Dr. Robert Ordway resolves to take a rural vacation, doing some hunting and fishing, but soon finds himself in the midst of a typhoid epidemic — with woes in part attributable to an old-fashioned doctor’s resistance to modern methods — that has set the stage for murder as well. The story is a bit meandering, …
Read the full post →“<em>The Millerson Case</em> (Columbia, 1947)”
Cowboy Trigger Carson (Harry Carey) sets out to infiltrate and thwart a band of outlaws headed up by rancher Luke Todd (Tom London), whose brother is in love with the daughter of one of Luke’s principal opponents. The fairly standard plot nevertheless has some appeal: A particular highlight is a rattlesnake that one of the …
Read the full post →“<em>The Last of the Clintons</em> (Ajax, 1935)”
Laurel & Hardy are vacationing in France, and Ollie has become enamored of an innkeeper’s daughter, who — unknown to him — is already married to an officer in the French Foreign Legion. Disappointed in his romance, Ollie resolves to end it all, taking Stan along with him, but instead decides to join the Legion …
Read the full post →“<em>The Flying Deuces</em> (RKO, 1939)”
A grumpy and bedridden man is shot down while a storm rages. Which of his greedy relatives committed the crime? Or was it someone outside the family instead? A local clergyman investigates, using interviews with the various parties to discard the red herrings and eventually find the true killer, who is trapped thanks to a …
Pia Zadora stars as Dee Dee, who just wants a chance to sing with a band, though her jerk of a boyfriend, who has a Stray Cats-like rockabilly group, doesn’t want her to do so. She gets her chance, however, when aliens arrive and decide to perform at the local high school cotillion — if …
Read the full post →“<em>Voyage of the Rock Aliens</em> (1984)”
Tarzan (Lex Barker) works to resolve a situation in which members of a tribe suffering from plague are kidnapping women from neighboring tribes to sacrifice in the hope of averting the sickness. There’s a new Jane in this one, Vanessa Brown; this would be her only outing in the role. Barker is lithe and fit …
Read the full post →“<em>Tarzan and the Slave Girl</em> (RKO, 1950)”
Despite the allure of the locations and what at first blush seems an interesting plot, the final film in the series of Fu Manchu movies starring Christopher Lee as the fiendish doctor is an exercise in tedium, perhaps even more so than the last one I watched, The Blood of Fu Manchu. Here, the criminal …
Read the full post →“<em>The Castle of Fu Manchu</em> (1969)”
A crime fighter, City Hunter (Jackie Chan), reluctantly becomes involved in battling a criminal plot to loot a cruise ship, finding some allies and plenty of opponents — including one from the past — along the way. There are many characters, action-filled sequences, and comedy as well, though the jumble isn’t in the end particularly …
A king murdered by his elder son (Jack Palance) passes along the secret to a magic sword to the younger (John Terry), who then busies himself righting wrongs. When his older brother, now a ruthless brigand leader, kidnaps an abbess and demands a ransom for her return, Hawk “the Slayer” assembles an interspecies team — …
A mine owner in fear for his life sends for great English detective Sexton Blake (David Farrar), and the sleuth soon finds himself investigating murder and more. Hectic and choppy, with far too much going on to follow the story as it jumps around, but interesting withal, though the version I saw was also so …
Read the full post →“<em>The Echo Murders</em> (Anglo-American, 1945)”
