February 15 - 21, 2025

 

To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.

Brain Teasers:

In which Italian Western does everyone kill each other over a bag of gold, but we never get to see the contents of the bag?

No one has answered this one yet.

Which Italian actress, born in 1944, worked with directors Alberto Lattuada, Vittorio Sala, Pierre Gaspard-Hult, Giulio Questi, Christian Marquand and J. Lee Thompson?

Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes knew that it was Marilu Tolo.

Which Italian actress, born in 1937, worked with directors Marc Allegret, Pietro Francisci, Terence Young, Jose Ferrer, Don Medford, William Asher and Ferdinando Baldi?

Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes knew that it was Luciana Paluzzi.

Which Italian Western is thought to have been inspired by the Greek tragedy ORESTEIA by Aeschylua?

Angel Rivera knew that it was IL PISTOLERO DELL'AVE MARIA, aka THE FORGOTTEN PISTOLERO.

And now for some new brain teasers:

Which actress, born in Italy, worked with directors Dino Risi, Sergio Corbucci, Duccio Tessari, Alberto De Martino,  Bernard Toublanc-Michel and Andrzej Zulawski?

Which actor, born in Italy, worked with directors Gary Winick, Angelo Antonucci, Nini Grassia, Giuseppe Vari, Demofilo Fidani and Vittorio De Sica?

In what movie did Oliver Reed play an Italian Prison Warden?

Name the movies from which these images came.

Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes identified last week's frame grab of Marilu Tolo and Bretty Halsey in ROY COLT & WINCHESTER JACK.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

Bertrand van Wonterghem, Charles Gilbert and  George Grimes identified last week's photo of Marilu Tolo and Moira Orfei in IL TRIONFO DI ERCOLE, aka THE TRIUMPH OF HERCULES.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes identified last week's photo of Jean Marais and Marilu Tolo in SEPT HOMMES ET UNE GARCE, aka 7 GUYS AND A GAL, aka 7 MEN AND A BITCH.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

George Grimes identified last week's frame grab from FIVE ELEMENTS NINJA, aka SUPER NINJAS.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

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I am interested in knowing what movies you have watched and what you enjoyed or not. So please send me an email at scinema@earthlink.net if you'd like to share. Here's what I watched last week:

Mildly enjoyed:

30th Annual Critics Choice Awards (2025)

Investigating Tarzan (1997) - Canadian filmmaker Alain d'Aix made this 52 minute TV documentary about the history and cultural impact of the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The visit to the Burroughs archives and museum will make any collector drool, and it is always nice to see Maureen O'Sullivan's nude swimming scene from TARZAN FINDS A MATE, but overall the film only gives a brief overview of the subject. Gordon Scott speaks a few sentences, Jock Mahoney is only briefly glimpsed, and while Tanya Roberts gets to comment about her SHEENA QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE movie, there is no mention of the TV series starring Irish McCalla. 

Did not enjoy:

A.C.O.D., aka ADULT CHILDREN OF DIVORCE (2013) - The film opens with an old video clip of Trevor Standish being humilated at his ninth birthday party by his parents fighting. Standish becomes the adult Adam Scott who thinks he has his whole life figured out. He has a successful restaurant and a beautiful girlfriend, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. His younger brother, Clark Duke, lives in his garage. Duke announces that he wants to marry Valerie Tian and that he wants Scott to talk their father, Richard Jenkins, and their mother, Catherine O'Hara, into both attending the wedding. The stress of the situation causes Scott to seek out the woman whom he thought was his therapist when he was a child - Jane Lynch. It turns out that Lynch is not a therapist, but a writer doing a study on Children of Divorce, and that she wrote a book with that title. Scott is horrified and quickly gets a copy of the book and reads it. In an effort to prove that Lynch was wrong is her assessment of him, Scott maneuvers Jenkins and O'Hara to finally talk to each other after all of these years. What follows is kind-of a new version of THAT OLD FEELING, but without the laughs. Lynch approaches Scott to join all of the other subjects of the CHILDREN OF DIVORCE book for a follow-up an what kind of adults they became. Needless to say, Scott's whole life falls apart. Director Stuart Zicherman is credited with co-writing the screenplay with Ben Karlin and I don't get what they thought was funny here. I guess that is also true of the cast which also includes Amy Poehler, Jessica Alba, Sarah Vowell and Ken Howard. And to complete the audience's frustration, the film has a non-ending.

