1959 - MAIGRET AND THE SAINT-FIACRE CASE aka Maigret Goes Home

Jean Gabin returns in his 2nd appearance as police inspector Julies Maigret.  Gabin's first shot as Maigret was in the film Maigret Sets a Trap which frankly wasn't much of a mystery but was watchable due to Gabin's excellent performance.  In Maigret and the Saint-Fiarce case Maigret actually has a decent mystery story line this time.

In this film Maigret returns to his hometown to help an old friend of his a countess who is living in a dilapidated chateau.  She has received a mysterious letter saying she will soon be dead.  Well as they say in the movies "we was too late."  The countess ends up dead during a church service and Maigret has to figure out if this is a murder or natural causes. Nothing like an unending Catholic Mass in Latin to kill off a member of the congregation.

The director was a man named Jean Delannoy, to say this guy was prolific is an understatement.  Delannoy started working in the French film business in 1928 and his last film was in 2003. Delannoy was apparently the working definition of a professional filmmaker.  He may not have cranked out a lot of masterpieces but he was usually a proficient craftsman.  Delannoy lived to be 100 years old.

Maigret and the Saint-Fiarce case is a good looking and well made film.  It has an excellent supporting cast who are in the service of Jean Gabin.  What can you say about Jean Gabin?  In a 50 year career in film he went from romantic lead to impressive character actor.  He worked with major directors like Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier and Marcel Carne.  In many ways Gabin was French cinema.

The film was written by, Jean Delannoy, Rodolphe-Maurice Arlaud  and Michel Audiard, the running time is 101 minutes. 

2022 - SISU, apparently the first in a series of two films.

Probably should have watched this film first instead of Sisu: Road to Revenge.  However both films are essentially the same plot our hero kills a hell of a lot of people but he does it very creatively.  

As it turns out the guy's name isn't Sisu.  Sisu is evidently a state of courage or something. The film is set in Finland.  Our hero, Aatami Korpi digs up a load of gold.  Unfortunately for him a German patrol finds out about his stash of gold and we are off and running as Aatami fights them off with probably some of the most graphic violence possible.

Is Aatami tough?  Well at one point he takes off his shirt and his body is covered in very large scars.  He's also clearly been working out at the Helsinki YMCA because he is very buff and he's got a dog just like The Road Warrior.  Those German soldiers are clearly outclassed in the brutality department.

 

This mayhem is once again orchestrated by the director Jalmari Helander.  Heander is very skilled at staging the action stuff in his films.  He has an interesting sense of humor, the violence at times gets mighty ludicrous.

Sisu is recommended for the action movie fans who like it tough and fast.

The film was written by Jalmari Helander, the running time is 91 minutes.  

 

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

1980 - THE BLOODY LADY - aka Krvavá pani

An anti Disney princess movie if ever there was one.  The Bloody Lady is based on an actual individual Countess Elizabeth Bathory who along with her servants was possibly responsible for the deaths of 80 women.  These crimes turned into a folk legend that claimed she bathed in the blood of the women she killed in order to maintain her youth.

 This is an animated horror film with cute little furry animals in the forest and a virginal princess until it takes a turn to the dark side.  The animation is stylized and the backgrounds are minimalist for the most part.  The style of the film kind of reminds me of one of those Hanna-Barbara or Filmation cartoon productions that showed up on Saturday mornings but this one has plenty of exaggerated blood for the horror gang.

 

The director is a man named Viktor Kubal who was based in Slovakia and is practically unknown in the west.  There are some examples and completed cartoons of his work on YouTube which are worth a look particularly if you are a fan of animation.

 

The Bloody Lady is  available on YouTube in a complete and good transfer. 

The film runs 72 minutes and was written by Viktor Kubal

2025 - SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE aka SI2U

From Finland comes the second in the Sisu series a film about one really pissed off citizen from Finland. He's about to raise holy hell on some of the Russian military after (what else) his family is murdered by them.  Apparently in the first film he took on the Nazi's but I guess he's an equal opportunity killer.

 

The film's rather sketchy plot has our hero transporting what is left of his family homestead by semi-truck.  In hot pursuit are the Russians led by the man who killed his family naturally.  The first half of the film is a road chase that is very reminiscent of The Road Warrior except this film wants to really top that film by being a lot more brutal.

