11 Ford films."

It's a rousing adventure film mostly set on an ancient steam train. It's 1905 and Kenneth More is Captain Scott of the British Army. He's asked by the maharajah to take his young son to safety in Delhi. They miss the last train out of Haserabad and the area is filled with rebels. Luckily there's an ancient train called the Empress Of India that they can use to make their escape. They find the earlier train and all the passengers are dead except for a baby. They take it along. 

That's the cast that escapes on the Empress, except for Herbert Lom. Besides Herbert and Kenneth there's Lauren Bacall, Wilfred Hyde-White, I S Johar, Ursula Jeans, Eugene Decker, Ian Hunter, Howard Marion-Crawford, Jack Gwillim, Frank Olegario and more I didn't know.

It's touch and go as the rebels attack, there's plenty of action, with a bit of double dealing intrigue on top of that. One of the people on the train has no love for the prince.

The 39 Steps 1959 It's based on the John Buchan novel of the same name, Frank Harvey wrote the screenplay, Ralph Thomas directed. I read the book when I was a teen and I saw this movie about the same time. Frank wrote I'm Alright Jack after this film. I've seen one of his earlier films, Saloon Bar, but I don't recognize any of his other works.

Kenneth gets caught up in the middle of a mystery that has some deadly dicks after him. He helps a nanny who was nearly run over, they meet at the theater and go to his flat. She tells him she''s a spy and she needs to go to Scotland. Before she can leave some dicks kill her. Kenneth takes over her mission to Scotland. He meets Taina Elg on the train but she gives him away to the police. He escapes.

 

There's all sorts of spy activity going on, Kenneth runs about, gets caught, escapes again. Sid James plays a trucker who helps him out. Others are not so nice. He escapes from the head of the spies, then is captured again, Taina is captured with him. They escape and hide in a bed and breakfast posing as a newly married couple running away from her father. Eventually everything works out for Kenneth and the spies are caught or dead.

I enjoyed it when I first saw it and each time it shows up in front of me. I'll be glad to watch it again some day. All in all a pretty good lot of films.

Friday Night Movies 786

11 Harrowhouse is a 1974 British heist film with Charles Grodin, James Mason  and Candice Bergen. It's based on a novel by Gerald A Browne, Charles Grodin did the adaptation, Jeffrey Bloom wrote the screenplay, Aram Avakian did the directing. I'm not much of a fan of Charles or Candice but they do OK for the most part. Charles is a small diamond merchant, he often deals with The System, a prestigious diamond house at 11 Harrowhouse Street in London.

Charles gets involved with millionaire Trevor Howard who hires him to obtain a big fancy diamond for his collection. Charles takes the million dollar check, the stone is bought, cut and stolen all in a week. Now Charles is in hock to Trevor for a million bucks. Trevor blackmails Charles into stealing all the diamonds from The System. John Gielgud s the head of the firm, James Mason is one of his employees. There's a whole sad sub plot with James that makes him turn against his employers.

The robbery is a success. The System had a lot of uncut diamonds but selling them could crash the market. Charles has a fun plan to keep them secure and out of anyone's hands. It's fun enough but it's not going to be something I'd bother buying.

The Black Shield Of Falworth is a 1954 Tony Curtis film set in English when Henry the 4th was King. It's based on a Howard Pyle novel called Men Of Iron, screenplay by Oscar Brodney, directed by Rudolph Maté. Tony is a peasant who is really the son of a nobleman who had been accused falsely of treason. Tony's dad was murdered by the Earl of Alban and his lands taken. Tony winds up in training for The Earl of Macworth. He doesn't believe that Tony's dad was a traitor but he has no proof. He had Tony trained up and eventually the day for Tony to fight the evil Earl does come.

Every now and again I like these big Hollywood adventure tales. It was fun with all the usual knights in armor stuff going on. There's a bit of romance, plenty of court intrigue, a few punch ups, and jousting. This is one that I might want to watch again, Tony's no Errol Flynn but he's alright, so is the movie.  

Rough Shoot 1953

Rough Shoot is the UK title of a 1953 espionage film that was called Shoot First in the US. I found a copy on YouTube and just watched it. It's based on a Geoffrey Household novel called A Rough Shoot, Eric Ambler wrote the screenplay, Robert Parrish directed. I've never read any Household novels that I recall, the same can be said of Eric Ambler. Just never got to be a fan of the espionage novel but I do like a few spy films. Parrish directed the 1967 James Bond film Casino Royale, I've seen that 3 or 4 times, I've also seen The Bobo but can't remember anything about it. I've seen Cry Danger with Dick Powell and Doppelgänger, which is better known as Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun. 

