To answer these trivia questions, please email me at scinema@earthlink.net.
Brain Teasers:
Which "Spaghetti Western expert" thought that the hero of UN DOLLARO TRA I DENTI was revealed as an "army spy" at the end of the film?
It was Alex Cox.
Which actor did not play Klaus Kinski's brother in a movie: Giuliano Gemma, Gian Maria Volonte, Anthony Steel or Antonio Sabato?
No one has answered this question yet.
Which Italian Western star survived the British bombing of Dresden as a child?
No one has answered this question yet.
Which Italian Western star was a prisoner of the British during World War 2?
No one has answered this question yet.
And now for some new brain teasers:
By what name is Rod Carter better known?
By what name is Robert Black better known?
Which star of Italian Epic Films was born in Lausanne, Switzerland?
Name the movies from which these images came.
Bertrand van Wonterghem and Angel Rivera identified last week's frame grab of Adam West and Jaime Banch in I 4 INESORABILI, aka THE RELENTLESS FOUR.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
Charles Gilbert identified last week's frame grab of Ziva Rodann in I GIGANTI DELLA TESSAGLIA, aka THE GIANTS OF THESSALY.
Above is a new photo.
Can you name from what movie it came?
No one identified the above photo yet.
Can you name from what movie it came?
No one identified the above photo.
It shows Ken Takakura in BRUTAL TALES OF CHIVALRY: THE MAN WITH THE KARAISHI TATTOO.
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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:
Da Vinci's Inquest season four (2001)
Enjoyed:
The Magic of Audrey - Mostly using clips from trailers to her movies, this documentary does an okay job of relating the life story of Audrey Hepburn and it had me in tears.
The Oratorio: A Documentary with Martin Scorsese (2020) - It was cute how the filmmakers incorporated Scorsese's name into the title to lure viewers with a more celebrated name than Mary Anne Rothberg, Jonathan Mann and Alex Bayer. It could just as well have been called The Oratorio: A Documentary with Jim Gaffigan for the sequence with him and his family was the most charming part of the film. However, the story of Lorenzo Da Ponte, an Italian libertine and friend of Casanova, who got run out of Venice, became the librettist to Mozart in Vienna, got run out of Vienna and eventually ended up moving to New York City and introducing Opera to the city in 1826 with an Oratorio dedicated to St. Patrick's Old Cathedral was fascinating. Also fascinating was the story of Pierre Toussaint, a black slave brought to New York by his owners from Haiti, who ended up having to provide for his mistress when the master died and left her penniless. Toussaint became the hairdresser to the rich women of the city, even doing the hair of Alexander Hamilton's wife. Toussaint was so successful, that his mistress allowed him to buy his own freedom, as well as his mother's and the woman who would become his wife.
Da Ponte's Oratorio: A Concert For New York" (2020) was strictly a performance of the music by Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, paid for by the Italian government as a celebration of the cultural ties between Italy and New York City.
Rise of the Clans (2018) - Neil Oliver hosted this three part series on the history of Scotland which struck a good balance between actors recreating the story and narration to explain what happened. It was a bit disappointing that after part one's story of Robert Bruce's success in winning independence from England, that part two, which covered the rise of Clan Stewart, didn't fill in the history between the previous story and the new story. Part three jumps ahead to story of Mary Stewart, also without at least a brief mention of what happened in between. I guess the BBC people figured that the view would already know a lot of this and the program was just to fill in some details.
Mildly enjoyed:
FAHRENHEIT 495 (2018) - I'm a big fan of the 1966 film directed by Francois Truffaut, so immediately I miss Bernard Hermann's driving music score. I also miss their portrait of the future. This new version sees the future as looking very much like the present, which takes away the fun aspect. It also completely reimagines the novel setting it in America after the 2nd Civil War. This 2nd Civil War is blamed on competing ideas found in books. As in THX 1138, everyone is given drugs to help them maintain "happiness" and their lives are controlled by Alexis-like home control systems. Slipping out of his drug regimen, Fireman Michael B. Jordan starts having flashbacks which contradict the accepted story of his Fireman father. A new story element is that the Eels, whom Bradbury called the Book People, have stored most of the world literature - and it seems movies - in a DNA strand put into a bird. Jordan is tasked to get this bird to Canada so that the data can be preserved for the future. So, it is kind-of like The Handmaid's Tail with Canada equaling salvation. However, if this totalitarian society is just confined to the U.S., wouldn't Canada still have their libraries and such? And how come at the end when the bird reaches Canada, we don't see any people up there - just a flock of birds our bird joins.