 

In the second half of this film, the Russians finally catch this guy, put him on a train to transport him back to Russia.  Bad mistake, this Sisu guy after being tortured escapes from his railway car prison cell and wreaks even more havoc if that's possible.

 

What can you say?  The film is extremely well made.  The mayhem inflected on the cast is considerable.  If you are looking for a lot of graphic bloody violence but well staged graphic bloody violence this film should satisfy you.  The ending seemed a little over the top but in reality the whole film was over the top.

Written by the director Jalmari Helander, the running time is a brisk 89 minutes.

1979 - CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79 aka The Concorde Affair

Released in the same year as the ridiculous The Concorde... Airport '79.  This film was a typical attempt by the Italian film industry to do what they do best rip off current American films. Basically stealing their plot lines and loading them up with past their prime American performers.   In this case instead of releasing just another crappy rework of an American film this is actually more entertaining than The Concorde... Airport '79, well go figure.

There is a conspiracy by a nameless corporation to sabotage the then fashionable faster than sound Concorde airplane.  They want to sell their own version of that plane by blowing up Concordes apparently. An investigative journalist played by American actor James Franciscus manages to locate the last survivor of  the latest Concorde plan crash played by actor Mimsy Farmer.  (Now there's a woman who had an interesting career).  Well the chase is on as the two of them have to avoid being killed by assassins so they can reveal the truth of these Concorde plane crashes.

 

The film was directed by Ruggero Deodato who in his film career made the very extreme horror film Cannibal Holocaust and one of the craziest science fiction action films ever made Raiders of Atlantis.  Besides Franciscus, Joseph Cotton and Van Johnson show up in the film as is the way with casting in these Italian productions.

 

This is an entertaining action film that zips along at a decent pace and as I indicated at the top of this post is a lot more entertaining and believe it or not more plausible than The Concorde... Airport '79 which frankly wouldn't take all that much. 

The film was written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Renzo Genta, the running time is 96 minutes. 

1937 - UN CARNET DU BAL aka Life Dances On.

This drama about a woman trying to make sense of her life after her husband dies is considered a film classic.  It's a part of the traditional French main stream film industry that was to be eviscerated by Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Godard and the rest of the "New Wave" gang looking to make a name for themselves by attacking traditional film directors in the 1950's and 60's.

However Julien Duvivier the director who was making films in the 1930's was a superb director and had an understanding of how to use the camera to tell a story.  You could probably put Duvivier's filmography next to any of the "New Wave" directors and it would more than hold it's own.

Duvivier spent some time in Hollywood during World War II where he had a mixed career.  The interesting Flesh and Fantasy and Lydia used the same episodic story telling structure as Un Carnet Du Bal.  However the ridiculous The Great Waltz which was supposedly based on the life of Johann Strauss II The Waltz King and probably one of the silliest films ever made about a composer.

  

Un Carnet Du Bal is one of his best films.  Duvivier and his writers fashioned a story that revolves around a woman remembering her coming out ball when she was sixteen years old where she was pursued by seven suitors.  She decides to find out what happened to each of these men and begins a journey to locate them.  From the beginning of the film with it's impressive memory waltz scene of her first dance to her final realization of the reality of her life, the film is actually quite a moving portrait of one woman.  

This is certainly a high point of 1930's French film making and cinema. 

The film was written by Julien Duvivier, Henri Jeanson, Yves Mirande, Jean Sarment, Pierre Wolff, and Bernard Zimmer.  The running time is 144 minutes.

1961 - THE GREEN ARCHER aka DER GRUNE BOGENSCHUTZE

This is a crime thriller set in a creepy old mansion which features a masked man dressed in green like Robin Hood running around a castle killing people with arrows.  The overly complicated plot involves a corrupt American businessman played by German actor Gert Frobe who when he isn't yelling at people he's holding people prisoner in a secret room, harassing his niece, planning to flee the country with his fortune and seeking revenge on his brother who took the woman he loved from him.  And that's just the beginning of this film. Where does The Green Archer fit into all of this?  I was never entirely sure, the archer is either trying to kill Frobe or is working for him.

To get an idea of the goofy nature of this film, one of the other characters in the film is a reporter who frequently breaks character by talking directly to the audience.  What soon becomes obvious during this film's running time is that the whole film has it's tongue firmly in it's cheek and the dead pan acting of the rest of the cast is really part of the joke.  The exception to playing it straight is Gert Frobe whose performance can only be described as so over the top I couldn't even figure out where the top is.  Frobe is chiefly remembered as the James Bond villain Goldfinger and that larger than life villain can't touch Frorbe's crazed bad guy performance in this film.  The female lead is played by Karin Dor another James Bond villain alumnus.  Dor was Helga Brandt in You Only Live Twice who ended up getting eaten by piranhas.

