To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.
Brain Teasers:
Which Italian actress married a film director and moved to Brasil where they made two movies? They eventually moved back to Italy for most of their careers.
It was Gianna Maria Canale, who married Riccardo Freda.
Which Italian actress retired from the screen at the age of 37 and eventually died at the age of 81?
No one has answered this question yet.
Can you name three filmmaking members of the Girolami family?
Bertrand van Wonterghem knew Marino Girolami, his brother Romolo Guerrieri and his son Enzio G. Castellari. George Grimes knew Marino and his sons Enio and Enzo.
Which member of the Girolami family once came to the U.S. hoping to make a film which Richard Harrison was going to produce?
George Grimes knew that it was Marino, with whom Harrison had previously made three movies.
What happened to a film that Richard Harrison and John Steiner were going to make in Mexico?
No one has answered this one yet.
And now for some new brain teasers:
When he was a professional football player, what was Walter Barnes called?
How did Walter Barnes acquire his athletic nickname?
How many movies did Walter Barnes make with Clint Eastwood?
Name the movies from which these images came.
Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes identified last week's photo of Gerard Herter, Lee Van Cleef, Walter Barnes and Calisto Calisti in LA RESA DEI CONTI, aka THE BIG GUNDOWN.
Can you name from what movie it came?
Bertrand van Wonterghem, George Grimes and Angel Rivera identified last week's photo of Mylene Demongeot and Roger Moore in IL RATTO DELLE SABINE, aka THE RAPE OF THE SABINES, aka ROMULUS AND THE SABINES.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
George Grimes identified last week's of Tatsuya Nakadai in SEPPUKU, aka HARAKIRI.
Above is a new photo.
Can you identify 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:
Enjoyed:
ABBA: Against the Odds (2024) - BBC helped to put together this 50th anniversary celebration of the only Swedish group to win the Eurovision Song Contest. As with all programs like this, one gets confused at what wasn't mention - such as that the feature film ABBA THE MOVIE was made during their 1977 tour of Australia. There is a shot featuring Richard Norton though. Mostly the documentary focuses on how the group was attacked by music critics, especially back home in Sweden. The program suggests that they weren't taken seriously until their last album, Voulez-Vous, right before they broke up. While their success in Australia is mentioned a lot, the program ends before MURIEL'S WEDDING reignated ABBA mania leading to the stage show MAMMA MIA. I'm still waiting for a program on ABBA to mention that Benny and Bjorn wrote the music for THE SEDUCTION OF INGA.
Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. "Laurence Fishburne & Henry Louis Gates Jr. (2025)
Mildly enjoyed:
GAMBIT (1966) - While pretending to be an heist film, GAMBIT is actually supposed to be a romantic movie, but the romance is completely unconvincing - unless you find Michael Caine being objectionally bossy attractive. The film opens with a clever bit. Michael Caine and John Abbott find Eurasian (!) dancer Shirley MacLaine working in an Hong Kong nightclub. She is the spitting image of Herbert Lom's dead wife, so Caine and Abbott recruit her to pose as Caine's wife expecting Lom to invite them into his reclusive apartment in the luxury hotel he owns in the fictional Middle Eastern city of Dammuz - which looks a bit like Istanbul. The first twenty or so minutes of the film shows Caine's plan to steal the most expensive statue in the world, which Lom bought because it resembles his late wife. One can't help but wonder why MacLaine was cast in the role as she remains expressionless and mute through out this part of the movie. It turns out that this was just a dramatization of Caine's plan as he tells it to Abbott. As soon as Caine approaches MacLaine, nothing goes as smoothly as the dramatization had shown. It is fun to see Herbert Lom playing a suave and charming fellow, and director Ronald Neame does a commendable job of keeing the viewer in suspense as to where the story is going. Are we supposed to root for Caine to rob Lom when we find Lom so much more likeable than Caine? At least we get to see how flexable and agile MacLaine is in 1966, and she is quite charming. And Jean Louis gives her some marvelous costumes. It all ends well, but any romantic stirrings the filmmakers expected the audience to feel fall flat. Before his name appeared in the opening credits, I knew the music was by Maurice Jarre as it was struggling to not become the theme to LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.
