PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Biggest Bundle Of Them All 1968

The Biggest Bundle Of Them All 1968 Written by Sy Salkowitz and directed by Ken Annakin. I've had the DVD of the movie on my Amazon Wishlist for a while but it never got very near the top of the list in a couple of years. The other day I found a copy on YouTube and watched that. Saved me from buying the Warner Archive DVD at nearly 20 bucks including shipping. It's even higher on eBay. I'd seen the movie when it came out. We went to the movies on our own a lot in those days.

Robert Wagner and his gang kidnap Vittorio De Sica in an attempt to extort $5000 from him. Jokes on them, he's broke and none of his friends will lend him the money. Vittorio's pride is hurt and he offers to help the gang make a big score. Sadly they can't even make a small score to fund the heist. Their robbery attempts end in failure and the police are starting to notice. One of the gang hasn't been home and his wife sends the police after him. Vittorio manages to raise some money from a cousin and the plan to steal $5,000,000 in platinum bars that weigh about 2 tons. Typically much goes wrong and the police are closing in. Do they get away? You can watch the movie and find out.

After watching it I decided I didn't need to buy the DVD anymore. Maybe if I found it used for a fiver, not for 20-30 bucks. I can always watch the download from YouTube if I want but I suspect it will sit unwatched for a long time. It's got plenty of robbery stuff and some of that is fun but many of the jokes are tired old ones. Nothing really stands out in the film except some of the cast. I liked the cast more than the characters they played. It's nice to see Edward G Robinson, Victor Spinetti and Godfrey Cambridge, but I can take or leave Raquel Welch. The rest of the Italian cast was fine. I just wish they all had more fun stuff to do.

Murder À La Mod 1968

 

Murder À La Mod 1968 Written and directed by Brian De Palma. It's Brian's first feature length film, he'd directed a half a dozen shorts between 1960 and 1968. That's Brian and William Finley in the photo, the movie introduces William to the world. Some might know William from Phantom Of The Paradise which Brian directed in 1974. That's the first film of Brian's I've seen and that goes for William too. I've seen a good half of Brian's work but never got to be a fan. I only have 3 or 4 on DVD, most of them aren't what I want to watch once, let alone again.

According to the Wikipedia the film played in one theater, and disappeared. It was thought to be lost but reappeared in 2011 just in time to appear on the Criterion Blu-ray of Blow Out. A better De Palma film but one I don't feel any need to revisit.

The film's synopsis on the Wikipedia is one that's been copied onto several review sites. Here it is: Karen is a naive young lady who wants to help her boyfriend Chris, who is a struggling amateur filmmaker, to raise money to divorce his wife. Meanwhile, a jolly psycho prankster named Otto is stalking the building where Chris is shooting a low-budget adult movie to make ends meet. 

Seems pretty straightforward, huh. Not so much. It's a jumble of images and sounds, sometimes jarring, not all of them moving. It's like Brian's read a book on film effects and styles and decided to use as many as possible in each scene. It's hard to describe the complexity, you can see for yourself on YouTube, the link is in the title.

I did not think it was groundbreaking or anything. It reminds me slightly of The Monkees movie Head, but in B&W. I certainly was more receptive when I saw Head as a teenager, on seeing it 30 plus years later, not really that interesting anymore. You might like it more than me, it's certainly a curious thing.

Science Fiction Sunday 644

The two Doctor Who stories today were both packed in a 2 disc box set. That's the slipcase cover of the UK edition. The two serials each are put in their own case with printed cover and printed insert with a synopsis of the serial and a detailed listing of the extras.  The US edition puts the two discs in one case without the insert. I've always thought that releasing each serial as a separate unit was the best way to get the most money out of your fans. Admittedly they do pack each serial with plenty of extras and those extras have a good bit of added value for me but an added cost for the BBC. Taken as a whole it's a phenomenal package with hundreds of hours of extras.

Doctor Who 011 The Rescue Two part serial that aired January 2-9 1965. Written by David Whitaker and directed by Christopher Barry.

Not one of the more interesting stories, a quick rescue to pick up another sidekick. It's the first appearance of Vicki, played by Maureen O'Brien. She's kind of in the same mold as Susan. I thought she was a bit annoying when I watched the series before and she's still kind of annoying.

Doctor Who 012 The Romans Four part serial that aired January 16 to February 6 1965. Written by Dennis Spooner and directed by Christopher Barry.

The Tardis gang spend months in Italy and the Doc gives Nero the idea of burning down Rome. Always a bag of laughs, our Doctor. Still think it could have been cut down to make it faster paced but that's something I prefer.

Friday Night Movies 843

Challenge The Devil 1963 Directed by Gieseppe Veggezzi under the name Joseph Vegh. There's no writer listed on the IMDb.