 

This film was based on a book by an English writer named Edgar Wallace who worked in the 1920's and 30's pumping out these overly complicated crime thrillers.  This story is clearly very dated and the filmmakers probably made the right decision to just spoof the crime/mystery aspect of this film.

 

The Green Archer entertains by virtue of its absurd plot and Gert Frobe's crazed performance.  The film is set in London but it's a German production with German actors gives it's a very surreal feeling.

Written by Wolfgang Schnitzier and Wolfgang Menge, the running time is 93 minutes. 

1982 - WE OF THE NEVER NEVER, drama about living in the Australian Outback is really boring

Good intentions in a film about a do gooder do not a good movie make.  You actually have to have a compelling story to maintain a viewer's interest.   This is not one of these stories even though it is apparently true. We Of The Never Never was an acclaimed novel which was a thinly disguised true story which the author modified by replacing the names of the actual people with fictitious names.

In brief, this film follows the story of a woman named Jeannie Gunn who marries a man who is relocating to a cattle station (ranch) in the Australian Outback circa 1902.  After a difficult journey Jeannie is confronted by the drovers (cowboys) who work at the station and think that a woman has no place in the Outback.  Jeannie also decides to befriend the Aboriginals living at the station much to the disgust of the drovers who are a bunch of wouldn't you know it racists.  Will Jeannie win over the drovers and the Aboriginals at the station or is she setting herself up for failure?  Well it's fairly easy to guess which way this plot is heading if you've ever seen an episode of Little House On The Prairie. 

 

We Of The Never Never is actually decently acted.  The main role of Jeannie Gunn is performed by an Australian actor named Angela Punch McGregor who plays her like a regular down under version of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  She's basically the whole show as she struts around the cattle station doing good deed stuff.

 

This is frankly a very boring film.  It is so low key there's nothing actually dramatic that happens in it's very long running time.  The best thing the film has going for it is the cinematography.  The Australian Outback may be a hell hole but it is certainly a very photogenic hell hole. We Of The Never Never is available on YouTube for your viewing pleasure and is a great way to fall asleep for insomniac viewers.

The film was written by Peter Schreck, the running time is 134 minutes.  

1954 - FEAR, aka ANGST aka really dreary film

Well they can't all be neorealist masterpieces and this film from Roberto Rossellini is one tedious film.  The film stars Ingrid Bergman who was in a famously scandalous affair with Rossellini after being impressed with his post World War 2 Italian films made on location and with non actors. Bergman ended up leaving Hollywood and her husband moved to Italy where she collaborated with Rossellini on a series of so-so films.  Hey that's the power of films to influence people's lives I guess.

Fear is set in post war Germany during the reconstruction of Europe.  Supposedly Rossellini wanted to examine how reconstruction was affecting Germany but who was he kidding this is just a very dull marital drama.

 

In this film Bergman is a woman cheating on her husband with a younger man while also being blackmailed by the younger man's ex girlfriend.  Bergman is trying to keep her affair secret but the situation is slowly unraveling.

 

Rossellini as usual filmed on real locations to add some substance to this drama, but all the location filming in Germany wasn't going to bring this monotonous soap opera to life.  I've seen more interesting drama on General Hospital. 

Fear was written by Roberto Rossellini, Franz von Treuberg and Sergio Amidel.  The running time is 83 minutes.

1963 - WINNETOU aka Apache Gold

An odd bird of a western film.  This is in many way a typical "Cowboys vs Indians" movie from an original story by a German writer author named Karl May.  It was filmed on spectacular locations in Croatia in wide screen and with gorgeous color photography, this film looks really good.  When one thinks of European westerns what comes to mind are the Leone Italian "spaghetti" westerns, however in this case these German movies are I guess "sauerkraut" westerns or something.

Winnetou is a native American who is trying to make peace between the "white man" and the Indian.  This is the first in a series of seven films featuring this character and the character is played by what else, a French actor named Pierre Brice and is he ever a noble "red man" he just oozes nobility. 

