PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 880

Vengeance Is A Golden Blade 1969 Written by Meng-Hua Ho and Yun Chih Tu, directed by Meng-Hua Ho.

That's Li Zhishan, his wife is fooling around with one of the Vicious Long Brothers. The VLBs are a rival security company who earn extra income robbing their clients. Business has been poor for the VLBs after Li began offering his security services. He's got a non-robbing security service. The Brothers decide to eliminate the competition and take Li's fancy, and unbeatable Golden Sword.

Li is hurt in the fight, a servant bundles him into a wagon with is young daughter and they all escape to the mountains. They find shelter with a herbalist and 18 years pass. The young daughter is now an adult, she's been trained up in the martial arts but doesn't know much of anything about her past.

Li allows his daughter to go into the city he used to live in and that unravels their secret existence. The wife sees the young woman and can only think of selling her virginity to the sleazy son of a rich official. Things go down hill from there, pretty soon most everyone is dead.

It's got some OK action and sword play, typical of the time, but the story is filled with clumsy bits and characters that act in their own worst interest. For a guy in security Li does one stupid thing after another. Early on he finds his wife cheating, again, and orders her to poison herself. He gives her the poison and leaves her alone in the house with the poison. She manages to poison Li and that helps the VLBs overpower him and take the sword. Li never tells his daughter anything of her past and that leaves her vulnerable. It's all very clumsy and I wished it was just better in general. There are so many more interesting films of the time, this one is barely average.

Deadlock 1970 Written and directed by Roland Klick. It's a German film shot in Israel which is standing in for the American West. It's filmed like a western and manages to use a lot of western tropes, all rather post-modern like.

A guy driving that truck sees a man lying in the desert. The man has been shot, he's carrying a machine guy and a suitcase with some cash in it. The truck driver takes him to the abandoned mining town he's living in, he's got an idea to let the guy die and keep the money but he's not that hard and he eventually saves the guy.

The guy is expecting a friend, turns out that friend is the guy who shot him in the first place. The trio fumble around while the money remains hidden. Ultimately nearly everyone lies dead on the desert ground.

It's way too slowly paced for me and there's little to like about any of the characters. I've seen better anti-hero kind of westerns, I wouldn't need to see this one again. The box says the film has developed a cult following, we all agreed we hadn't joined the cult.

Cry Of The Black Wolves 1972

Cry Of The Black Wolves is a 1972 West German adaptation of a Jack London story from a collection called The Son Of The Wolf but the story with the same name as the film isn't anything like what I just saw. Not surprising, film makers are fiddlers. It's filmed in Sankt Jakob in Defereggent Tirol Austria. It's rather nice and it looks enough like Alaska to get by. Rolf Olsen gets credit for "idea" on the IMDb. I can only guess. Kurt Nachman gets another credit for writing and Harald Reinl is the director.  Harald directed a whole pile of films, most of them in West Germany. I've seen The Torture Chamber Of Dr Sadism and that was OK. I've also seen The Return Of Dr Mabuse but I can't remember anything about it. I just ordered a copy of The Strangler Of Blackmoor Castle just based on seeing the listing on the IMDb. We'll see how it is someday in the future.

Ron Ely plays a trapper who has his dog sled stolen while he's in the small town of Happy Camp. The man who took it is killed in front of the native woman he's manipulated into traveling with him. She says she knows where there's some gold but she can't seem to deliver anything but the vaguest hints. Ron get blamed for the death and the town is after him. An outlaw gang comes into town and takes over the general store with violence. The head outlaw is looking for Ron too. Seems Ron killed his friend and got off when tried. The outlaws hear of the gold and there are killings. Ron does some hero work and there's some more killings.

It's got some nice scenery and that helps support a pretty standard Western plot. The supporting cast is alright, the villains are bad, the gals are pretty, the kid is cute, and the old coot is kind of funny. The dialog is odd at times and Ron has his voice dubbed. I suspect it was shot without sound as everyone had to be dubbed in for all the foreign versions anyway. It was fun enough to watch and I might watch it again someday.

