1967 - THE PANTHER WOMEN aka Las mujeres panteras

 Marching to the beat of it's own drummer is this Mexican horror film The Panther Women.  This is a very mixed bag of occult horror, female wrestlers, family curses, weird satanic ceremonies in underground vaults and for good measure a monster.

Our hero is a masked wrestler named El Angel who is clearly a copy of everyone's favorite heroic wrestler El Santo.  He even dresses like El Santo.  When El Angel isn't being called in to solve weird crimes he's in his laboratory experimenting with stuff in full wrestling apparel complete with a bulletproof and fire proof cloak he has invented

 

Well the plot is off and running as an evil sect of panther women want to destroy the heirs of a family that cursed them hundreds of years ago.  When I say panther women they are panther women, they turn into sort of panthers at 10:00 PM.   They have claws for hands and some nutty fangs in their mouths and a hair style that is supposed to look like panther ears I guess.   Frankly the makeup on the panther women is a little questionable.

 

The Panther Women is such a mixture of genres that it has already been ordained as a classic cult film which it certainly is.

The film was written by Alfredo Salazar, the running time is a brisk 88 minuts

1967 - THE CAPER OF THE GOLDEN BULLS, an entertaining heist film

This is a very decent heist film but it's no classic like Rififi, The Killing or Le Cercle Rouge.  The cast is a collection of  character actors and if the leads weren't exactly at the top of the movie star list they got the job done.

I.E. an American living in Spain since the end of World War II served as a bomber pilot.  During the war he and his crew accidentally blow up a cathedral.  To make amends this group robbed a number or banks to rebuild the cathedral.   Now operating a restaurant in Spain the American is blackmailed into performing one last robbery.  He reassembles his crew and we get the usual master planning, execution of the robbery and some close encounters with the police.  This is all pretty standard stuff for this genre.  

The cast had a lot of "seen them all before actors" who had shown up in many movies.  Vitto Sotti seemed like he was in about every movie and TV show from the 1940's on.  If you needed someone to pay a stereotypical Italian, Scotti was your guy.  Henry Beckman had also been working in movies and TV since the 1950s, he was the definition of a working actor, no part was too small for him.  Leon Askin is chiefly remembered as General Burkhalter on Hogan's Heroes.  Walter Slezak early in his career had worked for Hitchcock in his propaganda film Lifeboat.  Frankly in this film the list of character actors is endless.

The leads were Steven Boyd as the American and Yvette Mimieux as his girlfriend.  Boyd's career started out strong with Ben Hur, Billy Roses' Jumbo and The Fall of the Roman Empire but kind of petered out after awhile.  Still he was always a reliable performer for the most part.  Yvette Mimieux was an attractive blonde who was groomed to be a star in the studio system.  The problem was that the Hollywood studio system was falling apart in the late 1950's and early 60's so her career kind of drifted off into television .  

 The Caper Of The Golden Bulls was never going to win any awards but it does entertain and the gorgeous on location filming in Pamplona shot during the running of the bulls makes it a very good looking film.  The film is fun to watch because the makers were smart enough not to take this story seriously.  I'm sure everyone had a very nice vacation filming this picture in sunny Spain. 

The film was written by Ed Waters and David Moessinger, the running time is 106 minutes.    

1967 - CHUKA, typical Western with an unusual cast.

Set in the American West it's the old story where the fort is surrounded by some savage Native Americans who the U.S. Army has decided to let starve to death.  Understandably the Native Americans are pissed.  Into this mess comes gunfighter Chuka and a whole bunch of other characters with lots of subplots to wade through.

Chuka has an eclectic cast to put it mildly.  He-Man Australian actor Rod Taylor is the gunfighter Chuka.  British actor John Mills is the weakling Colonel in charge of the fort.  Ernest Borgnine who was in a lot of films and TV shows (this guy liked to work) is the sadistic Army Sergeant.  Michael Cole the future "Pete" from The Mod Squad is a treacherous soldier.  Another busy actor James Whitmore is an alcoholic scout for the Army.

