What was the last movie you saw?

I see a few people enjoyed the 1935 version of the 39 Steps, if you ever get the opportunity you really should watch the stage version. A comedy with a cast of four, the two main characters handcuffed together and everyone else played by two other actors, the scene with the husband and wife hotel owners and the two “detectives” played by just two actors was particularly well done. I wish there was a DVD of it.
 
The Mute, aka Sword of God - Der letzte Kreuzzug (2018). A Polish movie about Catholic priests (of course, Poland) who travel to a pagan land in order to convert its people before the king arrives and kills every non-Christian. The two religious men have diametrically opposite approaches of conversion: the older priest--a bishop--is a violent ex-soldier; the younger one--a Prince who became a monk--is more passionate and talkative. Their rivalry escalates until its peak in the climax.

The cinematography is brilliant. I really wish I saw this in a movie theater. Although it's not fantasy, it has a dark fantasy feel. The pagans are some kind of Celtic people that reminded me of HellBlade- Senua's Sacrifice. I just don't think the Celtics were covered in mud all their lives like in this movie :LOL:
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I see a few people enjoyed the 1935 version of the 39 Steps, if you ever get the opportunity you really should watch the stage version. A comedy with a cast of four, the two main characters handcuffed together and everyone else played by two other actors, the scene with the husband and wife hotel owners and the two “detectives” played by just two actors was particularly well done. I wish there was a DVD of it.

Is that the version with excellent and very inventive use of step ladders involved? If so I hearty agree. A really fun show. I saw it when it toured the Highlands many years ago in a village hall the other end of Glencoe from where some of the chase sequence for Hitchcock's film were shot.
 
CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES 1969- One of the Euro-made westerns which feels the most kinship with the Sergio Leone ones, especially a Fistful of Dollars--not only because they film in the same locations in Spain, but he gets an acknowledgement in the closing credits and a dining sequence is rumored to have been directed by him. There's a ghost town which makes an atmospheric location for this story about revenge and futility.

VILLAIN 1971 --It was the style of the time that famous thespians would appear in sleazy and graphic story lines as censorship rules eased--- Richard Burton is a vicious criminal who loves him mum and likes to beat up Ian McShane for sexual gratification. It gets negative reviews especially for Burton's cockney accent but I like this much more than GET CARTER. Burton has some funny lines--"Stupid punters, watch telly all the week," "You slag!" "Kids today...They should never have abolished national service." The US version re-dubs everyone but Burton.
 
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CEMETERY WITHOUT CROSSES 1969- One of the Euro-made westerns which feels the most kinship with the Sergio Leone ones, especially a Fistful of Dollars--not only because they film in the same locations in Spain, but he gets an acknowledgement in the closing credits and a dining sequence is rumored to have been directed by him. There's a ghost town which makes an atmospheric location for this story about revenge and futility.
Gonna have to watch this. Library doesn’t have it but the video store might. If I can figure out how to work the mirror/screen or screen/mirror thing I could try watching it on YouTube.
 
Gonna have to watch this. Library doesn’t have it but the video store might. If I can figure out how to work the mirror/screen or screen/mirror thing I could try watching it on YouTube.
It was in Blockbusters last time I looked.
 
The Drums of Jeopardy (1931)

Before he became Charlie Chan, Warner Oland was the villain in this pre-Code thriller. He plays Doctor Boris Karlov, in pre-Revolution Russia. (That was the character's name in the novel and play before the actor with the very similar stage name became famous.) His daughter is dying, pregnant by a man she refuses to name. A necklace with four jeweled charms in the shape of men playing drums (hence the title) is found in her room, revealing that her seducer was someone in a particular aristocratic family. Karlov swears revenge when she dies.

When the Revolution comes, one gets killed (off screen) pretty quickly, then another as soon as they escape to the United States. A cat and mouse game among Doctor Karlov, the intended victims, and the Secret Service follows. Our hero escapes into the penthouse of our heroine, getting her and her comedy relief aunt involved. They try to hide from Karlov in the aunt's country home, so the film turns into an Old Dark House film. The scariest scene happens when one of the intended victims betrays the other, his brother, leading to the the traitor's horrible fate. Karlov is a bit of a Mad Scientist; an early scene shows him in his laboratory, surrounded by all kinds of weird equipment. Orland is in fine form as the villain, and the whole thing is a pretty entertaining, if old-fashioned story right out of a Weird Menace pulp.
 
Strange Illusion (1945)

Cult director Edgar G. Ulmer (The Black Cat, Detour) offers a Poverty Row psychological melodrama with echoes of Hamlet. Opens with a dream sequence. Teen protagonist dreams about his father's recent death, and about a sinister, shadowy figure courting his mother. Sure enough, Mom is soon being wooed by our movie's villain, who is secretly a crook who has already killed a previous bride for her money. He also has a record of "attacks" on very young women, placing our protagonist's sister in danger, too. Very specific details of the dream come true, adding a touch of the supernatural, and causing the protagonist to freak out. He gets sent to an institution that happens to be run by a guy with whom the villain is in cahoots. Ends with a dream sequence, too. Not a great film, but it has its moments. The protagonist is a little too much of a clean-cut teen for a dark and moody film. When he calls his girlfriend on the phone from the institution, he says "Hey, vixen, what's fixin'" and "Are you missin' my kissing'?"
 
Goliath vs the Vampires 1961 - Kobrak!!! This is one of the best peplums for entertainment value. It has some unintentionally funny dialogue but the fantasy element is really strong. I wonder if the idea of how Sauron was depicted in the LOTR movies took inspiration from Kobrak because there is a similarity--especially when he has his army gathered.
A 4k version of this was planned but the rights fell though.