The IMDb trivia page: Filmed as a gothic movie under the title of "Katarsis" in 1963. Its production company "I films della mangusta" went bankrupt shortly after filming. The movie, which was about 90 minutes long, was bought by production company "Eco Film". They cut out half an hour and added newly shot scenes involving gangsters, a monk and a cabaret dancer. The finished product was 78 minutes long, retitled "Challenge the Devil" and released in 1965.

   

Part of the new Severin set The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee. A collection of five films, the remaining 24 episodes of an Italian horror anthology hosted by Lee, several interviews and extras, plus a soundtrack. The set will put you back a century plus and is really meant for the big CL fan. You can also find this movie on the bootleg DVD sites.

The movie has hardly any Christopher Lee in it. Most of the movie is told in a flashback by the guy in the striped shirt. He's a monk in a mission, his old friend comes to him for help. His old pal has been involved with an ugly woman who robs him of some documents. The gangster who wants the documents is upset and tries to kill the pal. The monk goes to see the ugly woman and his appeals for help fall on her deaf ears. She plans to blackmail the gangster and she doesn't care one bit that she's turned the pal into a wanted man. She'd known the monk when they were younger and she asks him how he came to be in that state.

That's when the flashback kicks in, the monk had been a part of a group of assholes who drive fast, drink a lot, and beat total strangers. As we see them driving about they run a car off the road and beat the driver for no reason. They leave him lying on the road and drive off. They next encounter a seemingly abandoned castle and break in. The castle in the film is the Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano Italy. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got married there.

The castle isn't empty, Christopher Lee lives there, he tells them he'll give them all his riches if they find his dead bride. She's somewhere in the castle. They start looking and weird things start happening. They're ordeal is kind of lame but they all get a dose of goodness and leave the castle. They help the man they beat and it turns out to be Christopher Lee. Was Christopher the devil or something like that? That's what many reviews say. It's hard to know, it's sadly not that well told a story. No matter, the harrowing tale from the monk turns the ugly woman around and she coughs up the docus to help the pal.

It's cobbled together nature and weak story make it below average for me. It's more interesting with Christopher in there, it's also unlikely to have survived without him. Still, I was glad to see it. It's often fun to see some of the lesser works by one's favorite film stars.

Witching and Bitching 2013 Written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Álex de la Iglesia, directed by Álex de la Iglesia. It's Spanish title is Las brujas de Zugarramurdi or The Witches of Zugarramurdi. It's a real town and you can read about it's occult past on the Wikipedia.

In an incredible opening scene some guys rob a pawnshop in a crowded town square. Jose and Tony are the main robbers, Jose has brought his son along and Tony isn't too happy about that. Things go wrong and the police are right on hand. The square the pawn shop is in is like Time Square in New York, crowded with tourists yet the police and robbers wage a fierce gun battle with plenty of victims.

The robbers are disguised as street performers, the kind you'd find posing with tourists for a bit of cash. Jose is Christ, Tony is a green army man, their associates are Spongebob Squarepants and Minnie Mouse. Only Jose, his son and Tony get away. They hijack a cab and force him to drive to France. The cab's poor passenger hopes they don't kill him but if he knew what happens after they get to Zugarramurdi he'd would have hoped for a quick and speedy death from a bullet.

The cab driver bonds with Jose and Tony over their troubles with  women. Jose and his wife are split up and he had his son that day. Jose's wife is one his trail and so are a couple of cops. The chase culminates in Zugarramurdi where some wildly entertaining things happen. The town is home to a lot of cannibal witches and they are a nasty lot with a desire to take over the world.

The story gets wilder and wilder as it moves fiercely along, it makes the 112 min running time seem to fly by. It's gory, gross and hilarious. I'll need to get a copy, it's one I would want to see again sometime.

Crack Up 1946

Crack Up 1946 Based on Madman's Holiday by Fredric Brown, screenplay by John Paxton, Ben Bengal and Ray Spencer, directed by Irving Reis and his assistant James Anderson.

Pat O'Brien is an outspoken art critic but when we meet him he's out of his mind. He smashes his way into the museum like a drunken man, a statue is bust, the police come and Pat concocts a wild story about someone calling about his dying mother and a train wreck. Trouble is there was no call about his dead mother and the train he took last night to go see her didn't have a wreck.

Pat swings into flashback mode and we see it start in the museum where he's giving a lecture to a small crowd. He's against the surrealists like Dali and for painters like Dürer's The Adoration of the Magi. It's a painting that had been on display at the museum, it's been crated and awaits shipment. Pat wants it uncrated, as well as a couple of his pals, so he can do a bit of a lecture about them and show off the technique of x-raying paintings to see what's underneath.

