Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz 2025 Answers

Quizwoz Answers

Okay everybody. Thanks for all who took part in my Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz for the end of 2025. This year’s winners are returning winners from last year with full marks... Chris and Ross from Manchester. Well done lads.

For all you who want to know which ones you got wrong (or indeed right), here are the puntastic and cryptic answers for you all.

1. Egyptian corpse owns technical equipment. 
An Egyptian corpse would be a mummy. If a person owns technical equipment then he/she “has tech”, so aztec. So we get the first film in The Aztec Mummy Trilogy.

2. What you give people for Christmas.
Well, presents so... yeah... Presence.

3. A central stage for spherical objects used in sports.
A spherical object used in a sport could be a ball. A central stage used in sports could be an arena. So we get John Wick spin off Ballerina.

4. The pride of lions’ fierce vocals are just over 19 decibels.
Lions fierce vocal sounds are a roar. One decibel over 19 decibels would be 20 so... The Roaring Twenties.

5. Suffering a disease in which a high temperature is a prominent symptom, on an evening at the weekend.
A disease could be a fever. An evening at the weekend could be a Saturday night. So... Saturday Night Fever.

6. A non X-rated firebird was polished up for the plan.
A firebird could be a phoenix but, non x-rated means you have to take away the x, which leaves phoeni. If you polished something up then it shone. Another term for a plan could be a scheme. So, phoeni-shone scheme... Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme.

7. Burglar belonging to the father of a kind of sack.
A sack could be a bag. The father could be a dad. The burglar is a thief. So we have, The Thief Of Bagdad.

8. A choice between two indefinite articles.
Two indefinite articles are an and a. A choice implies one or another... so an or a, or rather Oscar winning Anora.

9. A dagger of frozen water.
Frozen water is ice. A dagger is a knife. So we have one of have Carrol Baker’s Italian gialli, A Knife Of Ice.

10. A musical composition made out of soup.
Simply unscramble the letters of soup to get a type of musical composition, so O P U S. Recent John Malkovich thriller Opus.

11. The incorrect leg wear.
Trousers but they’re wrong. It’s the second Wallace And Gromit short film The Wrong Trousers.

12. The specific nomenclature of a prickly stemmed flower.
Nomenclature denotes a name. The prickly stemmed flower is a rose. So Sean Connery does Umberto Eco thriller The Name Of The Rose.

13. Bond villain’s tool for accessing his front door.
The Bond villain I was thinking of was Largo (played by Adolfo Celli in Thunderball and Klaus Maria Brandauer in Never Say Never Again). To access his front door he would surely need a front door key. So the Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson movie Key Largo.

14. Equine’s wing plumage.
Equine implies horse. Plumage is traditionally feathers. So we have the classic Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers.

And that’s it for 2025’s end of year quiz. As always, I hope it gave some of you something to keep you occupied in any Christmas downtime and that you enjoyed having a crack at it. Let me know if you want me to keep coming up with these end of year quizzes. Feedback is always welcome. 

The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2

Sting In The Tale

The Complete Adventures 
of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2
by Lee Savage Jr and Emmett McDowell
Altus Press
ISBN 9781618270702

Following on from the first volume (reviewed by me here), The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2 is the concluding collection of stories originally appearing in issues of the pulp magazine Action Stories between 1945 and 1949. And, having read the first volume, I’d have to say that these particular stories are not what I was expecting. 

Following an introduction by modern pulp writer Will Murray (one of the modern writers of Doc Savage who actually gets the formula right), we plummet straight into the first of the four stories collected here, Brand Of The Gallows-Ghost, from the Winter 1945 issue. 

This one, like many of the Señorita Scorpion stories, doesn’t feature the Scorpion, aka Elgera Douglas, herself in all that many sequences. She pops up here and there while other characters, like her romantic interest Chisos Owens, shouldering the majority of the action and deduction of the tale. The secret ingredient being that, as usual, everybody is talking about Elgera and she’s the focus point for the solution to the story. This yarn is pretty good and, once again, Lee Savage Jr uses his expressive language to craft a quite literary pulp, with wonderful passages like... “The moonlight dropped hesitant yellow fingers into the mysterious depths of Santa Helena Canyon…”. 

It’s all the standard Western tinted blood and thunder you could want... with a curious character name popping up. One of the female characters in the book is called Lupita Tovar and, I can only assume this is in homage to the 1920s-1950s Mexican actress of the same name, who my regular readers might remember best as being in the Spanish version of the 1931 Dracula, made on the same sets as the Lugosi Dracula (both reviewed here) during the evenings of the same shoot. 

The second story, Lash Of The Six Gun Queen, from the Winter 1947 edition of Action Stories, is where things get and, frankly, stay a little weird concerning the stories in this volume. This one is probably the stand out story in this collection but, unusually, it’s told in the first person from the point of view of a new character trying to bring Señorita Scorpion to justice (before falling for her and finding her innocent of her supposed crimes in the third act) rather than the standard third person. A good tale, though, nonetheless.

Then things get even weirder with the Winter 1948 tale Gun-Witch of Hoodoo Range, written this time by Emmett McDowell instead of regular writer Lee Savage Jr... and that change of writer shows in more than just the style, which is less expressive and poetic than Savage Jr’s prose (although it certainly has its moments too). However, the character of the Scorpion does not seem to be remotely like she was in the other books, always going around masked to hide a scar which she never previously had and with absolutely nobody referring to Elgera Douglas, nor indeed Chisos Owens, who is absent from both this story and, surprisingly, the next. In fact, the Scorpion in this is revealed to be a new love interest for a new character, who is the focal point of this one (none of the regular characters are in this at all) and, it’s revealed at the end that she duped everyone and that the real Señorita Scorpion died of wounds received half way through the tale. Wait... what?

This is a twist which is completely ignored when Lee Savage Jr returns to write the final tale, from Winter 1949, The Sting Of The Scorpion. This one has no mention of the events in the previous tale (as that one did of no events prior) and we definitely are back in the saddle with Elgera Douglas as the original Scorpion once more. 

That being said, this one differs from the others in that, a) there’s no Chisos Owens turning up or even mentioned here and b) this one stays with the Scorpion and she’s the main attraction of every story element, as we follow her adventure while she tries to prove her innocence, find out why she is being framed and identify who is doing it. It’s a pretty good tale but with no warning that it was intended to be the last. Actually, the main takeaway I got from the last two stories in this volume, both by different writers, is that a scabbard is not something which (unlike what the dictionary says) is just for holding swords. In these last two it’s referred to as the long holster on a horse which holds the rifles for the rider. So that was an interesting discovery... I need to do more research into that, I think. 

And there you have it. The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2 is very much a different experience to the first volume but, this makes it no less entertaining and I certainly had a good time with it. It’s a shame Lee Savage Jr never returned to the character but I understand there’s a newish, overpriced, short volume of three modern tales by different writers which I may have to look into at some point in the near future... so there’s that to look forward to.

February/The Blackcoat's Daughter

Half Term

February/
The Blackcoat's Daughter
Canada 2015
Directed by Oz Perkins
A24 Films

Okay, so February (aka The Blackcoat’s Daughter) is going to be a tricky film to talk about because there’s something about the movie which will dawn on a fair percentage of the audience maybe 20 minutes into the movie, when a third character is introduced... but I’m still going to try and shuffle around this element and attempt to not reveal anything, even though, as I implied, many people will reach a conclusion about a certain aspect of the movie fairly early on. 