One Little Indian 1973

One Little Indian is a 1973 Disney film with James Garner as a Cavalry deserter on the run. He gets caught as we start the story but he escapes with a couple of camels from the failed camel corps project. The Calvary, with tracker Jay Silverheels, is hot on his trail.

James encounters a little Indian boy called Mark who turns out to be a white kid. I've always been fond of James Garner, I will often watch something just because he's in it. Mark is played by Clay O'Brien, he had a short career, from 1972 to 1976. He appeared in several Disney productions. After acting he became a rodeo star with many world championships in team roping.

James and Mark stop at the home of Vera Miles and her daughter Jodie Foster. Vera's husband has died and they plan to leave their farm for a town in Colorado. James talks her into taking Mark to the next town where she hopes to get him a family. That doesn't go so well when Mark runs away and follows James.

The pair gets caught and it looks like they might hang James. We do learn James got in trouble because he stopped other troopers from killing Indian women at a village they were destroying. Heady stuff for Disney. Luckily, James has some friends, they arrange a stampede to bring the gallows down. It's Disney after all, they wouldn't have let a good man hang.

Morgan Woodward plays the Sergeant that is looking for James, he's a mean one. Pat Hingle, John Doucette, Bruce Glover, and Andrew Pine are some of the cast I knew. Harry Spalding is the writer and Bernard McEveety is the director. Glad I picked it up. I was entertained and would watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 734

Don't Kill It is a 2016 Dolph Lundgren movie. It's a bit of a comedy horror thing, Dolph's a demon hunter, he's been keeping a demon in a flask since he was a boy. He tossed it into the Mississippi bayou before the movie starts but in the opening scene some dog finds the flask. The demon escapes and takes over the dog. It puts the bite on the owner, who kills the dog, then the demon jumps to the man. It always jumps to the person or critter that killed it's host. Dolph's father poisoned himself and killed the host. His dad's dying body weakened the demon. When his father died Dolph was able to put the escaping bit of the demon into a metal flask. Once the dog owner gets home, there are all sorts of homicides. The local officials can't get their head around 3 triple homicides so the FBI sends an agent who had been run out of the same town by superstitious yokels when she was a child. She died and returned from the dead. People were upset somehow. Dolph thinks she's the good equivalent of the demon. The demon takes a liking to her, knowing the power that capturing a good soul will bring him. Now we've got everyone running about the town and the body count keeps mounting. It's pretty much a hunting demons movie with some comedy. It was enjoyable enough, I'd watch it again, but doubt I'd buy one. Who knows if I'd ever get back to it. I have literally thousands of movies to watch.

I probably wouldn't get back to Get Mean, a 1975 Italian Spaghetti Western, even if I had a copy. It's near the end of popularity for the SW and I suppose to jazz up the genre a bit they've thrown in everything they could that didn't belong in a SW. Tony Anthony takes on a job of transporting a Spanish noble woman to Spain. There they run into barbarians, Moors, an effete sidekick and a Shakespeare loving hunchback. After seeing it I began to wonder what went on in the head of the screenwriter. Tony Anthony wrote the story that was adapted by Wolfe Lowenthal and Lloyd Battista. Ferdinando Baldi is the director and I'm wondering what the hell he was thinking when he turned in the finished film. I wish it had more, and better, jokes. I found the music annoying as fuck too.

Western Wednesday 56

I watched Support Your Local Sheriff and Support Your Local Gunfighter today and enjoyed them all over again. I had copies I had recorded off of Turner Classic Movies and thought I would upgrade them to real DVDs. They do look a lot better.

Support Your Local Sheriff came out in 1969 and I went to see it in the theater. I'd been a big James Garner fan from watching the Maverick series on TV. I recently picked up a set of Maverick and I'm slowly watching the first season.

James Garner is a guy who wanders into a small town. He says he's on the way to Australia but he gets talked into taking the sheriff's job. His first act is to arrest Bruce Dern, the son of the local bad rancher, played by Walter Brennan. Walter and his son's have they way int he town and Walter collects a large fee to protect the gold that gets shipped across his land.

