1964 - HERCULES VS. THE MOON MEN or Maciste and the Queen of Samar or Maciste Against the Men of Stone

Evil moon men have landed on the earth and have formed a political alliance with the evil Queen of Samar.  The moon men have been demanding human sacrifices, in this case the citizens of Samar.  Hercules is called in to put an end to this stuff.

This is the usual standard Hercules plot, he pulls out a tree and clobbers guys with it, he bends bars, he fights a monster named "Monster", he throws a lot of guys around, etc. This is silly Italian junk with lots of closeups of our hero's well oiled and manly chest glistening, glistening, glistening as he performs his manly feats of strength.  It's all very homoerotic and quaint.

Hercules vs. the Moon Men wraps up with our hero fighting some stuntmen dressed as moon alien rock men.  The alien rock men lumber around the set as Hercules tosses them around like they were a salad that needed mixing.  Meanwhile, stock shots of volcanoes and hurricanes are inserted to signify the end of the world or something.

Not to worry it all ends happily with our hero riding off into the sunset to help the next kingdom in need of his services. 

90 minutes

1982 - MEGAFORCE, a Hal Needham film.

From Albert Ruddy the producer of The Godfather and auteur director Hal Needham comes this would be Star Wars ripoff of I don't know ineptitude, stupidity, unintentional action comedy, you name it. 

It would be easy to write a "rip into the movie review' on this one but suffice it to say this movie lays it self wide open for a barrage of cheap shots from amateur film blog reviewers like myself.

However we can look at some of the peripheral parts of the film.  A quick google search on this film shows websites with a lot of Megaforce toys for sale.  As part of the marketing for this film a whole series of little toy cycles or souped up trucks were created, when Megaforce bombed the toys disappeared as fast as the movie only to find a home on ebay like websites.

Finally there is this account from the IMDB page on this film.

"One of the first jobs I ever had was with a catering company. Imagine our excitement being hired on for the desert-location filming of MEGAFORCE! Everyone involved with the film seemed quite confident that it was going to become a smash summer hit.

Watching the filming at Nevada's dry lakes, it did feel like something momentous was in the making, but nobody could have imagined just how negative a reaction this movie was going to receive. I almost didn't want to see it, but curiosity got the better of me. Truthfully, I don't think it's nearly as horrible as many have made it out to be, though it's certainly not *good*, either. There's enough vehicle stunts, random explosions, and weapons futurismo to keep average 12-year-olds very entertained, and I think that may be exactly what Hal Needham intended for this project.

I still have a box filled with t-shirts, ball-caps, and other promotional crap emblazoned with "DEEDS, NOT WORDS". It may not have the iconic carriage of, say, "MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU", but I'll keep these things for posterity, anyhow...

...and I hope everyone on the set enjoyed the food..."

99 minutes.

2007 - BLINK, good later Dr. Who episode.

Gave up on Dr. Who years ago after Tom Baker left the series.  However I have been told this is one of the best of the later episodes.   Blink appears to be a stand alone episode on the series and does not really have much of the Dr. Who character in it.

Blink starts future flavor of the month actor Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow investigating the disappearance of her friend and some strange messages written on a wall of an abandoned house left by the Doctor, 20 years earlier.  In a very clever plot twist, Sally Sparrow can only communicate with the Doctor through DVD special features. 

The most impressive thing about Blink is the writing by Steven Moffat.  The time traveling paradoxes and the creepy alien angel statues are all very cleverly worked out in the story.  Dr. Who was always a TV series that the BBC produced on the cheap side, Moffat's writing really makes the story work even though there are almost no special effects in the show.

Carey Mulligan is a very charming and likable hero in Blink.  Whatever happened to this aspect of her personality?

Still, the clever plot is the selling point for this show.  Here's a link to the original short story the episode is based on.

45 minutes

1976 - THE GUMBALL RALLY, first in the trilogy

The first film based on the "Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash" which was an unofficial car race from New York to California, the chief legacy of this cross country race appears to be the inspiration for 3 films, 1 of them fairly decent the other 2 fairly terrible.

The Gumball Rally, has a couple of things going for it.  A screenplay by Leon Capetaneos who worked frequently with Paul Mazursky of all people and the director Charles Bail a stuntman and stunt coordinator.  Bail was never any kind of film stylist, but at least he knew how to stage and photograph action which Hal Needham couldn't do in The Cannonball Run. 

The Gumball Rally, has realist car stunts, something that probably would not even be attempted today.  Capetanos set up enough funny situations and characters that if they weren't gut busting  hilarious at least were funny unlike the Burt Reynolds film.  This film also has a decent cast who actually play characters unlike The Cannonball Run which was just a bunch of "B" grade actors mugging for the camera.

A well done car chase comedy.

105 minutes.

1994 - THE ASHES OF TIME, don't even get me started on this one.

Very pretentious director Wong Kar-wai, spent over a year in production on this wuxia film which is probably the key to understanding what went very wrong with this film.  Apparently Wong Kar-wai  improvised the film and it sure shows it.  There is not one bit of sense to be had or understood throughout the film.

