Author Archives: bandsaboutmovies

KINO LORBER BLU RAY RELEASE: Malone (1987)

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Richard Malone (Burt Reynolds) is a killer for the CIA who finally gest sick of it and quits. He drives across the country, getting lost, ending up somewhere in Oregon where he takes his busted Ford Mustang to the garage of Paul Barlow (Scott Wilson) and his daughter Jo (Cynthia Gibb). Marlow tells him that he should go to a bigger town because getting the parts is going to take some time. Malone has nowhere to go, so he stays in Barlow’s spare room and the two bond over being Vietnam veterans.

The town is being taken over by Charles Delaney (Cliff Robertson) who ends up being more than just an evil rich person and is also a white nationalist — funny how that keeps working out — and eventually his henchman start making life tough for Malone. The ex-assassin puts Dan Bollard (Dennis Burkley) in the hospital and kills that man’s brother Calvin (I really need to make a Tracy Walter appearance Letterboxd) when he tries to get back at him.

Sheriff Hawkins (Kenneth McMillan) may be someone Malone can trust but there are so many bought police officers and killers in town now that Delaney puts a hit on him. His handler, Jamie (Lauren Hutton) arrives to kill him, but come on, he’s Burt Reynolds and they’re soon making sweet love and because she’s a woman in an 80s action movie, she needs to die to give our hero emotion and reason to come back from his depression.

Based on Shotgun by William Wingate, Reynolds was, as always, honest about the movie: “I was attracted to Malone because I thought there was a chance the movie might be more than a guy running away from his past. Let’s be honest. The film is Shane. I am an ex-CIA man whose car breaks down in a small town who then gets close to a family and attempts to battle a Lyndon LaRouche character played by Cliff. I’m not doing Clint in Pale Rider. There’s a little bit of Stallone from First Blood in this, but I’m not playing the damaged-goods-guy Sly became in Rambo. Just to show you how movies change, Gérard Depardieu and Christopher Lambert at one point were going to play Malone. I wonder how this guy got rewritten into me.”

Reynolds was paid $3 million for this movie but this was a tough time in his career. He was dealing with so much. He knocked out Dick Richards on the set of Heat — Richards later tried to sue Reynolds for $25 million for the assault and Reynolds said, “I spent $500,000 for that punch. If I hit a guy, it’s certain that he will run a studio or become a huge director.” — had been in a series of flops like Stick, The Man Who Loved Women and Stroker Ace. He was also fighting rumors that he had AIDS. He was injured on the set of City Heat when he was hit in the jaw with a real chair instead of a breakaway prop. The jaw pain and TMJ kept him from eating solid food which is why he lost thirty pounds. He also became addicted to painkillers.

The Kino Lorber blu ray of this movie has commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson and a trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber.

88 FILMS BLU RAY RELEASE: The Postman Fights Back (1982)

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Hu (Eddy Ko Hung) has had four men selected to transport a gift through enemy lands. They include a thief named Yao Jie (Yuen Yat-chor), Bu the dynamite expert (Fan Mui-sang), a postman named Ma (Leung Kar-Yan) and conman Fu Jun (Chow Yun-Fat). They have a week to deliver the box and must never open it. They’re joined by Guihwa (Cherie Chung Cho-hung), who wants to free her sister from slavery somewhere in the city.

It seems simple, but soon there is a ninja, masked killers on ice skates and all manner of criminals out to take whatever is in the package. Yuen Woo-Ping directed the action.

Chow Yun-Fat may be the selling point to American audiences, but Leung Kar-Yan is the hero. But I mean, ice skating ninjas. That’s worth watching.

Director Ronny Yu also made The Bride with the White Hair before coming to the U.S. where he directed Bride of Chucky and Freddy vs. Jason before going back home to make Fearless.

The 88 Films blu ray of this movie has the Hong Kong and export versions of the film, two sets of commentary, one with Frank Djeng and Ronny Yu and the other with Stephan Hammond, as well as interviews with Chow Yun-Fat, Leung Kar-Yan and Ronny Yu, and a trailer. You can get it from MVD.

