What was the last movie you saw?

[KGeo777]

RED SONJA 1985 - Been a fan of this since I caught it one lazy afternoon. I can't remember if I ever saw it on VHS. The production design is so good in this. The costumes and the ruins of strange monuments and a weird dragon bridge. It won me over when I saw the dragon bridge. The score is also memorable. It is a well-written film (one of the writers did the Flashman books). The cast does about as good a job as they can, between the newcomer in the title role and Sandahl Bergman - the evil queen of the story (her American voice seems out of sync with her underlings like Ronald Lacey but she has the dancer skills for the sword fight at the end). The sword fighting is really good in this--Brigitte Nielsen was given proper training to make it convincing--I couldn't tell who was doubling for her in the somersault bits. And Arnie does what I think is the closet match to REH Conan as Kalidor (for some reason they could not use the Conan name). The other two films burdened him with a string of sidekicks but here it is only a kid who I did not find irritating.

 

[JunkMonkey]

RED SONJA 1985 - Been a fan of this since I caught it one lazy afternoon. I can't remember if I ever saw it on VHS. The production design is so good in this. The costumes and the ruins of strange monuments and a weird dragon bridge. It won me over when I saw the dragon bridge. The score is also memorable. It is a well-written film (one of the writers did the Flashman books). The cast does about as good a job as they can, between the newcomer in the title role and Sandahl Bergman - the evil queen of the story (her American voice seems out of sync with her underlings like Ronald Lacey but she has the dancer skills for the sword fight at the end). The sword fighting is really good in this--Brigitte Nielsen was given proper training to make it convincing--I couldn't tell who was doubling for her in the somersault bits. And Arnie does what I think is the closet match to REH Conan as Kalidor (for some reason they could not use the Conan name). The other two films burdened him with a string of sidekicks but here it is only a kid who I did not find irritating.

If you like Red Sonja I can totally recommend Hundra - if you can find a copy - a low budget American/Italian film from a year or two earlier with an Enio Morricone score (they are very similar in places). Less opulent in production values and rougher round the edges but I think it's a much better film. (More real - no wizardry and mystical magic stuff.)

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

What Waits Below AKA Secrets of the Phantom Caverns (1984)

Short review: Unofficial remake of The Mole People.

Starts as if it were a war movie. Our hero is "somewhere in Nicaragua" spying on the local soldiers. An old buddy shows up out of nowhere. The locals spot them, leading to a big battle/chase scene, with the two guys easily shooting down and escaping from countless soldiers. They get to a Jeep and drive it over a cliff into a lake. Somehow, we're told, "twelve hours later," they're helicoptering into Belize. Mind you, this Nicaragua stuff has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.

Our hero is some kind of super cave expert. He's been dragged to Belize so he can help the US military set up a special radio transmitter inside a cave. (There's some explanation for why this is the perfect place for the gizmo.) The problem is that there isn't an entrance to the place! Some archeologists are around, claiming to have found artifacts "millions of years old" (!), so they're interested in the cave as well. One of them is our pretty blonde love interest.

Anyway, something causes an entrance to the cave to open, so our antagonist, a nasty officer who has some bad history with the hero, orders the archeologists to stay out, and sends two soldiers inside with the gizmo. Before you can say "redshirt," they and the gizmo disappear. Our hero, the archeologists, the officer, and some other cannon fodder go inside to find out what happened.

After a lot of wandering around, and an attack by a reptilian monster -- we only see its huge, fang-filled head, so I'm not sure if it's a giant snake or a dinosaur-like critter -- we finally learn that there are a bunch of albino folks in pure white Star Trek style duds living in the cave, and they're not happy about the intruders.

Silly stuff, to be sure, and it takes itself very seriously, but it's moderately amusing in a 1930's pulp magazine adventure kind of way.

 

[KGeo777]

If you like Red Sonja I can totally recommend Hundra - if you can find a copy - a low budget American/Italian film from a year or two earlier with an Enio Morricone score (they are very similar in places). Less opulent in production values and rougher round the edges but I think it's a much better film. (More real - no wizardry and mystical magic stuff.)

