PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 931

Curucu, Beast Of The Amazon 1956 Written and directed by Curt Siodmak.

John Bromfield is a plantation owner called Rock Dean and he's having trouble with the locals. They are leaving the plantation to go back to live in the jungle. Rock travels up the Amazon to try to get his workers to come back to the plantation. He had a guide in mind but Dr Romar, played by Beverly Garland, hired him first. She wants to go into the jungle to find a drug the natives make.

   

Rock is of the opinion that where they are going is no place for a woman. Rock's partially right as far as I'm concerned. I'd go as far as saying that it's no place for anyone.

 

Rock finds out that a monster is scaring the natives back home. It's some sort of giant bird like creature with sharp claws. Rock's bullets don't seem to have any effect on it. We soon learn that it's the guide, he's been scaring his people back home for his own selfish reasons. He'd also loaded Rock's rifle with blanks. The guide sentences Rock and the Doc to death.

 

Luckily for Rock and the Doctor some nice natives set the guide's village on fire allowing them to escape on a raft. All in all it's a below average B movie. I wouldn't need to see it again. The most interesting thing about it is that the jungle scenes were filmed in Brazil. The IMDb trivia pages says: Director Curt Siodmak said of this film, "I shot it down there [in Brazil], in the jungles. I never recovered, physically".  I always say it's best to stay out of the jungle.

We Are The Night 2010 Story and screenplay by Jan Berger and Dennis Gansel, directed by Dennis Gansel. A German vampire film.

A thief has an encounter with a cop called Tom during robbery. She manages to escape and get home. Later she meets a trio of vampire's at a nightclub. The vampire gals are absolute scum who leave a trail of corpses wherever they go. The leader turns the thief. There's a lot of crying about it, despite one of the side effects of being turned is an improvement of the body. The thief's skin clears up, her wounds disappear, her hair grows out nice and fluffy, she's now much hotter looking. The thief isn't much into the killing and the vampire gals enjoy it way too much.

The vampires hide by day in a big fancy hotel, going out at night to have fun in nightclubs. The police find a living guy at the scene of an encounter with the vampires. Tom connects the thief to the group because he'd seen her in the survivor's stolen car. The cops have no idea they are up against vampires but they raid the hotel and get many get slaughtered. One of the vampire gals gets burnt up by the sun. The other vampire gals manage to escape and hide out with the intention of escaping to Russia the next day. Another of the vampire gals kills herself.

The thief and the cop meet up , are arrested and tossed into jail. The leader of the vampire group comes calling, kills all the cops at the station and rescues the thief. Lena is given a choice, come with the leader or spend a short time with a live man. The thief kills the leader and disappears with Tom. The movie ends.

I'm not much of a fan of vampire melodrama. Too much crying and woe for me. I'll not need to see this one again.

Friday Night Movies 884

Watusi 1959 Based on King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard, screenplay by James Clavell, directed by Kurt Neumann. Kurt had a decent career that ended early when he died in 1958 at age 50. I've seen a number of his films, all 4 of the  Tarzan pictures he directed, Island Of Lost Men, Rocketship X-M, Kronos, She Devil and The Fly.

In this sequel to the 1950 film King Solomon's Mines the son of Alan Quatermain comes to Tanganyika to seek the diamonds his father talked about. George Montgomery plays the son Harry, David Farrar plays Rick, an old friend of Alan's. They put together a safari and head out of town. Along the way they experience some of the same thrills that Alan experienced in KSM. This film uses quite a bit of footage from KSM, the whole stampede is used, the leopard attacking a tent, as well as many of the long shots. Sadly the new footage and the old footage show don't match up to well. The first film had a good bit of footage that was shot in Africa and this film doesn't have any.

The rescue a red-headed woman, played by Taina Elg, from a tribe of naughty natives who have a reputation for torturing women before they kill them. The natives had killed her father and the other men living in the church mission compound. The film dresses everyone in the cast with similar clothes so they can use more footage from the first film. We laughed at the clumsy attempts to make it fit.

The story isn't too bad and I sort of enjoyed it. I gave it a generous 5 at the IMDb. I might watch it again, I already wasted the money I spent on the DVD from the Warner Archive Collection so it would be a bit of a waste not to watch it when I get around to watching the first movie again.

