To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.
Brain Teasers:
Which Italian director made a Western in 1943?
Tom Betts, George Grimes and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was Giorgio Ferroni with IL FANCIULLO DEL WEST. Bertrand noted that the film was actually made in 1942.
Which Italian actress worked with Gordon Scott twice, Mark Forest three times, Alan Steel twice and Kirk Morris once?
George Grimes, Bertrand van Wonterghem and Angel Rivera knew that it was Rosalba Neri.
By what name is Tanio Boccia better known?
Tom Betts, Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes knew that it is Amerigo Anton.
By what name is Adriano Bellini better known?
Tom Betts, Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes knew that it is Kirk Morris.
And now for some new brain teasers:
Which Italian film director made one film with Steve Reeves, three films with Gordon Scott, one with Mark Forest, four films with Giuliano Gemma and one with Anthony Steffen?
Which Italian Western has a circus performer hero who thinks of himself as a coward?
Can you name two Westerns directed by Sergio Corbucci in which the hero uses a Mauser semi-automatic pistol?
Name the movies from which these images came.
Tom Betts identified last week's frame grab from SE SEI VIVO SPARA, aka IF YOU LIVE SHOOT!, aka DJANGO KILL!
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
George Grimes identified last week's photo of Luciano Marin and Elisa Montes in ERCOLE, SANSONE, MACISTE E URSUS GLI INVINCIBILI, aka SAMSON AND THE MIGHTY CHALLENGE.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
George Grimes and Bertrand van Wonterghem identified last week's frame grab of Kirk Douglas in HOLOCAUST 2000, aka THE CHOSEN.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
No one identified the above photo.
It shows Takakura Ken and Junko Fuji in BRAVE RED FLOWER OF THE NORTH.
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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 Dick Cavett Show (1977) - Gwen Verdon and the American Dance Machine perform in two episodes giving a mini-history of dance in the American Musical Theater. Thank you to
Decades TV for showing these old episodes.
Enjoyed:
Orphan Black season five
Mildly enjoyed:
DAS RHEINGOLD (1980) - This performance of the first opera in Richard Wagner's "Ring Cycle" was filmed at the Bayreuther Festspiele with the orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez. I'm not a fan of opera performances, so I expected this to be a bit dull, but producer Patrice Chereau mounted an impressive production - though having "the gods" dressed in Victorian, or is it Edwardian, clothes takes away some of the sense of the mythic. Reportedly, this production was originally greeted with hostility in 1976 as being "anti-heroic", but won over audiences by 1980 which gave it a 90 minute ovation.
LES GASPARDS, aka THE RATS, aka THE DOWN-IN-THE-HOLE GANG, aka THE HOLES (1974) - It would seem that Paris in 1974 was buzzing about all of the construction activity going on. Director Marco Ferreri used an excavation site to stage a satiric Western called TOUCHE PAS LA FEMME BLANCHE! Director Pierre Tchernia made a comedy about people living in the underground of Paris declaring war on Minister of Public Works Charles Denner because his building activity was ruining their standard of living. The film began with a nun becoming concerned that the carrots in her garden were being pulling down into the ground. News reports talked about mysterious holes appearing around Paris and bicyclists disappearing. Michel Serrault was an unassuming owner of a book store plagued by construction going on around his store. Serrault was also a writer, whose book about vanishing landmarks in Paris wasn't selling very well, though mail man Gerard Depardieu was helping out during his deliveries. When Serrault's daughter Chantal Goya disappears one night while bicycling home, Serrault became convinced that he must explore the hole which appeared nearby. He tried to get Police Superintendent Michel Galabru to investigate, but Galabru had his rented car packed for vacation with his children and wife, Annie Cordy, inside. After twenty tourists go missing while visiting the underground tunnels, Galabru found a spray painted message saying that the tourists will be returned after Denner stopped all of his "improvements". Eventually, Serrault found the society living underground, whose leader, Philippe Noiret, was a fan of his book. The tourists and the bicyclists were being used to generate electrical power for these people who lived off items they found in the unguarded basements of various businesses in Paris. After those underground, who refer to themselves as "Super Rats", undermine the foundation of Denner's office building, the authorities struck back with gas and riot police. As with most whimsical French movies, this film ended with a peaceful accommodation for everyone - including the street bum who loved listening to the classical music coming up from below.
