CINEMATIC REVELATIONS

SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL (1958) * OUT OF **

2024-09-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

The bounty hunter ranks as one of many stock characters in both American westerns and European horse operas. Universally reviled in virtually every American western until Sergio Leone's "For A Few Dollars More" (1965), this stock character emerged as a protagonist rather than an antagonist during the Spaghetti western craze. In most Hollywood westerns, the bounty hunter was almost always unsavory, untrustworthy, greedy and more often peripheral. This murdering scum had no qualms about shooting his quarry in the back rather than bringing him in alive. One of the early 'sympathy for the bounty hunter' westerns was director Gene Fowler Jr.'s "Showdown at Boot Hill," a Regalscope release. Lensed in glorious black & white by John M. Nickolaus Jr., this low-budget oater looks simply spectacular with its 2.35.1 widescreen imagery. Chiefly known for his prolific television work, Nickolaus Jr. served as a lenser on some vintage 1960's westerns, horror chillers and sci-fi sagas. Among them Roger Corman's "The Terror" (1960), "Young Guns of Texas" (1962), "The Day Mars Invaded Earth" (1962), "House of the Damned" (1963), "Guns of Diablo" (1964), and "Four Fast Guns" (1960). Sure, these low-budget, drive-in movies amounted to nothing memorable, but "Showdown" stands out from the pack. Fowler, Jr., and Nickolaus Jr., have taken Louis Vittes' intriguing premise and enhanced it with suspenseful pacing and attractive visuals. There are no bland compositions in the entire picture. The dusty little hamlet of a town that "Showdown at Boot Hill" plays out in has an authentic touch to it. Of course, since this is a Regal Pictures release, a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, the town now appeared previous Fox horse operas and later in Edward Dmytryk's star-studded "Warlock" (1959) with Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, and Anthony Quinn. Actually, the Anthony Mann western "The Tin Star" presented a sympathetic portrait of a bounty hunter who

"Showdown" boasts Charles Bronson's solid, steely-eyed performance as a tough guy in his first starring role. Long typecast as a villain, Bronson now played a sympathetic protagonist, Marshal Luke Welsh, who had tracked down a desperado, Con Maynor (Thomas Browne Henry of "The Domino Kid"), to the sleepy hamlet. He confronts Maynor in the dining room of the hotel and kills him in self-defense. Unfortunately, for Luke, nobody wants to identify Maynor, so our hero cannot collect his $200 bounty money. Virtually everybody in town loathes Luke vigorously except Sally Crane (Fintan Meyler of "Zero Hour!"), a plain-Jane type who waits tables in the hotel dining room. Unbelievably, Welsh winds up taking Ms. Crane to a town dance, but townspeople shun them and drive them out. During one scene in Crane's hotel room, we learn Luke has always felt self-conscious about his short stature. Similarly, Sally is ashamed of herself, because she was the illegitimate child of a dance hall tramp, Jill Crane (Carole Mathews of "Swamp Women"), who warbles songs for her customers in her saloon. Poor Sally struggles to live under the stigma of disgrace in the town's eyes. Before long, Luke and Sally are attracted to each other after a brash first encounter where Welsh barges into her hotel room. Of course, by this time, Welsh has outdrawn every foe in a gunfight and has established a reputation. He displayed his lightning swift draw as one gunman, Sloane (Robert Hutton of "The Slime People"), could later attest from first-hand knowledge. Welsh blew Sloane's gun out of his hand in a duel. Moments before this shooting, Welsh had gunned down his quarry in a saloon shootout. Scenarist Louis Vittes' screenplay contains psychological elements, tragedy, violence, and romance. The ending is rather offbeat, and what happens to our hero is a welcome change, though hardcore western afficionados may feel cheated by the outcome.

WHITE COMMANCHE 1/2 OUT OF **

2024-09-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

William Shatner plays a dual role as half-breed twin brothers in Spanish helmer José Briz Méndez’s hell-bent-for-leather sagebrusher, “White Comanche,” co-starring Joseph Cotton and Rosanna Yanni. Shatner made this low-budget oater while on hiatus from “Star Trek.” Although neither Méndez nor co-scripter Manuel Gómez Rivera earned any writing credit as scribes, they must have retooled the original screenplay by longtime Hollywood writers Robert I. Holt and Frank Gruber. These two Yanks boasted far more writing credits than Mendez and Rivera together. Indeed, apart from writing with Méndez, Rivera had only one earlier script credit, and it was for a short subject! Comparably, Holt had penned teleplays for many popular, prime-time television series, including “Hunter,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “Cannon,” and “S.W.A.T.” Comparably, not only was Frank Gruber a published author with several western novels to his credit, but he also inked scripts for several episodic western television shows, among them “Shotgun Slade,” “Tales of Wells Fargo,” “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp,” and Rory Calhoun’s “The Texan.” Presumably, since he was a specialist in the field of frontier western fiction, Gruber may have polished this horse opera.

Neither brother backs down from their inevitable clash in “White Comanche,” and the conflict ends efficiently with a showdown about a half-hour into the action. Basically, a Native American chieftain who craves Peyote with a passion, Notah (William Shatner of “The Outrage”), wants to wipe out all whites! Incidentally, for those who know little about it, peyote is a hallucinogenic substance containing mescaline. Moreover, apart from a renegade or two, Notah’s tribe stands behind him. Unlike his bad-tempered brother, Johnny Moon (William Shatner) remains the level-headed one of the twins. Nevertheless, he realizes with grim fortitude he must kill the bloodthirsty Notah before his unhinged sibling incites a frontier holocaust.

Mendez introduces us to Notah as he waylays a stagecoach. The chieftain orders his braves to kill the passengers in the coach as well as the driver and the shotgun guard. Just before he is about to depart from the scene of this cold-blooded carnage, Notah catches a whiff of perfume and discovers a lady, Kelly (Rosanna Yanni of “Sonny and Jed”), hidden in the coach. Predictably, after he chases her down in the rocks, Notah rapes this frightened dame but then surprisingly turns her loose! Afterward, she manages to make it back to the town of Rio Hondo on her own where she works in a saloon. She swears the town lawman, Sheriff Logan (Joseph Cotton of “Citizen Kane”), to silence about her ordeal. Clearly, Kelly doesn’t want her boss to know about the unfortunate circumstances of her encounter with the renegade Comanche who defiled her.

Meanwhile, Johnny Moon is tracking down his nefarious twin brother when a group of vigilantes jump him. Mind you, this constitutes a case of mistaken identity since these owlhoots plan to string up Johnny because they believe is Notah. In their struggle to slip a noose around his neck, Johnny manages to escape his fumbling captors. The hangmen catch up their mounts, but they fail to capture our hero. Later, Johnny rides into Notah’s village and challenges to him to a duel in Rio Hondo.

Shatner does an adequate job as both hero and villain. Literally, he turns in a performance reminiscent of Robert Lewis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." When he is decked out in cowboy duds, his Johnny Moon is "Dr. Jekyll." Johnny is the good guy, while Notah is "Mr. Hyde." Hollywood had not perfected the technology to place an actor facing himself in the same shot when “White Comanche” came out, or the producers couldn't afford it, so we never see the faces of both brothers eyeballing each other in the same shot. The writers do furnish some expository information about their lives. Eventually, Johnny Moon reveals his eyes are blue, while Notah has black eyes. Essentially, Shatner appears to have performed all his stunts. Watch the saloon brawl. During one moment in this fracas, Shatner and his opponent swap blows with each other in real time, and the camera follows them without cutting away from them as they demolish saloon. Shatner’s face is always visible during this white-knuckled donnybrook. He spends quite a bit of time also in the saddle. At one point, Notah hurls himself from the horse he is riding to one of the team pulling the stagecoach. He brings those horses to a halt, while his braves start slaughtering passengers.

The final showdown in this nimble, 94-minute opus resembles a Medieval jousting tournament. The twins charge each other on horseback down the main street of Rio Hondo, slinging lead at each other. To heighten the suspense, the filmmakers have Shatner riding bare-chested, so it isn’t immediately clear who dies until the moment of revelation. Nevertheless, Johnny Moon does kill his blood brother. “White Comanche” boasts solid production values. The rugged Spanish scenery substituted suitably for the old West, but some goofs are apparent in the frantic production schedule of his western. Meantime, Joseph Cotton is still spry enough to indulge in a shootout or two and intervene on Johnny’s behalf when everybody in town believes Johnny is Notah.

Altogether, the formulaic “While Comanche” is hardly Oscar winning material, but at least it isn’t an embarrassing oater. Since this low-budget film was shot quickly to accommodate Shatner, he doesn’t adopt the traditional, fright wigs worn by his braves. Instead, Shatner maintains his “Star Trek” haircut as Notah, with the mere addition of a tribal headband. The only concession is Notah wears war paint smeared. Veteran lenser Francisco Fraile’s cinematography is flawless. Between Fraile and Méndez, the camera is always in the appropriate place to cover the action. Unfortunately, composer Jean Ledrut’s mundane orchestral score consists of somebody thumping monotonous cords on a base fiddle. Otherwise, production values stand up to scrutiny for a movie that amounts to a curiosity piece in Shatner’s resume.

STRANGE ALIBI (1941) * OUT OF **

2024-09-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

“Bullet Scars” director David Ross Lederman’s ballistically-paced, B-movie thriller “Strange Alibi” casts Warner Brothers contract actor Arthur Kennedy as rogue detective Joe Geary. Geary staggers the chief of police with a punch in the face in front of departmental witnesses after the chief questioned his moral integrity. Police Chief Sprague (Jonathan Hale of “The Black Parachute”) refers to Geary’s chummy rapport with known criminals. Naturally, our hero is suspended. However, things aren’t as incriminating as they appear. Later, we learn Sprague conjured up this elaborate ruse in a desperate effort to unearth corruption within his department. Unfortunately, our hero cannot risk letting his devoted girlfriend, Alice Devlin (Joan Perry of “Shakedown”), in on this secret, so she worries about him. Meantime, the mob welcomes Geary with open arms, and he proves his worth as a tenacious bill collector.

Meantime, notorious gambler King Carney (Herbert Rawlinson of “Dark Victory”) has returned to town. Carney has agreed to sing like a canary for the grand jury! No sooner has he arrived than somebody mows him down in a barrage of scorching lead. When Carney dies, the prosecution’s case collapses. At the same time, the police search for Carney’s driver Louie Butler. However, before they can grille Butler, the guy hangs himself in his cell! What nobody knows until the end is Reddick killed both Carney and Butler! The coroner has his suspicions, but he cannot prove Butler didn’t kill himself. As it turns out, another hoodlum fresh out of the pen, Benny McKaye (Joe Downing of “Danger in the Air”), may know something but he refuses to talk. Geary is poised to expose the corrupt officials in the department when he arranges a secret rendezvous with the Chief. Tragically, everything goes to haywire. Another high-ranking but corrupt cop, Lieutenant-Detective Pagle (Stanley Andrews of “Cry Terror”), barges into the room, blasting away at Sprague and hitting him. The chief gets off one shot, but his bullet accidentally strikes Geary rather than the diabolical Pagle. Strewn face down on the floor with a head wound from where Sprague’s stray slug grazed him, Geary lies unconscious at Pagle’s feet. Naturally, Pagle puts the gun that he riddled Sprague with in Joe’s hand, so when the police swarm into the premises, they believe Geary killed the police chief. Predictably, Geary protests his innocence vehemently at his trial. He divulges Sprague’s decision to use him as an undercover agent to smoke out corruption. Nevertheless, the jury sentences him to life!

Mind you, this scenario about a cashiered flatfoot infiltrating the mob is as antiquated as Methuselah. Nevertheless, time after time, Hollywood has resorted to this proven formula with success. Typically, the hero and his confidante are the only people privy to their plan. The chances of their best laid plans backfiring on them is ever-present. Moreover, if anything goes amiss, the hero will find himself knee deep in danger, unless his confidante stashed evidence of their collusion. Since Sprague trusted nobody, both Geary and he were running an extreme risk. Since nobody can corroborate Geary’s revelations, our hero cannot convince anybody of his innocence.

Geary lands in prison where he tangles with a sadistic guard, Monson (Howard Da Silva of “1776”), who terrorizes him enough that our hero plans to break out of stir with another convict, Tex (John Ridgely of “The Big Sleep”), who unbeknownst to anybody has stashed a car for this very occasion. During their careening getaway with cops racing after them like maniacs on motorcycles and in cruisers, Geary risks their lives with his daredevil driving. Recklessly, Geary avoids a collision with a speeding train at a railroad crossing. Quickly, the authorities resume their pursuit. Sadly, the second time Geary tries to pull this death-defying feat, our protagonist cannot beat the locomotive and careens off the road and skids to a halt. Alas, Tex doesn’t survive this close encounter. Nevertheless, Geary manages to get back to town into one piece. Imagine his chagrin when he learns McKaye, the only man who can clear him, has died! For all practical purposes, Geary’s goose looks cooked!

Nevertheless, our hero improvises and sets McKaye’s corpse in a car and then parks the vehicle in plain sight on a city street. Now, the audacious Geary surprises the reform-minded governor, Phelps (Charles Trowbridge of “The Paleface”), in the latter’s hotel room. Holding him at gunpoint, Geary dopes out in detail his own outlandish ploy. Although McKaye is kaput, Geary persuades Phelps to notify the police about the gangster’s presence in a parked car and prompts them to send out men to arrest the hoodlum. Since the police believe McKaye may still be alive, Reddick and Pagle decide to handle it themselves but they end up incriminating themselves. Imagine Phelps’ shock when he watches the cops dispatched to arrest McKaye blast the car with a fusillade of gunfire nobody could survive. Mind you, not only does Phelps witness this homicidal act, but he can also identify both Reddick and Pagle. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, and the foolish villains have incriminated themselves!

Clocking in efficiently at an adrenaline-fueled 63 minutes, “Strange Alibi” lives up to its title. In fact, the words ‘strange alibi’ appear in the newspaper flashes inserted during Geary’s trial. Arthur Kennedy delivers another charismatic performance as the wronged hero, while Howard De Silva stands out as Geary’s abrasive guard in the prison scenes. Director David Ross Lederman never lets the momentum slacken during this slam-bang, white-knuckled, hellbent, urban crime saga.

