Category Archives: Movie reviews

Spagvemberfest 2023: 3 colpi di Winchester per Ringo (1966)

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Milklos “Mickey” Hargitay left Hungary in 1947 to get out of being drafted into military service by the Soviet Union. He settled in Cleveland, where he worked as a plumber and carpenter. Can you imagine Hargitay coming to your house to fix your toilet? He’d already been in an acrobatic act with his brothers, a football player, a champion speed skater and a freedom fighter. He was just 21 by the time he made it to America and he started an acrobatic act with his first wife, Mary Birge. Steve Reeves inspired him to start bodybuilding and just a few years later in 1955 Hargitay won the National Amateur Body-Builders’ Association (NABBA) Mr. Universe. Jayne Mansfield demanded that he be in her movie Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? The two became lovers, appearing in movies like The Loves of Hercules, Primitive Love and Promises! Promises! together. After they were divorced in 1963, Hargitay kept acting in Italy, appearing in Revenge of The Gladiators; Stranger in Sacramento; The Sheriff Won’t Shoot; Bloody Pit of Horror; Sette donne d’oro contro due 07; Cjamango; Ringo, It’s Massacre Time; Lady Frankenstein; Black Magic Rites and Delirium.

Charles Allen Pendleton was born in Denver, Colorado and began working out to deal with the rough kids in his neighborhood. He was in the Battle of the Bulge and taken prisoner and when he got back to America, he became a high school teacher and guidance counselor in Los Angeles. He was reenlisted for the Korean War and when he came home, he acted in Prisoner of War, The Man with the Golden Arm and The Ten Commandments in which he drags Moses to meet the pharaoh. Before going to Italy to be an actor — the success of Steve Reeves brought every bodybuilder there — a psychic asked him if the name Gordon Mitchell meant anything to him. When he got to Italy, that was the name that he was given. He would appear in everything from Fellini’s Satyrcon to crime movies, horror, sexploitation and post-apocalyptic films.

Both Mickey Hargitay and Gordon Mitchell started their show business careers as part of Mar West’s Muscleman Review. Other bodybuilders who appeared with West included Reg Lewis (Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules), Charles Krauser (who later became Paul Novak, the love of West’s life), Armand Tanny (a Muscle Beach bodybuilder who often wrote about weight lifting; he organized a strike when West attempted to reduce pay of the group), Dan Vadis (Hercules the Invincible, Mission: Impossible), George Eiferman (The Devil’s Sleep; George of the Jungle was based on him), Irvin “Zabo” Koszewsk (Tommy Chong’s stunt double; he’s also in Spartacus), Dick Dubois (Athena), Dominic Juliano and Joe Gold (the founder of Gold’s Gym). Krauser and Hargitay even had a fight at a press conference in 1956 over West.

Anyways…

This movie is the one time that Hargitay and Mitchell would be in a movie together. Ringo Carson (Hargitay), Frank Sanders (Mitchell) and Tom (Spartaco Conversi) are hired by Walcom (Amedeo Trilli) to rescue his daughter Jane (Milla Sannoner). She falls for Ringo and that splits the friendship between him and Frank.

After the Civil War, Ringo becomes the town sheriff of Stone City and has a son with Jane. Frank is the leader of an outlaw gang who is hired by Daniels (Ivano Staccioli) to terrorize his hometown and drive down the price of ranches. Ringo is blinded in an accident and Frank takes over as the law, which allows him to go wild. Eventually, he kills Ringo’s mother and kidnaps Jane, which is not how you repair a friendship. There’s even a voodoo scene in this oddball Italian Western.

This was directed by Emimmo Salvi and written by Ambrogio Molteni (who I love, because he was also the lunatic who gave me Enter the Devil, Crazy Desires of a Murderer, Violence In a Women’s Prison, Black Emanuelle, Yellow Emanuelle and Sister Emanuelle) and James Wilde.

You can watch this on Tubi.

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: C.C. and Company (1970)

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C.C. Ryder (Joe Namath, who is from a town over from me and we shared the same dentist; perhaps he is better known as the New York Jets quarterback who was such a big deal that he had his own fashion doll) is a biker who hooks up with a gang called The Heads who are led by Moon (William Smith, who as we all know improves every movie).

There’s a race between the whole gang and C.C. decides to win it to get a fashion model named Ann McCalley (Ann-Margret, whose husband Roger Smith wrote this) to notice him. She’s kidnapped by The Heads and C.C. has to save her.

This was directed by Seymour Robbie, who mostly worked in television, and was savaged by critics. Gene Siskel gave it no stars and said, “Ann-Margret has a brief nude scene in which she proves that in addition to having a foul mouth she is fat.” Let me say something. Gene Siskel’s wife Marlene Iglitzen was quite attractive, but Ann-Margaret is, well, Ann-Margaret. He’d never get away with a comment like that today.

Well, because he’s dead.

But you know what I mean.