CREATURE OF THE WALKING DEAD (1965) - U.S. distributor Jerry Warren took the Mexican Horror film LA MARCA DEL MUERTO directed by Fernando Cortes, added some useless scenes with American actors, used an English narration to explain the plot over scenes which originally were in Spanish, and put it out to make a quick buck. The scenes used from the original film were nicely photographed by Jose Ortiz Ramos and I guess that nice tune that gets repeated over and over again was by Gustavo Cesar Carrion. However, while the original Mexican film is probably superior, the plot of a mad scientist kidnapping women inorder to be transfused with their blood in order to attain eternal life is pretty lame. At least in THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH he needed female glands, which explained his choice of victims.

DARK ASSET (2023) - This is the eighth feature credited to writer/director Michael Winnick and I will not be going out of my way to seek out the previous efforts. Scientist Robert Patrick and his assistant Sabina Gadecki are working on a microchip to be implanted into human brains. This is supposed to make the patients stronger and smarter. They are doing this under the sponsorship of Senator Paul Savage, who seems to like this effort because it also makes the patients compliant to orders, which he likes for attractive women. Former soldier Byron Mann is the latest subject, but after he is switched on he seems intent on killing everyone behind the experiment. Much of the explanations for what it going on is given in flashbacks, which really interferes with the mostly martial arts action. Winnick gets credit for coming up with a project that doesn't seem to tax his low budget constraints, but he is unable to tell this story in an engaging manner. 

A DOG'S PURPOSE (2017) - When I was seven years old, I saw THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA, in which a cat narrates how she dies three times in the course of saving a human family in Scotland. In 2010, W. Bruce Cameron wrote A DOG'S PURPOSE in which a dog not only has something like a human conciousness and feelings, but also remembers his previous lives when he gets reincarnated four times. Josh Gad speaks the dog's thoughts in the movie version. Sentimental movies about a boy, or boys, and their dog, or dogs, lost their appeal to me after SAVAGE SAM, and this movie didn't win it back even with appearances by Britt Robertson and Peggy LIpton. Lasse Hallstrom had won an Oscar for MY LIFE AS A DOG, so it isn't surprising that the producers got hm to direct this film. Spoiler! In the end, the dog decides that his purpose is just "to be there".

THE FABULOUS FOUR (2024) - The idea of Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullally and Sheryl Lee Ralph coming together in a comedy about old friends from college getting together for a wedding sounds promising. Unfortunately, not with this script credited by Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly. Australian born director Jocelyn Moorhouse isn't able to make this material any more interesting than an average TV movie. 

FIRST SHIFT (2023) - I've not seen many films directed by Uwe Boll, but when I read that he'd decided to take a hiatus from filmmaking I didn't not disapprove. Anyway, after the failure of his restaurant in Vancouver, Canada, he's back behind the camera. Was this intended as a pilot for a series? This movie mostly sets up an odd couple of police detectives - Gino Anthony Pesi and Kristen Renton. Having moved from Atlanta to Brooklyn, Renton begins her first day on the job partnered with loner detective Pesi,who hasn't had a partner in five years. Boll is credited with the script which is filled with unconvincing cliches and an episodic format. Was the subplot, involving two thugs who wack a guy and his son who stole some drugs, put in to bring the project to feature length, or was it supposed to pay off in the "Part Two" threatened at this movie's conclusion? How many movies feature a "Coming Soon" on screen title?

JESSIE'S GIRLS (1975) - While most would think of this film as a low-budget version of HANNIE CAULDER, a contributor to the IMDb adds MACHO CALLAHAN, FIVE SAVAGE MEN and CRY BLOOD APACHE to the list of influences. I'd like to think of it as a low-budget influence on 1994's BAD GIRLS, and I prefer it over that movie. Director Al Adamson doesn't exhibit much taste or talent in JESSIE'S GIRLS, but he gets the job done with this story of a woman wanting revenge on the men who murdered her husband and failed to murder her after every one of them had their way with her. So, this is a standard revenge Western with a few scenes featuring topless women having sex, which are not at all erotic. Rod Cameron gets the job of being the man who nurses our heroine, Sandra Currie (sister of Cherie the original lead singer of The Runaways), back to health and who teaches her how to be a deadly shot. On the trail, she finds a sheriff and a marshal escorting three females to prison, and decides to recruit the woman to join her revenge mission. She also takes the marshal prisoner to find out what he knows about the men she's seeking. Don McGinnis contributed a solid Western music score, and Director of Photography Gary Graver gives the movie the look of a better budgeted Western. I don't know if it was Graver's work or the transfer made to the Monterey Home Video release, but the copy I saw looked the way I felt a Western should look, as opposed to the shot-on-video way most recent low-budget Westerns look. Henry (Hank) Calia gets some applause for the impressive stunt work for the final shootout with quite a few high falls.