Okay, so the basic set up is we have three girls who the narrative follows. The film is set in February, in what must be half term week. Two thirds of the action of the film takes place in a remote, snow surrounded, boarding school where two girls in their late teens, Katherine and Rose played by Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Boynton are left behind, when all the other girls are picked up by their parents for the holiday. So they have to stay there for a day or two with two, un-costumed nuns who work there while they are waiting for their parents to show up. However, something is happening in the school and there are rumours of satanic worship. Meanwhile, the third woman, Joan, played by Emma Roberts, has escaped from somewhere but a kindly gentleman and his wife pick her up and offer to drive her to where she’s going. 

And that’s really all I’m going to say about the plot because... well, because it’s actually a very simple story but the way the story is structured is fragmented and elliptical. This does two things... one, it makes the story more interesting to discover, simple as it is and two, it stops a certain trick of the story being detected by the audience until... well like I said... twenty minutes or so into it. 

The film is written and directed by Oz Perkins, who is the son of actor Anthony Perkins (who has recently, since I saw this and wrote this review, become quite a succesful presence in the modern cinematic landscape). And, it turns out he’s not a bad director. I don’t know if I’d go as far as calling this a horror film because I think a certain element of the plot depends on your point of view. I think it’s similar to Saint Maud (reviewed here) in terms of how the audience perceives or believes certain things, which will affect how you categorise this as either a horror or a thriller. But it does, at least, tend to use some of the tension of the horror film and it does get quite gory towards the end. Certainly, the director knows how to squeeze a large amount of dread from what was probably a small budget, delivering a film which manages to maintain a fairly creepy atmosphere, even in the parts of the movie which are unscored... there’s a scene where Katherine is gazing out of a window with no music but with a smile playing on her face which, once you’ve seen the movie, I think will be something you would remember. 

To accomplish this kind of atmosphere, the director mostly eschews camera movement, I noticed. Sure there’s a little but not much and he seems content to just place the camera in a static position for the most part and let the scenes play out just cutting from one point of view to another. It slows the pacing of the film considerably but, that’s okay, it’s what gives it the edge it has and I have to say it works very well when, really, the story perhaps doesn’t feel like it could hold up if the movie were sped up and, more pertinently, edited in a different manner to the way it’s presented here. 

Although it could be dismissed as a simplistic variant of an exorcist story... and I’d maybe have a hard time defending even that... the way in which the film is structured helps relieve the inherent malaise that many modern movies dipping their toes into that kind of territory seem to generate and, even though this is the director’s first feature, I’d have to say he really knows what he’s doing here.

Another element of the film, the sparsely spotted score by another member of the show business family, Elvis Perkins, is extremely effective when it is called upon to contribute, maintain or even generate the quite palpable tension inherent in a simple scene... like a girl walking slowly down a corridor. Also, the odd non-sequitur images such as one of a shadowy figure in a basement energetically pursuing some kind of ritual are pretty effective and are one of the things which help build the atmosphere where the audience, or at least me, are on the edge of their seat. 

And, for fear of accidentally including spoilers, that’s as much as I’ll say about February/The Blackcoat’s Daughter. Whether it’s a horror film or not is for you to decide but I think it would play well to those of you who enjoy the horror genre. The central element on which a certain part of the movie hinges on was perhaps less effective on me because of the way I clumsily perceive certain things but, yeah, I’d be curious to see what people think of the plot on this one, so I’ll recommend it to a couple of friends and see if they had a common experience. Either way, a well directed movie which is very much worth a look if you’re into movies which build a strong, slow burn atmosphere. Give it a go. 

The Mole People

Mole Keeper

The Mole People
USA 1956
Directed by Virgil W. Vogel
Universal/101 Films
Dual Edition 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

Warning: Yeah, this one has a bit of an ending spoiler.

Okay, so The Mole People is not exactly the best of the Universal atomic age monster movies, for sure but, for all its faults, I still find it a lot more watchable than Tarantula (reviewed here), it has to be said. It is quite a sluggish movie, however and, certainly does nothing to hook the audience from the start. After the familiar Universal logo comes up, we are presented with Dr. Frank C. Baxter appearing as... Dr. Frank C. Baxter, in a bizarre attempt to fool the audience that he’s a real expert on what he’s talking about. And he talks and talks and talks. Audiences are treated to around four and a half minutes of him telling us of various theories put forward over the centuries, using illustrations on a board, consisting of speculation about what lays beneath the Earth’s surface. Frankly, I would imagine he’s already lost half his audience fairly quickly and half of the drive-in customers would have possibly turned around and driven out again. 

For those that stayed, we are then treated to some opening titles which are quite well done, with the various bits of typography rising from the foreground rim of a steaming crater, presumably implying some volcanic activity. Then we join the three main male protagonists of the movie... Dr. Roger Bently (played by the sturdy block of wood that is John Agar), Dr. Jud Bellamin (played by Hugh Beaumont) and Professor Etienne Lafarge (played by the always watchable Nestor Paiva). The three of them, with various colleagues and diggers, are in Mesopotamia trying to find out what happened to the Chero dynasty. As luck would have it, they find a tablet which points to a snowy mountain. They climb it and find the ruins of a Sumerian temple but, one of their number is swallowed by the earth, opening a long shaft beneath the surface of the mountain. They follow their now dead colleague down and discover a race of Sumerian albinos who have been living beneath the Earth for years. How they’re albinos I don’t know... they have black hair and white painted faces which tend to make everyone look like Data from Star Trek The Next Generation. The sumerians also employ a bunch of mole monsters to do the digging for their mushroom food. 

Anyway, the doctors convince the antagonistic Sumerians, by way of their torch (the Sumerian’s are sensitive to strong light) that they are ambassadors to their God, explaining away Nestor Paiva’s death at the hands of a mole monster as him being summoned back to heaven. But the king and especially the high priest are unsure and it’s a race against time as to whether they can find their way back to the surface world before tensions become murderous for them. The high priest is played by none other than Alan Napier who, ten years later, would play the role he is probably best remembered for these days, as Alfred the Butler opposite Adam West’s Bruce Wayne in the Batman TV show. Meanwhile, the female love interest for John Agar appears in the form of Cynthia Patrick as Adad. She is given to Agar as she is different from all the others, not being born an albino. Things get a bit vague here I think.

And, it’s not a bad film but certainly not a pacey one for sure. We have to wait for almost half an hour of the 77 minute running time, for example, before we even catch sight of a mole monster. Now, it has to be said the many mole monster costumes and masks aren’t really anything to write home about in terms of convincing anyone that these are genuine living organisms, as opposed to just various men in monster suits but, it also has to be said, I do like the design of the monsters and they are a bit iconic (enough that they’ve been reproduced as various Universal monster themed action figures over the years). The make up design is credited, as a lot of these movies, to Bud Westmore but, yeah, whether it actually was Westmore who did these or one of his underlings well, I couldn’t tell you. I certainly don’t take it on trust (see Mallory O’Meara’s fantastic book, The Lady From The Black Lagoon, which I reviewed here for more information on the notorious Westmore). 

Actually, the monsters are pretty much everything here, as a lot of the first half an hour is various stock footage from previous films mixed in with close ups of actors dressed similarly, as the three original protagonists climb the mountain etc. Another bit of padding comes along when an ‘albino’ girl does a long and less than sexy slave dance to fill out the time. This film doesn’t really have an awful lot going for it when you put it down on paper but there are a few other things of interest asides from the monsters. 

One is a comment from one of the male heros when they are caught in a snowy avalanche and he remarks that sitting there in the middle of the avalanche is still safer than crossing Times Square. So, wow, Times Square must have had a bit of a reputation even in the 1950s, it would seem. 

