November 11 - 17, 2023

 

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

Brain Teasers:

By what name is Anthony Daisies better known?

Tom Betts, Angel Rivera, George Grimes and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was Anthony M. Dawson, aka Antonio Margheriti.

Which Italian actor, born in 1927, made his first Western opposite Mark Damon?

Tom Betts, Angel Rivera, George Grimes and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was Ettore Manni.

Which Italian actress, born in 1940, made her first film in a movie starring Reg Park and her last film in a movie starring Stefano Fresi?

Tom Betts, Angel Rivera, George Grimes and Bertrand van Wonterghem knew that it was Laura Efrikian.

And now for some new brain teasers:

Which actor, born in 1921 Austria, appeared in films with Jean Servais, Maria Schell, Gert Frobe, Andre Morell,  Sophia Loren, Kenneth More, Cameron Mitchell and Alessandra Panaro?

Which actress, born in 1939 Rome, worked for directors Mino Roli, Dino Risi, Giacomo Gentilomo, Mario Mattoli, Luchino Visconti, Giorgio Ferroni and Tulio Demicheli?

Which American actor worked with directors Sergio Grieco, Carlo Campogalliani, Domenico Paolella, Luigi Capuano, Pino Mercanti and Aldo Florio?

Name the movies from which these images came.

Tom Betts, Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes identified last week's photo from GUNFIGHTERS OF CASA GRANDE.

Above is a new photo.

Can you identify from what movie it came?

Bertrand van Wonterghem and George Grimes identified last week's photo of Loredana Nusciak and Carl Mohner in IL CROLLO DI ROMA, aka ROME IN FLAMES, aka THE FALL OF ROME.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

George Grimes and Angel Rivera identified last week's frame grab from IL PIANETA ERRANTE, aka WAR BETWEEN THE PLANETS.

Above is a new photo.

Can you name from what movie it came?

No one has identified the above photo yet.

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: 

FUZZ (1972) - Born in New York City in 1926, Salvatore Albert Lombino sold his first short story in 1951 under the name S.A. Lombino. His first novel came out in 1952 under the name Evan Hunter, which he soon made his legal name. In 1956, he published what would become the first is a series of police procedural novels featuring the cops in the fictional 87th Precinct. After writing two successful screenplays with STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET and THE BIRDS, Hunter was able to bring the 87th Precinct to the big screen in 1972, though the locale was changed to Boston. In its mixture of humorous cops and dramatic cases, FUZZ could have been the inspiration for the TV series Barney Miller, though that show never left the sit-com office. An ensemble piece, FUZZ featured an impressive cast list including Burt Reynolds, Tom Skerritt, Jack Weston, Bert Remsen, Steve Ihnat and Brian Doyle-Murray. Bad guys included Yul Brynner, Peter Bonerz, Don Gordon and Charles Martin Smith. I didn't realize that the woman playing Burt Reynold's wife was Neile Adams, but I couldn't miss Tamara Dobson. Raquel Welch did nine days of work as a cop luring a rapist. Her success at catching the perpetrator was muted as we didn't get a scene in which her accomplishment was noted. There were three other cases which suddenly became solved by chance, which should have been more enjoyable, but director Richard A. Colla (with whom I had many unpleasant interactions when I worked at Alert Answering Service) was unable to find a good balance between the humor and the violence. 

Loki season two (2023)

Did not enjoy:

 BALLAD OF A GUNFIGHTER, aka FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA PRESENTS GUNFIGHTER (1999) - A nephew of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, Christopher Coppola created PlasterCITY Productions Inc. and made four feature films before this one. It is hard to guess what he had in mind here. The hero is named Hopalong Cassidy, and played by Chris Lybbert, but Coppola shows no evidence of being familiar with either the novels by Clarence E. Mulford or the movies starring William Boyd. It seems that he christened his hero with that name because he thought it was a cliche for his idea of an old fashion Western hero. Well, the original Cassidy was often mistaken for an outlaw, and Boyd always wore a black hat. Here, Lybbert wears a white hat and everyone knows that he's a good guy. And who thought he should wear fancy gloves with a sparkling star on them? Anyway, the movie begins in modern times with guitar playing Robert Carradine driving up to an old saloon in the middle of nowhere for a gig, but finding the place empty. However, Martin Sheen shows up looking like a tough hombre and engages Carradine in conversation. Carradine confesses that he's not written a song in a long time, so Sheen tells him a story which will hopefully inspire him. And so we get the dull witted tale of Lou Schwiebert as Tex, who loses in a gunfight with Hopalong. Our hero shoots his two guns out of his hands. Years later, Tex wants revenge for being humiliated, so he comes back with a gang. While Hopalong is away from his ranch, Schwiebert kills three ranch hands, wounds Uncle Clu Gulager, rustles the cattle, kills the horses by burning down the barn, and kidnaps Adrienne Stout. Getting the news, our hero proclaims, in a very unheroic fashion, that he is going to kill everyone who committed the crimes. Setting out with his remaining men, Lybbert ends up killing a band of Mexican bullies - including the director and his cousin/production manager Roman Coppola - and then threatening a local sheriff who wants to arrest him for the killing. Eventually, our hero and his men catch up with the bad guys and kill all of them but Schwiebert, who gets away. Stout pleads with Lybbert to let the villain go, because she doesn't want our hero to leave her again. Later on, Lybbert particpates in a shooting exhibition to which Schwiebert attends. You see, earlier Schwiebert took our hero's fancy gloves off of him and figures that the gloves now make him as good a shot as Lybbert. After a series of bottle and cans, Schwiebert and Lybbert face off and our hero kills the villain. Sheen takes the fancy gloves off his own hands and gifts them to Carradine, who wears them as he plays a new song co-credited to Johnny Rivers. Well, this movie doesn't look like it was made by amateurs, but it also doesn't look like it was made by professionals either. 

