Movie - "Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarves" (2019) **

Some decent animation. Jim Rash was funny voicing the prince. Not a bad idea to combine Snow White and the Red Shoes. The storytelling is muddled. It feels dodgy with the pudgy girl turning beautiful - yes I know she turns pudgy in the end that doesn't really rectify it. Around forty minutes in it hits you that the lead shreck and the girl are our couple - and he's so unsympathetic you don't care. I nodded off a few times in the cinema. My five year old liked it.

Movie review - "Dangerous Exile" (1957) *** (re-watching)

Consistently interesting but flawed quasi swashbuckler. It's got a terrific central idea - the boy king Louis XVII arrives on an English island and the French set out to kill him. The film really should be a swashbuckler but director Brian Desmond Hurst seems more interested in the gloomier aspects of the story - there's expressionistic flashbacks to the kid being tortured in prison (high ceilings, use of reds, all that). There isn't a lot of action - we don't get our first duel until over an hour in, and we don't even really see the initial escape.

The hero is beyond gloomy - noble Louis Jourdan, devoted to the king, so devoted he left HIS OWN SON IN PRISON. This film is one of the few that break a great taboo - the hero puts his own son in danger (the kid doesn't look keen to be there), putting him in prison... the kid falls sick, he does get out of prison... but then he's killed by an assassin. Full on. Louis Jourdan goes to get revenge but dude - you put your kid in prison. Worst dad in a movie?

Belinda Lee is beautiful though not much of an actor. The character is American, so there are hints she might be sympathetic to Republic values - this is a real good point of difference that should have been used more. (Aside: Lee kept playing roles Diana Dors could have played - I wonder if they had been developed for Dors? Dors had more humanity and warmth.)

Louis Jourdan has plenty of dash but I kept wanting him to be killed. Keith Michell's French revolutionary officer is far more sympathetic - he doesn't want to arm kids, only does his job under great reluctance, and is quite sympathetic.

Strong support from actors like Finlay Currie and Anne Heywood (traitors on the island) and a superb performance by Richard O'Sullivan as the young prince - alert, traumatised, terrified.

Some lovely photography, art direction and location work. Characters are set up who you think are important but aren't used enough - like that British officer keen on Lee at the beginning, or Marita Hunt. They probably should have sent Michell on the island earlier to engage with Lee and Jourdan. They definitely should have lost the plot element of Jourdan offering up his son.

Still, I've always enjoyed this movie.

Movie review - "Fitzgerald Family Christmas" (2012) **

Ed Burns seems like a nice guy and has an amiable screen presence - I just wish he'd put a little more work into his scripts. Maybe base it on a public domain play or something.

This is about an Irish American family in the lead up to Christmas - it's not a sequel to The Brothers McMullen but is of that world. Burns' observations aren't as fresh - there's repetition, a lack of surprise. It feels like a first draft. There are some good actors but they don't feel like a family they feel like actors that Burns could get. Did he have to have two characters who lost someone on September 11? And use it as a romance device?

There is a lot going on, if only by virtue of all the cast - there's a lot of siblings. Strong female cast in particular.

Movie review - "Tiger Bay" (1959) *** (re-watching)

Lovely location photography in Cardiff. Solid acting from John Mills, Nice brooding stuff from Horst Bucholz. Brilliant work from Hayley Mills - one of the great acting debuts of all time.

It's a little long. There's no mystery. We know he did it - so it's just a matter of time before he's captured. The final scene on the boat drags especially for me. It might have been better had we been unsure - or if Anthony Dawson, as the creepy guy Yvonne Mitchell was cheating on the sailor with, was actually guilty.

Interesting look at multi racial Britain, then not often emphasized on screens. There's a black woman living in Mitchell's old house.

Mitchell's character has a quasi feminist speech - the influence of J Lee Thompson's then wife Joan Henry? Mitchell plays what I call the "Diana Dors" part. Was her character in a concentration camp? She refers to being in camps. Maybe a refugee.

Superb Hayley Mills. Love her scenes with John.

Movie review - "St Ives" (1976) **

The first collaboration between Charles Bronson and J. Lee Thompson. Bronson tries to smooth up his image - he's more cultured, has extra dialogue, uses his wits rather than fists, he has character touches (he's writing a novel, he has a gambling problem). There's Jacqueline Bisset as the female lead and John Houseman.

Bronson is hired by Houseman to find a thing. The handling feels 70s TV with music to match as well as actors like Dana Eclar and Harry Guardino playing cops. Max Schell pops up as a shrink.

Bronson seems to be having a good time - he's not bad. But it's not a very good movie. I was bored. 

 

The best thing about it is Bisset who is everything you want in a caper movie - beautiful, mysterious, seduces Bronson by rocking over to his place and dropping her coat to the floor. She can act too. It was just an uninteresting story. The final shootout/reveals weren't bad.

Movie review - "Return from the Ashes" (1965) **

Lesser known thriller from the 1960s despite a quality cast and being directed by J Lee Thompson during his peak. It wasn't very successful and one can understand why.

The central conceit of the story is high, high camp - Return to Eden territory: a woman believed to be dead (Ingrid Thulin) comes back to find her husband (Max Schell) has hooked up with her step daughter (Sam Eggar); she has plastic surgery and is spotted by her husband who asks her to impersonate his dead wife in order to access some money.

Now that is an inherently silly story but there have been sillier ones, you just need to commit. But the treatment here has flaws - Thulin doesn't seem to have any motive, it's Schell driving the action. (in Eden Rebecca Gibney wanted revenge.) Then having set up this conceit the film doesn't do anything with it - you don't say have a rival who wants the money or crims after Schell or something for stakes... Thulin reveals her true identity to Schell... and then wants him back anyway. Then the movie becomes about Eggar being jealous over Schell and Thulin.

Stakes are lessened by having Thulin know Schell is a bit of a louse from the get-go so there's no shock of betrayal. Also, we don't really see much of a relationship between Thulin and Eggar back in the old days so Eggar's betrayal seems nothing. Also it's not that much of a betrayal because everyone thought Thulin was dead.

Here is a bigger problem, the reason I think this film didn't do well - actually there's two reasons. First, the cast were probably too foreign. Thulin and Schell have accents, as does Herbert Lom (a doctor) - it probably felt like a foreign movie.  I know the characters are foreigners - maybe I'm wrong I just feel it would've done better commercially if they'd been English/American actors.

The second problem is that the background is the Holocaust during World War Two - Thulin is a Jew, taken off to the camps. She's so traumatised that in the opening scene she just sits there in a train as a kid opens a door and steps out to his death - a shocking opening, and kind of pointless for the rest of the story. It really starts things on a downer. It would've been a lot more fun without the Holocast - if Schell and Eggar had teamed up to kill Thulin or something.

I like that Schell was interested in chess but it felt the movie was too interested in making him sympathetic. I mean, he's really not that bad in movie morality terms - he's upfront about being shonky, only decides to kill his wife at the end. He's not a Nazi. It would've been more fun if he'd been worse and there had been no Holocaust in this.

There are echoes of Les Diabolique  - the villain thinks he's gotten away with it and a cop pops up at the end; a murder in a bath.

Random thoughts on how Game of Thrones should have ended

The world doesn't need this but:

- Bran should have died once the Night Watch were killed

- Tywin and Sansa should have gotten married and ruled

- They should have spent an ep exploring the differences in how Danny, Cerci and Sansa ruled their kingdoms.

That's all. Does anyone think about that show anymore?

Movie review - "MacKenna's Gold" (1969) **1/2

An odd movie - considered a flop at the time, though apparently a big hit in India, this is fascinating to watch today, in part because of its flaws but also because of its oddness.

The basic story is a simple Western - a bunch of people go after a map containing gold, facing the environment, Apaches, cavalry, each other. And it's core this is inherently medium budget at best - the main characters are a marshall, an outlaw who kind of loves him, a girl who comes along to prove the lead isn't gay, an Indian girl who wants to bang the marshall, a scary Indian, and a pursuing cavalryman.

Faced with this is then as if writer-producer Carl Foreman and director J. Lee Thompson thought "we can't just give them that, this is the blockbuster era" - and they jazzed it up: Cinerama photography, POV shots of people on horseback, a spectacular earthquake, location filming in the Grand Canyon, sweeping vistas.

It cost $7 million and it didn't need to. There is stunning photography but this is incorporated into some really obvious studio work.