Joel McCrea is a retired US Army Colonel who's living in England. He rents some land for hunting, one day he sees a man he believes is a poacher, he fires a load of buckshot to scare him off. Unbeknownst to Joel, a spy guy takes a pot shot at the exact same time that Joel let go with his single barrel. The shot man dies shortly after Joel finds him. Joel panics and hides the body, poorly. Joel encounters the other shooter and lies about seeing the dead man.

It gets more complicated as the movie unfolds. Herbert Lom shows up as retired Polish officer who's working with Roland Culver at British Military Intelligence. Roland tells Joel to help Herbert, H & J sneak into the woods to see what's going on with the secret plane landing. They kidnap the man coming in and set the woods on fire. More and more stuff happens and the movie ends with a bang.

Other than thinking Joel is a bit dim, I thought it was a pretty entertaining movie, it kept my interest right to the end. You can find out if you like it for yourself, I posted the YouTube link in the title above.

Panther Girl Of The Kongo 1955

Panther Girl Of The Kongo is a 1955 serial. It's near the end of the run for the serial, there would only be four more serials made. It's not that good a serial. I was particularly annoyed that Panther Girl kept getting knocked out all the time. The fights aren't that good and the villains are kind of incompetent. It's just a series of annoying things to me, though I did like that the villains created giant prawns to attack the local natives. Glad I didn't waste money on the more expensive Blu-ray.

Forgotten Noir Volume 4

The Man From Cairo is a 1953 film directed by Ray Enright from a script by Eugene Ling, Philip Stevenson and Janet Stevenson. It's Volume 4 of the Forgotten Noir series from Kit Parker Films and VCI. This disc has two movies on it that were originally produced by Robert Lippert Pictures. It was an Italian co-production with location shooting in Algiers and studio shooting at Palatine Studios in Rome Italy. It was the last film for Ray Enright, he directed over 70 films but I can't remember seeing any others except for Alibi Ike, a Joe E Brown comedy.

George Raft is the main star, he's an ex-serviceman traveling to Algiers who get caught up in the recovery of a gold heist from WW2. There's plenty of backstabbing and murder as people move in on the gold. It's not a bad movie but George is hardly an interesting guy in the role. I'd still watch it again but I like the second movie on the disc better.

Mask Of The Dragon is another Robert Lippert produced film. It came out in 1951 and was directed by Sam Newfield from a script by Orville H Hampton. Both men were terrifically prolific in their careers and they type of films they make are cheaply made and quickly shot. It's said MOTD was shot in 5 days. It's only 55 minutes long. I know I've seen many of their films and TV episodes.

Richard Travis is detective, his partner got called up to service in Korea, now the guy is heading for home. Before he leaves Korea he makes a deal with a Chinese shop keeper to bring back a dragon statue. He'll be paid handsomely to bypass the shipping restrictions because of the war. He gets home and is murdered by Sid Melton and Karl "Killer" Davis. Sid dresses up in Chinese garb and makeup and acts as the barker for a Chinese shop owned by the Chinese guy played by Jack Reitzen. Only Charles Iwamoto is really Asian, he plays the villains judo expert.

Lyle Talbot plays the police Lieutenant on the case and he tells Richard to leave it to the police but Richard doesn't. There's some stabbing, some fighting, some romance and a visit to a TV station.That was kind of fun. It's not a great film or anything, it's barely average but it has some goofy stuff that made me laugh. I'd watch it again. There's a commentary by Joel Blumberg that packs more facts per minute than most commentaries. There are a few other extras on the disc, George Raft Bio, Photo Gallery, Ad Gallery, Trailers and Star Bios.

The Thing From Another World 1951

After that Sherlock Holmes movie I wanted to watch something better so I put on the new Blu-ray of The Thing From Another World. Even the carrot guy is a better actor than the ones I had just seen. Acting is just one of the many good things in The Thing From Another World. Nice sets, good actors, interesting story, it hits all the marks and it's certainly one of my favorite SF movies. An exciting story about an alien invading the Earth and the men who stop him. He's a tough foe and the men have to be resourceful and cunning. It's a film that certainly should be in any good film collection. The Blu-ray is nice looking but there aren't any nice extras, other than a trailer.

Treasure Island 1950

I was going through my old home made DVDs and decided to order a copy of Treasure Island to replace the so-so copy from TCM. It came today and I watched it this afternoon. It's fun watching poor Jim Hawkins get tricked by Long John Silver. Makes me laugh. I like Robert Newton but I'm not as fond of Bobby Driscoll as Jim. He isn't in the sequel Return To Treasure Island. I watched that recently and enjoyed it. TI is directed by Byron Haskins and he does a great job. I know I'll be watching this again sometime, though probably not so soon.