To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.
Brain Teasers:
In which Italian Western does our hero answer the question, "How can you bury $360?" by saying, "With a shovel."?
No one has answered this question yet.
In the English language version of which Italian Western does a man take the money from a dead man's pocket with the line, "I'll take back the ten dollars with interest you Judas."?
No one has answered this question yet.
Which American actor who worked on Italian movies was born August 3, 1926?
George Grimes, Bertrand Van Wonterghem and Charles Gilbert knew that it was Gordon Scott.
And now for some new brain teasers:
Which American actress who made a Western with Franco Nero also appeared in a Hallmark Channel production?
In which Italian Western does our hero exchange his left handed gunbelt for a right handed gunbelt?
In which Italian Western does Roberto Camardiel play a character who talks about being a cook for the Army of Northern Virginia?
Name the movies from which these images came.
No one identified the above photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
George Grimes, John Black and Bertrand Van Wonterghem identified last week's photo of Chelo Alonso in I REALI DI FRANCIA, aka THE KINGS OF FRANCE, aka ATTACK OF THE MOORS.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
No one identified the above image.
Can you name from what movie it came?
George Grimes identified last week's photo from THREE KINGDOMS, aka THREE KINGDOMS: RESURRECTION OF THE DRAGON.
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:
Highly enjoyed:
THE WINDING STREAM The Carters, The Cashes and the Course of Country Music (2014) - Howcome they don't talk about the death of Coy Bayes - the man who wooed Sara away from A.P.? Is it because he remarried after Sara's death?
Enjoyed:
Game of Thrones season four (2014)
Mildly enjoyed:
LAURA (1944)
MARIA BY CALLAS (2017)
Peckinpah Suite (2019)
Did not enjoy:
APACHE DRUMS - "In 1880 the drums of the Mescalero Apaches carried the thunder of Chief Victorio's words over the waterless mountains of the South West." Who knew that the Apaches were such talented percussionists? "A hungry people rose to fight. Their fury fell upon settled places where peaceful Americans carried on trade and Welsh miners dug for silver. One of these places was the town of Spanish Boot." Since the town is prosperous, Reverend Arthur Shields decides that it's time to clean it up. Blacksmith and Mayor Willard Parker wants gambler and gunslinger Stephen McNally out, partly to end the romantic triangle with Coleen Gray. The Reverend wants Betty Careless Dance Hall closed down, which Ruthelma Stevens says suits her fine as long as they buy her out and she makes a profit. When McNally hits the road, he finds that the Apaches have massacred all of the dance hall girls and the one Black man in the movie who worked for them. Before the Black man dies, he says that the Apaches attacked without hollering - which is ignored for the rest of the movie where they whoop-whoop even while sneaking about. Rather than head back to Spanish Boot to warn them, McNally seems content to continue on towards Silver Springs until he gets spooked in the night. Heading back to Spanish Boot, McNally is almost ambushed by Indians, but they see a stagecoach on the road and attack it instead. When McNally arrives back in Spanish Boot, Parker calls him a liar and the towns people jump him. Luckily, a stagecoach filled with dead people rumbles into town and the local assholes realize he's telling the truth. James Best volunteers to "take the little ride" to get help. The next morning his body is found in the town well. Parker continues to be a shithead to McNally, and no one ever feels remorse for sending the dance hall girls to their deaths. When the Indians finally attack in force, McNally has to break apart the saloon bar to which he has been handcuffed. All of the townspeople who haven't been killed take shelter in the church, which only has open windows high up on the walls. "You can't fire out, but they can scale the walls," notes Cavalry Lt. James Griffith. The Apaches plays drums and sing in between attacks through the windows which the Whites find unnerving. So McNally suggests that the Welshmen sing to drown it out and the Reverend leads them in "Men Of Harlech" which is a scene echoed in 1964's ZULU. This was the last film made by producer Val Lewton, who is best remembered for subtle black & white Horror movies at RKO. Here there's an eerie color effect when the sky seen though the open windows turn red as the Indians burn the rest of the town. Surprisingly, the Indians ask the Whites if they have a doctor to treat Chief Victorio. Parker volunteers to pretend to be a doctor. If he saves the Chief, the Apaches will stop the attack and leave. The Chief dies, Parker gets a spear in the back and it becomes a fight to the death, with the Apaches setting fire to the door of the Church. Luckily, the Cavalry arrives in the end and Armando Silvestre gets another cutesy scene with his donkey. Hugo Fregonese directs. Reportedly the production couldn't afford stuntmen, so they hired lifeguards from Santa Monica to play the Apaches. Sheb Wooley is among the uncredited townspeople.
THE CREEPING FLESH - I hated this movie when it was new in theaters and I still hate it.
DINOSAURUS! (1960) - Irvin Yeaworth and Jack H. Harris fail to follow-up the success of THE BLOB with this effort, but the stop motion animation, with creatures made by Marcel Delgado, is some fun.