Blue Panther 1965 Screenplay by Claude Chabrol and Christian-Yve with additional dialogue by Daniel Boulanger, directed by Claude Chabrol. The Marie-Chantal character appeared in a number of novels by Jacques Chazot.

A French, Spanish, Italian and Moroccan comedy spy film. The original French title is Marie-Chantal Contre Dr Kha, the world wide English title is Marie-Chantal Vs Doctor Kha. One of the fellows picked up the Blu-ray from the Kino-Lorber sale that going on through the 19th of this month. Many of their Blu-rays are a tenner. 

On a train a spy convinces Marie-Chantal to hide a blue panther broach. Some men are looking for it and he doesn't want to have it on his person. She's rather naive and agrees. She's quickly involved with a pack of spies and in some danger. She gets some help from her goofy brother and that spy that put her into the soup. There's plenty of running about and yelling, some slapstick and some action.

I got a few laughs out of it and grew to like Marie-Chantal. Her brother is still a goof. There's plenty of interesting buildings and nice Moroccan scenery. I liked it enough to order one at the K-L sale.

Friday Night Movies 879

Ghostbusters Afterlife 2021 Written by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, directed by Jason Reitman.

Egon Spengler lives as a recluse on a farm in a small town in Oklahoma. Small towns in Alberta are used for filming. Egon goes up against a spirit from the Ivo Shandor mine nearby. It's a good reminder that everyone needs to be watching the rich, not because they're comically creating portals to evil in another dimension, they're creating much human misery in their greed grab.

Egon dies battling the spirits and his daughter Callie inherits the farm. Lucky for her, she's just been evicted from her apartment. Mom takes her two kids, Phoebe and Trevor to Oklahoma only to find there's no cash, just the farm and some debt. Callie's been estranged from her reclusive father for years and years. Her children don't know anything about him.

Egon's ghost helps reveal some of his Ghostbuster past and Paul Rudd, a local teacher and seismologist, brings the rest to Phoebe and Trevor via the internet. Egon's got the Ghostbuster car in his barn and it pretty much starts up ready to go fight the supernatural. The first attempt to catch a ghost goes badly, there's much rushing around and considerable collateral damage to the town.

Undaunted, Phoebe and her growing gang soldier on in the battle against evil. They discover the Shandor mine and the evidence that Egon had been working to keep the maelstrom of evil in the shaft. Eventually they trap Gozer and meet the original Ghostbusters.

It's a nice looking film with all sorts of flashy special effects, some family melodrama and a few laughs. I enjoyed it though I was a bit slow to get involved during the first act. I bought the Blu-ray and will want to watch it again. I should have a marathon of the three films and the 2016 reboot. It's been several years since I watched the first two films.

King Solomon's Mines 1950 Screenplay by Helen Deutsch, directed by Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton. According to the Wikipedia Bennet was replaced by Marton because he was ill but there are rumors that Bennet had a falling out with cast members.

Stewart Granger is Alan Quatermain, Deborah Kerr is a rich woman looking for her husband, Richard Carlson is Deborah's brother. Deborah offers Stewart £5000 for taking her on the expedition, that's about £684,587.82 in today's cash. His normal fee is £200. Reluctantly he takes Deborah and Richard on.

There's plenty of trekking through the African countryside. Much of the film was filmed on location. Some of the scenery is rather nice. The underground scenes were filmed in Carlsbad Caverns. They encounter quite a few wild animals and some danger. Along the way they lose some of their bearers and pick up Umbopo. His part as the son of a murdered king is somewhat reduced in the film when compared to the novel or the 1937 film we watched a couple of weeks ago.

Weeks and weeks pass before they get to the Watusi tribe and Umbopo fights the king. A romance develops between Stewart and Deborah, lucky for them her hubby is already dead in the mine. Unlike the book or the 1937 movie they escape without any uncut diamonds. At least they have their lives.

I'm sure I'd seen this before but not in decades. I enjoyed it but not quite as much as the 1937 version. The Technicolor is alright. I picked up the DVD and I hope to watch it again sometime.

