PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Die Tote Der Themse 1971

Die Tote Der Themse 1971 Based on Edgar Wallace novel The Angel Of Terror, screenplay by Horst Wendlandt and Harald Philipp, directed by Harald Philipp. The last of the German Edgar Wallace series from Rialto Film. One of the few in the series shot in color.

Danny Fergusson as an Australian who comes to London to find out what happened to her murdered sister Myrna. Inspector Craig is on the case, he's helped by Sergeant Simpson and hindered Sir John. That's Uschi Glas in the red coat playing Danny, the fellow is Friedrich Schoenfelder, he plays Anthony Wyman.

It's a fairly decent story with a bit of twist or two. It scores a 5.4 on the IMDb and that's not much off the mark for me. I enjoyed it well enough, I might even watch it again. You can download a copy off of RareLust.

Endless Night 1972

Endless Night 1972 Based on the Agatha Christie novel Endless Night, written, directed and produced by Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder, Sidney's long time partner, was was also the producer. It was the last film Sidney directed, he produced one more film and wrote a couple more before he retired.

Earlier in his career Sidney wrote The Lady Vanishes for Alfred Hitchcock  to direct, in the middle of his career he wrote Green For Danger for himself to direct, near the end of his career he wrote the St Trinian's Girl School pictures. There were a few other good films mixed in there too. He's one of my favorite film makers and he often worked with Frank Launder.

Endless Night is the story of a working glass guy, played by Hywel Bennett, who aspires to be rich. He likes the finer things in life, art, architecture and women. Hayley Mills plays an American who takes a liking too him, they marry pretty quickly on.

Turns out Hayley is rich, she buys the sea side plot Hywel wants, despite being warned that the place is cursed, and she arranges for the famous architect to design the house. Things happen for a bit and Hayley dies while out on a horse ride. The autopsy says natural causes but Hywel isn't sure. Hywel inherits Hayley's fortune. Things go downhill for Hywel after that.

When it was done I wasn't much impressed, it's about average, there's hardly anyone to root for but in the end there's some punishment metered out. I liked that part better. I bought a cheap DVD that I'll keep, I might get around to it again someday. Agatha herself didn't care for the film much, especially the nudity near the end of the movie. It did poorly in the UK and didn't get a US release.

All Coppers Are... 1972

All Coppers Are... 1972 Screenplay by Allan Prior and direction by Sidney Hayers. Produced by Carry On producer Peter Rogers.

A gritty crime story set in and around Battersea. A cop has a romp in the hay with a blonde woman he meet at a party. She doesn't know he's married with a baby and a cop. She gets something going with a local small time hood who's got a cigarette heist in mind. The heist puts him and the cop up against each other and it doesn't go so well.

It's pretty average despite the decent cast, Julia Foster, Martin Potter, Nicky Henson, Wendy Allnutt, Ian Hendry, Norman Jones, David Essex, Robin Askwith and Tony Wright. The script does well enough with the dialog and such but it's pretty much a by the numbers production. I more enjoyed the ambience of the time and place. You can check it out on YouTube and see if you like it.

 

Homebodies 1974

Homebodies 1974 Screenplay by Howard Kaminsky, Bennett Sims and Larry Yust, directed by Larry Yust.

An odd little film about some seniors that turn to murder to keep their condemned apartment building.

I liked the film's sense of humor and the groups decent into madness. I enjoyed the movie and would watch it again.

Bird With The Crystal Plumage 1970

Bird With The Crystal Plumage 1970 Written and directed by Dario Argento. The Wikipedia says the film borrows from Fredric Brown's The Screaming Mimi but it's not an adaptation. I might have seen this in the 70s or 80s but it didn't look familiar.

Tony Musante plays an American writer on vacation in Rome with his girlfriend who's played by Suzy Kendall. Tony sees a murder done in an art gallery and the police take his passport to keep him around. He thinks he has a clue in his head but can't get to it. He starts poking around in the case, the killer notices him and starts threatening him. That gives the police a clue. They catch the killer and save Tony's life. He goes back to the US. 

I'm not that big of a Dario fan but this is one of his better films. I've been a little more interested in the Italian Giallo films because of my interest in the German Krimi films. Some say the Krimi film influenced Italian film makers and that lead to the Giallo genre.

