PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 927

Crabs 2021 Written and directed by Pierce Berolzheimer. It's his first movie.

The small coastal town of Mendocino California gets invaded by some deadly horseshoe crabs. A lot of the locals die. Then the crab's giant big brother arrives. A group of teens put up a fight using some high tech.

There's a fair bit of crab action and gore. The physical crabs were pretty good, the gore drippy. There's a fairly good amount of humor but not all the jokes land well. It's 80 mins but seems longer. The story lurches to a crawl during some of the character development. I enjoyed it well enough but I'm doubting the need to add it to my collection.

The Alphabet Murders 1965 Based on The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, screenplay by David Pursall and Jack Seddon, directed by Frank Tashlin. The name was changed to avoid any connection with the British theater chain ABC Cinemas in case the film flopped while playing at the ABC theaters.

Tony Randall plays Hercule Poirot. Originally Zero Mostel was intended to play the Belgian detective but Agatha Christie objected to the script having a bedroom scene with Hercule. That was several years before the film got made, Seth Holt was to be the director.

Tashlin came aboard and rewrote the Pursall and Seddon script with Robert Morley. They added a lot of slapstick and made Poirot a bit of a bumbler. Christie was said to have loathed the resulting movie. I can't blame her. The story in the film bares little resemblance to her novel.

I've seen a lot of adaptations of the novel and this is the oddest. Poirot bowling? Despite all that there's still some entertainment value in the film. It's unique at least. You can find out if you like it at the link in the title above.

Friday Night Movies 925

The Unknown Man Of Shandigor 1967 Written and directed by Jean-Louis Roy. A Swiss spy film originally titled L'inconnu de Shandigor about a scientist who creates an invention that can incapacitate atomic bombs.

That's Daniel Emilfork, he plays the baddie Herbert Von Krantz. He's created the bomb stopper and he's a mad mad scientist. He holds up in a big house with his daughter Sylvaine and an albino assistant called Yvan. Herb keeps everything locked up and he watches over the property with his surveillance cameras. There's also an unseen and under used creature living in his pool. Occasionally someone stops by the pool to throw bits of dry ice into the water. Disappointingly we never see the creature.

Several countries have spies watching him. Sylvaine runs off and is kidnapped by one of the spy groups. She spends a lot of time running around places with Gaudi architecture with one of the spy guys.

It's an odd film, someone commented it was shot like a Berman film and I could se that. One of the two reviews on the IMDb said:

The Unknown Man of Shandigor is far more whimsical than any James Bond film. Yet, it is neither a parody nor a satire of spy films. It is just a bizarre take on one. I would compare this film to Alphaville in the way the film is a delirious style piece. It even shares one actor from the Godard film, the always welcomed Howard Vernon. I might also mention Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter, director Seijun Suzuki's two takes on the yakuza film from the same time period as The Unknown Man of Shandigor.

It's an unusual film, not for everyone. I liked it well enough and I am tempted to pick up a copy.

The Liquidator 1965 Based on the novel of the same name by John Gardner, screenplay by Peter Yeldham, directed by Jack Cardiff. Not a series I ever read. I think I've only read the first of Gardner's James Bond sequels. Like a Bond movie it opens with a big song. Shirley Bassey's alright singing wise and the music by Lalo Schifrin isn't that bad. The problem is the poor lyrics, not good.

Rod Taylor is Boysie Oakes, he saved the life of a man called Mostyn, played by Trevor Howard, in Paris during World War 2. He killed a German soldier who was about to shoot Mostyn. He killed that man by a lucky accident but Mostyn didn't see that, he just saw the dead Nazi. Years later Mostyn is a Colonel in British Intelligence. He's given a project by his boss, played by Wilfred Hyde-White, who wants Mostyn to eliminate security leaks in the agency with deadly force. It's a totally secret and illegal operation but Trevor goes ahead with the project.

He hires Boysie thinking he's a stone cold killer. Tempted by the spy game, the fancy car, the ladies and the lavish apartment Boysie goes along with the program until he learns he's going to be an assassin. Boysie wants to quit but Mostyn has him over a barrel and he can't resign. Boysie doesn't want to kill people, he fails in his attempt on that lady in the hat. Boysie wants keep his lavish lifestyle, so he does the next best thing, he farms out the killing to Griffin, played by Eric Sykes, a freelance professional assassin.