Midsomer Murders "Red In Tooth and Claw" (2016) - A fairly standard entry in the series, this episode benefited from the presence of Susan Hampshire and Aisling Loftus in the cast.
UNCANNY (2014) - Female reporter Lucy Griffiths is granted permission to spend a week with Mark Webber and David Clayton Rogers to see if she can detect that one of them is an advanced artificial man with artificial intelligence. So, the viewer wonders if this will be SATURN 3 or EX MACHINA. Meanwhile a sinister looking Rainn Wilson observes. Writer Shahin Chandrasoma and director Matthew Leutwyler get some credit for not having the expected ending.
UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991) - There are five official versions of this movie, of which I've only seen the shortest - the U.S. version at 158 minutes. The "director's cut" is 287 so there are obvious reasons why this film seems incomplete. Even at 287, I can't help but feel that the film will still feel like too much plot for one movie. Director Wim Wenders and star Solveig Dommartin reportedly conceived the film as the "ultimate road movie" - set in the future of 1999 - with Dommartin first running into two bank robbers, Chick Ortega and Eddy Mitchell. She agrees to take the stolen loot to Paris, but runs into William Hurt on the way. Hurt is being followed. Is it because he's a opal thief or because he's got something that the C.I.A. wants? Hurt evades Dommartin, so she seeks out her writer/boyfriend Sam Neill. Overhearing the man following Hurt getting an address in Berlin over the phone, Dommartin takes some of the loot with her to Berlin, where she hires a private investigator Rudiger Vogler to help find Hurt. Eventually, she chases Hurt to Moscow, then China, then Tokyo - where she catches up with him and takes him to a place where an herbalist eases his eye pain. It is almost half way through the film that we discover the Hurt has a machine which records what the wearer sees. He is doing this so that his blind mother, Jeanne Moreau can finally see the faces of relatives. The C.I.A. wants the machine because it might be able to read people's minds. Eventually everyone heads for Central Australia, when the atomic powered satellite from India - which got mentioned earlier - explodes knocking out all electrical devices. However, hand cranked diesel engines still work, so everyone gathers at the secret underground laboratory of Hurt's father Max von Sydow. It takes a while, but eventually the recording machine works and Moreau sees images - that look to be bad videotape pictures treated to be more sci-fiy. Moreau dies and then von Sydow decides to experiment on trying to record people's dreams. David Gulpilil and the other Aboriginals don't approve, so they leave. Dommartin, Hurt and von Sydow are so fascinated by being able to watch their dreams on playback, that they become addicted to it. Neill kidnaps Dommartin and eventually cures her addiction with "words" - the new novel he's typed on an old portable which recounts her adventures with Hurt. The world recovers from the atomic blast and the C.I.A. arrives to pick up von Sydow. Hurt is spirited away by Aboriginal friends, while Dommartin becomes a "Green" astronaut orbiting the Earth reporting on illegal Ocean Pollution. Australian novelist Peter Carey is credited with helping Wenders turn this into a screenplay. As Carey has no other screenwriting credits, it would seem that he couldn't talk the director into putting this material into a disciplined structure. Reportedly, the first cut of the movie was 20 hours long.