Cisco Kid Movie Collection: Cisco Kid Returns (1945)

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The first of three Cisco Kid films made in 1945r with Duncan Renaldo as Cisco and Martin Garralaga as Pancho, Cisco Kid Returns finds our hero trying to escape murder charges and keep his girlfriend Rosita (Cecilia Callejo) from marrying John Harris (Roger Pryor). There’s also the daughter of a murdered man who is used by Cisco as the child he claims that he has had with Rosita

The last film of director John P. McCarthy, this is not the first Cisco Kid movie. 1914’s The Caballero’s Way is the original film, starring William R. Dunn. Vester Pegg was Cisco in a 1919 film, then Warner Baxter took over the role in five films between 1928 and 1939, even winning a Best Actor Academy Award for In Old Arizona. Caesar Romero also was Cisco in six films from 1939 through 1941.

The Cisco Kid Western Movie Collection is available from VCI Entertainment. It has 13 movies and extras like two Cisco Kid TV episodes, interviews with Duncan Renaldo and Colonel Tim McCoy, and photo and poster galleries. You can get it from MVD.

TUBI ORIGINAL: The Engagement Dress (2023)

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Yes, there were traveling pants that girls of all sizes and shapes fit in, now there’s an engagement dress that has gotten women engaged for decades and it’s in a Tubi movie.

The dress didn’t work for Claudia (Angel Prater) whose boyfriend Mike (Sterling Sulieman) dumped her at a wedding and went right back to doing the electric slide. Now, she’s at the wedding of her best friend Barbie (Cathy Marks), acting as the event planner while Barbie’s brother Preston (Mike Manning) will be the caterer. They’ve always had something for one another yet Barbie hasn’t allowed either to date.

Everyone is in one place for the wedding with Mike falling back in love with Claudia, Preston falling for Claudia and Claudia, well, that’s why you watch the movie.

This was directed by Rachel Annette Helson (The Girl In the Window) and written by Alexa Droubay. It’s a romcom that has what you expect — love lost, love rekindled, exploration of the stars, you know, all of those things. That said, it’s a family-friendly movie that has plenty of good messages about finding the right person hidden amongst the usual Tubi Original movies that are about husbands and wives killing one another.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Spagvemberfest 2023: They Call Me Trinity (1970)

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The Spaghetti Western Database is my guide when I watch these movies and they say this about They Call Me Trinity: “…often described as the film that destroyed the spaghetti western and saved the Italian movie industry. In Italy the movie even linguistically marks the ending of an era: whereas the diehard westerns were called spaghetti westerns, the Trinity movies and the numerous imitations it spawned, would be called fagioli westerns. Fagioli (= beans) referring to the obsession with food, notably beans, both Trinity movies express.”

Terence Hill, who plays Trinity, is nothing like the dark heroes in the rest of the Italian West. Sure, there’s some violence in this movie, but by the end, it’s become an actual comedy and you care more about the characters than what they’ll do or who they’ll kill.

Director Enzo Barboni wrote the original story and screenplay for the film. which supposedly was much darker than what ended up being in this movie. Producer Italo Zingarelli suggested the inclusion of a brother, which is how Bambino (Bud Spencer) comes in.

The original idea was for Peter Martell and George Eastman to be the brothers, but Hill and Spencer were popular after God Forgives… I Don’t!,  Ace High and Boot Hill (which was released as Trinity Rides Again in some areas). This wasn’t just big in Italy; it was huge in France and Germany.

Again, unlike every Italian cowboy before him, Trinity doesn’t come into town dragging a coffin or tall in the saddle. He’s sleeping, lounging as his horse drags him somewhere new. His first meeting of the movie is with bounty hunters who have an injured Mexican with them. Trinity takes their prisoner and kills the others when they try to shoot him in the back. He’s nearly superhuman in his ability to draw and shoot, which is the opposite of his laconic demeanor.

Similarly, Bambino is the sheriff, someone who can shoot just like Trinity buy who is a burly man twice his size and someone who is ill-tempered where Trinity is full of smiles and kind words. All they have in common is that when they need to kill someone, it’s second nature to them. It’s what they do best.

Bambino became the law when he accidentally killed the man riding to town to take that role. Now his scam is taking that job until his gang rides in. He has to deal with a lot, like Major Harriman (Farley Granger), who is trying to run the Mormons off their land so that he can use it for his prize horses. Horses that are unbranded, so that means someone — someone like Trinity and Bambino — can make a lot of money stealing them.