Joan Hackett plays the romantic interest and Harry Morgan is her father and the town mayor. It's a town struggling with the lawlessness of the local gold miners, on top of being under Walter's thumb.

James makes Jack Elam his deputy and they proceed to clean up the town. There's plenty of jokes, some of that mushy stuff, and a good bit of fighting and gun play. The script was written by William Bowers and Burt Kennedy was the director. William has written some good screenplays since starting in 1942 and going on until 1980. I've seen The Gunfighter, Mrs O'Malley and Mr Malone, Cry Danger and Alias Jesse James, enjoyed them all. Burt started directing in 1961 and he worked until 2000. One of my other favorites of his work is the 1976 film adaptation of the Jim Thompson novel The Killer Inside Me.

Support Your Local Gunfighter came out in 1971 and a few of the previous cast return. James is a different guy, he's a conman who arrives in the jerkwater mining town of Purgatory. Suzanne Pleshette plays the wacky romantic interest. I've never cared that much for her. I've seen her in a lot of Disney movies. Henry Morgan is her dad. Henry and John Denher are both digging for the mother load of gold. It's a heated rivalry and there's sabotage involved.

Jack Elam gets tricked into playing a known gunslinger by James. There's several other good character actors in the mix, Marie Windsor, Dub Taylor, Joan Blondell, Ellen Corby, Kathleen Freeman, Henry Jones, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez and Chuck Conners.

I might not have enjoyed the second movie quite as much as the first but it was still entertaining. I gave them both a 7 but I couldn't really give the second movie a 6, it's bit better than that. Burt Kennedy returns as the director and he co-wrote the script (uncredited) with James Edward Grant. Grant started in the movie biz in 1935 when his story was adapted for a movie, he had his own screenplays the following year. He's written a few of John Wayne movies, I know I've seen Angel And The Badman, Flying Leathernecks, The Alamo, McLintock! and Circus World for sure.

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I got this four pack of Westerns and watched it today. It's called Western Classics, though they aren't, and all four are Italian Spaghetti Westerns from the late 60s and early 70s. It's from Echo Bridge Entertainment and all four movies are on the same disk. All but one are widescreen and they don't look too bad.

Life Is Tough, Eh Providence 1972 Here's a fun comedy that has a goofy sense of humor. A bounty hunter catches a criminal, turns him in for the reward, then helps him escape so he can catch him again and turn him into the next town's sheriff. They get mixed up with some other criminals and have an adventure. Not all the jokes were good, some were embarrassing. I occasionally laughed out loud, once because it was a funny joke. American Gregg Palmer plays the poor criminal forced to run behind the bounty hunters wagon as they travel between towns. It's the best of the lot and one I would watch again.

The Bounty Killer 1966 Originally called The Ugly Ones. A fairly descent story, the bounty guy after the criminal. They meet up at a hacienda where the locals turn against the bounty hunter, then the criminal's gang show up. They're fucked after that. Eventually the bounty hunter gets a jump on the criminal and nearly saves some of the locals. They deserved it. Not a bad movie, enjoyed it for the most part. British actor Richard Wyler is the foreign actor in the mix. He's alright as the bounty killer and so is main Italian lead Tomas Milan as the criminal. Good locals too. 

The Price Of Power 1969 The story is about a Pinkerton agent who discovers a plot to kill President James Garfield. It's 1881 and the place is Dallas Texas. That's not the only reference to the Kennedy assassination in the movie. It's kind of a weird plot element, not sure it's needed, certainly doesn't do anything for me. I did like the social commentary element about the ex-slave guy. There are three Americans in the cast, Fernando Rey, Warren Vanders and Ray Saunders. Generally it was noisy and there was a fair bit of action. I might watch it again, I might never see it again. Who knows.

Sundance Cassidy And Butch The Kid 1969 Here's another Western Comedy that's listed under Alive Or Preferably Dead on the IMDb, it's US release was under Sundance And The Kid. Two brothers have to fill a request in the will of their deceased father. They have to live together for 6 months. They aren't pals and that request causes some great mayhem around the country. Somehow they brothers turn to bank robbing and the like.

