November 1- 6, 2025

 

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

Brain Teasers:

In which Italian Western does a dying man shoot the canteen of the escaping evil woman so that she dies of thirst in the desert?

It was JOHNNY YUMA.

Which Spanish actress worked with directors Giorgio Ferroni, Marcello Ciorciolini, Francisco Ariza, Jose Ulloa, Victor Erice, Vittorio De Sica and Enzo G. Castellari?

No one has answered this question yet.

Which Italian screenwriter collaborated on 6 Westerns for director Enzo G. Castellari?

Angel Rivera knew that it was Tito Carpi.

Which Canadian body builder worked with The Three Stooges as well as in Italian productions?

Angel Rivera and George Grimes knew that it was Samson Burke, aka Sammy Berg.

And now for some new brain teasers:

Which actor, born in Greece, worked with directors Gianfranco Parolini, Stelvio Massi, Ignazio Dolce, Bruno Mattei, Sergio Corbucci, and Aldo Florio?

While making which movie in Italy did Mark Damon meet his second wife?

By what name is Alan Harris better known?

Name the movies from which these images came.

George Grimes identified last week's photo of Robert Hundar, Dina Loy, Luis Induni and Adam West in I 4 INESORABILI, aka THE RELENTLESS FOUR.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

George Grimes identified last week's photo of Livio Lorenzon and Samson Burke in LA VENDETTA DI URSUS, aka THE VENGEANCE OF URSUS.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

George Grimes identified last week's frame grab of Agostina Belli in LA NOTTE DEI DIAVOLI, aka NIGHT OF THE DEVILS.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

No one identified the above photo.

It shows Chi Kuan-chun throwing a villain in SHAOLIN AVENGERS.

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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:

Astrid et Raphaelle, aka Astrid, season three (2022) - As with most police procedurals, this show's cases are often predictable, but the performances of Sara Mortensen and Lola Dewaere are always engaging and sometimes very moving.

KINPEIBAI, aka THE CONCUBINES, aka THE NOTORIOUS CONCUBINES (1968) - Born into a poor family of rice farmers, Koji Wakamatsu became a member of the Yakuza clan Yasuda-gumi in Shinjuku before attempting to find work in television. In 1963, he began his career at Nikkatsu, specializing in "Pink Film". After 20 efforts, Wakamatsu left Nikkatsu and formed his own independent company. How he became interested in doing a movie based on Shin-Chen Wang's novel CHIN PING MEI, aka THE GOLDEN LOTUS, set in ancient China, is a mystery, though it featured plenty of the sex and torture found in most Pink Film. I've not seen the original Japanese version of this film. I've only seen the U.S. release version credited to James E. McLarty, but I can find no one accusing Harry Novak's Boxoffice International of ruining the film for U.S. release. Made on a low-budget, THE CONCUBINES is a compelling drama featuring some stylistic flourishes that sometimes suggests the theatricallity of a stage production. I wonder how Chinese audiences reacted to this Japanese vision of their history. The film begins with a poor wanderer coming upon a grave, out of which is a single outstretched arm. The wanderer asks permission to pass and he soon comes upon a scene of government troops torturing a young man to find the whereabouts of a bandit gang. After the troops have left, the wanderer tries to administer aid to the tortured man, but is suddenly surrounded by the bandit gang who seem to enjoy abusing the wanderer. This causes the wanderer to think back on the woman who ended up causing so much death and misery. Tomoko Mayama is the unhappy wife of a man who sells rice cakes. She lusts for her husband's brother, Shikokyu Takashima, who is a successful soldier. While Takashima is out of town on an assignment for the government, Mayama catches the eye of a rich official, who bribes Mayama's next door neighbor to help seduce the married woman. Eventually, Mayama is convinced to poison her husband, so that the official can make her his fifth wife. When Takashima returns and finds out about his dead brother, he flies into a rage, causing so much destruction that he is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. However, he had gained the admiration of the bandit gang, so they assist in his gaining his freedom. Takashima now leads the bandit gang on a reign of terror with the aim of revenge on Mayama. By this point, Mayama has been so abused by her new husband that she longs to be rescued by Takashima. While there is quite a bit of nudity for a movie made in 1968, during an orgy scene, the censor blurs out some possibly inadvertant glimpses of pubis. None of this seems gratuitous, and the complexity of the characters makes for a compelling drama. This material originated in the 16th century and was considered a spin-off of the classic WATER MARGIN.

