1977 - THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU, mad scientist time

Yet another film based on the H.G. Welles novel.  The book is sort of the H.G. Welles version of Frankenstein.  This is the usual mad scientist playing with nature stuff and as expected things do not work out very well for Dr. Moreau the mad scientist and the people who happen to be unfortunate to be in his circle.

This version of The Island of Dr. Moreau is nothing special.  Everyone goes through the motions and you know the film is going to end with stuff blowing up at the end.

The director is Don Taylor a 50's actor who didn't have a particularly distinguished career as a film maker although he had a few interesting films on his list like The Final Countdown and the odd spaghetti western hybrid  Five Man Army.  The cast includes Burt Lancaster, Michael York, Nigel Davenport and Barbara Carrera.  Richard Basehart is the "Sayer of the Law"  but sadly the submarine Seaview is nowhere in sight.  Frankly the plot of this film is basically and Irwin Allen TV episode anyway.

The monster makeup was co-designed by John Chambers who was a featured character in the film Argo and had created makeup effects for The Planet of the Apes along with his side career working for the CIA.

 

Written by Al Ramrus and John Herman Shaner, the running time is  99 minutes.

1969 - FIVE MAN ARMY, is an entertaining spaghetti western.

Fun spaghetti western with kind of a bizarro cast to put it mildly.  Peter Graves star of Mission Impossible is the Dutchman who has a plan to steal $500,000 in gold from a moving train full of soldiers during the Mexican revolution.

The Dutchman recruits a team much like Graves always did for the IMF force missions.  There's Bud Spenser as the tough guy, James Daly who was Chad Everett's boss on Medical Center, Tetsuro Tanba who was Tanaka in You Only Live Twice and some Italian guy.

Lots of action, a pretty good robbery sequence, Bud Spenser busting heads as usual.

What more could you ask for in an action film.  Dario Argento wrote the story and Ennio Morricone has one of his typically weird themes.

105 minutes.

1980 - THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, entertaining, extended Twilight Zone rehash

Captain Kirk Douglas, commander of the USS Nimitz and his crew go through a time portal in the Pacific ocean end up right before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Captain Kirk (?)  then has to decide if he should intervene in the Pearl Harbor attack which might change history.

This film really is a remake of a Twilight Zone episode, with a typical 1980's cast with actors like Ron"Superfly" O'Neal, James Farentino, Katherine Ross and Martin Sheen. The film looks like it was filmed entirely on location aboard the USS Nimitz, or some other carrier, which is probably the main point of interest about the film.   Maurice Binder, who did the title designs on the first 14 James Bond films, did the modest if cool looking time travel effects.

The F-14 Tomcat, the same plane Tom Cruise flew in his Homo-erotic Navy fantasy Top Gun, is featured in this film.  There is one scene where one of the F-14's appears to stall out and nearly hit the ocean which is a pretty gutsy flying stunt with the taxpayer's money. 

Professionally made, uninspired, decent time killer.

103 minutes