RIMASE UNO SOLO E FU LA MORTE PER TUTTI!, aka ONLY ONE REMAINED AND HE WAS DEATH FOR ALL, aka BROTHER OUTLAW (1971) - This movie is dreadful, but it's only 78 minutes long and the music credited to Felice and Gianfranco Di Stefano is a pleasure to listen to - though much of it is recycled from Felice's score for PERCHE UCCIDE ANCORA. I find it hard to believe that screenwriter Alessandro Schiro, who usually works as a set decorator, delivered more than an outline and that director Edward G. Muller, aka Edoardo Mulargia, got co-writer credit by improvising scenes based on that outline. Nothing is well thought out, like why is the prison warden wearing a confederate uniform and flying a flag from the time of the American Revolution? Also, how did that prison get a phone when the first telephone system in the West was in Deadwood in 1878? Mulargia usually delivers films with good pacing. Here, numerous efforts at creating suspense just feels like filling time to get the film to feature length. (There are 12 different shots of the Bank intercut with close ups of the gang waiting in a sequence that runs 4 minutes.) Like many Hopalong Cassidy movies, this movie opens with an army of bandits trying to rob a stagecoach. However, our hero doesn't ride up after hearing some shooting. Here, he's inside the coach, and makes like John Wayne in STAGECOACH by climbing on top to shoot at the bandits. Just to make certain that this scene doesn't get exciting and can be stretched longer, the stagecoach robbery keeps getting interrupted by fancy animated credits. Like STAGECOACH, Mulargia decides to cross the line of action, so that everyone, at times, is going in opposing screen directions. MINNESOTA CLAY, THE LONG DAYS OF VENGEANCE and DEATH RIDES A HORSE, among others, all begin with a main character already in prison. BROTHER OUTLAW shows how clever that device is by having a most stupid courtroom scene in which Sheriff Tony Kendall gets sentenced to 15 years with no evidence against him. In prison, a scene sets up how the prisoners are going to get our hero sheriff, but then his brother, James Rogers cons Warden Attilo Dottesio into setting him free. Like an old Hopalong Cassidy movie, the villain is a slick banker who uses an outlaw gang to do his dirty work. Banker Omero Gargano forces his ward, Sophia Kammara, to marry him in exchange for not having Kendall killed. This seems to suggest that Kendall and Kammara are destined to be a couple. However, in the end, after Kendall joins with Sheriff Celso Faria of Santa Cruz to ambush the bad guys, it is Cruz who rides off with Kammara and Kendall rides in the opposite direction alone. Now why would Faria hand Kendall the sheriff's badge of Santa Cruz and tell him to go back to being the sheriff of Tombstone? Wouldn't Tombstone have their own badge? And wouldn't they have already hired a new sheriff? I kept wondering if the film suffered from a lack of production funds, but they certainly hired a lot of stuntmen to do falls off roofs and horses. Plus they had those fancy animated opening credits.
RUDY: THE RUDY GIULIANI STORY (2003) - I recorded this off USA Network about 18 years ago, and finally watching it was a pleasant trip to the past. Remember when USA Network did original dramatic programming? Remember when James Woods was a respected actor? Remember when Rudy Giuliani was considered a hero? Remember when Judith Ann Stish was Giuliani's new girlfriend? Based on Wayne Barrett's book RUDY! AN INVESTIGATIVE BIOGRAPHY OF RUDY GIULIANI, this TV movie was not the white wash I was expecting. Starting on September 10, 2001, the film introduced Giuliani facing the end of his time as Mayor of New York City. On the morning of September 11, Giuliani went into action dealing with the destruction of the World Trade Center. The film then flashes back to his time in Miami and his romance with Donna Hanover, played by a glowing Penelope Ann Miller. Considering Giuliani's very public Catholicism, it was odd that this was the second marriage for both of them, but the film doesn't go into that. The film cuts back and forth between prior events in Giuliani's life and his handling of 9/11. We see Giuliani becoming the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and his success against the Mafia. After becoming Mayor, we see Giuliani's jealousy over Police Commissioner Bill Bratton getting credit for lowering the crime rate. We also see Giuliani's infidelity and mistreatment of Hanover. Writer Stanley Weiser and director Robert Dornhelm delivered a compelling drama which doesn't portray Giuliani as a "great man" which some critics accuse it of doing. Of course his declarations about how much he loved the law and New York City are corny. Born in Romania but considered an Austrian director, Robert Dornhelm went on to make the splendid 2007 TV mini-series of War and Peace starring Clemence Poesy as Natasha. Weiser, who wrote director Olvier Stone's WALL STREET, would go on to write Oliver Stone's W.