Mildly enjoyed:

FURAIBO TANTEI: AKAI TANI NO SANGEKI, aka DRIFTING DETECTIVE: TRAGEDY IN THE RED VALLEY (1961) - I don't remember ever before seeing the logo for "New Toei", but it is at the head of Kinji Fukasaku's directorial debut. I'd like to know who came up with the concept of making a Western set in modern day Japan, but this is that. A small plane crashes on a snowy mountain. The pilot's sister, Shigemi Kitahara, goes to the valley to see what she can find. She discovers an expensive German nail polish in the crashed plane, before three thugs accost her. Luckily, Shin'ichi Chiba appears, carrying a sort-of Winchester rifle, and kicks and punches the thugs away. Eventually, they end up at a farm which shelters orphan children. A greedy land developer wants that farm as he has bought up all of the land in the valley for his planned ski resort. It turns out that Chiba is a Private Detective, pretending to be a drifter, out to find the body of the man who owned the land and to solve what made the plane crash. There are many chases on horse back, many thrown lassoes, and a lot of gunfire without anyone reloading. As usual with Japanese movies, the guns are obviously phony, but that doesn't get in the way of the fun of the wacky screenplay. There's even a gunman hired to kill our hero, who, after a tremendous fight, decides to help him in order to challenge him face-to-face in the future. 

NIHON KUROSHAKAI REI RAINZU, aka JAPAN UNDERWORLD: LEY LINES aka LEY LINES (1999) Director Takashi Miike became world famous with his film AUDITION, which was just one of four films he made in 1999, and the film he made after LEY LINES. LEY LINES is also considered the last installment in his Black Society Trilogy, aka the Triad Society Trilogy. None of the films share characters or storylines - just the perception that Japanese youths who are considered not full blooded Japanese are not treated as equals in Japanese society. For someone reliant on English subtitles, I found much of this film hard to follow, especially when certain characters speak in Chinese, which is not translated. In their Japanese country village, three young men are taunted as being Chinese, and engage in various acts of vandalism and thuggery. They plan to escape the country life and move to the Tokyo, where they might get fake passports and leave Japan. In the Shinjuku district, they are lured by a woman, refered to as a Shanghai prostitute, into an empty room where they discover she has stolen their wallets. Taking jobs selling the recreational inhalant toluene, the three realize that the big crime boss is a Chinese immigrant. After being beaten up by a customer and then by her pimp, the prostitute is weakly walking the streets, when one of the three young men decides to help her to her home. Eventually the other two men move in with them and the three outcasts form a strong bond. They decide that the only way to pay for the planned trip to Brazil is to rob, and perhaps kill, the big boss. Naturally, as this is a Japanese movie, just about everyone ends up dead in the end, but Miike doesn't present the usual "dance of death". Instead he ends the movie on a more ambigous note. An odd stylism is that Miike seems to have filmed a number of scenes of nudity and then scratched the film to obscure the forbidden sight of both male and female pubis. I grew up watching movies on the Japanese theatrical circuit, including LAST TANGO IN PARIS, and I know that Japanese companies have a much more polished way of covering up the offensive bits, so Miike is deliberately playing with the form here.

SACCO & VANZETTI (1971) - I thnk I was 16 years old when I saw this movie, and it was kind of a revelation. Being in high school I was just beginning to learn that American History wasn't without blemish, but political and racial persecution was news to me. Around the same time, the Swedish movie JOE HILL also came out detailing capitalistic forces using violence against Worker's organizers. Naturally both movies were suspect as to how accurate their portrayals were. Reportedly, SACCO & VANZETTI originated with a 1960 stage play written by Mino Roli and Luciano Vincenzoni, which featured the actors who would star in the movie in different roles. Arrigo Colombo and Giorgio Papi, the producers of PER UN PUGNO DI DOLLARI, got the rights to the play with the hope of getting Yves Montand and Lino Ventura to make the movie. That didn't happen, and director Giuliano Montaldo, who made AD OGNI COSTO for Papi & Colombo, cast Gian Maria Volonte as Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Riccardo Cucciolla as Nicola Sacco. Reportedly, Montaldo wanted to shoot the film in Boston, where the events occurred, but the city couldn't pass for 1920 anymore, so the film was mostly made in Dublin, Ireland. Perhaps that explains why Irisn actors Cyril Cusack and Milo O'Shea played two of the non-Italians in the film. As the judge was presented a sort-of a villain, it made sense to cast English actor Geoffrey Keen in the role. While the film didn't try to explain all of the elements of the case, it was firmly on the side of the defendents being not guilty, and the court, and state governor, refusing to reconsider the case in the face of new evidence as proof that the guilty verdict was politically and racially motivated. Volonte delivered the strong and firey performance you'd expect, but it was Cucciolla that was awarded the Best Actor prize at the 24th International Film Festival of Cannes. Ennio Morricone provided a stirring music score for the film, which featured two songs co-written by Joan Baez.