Did not enjoy:
BURN (2019) - To call this a female CLERKS would be incredibly misleading as our main character turns out to be an introverted psychopath. Australian actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey plays a lonely young woman who works the graveyard shift as a gas station/convience store with Suki Waterhouse. Mousy and yearning to be liked, Hervey accepts bullying from Waterhouse and is crushed when an old man Waterhouse spurns won't talk with her. Josh Hutcherson comes into the store with a gun saying that he needs money to pay off a biker gang. After Waterhouse gives him all the money from the register, Hervey offers to open the safe and give him more. When Hervey returns with more money in a backpack, she refuses to give it to Hutcherson unless he takes her along with him. He refuses and belittles Hervey. Waterhouse belittles Hutcherson for his treatment of Hervey, which inspires him to drag Waterhouse into the backroom to teach her a lesson. Hervey is envious of Waterhouse once again getting all of the male attention and throws an hot pot of coffee in Hutcherson's face. This causes him to inadvertently fire his gun killing Waterhouse. Hervey clobbers Hutcherson unconscious and binds him to a chair with pull ties and heavy tape. After a long conversation in which he complains that he only wanted a simple robbery which Hervey made complicated, Hervey considers what she really wants. Taping over Hutcherson's eyes and mouth, Hervey then tries to rape Hutcherson. His violent reaction to this breaks some of his bonds, but Hervey is able to clobber him unconscious again. Noting all of the surveillance cameras in the store, Hervey eventually decides that the best thing to do is to flood the store with gasoline and burn it up. Things get complicated by visits by a friendly cop, Harry Shum Jr., the biker gang and various customers. Hutcherson breaks free of his bonds, so when Waterhouse's boyfriend, Shiloh Fernandez, arrives, Hutcherson tries to blame Hervey for everything. A fight ensues, Fernandez is killed with an air hose, Hutcherson gets his pistol back and tries to kill Hervey. However, the pistol had become soaked with gasoline so the spark of the bullet being hammered causes Hutcherson to burst into flames. After smothering the flames on her legs, Hervey exits the store to be pulled to safety by the returning Shum. When Shum asks Hervey "what happened?" she struggles to think of what to say. This movie begins with a scene towards the end, and then cut to Hervey arriving at the store "earlier that night". Did writer/director Mike Gan originally intend to start the movie this way, or did the filmmakers realize that they had to indicate that some thriller elements were coming for fear the audience would think they were stuck with an annoying "shy girl" drama? One wonders how Mike Gan was able to get these people invovled in his feature film debut. Did his screenplay really convince them? Tilda Cobham-Hervey had just won an Australian Academy Award for HOTEL MUMBAI, and was about to star in I AM WOMAN which would get her another AACTA prize. British born model Suke Waterhouse had just made A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK with Woody Allen. Josh Hutcherson had just finished playing the male lead in THE HUNGER GAMES series. Did everyone really believe this movie needed to be made?
COME AS YOU ARE (2019) - I've not seen HASTA LA VISTA, the Belgian film of which this is a remake - inspired by the life of Asta Philpot. In 2016, HASTA LA VISTA was remade in the Netherlands as ADIOS AMIGOS and I've not seen that either. Erik Linthorst penned the American version, which was directed by Richard Wong. Grant Rosenmeyer suffers from paraplegia so he relies on his mother, Janeane Garofalo, to handle all of his physical needs, though she does nothing for the constant unwanted erections he gets. Admiring the sexy girlfriend of a wheelchair bound baseball player, Rosenmeyer is informed about a brothel in Montreal that caters to the physically disabled. He convinces another wheelchair pilot Hayden Szeto and the nearly blind fellow Ravi Patel to join him in a quest to lose their virginities. They enlist Gabourey Sidibe to drive them. Convinced that their parents wouldn't approve, Rosenmeyer and Szeto sneak away, which results in Garofalo, C.S. Lee and Jennifer Jelsema frantically searching for them. Eventually it all works out, though there is a death. This is a road trip movie with many of the standard elements, though with a twist having the main cast with disabilities. Surprisingly, there have been no protests about able bodied actors playing disabled, but no one can argue with the film's message about everyone should be able to "get off".
THE STEPFATHER (1986) - Disappointed in his family, Terry O'Quinn murders his wife and kids and assumes a new identity. A year later, he's settled in with single mother Shelley Hack and daughter Jill Schoelen. Schoelen senses something wrong about O'Quinn and acts up in school, leading to her seeing therapist Charles Lanyer. Meanwhile, the bother of the murdered mother, Stephen Shellen, has returned from overseas and sets out to find his sister's murderer. Lanyer decides to investigate O'Quinn and is murdered. Hack disagrees with O'Quinn about Schoelen dating, so O'Quinn starts to seek out another single mother in a different town. When Hack discovers that O'Quinn has secretly quit his job, she demands to know what O'Quinn has been doing, so he clobbers her over the head and pushes her down the cellar stairs. Schoelen steps into the shower, so O'Quinn grabs a kitchen knife and starts towards the bathroom. Lanyer rings the doorbell, but O'Quinn quickly stabs the intruder. Having finished her shower, Schoelen sees the stepfather with a knife and proceeds to run away from him. Eventually, Hack makes her way out of the cellar and with her daughter's help ends O'Quinn's reign of terror. Carolyn Lefcourt, Brian Garfield and Donald E. Westlake are credited with coming up with the story, and one would think that with two famous writers they would have had a more interesting result. Joseph Ruben, who had made the more interesting DREAMSCAPE the previous year, directed. The film was popular enough for two sequels to follow and a remake in 2009.
