PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Witchhammer 1970

Witchhammer 1970 Based on Kladivo na čarodějnice by Václav Kaplický, written and directed by Otakar Vávra. A Czechoslovak drama about witch trials in the 1670s.

After being caught not eating the communion bread a woman admits wanting the bread to help a milk less cow start giving milk again. Thoughts of witchcraft fill the heads of the local land owner. An inquisitor is called in and soon there's torture a foot. The inquisitor's thugs use torture and brain washing techniques to make her admit to being a witch and engaging in sorcery and all sorts of sexual activities. It's easy to get confessions out of their victims with a few more turns of the thumbscrews or the foot press. First they burn one lady, then three ladies and finally there's hardly any room on the large field to set up another stake to burn more women at one time.

The inquisitor bothers a local priest, he pushes back and gets burnt at the stake for his sex crimes. The inquisitor is so full of himself he starts to believe he's better than everyone else. The movie is seen as an allegory for the 1950s show trials perpetrated on the Czechs by the Russians. It reminds me how easy it is the get citizens to do stupid and cruel things. The movie was pulled from the theaters shortly after release and not shown until 1989. It's a decent film but not the sort of thing I seek out. It's more political drama than horror film, that's less interesting to me.

Conduct Unbecoming 1975

Conduct Unbecoming 1975 Based on the play Conduct Unbecoming by Barry England, screenplay by Robert Enders, directed by Michael Anderson. A British legal drama set in the British military in 1880 India.

An attack on a local woman brings a soldier to court martial. The man charged is innocent, the truth puts a bullet in the bad man's head by his own hand.

It's not the sort of thing I normally watch, it's a good reminder that the olden days sure sucked. It's a decent film but hardly one I would like to see again. It's got a great cast: Micheal York, Richard Attenborough, Trevor Howard, Stacey Keach, Christopher Plummer, Susannah York, James Faulkner and Persis Khambatta.

The Devil's Cleavage 1975

The Devil's Cleavage 1975 Written and directed by George Kuchar with some writting help from Bob Hohalek. I found this on Rarelust. I can't say I have seen much of George's work, he has 250 directing credits on the IMDb, most of those are short films. I have seen a couple of films that George wrote, Sins Of The Fleshapoids and Thundercrack. 

A low budget film about a nurse and her unhappy love life. Most of the movie is people yakking in the places they live in. Nothing much happens other than people interacting.

It's New York in the 70s, black and white and gritty. I don't know any of the cast except for the three underground cartoonists Art Spiegelman, Bill Griffith and his wife Diane Noomin. I hadn't even known they were in a movie.

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would but it's still a slog. I doubt I'd need to watch it again.

Attack Of The Kung Fu Girls 1973

Attack Of The Kung Fu Girls 1973 Written and directed by Lo Wei. A Chinese film from Golden Harvest. Jackie Chan has a small part playing a Japanese bully.

Cheng Pei-pei pretends to be the long lost sister of a local army Captain so she can find out where the leader of the revolutionaries has been imprisoned. The revolutionaries want to stop Japan from influencing China in their favor. The Chinese President Yuan Shih Ka has let the Japanese become very influential in capital politics as well as on a local level. Because the Emperor likes the Japanese the locals can't say much against them. The revolutionaries spend the movie planning actions and mostly failing and dying.

 

There's a fair bit of action and plenty of dead guys to haul out of the movie. Jackie plays a Japanese guy who causes trouble in a Chinese restaurant. Cheng Pei-Pei beats him and his friends pretty well. They complain to the local Japanese Consul and that gets to the Army leaders. Cheng is told to apologize but gets out trouble when she claims to be the sister of Army Captain Lei. He takes her into his home along with her two friends, an older woman and a young boy. Both are also deep in the revolution, things don't go so well for them either.

 

The Japanese Consul is played by Jô Shishido, some might remember him as the gangster in Seijun Suzuki's Branded To Kill or the Mighty Joe films on MST3K.

It's an ultimately sad story about some revolutionists what come to a poor end. I was mostly interested in seeing it because it was one of the handful of Jackie Chan films I hadn't seen before. I downloaded it from RareLust, there's a really crappy copy on YouTube I wouldn't want to watch. There's a pricey DVD on Amazon that pairs this movie with Whiplash. I enjoyed the film and would watch it again sometime.

Soul Of The Sword 1978

Soul Of The Sword 1978 Written by Kang-Chien Chiu and Chan-Wei Lin, directed by Shan Hua. A Shaw Brothers film with Ti Lung, Chen-Chi Lin, Feng Ku, Hui-Ling Liu, Norman Chu, Shen Chan and Lily Li.

As a boy Ti had seen a swordsman battle the King Of Swords, the man was killed and in disrepair his woman killed herself. Ti is inspired train hard at swordplay so he can kill the King of Swords and take the title. Along the way to that goal Ti meets a shop girl, he fancies her and kicks another man aside. Ti also meets a doctor who lives in the town. The doctor offers advice but Ti isn't willing to give up his goal.

Ti has a good number of fights, someone is always fighting someone in ancient China. Most of the ladies that appear don't fair so well when they meet up with Ti. He's just too driven and it ends badly for him. Same with the doctor. I guess the message I got is stay away from that guy.

