Reviews

One of the last and the best of those infamous mexican nightclub melodramas ("Películas de Cabareteras"), it features a stunning noirish cinematography, over-the-top acting by half a dozen of wonderfully weird and wicked latina beauties such as Columba Dominguez and Kitty de Hoyos (looking like a drag queen performing Marilyn Monroe!) plus great -if low budget- musical show clips performed by the mesmerizing Esquivel, the "King of Zu-Zu-Zu"! Another masterpiece from the great (beer-drinking?) director Alfonso "Corona" Blake, who began as an assistant to Luis Bunuel and Emilio "Indio" Fernandez and gave the world some of the finest campy horror- and "Il Santo"-classics. Great fun to watch - if you ever get the chance to, for it's not available on tape or DVD.

An all-white moralistic remake of "Coffy" (the 1973 Pam Grier blaxploitation classic), presenting karate-ing cheerleaders and highschool girls, evil drug dealers, a little catfight and lots of unintentional laughs. The opening credits of "Lovely But Deadly" are presented over a static shot of a high-school dance in 1981. The music, being performed and orchestrated in a 007-like style, sounds outdated, exaggerated and does not fit in the cheesy late 70s sets in the background. The sweet rotten smell of campiness instantly rushes in. "How low can they go?.../ How high can they fly?" - that's what the title song lyrics say and that's what you're starting to ask yourself. "Lovely But Deadly" is about a young lady named Mary Ann Lovett (an admittedly real cute brunette named Lucinda Dooling) and her friends just call her Lovely. In the beginning, her brother drowns in a ridiculously far fetched drug-related accident. Angry as hell, Lovely decides to stop drugs in her high school, starting with killing "Captain Magic," the only really likable character so far, who has some incredible dialogue before Lovely stuffs drugs down his throat and he dies. Dead too quick. The next bad guys will be treated to better visual effect: let's get some martial arts action into the movie. Well, Lovely and all the other girlie fighters have obviously been trained in the secret arts by just watching a half-minute-preview of some Hongkong flick. So we get to see sheer incredibly clumsy fight scenes. Well, after all "everybody was Kung Fu fighting" those days... Talking of music: There is also a Rock Band in the movie, because Lovely's cheesy boyfriend is the lead singer of a band of smartasses who, during a class and out of the blue, are performing (poorly dubbed) a truly "electrifying" love song. All in all, a genuine classic of poor white drive-in trash. Yet probably too bad to ever get some cult approach.

There is just a handful of contemporary movies from the fifties dealing with that dark chapter of McCarthyism. "Invasion of the body snatchers" and the allegoric western "Silver Lode" are well known. Hence it's strange that this one, probably the most decided and direct anti-McCarthyism movie of them all, is almost forgotten today. Screenwriter Daniel Taradash's ("Picnic" / "From here to Eternity") directorial debut "Storm Center" is utterly convincing and politically correct. There are fine performances throughout (especially Brian Keith does a good job), and even the kid actors are bearable. The title credits are an early artwork by Saul Bass who obviously must have been involved in directing the climactic burning books sequences.

Director Irving Rapper had seen much better days (remember "Now Voyager" or "Menagerie of Glass"?) when he worked on the mise en scène of this quite bizarre flick. It starts as a war movie in a Korean torture camp, then switches to poverty-ridden melodrama, Peyton Place and Douglas Sirk style (even Gloria Talbott from "All that heaven allows" is here!), to end up as a cheap thrill version of "Night of the Hunter". There's plenty of incredible action and silly dialogue in this story about a young Korean vet who returns to fulfil a promise he gave to a dying comrade: to kill his kids in order to spare them a life with some stepfather if his wife/widow should marry again. And so a man has to do what he's gotta do. But the kids are such cuties (and so is their mom)and melodramatic effects come rising. Technically well crafted and thoroughly entertaining in spite of the crappy story, this is a must-see for bad movie aficionados!