Jerry Warren Collection 4

I made my own 4th collection of Jerry Warren masterpieces, movies that weren't included in the 3 volume series that was issued by VCI. These are all films I found on YouTube for the most part. Some are chopped up foreign films and some are all shot in the US by Warren, except for the stock footage he tosses into everything. It's like his salt, add a bit of flavor, that sort of thing. I'd seen most of them in the past, might have even blogged about them. Now that I've burned them onto a disc I can put it away with the other 3 volumes and forget about them.

Face Of The Screaming Werewolf 1964 Jerry hacks two Mexican movies to death and tries to revive them for the American market by linking their scenes with the poorly written and directed scenes he'd done himself. Consistently Jerry shows that he has no talent as a filmmaker.

Lon Chaney Jr appeared as a werewolf in the 1960 Mexican horror movie La Casa del Terror, his scenes are mostly what survives Jerry clown style editing. The other movie is La Momia Azteca, a 1957 Mexican mummy movie. It was the first of a trilogy of mummy films from Cinematográfica Calderón SA. The other two are The Curse Of The Aztec Mummy and The Robert Vs The Aztec Mummy. They were shot back to back and all three were released in 1957. There's a good DVD set of all three original Mexican films with English subtitles and  decent prints. Jerry had already chopped LMA apart in 1963 and released it in the US with new footage he'd written and directed.

Not surprisingly the movie makes little sense at times. It gets pretty harshly savaged in reviews and rightly so. Jerry is one of those filmmakers that is needing a savage beating with the de-fleshed skull of Paul Naschy. A fantasy of mine.

Frankenstein Island 1981 Jerry Warren wrote and directed. It didn't do well and Jerry though he hadn't made a modern enough picture. He cut it for a TV version and added some explosions. Yeah, that will disguise what shit job you did Jerry.

Some balloonists crash land on an island at sea. The place is under control of the Frankenstein family. Granddaughter Sheila captures the group and plans to turn them into zombies of a sort. One of the group is a doctor and Sheila brainwashes him to helping her keep her 200 year old husband alive. John Carradine plays the long dead, but spiritually alive, Dr Frankenstein. He communicates through Sheila's husband and appears as a floating head in a few scenes. They use the same short shot and change the dialog from scene to scene.

Goofy dialog made me laugh but the film isn't much by way of a comedy, it's just second rate.

Invasion Of The Animal People 1959 I already did a big post about the film's different versions.

Teenage Zombies 1959 Written and directed by Jerry Warren. It was filmed in 1956 and the IMDb Trivia pages says it may have been released briefly in 1957. The title and some of the score was ripped off from Kronos.

Katherine Victor is a mad scientist who's got here very own island. She's got a deal with the local sheriff to send vagrants and hobos as subjects for her experimentation. Some teens stumble on her set up and bring her project to turn Americans into zombies to an end. It's typical of Warren's inability to write dialog and make movies. Another stinker from Jerry.

Terror Of The Blood Hunters 1962 Written and directed by Jerry Warren. One of the lot that I hadn't already seen.

A subversive writer is sent to prison on Devil's Island where he gets to paint the Commandant's daughter. She wants to help him escape and take her with him. They bring his pal from the ship that brought him to the island and trek through the jungle to freedom. Griffith Park in LA stands in for the jungle with the aid of some stock footage. Pretty ambitious a project for Jerry, it's a slight bit better than most of his films, but as usual it comes up below average.

The Incredible Petrified World 1959 Written by John W Steiner and directed by Jerry Warren. It was filmed and completed in 1957 but it took until 1959 and 1960 to get released.

John Carradine is a professor who sends 4 people into the ocean in a diving bell. It gets disconnected and disappears. The crew find themselves still alive in a subterranean cavern. They meet a shipwrecked sailor  who's been there for 14 years. A rescue mission is sent to look for the castaways and eventually they are rescued. It's a dull thing, not enough monsters or terror for my liking.