Throw in lots of "artistic" camera work (shadows on faces, ocean waves in slow motion etc) and actors spouting indecipherable and incoherent dialog which seem to be completely made up of poor man's epigrams and what have you got, critics to stupid to see when the wool is being pulled over their eyes.

In 2008 Wong Kar-wai reworked the film and called it Ashes of Time Redux.  Kar-wai shortened the film by about 7 minutes.  He must have finally gotten around to watching this mess.

100 minutes.

1974 - THE PHANTOM OF HOLLYWOOD, filming the collapse of Hollywood, literally.

Evil studio head James T. Aubrey was the person who presided over the sale and demolition of MGM studios in the 1970's.  Either Aubrey or someone got the clever idea to remake the Phantom of the Opera and set it at MGM studio while bulldozers were busy knocking down the studios sets.

The Phantom of Hollywood is not a very good TV film, but it s loaded with lots of film buff junk to keep even the biggest movie nut entertained for a little over an hour.  The cast is about as old as some of the sets that are being torn down in the film.  John Ireland, Peter Lawford, Jackie Coogan and the great Broderick Crawford.  Throw in a little nepotism by casting Aubrey's daughter Skye as the maiden in distress and you have, well something I guess.

One time Broadway star and very hammy actor Jack Cassidy got to play the phantom and he is about as silly as you can get.  Even by 1974, the Shakespearean quoting crazy guy was a big trope but then again Cassidy was kind of a trope himself, with his matinee idol looks.

James "The Smiling Cobra" Aubrey's daughter, Skye.

The film was directed by Gene Levitt who was associated with such TV classics, like Barnaby Jones, Hawaii Five-O, and Fantasy Island.  Probably the perfect guy for this crummy but interesting TV movie.

74 minutes

1961 - VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, is a great film if you are a 12 year old boy

The submarine Seaview, with Admiral Nelson in command must save the world after the Van Allen Belt catches fire.

This film was produced, directed and co-written by Irwin Allen with Charles Bennett, who had worked with Hitchcock on his British films.  This probably accounts for the quasi mystery elements of the film as Admiral Nelson tries to figure out who is trying to sabotage their mission.

The film was photographed by Winton C. Hoch who had worked for John Ford and photographed The Searchers and The Quiet Man among other films.  Hoch was a brilliant color photographer and this film looks very pretty.

As a film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is very episodic.  It's just one damn thing after another sea monsters, giant squids attacking scuba divers, the sky on fire, religious fanatics, submarine chases, you name it this film has it. 

Irwin Allen makes sure everyone gets their money's worth on this film, lots of special effects, Frankie Avalon, and Barbara Eden shaking her booty in high heels on board the submarine.

This film still plays fairly well, when Irwin Allen was on his game he was capable of making very entertaining if light weight films.  For a 50 year old film it's not bad and the Seaview still looks pretty cool.

105 minutes.

1970 - HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, the film version of the soap opera

Before Tim Burton and Johnny Depp get their hands on it and spoil it with their Gothic camp crap, a  review of the original Dark Shadows film. 

Producer/director Dan Curtis looking for a quick buck took his TV series and reworked the plot line into a low budget flick using the original cast from the soap opera.  The results were not that bad although they sure should have been.

Curtis shot a lot of the film on location which allowed for a certain verisimilitude to the film, the acting if it was a little hammy was probably about what you could expect from a bunch of soap opera actors.

Dark Shadows made a star out of Johnathan Frid as the tortured vampire Barnabas Collins.  Frid was almost a pioneer in the romantic vampire genre than has spawned such things as the Twilight series and god knows whatever teen romance crap about vampires that is currently floating around.

As usual Dan Curtis was way ahead of the curve when it came to taking horror themes and sticking them in a modern setting.

The fun thing about House of Dark Shadows was that it allowed Curtis to put some closeur on the Barnabas Collins storyline, something that the series could never do since Frid was the star.  In addition, the film has some pretty decent vampire kills in it.

House of Dark Shadows is an interesting relic, it has a nice gothic and 70's feel to it, you have ancient vampires and chicks in mini skirts running around all in one film.

95 minutes

1981 - CANNONBALL RUN pretty bad but should be seen

There's got to be some place in film history for this terrible film.  Considering the cast, Hollywood in-jokes and driving stunts from the legendary stuntman tuned mediocre director Hal Neeham the film is some kind of milestone.

Burt Reynolds is the star of the film and Cannonball Run is really the end of his run as a major Hollywood star.  Too many bad films finally did him in.  Dino and Sammy show up dressed as a couple of boozing priests.  With the participation of these former members of The Rat Pack Cannonball Run is thematically linked to films like Ocean's 11 and Robin and the Seven Hoods.  These films are big Hollywood in jokes making money by ripping off the public pretending to be entertainment.

Since the film was produced by Golden Harvest the production company Jackie Chan was associated with.  The Chinese actor Chan is cast as a Japanese driver.  You get to see Chan speak in his original voice and beat up Peter Fonda reprising his original biker role of "Blues" from The Wild Angels.