Another interesting moment of genuine horror (for those days) is when three slave girls are sacrificed to the ‘Light Of Ishtar’... aka put in a room which lets in the bright sun from an opening above. Being as they are sensitive to light, when the dead bodies of the three girls are brought out of the room, they are burned black and flaky all over and it’s kinda interesting to see this strong an image as they are carted off in a 1950s Universal monster movie, to be honest. Earlier in the film, the director even tries a ‘fake out’ jump scare but, to be honest, it doesn’t really work. He does give it a good go though. 

One last thing of note is that, in the original cut presented to the studio, Bently and Bellamin escape with Bently’s new middle earth girlfriend Adad and, originally Bently and Adad were supposed to go off hand in hand, living happily every after. This doesn’t happen in the final release print however. In a bizarre twist, just as they get back to the ruined temple above ground, there is a small ground tremor and a big column falls on Adad, crushing her to death. Apparently, this reshoot took place at the insistence of the studio because, even though Adad is clearly not an albino and is just a normal looking person, the powers that be didn’t like the idea that this was still promoting an interracial relationship... so they nipped that in the bud by dropping a column on her. 

And there you go, that’s The Mole People. It’s not the film I remembered it being and it’s certainly a bit ploddy but, if you are a fan of these 1950s B-movie monster flicks then you should still have a good time with this one, especially when, in another moment which defies audience expectations, the mole monsters rise up to overthrow their oppressors and help the heroes escape. Yep, did not see that one coming for a while into the plot, it has to be said. So The Mole People does have a lot of interesting moments, for sure. Whether you think they add up to be something more than the sum of their parts though, is up to you.

Not Your China Doll

Queen Wong

Not Your China Doll
The Wild And Shimmering 
Life Of Anna May Wong
By Katie Gee Salisbury
Faber
ISBN 9780571388677

I’ve seen just a few movies with Anna May Wong in them over the years but never really knew much about her. So sometime around a year and a half ago I bought this beautiful looking, new hardback of Not Your China Doll, subtitled The Wild And Shimmering Life Of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury. Well, because of the usual book accumulation problem, I only got around to cracking those attractive covers late 2025 but, alas, when I got to around about three quarters of the way through, a long drawn out personal tragedy hit my life, culminating in the passing of my father. As regular readers will know I shut down the blog for just over a month but I also stopped reading this tome at the same time, because I didn’t think a book this well written and illuminating was something I could fully concentrate on after his passing.

But, both the blog and my somewhat eclectic ‘book life’ are both back in action and so, it was time to finish what I started. Which proved to be an absolutely charming book about the Asian-American actress, born in Los Angeles in 1905 under the name Wong Liu Tsong... which apparently, translated from Chinese, means Frosted Yellow Willows.

And, I have to say, this book was teaching me new things from the start. I mean, beginning with the arrival of D. W. Griffith in LA in 1910, it’s the first time that I was made aware that the reason that the film people who flocked to what would become Hollywoodland in California decided to go there in the first place was because the area has a way more consistent light source to be able to make movies in. I’d never even thought of it before. And in a time when ‘No Jews, Actors or Dogs Allowed’ was a familiar sign hanging on doors, we have a young Anna May Wong who was obsessed by the movies and sneaking off to visit the sets/locations and also spend hours in her local nickelodeon shows.

Without going into all the details, she finally got some acting jobs in films (while working at her father’s laundry each day after wrapping on set) and her fourth role in The Toll Of The Sea (reviewed by me here) proved to be her big break because it was the film in which Douglas Fairbanks saw her and offered her the role in his silent version of The Thief Of Bagdad (as it’s spelled on the titles of that particular movie... review will hopefully be forthcoming at some time during this next year on this blog, it’s already written).

The book then charts her career on screen in such classics as Piccadilly (as part of her European tour to help give her career a boost and reviewed in my second ever post for this blog here) and Shanghai Express for Von Sternberg, opposite Marlene Dietrich (review coming soon) whom she posed with, along with Leni Riefenstahl, for a photo at a party in Paris years before (and yes, that photo is one of the pictures which dot the book as a start to each chapter). The book talks about an important playwright lover from London as well as her hanging out with famous friends such as Paul Robeson and Emil Jannings (and wife Gussy Holl). And even a brief romantic dalliance with her leading man in a stage show at one point, a young Vincent Price.

It also covers her reception in China and details her tour of that land in 1936 (also talking about the documentary on the Chinese people she filmed as one of her projects while she was there), noting such incidents as a native cantonese speaker asking her to go back to English because of her atrocious American accent.

If I had one small criticism of the book it’s that her later years of ill health are not covered in as lengthy a fashion as I might have wanted but, then again, I don’t blame the author as the book is so well researched that one assumes that not a lot of information was as forthcoming about this period of her life as others. Or, indeed, it just may have been a shade duller than what makes for good reading. And this is a good book, make no mistake. The writer’s words flow into the mind easily and even wax quite poetic at times. 

And I was there for it... I really enjoyed this one and want to read more about the subject matter if possible (I bought another tome on the lady towards the end of last year, while attending a film at the BFI’s Anna May Wong season). 

Also, thanks to Katie Gee Salisbury, I now know what a cheongsam is and realise that this is what the Anna May Wong Barbie doll I recently purchased is probably wearing (not my China doll perhaps but, maybe my plastic effigy). And, yes, I even bought a couple of Anna May Wong quarters from the US, which is just a small reminder of the cultural impact that the lady in question has had over many generations of cinema lovers over the years. I’m not sure what the other, perhaps more sensationalist, portrayals of Wong are like but, this one is certainly a great piece of biographical writing. So, if this particular Asian star of yesteryear, who was at one time receiving over 500 fan letters a week, is your thing, then I would wholeheartedly recommend you pick up a copy of Katie Gee Salisbury’s Not Your China Doll - The Wild And Shimmering Life Of Anna May Wong. It’s an absolute banger of a book and I wish I’d read it sooner. 

Charlies Angels (2000)

 

Angel Delight

Charlies Angels (2000)
USA 2000 Directed by McG
Columbia Blu Ray Zone B

I remember when I first saw the first Charlie’s Angels movie at the cinema back in 2000. I’d remembered I half liked the TV show as a kid back in the 1970s but nothing had prepared me for this particular experience, which is easily one of the greatest American action movies of the decade coupled with art design which elevated it far beyond the expectations of its target audience. I think I saw it about five times at the cinema and, I’m glad I did because, you can’t see that cut anymore, it turns out. I’ll get to that later.

Okay, so the film opens with an earlyish example of company logo vandalism where, after the Columbia torch lady comes up, the camera pans to the side and around her into the sky next to her, before transforming into the sky around a passenger aeroplane to establish the setting for the first scene. Now cinema adaptations of old TV shows were not always successful and hadn’t quite gotten into their stride in terms of the new ones around at this time. We’d had Mission Impossible at the cinemas (which I didn’t see for at least another fifteen years, you can read my review of it here) but director McG obviously knew there would be a certain amount of cynicism attached to a remake of Charlie’s Angels, loved by so many people back in the day.

So he deals with it all right out of the starting blocks, in one of the most riveting and silly opening sequences of the year, completely winning over this audience member and, judging by how successful this first movie was, quite a lot of people. He cleverly starts it off in a slow journey with the camera around the interior of an aircraft with not an Angel in sight. Then we follow a character played by L. L. Cool J, who makes contact with a minor villain for this segment. The rich colours of the aircraft include a lot of red and the look of the film is all important in terms of bombarding the audience with some eye popping designs. Then the script does a very clever thing, after the villain reveals he has a time bomb strapped to him which is counting down... he starts watching an inflight movie which is a fake remake of the old TV series T. J. Hooker and, the two chat briefly about how they hate stupid movie remakes of TV shows. So, yeah, McG already undermines any audience reaction that the film is not, at the very least, self aware and then, he suddenly speeds everything up and piles us into an action sequence... as L. L. Cool J opens the plane doors, throws out the villain and jumps out after him. He’s joined by Lucy Liu’s Angel character called Alex mid air and, the two of them manage to get the bomb off the bad guy and then drop him, with themselves, into Cameron Diaz’s waiting speedboat, Diaz playing Angel Natalie. 