THE GIRL IN THE POOL (2024) - Written by Jackson Reid Williams and directed by Dakota Gorman, THE GIRL IN THE POOL teaches the lesson that "Love means taking the rap for your son when he bashes in the head of the young woman with whom you are having an affair, as she demands that you leave you wife." This is supposed to answer the question Freddie Prinze Jr. asks himself at the beginning of this annoying flick, "Am I a good person"? The answer is glaringly evident from the moment he finds Gabrielle Haugh dead in the pool and doesn't call 911. He hides her body in a storage shed near the pool while he tries to figure out what happened and whether the boy next door caught anything incriminating on the survellance drone flying over the backyard. So Prinze goes from trying to hide that he is cheating on wife Monica Potter, to trying to hide a dead woman, to trying to solve the woman's death while being blindsided by a surprise birthday party being held around the scene of the crime. Well, the writer figured out how to protect his low budget by keeping the locations to a minimum. And the filmmakers try to appear cinematic with a lot of flashbacks. Kevin Pollak adds to the star power with a minor role and seeing Gabrielle Haugh in her bikini/underwear brings some production value.

LITTLE BIG HORN (1951) - The end credits of this movie suggests that this is based on a real incident, but the story of an ill-fated patrol attempting to reach Custer occurred eight years before the campaign against the Natives at the Little Big Horn river, in 1868. Charles Marquis Warren was a successful screenwriter so he was given the chance to become a director with this film. Reportedly the original deal was to make this movie at Republic Pictures, but the project went over to Lippert and the starring role went from Rod Cameron to Lloyd Bridges. The film opens at Fort Lincoln where Lt. John Ireland is romancing Capt. Lloyd Bridges' wife Marie Windsor. Bridges catches the two of them just before he is sent out on another patrol. Stopping at a river, Bridges and his men are joined by a patrol led by Ireland. Ireland has been ordered to bring Bridges and his men back because it looks like an hugh Native uprising is about to hit Lt. Col. Custer at the Little Big Horn. Bridges decides to lead his men back to the Fort taking a long route which will allow him to warn Custer. Ireland opinions that it would be suicide for their small patrols, but Bridges feels that he needs to save Custer's larger force rather than his own men. Of course, the audience knows that Bridges will fail in his attempt and that the subplot regarding Windsor is just a ploy to make the conflict between Bridges and Ireland "more dramatic". Warren would go on to really make his name in television helping to create Gunsmoke, Rawhide and The Virginian, but his movies tended to be cliched, like this one. Western fans may get a kick out of all of the familiar faces here: Reed Hadley, Jim Davis, Hugh O'Brian, King Donovan and Sheb Wooley. I wonder from where this production got the footage of the Native village and the huge attack, which doesn't match the new footage. 

 

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David Deal Enjoyed:

CLINT EL SOLITARIO (67) - AKA Clint the Stranger. Clint (George Martin) comes home after years of making a living with his fast gun but his wife (Marianne Koch) wants no part of his violent lifestyle. Unfortunately, there's a range war going on, and despite putting his gun down for Marianne, Clint finds himself being dragged into the trouble. Nothing special plot-wise but this is a colorful high country western from Spain shot in the Pyrenees on 70mm. Hence it looks more like a Winnetou western than those shot in southern Spain. Features Edgar Wallace regular Pinkas Braun, Walter Barnes (a bad guy here), and the inevitable Fernando Sancho.

PERFECT FRIDAY (70) - Deputy bank manager Stanley Baker plots to steal a great deal of money from the bank. He enlists the help of Ursula Andress and her dodgy husband David Warner to pull it off. Things don't go as planned. Lighthearted British heist movie with some style and humor but still generates tension, especially in the third act and its surprise ending. Plenty entertaining.

A GHENTAR SI MUORE FACILE (67) - Translates to "In Ghentar you die easily." Adventurer George Hilton takes a job in Ghentar recovering some jewels that went down with a plane into the ocean. The rebels of the area want the jewels to fund their takedown of the tyrannical government. Sure enough, George finds the jewels and hides them but he is promptly caught and sent to a prison camp to bust rocks. Eventually he escapes and endures remarkable hardship making his way back, but will it be worth it? This Spanish-Italian co-production was credited to Leon Kilmovsky but it was  directed by Enzo Girolami (Castellari). It is light-hearted action crossed with harsh realities that is enjoyable but too long at 115 minutes. I believe there is a 95 minute cut which may prove the better option.