It's fairly entertaining, good fights and plenty of nice sets. I found this on RareLust and was happy to see it. I might get around to watching it again sometime.

Little Murders 1971

Little Murders 1971 Based on the play Little Murders by Jules Feiffer, screenplay by Jules Feiffer, directed by Alan Arkin. It was Alan's first film. He didn't direct that many and I've not seen any of the others. I've seen a lot of of the movies he's acted in but I don't have a lot of them on DVD. At some point in the early 80s I decided Feiffer's sort of story wasn't the sort of story that I was interested. I did like some of the children's books he illustrated. I liked his art but not enough to keep up with him.

Elliot Gould is a photographer who currently specializes in photos of shit on the sidewalk. He's won a half dozen awards. He's out on the street all the time, often he gets bothered by the street punks. The noise, the crime, the violence is bad in New York they live in.

Marcia Rodd is an interior designer who helps Elliot when the street punks are attacking him. Elliot doesn't fight back, he's got some goofy thoughts on that. Marcia starts dating him despite his lack of interest. He's emotionally withdrawn, doesn't talk much and has very little interest in others. What's interesting to Elliot is his photography work. He goes along with her plans, she steamrollers right over him, soon they are wed.

Like most scenes in the movie the wedding scene is overly exaggerated, it starts with a big fight and ends with a smaller fight. Donald Sutherland plays a hippie priest. He's got some crazy babble coming out of his mouth. Most of the movie has goofy dialog. We meet the young couple's families and they're all damaged in some way. Things get worse before the movie's over.

I mostly liked the movie but there's a lot of message in the media. The message I got out of it was not to date that sort of person. I did like the cast, it's nice to see Lou Jacobi, I haven't seen him in a while. I probably won't get around to it again but I've got other movies to watch first. You can check out the movie on YouTube, link in the title. You might like it.

Friday Night Movies 963

Arnold 1973 Written by Jameson Brewer and John Fenton Murray, directed by Georg Fenady. An American film set in a small village in Britain.

Stella Stevens marries her dead fiance. The ceremony is followed by a reading of the will. Stella gets the house and some odd stipulations in the will. Arnold can't be buried, he has to remain in the house, Stella has to remain in the house to keep the estate. Arnold's wife and son don't get anything. Shani Wallis plays the wife and sings the absolutely horrible title song. Roddy McDowall plays the son, he's one of the people Stella has been having an affair with, the lawyer's partner is another.

There's a huge pile of cash hidden in the house. There's plenty of vengeance going on as Arnold has set up various deathtraps for the family and friends to fall into. First to go is Arnold's wife when he died and the son isn't far off. The local bumbling Bobby, Bernard Fox, investigates but isn't smart enough to spot a murder when it's right in front of him.

It made me laugh occasionally but not all the laughs were to the jokes. It has a decent amount of zaniness. I haven't decided to buy the Blu-ray but I might want to see it again. There's a poor copy on YouTube and a good copy on RareLust.

Curse Of The Dog God 1977 Written and directed by Shun’ya Itô. The film is titled Inugami No Tatari in Japanese. Inugami refers to a curse that involves the killing of a dog to make a spirit that is used to curse people. You can read more about it on the Wikipedia.

Uranium hunters find a rich uranium vein in a small Japanese village. While searching one of the hunters ruins a small shrine by driving over it with his jeep, then he runs over a dog. That same uranium hunter marries the daughter of hte man who owns the land the uranium is on, more bad stuff happens and someone puts the curse of the dog god on the hunter, everything in his life comes to ruin.

After a bit of a slow start the craziness starts up and nearly everyone dies. It's a bit grim and might not be to everyone's taste. There's two dog murders, a couple of kids get murdered, and plenty of adults die horribly. Both films are about revenge and I thought they're a good reminder to stay single. Families like that I don't need. Despite all that I thought it was a fairly entertaining movie. I might not buy a copy and I might not need to see it again but I was glad to see it. You can download a copy over at RareLust.

Friday Night Movies 942

Punk Samurai Slash Down 2018 Based on the novel Panku-zamurai, kirarete sôrô, screenplay by Kankurô Kudô, directed by Gakuryû Ishii.

A ronin gets involved with the court squabbles of a small lord and a lot of people and monkeys die. There's a fair bit of action and plenty of comedy, as the movie progresses it gets weirder and weirder. You can get a bit of an idea from the trailer link in the title above.

I enjoyed most of the film but I doubt I would buy a copy of the Blu-ray. I might not get back to it.

The Amusement Park 1975 Screenplay by Wally Cook, directed by George A Romero.

I'm not going to buy a copy of George's film either. The Wikipedia called it an American psychological horror film. Fancy description. It's an hour long short that George produced for the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania as an educational film about elder abuse. He shot it in 1973, It premiered at the American Film Festival in 1975 and wasn't released anymore. In 2020 it was restored and we watched the Blu-ray that came out of that work.

An old man wanders around an amusement park, he talks about the plight of the elderly and has plenty of age related issue examples. The park is noisy and filled with people aimlessly milling about, getting in his way. Why anyone would go there is beyond me.

If I saw this on YouTube and George wasn't directing, I doubt I'd sit through it to the end. I got the message loud and clear and it's pretty sad to see there's not been much improvement since. Glad to have seen it but I wouldn't need to see it again.

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.

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.