Friday Night Movies 912

Blade Runner 2049 2017 Based on characters from Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, story by Hampton Fancher, screenplay by Hampton Fancher, directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Ryan Gosling is KD6-3.7, he's a blade runner for the LAPD, he's also a Nexus-9 replicant, nobody likes him. KD6-3.7 lives in the large LA sprawl and hunts rogue replicants, he retires them. It's a pretty crappy future, most everything is smog bound and it rains a lot. After KD6-3.7 retires a protein farmer a box is discovered on the property. It contains the remains of a replicant that died in childbirth. KD6-3.7's boss thinks this could be a bad thing to let the public know about, he wants the child found and destroyed.

Kd6-3.7 runs about getting into one scrap after another. People are dropping left and right. There are a number of factions interested in the child and the reproduction rights of replicants. The Wallace Corp is the main villain, the CEO has his pet psycho, a cold hearted murderin' lady. KD6-3.7 finds Rick Deckard in Las Vegas. No one goes there, it's all sand and radioactivity. There's a bunch of fighting when the psycho lady turns up, more people get killed, Deckard gets kidnapped and KD6-3.7 is left for dead. He's not. He sets off on a rescue mission.

It's quite a long movie, 164 mins, and there's a lot of slow moving stuff goin' on but it didn't drag too much. There's usually something to see but that future sure looks miserable. I mostly liked the movie but not as much as the first movie. I'd be curious to see a sequel. I see there's a TV show set 50 years in the future coming out from Amazon.

Massacre Gun 1967 Screenplay by Yasuharu Hasebe and Ryūzō Nakanishi, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. Hasebe made a good number of films for Nikkatsu  including the Stray Cat Rock series.

Joe Shishido is Ryūichi Kuroda, a yakuza hitman and the eldest of three brothers. That's his brother Eiji on the right and Saburo on the left. Eiji is a yakuza and Saburo is an up and coming boxer. Boss Azakawa orders Ryūichi to kill his girlfriend. He goes home all miserable, Saburo tries to comfort him but fails. He's young and ignorant, he goes to Azakawa and confronts him. Saburo's going to quit boxing for him so Azakawa has both his hands broken. When the other two brothers find out things get out of hand and nearly everyone dies.

It's a familiar story, yakuza vs yakuza, high body count, little learned. The Arrow Blu-ray looks really nice. I'd certainly watch it again sometime but it's no Tokyo Drifter.

Blood For Blood 1971 Screenplay by Hideichi Nagahara, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. Another Nikkatu gangster film by the same director as the film above.

Joe Shishido is a yakuza who gets out of prison after 5 years. He returns home to his old gang is being squeezed out by a couple of the local gangs and a gang from Tokyo. It's a blood bath as the rival gangs kill each other in vivid color.Hardly anyone gets out of this alive.

The film looks nice but the story is only about average. No matter, it's still one I'd watch again.

Nero Wolfe 1979

Nero Wolfe 1979 Based on The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout, written and directed by Frank D Gilroy. A TV movie pilot that aired on ABC television two years after it was made. It's part of a DVD set with the 14 episodes of the 1981 TV series. It's got a different cast than the TV series. Originally Orson Welles was to play Nero but he bowed out and Gilroy found Thayer David, that's him on the left, the other fellow is Tom Mason, he's playing Archie Goodwin. Sadly, Thayer died before the movie aired.

It's a good adaption of the novel. Nero is asked by a rich lady to get the FBI off her back, she sent out hundreds of copies of a book that spoke badly about Edgar and his gang. Now the FBI are following her and she's pissed off. Nero eyes the massive fee and plunges right into to setting a trap for the FBI. The Bureau throws it's weight around but they're no match for Nero.

It's well written and plotted, the cast is good and they do a great job. Anne Baxter plays the rich lady and Brooke Adams plays Archie's romantic interest. I liked Lewis Charles as Saul Panzer. David Hurst plays Fritz, Biff McGuire plays Inspector Cramer with John Randolph, Frank Campanella and John Hoyt in smaller roles.

It's quite fun and it kept my interest up right to the end. Thayer and Tom have a good bit of chemistry together. There's a good sense of humor too. Worth seeing. I'll watch it again sometime.