Did not enjoy:
THE COMMAND (1954) - One can't help but wonder what the film would have been like if Sam Fuller had directed it, rather than just penning the adaptation of the novel REAR GUARD by James Warner Bellah. Russell S. Hughes gets the credit for the screenplay, so we'll blame him for the corny dialog and contrived personal story. The plot is good: Guy Madison is a doctor with a cavalry unit on patrol after Gen. Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn. The Major leading the patrol is killed, but before he dies he gives the command of the patrol to Madison, who may not have combat experience, but has shown to be a leader of men. Madison has a simple assignment: to get the patrol back to the fort. However, on the way the patrol is met by a column of infantry escorting a civilian wagon train. Col. Carl Benton Reid orders Madison and his cavalry soldiers to join his column on their trip. With expert advice from Sgt. James Whitmore, Madison proves up to the challenge, and even comes up with some inspired tactics to thwart the Indian attacks. Eventually, Reid has a stroke, so Madison has to assume command of the entire column. Of course, he makes the time to romance Joan Weldon, who is caring for a sick boy who may, or may not, have small pox. Dimitri Tiomkin provides the bombastic music score you would expect from him, and the stunt team brings some excitement to the battle scenes, but director David Butler fails to capture any real grit on the screen. Harvey Lembeck has a small role as a complaining member of the patrol. While he complains about having to put on a dress to fool the Indians, in the end he seems to enjoy it.
BAD GIRLS DORMITORY (1986) - Writer/director Tim Kincaid began his movie career in 1973 with the soft core sex film THE FEMALE RESPONSE. With the name Joe Gage, he moved over to Gay sex fims with KANSAS CITY TRUCKING CO. in 1976. In 1982, he used the name Mac Larson for even more Gay sex films. In 1986, he seemed to have decided to try the R-rated home video market with BAD GIRLS DORMITORY with what seemed to have been a ridiculously tiny budget that couldn't even rent rooms that look like a cafeteria. There are some attractive naked women to be seen here, but no one shows any ability with acting. But as Kincaid shows no ability at credible writing, that's just as well. The sexual content of this 95 minute movie is rather low, but every bullet hit splatters big. I hope Kincaid's sex films have better production values.
DOUBLE AGENT 73 (1974) - If writer/director Doris Wishman made a halfway decent movie, would that ruin her cult status? I love looking at women's naked breasts, but Chesty Morgan's 73 inches are unattractive. The giggle of her having a camera implanted in her left breast so that she can take a picture of each person she kills is kind of fun and may have been inspired by Dana Andrews having a camera implanted in an artificial eye in BERLINO - APPUNTAMENTO PER LE SPIE, aka SPY IN YOUR EYE. There are no attempts to indicate where the lens in her breast may be, nor from where the flash comes, but that just shows that as a viewer you are spending more time thinking about details than the filmmaker did. This film is a follow-up to the previous Wishman/Morgan collaboration DEADLY WEAPONS, which I haven't seen and to which I don't look forward.
Get Out and Get Under (1920) - Directed by Hal Roach, this silent short is annoying because Harold Lloyd plays such a jerk and none of the messes he gets into are resolved. Neither his backing over his neighbors' garden, nor his knocking over the traffic cop, nor being chased by three different motorcycle cops - who think nothing of firing their guns into a tent in which they think he's hiding - come to any conclusion by the final fade-out. The gag of seeing a "Dope Fiend" shooting up inspiring Lloyd to steal the man's works so that he can "shoot up" his Model T to get it going again is highly questionable.
THE HOLLYWOOD DREAM, aka GAME SHOW MODELS, aka TEENAGE MODELS (1977) - It would seem that writer/director David N. Gottlieb intended to make a serious movie about the exploitation of women in Hollywood called THE SEVENTH DWARF. Toward that end he was given grants from the American Film Institute and The National Endowment For the Arts. Reportedly he couldn't sell that film. When Sam Sherman of Independent-International Pictures took a look at Gottlieb's film, he felt that if they added more naked women and some sex scenes, he could sell it. So, I guess Sherman gets the credit for the attractive women shown naked in this movie, while Gottlieb gets the blame for the unconvincing plot and terrible dialog. Interestingly, this movie is listed in the IMDb twice under the different titles of GAME SHOW MODELS and THE SEVENTH DWARF. My question is how did Gottlieb convince Sid Melton (of The Danny Thomas Show) and L.A. Times writer Charles Champlin to appear here? It seems to me that Dick Miller was willing to appear in anything in the mid 1970s. Thankfully Gottlieb soon gave up on making feature films and went on to make documentaries like Clear That Brush the Safe Way!