Despite being called the Right and Left Hands of the Devil, the two keep doing the right thing, Maybe it’s because he’s fallen for two angelic Mormon girls and is thinking about marrying them both. Or perhaps Trinity just sees protecting these peaceful Mormons as the right thing to do, even convincing his brother and his henchmen to show them how to fight.

Of course they’re successful. Trinity also learns that being a Mormon means working hard, so he lies back down and lets his horse take him somewhere, maybe further west, perhaps somewhere that he can annoy his half-brother some more.

“You may think he’s a sleepy-type guy, always takes his time. Soon I know you’ll be changing your mind when you’ve seen him use a gun.”

I know that I should be protective of the rougher movies of the genre, but I have to confess that I loved every moment of this movie. It’s pure joy on film, from the arguments between Trinity and Bambino to the fact that Trinity looks at beans like most Western heroes look at money.

If you ever wonder what I want for Christmas, it’s this Trinity action figure.

You can watch this on Tubi.

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: Planet Outlaws (1953)

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Planet Outlaws is the edited Buck Rogers serial from 1938. It was edited again to feature length and titled Destination Saturn as it was syndicated to television,. It was edited again into in the late 70s and called Buck Rogers with the theatrical poster advertising, “Star Wars owes it all to Buck Rogers.”

Lieutenant Buck Rogers (Buster Crabbe, who was also Flash Gordon) and Buddy Wade (Jackie Moran) are lost somewhere in the North Pole in 1938. The Nirvano Gas they have in their ship causes them to go to sleep for five hundred years, waking up in 2440.

The future has been taken over by Killer Kane (Anthony Warde) and his army. The only people left to fight him are Dr. Huer (C. Montague Shaw), Wilma Deering (Constance Moore) and Air Marshal Kragg (William Gould). Buck and Buddy join up and head to Saturn to fight against the super crime bosses of the future.

This serial reuses a lot of things, such as the vehicles, a set and costumes from Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars, background music from The Bride of Frankenstein, the theme from Tim Tyler’s Luck and background shots from Just Imagine,

Forty years later, Buster Crabbe made a cameo appearance as Brigadier Gordon on the Buck Rogers TV series episode “Planet of the Slave Girls.” Gordon tells Buck (Gil Gerard), “I’ve been doing this since before you were born.” When Buck, at 533-years-old, asks “You think so?”

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: The Phantom Planet (1961)

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William Marshall was born in Chicago, Illinois. He started his entertainment career as the vocalist for Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians — Waring was “The Man that Taught America to Sing,” as well as the inventor of the first commercially available electric blender in the U.S., the Miracle Mixer, which Dr. Jonas Salk used to help mix up his polio vaccine; plus he had one of the largest collections of original comic strip art in the world — before moving to Hollywood to be an actor.

Marshall acted in twenty-five movies, including Knute Rockne All American, State Fair and Blackmail before becoming a director. He wrote and directed 1951’s Hello God, which starred Errol Flynn, as well as directing a movie Fynn wrote, Adventures of Captain Fabian. The Phantom Planet would be his last film.

In addition to all that singing, writing and directing, Marshall also found time to get married four times. He was with his first wife, French leading lady Michèle Morgan, for seven years and they had a son Mike* (who is in this movie), then was married to Devil in the Flesh star Micheline Presle, with whom he had a daughter, director Tonie Marshall. Then, he was married to Ginger Rogers for a decade* before he found a lasting marriage– 23 years before his death — to Corinne Aboyneau.

But hey, didn’t we have a movie to discuss?

The Phantom Planet takes place in 1980, a time when the United States Air Force’s Space Exploration Wing has bases on the Moon and is getting ready to head to Mars. The only problem is that spaceships and astronauts are disappearing. Rumors abound that it’s yet another case of phantom planets and space monsters, so Captain Frank Chapman and Lt. Ray Makonnen are called in.

Don’t get too attached to the latter, as he dies about two minutes later, before Chapman crashes on to the Phantom Planet and shrinks down to six inches in size. Now he has become a citizen of Rheton, where he will have the full rights of everyone else, but can never leave. He even has the choice between two women, the leader Sessom (Francis X. Bushman) entitled daughter Liara or the mute and kind Zetha (Dolores Faith, who disappeared from acting when she married the heir to Maxwell House, James Robert Neal, after a long courtship; she supposedly died in 1990, but there were reports of her still alive as late as 2006).