GUN BROTHERS (1956) - Buster Crabbe musters out after six years in the U.S. Cavalry and finds that the stagecoach he's taking to Laramie is also ferrying a gold shipment and a saloon girl played by Ann Robinson. It turns out that Crabbe's brother, Neville Brand, leads the Nighthawk Gang - which includes Michael Ansara. When the Nighthawks hold up the stage, Crabbe prepares to fight, but fellow passenger and card shark Jimmy Seay clobbers him over the head. Finally in Laramie, Crabbe goes to visit Robinson at the Laramie Hotel, and interrupts her bath scene. Crabbe figures to become a rancher with Brand, but when Ansara takes Crabbe to meet his brother, he realizes that rather than a ranch house, Brand lives in an outlaw's hideout. It isn't long before Ansara takes exception to Crabbe's kindness towards his squaw, Lita Milan, and Crabbe calls Ansara an "half-breed". After a punch-up, Crabbe leaves with Milan with the intention of taking a job offered by Yellowstone Kelly, played by Walter Sande, in Jackson Hole. Arriving back in Laramie, Crabbe watches Robinson sing a song in the saloon. Seay sees Crabbe return the broach that was stolen from Robinson during the hold-up, and alerts Sheriff Roy Barcroft to hassle our hero. Rather than explain things to the sheriff, Crabbe dives through a saloon window and escapes with Milan's help. When Robinson goes to her room later, she finds Milan tearing up her best dresses to make bandages for Crabbe was wounded in the shoulder during the escape. Robinson and Milan try to sneak out of the hotel, but Seay is there to stop them. Milan stabs Seay and then the women take Crabbe back to the outlaw hideout. Jealous, Milan makes a deal with the sheriff to arrest the Nighthawks and Robinson but to leave Crabbe alone. As the posse approaches the hideout, Crabbe and Robinson attempt to sneak away in the night. Ansara tries to stop them and takes a bullet in his hand from Crabbe. The posse arrives and Brand takes a bullet in his side from the sheriff. Crabbe and Robinson get away as does Ansara and Brand, but not before Brand calls Milan a "she devil" and shoots her dead. Crabbe and Robinson are welcomed in Jackson Hole by Sande and Slim Pickens with his wife Dorothy Ford. Luckily Dan White is also there as a minister who marries our heroes. Crabbe makes a success working as a trapper, when Brand and Ansara show up to ask him if brought in the posse. Crabbe reminds Brand of a quote from the Bible their mother taught them about being your brother's keeper, which convinces Brand of Crabbe's innocence. Ansara doesn't care and with a new gang of five men plans to steal the furs collected at the trading post. Together Crabbe and Brand prepare for the assault, while Brand congratulates Robinson on getting pregnant. Predictably, both Brand and Ansara perish in the final shootout, and the film ends with Crabbe and Robinson deciding to name their newborn baby girl after Brand. He was Jubal, and she will be Jubalee. Sidney Salkow directs.
RAIDERS OF SAN JOAQUIN (1943) - As Johnny Mack Brown and Fuzzy Knight ride along, Fuzzy sings "I'd Rather Be Footloose An' Free". Brown sees a notice nailed to a tree about a meeting at Roger's General Store about taking action against Gus Sloan and the A&M Rail Road for the way they are taking property away from ranchers of Valley Center. Well, that sets up the conflict. The question now is who is the bad guy? Brown and Knight see a man on horseback being chased by four other men, so they intervene. Tex Ritter gets shot off his horse, so Brown rides up and grabs him while Knight grabs Ritter's horse. At full gallop, Ritter (or his stuntman) transfers from the back of Brown's horse to his own steed with the four others breathing down their backs with guns blazing. The chase doesn't end until they reach the ranch of Ritter's father, Joseph Bernard. The four pursuers are rail road men who deliver a notice that they plan to get Bernard's ranch with a lawsuit before Bernard orders them to leave. At the meeting at the General Store, Bernard is elected to be the spokesman just as lawman Michael Vallon arrives to charge Bernard and Ritter with assault. During the argument, one of the railroad deputies, Carl Sepulveda, shoots and kills Bernard so Ritter forces him to draw again and gets justice. Convinced that the only law around town is owned by the Rail Road, Ritter and other ranchers take off on the vigilante trail. With a visit from railroad deputy Jack Ingram, it soon becomes apparent that store owner Henry Roquemore is part of the plan to sell the purloined property to the Rail Road. Lots of action scenes from other movies, as well as newspaper headlines, illustrates Ritter's assault on the Rail Road. Then Ritter and his men sit around a campfire to sing "A Carefree Cowboy". Brown, dressed as the Black Rider, grabs Gus Sloan, played by George Eldredge, from a stagecoach before Ritter can kidnap him, and uses the effort to take a look at the documents Eldredge carries. It is apparent that Brown needs to find out who is working with Eldredge. While Knight is cooking at Clairmont's Cozy Coffee Cantina, the Jimmy Wakely Trio perform "The Hatches and the Morgans". Brown informs Henry Hall that he is actually the son of the Vice President of the Rail Road and he's working undercover to stop illegal doings. Disguised as the Black Rider, Brown steals the illegally gotten deeds from Eldredge. Threatening Hall and his daughter Jennifer Holt, Eldredge tricks Brown into revealing his secret identity and then tries to get the deeds back. While the Jimmy Wakely Trio perform "Oh My Darling Clementine", Knight drills a corkscrew hole in the wall of the General Store and witnesses Eldredge plotting with Roquemore. Eventually all the good guys confront the bad guys as Brown's father, John Elliot, arrives by stagecoach. While Brown never saw Roquemore's signature on the illegal contract, it turns out that when Knight baked the deeds into a bread, the process turned the invisible ink visable so Roquemore is thrown in jail. Lewis D. Collins directs.
