DEADLY SHOTS ON BROADWAY - 1969 - Jerry Cotton FBI agent seeks to find where an undercover agent stashed stolen Federal Reserve gold before he was murdered. A crime boss who had plastic surgery and likes to throw grenades around is also seeking it.
I watched about half of this a few years ago. It is quite odd. The ranch was apparently Charles Manson’s place in the desert.The Female Bunch (1971)
Schlockmeister Al Adamson gave us this feminist classic. Starts off with a bang, as we see a woman and a man driving through the desert, chased by women shooting at them from a small airplane. The shooters manage to burst a tire, so the pair sets off on foot, only to be chased by several women on horseback. The man gets shot but survives, so the two seek refuge in a cave. This leads to a long flashback.
Our film's Good Girl was jilted by her fiancé, then got dumped by another guy. After trying to kill herself with an overdose, a friend told her about a ranch in the desert where men aren't allowed. The initiation ceremony for joining them is allowing herself to be buried alive, then dug up.
The Female Bunch spends their time away from the women-only ranch in Mexico, where they party hard with guys and also get drugs. The plot involves a man being smuggled into the ranch, which winds up with him being branded with a cross on his forehead. He comes back seeking revenge, only to be killed with a pitchfork. His Good Guy buddy shows up, which leads back to our opening scene as the Good Girl runs off with him.
Lon Chaney, Jr., is around as the one man allowed to work at the ranch. He's near the end of his life and his voice is extremely raspy. One of the Female Bunch is a very tall redhead with a deep voice. The actress was a transwoman, which is unusual for the time. (She had full sex reassignment surgery in 1962.)
Not a great film, but it does what it sets out to do.
Hundra (1983)
Italian/Spanish/American sword and sorcery flick with a feminist twist. Statuesque, athletic blonde actress Laurene Landon is Hundra, last surviving member of a tribe of women who live without men, visiting them only for reproductive purposes. In true Conan the Barbarian fashion, the bad guys slaughtered all her people. I said last surviving, but there's an elderly wise woman living in a cave who tells Hundra (after she has easily killed the sixteen male warriors chasing her) that she must bear a girl child to continue the tribe. That means finding the right man, of course, which is a problem, as they all seem to be vile monsters in this universe.
After some time fighting off various rotten men, Hundra finds our movie's nice guy and immediately tells him they need to make a (female) baby. He demurs until Hundra learns girly ways from the woman who becomes her BFF. In return, she teaches the BFF to fight. (This sequence adds some comedy, as the barbaric Hundra tries to figure out how to do things like eat with utensils.)
Baby girl arrives, but the bull-worshipping bad guys, who keep hordes of miniskirted young women as sex slaves in their "temple," kidnap the infant. Will Hundra submit to save the life of her daughter?
The film has campy aspects, to be sure, but it's pretty entertaining. Landon isn't the world's greatest actress, but she's a convincing action heroine. The mixture of accents from the various characters is cause for some amusement. There are tons of fight scenes, many of which go on too long. Nicely filmed, with some nice outdoor scenes. Music by the great Ennio Morricone helps.
Interesting. Scripted by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, who would go on to create the 1990's The Flash TV show, and the movie, The Rocketeer. No wonder it was fun. The title makes me think it was a variation on Fredric Brown's "Arena," but I don't see a credit for him.Arena (1989)
Boxing drama. Our hunky blond hero is forced to become a fighter in order to keep a crime boss from killing his buddy, who grabbed some money during a raid of the crime boss's casino. Fortunately, he's darn good at it. Our hero falls for a sultry nightclub singer, but doesn't know she's really working for the crime boss. Can he win the Big Fight, even though the singer has slipped him a mickey and the crime boss has a plan to have his slimy assistant fix the fight?
Oh, did I mention that this takes place aboard a space station full of weird-looking aliens?
The combination of boxing movie cliches and science fiction elements works pretty well, despite a modest budget and the inherent silliness. Sets, costumes, and makeup look inexpensive but imaginative. Most aliens are people in suits and/or with prostheses, but there's one huge, truly bizarre creature that's impressive. Good mindless fun.
Hearts and Minds (1974) A documentary about the Viet Nam war. Actual film clips show attitudes of U.S. people, not just politicians and military. Also shows the horror inflicted on the people who lived in that nation. I was broken-hearted at one particular scene, in which they had just lowered a coffin into a grave, and a woman, either wife, or mother jumped in after it, She resisted being pulled out of the grave. I will never watch this again!
Another of TCM's 100 most significant political films.
Not covered in this film:
After the end of WWII, many previously colonized nations found themselves free of foreign domination for the first time on who knows how long. Their former European masters were busy rebuilding, etc., but one in particular would soon return to both Indochina & North Africa. Until then, local groups fought for dominance. Could call this a time of civil wars. After the horror of centuries of foreign domination, WWII, the struggle for supremacy among local groups, then comes the return of the foreign colonialism.
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