Sexy friendly disc jockey Norah Dain (Juliet Prowse) spins the dance tunes for the punters at the nightclub she works. Dropping jiving, hip swinging records for the happy drunks dancing and twisting the night hours away. She’s a nice popular girl who gets attention from a few admirers and looked after by the Manhattan nightclub boss Marian Freeman (Elaine Stritch). Continue reading
Much like last month’s Ground Zero took a real life story and mixed it with a batch of fiction to amp up the drama.
Orion’s Belt is based on factual happenings in the Svalbard regions of Norway where the games of Cold War were being played out between Russia, America and the UK. Real brinkmanship shenanigans, with Norway, and their scandinavian friends, sat right in the middle like the stars in Orion’s Belt. Continue reading
I do like a list, even a late list! Here’s what has been watched in May 2017. Continue reading
Been slowly introducing the classics to my two children and what better excuse is there than Father’s Day. Nothing beats family time, to me, than watching a movie I so loved as a teenager and hopefully passing on it’s “greatness” to another generation. Predator, Total Recall, Rambo, Aliens have all been unleashed on them but this time it’s John Carpenter’s The Thing and quite frankly this one is a freak show. Continue reading
Director Robert Aldrich teams up once again with Jack Palance. After enjoying their last outing together, the 1956 war film Attack, I was keen on seeing our Jack in another hero role. Off the back of Attack, IMDB recommended me the wonderfully titled 1959 film Ten Seconds To Hell. A story of six German ex-soldiers returning to Berlin to help clear and make safe the city from unexploded British and American bombs. Continue reading
Jack Palance is one of those actors that I know so well. His voice is so recognisable and that unique face of his seems to have played nothing but bad guys. He is probably best known to a certain generation for playing old badass rancher Curly Washburn alongside Billy Crystal in the 1991 comedy adventure classic City Slickers. But he’s popped up in a string of 80’s films which included Batman, Hawk The Slayer and Tango & Cash, to name a few, usually doing his panto villain role. Continue reading
After being so impressed with director and star Cornel Wilde in magnificent form with his chase movie The Naked Prey I had been excitingly awaiting his 1967 follow up Beach Red. This time he stars as a Captain MacDonald, a leader of a US marine unit sent in to fight the might of the Japanese who have a stronghold on a small island in the Pacific during World War 2. Continue reading
Donald is gonna think I’m stalking him! This is the third film in a row with the versatile, dependable Mr Pleasence and this time it was purely by chance as I didn’t know he was in it. What a great surprise. Cul-De-Sac was first then Ground Zero.
Was ticking this one off the list mainly because of Charles Bronson and second being that it’s a Don Siegel movie I knew about but wondered if I had actually seen it. I hadn’t and I can report that it’s a fine piece of 70’s drama. Continue reading
One way to write a good screenplay is to use historical facts for your plot and then jazz it up with some fiction. Ground Zero really doesn’t need “jazzing up” as the original source material is horrific in it’s own right but with a tweak here and there this 80’s Australian film casts a thrilling story. It also scores big points for a collection of amazing imagery which give the outback set pieces a science fiction movie feel. Continue reading
Can you judge a film by it’s cover? Yeah course you can in this case! Flicking through a few movie titles on a search for something different I stumbled across the intriguing title of Cul-De-Sac. What grabbed me in was the minimalist artwork from the cover of The Criterion Collection release and then the hook, line and sinker, Donald Pleasence. Oh I do love a good Donald performance and this film highlights his quirky style to the fullest. Continue reading
Wolfmans Cult Film 