The script is very patchy. Far too many scenes of Peck escaping and being recaptured. Around 45 minutes in Foreman introduces all these new characters - Raymond Massey, Edward G Robinson, Burgess Meredith, Lee J Cobb, Eli Wallach, Anthony Quayle, etc - and within twenty minutes they're all killed. Why even have them? (Maybe Foreman wanted to invoke High Noon which actually isn't a bad idea for a script - the town from High Noon looking for gold - but they set up all these people and then just kill them.) Would the cavalry really kill them all?

Some exciting action sequences. Raymond Massey and Burgess Meredith being killed by Apaches - Meredith pleading with glasses and money and being killed. A fight between Sharif and Peck at the end is very well done bar the studio work.

Plenty of nutty bits. The opening song abut a buzzard. The narration that feels shoved in after a tricky post production process. The effects at the end aren't entirely convincing. Julie Newmar and Omar Shariff show their arse swimming. A naked Newmar tries to hump Peck in the water (he's clothed) then when he rejects her she tries to kill Sparv. George Lucas made a short film during the shoot. Dimitri Tiomkin co produced.

The acting is pretty good - Savalas is reliably excellent. It's one of Sharif's best performances, the film should've have focused more on him and Gregory Peck. Peck is solid. Camilla Sparv has a big chance as the girl, and she's gorgeous but not really up to it.

Movie review - "Keep It Downstairs" (1976) *

This was grim. A 70s British sex comedy - antics in a manor in the early 20th century. I guess it's typical of the time. It feels like a porno without the hardcore sex, or attractive male stars - the men all seem old. The women are attractive.

Diana Dors pops up as a noble lady - she's top billed but doesn't appear for a while. She's good value. Jack Wild is in it - he seems depressed and sad.

It was a slog to get through.

Movie review - "The Delinquents" (1989) **

A real one-that-got-away... the book on which it is based was lovely, and it's a perfect role for Kylie Minogue to star in at her peak. She's absolutely fine - sparky and bright, plenty of charisma. It's a shocking waste that she's never been given a lead in an Australian film since.

The film also wastes its budget - it didn't need to cost this much. All those shot of the main street of Bundaberg, the trains going past, the cars in the street, the bars. It could - and should - have been made for one third the price. The photography and production design is lovely as are the costumes - but it didn't need all those panning shots. You can feel the director taking refuge in them.

That's not as big a flaw as Charlie Schlatter's lead performance. He's all wrong - whiny, high pitched voice, not romantic. Ben Mendelsohn - apparently an early front runner - would've been perfect. An American would've been fine, but it needed a young Heathcliff, not a stand up comic type.

The script smells like something rewritten countless times and is full of flaws - no resolution about Brownie's home life, Brownie randomly encountering Lola in a Melbourne bar, irritatingly vague on what Lola did to "get by" in Melbourne, the support parts of that couple feel really undercooked. But that's not as damaging as the miscast lead.

Nice to see Brisbane on the screen.

Movie review - "Taras Bulba" (1962) **

Odd that this was such a hot property - Robert Aldrich tried to make it for five years. It's got spectacle but it's not too hard to find spectacle stories, surely. I suppose it has three decent leads - the imposing Cossack Taras, who loves his sensitive son but turns against him when his son falls for a Pole.

That is a strong simple conflict that should work. And this film has its moments - some spectacle, the horse duel over a cliff. Christina Kaufman is pretty. Yul Brynner is idea in the title role and Tony Curtis gives a good performance. But Curtis is simply spectacularly miscast - he's like twenty years too old for a role that needed someone who was clearly Brynner's son. I could've handled Curtis as a Cossack - I've gone with him being a Viking and a Persian prince - but not Brynner's son and that is the heart of the piece.

He's also too old for a role that requires someone callow. They would've been better off getting some teen idol - or cast Brynner's part a lot older.

The drama is muted. The character of the brother, played by Perry Lopez, is wasted (what's his dramatic point?). Curtis' mother character is wasted. Guy Rolfe's villain feels undercooked - oh for Frank Thring to have played this. Kaufman feels too young for Tony - I get they hooked up in real life, but he's too old for the character as written.

It doesn't feel real. Films have to make their own reality. This feels odd with its colourful costumes, and Cossack dancing and singing (sometimes it's like it's going to spill over into a musical).

Also the Cossacks just feel dumb. The opening scene Guy Rolfe tricks Brynner into defeat. They have a silly dispute resolution process where they jump over a gap - it's an exciting scene but it makes you worry about the stability of this society.

I admit I'm influenced by knowing nothing about this period. Maybe if the storyline had been changed to say the Goths and the Roman Empire.

I do think having cast Brynner and Curtis they should have changed it so that they were brothers rather than father and son.

Still, it is a big expensive Hollywood epic set in medieval Russia so it has points for novelty. And a gorgeous music score.

Book review - 'The Republic of Pirates" by Colin Woodard

Superb book. Excellently written and researched. Focuses on the Golden Age of Piracy with emphasis on the career of Woodes Rogers but also covers others. A real page turned. I've never read a Woodard book before - enjoyed it enormously.

Book review - "Blackbeard the Pirate" by Robert E. Lee

Solid bio of the most famous pirate of them all, who actually wasn't that bad, just liked to use psychological war. This gets through Blackbeard's history quite quickly but does a deep dive on his later years. What a death! Entertaining.

Book review - "Black Flags, Blue Waters" by Eric Jay Dolin

Excellent account of pirate history, emphasizing their role in the American colonies - Blackbeard, etc. Has a wider scope than The Republic of Pirates. Very entertaining.

Book review - "Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire" by John August (2020)

John August is a super smart guy who sounds lovely. There's such a thing as a tidy cricketer and this feels like a tidy book - smart, elegant, compact. Nothing wrong with it. I didn't really respond to it but can appreciate it and am sure if I was 12 I would've loved it.

Movie review - "The Love Specialist" (1958) **1/2 aka La Ragazza del Palio

Stunning colour and looks at Italy. I saw it in Italian so didn't get the plot but it seemed to be Diana Dors and Vittoria Gassman strolling around some impressive looking places, falling in love as they bicker.

I gather she was an American and he was an Italian price. Both are handsome - she looks especially gorgeous. It's got to be said any starlet could've played this part - it's got none of the Dors magic. She's likeable, you could've cast anyone, that's all. Gassman is fine - I've never been a massive fan of his.

Views are spectacular. And the film gets points by having Dors compete in the Palio di Siena horse race at the end! It's so random. That probably should've been the focus of the whole movie. So for that and the photography I gave it two and a half even though I didn't really follow it.

Book review - "The Lady in the Lake" by Raymond Chandler

An excellent Marlowe - a very strong plot, some memorable locations (the woody resort, the environs of Bay City), some decent characters (a corrupt cop, a ruthless femme fetale who I wish hadn't died, a local copper), some great scenes (discovery of the lake in the lake, Marlow being smacked around, the death of the corrupt cop).

Maybe the lack of an extra classic character or two is what holds it back from being Farewell My Lovely or The Big Sleep.

Movie review - "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (2011) **

Well, be careful what you wish for... I wanted a simpler plot, got it, no Orlando Bloom, got that, more Johnny Depp, got that... And it's the flattest film in the series to date.

Without a complex plot you're left with characters who haven't changed and repeat the same beat. I guess Johnny is in love with Penelop Cruz but she's a beautiful spitfire and a little untrustworthy and that's it. Geoffrey Rush snarls and does his thing as does Ian MacShane's Blackbeard.

I liked the mermaids but jeez couldn't they find something more for the young male lead to be other than religious? Introduce him early or something? Make him a connection to Jack?

I liked the London scenes and the first half hour. Full of these annoying endings. Stop setting things up for sequels.

Movie review - "A Rainy Day in New York" (2019) **

I wish Woody would take more time and effort. Maybe work with a co writer. Adapt something. He's got some good young actors in this movie - but they all talk like they're, well, hanging out with Woody Allen, with references to Gone with the Wind.

Again a young woman wants to hump a middle aged man (Liev Schreiber), and also an older film star (Diego Luna), a hooker is invited along to an event pretending to be someone else, there is talk of woman.

Tim Chalamet plays one of Allen's least sympathetic protagonists - he doesn't work, has no goals, is rich, mopes around a woman but has Selena Gomez throw herself at him.