COAST OF SKELETONS 1965 --an Edgar Wallace treasure quest story. The location-a coastline of Africa where ships have washed ashore--is a neat background. The story is slow-paced as was common then but I like nautical and desert movies. A little unusual is that the bigwig tycoon who seeks gold is not really a bad guy in the end. His underling is the one who causes the most trouble due to his over-enthusiastic nature. It breaks with the usual formula for these kinds of situations. There's another movie this reminds me of, A TWIST OF SAND.
 
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I see a few people enjoyed the 1935 version of the 39 Steps, if you ever get the opportunity you really should watch the stage version. A comedy with a cast of four, the two main characters handcuffed together and everyone else played by two other actors, the scene with the husband and wife hotel owners and the two “detectives” played by just two actors was particularly well done. I wish there was a DVD of it.
I saw The 39 Steps at The Lowry in Salford a few years ago, and it was excellent. Maybe we should have a theatre thread when it resumes. My favourites are One Man Two Guvnors - one of the funniest things I've seen in any medium, and my local theatre (the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme) put on an outstanding version of 101 Dalmations a few Christmases ago, with actors swapping between roles in the play and playing as part of the live band. Some of the best fun I've ever had!
 
CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE - 1968 By most standards, a terrible film, however I liked it because despite the awfulness it was entertaining instead of boring. An oil executive is "rolled" by some hustlers in a bar and accidentally killed-- he was waiting for a geologist to arrive so they can search for oil in the swamp.
The woman hustler has a plan: she will pretend to be the wife of the oil man to trick the geologist so they can go off and find the oil.
John Agar is the geologist and despite being skeptical - he goes along until they encounter a scientist in the swamp who is trying to make fish-men--he feds his failures to alligators--though he calls them crocodiles.
When the title creature shows up and the wife of the scientist pleads with the creature in a sincerely emotive Mid-Atlantic accent, you realize you can't get that kind of classic theatrical quality much anymore in bad movies.
 
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) dir. Tobe Hooper

Huh.

Well, that was ...

Huh.

I've never seen this before, probably won't watch it again, but I can see how it must have been extremely effective when first screened. One of those movies where the low budget and amateur acting added verisimilitude, so it has probably influenced everything from The Hills Have Eyes to the episode of The X-files with the Peacocks, and beyond.


The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three (coincidentally, also 1974) dir. Joseph Sargent; starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam

Crime thriller with Shaw and crew hijacking a subway train and holding the passengers for ransom. Matthau as a laconic lieutenant transit cop acting as negotiator. The scenes in the subway car are tense, and the exchanges between Shaw and Matthau escalate in tension as Matthau's character realizes this is not a joke or some kind of lark, but a well-planned and even deadly threat. The movie is also notable for beautifully handling comedy, sometimes with Matthau, as during the exchanges between Matthau and some of his co-workers, but maybe more so for the scenes away from Shaw and Matthau, especially the scenes with the flu-stricken Mayor and his Lieutenant Mayor (Tony Roberts).

Two of Shaw's henchmen are familiar: Hector Elizondo who has been in, roughly speaking, everything (I'd almost forgotten he was young once) and Earl Hindman, whose face you may not recognize and whose voice you don't hear enough of to ring a bell, but he was Tim Allen's neighbor Wilson in Home Improvement. Oddly, maybe, they share a connection to Allen since Elizondo was a regular on Last Man Standing.

If you haven't seen this, I'd really recommend it. I haven't seen the remake to compare.
 
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The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three (coincidentally, also 1974) dir. Joseph Sargent; starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam
<snip>
If you haven't seen this, I'd really recommend it.

If nothing else for David Shire's music. The opening title track is the acme of Crime Jazz:
 
There are at least a couple of tv-movies that were inspired by it.
Panic on the 5-22.
And the other is The Great Ice Rip-Off by Dan Curtis. Both 1974. Funny ending.
 
Scanners (1981). Hadn’t seen this for at least 30 years. Fantastic film. Just shows what one can do on a low budget with good direction, camerawork and editing. Almost worth it just for 1970s Montreal. The acting is hammy and the script is a bit odd, but it all adds up to an effectively disconcerting sf horror film.
 
Death Proof

Thought I'd seen all of Tarantino's films, but this one had slipped under the radar. An odd movie with veers from dialogue-heavy to outright action - and then back again.
 
DARK OF THE SUN (1968) Capt. Bruce Curry (Rod Taylor) & Sgt Ruffo (Jim Brown) are mercenaries hired by the ruler of an African nation in the turmoil of civil war. They are tasked with taking a trainload of people and a cache of diamonds from a remote village & returning them to the capitol. But, the rebels want the diamonds and want to kill the people. Among other mercs is Capt. Henlein (Peter Carsten) who had been in the German army during WWII, and wears a Swastika medallion, just so everyone knows how he feels about black people. I thought that his voice was dubbed by Paul Frees, & I was right!

So, they gather about 40 other mercenaries, most black men, put five or so cars on the train, & head toward the village. But, things go bad, & then, from bad to worse. When they arrive at the village, the guy in charge of the diamonds Bussier (André Morell, best known for HAMMER FILMS), says the time lock on the vault will not open for three hours. All the while, the bloodthirsty rebel Simbas (Lions) are on their way. Very tense drama!




THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1962) Physician / scientist who pushes the science beyond ethical limits keeps his decapitated fiancee's noggin alive while scheming to murder some other attractive woman to provide a body transplant. :ROFLMAO: She really wants to die, rather than be a part of his madness.
 
Loved the dark of the sun but it is most certainly not for the faint of heart. In spots.
 

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