July 2015 Movie Round-Up

Also posting the movie list.  I’ve never used WordPress, but from what I can tell these are the final posts he was working on.

The Window(1949)

Poker With Pistols (1967)

Drummer of Vengeance(1971)

John Carter (2012)

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The Window(1949)

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Arthur Kennedy, Barbara Hale, Bobby Driscoll, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman

I’m indebted to Barry Ergang fo the email he sent touting the showing of this film(and one other) on Turner Classic. Based on a short story, The Boy Who Cried Murder, by Cornell Woolrich. The host of the showing said the film was originally shot in 1947, but shelved buy new studio owner Howard Hughes because he didn’t like kid movies. But after mismanagement by Hughes and threats of studio collapse, other heads prevailed and it was released in 1949 to great success. A 210,000 budget was greatly exceeded and brought the ailing studio success.

One interesting bit was, though set in a very hot summer(mention was made of mid-nineties temperatures), it was shot in the middle of winter in New York City. Cast wore summer clothes and sprayed to simulate sweat, then bundled in heavy coats and fed hot soup when not in scenes.

Tommy Woodry(Bobby Driscoll) liked to tell tales, always regaling his friends with stories of the ranch his dad owned and how they were soon to move there after all the Indians were killed. It almost cost the family their apartment when the landlord brought prospective tenants to see it because they were moving in a few days. Mom and dad were furious. Barbara Hale plays mother Mary and Arthur Kennedy dad Ed.

That very night, Tommy sleeps on the fire escape trying to beat the heat, climbing a floor where it was a bit cooler. There, outside the window of Joe(Paul Stewart) and Jean(Ruth Rman) Kellerson, Tommy witnesses them murder a man they were robbing, stabbing him with a pair of scissors. He neaks away as they hide the body in an abandoned building.

Of course no one believes him. Just another one of his stories. The parents castigate him. He sneaks out to the cops and they don’t buy it either. Mom even makes him apologize to the Kellersons, putting him on their radar.

That’s the meat of the film, his running, capture, escape, and showdown in the same abandoned building where the murder victim was hid.

A good film.

Poker With Pistols(Un Poker di pistole)1967

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George Eastman, George Hilton

This film was a bit of ab oddity. Reviews seem split that it was a forgettable entry in the genre while others thought it memorable. Direction was by Giuseppe Vari billed as Joseph Warren. The screenwriters had turned out admirable work previously, Ferdinando di Leo and Augusto Caminito.

Two of the genre’s stalwarts starred: George Eastman as Lucas and Gerge Hilton as Terrail. A pair of gamblers, they get nto an tough game in the beginning of the film when Terrail sets lucas up by allowing him to see a king on the bottom on the deck as he lays it down after dealing a hand of five card stud. Kucas has the fourth queen on his down card and figures it for the winner. Short covering the bet, four thousand dollars, a well dressed Mexican that followed Terrail into town covers the bet and Terrail revels the fourth King in his down card.

Angry, Lucas is prevented from doing anything by the sheriff and Terrail ends up offering him a job: driving a wagon load of paper into Mexico. The original driver was killed. The four thousand he pays off the Mexican and says another five gran will be paid on delivery to a blacksmith.

Both men are curious as to why a wagon load of paper would be worth that much. Lucas delivers, dealing with bandits along the way, while the same Mexican follows along behind.

Things start to become clear when a bar girl sets Lucas up to be beaten and taken to a rich rancher named Masters(Mimmo Palmara, billed as Dick Palmer). The girl’s father, an artist, is missing. Lucas proves adept at using his fists as well as his guns.

There’s more than a couple of twists along the way, a double cross, and a reveal I missed.

Not a great print. Scenes seemed to be missing and one spell of a couple of minutes with only sound.

But still not a bad film.