Maybe if the characters were twenty years older? The stuff around the side characters was entertaining - Jude Law bickering with Rebecca Hall and so on.

I just wish he'd put in more effort. Work with a co writer. Adapt. Something.

Movie review - "Scent of Mystery" (1960) **

Best remembered for "Smell of Vision" - I can't judge it on that because I saw it without smells. I can judge it as a movie. It's a weird thing, in 70 mm, because it was make by Mike Todd's son, so presumably he felt he had to maintain the family tradition. It also has a travelogue narrative, a little like Around the World in 80 Days, and also like that there is a slightly stuffy British hero (Denholm Elliot here), and he has a sidekick akin to Don Quixote which Todd Snr was going to make.

If you enjoy Spanish scenery you will like this more than I did, because there's a lot of it. Denholm Elliot having the lead has novelty - there's a lot of him too. He doesn't have much chemistry with his Sancho, played by Peter Lorre who looks unwell (indeed, he had a heart attack). There's no 80 Days complication of a pursuing detective or Indian princess... though I did like the device that Elliot knows someone is going to be murdered but doesn't know what the proposed victim looks like.

There's no all star cast - you've got Leo McKern in an American accent, and Diana Dors in a bikini and American accent in a cameo. Yet again Dors is better than the female lead. Elizabeth Taylor pops up with a fun cameo.

But I found it irritating - I never got a fix on Elliot's character (nothing wrong with a Don Quixote imitation... but make him like Don Quixote) or why Lorre would go along for the ride. It doesn't have much of a plot. The widescreen photography was annoying more than anything else. They should've made Lorre's character a love interest to give the scenes some pep.

I give it points for having a swing.

Movie review - "Baby Love" (1968) **1/2

The role of a teen sexpot would've been a natural for Diana Dors in her younger days so it's entirely appropriate to see her as the mother of Linda Hayden here. Dors is very effective in her small part, looking sad in the opening moments before she kills herself, traumatising her daughter.

This film is less pervy than I thought. It's fairly pervy - Hayden was fifteen and she goes topless and flashes her backside in some scenes (does that make this movie illegal now?) but it's clear she's a victim. The son leches after her and the mother seduces her and the father isn't caring.

She also gets drooled over by a friend of dad (Dick Emery), a black man at a nightclub with stoned friends, some rapist rowers.

I wasn't sure if the film was being complex or simply didn't have a cohesive vision. The story seems to build to melodrama that doesn't happen.

It is interesting - it keeps you guessing, Hayden is good as are all the actors, and Alistair Reid's direction is frequently imaginative and lively.

Book review - "The Little Sister" by Raymond Chandler (1949)

One of the three weak Marlowes i.e. the non classics. This is still pretty good, with not one not two but three femme fetales - the mousy country girl of the title (looking for her brother), a film star, a Latina actress.

Some of this felt like Chandler writing while drunk - the women finding him irresistible, the men he beats up. Some stuff felt repetitive eg Marlow is drugged, harrased by cops. I did like the cops monologue and the toughness and stuff. I enjoyed the ice pick deaths, the papers in the toupee

The satire of Hollywood was reportedly in response to Chandler's experiences - I would've liked more send up of Hollywood types actually it was a point of difference.

Movie review - "On the Double" (1961) **1/2

I liked this a lot as a kid - less so as the years have gone on. Maybe I outgrew Danny Kaye. The film does make it seem awfully easy to escape Berlin in World War Two.

The story is a riff on I Was Monty's Double/The Prisoner of Zenda. Some of its fun especially when Kaye goes off on a tear - dancing a Scottish jig to confuse Margaret Rutherford, impersonating a Marlene Dietrich style entertainer in Berlin.

Dana Wynter is beautiful as the love interest but she never seems that into him - Kaye of course is sexless. Diana Dors pops up as Kaye's mistress who is revealed to be a spy - I wish she and Wynter had swapped roles, I think Dors was more warm on screen, it would have worked.

Movie review - "Dancing with Crime" (1947) **

Richard Attenborough is just out of the army and struggling to make a go of it as a cab driver. His old army pal has gone into crime - which is a great set up for a thriller,Atteborough being tempted so he can provide for Sheila Sims, dealing with post war adjustment problems for veterans. But this promising situation is dealt with perfunctorily - Attenborough is never tempted, his mate is killed, Attenborough goes investigating.

They should've kept the mate alive and killed a third mate or something. Had both men in love with Sims.

Too much time is given to boring cops and moralising, not enough to gangsters. I did like how Sims got involved and went undercover - I wish they'd done more wiht it. Diana Dors is a dancer at a club - she was just a few years too young for this sort of role for which she'd otherwise be perfect.

Barry Barnes is the villain - he's better than as leading man.Judy Kelly has a big part as a gangsters moll - a part Dors would've been good at later. Aussie John Warwick is a cop.

The last act is quite exciting. Apparently Dirk Bogarde has a small bit.

Movie review - "Peggy and the Pownall Case" (1948) **

From Highbury Films a short lived company J Arthur Rank set  up to turn out 50 minute movies when he thought he was going to have to provide all British cinema.

This has an amateurish feel - I don't think the director was a star. It's a shame because the central idea is perfect for a B - about a model who gets involved in busting a spy ring. Peggy Evans is lively in the lead - I wonder why she didn't kick on.

I watched this for Diana Dors, who is wasted as the secretary to someone in British intelligence. Normally I write Dors is the best thing about her movies - not so much here, anyone could have played the part really but she has warmth and energy. She pops on screen. In a few years she would have been perfect for Evans' role but she does feel too young here.

The direction is pervy at times - Evans changes her clothes a lot. Some lazy writing like Dors and Evans having to share a flat when Evans realises her photographer Christopher Lee is a spy. But Lee is in it which is great. He's awkward, all tall and teeth, but it is a young Lee.

The ending has a bit of pace. This could have been a cracker of a B with the concept and the cast but they could't pull it off.

Movie review - "The Shop at Sly Corner" (1947) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

I mostly watched this because it was the first screen role for Diana Dors, who has a scene - as a floozy (surprise) the gal of slimy blackmailer Kenneth Griffith.

This is a pretty decent thriller. I was distracted by Oscar Homolka's moustache. The girl violinist he's Doing It All For is dull as his her boyfriend. Griffith is splendid fun,  a wonderful sleazebag - the film never really recovers from his death. I wish there had been a second villain maybe to come along.

The story feels familiar - ex crim gone respectible, blackmailer, sympathetic murder, violinst - but maybe this was imitated. The acting is solid. I wasn't that familiar with the work of director George King but felt he does a good job.

Boris Karloff played the lead on Broadway and once I read that it did make me wish he'd done this film.

Movie review - "Lady Godiva Rides Again" (1951) **1/2 aka "Bikini Baby"

A film probably best remembered for casting someone called Pauline Stroud in lead role while overlooking Kay Kendall, Audrey Hepburn, Joan Collins and Dana Wynter who were all up for the part.

Stroud is fine - not magical, but fine. Maybe the others were too knowing. The film is stolen, as they often were, by Diana Dors, as an experienced beauty contestant. The scenes between Stroud and Dors, with the latter showing the former the ropes, have the most heart.

It should have been in colour and the satire is mild when surely there was more to mock - I couldn't help thinking Frank Launder made it to have a perv. I wonder if it wouldn't have been a better movie ten years later when it could have risked more censorship-wise.

There is fun to be had - Dennis Price as a self centered movie star, John McCallum playing an Aussie pineapple farmer who talks about kookaburras, Alistair Sim cameo'ing as a British film director and making some cracks about the industry (the fun is lessened when he laments not being able to chase Stroud), Sid James as the person who runs a French revue, Stanley Holloway as dad. Kay Kendall is her sister but doesn't do that much.

Dors is wonderful - but we don't see her after the first part of the movie. This film really should have been about Dors and Stroud as buddies on the make like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or something. Or just cast Dors in the lead.

Too much isn't pleasant - like John McCallum abducting Stroud at the end. But it's worth a look.

Movie review - "No Trees in the Street" (1959) **

I have a lot of respect for the efforts of Ted Willis but I'm starting to hate his scripts, with their simple working class folk singing songs and being working class and struggling and overacting melodrama. Maybe I watched this in a bad mood.

