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FULL TIME KILLER-2001-Two hit men Tok (Andy Lau) and O (Takashi Sorimachi) clash and decide to take each other out in this over long Hong Kong action drama from the director team of Johnny To and Ka-Fai Wai (MY LEFT EYE SEES GHOSTS). Both fall for a young Taiwanese house cleaner (Kelly Lin). Simon Yam plays a police officer determined to bring them both down. Though it might have been shorter it contains some terrific action scenes.

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Better Never Than Later

28 WEEKS LATER-2007-Terrible sequel to the already overrated 28 DAYS LATER finds London admitting people back into the city but thanks to a woman “carrier” who infects her husband the cannibal zombies are back. So is the irritatingly shaky camera work. The infected woman’s kids are the lead characters. The US Army is the real villain here murdering both infected zombies and innocent humans. They even use napalm. It’s much gorier than the original, which might satisfy undiscriminating viewers. 

The director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (from Spain) had previously only made films in his native tongue. Maybe he should have done this one in Spanish.


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Lost In Space...Again!

LOST IN SPACE-1998-As movie remakes of TV shows go this is pretty good. Gary Oldman is great as Dr. Smith. Dr. Robinson (William Hurt), his wife (Mimi Rogers) and their three children rocket off into space in a ship piloted by Don West (Matt LeBlanc). Heather Graham is older daughter Judy, a real egghead. Smith is a reluctant stowaway. They wind up being blasted into an alternate future where they meet an adult Will (Jared Harris) and his robot assistant Dr. Smith! Metal alien spiders figure in the plot.

Original series cast members June Lockhart, Mark Goddard, Marta Kristen and Angela Cartwright also appear. Edward Fox also has a small role.

Director Stephen Hopkins previous made PREDATOR 2, JUDGEMENT NIGHT and THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS. He later made THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS.


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More Bruce Clones

BRUCE LEE WE MISS YOU-1976-A martial artist who worships the original Bruce and acts a little like him too (wannabe Lee clone Bruce Li who made many Hong Kong movies with the name Bruce in the titles) is devastated when “the great one” dies. He decides Lee was murdered and investigates. There are a lot of fights (the last fight goes on very long) and not much else. At one point he fights a gang of Asian thugs made up to look Black. 

Star Li (from Taiwan) later directed a couple of movies. He retired from acting in the mid ‘80’s.

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Zombies Rule OK-Part 3

ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY-1945-Two stupid publicity agents (Alan Carney & Wally Brown) get in trouble with a gangster (Sheldon Leonard) when they promise a real life zombie will appear at the opening of his nightclub and then can’t deliver. He sends them to the island of San Sebastian to get a real zombie and they meet a mad scientist Dr. Renault (played by Bela Lugosi) who’s trying to make his own “scientific zombie” in his lab.

Darby Jones (from I WALK WITH A ZOMBIE) is Renault’s living dead servant. Also with Anne Jeffreys, Ian Wolfe and Frank Jenks.

Brown & Carney made a series of RKO comedies between 1943 and 1946. They are usually described as a “lower case Abbott & Costello” but are more like a lower case Bud Abbott & Curly Howard! 

Lugosi would be in the team’s GENIUS AT WORK the next year too. Director Gordon Douglas later helmed the giant ant fest THEM. 

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Zombies Rule Ok-Part 2

REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES-1943-More WW2 /zombie fun from Monogram. John Carradine is Dr. Max Hendrich Von Alterman, a Nazi scientist working in his jungle lab to raise an zombie army that will win the war. He also has a zombie like wife (Veda Ann Borg) who strolls around. Gale Storm (the future MY LITTLE MARGIE TV star) is his secretary.

Cowboy star Bob Steele (the future Duffy on TV’s F-TROOP) plays an undercover agent. Robert Lowery who later played Batman in the second serial based on the comic book plays the male lead but once again Mantan Moreland steals the show! Hungarian born director Steve Sekely later made HOLLOW TRIUMPH and THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS.

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Zombies Rule Ok-Part 1

KING OF THE ZOMBIES-1941-Hokey horror fun from Monogram. The three man crew of a small plane crash lands on an island where the mad scientist Dr. Sangre (Henry Victor) is using voodoo and black magic to raise the dead. Actually he wants to transfer the mind of a US admiral into the body of his niece to obtain secret government information!