SLIGHTLY SCARLET (55)

THE INVISIBLE MAN (33)

FEUER FREI AUF FRANKIE (67) - AKA Target Frankie. A scientist has invented a new fuel and various bad guys (including Rik Battaglia) want it. On the run from said bad guys, the scientist is killed and his assistant (Joachim Fuchsberger) is badly hurt when their car crashes. CIA agent Erika Blanc convinces Joachim's playboy brother (also Joachim) to impersonate his injured brother; all the better to catch the bad guys. Fun Eurospy stuff as Joachim has various scrapes he must get out of that include being rescued by Rosalba Neri at one point. Features Eddie Arent and Walter Barnes.

A REAL PAIN (24)

TOM HORN (80)

LONE WOLF AND CUB: SWORD OF VENGEANCE (72)

THE BLACK CAT (34)

Mildly Enjoyed 

APPOINTMENT WITH A SHADOW (58) - George Nader is a drunken reporter given a second chance when his long suffering wife (Joanna Moore) gets a tip from her cop brother (Brian Keith) that they're going to take down a notorious gangster (Frank DeKova). Nader avoids the bottle for the day and shows up for the nab but it turns out they unknowingly kill the wrong guy. Now nobody believes Nader who knows the truth. Not un-entertaining programmer although somewhat frustrating with the mix-ups and naysaying. Fun cast and a decent soundtrack.

KILLER SHREWS (59)

BLACK CANDLES (80)

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Angel Rivera  Highly enjoyed:

"WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION" (1957)
A great courtroom drama with great performances from: Charles Laughton as the "barrister" (attorney) for the defense; his real life wife, Elsa Lanchester as his nurse (who supplies needed comic relief); Torin Thatcher, as the prosecutor; Tyrone Power as the accused and Marlene Dietrich as the wife of the accused. Based on Agatha Christie's play and adapted for the screen and directed by Billy Wilder. A must see for everyone. A true classic.

Enjoyed:

"ENEMY FROM SPACE" aka "QUATERMASS 2" (1957)
Brian Donlevy again plays Prof. Quaternass, a role he performed in the previous Quatermass film, "The Quatermass Xperiment" (1955) aka "The Creeping Unknown". Here Donleavy is given more to do as he fights an invasion from aliens from outer space. Well made with great directing, music and believable performances by the cast.

Mildly enjoyed:

"OSS117 SE DECHAINE" aka "OSS 117 IS UNLEASHED" aka "OSS 117" (1963)
This is the first of the OSS 117 films starring Kerwin Mathews which in an interview he states he played the main character in French as he stated he was fluent in French. OSS 117 is said to be the "Gallic James Bond", but other than, in the film, Mathews is "friendly" with the ladies, there are very few similarities. The film has Mathews as sort of an insurance investigator  trying to solve a murder. The film opens with stock footage of nuclear submarines and Mathews finds a nest of bad guys who are trying to sell a device to the highest bidders which can track the aforementioned nuclear submarines. Mathews with some help from "friends" thwarts the bad guys plans and gets the girl.

'BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH" (1967)
A silly moviei n  which has Kerwin Mathews as US Naval commander Jonathan Shaw, with the help of the US Navy, stop some renegade Red Chinese agents from destroying the US.

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Charles Gilbert watched:

KING BOXER aka FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH (1972) Local Chinese athlete (Lo Lieh) falls for pretty chanteuse while training for a martial arts tournament. A rival school wants to mix things up before the sporting begins by importing a couple of Japanese assassins. Eye gouging scene is rather unsettling.. First saw this in double bill with ENTER THE DRAGON at a Newport News, Virginia walk in theatre in 1975 while in the Navy.

CHINESE BOXER (1978) Lo Lieh plays a Japanese hitman recruited to cause havoc on a boxing school for filthy lucre.

MACHISTE AGAINST HERCULES IN THE VALE OF WOE (1961) Larry Anderson upload still available on YouTube.

THE MANSTER (1959) B&W. Married British actors Peter Dyneley and Jane Hylton play husband and wife in this horror film shot in Tokyo, Japan. He falls prey to an Oriental sinister mad doctor experimenting with evolution of the species. 

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Bertrand van Wonterghem Enjoyed: 

Teurigeo / Unmasked (2024, Yoo Sun-dong) – episodes 7 & 8

Nyutopia / Newtopia (2024) episodes 1 & 2

Mildly enjoyed:

Ray Bradbury's the martian chronicles – part three “The martians” (1979, Michael Anderson)

Did not enjoy:

The lake (2022, Lee Thangkham)

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