I hated the smug cop Ronald Lewis, and all the chattering working class singalongs, and the nervy tick hammy acting of the kid brother, and the fact Sylvia Syms was so weak and just whined. The character I had sympathy for was Herbert Lom's gang boss - at least he had a bit of drive; he also has a very sympathetic backstory (beaten up by his dad) and empathetic career arc, being in love with Syms.

The film would've been far better that Sym's character been hot for Lom but she's so anti him and he grabs her and then she kisses him in a really unconvincing scene.

The film felt miscast - Melvyn Hayes never felt like Syms' brother and Joan Miller never felt like her mother. While Syms is a very good actor I feel the movie would've worked better with Diana Dors in her role - there was something more inherently lower class in Dors' personal (had nothing to do with their real circumstances); you would feel her attraction to a gangster more than Syms. Maybe it would've worked better with younger/sexier men... Howard and Lom feel so middle aged. Imagine say, Michael Craig or John Fraser or some other young spunk. It would've been so much more interesting.

In the film's defence maybe the censors wrecked it  - for instance the mother whoring out Syms felt reduced.

But surely the censor wasn't responsible for Hayes' hysterical overacting. By the end of this film I was hating it - Hayes whining on and on, blaming society, blaming Lom, acting, acting, acting. It was a relief when Syms shot him (I think we were meant to think it was tragic but he was so irritating).

I don't mean to be mean. Maybe I should read the original play. The story is solid - gangster employs boy, goes out with his sister whose mother pimps her out. But they didn't execute it well.

Movie review - "A Study in Terror" (1965) ***

The sort of film that feels like Hammer but was actually Tigon and Herman Cohen - it has Sherlock Holmes investigating Jack the Ripper and is stylish and a lot of fun. Plenty of pseudo names like John Neville as Holmes and Donald Houston as Watson.

I love the photography, sets and feel. The script is occasionally a bit iffy but it is a decent story - Holmes and Watson work well. The cast includes a young Judi Dench as well as people like John Fraser, Tony Quayle, Peter Carsten.

Book review - "Sidney Lumet" by Maura Spiegel

Superb book on the legendary director - probably the one "TV guy" whose reputation was still high. I knew a fair bit about Lumet's career, in part from reading Making Movies but also from seeing the sheer amount of credits he turned out. There was a lot I did know like:
- he was a top child actor, starred in a film
- his dad was a self centered actor, who cheated on the mother
- mother died traumatically young
- sister spent all Sidney's army pay
- Sidney did radar training in the Himalayas during WW2 and hated his war service bc of all the rednecks
- he was married four times, the first to actress/model, the second to Gloria Vanderbilt, the third to Lena Horne's daughter, the fourth did the trick
- one of his daughters became a coke snorting party girl then reinvented herself as a body building neo con
- Bobby Canavale was his son in law for a piece.
A great soap character.
The main had his flaws, and a surprising lack of success directing theatre, but managed to keep relevant and fresh for his career. So many good lessons to learn how to handle a career - work hard, keep working, aim to do good material, all that stuff. Fabulous book.

Movie review - "Woman in a Dressing Gown" (1957) **1/2

A fascinating film. It does stack the deck in favour of Anthony Quayle shagging his hot younger secretary - Sylvia Syms is so gorgeous, nice, understanding, and sensible... the camera loves her. At least, as directed by J Lee Thompson. She's way too hot for Anthony Quayle but I guess, class system, and Quayle is very good.

Yvonne Mitchell over acts at times as a wife - scatty, messy, clearly depressed. She never looks attractive or like someone Quayle would be with. Yet the film does give her a moment in the sun - she has a lousy life, she lost a child, her living child (Andrew Ray) is selfish. She needs a job and a sense of purpose and the film does acknowledge that.

I did feel the film lacked another character - a parent for Quayle/Mitchell maybe, or another child. Or maybe just flesh out the ones that are there.

I like J. Lee Thompson's direction. He moves the camera around which I feel helps the material. But he lets some scenes breathe.

The film wasn't a whole success for me - I always felt Willis was a bit mean to women and the sympathies of him and Thompson was more with Quayle. Which is true but it's not black and white. I get why some people like this.

Maybe it would work more for me if I'd liked Yvonne Mitchell more - if it had been say one of the Gainsborough gals. I missed Diana Dors - I'm sure Thompson thought about her for the Syms part then decided against it.

Movie review - "Sea Fury" (1958) ***

An old story - elderly captain, young hot wife who wants to bang the younger first mate. But Cy Endfield, writer-director, puts in effort - its got location work in Spain, some excellent storm footage, a strong finale with the ship coming across a creepy trawler and weird captain... I actually wish it had been more of this, maybe one journey with the woman on board.

Luciana Paluzzi is sexy and can act as the woman even if ultimately there's not a lot of depth to her character. Victor McLaglen and Stanley Baker are excellently cast as is Robert Shaw as a scowly crew member who wants Baker's job.

This is good, tough adventure stuff - not as strong as Hell Drivers, and it needs more of a villain, like German U Boats or something. But it was made with care - flamenco music and so on. Not a typical bland 50s Rank movie.

Movie review - "Rasputin the Mad Monk" (1966) **1/2 (re-watching)

This starts so well - Chris Lee is wonderful, it's easily one of his best performances, eyes blazing, long beard, mystical, magnetic, clearly good in bed, up for a dance. Barbara Shelley is good too.

The film gets less good as it goes on - it seems to lack vision and focus. It has Hammer pleasures - the colour and sets - but doesn't feel cohesive. Francis Matthews is introduced too late to the story.

Lee seducing Shelley is great but we don't get a proper Shelley story - she has no death scene. Richard Pasco  is a Renfield style doctor.

It's definitely of interest because of Lee's performance but watching it I kept being frustrated because it is had been done better it could have launched a whole bunch of racy Hammer biopics eg Caligula, Cleopatra. There's no reason why you couldn't do a really fun Hammer style biopic full of cleavage and so on - this just didn't do it well.

Movie review - "Blood from the Mummy's Tomb" (1971) **1/2 (re-watching)

I've seen this a few times and it never makes sense even though surely the basic story is simple. Christopher Wicking never did like writing uncomplicated screenplays and Seth Holt's death during filming wouldn't have helped. Some of it is silly such as the convincing flashbacks to ye olde Egypt and there's little chemistry between Andrew Keir and Valerie Leon - Cushing (the original choice) would've been far better.

And yet... the film has as certain magic about it. The circumstances of its production of course, but also the bewitching Valerie Leon, all curves and flashing eyelashes - Hammer should have given her another lead, like Ingrid Pitt she was a star. Keir is professional and actors like James Villiers and George Colouris are excellent. It's fun seeing an Aussie bearded Mark Evans as Leon's love interest, called "Tod Browning". There's neat severed hands and fun costumes. It's very patchy but is its own thing.

Book review - "The Reivers" by George MacDonald Fraser (re-reading)

The last novel to be published in Fraser's life time. A throwback to The Pyrates but not as good. Fraser loves language and I wanted to like this but he lost the knack of telling a good story and creating new characters. In Pyrates the characters were memorable and different - here they kind of all blended in (I got the two heroic male leads especially confused). The story isn't that great either (the first bit is based on The Candlemass Road) - maybe if he'd introduced a few more genuinely famous people like given a bigger role to King James or something. It'll be honest, it was tiresome to read.

Movie review - "Taste of Excitement" (1969) **

The two films Don Sharp made for Group W aren't widely known - this and The Violent Enemy. This isn't bad - it's not great, but I kept watching. I couldn't pick what was going to happen.

I thought it was a woman in peril film - Eva Renzi is chased by some mysterious people, someone is driving her insane. Then part of the way in she crosses with this painter, David Buck, and he becomes the hero - his character actually was the hero of a series of novels, the first of which was the basis for this book. It then turns into this Cold War Thriller.

Buck and Renzi are vaguely familiar to me. Buck is fine; Renzi was very good, beautiful, and a solid actor; the role gives her something to chew on, she's got to be mad, and sexy, and mysterious, and fall in love.

Familiar faces turn up in the support cast like Francis Matthews, Peter Bowles (in an accent), Peter Vaughan.

Movie review - "A Time to Love and a Time to Die" (1958) ***

With All Quiet on the Western Front, Universal had a lot of success with a German-focused anti war tale based on an Erich Maria Remarque novel starring an unknown... so almost thirty years later they tried to recapture the magic by repeating those elements.

