Where's The Wolf?

CRY OF THE WEREWOLF-1944-In this Universal quickie Dr. Morris (Fritz Leiber), curator of a famous museum has discovered the secret of their top attraction the mysterious Marie Latour . Her daughter (Nina Foch who was in THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE with Lugosi the same year) lives with a band of gypsies and can turn into a werewolf whenever she seeks to silence anyone who knows the truth. Morris' son (Stephen Crane, a fairly catatonic actor. It doesn't surprise me he only made 3 movies!) and his girlfriend Elsa (Osa Massen) investigate while a police lieutenant (Barton McLane) refuses to believe the supernatural goings-on. Blanche Yurka is a mysterious gypsy leader and John Abbott has a small role as a tour guide who loses his mind ("Much to be seen, more to be heard and plenty to imagine"). It's mostly talk and the wolf is rarely seen but it's only 63 minutes long and McLane's wisecracking cop is a highlight. Milton Parsons has one scene as a talkative funeral director and Ray Teal is an (un-credited) cop.

CRY OF THE WEREWOLF was Henry Levin's directorial debut. He made other low budget quickies but later "graduated" to bigger things like JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH and THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM as well as two Matt Helm movies starring Dean Martin.

Thanks for reading and once again thanks to my pal Tony for finding this!

The Mountains are Killers

KILLER MOUNTAIN-2011-After a research team disappears on a mysterious mountain in Bhutan, a climbing expert (Aaron Douglas) leads a rescue squad to find them (his wife is among the missing). After several bad decisions the four remaining members wind up kind of stranded on the mountain while the missing wife has her own adventure. Meanwhile a phony computer generated centipede like monster terrorizes everyone. It's all a plot by a dying doctor to find the lost city of Shambala.

Director Sheldon Wilson directed lots of other nonsense that's played on the SYFY channel like SNOWMAGEDDON.

Thanks to my buddy Tony for giving me this and thanks to you all for reading!

Perry Mason

THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS BRIDE-1935-Attorney Perry Mason (Warren William) is ready to go on vacation to China when an old friend named Rhoda (Margaret Lindsey) wants his help. It seems Rhoda thought her husband was dead and re-married. Turns out she was wrong and now hubby number one has returned and is blackmailing her. When he winds up dead Perry really gets involved. This very entertaining film has a clever script and great performances. Clare Dodd is Della Street and Allen Jenkins is Mason's right hand man, Spudsy. Olin Howlin is his wise cracking coroner friend. Also with Barton McLane, Donald Woods, Warren Hymer and Errol Flynn in one of his earliest roles (he appears in a short flashback toward the end of the story).

Almost forgotten today Warren William was a big star in his (relatively short) time. He also portrayed The Lone Wolf and Philo Vance and was in the second version of "The Maltese Falcon" called SATAN MET A LADY. This was one of 4 Perry Mason stories he made. He died in 1948 at the age of 53.

Director Michael Curtiz made THE WALKING DEAD starring Boris Karloff the next year.
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hanks for reading!

RIP

Lina Romay, a pretty brunette who starred in numerous risqué features for
longtime companion Jesus Franco, has died. According to online reports, Romay
died of cancer on February 15. She was 57.

Born Rosa María Almirall
Martínez in Barcelona on June 25, 1954, Romay began her film career while in her
late teens. The source for her artistic name was another Lina Romay, a singer
with Xavier Cugat's band who had featured roles in movies such as Love Laughs at
Andy Hardy and Joe Palooka in the Big Fight.

The Spanish Romay's movies,
however, were anything but G-rated fare. Her gialli and erotica efforts had
titles such as Tender and Perverse Emanuelle (1973), Justine and the Whip
(1979), The White Slave (1985), and Alone Against Terror (1987). From the early
'70s to 2005, she was featured in more than 100 productions.

Among
Romay's movies directed (and oftentimes edited/scored/shot/etc.) by Jesus Franco
(aka Jess Franco and countless other pseudonyms) were Swedish Nympho Slaves
(1977), The Sadist of Notre Dame (1979), White Cannibal Queen (1981), Hellhole
Women (1981), and Macumba Sexual (1983). Romay also helped Franco in the
directorial/editing process, and under the pseudonyms Lulu Laverne/Candy Coster
directed a dozen movies in the 1980s. Additionally, she was perfectly
comfortable performing in sexually explicit fare.

Needless to say, the
Franco-Romay movies were no-budget efforts. Yet, the couple managed to carve out
for themselves a lasting place in the realm of erotica/gialli
filmmaking.

