Radio review – Mercury Shakespeare - “Macbeth” (1940) **1/2

Solid, surprisingly unflashy version of the Scottish play from Orson Welles which goes for 80 minutes. Not as intriguing as the voodoo version or his later film version. Still interesting, especially to compare to those other works.

Radio review - Lux – “Laura” (1945) ***1/2

Very strong mystery with many great characters – the enigmatic Laura, the tough cop who falls for her dead "image", the magnificent Waldo, the gigolo fiancée – and twists – the revelation that the girl isn’t dead, the finale with Waldo on the radio. Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews and Vincent Price all reprise their excellent film performances but unfortunately not Clifton Webb. They replace him with some random actor (Otto someone) – surely they could have gotten someone like Laird Cregar or Sydney Greenstreet? Still, this is excellent entertainment.

Radio review – Lux – “Murder My Sweet” (1945) ***

I always enjoy first-rate adaptations of Raymond Chandler because the dialogue is so great and the characters so vivid - even if I always have trouble following the plot. (I've seen several versions of Farewell My Lovely and always get confused, except I know one of the girls turns out to be Velma - the upside of this is that each viewing is fresh.) Detective stories adapt well to radio too because they can be told in the first person and the atmsophere transfers well to radio. Dick Powell and Claire Trevor reprise their film roles to excellent effect.

Radio review – Lux - “Singapore” (1947) **1/2

Fred MacMurray isn’t the most ideal hero for a tale of amnesia and smuggling in the third world (it should have been Alan Ladd or Bogart or someone), but Ava Gardner is a perfect female lead, and the story isn’t bad. It works a lot better here than in the Errol Flynn remake Istanbul because of the whole fall of Singapore thing – that was a real excuse to bail on a country. Good junky exotica entertainment with a miscast star.

Radio review – SDP – “The Gunfighter” (1951) ***

You can’t help wishing a better actor than Gregory Peck played the lead role – or at least one who seemed more like a tough gunfighter – but for all that this is a pretty good story. It's also very adult, with its downbeat tone and Peck running into his illegitimate son.

Movie review – “The Swinging Cheerleaders” (1974) **1/2

Jack Hill enjoyed success with women in prison and women blaxploitation, so he turned his area to a sub-genre of the “three girls” movie – the cheerleader film. It gave him another financial success, although it’s not as well known today as Big Doll House or Coffy. The three girls here are Jo Johnson (a very likeable performer with an usual look whose career never really took off), Rainbeaux Smith (a sweet-looking thing who later got on heroin and who, like so many 70s drive in female stars, died young) and Rosanne Katon (token black).

The plot involves Johnson going undercover as a cheerleader to write an article, Smith trying to lose her virginity (she gets gangbanged in a very unpleasant sequence), and Katon having an affair with her professor. The best scene is when the professor’s wife goes Katon with a knife – it’s brilliant (Hill always did great female fight scenes and you wish the film had more of them). The support cast includes a young Colleen Camp (who doesn't go nude) as one of the cheerleaders. It's bright and energetic, though a little dodgy - Hill's own description of the film as "a Disney sex comedy" is spot on.

Movie review – Nurses#3 - “Night Call Nurses” (1973) *** (warning: spoilers)

One of Roger Corman’s best pieces of advice to young directors making a genre film was to make the best possible genre film they could, i.e. don’t slum it until you find material that’s personal to you, make what you’ve got work. Jonathan Kaplan took this to heart with this third "nurses" film - where all the leads work in a psychiatric hospital - and the result is energetic, flashy entertainment, where there’s lots of crazy editing and scenes with non-synchronous dialogue.

The three girls are all very pretty and likeable - Patti Byrne is particularly winning (whatever happened to her? Kaplan apparently offered her the lead in The Student Teachers but she turned it down and disappeared); Alana Collins is a rare "nurses" star who went on to have an ok career - she married George Hamilton and acted under the name of Alana Hamilton. The support casting includes Dennis Dugan and, as always, Dick Miller.

The adventures are typical of the time: the brunette (Byrne) gets involved in a sex cult run by a manipulative chap who accuses her of being a sex deviant (to do an experiment and to get her into bed) - this has a lot of creepy overtones which are quite effective; the black nurse (Mitti Lawrence) falls for a black revolutionary and ends up going on the lam at the end (the way the hispanic nurse did in The Student Nurses); the blonde (Collins) wants to marry a rich doctor but falls for a speed-addicted trucker (who at the end still seems to be addicted to speed - they don't do a good job of wrapping up this story).  There's another plot line about a stalker at the hospital who seems to be after Byrne but also perves on Collins.

There are lots of love making scenes and nudity, and the men are more prominent than in Student Nurses - was this because of a male director? But like that film (and unlike the others in the series) there are plenty of scenes of the girls together; they have real camaraderie and you get the sense that they are friends. (e.g. Collins and her boyfriend help Lawrence and her guy bust a prisoner/patient out of gaol)

There are lots of random sports interludes – water skiing, sky diving – which make it seem like a Beach Party movie at times. George Armitage wrote the script, although Kaplan claims it was rewritten; he also directed Private Duty Nurses, which wasn't very good, so I think Kaplan was right. One of the best of the series - people such as Joe Dante claim this is the best; I would rate The Student Nurses up there as well, because it's got the best "serious" subplot (i.e. about abortion) and my favourite is Summer School Teachers but these three are easily the best of the genre.