This sequel for the 1966 trash classic "Deadlier than the male" is quite a disappointment compared with the original spy movie. There are good bad movies and there are bad bad movies. This one's medium bad. The film has a great storyline (in exploitation terms), but suffers from being quite unfunny and kind of lustless in acting and directing. If you expect something like an "Austin Powers" flick back from the original sixties, you will be disappointed. The production design and the costumes are uninspired and look as if they'd belong to a cheap british early-seventies TV series. Even those female robots have a boring look and could have been designed much, much spicier. The movie lacks highlights like the great Robert Morley's hammy appearances, provided only in the first half of the movie. And this first half is a bore, anyway, especially due to the unfunny comic relief of Drummond's sidekick. The second half runs better, with more action and more funny scenes in it. The best scenes belong to Daliah Lavi as the bad girl, while pretty Sydne Rome (as the good girl) is absolutely colorless. Poor production, poor fun -at least in this case. Watching this movie is not a complete waste of time, but it comes close to that. So you are recommended to watch "deadlier than the male" for a third time instead.

Expecting a low-grade and low budget chiller (you know: good ol' Tony Curtis has a cameo in it...), knowing that it was originally made for TV, and having seen vintage ads of it, announcing gimmicks like the "fear flasher" and the "horror horn" to protect rabbit-hearted viewers from being shocked without warning, this one's a real surprise to watch. Sure, the gimmicks are quite ridiculous, but the rest of the movie -and that is quite a lot- provides tense and moody atmosphere, above average camerawork, gorgeous colour compositions and probably the most gripping performance Mr. Patrick O'Neal -as the demented killer- has ever delivered (well, sure, there have not been many...). It's great fun watching him do scary things with his special wooden hand stump, fitted with a variety of hooks, knives and cleavers. This almost forgotten pic can easily compete with the quality of the Vincent Price Classic "House of Wax" and it's a winner - especially considering the fun factor. The whole thing looks a bit like as if William Castle would have produced and re-edited a classic hammer movie directed by -say- Jacques Tourneur (forgive me, Jacques). Great fun to watch.

Ever been bored by reviewing some James Bond/Roger Moore vehicles from the Seventies which you remembered to be entertaining? Then this is what you need: A proletarian, tongue-in-cheek Bond-like action flick (or ARE they possibly serious with this kinda stuff? We'll never know...). A movie garbage can overwhelmingly filled with cheesy sex, GWG (girls with guns, bra and thighs included), sleazy villain Ross Hagen as the hero, a bit of horror, some mutants, a lot of action, a bit of whatever you want. If you don't expect watching a Bergman movie. Real weird cheesy trash with lots of genuine seventies'"trashion", all deliciously and perfectly ripened through the years. A guilty please of mine. Great fun!

This is a rarely seen, moody, melancholy and seriously done time-piece of early sixties' Gay Pur-ee starring wonderful early girlie icon NICO of latter VELVET UNDERGROUND fame. Good b/w cinematography also shows a surprisingly lot of Nico's (and the other strippers) body -for early sixties' standards. If you're a Nico addict, this etherial mélo is a must-see. Watch out for famous chansonniere Juliette Gréco.

considering the vast quantity of cliché war movies from the fifties, whose plots are as "interesting" as -say- an Audie Murphy Western, this one's a real surprise hammer which highly exceeds the good expectations drawn from the interesting cast and the fact that Anthony Mann is the director. This one's a brilliant anti-war-classic in the same category with Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" still waiting to be rediscovered. Whenever this one's on cable or on video, don't miss!

A widely unknown strange little western with mindblowing colours (probably the same material as it was used in "Johnny Guitar", I guess "Trucolor" or something, which makes blood drips look like shining rubies), nearly surrealistic scenes with twisted action and characters. Something different, far from being a masterpiece, but there should be paid more attention to this little gem in western encyclopedias.

I really don't know why there are all those brilliant reviews in so many respected papers and magazines. This was a hell of a deception to me, an utterly boring (cinematography & story) display of cardboard characters played by wooden actors, esp. the highly credited Sophie Rois delivers an exceptionally bad performance. Too much of an artificial appeal to be realistic, too pretentious to be funny, too silly to be taken seriously: so the film doesn't even make it to be a "good bad movie". Not amused.

I think this one's well worth watching, however it's slightly disappointing when you relate this 1963 movie to Mulligan's 1962 classic "To kill a mockingbird". Around the middle of the movie, things are getting a bit turgid, but the striking performances, the fine cinematography and the gorgeously orchestrated main soundtrack theme by Elmer Bernstein (which apparently never appeared on CD) make things a lot better.