Did not enjoy:
THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS (2018) - What is more amazing? That the 1974 murders of the DeFeo family, the 1977 book about the Lutz family and the 1979 movie THE AMITYVILLE HORROR can still generate new movies, or that I still feel compelled to watch the movies even though none of them are any good? Unlike AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION, which had the good taste (?) to not use the real names of the deceased, this film doesn't have priests or swarms of flies. Only one fly shows up at the end of the movie. Like AMITYVILLE II, Burt Young appears, but not as the father, but as the uncle which adds a Mafia subplot to the story. However, the film does not dramatise Ronald DeFeo's assertion that the murders were carried out by an hitman, but reiterates the popular belief that it was caused by evil spirits. Paul Ben-Victor plays the father, with Diane Franklin also returning from AMITYVILLE II, but this time playing the mother and not a daughter. Lainie Kazan also appears. After a series of documentaries about famous Horror movies, including two on The Amityville Horror, writer/director Daniel Farrands decided to take the plunge into fictional filmmaking with this. He followed it with movies exploiting the stories of Sharon Tate, Nicole Brown Simpson, Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos.
APE VS. MONSTER (2021) - I'm guessing that The Asylum intended this to cash-in on the hype for GODZILLA VS. KONG. However, the excuse for the giant simian was different. It seems that in the mid 1980s the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had a secret cooperative space mission sending a chimpanzee into deep space hoping to make first contact. When it returns, the capsule is infected with a green sludge which causes the simian to become a giant. That's all well and good, until a gila monster drinks some of the sludge and goes on a rampage. And then, out of DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, an extra terrestrial spaceship shows up with a signal to control the two giants, ordering them to attack Washington D.C. Our heroes figure out a way to stop the signal controlling the simian and it kills the gila monster, thus ending the threat of an extra terrestrial invasion. A special area is designated as a habitat for the simian in the end. As usual for a something from The Asylum, poor production values, bad scripting and mediocre CGI make for an almost unwatchable viewing experience.
THE RESURRECTED (1991) - Director Dan O'Bannon gets credit for shooting scenes that take place in total darkness, only illuminated by a flashlight or a lantern, in total darkness, illuminated only by practical elements. This makes it a bit hard to understand what is going on and it doesn't make for pretty pictures, but at least the viewer isn't wondering from where all that light is coming, or, if it is a Jean Rollin film, who left the torches burning for 200 years. That's about all there is to recommend about THE RESURRECTED, which is a dreary, though fairly faithful adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD. Reportedly, Scotti Brothers Pictures recut O'Bannon's finished film, and it shows, particularly with the re-voiced soundtrack. Whether O'Bannon's film was better remains an unanswered question. Perhaps the humorous bits worked better there. Who knew that Rhode Island had so many wilderness areas?
TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN (1983) - Do you want to see Bill Paxton's erect penis? You don't get a good look, but it is there to be seen. I wonder if director Kent Smith toyed with the idea of going hardcore for the sex scenes. In any case, we can only wonder at what Smith had in mind, because Tom Huckabee took over the film in post production and changed the concept of the movie, inspired by Blade Runner (a movie) by William S. Burroughs. Since Smith shot the movie without direct sound, planning to put in dialogue later, Huckabee was able to manipulate the material with impunity. Was the idea of Paxton being experimented on by female scientists to alter male behavior part of Smith's original concept? It certainly gave Huckabee free reign to make the storytelling hallucinatory and incoherent as our hero's brain had been fried. There's a constant voice over supposedly by radio news suggesting that this was taking place after a nuclear war. A funny bit was a report on Mormon forces in Utah at war with the Mafia forces from Nevada. Unfortunately, none of this stuff was shown, just voices over repeating shots of Paxton either being attacked by a boy or attacking a boy. In 2016, when Vinegar Syndrome contacted Huckabee to release the film on home video, Huckabee took the opportunity to create an alternative version called TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN REVISITED with added CGI material. I've not seen that version.