LOST IN AMERICA (1985) - While the characters in this film continually reference EASY RIDER, it seems to me that writer/director/star Albert Brooks didn't really understand that movie. He seems mostly to have remembered the advertising campaign about "he went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere". EASY RIDER is not about dropping out of society and heading out "on the road" to find oneself. It is about two drug dealers who are heading to Florida to retire after a brief stop over to enjoy Mardi Gras in New Orleans. In any case, this feature film seems to be an elaboration of the short films Brooks made for Saturday Night Live. However, witty improvised bits may work in a short, but quickly become tiresome when stretched to feature length. As usual, Julie Hagerty is quite charming.
RIDE THE WILD SURF (1964) - Columbia Pictures attempted to get some of that BEACH PARTY box office with a more serious surfing movie, and prove that without the comedy and music which American International Pictures provided, the results were corny and dull. Reportedly, married producers Jo and Art Napoleon went to Waimea Bay in Hawaii and shot the footage of real surfers on the big waves. They then went back to Hollywood and wrote a script to incorporate their footage. While Don Taylor, former actor and TV director, is given sole credit as the director of this film, reportedly he had to leave after his mother died and Phil Karlson was brought in to finish the film. Fabian, Peter Brown, and Tab Hunter show up in Hawaii to tackle the big waves. They soon pair off with Shelley Fabares, Barbara Eden and Susan Hart. Hart does a seductive dance here, which obviously caught the attention of AIP head James Nicholson, who married her and put her in number of BEACH PARTY movies to repeat that dance. After being injured by a wipeout, Fabian worries that he's lost his nerve to ride the big waves, but triumphs in the end by being the only surfer to stay until the end. The makers of this flick got to use perhaps the best surfing song ever performed, "Ride the Wild Surf", but don't use it until the end credits. Mostly, the viewer has to put up with the music composed by Stu Phillips. Fans of movie directed by Robert Aldrich can take note that Joseph Biroc is the credited Director of Photography, while Jim Mitchum and Roger Davis have supporting roles. Never before has Hawaii looked to be mostly populated by White people, and there is no territorialism among the surfers.
TNT JACKSON (1974) - Never before has Hong Kong looked more like Manila than in producer/director Cirio Santiago's attempt to make a martial arts Black action film. Reportedly actor Dick Miller wrote the original screenplay for this, but the final film shows no originality. Executive produced by Roger Corman, TNT JACKSON features a number of actors who show no thespian ability, and no martial arts ability either. Star Jeanne Bell is very attractive with her top off, and was a precursor to Jillian Kesner in director Santiago's FIRECRACKER (1981) in having a martial arts battle with her breasts exposed. Bell gets a better scene than Kesner. After the bad guys take her top off, Bell says, "You want it Black. I'll give you Black." She turns off the light and hides in the shadows to suddenly strike whenever one of the guys tries to turn the light back on. Stan Shaw would go on to do good work in films like RUNAWAY, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES and DAYLIGHT. Ken Metcalfe would return for FIRECRACKER. Filipino actor Chiquito would rack up 320 credits on the IMDb before daying in 1997.
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David Deal Enjoyed:
JOE KIDD (72)
THE VIOLIN CASE MURDERS (65) - Please refer to the Eurospy Guide.
DR. RENAULT'S SECRET (42) - I was reminded that J. Carrol Naish was nominated for two Oscars.
RUNNING TARGET (56) - From 2018: "Thoughtful sheriff Arthur Franz leads a posse into the Rockies after escaped cons. Based on Steve Frazee's great short story "My Brother Down There", this adds a female element and retains flashes of great writing."
PERVERSION STORY (70)
WAR OF THE WORLDS (52)
THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (50)
Mildly enjoyed:
LA VENGANZA DE LAS MUJERES VAMPIRO (70) - AKA Vengeance of the Vampire Women. Santo has his hands full with a sexy vampire queen and her minions. An awkward yet refreshing return to the Gothic atmospheres of the early Santo movies. The ring wrestling - though minimized - has a harder edge (speeding the film up a bit lends a left-handed validity) and there is a nod to relaxed censorship. One wonders if there is a "sexo" version of this entry but the online option I watched was entertaining enough.
LAS LUCHADORAS CONTRA EL MÉDICO ASESINO (63) - AKA The Wrestling Women vs the Killer Doctor. A mad doctor is kidnapping women and taking their brains in an attempt to give his monster life. Unfortunately for him, his latest victim is the sister of wrestling woman Lorena Velazquez. Lorena and her team partner, Elizabeth Campbell, join forces with the police to take the doctor down. This, the first of the "wrestling women" series, is, as I understand it, the best of the lot. It does have plenty going for it; a crazy plot that has the doctor suffer a major setback but come back as a masked wrestler-type himself (!), and of course, wrestling women. It also benefits from a cool jazz score, so you might want to take a chance on it.
