Movie review - "The Greek Tycoon" (1978) ***

 I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. It's got two talented stars perfectly cast, a strong story, decent locations, entertaining "millionaire lifestyle porn" (the Aegean Sea, luxury yachts). It's very empathetic to Jackie and Onassis - it does lean more towards him, but you can see why they got married, their attraction, and why it didn't work. The ending was quite moving with Quinn sending Bisset away so he can be by himself with his fatal illness and dog in a small village.

It's fun spotting people like Churchill, Callas, JFK, RFK. Bisset's hairstyles are a bit mumsy - she can look better than this.

Movie review - "Happy Birthday to Me" (1981) **

 The one with the poster involving a skewer to someone's head.

Production values are strong. The acting is high. Glenn Ford is in it. The lead is Melissa Sue Anderson. I recognised some of the others. It feels like a studio movie. The actors are quite good. Some of the killings are alright.

It was really confusing. I couldn't follow the story.

Play review - "Brighton Beach Memoirs" by Neil Simon

 It's not entirely Simon's fault but he had mined this material before - an elder brother he worshipped, an unrealiable father - and some of the tropes pop up in other autobiographical works from Jewish writers of his generation: the wisecracking family, worship of baseball, being pervy on women. (There's a lot of overlap with Radio Days/Annie Hall)

I felt it was more successful as a drama than a comedy though the comedy is fine. The talk of masturbation and Eugene being a sex pest got on my nerves - it was true to life, don't get me wrong, it was just irritating. I felt as though it lacked a wallop - I kept waiting for the dad to be cheating on the side.

Movie review - "Escape from New York" (1981) **** (re-watching)

 Random thoughts:

- Kurt Russell is bad ass

- this is more a horror movie than an action - the action isn't that well done, but the world is spooky

- superb cast - especially the small roles like Charles Cypher

- they shouldn't redo this as a movie but as a TV show because the world is so rich.

Movie review - "Last Christmas" (2019) *** (warning: spoilers)

 The critics tore this a new one - some at least. Why? It's funny, well directed with a charming lead performance from Emilia Clarke, who is a perfect rom com heroine: plucky, cute, empathetic.

Maybe the twist offended them. Or all the diverse casting. (Though that doesn't stop Emma Thompson doing accent acting - but I get she is a star and the film felt as though it needed her).

I don't think Clarke has the best chemistry with Henry Golding but he's got the looks. The George Michael songs are lovely. London looks dreamy.

I feel the twist could have been introduced earlier - they could have played out the ramifications of ghost dating. I remember watching the trailer going "that seems a little thin - she's a party girl, she likes George Michael, he's nice..." I think they should have given away the twist in the trailer, personally. It doesn't wreck the movie - it adds it for me. 

But it is sweet with some funny lines.

Radio play review - Marlowe#4 - "The Lady in the Lake" by Raymond Chandler (warning: spoilers)

 Solid Marlowe - this was a decent adaptation but I think I preferred the book, where the lake sequences felt creepier and the cop antagonist scarier. Those are the two most memorable things about this. It only just hit me why this novel/story doesn't hit the great heights - the character of Mildred, who kills a doctor's wife and another man, is barely seen - most of what she does is off stage. If Chandler had found a way to keep her alive a little more I think people would go for this more. (NB I didn't have this problem with the enigmatic Reagan in The Big Sleep maybe because there were other vivid characters and also Marlowe was a newer version of Reagan).

Movie review - "Northwest Frontier" (1959) **** (re-watching)

 Rank's attempt to conquer the world markets were much mocked but it did result in some of that studio's best movies - this and A Night to Remember are among the best.

This gives Kenneth More one of his best roles, a cheery engineer in 1905 India. He is a bit patronising and refers to the natives as children. There's a lot of defensive paternalism going on here - saying the British are needed to keep Muslim and Hindu tearing each other apart, etc.

I enjoyed his romance with Lauren Bacall - she's a sensible no-nonsense governess, a little wry about the British. But they are both sensible and respect each other.

I.S. Johar is full of life and energy as the train driver, though he's required to say "I feel like banging my people's heads together". The rest of the support cast is strong - Herbert Lom, Wilfrid Hyde White, Ursula Jean etc.

I liked the Macguffin of the kid (dubbed voice). I wish the death toll had been higher - surely that arms dealer could've gone? And the crew could have used a second traitor. Or someone other than a half-caste Muslim.

The location filming is spectacular - CinemaScope is well used. Production values are splendid. It starts with a bang - maybe a mistake to then go to the safety of the British cantonment (or that should've been wiped out). Has some very solid action sequences, and a suspenseful walk across the rail tracks.

Rousing music score.

Movie review - "Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects" (1989) **

 Historic in a way - the last feature from J. Lee Thompson and the last feature lead from Charles Bronson. This was his contribution to Hollywood's late 1980s in Japan - and it does provide a point of difference.

There's memorable bits - Peggy Lipton is his wife, Nicole Eggert is his daughter, Bronson forces a baddy to eat a watch, Bronson and a fellow cop hold another baddy over a ledge to get him to talk and accidentally drop him.

The villains are Latino and black, with Japanese sort of half and half. Bronson goes on a racist rant but the film doesn't seem to endorse it. A Japanese character (James Pax, quite a large role) thinks it's okay to grope women on public transport because he sees it done in Japan so he tries it on Eggert, and she goes him - which is nice character stuff (Eggert is very good actually - fresh faced, strong actor).

The movie never seems to quite get its groove. Really it should be about tough cop Bronson whose daughter is sold into sex slavery a la George C Scott in Hardcore and Bronson blows away everyone. That feels like where it wants to go.

But instead Bronson divides up protagonist duties with James Pax and the Pax storyline is bitsy.

Book review - Marlowe#6 - "The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler (1953)

After two decent books Chandler responded with another masterpiece. It's more character driven, reflective - the self portraits of Chandler in the characters of Terry Marlowe and Roger Wade. It has probably the best relationships in the Marlowe canning - Marlowe's bromance with Terry Lennox, Marlowe and Terry Ohls, the drunken Roger Wade and his wife, Marlowe and Linda.

It's long - and in the second half it dragged. The mystery needed tightening. In terms of character and self reflection it's terrific but it is an ambling book that felt it needed an edit.

Play review - "Chapter Two" by Neil Simon (audio version)

 One of Simon's classics - from the heart, famously based on his own remarriage after the death of his first wife. I hope Marsha Mason got a percentage.

It's more screenplay like - lots of short scenes. That's the best way - we see the lead, George, grieving, then flirting with the girl, the marriage, the troubles. There's lots of humour but it's all character based and written with much affection. It would've been awful for him to stuff this up and he didn't.

Movie review - "Legal Eagles" (1986) **

 Conceived as a buddy comedy then reconfigured as a rom com it creaks like buggery and feels hopelessly confused. Robert Redford is against Debra winger, then with her, then romances Daryl Hannah and has this daughter. He looks handsome. It's a mess. 

I get what it was trying to do and it doesn't get there.

Play review - "Corporate Vibes" by David Williamson (1999)

 This came alive for a brief moment when Sam, the alpha developer, talked about his family and parents and being young and you realise that Williamson predicted Trump (who was famous in 1999 so maybe he took inspiration from him then). It gave a view of what this play could have been - a really interesting character study. Or at least a more interesting battle of wills.

But most of it is Sam (the Trump guy) yelling at people and the female lead may be black or part black but her character isn't compelling - she's just opposed to Sam and is a bit plucky.