The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection Volume 1

The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection is a sub-set of The British Film series from Network. For some reason I'm a sucker for a film series on DVD. This series has 14 volumes, 28 discs, and 56 films, and the DVDs came out in 2013 and 2014. The films aren't the Ealing Comedies you might have heard about or seen, films like Kind Hearts And Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man In The White Suit, and The Ladykillers. Most of them haven't been on video before, often they've not been seen for a long time. They might be lesser films but they still have some entertainment value and I'm glad they managed to get them out. The complete set of DVDs is still available and they are priced between £3-6 each after the VAT has been removed. That's ordered from Amazon UK. Volume 1 has 3 films from the 1930s and 1 film from 1954. 

The packaging says that Ealing Studios made over 150 films over a three decade period but I only found 126 listed on the Wikipedia. The studio's history is convoluted with different studios merging over time so who knows what they're counting.

The site of Ealing Studios, Ealing Green in West London, has been used by film makers since 1902. In 1929 Basil Dean founded Associated Talking Pictures Ltd which became Ealing Studios in 1938. The Wikipedia says the current sound stages were built in 1931 and bought by the BBC in 1955. Ealing Studios continued to make films through 1957 and in 2000 they resumed making films again. Other film studios used the Ealing stages too.

Escape 1930 The very first of the ES films back when they were Associated Talking Pictures. It's based on a 1926 play by John Galsworthy, Basil Dean wrote the screenplay and directed. Dean had previously directed the 1929 film The Return Of Sherlock Homes with Clive Brooks and H Reeves-Smith. Since the Ealing stages weren't built at this time, the film was shot at the British Lion Studios in Beaconsfield.

That's Gerald du Maurier talking to Mabel Poulton above, he's an upper crust guy and she's a gal hanging out in a park. Gerald is father to writer Daphne du Maurier. A police detective accuses Mabel of soliciting and arrests her, Gerald steps in at the rough treatment, a fight ensues, the copper dies after hitting his head in a fall.

Gerald is plunked into prison for 5 years, after 2 years he escapes while working outdoors, he then leads the police a chase through the moors. Gerald is befriended or betrayed by the people he meets and not much else happens.

It's an odd film, I'm not sure what to make of the story. The Wikipedia says it's a look at class and such. Many of the people Gerald meets think he got a bum sentence but 5 years doesn't seem too bad for manslaughter. With a bit of help from the locals Gerald manages to stay on the run for a couple of days. The local Bobbies have enlisted men for searching and they're hot on his trail. Gerald only got caught because he didn't want the Priest who helps him to lie for him. It was different enough it kept my attention to the end. It's only 68 minutes so I didn't have that hard a job. I'd watch it again.

West Of Zanzibar 1954 An interesting topical film about Africa. Harry Watt wrote the story and directed, Max Catto and Jack Whittingham wrote the screenplay. It's a sequel to Where No Vultures Fly which I don't have. WNVF is 30-40 smackaroonies on Amazon so I'm not having that. It's even more crazy expensive on Amazon UK, the price ranges from £46.91 to £208.15. You can buy used or bootleg copies online for a reasonable price.

Anthony Steele is a game warden in Kenya. He's friends with the Chief of a tribe that's facing a big decision. The drought  is so bad they must move the tribe. Either further into the countryside or near Mombasa. The Chief wants to stay in the country but the tribe votes to move to Mombasa.

They have a hard time adjusting to life near the city, the young men of the tribe want the fancy trappings of city life but they have no jobs or money. Some of them join up with Ivory poachers and that leads to trouble.

There's a mix of location shooting and stock footage. The story is fairly good with the two story lines wrapping around each other until they become one story. It's topical and there's some nice scenery to see. Worth a look.

Penny Paradise 1938 The 7th film directed by Carol Reed. Basil Dean, Thomas Browne, Walter Meade and Thomas Thompson all worked on the screenplay at some point.

Edmund Gwenn is a tugboat captain in the picture above. The young woman is Betty Driver, she plays Edmund's daughter Betty. She sings 3 songs during the movie but it's not meant to be a musical. Jimmy O'Dea plays Edmund's assistant and the older lady is Aunt Agnes, played by Ethel Coleridge. Jimmy played King Brian in Darby O'Gill And The Little People.

Edmund fills out a penny pools ticket and gives it to Pat to mail. Guess what, Pat doesn't mail it in, and Edmund wins £20,000. It throws the area into a tizzy as the story plays out.