It was a lesser regarded novel, and focused on the Germans in World War Two who are less highly regarded, shall we say, than the ones from World War One. "Good Germans" were a feature of many British and Hollywood movies of the fifties (Cold War influence no doubt)... but it was rare to focus on one.

John Gavin was the unknown, surely selected in part because of his similar appearance to Rock Hudson. He's actually quite good in this - better than he would be in later movies. Maybe more confident. It helps he's the lead.

I liked this movie. It was beautifully shot. Very American for a tale set in Germany - but once I got used to that I adjusted. Keenan Wynn and Don Defore are Germans. And a young Jim Hutton who is effective as a fellow soldier early on.

The film is dark because it's set in Germany and on the Eastern Front. And you guess Gavin is going to die and he does - shot by a traumatised Russian who he's set free.

I had low expectations but this was good.

Movie review - "Craze" (1974) **

Not a very good horror film. I enjoyed the work of producer Herman Cohen and director Freddie Francis in other movies but not this one - maybe it was made too late in the day. Or they didn't have enough money. Or a shared vision. Or whatever.

Maybe Jack Palace wasn't suited for the lead role. Maybe films about men seducing women for a cult aren't as interesting as women doing it - if Julie Edge or Suzy Kendall were in the lead instead of Palance, maybe that would've worked. Of course depends on how in to Palance you are.

Strong cast including Trevor Howard, Edith Evans, Hugh Griffith and Doris Dors - they are all solid, as is Palance to be fair. I did laugh at the cop slapping around Palance's off sider - it made me wonder if they ever made a Sweeney style police brutality movie with Satanic villains?

It's an ugly looking movie like far too many 70s British horror movies. Did they lose the gift of art design or something?

Movie review - "Hammerhead" (1968) **

Irving Allen missed out on the James Bond movies and spent the rest of the sixties trying to catch up. He got lucky with the Matt Helm movies, but not with this, which was meant to be the first in a series.

It's a sixties spy film with Judy Geeson great fun as a swinger having adventures meeting up with Vince Edwards, who seems bored and sinks the movie.

There's some pleasing views of Portugal, heavy hanged sixties satire of happenings. There's dancing girls like Beverly Adams and Tracy Reed, and Diana Dors popping up, smiling enigmatically, and being revealed as a baddy to the shock of no one.

Average action. It's fairly underwhelming apart from Gleenson who deserved a better movie.

Movie review - "Danger Route" (1967) **1/2

Seth Holt directed this but no one was happy with it - not him or Amicus. I've got to say though I didn't mind it.

You can tell it was a tricky production - the movie doesn't have a cohesive feel. Characters come and go. It's like it needed to be in black and white and made five years previously or something. It seems unsure how violent to be, or how sexy, or how cynical. Dr No when it came out felt confident of its tone - this doesn't.

Still there are pleasures - the opening scene of the government agent whispering the job, the novelty of Richard Johnson as a hero. Carol Lynley isn't really at home in this sort of movie - the voice lets her down. Barbara Bouchet has the perect looks - she's a stunner - but not the voice. Maybe Bouchet and Lynley's part should have been combined. They should have had different hair.

Gordon Jackson is excellent as an agent; Maurice Denham isn't bad, Harry Andrew is reliably excellent as are Sylvia Syms and Sam Wanamaker.  The meet cute between Lynley and Johnson - where they pretend to know each other but actually do - predates the similar one in Butch Cassidy.

Doris Doris is always fun to see - here she's an aging housekeeper, plump, nice, lonely and horny, with a husband in Australia looking "after sheep". Her scenes with Johnson do slightly feel like they're in a different movie to the rest. She would've been better than Lynley in her part but she would've been considered to be too old.

The action scenes aren't particularly well done. This is a movie that got away. But it was late 60s spy stuff with some great actors and twists - I went with it.

Movie review - "Man Bait" (1952) **1/2 aka The Last Page (warning: spoilers)

This was a B movie, made in a small studio for little money but in hindsight the credits impress - the studios were Hammer and Robert Lipper, the director was Terence Fisher, the first of several movies he'd do for Hammer, the writer was Frederick Knott, the original play by James Hadley Chase, the female lead was Diana Dors.

Ironically the best know people at the time were George Brent and Marguerite Chapman, who for me are the weak links. Brent had a colourful love life but came across less colourful on screen - I guess his "aging" factor helps. The subplot about his crippled wife feels random - she seems healthy enough in the one scene we see her, then she's dead from getting a letter...? Did I get that right? It's like the baddy needed to do something.

Chapman is fairly bland. It's not much of a role but compare with what Diana Dors would have done - Dors could convey emotion better with her face, the longing, etc. It's also a little creepy the way once Brent's wife is dead Chapman practically rips off his pants.

It's a great performance from Dors - lonely, put about, hungry for love, insecure. Gosh she was good. I can't believe she didn't work more with Lippert and/or Hammer. Hammer especially - imagine her in those horrors, she would've been fabulous. The film loses momentum when she's killed. I wish she hadn't been - she didn't deserve to die, it's depressing. It may have worked better story wise even if Chapman had died... she was in love with Brent... so that looks bad, etc etc.

Fisher uses a lot of long takes to get through his short schedule. This would be less noticeable in the horrors as the art direction was better.

It's set in a book store and there's some fun like bits where a character goes "over near the Enid Blytons".

Movie review - "Vote for Huggett" (1949) **

I liked the first two Huggett films but this entry didn't work for me. Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison do fine work - actually the acting is accomplished. I just didn't care. Political storylines get so vague... it becames about land values and crap.

This was uninteresting. There's some pretty women without characters to play, really old leading men, a lack of a sense of family and life. All love couples have old men and younger women.

Diana Dors, one of the best things about the last movie, is given a different role, that is minor - the girfriend of a spiv who looks like Turhan Bey. She's wasted.

There's some ordinary songs. Little charm.

Sydney Box was a lousy studio head.

Movie review - "Ice Cold in Alex" (1958) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Long - over two hours - and occasionally there are dull patches. Anthony Quayle's South African accent takes some listening to. But it benefits from location work in Libya. Gorgeous photography. Some ideal gritty "sand" action stuff - sand dunes, quick sand, wind.

Sylvia Syms is shot lovingly - someone was in love with her, the cameraman or J Lee Thompson. She gets countless gazing close ups. I'm not complaining, mind. She's beautiful - especially when handing over a cigarette. (Aside: Syms seemed to take over the "Diana Dors" parts in J. Lee Thompson's oeuvre around this time. Coincidence? Dors being in America?)

It's a shame she doesn't have a more sexually charged leading man than John Mills - who seems far more interested in Anthony Quayle. It's good work from Mills, though - playing an alcoholic gives him something to sink his teeth in to. (Though the film kind of celebrates his alcoholism - being about the pursuit of a beer. Mind you it does make for a very satisfying ending. I don't drink but I enjoyed that beer.)

Syms' part actually isn't that great - I mean, she goes along for the ride, drives the truck at key moments - but it's not super duper involved. Harry Andrews is a passenger too. I felt maybe he should've been killed half way.

I love the moment at the end when Mills reveals to Quayle that they know he's a spy - superb acting from Quayle, staring into his glass, going "oh f*ck I thought I had it over them, and had succeeded, but I didn't and kind of to make it worse they've even helped me out." It's a wonderful ending.

I'm actually sympathetic to the US wanting to cut it but to 80 minutes??

Movie review - "Miss Tulip Stays the Night" (1955) **

I think Leslie Arliss was one of those people who were found out once the studio apparatus wasn't there to help him - or maybe he just lacked mongrel. This was his last feature and its very uninspired. He's not half as lively as Maurice Elvey, who did similarly dim stage adaptations around this time.

The basic idea isn't bad - a couple go to a house, a woman rocks up, dies, the man (a mystery writer) is blamed.

Diana Dors is the man's wife and she's terrific - lively, keen, easily the best thing about the movie. Unfortunately more screen time is given to Patrick Holt, some bland charm school graduate who seems to old and doesn't have much comic touch. I read Ron Randell was considered - he would've been able to do it.

or they should've bitten the bullet and cast Cicely Courtnidge and Jack Hulbert, who have support roles, in the leads... and had Dors as Miss Tulip. I like Dors. Everyone else in the film seems 105. I guess they try.

Movie review - "A Boy a Girl and a Bike" (1949) **

A film I wanted to like more than I did because it has an interesting world - Yorkshire bike club - and Aussie interest: John McCallum and Ralph Smart, plus Diana Dors.