I have seen it--it was entertaining. Felt like a precursor to Xena in some ways.

 

[Jeffbert]

RED SONJA 1985 - Been a fan of this since I caught it one lazy afternoon. I can't remember if I ever saw it on VHS. The production design is so good in this. The costumes and the ruins of strange monuments and a weird dragon bridge. It won me over when I saw the dragon bridge. The score is also memorable. It is a well-written film (one of the writers did the Flashman books). The cast does about as good a job as they can, between the newcomer in the title role and Sandahl Bergman - the evil queen of the story (her American voice seems out of sync with her underlings like Ronald Lacey but she has the dancer skills for the sword fight at the end). The sword fighting is really good in this--Brigitte Nielsen was given proper training to make it convincing--I couldn't tell who was doubling for her in the somersault bits. And Arnie does what I think is the closet match to REH Conan as Kalidor (for some reason they could not use the Conan name). The other two films burdened him with a string of sidekicks but here it is only a kid who I did not find irritating.

"a kid who I did not find irritating"!? That kid so needed a trip to the woodshed!

I mentioned this film a few months ago, and would be surprised to learn that I did not make a similar comment then.

 

[Jeffbert]

What Waits Below AKA Secrets of the Phantom Caverns (1984)

Short review: Unofficial remake of The Mole People.

Starts as if it were a war movie. Our hero is "somewhere in Nicaragua" spying on the local soldiers. An old buddy shows up out of nowhere. The locals spot them, leading to a big battle/chase scene, with the two guys easily shooting down and escaping from countless soldiers. They get to a Jeep and drive it over a cliff into a lake. Somehow, we're told, "twelve hours later," they're helicoptering into Belize. Mind you, this Nicaragua stuff has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.

Our hero is some kind of super cave expert. He's been dragged to Belize so he can help the US military set up a special radio transmitter inside a cave. (There's some explanation for why this is the perfect place for the gizmo.) The problem is that there isn't an entrance to the place! Some archeologists are around, claiming to have found artifacts "millions of years old" (!), so they're interested in the cave as well. One of them is our pretty blonde love interest.

Anyway, something causes an entrance to the cave to open, so our antagonist, a nasty officer who has some bad history with the hero, orders the archeologists to stay out, and sends two soldiers inside with the gizmo. Before you can say "redshirt," they and the gizmo disappear. Our hero, the archeologists, the officer, and some other cannon fodder go inside to find out what happened.

After a lot of wandering around, and an attack by a reptilian monster -- we only see its huge, fang-filled head, so I'm not sure if it's a giant snake or a dinosaur-like critter -- we finally learn that there are a bunch of albino folks in pure white Star Trek style duds living in the cave, and they're not happy about the intruders.

Silly stuff, to be sure, and it takes itself very seriously, but it's moderately amusing in a 1930's pulp magazine adventure kind of way.

I thoroughly enjoyed THE MOLE PEOPLE; I recall the line about "THE FIRE OF ISHTAR."

Hmm; the wiki page says "Eye of Ishtar."

 

[Jeffbert]

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935) Not the cartoon in which Bugs Bunny impersonates Charles Laughton in the role of Captain Bligh.

Sadly, there was no Ben M. giving intro or follow-up comments.

Opens with Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) leading a gang of pressers, out to literally abduct men off the street, or in this case, out of a tavern to be unwilling sailors on the ship. It was with the King's consent, or in the name of the King, that they shanghaied these men. What ever became of the Magna Carta?

So, anyway, Capt. Bligh is an absolute dictator, who places no more value on the lives of his crew, than what service they can deliver. He ordered a man keel hauled (a death sentence), just for asking for water to ease the sores on his knees that occurred from kneeling on the deck, scrubbing it.

Great film, though depressing, as those who had no part in the mutiny, were prosecuted as mutineers, with only one receiving a pardon from the king.