 

Well it gets better, Italian actress Luciana Paluzzi plays a Mexican Senora.  Paluzzi played Fiona Volpe a SPECTRE assassin in Thunderball which kind of typecast her.  Playing Paluzzi's niece is American model Victoria Vetri who would star as a scantly clad cave woman in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

 

Chuka is a film that has a fairly sympathetic view of the Arapaho Indians but that doesn't seem to slow down the number of Indians that Chuka shots with his trusty six shooter.  The film was directed by Gordon Douglas who had a long career it not a particularly distinguished one as a filmmaker.  Rod Taylor has a producer credit on this film.  Chuka is kind of the same old Western film stuff for the most part, been there done that.

The film was written by Richard Jessup who authored the original story, the running time is 95 minutes.

1967 - IRONSIDE, the TV movie pilot for the series.

The careers of some actors can take an interesting turn, case in point Raymond Burr.  Burr had entered into the movie business in the 1940's and carved out a career playing bad guys.  Probably his most notable role was as Lars Thorwald the wife killer in Rear Window.  Hitchcock with his usual perverse sense of humor had Burr made up to look like his first producer David Selznick who Hitchcock frequently clashed with while making Rebecca, Spellbound and The Paradine Case.  It should also be mentioned that Burr was cast as reporter Steve Martin in the American reedit of Godzilla.  This version of Godzilla was the film responsible for the popularity of the Godzilla character.

 In 1956 Burr moved to television where he was cast as Perry Mason in the long running legal series.  As with all TV series Perry Mason finally ended it's run in 1966.  Burr was now a popular television star which lead him to his next series Ironside the wheelchair bound detective.   The TV movie pilot showed up on Amazon Prime so I thought I would give it a look.  Ironside had Burr playing the chief of detectives of San Francisco who gets shot while on vacation.  Ironside survives the shooting but is left paralyzed. This doesn't stop him from getting back in the crime solving business. His first case being who shot him.  Ironside has a trio of helpers to assist him in solving crimes.  A by the book cop, a beautiful blonde policewoman and in a rather tasteless piece of casting a black guy who's job it is to push him around in a wheelchair.  The Ironside character is basically a reworking of Sherlock Holmes if Sherlock were stuck in a wheelchair.

 

Truth to tell when I watched this series in my very younger days the mysteries on the show were nothing special.  Then again there wasn't a whole lot of choice on what to watch on television in the 1960's since there were only three networks.   Raymond Burr had a great booming voice but he really hams it up as the tough detective who isn't going to let a little thing like the loss of his legs keep him from solving crimes every week.

Ironside the TV movie pilot is a typical Universal Studios pilot from the 1960's.  It was filmed mostly on the back lot, it's loaded with lots of B-movie and TV actors and overall is kind of a cheap looking production.  The mystery isn't really much of a mystery.  Viewing this movie was probably more an exercise in nostalgia if anything it's really kind of a mediocre movie.

The writers were Collier Young and Don Mankiewicz, the running time is 98 minutes. 

1967 - THE ONE ARMED SWORDSMAN, a very good Shaw Brothers film

Growing up, a person could usually find something called Kung Fu Theater on your afternoon television lineup.  Kung Fu Theater was usually some poorly dubbed marital arts film from the Shaw Brothers  or some other company which had a lot of weird mannered Kung Fu fighting that was usually filmed on some phony studio sets.  Rarely did these films actually film on outside locations.

For all the poor quality of many of these films some of them did actually stand out as good films, The One Armed Swordsman is one of the best.  The plot in a nutshell, Fang Kang a promising student of the The Golden Sword school ends up losing his arm after he rejects the daughter of the school.  In a jealous rage, she manages to wack one of his arms off.  Fang Kang ends up being nursed back to health by a farmer and his daughter.   While recovering he learns to cope with his disability and becomes a talented and formidable martial arts swordsman.  