"THE BIKERIDERS" (2023) OUT OF **

2024-07-30T16:03:00.000-07:00

Danny Lyon's 1968 photojournalistic book about a Chicago biker club inspired "Mud" writer & director Jeff Nichols to make "The Bikeriders," starring Austin Butler, Jody Comer, and Tom Hardy. This nostalgic but lackluster, 116-minute epic chronicles the evolution of the fictitious Vandal's Motorcycle Club from its origins in the 1960s to the 1980s. Nicholas pays tribute to Martin Scorsese's classic Mafia crime thriller "Goodfellas" (1990) with the pervasive use of flashbacks, a gabby narrator, and patch work of character interviews to forge an ethnographic portrait of early biker subculture. Although Nicholas humanizes these counter-culture ruffians, letting then chew the scenery about themselves, the film seems to start and stall out and it never maintains sufficient headlong momentum. "Midnight Special" cinematographer Adam Stone, who has shot many of Nichols' films, lenses scenic long shots of these bikers as they cruise through sun-drenched, mid-western America. You can savor the spirit of freedom they bask in on these open roads. Nevertheless, the spectacle of these steel horses cannot compensate for the dire lack of drama. Mind you, gearheads and car-geeks will drool over vintage bikes and cars. Several bikers die tragically. Like Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper), the cross-country heroes exploring America in "Easy Rider," the Vandals suffer fates nobody could foresee. One biker who swears he would die first rather than shed his colors capitulates at fadeout. Nobody is really happy long in this journey from one era to another.

"The Bikeriders" shares little in common with those genre-flavored exploitation biker pictures that followed the 1969 success of "Easy Rider." Primarily, Nicholas illustrates the origins of this Chicag0-based club. While watching the iconic black & white biker saga "The Wild One" (1951) on a small television in his family living room, trucker Johnny (Tom Hardy of "Venom") decides to launch his own bike riding club. Whenever anybody wants to challenge his leadership, Johnny promises to give them a chance to topple him. Eventually, Johnny buys a bar and holds meetings there with suds flowing. He installs a phone so anybody who gets arrested or injured in a fight can contact club members. Occasionally, we see Johnny and his followers rumbling through Chicago's concrete canyons in an impressive display of bikers riding in formation. The sight of these noisy choppers growling like mechanical lions captures the heart of a discontented twentysomething who shares Johnny's aspirations.

Meantime, the second protagonist is Benny (Austin Butler of "Elvis"), a quiet loner who would rather die than shed his colors. The opening scene in "Bikeriders" depicts the danger of wearing colors in a hostile setting. Benny suffers grievously at the hands of two obnoxious blue-collar thugs. The scene is brutal, perhaps the most visceral in the film, and Nichols reprises this gripping scene later. Watching that scene unfold when Benny refuses to forsake his colors looks like something in "Easy Rider." This is the show-stopping scene in a film that lacks narrative focus. Basically, Benny, Kathy, and Johnny amount to triangular protagonists. Benny and Kathy are an amorous couple, while Johnny is Benny's best friend. Meantime, a gallery of fascinating characters jabber about their exploits, but we rarely see them doing anything more than drinking and boasting. Occasionally, fights break out, but Johnny doesn't line up any kind of genre style enterprise, such as selling narcotics or robbing businesses.

"The Bikeriders" amounts to an inventory of scenes that resemble excerpts from a photo album. The chief drama here is Johnny's fateful decision to turn over the club to someone else since he lacks the vision to take it beyond a social group. The Vandals neither stick up convenience stores nor banks. They don't molest citizens, etc. Benny's worse crime is evading the police during a high-speed chase. They capture him because he runs out of gas! The early Vandals reminded me of Boy Scouts compared to those psychotic cretins that followed in their footsteps. Nicholas indulges in a peripheral kitchen drama when he introduces the chief villain, the Kid (Toby Wallace of "Dark Frontier"), who hails from a broken inner-city home. His father beats his wife without mercy. Repeatedly, the frustrated Kid approaches Johnny about joining the Vandals. Johnny rejects him twice. Eventually, the Kid challenges Johnny. Meantime, Nichols explores the lopsided romance between Benny and Kathy (Jody Comer of "The Free Guy"), with Kathy talking about them during her interviews. Largely speaking, "The Bikeriders" is filtered through Kathy's eyes. Most traditional biker movies are told from a male perspective, but everything here has a feminine slant. More often than not, these interviews feel like repetitive commercials that interfere with the flow of the action.

Mind you, the cast is impressive. As the Vandals' head honcho, Tom Hardy rules his riding club with a passion. Indeed, Hardy gives a marvelous, Marlon Brando-infused performance. After Benny is beaten down at a bar, Johnny and his riders destroy. Spectators stand in a crowd around the bar with firefighters and watch it go up in smoke. Benny emerges as Johnny's closest confidante, but he refuses to replace Johnny as the Vandals' leader. Most of the picnics that the Vandals have amount to garrulous, booze-fueled, gripe sessions. Michael Shannon has a wonderful scene where he explains how he was rejected for military service because he was branded "an undesirable." Ultimately, little about "The Bikeriders" qualifies as either nostalgic or dramatic. Not only does Benny refuse to be the leader, but he also lets Johnny and the Vandals down by not punishing the Kid. Altogether, "The Bikeriders" leaves you feeling indifferent about the fate of these hellions.

"THE GLADIATOR" (1986) MADE FOR TELEVISION * OUT OF **

2024-07-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

Any movie veteran director Abel Ferrara of "Bad Lieutenant” fame helms is worth watching at least once, and his competently made-for-TV revenge melodrama, "The Gladiator" proves no exception to this rule. "Wiseguy" star Ken Wahl plays the hard-bitten protagonist, and he delivers a sturdy performance. As older brother Rick Benton, Wahl struggles to raise his younger brother, Jeff (Brian Robbins of "C. H. U. D. II: Bud the Chud") without their parents. He decides to coach Jeff about how to drive since the lad has landed his learner’s permit. Buckling up and cruising out into Los Angeles traffic, Rick reminds the fifteen-year-old to obey the rules of the road. Suddenly, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, a sleek, black, 1969, Dodge Charger, looking souped up and sinister as a phantom, careens in behind them. After the aggressive Charger rams Jeff twice, the youth accelerates in a desperate effort to elude the homicidal driver. Sadly, Jeff speeds through an intersection, and a semi-truck smashes into him. Not surprisingly, Jeff dies, while Rick wakes up a couple of days later from a coma. Now, our embittered protagonist embarks on a self-appointed mission to track down this anonymous felon known only as “The Skull.” With the help of his long-time buddy Joe Barker (Stan Shaw of "Daylight"), Rick relies on his genius as a custom car designer to modify his two-door, pick-up truck, installing stronger suspension and heavier bumpers as well as equipping it with a police band radio. He searches for the murderous motorist who wheels around town deploying savage “Ben-Hur” blades that telescope from his front hubs during his death dealing escapades. Sometimes, this madman terrorizes other drivers for nothing more than either accidentally bumping his car or he careens up behind them and plows into them, running them off the road.

Meanwhile, an overworked detective, Lieutenant Frank Mason (Robert Culp of "Hickey and Boggs"), has little success with the case. After he recovers from the accident, Rick sits in on a support group of people who lost family members to drunk drivers. Initially, Rick suspected the dastard who brought about the death of his brother was a drunk. Later, he comes to the realization that this isn't the case. Here's the deal, however, the genuine culprit of this above-average, television quickie doesn't abuse alcohol! Instead, he is a hopeless psycho who preys at random on innocent, unsuspecting victims. By this time, Rick has begun a relationship with a late-night, radio talk show host, Susan Neville (gorgeous Nancy Allen of "RoboCop"), who juggles phone calls from a variety of listeners that are split along the lines of whether the self-professed "Gladiator" as Rick dubs himself is either a vigilante or a menace to society. Inevitably, he emerges as a celebrity in the sense that he patrols the roads to dissuade drunken drivers from swerving across lanes and killing people. Finally, Rick manages to thwart this madman during a climatic, slam-bang, demolition derby in an automobile junkyard. Moments before this showdown, Rick had phoned Detective Mason and identified himself as the "Gladiator." Like Michael Winner's "Death Wish" starring Charles Bronson, Rick takes it on himself to find his brother's killer. Unlike Bronson, Rick succeeds in bringing the lawbreaker to justice. Unfortunately, not only do we never get a glimpse of this fiend, played by professional stunt car driver Jim Wilkey, but also we never learn what fueled his road rage. For the record, Wilkey drove some of the vehicles in "Mad Max: Fury Road!" This is the only flaw in an otherwise white-knuckled thriller. Although it is a made-for-TV movie, Ferrara never lets the momentum stall in this gripping 94-minute tire shredder of an epic. Interestingly, Ferrara’s film was initially supposed to unspool on the big screen instead of television.

"THE SICILIAN CONNECTION" (1972) * OUT OF **

2024-06-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

“Blindman” director Ferdinando Baldi’s violent, mafia-themed, narcotics-trafficking thriller “The Sicilian Connection,” starring Ben Gazzara, Steffen Zacharias, and Fausto Tozzi, qualifies as a slam-bang, action-packed saga. Gazzara plays Joe Coppola, an audacious New Yorker who flies to Sicily to establish an opium/morphine/heroin pipeline from Turkey via Sicily, with the Big Apple as the final destination for his contraband. Gazzara is ideally cast as a smiling, thick-skinned criminal of considerable resource who has been engaged in the illicit drug trade for years. Now, Coppola sets out to make a big splash. Nevertheless, in the tradition of all mafia-themed, Euro crime stories, treachery is rampant, since nobody can trust anybody, and surprises constantly keep both criminals and the authorities on a tightrope. The shocking opening essentially foreshadows the shocking finale!

When Baldi helmed this exciting little actioneer, he stuck to the venerable Hollywood edict that ‘crime cannot pay.’ In other words, nobody succeeds in this complicated, multi-million-dollar venture which could serve as a companion piece to Robert Stevenson’s “To The Ends of the Earth” (1946) with Dick Powell, a Treasury Agent who follows the trail of opium from China to Egypt and finally New York. Baldi collaborated on the script with “Hell Raiders of the Deep” scenarist Duilio Coletti, and they keep the surprises coming in this 100-minute gangland opera but never wears out their welcome.

The opening scene of “The Sicilian Connection” is a genuine showstopper. Indeed, this gruesome encounter serves as a template for everything that ensues. An intrepid police inspector interrupts the funeral of a respected high-ranking mafia figure. He demands to examine the funeral permits without considering the plight of the grieving mourners. Not surprisingly, the mafia soldiers and the family attending the funeral are not amused. Nevertheless, they endure his painstaking interference without protest. Just when they think this suspicious cop is going to let them proceed with their funeral, he demands to eyeball the corpse. It seems the corpse was embalmed in Turkey, so now the inspector insists they strip the body. According to the dead man’s papers, he died of a respiratory ailment. Imagine the cop’s curiosity when they open the funeral shroud and discover the pale corpse has a gash running from his throat to his navel. Whoever stitched the dead man’s chest together did a shoddy job. You can see through the crevice in the corpse’s torso to something inside his chest cavity. As it turns out, the inspector was correct in assuming that packets of cocaine were stashed in the corpse. By this time, the mafia lieutenants overseeing the funeral have had enough of their nosey cop. Just as the inspector is congratulating himself on his discovery, he seems to have forgotten that he is alone, by himself, surrounded by the mafia. Suddenly, the mafia soldiers seize him and thrust his protesting arms and legs atop the dead man. Despite his cries of protest, the fear-stricken man struggles in horror as the mafia thugs screw the nails down on the coffin lid and bury their soldier with the crying inspector in the ground.

The next thing we know, we are introduced to Joe Coppola in a Sicilian restaurant. He asks for some coke, and the owner of the restaurant slips him a couple of packets of coke in a folded napkin. Coppola inquires about the whereabouts of a mafia kingpin with whom he can conduct business. Everything treats Coppola with considerable suspicion until they establish his credentials and then they educate him about not only the difficulties of selling him the large quantities that he wants but also the extreme cost and the various people to whom he must ingratiate himself. No, “The Sicilian Connection” is not without some shooting and killing, but it covers the logistics of smuggling the narcotics from Europe into New York.

This is truly an insightful thriller with an ending that you won’t expect.

TRIGGER WARNING (2024) OUT OF **

2024-06-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

Jessica Alba goes full metal jacket in Indonesian director Mouly Surya’s Hispanic-themed action thriller “Trigger Warning” and shows she is no slouch when it comes to fighting. Our resourceful heroine disarms a chainsaw wielding madman when he tries to carve up her. Later, she tangles with ruthless domestic terrorists selling high-tech, military-grade weapons from a nearby Army Depot! As a U.S. Special Forces commando with combat experience galore, Parker (Jessica Alba of “Sin City”) takes a leave of absence to go home and attend her father’s funeral. During a bullet-riddled shootout in the scorching sands of Syria’s Badiyat al-Sham Desert, she had received the phone call from her former high school sweetheart, Sheriff Jesse Swann (Mark Webber of “Green Room”), about her dad’s tragic death. When she meets with him at the Swann County Sheriff’s Department, Jesse hands her the suicide note her father Harry (Alejandro De Hoyos of “The Contractor”) left behind on his bedside nightstand. According to Jesse, Parker’s father killed himself with a live hand grenade in a mine shaft he had been excavating when he wasn’t operating his own bar. Reservations notwithstanding, Parker concedes her father’s death as accidental.

Later, after she discovers weapons have gone missing from the local U.S. Army armory, she changes her mind about her dad’s death. Meantime, she encounters Jesse’s father, incumbent conservative Senator Ezekiel Swann (Anthony Michael Hall of “The Breakfast Club”), on the campaign trail. Eventually, she learns the senator has a gunnery range on his estate and allows his house guests to blow holes in the targets in his backyard. Not surprisingly, the weapons are government-issue! Earlier, she had seen Senator Swann’s obnoxious younger son, Elvis (Jake Weary of “Animal Kingdom”), obliterate a Mexican taco wagon with a shoulder-fired, rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). Now, Parker has second thoughts about her dad’s demise. She learns Senator Swann is up to his eyeballs in a conspiracy to sell million-dollar, high-tech weaponry because he needs the dough his illegal arms sales generate to fund his re-election campaign. Meantime, Elvis has stashed some of those weapons in Harry’s cave. When Harry discovered them, Elvis murdered him and covered up his death as a suicide. By this time, Parker has notified a shady colleague at the CIA, code-named ‘Spider’ (Tone Bell of “Dog Days”), look into this treachery.