There really isn't enough in what's here to justify a play though it's got to be said Williamson always delivers a story, he's done some research on architecture there are some funny lines. (Though do building critics have such an influence?)

I just wish there were a few more drafts - to get rid of the younger woman having an affair with the married middle aged man, the woman who was once fat, the antagonist railing against political correctness, what feels to but cut and paste research on how builders talk about building as opposed to something organic. More of Sam - see his family or something.

Movie review - "Death Wish 4: The Crackdown" (1987) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Everyone was on their last legs here - Cannon, Bronson, J. Lee Thompson. Thompson took over from Michael Winner - the movie is less offensive, less memorable, more sensible. The bulk of the villains are still dark skinned, and there are moments of flourish like Bronson killing John Ryan with a rocket launcher.

He starts this one off with a girlfriend (Kay Lenz) whose daughter (Dana Barron) dies from a drug overdose, causing Chuck to go on a rampage. I like the Yojimbo element with him playing the two gangs off against each other.

The film feels routine - Bronson blowing people away and so on, which probably plays better in a packed cinema full of drunks than on the small screen. Bronson is quite active but his heart doesn't seem really in it.

The movie forgets Lenz for a bit then brings her along to be held for random, and she's killed - which surprised me - thereby justifying the rocket launcher.  Ryan hams is up with flaring nostrils. Lenz gives a nice restrained performance.

Book review - "Rogue Male" by Geoffrey Household (1939)

 Husehold's classic book - it defined his career in the way The Most Dangerous Game did for Richard Connell. It's got such a great idea - trying to assassinate a (hear unnamed) dictator, not taking the shot, being busted, tortured, thrown off a cliff, surviving, getting back to England and being pursued.

Household skims past action with surprising speed and devotes more time to hanging out - the bit where he describes how he goes to ground was a slow point, it felt as though it went on.

But he has an excellent antagonist. He hero is very pukka and a little Richard Hannay-ish.

Play review - "California Suite" by Neil Simon (audio play)

 The first segment is excellent - top banter between a pair of exes, one New York, the other LA. It's a little weighted towards him, and anti-New York, and in the version I heard Bruce Davison doesn't quite knock it out of the park, but Marsha Mason is very good. This could have been expanded into a full length play, if you bring in her partner, his new partner, the daughter.

The second play is more routine - Jewish guy wakes up with a hooker asleep. I remember the really strong gag "let's not go so fast beyond the children".

The third play is deservedly famous - the English actress nominated for an Oscar and her bisexual husband.

The fourth play isn't very good - slapstick from a couple who hate each other. It's fine, just mechanical. You could cut it out, really.

Play review - "Prisoner of Second Avenue" by Neil Simon (1971) (audio play)

 Different Simon work - it's really an extended rant by a man having a nervous breakdown, which is very well done. The wife character doesn't do much other than pop up feeder lines.

This is part of that sub genre of stories around this time about boomer parents who lost theirjobs after twenty years of boom conditions - The Great American Tragedy a George Kennedy TV movie was about the same topic.

The "plot" is about the man's family (siblings) discussing how to help him - they offer him some money and eventually he says no.

Maybe we should have seen the never-seen daughters who are in college. Maybe the guy should have gone back to work earlier - he has a touchy pride, whines about the wife going back to work, etc. It does limit sympathy. But some of it remains powerful.

Richard Dreyfuss starred in this version - I kept thinking the voice of his brother was super familiar; it's Dreyfus' real life brother.

Movie review - "The Evil That Men Do" (1984) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Bronson and Thompson but not a Cannon Film - ITC. It's actually not a bad story - Bronson is sent to assassinate a torturer in Suriname. There's torture of a naked man, Bronson pretends to be a bisexual married man to pick up bisexual Raymond St Jacques, Bronson lies under a bed as two women make love, Teresa Saladana is in one of her first post-stalking-stabbing roles, J. Lee Thompson was called in to replace Fielder Cook at the last minute.

It was all shot in Mexico and I think that adds to it. The script is solid - the torturer is smart, there's decent complications in the form of a local CIA officer. They throw in a car chase and Bronson blows some people away. The torturer is killed by a random group of miners at the end, which is actually a nice touch.

It's not a bad movie. More routine apart from that bisexual scene.

Movie review - "Before Winter Comes" (1968) **

 Little remembered post war drama - set in the refugee camps of 1945 Austria, full of tension between Britain and Russia, with David Niven in charge of a camp, and Topol as a refugee who goes to work as an interpreter.

The main problem for me was that the piece never seemed to get its fix right. There's a new officer, played by John Hurt. There's a local innkeeper, Anna Karina. Karina sleeps with Topol and Niven and Hurt.

Is the film meant to be about Niven and Hurt? Niven and Topol? Karina and the men? I was never sure. At times I got the impression the film was distorted to give more time to Niven when it really should have been about Topol and Hurt. I could be wrong.

Everyone can act, the Austrian locations are spectacular, but the drama feels undercooked, the dialogue is on the nose. Why was this made?

Movie review - "The Reincarnation of Peter Proud" (1975) **

 The story here isn't bad - it's a decent reincarnation tale - but J. Lee Thompson's direction is remarkably lacking in atmosphere. I wish he'd done this in his late 50s prime, in a cramped set in black and white with Tony Quayle or someone like that.

Michael Sarrazin is a handsome man and a competent actor but isn't a star - he can't hold the screen. At least, not for me. Jennifer O'Neill is stunning - Thompson knew how to shoot  a pretty girl - and an ideal femme fetale.

Margot Kidder feels under-utilised - I wonder if maybe she and ONeill could have swapped roles. O'Neil could've played enigmatic and mysterious better, perhaps. Ah, it doesn't matter. That's not the problem with the film. It has washed out 70s TV movie look. It feels like a movie of the week apart from the odd flourish like middle aged Kidder (grey hair) masturbating over a memory of being raped when younger, if I have that right. There's a bit of toplessness in this.

Cornelia Sharpe is Sarrazin's girlfriend who disappears from the film. Why? Why not have her killed or something exciting? Paul Hecht's doctor also feels as though he could use another twist.

Movie review - X-Men#3 - "X Men Last Stand" (2006) **

 The opening sequence was moving - the teenage boy who doesn't want to be a mutant werewolf (great work from that kid actor), and I thought we'd be fine.

But as it went on it got worse, and muffed simple things. There's this love triangle between Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen and James Marsden, but does Jackman really love her? And they get rid of Marsden instead of playing out conflict between them all which would have added to the drama.

There's a lot of characters but no one seems to have a decent story. Ian Mackellan seemed silly in this with his hat. What happened to Rebecca Romjim Stamos again? Ellen Page pops on screen I wish she'd done something decent.

There's a lot of quips and cliches. Vinnie Jones just quips. It's not a very good script. The direction isn't that cohesive. Wolverine is a lot more war and cuddly.

Some decent moments but I was glad when it was over.

Story review - "Trouble is My Name" by Ramond Chandler

 Early Chandler that's not Philip Marlow although there is a Marlow type. Elliot Gould read it. It is an odd length - feels a bit wonky. Like it really should be a novel Entertaining. The best character was the killer, smug and taunting. Not as good as his novels but worth reading.

Play review - "Mates" by Peter Kenna

 I wish Kenna had done a stint on an Aussie TV show - a soapy, say, so he could practice narrative more. He's got this wonderful insight and touch and humour but struggles to spin out a story.

This is about an old guy who rocks up at an old brothel, now a cabaret and runs into an old hooker and a drag queen who is seeing a footballer. There is rich material here, easily enough for a full length play, but Kenna can't do it (or didn't want to). The central drag queen-footballer relationship is wonderful.