ERROR IN JUDGEMENT (1998) - Stan Ridgway helped to form Wall of Voodoo in 1977 with the aim of doing soundtrack music for low-budget Sci-Fi movies. They became part of the L.A. Punk Rock scene and had a hit record with "Mexican Radio" in 1982. His first credit as a composer for movies came in 1991 with FUTURE KICK, so ERROR IN JUDGEMENT was  his fifth credit and it is pretty good. However, the movie is not. Lee Sung Hi is an artist who decides to slit her wrist when her boyfriend leaves. She survives and is sent to psychriatrist Joanna Pacula for therapy. While Pacula is successful, her husband, Joe Mantegna isn't, and she's been bankrolling his failing art gallery. As Hi is a struggling artist, Pacula decides to send Mantegna to see her. Hi's art turns around Mantegna's gallery profitability, but soon Pacula is telling her therpist, Kate Jackson, that she suspects her husband is having an affair with her patient. Pacula hires private detective Paul Dooley to investigate. Will Dooley be able to uncover Hi's plan to murder Pacula? When it comes down to it, which woman will Mantegna shoot? This is the only credit on the IMDb for writer Robert Winogron and the final credit for director Scott P. Levy. For audiences, this is a good thing. Having appeared 12 times in Playboy, Lee Sung Hi has been able to rack up 37 credits on the IMDb.

MUSKETEERS FOREVER (1998) - After winning a lot of money in Las Vegas, Lee Majors tells his old comrades in arms that now is the time to open that joint they've always wanted to have. Christening themselves as the Three Musketeers, Majors, Daniel Pilon and Martin Neufeld call for Michael Dudikoff, as D'Artagnan, to join them. Not surprisingly they run into trouble from a white haired gangster who wants to build a casino on the local Indian Reservation in order to run drugs and launder money. As Sheriff Michel Perron is working for the gangster, our heroes can't go to the law, so they have to get justice the old fashioned way - with a lot of ho-hum fist fights featuring many glasses being broken over guys heads. The villain employs the lethal Sylvie Varakine to do his killing, and, surprisingly, it isn't one of our heroes who ends up facing off with her in the final fight. An associate kills her with a crossbow while she threatens to cut the throat of our heroine, Sabine Karsenti. Shot on a low budget in Quebec, Canada, MUSKETEERS FORVER seems, at times, to be a promo for a band called LouLou Hughes and Too Many Cooks - or Lulu and Too Many Cooks - who get a lot of screen time while doing three songs. 

VENDETTA (1999) - When seeing that this HBO movie was based on a book by a fellow named Gambino, I figured it would include a history of the Mafia. I was wrong. The book is VENDETTA: THE TRUE STORY OF THE LARGEST LYNCHING IN U.S. HISTORY by Richard Gambino about the murder of eleven Italian Americans in New Orleans on March 14, 1891 - the day after they were not found guilty in court, but were being held overnight in Parish Prison. While it is true that Police Chief David Hennessy - played in the movie by Clancy Brown - was shot down on the night of October 15, 1890, and died the next day, the movie postulates that those responsible were White politicians and buinessmen who could not get Hennessy to help them seize control of the port from the Mantranga family. While the Mantranga family had control of the port, the rival Provenzano family controlled "the French market". The White bosses used this rivalry to pit one group of Dagos against the other, with those helping the Bosses hoping to advance in society. The hero of the movie, played by Alessandro Colla, arrives, with his father played by Pierrino Mascarino, in New Orleans from Sicily where people are starving. In conversation, the White leaders of the city - played by Christopher Walker, Luke Askew and Kenneth Welsh, talk about how they welcomed the Italian immigrants to replace the Niggers who were emancipated, but now there are too many of them. Police Chief Brown reminds them that it wasn't that long ago that Irish immigrants were mistreated in a way similar to how the Dagos were now treated. It was in the newspaper coverage of the trial that Italian criminal conspiracies involving "the Mafia" became wide spread in the American consciousness, though no evidence linking the murder to an Italian criminal conspiracy was ever proven. While Timothy Prager's screenplay was certainly well-meaning, director Nicholas Meyer was unable to make it into a compelling drama. Interestingly, the production was made in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. And all this happened a good twenty years before the Sacco and Vanzetti trial.