It’s at this point that L. L. Cool J takes a voice changer out of his mouth and pulls his face off, to reveal it was a mask used for the third and, behind the scenes, most important of the Angels, Dylan, played by Drew Barrymore. It was Barrymore who had already bought the rights to the show before the film went into production and it was her who stood to make a fortune from the success of the movie (and its sequel, which she did to the tune of $40 million for the first one and, although not confirmed, $80 million for the less successful but, equally fun sequel).

Then, in a brilliant move to get fans on the side of the movie even more, we hear the voice of John Forsythe, the original voice of Charlie, who is reprising the role for this and the next one, as McG takes us on a parody remake of the original TV show title sequence, including some nods in scene reconstructions from the original show. It’s brilliant, uses a new version of the original theme music over some of it and, yeah, this is the way you overcome a reluctant audience... with sheer brilliance. 

And then the film somehow manages to keep going even stronger, as it reveals the new Bosley (played by Bill Murray), a red herring villain played by Tim Curry, a brilliant action henchman, The Thin Man, played by Crispin Glover (his real life dad tried to kill James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, reviewed here), Luke Wilson, Matt LeBlanc, Tom Green, Kelly Lynch and the truly brilliant Sam Rockwell. 

And it’s a nice enough story of industrial espionage disguising the true intentions of the villanous antagonists of the film, who really were a fairly good twist reveal about two thirds of the way through the movie. It’s another old story but any weaknesses in the script (which went through at least thirty drafts by numerous writers because they wanted to get it right... there’s a reason why this film seems so polished at all levels), which are few and far between, are more than carried by the combinations of criminally good acting, imaginative fight choreography, some amazing dance sequences and some beautiful set designs with every different scene bringing in a strong, themed colour palette significantly different from each preceding scene. 

It’s also quite innovative in terms of what they do with the camera in this one... so, for instance, those amazing high speed push/pull Vertigo-like zooms during the off circuit racing car chase or, during that same sequence, the way lorries rushing in front of each car in a side view are used as very fast transitions to cut between the two cars. It’s amazing stuff and the film is full of little jolts of brilliance like this, giving the whole production a very highly stylised feel, almost like a comic book. The director himself, if I’m remembering correctly from the time, said the film takes place in ‘Angel time’, a kind of heightened, beautiful alternative to real life... which would explain, I guess, why opening the plane door to save all the passengers at the start didn’t result in all the passengers getting sucked out to their death.

I have one big criticism with the movie plus, a fair few criticisms of the home video releases of the film. Let me get started on the thing which totally popped me out of the film and my seat when I saw this the first time at the cinema. There’s a big, bold cue at one point in the film and it’s composer Akira Ifikube’s Godzilla leitmotif. As soon as I heard this my mind was like, “No way” and I was expecting a sophisticated joke based on one or more kaiju eiga. Instead, it becomes clear after about five seconds that it’s just been used as an opening and sample base for a piece of modern techno music, which the director was using from one of many (probably no comparison for an original score where this movie goes) needle drop musical selections. So yeah, that was disappointing.

Now, the 15 rated version of the movie as released in UK cinemas is longer than any other country’s versions and stuff like a full on sequence involving nunchucks never made it to home video, which is a damn shame and should not be censored, especially since the UK always had a ban on the weapons being included in films until around about this period (yeah, you can guess what looking at a UK home video version of Enter The Dragon was like before this point... this is why God invented mulitregion players). I also happen to remember.... although nobody else I know seems to (perhaps they didn’t do multiple cinema trips like I did) that the drive through hamburger scene near the start of the movie included an exchange of dialogue with a bit of a put down by the Angels directed at the burger seller... I remember it being the only false note/crack in the ‘nice gal’ facade of the Angels and felt it was just out of place. Well, if I didn’t imagine that scene (and I’m pretty damn certain I didn’t), then I guess somebody on the film also realised it didn’t promote empathy with the angels and, the scene is significantly shorter on the home video version, for sure. 

Those minor grumbles aside though... I’d have to say that Charlie’s Angels by McG is still a pretty great art/action spectacle with some beautiful, innovative sequences which I think a lot of today’s modern film students could learn a lot of lessons from. An absolute classic which is maybe a little dated already in some of the attitudes on display but, yeah, who cares about that kind of stuff when it’s put together so well. My one warning to viewers is... don’t waste your money on the cheapo, UK Blu Ray double pack edition as I did... as the version of the sequel, Charlie’s Angel’s Full Throttle, is not the proper, full on unrated US cut of the movie, but the standard theatrical, ‘sans blood spraying every time someone gets hit in the face’ version of the film. If you want the full, unrated version of the sequel on Blu Ray, you need to pay out the extra for the US edition of the film which clearly states it has both cuts on there (as I have just done, once I discovered which print of the film was on the second disc). This is disgraceful behaviour by the UK distributors based, I would suspect, on the fact that they don’t want to shell out the cash to resubmit the longer cut to the admittedly evil UK film censors at the BBFC.

King Of The Rocket Men

Jet Pack To Where 
You Once Belonged

King Of The Rocket Men
USA 1949 Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Republic Pictures 
Imprint Films Blu Ray Zone B

It was the very early 1980s when I personally made the acquaintance of Jeff King (of the Rocket Men). Since the mid-1970s, school kids had been fed with the same four fantastic Universal serials running in the mornings of alternate school holidays... and we loved it. The big four were Flash Gordon (reviewed here), Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here), Buck Rogers (reviewed here) and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). But the BBC must have realised at some point that they needed to buy some fresh serials so they introduced the first of, I think I’m right in saying only three others they ever broadcast and... that was King Of The Rocket Men, starting off week nights in the old 5.40pm slot used by those other serials on their debuts (not to mention another load of great B-movie features over the years, such as the Charlie Chan, The Saint and The Falcon movies). 

Now, King Of The Rocket Men was made by the old ‘shoot ‘em up Western’ studio Republic Pictures and, yeah, even as kids I could see that they had nowhere near the same kind of budgets as their Universal counterparts. But that didn’t matter, the Republic serials had Howard and Theodore Lydecker handling their special effects, most of which were pretty good and they had a great team of stuntmen on their very energetic fight scenes, which were numerous. I’ve said it a number of times and I’ll re-iterate it here, if the bad guys and the good guys walked into a room in a Republic picture, anything that wasn’t nailed down would be used as a projectile at some point in the next two minutes.

Suffice it to say, I loved King Of The Rocket Men. As I said, the title character was Jeff King (played by the great Tristram Coffin), inventor and member of the Science Associates, who would don a rocket suit to fight off the machinations of the evil Dr. Vulcan, who would put the world in peril for a fast buck. And, while he did this, King would also have to try and find out which one of the Science Associates members actually was Dr. Vulcan (a common plot in these serials, where the villain is revealed in the penultimate or even the last episode). 

And of course, in order for the title of the serial to make sense, there’s an episode when King’s ‘secretly not dead after all’ colleague, who invented the suit and also a weapon called The Decimator (which causes much trouble during the course of the 12 chapters, due to the writers presumably not knowing the actual meaning of the term decimate) dons the rocket suit himself in order to throw suspicion off of King and rescue him from the bad guys’ clutches. Yep, it’s the old “How can Clark Kent and Superman be in the same place at the same time?” ploy but, heck, it worked for me and, if my fifth or sixth revisit to the serial now, courtesy of a beautful new Blu Ray boxed set of serials from Imprint Films in Australia, is somewhat jaded, I still found myself able to recapture some of the magic and excitement of watching this thing when I was 12 or 13 years old. 