Book review - "The Big Goodbye" by Sam Wasson (2020)

 Was the making of Chinatown that interesting? It was tricky to write the script, sure. There were some troubles. But everyone had enjoyed a hit recently - it wasn't that hard to finance. A big star wanted to do it. People "got" it was a Chandler throwback. (Come to think of it there's not enough in this book about 30s nostalgia that dominated Hollywood).

Of course the personalities are fascinating- Evans, Polanski, Nicholson, Towne, Dunaway.

Wasson is an excellent writer. He's superb on the different drafts of the script. I was shocked Town used a ghost writer for most of his career - Eric Taylor. That was a true revelation for me. That's amazing. One of the greatest screenwriters of all time. It does explain the quality of his work. But Taylor should be better known.

The book is less good elsewhere. I feel Wasson was overly influenced by who would talk to him - he goes in soft on Polanski and Evans, and hard on Dunaway and Towne. I'm sure he would argue that's not the case, but it's the impression I got. And like far too many writers he accepts the comments of Peter Bart uncritically.

Worth reading. But I feel it would've been a better book had he not done interviews of the famous people.

Script review - "Natural Born Killers" by Quentin Tarantino

 Bold, funny, imaginative, overlong. A kind of a satire of America's worship of serial killers as well as law enforcement - but stuff still hits home like the scared witness being stabbed to death in the court. An innocent person being killed. You look for a moral take. It's more moral than the film, which seemed to say, "sure serial killers are bad but you know what's worse? The media!" Big slabs of dialogue but that could be easily fixed. You can see why this script got attention.

Book review - "Making Movies" by Sidney Lumet

 Superb. Lumet made so many movies he can simply draw on examples from his own CV though he does refer to others - he's a big fan of Spielberg, particularly Schindler's List. Very no-nonsense, passionate and hardworking, as you can imagine. I would've liked more gossip - I did spend some time guessing who was the female star who just "didn't have it" in a film with three big stars. Stage Struck? That Kind of Woman?

Movie review - "Huckleberry Finn" (1974) **

 Lower budgeted musical - songs from the Sherman brothers. I kept forgetting it was a musical - occasionally a character will burst into song.

It's dull. Amiable, but dull. The tunes aren't bad. It looks okay - decent enough production value. J. Lee Thompson directed - he wasn't known for musicals but he did some: The Good Companions, a sequence or two in What a Way to Go.

Jeff East is a dull Huck - no life, no spark. I forgot at times he was in the movie - I think Thompson sensed his weakness and gave scenes to his co stars. This kid is a trouble maker?

Paul Winfield is fine. Harvey Korman and David Wayne bring some life camping it up as con men.

The making of this was more interesting - Arthur Jacobs dying of a heart attack, Winfield getting arrested for marijuana possession in Natchez.

Movie review - "The Chairman" (1969) **

 More interesting as a piece of social history than as an actually entertaining movie. Gregory Peck is a scientist who goes behind the bamboo curtain to play ping pong with Chairman Mao. The commies have an enzyme to make disease free food which would seem to be a Good Thing - he wants to make sure they don't hog it or something.

Anne Heywood has a blink and miss it role as a gal in love with Peck. There's actually a lot of screentime for Chinese characters, more than usual - people like Keye Luke and Burt Kwouk pop up. Arthur Hiller is  a nasty army officer with a shade over one eye glass.

It's not very exciting. Peck doesn't do much that's thrilling. He sleeps with a Chinese woman which is groovy I suppose. Decent chase in the end. Uninspiring Taiwan scenery standing in for China - the Hong Kong sequences are more visually interesting. 

That ping pong scene does get point for bizzareness.

Movie review - "10 to Midnight" (1983) *

 Horrible movie. Part cop film part slasher. We see lots of POV of the slasher killer, often naked, chasing and stabbing screaming naked women. This is horrible. It probably made the movie profitable.

In the middle section though it turns into this other movie , and a decent one - Charles Bronson rigs evidence to frame a killer, causing a crime of conscience for partner Andy Stevens who is dating Bronson's daughter, Lisa Eilbacher. This is strong drama helped by good actors.

Then the end becomes about a naked man stabbing screaming scantily clad women at the end. I did enjoy Bronson shooting him.

This movie is a mess. A clearly rewritten lowest-common-denominator movie with an actual decent story inside struggling to get out.

Radio play review - "The High Window" by Raymond Chandler (also novel)

 Marlow # 3 doesn't have the reputation of the first two - maybe the plot is too linear - but has plenty of decent stuff: the vicious old crone who hires Marlowe, her frigid secretary, the weak private eye who gets killed, the Maltese Falcon like macguffin.

Maybe it isn't as liked because the plot is relatively straight forward - I remembered who did it.

Movie review - "Big Trouble in Little China" (1986) ****1/2

Many filmmakers tried to copy Hawks this comes closer - the camraderie, sense of adventure, ensemble feel, the quips. It's not a white saviour movie at all - Kurt Russell is more a trickster character like Captain Jack Sparrow. The real hero is Dennis Dunn.

A lovely motley crew of characters - Kim Cattrall's wisecracking lawyer, Kate Burton's wisecracking journo, than random other Chinese guy, Victor Wong. Great line up of villains.

Action, humour, silliness, fun. When I was 13 I thought it was perfect and it's still a mystery why it didn't make money.

Movie review - "King Richard and the Crusaders" (1954) **1/2

 Better than I'd been led to believe. Laurence Harvey is quite good as a dashing knight hero. Virginia Mayo is silly. Rex Harrison is in brownface and sings songs but he's fun. So too is George Sanders.

It was expensive but a lot of scenes look cheap - two actors in a tent. George Sanders spends a lot of time lying down in bed sick. The plot has nasty English knights trying to cause trouble. It's actually quite nice to the Arabs, this movie.

It's just so silly but there's lots of action and at least the three male leads are all uniformly miscast so it works coherently. Michael Pate is a villain as is Robert Douglas. Virginia Mayo is there.

The Medveds listed this among the 50 Worst Movies of All Time. That is not, not true. I mean it's dumb but... I was taken with it.

They get around the dodginess of the Crusades by having Harrison help Sanders take out some treacherous knights.

Play review - "Plaza Suite" by Neil Simon (1967)

 A wonderful play - collection of plays, rather. The first one contains some of Simon's best writing, a look at a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary and the wife realises the husband is having an affair. I actually think Simon could've spun this out into a full length piece - act two she goes on a date, act three they reunite at a child's wedding. But what's left is terrific - it captures the ebb and flow of a 20-something marriage, a woman who forgets stuff but is still razor sharp. It's very well done.

Part two isn't as regarded but it still quite funny/touching - a producer has romanticised his past and tries to seduce his star struck ex. I love the pop culture of the time - references to Mia and Frank, Yvette Mimieux, Dean Jones, Troy Donahue. The central situation of this was actually strong enough for a longer piece too.

Part three is a comic gem - daughter locked herself in room on wedding day. Ed Asner is the dad (I listened to a radio version) - he doesn't have the strength that George C Scott would have. A lot of Simon I think benefits from casting a guy who would make a believable killer - Scott, Robert Redford - not a nebbish character. But great.

Play review - "The Odd Couple" by Neil Simon (audio play)

 Simon's classic - though as he admitted while the first two acts are seemless, the third act is wonky (he fixed it enough on the road to work but it's not as good as the first two - I'm not sure what else he could have done. Had a custody dispute between the two over something? Brought in Felix's wife?)