This film is well directed by one of the masters of the genre,  Chang Cheh.  The film has plenty of the usual martial arts action but in this film there is a decent amount of attention payed to the motives of the characters  for a change. The viewer comes away with a  pretty entertaining film which for once deepens and creates a context for the motivations of the various people in the story.  Usually in these films it's just a lot of silly flying through the air and jumping around for no particular reason.

The One Armed Swordsman is one the best films in the wuxia genre.

The film was written by Chang Cheh and Ni Kuang.  The running time is 117 minutes

1967 - HOMBRE, a fairly good western

Paul Newman is the title character Hombre a white man raised by native Americans who prefers their company over his own Caucasian race.  New York actor Martin Balsam plays a Hispanic character called what else Mendez.  Australian actor Diane Cilento is a woman running a boarding house.  Richard Boone is the bad guy and Cameron Mitchell is the corrupt sheriff.  All the character cliches are in order for this western.

Anyway,  everyone leaves on a stagecoach which is held up by outlaws.  The white guy hating white guys, Hombre played by Newman has to step up and save the lives of the other passengers.  The film was directed by good Hollywood liberal Martin Ritt and actually he does a good job moving the story along.  Paul Newman another good Hollywood liberal gives a very minimal performance in this film if he spoke over two hundred words in this film I would be surprised to learn that.  Newman wears a ridiculous wig as he is supposed to be channeling his inner Native American.  However no wig in the world is going to fool anyone that it's still famous actor Paul Newman.  Diane Cilento gives the best performance in the film even if she is stuck as the voice of compassion and reason in the film.

 

The film's plot is supposedly partially about the plight of the Native American, but there is hardly a Native American in it.  However it has great photography courtesy of legendary cameraman James Wong Howe.  Hombre isn't a bad film it's just such an obvious one.  It's the kind of film that well meaning Hollywood do-gooders turn out that in the end really isn't all that courageous or very relevant to the plight of Native Americans.

 

The film was written by a couple of writers who had worked with Martin Ritt in the past Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.they were good Hollywood liberals.  The running time is 111 minutes.

1967 - THE GNOME-MOBILE, one of Disney's better live action films

Probably one of the few good live action Disney films shot in the 1960's,  although the bar isn't really very high for the amount of live action junk they cranked out.  The film benefits from Disney's best in-house director Robert Stevenson, the actor Walter Brennan and (for the time),  Disney's top notch special effects crew which interestingly enough credits Robert Mattey who went on to build the shark for Spielberg's Jaws.

The film has Walter Brennan as a lumber tycoon on vacation with his grandchildren played by Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice the Mary Poppins kids.  While stopping off at a forest they run into a couple of gnomes who need to be reunited with their gnome friends.  Brennan plays two roles in the film The lumber tycoon D.J. Mulroney and Knobby the old gnomish elf.  As was the practice with Disney films there are a lot of old-timers in the cast.  Jerome Cowan, Richard Deacon, Ed Wynn and Sean McClory who was usually associated with John Ford.

 

Robert Stevenson the director, seemed to have a knack for these kinds of films.  He directed The Absent Minded Professor, Mary Poppins, The Love Bug and Son of Flubber.  All big moneymakers for the Disney studios.  Stevenson had directed Darby O'Gill and the Little People about a bunch of leprechauns which featured Sean Connery in one of his first important roles.  That film used lots of clever trick photography in it and despite being a good fantasy film was a commercial disappointment.  Stevenson and his crew clearly used a lot of what they learned about trick photography from that film for the  The Gnome-Mobile which was a more audience friendly film.

 

The film was written by Ellis Kadison based on a book by Upton Sinclair of all people.  The running time is 84 minutes.

1967 - POINT BLANK, excellent crime thriller from Lee Marvin and John Boorman

Donald Westlake's cool criminal character who is only known by his last name "Walker," is featured in several films, The Split, The Outfit, and Payback.  Probably the best film based on the Walker character is British director John Boorman's Point Blank.   This was Boorman's first American film and he brought and outsider's view to Southern California and took what could have been a conventional story of a criminal's revenge against a crime syndicate and filmed it incorporating flashbacks and strange dream like sequences.

