Movie review - "Vendetta" (1950) **

 One of Howard Hughes' most notorious projects, with plenty of hiring and firings, a number of directors (among them Max Ophuls, Stewart Heisler and Preston Sturges, though the film is solely credited to Mel Ferrer), a Hughes starlet in the lead (Faith Domergue), a Hughes leading man featured (no one remembered them because they didn't have big breasts and/or become famous but there were a few, George Dolenz is here). There is plenty of narration.

Domergue is a Corsican determined to avenge the murder of her father and... that's about it. This is a dull slog. It stumbles long, with lousy photography and amateurish acting. Some familiar faces are competent, like Nigel Bruce and Hilary Brooke, but too much lies on the inadequate shoulders of Domergue, Dolenz and Donald Buka. 

Remarkably unsexy - there's not even Hughes-esque low cut gowns. It just stumbles on, then stops. Other Hughes films are a lot more interesting.

Movie review - "His Kind of Woman" (1951) ***1/2 (re-watching)

 Legendary nutty film noir turned comedy which starts out as a Bob Mitchum-Jane Russell movie then becomes a comedy farce headed by Vincent Price. Slangy dialogue, Tim Holt looking puffy as an agent who winds up dead, Charles McGraw as another agent, Raymond Burr a gangster, a creepy torturing doctor, reshoots. Fascinating.

Book review - "Garbo" by Robert Gottleib (2021)

 Entertaining enough biography which seems to rely heavily on other biographers. It breezes through her life, times and films - it feels like a long essay, which is fine. It includes an anthology of other writing on Garbo, including profiles by Ken Tynan and Lili Palmer, which seems like cheating. Goes into the dressing in clothes and possible bisexuality and all that. Garbo isn't that mysterious she just photographed well and honestly couldn't give a stuff. People go in raptures over her. It's odd.

Movie review - "Macao" (1952) ***1/2 (re-watching)

 Put this on again just for fun. Mitchum and Russell were a great team - tall, sexy, arrogant, sly - and it's a shame they only made two films together. This is fun in the backlot third world with the two coming up against Brad Dexter and William Bendix as an undercover agent. Makes a strong bill with His Kind of Woman. Russell is really attractive. I know that's taken as a given but it's worth saying again!

Movie review - "The Blue Lagoon" (1980) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Easy to mock and it deserves to be mocked but it does have its own integrity. Randall Kleiser made it from a place of love. I get the idea: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Some wish fulfilment - cut off from everyone, free to make your own rules. Living in paradise with a fancy home. The film became iconic. Even now it's famous.

Chris Atkins and Brooke Shields are very beautiful. Direction very male gaze-y on Atkins. Their voices clang. Hard to listen to them talk.

I'm not sure the film would even be legal today. Shields looks older in some scenes but very very young in others, like when she's playing with their baby. She was 14. A body double is used. I don't think so for Atkins. Still, Shields is very sympathetic and charismatic - it was clearly the right decision to cast her.

Stunning photography on locations - it was worth it to go to Fiji and not the Barrier Reef, just looks more "Pacific".

Richard Franklin knew Kleiser at film school and helped production, organising many Aussies to take part in the crew (and cast such as Alan Hopgood).

Movie review - "Running Delilah" (1993) **

 Richard Franklin had successfully directed the pilot for Ron Koslow's Beauty and the Beast so was bought back to do another Koslow pilot, this one, which wasn't picked up for series. Kim Cattrall isn't entirely comfortably cast as a secret agent with handler Billy Zane; she's killed in the line of duty and brought back as a cyborg.

Billy Zane puts the hard word on Cattrall in their first scene together. The lack of strong bond between this duo is a big drawback. It's on the page but isn't on the stage. I think it's simply a matter of miscasting.

I get the feeling Cattrall was cast because she reminded the producers of Diana Rigg, who played a spy so well in The Avengers and who plays the controller here. But it doesn't work. I think Catrall could've played a flirty spy like Emma Peel but that's not the role ehre - that's of a woman who wakes up to find she's been turned into a cyborg.

None of it feels real - the cast, the spy agency, the tech, the relationship/banter between Zane and Cattrall. Beauty and the Beast, outlandish as it was, always felt real. This doesn't click. The action sequences aren't even that suspensful and the photography (at least in the copy I saw) not that great.

The cyborg angle isn't really exploited either. Everything she does on the mission could've been done by a good old fashioned real person.

Movie review - "Motorcycle Gang" (1994) ***

 One of the ten films Showtime made in 1994 based on old AIP films. This was John Milius' entry - a take on biker films with middle aged vigilantism thrown in. His wife at the time, Elena Oberon plays the sexpot wife of convservative Gerald McRaney and they have a blossoming sex plot daughter in Carla Gugino. Jake Busey leads the Indians/bikers who attack the gals and take away Gugino, Searchers style. McRaney goes looking for them. (Maybe this is Milius' version of Rolling Thunder.)

I thought mom would be killed and I'm sure that was considered but maybe that was too heavy - so she just kinds of hang around. McRaney only cuts loose one scene but it's a good one - some hand to hand combat where he takes out three bikers. I'd never seen that in a Milius film and it's very well done. I enjoyed the beatniks who ran the hotel they stayed at.

It lacks some flamboyance of earlier Milius works - I expected the biker characters to be bolder (a female biker would've helped) - but it was entertaining, albeit dodgy with its man reclaiming woman thing.