June 2015 Movie Round-Up

Mr. Wu (1927)

Mystery Street(1950)

His Name Was Holy Ghost(1972)

Kill The Poker Player(1972)

Tex and The Lord of The Deep(1985)

The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James (1986)

Kingsman:Secret Service (2014)

Mystery Street (1950)

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Bruce Bennett, Elsa Lanchester, Jan Sterling, John Sturges, Marshall Thompson, Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest

John Sturges diected this stylish B movie that showcased Ricardo Montalban, intent on blunting his Latin lover/musical image to more serious acting, as cop Peter Moralas investigating the murder of a young waitress/prostitute found washed up ashore off Boston. Missing several months, she’s but a skeleton by now.

With CSI precision, aided by Harvard medical Dr. Mcadoo(Bruce Bennett), they piece things together. Marshal Thomson is Henry Shanway, the innocent man dragged into the murder. Stopping off for a drink, and already drunk, he gets scooped up by the pregnant murder victim, Vivian Heldon(Jan Sterling), pissed that her married boy friend refuses to leave his wife, getting Shanway to let her drive them up to a meeting with boy friend. When he balks, she gets him out of his car, steals it, leaving him stranded. The murderer shoots her, strips the body and leaves her clothes in Shanway’s car, driving it into a lake.

Sally Forrest as the innocent’s wife, Grace and Betsy Blair as the victim’s friend, Jackie Elcott are the only ones who believe him innocent.

Mrs. Smerrling(Elsa Lancaster) owns a rooming house for women. She’s a scheming, money hungry blackmailer who knows the killer and has the murder weapon hidden.

And the murderer is James Joshua Harkley(Edmon Ryan).

The story of how they piece things all together is nicely done.

His Name Was Holy Ghost(Uomo avvisato mezzo ammazzato… Parola di Spirito Santo)1972

Spaghetti vet Gianni Garko plays a character that’s polar opposite his most famous role: that of the gunman Sartana. Where Sartana was always in black, Spirito Santo/ Holy Ghost appears wearing white, even to a cape, rides a white horse, and even has a white dove he calls Eagle. At times in the film, director Giuliano Carnimeo(billed as Anthony Ascott) reinforces the notion that he might be a real ghost. He seems to pop in and out at odd times, appearing suddenly to commit a little violence, then fading from the scene just as quick.

The latest “liberator” of Mexico has taken over and, as usual in these cases, he’s more interested in lining his pockets. General Ubarte(Poldo Bendandi) is his name and he’s setting in the middle of an impregnable fort where a fortune in gold is hidden. The Holy Ghost is looking for it. He had a map won in a poker game, then the loser tried to kill him. Unfortunately a bullet managed to blow out the map where the gold was marked.

Holy Ghost is looking for another fellow, Samuel Crow(Paolo Gozlino, billed asPaul Stephens), that may know where the gold is hidden, then the engineer who designed the fort, now a prisoner of Ubarte. He falls into the revolution when he rescues the deposed president Don Firmino(Georeg Rigaud) and his beautiful daughter Juana(Pilar Velázquez), a benevolent pair interested in freeing Mexico.

The Holy Ghost has a sidekick, Chicken(Cris Huerta), a big bluff man with religious leanings. He can fight though. Another spaghetti “face,” Nello Pazzafini, plays a Colonel.

This film came out at a time when the spaghetti western genre had recived a bit of revitalization with the comedy of the Trinity films. This one had a fair amount of comedy mixed within the usual spaghetti violence. The film has the usual assortment of odd weapons, a small machine gun for the Holy Ghost, a grenade launcher in the final assault on the fort, and even loaded eggs. Chickens were fed bits of gun powder abd their eggs exploded when close to flames(I don’t know about that one).

Not a bad film at all.

The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James(1986)

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Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson

Watched this film on Grit TV Sunday and enjoyed it tremendously. As I started doing a little research in preparatio for this post, I was surprised to fi d it was a TV movie. Cdrtainly didn’t have the look, but was gritty and involving all the way through.

Our heroes were played by Johnny Cash (Frank) and Kris Kristofferson (Jesse). Williw Nelson played General Jo Shelby and another country singer, David Allan Coe, has the role of a fellow outlaw named Whiskeyhead. Johny Cash’s wife, June Carter, played Mother James. Other members of the cast were those faces one sees often, but just can’t put a name to.