I loved the music... and still do (can we have a CD please?) and the serial scurries along at a relatively fast pace, very much using the old ‘change the footage from last weeks cliffhanger to show how the hero is able to escape’ modus operandi that a lot of the companies used. The flying effects by the Lydecker Brothers are exactly the same as those employed to make the title character fly, at the drop of a Shazam!, in Republic’s The Adventures Of Captain Marvel serial (reviewed here), consisting of a hidden trampoline take off to flight, followed by a rigged, ‘stiff as a board on hidden wires’ dummy for the long shots. It’s silly but great stuff and it’s arguable whether it’s any better or lesser than Columbia’s trick in their two Superman serials... of just having the character turn into a cartoon version of himself after take off. 

Honestly, it may be nostalgia talking but I really loved following along with Tristram Coffin and various, assorted colleagues such as Mae Clark, a curiously age appropriate female lead (and Lois Lane-like reporter) who would have been perfect as the female love interest, if such a thing was ever brought up within the confines of the fast moving plot (it wasn’t). Imprint’s new transfer looks the best I’ve ever seen it on a home video format and, unlike other transfers I’ve seen, doesn’t feature the materialising words (A re-release) on the opening credits of each episode... so this must have been from a different master source than the ones they used to show on BBC2 back in the day. 

King Of The Rocket Men was also influential. Not only was the flying footage re-used in three other serials using the same costume - Radar Men From The Moon, Zombies Of The Stratosphere and Commando Cody: Sky Marshall Of The Universe (reviewed by me here) - all of which are included in the Imprint boxed edition, which also includes Flying Disc Man From Mars, The Invisible Monster and The Mysterious Dr. Satan... but it was also the inspiration for Dave Steven’s loving, comic book homage The Rocketeer, which was itself turned into a very badly adapted but no less entertaining movie of the same name. 

And that’s me done on King Of The Rocket Men, I think. If you are coming to this as an adult and this is your first watch... I would urge you to suspend disbelief and water down any cynicism while watching. All of you who are a child at heart, though, surely can’t fail to have a good time with this one. 

Sharp Force

 

Holo Man 

Sharp Force
By Patricia Cornwell
Little Brown
ISBN 9781408622596

Warning: No real spoilers but some people might see the contents of this review as such. 

I suppose with the end of the year I’ve just had I could be forgiven for disposing of my usual Christmas rituals but, to be honest, it’s my adherence to at least some of the every day... err.. every year... machinations which allow me to continue in a semi normal state right now. 

Hence, this year’s annual reading kicks off, once again, with the latest of Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta books, Sharp Force. And it’s a real cracker and takes a similar spin to novels of the last few years in that, all the action that takes place is pretty much compressed into a very small window of time. And what better time to take place in proximity to when I’m actually reading this one, than this particular story, in which all the action takes place between the closing hours of Christmas Eve and coming to a conclusion towards the end of Christmas Day... with the ‘brief autopsy’ of a summing up for any loose threads and explanations taking place on New Year’s Eve. 

As such, I was wondering when I started reading why we were already in the midst of a detailed pathological examination and, it turns out, that’s because it’s mostly investigations of events happening and a body recovery rather than any long chapters in an autopsy room at a later point in the proceedings. 

This one, of course, includes many of the old and new periphery characters Cornwell’s readers have grown to love... Marino, Dorothy, Lucy, Tron and even the growing malevolence of the AI version of Lucy’s dead lover Janet (which I’m sure will get more out of control as the series progresses). Mostly, though, this is more about Scarpetta and her husband Benton Wesley, working the crime scenes with a little help from the others... and punctuated by growing tension between her long standing right hand man Marino and his wife, her sister Dorothy. 

I’d twigged by about two thirds of the way through the novel that this was going to be one of those stories where the investigation was a prelude to a very quick and, in this case, serendipitous conclusion... rather than a few months of investigation... and, yeah, it was a complete surprise by the end as to the identity of the killer, nicely pulling in a very early ‘background noise’ ingredient to the backdrop of an earlier scene to add some colour (in an almost Dario Argento kind of way but, I’m not saying which movie because that would constitute a spoiler). 

And, as usual, it was a brilliant, entertaining and intriguing read but, once again and, because I know just how much research goes into one of Cornwell’s novels, this one managed to frighten me with technology which has obviously already been invented (just isn’t necessarily available to the public for general use as yet). 

So this one’s ‘nightmare I didn’t know existed’ takes us into the realms of ‘I thought that was just science fiction’ with the killer in this one sending in a sinister hologram to taunt and tease his future victims with. It appears out of nowhere, walking through people’s houses and seems realistic, just isn’t picked up on any camera. And here’s the thing, scary as that is... even though the holograms are conjured into the thin air by manipulating various molecules... the remote technology behind them can also spy on subjects by sending back signals from the hologram. I mean... whaaaat? 

So my best analogy of this would be all those 1960s spy movies, TV shows and cartoons I used to see on repeats as a kid. The villain (and sometimes the hero) would always be able to spy on his progress by summoning up a TV screen show of what he was doing remotely... which would change shots and be edited just like the rest of the movie... with a perfect picture and from absolutely no camera because no single camera would ever be capable of picking up that footage in the first place, especially not at the time in which those movies and shows were conceived... 

Now, however, this is exactly the kind of information (and much more) that these realistic, conjured holograms can bring back (it would seem... I’m pretty sure Cornwell wouldn’t write about this stuff if it wasn’t already in existence, she’s not generally a sci-fi writer) and so, yeah, I just find it all pretty frightening that this stuff is even possible today. Not to mention what would happen if everyone had easy access to this technology (which I’m assuming isn’t quite the case yet, or the entertainment industry would be jumping all over it). It means a person can just go anywhere remotely and gather whatever information/surveillance on a person they wanted with ease. This is not the future I want to live in but there you have it. Oh... and don’t get me started on AI robot dogs, one of which also features prominently here.

But, yeah, scariness aside, as usual Patricia Cornwell is at the top of her game and I can’t recommend Sharp Force enough. Glad she’s still writing a new one each year in time for Christmas and, yeah, hopefully they’ll be another one coming out towards the end of this year for me to devour at that special seasonal time. 

Fantastic Beasts - The Secrets Of Dumbledore

 

Dumb Or Dumbledore

Fantastic Beasts - 
The Secrets Of Dumbledore
USA 2022
Directed by David Yates
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers ahead. And please keep in mind I wrote this one some time ago... before real life events moved on.

Fantastic Beasts - The Secrets Of Dumbledore is the third in the series of Harry Potter prequels written for the screen by the writer of the original novels, J. K. Rowling. Now, I absolutely loved the first film in this series (more so than the Harry Potter movies... I’m not exactly a fan of Potter and his fellow tykes) which I reviewed here but I thought the second movie, Fantastic Beasts - The Crimes Of Grindelwald (reviewed here), was a bit of a let down and felt like a stepping stone of a movie. This third installment in what I’m hoping will be running for the number of films originally planned, certainly works a heck of a lot better than the previous movie but, even though it’s way more entertaining, this one is a bit of a mess, to be honest. 

Once more, Grindelwald has changed his visage because of, presumably, Warner Brothers mixing up art and PR with certainly bizarre allegations made against Johnny Depp*. Why they think those audience members strangely not in the Depp camp would be unable to suspend disbelief like anyone else and not get the art mixed with the people behind it is beyond me but, whatever, he’s been replaced with Mads Mikkelsen... who, to be fair, always makes for a good bad guy. 