When the director of the museum voiced his reluctance to have the paintings uncrated I figured this was a art forgery story and that's what it is. Pat's crazy antics give the director even more of a reason to cancel Pat's lecture. Pat's one of those tenacious bulldog types, he really needs to find out what happened to him last night. He takes the train again and gets a clue to the mystery. The rest of the film is Pat vying against the villain. He takes some body blows but comes out of it OK in the end.

That's Pat with Clair Trevor and Herbert Marshall, Claire's Pat's girlfriend and Herbert is an art theft investigator from Scotland Yard. Ray Collins plays a member of the museum's board of directors, Wallace Ford is the local police lieutenant. I enjoyed the cast and the story idea was good enough to carry a movie. I thought it was a bit pokey, even for the time it was made, but I still enjoyed the film as a whole. You can give it a test drive by clicking the link in the title.

Unforgotten Crime 1942

 

Unforgotten Crime 1942 Based on the play Alias Jimmy Valentine by Paul Armstrong Jr, screenplay by Olive Cooper and Robert Taster, directed by Bernard Vorhaus. Unforgotten Crime is the American TV title of The Affairs Of Jimmy Valentine. The original film ran 73 mins but it was cut to 53 for showing as a B movie and on TV. There are plenty of copies of the cut down version on YouTube but not the longer version.

Dennis O'Keefe has a murder mystery radio show host who's convinced his sponsors to offer a reward to find the retired safe cracker Jimmy Valentine. George Stone plays small time crook who's father was framed by Valentine and went to the chair. He really wants to find Valentine to get some revenge.

There's a rumor that he retired to a small town in Illinois and Dennis takes his co-worker Gloria Dickson and Mousey along. They can't seem to find anyone who knows Valentine except one guy and he's clammed up. He winds up dead soon after and Dennis thinks he might have been killed by Valentine. The story gets a bit more complicated and a couple of others die along the way. Eventually it gets sorted out.

It's a fairly good but kind of predictable crime story that's heavy on the melodrama. It's jumps about a bit and I wish that the whole thing was there. It's got a sense of humor and I got a few laughs. You can see it on YouTube, link above.

Flight To Nowhere 1946

 

Flight To Nowhere 1946 Written by Arthur V Jones and directed by William Roland.

A slight but decent crime film with Alan Curtis as a pilot who gets hired by some shady people to fly them from LA to Death Valley. Alan doesn't want to but the Countess who's hiring him offers to let him take her to dinner. So, he accepts and he gets repeatedly knocked out. Surprised he's not suffering from concussion.

The plot revolves around a map of the location of a secret uranium deposit on an island in the South Pacific. One of the Countess's party has the map, he wants to sell it, not everyone wants to pay for it. There's an attempt on the Countess's life on the flight to Death Valley, a man is killed soon after landing, a lady is killed once the party moves to Las Vegas, another guy is killed at a stable. If the killer survives he'll have saved himself a lot of cash on buying the map.

Besides Alan Curtis the cast includes Evelyn Ankers, Micheline Cheirel, Jack Holt, Jerome Cowan, John Craven, Roland Varno and Hoot Gibson. They do alright for the most part, the script is fair to good but there's nothing that stands out. There's some entertainment value in the background: flights in a small Cessna plane, some nice scenery in Death Valley and a bit of a look around Las Vegas when there weren't that many casinos. The characters spend some time in the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley and the Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. I often like seeing old buildings in films, especially those that are long gone.

It's a 4.5 on the IMDb and that's about where I thought it should be. You can see it on YouTube, link in the title above. You might like it well enough to waste 74 mins.

Science Fiction Sunday 643

The second series of Doctor Who started with two ambitious serials. The second story was the first to feature a good bit of outdoor shooting on film. Several recognizable London locations were used. The studio sets were still a bit cramped even though they had moved to a different studio. Riverside studios had better equipment and large studio rooms.

 

009 Planet Of Giants Three part serial that aired October 31 to November 14 1964. Written by Louis Marks and directed by Mervyn Pinfield (1 & 2) and Douglas Canfield (3).

As I look at the old post I see I got the airing date wrong. I'll have to remember to go back and fix that. I enjoyed the story about the same and did think that the condensation of episodes 3 and 4 did make the story move along better. It's still nice to have the option of seeing as it was originally shot.

 

010 The Dalek Invasion Of The Earth Six part serial that aired November 21 to December 26 1964. Written by Terry Nation and directed by Richard Martin.

I'm still unhappy with the end of the serial, where the Doctor dumps Susan into a post alien invasion England. Carole Ann Ford wanted to leave the series, she wasn't happy playing a teenager that screamed and fell down all the time. I can't blame her, she was the worst written main character on the show.