It's a nice comedy about a lovable old sea captain, his lovely daughter and their stupid and incompetent pal. Why people continue to hang around Pat I'll never know. Betty is in love with him and Pat's in love with her. Betty was 18 at the time the picture was shot and Jimmy was 40. Trouble is Creepy Pat's too weak and stupid to tell her. Aunt Agnes is an old harridan who thinks she should get half the winnings because she said the name of one of the 15 teams that won. Family sure can suck. Still, it will all work out nicely in the end, other than Betty and Jimmy hooking up. I usually enjoy Edmund in most of his pictures and this is no exception. It's a fun tale.

Cheer Up! 1936 Written by Stanley Lupino and Michael Barringer with Leo Mittler directing. Stanley's also the producer and he's in the movie, playing a songwriter. He also wrote the lyrics to the songs he sings. Roddy Hughes plays his musical pal and Sally Grey plays the romantic lead. That Sally and Stanley in the picture above.

I didn't like Stanley right from the get go, he's annoying and creepily made up. Stanley and Roddy do a lot of slapstick bits that were fair to poor. Their characters have some songs and want someone to back their revue. Sally is an actress and singer who's badly in need of work. I didn't care much for the songs in the movie but eventually they do get them on stage. There are several musical dance numbers that were sort of entertaining to look at. Better if I had liked the songs. All told not a movie I liked that much.

A mixed bag of stories and production values. Still I was glad to have picked the first of the series up. I have all the others in a stack. I'll get to those soon, I hope.

Duel In The Jungle 1954

Duel In The Jungle is a nice jungle story that came out in 1954. It's port of The British Film series from Network. SK Kennedy wrote the story, Samuel Marx and TJ Morrison wrote the screenplay, the director is George Marshall. George's career was a fairly long one, he started back in 1916 directing a short called Across The Rio Grande, his last credit on the IMDb is in 1972 for directing a couple of episodes of The Odd Couple. The movie George directed just before this one was the film version of the play Red Garters. I remember seeing that in the early 60s, images from it's unique look have stuck in my head for decades. I bought the DVD as soon as I found out it existed. It's right at the top of my list of favorite musicals.

 

Dana Andrews is an insurance investigator that goes to South Africa to investigate the death of a rich guy. David Farrar plays the rich guy and Jeanne Crain plays Farrar's secretary. Parts of the film was shot in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg, Botswana and Victoria Falls.

Someone doesn't want Dana to stay on the job, he's nearly killed on the ship to Africa, and the crew blocks his way when they dock. He escapes and gets right to work. There's more natural danger when Dana goes into the jungle on the quest of the elusive rich bastard. A good solid story with a creepy bad guy. Entertaining.

Monster From Green Hell 1957

I don't remember ever seeing Monster From Green Hell before. It's a 1957 giant monster movie, written by Louis Vittes and Endre Bohem, direction by Kenneth G Crane. I had heard of the writers, they worked on some decent shows in the 50s and 60.

Crane on the other hand was mostly a film editor, he only directed 4 films, When Hell Broke Loose was next and that was followed by the US scenes used in Half Human, those were followed by The Manster. An odd lot of films, huh, and all of it happened in 1957 and 1958.

The story is about a space test rocket that stays up for 40 hours and then falls into Africa. Some months later the area is plagued with suspicious animal and human death. Jim Davis plays a scientist, one of the men with the rocket, and he suspects the deaths might have something to do with his rocket. He goes off to Africa to investigate.

It's filled with what seem to be endless jungle scenes, so many in fact, they had to borrow some footage from Stanley And Livingstone. The story is fairly good, giant wasps, but the execution is weak. It was fun enough but it knows it's below average and so do I.

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.

Bomba The Jungle Boy Volume 2

Volume 2 of Bomba The Jungle Boy has the remaining 6 movies in the series. They all star Johnny Sheffield, who played Boy in 8 Tarzan movies. After the Bomba series ended in 1955 Johnny hung up his lion cloth and went into business. Sadly, Johnny died in 2010 from a fall from a ladder. He was 79.

Here's a bit of the TV show Johnny was in, Bantu The Zebra Boy. He rides a zebra. You'll see a lion look bored as he rides by.