After some romantic misadventures and trial by combat with Herron, who is in love with Liara, our hero repels the evil forces of the Solarites (Richard Kiel is one of them) before leaving behind the planet and growing back to full size.

This is the very definition of made on the cheap, as all of the film’s sets, spacesuit helmets and special effects originally appeared in the CBS TV series Men into Space. Speaking of recycling, there are some rumors that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea reused some of these sets.

Hey but someone loved this movie! It has a Dell comic book, after all.

*Marshall’s first two wives were friends and he’d begun dating the second (Micheline over Michèle) while still married. She’d already started an affair with her co-star Henri Vidal, so he hired detectives who caught her in bed with him and Marshall got full custody of his son Mike.

Strangely enough, Marshall hated France, despite three of his wives coming from there and would call his first wife Mike because he refused to learn how to pronounce her name.

Strangely enough, Marshall had really conservative values, so when his first wife moved from France to Hollywood, he refused to live in the house she built at 10050 Cielo Drive. He demanded that she sell the property, which years later would be purchased by Roman Polanski and, well, we all know how that turned out. In some level of irony, his daughter Toni was one of the people who signed the Free Roman Polanski petition following the director’s arrest in Switzerland in 2009.

**Actually, he produced a movie for her that bombed called Quick, Let’s Get Married and they were separated for most of the time they were officially betrothed.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on YouTube.

Tales from the Crypt S1 E6: Collection Completed (1989)

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Man, why does Mary Lambert hate cats so much?

The last episode of season 1, this starts with the Crypt Keeper saying, “Before I get to tonight’s terror tale…I’d like to introduce you to my pet, Peeves. He has a terror tale of his own. Tonight’s skin-pimpling story is about a couple with their own pet peeves. I call this chunk of chilling charnel chatter “Collection Completed.””

Based on the story in The Vault of Horror #25, written by Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein with art by Graham Ingels, this is not the story to check out if you love animals.

Jonas (M. Emmet Walsh) is retiring after 47 years of working at a tool company. He didn’t want to be done, but that’s the way it went. He’s supposed to be relaxing, but he soon learns that his wife Anita (Audra Lindley) has kept from being lonely all these years by having animals all over the house.

She starts treating him like one of them, giving him his pills in food and feeding him cat food. She even names a dog after him, which is the point he goes insane and starts killing all of her animals and stuffing them. Yet when he tries to kill her cat Mewmew, she uses the gold hammer Jonas was given for his retirement to take care of him. And then she stuff him.

This episode was written by A. Whitney Brown, who some of you may remember from Saturday Night Live.

With that, we end the first season of this show. Anyone interested in season 2?

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: Phantom from Space (1953)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I feel bad that this ran just a few weeks ago, but hey, it’s in this box set.

Director W. Lee Wilder formed a film production company in the early 1950s called Planet Filmplays to quickly make low-budget science fiction films with screenplays co-written with his son Miles. Directing was in the Wilder blood, as his brother was the much better considered Billy.

Other Wilder science fiction movies of this era include Killers from Space and The Snow Creature.

Do you know who gets there first when a UFO crashes? The Federal Communications Commission. Yes, they’re there when The Phantom (Dick Sands), an invisible radioactive alien, is on the loose before it gets trapped inside Griffith Observatory. He tries to communicate through tapping but it’s too late. He can’t breathe our air and ends up falling off the top of the planetarium to his death, despite Barbara Randall (Noreen Nash) trying to save him.

I kind of love the way that the alien looks but then again, I like how Robot Monster looks.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

The Marvels (2023)

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People seem gleeful that superhero movies aren’t doing as well, as if it’s fun to ruin someone’s party. These are the same people who make fun of girls for liking Taylor Swift, post mean things on holidays and during the Super Bowl, and generally are the ones I hide or eventually unfriend online.

Look, life is short. Like what you like.

It’s OK to like superheroes. I mean, isn’t Hercules and every peplum character a superhero? Aren’t comic books modern myth? Thinking that there’s only one kind of comic book movie is like thinking there’s only one kind of animated movie.

And you know, you don’t have to like everything. Every movie is not for you.

But don’t you have to see too much to get this movie?

