Ash Ketchum

With BILLY THE KID RETURNS (1938) last night and KAMEN RIDER X SUPER SENTAI SUPER HERO TAISEN (2012) this morning, I've now seen something from every decade from the 1930s to the 2010s.

This comes after a week dominated by Italian genre films, seen on a mix of VHS and DVD editions, including three by Sergio Corbucci, one by Sergio Sollima, and one by Fernando Di Leo. Best of all, four had music by Ennio Morricone. Let's see, there were three westerns (THE MERCENARY, COMPAŅEROS, and SARTANA IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH), two crime thrillers (THE FAMILY, THE BOSS), one war picture (DIRTY HEROES) and one sword 'n' sandal mini-epic (THE SLAVE).

DIRTY HEROES (1967), a World War II caper film with an international cast and a moving subplot about a Nazi general (Curt Jurgens) married to a woman who's secretly a Jew (Daniela Bianchi, pictured below) was the great surprise of this viewing. I've had a VHS copy of it for years but hadn't watched it until now, having only previously seen it on a b&w TV about 35-40 years ago. The VHS had the complete 121-minute cut. (When it ran on TV it was always in a two-hour time slot with commercials, so we only got to see 90 minutes of it.) The film had a much bigger budget than we usually saw in Italo war pictures.



THE SLAVE (1962), in which Steve Reeves stars as the son of Spartacus, also had a much bigger budget than films in its genre usually got. They filmed a lot of it on location in Egypt so that when you see the pyramids or the Sphinx in the background, it's the real thing!

My only problem, though, is that Reeves looks a lot less formidable without his Hercules beard.

walletboyniac

Get out! The Ramones' acting (and accents) add to the charm of of the movie.

pacaway

Here here! and PJ could NOT have been having more fun! It's infectious!

Hey, Ho... Let's Go!!

pacaway

I don't know what it was about your post that made me think I should watch this other than the cool titles, but I did anyway. Yeesh! That was a painful 1:22! Nothing about the posters, descriptions, DVD cases or anything else even comes close to describing what this movie is about or like. It is exploitation at its finest! Way over built up and WAY underdelivered. At least it was free and the whole point of this month is to make it painful! It succeeded there!

malazar

I just watched this last night. Those songs were amazingly bad in a non-amusing way. The rape song you mentioned was particularly awful. It is hard to imagine someone thinking that was funny at any time. This ended up being a surprisingly more interesting movie than I expected with all the various experiments and discussions they did. It might have been better watching it on mute with subtitles though for sure.

shadokitty

Started today with another first time view on the Drive In Classics channel on Roku, CB Hustlers. Bad acting, but enough T&A to make the movie very watchable. . IMDB listed it as a comedy, but it was almost a softcore with all the money shots in it. There was one in the first 30 seconds of the movie even.

caligulathegod

"And if we like your songs maybe we'll pay you and Mr. McGloob a visit."

LOVE Rock N Roll High School.

BobO'Link

Doesn't it, though!?!?

Yes, I meant Blanc - chalk up another one to lack of proofreading... Thanks!

BobO'Link

Why, oh *why* are such great pepla films, and those 50s/60s adventure/action films, relegated to the Warner Archive!?! Issues with MOD aside I have trouble paying their prices for these titles (even with the "good" sales)!

Because of your post I now know The Slave as well as The Tartars (1962), Hercules, Samson And Ulysses (1965), and Gold for the Caesars (1964) are available... I don't peruse the WA titles often due to the high prices. The bad part is I grew up watching many of those and they are the films I *really* want in my collection!

wayoutjunk

I don't know if it would be worth your while, but you might want to look into Warner Archive Instant. Just go to warnerarchive.com and look for the link there. It's $9.99 a month, but you can get a free 2 week trial to get you through the Challenge. I'm not trying to shill for them (I don't have a membership myself), but I thought you might be interested if you weren't aware of it.

Tony

Ash Ketchum

Yeah, I took advantage of a 5-for-$50 sale at WA and got THE SLAVE and four other titles. Of the three other ones you mentioned, I have seen THE TARTARS and GOLD FOR THE CAESARS in recent years, on VHS copies taped off cable, and while they were interesting, I feel no compulsion to upgrade them. I remember liking HERCULES, SAMSON AND ULYSSES on TV a few decades ago, but I have no idea how it'll hold up. I'd love to see DUEL OF THE TITANS again, the one with Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott as Romulus and Remus. I'd also pay for decent copies of HERCULES and HERCULES UNCHAINED.

SterlingBen

I was scanning post and initially got very excited when I thought that you had watched:

davidh777

Knocked a couple titles off my to-watch list that seemed appropriate for this challenge: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and Machete Kills. Both, coincidentally, with Amber Heard. Then again, it might not be coincidental that Amber Heard is on my to-watch list.

BobO'Link

I watched Majin, Monster of Terror last night and was totally caught off guard. It was *not* what I was expecting! I thought I'd get a fairly standard Kaiju film but instead got a somewhat grim film about oppression of indigenous population by a evil overlord who usurped the throne of the reigning ruler with a bit of Kaiju as bookends. It was *very* good! I liked that Majin is not necessarily good or bad but just seems to right wrongs as needed. If the second film is as good they'll be worth the price of the set by themselves.