The title is somewhat of a misnomer. The “days” were actually a period of years, extending to a decade past the murder of Jesse James by Bob Ford, ending with his death at the hand of a drunk cowboy in his saloon. Don’t think in reality it happened, but Frank James was there to witness that shot and say bye to Ford as life was leaving his body.

Liked this one a lot.

Tex and The Lord of The Deep(Tex e il signore degli abissi)1985

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Giuliano Gemma, spaghetti western, William Berger

Spaghetti western icon Giuliano Gemma played another icon in this western very late in the spaghetti genre. Tex Willer was an Italian comic character first appearing in 1948. It was Italy’s take on the western genre. Tex was the most popular comic translated into over thirty languages, never English as far as I’ve been able to determine.

Tex Willer was a tough minded, though ethical character who lived in Arizona, while being a Texas ranger(I just report them, I don’t explain them. He defended Indians, married a Navajo woman, eventually becoming a chief. He also protected the innocent of all types of people. He’s been given the name of Night Eagle and wears almost a superhero emblem on his buckskin shirt: a white circle with a black eagle silhouette in the middle.

As the movie opens, Tex and his Navajo friend Tiger Jack(Carlo Mucari) find a murdered Navajo, left to rot on open ground. While Tiger buries the fellow, Tex rides ahead following the trail of two men on horseback with a wagon. It doesn’t take long before he finds two old enemies selling liquor to the Navajo. Tex had warned them about that and they paid with their lives.

Shortly, an old friend comes looking for Tex. A fellow Ranger named Kit Carson(no, not that one) played by spaghetti vet William Berger. He wants Tex to help find an army shipment, 300 rifles, stolen while being shipped. It was led by an old friend of the two men. Tex, along with Tiger Jack, set out with Carson to see what they can find. What they locate is the ambush site and men mummified in some sort of manner. Tiger finds a medallion of some type of animal lying at the site.

A sheriff in town recognizes it as belonging to an Indian that worked for the shipper, Bedford(Frank Braña) and interestingly enough he’d had a number of shipments taken in the last few months. All army stuff, weapons.

A fast shoot out and a gruesome death follow as they witness the mummifying process, which takes all of about thirty seconds. The Indiam they were looking for uses a blow gun to do the deed.

Therre’s a mystery here. Deep in Mexican mountains, a forbidden region, live a number of tribes, all descended from the Aztecs. They live peacefully, but one tribe has the idea of reuniting them all and slaughtering anybody with Spanish blood. Or white blood for that matter. There’s a princess

that doesn’t seem to have a lot to do either. But look good. They worship the Lord of the Abyss and get the mummifying weapon from him, a bit of volcanic rock.

An interesting film with a bit of magic thrown in and a character I was entirely unfamiliar with. The trailer below(one must click through to watch it on Youtube) has som of the artwork interspersed in the scenes.

Kingsman: The Secret Service(2014)

Saw this one today amd was amazed. Based on a comic book I believe, it was filled with wild action sequences and lots of violence.

Enjoyed myself tremendously .

Mr Wu(1927)

In watching this 1927 silent film, I saw why Lon Chaney earned the sobriquet The Man of A Thousand Faces. In the prologue, he plays the grandfather, old Mandarin Wu, and ages over the early part of the film until death. He also plays the title character who ages from a young man at his wedding to presiding over the death of his young bride after giving birth to a daughter to when he becomes a powerful Mandarin himself.

He dotes over his daughter as she grows up. A marriage has been arranged to unite two powerful families. The problem is Wu had raised his daughter not to fear love. She meets a young Englishman and they’ve been meeting in the gardens for months. Though they don’t show it, she’s pregnant with his child.

Wu learns of this when a young peasant spills the beans, seeing them in each other’s arms, earning the harshest consequences in “killing the messenger.”

Now Wu has a problem. In reading texts (for us unenlightened, the Chinese characters are translated), wu sees when a female has been despoiled, honor must be restored by killing his daughter. He or the nearest male relative must do the deed.

Will he do it? Will he seek revenge on the young man? Watch the film.

Lon Chaney could convey so much with just facial expressions. A consummate actor.