Among those back from the previous films are Eddie Redmayne as Newt, Dan Fogler as Jacob, Alison Sudol as Queenie and Jude Law as young Professor Dumbledore. Then there’s Ezra Miller, who seems to be on a real bender in real life with various criminal charges brought against him. Warner Brothers’ seem to be reacting to this in the same way as they have with Johnny Depp and they keep postponing The Flash*. However, he’s not got as much presence in this movie as he did in previous installments and, at the end of this one, there’s the open ended opportunity for his character to just dissappear from the films from now on (should Warner Brothers’ do the right thing and make some more of them). Since the script is credited as being written by J. K Rowling and Steve Kloves... but ‘based on’ a screenplay by J. K. Rowling, I can only assume some ‘PR idiots running scared’ studio politics forced a rewrite of the material to make some alterations to Rowling’s original intent? 

And then we have the most noticeable absence in the film... Newt’s love interest and quite strong protagonist of the previous movies, Tina, as played by Katherine Waterston, is almost entirely missing in action from this installment. She has one brief shot near the end and then a couple of minutes at the conclusion of the movie... her disappearance being ‘explained away’ as being that she’s now a very busy person. 

Really? I mean, WTF? 

She was one of the best characters in the movies and now she’s been shunted out. Now, there were the usual COVID delays on this movie, plus the politically motivated ones but I’m also hearing she disagreed with comments made by Rowling (and blown up bizarrely by social media trolls) and that she was deliberately sidelined. I don’t buy that... what have personal viewpoints got to do with making art (and the horrible box office which wags the dog, for that matter)? I suspect scheduling conflicts due to COVID may have been an issue and, again, I suspect it’s why we have the ‘based on a screenplay’ credit on this picture. 

The story itself seems a lot weaker than the previous two, with the ingenious device of making the plan of the protagonists proof against those who can see the future by not having a real plan and obfuscating it from those who are even supposed to be executing it... allowing for the convoluted stitching together of set pieces to remain unchallenged by any collective raising of eyebrows from the audience. It’s a sound concept though so... it just about works. Surprisingly, this doesn’t make the identity of the end game protagonist any less easy to see coming a mile off but, yeah, it’s not a film about surprising anybody, for sure. 

And it’s a big, dumb(ledore) Hollywood blockbuster but it looks fantastic, has a great score by regular composer James Newton Howard (occasionally referencing John Williams’ themes at certain key points... like the obvious one for scenes taking place at Hogwarts), some good staging of certain scenes and some really nice acting turns... if you want to see Eddie Redmayne scuttling sideways and dancing like a lobster as a mechanic of successfully executing a rescue operation, then this is definitely the film to see. 

All in all, I had a really great time with Fantastic Beasts - The Secrets Of Dumbledore and I think fans of the series will appreciate it. I will, however, say three things that I see as problems with it. One is the fact that, if the previous film felt like a stepping stone to something bigger... this doesn’t feel like anything bigger at all... it feels more like a compromised story with an open ended, semi-conclusion in case no more films in the series are green lit. 

Secondly, the motivations of the turncoat actions of Queenie in the previous film are almost completely not addressed. I’m still none the wiser as to why she joined up with Grindelwald at the end of the previous movie. No idea what that was about. 

Thirdly, the definite lack of presence of Katherine Waterston’s character in this really hurts the film. It just feels wrong and is very conspicuous... just not a good idea, at all. If an actor can’t fit in with your schedules and she’s essential to the movie (as I feel Waterston was) then rearrange your schedules, is my advice. Other than those three things... an enjoyable movie and I certainly hope that Warner Brothers’, despite the low box office returns on this one, get off their high horse and get on with the series without worrying about what their actors and writers are doing behind the scenes (which is, frankly, none of their’s... or the audience’s, business). 

*Yeah okay... that kinda shows the huge gap between when I wrote this review & when I’m publishing it.

Tarantula

Firefox VS Spider

Tarantula
USA 1955
Directed by Jack Arnold
Universal/101 Films 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

Warning: Small, eight legged spoilers coming your way. 

“I’d say you were the biggest liar since Baron Munchhausen”
quote from Tarantula

Well Tarantula is a film I wasn’t that impressed with when I first saw it, although I absolutely adore 1950s, atomic age B-movies and... revisiting it now on a very good Blu Ray transfer put out by 101 Films as part of a dual edition (yeah, some companies are still putting both the Blu Ray and DVD in the same set combinations)... I’d have to say I’m still not all that swayed over by it. Jack Arnold was an absolute master of these kinds of films with things like the first two Creature From The Black Lagoon films, The Incredible Shrinking Man and, even uncredited work on the classic This Island Earth. This one falls fairly flat though, especially when you compare it to, say, the absolute masterpiece that was THEM! (reviewed by me here). It does have a couple of things going for it though...

One is that some (but not quite all) of the special effects and make up effects in this one are handled pretty well, for the most part. The other thing is that the script does nothing to make light of the ridiculous plot (although the make up in one scene may well make you laugh) and the actors are all very good at projecting a certain amount of gravitas around the story. These actors include monster movie regular John Agar as the perpetually smiley, heroic Dr. Matt Hastings, Leo G. Carrol as the resident mad scientist Prof. Gerald Deemer and the sensuous Mara Corday as the professor’s new work experience student (as we’d express it these days) and love interest for Agar, Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton (who would go on to play a few supporting roles for her friend Clint Eastwood in The Gauntlet, Sudden Impact, Pink Cadillac and The Rookie but, I’m getting ahead of myself... I’ll get to Clint in a little while). 

Also in the cast, as the sherif of the small town of Desert Rock and friend to Agar’s Hastings, is Nestor Paiva. Regular readers may remember Paiva as the boat captain in both Creature From The Black Lagoon (reviewed here) and Revenge Of The Creature (reviewed here)... and also for his role in The Falcon In Mexico (reviewed here). I almost didn’t recognise him at first because, although he was born in California, I always associate him with playing roles with a strong, sometimes Mexican accent and, also, his almost bald head here is prominently displayed, rather than covered with a hat. Hearing him speak perfect American English was a bit of a shock, to be honest. 

The film opens quite starkly and effectively. A camera pans around the bleak desert landscape until it fixes on a man wandering through and then collapsing. He dies but by then we can see he has deformed features. This is because, as we later find out, the serum Professor Deemer is working on to make animals grow to giant sizes in order to solve the world’s food shortage problems, causes an unnaturally quick manifestation of the rare disease acromegaly when injected into a human. Acromegaly, is of course, the famous rare condition contracted by famous character actor Rondo Hatton, which pushes the bones and muscles around the face to give everything a warped look (something which gave him good work in various villainous roles in his short, painful life... the Rondo Awards are named after him).  

Anyway, the professor buries another of his initially willing human victims, after being attacked by him and... the laboratory is partially burned down. What he doesn’t realise is that, while he was rendered unconscious in the fight, the dying human lab rat injected him with the formula as well... not to mention the fact that the professor’s already unnaturally huge tarantula has escaped and, of course, it roams the desert killing cattle, horses and humans until everybody can put two and two together... mostly as a not bad special effect superimposition of a real tarantula interacting with miniature sets and being projected against real life actors in some sequences. I think there’s probably some puppet work here too but, in regards to the big spider’s many on screen appearances, the puppetry is kept to a minimum.

So that’s the set up and, it’s not a terrible film to be sure (fourth biggest box office hit of the year) but, I have to say, the storyline and lack of any real twists and turns leaves me a little cold when compared to other movies like this. However, some of the make up effects, such as when Leo G. Carrol first shows signs of acromegaly, are put together extremely well. Alas, on the last time you see him, just before he is injected with venom by the tarantula so it can eat him, the make up is so over the top that he appears to have one eyeball that has melted all the way down the side of his face. If this sounds silly, it is.