Viking War: The Last Battle of the Vikings (2012) - Like many BBC TV documentaries, this seems more interested in creating images than in imparting information. The film crew captures touristy shots of Norway and the northern islands of Scotland while the history of Vikings from Norway in Scotland is mentioned.
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Charles Gilbert watched:
DJANGO'S CUT PRICE CORPSES aka EVEN DJANGO HAS HIS PRICE (1971) Jeff Cameron the only recognizable actor in this cut price flick. Mexican bank robbing bandits are hunted by gunslinging agent Jeff.
THE UNHOLY FOUR (1954) B&W. Hammer films murder mystery with Paulette Goddard and William Sylvester as her husband. Terence Fisher directs.
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David Deal enjoyed:
THE THING (82) - The 4K looks and sounds great.
FORBIDDEN PLANET (56)
PURSUIT TO ALGIERS (45)
TERROR BY NIGHT (46)
DANGER GIRLS (69)
FOUL PLAY (78)
DRESSED TO KILL (46) - Always a wee bit sad when this Sherlock Holmes series comes to an end. Rathbone and Bruce are almost like family. Happily, I can watch them all again someday.
THE SAINT STRIKES BACK (39)
Mildly Enjoyed
HOUSE HUNTING (12) - Two families find themselves trapped in a house that was for sale. Eventually, the reasons they are there and what their fates will be is revealed. Marc Singer is the big name in this unpleasant low-budget Twilight Zone/Shining/EC Comics-type supernatural horror flick.
CHOSEN SURVIVORS (74)
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Bertrand van Wonterghem Highly enjoyed:
Bean (1997, Mel Smith)
The harder they fall (2020, Jeymes Samuel)
Enjoyed:
Hometown cha-cha-cha –season 1 – episodes 7 to 10
Hashoter hatov – season 1 – episode 8
Au service de la France – season 2 – epsiodes 8 to 12
The bank dick (1940, Edward F. Cline)
The terrornauts (1967, Montgomery Tully)
Mildly enjoyed:
Russian doll – season 1 – episodes 1 to 8
Find the lady (1975, John Trent)
Polce officer camera / Body cam (2020, Malik Vitthal)
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Angel Rivera wrote:
Shows I watched and enjoyed
DC's Stargirl--Season Finale; "The Neighborhood"; "Dancing with the Stars"; "Doctor Who: Flux"
Mildly enjoyed:
"Impeachment: American Crime Story"; Supergirl-/Series Finale"
I also read about this film which is supposedly one of the first international westerns filmed in Almeria, Spain, if not the first film filmed there before Leone's westerns and others. In an article that appeared in the latest issue of "Cinema Retro" magazine, a film titled "The Savage Guns"(1961) was a coproduction between a Spanish production company and a British company founded by Michael Carreras and Jimmy Sangster, late of Britain's Hammer Productions.
I searched for the film on YouTube , but all that I found was another western titled "Savage Guns" from 1971 which starred Robert Wood. I, then searched using the Spanish title for the film, "Tierra Brutal" and found a Spanish language only print. As I had taken eight years of Spanish in the NYC educational system (junior high thru college) I was able to understand the film.
It starred: American actors: Richard Basehart, Don Taylor, Alex Nicol; and Spanish actors: Paquita Rico, Jose Nieto and Fernando Rey.
The film opens with the murder of a rancher who will not play ball with Ortega (played by Jose Nieto, who also played Captain Malagon, the villain in "The Son of Captain Blood"), a land baron who is fighting for power in the territory of Buenavista, Mexico in 1870. After his men report back to him, he asks them if they did any thing to the man's wife and son. They say no; to which he responds, good, he does not fight with women and children. To which his head hired gun played Alex Nicol responds, "Yeah! You only make them widows and orphans." I don;'t know if the English version has such dialogue, but this dialogue made the film a little more interesting for me. While this film was filmed where other Spaghetti Westerns were filmed, it has more in common with traditional American westerns like "Shane" than it does with the Italian coproductions. Richard Basehart is a drifter and former gunfighter who aids Don Taylor, a former confederate officer who now wants to live in peace with his wife, played by Paquita Rico, but whose peaceful life is now in jeopardy due to Ortega and his men. I found the film entertaining even though I read it did not do well at the international box office.
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