The Octagon (1980)
Scott James a retired martial arts champion gets caught up in a complicated web involving a wealthy heiress trying to hire him for an assassination job that includes an international terrorist group of ninjas and their training ground called ‘The…
Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)
The archetypical renegade Texas Ranger wages war against a drug kingpin with automatic weapons, his wits and martial arts after a gun battle leaves his partner dead. All of this inevitably culminates a martial arts showdown between the drug lord…
The Danger Of Day And Date Releasing
The perception of movies and their marketing is changing rapidly. What is occurring is a herculean paradigm shift that will forever change movies and the way they are perceived. One of the dangers of accelerating the demise of movies is…
Superchick (1973)
The name “cult movie” is often given to films which continue to be screened, or to sell in home movie format, more than a generation after they were first released. Superchick, which was first released in 1973, now comes into…
The House Across the Street – Review
www.thehouseacrossthestreet.com Amy has moved east from Kansas, determined to start a new life. She thinks she has found the perfect small quiet town, a great neighborhood on a quiet street. As she moves into her brand new apartment, eager to…
Daniella by Night (1961)
This film reminded me of the “Perils of (fill in the blank)” comics and adventure stories brought to the screen. The beautiful, innocent heroine repeatedly finds herself in precarious situations through no fault of her own or by trying to…
Wild Women (1951)
Let’s start off by admitting that the reason this picture was made was to titillate the audience with fantasies of white American males dominated by women. It wants to take the boy rape scene from Ed Wood’s The Violent Years…
Batman (1943)
Made by Columbia Pictures in 1943– just four short years after the character was first created by National Comics– this serial remains a pretty faithful adaption and one of the top 5 serials of all time. This is an A-Production…
Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942)
As MGM knew Maureen O’Sullivan was departing the ‘Tarzan’ series, and budget and talent constraints were forcing the long-running series out of the studio (RKO would soon be Tarzan’s new home), they decided to end things with a bang, clothing…
Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963)
It’s surprising so few people have commented on this movie since it enjoyed a degree of success upon its original release and still qualifies as one of the better Tarzans. The plot follows the traditional pattern of a guide/protector leading…
Tarzan’s Savage Fury (1952)
TARZAN’S SAVAGE FURY (RKO Radio, 1952), directed by Cyril Enfield, is an acceptable entry to the long running jungle adventure series starring Lex Barker in his fourth go-round as Edgar Rice Burrough’s legendary King of the Jungle. Not since the…
Sands of the Kalahari (1965)
Sands of the Kalahari sounds as if it is based on a book by Wilbur Smith, but actually it isn’t. It features a top-drawer cast, some blazing African location photography, and a genuinely exciting storyline about survival in the wilderness….
Woman of Straw (1964)
Sir Sean Connery’s career in movies is really remarkable. Beginning in a Disney film (DARBY GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE), he lucked out early and got the signature role of James Bond in FROM Russia WITH LOVE, DR. NO, GOLDFINGER,…
Hell Drivers (1957)
Stanley Baker heads a remarkable cast of high quality British based actors in a rattleing good yarn of corruption and grim macho rivalry. The towering Welsh actor looks and acts every inch the quiet spoken smouldering tough guy character(Tom Yately),a…
Operation Snafu (1961)
You could never have made a service comedy like On The Fiddle during the World War II years in the United Kingdom. When the UK was fighting for its very life with Hitler only hours away by air, a film…
Raiders from Beneath the Sea (1964)
RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA is a resolute B-movie, shot on zero budget and with little in the way of action, incident, atmosphere or indeed decent plotting to recommend it. The storyline sees a gang of criminals deciding to come…
Death Race 2000 (1975)
David Carradine stars in this classic cult creation. Deathrace 2000 is the 20th anniversary of the murderous trans-continental road race, or, in the words of the US president “what you all want”. You could lose this film in the repertoire…
Planet of the Vampires (1965)
For many people the directors Mario Bava and Sergio Leone are the cornerstones of Italian popular cinema. They created estetic conventions which other, sometimes just as talented, directors followed. Bava’s legacy not only extends to horror and thriller films but…
Ib Melchior Passes
Ib Jørgen Melchior (born September 17, 1917, died March 13, 2015) was a novelist, short-story writer, film producer, film director, and screenwriter of low-budget American science fiction movies, most of them released by American International Pictures. He was born in…
For Love Of Blacula
“Blacula” (PG, 93 min.) ★★★ / “Scream, Blacula, Scream” (PG, 96 min.) ★★★ “Man needs ritual — some form of worship to combat the very real existence of death.” — Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall) discussing religion and incidentally explaining the existence of horror…