Based on the novel by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo, this movie is about the connections between organized crime and politics in Rome. A real estate project is going to turn the neighborhood in Rome into Las Vegas, but it creates a web connecting politicians like Filippo Malgradi (Pierfrancesco Favino) and criminals like neo-fascist terrorist turned crime boss Samurai (Claudio Amendola).
It also doesn’t make things any less dirty when Filippo parties with two sex workers. The underaged one, Jelena, overdoses and the politician has to bring in Alberto “Spadino” Anacleti (Giacomo Ferrara) to dispose of the body. Sapdino begins to blackmail him before he’s murdered by another criminal, Aureliano (Alessandro Borghi), which starts a war between him and Manfredi Anacleti (Adamo Dionisi).
Directed by Stefano Sollima, this has so many characters and so much happens in a little over two hours. It was expanded as two miniseries on Netflix, Suburra: Blood on Rome and Suburræterna, which start on Netflix on November 14, 2023.
It’s also pretty astounding how much of this was based on real life.
The Unearthed Films blu ray of this movie comes with a 2-hour making of feature and a trailer. You can get it from MVD.
Released in the Philippines as Police Protectors, the UK as Hard Boiled 2 and with an original title that means 12 Hours of Terror, The Last Blood has Interpol officer Lui Tai (Andy Tam) and Big B (Alan Tam), a gangster on vacation get caught up in the Japanese Red Army trying to kill the Daka Lama (Law Shu-kei). It turns out that he has the same blood type as Big B’s girlfriend May (May Lo), a type that only three people in all of Hong Kong have. Those three people must be found to save their lives while the terrorist cell led by Kama Kura (Chin Lo) must be defeated.
The JRA kills two of them, but the last one is Fatty (Eric Tsang), who doesn’t want to help a gangster or the police. But when his girlfriend and nearly all of his family are murdered by the terror cell, he decides that he needs revenge.
Directed and written by Jing Wong, this has the gunplay and violence that you’d expect from a movie that is trying to live up to Hard Boiled. I guess they both have lots of weapons and a hospital setting, so it makes sense.
The 88 Films blu ray of this movie has commentary by Frank Djeng and a trailer. You can get it from MVD.
Cult Epics has released several Marleen Gorris movies, including Broken Mirrors and A Question of Silence. This is the best of the three that I have watched.
The world has ended and seemingly the only survivors are those who escape from a plane crash: Sean (Paul Freeman), Frank (Mark Hembrow), military man Nick (Kenneth Colley), naturalist Pierre (Marc Berman), Jack (Ian Tracey), Joanna (Shelagh McLeod) and Mrs. Godame (Patricia Hayes). They figure that if they’re the last one left, every man should impregnate Joanna, which doesn’t seem like something she’s interested in.
Produced by Alex Maas and shot by cinematographer Marc Felperlaa, who filmed his Amsterdamned, this gets dark as Nick tries to impose religion on the island. When faced with some of the men being gay or becoming gay as the days become months and years, something bad has to happen. But man, it gets really horrible for everyone. This is a bigger movie from Gorris but it’s also really well done.
The Cult Epics blu ray has a new 2K HD Transfer from the original 35mm print, commentary by Peter Verstraten, behind the scenes footage, news footage, a trailer, a promotional gallery and an audio introduction by Dick Maas. You can get it from MVD.
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 Bloodin 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
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