The Heads also have members like Crow (Sid Haig), Captain Midnight (Bruce Glover), Pig (Teda Bracci, who was Bull Jones in The Big Bird Cage and Rita in The Centerfold Girls), Pom Pom (Jennifer Billingsley, The Thirsty Dead), Zit-Zit (Jacquie Rohr, The Mini-Skirt Mob, Devil’s Angels), Tandalaya (Kiva Kelly), Lizard (Greg Mullavey, My Friends Need Killing) and Rabbit (Mike Battle, who also played for the Jets).

Glover was supposed to play the lead, but when Joe Namath saw him, he got Willaim Smith. Glover said, “”He took one look at me and said I was too short to beat him up. I had no power at the time, so I couldn’t quit. But I made my character and improvised every line I had in that movie.”

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

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: The Borrowers (1973)

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The Clock Family — Pod (Eddie Albert), Homily (Tammy Grimes) and Arriety (Karen Pearson) — are Borrowers, small people who live in the houses of human beans, as they call big people, and stay out of view. Arriety, unlike any Borrowers before, becomes friends with the eight-year-old (Dennis Larson) who lives in the house they have turned into their world.

Based on the book by Mary Norton, this was directed by Walter C. Miller (who mainly worked on the Grammy, CMA and Tony award show broadcast, as well as directing several Rodney Dangerfield specials) and written by Jay Presson Allen, who wrote the screenplays for Marnie, Funny Lady, Cabaret and Death Trap. She was a screenwriter when few women were.

The Borrowers was also made into two BBC TV series, a 1997 and 2011 movie and an anime in Japan called Karigurashi no Ariettii that was produced by Studio Ghibli.

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

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: Border Cop (1980)

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Directed by Christopher Leitch (the director of Teen Wolf Too and the writer of Universal Soldier) and written by Michael Allin (Flash Gordon, Truck Turner), this has Telly Savalas as border patrolman Frank Cooper.

Cooper has to balance doing his duty and empathizing with the illegal Mexican border jumpers. He also has to deal with his corrupt boss Moffat (Eddie Albert), who deals with coyote Suarez (Michael V. Gazzo), as well as protect a young Mexican man by the name of Benito Romero (De La Paz), who is on the other side of the border working in a slaughterhouse.

It’s not the quickest movie but as always, Telly Savalas makes any movie that much better by being in it. There’s nothing like hearing him say a line like, “Compassion? If I had compassion I’d stick a .357 up your ass and blow your brains out!”

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

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: Against a Crooked Sky (1975)

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Directed by Earl Bellamy (Munster, Go Home!) and written by Eleanor Lamb and Douglas Stewart, Against a Crooked Sky has Sam Sutter (Stewart Petersen, who quit acting in the late 70s and formed an outfitting business with his uncle called Magic Mountains Outfitters that eventually became Crooked Sky Outfitters) losing his sister Charlotte (Australian country singer Jewel Blanch) to some Native Americans. Sam goes to rescue her and meets a prospector named Russian (Richard Boone) who helps him to find her which means going through the Crooked Sky.

This is a G-rated movie with Christian values, Native Americans being killed and a supposed young girl flashing her breasts and butt. The 1970s, people. They were wild.

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

Cisco Kid Movie Collection: Beauty and the Bandit (1946)

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The Cisco Kid (Gilbert Roland) attacks a stagecoach carrying a wealthy young French person named Du Bois who ends up being Jeanne Du Bois (Ramsay Ames). The gang escapes with the money which Cisco says is money stolen for years from the poor of California. Of course, she soon falls in love with Cisco — and he with her, come on, he’s Cisco and she’s Ramsay Ames — and he gives her the money back. She has to decide what to do with it.

Directed by William Nigh and written by Charles S. Belden, this was another quick movie made for Monogram Pictures yet the Cisco Kid’s legend has lived all the way to today, as I’ve been watching movies with the character in them all week.

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.

Spagvemberfest 2023: Blood Money (1974)

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Also known as The Stranger and the Gunfighter, Là dove non batte il sole (Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine) and El kárate, el Colt y el impostor (Karate, Colt and the Imposter), Blood Money comes from the era where Shaw Brothers was working on other genre mash-ups as part of international co-productions like Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh) must go to America and find his uncle Wang’s missing fortune and return it to a warlord or his entire family will be executed. His only clue is that a thief named Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) accidentally killed his uncle when he blew up his safe and he knows where Wang’s uncle is buried.

Ho Chiang takes Dakota there and they learn that the map to the treasure appears on, well, four asses of Wang’s mistresses. Those girls include Patty Shepard (Hannah, Queen of the Vampires; The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman), Femi Benussi (Bloody Pit of Horror, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance), Karen Yeh (Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women) and Erika Blanc (Kill, Baby, Kill, The Devil’s Nightmare).

Yes, a movie where Lee Van Cleef and Lo Lieh fight people and are on a quest to see Patty Hsepard and Erika Blanc’s butts. Did I manifest this movie into being? And it’s directed by Antonio Margheriti?

Sometimes, life can be perfect.

You can watch this on Tubi.