"It's said than I am an exhibitionist," Romay once
(supposedly) remarked. "Every actor is one — I gladly accept that. I'm not a
hypocrite."

Cugat's Lina Romay, by the way, died at the age of 91 in
December 2010 in Pasadena, northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

http://www.altfg.com/blog/movie/lina-romay-sex-movie-horror-actress/

Doggone Zombies

DOGHOUSE-2009-A bunch of English gobs take their friend to a remote village so he'll forget about his divorce. Unfortunately for them (and us) the town is occupied by man hating, flesh eating women due to some kind of virus (Project: Cathouse).

This SHAWN OF THE DEAD/DEAD ALIVE inspired gore comedy features a variety of female zombies (a hairdresser, old lady, bride, butcher, dominatrix, etc.) but much of the heavy accented English dialogue was lost on me. At one point three of them (they meet an army sgt. at the village) dress in drag to evade the zombies. Things get more serious and deadly when the flesh eaters mutate. The weirdest death involves a fat dead housewife squashing her victim.

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Aptly Titled

THE LOSERS-2010-You know if you make a movie and call it The Losers it better be good otherwise people will be making stupid cracks like "Well at least it lives up to it's name" or "the real losers are the audience".

Unfortunately this derivative action nonsense lives up to those lines and more.

A US Special Forces group thought to be killed in the Bolivian Jungle hides out somewhere plotting revenge against a guy named Max (Jason Patric) who set them up. But of course the evil empire of The United States is also to blame. The idiotic acting and routine direction don't help things in this cliché ridden story.

Jeffery Dean Morgan, Zoe Saladana (Uhura in the new STAR TREK), Chris Evans (much better in CAPTAIN AMERICA) star. It's based on a comic from DC's Vertigo line. Director Sylvain White had made STOMP THE YARD.

Thanks for reading!

PS-I didn't look it up yet but I think DC once published an Army comic called THE LOSERS!

The Legend

RIKIDOZAN: A HERO EXTRAORDINARY-2004-If you don't know anything about Japanese professional wrestling you might still enjoy this Korean made biographical drama about The Rising Son's greatest grappler.

Kyung-gu Sol stars as Kim who comes from Korea to study Sumo wrestling in Japan soon after the end of WW2. Although he becomes Sumo he's not allowed to participate because he's Korean. After beating up a bouncer he meets actor Harold Sakata (played by real pro wrestler Kenji "The Great Muta" Muto) who beats him up and then introduces him into the world of pro wrestling. He changes his name and goes to America to make a name for himself. He makes pro wrestling a national past time in Japan after making a speech about standing up to "the big and bad white man". Later he helps Japan "regain it's lost pride" and get revenge on America by trouncing a foreign tag team but he dies from a stab wound he receives in a fight. (Some say he was killed by The Yakusa but this film seems to say he was just paranoid)

His main promoter Mr. Kanno is played by Tatsuya Fugi (from IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES). The story leaves out a lot of details especially regarding his wrestling career. It is true that he gave the post-Japanese population a much needed moral "shot in the arm" but pro-wrestling was (and still is) a choreographed sport so even though Rikidozan was standing up to "the American bullies", it was these very same bullies who had agreed to playing arrogant, cheating Westerners. Still his impact on pro-wrestling jn Japan can't be denied.

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Grizzly (not Adams)

GRIZZLY-1976-A 2000 lb. killer grizzly bear preys on campers in a state park. The ranger in charge (Christopher George) must find the murderous hirsute mammal. He also has to contend with drunken hunters, an idiot park supervisor and his would girlfriend photographer (Joan McCall who later wrote a sequel GRIZZLY II: THE CONCERT). A bear expert (Richard Jaeckel) says it's a hold over from the prehistoric era. Andrew Prine is a helicopter operator. It's rather gory for the time but sometimes the actors talk too softly.

This "Jaws on land" horror film (which was a big hit) was made by director William Girdler who made only 9 films in his brief career. He was killed in a helicopter accident at age 30 in 1978. He re-teamed with George the next year to make DAY OF THE ANIMALS.

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Tsuguri is Dangerous...and Smart....

THE STREETFIGHTER'S LAST REVENGE-1974-Sonny Chiba returns as Terry Tsuguri, in his third "street fighter" film. The plot concerns a formula for making heroin. He battles a lot of pushers over two cassette tapes. A crooked cop gets in the way and Terry (who's dubbed voice sounds like George Takei) beats up people while trying to regain one of the tapes. Reiko Ike (who has a brief topless scene) and Etsuko Shihomi (who was later in the "sister street fighter series) are the female leads. Masafumi Suzuki returns as Terry's former mentor.