The villains try to kill Parker and they burn down Harry’s tavern. Parker tosses one miscreant off a second story balcony into the writhing inferno. Jesse arrests Parker for attempting to kill Elvis and cuffs her to a jail cell. A standard-issue ritual torture scene ensues with Ezekiel and his sons roughing Parker up until she reveals she has video evidence connecting them not only to her father’s murder but also to the theft of those Army weapons. Apparently, Elvis thought Harry’s surveillance cameras were not documenting his skullduggery. As it turns out, those cameras recorded evidence of their nefarious deeds and dumped them off-site for safekeeping! Now, Parker must break out of jail before they kill her. Worse, she is appalled to learn Jesse looked the other way when Ezekiel and Elvis were smuggling military ordinance. When Jesse tried earlier to convince her to agree to a cover-up, Parker had refused.

Mind you, there’s plenty of rough and tumble gymnastic action with Alba reliving her “Dark Angel” days when she takes down guys twice her size. Scenarists John Brancato of “The Game” and Josh Olson of “A History of Violence” penned the by-the-numbers screenplay which “Babysitters” scribe Halley Wegryn Gross rewrote. Altogether, they have churned out a predictable but entertaining boilerplate actioneer that gives Alba a chance to play rough. She wields a machete with considerable flourish as it if were a steel tipped fan. Of course, nothing is easy for our redoubtable heroine as she struggles to get to the bottom of her father’s death. Jesse finds himself caught in the middle between his arrogant brother Elvis and his unsavory father. Elvis has brokered a deal with people who are on the classified FBI’s terrorist list. Once our heroine realizes her father was murdered, she sets out to exact vengeance. At one point, she confronts Jesse and urges him to turn himself, the senator, and his younger brother into the authorities. Predictably, family ties outweigh the law, and Jesse goes along with his father. Earlier, he had tried to bribe Parker by buying her property. Mind you, Parker was no more going to sell than Jesse was going to make it simple for her to do.

“Trigger Warning” had such a troubled production history, and Netflix kept it on the shelf for three years. Meantime, Alba had been absent from the screen for five years. Her 2019 thriller “Killers Anonymous” (2019) was her last theatrical film. Now, she looks far more mature. The action choreography of the close-quarter combat scenes looks plausible. Parker’s willingness to hurl herself into breech and fight the Swann family says a lot about her tenacity. She is like a mongoose when she goes after them. As a murder mystery revenge thriller, “Trigger Warning” makes the grade. Comparably, it is not as violent as “Peppermint” (2018) with Jennifer Garner. Happily, Surya doesn’t waste time with comic relief, and she maintains enough momentum so the action doesn’t dawdle. The basic plot is no great shakes. The death of a loved one that prompts the hero or heroine from afar to say goodbye is standard-issue narrative convention. Of course, we know no matter how stiff the odds are, Parker will survive and her adversaries will grovel. The villains—the entire Swann family—both father and sons—lack the savagery of genuinely despicable villains. Indeed, they beat the living daylights out of Parker, but they don’t kill innocent men or women who stumble into the line of fire. Our heroine is fearless even when she has her back to the wall while taking a beating. Altogether, “Trigger Warning” qualifies best as ‘a guilty pleasure.’

"BRIMSTONE" (1949) *OUT OF **

2024-06-02T21:13:00.000-07:00

"Undersea Kingdom" director Joseph Kane's "Brimstone" ranks as an above-average, but formulaic western with plenty of a knock down, drag out fistfights, shootouts, and intrigue. Rod Cameron is cast as an undercover marshal after a gang of thieves. The movie draws its title from the cunning patriarchal 'Pop' Courteen that Walter Brennan plays who presides over a family of ruthless, no-account outlaws who have a legitimate cattle spread. Just to give you an idea how villainous Brennan is, his two eldest sons are played by a pair of seasoned Hollywood heavies, i.e., Jack Lambert and Jim Davis. Mind you, this is a plum role for Lambert because he survives about three-fourths of the film before he bites the dust. After a number of unexplained robberies occur, Johnny Tremaine shows up, and Sheriff Henry McIntyre (Forrest Tucker of "Ride the Man Down") deputizes him despite his better instincts that Tremaine may be the outlaw roaming the territory. The town elders have their eye on McIntyre because he cannot seem to round up the bandit and threaten to depose him if he doesn't solve the crimes and apprehend the criminals before Marshal Walter Greenslide (Jack Holt of "The Littlest Rebel") arrives. When the marshal shows up, he is promptly wounded during a stagecoach robbery in the middle of a stream by a hooded bandit. Fortunately, the lawman is merely winged and comes out of it wearing a sling. Meantime, Pop is up to no-good not only struggling to keep his sons in line, especially one (James Brown of "Red River") who wants to marry a settler, and stealing money holding up a bank.

"Brimstone" features an all-star cast. Cameron makes a stalwart hero, while Brennan steals the show as the treacherous father. Indeed, Brennan's performance here reminded me of his superb characterization as Ike Clanton in John Ford's classic oater "My Darling Clementine." One big twist occurs near the end that Kane and "Escape Me Never" scenarist Thames Williamson concoct and let simmer beneath the surface for the length of his vigorous western. Look for Will Wright as the fiery editor and publisher of a newspaper. Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams has a strong part as Sheriff McIntyre's deputy. My only complaint is some of the special effects, particularly the painted backdrops look might obvious. Prolific helmer Joseph Kane, who directed two John Wayne escapades entitled "Flame of the Barbary Coast" and "Dakota," keeps the action moving and never allows the pace to slacken in this nimble 90-minute frontier tale. This is one of those rare action-packed westerns where the hero doesn't have a love interest. Nevertheless, western fans will appreciate this rugged horse opera and the sturdy cast that highlights it. My favorite line from this oater is "Save your breath to cool your coffee."

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940) * out of **

2024-06-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

“High Sierra” helmer Raoul Walsh’s “They Drive By Night” chronicles the trials and tribulations of the hard-luck Fabrini brothers, Joe (George Raft of “Scarface”) and Paul (Humphrey Bogart of “Casablanca”), who drive around the clock to deliver merchandise around California. Eventually, since they have fallen behind on their vehicular loan payments, they must now dodge their creditors. Fortunately, Joe and Paul buy a load on their own dime rather than contracting themselves out for peanuts to a trucking firm. The profits enable them to pay off their truck. No sooner do things appear rosy than disaster strikes. Joe makes the mistake of asking Paul to take over the wheel from him because he is feeling drowsy. Mind you, Paul himself cannot seem to get enough shuteye. Earlier, Walsh showed the fate of a trucker who nodded off at the wheel. Predictably, Drifting off asleep Paul plunges their paid-for truck with its valuable into a ravine. Joe bails out at the last moment, while Paul rides the load into the ground. Miraculously, Joe survives the crash none the worse for wear. Sadly, Paul isn’t as fortunate. Doctors take off his right arm. Paul’s wife Pearl (Gale Page of “Crime School”) had been worrying herself constantly about her husband’s uncertain fate. She hates that he cannot spend more time at home with her. She dreams of them having a baby to comfort her in her loneliness. Paul argues they cannot afford a child.

Scenarists Jerry Wald of “The Roaring Twenties” and Richard Macaulay of “Across the Pacific” adapted A.I. Bezzerides’ novel "Thieves' Market." The wit and spontaneity of their snappy dialogue energizes the action. Joe and Paul swap loaded words with Cassie Hartley (Ann Sheridan of “King’s Row”), a waitress slinging bacon and eggs at a roadside dinner. Later, she quits because the owner cannot keep his hands to himself when he is around her. She hopes she will get lucky in Los Angeles. Happily, Joe obliges her, giving her a lift to L.A. with him where he looks for loads to buy. Eventually, Joe lands a job working for an old friend, Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale of “Desperate Journey”), who owns a trucking outfit. Initially, Ed saw Joe and another irate trucker tangle over who would land a load from Ed. Remembering his old friend, Ed invites Joe up to his second story office. Carlsen’s big heart is matched only by his eternally happy outlook. Ed’s trophy wife, Lana (Ida Lupino of “High Sierra”), squandering his cash like confetti, throttles the drama into high gear in “They Drive By Night.” She yearns to sprawl in Joe’s arms. She convinces Ed to hire Joe, but not as a trucker. Instead, she convinces Ed that Joe can do more for them in the office than out on the asphalt.

Afterward, Lana drives Joe crazy with her passes at him. He shuns her like poison. First, he refuses Lana’s advances because Ed is his good friend. Second, Joe has eyes only for Cassie. He furnishes her with room and board. After he drove her to L.A., Joe passed out in Cassie’s bed. Instead, Cassie had to bed down for the night in a chair. Now, the Production Code Administration forbade showing a couple sleeping in the same bed. Eventually, Joe hires Paul, and business begin to boom. During a party at Ed’s new estate, Ed boasts about one of his novel gadgets. He has installed a photo-electric eye in his garage. When he approaches the garage, the vehicle breaks the light beam of the mechanism. This prompts the garage door to retract, allowing the motorist to enter and park their vehicle. Walsh and his writers go out of their way to emphasize this novelty. Later, after he is so sloshed he cannot drive, Ed has Lana drive them home. When she parks in the garage, she realizes Ed has passed out. Lana lacks the strength to remove him from the vehicle. Instead, she leaves him in the car with the engine running. Ultimately, Ed dies from carbon monoxide, and Lana knew exactly what she was doing when she let him die.

The Production Code stipulated nobody was above the law. Lana confesses her guilt to the District Attorney. Initially, the D.A. rules it as a case of accidental death. Later, after Joe continues to ignore her advances, Lana convinces the D.A. that Joe threatened to kill her if she didn’t kill her husband. The D.A. swallows this lie without blinking and has Joe arrested allegedly for his part in the murder. Clearly, Walsh and company appropriated the complicated murder subplot from another WB film, Archie Mayo’s Latino thriller “Border Town” (1935) with Paul Muni and Bette Davis. Nevertheless, Walsh makes more comprehensive use of it. Although Lana insists to the D.A. that Joe drove her to kill Ed, she cannot cope with her own sense of guilt. The electric eye technology haunts her. She discovers the facility where she is being held boasts such technology. Every time she encounters an electric eye, she feels overwhelmed by her guilt, like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth. During Joe’s trial for his complicity in Ed’s murder, Lana melts down in court. The judge dismisses the murder charges against Joe.

The cast is first-rate, and Walsh’s fast-paced, no-frills direction maintains momentum. Lupino is riveting in her portrayal as Lana. The tacked-on murder and trial seems rather contrived but inevitable. Humphrey Bogart was still confined to thankless second-string roles at this point in his career. Meanwhile Raft played the level headed big brother who used his brains to get ahead. This ranks as one of the Raft’s more sympathetic roles. Alan Hale steals the show with his antics. Altogether, “They Drive By Night” qualifies as an above average Walsh effort.

PIRANHA (1972) *1/2 OUT OF ****

2024-06-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

William Gibson’s one and only film “Piranha,” reuniting “Laredo” co-stars William Smith and Peter Brown, qualifies as a half-baked spin on the venerable survivalist saga “The Most Dangerous Game.” Brother and sister, Art Greene (Tom Simcox of “Shenandoah”) and Terry Greene (Ahna Capri of “Enter the Dragon”), hire a local, Jim Pendrake (Peter Brown of “Lawman”), to serve as their tour guide in the jungles of Venezuela. Terry is a wildlife photographer with an antipathy toward firearms. Later in the story, her brother Art fills Jim about her sour attitude. Apparently, their mother shot their father in cold blood. Mind you, he had cheated on his wife, so in a fit of rage, she blew his head off. Tragically, Terry witnessed the murder. Since then the sight of guns evokes those painful memories. They encounter Caribe (William Smith of “Any Which Way You Can”), a seasoned hunter who sums up his love of hunting, "I can taste the very soul of every animal I hunt... what I hunt becomes a part of me... and lives on in me. Someday I'll be outhunted. And everything that I will become part of that hunter..."

By the time, this slow-burn, but tedious 95-minute melodrama has worn out its welcome. Caribe loves to kill animals much to Terry’s chagrin. Near the end, Caribe kills Terry’s brother and beats poor Pendrake half to death. Predictably, Terry adapts to this horrific predicament. Earlier, she complained to Jim about packing a pistol. Nevertheless, he saved not only Terry’s life but also her brother when she shot a venomous snake poised to strike them. Now, she has gotten hold of Caribe’s rifle, and she blasts him into eternity. Although the location photography and the stock footage of wildlife provide considerable atmosphere, Richard Finder’s screenplay is light on drama until the final quarter hour. The use of stock footage pads out the action and provides a sense of atmosphere. Incredibly, we never see any piranha. What a letdown! Apparently, neither Gibson nor his writer lacked the resources to stage a piranha feeding scene. As it turns out, Piranha is Caribe’s nickname. Smith is appropriately maniacal as the hunter gone mad. Gibson could easily have whittled twenty minutes out of this lethargic saga. Whether he knew it or not, Gibson paved the way for those grisly Italian-produced horror movies, like Sergio Martino’s “Slave of the Cannibal God,” which featured live footage of animals eating animals. Although it doesn’t redeem the film, the wildlife unit shot film of an incredibly monstrous anaconda. No, this anaconda is much larger than those Jennifer Lopez tangled with in “Anaconda.” This reptile resembles a felled tree slithering through the underbrush. Presumably, the cast got a vacation out of this on-location shoot when they weren’t sweating it out in the jungle. Save your curiosity for something else if you feel the urge to watch this abysmal adventure.