Lee Marvin was perfect casting for the character of Walker who during a robbery is betrayed by his best friend Mel Reese played by John Vernon and his wife Lynne Walker played by Canadian actor Sharon Acker.  As Walker works his way up the crime syndicate that Reese is now a part of,  he is assisted by Angie Dickinson who is pretty good as Acker's sister in law.  Mention should also be made of Keenan Wynn as a mysterious character named "Yost," who provides Walker information by the syndicate.

 

John Boorman was always a highly individualist film director.  It's amazing he made as many films as he did because Boorman liked to push the narratives of films in unusual storytelling ways.  The Emerald Forest, Zardoz, The Exorcist II: The Heretic to name a few are very odd films.  Boorman had some decent commercial success with Deliverance, Excalibur and the autobiographical Hope and Glory which probably kept him in the movie making game during his career.

 

Point Blank was also a very successful film financially and is now recognized as one of the best films of the 1970's.

The screenplay was by Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse and Rafe Newhouse.  The running time is 92 minutes.

1967 - KING KONG ESCAPES, more Toho monster stuff

Toho Studios partnered with Rankin/Bass studios for this monster mess.  Rankin/Bass primarily made stop motion holiday specials for American television studios.  They are probably best remembered for their Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer special featuring Burl Ives as Sam the Snowman. To have these two studios team up on a film about King Kong you can probably guess what you are going to get for an end result, a film squarely aimed at children.

It seems an evil villain named Dr. Who, has built a robot version of King Kong for the purpose of digging up something called "element X."  The actor Mie Hama probably best known to western audiences as James Bond's assistant "Kissy Suzki" in You Only Live Twice is an agent for an unnamed foreign government interested in purchasing element X which will help them take over the world. 

 

Into this story comes American actor Rhodes Reason the leader of a United Nations submarine  exploring Mondo Island in search of the real King Kong.  Rhodes Reason was the brother of Rex Reason who I last saw flying around in a spaceship towards the planet Metaluna in This Island Earth. But that's another story.

Along with Reason is his trusty assistant Akira Takarada who appeared in many Honda monster movies which stared Godzilla who was usually versus something.  Also in the mix is a young woman who was an American model in Japan named Linda Miller as a member of Reason's crew.  Miller is an interesting performer in that she can't really act but has that all American blonde look that appealed to a lot of people.  For years Miller was a mysterious presence, she didn't appear in a lot of films and had kind of vanished.  It took the internet to finally track her down.

Well anyway the movie's climax involves King Kong and robot Kong battling it out on top of Tokyo Tower in true Toho monster movie fashion.  The models and miniatures are once again by the master Eiji Tsuburaya.  Although it seems Toho could have spent a little more money on a better monkey suit for the actor playing King Kong, the giant gorilla looks awfully stupid.  

The film was written by Takeshi Kimura an old pro at this kind of film.  The running time is 104 minutes.

1967 - GUNN, attempt to revive an old TV show

The writer and director Blake Edwards decided to bring his Peter Gunn character back from the late 1950's TV graveyard with very mixed results.  Craig Stevens who had played private detective Peter Gunn was as one critic called him the poor man's Cary Grant.  Several of the characters from the original television show notably Herschel Bernardi and Lola Albright didn't return.  In the case of Albright, she was deemed to old to play Peter Gunn's girlfriend.

Blake Edwards mostly known for his comedies had pretty good luck with his noir film Experiment In Terror so tacking a private eye mystery shouldn't have been to hard for him.  However the film is very lazy.  Edwards clearly cribbed a lot of plot points and situations from his old series.  Edwards fascination with cross dressing also shows up in the film.  Edwards was clearly going for a noir feel to Gunn.  Many scenes are filmed at night and with everyone running around in dark suits, at times it's difficult to tell exactly what's going on.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Gunn is an OK time killer from a director who is coasting with this picture.  Perhaps there was an interesting idea for a film rolling around here, maybe something like having a 1950's character trying to adapt to the changing 1960's.  But clearly this wasn't explored.

 

Henry Mancini as usual provided the score for this film, he can be seen performing at a piano in a nightclub scene.