Too many supporting actors to mention. One, Ian Wolfe would much later appear in two, count 'em, 2 Star Trek episodes.

 

[KGeo777]

"a kid who I did not find irritating"!? That kid so needed a trip to the woodshed!

I mentioned this film a few months ago, and would be surprised to learn that I did not make a similar comment then.

There are other movies with far more irritating kids. Jurassic Park, Temple of Doom...

Spielberg is especially skilled at inserting show-stopping children into his films.

The kid in this is supposed to be a spoiled prince, so it has a story point. Comedy relief.
Could they have done the film without him? Yes, but with George MacDonald Fraser doing his dialogue, it makes the inclusion at least palatable.

 

[CrazyKB]

I watched NOPE. It's an interesting take on the UFO phenomenon and a solid piece of filmmaking. However, the script could have been much better in my opinion. If you're interested in UFOs it's worth a watch.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Visitor AKA Stridulum (1979)

Take random bits and pieces of Star Wars, The Exorcist, The Birds, Carrie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Omen. Add a little religious allegory and a soupçon of LSD. Toss in a blender and hit liquify. Voilà! You've just created The Visitor; or, if you prefer, the original title, which seems to be Latin for "hissing." (Suspiria was already taken, but Tenebrae was still available at the time.)

On a Dune-like desert planet with a huge orange sun, John Huston in a robe faces a figure who is completely hidden in a similar robe. Huge roiling clouds appear, and fake snow falls everywhere. The hidden figure is revealed to be a little girl with a monster face.

Cut to a guy with long blonde hair and facial hair, who is wearing a white robe. The credits on IMDB just out-and-out call this character Jesus Christ, if you didn't make the connection. He's talking to a bunch of bald children in a white room. He supplies the viewer with our back story. It seems that an evil mutant with a name that sure sounds a lot like Satan was defeated by John Huston, whose character has a name that sure sounds like Yahweh. There's also some stuff about how sounds-like-Yahweh used birds against sounds-like-Satan, but the bad guy turned some of the birds to the dark side. Enter Huston himself, who announces that the latest spawn or incarnation of sounds-like-Satan is on Earth, in the form of (you guessed it) a little girl.

Cut to a basketball game in Atlanta, Georgia. Evil little girl demonstrates her powers by making a basketball hoop explode. Long story short, owner of the basketball team is being used by a cabal of business executive types to romance and eventually impregnate the girl's mother, so another evil child will be born.

The movie has barely started, so let me just hit some of the highlights. A beautiful toy bird somehow transforms into a handgun when the girl receives it as a birthday present. She throws it at her mother, which somehow causes it to go off. Mom is confined to a wheelchair. Later, the girl will torment her mother in other ways. Besides suffering all this, Mom still resists the advances of the basketball guy, so the cabal somehow impregnates her while she's unconscious. She gets an abortion from an understanding doctor.

Meanwhile, Huston shows up with his gang of bald guys in track suits who do yoga movements behind white screens on the top of a building. He also engages in casual chat with the girl while they play Pong, both of them knowing who the other is. Girl does random evil stuff. The scene where she grabs two guys by her hands while ice skating and spins around so fast that they go flying and crashing into windows is worth the price of admission.

After not doing too much to stop all this, Huston finally calls down a bunch of glowing lights that spin around for a while, then turn into a roiling gray cloud, then turn into an army of birds. They're real birds, except for one mechanical one that kills basketball guy by producing a steel rod from its head and stabbing him with it. The real birds also apparently kill the girl, who is now in full monster face form, but we cut back to the white room from the beginning, and she's there (and bald.) Huston explains that they don't kill children, but just remove the evil (and apparently shave their heads and transport them to this place.)

Believe me, I've barely scratched the surface of the weirdness of this thing. There are a lot of familiar actors besides Huston. Glenn Ford as the detective investigating the toy-bird-changed-into-handgun case. Shelley Winters as a housekeeper who sings "Shor'tnin' Bread" and knows the girl is evil, so slaps her around. The film is often visually impressive, despite how goofy it gets. The music is often bombastic, and the theme sounds like a disco version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra."