But while the film has good things about it, it's a bit all over the shop. The adventures of a bike club feel like it should be a kids film, and at times the movie has that vibe (there's a plot about a stolen bike racket), but it's also got these thirty something actors like McCallum and Patrick Holt chasing after Honor Blackman - their parts feel written for younger actors.

The whole movie McCallum is chasing Blackman, she seems into him... then at the end he introduces her to his parents, they're a bit cool, so the next scene he's passing her over to Holt. It's very unsatisfactory especially as Holt seems like such a drip - she's too good for him. (This scene felt like it was added after previews or something but who would be satisfied by it? They should have just made Holt the villain - the film lacks a villain in the final bike race.)

At times you get the sense the filmmakers were going for a Holiday Camp style multi-storyline movie (there's a subplot about an escaped criminal living in the community, and about a kid who was orphaned in the war and has gone off the rails) - which in hindsight is the way they should have gone once they decided to cast it with adults.

More and more I'm coming to feel that Sydney Box wasn't a very good executive for Gainsborough. He had good ideas and instincts but seemed to lack a simple overall vision for his films.

Another strong effort from Dors, a screen natural, as the pretty, chubby thing with a twinkle in her eye and a determination to flirt with men. Really the movie should have given her more to do - a rival for Blackman, say. Blackman is solid but hadn't grown into her looks yet.

Movie review - "The Great Game" (1953) **

Based on a stage play about football - specifically the British transfer system of the 1940s in soccer. So if you're into that you may get stuff that escaped me.

I got the basis - it's really a comedy with broadacting northerner James Hayten as a tin pot club president trying to entice a player who is marrying his secretary to his club.

There's a lot of blustering northern accents. Geoffrey Toone is irritating as a perfect sort of soccer person - "we've got to develop talent, give people trades". The cast includes people like John Laurie and Thora Hird but the best was Doris Doris, in a small role despite her billing as Hayten's minxy secretary. She gets decent screen time in the opening but it fades. But she is fun with a mischievious twinkle - a film about Hayter sending her out to seduce players would have been better.

As a cricket fan I loved how Hayter at the end got excited about cricket and thought up ideas - exhibition games, cricket on ice, etc. I would have liked that movie more than this.

As with Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? I've got to say that director Maurice Elvey keeps the pot boiling. It's just weak material.

Movie review - "Merrill's Marauders" (1961) ***

Less regarded Fuller movie - none of his flourishes. There are some fine battle sequences - done in long shot. Lots of emphasis on the physical difficulty of travelling and fighting - the sore feet, random illnesses.

Lots of scenes of people saying they're too tired to fight. Doctors trying to persuade people not to fight.

The British are mentioned lots of times and we see a Gurkha. I think they were hoping to avoid an Objective Burma style controversy.

Some nice touches like the mule guy's love for his mule, the Filipino who refuses to tuck in his shirt. it's very different in that Merrill/Chandler has a heart attack at the finale.

Big role for Ty Hardin though one senses anyone could've played it. Jeff Chandler is fine - rugged, tired - but Fuller couldn't access hidden depths.

It's absolutely fine - just lacks that delirious Fuller excess. Maybe because it was a based on a true story.

Movie review - "Value for Money" (1955) **

So frustrating - because this has terrific central conflict: tight arsed, povertly pleading Yorkshireman John Gregson, and brassy showgirl Diana Dors. That should be the core of this movie - something like Vivacious Lady. Instead it's unsatisfactory. He becomes besotted, which is understandable since Dors is at her loveliest - and her character is friendly, sick of being a showgirl, nice to him. She warns him that she's not his type.

She only decides to marry him for money around an hour in. Gregson is a charming actor but his character is a dill - whining about money. There's this boring woman who is into him  - we don't know why. Money? Growing up together? She's dull too.

They throw in two musical numbers but it's not a musical. It should have been a musical. Gregson needed family to harras him instead of dead dad's painting.

I did laugh at the two scenes were people were having an intimate chat and there was honking noises. The satire of Yorkshire was funny.

This film didn't realise its strengths and potential. Just make it a simple romance between very different people, add songs.

TV review - "Alfred Hitchcock Hour" - Episode "Run for Doom"

Young Tom Skerrit! And John Gavin in one of his meatiest roles... as  a doctor who becomes obsessed with lounge singer Diana Dors. Dors is good - though I'm a big fan, she's not for everyone. She always had empathy and a big heart came across. You can see why Gavin is attracted - though maybe he's too handsome.

I do like how Gavin got to stretch his wings - be obsessed, kill two people! He's still John Gavin, he can't act that well, but he doesn't disgrace himself.

Support cast are solid. This goes for an hour - the story doesn't really get going til they kill the person on the boat. It probably could have been told in half an hour.

I know Dors was too trashy for Hitch's features but I would have loved to have seen her in Frenzy or something.

Movie review - "Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary" (1953) **1/2

Oh, look, it was lame but I went with this... Maurice Elvey the director did a good job. Bonar Colleano isn't my idea of a strong comic but he is animated and tries - everyone really tries. For me the best was Diana Dors, as usual - she seems to be having the time of her life as the saucy minx with a heart of gold who was married to Colleano.

I like Dors and stuffy David Tomlinson as a team. Diana Decker is fine in a thankless role. The girl who plays the maid really goes for it - Tomlinson's wife in real life apparently. Sid James hams it up. They all do. But Dors steals the show for me - she was so likeable.

Movie review - "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" (2007) **

Gorgeous sets and photography. Great to shine some light on Chinese pirates. Some funny moments and imagination. Stunning visuals - all those boats, and the maelstrom. Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush are fun.

Long. Flabby. Felt heartless. Took ages to get going. Starts of bleakly with lots of hangings including a kid. The "villain" is trying to rid the seas of piracy. This is bad because...? The villain is undercooked.

The film doesn't have a heart. Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley's love should be the core. They don't like each other for the first hour for silly contrived reasons (he thinks she wants Johnny Depp - nothing wrong with a love triangle but it's set up poorly). Who cares about Orlando and his dad? I forgot Orlando in the movie.

The only time Keira seemed into Orlando was when he was leaving. Keira K is perhaps the most photogenic woman in cinema at the moment but her acting can be iffy and it is here.

TV review - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" - "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (1961) **1/2

This ep was not aired due to violent content - it ends with Diana Dors about to be cut in half by a buzzsaw. It's actually a cracker of a story - Robert Bloch wrote it and he knew his stuff - but it's almost sunk by the terrible acting of Brando de Wilde.

I'm not a de Wilde fan - I know, Shane, Member of the Wedding - but he lacked technique and he's dreadful here, falling into "disabled" acting. He plays a mentally unstable boy who falls in with a circus and gets obsessed by magicians wife Dors who is having an affair with a strongman.

Dors is perfectly cast as a trashy circus performer - the other actors are fine too. De Wilde is awful.

The concept for this was strong enough for a feature.

Kid and criminal movies

Random thought... in the 1950s there were a heap of "kid and criminal" movies - where a kid befriends a criminal.

What kicked it off? Maybe The Fallen Idol.

Look at what happened
- Treasure Island (1950)
- Hunted (1952)
- The Yellow Ballon (1952)
- Moonfleet (1955)

Movie review - "The Yellow Balloon" (1952) **

J. Lee Thompson was clearly a natural director - look at his visual command. Good with actors too (or, at least, casting). Andrew Ray is an excellent young lead and the support can't be faulted - William Sylvester, Kenneth More (dad), Kathleen Ryan.

Some tremendous moments - the death of Ray's friend. The terror of the final chase. Ray befriending a nice prostitute. This got an X which caused much criticism but it is an adult kids film.

I didn't like it much, have to say. It didn't make sense that Sylvester would put in so much effort to grooming Ray. Does he need an Oliver Twist that much? If Ray had witnessed a crime or knew something - sure. But Ray was part of kids mucking around which led one to die.

Also the relationship between Ray and Sylvester lacks much weight. It's grooming under blackmail. There's no genuine friendship/family stuff like in Treasure Island or Hunted or Moonfleet.

Maybe if Sylvester and More had swapped parts - Sylvester is menacing, More has that breezy charm. I also feel these movies work better when there isn't a dad figure around.

Watching this I wish Thompson had done a version of Treasure Island.

