To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.
Brain Teasers:
In which Italian Western does the hero suffer bad rope burns to both of his hands before the final gun fight?
It was DEGUEYO, aka DEUEJO, aka DEGUELLO.
In which Italian Western does the hero shoot the thumbs off of the men he takes prisoner?
No one has answered this question yet.
Which Italian Western has an English language version that ends with the line, "The red and the black"?
No one has answered this one yet.
Which Italian Western has in the English language version, "I'm scarier than you."?
No one has answered this one yet.
Which Italian Maciste movie was dubbed into English to rename the hero "Maxus"?
George Grimes, Angel Rivera, Charles Gilbert and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was MACISTE CONTRO I MOSTRI, aka FIRE MONSTERS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES.
Which Italian Western was dubbed into English with the hero's name changed to "Roko"?
George Grimes, Angel Rivera and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was JOKO INVOCA DIO... E MUORI, aka VENGEANCE.
Which Italian Hercules movie was dubbed into English with the hero's name changed to "Goliath"?
George Grimes, Angel Rivera, Charles Gilbert and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was LA VENDETTA DI ERCOLE, aka GOLIATH AND THE DRAGON.
And now for some new brain teasers:
In which film did Gordon Mitchell appear with Charlton Heston?
In which film did Gordon Mitchell appear with Elizabeth Taylor?
In which film did Gordon Mitchell appear with Sandahl Bergman?
Name the movies from which these images came.
No one identified the above photo.
It shows Richard Harrison shooting with his right hand in a flashback for LA DILIGENCIA DE LOS CONDENADOS, aka PRIMA TI PERDONO... POI D'AMMAZZO, aka STAGECOACH OF THE CONDEMNED.
Bertrand van Wonterghem and Charles Gilbert identified last week's photo of Liana Orfei and Bella Cortez in IL GIGANTE DI METROPOLIS aka THE GIANT OF METROPOLIS.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
George Grimes and Bertrand van Wonterghem identified last week's photo of Aroldo Tieri and Margaret Lee in LA BALLATA DEI MARITI, aka THE BALLAD OF HUSBANDS.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
George Grimes identified last week's photo of Shinichi Chiba in SAMURAI REINCARNATION.
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:
Astrid et Raphaelle, aka Astrid (2023) season four episode 1 "The Dragon's Eye"
season four episode 2 "Arabian Nights"
season four episode 3 "10.000 metres"
Did not enjoy:
BLACK HAND (1950) - Who was it that thought that Gene Kelly should play the part of a new immigrant from Italy come to New York City to uncover who murdered his immigrant father? Probably the same person who thought that J. Carol Naish would be perfect to play the Italian American cop who helps him. And what of Marc Lawrence as the main Italian American gangster? Kelly and Naish are determined to smash the Black Hand, an amalgamation of crime families from the Old World working together to terrorize the immigrant community in the early 1900s. While they have trouble convicting a suspect in court, they receive confirmation that the suspect was convicted of murder in Naples and so entered the U.S. illegally and must be deported. Naish goes to the MGM back lot pretending to be Naples and combs through the police files there for pictures of criminals now in New York. Deciding to post the pictures in a mailbox in the dead of night, Naish is gunned down, but after putting the envelope in a mail box. Do the killers go after the mail box? No. They wait until Kelly gets the envelope and then kidnap Kelly's girlfriend's young brother to force him to hand it over to them. Kelly is captured when he attempts to rescue the boy and is tied up. Luckily, one of the bad guys leaves a smouldering cigarette on the floor so that our hero can use it to light the fuse to a box of explosives Kelly uncovers in the storeroom. After the explosion, Kelly ends up chasing Lawrence up a crowded tenement staircase for possession of the envelope, which the villain keeps failing to set on fire. Finally, Kelly is able to throw a knife into Lawrence's back, retrieves the evelope, and then hands it over to Police Captain Barry Kelley. For a movie about Italian Americans, this film is filled with Irish American actors. Leo Townsend gets story credit for this while Luther Davis, best known for KISMET, is credited with the screenplay. Veteran MGM director Richard Thorpe made this movie right after CHALLENGE TO LASSIE.