Dick Purcell (who’d play the lead in the Captain America serial 2 years later) and John Archer try to figure it all out. Mantan Moreland is Purcell’s (usually sacred) butler but despite the racial stereotype Moreland’s character is the only one who actually knows what’s really going on, has the funniest lines and helps save the day! Victor had played Hercules the strong man in FREAKS.

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Chiba Trio

KARATE BULL FIGHTER-1977-Sonny Chiba plays another unbeatable Karate drifter in this standard Martial Arts drama from Japan that's actually based on the real life of a Korean fighter who changed his name to Mas Oyama and founded the Kyokushin Karate Organization in 1953.

After killing a bull with his bare hands, Chiba wanders around the countryside getting into trouble with various dojos. Later he befriends a young boy (and beats up his father) and has to fight a bear (man in a bad costume)! There are lots of fights, some blood and Chiba gives his classic stare at the camera several times.

KARATE BEAR FIGHTER-(Kyokushin Buraiken)-This is actually a sequel to the above title with Shinichi “known as Sonny in The US" Chiba. Everyone is on his case because he’s such a great Karate fighter especially a certain Dojo. He beats up all the students. He beats up a father who abuses his son and helps the boy fish. (and catches them with his bare hands) For some reason he must fight a bear to get money for the injured father. Since he once killled a bull barehanded fighting a bear seems like a reasonable task I guess! Chiba does his usual staring and fights a lot.

KARATE FOR LIFE-1977-Sonny Chiba returns for the third time as Karate master Mas Oyama in the last of this martial arts trilogy based on a real person. It’s the best of the 3 with some great and violent fights. Oyama beats up a Karate school and gets involved in pro-wrestling and gangsters. Director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi made all three in the series.

The real deal!
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Everything's Archie!

WILD GUITAR-1962-Arch Hall Jr. stars as Bud Eagle, a Rock-A-Billy yokel who comes to LA and is exploited by agent Mike McCauley (William Watters AKA Arch Hall Sr.). Director Ray Dennis Steckler plays Steak, McCauley’s strong-arm thug. He meets (former amateur ice skater) Nancy Czar and performs on a TV show and becomes a big star. After being cajoled and blackmail (and unsuccessfully seduced by a hooker) Bud and his brother sent things straight. 

WILD GUITAR is a pretty wacky little movie made in the pre-Beatles era of teenage rock and roll. The music is ok but Arch’s hair is really out of control. This was the first feature directed by co-star Steckler. EEGAH! was made the same year by the father and son team. Arch Jr. would star in the eerie THE SADIST the next year.



THE SADIST-1963-If you’ve only seen Arch Hall Jr. in EEGAH! or WILD GUITAR you owe it to yourself to see him in this movie as a deranged psycho! As he proclaims before the credits roll: “I have been hurt by others. And I will hurt them. I will make them suffer like I have suffered”.

Three schoolteachers on their way to a baseball game have car trouble. They pull into a dilapidated gas station for help. Ed (Richard Alden) and Doris (Helen Hovey) are the two youngish sweethearts to be types. Carl (Don Russell) is the older guy. Their quick stop for a new water hose becomes a nightmare when they are confronted by loony thug Charlie Tibbs (Hall Jr.) and his imbecile girlfriend Judy (Marilyn Manning also in EEGAH!). He’s a mass murderer on the run and wants the teach-mobile fixed so he and his moll can make a quick getaway. Fortunately Ed takes practically the whole film to fix the damn thing. However Charlie manages to taunt the trio every chance he gets. He pistol whips Carl and then shoots him in cold blood after drinking a coke. There’s a good deal of suspense and a few interesting plot twists. Hall is really slimy in the lead and quite surprising after the goody teenage roles he had been playing.

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Which is It?

I just watched a Japanese Samurai film called KILL! (1968) directed by Kihachi Okamoto. I'm a little perplexed by it however. I'm not sure if it's a comedy set-up or just some kind of cliched (is that a word?) homage (??). It's kind of crazy with several storylines going on all at once. But it's not boring! Tatsuya Nakadai gives pretty cool performance but I got a headache and a sore throat now so I think I'll stop writing....

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Just Imagine...if it was real...

JUST IMAGINE-1930-This whacked out musical-comedy-fantasy is set in the far flung future of 1980 where everyone has numbers instead of names. Part of the plot involves a man (comedian El Brendel, who speaks with a phony Swedish accent) from 1930 being revived in the future. The other part has a guy J-21(John Garrick) who's in love with a married women LN-18 (Maureen O'Sullivan in her third movie). The musical numbers are pretty hokey and quite bizarre in some cases. The art deco sets and special effects are great though.

