Showing posts with label david lowell rich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label david lowell rich. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Vaughn's Debut

 (tcm)

 

NO TIME TO BE YOUNG-1957-Three immature losers can't face reality. Robert Vaughn (screen debut) is Buddy, a wise ass mamma's boy who wants to run away because he's afraid when he's drafted. He's also dating one of his college teachers Mrs. Dexter (Dorothy Green). Bob (Roger Smith) works in a grocery store and wants to marry waitress Gloria (Merry Anders) but he's partially responsible for her broken back. Stu (Tom Pittman) is a failed writer who lied to marry his wife. After much drama and Freudian plot twists they decide to rob Bob's place of business. Despite some reluctance on Bob and Stu's part, they go through with it but Buddy shoots the store manager. The trio fracture and Bob and Stuff are arrested. Buddy loses the money (while dancing…) and crashes a stolen truck. It's unclear whether he dies or not.1940's Superman Kirk Alyn has an unbilled role. 

Director David Lowell Rich later directed the 3 Stooges in HAVE ROCKET-WILL TRAVEL. He did a lot of TV later but occasionally did a big screen film (MADAME X (1966), THE CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79 (1979)). Vaughn starred in TEENAGE CAVEMAN the following year.

 (imdb)


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Thursday, November 19, 2020

Moe and Larry and Curly Joe

 


 HAVE ROCKET WILL, TRAVEL-1959-The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry and Curly Joe) are maintenance men for a NASA like rocket foundation headed by JP Morse (Jerome Cowan). Inga Naarvey (Anna-Lisa) heads the project and admits she's “married to science” when psychologist Ted Benson (Robert Colbert; later in Irwin Allen's "Time Tunnel on TV) suggests marriage. 

When JP tells Inga the foundation might close down the trio (who have taken a liking to Inga and vice versa) decide to make their own rocket fuel. Moe tries to stuff Larry down a sink and they make a general mess of the place (and JP). They hide out in the supposedly abandoned rocket and when it's accidentally launched, they go into space headed for Venus. 

After some hi-jinx with no gravity they land on Venus and encounter a giant spider and then a unicorn whose horn is stuck in a rock. They help him and he takes them to a city. Along the way they sing a song. Later they meet a talking flying electric car and then a weird robot with multiple arms. It shrinks the trio and puts them in a cage. The machine makes robot doubles of them but they botch up everything as well. Somehow the zany three make it back to Earth and are hailed as heroes. At a party in their honor the stooges wind up making all the party goers fight each other. Their doubles show up too!

This was the "new" Three Stooges first feature length film as the team had a resurgence in the late '50's due to their Columbia shorts being shown on TV. It's also Curly Joe DeRita's debut. He replaced jolly Joe Besser who co-starred in the last series of their short comedies. Though this black and white movie was a box office success Moe didn't like it and really it's that good. Later efforts were much funnier. 

Director David Lowell Rich was a busy TV director who later made many TV movies and the blaxploitation film THAT MAN BOLT. 

https://moviemeltdown.blogspot.com/2018/10/bolt.html


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Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Bolt



THAT MAN BOLT-1973-A Karate expert/pro-fessional courier Jefferson Bolt (Fred William-son) locked up in a Macao prison is hired /black-mailed by a mysterious English man named Griffiths (Byron Webster) to deliver 1 million dollars from Hong Kong. When he lands in Las Vegas some mobsters try to kill him, so after a car chase he gets help from another mobster Connie (Jack Ging). At a casino he meets singer Samantha Nightingale (Teresa Graves) and after they have sex she's killed in an attempt on Bolt's life. He hightails it to Hong Kong where things get a little confusing when an Asian assassin is hired by Javanese merchant banker Kumata (Masatoshi Nakamura) to kill Bolt. 

The acting, dialogue and fights are sub-par but it also features appearances by Karate and kickboxing champions like Mike Stone, Kenji Kazama, Emil Farkus and David Chow. 

THAT MAN BOLT has two credited directors. One Henry Levin made his directing debut in 1944 with semi-horror movie CRY OF THE WEREWOLF. In the 1970's he directed several Matt Helm movies. BOLT was one of his last features. The other was David Lowell Rich who started in TV around 1950 and continuing till the mid '60's when he made some feature films like EYE OF THE CAT and THE PLAINSMAN. He went back to TV making many TV movies and in the early '80's returned to some feature film work including THE CONCORDE-AIRPORT '69. 

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