Movie review - "A Kid for Two Farthings" (1955) **1/2

Carol Reed had a great success with "through the eyes of a child" in The Fallen Idol. This is less regarded though it has charm, as well as a strong Diana Dors performance has a girl keen to marry her bodybuilding fiancee.

Dors worked best where she was the hot girl in a low rent environment. The bloke who plays her body builder isn't as good although at least the body building setting has novelty - as does the fact he goes into wrestling.

It is a novelty, too, to see such a strongly Jewish movie, filled with (it seems) a heavily Jewish cast, eg David Kossof, Sidney Tefler. Kossof's make up was distracting. The stuff with the goat at the end was moving - the central conceit is charming. 

Celia Johnson's role is terrible - she hangs around moping about her husband off in South Africa making money. Give her something to do! Like an affair or a job or something.

Maybe more scenes needed to be from the POV of the kid.

I got into the stylised sets though it also meant at times I kept waiting for everyone to break out into song.  Still, it's different.

Movie review - "The Weak and the Wicked" (1954) ***1/2

Very strong women in prison film benefiting from J. Lee Thompson at his peak and a memoir by Joan Henry who would soon marry the director... and usher in Thompson's peak years.

It's a film with a great deal of empathy and warmth particularly the friendship between Glynis Johns and Diana Dors. Johns is fine - a solid medium level star. It's not her fault her character learns that having a man is the most important thing in life. Dors is very good - she looks like she should be in prison and down playing her glamour is effective. It's so nice to see her have a female friend.

There's a strong support cast including Rachel Roberts, Jane Hylton (a devastating subplot where she plays a mother whose kid dies), Sybil Thorndike.

The storyline about the two old biddies who poison an old guy probably becomes too late in the day. The subplot with John Gregson as the boyfriend going off to Rhodesia seems wonky, though Gregson is an ideal romantic lead for something like this he's not too wet. The guy who plays the reverend is creepy and the nice warden scary - but that feels authentic. Good movie.

Movie review - "The Lone Ranger" (2013) **

I would've greenlit this - Johnny Depp as Tonto, the writers and director of the Pirates movies... sure.

But when you think about it - and this is purely hindsight - the Lone Ranger isn't that much of a character. He's mostly just... good. There's no duality of a Superman or Zorro. His origin story isn't that amazing, either.

There are some funny gags and well staged action but it's long and lumpy. There are echoes of better movies - Morricone score, the narration to a kid a little like The Princess Bride (I think it was to get Johnny Depp into the movie earlier but it reminded me of Bride), the baddy realising that the goodie has been after him via a prop Once Upon a Time in the West style.

The support cast feels too obvious (Tom Wilkinson as a baddy) or undercast (the female lead, the brother). The villain cutting out a heart and eating it feels very full on.

Maybe it would've worked with Terry Rossio's idea of making the spirits of Tonto a real thing. That would've been most interesting than villainous cavalry and railroad men.

Movie review - "Alexandra's Project" (2003) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

An excellent thriller which keeps you guessing all the way through, anchored by two superb performances from Helen Buday and Gary Sweet. It's a penetrating account of marriage - some of it struck close to home!

Rolf de Heer does well with movies stuck in rooms. Maybe he shouldn't go outside anymore. A definite success. I personally could have done without Gary Sweet full frontal (do people do push ups that way?) but maybe de Heer wanted to counter balance Buday's boobs.

I think the film's third act isn't as strong- it felt as though it was building towards something more violent. (Would he really not be able to see his kids?) But a powerful movie, one of the best things de Heer ever did.

Movie review - "Passport to Shame" (1958) **

Diana Dors didn't have many lead roles - even this which would've been better with more of her, she's a support actor. There's too much of this French actress and Eddie Constantine - they fake marry to she can stay in the coutry, she works for pimp Herbert Lom.

There's black and white photography and a jazzy soundtrack. Not enough drama or sleaze to make it interesting. Dors looks great in her white outfit. She's the best of the cast for me. Trippy dream sequence.

Robert Brown from the Bond films is Constantine's co worker. He's a horrible sexist obsessive and I think we're meant to be glad he and Dors get together. I didn't care for Constantine and his girl.

The big drama is Dors and her sister and we don't see enough of the sister or Dors and Lom. The music got on my nerves. I didn't like this movie I guess.

Movie review - "Wide Boy" (1952) ***

Enjoyable British B based on a script by Aussie Rex Rienits which was adapted for TV as Bodgie. Sidney Talfer's casting in the lead gives the piece integrity - not a pretty boy, he does seem to be a spiv. Susan Shaw is too good looking to be his girlfriend really but she's a good actor, and very easy on the eye.

This is stripped back, quick, atmospheric. It was Ken Hughes' first credit as director and he does well. There's not an ounce of fat on it. It was probably too much of a coincidence that the girl blackmailed went to Shaw's hairdressing salon. It only clocks in at an hour.

Movie review - "Sonic the Hedgehog" (2020) **1/2

A very good story - solid set up, empathetic Sonic being lonely, the rings is a great macguffin. The script dialogue has too many gags - it was like it was given the sitcom treatment. Jim Carey is splendid - his jokes come from character. No one else's seem to. James Marsden is fine - I just wish it was someone better, someone to match Marsden - Adam Pally probably would've done a better job. Some very good animation.

Movie review - "The Violent Enemy" (1967) **

An under the radar movie - one of a few action/thrillers made by Trio Film, a short lived company. I watched this mainly because it was directed by Don Sharp the Aussie, who also dealt with IRA stuff in Hennessy.

This has a great start and finale. IRA expert Sean Rogan (Tom Bell who I wasn't that familiar with but good) is busted out of prison for a mission. It's blowing up an electrical factory. He doesn't want to do it but sort of mopes around and then does it.

The middle act is a little dull despite a strong cast - people talking about the Troubles, and everyone being sympathetic to the IRA but not the methods. I read an item in the book which called Rogan an "IRA Hamlet" - which is true. But we never get inside his head - why he joined up, why he softened. This needed to be dramatised somehow - to have him fall in love, or to meet his estranged son or something. He has a sort of relationship with Susan Hamphire who is a character of great potential - the daughter of a rich man caught up with the romance of the struggle... but she feels undeveloped. She just sort of hangs around.

Quickest fix - give him an ex girlfriend who he reconnects with... she carried his kid. He reconnects with the kid. Maybe the girfriend is killed off. Have Hampshire's character as more of a fanatic.

The acting is strong - Philip O'Flynn especially as a grinning cop but also Ed Begley as an IRA fanatic determined to use violence (in a few years that character would achieve his dream), Noel Purcell as an enormous beard.

The Irish settings help. The direction is fine.

Movie review - "The Devil Ship Pirates" (1964) ***1/2 (re-watching)

I've always loved the cleverness of this movie's concept - a Spanish ship is wrecked off the coast of England during the Spanish Armada of 1588; they've lost the war but the locals don't know that, so they try to pull off a con.

It's one of those movies that force you with the baddies and the plan is so bold at times you hope they'll pull it off.

There are plenty of other strong ideas - most of the ship's crew were former pirates keen to go back to their old life, there's a goody-goody noble on board (Barry Warren) to provide conflict with the captain (Christopher Lee), the British town includes a quisling type as well as an injured young man.

The cast is well above average - its a good chance for Christopher Lee who does well, and Andrew Keir is in there as well as Michael Ripper (in dark make up).

The filmmakers put ship action up the top to try and cover the fact that there's no ship action until the end. There are some sword fights.

It doesn't quite get there as a classic - I felt it could with another draft. Maybe there are too many characters to service. Or not enough emotional relationships. Perhaps we needed a love triangle involving Warren, lee and a girl - the female characters feel very undercooked. A local lady who falls for Lee/Warren could have made the difference. Maybe a more villainous/treacherous local?

Movie review - "Captive Women" (1952) *1/2

The sort of movie boomers would have affection for having watched it as a kid. It doesn't age well and doesn't impress though the central idea is bold - a post apocalyptic tale involving a fight between two rival camps. There's lots and lots of talk about religion - people act as if they're in a South Seas tale.

The top billed actor is Robert Clarke but actually Ron Randell is more of the hero - a principled leader of the mutats who romances a girl from the other tribe.

Not well directed, silly outfits, lumpish dialogue. Randell is effective. He should have played more leads in America. I wonder why he didn't - he had the looks and could act well enough.