"TWO FACES OF THE DOLLAR" (1967-ITALIAN) * OUT OF **

2024-04-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

Most Spaghetti westerns are derivative, imitating the genre’s box office champs, specifically Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" and Sergio Corbucci's "Django," and then later the “Trinity” horse operas. “Man from Oklahoma” director Roberto Bianchi Montero’s "Two Faces of the Dollar" borrows marginally from Leone's classic, but contains more plot and morality than those superficial, straightforward, gunnery range Spaghetti westerns. Mind you, "Two Faces of the Dollar" has no shortage of violent shootouts in the grand Spaghetti western tradition. Moreover, the filmmakers observe some of the now defunct Production Code rules. The film depicts cold blooded murder, premediated larceny, and reflects the venerable Production Code edict: crime doesn’t pay. Meantime, this 95-minute sagebrusher also crowds out gunplay with the logistics of an elaborately planned gold heist. Think “Mission Impossible.” Kudos to lenser Stelvio Massi. His first-rate, widescreen cinematography along with his novel use of zooms and pans enhances the film’s spectacle. Later, Massi would ascend to the director’s chair and distinguish himself with various poliziotteschi crime thrillers, notably “Convoy Busters” and “Emergency Squad.” At the same time, Giosy and Mario Capuano’s flavorful orchestral score evokes memories of Leone’s “For A Few Dollars More.” What our anti-heroes set out to accomplish mirrors John Huston’s revered crime classic “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950). Surprisingly, the Italians embrace a ‘crime doesn’t pay’ note, in the context of “The Asphalt Jungle!”

Story and screenplay scribes Alberto Silvestri of “Nick the Sting” and Franco Verucci of “No Way Out” conjure up a vivid gallery of characters. Furthermore, they pose stiff obstacles our thieves must contend with before they get away with the gold. First, they introduce us to a bespectacled professor, Matthew (Jacques Herlin of “Secret Agent Super Dragon”), who idolizes clocks. He has devised an audacious plan to steal a fortune in gold stored at Fort Henderson. Although it remains under lock and guard in a separate room, Matthew orchestrates the theft in broad daylight inside the fort during a camp inspection. He has recruited three accomplices, two men and a woman. First, he convinces a sharp-shooting gunslinger, Django (Maurice Poli of “Battle of the Damned,” aka Monty Greenwood), who prizes the qualities of a Navy Colt revolver, to join him. Second, he enlists the aid of a disgraced army officer, the treacherous Blackgrave (Gérard Herter of “Adios, Sabata”), who shares Django’s relish for Navy Colts. Blackgrave must impersonate the colonel scheduled to inspect the fort. Once they enter the fort, Blackgrave and Django perform all the heavy lifting and later the ensuing gunplay when they cross the border. Third, he solicits the help of a buxom babe, Jane (Gabriella Giorgelli of “Moving Target”), who relies of her charms to seduce lusty males. This turns out to be the first flaw in Matthew’s plan. He chose Jane because she knew the former quartermaster. After her arrival at the stockade, the current quartermaster informs her about Felix’s death. Initially, the new quartermaster insists she leave. Naturally, she appeals to him and hangs around long enough to carry out her part in the robbery. Moreover, Matthew has painstakingly created a persona for himself that will enable them escape with the gold, even under the noses of a fort bristling with soldiers! Earlier, at the local bank, Matthew tried without success to cash in bags of dirt he had mistaken for gold. He has done it so often everybody considers him a fool. Indeed, Matthew grooms this persona until the thieves possess the gold. Earlier, Blackgrave had turned his horse loose in the desert, so he flag down the stagecoach transporting Colonel Talbert (Andrea Bosic of “Sandokan the Great”) to Fort Henderson for his camp inspection. During their conversation, Blackgrave assembles his Navy Colt. He guns down the officer traveling with Talbert without a qualm. Afterward, he faces off with Talbert in an old-fashioned duel and kills the colonel. Fortunately, during their conversation, Blackgrave had learned from Talbert that the latter had never visited Fort Henderson, so nobody would be able to challenge his identity. Indeed, after he kills the colonel in a duel, Blackgrave dons Talbert’s uniform and masquerades as him. At the fort, he informs the commandant that he plans to rest before he launches his inspection. Meantime, posing as a drunken Mexican, Django charges recklessly into the fort and picks a fight with a brawny sergeant. Promptly, the soldiers lock him up in the guardhouse. Later, Django tempts a guard to enter his cell when he catches the soldier admiring his watch. Django overpowers the guard and prepares to play his part in helping Blackgrave steal the gold.

Basically, Blackgrave and Django work inside the fort to remove the gold. Blackgrave dodges an inquisitive officer, Lt. Benjamin Sinclair (Andrea Scotti of “Operation Poker”), who may have recognized him from his shady past. Meantime, Django struggles with another sergeant who tries to thwart his efforts to steal the gold. Later, when a soldier discovers Jane and tries to alert the post about her, Blackgrave gunned him down in front of everybody. Blackgrave justifies shooting the soldier because he recognized the man as an arsonist. Meantime, to facilitate loading the sacks of gold onto Matthew’s wagon, Blackgrave orders the fort commander to dispatch troopers to help Matthew load up. Montero and his writers rarely let Matthew and his accomplices off the hook. Once they have left the fort, greed prompts them to double-cross each other. Later, after they reach the border, they discover Lt. Sinclair has hired a gang of desperadoes to help him seize the gold. A nighttime gunfight in an abandoned border town ensues, with our protagonists mowing down the villains. Nevertheless, unexpected trouble lies ahead for Django, Blackgrave, and Matthew. “Two Faces of the Dollar” ends on an ironic note for a Spaghetti western: crime doesn’t pay.

"ALIEN" (1979) OUT OF

2024-04-30T20:24:00.000-07:00

“Duelists” director Ridley Scott's "Alien" ranks as one of the greatest sci-fi horror sagas of all time. If you haven't seen this landmark epic that spawned a franchise, then you haven't experienced genuine icy cold dread. Happily, the years haven't robbed this terrific gem of its skin crawling repulsion. Several sequels followed in its wake, but only James Cameron's "Aliens" came close to replicating the original's intensity. Like any suspenseful film, "Alien" boasts several surprises that will catch you off guard and send shivers down your spine. Most of the action is confined to the murky confines of a shadowy mining company spacecraft with passages galore. Reportedly, Scott and scenarist Dan O'Bannon knew nothing about director Edward L. Cahn's "It! The Terror from Beyond Space" (1958) and Mario Bava's "Planet of the Vampires" (1964) with Barry Sullivan. Nevertheless, though neither had seen either film, it is easy to see the resemblance in the plots between "Alien" and edgy Cahn's epic where a monster boards a spacecraft before it blasts off into space and the crew spent the entire flight waging a life and death war with the monster as it corners the heroes. On the other hand, the set design in the Bava film seems virtually replicated in Scott's film. Mind you, neither of those two inspirations is anywhere near as chilling as "Alien." The eponymous monster is a memorable predator that you’ll never forget. Indeed, coursing through the veins of this lethal life-form is acid that eats its way through the metal hull of the ship.

Scott's atmospheric film takes place in the year 2122. The commercial cargo vessel the Nostromo is heading home when Mother, the ship's computer, receives an SOS distress signal and awakens the seven-member crew from hyper-sleep in their individual sleeping pods. Reluctantly, they hasten to a planet to investigate the signal. They land on this inhospitable planet and check things out. One of the crew, Kane (John Hurt of "Heaven's Gate") finds himself in an eerie setting, a garden within the hull of a derelict space ship that contains curious organisms in small silos. Kane makes the fatal mistake of scrutinizing one of them and the dome shape of it peels itself back ominously and then something icky surges out of it, smashing through the face plate of his helmet. This unsavory organism attaches itself to Kane's face, while another part of it plunges down his gullet, while its snake-like tail coils around his neck. Kane's shipmates rush their fallen colleague back aboard the Nostromo despite the protests of Science Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver of "Ghostbusters") who doesn't think Kane should be brought aboard. Ripley fears Kane has been infected with something hazardous. Nostromo ship captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt of "M. A. S. H.") intervenes on Kane's behalf and allows him to be brought aboard. They confine Kane to quarantine, so they can analyze the mysterious creature clinging tenaciously to his face. Miraculously, the creature strangling Kane releases him, collapses to the floor, and scuttles away like eerie vermin. Kane revives none the worse for wear, and everybody celebrates his recovery.

At best, the sense of relief proves at best ephemeral. While the crew is indulging in a gluttonous repast, Kane coughs and then sprawls onto their table and goes into a palsy. As his shipmates struggle to restrain him, Kane heaves and a pickle-shaped demon erupts from his chest and tears off into the shop. At this point, the dwarf-like critter grows into a huge, ugly creature with a double-set of ravenous jaws. One by one, it eliminates the shipmates until only Ripley is left. In this respect, Scott's grisly film resembles a slasher film because Ripley qualifies as 'the final girl.' Ripley manages to activate the self-destruction phase, after she rescues her cat, and slips into an escape shuttle. Unfortunately, Dallas dies during the final moments after the self-destruct sequence is set into motion. Ripley and Jones make it into the shuttle and prepare for the long voyage back to Earth. Little does poor Ripley realize that the alien beast escaped from the Nostromo before it was obliterated. Eventually, she is able to blow the monster out of the shuttle. "Alien" garnered an Oscar for Best Special Effects. Jerry Goldsmith’s orchestral score heightens the suspense and terror. “Alien” used the following line in its advertising campaign: In space nobody can hear you scream!

MARIA (2019) OUT OF

2024-04-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

Filipino film director Pedring A. Lopez’s fearsome but formulaic female revenge thriller “Maria,” headlining Christina Reyes, makes the gun-toting, blade-wielding, karate chopping dames in “La Femme Nitika,” “Peppermint,” “Atomic Blonde,” and “Anya” look like Girl Scouts soliciting for their annual cookie drive. Clocking in at a nimble 90 minutes, “Maria” never wears out its welcome, though it relies primarily on an inventory of cliches to propel its ballistic yarn. Several factors distinguish this low budget actioneer and enhance its spectacle, principally a persuasive cast, acrobatic combat choreography, atmospheric settings, a sympathetic heroine, thoroughly despicable villains, and some extreme violence in its depiction of its unsavory subject matter. Sensitive souls who abhor graphic violence should skip this bloodthirsty carnage in this martial-arts action thriller.

“Maria” follows the unfortunate fate of a Filipino assassin formerly known as the Black Rose assassin Lily. Our courageous heroine staged her own death, so she could quit the cartel, disappear into obscurity, and start a family. Guess her hormones were crying out to her. Now, after seven years, things are looking pretty rosy for our protagonist. Maria has married Bert (Guji Lorenzana of “Silong”) who is a decent guy. They have a rambunctious daughter, Min-Min (Johanna Rish Tongcua of “Once Before”) and they indulge her every whim. Predictably, Lopez presents a portrait of domestic family bliss fuzzy with sentiment. Meantime, the Black Rose cartel that Maria deserted is monitoring a controversial gubernatorial race. They don’t like the way things is shaping up and they send their henchmen out to cover it. Maria’s old lover Kaleb (Germaine De Leon of “Here Comes the Boom”) from her Black Rose days reacts with understandable shock when he spots her in a picture at a rally taken by one of his henchmen. Immediately, Kaleb informs his father, the chieftain of the Black Rose cartel, Ricardo (Freddy Webb of “Etiquette for Mistresses”), about his alarming discovery. Although Kaleb vows to liquidate the dame himself for her treachery, Victor (KC Montero of “Kubot: The Aswang Chronicles 2”) has nothing but contempt for Ricardo’s son. Nevertheless, Kaleb and his gunmen crash Maria’s house without warning and gun down not only Bert but also kill Min-Min! Now, there is no going backwards. Maria vows to rub out her enemies with extreme prejudice, no matter how long it takes her. She convinces her mentor, Greg (Ronnie Lazaro of “Gospel of the Beast”), to provide her with not only sanctuary but also furnish her with an arsenal of weapons to wage her own private war. The only thing keeping Greg from suffering reprisals for aiding and abetting Maria is a gentleman’s agreement with the Black Rose cartel. Imagine that: honor among these thieves.

You’ve seen this kind of high body count thriller dozens of time. What “Maria” lacks in originality, Lopez more than compensates with blood, gore, and more. Moreover, this predictable but exciting yarn never runs out of steam. Of course, Maria whips everybody’s butts! No surprises there! Nevertheless, the violence in the cartel scenes is pretty toxic. Ricardo loves to torture those whom he suspects are traitors within his ranks. Moreover, he is prepared to do some rather vile things. We see two hefty fellows strung up like beef in a slaughter house who have been beaten half to death. The cartel chieftain is chewing them out before he has two cute little babes with automatic pistols clean the wax out of their ears with lead! The CGI splashes of blood are brief but punctual! Later, the cartel torture a naked man strewn on a table. After beating the poor soul to a pulp but not enough to loosen his tongue, they resort to a mechanical enema, thrusting a rod up his anus. Yes, the guy screams like a stuck hog. Indeed, if you’ve ever endured a prostrate biopsy, you can sympathize with this fellow’s plight. Granted, these scenes are excessive, but they prove that the Black Rose cartel is not a Sunday School outfit. Their indifference to murder in all forms is clearly sociopathic. Sensitive souls may shrink from these scenes. If ever a mob needed massacring, the Black Rose does and it gets its just comeuppance. As the alpha female, Christina Reyes lives up to her reputation and thwarts her old employers. Word is a sequel is in the works, too.

THE BATMAN (2022) OUT OF

2024-04-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Prepare yourself for a different kind of Caped Crusader in "The Batman" as a ripped Robert Pattinson dons the cape and cowl. A grave looking Bruce Wayne wonders after two years of crime fighting if he is making a difference. Pattinson's version of Bruce Wayne may be the youngest iteration of The Batman. In fact, he refers to himself as 'Vengeance' rather than Batman and spends more time on crime than climbing the social ladder. Get ready for some heavyweight drama, too. "Cloverfield" writer & director Matt Reeves and "Hunger Games" co-scripter Peter Craig put Pattinson through the wringer in what amounts to a "Mad Max" spin on the Detective Comics hero. Awash in shadowy 1940s film noir lighting, nothing about "The Batman" is either lighthearted or romantic. Gotham City is a sinister Sodom and Gomorrah on the eve of a critical mayoral election. This grim murder mystery about byzantine corruption in both the police department and the district attorney's office has a sliver of the sadistic "Saw" franchise in its DNA. A nonentity who calls himself 'the Riddler' wants to wash away all that evil with some Old Testament retribution. Meantime, The Batman encounters slinky Selina Kyle, (Zoë Kravitz of "X-Men: First Class"), aka Catwoman, who is searching for a friend gone missing. Predictably, the Bat and the Cat team up for different reasons to contend with a hazmat clad Riddler who looks nothing like the spandex-clad Jim Carrey in "Batman Forever" (1995). Watching this grim, serious-minded melodrama, you'll feel like you're caught in a storm without an umbrella because "The Batman" is dark, rainy and ominous. Basically, you'd need a hacksaw to carve the doom-laden atmosphere, especially when it clocks in at 176 marathon minutes. Reeves deliberately takes his time piecing together each part of the puzzling plot without giving away anything. Oscar-winning "Up" composer Michael Giacchino's orchestral score heightens both the suspense and sharpens the chills with a variety of musical cues.