For years this movie was unseen (I think it might have been considered a "lost film") but in the '60's the horror magazine "Famous Monsters Of Filmland" occasionally ran stills from JI and editor Forrest J Ackerman touted it as one of the greatest films ever made. I wonder if he ever saw it?!

Anyway, a scientist convinces the J-21 to take a spaceship to Mars with his best friend RT-42 and Brendel, who's character chooses the name Single 0. The inhabitants are very strange and the men appear to be gay ("She's not the queen, he is")!

JUST IMAGINE was written by the songwriting team of DeSylva, Henderson and Brown (they wrote a huge amount of famous songs but none from this movie) and directed by David Miller who made many movies in the '30's & '40's including directing Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre in the Big Band comedy-mystery YOU'LL FIND OUT. In the late '50's he turned to TV. 

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It's Snowing and I Have To Shovel...

....So this is the best I can do.....




MAN WITH A GUN-1994-Micheal Madsen stars as a hitman who narrates part of the story. He talks about "The Kingdom" and says: "The good die young but the bad die ugly". He works for crooked land developer Gary Busey who wants Madsen to kill his wife (Betty Boop voiced Jennifer Tilley) who is screwing up his transactions. "If you can kill a rattlesnake, you can kill my wife".

Trouble is Madsen and Tilley are already having an affair. Fortunately Tilley has a twin sister who Madsen kidnaps and plans on killing instead. Of course he winds up falling in love with her. Blah, blah, blah. Robert Loggia plays a mob boss.

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They Live...

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT-1949- is an incredible film noir by Nicolas Ray.

It stars Farley Granger (who had just been in ROPE and would go on to co-star in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN for Hitchcock) and Cathy O'Donnell as doomed lovers involved in robbery, deception and killing.

Director Ray creates an undercurrent of doom in this film that is unbelievable. You know things can never work out. You just watch and wait for it to fall apart. Ray would go on to make REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, JOHNNY GUITAR and KING OF KINGS but he never really made another one like this.

Howard Da Silva (who was later blacklisted) and Jay C Flippen ( a veteran character actor later in Kubrick's THE KILLING and THE WILD ONE) are the guys who lead Granger's character astray. O'Donnell was headed for stardom until she incurred the wrath of Samuel Goldwyn. She made sporadic film appearances after that (her last film was BEN-HUR in 1959). She died of cancer in 1970 at the age of 45.

THEY LIVE BY NIGHT also includes in it's cast Will Wright, Ian Wolfe, William Phipps and my favorite character of all time Byron Foulger!

Granger (still alive at the time of this writing) would later on star in SENSO for Luchino Visconti but wound up playing in mostly low budget films in Europe and America....

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Ring of Fire/The Strangler

RING OF FIRE-(1961)-David Janssen (2 years before THE FUGITIVE TV show) stars as a sheriff kidnapped by three bank robbers (future "Riddler" Frank Gorshin, Joyce Taylor, James Johnson) and forced to lead them through the Oregon forest. It's ok at this point. One of the thugs falls off a cliff and Gorshin and Taylor are captured by a huge posse but an errant cigarette sets the woods ablaze. Janssen has to save the day and romance Taylor.

The forest fire SFX are very well done and bring the movie up an notch.

RING OF FIRE was produced by the husband and wife team of Andrew and Virginia Stone. Andrew directed and Virginia edited (a key to the whole climax). Their previous film had been a disaster epic THE LAST VOYAGE where they actually sank a real ocean liner!



THE STRANGLER-1963-This black & white thriller stars Victor Buono as a lab technician driven to strangling young nurses by his nagging, domineering wheelchair bound mother (future Grandma Walton Ellen Corby). A milk drinking detective trys to catch him while Russ Bender portraying a psychiatrist explains what a fetish is. 

Buono (an underrated actor) gives an intense performance as the cool headed killer. Also with Wally Campos and James B. Sikking. Director Burt Topper later made SOUL HUSTER with Nai Bonet and Fabian.

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AKARUI MIRAI-(BRIGHT FUTURE)-2003-I just watched this strange (and kind of disturbing) Japanese film from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Two friends work at a boring laundry job. One dreams of the bright future of the title while the other has his own agenda for dealing with his inner rage including converting his "pet" saltwater jellyfish to fresh water. While some of the scenes may seem pointless and disjointed it makes you think a little more than usual about just what the heck is going on! It's not for all tastes and you may lose interest too soon.