I'll be purchasing the original Japanese versions of these for sure!

pacaway

I'm going to have to be finding myself those movies I guess. I've never heard of them before.

Chet Desmond

Greatest line delivery ever!

wayoutjunk

I have a question about the ending of one of the movies I just saw,The Big Doll House. I'll spoiler it in case somebody else wants to see it.



I was pleasantly surprised by The Big Doll House. I thought there was going to be more nudity and sex. There was nudity, but sometimes even it was restrained. (You could tell a woman being whipped was topless from the back, but from the front her hair always conveniently fell over her breasts.) I have a feeling that later "women in prison" movies dispensed with the plot and threw in more of the sexual stuff. It was also fun to see Pam Grier in a very early role.

I also saw What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, and liked the thoughtful questioning of sexual and racial matters between the stunts with naked women. And I agree with just about everybody else here: the rape song was pretty uncomfortable. I was curious about some of the scenes going on at that time. It looked like they brought in various guys to play somebody raping a woman in bed for a movie. Was this from a longer scene that was later cut?

Ash Ketchum

I saw THE BIG DOLL HOUSE on a double bill with SHAFT some 40-odd years ago. I'm wondering if what you saw was a reedited version. I don't remember the nudity being restrained, but then I was just barely out of high school then and was somewhat less discriminating. As for that ending line you quote, my guess it that it was tacked-on somewhere along the way to make it look like law-and-order was eventually served. I certainly don't remember it that way, but then it has been a long time.

Dimension X

I remembered Jack Hill talking about that in the commentary. So I grabbed my copy of the DVD, and gave it another listen. Here's what he had to say:

Ash Ketchum

Thanks for that confirmation, DX. It's always reassuring to know my memory hasn't failed me.

BTW, there's a low-budget American crime film I've been wanting to see for years and I discovered it on YouTube, so I watched it last night. It's called PLUNDER ROAD (1957) and it's a caper film focused on the getaway efforts of a team of five robbers who've just taken $10 million in gold off a train headed for the U.S. Mint and have split it up into three cargoes hidden on three different trucks and sent out at different times and along different routes headed west. The suspense comes from what happens along the way. The robbers have taken all necessary precautions, but slip-ups are inevitable and the police are shown to be alert and competent. At no point does anybody do anything in a contrived, stupid way. Everything is absolutely believable. I like crime films like this. The mostly no-name cast is led by Gene Raymond, a onetime light leading man in the 1930s, and two genre stalwarts, Elisha Cook and Wayne Morris.

Here's the link:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/30CC99gQpnU?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

wayoutjunk

Thanks for clearing that up, Dimension X. I thought that last bit seemed out of place. Guess I wasn't the only one!

I've got another question for the assembled masses here. I may be going to the drive-in this weekend to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Need for Speed as a double feature. I know I can count Cap as my Drive-In movie, but can I count Need for Speed for my Carsploitation movie?

caligulathegod

I would count it as Carsploitation. If there is any doubt, seeing it at the Drive-in overrides it.

ntnon

Words to live by/quote ceaselessly/put on a T-shirt:

"It has been a long journey, Helen. {dramatic pause} {dramatic pause}
Welcome to The Moon!" - Alpha, Cat-Women of the Moon

"We have no use for men!" - Beta, Cat-Women of the Moon

"Strange.... I should care what happens to them..... yet I don't!" - Helen, Cat-Women of the Moon

"You stupid bitch! Do what you're told!" - Bodine, The Big Doll House

ntnon

I assume they were all meant as 'satire' rather than 'humour' per se, although I thought the social commentary included in them all - different people have different reactions, what would you do? - was essentially an ethics/social studies lecture set to music. So the morals of the words probably reached people easier than if they were just voiceover.

I was interested in both the event (and the commentary on the event) of Funt asking an actress to just take off her clothes for him, so he could assess whether he wanted to offer her a part - and her swift and easy compliance. Obviously it implied that she knew that was what the job was, so it wasn't just a 'casting couch' situation, but even so...!

ntnon

Particularly with the write-up (at Amazon) and comments elsewhere about how it played up those elements, it was interesting to think it played them down... maybe it's all down to changing opinions over time.

It was meant to be, though, wasn't it...? Satire and social commentary... like Avenue Q on racism.

I wondered about that, too - and if it was maybe even from an entirely different film, or was just added to point out that all the people thinking THIS was exploitative should take a look at other "entertainment" films, or similar.

EDIT: Watching JUST that song again, I definitely think it's meant to be uncomfortable and encourage a good hard look at oneself. It reminds me a lot (in style as well as content) of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and Neil Innes (hence also Monty Python), and it's a clever as well as thought-provoking little ditty: people read the line "he raped her" in a number of books - both throwaway and 'proper fiction' - but there's a lot more too it that that. The scenes point out the struggle and the fight, while the intercut other scenes highlight the other side of the song: lusting after someone you see tends to connote thoughts not-a-million-miles away from rape. Lifting the skirt on a doll, thinking impure thoughts in a roomful of women... obviously it's the act that's illegal and punishable, but thinking about it is arguably only a small step away from acting on it.