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The four pack of Westerns I watched today came from Platinum Disc Corporation and they put four different Westerns on a single disc. The series is called The Great American Western and it's the 11th volume of 30.

Battle Of Chief Pontiac 1962 It's directed by Felix E Feist with a script by Jack DeWitt. Lon Chaney Jr plays Chief Pontiac and Lex Barker is a soldier who goes against the Hessian Colonel who is in favor of killing the natives outright. It's pretty heavy handed but the bitter sweet ending is good. About average for the story. There's a nice score by Elmer Bernstein.

Sitting Bull 1954 Dale Robertson is a Major in the Army, he disagrees with General Custer and sides with Sitting Bull. J Carrol Naish plays Sitting Bull and Iron Eyes Cody plays Crazy Horse. He gets tried and convicted of treason for helping the Indians. Don't worry he'll be saved when Sitting Bull comes to his rescue in a pretty unbelievable scene. Jack DeWitt wrote the screenplay to this movie, he co-wrote the script with director Sidney Salkow.

Against A Crooked Sky 1975 Richard Boone plays a prospector who helps a young man find the Indian tribe that stole his sister. They find her just as she's doomed to die int he morning. The brother has a certain amount of time to beat the sun so he can die in his sisters place. He fails and the sister is shot with an arrow and falls off a cliff. In a kind of bogus made for TV ending she's alive. The daughter of the chief took her place under the strategically placed blanket and fell off the cliff with an arrow in her. The Indian brave who took the sister returns her to the family. It was mostly below average with hardly anything happening for long stretches. Richard Boone was noisy.

The Great Indian Wars is a 1991 documentary that was pretty poorly produced. They use clips from public domain Westerns and re-use them several times in the 96 minute running time. The narration is kind of dull on top of that. I started speeding up after a while. From what I see the documentary I saw is edited from a longer 5 part series. You can see the 3 hour and 40 minute version on YouTube. It looks like a lot of the interviews, and other interesting stuff, was cut out and the narration changed. After watching bits and pieces from the same era it turns out to be a more interesting documentary. I'll download it and get to it in the future.

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The Yellow Rose Of Texas is a 1944 Roy Rogers Western. It's written by Jack Townley and directed by Joseph Kane. Roy is an insurance investigator. Dale Evans is a singer on the Yellow Rose Of Texas showboat. Her father was convicted of robbing some gold and the showboat is coming into the town where the robbery took place. About a week before the story starts Dale's father has bust jail, that's why Roy is there, there's also some federal marshals looking for pop. Dale doesn't believe her father is guilty and it takes a while to convince Roy of that. There's plenty of musical numbers and the usual western antics. It was as entertaining as most of Roy's movies are. Nothing much out of the ordinary.

On the other hand Adios Amigo is a bit out of the ordinary. It's not often you see Richard Pryor and Fred Williamson in a Western. I see that Richard's first credit was an episode of The Wild Wild West. I had forgotten he was on that show.

Adios Amigo came out in 1976 and I'm pretty sure that I hadn't seen it before. The elements of the Western are there, more a comedy than a drama, and the production is more Italian looking than American, even though it was filmed near Santa Fe New Mexico. The movie was written, produced and directed by Fred Williamson. He wrote a 12 page script, figuring that Richard would ad-lib all his lines and jokes. That part didn't work out so well but they manage to get through the movie anyway. It was shot in 9 days and looks it. It's pretty weak, joke wise, and it gets a 4.2 on the IMDb for a good reason. I only paid a couple of bucks for it and I feel I almost got my money worth.

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The last disc of Ten Thousand Ways To Die - The Spaghetti Western Collection has 4 more movies and no matter how you add it up the dozen movies on the set don't have anywhere near 10,000 ways to die. Mostly they just get shot. Oh well. It's what is to be expected from Mill Creek Entertainment. The quality of these films is good to poor. MCE isn't a company known for the quality of their products. There's just a lot of stuff in each set. At least this set has only four movies per disc, the discs are single layer and dual sided, there are 2 movies per side. Single layer discs give two movies more bytes, as opposed to putting 4 movies on a dual layer disc which has about a gigabyte less space than the single layer dual sided disc. Some of their current offerings have 5 movies on a dual layer disc. Mind you I still buy these DVD sets when I see them on clearance. It's often the only way to get some of these films.