The central situation is so strong, so universal, as are the two archetypal leads, it has overshadowed the excellent support fact - the Greek chorus poker game and most of all the Pigeon sisters, who are brilliant. It's a delight of easy construction, character drive jokes, excellent recall and pay off.

Nathan Lane was Oscar in this one, Dave Paynter was Felix. I think Lane would be better as Felix.

Movie review - "A Great American Tragedy" (1972) **

 There is something inherently powerful in the central conceit - a later-middle-aged man is fired from a well paying job and can't find a new one because his knowledge is so specialised.

It's handled with sensitivity, care and a strong cast - George Kennedy is fine in the lead, and there's people like Vera Miles and Kevin McCarthy and a young James Woods as his son in law.

I did find myself wishing Kennedy wasn't such a dill - he's got a yacht that takes him forever to decide to sell, a large house he won't sell, he's reluctant for his wife to work or even give up her studio. Being Hollywood when he cheats hes still good in the sack ("I've been made love to bu a man who knows how").

I know that is the point - it's a slow burn of a wealthy man. It just gets frustrating. It feels as though it misses a dramatic beat - like the marriage should break up, his cheating should be revealed or something. His family could be a little less supportive.

It's interesting, though. They did all sorts of stories with these TV movies.

Movie review - "Treasure Island" (1972) **1/2

 Orson Welles started making a version of this story in the 1960s - he'd done it on radio - and I wish he had, he is an ideal Long John Silver. Here is voice is dubbed which seems absurd.

Still, he's got a twinkle in his eye and is full of rogueishness - even without the voice its an endearing performance. He has pleasing by play with Jim Hawkins, who seems very young, but that adds to the drama.

There is a solid sail boat, and occasionally this springs along very well, with some flourishes. It feels like a flawed work but I didn't mind it. It was fun to see Welles in a lead in this stage of his career.

Movie review - "The White Buffalo" (1977) **1/2

Charles Bronson and J. Lee Thompson were criticised for selling out in their later career but this movie is an example that they tried - it's a Moby Dick out west though they probably got in greenlit by hinting it as being close to Jaws.

Bronson is Wild Bill Hickok looking positively steam punk in his glasses and being affected by the trauma of this white buffalo -  why not have a personal connection? Chief Dan George is Crazy Horse who does have a personal reason to go after the buffalo. Jack Warden goes along.

It was filmed too much on a soundstage, the buffalo isn't always convincing, and too often looks like a crappy 70s TV show (Ed Lauter appeared in far too many movies of which you could say that). 

But there's a lush John Barry score, a strong cast, some impressive location work and its oddness was endearing.

Book review - "Playback" by Raymond Chandler

 Started as a screenplay and you can tell - it's more linear. Some hot love scenes. Too much feels like repeats - the cop who seems crooked but is defensive and who Marlow has a bromance with. He has sex with two women. It feels underwritten - not that good.

Play review - "Barefoot in the Park" by Neil Simon

 Listened to an audio recording - Laura Linney is perfect as the female lead, you'd think Eric Stoltz would be ideal as the male but he isn't... lacks a certain strength and definite-ness that Robert Redford brought to the part.

A lot of this has dated - jokes about hitting little old ladies, the woman staying home - but it has a genuine love for its female lead that is very endearing, and the jokes come along so consistently, and some of them are still very effective because they are character based. The conflict is obvious but effective (she's spontaneous, he's conservative), the sub plots work well (mother, crazy neighbour), its understanding of stage craft is solid.

Radio play review - "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler

 This play was performed with Toby Stephens. This really is the best Chandler - tight storyline, fantastic dialogue, and most of all it has the most memorable characters: Carmen the sexy crazed "nympho", dying General Sternwood, gangster Eddie Mars (maybe the character isn't that awesome  but the name is), Geiger the blackmailer, stoolie Brody, the never-seen enigmatic Irish soldier of fortune Regan who should've been given his own prequel series (did he inspire that Irish character in Boardwalk Empire?) Brilliant opening and great sequences like the shoot out at the garage and Carmen going nuts.

Movie review - "Ghosts of Rome" (1961) **

 Fantasy comedy about a bunch of ghosts in a castle which is going to be sold. Not a bad concept and the actors have a good time including Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman, so I recognised some. There's also Belinda Lee as the girlfriend of the new owner (also played by Mastroianni) - she's  a stripper, naturally.

This went for a bit long and I had auto translate subtitles so didn't pick up on the jokes, but was charming. Well acted, fun, sweet. Moving in that some of the dead are suicides and one is a little boy.

Book review - "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson (audiobook)

The classic novel. I listened to an audio book. Didn't get that into it. Maybe I'm not a big fan of Alfred Molina, who read it. Maybe I got annoyed by the Doctor and Squire Trelawney. But it bogged down and wasn't scary or exciting. Is it me or the book? I remember liking this more.

Movie review - "West of Zanzibar" (1954) **1/2

 Ostensibly a sequel to Where Vultures Fly this doesn't feel like one, despite the same star, director, continent, and producer. It feels different in tone - the first time was a family story about saving animals in a park, this one is about looking after black Africans who are being lured into ivory trafficking.

Anthony Steel is back but it's less pleasant to see him worrying about humans than animals especially when he expresses concern like they're animals - he doesn't like them being tempted by big city ways.

Ealing were full of lefties, Harry Watt was a socialist - so there are monologues from a black African how blacks get blamed for things and the whites made it hard, and also a monologue from an Indian lawyer about how he's treated like a piece of shit. These are effective and good on a British movie for including them in the script but... they're kind of undercut by the fact that the Indian is shown to be the head baddy, and he does tempt the black people and the blacks rise up to liberate themselves from the Arabs, and the black does what Steel says. 

They just should've cut the wisdom out of it, it only makes the film seem more racist because the filmmakers are conscious of it. And when Steel goes "I'm a proud East African" it seems silly. I mean maybe if there had been a good Indian and a bad white, just to even it out...

It doesn't help that Steel's wife, here played by Sheila Sims, is such a racist whiner - she loathes the Indian, and whinges the blacks don't appreciate what they do.

It feels strange that park ranger Steel is going on this mission to bust ivory traffickers. Really they should have made this a prequel and dropped the wife and kid - they serve no function in the story (why not have them threatened?). It could've been how he met his wife, before he was a park ranger or something. 

On the sunnyside there is some spectacular colour photography of Africa - the hippos, and coastlines and boats. Steel's bland doggedness suits this sort of role. Sims isn't very good but the other support cast is strong.

Movie review - "Yield to the Night" (1956) **** (rewatched)

 Saw it again - my opinion is even higher. Masterpiece. Beautifully directed. And acted.

I love how the film doesn't play for sympathy. Diana Dors did it. She had a husband, cheated on him. Doesn't care about her husband or family, finds them annoying. Finds a little old lady who visits death row people annoying.

Love the Greek chorus of the warden. Yvonne Mitchell, a favourite of J. Lee Thompson is the most notable but also there's others.

Full of wonderful details - the anxious waiting for a reprieve, never ending tension, the final cigarettes.

Dors is magnificent - her sense of defeat, her exhaustion, her determined independence, her love for Michael Craig (who is excellent, as the self-pitying loser). 

It's a fantastic movie.

Movie review - "X Men 2" (2003) *** (warning: spoilers)

 A very good sequel - improves on the original, deepens the character relationships and thematic work, has some superb action sequences.

It does get afflicted by bloat in the second half - like, really bogged down. The sacrifice of Jean Grey/Famke Janssen is a worthy climactic point but you feel they could have built to it more.