Director Shigehiro Ozawa had made the previous 2 Streetfighter movies and later made SISTER STREETFIGHTER (with Shihomi).

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"It's Hard to Kill a Horse With a Flute".

CIRCLE OF IRON-1978-A fighter named Cord (Jeff Cooper) fights in a weird tournament where the winner gets a chance to find "the book of enlightenment" held by someone named Zetan. He wins but is expelled for cheating by the games master (Roddy McDowall in strange headgear). He sets out to find the book anyway and helps a philosophy spouting blind flute player (David Carradine, similar to his Caine KUNG-FU character) who beats up three attackers in alley.

To find the book Cord must go through several trials. In the first he battles the leader (Carradine again) of a tribe of monkey men. Then in the film's most amusing scene he meets "man in oil" (Eli Wallach), a doctor who sits in a tub of oil to destroy his sexual urges. Cord then meets a barbarian leader Changsha (Carradine once more) who fights pro wrestler Earl Maynard and eventually provides Cord with his next trial. There he also meets Tara (Erica Greer) who tries to make Cord break his vow of chastity and gets crucified instead. In a dream he confronts Death (Carradine in his fourth role). Then he and the blind flute player have a few adventures. At the end Cord does meet Zetan (Christopher Lee) and finds out the secret of the book.
Carradine is great in his multiple roles (especially the blind flute player saying things like: "A fool is the twin of the wise") Antony De Longis is Morthond.

The Zen Buddhism inspired story was developed by Bruce Lee, James Coburn and Stirling Silliphant (who co-wrote the screenplay) as a vehicle for Lee (who died in 1973 ). Despite this it does seem influenced by the KUNG-FU TV show. Silliphant was a prolific TV writer who also penned the original CHILDREN OF THE DAMMED, THE SWARM and several Irwin Allen disaster movies.

Director Richard Moore was a cinematographer on films like WILD IN THE STREETS, MYRA BRECKENRIDGE and (later) ANNIE. CIRCLE is his only film as director. Co-scripter Stanley Mann also wrote DAMIEN: OMEN 2 and METEOR. It takes place in the Far East but was filmed in Israel.

"A fish saved my life once. I ate it".

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Stop Using The Dead To Make Bad Movies!

FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: OUTBREAK ON A PLANE- 2007-Cliché ridden idiocy mostly takes place on a plane where a dead female scientist has been brought back to life by some stupid scientists. She infects some passengers. They include the 3 stupid scientists responsible for the nonsense (they created some kind of virus), a Tiger Woods clone, a cop and his prisoner, a nun and other cretins. It sort of seems like a comedic takeoff but there's no comedy. The gory SFX are ok but most of the acting is pretty bad and things really get ridiculous in the climax. The director Scott Thomas produced the '90's X-MEN animated series. There's some TV actors in it and Dale Midkiff, Brian Thompson, Richard Tyson and Kenneth J. O'Connor.

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Karloff Soon After Frankenstein

BEHIND THE MASK-1932-A Secret Service man (Jack Holt two years before BLACK MOON) poses as an escaped convict to infiltrate a drug ring run by the mysterious Mr. X. Edward Van Sloan is an evil sadistic doctor behind the ring who uses medical operations as an excuse to kill and hides the dope in coffins in a graveyard. He gets a lot of inside info because he's also on the crime committee trying to bring down the ring. Van Sloan's FRANKENSTEIN co-star Boris Karloff appears as one of his henchman (he's good in the role but his character seems to disappear. Maybe he had a make-up call for THE MASK OF FU-MANCHU which he made the same year...). Constance Cummings (who was in THE GUILTY GENERATION with Karloff the year before) is Holt's nominal love interest.

Jack Holt (said to have been the Chester Gould 's model for Dick Tracy) was a popular silent screen star who's career waned in the sound era although he continued to work until his death in 1951.

Director John Francis Dillon started his film career in 1914 and made a slew of silent movies. He later made one of Clara Bow's few talkies CALL HER SAVAGE but died of a heart attack in 1934.

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It Would Have Been Better If They'd Met Abbott & Costello!

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE-1958-It's said that this notorious campy space nonsense started out as a serious science fiction story (the story was by Ben Hecht and the script was written by Charles Beaumont who wrote many classic TWILIGHT ZONE episodes) but I guess when they hired Ben Schwab who produced many of the later BOWERY BOYS entries to produce it and Edward Bernds who directed 3 Stooges shorts to helm it, things got out of control.