"The Batman" feels more like David Fincher's serial killer thriller "Se7en" (1995), co-starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, than a luminescent, lightweight, costume-clad crimefighting caper. Mind you, nobody has solved the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne twenty years before, and the tragedy still clouds Bruce Wayne's psyche. We see this younger version of Bruce suited up more often as The Batman rather than modeling the latest sartorial fashions with a gold digger hanging onto his elbow. Crime preoccupies The Batman, and he has trouble keeping out of trouble with the Gotham City Police. Although he has won the trust and support of Detective Lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright of "No Time to Die"), most of Gordon's skeptical superiors and subordinates regard the Caped Crusader with considerable suspicion. Mind you, the criminal element have even less use for him. Blue collar crooks cringe when the Bat signal illuminates the skies. Mob boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro of "The Big Lebowski") and the Penguin, Oswald Cobblepot (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell of "Daredevil") dismiss The Batman as a rank amateur. Carmine knew Bruce Wayne when the latter was a child, but he doesn't suspect the orphaned Wayne is The Batman. Neither does Carmine take Selina Kyle seriously either. Actually, she serves drinks in the Penguin's shady nightclub that serves as a front for Carmine's minions. Rarely do we see The Riddler (a bespectacled Paul Dano of "Swiss Army Man") until the last half hour. He doesn't appear very intimidating and that makes him seem twice as intimidating. The Riddler's riddles aren't bright and witty, but dark and dangerous. He has orchestrated a massive maneuver that makes the January 6th riot at the Capitol in Washington, D. C. look like child's play. The huge difference here is writer & director Matt Reeves makes everything appear both plausible and chilling in its audacity. No, extraterrestrials don't enter the fray like in "Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice" (2016) or either version of "Justice League" (2017).

"The Batman" begins as a slow burn whodunit as our protagonist assembles clues, but there is no shortage of action. This Batman isn't afraid to tango even when the opposition outnumber him. The harrowing demolition derby freeway chase through Gotham City with The Batman hauling butt after the Penguin is a genuine showstopper. The new, stripped-down, Batmobile muscle car looks nothing like any earlier incarnations of the renowned vehicle. Indeed, this Batmobile has a predatory appearance. Interestingly enough, The Batman relies on his trusty Bat motorcycle to zip from here to there with his cape fluttering in the breeze. Reeves doesn't dwell on many Batman gadgets like a James Bond thriller. While Reeves and Craig are more focused on narrative realism, they equip our hero with some clever gadgets. For example, the smart contact lenses with built-in cameras that recognize and identify people are extraordinary. Occasionally, things don't always work out as smoothly for our hero as he expects them. The scene where The Batman BASE jumps from a skyscraper at night to elude capture goes awry when he deploys his parachute too early. Reeves and Craig surround Pattinson with a sterling cast of infamous characters, and they put the Caped Crusader into some predicaments he cannot get out of even with his gadgetry. Unlike previous incarnations of Batman, Pattinson will have the chance to age in the role, because Warner Brothers has signed him up for a trilogy. He has the tenacity of Michael Keaton's Batman, the guile of Christian Bale's Batman, but he lacks the brawn of Ben Affleck's Batman. Nevertheless, in his freshman outing, Pattinson looks like he has gotten off on the right foot. All quibbles aside, "The Batman" is off to a promising start!

THE WAGES OF FEAR (FRENCH-2024) * OUT OF **

2024-04-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

No, “Earth and Blood” director Julien Leclercq’s remake of “The Wages of Fear” doesn’t eclipse the grim, black & white, Henri-Georges Clouzot original made in 1953, starring Yves Montand. Nevertheless, Leclercq generates more than enough thrills and chills to keep spectators poised on the edge of their collective seats during its brisk 104-minute runtime. This taut tale chronicles the Herculean efforts of a group of desperate men and a woman driving trucks laden with Nitroglycerin across treacherous terrain to snuff out a calamitous oil well fire. Earlier, terrorists had sparked this blaze when they attacked the site to keep it from being resupplied. Mind you, Leclercq’s version should not be dismissed entirely as disposable. “Cannabis” scenarist Hamid Hlioua and he have reimagined this classic Man versus Nature showdown with similar but different predicaments. Shrewdly, they have altered elements of Clouzot’s masterpiece without tampering with the basic premise. This sprawling spectacle of men against insurmountable odds accomplishing a virtually impossible mission amounts to a tribute to Clouzot’s masterpiece.

The chief difference between this version and previous ones is the setting. Unlike the South American locales in both Clouzot’s classic and William Friedkin’s dazzling remake “Sorcerer” (1977), Leclercq and Hlioua shift the setting to an anonymous Middle Eastern nation bristling with heavily armed rebels, corrupt military officials, and lethal minefields. Specifically, Leclercq lensed this epic in Morocco with its sprawling desert wastelands and towering mountains. Our gritty heroes and heroine must brave an obstacle course consisting not only of an arid desert with mountainous terrain but also trigger-happy gunmen at roadblocks and gimlet-eyed female snipers who kill without a qualm. Were it not harrowing enough, the drivers must cover about 500 miles in under 20 hours to deliver a sufficient amount of nitro to quench the blaze! Two trucks transporting more than enough nitro to excavate another Grand Canyon constitute part of this small convoy. Several armed guards accompany these intrepid truckers, but at least one of them is untrustworthy. Everybody displays credentials that identify them as medical relief personnel. Similarly, they plaster their vehicles with medical relief emblems.
Appropriately enough, Leclercq and Hlioua whittle down the number of characters gradually from the get-go until only a couple survive this white-knuckled odyssey with its nail-biting timetable.
Basically, the premise hasn’t changed much since the 1953 original. An oil well inferno rages out of control in the middle of the desert. Leclercq and Hlioua have upped the ante considerably. Now not only will the well eventually explode, but also the explosion will obliterate an entire village of innocent souls. The clock is literally ticking as our heroes and heroine embark on their mission of mercy. The heroes in Leclercq’s version differ considerably. In both, Clouzot’s original and Friedkin’s remake, the protagonists were destitute individuals. Owing to their extreme character flaws and the hand of fate, these men turned their backs on civilized society and fled to a sanctuary deep in the South American jungles. They gambled that neither the authorities nor any other adversaries looking for payback would follow them to the ends of the earth.
In the Netflix remake, our protagonists are siblings caught up in slightly better circumstances. Fred (Franck Gastambide of “Restless”) and Alex (Alban Lenoir of “AKA”) have reconciled after a tragic incident that landed his brother in prison. Initially, a wealthy client had paid Fred to get him aboard a flight out of a country teetering on the brink of a revolution. Before they could leave, the military gunned down Fred’s client. Earlier, before this man of affluence died, he had paid Fred for his services. When his client wasn’t looking, Fred caught a glimpse of huge stacks of currency which were crammed in the safe. Since the military knew nothing about this loot, Fred wasn’t about to leave this payday behind for them to discover.
After the soldiers shot his client, Fred told Alex about the cache. With this fortune, Fred assured Alex they could return to Paris and live like kings. Moreover, he convinced his reluctant brother to blow the safe because the risks were minimal. Unlike Fred, Alex has a wife and child to consider. Fred had posted himself outside the building as a guard and had watched in mute horror when the soldiers stormed it. Alex had commenced the countdown to blow the safe when the soldiers surprised him. This part of the plot appears in two flashbacks that explain why the brothers were separated. Afterward, the military arrested and imprisoned Alex in a barbaric prison where he was forced to fight his fellow prisoners to survive. Since he is an explosives expert, the corrupt oil company bribed prison officials to release Alex. The brothers resolved their differences and embarked on this journey of hardship. Basically, the relationship between Fred and Alex amounts to this remake’s weakest element because it is rather contrived. Another major departure from Leclercq’s film and the earlier versions is a woman, Clara (Ana Girardot of “Saint Amour”), who accompanies them on this road trip through Hell. Clara is Fred’s girlfriend, and she comes along for the ride as one of the medical assistants.

Of course, Leclercq’s “Wages of Fear” suffers from other contrivances. At one point, a bandit with a machine gun mounted atop a pick-up truck careens after the convoy along a switchback road. The gunner pours a hail of lead into one of the trucks. Miraculously, none of his ill-aimed bullets strike the nitro in either of the vehicles! Had either truck been hit, the entire convoy would have been atomized in a fiery cloud of smoke. Now, the villains could not have destroyed the convoy, otherwise the movie would concluded on an anticlimactic note. Later, the brothers must clear a road sewn with land mines using a spider web of chains to find the mines. Although it suffers from its share of weaknesses, Netflix’s “Wages of Fear” qualifies as an entertaining epic with a stalwart cast and several genuinely traumatic moments.

"WHERE DANGER LIVES" (1950) OUT OF

2024-04-06T23:39:00.000-07:00

“West of Shanghai” director John Farrow’s psychological melodrama “Where Danger Lives” ranks as one of the best all-time film noir thrillers. Furthermore, “Out of the Past” tough guy Robert Mitchum plays a different kind of noir protagonist. Instead of a blue-collar, gun-toting hardnose, Mitchum is cast as a professional, a doctor with a pleasant bedside manner, who neither brandishes a pistol nor beats anybody to a pulp with brass knuckles. Indeed, the first time we lay eyes on him, he is telling an adolescent girl encased in an iron lung a bedtime story about Elmer the Elephant. Nevertheless, like a quintessential noir male, Mitchum swallows every lie this duplicitous dame, Margo (Faith Domergue of “This Island Earth”), conjures up. Mitchum delivers one of his finest performances as Dr. Jeff Cameron, a caring, compassionate, human being who epitomizes the essence of the Hippocratic Oath. His first encounter with the treacherous Margo occurs when this suicidal siren, looking absolutely stunning, is brought in a hospital examination suite. Margo bewitches Jeff, enough that he forfeits all interest in his current girlfriend, nurse Julie Dorn (Maureen O’Sullivan of “Tarzan”), who he had been planning to wed. Comparably, unlike Margo, Julie is neither mysterious nor deceitful.

Unfortunately, Jeff is helpless when he comes under the spell cast on him by his leading lady. Domergue gives an equally stalwart performance as the addled dame who leads the clueless Mitchum astray. Later, Margo decides to ditch Jeff to board a plane with her father, Frederick Lannington (Claude Rains of “Casablanca”), and leave Jeff behind. The good doctor refuses to let Margo out of his sight. Boldly, he hires a Yellow Cab to take him out to Margo’s elegant estate. While he visits there, our protagonist learns to his chagrin that Lannington isn’t Margo’s father as she has told him. Instead, Lannington is her husband! Jeff is thunderstruck by this dramatic reversal. She tells Jeff that she married Lannington for his money, and he reciprocates and admits he married Margo for her youth. Lannington ushers Jeff in for drinks. A brief but savage fight erupts between these two with Margo watching the two men clash over her. Frederick seizes a fireplace poker and wields it like a madman, clobbering our hero repeatedly. Finally, Jeff knocks Frederick flat on his back with a fistful of knuckles to chin. The older man staggers backwards from the impact and collapses unconscious by the fireplace.

Frederick’s violent blows to Jeff’s head mark a turning point. “39 Steps” scenarist Charles Bennett and “All Through the Night” writer Leo Rosten send Jeff into a bathroom. Farrow stages this scene so we see not only Jeff but also his reflection in a huge mirror while he is bathing his head wounds. For the rest of “Where Danger Lives,” Jeff suffers miserably from the adverse effects of a concussion. Later, he warns Margo that his condition will progressively deteriorate. Eventually, he might not be able to walk. Indeed, Jeff’s prediction comes true, as he steadily go downhill until he pales by comparison to his former self. Actually, this scene serves a pivotal function. Never again is Jeff the same person after his fracas with Frederick. When he comes back to examine Margo’s husband, she informs him that her jealous husband is dead. Initially, Jeff is incredulous. Frederick was still breathing when Jeff left him to bathe his own wounds. Together, Jeff and Margo become a fugitive couple on the lam. They set their sights on the Mexican border, but they must sell Margo’s Cadillac for a vehicle less conspicuous because the police know about it. Ironically, Jeff and Margo never cross the border.

“Where Danger Lives” slackens its own suspense when a radio newscaster reveals the cause of Frederick’s death. No, he did not die from a blow to the head. Instead, he died from being smothered under a pillow. Later, Margo in a fit of desperation tries to smother Jeff with a pillow. She doesn’t has enough time to asphyxiate him, because she wants to catch a ride across the border with a theatrical troupe. Despite being nearly suffocated to death, Jeff survives the ordeal and pursues Margo. Now, our misguided hero is in deplorable condition. Wanting nothing more to do with Jeff after she has sold a prized bracelet to get a ride across the line, Margo is shocked to see him staggering after her. Palming a small caliber handgun from her purse, Margo fires several shots at him. An observant lawman nearby blazes away at her with his revolver and Margo goes down. “Where Danger Lives” winds up with a happy ending. Not only is Jeff cleared of Frederick’s murder, but also he rekindles his romance with Julie. John Farrow never lets the momentum slacken in this tense, 82-minute film noir thriller.