They still can't find something for Halle Berry to do, but they do push the subtext more in an interesting way (i.e. mutants = gay, we all thought Bryan Singer was like Xavier but in fact he was Magneto). Hugh Jackman, Janssen and Patrick Stewart-Ian MacKellan have stuff to do.

Movie review - "The Long Haul" (1957) *** (re-watching)

 Surprisingly down beat trucker noir with strong performances from two underrated actors, Victor Mature and Diana Dors. He's a Yank in England with a nagging wife and dull kid who falls for slinky dame Dors - and she genuinely falls for him.

This was Dors' first movie post-Hollywood - she's as strong as ever, sexy, empathetic, lonely. She suits the low-rent world.

Mature's craggy, tired eyes suit the part too. He seems like a beaten-down trucker. Their attraction is believable. The part of the wife is thankless - she's such a shrew. They could've done more work on that. Strong other actors and some decent truck action.

Movie review - "Eyewitness" (1956) **1/2

 Decent thriller which is written and directed by women and also two of the three leads are women.  One wishes it were better. It is well directed but the story isn't enough to sustain a feature. It should have been. There are plenty of characters who could have been developed more.

The story is far too simple. Muriel Pavlov and Michael Craig argue. She witnesses a murder. Gets hit by a bus. The killers go to hospital to try and silence her. That's a fantastic set up. But the film has all these characters they don't use - the husband just sort of hangs around. Use him - make him a baddy, or help the baddy, or die. This nurse in the hospital, Belinda Lee, looks as though she's going to be important - but she never figures out what is going on. She has this American serviceman boyfriend - you think he's going to be killed, or be bad, but... no. 

The heroic stuff is done by some patients - a little girl and a little old lady (good on Box for doing this) and the fellow murderer. But it's all so linear.

I think the film should've been played from Lee's POV - this mystery patient comes in and Lee figures out what's going on, gradually, along with the audience. We meet Donald Sinden but don't know if he's good or bad. Ditto Michael Craig (both could claim to be Pavlov's husband for example). Play out the romance with Knight instead of having it all be resolved ("let's get married" "okay"... why not have some conflict? Some attraction?) I think the killer should've had a closer relationship with the eyewitness.

Look the film is fine. I just think the story needed a rejig. It's stylishly show.

Movie review - "Footsteps in the Fog" (1955) (re-watching) ***

 This holds up well. It probably should have been in intimate black and white instead of colour - the colour on the print I watched wasn't very good. The fact it was shot in England helps. I'm not a Jean Simmons fan but I liked her here - a maid who knows boss Stewart Granger murdered his wife, but loves him... even after Granger then tries to kill her (he knocks off someone else, a mother with two kids, which is full on. The film doesn't really explore this darkness).

Granger is good as a villain. I quite liked Bill Travers and Belinda Lee too - Lee loves Granger, and Travers loves Lee but has to defend Granger. This is a decent subplot. 

Lee doesn't have much to do other than look rich and beautiful which she does. Travers is solid, strong speaking voice.

 Granger does take a risk poisoning himself to get Simmons then tripping up - risk strategy. Maybe all the twists don't work but the underlying drama of a crazy eyes maid in love with her murderous boss is effective and holds it together.

Movie review - "John Goldfarb Please Come Home" (1965) *

 Urgh. I'm glad Fox won the lawsuit against Notre Dame to show this but it's a terrible movie. Smart arsey. Too smart by half. Overly frantic. Dumb. It feels like the sort of movie where everyone on it was taking cocaine.

J. Lee Thompson was found out a little with this one. Comedy was not his forte. Shirley MacLaine tries - wears some slinky outfits. It's not enough. Richard Crenna seems to try to channel Joel McCrea - it doesn't work. Crenna was a good actor but not a film star. Peter Ustinov in brownface mugs it up. So too do people like Jim Backus and Harry Morgan. There's some sexy harem girls but the movie is just offensive and unfunny.

Movie review - "Life with the Lyons" (1954) **

 Hammer studios specialised in adaptations of stories that were hit in other media first - Dick Barton, this Dracula, On the Buses. This was based on a TV sitcom and radio show - American entertainers Bob Lyon and wife Bebe Daniels and their two kids played themselves in a meta conccept.

I wasn't familiar with the show - this left me cold. Val Guest keeps the pace fast but these characters meant nothing to me. There was a lot of running around, everyone tries to entertain.

The plot concerns the Lyons moving in to a house - the daughter gets engaged.

Belinda Lee has quite a large part as the daughter of an author  (Hugh Morton)- she mugs it up, really goes broad. It's actually fun to see her even if it she is muppet acting.

It's frantic, and tiring.

Movie review - "The Chasers" aka "Les Drageurs" (1959) ***

 An accomplished directorial debut from Jean-Pierre Mocky, helped by pleasant photography, location work in Paris, a simple story and a strong cast.

Jacques Charrier (who was Mr Brigitte Bardot for a while) and Charles Aznavour are two young lads on the make one night. Charrier has a lot of luck - I get he's handsome but he's not very charming and at times I felt the film pushed the believably factor (had it been Delon or Belmondo, maybe). Aznavour's strike rate felt more realistic.

The women they meet include a wife, a crippled girl, a teenager, a man eater, a tragic figure. Anouk Aimee is effective as the crippled girl; Estella Blain is a sad sack, albeit hot; Dany Robin is the wife; Dany Carrel cracks jokes; Belinda Lee is fun as a man eater (the type who tongue kisses strangers at a masked ball party then slaps them); Nicole Berger, who later died in a car crash, is a nice girl.

I felt it was a strong movie - not as profound as it thinks it is and over reliant on Charrier's charm but it gives its cast roles to act and was compelling.

Movie review - "Nor the Moon by Night" (1957) ** (re-watching)

I watched this again to focus more on Belinda Lee. She actually gives one of her better English language performances - suicide attempts agree with her! She seems focused, intense, conveys meaning with her face. 

The other actors are strong - Patrick McGoohan and Michael Craig especially. But it's such a dopey story. It's not a love triangle because Lee never met McGoohan, and he's got this other girl waiting. She's in trouble about her mother dying then it's resolved off screen. Her "rival" for McGoohan gets him just by hanging around. The villains just snarl a bit but don't do anything.

 The story is a series of encounters with wildlife and danger but in an episodic way -  a lion runs loose twice, a bush fire, a snake, etc. It's a lazily written movie. It's worth seeing for the actors and location work in South Africa.

Movie review - "Vacations in Majorca" (1959) **

 I saw this without subtitles so had no idea what was going on - it was set at a resort town with the men being pervy on the women, and Alberto Sordi chasing after diva Belinda Lee. There was another woman and a man hanging around.

It was beautifully shot - splendid locations. Belinda Lee looks gorgeous - she was never more attractive than in her Italian films. It's got a gropey vibe but a lot of Italian comedies do.

Movie review - "The Belles of St Trinians" (1954) ***

 Playfully anarchic comedy about a girls boarding school where the staff and students are out of control. Everyone smokes, bets. The girls torture each other to get information. Belinda Lee is sent to seduce a jockey. But it's not pervy because it was 1954.

There's something about the film that doesn't quite work for me. It's always in second gear. Maybe because the girls aren't the focus, they're background. It needed to be Marx brothers. But it's too... I don't know, polite. Maybe it's too much on the men - Alistair Sim in drag, George Cole - and not enough on the female teachers.

I'm not an Alistair Sim fan, I'm discovering. Something about him is just irritating. He seems to slow down the action. That could be it, for me - Sim fans would feel otherwise.