The film was written by Blake Edwards and William Peter Blatty, the running time is 93 minutes.

1967 - THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST, satire from the 1960's

Time has slightly worn the edge off of this still funny satire about American, life, paranoia, politics, you name it.  James Coburn plays Dr. Sidney Schaefer a psychatrist who is being screened by several government agencies as a possible therapist for the President of the United States.  As Dr. Schaefer becomes the confident of the President he suffers a breakdown from the burden of listening to the President's secrets. 

This puts him on the run from the FBI (known as the FBR) and the CIA (known as the CEA).  Schaefer's flight from these government agencies allows the writer/director Theodore J. Flicker to satirize various parts of the country from some gun toting quasi suburban liberals to the phone company to a bunch of goofy hippies. 

 

The film has a serious cast of comedians starting with Godfrey Cambridge, Severn Darden, Pat Harrington, Will Greer, Artie Johnson and future director Joan Darling as a karate chopping suburban mom.

Although dated at times this is still a very funny film.  Since it is a satire as expected it was a box office flop.  Audiences just don't seem to like satirical films.

The running time is 103 minutes.

1967 - BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN, third in the Harry Palmer spy series

 The third and last of the Harry Palmer series.  Michael Caine sort of plays the anti James Bond, Harry Palmer.  Palmer wears glasses and is basically a civil servant working for British Intelligence.  The first two films attempted to steer way from the elaborate James Bond type story lines of crazed rich madmen attempting to destroy the world for the most part.

But  Billion Dollar Brain is actually more in line with a James Bond movie fantasy.  The plot concerns a rich American played by Ed Begley in a scenery chewing performance,  attempting to start a revolution that will overthrow Communism.

 The film has a very good cast.  Besides Caine the always reliable Karl Malden plays a sneaky ex CIA agent, Oscar Homolka is Colonel Stok back from the previous Harry Palmer film Funeral In Berlin and the stunning Francoise Dorleac is the sort of love interest.  This was Dorleac's final film, she died in a car accident five weeks later.

 The film was directed by Ken Russell who wasn't particularly interested in the story.  However Russell did a very good job taking what by this time had become a bunch of spy movie cliches and putting a new spin on them.  

 

The photography in Finland is at times stunning and filming in the snow was probably no one's idea of a good time. This is an enjoyable espionage film.

Written by John McGrath running time 111 minutes.

1967 - TONY ROME, attempt to revive the detective film.

Frank Sinatra is Tony Rome, a private eye living on a boat in Miami.  Tony Rome is up to his ears in dead bodies, and babes.  Tony Rome wisecracks his way through his case as he puts the puzzle pieces together on a case involving missing jewels.  The reality of this film is that it is just an excuse for Frank Sinatra to romance the dolls and shoot off his mouth with lots of quips and one liners. Occasionally Sinatra pulls out his "38" and plugs some bad guy with it.

The film was directed by Sinatra's go to director Gordon Douglas but as in any Sinatra film, Frank calls the shots. It does have some nice on location photography of late 60's Miami.  Sinatra's daughter Nancy sings the lame-o, title song.

 

The cast is full of Sinatra's Los Vegas buddies and lots of fun character actors like Richard Conte, Robert Wilke, Lloyd Bochner and Simon Oakland.  The female characters are treated with a less than open minded attitude.  Jill St. John is a tough talking broad who has to put up with Sinatra's leering and the camera frequently is pointed at her bottom.  Well that's how it went back in the 1960's I guess. You would never know the Vietnam War was going on and American cities were burning down from racial strife.

 

The film is recommended for it's very weird Sinatra Los Vegas attitude.  It's certainly some sort of time capsule of that era for better or worse.

The writer was Richard Breen, the running time is 110 minutes.

1967 - FESTIVAL, a very good concert film.

Much to my surprise or lack of knowledge or just plain avoidance of anything that has to do with folk music this turned our to be a very good documentary on the Newport Folk Music Festival                                                                        

This film that completely escaped my notice.  Filmed over a three year period Festival captures an era as they like to say is now gone.  A lot of musical acts are included but the film does a good job with not wearing out it's welcome and runs just a little over 90 minutes.