Truly a unique experience.

 

[HareBrain]

the bad guy turned some of the birds to the dark side

Geese.

 

[paranoid marvin]

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935) Not the cartoon in which Bugs Bunny impersonates Charles Laughton in the role of Captain Bligh.

Sadly, there was no Ben M. giving intro or follow-up comments.

Opens with Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) leading a gang of pressers, out to literally abduct men off the street, or in this case, out of a tavern to be unwilling sailors on the ship. It was with the King's consent, or in the name of the King, that they shanghaied these men. What ever became of the Magna Carta?

So, anyway, Capt. Bligh is an absolute dictator, who places no more value on the lives of his crew, than what service they can deliver. He ordered a man keel hauled (a death sentence), just for asking for water to ease the sores on his knees that occurred from kneeling on the deck, scrubbing it.

Great film, though depressing, as those who had no part in the mutiny, were prosecuted as mutineers, with only one receiving a pardon from the king.

Too many supporting actors to mention. One, Ian Wolfe would much later appear in two, count 'em, 2 Star Trek episodes.

Charles Laughton was a marvellous choice for the role of Bligh.

Away from the movies, it's hard to know for sure just how things were. Life aboard RN ships was very hard, and discipline had to be maintained. A lack of discipline could lead to the failure of a mission or even the loss of a ship, so a Captain was judge, jury and - sometimes - executioner.

The problem for Bligh was that he wasn't able to be present for the trial of the convicted men, so all of the testimony heard in defence of the mutineers would go largely unchallenged.

The fact that only 3 of those convicted were hung, plus the fact that Bligh was conveniently sent on a mission whilst the court martial took place suggests that there was some truth in the accusations against Bligh, although (after a brief hiatus) he did go on to progress in the RN.

I think though that much of this was to try to stem off a growing discontentment in the RN for treatment for sailors, which culminated in a general strike in 1797 in an attempt to get better pay and working conditions.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Bonnie Scotland

Is this the best (Mc)Laurel & Hardy movie? No, that honour goes to 'Sons of the Desert', but this one is still

L&H's antics are always at their best when accompanied by James 'D'oh!' Finlayson, and here he is on top form. The scene where they are cooking a fish using their bed as a grill is hilarious.

Just the right length as well at 80 minutes.

 

[JunkMonkey]

The Visitor AKA Stridulum (1979)

Take random bits and pieces of Star Wars, The Exorcist, The Birds, Carrie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Omen. Add a little religious allegory and a soupçon of LSD. Toss in a blender and hit liquify. Voilà! You've just created The Visitor; or, if you prefer, the original title, which seems to be Latin for "hissing." (Suspiria was already taken, but Tenebrae was still available at the time.)

On a Dune-like desert planet with a huge orange sun, John Huston in a robe faces a figure who is completely hidden in a similar robe. Huge roiling clouds appear, and fake snow falls everywhere. The hidden figure is revealed to be a little girl with a monster face.

Cut to a guy with long blonde hair and facial hair, who is wearing a white robe. The credits on IMDB just out-and-out call this character Jesus Christ, if you didn't make the connection. He's talking to a bunch of bald children in a white room. He supplies the viewer with our back story. It seems that an evil mutant with a name that sure sounds a lot like Satan was defeated by John Huston, whose character has a name that sure sounds like Yahweh. There's also some stuff about how sounds-like-Yahweh used birds against sounds-like-Satan, but the bad guy turned some of the birds to the dark side. Enter Huston himself, who announces that the latest spawn or incarnation of sounds-like-Satan is on Earth, in the form of (you guessed it) a little girl.

Cut to a basketball game in Atlanta, Georgia. Evil little girl demonstrates her powers by making a basketball hoop explode. Long story short, owner of the basketball team is being used by a cabal of business executive types to romance and eventually impregnate the girl's mother, so another evil child will be born.