Some of it is very funny and I love the anarchy and lack of scruple. Maybe it's the direction. I don't know, just being honest.

Movie review - "Satan Tempts with Love" (1960) **

Belinda Lee mostly worked in Italy during her European years but made the odd movie in France and Germany - this is one of the latter, a melodrama where she's the singer girlfriend of an escapee who uses her to con a rich man.

Lee wears a similar high mascara that she did in her other German movie - was that a German style? She's fine. The film is a bit silly. It starts promisingly with a baddy on the run and has some good moments, like Lee singing in a nightclub. 

There's interesting touches like a man in yellowface playing a Chinese, and the protagonist wanting to go to Australia. The ending didn't feel real. A lot of it didn't.

Movie review - "Assassin for Hire" (1951) *** (warning: spoilers)

 Rex Rienits, Aussie, wrote the script, based on a radio play. It's why I saw this. The plot has elements of Golden Boy - Sidney Telfer is an Italian immigrant who sells stamps and shoots people on the side, but only so his violinist brother can have a career.

Ronald Howard, son of Leslie, is the rather ruthless pipe smoking cop who traps him by making him think he's shot his brother, which is full on. The film feels as though it could have done with another act - it hints at some other characters who I wouldn't have minded seeing, like a rival gunman, or the gangsters he works for.

But it is stripped backed, well structured, every scene has a point. Telfer is very good despite his atta-boy Italian accent.

Movie review - "Eureka Stockade" (1949) *** (re-watching)

 Three stars is generous but I am Australian.

The pros

- spectacular production value - it was the most expensive Australian film made until that time, apparently, but a lot of that is up on screen - spectacular sets of the mining camps and settlements and stockade, and teems of extras... it's a shame they didn't re-use the sets for another film or two, or at least re-use the footage.

- I appreciate the effort it went to to get the historical facts right.

- The action sequences are very well done - the attack on the stockade, the murder of Scobie, the miners rioting.

- the photography is beautiful.

- the editing and other technical aspects are first rate.

- Gordon Jackson and John Fernside manage to create living, breathing characters with very little. 

- I loved that random bug eyed doctor who cut off Lalor's arm at the end.

- they do show an occasional POC such as one of the Eureka people standing trial and the very occasional Aboriginal.

The cons

- the script isn't great - Harry Watt whinged about Australian writers, justifying importing Walter Greenwood - it goes through the events without managing to dramatise them.

- the characters aren't characters they are people who say speeches - there's no life say in the Chips Rafferty-Jane Barrett romance, Rafferty spouts platitudes (Lalor has been de-Irished), I didn't know what Finch's character was (he just appears as an Important Person - I had to google him)

- Commissioner Rede twirls his moustache but is depicted as being so reasonable (surely motivated by fear out of offending the establishment) about his position it sucks the piece clear of drama (it kind of hints maybe he's interested in Jane Barrett but it's only a hint).

- the only people who seem real are Gordon Jackson, the doctor and John Fernside - Fernside is best because he is a spy, just a good old fashioned villain.

- the miners come across as a bunch of whingers - complaining about having to pay a fee (should they have it for free?), Scobie is a drunken brat who throws something through a window (I mean it was harsh he was killed but he wasn't like this innocent victim).

- it wasn't worth importing Jane Barrett, or any of the cast they brought in, except maybe Jackson - the British cast are dull, lacking charisma and surely had no name value at the box office.

- Peter Finch or Grant Taylor should have played Lalor and Muriel Steinbeck could've played Alicia.

- I barely recognised Grant Taylor, in whiskers as a cop.

Actually they shouldn't have focused on Lalor - that straightjacketed them to history. They should have had a fictitious love story-  maybe center around two brothers in love with the same girl or something else simple but effective.

The waste of it gets me irritated at times because it didn't have to cost as much money, be so hokey or have such a miscast star. I get Harry Watt was feeling confident after The Overlanders but not so much that he could leave history - he leant into it. Which is fine, we all make mistakes, but he spent too much money.

Still, there is much to admire about it.

Movie review - "Man of the Moment" (1955) **

 For around a decade Norman Wisdom was one of the biggest stars in British cinema - a huge draw at home and in communist countries.

He's little Chaplin-esque - a big kid, playing for pity, engaging in slapstick. He sings a few numbers here. 

He wasn't my cup of tea but this wasn't the strongest vehicle. He's a clerk who winds up a diplomat in Geneva and gets involved in the affairs of a small Pacific Island - the locals are played by actors with New Zealand accents, notably Inia Te Wiata, who popped up in a few British films.

Lana Morris is fun as Wisdom's co star as is Belinda Lee as a film star ordered to seduce Wisdom.

The movie really comes alive in a chase through a TV studio and Wisdom goes from show to show - it's funny, anarchic and imaginative, and gives an insight into what the film could and should have been. 

But if you like Wisdom...

Movie review - "Meet Mr Callaghan" (1953) **

 How much you enjoy this will depend on how you like spending time in the company  of Derrick de Marney. He played the lead in Young and Innocent and had a long career - he's got looks and can act, I found him extremely irritating. He mumbled his lines, and seemed contemptuous and never believable as a private eye. I may be doing the man a disservice. I just didn't like him.

There's a lot of talk - it was based on a play which was based on a novel and you can tell. It's very verbose, a lot of exposition about things we don't see. The quality of acting is fine.

Belinda Lee has one scene as a young girl cross examined. A young Adrienne Cori pops up in a nightclub. There's some humour but it isn't very good.

Movie review - "The Truth About Rosalie" (1959) **

 Belinda Lee played a large amount of real life people during her brief European career - Fausta, Messalina - and here she's a German prostitute who was murdered in real life. This inspired a German movie so successful it led to this new version around a year later which is odd, but money talks I guess and maybe they figured with Lee in the lead they'd have an edge.

She's not that good. I wish I could say otherwise because so rarely did she have the chance to be front and centre, as she is here (it is her story, not the tale of a man, but her). Lee  has her moments - she is believable prostitute, the angles in her face give her a harshness, she seems to have been around, she's very sexy - but the heightened mascara makes her look vaguely drag queen-y, and too often she's required to glower and shout and seduce. We don't get much insight.

The best scenes are her murder and a moment where her masseuse starts talking about her life and blubs and hugs her in a quasi-queer way... that was unexpected. I admit I would've lost a lot of nuance because I saw this on auto translate. But the film seems to lack nuance and empathy.

Movie review - "Constantine and the Cross" (1961) **1/2

Most Christian-in-Ancient Rome literature seems to concern the time of Jesus and shortly afterwards - the persecution of Christians, famous Emperors, so on. The dramatic hooks are bigger and clearer, the Christians were such underdogs.

Later on they were less so, which is maybe why filmmakers steered clear. This has a fascinating subject matter though  - Constantine, whose conversion to Christianity turned a minority religion to the main game in town.

 

That helps this movie - along with the production values and the fact the cast includes Cornel Wilde, Belinda Lee and Christina Kaufman.

 

Lee plays Constantine's wife Fausta who he later had executed for sleeping with his step son... which is a typical Lee role from this period, but Fausta here is relatively goody-goody (a sequel focusing on her would've been more fun).

 

Christians get eaten by lions, there are battles, extras, lounging in togas, assassinations. Not bad.

Movie review - "X Men" (2000) **1/2

 I think Bryan Singer is a better producer than director  - he has a solid collection of elements and it holds together well enough but doesn't have the visual clarity of say a Spielberg or Fincher. The good here outweighs the mediocre - they lucked out with Hugh Jackman, their X factor, but also Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart, Ian MacKellen and the make up and Rebecca Romjin Stamos as Mystique. I also think Famke Janssen's contribution has been overlooked.