THE STEPFATHER II (1989) - The first film made too much money for Terry O'Quinn to have actually died from a knife to the heart, so he wakes up in a mental hospital. After getting his psychiatrist, Henry Brown, to trust him, O'Quinn murders him and a guard, from whom he steals a uniform allowing him to walk out of the facility. Eventually, O'Quinn assumes a new identity and moves into a new neighborhood, thanks to real estate agent Meg Foster. Checking out a video dating service, O'Quinn seeks out a new single mother with child. He even starts a therapy group for single mothers, and eventually settles on Foster and her son, Jonathan Brandis, for his new family. When Foster's ex shows up hoping to reconcile with her, O'Quinn murders him, stuffs his body into a car trunk, and then leaves the car in a salvage yard where it gets put in a crusher. Foster's friend, Caroline Williams, is the local mail carrier and she begins to investigate her friend's fiance. When she discovers that O'Quinn has assumed the identity of a dead black man, O'Quinn makes it look like Williams committed suicide. On the day of the wedding, Foster discovers O'Quinn's lies and with her son's help kills the creep in the reception hall. Reportedly, director Jeff Burr refused to add more blood to the movie, so director Doug Campbell was brought in. Burr's next film was THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III. O'Quinn did not return for STEPFATHER 3, which was made for HBO.
THE STEPFATHER III (1992) - The fantasy here is that Mario Roccuzzo can perform plastic surgery to turn Terry O'Quinn into Robert Wightman. Naturally, Roccusso is murdered for his efforts. Moving to a new town with a new identity and now working at a plant nursery, Wightman meets divorced mother Priscilla Barnes and her wheelchair bound son, David Tom. Doctors say that there is nothing physically wrong with Tom, so you know that at the end of the movie he will rise from his wheelchair to save Barnes from being murdered. But first, Tom's father, Jay Acovone, wants to reconcile with Barnes, so Wightman murders him and plants a flower garden over his body. Meanwhile, Tom doesn't trust Wightman and enlists the aid of priest John Ingle to check him out. After Tom expresses interest in going to a summer computer camp and Barnes proves to be unable to have more children, Wightman takes an interest in a newly arrived in town single mother, Season Hubley, who has a son, Adam Ryen, with whom Wightman can play football. At work, Wightman's boss, Dennis Paladino, comments about seeing Wightman out with Hubley, so he gets fed into a wood chipper. Ingle gets a fork with which to check Wightman's fingerprints, so he gets run off the road and his car set afire before being pushed off a cliff. Eventually, Hubley begins to pressure Wightman about moving forward with marriage plans, but his plan to feed her into the wood chipper is interrupted by a jealous Barnes. So, Wightman now has two intended victims, until Tom rises from his chair and helps to feed Wightman into the grinder. More so than the previous two, this installment has more unfunny quips after the murders. Guy Magar takes authorship credit for this flick, which didn't seem to hurt his career as a TV director. Christa Miller fans may enjoy seeing her pre-The Drew Carey Show. The problem with watching something on IMDb TV is that while you can fast forward through the movie, you can't fast forward through the
commercials.
STRANDED (2013) - This has a promising idea for a low-budget sci-fi thriller. Four astronauts on a moon base are suddenly cut off due to a meteor shower. A spore is found on one meteor which infects the sole female member, Amy Matysio. She suddenly gives birth to something alien which assumes the form of one of the male members, Michael Therriault. So you've got ALIEN, with a bit of INSEMINOID (without the obvious rapey elements from both of those movies), a bit from IT'S ALIVE and some elements from THE THING (1982). Unfortunately, it isn't long before the viewer is arguing with those on the screen about what would be the sensible way to handle things, and writers Roger Christian and Christian Piers Betley aren't able to keep the dimly lit proceedings from becoming tedious, even for 88 minutes. Christian Slater and Brendan Fehr make up the rest of the main cast. If nothing else, this is less annoying than director Christian's earlier film BATTLEFIELD EARTH, though it seems to desire a sequel.