My biggest complaint is that the Doctor dumped her there, She didn't get a say in it. I'm still thinking the Doctor is a dick. I thought she could have had a nice moment where she decides to stay on her own. Cue tearful goodbye. I suspect that sort of scene wasn't the sort of thing Terry could write. Maybe he hadn't even thought of it. His writing hasn't made me a fan of his work.

A lot of people watched that serial, 11.4 mill at the start and 12.4 mill for the last episode. That was when Britain had 53 million people in it. I wonder how many people have seen it since.

Across The Bridge 1957

Across The Bridge 1957 Based on the 1938 Graham Greene short story of the same name, screenplay by Guy Elmes and Dennis Freeman, directed by Ken Annakin. Ken started directing documentary shorts in 1943 and feature films in 1947. His first film was Holiday Camp, a bittersweet story of murder and melodrama. He directed Miranda and all three of the Huggetts films, Hotel Sahara and several films for Disney. He directed the film with the 9th longest title in the world. Ken's obituary says this was his favorite film.

Rod Steiger is a businessman who's embezzled $3 mills from his British company. He's in New York when the news hits and he decides to lam it to Mexico where he can hold off extradition and arrange a trip to someplace else. He travels by train but the news quickly catches up to him. Bill Nagy is on the train, he's got a Mexican passport and he looks vaguely like Rod. A quick mickey and Bill's just as quickly tossed out of the train. Rod darkens his hair and assumes Bill's identity.

Bill had a dog names Delores that he brought along, Rod takes it from the baggage car and let's it go on the road. Delores keeps turning up all through the movie. Bill turns up alive and it turns out he's wanted in Mexico for a political assassination. Rod's arrested but he proves he's really who he says he is. He even turns Bill in to the authorities. Bill's killed and that makes things worse for Rod. Everyone in that town liked Bill and his wife and child live there. They were going to meet on the US side and finally be together again.

Bernard Lee is a Scotland Yard detective who's come from the UK but he's got no authority to take Rod while he's still in Mexico. The other guy is the local police chief. He's a small time hustler, extorting money from Rod, but he gets greedy and blows the gaff. It's a nice crime thriller, made mostly in Spain. It moves along at a nice pace and I enjoyed Rod's fall. He's a bastard. I saw it on YouTube and you can see it here. I'd recommend it and I'd watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 844

Scanner Cop 1994 Story by Pierre David, screenplay by George Saunders, directed by Pierre David.

Daniel Quinn plays a grown up scanner who works for the LA PD. Richard Grove plays his father, the guy is a Commander in the same precinct. Daniel uses a drug called Ephemerol to suppress his scanner abilities. If he stops taking the drug he gets his powers back but they will rather quickly drive him insane. Of course a case comes up that needs his powers and he goes off his medication.

Richard Lynch plays the villain, Hilary Shepard plays his murderous hench woman. Lynch is using a drug and his scanner powers to take control of the minds of helpless victims. Once under his command he programs them to kill cops. He's got a grudge against the police and Daniel's dad. Five years before the movie starts Daniel's dad shot him but didn't kill him. Lynch got sent to psychiatric prison but escaped about a year before the movie starts. No one has seen him until Daniel gets a look at him. Darlanne Fluegel plays the scientist.

There's plenty of chasing about and psychic dueling. There's a lot of people murdered one way or another before Daniel and Lynch battle it out to the death. Average to slightly better than average for me. We watched Vinegar Syndrome's new 4K Blu-ray. Looked great. Still, I doubt I need a copy of this one.

Scanner Cop 2 1995 Written by Mark Sevi and directed by Steve Barnett, produced by Pierre David.

Daniel Quinn is the only one from the first movie to appear in this movie, some time must have past because he's been made a detective. Patrick Kilpatrick is the villain, Khrystyne Haje is the science lady, Stephen Mendel is Daniel's partner on the LAPD where Robert Forrester plays the Captain.

Patrick has discovered a new trick for his scanner mind to do. He sucks the mental energy from another scanner and it makes him stronger. Patrick is wanting some revenge, it started when he was murdering and raping with his brother. In a flash back we see the encounter with Daniel where he forces Patrick to shoot his own brother. The scumbag was holding a poor hostage in one hand and holding a knife to her throat with the other.

Patrick has been locked up ever since. Now that the movie has started we find that Patrick has stopped taking his Ephemerol and escaped. Now he can go on that killing spree he's always wanted. Sadly for him, his mind starts to deteriorate from the lack of Ephemerol.

Patrick and Daniel have a series of mental bouts that are way too long and way to repetitive. I didn't think the movie lived up to the enjoyable level of SC. Below average for me. Nice 4K transfer on Blu-ray.