The performances from James Marsden and Halle Berry aren't so much bad as bland - so too the two non-blue henchmen villains. The core relationship between Jackman and Pacquin is solid. 

 It starts with a great deal of confidence but gets bogged down in lethargy. I couldn't put my finger on it - it doesn't seem to build. The final sequence has some decent fights and clever bits but no narrative build or pace. The film is remarkably sluggish. 

I absolutely recognise the film's importance in the treatment of comic books by the movies. It has a serious subtext - the treatment of minorities - and effective moments. It just didn't light my fire.

Movie review - "The Runaway Bus" (1954) **1/2

The title promises pace at least, which writer-director Val Guest normally excelled in, but the budget wasn't high enough for that so the bus breaks down in fog.

This is heavily influenced by The Ghost Train which Guest wrote for Arthur Askey - shenanigans in a deserted location with a group of strangers thrown together, some of whom are bad, some of whom are red herrings, and a comic in the middle of it all.

Here the comic is Frankie Howerd, who is fine. The support cast also includes Margaret Rutherford (splendid), George Colouris, and Petula Clarke - plus Belinda Lee in her first role I believe. She's a little amateurish but is great fun and spirited as a young woman hooked on detective novels. I wish her part had been bigger and less time devoted to boring policemen and handsome lunks who turn out to be undercover agents.

The support cast and intelligence of the script - it does try to tell a story - helped this one for me.

Movie review - "Messalina" (1960) ***

Very silly and a lot of fun - everything you want from an Imperial Roman court peplum, with Belinda Lee having a high old time as the famous empress, who goes through her tropes: milk baths, seducing soldiers, assassinating people, plotting coups. It's one of her best parts and she's very enjoyable.

Out of the other cast there is a dutiful soldier and some decent nobles, and a pure slave girl (at least I think she was a slave girl), plus imitations of Claudius and Narcissus which adds to camp value. There's a decent budget, impressive action and production values. Maybe three stars is too high but it seriously ticks all the boxes.

Book review - "The Master of Ballantrae" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1889) (audiobook)

I return to this story every decade or so - there's something about it. Perhaps the universality of the central theme: Jamie, the Master, is shallow and flashy, but everyone loves him and forigves him; Henry, the younger brother, is brave, dutiful, smart, honest... but no one really likes him, except the narrator, a "confirmed bachelor" Mackellar (the stock narrator of many old time adventure novels).

This is also a powerful psychological thriller - there is action, but it is dispensed with  quite quickly (the Master's adventures with Bonnie Prince Charlie are covered in a few pages; ditto his time among pirates). Most of the reading time is spent with a family being mean - the father and Jamie's ex pining after Jamie, treating Henry like shit, and Henry taking it so stoically you want to slap him, then Jamie coming back and psychologically torturing everyone, and then Henry gradually goes mad.

It's actually really powerful stuff that would've made a great Gainsborough melodrama with James Mason as the master and Stewart Granger as the brother and Phyllis Calvert as the woman with maybe Jean Kent as the girl Jamie knocks up. Or do a sex change - Lockwood as the Master, Calvert as the younger sibling.

So it's a harrowing read, with no terribly sympathetic characters - even the narrator got wearying. The book picks up at the end when it's just Jamie and Mackellar and the former tries to smooth talk the latter and they head off to America, with an exciting finale in the forests of America being chased by Indians, looking for gold and going mad.

The Irish soldier of fortune character was great fun and I wish he'd come back at the end.

Book review - "Under the Black Flag" by David Cordingly

Entertaining recap of Western pirate history with an emphasis on depictions in books and movies. Has a larger scope than Woodard's book - it deals more with Morgan, and later people like Bart Roberts. Very well done.

Script review - "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" by William Goldman (re-reading)

I was prompted to re-read this after seeing on twitter someone talk about how it was the ideal character intro. Indeed it is, for Butch and Sundance - this is one of the great bromances. Goldman loves these characters and their adoration for each other - it comes through in every scene.

He correctly spotted their lives were great material - heading off to Bolivia and dying in a foreign country. Etta adds to it though the writing of her is pervy - references to her figure etc - and her rape-y intro, which got laughs at the time, doesn't hold up to well.

There's a lot of flabby chasing but the standout scenes still sing - the intro of Sundance, fighting Logan, the finale, defending the payroll. A really good script.

Movie review - "The Fog" (1980) *** (re-watching)

A central situation is terrific but this isn't that great a screenplay - it's propped up by the gorgeous locations, photography, acting, music and John Carpenter. The killers don't have a personality - which is a shame, I think they could (former lepers who just want a home). That's what the remake should have focused on - the mythology of it all.

Tom Atkins has a rugged everyday heroism that should have gotten him more leading roles. Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis shine in parts that show the benefit of a female producer. It's fun to see Janet Leigh - I wish she'd had more to do with her daughter. Hal Holbrook is reliable. There's that random other woman.

I felt sorry for the old baby sitter who was killed, she seemed nice. Some decent scares - this film is fine, but it's clearly second rate material being elevated by A grade treatment.

Notes on Robert Rehme at Avco Embassy

Someone who should be more embraced by cultists - Robert Rehme, who was head of production at Avco Embassy for 3 years from 1978 to 1981. He revived Embassy's filmmaking arm - dormant since Joe Levine left - and did so well it was sold to Norman Lear for a healthy sum.

Not all Rehme's works did well but how is this for a cult line up:

1) The Howling (1980)

2) The Fog (1981)

3) Escape from New York (1981)

4) Scanners (1980)

5) Zapped (1982)

6) Winter Kills (1979)

7) An Eye for an Eye (1981)

8) Time Bandits (1980)

9) Prom Night (1980)

10) Phantasm (1979)

For "classier" movies there is...

1) Murder by Decree (1979)

2) Hopscotch (1980)

3) Watership Down (1978)

4) Go Tell the Spartans (1978)

5) The Onion Field (1979)

6) The Black Marble (1980)

7) Old Boyfriends (1979)

8) Carbon Copy (1981)

9)  A Man a Woman and a Bank (1979)

10) The Bell Jar (1979)

For extra nutty movies there's

1) The Exterminator (1980)

2) Night Games (1980)

3) Death Ship (1980)

4) Goldengirl (1979)

5) Delusion (1981)

6) Dead and Buried (1981)

7) Vice Squad (1982)

8) Final Exam (1981)

9) Hog Wild (1980)

10) City on Fire (1979)

And I haven't really touched on the comedies.

That is a very versatile, lively line up.

Movie review - "The Long Night of 1943" (1960) ***

I never would have watched this movie if Belinda Lee hadn't been in it - it wasn't on my radar. As a movie about Italy occupied in the war it's overshadowed by better known films which may be superior - but I thought this was very good. It's understated, and the middle bit is slow, but that means when something happens it packs a wallop.

It's about the events leading up to a massacre of people in Fascist Italy in 1943, based on a real-life massacre - they plucked various Jews and what not off the street.

The human drama consists of a crippled chemist who watches  (Enrico Maria Salerno); his wife is Belinda Lee and she is having an affair with Grabriele Ferzetti from On Her Majesty's Secret Service. None of the three are really involved in the massacre - Ferzetti's father is killed but we barely see him, or spend any time with him and Ferzetti. Really Ferzetti should have been among those who are killed, from a purely dramatic point of view.