The movie has barely started, so let me just hit some of the highlights. A beautiful toy bird somehow transforms into a handgun when the girl receives it as a birthday present. She throws it at her mother, which somehow causes it to go off. Mom is confined to a wheelchair. Later, the girl will torment her mother in other ways. Besides suffering all this, Mom still resists the advances of the basketball guy, so the cabal somehow impregnates her while she's unconscious. She gets an abortion from an understanding doctor.

Meanwhile, Huston shows up with his gang of bald guys in track suits who do yoga movements behind white screens on the top of a building. He also engages in casual chat with the girl while they play Pong, both of them knowing who the other is. Girl does random evil stuff. The scene where she grabs two guys by her hands while ice skating and spins around so fast that they go flying and crashing into windows is worth the price of admission.

After not doing too much to stop all this, Huston finally calls down a bunch of glowing lights that spin around for a while, then turn into a roiling gray cloud, then turn into an army of birds. They're real birds, except for one mechanical one that kills basketball guy by producing a steel rod from its head and stabbing him with it. The real birds also apparently kill the girl, who is now in full monster face form, but we cut back to the white room from the beginning, and she's there (and bald.) Huston explains that they don't kill children, but just remove the evil (and apparently shave their heads and transport them to this place.)

Believe me, I've barely scratched the surface of the weirdness of this thing. There are a lot of familiar actors besides Huston. Glenn Ford as the detective investigating the toy-bird-changed-into-handgun case. Shelley Winters as a housekeeper who sings "Shor'tnin' Bread" and knows the girl is evil, so slaps her around. The film is often visually impressive, despite how goofy it gets. The music is often bombastic, and the theme sounds like a disco version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra."

Truly a unique experience.

I'd not heard of this before but it is now firmly imbedded near the top of my I MUST SEE THIS list. Thank you.

 

[KGeo777]

I haven't heard of it either but sounds interesting.

 

[Jeffbert]

THE LAVENDER HILL MOB (1951) Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) works in gold bars, being involved with the transport of them. He had already devised a way to steal them, but was lacking in a scheme to smuggle them out of England. Living in a boarding house (I think) he meets the new tenant, Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), whose business is making paperweights in the shape of the Eiffel Tower from cast lead. If this had been an animated cartoon, there would have been a lightbulb over his head.

The plan involves the recruitment of two, count 'em, 2 other men, & they soon recruit 2 guys with criminal histories, who can thus be trusted with the plan.

Spoiler

So, they will rip-off the gold shipment, melt the bullion, recast it as the Eiffel Tower paperweights, export them to France, where the company has a warehouse and actually sells the souvenirs at the shop at the top of the Tower.
All goes as planned, except that when the two partners go to Paris on vacation, they visit the shop, and notice that the crate in the shop has the letter "R" on it, which was to mart the gold paperweights, to distinguish them from the standard lead ones. English school girls have just bought 6 of them, which will be very likely the end of the plot if by any chance, they are dented or scratched, etc. They must recover them! All but one is, and the girl who has it wants to give it to her police man friend back in England!

A very enjoyable film! It has a most unusual chase scene, in which a cop is riding on the running board singing along with Old Mac Donald had a Farm, and even snorting when the verse was about a pig.

I noted that the police cars did not use sirens as in the USA, but had bells mounted on the front bumpers. This did amuse me, just a bit.

 

[KGeo777]

SCORPIO 1973 - One of those "government hitman who wants out but can't" kind of stories that seemed to be run off an assembly line back then. Other than various cat and kitten closeups there isn't much to make this memorable. I must have seen it a couple of times and forgot most of it (other than the cats). One thing I noticed though is that the music for this is often very similar to the music from the Kolchak telelvision series and no surprise to learn Jerry Fielding was the composer. Another curio is that JD Cannon is a CIA agent who works for a man named McCloud. Premiered 50 years ago last month--it came out the same day as Soylent Green. I probably would have watched that if I had been keeping track of my premiere schedule.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Old Comic Strips Adapted Into Old Movies That Had At Least One Sequel Each Quadruple Feature:

Blondie (1938)

The first of 28 (!) movies in the series. Pretty faithful to the feel of the comic strip, and the lead actors fit the roles very well. Plot has hapless Dagwood co-signing a loan for an unseen woman who just lost her job, and who runs off leaving him responsible for it, while bubbly Blondie buys new furniture as a surprise. Dagwood gets a chance at a raise and a bonus from stern boss Mister Dithers if he can make a big sale to a rich guy who hates salesmen. They bond over trying to fix a vacuum cleaner. Meanwhile, a series of coincidences (such as the fact that the rich guy's daughter has the same first name as the never-seen woman for whom Dagwood signed the loan) makes it look like Dagwood is fooling around with another woman. I found it moderately amusing, and nicely filmed for a low budget B movie.

Private Snuffy Smith (1942)

The diminutive hillbilly from the Barney Google and Snuffy Smith comic strip (the first named character almost never shows up anymore) goes into the Army. A Romeo and Juliet plot involves two lovers from feuding clans. The boy, in the Army himself, has invented a new rangefinder. In a bizarre plot twist, Snuffy's much larger wife Lowizie (they spell it Loweezy these days) accidentally creates a liquid that makes things invisible while making soap from lard and lye. Thus, Snuffy's oddly named dog Mister Carson, now invisible, goes with him into the Army, leading to hijinks. The actual plot has something to do with "fifth columnists" trying to get their hands on the rangefinder. A very cheap-looking and not very funny little film, but odd enough to be somewhat interesting. There was one sequel the same year, Hillbilly Blitzkrieg.

Bringing Up Father (1946)

Lowbrow but accidentally filthy rich Jiggs and his social-climbing wife Maggie come to life in this modest adaptation. The minimal plot (Jiggs and his buddies get fooled into signing a petition to close down their favorite bar-and-grill, Dinty Moore's) is an excuse for random gags. There are also two rivals for the affection of the beautiful daughter of Jiggs., one the son of the guy trying to close down the joint. The snooty butler working for Jiggs is amusing. Funniest moment is right at the start, when the narrator says "This is New York City" over the typical scenes of Times Square and such, then asks himself why he's telling us that, because we've already seen these scenes in every movie set in New York. The very end is cute, too, as the real-life creator of the comic strip shows up as himself. Pretty amusing. The song "When the Mush Begins to Rush Down Father's Vest," sung barbershop quartet style, is pretty funny as well. Followed by four sequels.

Gasoline Alley (1951)

Generally quiet little film (although there's a car zooming along wildly at eighty miles an hour near the end as part of the plot) of the comic strip famous for aging its major characters. (Walt Wallet, the father of two biological children and an adopted orphan in this movie, is still around in the comic strip, although he's well over 120 years old.) His son Corky drops out of college and gets married. He buys a rundown diner and tries to make a success out of it. Some business types try to force him to sell out. No big laughs in this thing, which might be called a "warmedy" these days. Followed by one sequel, Corky of Gasoline Alley, the same year.

 

[KGeo777]

Blondie (1938)

The first of 28 (!) movies in the series.

I haven't seen those in years but I recall them well.
Ma and Pa Kettle movies also played all the time on tv.

 

[alexvss]

Apocalypse Now (1979. Redux version 2001). Francis Ford Coppola’s classic anti-war movie. During the Vietnam war, a captain is tasked with murdering a colonel who’s gone rogue and became a godman to Cambodian natives.

This movie is three hours and sixteen minutes long (with no credits sequence), and I wasn’t bored for a single second, even with the longer scenes from the redux version.

The structure, borrowed from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, is pretty simple: the captain sails up river, passing through multiple American outposts where the soldiers have gone crazy, civilization becoming further and further away.

I think this is the ultimate Vietnam War movie. It’s better than Full Metal Jacket (1987), which is awesome already; Platoon (1986) can’t hold a candle to it.

Oh, I didn’t realize the kid was Laurence Fishbourne until I googled it.