Pepe “Pepper” Morales (John Astin) already has four kids and another on the way with Maria (Maria Pohji). What better time than now to quit his job at a can company and paint a car so it looks like a taxi and be his own boss?
Directed and written by Alexander Grasshoff — who also made that Fascist warning movie we watched in high school The Wave that no one paid attention to — with directing help by Astin. This is a movie where John Astin beats up an innocent Frank Sinatra Jr., where Alan Sherman gets in the cab and a female soldier is taken to Tijuana for an abortion. In a family movie. Yes, that happened. Avco Embassy released it, so maybe they weren’t used to family audiences.
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Stephen Boyd only lived to see 45, but the guy had the kind of life that could fill several others, what with starring in epics like Ben-Hur, nearly drowned in the Ardèche river and shared a camp with cannibals for the movie The Big Gamble, was censored for his near-nudity in GIna Lollobigida’s dream project Imperial Venus and traveled the world to be in movies like Genghis Khan (Yugoslavia), The Bible(Egypt), Assignment K (Germany), Shalako (Spain), Slaves (the supposedly haunted Buena Vista plantation near Shreveport, Louisiana), The Hands of Cormac Joyce (Australia) and The Manipulator (South Africa). He was also in wild movies like The Oscar and Fantastic Voyage; was one of the first celebrities to be involved in Scientology with a status of OT 6, a position above that of Clear; was spoken of by many to be incredibly friendly and spent much of his time on sets with the crew and oh yeah, he was so close with Brigitte Bardot that one of her husbands left her. He was also married in a gypsy blood ritual to Marisa Mell, a relationship so intense that they had an exorcism to stop their passion. Boyd was also the only actor to have a relationship on set with Dolores Hart before she became a nun; they remained in contact for the rest of his life. He finally married Elizabeth Mills, who had been his personal assistant for over twenty years, in 1974. Sadly, he died of a heart attack in 1977 while golfing with his wife. He would have been in The Wild Geese had he lived.
Stephen Boyd stars in this movie as Hugo Graham, who is asked by Zappy (she’s in the credits as Cheryl Stoppelmoor, but the world would soon know her as Cheryl Ladd) to join her and her friend Victor Spivak (Chuck Woolery, before he hosted game shows) to explore a wrecked ship. She even has a boat, captained by Asper (Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier).
Ladd married her husband David — also in this movie — before it was released in the U.S. And yes, that is Darby Hinton in there. And Commandant Mauser himself, Art Metrano.
This was directed by Virginia Lively Stone and written by John Walker and J.A.S. McCrombie, who also wrote Stone’s other two movies, Money to Burn and Run If You Can.
Twelve months later, Jawswas a big deal. So the filmmakers brought back Boyd, added some gore, some skin and a new title, Evil In the Deep. They took what was a G-rated movie and made it R-rated and I love them for it.
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Blue (Bill Cosby) works as a skycap for an airport and also scrounges for junk he can sell. His wife Serena (Gloria Foster) is a maid and going to school to be a nurse. They’re both working so they can leave the projects and have a better life for their son Vandy (Dennis Hines), who resents the fact that he can’t have fun like his other friends and spend money. Well, when he gets sickle cell anemia, everyone realizes that time may mean as much as dollars.
Directed by Gilbert Cates — the producer of the Academy Awards fourteen times between 1990 and 2008 and was credited with recruiting Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman, Steve Martin, Chris Rock and Jon Stewart to serve as hosts — this was written by Cosby and Allan Sloane.
Cosby and Foster would reunite years later for Leonard Part 6. But that’s another story.
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Gold transfers keep getting attacked, which puts a hurting on the U.S. Mint, so they sent Joe Ford (Rik Van Nutter, Felix Leiter in Thunderball) — better known as Dynamite Joe — to make sure those bandits get taken care of. Joe’s talent is blowing people up. That’s why they call him Dynamite Joe, after all.