NIGHT MONSTER (42)
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Angel Rivera Highly enjoyed:
"MIGHTY URSUS" aka "URSUS, SON OF HERCULES" (1961/2)
"Mighty Ursus" is one of the first movies I remember seeing in theaters and so it has a special place in my memory. Even though I was very young when I saw it, my main memory of the film is of the girl who was blinded after a blow to her head and then regains her sight after being hit by a glancing blow from a bull's horn. Ursus is portrayed by Ed Fury a body builder and actor of the Steve Reeves school of performers, but who is quite good and a pleasure to watch as the hero out to find his missing fiance. Ursus/Ed Fury is one of the better of these type of stars as he looks good at what he does. To watch this movie I watched my DVD copy which is actually the Spanish print dubbed into English. (As some of these DVDs have scenes that were not part of the English release, there are scenes with Spanish dubbing.) And I also watched a DVD of a TV print of "Mighty Ursus" with its TV release title, "Ursus, Son of Hercules" which I bought at a nostalgia convention years ago. The TV print had scenes not complete in the legitimate DVD release and vice versa. So I sort of switch off between each DVD. But it is still worth the viewing for Fury and Mary Marlon, who plays the blind girl who regains her sight and ends up with Ursus. (This film although it has a "son of Hercules" title was not part of the series of films shown on TV as "The Sons of Hercules" in the sixties.)
"URSUS IN THE VALLEY OF THE LIONS" aka "VALLEY OF THE LIONS" (1961/3)
This film is a sort of an origin story for Ursus. Although it has a formulaic plot; (a kingdom is under siege. Its dying king has his only son secreted out of the kingdom, only to narrowly escape on a horse from the clutches of the enemy. Only to end up in the "valley of the lions' where surprise, surprise, he is not eaten by the lions, but is raised as one of them. He then gets himself a girl, whom he had freed from a slave merchant and after routing the evil king that killed his family, lives happily ever after with her. Here again Ed Fury plays Ursus and his love interest is played by Mary Marlon, who is also known as Maria Luisa Merlo, a Spanish actress who is still alive. (Born in Sept., 1941, she is now 84.)
"THE SON OF HERCULES IN THE LAND OF FIRE" aka "URSUS IN THE LAND OF FIRE" (1963)
This film was part of "The Sons of Hercules" series and I found a print uploaded to YouTube which had the "son of Hercules" opening and ending, and also has Ursus referenced as the son of Hercules in the movie. Again Ed Fury is Ursus, who saves a kingdom from an evil usurper and ends up with one of the most beautiful actresses ever to grace these peplum films. She is Luciana Gilli who is still alive, now at age 80. I found these movies quite entertaining and recommend them to any one who has not seen them and likes these types of movies.
Mildly enjoyed:
"MY GUN IS QUICK' (1957)
A adaptation of a Mike Hammer novel. The third such film to be adapted in what is the second Mike Hammer novel. Since Mike Hammer is a very violent "hard-boiled private detective" there is a lot violence in the movie. But it's fifties style violence. As well as fifties style sex. I had read Mickey Spillane's first Hammer novel, "I, the Jury" and thought it was the worst written trash I had ever read, but the movies based on Spillane's Hammer novels have been a varied lot. Some good, some not so good. This movie falls into the not so bad pile. Hammer is out to solve the murder of a down on her luck street walker, he once took pity on and helped. After beating and getting beaten, with a few quick stops to cavort with women, Hammer meets his femme fatale, who for any one who has seen John Huston's version of "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) can guess how it ends. Of interest is the actor who portrays Hammer in this film, Robert Bray, who would become better known as Forest Ranger Cory Stuart, who became TV's "Lassies's owner after Timmy Martin (Jon Provost)
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Bertrand van Wonterghem Enjoyed:
Lady in a cage (1962, Walter Grauman)
Battleground (1949, William A. Wellman)
Let's cogitate – have you ever wondered 2 (short) (1949, David Barclay)
Affair in Trinidad (1952, Vincent Sherman)
Beyond Atlantis (1973, Eddie Romero)
Urutoraman : kûsô tokusatsu shirîzu / Ultraman (1966) – episode 14
The avengers – episode “The danger makers” (1965, Charles Crichton)
Did not enjoy:
Above and beyond (1952, Melvin Frank & Norman Panama)
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