Gino Cervi is the local fascist who, in a nice touch that is all too believable, is shown in an epilogue years later meeting Ferzetti, smug and comfortable. Scenes like this give the film real power - it lingers with me after it's gone. The execution sequence is very good too though you can't fail with material like that. The material of this is strong - I mean, a civil war in Italy. I haven't seen that many movies on that topic.

The acting is solid. It's a jolt to see Lee, who was in so many potboilers, in a movie that actually tries to be good. Nicely shot by Carlo di Palma. Pasolini was one of the co-writers.

Movie review - "The Nights of Lucrezia Borgia" (1960) **

 I only watched this for Belinda Lee who plays the title role, predictably horny and villain-y. Lee has a great old time - her angular beauty suits period movies for some reason. She bathes exotically and throws herself at men, even when they're not keen (which only makes her want him more). She's Cleopatra, really - or Poppea, or Messalina or any of them.

The actual star is Jacques Sernas, who was in another Lee movie, The Goddess of Love. He's an acceptible swashbuckler hero, not particularly memorable, at least not to me. He saves a woman from being attacked (she's pretty and docile - the sort of part Lee would've played in England, no wonder she went to Europe).

There's some nice sets and colour, a fair bit of action though it isn't that well done. It's fine.

Movie review - "Who Done It?" (1956) **1/2

An attempt to turn Benny Hill into a film star - it didn't work out, Hill wouldn't really find his feet as a screen performer until The Benny Hill Show - but points to producer Michael Balcon for giving him a shot. He had an eye for talent did Balcon.

This was one of the least Ealing comedies. It's got some A list talent behind the scenes - TEB Clarke wrote the script, Basil Dearden directed, Michael Relph helped produce.

The foundations are solid - Hill is an ice rink sweeper who wants to turn private eye and gets involved in a spy ring. That's fine. I wish they'd used the ice rink stuff more. Ditto Belinda Lee who is animated and fun as his friend - but why not integrate her into the story, be a spy/scientist's daughter/something. Ealing always struggled to include women into the action.

The film starts strong and ends strongly - particularly the end, with an extended chase scene that allows Hill to undertake multiple disguises, including in drag. He comes alive here - I think he was more comfortable in alter egos, and should have used more disguises during it (to be fair he does... maybe it's being in drag).

It's odd to see a young, relatively handsome Hill. Lee enters into things with good spirits. Strong support cast but very male. I mean it's a spy spoof, have female spies and traitors and stuff.

Movie review - "The Big Money" (1958) **

A comedy that Rank made to cash in on Ian Carmichael's box office success with Private's Progress but which was so disliked that it sat on the shelf for two years. It's pretty bad but many Rank comedies from this era were bad. I wonder what got up Jack Davis' goat?

Ian Carmichael writes in his memoirs that he disliked the script and tried to rewrite it at the eleventh hour with Bryan Forbes - that probably poisoned Davis' feelings. Maybe he was also offended by the fact the lead family were criminals. And possibly Belinda Lee was annoying him.

The movie has two concepts, both strong - Carmichael is the dopey son of a criminal family, and also he comes across some forged money and spends it to impress barmaid Belinda Lee. The two concepts could each sustain a movie but cancel each other out - it's not as exciting if a criminal finds forged cash. Surely it would have been better to have either the story be about a member of a criminal family who is trying to go straight, or an innocent who finds cast.

The movie drops the criminal family storyline which is a shame since actors like Kathleen Harrison and Jill Ireland are involved. It focuses on Carmichael spending money to impress Lee. The film can't seem to make up its mind about Lee either - she's got a sort of lower class accent (?) she is greedy for possessions but then... not. And she's meant to come to genuinely like Carmichael? Why? They would've been better off just having her greedy, and had Jill Ireland play a decent girl who loves him or something. I didn't believe Lee being into Carmichael for a second.

Lee is beautiful as always but seems bored. Original choice Diana Dors would've been better - though I don't blame her for turning down the movie.

It has colour. Robert Helpmann is fun as a crook. Another actor pretends to be an Aussie. Carmichael is annoying, especially with a pompadour hair cut.

Movie review - "This Desired Body" (1959) ** aka "Way of the Wicked"

Belinda Lee found herself mostly in comedies and crime films while in Britain; Europe gave her better roles, albeit mostly playing femme fetales. Here she's a hooker who goes to live in a small coastal town, working at a mussell factory, where she is pursued by two men, Maurice Ronet and Daniel Gelin.

Reviews dismissed this was a knock off of And God Created Woman - it would've been better had it followed that template more. The situation is fine, as are the actors - it's set up as if it's going to build to a climax but becomes a squib. Ronet does punch someone out who dies and goes to prison but that's about it. 

 

The action cries out for a tragic climax, gangsters, cops, something - I was hoping the bar owner who sleeps with Lee would pull out a gun but no.

Some surprises, like it being set around a mussel factory and the girl Dany Carrel who pines over Ronet doesn't get him in the end.

Location shooting in a seaside town. Acting is fine. Lee is excellent as a woman who has been around the traps; very sexy strutting around in some tight gear. A bit too much men slapping women.  The main issue is it trundles along when it should build.

Movie review - "Goddess of Love" (1957) **

Belinda Lee's first film in Italy, I believe  - she would work there increasingly often. This one has a novel idea, being about a real life sculptor, Praxiteles (who I'd never heard about before watching this but who existed) whose work included Aphrodite - the model for which is played by Lee. She spends a bit of the film posing in a towel flashing her bare back. This film might've done better if made a few years later when it could show more skin.

Lee seems animated, walking around in short togas. The plot involves an enemy soldier, Jacques Sernas, being found near the scupltor's estate - the sculptor, Massimo Girotti (who was in Ossessione) seems to think the soldier is a babe and keeps him secret to be a model. But show everyone's straight, Lee falls for the soldier which makes the sculptor jealous and starting to want Lee.

That's actually a good solid set up for a drama - a love triangle between a sculptor and his two models, one of whom is an enemy soldier. The film doesn't really exploit it though. At heart this should be a sexy character drama but the censor presumably wouldn't have allowed that. In that case they should have gone action then but don't.

The film goes for melodrama at the end with Lee working as a hooker, basically and worried the guy won't love her naymore.

Lee is very good - she's relaxed, animated, more involved with the material than she was with too many of her British films. Italy agreed with her.

Movie review - "What a Way to Go" (1964) **

This has a cute idea a little bit like Kind Hearts and Coronets  - Shirley MacLaine is a woman who dislikes money, keeps marrying poor men who then become rich and die, leaving her richer and richer.

The film took no chances at the box office, roping in Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Dick Van Dyke, Dean Martin and Gene Kelly to play husbands, with Robert Cummings thrown in for good measure.

How well you enjoy this depends on how much you like the stars. I'm not a massive MacLaine fan - Mitchum seemed irritating (sometimes I like him, sometimes he feels genuinely lazy and this was such a time), Dean Martin was... fine, Van Dyke was... fine, Newman was trying to be Funny (in a beard as a French artist). Cummings was fun as a nutty shrink who falls for MacLaine.

For me the best was Gene Kelly, in part because he does a few song and dance numbers - including one with MacLaine who does it terrifically. It made me wish this was a musical - at times it feels as though it was meant to be and had songs cut out or something. Because in those scenes you see the actors really trying as opposed to being a smart arse. That may be unfair but the rest of the movie felt like stars being smart arses - drenched in costumes and production value, pulling faces. But like I say if you adore those actors you might feel differently.

It was directed by J. Lee Thompson who actually made a few comedies in his career, people just didn't remember them. I'm actually surprised this wasn't turned into a stage musical or remade because of the concept.