Joe builds an entire train car out of gold. That doesn’t seem like a plan, but I’m also not someone that throws lit sticks at people. Maybe it’s the fact that Van Nutter was in a Bond movie, but this feels like a Eurospy mixed with an Italian Western and I am all for everything that is all about.
So yes, Joe shows up looking like Eastwood, but this is by Antonio Margheriti which guarantees great camerawork and something a little different. Cinematographer Manuel Merino also shot She Killed In Ecstasy, so the camerawork is great and the soundtrack by Carlo Savina is a bit off as well and I mean that in a “it’s a bit off” and I love it usage of the phrase. He also composed the music for Comin’ at Ya!, Lisa and the Devil, And God Said to Cain…and many more.
Based on characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner, this was directed by Walter Grauman and written by Sam Roffe, who created Have Gun, Will Travel. The producers — Paisano Productions — had tried to launch a Doug Selby series for six years, while its series Perry Mason was popular. This is the only effort that came of all that hard work.
In the small town of Madison City, Doug Shelby (Jim Hutton) and Sheriff Brandon (Robert J. Wilke) have recently won the election pledging to keep the filth of neighboring Los Angeles out of their city. There’s also Chief Larkin (Ed Asner), who loves L.A. and a murder. That’s right — a body has been found in the pool at Jane Antrim’s (Jessica Walter) home. She that place with her disabled father-in-law Frank (Leslie Neilsen), a man who was put in a wheelchair by an accident. that also killed Jane’s husband Brian, who was also Frank’s son. For some reason, the insurance won’t pay up. And now that body isn’t drowned but has been shot twice, with two different bullets, in one entrance wound.
This is very Perry Mason, which makes sense, as Erle Stanley Gardner also created that character. Where his TV show was memorable, this movie, unfortunately, isn’t.
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Michael Apted directed Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorillas In the Mist and The World Is Not Enough but before all that, he made this movie that he called an “informed look at the British underworld.” That may be because he enlisted ex-gangster Bob Ramsey to act as a contact between the film unit and the local underworld. This kept harassment down and let them shoot in high crime areas.
Jim Naboth (Stacy Keach) has lost his job and his wife Jill (Carol White) and children thanks to his drinking problem. Now a private detective, he’s still drinking and she’s moved on to a new husband, Foreman (Edward Fox) and taking care of his daughter Christine (Alison Portes).
A gang of kidnappers — Keith (David Hemmings), Vic (Stephen Boyd), Barry (Roy Marsden), Des (Barry Stewart Harwood) and Taff (Alan Ford) — take Jill and Christine to force Foreman to help them with a crime. He’s an important businessman, so he hires Jim to get his wife and child back.
The story itself is simple but the real issues are whether Foreman was part of the crime, the past relationship between Jim and Christine, and how Jim and Keith knew each other when Jim was a cop. There’s a lot of humiliation of Jim — and Christine — which also seems like Foreman’s doing. This may be too British for American audiences — Warner Bros. said it was “too indigenous” — but I found it interesting.
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You probably know Jack Arnold better from directing movies like It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Tarantula and The Incredible Shrinking Man than spy thrillers. In this movie, a Swiss bank has its infamous secret bank accounts get compromised. They get David Christopher (David Janssen), a former U.S. Treasury official who now resides in Geneva to help.
He meets with the four people being blackmailed — one has already been killed — who include Denise Abbott (Senta Berger), Dwight McGowan (John Ireland), Robert Hayes (John Saxon) and Andre Kosta (Arthur Brauss). Who could be blackmailing them? Well, it could be any of the following people: bank vice-president, Franz Benninger (Anton Diffring), his mistress Rita Jensen (Elke Sommer) or two criminals, Korsak (Curt Lowens) and Sando (David Hess). Whoever the blackmailer is, they demand uncut diamonds as their payoff. Christopher has to head into the Andes, all alone, prepared to face off with whoever the blackmailer or blackmailers may be.
Hey it’s 89 minutes long and moves quick. It’s not the worst movie you’ve seen.