LES RENDEZ-VOUS D'ANNA, aka THE MEETINGS OF ANNA (1978) - You know you're watching a French art film when the movie has opening credits with no sound. Then we get a locked down camera showing an empty train platform. The train arrives on the right side of the screen, passengers walk past the camera down the arrival stairs, except our main character who walks along the platform to a phone booth. She makes a call, which we don't hear. The train on the right side of the frame leaves as our main character leaves the phone booth and eventually walks down the arrival stairs. And the shot continues on for about a quarter of a minute more. This is the kind of movie where our character is a filmmaker in Germany for a screening, but we don't see her being interviewed, we don't see her introduce her film and we don't see any of her work. We don't see her meet the man she invites to her hotel room. She decides not to have sex with him, but accepts an invitation to meet his daughter the next day. She goes to his home, but outside he relates a short version of the history of Germany from 1920 to the present day. She goes in to meet his daughter and mother, but we don't see her meet these people. This is the kind of movie where a woman meets her mother on a train platform and decide to get an hotel room to get some sleep. In bed together, the woman tells her mother about a satisfying sexual experience she had with a woman in Italy. Later, in Paris, the woman goes to an hotel with the man friend who picked her up from the train station because she had no food in her apartment and he finds his place too dreary. After she gets naked, she finds that he feels sick and has to take a taxi to find a pharmacy. After giving him oral medicine and rubbing him with a salve, the woman starts to fondle his butt, but he asks her not to. So, in the end, so goes home to her apartment and sadly listens to all of the messages on her answering machine. One message indicates that she's about to spend another week traveling to film screenings. Belgian director Chantal Akerman has been labeled a pioneer in feminist and queer filmmaking, but she publicly shunned any labels but that of being a daughter. Her suicide at the age of 65 came shortly after finishing a movie dealing with the death of her mother. In the lead role, Aurore Clement is lovely to look at even when she spends most of the movie acting like a zombie. Magali Noel and Lea Massari make welcome appearances, as does Jan-Pierre Cassel and Helmut Griem.
WIENERS (2008) - A gross-out comedy making fun of Dr. Phil should be fun, shouldn't it? A film featuring Fran Kranz, of Dollhouse, and Zachary Levi, of Chuck, should be fun, shouldn't it? I left out Kenan Thompson because I am not a fan of Kenan & Kel.
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Charles Gilbert watched:
The Making of CLEOPATRA. Robert Culp narrates behind the scenes events in filming the much maligned epic. Production began at Pinewood Studios in London, but moved to Cinecitta Rome due chiefly to the deleterious effects caused by cold English climate, and illness to star Liz Taylor. I've yet to see the film.
HORRORS OF THE RED PLANET aka THE WIZARD OF MARS (1965) Four astronauts, one a woman, probe Mars and encounter a phantasm (John Carradine) who describes to the inquisitive explorers the fate of a decadent civilization there that had long past expetienced cosmic hegemony but became inert.
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Bertrand Van Wonterghem enjoyed:
Supernatural season 15 episode 13 « Destiny’s child» (2019, Amyn Kadreali)
Judex (1963, Georges Franju)
Carry on spying (1964, Gerald Thomas)
Dorohedoro season 1 episodes 3 and 4
DC’s legends of tomorrow season 4 episode 4 « Wet hot american bummer » (2018, David Geddes)
Strippers vs werewolves (2011, Jonathan Glendening)
Anche gli angeli mangiati i fagioli (1972, E.B. Clucher)
Mildly enjoyed
Penny dreadful : city of angels – season 1 episode 1 « Santa Muerte » (2019, Paco Cabezas)
Serie B (2012, Richard Vogue)
Diên Biên Phù (1991, Pierre Schoendoerffer)
Space force season 1 episodes 1 and 2
Si da ming bu / The four (2012, Gordon Chan and Janet Chun)
Did not enjoy:
Nyrkki / Shadow lines season 1 episode 1Nyrkit veressä (2019, Antti-Jussi Annila)
The silent flute (1978, Richard Moore)
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