 

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.

The Abductors 1972

The Abductors 1972 Written and directed by Don Schain. The second in the Ginger film series with Cheri Caffaro playing the lead role. Cheri married Don Schain before doing this film.

Ginger's some sort of spy or investigator, she gets asked to help investigate a series of teen abductions. We already know who the kidnapping scum are, a thuggish and rapey group who need killing. We spend a lot of time with the scum as they terrorize the young women into submission. They rape them while the boss sets up a trio of business scum for a purchase.

Ginger arrives and starts investigating, she enlists another gal who gets kidnapped right away. She follows them to a house, scopes it out and returns with a gang of coppers. They raid the house and rescue the young women.

Ginger and another cop confront the head man at his office, he's a bank manager with a trio of shotguns in his desk. Ginger and her pal nearly get blown away but the head man gets all worked up over the injustice some other rich scumbags have inflicted on him. Poor him, he should suck a shotgun and put himself out of his misery. As it plays out in the movie, head man gets all worked up, Ginger and the cop jump out of the way of the shotguns while his fingers are waving in front of his face. A couple of quick punches and he's ready for the slammer.

Like that scene the whole movie is poorly made and scripted. Well below average. I downloaded this from somewhere last January and it's no longer there. You can download a copy at RareLust. Certainly not something I would need to buy.

Friday Night Movies 888

Doctor Strange 1978 Written and directed by Philip DeGuere. I had forgotten that we had watched this on a previous FNM night. That was back in 2018. Click the link in the title to read that.

I still feel it's just not that exciting. The director was sad it got such low Nielsen numbers but I could see where a lot of people would have bailed on this after sitting through the first half. I don't think Peter Hooten is much of an actor, he certainly doesn't do very well here. The other actors are a mix, John Mills, Jessica Walters and Clyde Kasatsu do well, the rest are weaker by far. Not that they have that great a script to work with.

The Blu-ray does look nice but that isn't enough to make the movie much better. Ironically the second film today, like the film in the 2018 post, made Doctor Strange look a little bit better by comparison.

Bury Me An Angel 1971 Written and directed by Barbara Peeters. It was picked up for distribution by Roger Corman's New World Pictures. According to the Wikipedia, Peeters was the first woman to direct a biker film. Peeters is also credited with directing Humanoids From The Deep. Not a great picture but one that's fascinating to watch none the less.

Corman didn't think Peeters had made the monsters in Humanoids From The Deep nasty enough for his audience, so Jimmy T Murakami and second unit director James Sbardellati were asked to direct a bit more of the rapey monster stuff that Roger wants his audience to have. He did this without telling the other cast and crew, Peeters and Ann Turkel didn't care for the changes and asked to have their names removed from the film, they were refused. Roger, classy or what?

It''s kind of the same for Bury Me An Angel, the exploitative elements are weak for a biker film. Dixie Peabody plays the main character, a biker called Dag. This is her second film, the first was a bit part in the 1970 biker film Angels Die Hard. Peeters worked on that film and it's there she meet Rita Murray, an actor who wanted to producer her own films. In 1971 Dixie had a small part in Night Call Nurses and then worked briefly as a PA on Summer School Teachers. No more acting. It's probably best, she doesn't have the ability.

In Bury Me An Angel Dag's brother is killed by another guy. The brother stole that guy's nice motorcycle and gave it to Dag. She decides to get revenge. After rounding up a couple unarmed goofs for backup and getting some info from a guy, the trio head north. They meet some people along the way, Dan Haggerty was one of them, eventually they find the guy who killed Dag's brother. There's an unsatisfying confrontation with the murderer at the end of the movie.

It's amazing that a movie could fail on so many fronts. Peeters just isn't that good of a director. The film meanders around with nothing happening way too often. The script isn't very good, it's certainly does not make for a good exploitative biker film. It seems more like a melodrama with Dag moping around. Too much time is spent with Dag and her internal struggle over her brother's death. The acting is mostly poor with poor Dixie leading the pack in lack of ability. We were mesmerized by her facial expressions. I think mostly because there wasn't a lot going on up on screen. Oh, well, another one I wouldn't need to buy.