TALE OF A VAMPIRE (1992) - When is a Japanese vampire movie not a Japanese vampire movie? When the Japanese writer/director uses an English speaking cast and sets his story in an English speaking world. Reportedly Shimako Sato began this project as an hour long video production, but switched to a 93 minute 35mm feature when better financing came. Unfortunately, the final film feels like an idea for a short stretched too long. Julian Sands is a vampire pining for his lost love. He seems to not want to feed on people (poor kitty), but some shadowy figure keeps throwing dead people at him to drink. He sees a woman on the street, who looks like his lost love Suzanna Hamilton. The next thing Sands knows it that Hamilton shows up at the library where he hangs out (and we never find out what he's studying), saying she got a job offer in the mail. We know that the shadowy figure stole some stationary from the librarian's desk and has set up Sands and Hamilton to meet. It is not until the end that we discover that Kenneth Cranham is the shadow figure. He was responsible for the disappearance of Sands' old love and wants to torment Sands by killing his new potential love. According to this movie, vampires can not die, so when Hamilton became a vampire and ran off with Sands in the past, her vampire husband, Cranham, caught her and dumped into the deepest ocean for her to suffer for eternity. And even though Sands pushes Cranham out the window, he won't die either. Unfortunately, the present day Hamilton has already died, so Sands can not bring her back as a vampire and the film ends with his reciting, by voice over, Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee". Slowly paced and lacking any dramatic tension, TALE OF A VAMPIRE makes for dull viewing even with an attractive cast and atmospheric photography.
THOUSAND PIECES OF GOLD (1991) - Ruthanne Lum McCunn's novel about a Chinese girl sold by her family to become a prostitute in 1880's Oregon was turned into a movie written by Anne Makepeace and directed by Nancy Kelly. Rosalind Chao was a strong lead, but was unable to overcome the predictability of the material.
UNDER SUSPICION (1991) - While it is fun to see Laura San Giacomo as a "femme fatale", writer/director Simon Moore is more interested in manipulative storytelling then in being sexy. Liam Neeson is a disgraced cop who in 1960's Brighton illegally helps people get photographic evidence of adultery in order to obtain divorces. Often he uses his wife, Maggie O'Neill, as the "other woman" in these photographs. One night, when he gets the maid to open the hotel room door in order to snap the picture, he finds O'Neill and the client dead in the bed. Who did it? Was it the client's mistress, Giacomo, or his wife, Alphonsia Emmanuel, or a cop setting up Neeson, or was it Neeson himself - to whom all of the evidence is pointing? Luckily, Neeson can rely on his ex-partner, Kenneth Cranham, to try and stop his death by hanging after the trapdoor is opened. The plotting strains credibility, but Christopher Gunning delivers an atmospheric music score.
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David Deal enjoyed:
THE LORELEY'S GRASP (72)
FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR (70)
EYE IN THE LABYRINTH (72)
THE SOUND OF METAL (20)
BLADE RUNNER (82)
Mildly enjoyed:
CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS (62)
THE DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S HOTEL (79) - A police inspector is called to a remote hotel in the Alps but when he arrives, there seems to be no crime. When an avalanche cuts them off, the truth is manifested and invaders from another planet come into play. A very odd Estonian science fiction film written by those responsible for Tarkovsky's Stalker.
CHINATOWN AFTER DARK (32)
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Charles Gilbert watched:
CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1959) B&W. Michael Pate is a gunslinger in the old west with a penchant for drawing blood from the neck. Preacher Eric Fleming learns of his provenance and challenges him to a duel in the morning sun. The bullet he fires successfully is fashioned from a cross lapel pin.
SAM WHISKEY (1969) Clint Walker is reduced to a big lug role as a buddy of Sam (Burt Reynolds) who takes on a caper engineered by widow Laura Breckenridge (Angie Dickinson). Along with smithy Ossie Davis they first retrieve stolen gold bars from a wrecked boat at river's bottom, then break into the federal mint for a golden bust of George Washington.
Deceived: The Jonestown Tragedy. Documentary by Mel White.