It all works well enough for a while but Boysie is a bit of a rule breaker and he wants to get closer to Mostyn's secretary Iris, Jill St John plays her and she's a handful. The problem that keeps cropping up is there are rules about spy's dating the agency civilian staff. Serious rules that could get rule breakers 10 years in prison. Despite that Boysie and Iris take a trip to the Côte d'Azur on the French Riviera. They get tumbled before the plane leaves the runway and Mostyn is on their trail. Meanwhile in France a secret plan to kill the Duke Of Edinburgh is formulating. Boysie is set up by a fake agent and believes his story about a training exercise. The baddies really have another goal, they want to steal the new test plane that the Duke was to inspect, they nearly get away with it before Boysie finally comes through.

I don't think it's humorous enough to be a spy spoof, it's more a thriller with a dark comedic core. People commenting on the IMDb and reviews can't seem to agree on what it is. Boysie doesn't want to kill people but he's OK with Griffin doing the job. Daniel Emilfork, Krantz in the first film tonight, has a small role as a spy.

I enjoyed it most of the time. It moves along fairly well until the last act when it starts to lag a bit. It's 104 mins could have been cut by 10 mins and it would have tightened it up nicely. I picked up a copy from Amazon for a tenner and I'm not sad about that. I'd watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 917

The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm 1962 Based on the biography The Brothers Grimm by Dr Hermann Gerstner, story by David P Harmon, screenplay by Charles Beaumont, William Roberts and David P Harmon, directed by Harry Levin with George Pal directing the fairy tale sequences.

The film was filmed in three panel Cinerama widescreen. The film hadn't had a US video release since the 1989 VHS and the 1992 Laserdisc. The Wikipedia tells of a bootleg Italian DVD. I know I haven't seen it in decades. I'm sure I saw it on TV as a kid. The film's been restored and presented in two versions, letterbox and Smilebox. We watched the letterbox and the dragon sequence on the Smilebox.

That's the Smilebox. Letterbox below.

Laurence Harvey plays Wilhelm and Karlheinz Böhm plays Jacob, Claire Bloom plays Wilhelm's wife and Barbara Eden plays Greta, a young woman smitten with Jacob. Oskar Homolka plays the Duke and Walter Slezak plays a bookstore owner called Stossel. Other members of the cast that I knew were Yvette Mimieux, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Backus, Beulah Bondi, Terry-Thomas, Buddy Hackett, Otto Kruger and Arnold Stang. Stan Freberg does some voices for the Puppetoons puppets.

The Brothers Grimm have taken a writing assignment from the local Duke. They are writing his family history and are nearly at the end of the 6 month project. The Duke is mad because it's not quite finished and he knows Wilhelm has been devoting some of his writing time to the fairy tales he loves so much. The brothers need to get this work done or the Duke won't pay them, he'll toss them out of their house and send them to the debtor's prison.

Wilhelm is a problem, not a practical man, he causes issues, nearly dies and hallucinates fairy tale characters and gives them names. Interspersed with the bio story are three short animated and live action fairy tales. They were nice to watch but the bio stuff was less interesting. I would have liked to see more fairy tales animated instead of incorrect bio info. It's fairly long too, 140 mins.

The Blu-ray looks nice but I'm doubtful I need to add it to my library. I can say the same about our second movie.

Amityville In The Hood 2021 Written by Jeremiah Douglas and Dustin Ferguson, directed by Dustin Ferguson.

Some joker is growing weed in the Amityville house, some guys steal it and take it to California. It's Big M's weed and he follows the weed to Cali. The drug guys have a dust up and kill some people. The weed turns people crazy and they kill other people. Sadly, most of that sort of action takes places off screen. What we have to sit through are some bad actors reading crap dialog from a poorly written script that was never thought through in the first place.

It was hard to sit though without heaping scorn on the film. The movie scores a 1.8 on the IMDb. It's deserving, just about everything about it is poor.

The Shadow Of The Cat 1961

The Shadow Of The Cat 1961 Written by George Baxt, directed by John Gilling. The last movie in the last set of Universal Horror Collection Volume 6. There's a commentary with Bruce G Hallenbeck, an interview with Barbara Shelley and a still gallery. It's a Hammer Film made in the UK.