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This was Bob Shaye’s — and New Line Cinema’s — first full-length production after a decade as a pure distribution company. Director Mark Lester would tell The Pink Smoke, “They were distributing Truck Stop Women to college campuses and they already had a script, so I was hired to direct it. We hired Robert Forster because he had done Medium Cool. Don Stroud was supposed to star in it but he got into a motorcycle accident the night before shooting.”
The film starts with the death of one of Greg Wilson, one of its stuntmen, who was set up. His brother Glen (Forster) arrives on the set, along with B.J. Parswell (Fiona Lewis!), a reporter who wants to write about the danger of the stunt game. The minute Glen gets there he gets hit on by the producer’s wife (Candice Rialson, in one of her last roles; she’s also great in pretty much everything she ever did, like Chatterbox, Hollywood Boulevard and Moonshine County Express).
Glen joins the stunt team of the film, who all promise one another that if anyone gets hurt, they’ll always pull the plug for one another, predating Dr. Kevorkian by several years. Screw the law. We’re stuntmen!
One of the people who have to get the plug pulled on them is Chuck, played by Bruce Glover, always a welcome sight. He’s married to Joanna Cassidy, who is — again, you’re going to get this a lot with this cast — astounding in everything I’ve ever seen her in. In this one, more than aardvarking with Crispin’s dad in a waterbed in the back of a custom van, she’s punching the faces of an entire bar of rednecks.
The death keeps coming, as Paul (Ray Sharkey? This is like a B&S About Movies dream cast and it gets even better) gets trapped in a burning building. That means that our hero has to finish the film, figure out who the killer is and get some revenge.
Former pro wrestler Hard Boiled Haggerty shows up, as does Richard Lynch. And you know how I feel about Mr. Lynch and the fact that he can make any movie better just by walking on set. Suffice to say he does way more than saunter on here.
This is why we’re doing an entire week of Mark Lester’s films. He knows how to get a story told, gather the right people to help tell it and get out of the way. He’s never let me down yet.
Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.
Directed by Agustín Navarro and written by Fernando Galiana, Mario Guerra, Julio Porter and Vittorio Vighi, this Italian/Spanish Western comes from just before the genre took off in those countries.
Frank Dalton (Paul Piaget) is out to get vengeance for his dead sister, a woman wrongfully accused of killing her husband. It’s a relatively American Western by way of a murder mystery and is very unlike the Eurowesterns that would come after. There’s also a sheriff (Fernando Casanova) trying to solve who the murderer is and trying to keep Frank out of harm’s way.
Notable cast members include Barbara Nelli (Lady Morgan’s Vengeance, Bloody Pit of Horror) and Rafael Bardem, the grandfather of Javier. I wish this were a better movie, but there are certainly others to check out. Then again, the appearance of a black-gloved killer in the middle of a Western is always something I am going to watch. There should be more giallo Westerns! I looked up a list on the Spaghetti Western Database and see the following listed that I need to watch:
Based on Geoffrey Household’s 1939 novel Rogue Male, this BBC TV movie was directed by Clive Donner, adapted by Frederic Raphael and in addition to Peter O’Toole, it also stars Alastair Sim in his last film role.
In early 1939, before the start of World War II, Sir Robert Hunter (O’Toole) takes aim at Adolf Hitler with a hunting rifle. He hesitates to shoot, which ends with him being attacked by an SS guard. He’s tortured and claims that this was just an intellectual exercise to see if he could kill the leader. He’s a well-known British citizen, so to cover up the torture, they throw him off a cliff.
He survives and escapes to England, where a Nazi sympathizer named Major Quive-Smith (John Standing) recaptures him and demands that he writes a false confession that the British government demanded that he was given orders to kill the German leader. But he’s not giving up without a fight.
In 2007, Peter O’Toole named the film as his favorite among those that he had made. One of the reasons he was in it was because his wife Sian Phillips loved the novel.
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B&S About Movies 