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Bertrand van Wonterghem highly enjoyed:
Diablero – season 1 (2018) – episodes 3 & 4
Le nom des gens (2010, Michel Leclerc)
Enjoyed:
The invisible ray (1935, Lambert Hillyer)
Maeumui sori : reboot / The sound of your heart : reboot – season 1 – episode 10
Tie guan yin / Angel with the iron fists (1966, Lo Wei)
Target : Harry (1968, Roger Corman)
Gate: jieitai kanochi nite, kaku tatakaeri (anime) – season 1 – episodes 1 to 4
Cinecittà : de Mussolini à la dolce vita (doc) (2021, Emmanuelle Nobécourt)
Did not enjoy:
Cosmic sin (2020, Edward Drake)
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Angel Rivera wrote:
While doing research for your picture of Kirk Douglas I went on YouTube and found that someone had uploaded TOWN WITHOUT PITY. Even though I have seen the movie several times and have a copy in my collection, I decided to watch it again. First to hear the title song, then I got caught up in the movie. Watching it now knowing things about it, I did not know about it when I first saw it was interesting. Like knowing that the actors playing three of the defendants have become better known after the film was released. Robert Blake who played Cpl. Larkin is now best known for his portrayal of "Baretta" on the popular TV show of the same name and for the murder of his wife for which he was acquitted even though many believe he was guilty. Frank Sutton who portrayed Sgt. Snyder is best known for playing Sgt. Carter on the TV program "Gomer Pyle. U.S.M.C." and Richard Jaeckel who plays Cpl. Scott of course is a familiar face having appeared in numerous television shows and movies, but is probably best known for playing Lee Marvin's second in command in THE DIRTY DOZEN. Of course the main star of the film, other than Kirk Douglas is the beautiful Christine Kaufmann who I now know was only sixteen at the time she appeared in this movie. The movie is one of my favorites and I believe it was one of the first Hollywood movies to deal with the subject of rape. Ms. Kaufmann was listed in the credits as being "introduced" in this film as if this were her first movie role. Of course we know that she appeared opposite Steve Reeves in THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII which then led me take my copy out and watch it. While Ms. Kaufmann has little to do in that film, it is amazing to realize that she was only fourteen when she made that movie even though she appears much older. What is also interesting is that behind the scenes, the script was written by Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci and Duccio Tessari; all names we know to be important to the "Spaghetti" westerns genre.
(Note: It is now well known that credited director Mario Bonnard left the production to make GASTONE, leaving his assistants Leone, Corbucci and Tessari to actually be the on-set directors of POMPEII. When the film got a re-release in the late 1960s, it was credited as "Sergio Leone's masterpiece". In interviews, Corbucci complained that while Leone was in Rome directing the interior scenes, he directed all of the material shot on location in Spain. Tessari was in charge of 2nd unit work.)
I've also been watching films I've seen before, but a long time ago. For example I watched the Jackie Gleason film GIGOT which I had not seen since the sixties It was showing on the Movies.TV network and this is the first time I have seen it in color. (My family did not have a color TV until the seventies.) Gleason plays a mute janitor who faces ridicule from the villagers of the small French village in which he lives. He saves the life of a little girl and when it is believed he died saving her life the villagers begin to mourn him and realize that he was not such a silly fellow after all. Of course unbeknownst to them Gigot is not dead and he sees how much he was loved. When the towns folk discover he is still alive they begin to chase him to which he misunderstands their attention and the film ends with a big chase scene. Gleason is great as the mute Gigot and the movie was directed by Gene Kelly and shot in Paris, France.
Another film I watched again was the western ROUGH NIGHT IN JERICHO with Dean Martin as a villain, George Peppard as the man who goes up against Martin and Jean Simmons as the woman in the middle. My favorite scene is when Peppard, who was once a lawman and is initially unwilling to go against Martin who is also a former lawman now the corrupt town boss are playing cards. Martin thought Peppard was going to join a meeting of the townsfolk who are going to oppose him and there is an explosion to which Martin says "I guess the meeting is over." The look on Peppard's face when he realizes how ruthless Martin is is worth the price of admission. Another one of my favorites.
I next watched BANDOLERO another Dean Martin film, this time featuring the incomparable Raquel Welch. A review of the film in Cinema Retro magazine claims the film was influenced by the Spaghetti westerns of the day. I doubt this, but BANDOLERO was advertised as "a new kind of western." I first saw the film when it premiered in theaters back in 1968. Memorable scene: when bandits ambush and kill two of the posse chasing Dean and his gang into Mexico. The bandits kill the men using machetes and then rob and strip the corpses of all their belongings.
Lastly I wanted to mention that I enjoyed IN THE HEIGHTS especially for the dance scenes and the music. Its plot is very thin, but the musical scenes are worth it,. (I saw the musical when it played on Broadway back in 2008, but vaguely remembered the show outside of a few numbers.)
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