THE GYPSY MOTHS (1969) - I wonder why I didn't see this when it first came out. Was it because I was too busy with amateur theatrics? Or was it because I figured it would be a dreary melodrama trying to cash in on the public's new interest in skydiving? When it popped up on Turner Classic Movies, I figured it was time to scratch this off my list of unseen movies and it was not a pleasure. There was a time when movies about people realizing that they are living empty lives was considered adult dramas, but soon these movies became very predictable, and this is one of those. Right from the pre-credits opening, you knew that Burt Lancaster was going to commit suicide. When fellow jumper Scott Wilson introduced Lancaster to his aunt Deborah Kerr, who was married to William Windom. you knew they were going to have an affair. For some reason, I never found Deborah Kerr to be sexy, so the fact that her naked breast was shown while she was having sex with Lancaster on a couch wasn't particularly enjoyable. I guess director John Frankenheimer felt that he had to top the Lancaster/Kerr kiss on the beach in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. What I want to know is what was the magazine that the fellow was looking at in the roadside stand which someone felt needed to be digitally obscured? Gene Hackman, Sheree North and Bonnie Bedelia deliver good supporting performances.
JAIL BAIT BABYSITTER (1977) - Therese Pare made her film debut as a 17 year old babysitter who doesn't want to "go all the way" with her boyfriend Roscoe Born. One night, at a party, Born hoped that some alcohol and drugs might loosen her up, but instead she freaked out and hit him with a fire poker. After she ran away, he pursued her, leading to her being rescued by an older woman, Lydia Wagner, with a pistol Wagner agrees to allow Pare to stay with her, and eventually the young woman realizes that the older woman is an escort. Pare goes with Wagner to a tennis club where an older man, thinking that she is a hooker, takes her home. Pare decides that she wants the older man to deflower her, but he has an heart attack during the act. Dr. Jerome Guardino recommends that Pare stick with boys her own age. As Born was parked outside the older man's house to keep an eye on Pare, she decides that now she was ready to "go all the way" with him. There's one shot of Pare's naked chest as they do the deed, so all that's left is for Born to finally win a fight with David J. Partington who had bad mouthed Pare earlier. JAIL BAIT BABYSITTER would suggest that the film written and directed by John Hayes would be a sexy romp, but it isn't This was Hayes tenth credit having previously made GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE with Michael Pataki, who has a small role here, and END OF THE WORLD with Christopher Lee. Hayes soon moved on to making "adult films" under the name Howard Perkins.
LOVELY TO LOOK AT (1952) - I am not a fan of the musicals made by MGM during the 1950s. The "book" is usually just some dialogue scenes to piece together the musical numbers, so the only enjoyment to be found is in the musical numbers. This film does have some beauts performed by Marge and Gower Champion, including "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and "I Won't Dance". In 1933, Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach came out with the Broadway music ROBERTA, which was inspired by the 1933 novel GOWNS BY ROBERTA by Alice Duer Miller. In 1935, RKO adapted it to the screen starring Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Randolph Scott. In this version, Howard Keel, Red Skelton and Gower Champion are trying to find investors for their new Broadway show. The news comes that Skelton's aunt Roberta has died in Paris and left him half of her dress salon business. The guys figure that they can fly to Paris, sell their half of the business and have the money for their new show. Naturally, it doesn't work out that way, as the salon is in financial trouble. Keel has the bright idea of staging a show in the salon to attract new customers, while he is falling in love with Kathryn Grayson, who runs the business. The complication occurs when rich man Kurt Kasznar offers to back the show on Broadway, but insists that he and Keel fly back to New York before the salon show. Of course, circumstances occur which allow Keel and Kasznar to return to Paris and save the salon show. While the overall film is credited to director Mervyn LeRoy, the salon fashion show, which seems to go on for hours, reportedly was directed by Vincent Minnelli, with gowns by Adrian. There is a funny bit during a party in which Red Skelton does a comedy number. When the audience groans as he begins to sing, he says, "You knew when I walked out here that I wasn't Howard Keel." Also in the cast is Ann Miller, whom the filmmakers seem to feel has the best legs in Hollywood, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, who is as annoying as usual, as Kasznar's woman friend.