What also sounds silly but, really isn’t, is the way the live footage of a real tarantula is scaled up and inserted into the shots. This kind of approach rarely looks good but, in Tarantula, Jack Arnold just about gets away with it... it looks quite acceptable and decent. I say almost because, on one tell tale shot where the big guy is one again clambering over a small mountain, some of its legs disappear behind the sky so, you can definitely see where the live action and the miniature were badly lined up, in that instance. 

And, big spoiler here, the Tarantula is finally put down in the final reel by a jet fighter pilot firing rockets or napalm or some such. The close up shots of the pilots eyes (pretty much the only thing visible of his face) combined with his voice, made me sit up straight. I looked it up and this is, indeed, the second uncredited screen role in a Jack Arnold film for a young Clint Eastwood, seen here piloting a jet long before his stint in Firefox. And, of course, this film’s leading lady would, as I said earlier, play a supporting part in four of Clint’s movies too. I wonder if this film is the first time they met... or even if they did meet as, I don’t think Clint shares a screen with anyone in this film... just sits in the cockpit, talking into his radio. 

And that’s me pretty much done with the quite entertaining but, really not great, Tarantula. The score is a mix of original and old rerecorded and tracked in pieces, from the sound of it... the opening Universal logo was the tip off for me on that front, which begins with the same opening bars as Creature From The Black Lagoon. It’s all quite effective though and very much of its time. Let’s face it, though, while Tarantula may not have the thrills and spills of certain other, more thoughtful atomic age monster movies, it’s still quite watchable and, if you have a hankering for spending time with this kind of thing (and who doesn’t?), then you’ll certainly want to be adding Tarantula to your list, if you’ve not seen it before. 

New Year's Day 2026

 

Happy New Year 2026

Well, it’s been a terrible year for me. 

Started okayish and I had a good couple of weeks off from work in August but, yeah, everything this year was overshadowed by the passing of my father at the end of October. Still picking up all the pieces for that one and probably for a long time to come.

Half the stuff I wanted to get up on the blog last year happened and, some of it didn’t. So, as per usual, this is a very rough guide to what you might expect to see reviewed on the blog this year...

So the Dirty Harry films for sure, the Bruce Lee movies and more secret agent titles. I’m hoping to finish off Severin’s magnificent All The Haunts Be Ours box so I can start putting those up too. Plus the remainder of the Jesse Stone TV movies. I’m also hoping to finally get around to watching and reviewing the first few Emmanuelle (with a double M) films, along with a whole raft of Black Emanuelle (with a single M) films, plus a few other sexy titles (... “there’s an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door”, is all I’m saying... along with a ‘Thanks very much Melusine label’!).

Oh... and thanks to the likes of Vinegar Syndrome and Severin, I should be revisiting some unreviewed Dario Argento titles in new transfers too. 

So, a little to look forward to there at least, I would say.

Anyway, have a Happy New Year and, like always, normal review service returns tomorrow.

Top 15 Films of 2025

 

Fifteen Favourite 
First Release Films of 2025

Now then, more than the usual caveats apply to my list this year... 

My father got very sick in September and then passed away at the end of October. Consequently, the blog was shut down for over a month and, another knock on effect was that I haven’t, so far, been able to get to the cinema since September. So I’ve missed loads of potential films which might well have made it into my top ten and perhaps even my number one spot (though, that movie is pretty much ‘in the bag’, so to speak). This perhaps also partially explains why this year’s list is only 15 films as opposed to last year’s 30.

So possible contenders I didn’t see were... Now You See Me Now You Don’t, Good Boy, The Running Man and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Along with a whole host of others I’ve probably forgotten about. So please bear with me on this stuff. Also, the list is pretty much all American movies again... it’s not that I didn’t see many foreign language films, just that I didn’t really rate the ones I saw as being special enough to make the list so... yeah, it is what it is, I’m afraid. 

Anyway, here’s the list with the usual link to the full review on the title... so just click each title to get to the review. Please remember, the UK release dates on some of these are for this year, although at least one of them was 2024 in the US. In ascending order they are...

15. A Working Man
Just scraping into my top fifteen is this trusty, tried formula action flick to the tune of  ‘Jason Statham goes up to eleven on the bad guys!’. A more serious brand of The Stath this time around and it keeps me going until The Beekeeper 2 gets released. 

14. Novocaine
Absolute silliness with a ‘what if the ‘no pain’ villain from The World Is Not Enough used his powers for good in a mild mannered way’ kind of premise. There’s absolutely no way the main protagonist could actually survive what happens to him in this film but, I dunno, Hollywoodland seems to think that not feeling pain is somehow synonymous with not having the lasting effects of the accompanying injury. Still, unbridled silliness does count for a lot so, on the list it goes. 

13. Ballerina
What if John Wick was a hot female? Well, here’s the answer, where she’s somehow shoehorned into a gap between John Wick films which, once Keanu shows up, makes no sense in terms of the continuity. Still, since when did that spoil my appetite for a sexy woman jumping around and beating everybody up (well, okay, a few times but not here, I can forgive it somewhat). 

12. Nobody 2
Okay, so this wasn’t nearly as good as the first movie but, it’s just nice catching up with the main protagonist and also seeing a little more of his wife in action for this one.

11. Jurassic World Rebirth
If you’d have told me a year ago a Jurassic World movie would be on my top fifteen list, well... let’s just say that nobody had any right, after the fiasco of the last three movies, to expect anything decent from this one at all but, nope, this was a much more fun movie than I’d expected. Completely took me by surprise.

10. Superman
Okay, I hate the fact that the DC cinematic universe has already been rebooted and it just makes no sense to me after all that hard work of the previous films in the series. However, I didn’t hate this and, well, in a word... Krypto. A live action movie with Superman’s dog (even though the reveal at the end shows it’s not actually his dog) was always going to hit big with me. I can live with it... so far.

9. The Last Showgirl
Finally, people are taking Pamela Anderson seriously as an actress... and good for her. This heartbreaking portrait of a woman trying to keep herself afloat is amazing and the great Dave Bautista is equally fantastic as her leading man. 

8. Bridget Jones - Mad About The Boy
Well, I loved the first movie when it came out all those years ago but was left rather lukewarm by the two sequels. This one, however, brings Bridget back with a bang and it’s a satisfying conclusion to the franchise, for sure. 

7. Drop 
Okay, a clichéd old plot is this time set mostly in a restaurant. I wasn’t expecting a lot from this tired old premise but, honestly, it was so well filmed and performed that it won me over in no time. The Bear McCreary score helped a lot too.

6. M3GAN 2.0
Wow, a sequel to one of the most popular horror movies in years completely underperformed at the box office and was almost universally hated. I guess I’m out of tune with the times again because, although I loved the first one, I also thought this was a great move to keep the franchise fresh. They ditched the horror and turned it into M3GAN meets Mission Impossible meets Charlie’s Angels. Worked for me... loved it.

5. Tornado 
Well, I certainly didn’t expect to have ‘Scottish female samurai movie’ on my ‘top films which somehow managed to get released in UK cinemas’ Bingo card but, here it is and it was truly wonderful.

4. The Long Walk
Read this over 40 years ago and wondered why nobody had made a movie of it. Well, it’s finally here and it’s a pretty intense take on the original Stephen King (or rather Richard Bachman) novel. The ending is, I believe, not what it seems... and is all the better for it.

3. Presence
Steven Soderbergh brought out two films in UK cinemas this year, both within six weeks of each other. And they both made my top three! With one of them snagging my number one spot, no less. This one is him doing something slightly different with what could have been a traditional ghost story.