I read a couple of George's Hollywood mystery novels but at this time what they were is long gone. He didn't write many movies, less than 2 dozen, and I've only seen a handful, The Revenge Of Frankenstein, Circus Of Horrors, The City Of The Dead, Strangler's Web (part of The Edgar Wallace film series made by Anglo-Amalgamated in the early 60s), Vampire Circus and Tower Of Evil. John was fairly prolific and I know I've seen quite a few of the movies he's written and directed plus all 10 episodes of The Saint. I've probably seen those 10 episodes close to a dozen times each.

A wealthy old lady is murdered by her greedy family, the only witness is the old lady's cat. The old lady's body is buried in the grounds and the cat saw that too. The cat takes it upon himself to get vengeance for the old lady. He does a good job, these people are so scared you'd think the cat is a giant monster of some sort.

It's pretty entertaining watching them flail about as the cat gets to work. The police poke their noses into the mix. The bodies pile up and the family's attempts to kill the cat backfire on them in deadly ways. Eventually the cat leads the police to the old lady's body. We'd all be better off with a guardian cat.

It's not a great movie but it is entertaining. I usually get a laugh or two out of it.

Kill Or Cure 1962

Kill Or Cure 1962 Story and screenplay by David Pursall and Jack Seddon, directed by George Pollock. George was an assistant director on 39 films including the 1940 Gaslight. He was director on 17 films and four of them are favorites of mine. He directed the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple series in the 1960s. He directed another Agatha Christie adaptation, the 1965 Ten Little Indians with Shirley Eaton, Fabian and Hugh O'Brian. The IMDb Trivia page says the plot of Kill Or Cure is out of a Tommy and Tuppence story by Agatha Christie. They don't say which one and I haven't looked.

An elderly lady hires low level Private Investigator Terry-Thomas to join her at a health spa to keep an eye on someone. The old dolly is murdered right quick and Terry-Thomas stays on the case because there's a big reward for the capture of the murderer. Eric Sykes is the fitness guy at the health spa and he's got an eye on that reward.

Dennis Price plays the next victim. That's Moira Redmond with Terry-Thomas. She's the rich lady's secretary and T-T has an eye on her. Lionel Jeffries is the Detective Inspector, Ronnie Barker is his Sergeant. Terry-Thomas and Eric try working together but they both are kind of incompetant. There's usual sort of running about and some slapsticky bits. A running gag delivers several blows to the head of the poor Inspector. There's a great Dane in the movie that appeared as Steed's dog in several episodes of The Avengers. I enjoyed it. I watched this on YouTube. Link above.

Nearly A Nasty Accident 1961

Nearly A Nasty Accident 1961 Based on the play Touch Wood by David Carr and David Stringer, screenplay by Jack Davies and Hugh Woodhouse, directed by Don Chaffey. Don would go onto direct films for Disney, One Million Years BC, and episodes of The Prisoner, Man In A Suitcase, The Avengers and Secret Agent.

Kenneth Conner is in the Air Force and they aren't happy about it. Kenneth is a one man wrecking crew. Everything he touches breaks and the collateral damage to the AF is over £5 mills. Kenneth played a similar character in some of his other movies but this character is really destructive. On a trip to another post Kenneth destroys some stuff and meets Shirley Eaton. Eventually things have a bit of a happy ending, despite the roof caving in on them. It's a comedy, no one was hurt.

Oddly, I watched another British movie tonight that ends with a roof caving in, And The Same To You. That bit of a coincidence happens frequently on Friday Night Movies night.

There's some good jokes but over all it's pretty average. I couldn't believe the AF couldn't have gotten rid of him sooner than they did. There's a good cast: Jimmy Edwards, Eric Barker, Jon Pertwee, Ronnie Stevens, Richard Wattis, Peter Jones, Terry Scott, Jack Watling and Jack Douglas. I did enjoy the movie and would watch it again sometime. There's a copy on YouTube that you can watch, link above.

And The Same Too You 1960

And The Same Too You 1960 Based on the play The Chigwell Chicken by A P Dearsley, screenplay by John Paddy Carstairs with additional material by John Junkin and Terry Nation, directed by George Pollock.

A reverend is assigned to a new church and his first assignment is to check up on a tenant who hasn't been paying the rent on the church hall. Leo Franklyn plays the reverend and William Hartnell plays the tenant. William is a boxing promoter and he's running his business out of the church hall, he's not successful or he'd be able to pay the rent.

He convinces the reverend that they can make some money from the fights and some of that money can help fix the church roof. Leo's nephew Dickie, played by Brian Rix, gets roped into sparing with William's best boxer. Of course Dickie knocks out the boxer, next thing he's got a fight. Sid James plays a fight promoter who William convinces to supply a fighter for Dickie. Vera Day is William's assistant and Dickie's romantic interest.