SHINKANSEN DAIBAKUHA, aka THE BULLET TRAIN'S BIG EXPLOSION, aka THE BULLET TRAIN (1975) - From 1968, for their all-star big budget films, Toei Films assigned Junya Sato to direct. He made THE DRIFTING AVENGER, a Western starring Ken Takakura shot in Australia. He made GOLGO 13, with Ken Takakura, shot in Iran. And he made THE BULLET TRAIN, starring Ken Takakura as the head of a gang that plants a bomb on a bullet train to extort 5 Million U.S. dollars from the Japanese government. Shin'ichi Chiba, aka Sonny Chiba, is the driver of the train - but has very little to do in the film except to show nervous sweat. Tetsuro Tamba, Takashi Shimura and Susumu Kurobe of Ultraman also appear. Reportedly Etsuko Shihomi, aka Sue Shihomi, also appears, but I didn't recognize her. Sato delivers a solid suspense film, with the usual jiggly hand held camera work usually found in Toei films set in modern days. The suspense is whether the police investigation will screw up the efforts of the train officials to make a deal with Takakura and save the 1,500 passengers on the train. At least twice in the film, we see someone imagining the train blowing up. For a Toei film, the model work, mixed with a lot of real train footage is good, though the process shots inside the train and various cars, aren't. Like many Japanese movies, this film portrays average people as quick to jump to hysteria, which makes Takakura's stoic reserve all the more appealing, even when he plays the bad guy. Reportedly, Graham Yost used elements of THE BULLET TRAIN and RUNAWAY TRAIN in his script for SPEED. I watched the 115 minute English language version of the film. Originally the film ran 152 minutes.

Did not enjoy:

CARRY ON EMMANNUELLE (1978) - The 30th installment of the long running CARRY ON series, this was the next to last effort, being overshadowed by the more explicit CONFESSIONS series begun in 1974. Perhaps intended as a spoof on the French EMMANUELLE films, this sorry effort, written by Lance Peters, isn't funny or sexy. Fans of the series may enjoy seeing old favorites like Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Joan Sims and Peter Butterworth getting on with it, but the material is quite dire. Originally a dancer, Suzanne Danielle plays the title role. She bares her bottom in the film, but then so does Kenneth Williams, only his bottom is supposed to be funny. Williams is the French ambassador to the U.K., who doesn't feel that he can perform in bed after a sky diving mishap with a church spire. Danielle is his wife who is willing to have sex with anyone because love is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, Larry Dann is convinced he is in love with her, and so stalks her. When someone at a dinner for her husband suggests that it would be easy to kill the French ambassador with an hidden weapon, she ends up seducing all of the VIP guests to be certain that they did not have an hidden weapon. Dann takes pictures of all of her liasons, and sells them to the tabloids. However, by this time, Williams' doctor shows the ambassador that his difficulty was psychological and not physical, so the married couple reunite in bed. The film ends with Danielle giving birth to a large brood of babies which is celebrated by all of the men in her life.

EL VAMPIRO NEGRO, aka THE BLACK VAMPIRE (1953) - The notorious case of serial killer Peter Kurten, aka The Vampire of Dusseldorf, was first made into a movie in 1931 by director Fritz Lang. M became a world wide sensation and many proclaimed actor Peter Lorre as the world's greatest actor. In 1951, director Joseph Losey did a remake also called M with David Wayne which was not as acclaimed. EL VAMPIRO NEGRO was a 1953 version of the same story made by Agrentine director Roman Vinoly Barreto which seemed to have not gotten much of a release outside of Argentina. While produced with masterful art direction and photography reminicent of the German Expressionism films of the 1930s, plus the "Black" crime films from the U.S., EL VAMPIRO NEGRO failed to engage in its storyfelling. Rather than the story of how the police pressured the criminal underworld to find the murderer of little girls, Barreto's film begins with the suspect in court with the mystery of why he did the crimes. Then begins the extended flashback which was the main body of the film. Nightclub performer Olga Zubarry witnessed someone desposing of a body, but was afraid to give the information to the police for fear that if child services knew she worked in a club, they would take away the custody of her little girl. Roberto Escalada was the investigator trying to pressure her into talking. Eventually, when Zubarry realised that the villain, Nathan Pinzon, wanted her daughter, she screamed for help. Some feel that the climactic chase in the sewer system was inspired by THE THIRD MAN. 