Farrah Fawcett is the eye candy in this film, she has absolutely no chemistry with any of the cast especially Reynolds.  Fawcett lasted one season on Charlie's Angels and tried her damnedest to make a career for herself as a serious actress with mixed results.  She looks and acts in the film like she would really like to be someplace else. 

The film also has one of the most bizarre supporting casts in the movies.   Mel Tillis doing his weird stuttering character, Jack Elam hamming it up mercilessly,  Jimmy the Greek Snyder,  Adrienne Barbeau and her breasts, Roger Moore in the Aston Martin, dumbbell ex football jock and NFL commentator Terry Bradshaw, game show host Bert Convey, Warren Berlinger star of many mediocre Disney films and George Furth who was frequently associated with Steven Sondheim

That's the way it goes in this film.

20th Century Fox forced theaters to take this film and it had a mass release in the summer of 81.  It made money but clearly everyone associated with it knew it was pretty bad.

The director Hal Needham was a buddy of Burt Reynolds.  Needham had been a stuntman and stunt coordinator for years, he knew how to stage car crashes and stunts but his direction was so pedestrian, the dangerous driving looks pretty unexciting throughout the film.

95 minutes.

2011 - TOWER HEIST, is OK

The old "let's pull off a heist with a team" story.  Tower Heist is about as good as the original Ocean's 11 which isn't saying much since that film was no masterpiece of the crime thriller heist genre.

Film nerds dump on Brett Ratner but he's no better or worse than any other director pulling together a by the numbers studio project.

A time killer, you can stop the movie, get a beer out of the fridge, go to the bathroom, get something to eat, etc.

104 minutes, written by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson.

1942 - CASABLANCA, looking a little less this viewing.

Still a lot to enjoy about Casablanca but the film is an extremely slick piece of Hollywood story making during the golden age of studio production when everything was shot on a sound stage where everything could be completely controlled.

Considering this was originally an unproduced stage play, what Warner Brother's studios did with it is pretty amazing.  The is a product of a system that when it wanted to could bring first class artistic talent to a production.

The cinematographer was Arthur Edeson who had filmed The Maltese Falcon, The Invisible Man and Sergent York to name a few films.  Edeson was a guy skilled in black and white photography.  Ingrid Bergman was a beautiful woman but Edeson's photography makes her face glow with soft focus and shadow effects. 

The director was Michael Curtiz, one of the most talented film makers in Hollywood.  Curtiz was a skilled craftsman who understood how to get the most out of a film visually.  By the time Curtiz filmed Casablanca he had a stong understanding of how to tell a story with a camera.

Casablanca is also know for it's impressive cast.  Besides the three leads, the stock company of actors that Warner's assembled for the film was one of the best, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Conrad Veidt and most importantly Claude Rains.

So what's the problem here?  Well the World War II propaganda stuff of the love story really date this film.  The viewer has to have a pretty decent understanding of some of the political aspects of that conflict.  References to Vichy France and Marshall Petain will probably go over almost every viewer's head today.  Also, the incessant propaganda that runs through out the film is as major a plot point as is the love story.

102 minutes.

1974 - PLACE DE LA REPUBLIQUE, a unique documentary.

Louis Malle and a small camera crew stroll up and down a Paris street interviewing French citizens in this example of spontaneous film making.

Shot over a period of around 10 days, Malle attempts to interview people about their lives and interests.  This could have been an awful film but as it turns out to be a pretty fascinating one.  It's amazing how personal people get with Malle when there is a camera and a microphone pointed in front of them.

Considering some of the nut balls that Malle interviews and particularly one right wing nut case, he is incredibly nonjudgmental.  Amusingly, one woman being interviewed is the daughter of an actress that Malle had worked with, she can't say enough bad things about her mother. 

This is not a perfect film,  some of the interviews kind of ramble and it does have some slow spots.  But considering the challenge of a film like this,  it's a fairly successful  premise for a documentary.                                                                                   

94 minutes.

1962 - VIVE LE TOUR, very good documentary on the Tour de France bike race,

The french filmmaker Louis Malle filmed this short documentary in the early 1960's.  It's under 20 minutes but is packed with a lot of interesting information about the race which includes such things as exactly how one goes to the bathroom during a bike race.

This is film making at a very high caliber.

19 minutes.

1927 - THE END OF ST. PETERSBURG, another film classic to get through

Celebrating the tenth year of the Russian revolution, Vsevolod Pudovkin, filmed this story of the fall of the city of St. Petersburg which eventually became Leningrad.  The film is told from the point of view of a peasant who gets his friend, a revolutionary in trouble with the authorities.

This film is extremely well directed with each shot carefully composed and edited.  Pudovkin has a very strong visual sense along with a careful editing rhythm.  

This film seems a lot easier to watch than that other Russian film I sat through,  Earth.  There is something about these lefty intellectual artists who attempt dramatize the lives of the "ordinary people."  Their efforts always smack of a condescending intellectualism.   The End of St. Petersburg seems to be able to avoid this for most of the film .   

To use an overworked word this is a very "cinematic"  film experience in spite of the age and subject matter of the film.

80 minutes