NINJA CHECKMATE, aka THE MYSTERY OF CHESS BOXING (1979) - Yi-Min Li, aka Simon Lee, does a good job of not only looking like Jackie Chan, but also moving like him. However, this Joseph Kuo directed film doesn't have the inventiveness, or humor, of SNAKE IN THE EAGLE'S SHADOW. Kuo does bring in Siu-Tin Yuen to underline the resemblance to DRUNKEN MASTER, but the results are less exciting. The infamous Ghost Face Killer, played by Kuan-Wu Lung, had been thought to be dead for ten years, but now he's back wanting to kill the surviving members of the clan that tried to put an end to his reign of terror. Meanwhile, Li offers unrequested advice to Hou-Tao Hsiao, who is playing a game of chess with Master Shi-Chia Lung, aka Jack Long. When Hsiao loses the game, he blames Li. And when he finds out that Li plans to attend the nearby Kung Fu School, Hsiao makes it a point, as a senior student at the school, to make Li's life a living hell. Luckily, Li gets assigned to the kitchen, where the cook, Siu-Tin Yuen, actually teaches him some fighting skills, in his usual round-about way. Naturally Li gets expelled from the school and follows Yuen's advice to seek teaching from Long. Long refuses to admit his kung fu skill, but his granddaughter, Jeanie Chang, likes Li and prevails on granddad to teach our hero. After Lung has killed eight or nine guys in his revenge quest, he finally kills the master of that local kung fu school. Seeking the villain's favor, Hsiao offers to expose the peaceful chess master as another target. As Hsiao holds Chang prisoner, Lung attacks Long and Kuo succeeds in creating some real suspense as to whether Li will return in time to rescue granddad and granddaughter. He does, and the teacher reminds the student of the chess moves with which they can defeat the villain. As neither succeeds in single combat, the teacher and the student combine to finally kill the bad guy together. The ending is a bit disappointing because we never see Hsiao get his comeuppance.
NINJA III THE DOMINATION (1984) - If you, like me, found that the only redeeming feature of BREAKIN' was the appeal of star Lucinda Dickey, then this film will probably also help you get over that. James R. Silke is credited with writing this dumb dumb movie which begins with Black Ninja David Chung going into a cave to get his weapons. Why the weapons are hidden in a cave in the U.S., and why he decides to murder a politician on a golf course is never explained. Luckily, the politician is surrounded by an army of guards, so Chung has plenty of cops to kill. Eventually, after the army unloads all of their guns into Chung, he falls to the ground. Dickey is up a pole doing electrical work when she sees him and tries to render aid. Once she grabs his ninja sword, Chung's spirit enters her. At her other job teaching aerobics, Dickey comes to the attention of cop Jordan Bennett. She starts of have unexplained flashbacks of cops filling Chung with lead. This leads to blackouts during which she dons ninja garb and kills cops. Luckily, Master Ninja Sho Kosugi hears about the trouble Chung caused, and arrives in town - because "only a ninja can destroy a ninja". After local priest James Hong invokes the evil spirit in Dickey during a freak out scene out of THE EXORCIST and POLTERGEIST, Bennett seeks Kosugi's help. This leads to a very tedious fight scene before good triumphs over evil. Director Sam Firstenberg helped with kick off the Cannon Ninja flicks with REVENGE OF THE NINJA before reuniting with Dickey for BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. Born in Poland, Firstenberg has 25 credits on the IMDb, and not a single good one among them. I wonder if the cemetery where much of the fighting was filmmed lost business because of how easily their headstones were seen to be destroyed.
SHAOLIN IRON CLAWS (1978) - It is always fun to watch Tao Wong, aka Don Wong, but this isn't one of his better films. Reportedly, this was the directorial debut of actor Shih-Hao Ko, aka Pao Ko. Ko delivers a workman like film, that is rather predictable. The film starts with Sing Chen, aka Chen Sing, as a War Lord after the Chinese Revolution who is forcing people to sign a list to bring back the Manchu dynasty. He sticks his hand into a red hot brier, so we assume that he is the iron fist of the title. After he kills a man who refuses to sign, he disappears from the film. It turns out that he works for Yi Chang, who is the main villain. Two bumbling thieves accidentally steal a secret document important to the anti-government conspiracy. The thieves are saved by righteous Police Commander Don Wong from being killed by the villain's henchmen. Aided by his best friend, Yi-Min Li, aka Simon Lee, Wong begins an investigation into why this document is so important. As part of the investigation, Wong runs afoul of the thieves' sister, who becomes smitten with him after they exchange blows. After the villain's effort to destroy Wong's reputation with the towns people fails, Li turns out to be working for Chang. However, Wong flies in with a kick to save Li from Chang's effort to kill him for presuming to be important, and the traitor ends up helping our hero to win in the end. All of the performers are quite impressive physically.