Here's the 6 movies in the set. They come 2 to a disc, on DVDrs with no extras. The picture quality is fine, the sounds pretty good. All of them were written and directed by Ford Beebe. The Bomba series would be the last films of his 40 year career, he wrote another film in 1959 but didn't direct anything. He started writing screenplays in 1915 and he would have been 67 when he made the last Bomba picture in 1955. He died in 1978.

African Treasure 1952 Bomba is on the trail of diamond smugglers. They've kidnapped a village and are using them to dig the diamonds.

Bomba And The Jungle Girl 1952 Bomba's on the trail of information on his long missing parents. He gets a lead that takes him to a tribe that is up to no good. Bomba puts a stop to their shenanigans and finds out more about his past.

Safari Drums 1953 A rich guy wants exciting movie footage of the animals in Africa. His safari crosses paths with Bomba, who's been told that there's a murderer in the group. The rich guy's imported a tiger so he can have it fight a lion. That's some pretty poor footage. Sometimes the animal footage isn't very interesting and they repeat footage from film to film.

The Golden Idol 1954 Bomba's holding a statue that Arab Prince Ali Ben Mamoud wants. He hires a killer to go after it. Bomba thwarts the killer and the Prince gets burn up alive. You don't fuck with Bomba on his land. The jungle can hide a lot of dead bodies.

Killer Leopard 1954 Beverly Garland plays an actor who's gone into the jungle to try to find her husband. He's on the run, having embezzled some cash, which he plans to turn into illegally gotten diamonds. Bomba runs into that family mess while on the hunt for a killer lack leopard.

Lord Of The Jungle 1955 The government has sent a hunter to kill the heard of elephants that have gone rogue. Bomba stops them, the elepehants are n his land, so he can figure out which elephant is the rogue. He'll turn him over to the hunter to be destroyed. That way he'll save the herd. It all gets pretty grim for Bomba for a while but he comes out A-OK in the end.

I was glad to have gotten the two sets that contain the series. They aren't the best jungle films out there but they are entertaining. I'll certainly watch them again someday.

Friday Night Movies 689

Tarzan The Ape Man is a 1959 film with Denny Miller as Tarzan. I was pretty sure I hadn't see it before, but truth be told, it turns out that I had seen parts of it before. MGM has re-make rights to their 1932 film Tarzan Of The Apes so they decided to re-make the film. Sy Weintraub had the rights to the other Tarzan films and he was making Tarzan's Greatest Adventure at the same time.

For an MGM film it seems pretty low budget, making it, rather sadly, a poor  addition to the Tarzan film library. Roger Hill beats some words into a screenplay but he doesn't have much of a story. Joseph M Newman directed the scenes that were new to the film. The film makers borrow heavily from the 1932 Tarzan Of The Apes, the 1934 Tarzan And His Mate, and the 1937 King Soloman's Mines. All of those were B&W films and this new one is color. You'll notice that right off. There's a good bit of miss matched color stock footage of animals wedged in there too.

Besides Denny Miller, there's Joanna Barnes, Cesare Danova and Robert Douglas in the cast. Joanna is Jane, Robert her father and Cesare their guide. They encounter a Tarzan that doesn't speak much English. Tarzan fights some critters, Denny Miller fights a stuffed leopard, and Johnny Weissmuller fights a crocodile. That was the footage from Tarzan And His Mate. There's a good bit of tramping through the jungle and some noticeable rock climbing. It's all to the  score by jazz thingy Shorty Rogers. I can't say I disliked the movie but it sure wasn't something anyone could be proud of. Since I bought it, I'll keep it, making my Tarzan collection that much more complete.

The Evil Of Dracula is the 3rd of 1970s vampire films from Toho. It's came out in 1974 and once again the style copies the Hammer horror film. A teacher arrives at a school to find the Principal's wife has just died. She's down in the basement for a week. It's a local custom. The teacher has an odd dream about the dead wife. Soon enough it's a battle to the death with the vampires. There's plenty of tooth flashing and dripping blood. It's similar to the other two films in quality. I'm going to keep an eye on the price for the three film set. It'll get cheaper someday or I won't bother with it.