Good gravy, the 70s were a great time for movies! It seems like they would greenlight a picture based on a single stunt or scene no matter how insane. In this movie there are two! Charles Bronson is excellent as an edge-of-the-law pilot tasked with breaking Robert Duvall(!) out of a Mexican prison. Also in the mix is a skinny, 70s Randy Quaid and screen legend John Huston. So much star power in what is essentially a Canon-level B-movie. Duvall is underused but Bronson shines with his largely comedic take on his role. This is not a great movie by any stretch, but the final act makes up for all the laggy middle bits. There’s some great aerial stunts and a balls-to-the-metal ending for the main villain.
The third Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright collaboration feels much like the last two. Lots of jokes that come from strategic editing and lots of pub culture. There is a science fiction twist that eventually drives the plot in the second half of the film, but, to be honest, I don’t think it really needed that. The story of old friends dealing with aging is far more interesting than the Body Snatchers homage.
A lame Italian Western that is only noteworthy because you get to see Ernest Borgnine gored by a bull in the last five minutes. He’s supposed to be the big baddie but he just comes across as a sweet old man for most of the film.
This corny early eighties fantasy opens with some great creature effects and then proceeds to bore the audience for the next seventy minutes until the monster reappears for the finale. There aren’t any great set pieces, it’s mostly ren-fair dudes fighting in hallways. I had no idea how the various characters related to each other (wasn’t Talon the princess’s brother?) and I imagine most of the character development ended up on the cutting room floor. There are two well executed comedic smash cuts and I’ll give the movie props for that.
The final book in the Tower and the Tree doesn’t quite work as well as the earlier books. I guess that could be expected. By the start of this novel, all of the characters had gone through most of their story arcs. We’re just winding everything up plot-wise and providing some backstory behind the lore. Of course there’s a massive battle to distract from the main magical quest because…. phantasy!! But, with all my complaints, it was an okay conclusion to this mostly entertaining series.
For centuries, magicians thought that the mummified hand of a hanged man (preferably a murderer) could lead one to buried treasure, unlock doors, or render victims unconscious. Commonly known as the “Hand of Glory,” the hand would be combined with a candle made from the fat of the dead murderer to enhance its powers.
Legend has it that when the Hand of Glory was lit with its special candles, it would emit a powerful light that only the person carrying it could see. Everyone else in the vicinity would be rendered motionless and unable to intervene, allowing the thief to go about their illicit activities without hindrance.
In this print, a trio of ne’er-do-wells has procured a hand thinking it would lead them to riches. Alas, when you play with the demonic arts, only evil spirits will be found!
Process Photos
Some early sketchesThe completed preparatory drawingHand transfer via red transfer papertransfer resultthe block at the halfway pointThe prints hanging to dry
I had this movie on my DVD wishlist for many years and never got around to buying it. I had heard that it was a gory, bonkers Japanese giant monster movie. Well, it does have one moment of low rent gore for a few seconds, but most of the movie is slow-paced and boring. We really only get about twenty minutes of poorly shot, shaky-cam monsters and then the movie just ends without any sort of resolution. Little bits taken out of context might make a good trailer: the aforementioned gorey attack and perhaps the Japanese country band scene. Most of this doesn’t even rise to level of cheese you’d want from a film of this era (except maybe the disco soundtrack). I was very disappointed in this one.
Also known as School of Fear, this krimi is about a boarding school for boys where the students sneak off to visit a lady of the evening™, get in trouble with the professors, then start to disappear. I was mostly bored by this because nothing exciting ever really happens and the culprit, who turns out to be an ex-Nazi, is never shown as a intimidating bad guy. It comes off as a proto-Porky’s sex comedy without the humor and a mystery without the mystery.
A Korean fast-zombie zombie movie that focuses on the survival of a single kid in an apartment complex. His character is set up as being a streaming gamer dude but his knowledge of tech only pays off a little bit when he flies his drone around. Otherwise, this was mildly fun but not terribly memorable.
This 1963 black and white Krimi opens up with a nebbish man killing his wife at a rural bus station. We know he did it, but the papers report that he had an alibi for the crime. Enter our hero, Walter, who is curious about the crime perhaps because he wants a way out of his own failing marriage. The murder plot fades into the background as the film starts to become a straight up marriage drama until the second act, when Walter’s wife turns up dead nearby a bus station. Coincidence? Well, maybe. The two suspected murderers become intertwined in blackmail and other noir hijinks until it all comes to a somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion. I thought this was entertaining, but I wished they tied it up better.