Beyond The Law 1968 Turns out I had seen this one too. Back in 2010 I had watched a MCE set of Italian Westerns and this was one of 4 or 5 films in this set that were on that set. Mill Creek sure does re-issue the same films often.  Lee Van Cleef is a gunslinger that wants to go straight. He gets a job as a sheriff in a town. His old gang thinks they can use him as a cover for their criminal activities but that won't work out for them so well. Lionel Stander, Gordon Mitchell and Bud Spenser co-star. Best film on the disc but barely above average.

The Great Adventure 1975 Jack Palance and Joan Collins are the big stars in this one. They aren't the main characters, it's that kid and his dog. He gets orphaned and him and his sister hook up with a couple of nice trappers. They wind up in a town where Jack runs the saloon, and lords over the town, and Joan is a dance hall girl. Things get worse before Jack lies in the dirt, a slug in him. It's got a poor script and nothing much else is better. Not worth watching once. They have the film on YouTube but they are asking $1.99 to see it. I didn't pay that for the whole 12 movie set and I couldn't recommend anyone bother with this film.

His Name Was King 1971 Klaus Kinski is a bounty hunter. He kills a guy and the guy's brother kills Klaus's brother and rapes the sister-in-law. Klaus goes on a revenge trip but winds up getting used by a government agent to catch another crooked guy. It's only so-so. 

Jesse And Lester 1972 Jesse is a crook and Lester is a Mormon. Estranged half brothers they are drawn together because of an inheritance. It's the worst looking film in the bunch. The transfer is probably from an old tape. Mill Creek doesn't much care, it's bulk before quality. Besides the poor quality of the film there's a so-so script. Not one worth bothering with.

All done with that set now, not a great set, certainly not for more than a couple of bucks. It's nice that the Italians liked the American Western so much that they continued to make them after Hollywood cut back production on their own oaters, it's just too bad that the Italians were so poor at it. Not every film is as poor as many of these are, there are some great Italian Westerns. Some films had better budgets and better film makers at the helm. Clint Eastwood's Dollar series is worth seeing and Once Upon A Time In The West is out and out brilliant. You can't go wrong with the original Django and the Trinity films, with Terrance Hill and Bud Spenser, are worth a look. After that, your guess is as good as mine.

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Four more Italian Western's today, all from the Ten Thousand Ways To Die - The Spaghetti Western Collection. Sadly, I had already seen them. I had gotten another Mill Creek Entertainment collection called Spaghetti Westerns and these four were all in that that. None of the other 8 films in the current set I'm watching were in that other collection. Mill Creek makes a lot of different size collections and they mix and match the same films over and over again. A film collector has to watch what they buy when it comes to MCE.

The Grand Duel 1974 Lee Van Cleef is an ex-sheriff who helps a guy framed for murder get away from two brothers who believe he killed their dad. It's a bit better that average and Lee is A-OK. Music from the score is used in Kill Bill Vol 1.

Johnny Yuma 1966 Johnny Yuma, played by Mark Damon, comes to his Uncle's ranch to work, only to find the man dead. Johnny suspects his Uncle's younger wife and her brother. The pair send their henchmen to kill Johnny, he's the heir, but that doesn't work so well. Johnny can take care of himself. Another one that was a bit better than average.

God's Gun 1975 This ones got a hat trick of Western stars; Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance and Richard Boone star in this only barely average Italian Western. The rest of the cast includes Sybil Danning and Lief Garrett. Lee is an ex gunfighter turned priest. Lief is the older version of a young man who was there when Lee was killed by Jack. He grows up and hunts Jack down. Nothing special here.

It Can Be Done Amigo 1973 Bud Spencer and Jack Palance are the names I recognize in this comedy Western. Bud helps a kid get his inheritance and Jack wants Bud to marry his sister. There's a few laughs but not that many. Bud's made better comedy Westerns before. You can check it out, and two of the other titles, on YouTube.