"GOD IS A BULLET" ( OUT OF )

2024-03-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

"Notebook" helmer Nick Cassavetes's R-rated feature "God Is A Bullet" (2023), toplining Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Jamie Foxx, and Maika Monroe, qualifies as an unforgettable crime thriller. Now, using the adjective "unforgettable" to describe a film has been so overdone that you may be inclined to shrug it off. Nevertheless, this 'based on a true story' melodrama takes its violence to heretofore untold levels of sadism. Once you lay eyes on this chilling film, you'll know whence I speak. The depiction of violence here is far beyond what most crime movie aficionados are accustomed to when we watch genre movies. "God Is A Bullet" concerns the search for a teenage girl who has been abducted by a warped family of hooligans who live on the fringe of society and have homicidal tendencies.

Our protagonist is a nice guy, pencil-pushing, sheriff's deputy, Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of "Gods of Egypt"), who has ridden a desk for years and earned little respect from his law enforcement colleagues. A regular churchgoer, Bob believes heart and soul in the word of God. Imagine our hero's alarm when nobody answers the doorbell. He is checking in at the home of his ex-wife and her new husband, so he can see his daughter. Entering the house cautiously with his service pistol drawn, Bob finds the two adults butchered like hogs. His ex-wife's African American husband has been slashed, gashed, and hanged spread eagle from the ceiling by his outstretched arms. He finds his ex-wife riddled with lead and floating face down in an outside pool. Worse, his teenage daughter is missing. The despicable dastards who abducted this innocent girl are the devil's own brood in the flesh. They make Rob Zombie's unhinged hellions look like kindergarten kids. Ghoulish tattoos cover every inch of their bodies. One member of this evil bunch, Case (Maika Monroe of "Independence Day: Resurgence") will quit the gang after the diabolical ringleader, Cyrus (Karl Glusman of "Greyhound"), has kicked her front teeth out of her mouth. Case believes Hightower's daughter is still alive, but for how long she has no idea. This spit and polish sheriff's deputy, decked out in his creased uniform, with his neatly trimmed mustache, struggles to deal with his disaster.

Initially, Hightower doesn't trust Case. He refuses to play by her rules to find his daughter. Case ushers the reluctant Hightower into the world of these subhuman thugs who stole his daughter. Poor Bob must undergo a thorough makeover. He has to shun his boy scout uniform and attire himself like gutter trash. Jamie Foxx appears in a cameo as the 'Ferryman.' He is a legendary tattoo artist who lives in the middle of nowhere. Bob's antagonists are blasphemous maniacs. They suffer no guilt from their depredations, have no conscience, and kill without a qualm. Cyrus has upside down crosses tattooed under his eyes and has no respect for life. In one scene, we see him shoot one of his relatives in the head at point blank range without any warning so her brains splatter the wall nearby like strawberry jam. We're talking about the vile scum of the earth. Reluctantly, Mr. Formal, Nice-Guy Deputy must turn into one of these predators to rescue his daughter.

Not only is Bob compelled to remake himself in the image of his enemies, but he must also renounce all of his Christian beliefs. Once Bob and the villains have met each other in a standoff of sorts, the ringleader Cyrus decides to slip him a surprise present. These fiends catch a rattlesnake, pin it down to a table, and inject the reptile with a solution (presumably speed). The rattler's tail shivers twice as fast, and Cyrus stashes it in a bag and sends a disciple to slip it in Bob's unattended truck. Unbeknownst to him, Bob climbs into his truck, spots the bag, and hoists it into his lap to check it. This rattlesnake surges out of the bag like a whip being cracked and strikes our hero several times. He has to shoot the snake to keep it from streaming more venom into his neck. Afterward, Case takes him to the 'Ferryman' and Bob has to undergo a long process of recovery. Such is Bob's tenacity that he bounces back from this debacle. Nevertheless, the end is no closer in sight because the villains are prepared for him. Bob's arranges a swap with Cyrus involving a bag full of money in return for his daughter. The showdown commences in a quarry with fireworks exploding in starbursts while Bob takes down the bad guys without an ounce of remorse.

Clocking in at two hours and thirty-five minutes, "God Is A Bullet" amounts to a clenched jaw, white-knuckled, ordeal that features heavyweight toxic villains who are scary as all get-out. Director Nick Cassavetes also wrote the screenplay based it on pseudonymous American author Boston Teran's novel which was based on a true story. If you're sick of predictable, namby-pamby crime thrillers, "God Is A Bullet" will hit you like a Mac truck and leave you stunned by its revelations.

"GUN WOMAN" (2014) * OUT OF **

2024-03-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

Premises don't come either more outlandish or extreme than "Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf" writer & director Kurando Mitsutake's far-fetched, gruesome, but riveting revenge thriller "Gun Woman" with Japanese actress Asami as the eponymous heroine. For the record, Asami is the same actress who appeared in all five installments of the "Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead" series. Although it isn't a ten-star masterpiece, there is more going on in this absurd but satisfying epic about an insane doctor who exacts vengeance on the deranged killer who murdered of his wife in cold blood.

The Mastermind (Kairi Narita of "Into the Sun") is a brilliant surgeon with an uncanny ability to erase knife wounds. After the exiled son of Hamazaki (Noriaki Kamata of "Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf") rapes and kills the Mastermind's wife, snapping her neck in a fit of glee, he kicks the poor doctor nearly to death, breaks one of the guy's legs, and then-the ultimate indignity-urinates on him! Nevertheless, he lets the poor slob live! This psycho villain surrounds himself day and night by a goon squad of bodyguards, and he indulges in the most heinous kind of pleasure know to mankind-necrophilia. The revenge driven Mastermind learns Hamazaki's son visits a remote place known as "the room" where he can screw the dead. The site is maintained by some weirdos who thoroughly check out the corpses as well as the customers before they allow them on the premises. This is the only place where Hamazaki's son can venture into without being under the vigilant eyes of his army of bodyguards. This off-the-grid place provides guards of their own. As it turns out, the Mastermind bribes one of the employees who verifies the dead are really defunct. Next, the Mastermind buys a drug addict, Mayumi (Asami of "The Machine Girl"), from human traffickers and rehabilitates her so she is no longer a meth addict. Redemption saves the day?

Afterward, she learns how to dismantle an automatic pistol, reassemble it, and then empty a magazine of 13 cartridges into a target in under 20 seconds! As he explains to Mayumi, she will masquerade as a corpse in the room. Since the naked bodies are inspected before they are brought into the site, the Mastermind gives her an injection of a drug that will make her appear lifeless. Meantime, he surgically implants the two main parts of a 9mm automatic pistol in her breast and abdomen with the clip stuffed presumably in her vagina. Basically, she smuggles her gun inside her body since she has no other way to take it into the facility. Before our heroine embarks on this outrageous mission, she watches as the Mastermind murders another girl as a demonstration to show Mayumi that once she has extracted the firearm from her body, she has 25 minutes to carry out the execution of Hamazaki's lunatic son. After the 25 minutes elapses, she may die from loss of blood. Naturally, nothing in life is a picnic. Our death-defying heroine makes it into the facility and recovers from the effects of the drug which enables her to play possum, she tangles with a brawny guard. Although the guards and employees have weapons, these weapons have been modified so that only they can discharge them. Our heroine must kill three of these guards before she can get a crack at the heinously demented son. Mitsutake frames the story with another story about an assassin-a bespectacled, mustached American (Matthew Floyd Miller of "Stan the Man") who shoots a woman twice in the head while she is taking a shower-and then is driven to an extraction point in Las Vegas by a contract wheel man (Dean Simone of "Dumb Money") who discuss the bizarre death of Hamazaki's son while they cruise from Los Angeles to Sin City.

Predictably, "Gun Woman" wallows in nudity, blood, gore, and violence. Nevertheless, writer & director Kurando Mitsutake has designed it strictly as a soft-core porno potboiler. The pay-off from the book-ends of the framing story set up is terrific. Now, the acting is nothing that the Oscars would recognize, but "Gun Woman" will hold your attention throughout its 85 minutes, and Mitsutake never deviates from the main plot or squanders a second of screen time. Not for the squeamish, this imaginative but graphic shoot'em up gives new meaning to carrying concealed weapons.

"5-CARD STUD" (1968) 1/2 OUT OF **

2024-03-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

"Garden of Evil" director Henry Hathaway's western whodunit "5-Card Stud" (**1/2 out of ****) pits a "hellfire gambler" Dean Martin against a "gunfire preacher" Robert Mitchum in a frontier tale about lynching, murder, and revenge. Mind you, deducing the whodunit will pose a minor challenge to astute audiences. You will spot the actor committing the crimes long before the film identifies him in its penultimate scene. If you study the stable strangling scene, the killer's headgear gives him away. The characters in "True Grit" scenarist Marquerite Roberts' screenplay based on Ray Gaulden's novel are flat since they neither change either their their mentality or their morality. Nevertheless, Roberts boots around an interesting question about "who people were before they became who they are" which segues with the mystery. Otherwise, this Hathaway horse opera is sturdy enough, contains a believable cast and knows how to blend comedy with drama nimbly enough so that it rarely becomes either heavy-handed or repetitious.

Compared to Hathaway's other oaters, "5-Card Stud" doesn't top "True Grit," "The Sons of Katie Elder," "Garden of Evil," "From Hell to Texas," or "Rawhide." However, "5-Card Stud" surpasses "Shoot Out" and "Nevada Smith." Although some critics don't cotton to Maurice Jarre's orchestral score and denigrated it as "Dr. Zhivago" on the range, I contend it is superb music and differs from anything that Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, or Ennio Morricone would have done. Jarre's score enlivens the action and enhances the atmosphere. The Dean Martin song at the beginning and end of "5-Card Stud" marks this sagebrusher as a traditional western As far back in the 1950s, many major westerns contained a ballad about the story or the hero with lyrics like ". . . play your poke and he'd leave you broke."

Interestingly, "5-Card Stud" makes some racial references that chipped away at the usual barriers. In one scene, Robert Mitchum's gun slinging preacher doesn't think it inappropriate that a black man be buried among whites, something that marked this western as a departure from Jim Crow mentality. John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven" had broken ground earlier with a gunfight so that an Indian could be buried in a white graveyard.

Professional gambler Van Morgan (Dean Martin of "Sergeants 3") takes a break from a Saturday night poker game while Sig Ever's son Nick (Roddy McDowell of "Planet of the Apes"), stableman Joe Hurley (Bill Fletcher of "Hour of the Gun"), Mace Jones (Roy Jenson of "Big Jake"), storekeeper Fred Carson (Boyd 'Red' Morgan of "Violent Saturday"), Ever's ranch hand Stoney Burough (George Robotham of "The Split") continue to play poker with newcomer Frankie Rudd (Jerry Gatlin of "The Train Robbers") until Nick catches Rudd cheating 'red-handed' and organizes a lynch party. They take Rudd out to a stream and string him up from the bridge. Barkeeper George (Yaphet Koto of "Live and Let Die") warns Morgan and Morgan lights out after Nick and company to thwart the necktie party. "You don't hang a cheat," Morgan growls, "you kick him out of town." When Morgan arrives, Frankie is swinging with a noose around his neck, and Nick clubs Morgan on the back of the head with his six-gun.

Mama Malone (Ruth Springford of "Vengeance Is Mine") discovers Morgan strewn on the boardwalk the following morning and summons George to help the battered gambler to his room. Morgan decides to pull out of Rincon and try his luck in Denver. Before he leaves, he rides out to Sig Ever's spread to bid goodbye to Sig's comely daughter Nora (Katherine Justice of "The Way West") and deck Nick as repayment for clobbering him at the hanging.

Naturally, the town marshal (John Anderson of "Young Billy Young") can neither identify the lynch mob nor the hanged man. Later, participants in the card game begin to die off one by one. One is wrapped up in barbed wire, another is hanged in the church, and still another is suffocated in a barrel of flour. This was pretty radical stuff for 1968. Indeed, Hathaway and Roberts make each death look different. Eventually, George visits Morgan in Denver, and Morgan decides to ride back to Rincon. Two things have changed since Morgan rode out of Rincon. First, the town has acquired a gun-t0ting pastor who renovates the church and holds Sunday services. Second, Lilly Langford (Inger Stephens of "Hang'em High") has opened a barbershop that features a $20 item that intrigues Morgan when he visits her establishment for the first time. Lilly and Nora contend for Morgan, while Morgan closes in on the new preacher Jonathan Rudd.

"5-Card Stud" boasts several good scenes. The shoot-out in the streets of Rincon when paranoid miners go berserk because they fear that they may be the next victim of the local serial killer is well staged. If you slow down your DVD or VHS copy, you can see Dean Martin lose his Stetson when he grabs hold of an axle to let a wagon haul him out of harm's way. You can see his headgear fall off completely and in the next scene is hat is back on his head. Nevertheless, it is still a neat gunfight with Morgan and Rudd standing back to back against the opposition. The scene at a windmill where Rudd hits each of the windmill blades because he was aiming at the spaces in between the blades is fun, too. George plays a role in the story and provides his buddy Morgan with a clue to the killer's identity. The animosity between Nick Evers and Van Morgan is feisty throughout the action with Nora trying to do her best to dampen it. Van Morgan and Lilly have some amusing banter. The expository scenes about Nick's childhood almost make his character marginally sympathetic.

Indeed, "5-Card Stud" is no classic, but it good enough for a rainy day.

"DAMSEL" (2024) **1/2

2024-03-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

“Stranger Things” heroine Milly Bobby Brown emerges as a pretty pugnacious warrior princess in “28 Weeks Later” director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s above-average medieval fantasy “Damsel.” Although she spends almost every minute in distress, she never requires the services of a man to deliver her from adversity. Our beautiful heroine finds herself in a position that foreshadows wealth, affluence, and love until the dark truth reveals itself. Indeed, she is poised to die an ignominious death in a sizzling wreath of flames from jaws of a vengeful dragon! Initially, “Damsel” unfolds like a predictable fairy tale. She is a beautiful young thing poised to become the wife of a handsome young prince. She hopes he will be kind. Not surprisingly, “Wrath of the Titans” scenarist Dan Mazeau appropriates all the time cliches of the genre but stands them on their collective heads. Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone of “Beowulf”) has negotiated a marriage of convenience for his adorable, Elodie (Milly Bobby Brown), to a sovereign. Prince Henry (Nick Robinson of “Silk Road”) will wed her in his distant kingdom under the icy eyes of his mother Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright of “Forrest Gump”) who is Janus-faced. Basically, the twin ravages of starvation and ecological ruin have virtually destroyed Bayford’s kingdom. His decision to give his daughter’s hand to a stranger prince so his subjects will flourish is not in Elodie’s best interests. No sooner has our heroine exchanged vows than the Prince ushers her up a winding path into a mountain cave.