2. The Phoenician Scheme
And once again, Wes Anderson brings out a movie which shows why he’s one of the greatest of the living American directors. Another brilliant, funny and witty movie with some wonderfully fun performances. 

1. Black Bag
Soderbergh’s second film of the year is his take on the cold war spy novel as popularised by such writers and John Le Carre and Len Deighton back in the 1960s. Indeed, his main protagonist here is named George (presumably after George Smiley) and wears Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer NHS glasses. So a film which very much wears its influences on its sleeve but then takes us into more intimate territory. An absolutely fantastic piece of cinema.

Lady Reporter aka The Blonde Fury

 

Blonde Fury Road

Lady Reporter 
aka The Blonde Fury
aka Shi jie da shai
Hong Kong/USA 1989 Directed by Hoi Mang
Golden Harvest/88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Next up in my Cynthia Rothrock watch is Lady Reporter, or The Blonde Fury as it is known in some territories. It’s noted for being the first (and quite possibly the last) Hong Kong action film to have a US actor receiving top billing... so that’s really something. 

This one has Madam Rothrock playing an FBI operative named Cindy, summoned to Hong Kong to go undercover as a female photojournalist... at a paper whom they suspect are printing forged bank notes. So she stays with her friend Judy (payed by Elisabeth Lee), whose father is the prosecutor trying to put the mob boss organising the counterfeiting behind bars. Well, the reporter job only lasts one day as she quickly confirms that the faked money is being printed at the newspaper (but can’t yet prove it... it all ends in a fight after day one, as you would expect from this kind of movie). So, it has to be said, since she’s only a reporter for about ten minutes of the film, the Lady Reporter title is maybe much less of a fit than The Blonde Fury Rothrock becomes, when she’s kicking bad guy ass in this. 

Other stand out actors in this one include Siu-Ho Chin, Hoi Mang and Roy Chiao (who many may remember as the Chinese mob boss of 1935 Shanghai in the opening scenes of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom).They’re all pretty good in this and quite entertaining in their own ways. 

Now, if you’re not used to watching these kinds of early to late 80s Hong Kong action vehicles, I should probably shout out again that the humour in these is quite broad and often slapstick. This one is no exception although, I would have to say it’s a little less annoying here than in most of these movies... so this one may be a good jumping on point for some. One point that did make me laugh is when, after the prosecutor, played by Chiao, has gone mad through a nefarious deed of the villain but is kidnapped back from hospital by Cindy and her friends to fake a photo shoot of his having regained his senses so he can prosecute the villain again, they glue eyes over the sleeping patient’s eyelids and hold up his limbs to make it look like he’s awake. At the end of the scene we pan around to another wall where it becomes obvious that the eyes have been cut out of a poster of Bruce Lee. 

The action scenes and choreography are great in this, as you would expect and, like the majority of movies shot there, the actors and actresses were certainly not discouraged from performing their own stunts on these things. Luckily, a hard working talent like Cynthia Rothrock manages to pull it off and make it look relatively easy. Some highlights would be where, in the middle of a fight, she lands on top of a ladder and then turns it around while balancing on it to reface her opponent... and another wonderful moment where she ‘Donald ‘O `Connor’s’ it, running midair around the two walls of a corner to carry on her fight... similar to O’ Connor’s gravity defying moments performing Make ‘Em Laugh in Singin’ In The Rain except... here she’s doing it in high heels. There’s even an action scene where the main part of the fighting takes place up and down some bamboo scaffolding work which, made me wonder if this film was part of the ‘inspiration’ for a similar fight in Marvel’s relatively recent movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (reviewed by me here). 

My understanding is that in the scene where she was required to jump off a second story building and land on boxes while holding a fake baby... and then filming it again from a slightly lower height so she could be seen landing on her heels... it all took its toll on the actress for those two days of filming and a doctor gave her a load of pills because, in his opinion, she’d ‘jumbled up’ her internal organs.

Whichever way you cut it though, Lady Reporter aka The Blonde Fury is a pretty entertaining slice of Hong Kong action where Rothrock truly gets to shine, as much as an actress as she is a martial arts performer, I would say. I quite liked this one and even the droopy, synth-pop influenced soundtrack in parts didn’t distract me from the quality of the final product, despite the many noted continuity errors which occurred from reshoots. This certainly won’t be the last of this lady’s films I’ll be reviewing for the blog. 

Buck Privates

Private Parts

Buck Privates
USA 1941 
Directed by Arthur Lubin
Universal/Shout Factory Blu Ray Zone A

Following on from the box office failure of One Night In The Tropics (reviewed here) but, also marking the success and popularity of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in their joint movie debut in that film (although, it turns out, not quite in Lou's case... more on that in a silent Laurel & Hardy review coming to the blog), they were signed to at least two more pictures and Buck Privates was the first of many where they were the main draw. Having said that, there are a couple of other characters who are also there to provide a kind of romantic rivalry in the film and who share the limelight with the two comedians.

Bud and Lou play two illegal street salesmen who run away from a police sergeant and join the line in a cinema for cover. They’re both too stupid to realise it’s a line for ‘peacetime recruitment’ for a year’s national service, to get people trained up as soldiers ‘just in case’ America entered the war... and so end up recruited themselves. Also recruited is a millionaire playboy portrayed by Lee Bowman and his ex-servant and main romantic competitor, played by Alan Curtis. Both of these mostly loathe each other and are both after the same army gal, played by Jane Frazee and, when the camera isn’t concentrating on various Abbott and Costello routines worked into the story, the rivalry between these two is shown as quite cut throat and nasty, until the rich playboy saves the life of his ex-employee and they both do their company proud in an army game at the finish of the movie.

So, yeah, it’s all the kinds of gags you would expect from this kind of ‘little people joining up for a greater cause’ movie but, of course, in terms of American movies, it would have been one of their earlier ones so, at the time, it wouldn’t have seemed quite to formula. Indeed, the movie was a huge hit, making more money than any other Universal picture had made up until that point. 

The comedy is mostly good stuff... some of the physical stuff is really creaky and there’s a hell of a lot of ad libbing going on (for instance, a drill routine was supposed to last three minutes but went on for over five, because all the ad libs from the boys were kept in) but the fast dialogue shenanigans, many once again based on ways Abbot could con money out of Costello, are all great and very witty. There’s also an early appearance of a boxing match that Costello gets conned into fighting which, if I remember rightly, was revisited in various ways by the duo over the years. 

Interjected among the comedy is the story of the rivalry between the two other male leads and, some really great song and dance numbers including The Andrews Sisters. This was the first of a few collaborations they filmed with Bud and Lou and they got a few big hit singles out of this one, including the tremendous Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Of Company B, of course. 

A couple of things to mention here too. Firstly, keep an eye out for the cook who features prominently with Lou in a musical scene in the army kitchen tent... it’s none other than Shemp Howard of The Three Stooges fame. Secondly, that long drill scene (which I have to say, was not exactly a highlight of the picture for me) was something that the Japanese used to show their soldiers during the war, to demonstrate just how stupid the American soldiers were. Hmmm... a somewhat back handed compliment I guess. 

And, like I said, Buck Privates really did the business at the box office and the prints were at a shortage and in demand from cinemas. In fact, it delayed the production of the next Abbott and Costello film, also directed by Lubin (who did a number of these and was given a $5000 bonus by the company after this one proved so successful), because the studio wanted to give it a bigger budget and restyle it to a bigger picture. So I guess that’ll be the third film coming up in this beautifully restored Abbott And Costello - The Universal Collection Blu Ray set so... I’ll get onto that one soon.