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: Zontar, the Thing from Venus (1967)

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Zontar, the Thing from Venus is one of the many remakes of Roger Corman movies — this one is It Conquered the World — directed by Larry Buchanan.

This starts at a dinner party. That’s where NASA scientist Dr. Keith Ritchie (Anthony Huston) reveals to Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar) that he’s been secretly meeting with an alien from Venus named Zontar who is coming to solve all of Earth’s issues. A dinner party would not seem to be the time to do this.

Zontar ends up being a three-eyed, bat-winged, skeletal black creature and I don’t want to be one of those people that judges people by their outside appearances, but I don’t think Zontar has any intention of making the world a better place.

Not even when Zontar starts possessing people with lobster injecto-pods does Ritchie think this friend is a horrific alien monster. No, it takes his wife Martha (Patricia De Laney) dying before he does something about it. Scientists are really smart and also so dumb.

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

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: The Wild Women of Wongo (1958)

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One of only two movies that James L. Wolcott would direct — the other is a compilation film called The Best of Laurel and Hardy — this is one odd duck. It also features scenes that were, believe it or not, directed by his friend Tennessee Williams, who was on set and thought it’d be fun to try.

It’s shot inside Coral Castle, an oolite limestone structure that was built by one man, Edward Leedskalnin, who either used ley lines or reverse magnetism to move and carve numerous stones — all by himself — with several weighing multiple tons. Other movies shot there include Nude on the Moon and La Furia de Los Karatecas.

Mother Nature herself explains to us an experiment that she created with Father Time. On the island of Wongo, they made two tribes, the ugly and violent men and the gorgeous women. On the island of Goona, they did the exact opposite.

Now, the four tribes have come into contact with one another, as the brutish apes of Wongo have attacked the attractive men of Goona. That tribe sends their king’s son to seek help and he discovers the attractive women, who suddenly realize that they no longer have to settle for the grotesque men that their mothers and grandmothers once did.

Going against tradition has its downside, as the crocodile god of the people — played by stock footage — grows angry and demands their deaths. They rebel, defeat their oppressors and make their way to Goona, just as the good looking men of the tribe are engaging in the ritual where they must survive weaponless in the jungle. The women easily defeat them and take them for husbands while the less good looking races find one another too.

The women of Wongo are played by Marie Goodhart, Michelle Lamarck, Val Phillips, Jo Elaine Wagner, Adrienne Bourbeau (not Adrienne Barbeau, who would have been 12 when this was filmed), Joyce Nizzari (Playboy Playmate of the Month for December 1958, who was photographed by Bunny Yeager and would serve as one of Hugh Hefner’s personal assistants in the 1990’s), Jean Hawkshaw, Mary Ane Webb and Candé Gerrard.

The women of Goona were played by Barbara Lee Babbitt, Bernadette, Elaine Krasher, Lillian Melek (Pagan Island), Iris Rautenberg and Roberta Wagner.

If you want to learn more about them — and this slice of strangeness — I recommend the Women of Wongo page.

I’m trying to think of what message this is all trying to send and how it ties into female-based societies when it really seems that this movie is all about outward appearance. It does have a talking parrot and lots of alligator wrestling, so it has that going for it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: White Pongo (1945)

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Back in the day of these movies, the costumes were never one and done. Ray “Crash” Corrigan was an experienced gorilla man and played a similar role earlier that year in The White Gorilla, where he was both the jungle explorer and the gorilla. This costume was years later brought out of storage for  Jerry Warren’s 1956 movie Man Beast. Corrigan also played apes in Tarzan the Ape Man, Tarzan and His Mate, the Flash Gordon serial, Three Missing Links, Murder in the Private Car, Hollywood Party, Round Up Time In Texas, The Ape, Three Texas Steers, Dizzy Detectives, Dr. Renault’s Secret, The Monster Maker, The Hairy Ape, Miraculous Journey, Crime On My Hands, The Lost Tribe, Zamba, Forbidden Jungle, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, The Strange Case of Doctor Rx, Captive Wild Woman, Nabonga and Unknown Island. Corrigan was also It in It! The Terror from Beyond Space.

He sold the suits to Steve Calvert, a Ciro’s bartender, who like him rarely asked for screen credit. But he was making money. Corrigan was on a hunting trip with Clark Gable when he decided to buy some land that he called Corriganville. That was used to shoot movies and as a tourist attraction. Corriganville was eventually sold to Bob Hope in 1966, becoming Hopetown, but is now known as Corriganville Park.

Anyways, White Pongo.

In the Belgian Congo, natives dance around the fire and plan on killing Gunderson, who is freed by an attack by an albino gorilla named White Pongo and an elderly scientist who sends him with a diary all about the gorilla into the jungle. As you can imagine, the goal is to bring this supposed missing link back to civilization which is never a good idea.

Director Sam Newfield made hundreds of movies, such as The Terror of Tiny Town, Fight That Ghost and I Accuse My Parents. It was written by Raymond L. Schrock, who wrote the Lon Chaney The Phantom of the Opera.