That was a terrible review but I'm tired and have to go to bed...

Good night!

J-Horror Quickies

Wow! I'm very busy tonight. These short reviews will have to do!

INUGAMI-(2001)-is a strange Japanese film from director Masato Harada. It's about a teacher from Tokyo who goes to work in an isolated country village where everyone believes the curse of "The Inugami" hangs over the women of a weird local family. Flashbacks involving incest, murder and the birth of a baby try and explain it and a violent blood rite (shot partially in black & white) caps the climax but much of the story is lost in Harada's overly stylish direction (well, something like that...)

SPELLBOUND-(2003)-Another well made film by Masato Harada (see above) set in the Japanese banking world. Federal investigators try to expose corruption while a female reporter has her own investigation going on. It also focuses on how it all effects the private lives of some of the people caught up in the whole thing. The acting is excellent but Tatsuya Nakadai (from Kurosaw's KAGEMUSHA) kind of steals the show. It's engaging but some might find the storyline (which is based on real events) not so interesting.
Director Harada spend a lot of time as a critic in L.A. before turning to movie making. His "cyber-punk" themed GUNHED which received a 1998 US released was largely changed by the distributer and credited to that very busy "late" director Alan Smithee.
ROUND 1-2003-Directed by Daiki Yamada is a Japanese/Korean co-production comedy/drama about Toppo, a failed Japanese actor who becomes a con-man. Parts involving The Yakuza are kind of violent.

ISOLA MULTIPLE PERSONALITY GIRL-2000-This Japanese horror tale seems to be inspired by RINGU. It uses a lot of similar effects and even has "found footage film" from an old (but fake) movie, a plot device used in several other Japanese films. A woman (Yoshino Kimura) who can read minds comes to help victims during the Kobe earthquake. She meets a strange young girl (played by Akira Kurosawa's granddaughter Yu) who now suffers psychotic episodes after participating in an outer body experience experiment go awry.

Very strange but not much else. I've read Takashi Miike has a cameo when one character (played by Susumu Terajima) commits suicide but I missed him. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I'd know what he looks like anyway! Directed by Toshiyuki Mizutani.

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It's A Snap!

GINGER SNAPS-2001-This is an off-beat bizzaro horror film from Canada. Two misfit sisters, Ginger and Brigitte like taking staged photos of bloody deaths. One night Ginger is attacked by a werewolf and begins to change...

It might not be for every horror fan though (there's a lot of talk about menstruation) and there are a few plot lapses and twists that don't really make it. The finale takes forever to wind up and it is a little bit of a let down but I liked it and Emily Perkins who plays Brigitte is great! I guess some of the dialogue was suppose to funny but I'm not sure! The director, John Fawcett had done mostly Canadian TV before this. Followed by 2 sequels.

GINGER SNAPS-2: UNLEASHED-2004-This is an excellent sequel to the usually overlooked Part 1. Brigitte (Emily Perkins) still has were-wolf troubles and gets locked up in a hospital for problem girls. A blond girl named Ghost (Tatiana Maslny) sort of befriends her while an intern gives the inmates drugs for sex. The head doctor says everything is in Brigitte’s drug induced mind. Eventually that’s proven wrong of course. The now dead Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) shows up occasionally too. The acting is great but the ending is a bit of a letdown once again. Director Brett Sullivan was usually a film editor. It was followed quickly by another sequel GINGER SNAPS BACK: THE BEGINNING by a different director. 

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He's Tight, Together and Mean!

WILLE DYNAMITE-1974-Serious (but sometimes unintentionally funny) “blaxpoltation” film in the world of pimps and hookers.

Roscoe Orman (later a regular on SESAME STREET) is the title character an outrageous vicious pimp with a menagerie of women working for him. Diana Sands (in her second to last movie) co-stars as a social worker trying to put him out of business. Thalmus Rasulala is district attorney boyfriend who tries to help. Meanwhile 2 cops (George Murdock and Albert Hall) try to nail him. Unlike a lot of other films like this the story doesn’t glorify Willie but the kind of happy ending ruins it. His pimp clothes are really something though!

Director Gilbert Moses made THE FISH THAT ATE PITTSBURGH and did a lot of TV.

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