The Forgotten Pistolero (1969)

The Forgotten Pistolero (Il pistolero dell'Ave Maria) is a fairly obscure spaghetti western, and it’s quite a pleasant surprise.

Rafael and Sebastian are two young men who encounter one another and at first it appears they have little in common. In fact Rafael has been searching for Sebastian for years. They were childhood friends. A lengthy flashback sequence now intervenes.

Sebastian and his sister were the children of a famous Mexican general. When he returned from the war (and I’m not entirely sure which war this was) he received an unexpected welcome from his wife Anna. She and her lover Tomas proceeded to murder him. Sebastian and his friend Rafael (the son of a servant) had fled after the murder and had not been seen since. But while vengeance might be delayed it cannot be avoided indefinitely.

Sebastian will eventually discover that his family situation was actually even more complicated than it seemed.

The plot is based vaguely on the story of the murder of King Agamemnon after his return from the Trojan War.

Director Ferdinando Baldi had a lengthy career that seems to have spent largely making peplums and spaghetti westerns. There’s nothing flashy about this movie but Baldi’s direction is more than competent. The script is clever and (by the standards of 1960s Italian genre movies) fairly coherent. The pacing is excellent and technically the movie is very very solid.

The acting is also quite strong. Leonard Mann as Sebastian, Pietro Martellanza as Rafael, Luciano Paluzzi as the murderous Anna and Alberto de Mendoza as the treacherous but smooth Tomas all give fine performances.

Roberto Pregadio’s score does its best to sound like an Ennio Morricone score but it works extremely well.

There’s no one element that really stands out, this Italian-Spanish co-production is simply a well-made and very entertaining example of its genre with no obvious faults and it all holds together nicely.

This movie has been released under various alternative titles, including Gunman of Ave Maria.

I picked this one up, along with a stack of other spaghetti westerns, in a bargain bin. There’s absolutely no indication on either the disc or the box as to its origin or who released it except that it’s an NTSC all-region disc. It’s letterboxed and the picture quality is exceptionally good for a bargain DVD.

Espionage in Tangiers (1965)

Espionage in Tangiers (Marc Mato, agente S. 077) is a 1965 eurospy movie and if you’re familiar with the genre you’ll know what to expect.

These movies weren’t just cheap knock-offs of the James Bond formula; they were ultra-cheap knockoffs. If you approach them expecting the quality of special effects and stunts that the 1960s Bond movies provided you’ll be disappointed. But they have their own charm, and despite what you might read in some online reviews this is actually a pretty decent example of the breed.

There is of course a death ray that has been developed by an idealistic scientist. In these types of movies idealistic and kindly scientists were always working on things like death rays. Of course their dream was always that their invention would bring about world peace. Needless to say the death ray is stolen by certain unspecified bad guys.

Secret Agent S 077 (played by Argentinian actor Luis Dávila) is assigned to recover the dearly device. The assignment will of course bring him into contact with numerous beautiful glamorous women, but he’s a professional and he knows that’s the price you pay for being a secret agent.

There are naturally a series of double-crosses. This film has more than its share. In the opening sequence we’ve already gone beyond mere double-crosses or triple-crosses and we’ve reached the level of quadruple-crosses.

Trying to describe the plot in any detail would be futile. The plot exists purely to provide an excuse for lots of action, and in that area the movie delivers pretty strongly.

The tone is definitely tongue-in-cheek, which is how it should be.

The acting is B-movie standard although social mention should be made of Alberto Dalbés who is great fun as the twisted sadistic criminal genius Rigo Orel.

There’s some nifty location footage of Tangiers which adds to the atmosphere.

Dark Sky have released this one as part of a two-movie drive-in pack complete with vintage drive-in ads. The movie is letterboxed and the picture quality is acceptable. Given that most eurospy movies are only available in pan-and-scanned grey market versions we should be grateful that this one looks as good as it does.

This Spanish-Italian co-production should please eurospy fans.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959)

The 50s was the decade that saw Hollywood go crazy for Jules Verne. It’s not that difficult to understand why. If you’re committed to the idea that the best way to combat the threat of television is by making lavish big-budget colour Cinemascope epics then Verne is ideal source material. The really surprising thing is that most of these movies turned out rather well, and 20th Century-Fox’s 1959 Journey to the Centre of the Earth is no exception.

Sir Oliver Lindenborok (James Mason) is a crusty, eccentric but basically good-natured geology professor at Edinburgh University. In 1880 he is presented by a student with what at first seem to be merely a rather interesting volcanic rock. Then he notices that it’s unusually heavy. Could there be something inside? There certainly could. It’s a metal plumb bob, but more intriguing still is that there’s a message on it. In Icelandic. The message, written by a famous Icelandic explorer named Arne Saknussem who vanished a century earlier, is that if you descend into a certain extinct volcano in Iceland you can reach the centre of the Earth.