THIEF OF HEARTS (1984) - After the success of AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, writer Douglas Day Stewart got Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to produce his directorial debut THIEF OF HEARTS. Who thought Steven Bauer was a heartthrob? Bauer is a burglar who teams with parking valet David Caruso to get at rich people's homes while they are having dinner at expensive restaurants. One night he burgles the home of married couple Barbara Willams and John Getz. There are glamour portraits of Williams all over the house, which catches Bauer's eyes. Among the items Bauer takes is Williams' journal into which she expresses all of her frustrations regarding her marriage. Soon Bauer is stalking the woman, seeming to accidentally run into her around town. Caruso complains that Bauer is neglecting his burglary career, so the two of them pull a job one night during which Caruso murders a security guard. Bauer wants to leave behind a life of crime, especially after he begins having sexual relations with Williams. (I wonder how the actress felt about the body double brought in for a close up of "her" breasts, which don't match her body seen in medium shots.) When Williams decides to go back to her husband, Bauer doesn't take it well. However, he later breaks into her house again to return the journal, when he is unexpectedly joined by Caruso. Bauer wants his former partner to leave these people alone, which turns into a rough and tumble fight. Caruso pulls a knife and someone is stabbed. Williams and Getz come home and find a masked man on the staircase. Williams pulls out a gun, which Bauer taught her how to shoot, and a gunshot is heard. When the dead burglar turns out to be Caruso, Williams realizes that she didn't fire her gun - a wounded Bauer did. They exchange significant looks before he escapes through the bedroom window with the police investigating downstairs. Stewart says that he was inspired to write this script because of having his own house burgled and then reading up on women's sexual fantasies. It is kind of fun seeing Alan North playing a cop very reminiscent of the part he would play in Police Squad! It is also kind of fun seeing George Wendt as Getz's best friend to whom he confides his growing suspicion that Williams is unhappy in their marriage.
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Angel Rivera Highly enjoyed:
"JESSE JAMES" (1939)
Did not enjoy:
INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE" (2016)
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Charles Gilbert watched:
GIANT OF METROPOLIS (1961)
SMOKE SIGNAL (1955) Dana Andrews plays a frontiersman detained by Cavalry captain William Talman at an army fort juxtaposed to the dangerous Colorado River. An imminent Indian attack compels the meager contingent of soldiers to embark on a ride downstream to escape in several boats.
GUNMAN OF AVE MARIA aka THE FORGOTTEN PISTOLERO (1969) Grand SW inspired by plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Eurypides, and with Luciana Paluzzi portraying a turpitudinous woman who conspires with paramour Thomas (Alberto de Mendoza) to murder her husband General Carassco (Jose Suarez) returning from a military campaign. As the years have passed her two children Sebastian (Leonard Mann) and Isabella seek revenge, only to discover in the end their real mother was a servant to their wealthy family that died earlier. With Peter Martell, Piero Lulli, and Enzo Fiermonte.
THE BOUNTY KILLER (1965) Sensitive western dude Willy Duggan (Dan Duryea) is taken aback by the violent ways of gunman Johnny Liam (Rod Cameron), but winds up becoming a bounty killer. In the end he that lived by the sword died by the sword.
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Bertrand van Wonterghem Enjoyed:
Undercover brother (2002, Malcolm D. Lee)
Les malabars sont au parfum (1965, Guy Lefranc)
Waterhole # 3 (1967, William Graham)
Geunyeoui Sasaenghwal / Her private life (2018, Hong Jong-chan) – episodes 6 to 11
Our relations (1936, Harry Lachman)
Mildly enjoyed:
Les cinq dernières minutes – episode « D'une pierre deux coups » (1958, Claude Loursais)
Ma femme s'appelle Maurice (2002, Jean-Marie Poiré)
Did not enjoy:
Gunfight at Black Horse canyon (1961, R.G. Springsteen) – 2 episodes of tv serie 'Tales of Wells Fargo' joined together
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998, Terry Gilliam)
Sueurs (2002, Louis-Pascal Couvelaire)
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