Category Archives: Movie reviews

Spagvemberfest 2023: Four Bullets for Joe (1964)

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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:

Killer Caliber .32

Killer, Adios

Ringo, It’s Massacre Time

The Last Traitor

The Masked Thief

The Price of Death

Kill the Poker Player

Revenge of the Resurrected

The Crimson Night of the Hawk

You can watch this on Tubi.

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: Rogue Male (1976)

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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.

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

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: The River Niger (1976)

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Directed by Krishna Shah and written by Joseph A. Walker, this has an incredible soundtrack by the band War. It’s based on Walker’s 1972 play.

Johnny Williams (James Earl Jones) is a house painter and poet who has raised his family in Watts. His son Jeff (Glynn Turman) is home after failing out of the U.S. Air Force flight school and his wife wife Mattie (Cicely Tyson) is dying, but Johnny tries to remain positive. Yet when Jeff kills a rival gang member and a police officer gets killed, there’s a standoff with the cops that doesn’t end well for anyone.

The cast also includes Roger E. Mosley as Big Moe Hayes and Louis Gossett Jr. as Dr. Dudley Stanton.

This is shot in an all over the place style, somethimes in striking POV shots, other times in your face African masks dominating the entire shot. There seems to be so much crammed into this movie — Vietnam, alcoholism, racism, dealing with loss, Afrocentrism, the militarism of the Black Panthers — that it doesn’t have a solid focus, but these are the kinds of movies that had to be made and stories that had to be told.

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

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: Mr. Sycamore (1975)

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From a story by Robert Ayre and a play by Ketti Frings, this is the tale of John Gwilt (Jason Robards), a postman who decides that he wants to become a tree. He plants himself in his back yard and waits for it to happen while his wife Jane (Sandy Dennis) tries everything she knows to get him to be normal. At the same time, John finds a sympathetic figure in librarian Estelle Benbow (Jean Simmons).

Directed and written by Pancho Kohner, who produced the Bronson movies Assassination, Death Wish 4, Messenger of Death, 10 to Midnight, The Evil That Men Do, St. Ives, The White Buffalo and  Kinjite, this is definitely a movie of its time.

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

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: A Real American Hero (1978)

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Also known as The Letter of the Law and Big Stick, this is a movie about Buford Pusser, except instead of Joe Don Baker, Bo Sevenson, The Rock or Kevin Sorbo, it has Brian Dennehy in the lead. Keep in mind this came out five years after the first movie and a year after Walking Tall: Final Chapter.

Buford Hayse Pusser was the sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, from 1964 to 1970, and constable of Adamsville from 1970 to 1972. During his time on the force, he survived seven stabbings and eight shootings as the result of his war on moonshining, prostitution and gambling on the Mississippi and Tennessee state line.

Already a local hero, Pusser’s war on the State Line Mob went national when his wife Pauline was killed on August 12, 1967. There was an ambush intended for him, brought on by common-law husband of a woman who tried to kill Pusser and who he shot and killed in self defense,

Pusser died on August 21, 1974, of injuries sustained in a one-car automobile accident four miles west of Adamsville on the same day that he met with Bing Crosby Productions in Memphis to talk about playing himself in the sequel to Walking Tall. It was claimed he was drunk driving but no autopsy was ever conducted.

As his legend grew — even when he was alive — singer Eddie Bond wrote and recorded several songs honoring Pusser, beginning with “Buford Pusser” in 1968 and then released Eddie Bond Sings The Legend Of Buford Pusser five years later. Pusser even recorded on Stax subsidiary Respect and even today, bands like The Mountain Goats and The Drive-By Truckers sing about him. And in 1973, when the first movie was made, he became a hero to many.

There’s a good cast here, with Forrest Tucker as Carl Pusser (he also played the same role in Final Chapter: Walking Tall), Brian Kerwin as Til Johnson, Ken Howard as Danny Boy Mitchell and Sheree North as Carrie Todd. It was directed by Lou Antonio and written by Samuel A. Peeples. If you don’t know the story from the other movies, here it is again. I like Dennehy, but I’m partial to Joe Don Baker. Then again, this led to the seven episode TV series. I can remember seeing all the commercials for these movies and I thought it was kind of sad that people kept glorifying someone who was dead, but I was a kid and what did I know.

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

TUBI ORIGINAL: Hot Girl Winter (2023)

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Mrs. Jess Claus (Golden Brooks) is sick of waiting for her husband Nick Claus (Jason Mimms) to stop working and cancel their annual vacation. So to put the spark back in her marriage, she goes to Miami on her own and gets back together with her best friend from college ,Tamira (Schelle Purcell). As you can probably read there, she’s Mrs. Claus. He’s Santa Claus. And she’s having a hot girl weekend in Miami to see if she can find the naughty outside of her nice — and not there — marriage.

Directed by Patricia Cuffie-Jones, who also made Tubi Original Immortal City Records and co-wrote this with Barbara Zagrodnik (Tubi Originals Five Star Murder and Blood, Sweat and Cheer), your willingness to enjoy this may depend on the idea of wanting to see Santa’s wife put her eggnog down and get her groove back.