JEUNES FILLES IMPUDIQUES, aka HIGH SCHOOL HITCH HIKERS, aka SCHOOLGIRL HITCHHIKERS (1973) - I've never seen a film directed by Jean Rollin that I've liked. But I didn't know this was a Jean Rollin film until I went looking for it on the IMDb. The credit on the print I watched said "Regie Jean Pierre Sammut". Many feel that Rollin made a number of films for the money to make his more important Horror films, and this would seem to fall into that category. However, like his more celebrated Horror movies, this featured two attractive young women who wander into a dangerous situation. Joelle Coeur and Gilda Stark, aka Gilda Arancio, are a pleasure to watch, but not in this stupid movie - credited to writer Natalie Perrey. The film probably should have been called SCHOOLGIRL BACKPACKERS, as we never see the women trying to hitchhike. Coeur and Stark wander through a forest and decide to check out an old house they find. They decide to spend the night there, and end up having some tame sex in a bed. Later, Coeur goes down stairs and find gangster Willy Braque inside the living room. While the two are having tame sex, Stark comes downstairs, and decides to join in. In the morning, Braque says goodbye to the young women before the sadistic Marie Helene Regne arrives with Francois Brincourt. The three go to the hidden safe to get the jewels Braque was to have put there after an heist. The jewels are gone, so Braque and Brincourt drive into the forest to find, and chloroforme, the two women. Back at the house, Regne begins to torture Stark, convinced that she must have stolen the jewels. Coeur escapes and rushes to the village to get help from Private Detectives Pierre Julien and Reine Thyrion, aka Reine Thirion. Soon begins an irritating series of power games over who has the gun and who is threatening to kill an hostage. Eventually, it ends with a man arriving, played by the director, who is interested in buying the house. He found the safe, and took the jewels - but says that they are fake. Regne is about to kill Braque for not completing the heist, but is stopped by Julien and Thyrion. Everyone marvels that Coeur and Stark have returned to kissing each other in the end. The print I watched was 67 minutes long. The IMDb reports that the film should be 74 minutes long.

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David Deal Enjoyed:

FROM ISTANBUL, ORDERS TO KILL (65) - Watched this because we just got back from Istanbul. Interesting to see how things have changed - or haven't - in 60 years. Please refer to The Eurospy Guide for a review of this minimalist entry.

THE RETURN OF DR. MABUSE (61)

ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (44)

THE GHOST (63) - I wonder why this isn't out on Blu-ray.

BEFORE I HANG (40)

CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (59)

EVIL OF DRACULA (74)

FEAR NO EVIL (69)

Mildly Enjoyed

WOMAN ON THE RUN (50) - Ann Sheridan's husband (Ross Elliott) witnesses a murder and then goes into hiding fearing for his life. The police convince Ann to help them find him, and she pals up with reporter Dennis O'Keefe to do just that. A deceptively simple story is told with flare; the San Francisco locations are suitably threatening as are the various underworld characters that populate them.

THE BELIEVERS (87)

BACKFIRE (64)

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Angel Rivera  Highly enjoyed:

"THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL" (1951)
The original version! My all-time favorite sci-fi film. I count it as the best sci-fi film ever made and it is in a tie with my other favorite sci-fi film, the original Star Trek pilot, "Star Trek Voyage One, The Menagerie" (also known under its working title, "The Cage"). I enjoy everything about this film. From the performances to the music and the effects. to its meaningful ending. A true classic.

Enjoyed:

"THE SPY WITH MY FACE" (1965)
The second of the "Man from U.N.C.L.E." movies derived from episodes of the series. This one is an expanded version of the episode known as "The Double Affair". THRUSH, the evil organization from the series bent on world domination has created a double of U.N.C.L.E.'s best agent Napoleon Solo (played by Robert Vaughn) With this double after capturing the real Solo, they plan to infiltrate an U.N.C.L.E. top secret project that will give them the means to conquer the world. Solo has his work cut out for him. After some machinations performed by our heroes. Solo and the other agents of U.N.C.L.E. save the day. Along for the ride is an actress I am not that familiar with, one Senta Berger, who obviously was an international beauty of the time as the bad girl. One of the other featured actresses is Sharon Ferrell, a well known actress of the period and one of my early crushes. The movie comes off as a well made entertaining spy film, better than or just as good as other James Bond type films of the period. 

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