After a brief ceremony concludes, Prince Henry gathers an unsuspecting Elodie gracefully in his arms and then without warning throws her off a bridge into a shadowy abyss. What poor Elodie doesn’t realize is a humongous dragon with a ravenous appetite awaits her when she lands with a thud. This ferocious flying reptile is herself a scorned mother, and Queen Isabelle has served her human sacrifices as part of a debt because her army slew the dragon’s three offspring in the nest. The King and his army skewered the demons with their swords, and the dragon swept in and roasted in a blaze of fury. Afterward, this talkative dragon toys with Elodie. Thus ends the first half of this tolerable 110-minute fantasy. One of the features that solidifies “Damsel” as a fantasy is its loquacious dragon. Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo of “Star Trek Beyond” provides the voice and gives the CGI dragon a faintly menacing personality. Elodie and the Dragon start out as antagonists but once their minds meet they become sisters.

The first half of the action chronicles the hopes and dreams of our fair heroine as Lord Bayford and Elodie’s stepmom, Bayford’s Queen Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett of “Black Panther”) inform her of her impending nuptials. They set sail in a wooden ship for a distant kingdom. Elodie dreads her future. Nevertheless, dutiful daughter that she is, she accommodates her Lord despite her apparent misgivings. Imagine her surprise when she finds herself flung into a gloomy cavern to face a smoldering female dragon with the power of speech. Elodie survives a variety trials and tribulations in her efforts to elude death. While she wanders desperately through an inhospitable maze of caves, she encounters some exotic creatures. After her first brush with the dragon, Elodie discovers that some glow worms, slightly similar to maggots, are useful in restoring charred flesh. Eventually, her father and several men enter the cave to save her but they struggle to survive themselves. The incensed reptile dragon sets them ablaze and crushes Lord Bayford under its claw before it resumes her hunt for Elodie.

However, Elodie improvises and turns the tables on her enemy. Although she out-smarts the evil dragon, Elodie takes pity on it. She understands how the bereaved creature has been mistreated and told lies. In a reversal of fortune, Elodie saves the dragon’s life, using those glow worm maggots to restore the dragon’s health. Indeed, the fiendish flying flamethrower had cornered Elodie, but our heroine survived by her wits. Cleverly, she stood with her back to a huge curved rock structure. Nimbly, she sidestepped the burst of the dragon’s sulfurous breath so the flames blew back onto the beast, singing it into submission! Meanwhile, since Elodie has managed to survive thus far, the evil Queen abducts Elodie’s younger sister, Floria (newcomer Brooke Carter ), as a substitute. The act of treachery cements Isabelle’s villainy.

Meantime, once Elodie befriends the dragon. She explains the circumstances of her predicament and wins the sympathy of the hideous creature. Together, they team up and take on the evil Queen. Perhaps the Queen’s impending comeuppance is a little too obvious, but it is entirely satisfying. The computer-generated scenery of a fanciful kingdom looks spectacular enough, even though it is obviously synthetic. The detail in the depths of the cave during Elodie’s journey of hardship looks good. The CGI of the dragon stands up to scrutiny for the purposes of this revisionist fantasy. Sadly, despite its twists and turns, nothing about the shallow characters makes them remotely memorable. Indeed, characterization is kept to a minimum. Despite the horrendous obstacle course over which our heroine triumph, we know in the end she will win out. As a Young Adult fantasy, “Damsel” qualifies as worth watching once.

"FORTURES OF WAR" (2024) **

2024-03-02T07:38:00.000-08:00

After a surprise raid on a German convoy goes sideways and their imperious C.O., Lieutenant Quayle (Mark Kitto of "The War Below") is killed, the survivors of an ill-fated British commando unit find themselves cut off in Nazi-occupied France. Sergeant Mason (James Oliver Wheatley of "One Ranger") and a mixed batch of Tommies, both black as well as white, along with a couple of pugnacious female French Resistance fighters take refuge in an apparently deserted farm. Alas, they learn the farm is not completely deserted. Now, between the blotched mission and the forced march that culminates at the deserted farm house, co-writer & director Bill Thomas indulges in moments reminiscent of Louis Milestone's classic World War II movie "A Walk in the Sun" as the Tommies reflect on their predicament. One of the blacks doesn't trust the French girls, while one of the whites, a smart aleck named Leech (Daniel Thrace of “Book of Monsters”), causes no end of trouble. His precipitant action when he whipped back the rear flap of the flatbed revealed a nasty Kraut holding a flame-thrower. Although Leech eludes death, the Tommy who had accompanied him is incinerated. Now, this incendiary death is probably the most violent scene. Meantime, “Fortunes of War" never tries to rival the grit, grime, and gore of "Saving Private Ryan.” Nevertheless, everything about this infantry epic looks entirely plausible. Thomas generates considerable urgency from the get-go with our heroes exchanging gunfire with the enemy. Meaning, less talk and more action! Sadly, the filmmakers reveal next to nothing about that raid gone wrong. Lieutenant Quayle claimed his plan would succeed like clockwork.

Afterward, Mason, his men, and the French dames must fight the Nazis in a baptism of bullets. Essentially, this modest military melodrama could be classified as a single setting actioneer. Eventually, Thomas and co-scribe Ian Thomas came up with a title that foreshadows the chief surprise in this men on a mission movie. As war weary Sergeant Mason, James Oliver Wheatley radiates a gruff virile charm as he chews the scenery. This slap happy combat non-com keeps reminding his men he isn't their "mum." The French Resistance girls know which end of their weapons to aim at the enemy. Annette (Sophie Craig of "The Adventures of Maid Marian") cradles a machine gun like a baby, while her fellow French compatriot, Ines (newcomer Meg Forgan), lugs around a sniper's rifle. Ines rarely misses what she fires at in a fracas. These dames have no qualms about loosening a hail of lead into a passel of Jerries. Would that the filmmakers had developed their characters in greater depth so they would be more memorable. No sooner have our heroes taken up residence at the farm than they encounter some suspicious characters. Turns out one of them is a Belgium guy who has a screwy story to tell them about bricks. Eventually, our outnumbered and outgunned chaps find themselves surrounded by more Germans than they can shower with a hand grenades. It comes as something of a shock when German General Horseler (Bob Cryer of "The Undertaker"), immaculate in his trench coat and cap, wants to negotiate with them. He worries more about what our heroes may reveal when they surrender as well as what his men will think when they discover his underlying motives. Turns out Horseler had been melting down precious Jewish contraband, that is, golden ornaments and glittering jewelry into ingots! The sooner Horseler can get these infernal Brits out of the way, the less attention he will face about his ulterior motives. Mind you, the Brits chop up a fair number of the enemy before this happens. Shrewdly, Horseler uses this moment of silence to wave the white flag of peace. To all outward concerns, Horseler justifies it as time for his troops to remove the wounded and the dead.

Thomas relies heavily on the charisma of his capable cast, since their budget couldn’t accommodate the kind of fireworks display we're accustomed to in million-dollar military melodramas. This stiff upper lip saga about the aftermath of a blown mission clocks in at a meager 85 minutes. Happily, Thomas makes certain the air is swarming with bullets, and our heroes are whittled down one by one until only a handful are alive. Some of the German soldiers look like they are wearing American helmets, but everybody appears to tote period-accurate firearms. Sergeant Mason brandishes a .30 calibered Thompson submachine gun, while the most of the German soldiers carry the familiar MP 40 "Schmeissers." Beware of the DVD cover art for “Fortunes of War,” because a flaming B-17 flies above our heroes. No aircraft are ever seen in this movie. Apart from highlighting the little-known fact blacks served in the British Army during World War II, "Fortunes of War" is a fair to middling potboiler. If racially integrated World War II epics are your cup of tea, you should watch “Come Out Fighting” (2022) about African American tankers in Patton’s army!

"THE OUTSIDE MAN" 1/2 OUT OF **

2024-02-17T08:55:00.000-08:00

“Borsalino” director Jacques Deray’s French mobster melodrama “The Outside Man,” starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ann-Margret, and Roy Scheider, chronicles the trials and tribulations of a Frenchman flown to Los Angeles to kill a wealthy crime czar, Victor Kovacs (Ted de Corsia of “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”), in his palatial Beverly Hills mansion. Lucien Bellon (Jean-Louis Trintignant of “The Great Silence”) isn’t a professional contract killer. Instead, wrestling with a gambling addiction, he must find a way to pay off his enormous debts. Unfortunately, the only way he can raise sufficient funds to liquidate those debts is to fly from Paris to Los Angeles and ice a notorious crime lord. After landing in Los Angeles, Lucien checks into the luxurious Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The desk clerk hands him a mysterious attaché case along with his room key. In his room, Lucien finds a loaded snub-nosed revolver and an envelope stuffed with cash in the case. Renting a car, Lucien drives out to the Kovacs mansion. The doorman admits him without frisking him for firearms. Victor surprises Lucien then realizes he isn’t the man he was expecting. Lucien brandishes his revolver and shoots him dead on the spot with a single shot. Earlier, Lucien had emptied the cylinder of the gun in his hotel room and replaced only one of the six bullets. No sooner has Lucien fled the scene of the homicide than an alert circulates about Kovacs’s murder. However, the description of the shooter, furnished by Victor's wife Jackie (Angie Dickinson of “Ocean’s Eleven”) and Victor’s son Alex (Umberto Orsini of “La Dolce Vita”) doesn’t fit Lucien!

While the LAPD struggles to catch the killer, Lucien discovers the Detroit mob has sent an assassin to rub him out. Lenny (Roy Scheider of “Jaws”) arrives in town eager to kill Lucien. Fate has a quirky way of intervening on behalf of our protagonist, and Lucien survives three of Lenny’s desperate attempts on his life. Meantime, the Frenchman hooks up with a bosomy topless bartender, Nancy Robson (Ann-Margret of “Viva Las Vegas”), who agrees to help him obtain a passport. The dastards who had hired Lucien have stolen both his passport and his plane ticket, so our protagonist cannot leave the country. Lucien confers with his Parisian friend Antoine (Michel Constantin of “Violent City”) about his predicament during a long-distance phone call. He advises Lucien to find with one of his old girlfriends, Nancy. Happily, she arranges for Lucien to buy a forged passport from a cabbie, Karl (Carlo De Mejo of “Teorema”), who can get him one.

Eventually, a naïve Lucien figures out the killing was an inside job, and he served as a mere pawn. Victor’s greedy wife Jackie and his treacherous son Alex were instrumental in orchestrating Victor’s demise. Poised as our protagonist is to leave the country, Lucien has second thoughts and prefers to remain in L.A., so he can discover who incriminated him. Meantime, Antoine and his bodyguard fly in from Paris to attend Victor’s funeral. Probably the most offbeat thing about “The Outside Man” is the funeral itself. When everybody pays their last respects to Victor, they find his corpse sitting upright in a chair with a cigar in one hand. What a bizarre way to display an embalmed corpse! An impromptu gunfight erupts in the funeral home when one of Alex’s henchmen, Miller (Alex Rocco of “The Godfather”), tries to gun down Antoine. Instead, Antoine guns down Miller and traps a cowardly Alex hiding in a casket, finishing Alex off for good. Meantime, Lucien hijacks a hearse and careens away through the cemetery grounds with Antoine chasing after him. A policeman with a rifle shoots Antoine before he can get into the hearse with Lucien. Antoine tells Lucien to leave without him. Grabbing hole of the rear bumper, a mortally wounded Antoine is dragged behind the hearse until he dies. During the gunfight, Lucien caught a slug himself, too. As “The Outside Man” concludes, Lucien is sitting behind the steering wheel of the hearse with blood-soaked hands. Like Deray's later crime thriller "Three Men to Kill" (1980), the protagonist dies in the end just as Lucien dies here in "The Outside Man."

This uneven but entertaining crime thriller has its moments. Initially, when Lucien goes on the lam, he carjacks a single-mom, Mrs. Barnes (Georgia Engel of “Grown Ups 2”), and forces her at gunpoint to take him to her residence. Lucien cools his heels there. Mrs. Barnes cooks him supper and her presumptuous young son, Eric (Jackie Earle Haley of “Watchmen”), wants to know more about him. During a private phone call, Lucien catches the disruptive adolescent listening in on his call and slaps the stuffing out of him. Meanwhile, every step of the way, Lenny shadows Lucien but fails repeatedly to kill him. At one point, Lucien picks up a hitchhiker who rhapsodizes about Jesus. Cruising up alongside them, Lenny shoots from his car into Lucien’s. Miraculously, he misses Lucien and blasts the Jesus freak. During the rest of the film, Lenny pursues Lucien. He kills the cabbie that provided Lucien with a passport and finally tracks him down to a hotel where he is holed up with Nancy. Their adversarial relationship changes when Lenny decides to team up with Lucien and go to the Kovacs estate. At the last second before they enter the estate, Lenny tries to double-cross the Frenchman, but Lucien kills him with a single shot.

Deray and writers Jean-Claude Carrière and Ian McLellan Hunter complicate matters considerably throughout this brisk, 105-minute thriller. Actually, the filmmakers had not scheduled to shoot “The Outside Man” but another movie. Unfortunately, the other movie they were set to produce fell apart. Deray’s scenarists whipped up this tale in a matter of twelve days, and he lensed it before their work permits expired. Composer Michel Legrand garnishes this fish-out-of-water tale with an interesting orchestral soundtrack that accentuates the action. The abrupt ending with our protagonist parked in the Los Angles river basin with blood on his hands and nowhere to run leaves too many plot threads hanging. Basically, this was ‘an inside job’ organized by Alex to liquidate his dad Victor using an “Outside Man” from Paris who knew no better.