WALKER (1987) - With REPO MAN and SID AND NANCY, director Alex Cox was thought to be an inventive filmmaker. With WALKER, it became obvious that he would never make a "real" movie with coherent characters and a compelling storyline. At the beginning, the film proclaims "This is a true story" and then begins to pile on historical inaccuracies and intentional anachronisms supposedly to draw parallels between the actions of the "filibusterer" William Walker's attempts to force America's "manifest destiny" on Mexico and Nicaragua and the current efforts by President Ronald Reagan to overthrow the Communist government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Cox hired unconventional writer Rudy Wurlitzer to help create the screenplay, which Cox completely shot in Nicaragua. He brought together an impressive cast, including Ed Harris, Richard Masur, Rene Auberjonois, Marlee Matlin, Peter Boyle, Alfonso Arau (the future director of LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE), Pedro Armendariz, Jr., Gerrit Graham and Miguel Sandoval, who all, presumably, wanted to disparage the U.S. participation in the Contra War. Joe Strummer, who had worked with Cox on STRAIGHT TO HELL, had a small role in the film in addition to doing the music for the soundtrack. 

                                                        

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David Deal Enjoyed:

BLIND ALLEY (39) - Killer Chester Morris broke prison and is on the lam with his moll Ann Dvorak and his hooligans Marc Lawrence and Milburn Stone. They head to a lake where a boat will arrive to take them to safety and they storm a house on the shore where they can hide out while they wait. In the house is psychologist Ralph Bellamy with his family and some friends, and the wait turns out just long enough for Bellamy to psychoanalyze Morris. An unusual noir that focuses on the criminal mind laid bare. Morris is very good as the tormented gangster as is Dvorak as his lovetorn companion.

THE BLACK CASTLE (52)

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (74)

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (93)

SQUARING THE CIRCLE (22) - Excellent documentary on the creative minds behind Hipgnosis, the guys who put together eye-catching album covers in the 70's and 80's for the likes of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, et al.

MIDNIGHT MANHUNT (45)

Mildly enjoyed:

HIGH LONESOME (50) - John Drew Barrymore is in a load of trouble; he's accused of murder but he claims a couple boys long dead did it. Cowhand Chill Wills eventually believes the kid. A strange, early adult western with a witch's brew of ideas but lacks the utensils to put it together. Still, it's an interesting curio that features noir sensibilities and the young John Drew in a fiery mood. A young Jack Elam shows promise here.

THE BUSHWHACKERS (51) - Big rancher (Lon Chaney) uses his gunmen (Lawrence Tierney and Jack Elam among them) to run out the "squatters" because the railroad's coming thru and there's a fortune at stake. Wayne Morris is the sheriff's in Lon's pocket. John Ireland is the ex-soldier who's fed up with killing and doesn't wear a gun anymore who gets caught up in the range war. Dorothy Malone is the daughter of the honest newspaper man. Old fashioned story is told with some interest, particularly concerning Ireland's laconic, fatalistic hero.

ALONE IN THE NIGHT (45) - One night a young girl is murdered on the street, and someone heard a man singing the title tune just before she was killed. Young inspector Bernard Blier runs down the clues which point to the famous singer who recorded the song. Things don't pan out and the bodies start piling up. French procedural is adequate entertainment with future character actor Blier as the appealing lead.

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Angel Rivera Enjoyed:

"SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS" (1937)

Disney has just done some restoration on this film, so I watched again for the first time in who knows how long. I had forgotten how great the songs and the soundtrack are. Great nostalgic fun.

"A FEW GOOD MEN" (1992)

Great court room drama with fine performances from Tom Cruise and Demi Moore, especially Demi Moore. She looks great and plays her character well.

"EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES" (1964)

Bought the book back in seventh grade and still had it, Emil is a boy who gets robbed of 400 marks, (the story takes place in 1964's West Berlin). He meets up with street smart Gustav and with the help of "the detectives", (other boys from the "hood") they take on Emil as "a client", and come to his aid. Interesting characters. Plays like a well made West Berlin Hardy Boys adventure. Great nostalgic family fun.

"WHITE HEAT" (1949)

A classic performance by James Cagney, which the "gang" in "Goodfellas"(1990) would root for. Cody Jarrett is a marvel to watch. Especially when he makes it to "The top of the world, Ma!" Worth several repeat viewings.

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Bertrand van Wonterghem Highly enjoyed:

Himssenyeoja Kangnamsoon / Strong girl Nam-Soon (2022) season 1 – episodes 1 to 8

Enjoyed: 

A haunting in Venice (2022, Kenneth Branagh)

Night of the tommyknockers (2022, Michael Su)

Gorod masterov / The city of masters (1965, Vladimir Bychkov)

Midly enjoyed:

Bodies – season 1 – episodes 1 & 2

Fire maidens of outer space (1956, Cy Roth)

Did not enjoy:

Loki – season 2 – episodes 1 to 5

Max Magician and the legend of the rings (2002, Kevin Summerfield)

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