American actor Lex Barker is Winnetou's white guy friend.  Barker had played Tarzan in five films and eventually ended up in Europe where he showed up in Fellini's La Dolce Vita and about 40 other European films.  He turned out to be a very popular performer in Europe.  In the Winnetou series he's a character called Old Shatterhand because he's a good fist fighter.  Well anyway Winnetou and Old Shatterhand gallop around Crotia righting wrongs.

 

For an odd ball of a western this film is surprisingly well made.  The action scenes are exciting and it was clearly produced on a large budget.  It's a well told story and doesn't have a lot of slow spots.  Sure everyone speaks in the German language for a film set in the American west which is a little weird.  But I've watched plenty of films from England and between the regional accents and all the slang the "Limeys" utter in that country, believe me subtitled European films are a lot easier to follow.   

The film was written by Harald G. Petersson, the running time is 101 minutes. 

1990 - SHE SHOOTS STRAIGHT, female cops kicking butt

Another Hong Kong action film from the early 90's.  There isn't really a whole lot that's new story wise but the film's fight scenes are exciting since they were staged by the director and action choreographer Corey Yuen who was an expert at arranging this stuff and there is a lot of action in this film.

 

The plot involves a family of police officers most of whom are women with the exception of Sammo Hung who plays one of the brothers in the family and Tony Leung who plays the other brother.  When Leung marries police Inspector Mina Kao (played by Sammo Hung's wife Joyce Gondenzi) jealously rears it's head in the family.  The action in this film kicks in with a vicious gang of Vietnamese thieves during a robbery that are confronted by the family of cops.  The result, lots of gun play.

 

The story is a little absurd but it's full speed ahead for the most part with the exception of one ridiculous scene where the Vietnamese gang ambushes the cops with an elaborate series of traps reminiscent of that scene in Home Alone where the little kid assaults Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern except in this film a lot more blood and guts are spilled.

 

The big spin in this film is having these police women beat the crap out of almost all these bad guys.  Hong Kong films have had women in action roles before but I can't recall them fighting and beating up people to this extent.  As is typical with these Asian action films the actors in this case Joyce Gondenzi practically do as much stunt work as the actual stuntmen.  She Shoots Straight is a standard but entertaining action film.

The film was written by Corey Yuen, Barry Wong and Yuen Kai-chi, the running time is an efficient 94 minutes. 

2011 - FLYING SWORDS OF DRAGON GATE - sort of a remake of Dragon Gate Inn

Filmmaker Tsui Hark's sort of update of Dragon Gate Inn which came out in the mid 1960's and was directed by one of the best wuxia filmmakers King Hu.  Tsui Hark brought his usual vigorous staging over the top action and crazy visual effects while updating the plot to fit his style of storytelling.

 

Hark cast Jet Li who was pushing 50 when this film came out.  Li still was pretty agile of course it didn't hurt that he was assisted by the wild wire work that the Asian stunt arrangers like to use during the action scenes.  As usual with Hark the film was loaded up with not one but in this film three gorgeous Asian female actors, Zhou Xun, Chris Lee and Gwei Lun-mei.  As in many of Tsui Hark's films the women are equally as good at  sword fighting as the men.

 

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate involves the Emperor's main consort (mistress) attempting to eliminate the Emperor's harem in order to retain power.  One of the harem's consorts flees into the desert where she ends up at the Dragon Inn and is protected by Jet Li.  Throw in a roving gang of outlaws, soldiers loyal to the main consort, a mystical desert dust storm which threatens to blow the Inn off the face of the earth and you have a lot of opportunities for Tsui Hark to top one action scene after another.  Just for good measure there is also a hidden city buried in the desert made out of gold for the outlaws to loot when the pacing of the film slows down which it never does.

I usually enjoy Hark's films.  Watching one of his films usually guarantees you are in for a pretty entertaining time.  Hark is definitely one of the masters of the action genre and at age 75 he's still working.

This film was written by Tsui Hark, Zhu Yali and Ho Kei-ping.  The running time is kind of on the long side at 125 minutes, but it's never dull. 

1962 - CARPET OF HORROR, yes that is the title

As ridiculous as the title might sound this is really an old fashioned crime film in the tradition of the 1930's.  It has an evil mastermind, a criminal gang to do the mastermind's bidding, a heroic secret service agent and a damsel in distress.  The film is at times ridiculous and technically very competent film making.