I never watched WandaVision, Ms. Marvel or the Captain Marvel movie and somehow, I really had fun with this movie. To be fair, I can also discuss ultra nerdified Marvel mutant history like how Cable is older than Cyclops despite being his son, you know? But you don’t need to know how Jean Grey wasn’t the Phoenix but an aspect of her or even care about comics to enjoy this.

Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel (Bree Larson). She’s been getting used to being back on Earth after thirty years gone thanks to being transformed into a Kree, one of the major alien races of the Marvel Universe. After her initial movie, she went back and destroyed the Supreme Intelligence that was the ruler of that alien empire which ended up causing a war that blackened out the sun, took away the oceans and ruined the air of Hala, the Kree homeworld.

Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) is an astronaut for S.A.B.E.R. whose mother was Carol’s best friend. Carol had left her behind after promising to come back, missing Monica’s mother’s death, which Monica also missed due to her being erased by Thanos.

Kamala Khan is Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellini), a Pakistani-American who has been given a bangle that unlocks the power to create hard light objects. She’s as young as the kids watching this movie and in awe of the other superheroes. She’s a real girl in a very comic book world, complete with a family — father Yusuf (Zenobia Shroff ), mother Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) and brother Aamir (Saagar Shaikh).

As the story opens, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton)* has been opening portals that weaken time and space — definitely a theme in the last year of these movies — and has the same bangle as Ms. Marvel. She refers to Captain Marvel as the Annihilator and begins destroying the worlds that Carol loves most — Skrull refugee planet Tarnax**, Aladna*** and Earth — to take the air, water and sunlight.

The Marvels also have to solve Carol’s feelings of being a failure, Monica’s loss of her aunt and Kamala’s hero worship to become a team. They also have to figure out why they keep switching places like Rick Jones and Mar-Vell.

I loved the Aladna scenes, a planet where everyone sings. It was like that in the comic and it’s silly, sure, but works within the movie. Prince Yan in the comics came from a planet where only women could choose their mates. He eventually married a Skrull named Tic and abolished the rules that only women could pick their husbands. That said, you don’t need to know any of that. You just need to know that this scene is a blast filled with big action and even some funny comedy where Monica asked Kamala if this is all fueling her fan fiction.

Of course the good guys win, but the end of the movie seemingly sets up…something you should definitely see in the theater.

Directed by Nia DaCosta, who wrote the movie along with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, this movie just sails along. Does the villain not get enough motivation, as some say? I mean, Carol ruined her entire world. I saw one review that said, “hacked to pieces in post” and “We could’ve had Dune Part Two this week but we got this instead.”

I don’t know how you can dislike a movie where hundreds of alien cats eat people set to “Memory” from Cats. Or one where a singing space prince gives a teenage girl a magical fighting scarf. I get the feeling that bad reviews for this are either going with the flow or would be bad regardless because people are on the wrong end of liking comic book movies.

And that’s fine. You shouldn’t need anyone to love your culture to keep on loving it. I can’t even imagine if we got a movie like this during the 70s made for TV movies where Spider-Man had a grappling hook or during all the cash-ins of the 80s that ignored the source material or even movies where the heroes didn’t get their costumes or stories right.

If you love comics, we’re lucky to see what we love communally on the big screen.

And if you don’t, there are a million other movies for you.

Find what you love and love it.

PS: This is far enough to spoil one thing: Lucky the Pizza Dog showing up in a scene that echoes how Nick Fury — I didn’t even mention how fun Samuel Jackson is in this movie because he’s so effortlessly good — found the Avengers was great. And the next spoiler was so good I clapped like a demented Charles Foster Kane.

*If you’re wondering who she is, she appeared in about two Marvel stories. In the comics, Dar-Benn is the pink-skinned Kree who killed Clumsy Foulup — yes, really, that’s his name — and General Dwi-Zan using a robotic Silver Surfer. He was killed during the Kree-Shi’ar War by Deathbird.

**In the comics, Tarnax was the star system that the Skrulls — who are the enemies of the Kree — came from. All of the Skrull homeworlds are also called Tarnax, like Tarnax IV, which was chowed down on by Galactus.

***Aladna is where Prince Yan comes from in the comics, too. Except there, he was engaged to Lila Cheney, a space-touring musician with her band Cats Dancing. Yes, I knew that without looking it up, I was a virgin until I was 24.