Book review - "Caravan to Vaccares" by Alistair MacLean (1970)

The movie adaptation was bad but this was an enjoyable tale - a mystery man meets up with a woman and investigates why gypsies killed someone. The atmosphere of the Spanish setting is well evoked - bullfights, small hotels, caves, hot plains.

The normal dashing hero, and I got the two lead women mixed up, but a bright villain killer and I enjoyed the enigmatic Duke. It feels like a novel rather than a film script. A strong entry.

Movie review - "The Brigand" (1952) **1/2

I didn't mind this - better than Lorna Doone with a stronger story and support cast. It's ostensibly based on an Alexander Dumas tale but surely the greater inspiration was The Prisoner of Zenda.

The lead offers an acting challenge to Anthony Dexter who can't do it. He was a handsome enough guy cast as Valentino by Edward Small and Small gave him a few more chances. At times Dexter works - he's believable as a lounge lizard king not so much as the decent officer who imitates him.

A lot of plot but the basic impersonation is solid. Anthony Quinn adds clash, dash and verve as the villain - he should have played the lead he would've been marvellous. Ron Randell would have been better too - he's got a thankless part as a sort of helpful officer, a little like the role David Niven played in the 1937 Zenda.

There's bright colours and action. I wasn't wild about Jody Lawrence as the dopey princess but Gale Robbins was a lot of fun as a horny aristocrat.

Movie review - "Omoo Omoo the Shark God" (1949) **

I haven't read the Herman Melville novel on which this is ostensibly based but am guessing it's not very faithful. Still this isn't a bad story - about a curse on a sea captain whose greedy crew is after some pearls.

Ron Randell gets a rare Hollywood leading man part as the decent member of the ship.

There's some poor performances like the girl who plays the daughter of the captain. It isn't in colour - the production values are like a Jungle Jim movie, which works on its own terms, it just helps to know going in. There's some awkwardly inserted stock footage.

The director really likes scenes of two people talking intently to each other in close up. It's not always ideal for a south seas adventure.

Theres some decent action at the end to be fair this edition ran 57 minutes.

Movie review - "Lorna Doone" (1951) **

This novel is a classic? Alright, sure, whatever. It's not a very good adaptation. At least it's in colour. There's no a lot of action. This is meant to be Western influenced by I felt the greatest influence was Robin Hood.

I'm not a massive Richard Greene fan - this may be more fun if you are. As a loyal Aussie I wish Ron Randell's part was bigger - he has some pleasant dash as Greene's... mentor I guess. Someone who is already an outlaw.

They should have made Randell the villain instead of William Bishop who is dull. Randell, Greene and Bishop all look alive. Couldn't one of them had a beard or something?

Barbara Hale, a cheery actress, feels very American - they would've been better off with a more English type actor. Or maybe someone who doesn't seem so contemporary.

There isn't even a particularly memorable Charles II. There is some neat stuff around waterfalls.

Movie review - "Sign of the Ram" (1948) **

Quasi legendary because it starred Susan Peters after her accident - it has all this resonance because she was in a wheelchair and it was her last movie, she'd kill herself within a few years.

She has beauty, and can act and has this intense crazy look perfect for the character. It's a wonderful character perfect for a psycho thriller - a wheelchair bound lady wants to keep control.

But John Sturges' direction is perfunctory when it needs a Robert Siodmak. The plotting is confusing with far too many characters - there's this husband who dotes on her (Alex Knox) and a secretary who always gives her this smug pitying smile (Phyllis Thaxter), and a young step daughter (Peggy Ann Garner), and a doctor Peters seems to have a crush on (Ron Randell), and a step daughter (Allen Roberts) and a stepson (Ross Ford) and his girl (Diana Douglas). There's too many people - pick a lane, movie!

Maybe it would have worked if the step kids were her biological kids. they shouldn't have split focus between her being interested in Knox and Randell - they should have killed off Knox (establish Peters did it off screen ages ago) and now she's in love with Randell who falls for Thaxter. Get rid of Ford, Douglas, Roberts.

Randell is hardly in the movie. I got Thaxter, Douglas and Roberts mixed up and kept forgetting who Ford was.

The movie doesn't work but it's not Peters' fault.

Movie review - "The Loves of Carmen" (1948) **

You can see why you'd make it -the classic tale, Rita Hayworth starring, technicolor, the director and star of Gilda, and apparently the writer Virginia Van Upp had a go at the script. Even in 1947 Columbia surely would have known Glenn Ford was miscast - he has his moments to be fair, some nice intensity, he tries, but just feels too 20th Century.

In their defence it's not as though the studio had many other actors under contract who would've been better. Larry Parks? Willard Parker? Bill Holden?

You know who would've been good? Orson Welles. He could do that intensity stuff and he'd feel 19th century. Also a Brit star like James Mason or Stewart Granger but they hadn't head over yet.

Maybe this could have worked turned into a Western - I felt the same about Ford's stint in Four Men of the Apocalypse. Or a musical - Hayworth does a few dances but not enough.

Ron Randell is billed third but barely in the movie - what's that all about? Far bigger parts go to Victor Jory (Hayworth's villainous husband), Luther Adler (bandit), the colonel, the bullfighter... it's weird. What happened there?

Movie review - "The Mating of Millie" (1948) **

This has a perfectly decent central idea - single gal Evelyn Keyes wants to adopt a cute boy and needs a husband to do so. Rough tough Glenn Ford offers to help her woo men.

That's absolutely solid. But the movie stuffs it. Ford doesn't decide to do it until 45 minutes in and never really helps out. He's a prick to Willard Parker as one candidate (her neighbour) and gives some gentle pushes (but that's all) to Ron Randell who runs the orphanage.

You can forgive a lot with the right stars but that isn't the case here. Keyes can't quite carry a movie as a lead - I don't want to be mean, but she's too awkward, not warm. Ford can carry a movie but his character is an obnoxious jerk. Badly written too - he's a bus driver who is going to be a floor walker but he actually wants to be a novelist. He's a prat... and has no chemistry with Keyes. They  sure are a lot of scenes of women finding him hot, though.

I liked the stuff with the kid. Hated how Keyes was going to give up everything for Ford. Couldn't understand why Parker was in the movie. They don't do anything wth him. They should make him a villain who doesn't like kids or something.

This is simply incompetently made. I guess it's nice to see Keyes in a lead. Randell is fine by the way. He should have played Parker's part - make him the villain and have a nice cuddly character actor play Randell's old role.

Movie review - "It Had to be You" (1947) **

There's a lot of muppet acting going on in this film, mostly from Ginger Rogers who sets the tone and also Cornel Wilde who rises to match her at times. It does mean Wilde is more animated here than in other of his movies.

Rogers feels a little old - I don't want to be ageist, truly, I get she was only mid 30s, I just feel this would work better with someone who felt younger and sillier. As it is Rogers' character feels like she has psychological troubles, more serious than as treated here.

She keeps jilting men at the altar. Turns out when she was six she was kissed by an Indian and never got over it. This could be seen today as a metaphor for sex abuse but here is treated comically.

It's a fantasy - Columbia liked making them since Here Comes Mr Jordan. But I got confused over the rules - Cornel Wilde is a figment of Rogers' imagination, but he could still interact with other people... is that right? Then one hour in - one hour! - a "real" Wilde character appears, a macho fireman.

Ron Randell goes all out and is quite good. The title tune is heard a few times - I wish Ginger had sung and danced.

But it's confusing. They needed to sort the rules.

Movie review - "Lone Wolf and His Lady" (1949) **

Ron Randell didn't work out as Bulldog Drummond so Columbia tried him as the Lone Wolf. He only got one film, but in his defence B movies were morphing into television.

He's actually quite good with his pencil moustache and sub Doug Fairbanks Jnr delivery. The thing is, the film doesn't give him much screen time - as much is taken up by a girl reporter June Vincent and his butler Alan Mowbray. Randell/Wolf is accused of a theft but that doesn't happen until about half an hour in.

Mowbray and Randell are shown to be serial sexual harrassers - I think Mowbray has his hand over a girl's breast in one scene.

Vincent isn't much, Randell and Mowbray are lively.  There's not enough Lone Wolf. The script isn't right. Maybe that's how these Lone Wolf movies normally go, I'm not overly familiar with them.

Maybe it was simply too late for stories of former jewel thieves with butlers.