Along with the usual big name acts like Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan are a number of interesting groups which I with my lack of knowledge of this genre have never heard of but enjoyed none the less.

My favorite moment in the film is an interview with Joan Baez saying how much she likes her fans but wishes they would bath a little more often.

Written and directed by Murray Lerner, the running time was 97 minutes.

1967 - VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, campy trash fest if ever there was one.

 For some reason Criterion decided to release this film into their collection.  I believe the thinking was that they were trying to market this mess as some sort of glorious camp fest for their audience.  After all one can't consume a steady diet of Ingmar Bergman and Ozu films.  

I don't know if Valley of the Dolls is worthy of the Criterion treatment.  Even if you consider the camp factor of the film, it's kind of struggle to get through this thing.  The story about three women trying to make it in show business has been done before so this isn't exactly an original plot going on her

The actors played by Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins and Sharon Tate are all over the place.  Duke had something of a reputation as a serious actor once upon a time but in this film she really hams it up as a young Judy Garland type of character who resorts to popping pills to keep going.  Barbara Parkins has that sophisticated sexy look thing going but struggles to act.  Sharon Tate of all people actually gives the best performance in the film.

The film was directed by Mark Robson an old Hollywood filmmaker.  Robson films the whole thing like a middle aged guy trying to act hip or as hip as you could be in 1967. 

123 minutes.

1967 - BAREFOOT IN THE PART, Neil Simon's hit play is an irritating film.

Neil Simon was always a fairly tough customer when it came to his plays.  He insisted they follow his scripts to the letter.  That is why Barefoot in the Park has a real claustrophobic feeling to it.  Simon opened it up a little bit so they could shoot on location, but those scenes are basically filler for the main plot.

The film is about a couple of newlyweds adjusting to married life.  They live in a 6th floor walk up studio apartment ($76.00 a month).  She's a free spirit, he's a buttoned down attorney just starting his career.  New York is a fun city in this film, it has lots of colorful characters for the couple to interact with.  The crisis in their marriage comes when Corrie played by Jane Fonda decides her husband played by Robert Redford is a big dud and does want to have her kind of fun. After about 6 days of marriage she wants a divorce!

I suppose a good actor could pull off this nut case of a female character, but Jane Fonda isn't it.  Towards the middle of the film I started to suspect that Fonda's character "Corie" had some serious mental problems with her obsessive fixation on her husband.  This stay at home housewife needs a job. 

Still for a Neil Simon film there are some funny situations and the dialog is kind of clever.  But Jane Fonda really sinks this thing.

106 minutes.

1967 - O.K. CONNERY or OPERATION KID BROTHER.

This Italian Eurospy comedy thriller is one of the strangest films that ever tried to make money off of the Sean Connery/James Bond series.  O.K. Connery or whatever it's called features the regulars from the Bond series Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell.  Also showing up in this cheese fest was Daniela Bianchi who was in From Russia With Love, Adolfo "Largo" Celi and Anthony Dawson from Dr. No.

But probably the oddest actor of all is Neil Connery, Sean Connery's younger brother playing Dr Neil Connery the brother of secret agent Sean Connery although his name is never actually mentioned.  Connery is a plastic surgeon who is also an expert at some kind of yoga hypnosis, a lip reader, a championship archer and finally a skilled karate champion.  If you want to know a little more about Neil Connery, the brother of Sean Connery, frankly the pickings on the internet are rather slim.

Operation Kid Brother or whatever it's called is basically one big trope of every  James Bond film up to Thunderball.  The film zips along from one scene to another as Dr. Connery has to stop the evil Adolfo Celi from using some wacky device that will freeze together all of the world's moving parts or some such nonsense.

This film is an entertaining reminder of the insane spy movie crazy that swept the film world during the 1960's.

104 minutes. Written by Paolo Levi,  Frank Walker,  Stanley Wright and Stefano Canzio.