Three nutty astronauts (straight laced Eric Fleming, womanizer Patrick Waltz and comic relief Dave Willock) go on a "milk run" to deliver a famous scientist Prof. Konrad (NOT OF THIS EARTH's Paul Birch) to his space satellite. Before they can get here however a mysterious beam destroys the base and sends the ship crash landing on Venus (with Earth gravity and oxygen). It turns out Venus is inhabited by nothing but women lead by the evil masked Queen Ilyana (Laurie Mitchell) who's scarred face makes her hate all men. She also wants to destroy the Earth.

Top billed Zsa Zsa Gabor (some Venusians it seems have Hungarian accents) is Talleah, a scientist and head of a movement to over throw Ilyana ("I hate zat queen!"). The dumb men need women love story seems to be intentional but I think it got out of hand. For an Allied Artists movie it does have Technicolor and Cinemascope which kind of hide the cheesy effects.

Marilyn Buferd (from THE UNEARTHLY) has a small role as a traitor who is vaporized. Joi Lansing and Ralph Gamble have un-credited roles too. Fleming was starring on TV in RAWHIDE at the time. Gabor (still alive at the time of this writing) had a small role in Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL the same year.

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Early Voodoo

BLACK MOON-1934-A woman (Dorothy Burgess) raised on a tropical island where she became involved with voodoo rituals decides to go back for a visit despite being happily married. Her husband (Jack Holt) can't go with her because of business (bad move) so he sends his secretary (Fay Wray, a year after KING KONG), who's secretly in love with her boss, to accompany her and their young daughter. Arriving on the island she's treated almost like a goddess by the natives and refuses to leave. When hubby arrives to take them all back things get worse. It appears the daughter is to become a human sacrifice!

Clarence Muse is also featured as a boat operator and although it's his usual racial stereotypical role his character does do a little more than just stand around taking orders.
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his early pre-code voodoo film (Burgess wears a very revealing night gown in one scene) was directed by the underrated Roy William Neill who made THE BLACK ROOM with Karloff the next year.

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From Thailand

GOODMAN TOWN-2002-In a post apocalyptic future Earth has been devastated (at least in Thailand where this was produced). The most prosperous place is Goodman Town and everyone wants to go there. It's run by a cruel but stupid guy named Tiger Yai. A one eyed fortune teller says that if Yai doesn't marry a certain girl in 4 days he will die. He's convinced his dream girl is the model from a newspaper ad. He offers a big reward to the one who can find her. Two of his idiot henchmen find a woman in a tattoo parlor who looks like her but they lose her when Tiger's enemies from Dark Commune attack.

The action, violence and acting are all over the top in this crazed comedy directed Sakchai Sribonnam and influenced by Miike, Tarantino and Leone.

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Quick Audie

THE QUICK GUN-1964-A gun slinger named Clint Cooper (Audie Murphy) returns to his home town to warn the sheriff (James Best) that bank robbery Jud Spangler (Ted De Corsia in a good evil role) and his gang are targeting his town's bank. He has a inane bar fight with the father (Walter Sande)) and nephew (Rex Holman) of two brothers he killed. Nobody likes him because they think he has an ulterior motive even though he warned them and stays on to help fight the gang but when he kills the father and nephew in self defense the sheriff arrests him and locks him in jail leaving the town to fend off the hombres themselves! 
Later a cowardly preacher deputizes Cooper and he takes on the whole gang.

Frank Ferguson is the philosophical deputy and Merry Anders is his former girlfriend, now the sheriff's fiancé. It also features Frank Gerstle, Mort Mills, Raymond Hatton and William Fawcett and is based 
on a story "The Fastest Gun" which  '50's horror vet Robert Kent adapted. Director Sidney Salkow was coming to the end of his long career in TV and movies. Also in '64 he directed some scenes for the Italian lensed LAST MAN ON EARTH.

Audie Murphy was the most decorated hero of WW2. He came to Hollywood (on advice from James Cagney) and starred in a biography of his exploits TO HELL AND BACK. He made 44 movies in his career including John Huston's RED BADGE OF COURAGE but in the last 12 years of his life he made only westerns. He died at age 45 in a plane crash in 1971.

Co-star James Best starred in THE KILLER SHREWS in 1959 and went on to a successful career in TV (as actor and director). At the time of this writing there is a KILLER SHREWS sequel in the works!
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hanks for reading and have a Happy Groundhogs Day tomorrow!