There's plenty of shenanigans and goofy business. I enjoyed it and thought it's about average. You can see a copy on YouTube, not the best quality but watchable.

Friday Night Movies 889

Innocent Bystanders 1972 Based on the James Mitchell novel The Innocent Bystanders, screenplay by James Mitchell, directed by Peter Collinson. Mitchell wrote several John Craig spy novels under the name James Munro. I've not heard of them before. Not planning to look for them either. Spy books are pretty low down the list of genre fiction for me. Collinson directed The Italian Job in 1969 and Ten Little Indians in 1974. I liked both of those well enough but I've not seen any of his other work that I remember.

Stanley Baker is a spy working for Donald Pleasence, they work at one of the spy agencies in the UK. Donald is a nasty man with a plan to sacrifice Stanley as a decoy for his younger agents. Donald is not happy with Stanley, he thinks the man has passed it.

Stanley has to go to Turkey to find a scientist who's hiding. There's plenty of trouble for Stanley, other agents, including those on his side, want him dead and he's kidnapped Geraldine Chaplin. She has clues on the scientist's whereabouts.

There's all the usual sort of spy stuff going on, punch ups, gun shooting, explosions, and plenty of driving around. The action moves from London to Spain and  then to Turkey. Plenty of fairly interesting locations. There's a bit too much personal melodrama between Stanley and Geraldine, it seems to slow the second act down. The movie runs 111 mins and it's pretty slowly paced.

Stanley turns out to be less than washed up, he manages to beat the baddies and the goodies, get some cash and move on. It's was mostly fun to watch. I'd watch it again, good thing because I've bought the Blu-ray, but I'd be fast forwarding through some of that personal drama.

I thought Stanley was entertaining is this movie but a bit less interesting than he was in Hell Drivers. That's my favorite trucking movie. It's a hell of a movie and I'm no big fan of a drama. This one stands out. Stanley is an ex-con who's gone to work for a gravel hauling company. The cast includes Herbert Lom, Patrick McGoohan, Peggy Cummins, David McCallum, Sean Connery, William Hartnell, Jill Ireland, Alfie Bass and Sid James. Here's a copy of the movie on YouTube.

The Great Spy Chase 1963 I watched this last December on a FNM night when we were all kept at home during a snow storm. You can see the post in the link above. I enjoyed the movie for the second time but both other viewers took a snooze during the last act.

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 881

Greed In The Sun 1964 Original story by Claude Veillot, written by Michel Audiard, directed by Henri Verneuil. A French and Italian production set in the Sahara Desert.

Jean-Paul Belmondo is a truck driver working for Gert Förbe in Morocco. Lino Ventura and Bernard Blier are also truck drivers in the same company. Gert buys a new tractor trailer and he plans to let his new driver Reginald Kernan take it out on a trip to Nigeria. Next morning Jean-Paul takes the truck and runs off with the cargo. He's got a pretty lady with him. She turns out to be the instigator of the robbery.

Gert sends Lino after Jean-Paul and Bernard after Lino. Reginald joins Lino at the edge of town, Gert had fired him for being tricked by Jean-Paul. The guys chase each other across the desert with Lino catching up with Jean-Paul on occasion. Jean-Paul uses any trick he can, he tells the owner of the gas pump and bar along the way that Lino and Reginald are gay and not to sell them any gas because it would upset Gert. That doesn't go down well with Gert and Reginald, they bust up the owner and his bar, they get gas but don't pay.

Their trucks have trouble and eventually Jean-Paul has to hi-jack Lino's truck. Lino and Reginald get to the city where the deal is supposed to take place and they split up. Lino finds Jean-Paul among some prostitutes and they have a punch up. Jean-Paul admits to being hi-jacked by his girl friend. They have a big laugh and join the prostitutes in the brothel.

It's no Hell Drivers but it was entertaining enough for me to spend $2.95 for the Blu-ray over at Hamilton Books. It's fairly comic and scenes in the desert are a good reminder I'm glad I'm not there. None of those trucks seem to have air conditioning. I wouldn't like that much.

God Raiga Vs King Ohga 2021 Written and directed by Shinpei Hayashiya. The third of his films featuring Reiga or Raiga.

I really didn't care for this at all and won't waste any  more of my time on it.