Mrs. Claus has the magical powers to see people’s naughty or nice history as well as drop holiday beats inside their brains. One imagines that Mr. Claus can do the same and is currently not all that happy that his wife is dancing with other men. One of those men is Andy (Danny Pardo), an older man who she bonds with and then breaks his heart. That ends up nearly destroying her friend’s charity event.

Santa and his wife even have a son, Kris (De’Variyay Harris), who gets in the middle of all of this. But finally, Mr. Claus has enough and flies down to Miami to set things right.

Anyways — you never thought you’d see Santa strip down, but here we are. Enjoy.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Spagvemberfest 2023: A Pistol for 100 Coffins (1968)

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Also known as El sabor del odio (The Taste of Hate), A Gun for One Hundred Graves and Vengeance, this Italian-Spanish Western was directed by Umberto Lenzi and written by Marco Leto, Vittorio Salerno and Eduardo Manzanos.

Jim Slade (Peter Lee Lawrence) had it rough in the Civil War. He’s a Jehovah’s Witness, so he refused to shoot other soldiers. He’s locked up in a labor camp for cowardice before being pardoned. When he gets home, he finds that his parents are dead.

Jim gets over that whole thing about not killing people pretty quick, taking out three of the four suspects quickly. That’s when he goes after their leader, Texas Corbett (Piero Lulli), which brings him to Galveston. Seconds after he shows up, he meets a preacher by the name of Douglas (John Ireland) and witnesses a bank robbery. He soon learns that Corbett was behind that robbery, so he gets the job of sheriff so he can legally hunt down and kill him.

This feels like an Italian Western mixtape with a weird undertaker (A Fistful of Dollars) and an end battle in a cemetery (Django). Then again, if you get upset with every Italian movie that rips something off, you’re going to be angry your entire life.

My favorite thing about this is that even though Jim is now able to kill people, he only drinks water. Never whiskey.

You can watch this on Tubi.

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: The Proud and the Damned (1972)

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Once Confederate soldiers and now mercenaries, Sgt. Will Hansen (Chuck Connors), Ike (Aron Kincaid), Hank (Henry Caps), Jeb (Smokey Robards), and Billy (Peter Ford) have just come from Texas to Colombia. In hours, they’re captured by General Martinez (Andres Marquis) and forced to join the rebels and report back what they discover from them.

Will also soon meets and falls for a gypsy girl named Mila (Anita Quinn) whose father is so angry about her dating a white man that he cuts off her ear. Will responds by shooting him because the holidays are gonna be weird after this. So because Will gets detained, Martinez finds him and hangs him. Yes, that’s right, the hero of the story dies before the end. The rest of the mercenaries — who never make any money from their soldier work — join the rebels, get revenge and get killed. Except Billy. Because of dumb luck, he fell off his horse and missed the deaths of his friends.

This was directed and written by Ferde Grofé Jr., who also made Hellraiders and Judgement Day. He finished shooting in 1969 and the movie wasn’t released until 1972, so it didn’t seem to work out all that well. At least Cesar Romero got some work.

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

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: The New Adventures of Heidi (1978)

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Directed by Ralph Senensky (Death Cruise) and written by John McGreevey (The Death of Richie), this remake moves Heidi from Switzerland to New York City. It’s also a musical.

Heidi is played by Katy Kurtzman and her friend Elizabeth Wyler is played by Sherrie Wills. It’s the same story you expect, as Elizabeth is fascinated by the rural life of Heidi and her grandfather (Burl Ives).

While you see a lot of snow in this, it was shot in the summer in Los Angeles, so the acting is pretty decent. After all, it was in the 80s while fake snow was falling on the ground. Also: the grandfather is assumed dead for nearly a year and no one calls the police or tries to help Heidi. Instead, they bring her to live with the rich people and treat her like a pet, then solve the grandfather’s blindness by paying for surgery because money solves everything.

Maybe I’ve never seen Heidi before or something.

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: Rulers of the City (1976)

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Also known as The Big Boss, Mr. Scarface and Blood and Bullets, this was directed by Fernando Di Leo. He started his career mainly being known for his writing, including A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Massacre Time, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man and so many more. He co-wrote it with Peter Berling, who was often in Kalus Kinski movies before writing a series of conspiracy novels about the Priory of Sion.

Tony (Henry Baer) works as a money collector for Cherico (Edmund Purdom) but he dreams of leaving his life of crime behind and settling on the beaches of Brazil. He decides to fast forward all the hard work of being a henchman by working with Rick (Al Cliver) and Napoli (Vittorio Caprioli) to rob the biggest boss of all, Scarface Manzari (Jack Palance).

It takes its time getting there, with Tony mostly cracking wise, cracking schools and, well, cracking smiles at the many ladies he sees during his days and nights of collecting blood money. He would have never even considered going after Scarface if he didn’t kill Cherico instead of repaying his debt. By the end, our hero has tracked his enemy — actually, his lifelong enemy, even if we don’t get that knowledge for some time — to a slaughterhouse where he wipes out the entire family.

Added bonus: Gisela Hahn (Devil Hunter, White Pop Jesus, Disco Fieber) is in the cast. And man, Jack Palance is so macho that he even makes a cigarette holder look manly. Like, the same kind of long effete cigarette holder that, let’s say, Cruella de Vil would use.