Well lets get the story out of the way.  A secret agent back from India has information he intends to give to the police that will bring down a gang of criminals operating in London.  He is murdered by a drug that is dropped on to his carpet which gives out a gas that asphyxiates him, it's not as ridiculous as the title implies.  Jumping into solve this crime is another British agent who also happens to fall in love with the dead man's niece.  The British agent has a black sidekick who he almost treats as an equal although there is still a rather patronizing attitude too the black character.  

 

This is a film set in England but filmed by a German cast and crew.  The director Harald Reinl cast his then wife Karin Dor as the helpless damsel in distress.  Reinl was a good director for the most part and some of the scenes in particular a shoot out between the gang and the police in an underground tunnel is actually well staged.

 

What causes this film to be on the ridiculous side is just the atrocious dubbing of the performers from the German language to English.  You have to get past this horrible dubbing to watch this film.  Also for a film set in England it was clearly filmed in Germany.

The screenplay was written by Helmut Harun and Felix Lutzkendorf.  The running time is 92 minutes.n  

1970 - ASSIGNMENT TERROR aka The Monsters of Terror or Dracula vs Frankenstein

This film is review protected especially from the musings of this little blog.

In Spain, space aliens revive the bodies of two deceased scientists bringing them back to life for their own nefarious purposes.  The leader of the space aliens was played by Michael Rennie who had come a very long way from his previous alien character "Klaatau" from The Day the Earth Stood Still.  German actor Karin Dor who is probably remembered for her appearances in You Only Live Twice and Topaz if she is remembered at all is one of the resurrected scientists.

Well the space aliens plans to take over the world involves them resurrecting all of the great movie monsters.  Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy and of course Frankenstein's monster.  All the monsters end up in a Spanish castle ready to go to work for the space aliens and waiting to pounce on an unexpected mankind.

 

Fortunately for mankind Inspector Tobermann of the Spanish police figures out what's going on and confronts the monsters in the castle.  Inspector Tobermann's main squeeze Ilsa Sternberg has been kidnapped by the space aliens and brought to the castle.  So now Inspector Toberman must rescue his girlfriend and fight off the monsters. 

Assignment Terror does have nice color photography.

The film was written by Jacinto Molina Álvarez who apparently played a lot of monsters in his career including, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman and the Mummy although not all of them in this movie.  The running time is a tidy 85 minutes. 

1960 - STOWAWAY IN THE SKY, aka LE VOYAGE EN BALLON

A rare family film that's actually good for a change.  Stowaway in the Sky has a very light touch like the air balloon that our protagonists use to travel across France and eventually the Alps.

The story is a very simple one, a young boy, Pascal manages to stowaway on his grandfather's latest air balloon. They fly over the French countryside and narrowly miss church steeples and towers and that's about it for a plot.

 

What this film has going for it is spectacular aerial footage taken with a specially developed camera by the director Albert Lamorisse called "Helivision." This camera was sort of an early version of the "steady cam."  

 

The photography in Cinemascope is remarkably clear and steady this is wide screen camera work at it's finest.  The film took 3 years to complete and was apparently a very difficult production but the resulting film is very impressive.  A really marvelous film.

This film was written by Albert Lamorisse, the running time is 85 minutes  

1964 - THE BLACK TULIP, entertaining update of a traditional swashbucker

French star Alain Delon does the Errol Flynn swashbuckler thing in this entertaining throwback to one of Flynn's 1930's or 1940's sword fighting films.  Delon's in a dual role as Guillaume de Saint Preux, The Black Tulip sort of a Robin Hood type of role.  Delon also plays his look alike brother brother Julien de Saint Preux who has to step into the role of The Black Tulip after Guillaume is injured.

This film is set just before the French Revolution and it's a handsome production filmed in 70mm by Henri Decaë who had an extensive list of credits working for directors Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle, Claude Charbol, Jean Pierre Melville, Roger Vadim, Robert Wise and Wim Wenders, a very impressive resume.

 

The film also stars Italian actor Virna Lisi an attractive woman who as it turns out could act.  Also showing up in this film is perennial ham actor Akim Tamiroff who as usual just plays the same character from film to film.  Tamiroff was a favorite actor of Orson Welles and showed up in a couple of his films.

 

The director Christin-Jaque keeps the film moving with some very entertaining action scenes and the whole film has a very fast moving light touch to it.  It takes a lot of skill to pull off this kind of a fun film.

The film was written by Henri Jeanson and Christian-Jaque, the running time is 110 minutes.