"I SHOT JESSE JAMES" (1949) * OUT OF **

2024-01-15T20:24:00.000-08:00

Maverick director Samuel Fuller made his directorial debut with the B-movie western “I Shot Jesse James” (1949). This black & white, 81-minute oater opens during a daylight bank robbery. A bearded Jesse James (Reed Hadley of “The St. Valentine's Day Massacre”) and his accomplices have the bank president and his employees at gunpoint. Nevertheless, Jesse cannot see is the president edging his foot closer to an alarm bell in the floor. The tension builds as a cashier stuffs money into a set of saddle bags. The manager grinds the alarm mechanism underfoot. The alarm goes off, and Jesse and his gang flee. One of Jesse’s minions, Bob Ford (John Ireland of “Red River”), scrambles out of the bank with the loot in those saddle bags. Gunshots ring out as the gang gallops out of town. Bob takes a bullet in the back and drops the saddle bags in the road. Jesse and his gang hightail it out of town. The infamous outlaw rushes to keep Bob from falling out of the saddle as the gang storms out of town.

Several months later, Bob splashes buckets of steaming water over Jesse’s back as the outlaw legend as he bathes. Bob spots a brand, spanking new, nickel-plated, Colt’s .45 revolver on a nearby stool. Picking it up and admires it, Bob is surprised when Jesse tells him the revolver is a gift to Bob, a reward for the latter’s loyalty. Meanwhile, Jesse’s wife, Zee (Barbara Wooddell of “The Great Jesse James Raid”), complains to Jesse about Bob and his younger brother, Charlie (Tommy Noonan of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”), who are hiding out with them. Jesse masquerades as an honest rancher under the alias of Tom Howard. He has managed to live in quiet anonymity in Missouri, while conducting his bank robberies in other states. Jesse shares his paranoid nature with Bob when he tells Bob that everybody wants to collect the $10-thousand bounty on his head. According to Jesse, a man must choose his friends with discretion.

Jesse has no idea how desperate Bob is to wed an old flame, Cynthy Waters (Barbara Britton of “Dragonfly Squadron”), who has been on tour, warbling songs for a roadshow company. No sooner does Bob learn about Cynthy being in a nearby town than he lights out to see her and propose marriage. Cynthy rejects Bob’s offer. She insists she can neither live on the run nor hide out from the law while Bob gallivants out of Missouri with Jesse and Frank James. Not only does Bob vow to hang up his six-gun, but he also plans to resume farming if Cynthy will marry him. Bob’s trouble is he has very little cash, so Cynthy--much as she loves Bob—turns down his marriage proposal. Bob’s obsession with Cynthy creates more problems than he imagined. Another man, John Kelly (Preston Foster of “Montana Territory”), approaches Cynthy with a business proposition. He wants to invest in Cynthy’s song and dance routine. When he catches Kelly in Cynthy’s room, Bob smolders with jealous rage.

Later, at the Howard ranch, Charlie is reading a newspaper article aloud about amnesty for anybody who kills or captures Jesse James and turns him over to the law. While Charlie reads the article, Bob imagines what he could do with the $10 thousand and the amnesty. Initially, he decides to buy a wedding ring for Cynthy, marry her, and settle down with the ten grand to live a quiet farmer’s life. Without further ado, Bob brandishes the Colt’s .45 with pearl handles that Jesse gave him and shoots the outlaw in the back while he struggles to adjust a picture on a wall. Eventually, Bob learns all of his best laid plans are compromised. Although he lands amnesty, Bob gets only $500 instead of the $1o thousand. Of course, Cynthy is appalled by Bob’s treachery. Although the law cannot touch him, Bob is shocked that some deranged souls want to kill him because Bob had killed Jesse. No matter where he rides, Bob encounters either contempt at his cowardice or men itching to slap leather so they can brag they have killed Jesse James’ murderer.

In “I Shot Jesse James,” Samuel Fuller shows more sympathy for Bob Ford than the eponymous outlaw. Fuller suffered no illusions about Jesse’s notoriety. He regarded Jesse as nothing less than a murdering coyote. Incidentally, Fuller doesn’t beat around the bush. He has Bob Ford bushwhack Jesse early in the film. Afterward, Bob goes prospecting in Crede, Colorado. Bob and Kelly’s paths cross again. They share a hotel room. Bob awakens the next morning and discovers to his anger that the ring he bought for Cynthy has been stolen. He accuses Kelly of the thief. However, Kelly clears himself and brings the thieving hotel clerk (Byron Foulger of “Ride the High Country”) to confess he stole Bob’s ring. By now, Cynthy fears Bob and wants to flee. However, Bob’s days are numbered when he tangles with Kelly who has pinned on a town marshal’s badge. Fuller directs with a fast, efficient hand and doesn’t let this outlaw saga wear out its welcome.

"BLAST OF SILENCE" (1961) 1/2 OUT OF **

2024-01-13T13:06:00.000-08:00

Although it isn’t in the same league with Jean-Pierre Melville's classic 1967 French crime thriller "Le Samurai," director Allen Baron's procedural murder melodrama "Blast of Silence" amounts to a meditation on the fate of a Cleveland, Ohio-based, contract torpedo, Frankie Bono (Allen Baron), who arrives in New York City on Christmas Eve to ice a rival, low-level crime boss. Tis the season to be murderous! Bono prefers a .38 caliber revolver equipped with a silencer as his weapon of choice. Seems like a lot of cinematic gunsels packed revolvers with silencers, even though an automatic pistol would have been far more appropriate for the occasion, particularly when silence is considered golden. Of course, most cinematic assassins usually show up with their own hardware, thus eliminating the need to bring anybody else into the equation who could prove to be a loose thread that unravels everything.

Written, produced, and directed by Baron, this lean, mean, 77-minute, film noir unfolds from our paranoid assassin's perspective. You'd think he’d tote his own firearm, so he wouldn't wind up in a hopeless predicament like he faces eventually at fade-out. Not long after he shows up in the Big Apple and receives his marching orders, Frankie tangles with a dire crisis of conscience about his predatory lifestyle. Accidentally, he runs with an old school classmate in a restaurant, and this well-meaning fellow invites Frankie to come to a party. During this social occasion, Frankie rekindles a brief relationship with an old flame, Lori (Molly McCarthy of "Over The Edge"), whom he knew before he embarked on his shady, criminal shenanigans. Second thoughts about his job as a mob hitman plague him, and he toys with the idea of making this killing the last one of his career. Our embittered protagonist displays his considerable skills as a homicidal killer, and as we eavesdroppers watch him skillfully shadow his intended victim, Troiano (Peter Clune of "Juke Box Racket”), who is often accompanied by two bodyguards. Frankie knows how to tail a target in traffic without attracting attention. He never rents the same automobile, and he knows when to stop stalking his prey because the latter might spot him. Now, we’re never given any details about either Troiano or why he has become the object of a hit. Produced on a minuscule budget of $20 thousand, this movie is nevertheless interesting because it is so atmospheric.

Basically, "Blast of Silence" is a slow burning fuse of a film that chronicles Frankie's standard operating procedure for killing a man. First, he obtains an untraceable firearm from an unsavory, low-life criminal, Big Ralph (Larry Tucker of “Shock Corridor”) who lives alone in a ground floor city apartment. This gun runner has cages of pet hamsters stacked up around his apartment! Imagine the odor!? Ralph lives up to his “Big” nickname because he is obscenely fat and slimy. Later, Ralph gets under Frankie’s skin, and our pugnacious protagonist takes him apart during a violent, knockdown, drag-out fight that leaves Big Ralph dead in his apartment and Frankie shaken up. The criminal underworld of “Blast of Silence” is riddled with treachery and untrustworthy accomplices, especially in the film’s ominous finale.

Baron penned Frankie's loquacious voice over narration with scenarist Waldo Salt. Later, Salt would win an Oscar for his "Midnight Cowboy" screenplay, and this evocative narration provides considerable insight into the psychology of our tightlipped assassin as he contends with all the obstacles that complicate this job. Moreover, the distinguished blacklisted actor Lionel Stander of “The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight” delivers Frankie’s voice-over narration in his trademark gravel voice that blends in orally with Barron’s physical depiction of Frankie. Too bad that Stander couldn’t have dubbed all of Baron’s dialogue for the sake of similarity between the narration and Frankie’s spoken dialogue.

"Violent Women" lenser Merrill S. Brody's black & white cinematography captures the era of storefront shopping, and the austere New York City locations lend the film an abundance of authenticity, seasoned with its historic significance. The filmmakers photographed the daily flow of ‘Big Apple’ traffic on foot and in vehicles. Low-key film that it is, "Blast of Silence" delivers snapshots in time of New York City back in the early 1960s. You can feel the gritty sidewalk crunch under your shoes. Shot in an improvised documentary style, "Blast of Silence" familiarizes audiences with the obstacles our protagonist must transcend before he can perform the execution for which he has been paid.

Despite his emotional outburst after he renews his acquaintance with an old grade school girl, Frankie is a very thorough-going assassin. He describes his method of operation when he is dispatched to kill somebody. Ultimately, Frankie tosses the incriminating weapon he wielded into the bay. This turns out to be a fatal decision, and it costs Frankie his life. When he appears at a rendezvous with the mobster who hired him, Frankie is shocked to discover his days above ground are limited. We witness the age-old duplicity of organized crime when the gangsters who hired Frankie have no intention of paying him off for a job well done. Instead, these vicious hoods pursue him and riddle him with lead! Our protagonist dies face down in a muddy pond in the boondocks. Predictably, Hollywood maintained its familiar credo of ‘crime does not pay.’ Comparably, “Blast of Silence” came before the incomparable hit thrillers like Jean-Pierre Melville’s "Le Samourai" (1967) Alain Delon and Michael Winner’s “The Mechanic” (1972) with Charles Bronson. Some spectators may grumble about this slow-moving saga as well as its anonymous cast. Interestingly, Peter Falk turned down the lead role in “Blast of Silence” for his stunning turn as a killer in “Murder, Inc.” (1961) helmed by Burt Balaban and “Cool Hand Luke’s” Stuart Rosenberg. Crime Genre specialists should make the effort to watch this low-budget indie release!

"ABILENE TOWN" (1946) OUT OF

2023-12-31T18:37:00.000-08:00

Don't let the fact this is a black & white, post-World War II, public domain western dissuade you from watching it. The Randolph Scott oater "Abilene Town" exemplifies what makes a great western and great filmmaking. Scott is capably cast as a strong, level-headed lawman of the eponymous cattle town in 1870. Predictably, the cattlemen behave like a rambunctious, trigger-happy, liquor-swilling horde that dictate their demands to the merchants. Although our stalwart town marshal is sworn to uphold the law, the obsequious townspeople--who depend on the trail drovers for their livelihood--don't want Town Marshal Dan Mitchell to enforce the law in such a way that would alienate the cattlemen and incite them to drive their herds to other towns. Change, it seems, is rarely a good thing initially, and the arrival of Lloyd Bridges and a crowd of homesteaders from Ohio sparks conflict between not only the cattlemen and the homesteaders but also with the merchants and the homesteaders. At one point, the cattlemen resort to stampeding their cattle so they can drive the ornery sodbusters out.

"Ride ‘em Cowboy" scenarist Harold Shumate adapted Ernest Haycox's novel "Trail Town" for the screen, and the characters are as interesting as they are charismatic. For the record, Haycox had written the short story “Stage to Lordsburg” earlier that inspired the classic John Ford western “Stagecoach” with John Wayne. The brilliance of “Abilene Town as western is we get to see the townspeople behave for a change as if they have minds as well as spines, and they don't cower for long after Scott mobilizes them into action. The impetus for the merchants to side with the homesteaders comes when the chief storekeeper's daughter, Sherry Balder (Rhonda Fleming of “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”) falls in love with Henry Dreiser (Lloyd Bridges of “High Noon”), the leader of the homesteaders.

"Abilene Town" is one of the few American westerns containing a scene where our lawman hero has a shoot-out in the saloon and plugs one of his adversaries in the same pictorial frame in which he appears. In other words, we see the hero shoot a villain in the same visual shot as he pulls the trigger! This unusual event occurs roughly 75 minutes into this 89-minute oater. 'Cap' Ryker (Dick Curtis of “The Texas Rangers”) refuses to be arrested by Sheriff Mitchell and takes a slug. Typically, old fashioned Hollywood westerns refrained from having anybody shoot another somebody in the same visual frame. Moreover, "Abilene Town" differs also because the hero doesn't stick with the sweet, innocent young thing, Sherry Balder, that he starts out romancing. Instead, he winds up with a cantankerous saloon girl, Rita (Ann Dvorak of “Scarface”) who has a passion for kicking our hero in the shins.

"Tall in the Saddle" director Edwin L. Marin makes sure this 89-minute horse opera doesn't wear out its welcome. He is adroit at swirling humor into this largely straightforward yarn about good citizenship. Edgar Buchanan steals the show as a craven County Sheriff 'Bravo' Trimble. Veteran heavy Jack Lambert of “Vera Cruz” makes a first-rate murderous villain. He is as slimy as he has ever been and swaps blows with Scott in one scene. Later, he manages to break out of jail, and our hero has to blast him out of the saddle on main street before he can flee. Everybody who calls themselves 'western movie' fans must see "Abilene Town!"

CINEMATIC REVELATIONS

SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL (1958) *** OUT OF ****

WHITE COMMANCHE **1/2 OUT OF ****

STRANGE ALIBI (1941) *** OUT OF ****

"THE BIKERIDERS" (2023) ** OUT OF ****

"THE GLADIATOR" (1986) MADE FOR TELEVISION *** OUT OF ****

"THE SICILIAN CONNECTION" (1972) *** OUT OF ****

TRIGGER WARNING (2024) ** OUT OF ****

"BRIMSTONE" (1949) ***OUT OF ****

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940) *** out of ****

PIRANHA (1972) *1/2 OUT OF ****

"TWO FACES OF THE DOLLAR" (1967-ITALIAN) *** OUT OF ****

"ALIEN" (1979) **** OUT OF ****

MARIA (2019) **** OUT OF ****

THE BATMAN (2022) **** OUT OF ****

THE WAGES OF FEAR (FRENCH-2024) *** OUT OF ****

"WHERE DANGER LIVES" (1950) **** OUT OF ****

"GOD IS A BULLET" (**** OUT OF ****)

"GUN WOMAN" (2014) *** OUT OF ****

"5-CARD STUD" (1968) **1/2 OUT OF ****