Being a professor of geology our hero is understandably quite excited by this. He writes to an eminent geologist in Stockholm, a man renowned as an authority on volcanoes. Rather than the reply he was hoping for he receives a message from the university in Stockholm. Professor Göteborg has suddenly disappeared. Lindenbrook realises at once that the treacherous Göteborg has set off for Iceland, hoping to be the first man to reach the centre of the earth and return to tell the tale. Lindenbrook has no intention of allowing himself to be beaten to this prize, and the race is on.

Lindenbrook sets off on his own expedition. He is to be accompanied by his favourite student (soon to be his son-in-law) and by a friendly and immensely strong Icelandic farmer. There a few more surprises in store for him. There is yet another rival in the field, a descendent of the original Saknussem. And Professor Lindenbrook finds himself with a fourth member of his expedition. Carla Göteborg (Arlene Dahl) proves to be a rather distracting presence for the professor although she’s a distraction he comes to be rather fond of. And of course she provides the necessary romantic sub-plot.

There will be many perils to be faced, both human and natural.

Disney had set a very high standard for Verne adaptations with their 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and while Disney’s movie remains the best of them all Journey to the Centre of the Earth is not far behind.

The special effects look 1950s but they also look wonderful, and help to give this film much of its charm. The world below the surface of the Earth is brought to life with some gorgeous colour effects.

It’s a great story but of course it’s scientifically ludicrous in the light of present-day knowledge. This potential problem was avoided by keeping the late 19th century setting, so the idea seems perfectly plausible to the characters.

Bernard Herrmann’s score should also be mentioned. As he did so often Herrmann captures the spirit of the story perfectly with his music.

Pat Boone is perfectly adequate as the professor’s student and prospective son-in-law. Arlene Dahl makes a great love interest who also turns out to be a bold and courageous member of the expedition. After his sensational performance in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea James Mason was the obvious choice to pay Professor Lindenbrook. It’s a less challenging role than Captain Nemo but it gives Mason the opportunity to have an enormous amount of fun. It’s a delightful performance.

Fox did a superb job of restoring this movie for their DVD release. It looks magnificent.

A great combination of spectacle, adventure, romance and sheer fun. Highly recommended.

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

As director Roger Corman points out on the commentary track to X (X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes) there are two kinds of mad scientist movie. There’s the mad scientist as monster movie, and there’s the mad scientist as obsessed but well-meaning visionary movie. X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes definitely falls into the second category.

Dr James Xavier (Ray Milland) is a dedicated surgeon. He had long been obsessed with the idea that doctors essentially work in the dark. X-rays can give a vague shadowy glimpse inside the body but they are subject to misinterpretation, with often fatal results. If only doctors could see clearly what was going on inside a patient’s body.

To this end Dr Xavier has been experimenting with ways of extending the range of human vision to cover the entire electro-magnetic spectrum rather than just the fairly narrow band represented by visible light. And he believes he has achieved a breakthrough. He now needs an experimental subject, and he decides to use himself.

The experiment is a success, of sorts. Dr Xavier is able to see through solid surfaces, although the experience is rather disturbing. He is able to save the life of a young female patient by diagnosing her illness by looking straight through her skin into her internal organs. Dr Xavier discovers he has other abilities as well - he can see through women’s clothing. He’s a serious and earnest man of science but it has to be admitted that he finds this to be a rather desirable skill.

Unfortunately Dr Xavier’s success does not impress his medical colleagues and he finds himself facing an accusation of malpractice, and shortly afterwards he finds himself on the run accused or murder.

He hides out in a carnival, working as a psychic under the name of Mentalo. Later he meets up again with his assistant, Dr Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vlis). She is keen to help him, but he needs money. Then he realises that he can easily get as much money as he needs - all he has to do is get to Las Vegas. With his x-ray vision he’ll be guaranteed of an unstoppable winning streak. Then he can equip a laboratory and continue his research. But his mind is starting to crack under the strain and his vision is too acute - he sees too much.

While there’s a fair amount of scientific silliness in the plot Corman and his cast play it generally pretty straight. There are moments of comic relief but overall this is not a campfest.

Ray Milland’s intense and committed performance is a major asset. Apparently he not only liked working with Corman, he also (to Corman’s considerable surprise) considered this to be one of his best roles. Even the presence of Don Rickles in the cast (as Mentalo’s manager/frontman) doesn’t give the film a camp feel. Rickles actually gives a fine, rather dark and sinister performance.

The special effects are of course cheap, but they work well enough. The movie was made in widescreen and in Pathécolor. Corman chose Pathécolor because, yes you guessed it, it was cheaper than other types of colour film. But as usual Corman manages to make a cheap movie look quite impressive.

The MGM DVD includes a commentary track by Corman. Most of the MGM Midnite Movies DVDs don’t include any extras so this is a definite bonus. On the other hand MGM usually come up with good DVD transfers and this one is no exception.

This movie takes a fundamentally silly premise and makes a fairly effective serious science fiction movie out of it. Recommended.

High School Caesar (1960)

I love juvenile delinquent movies, and High School Caesar ticks all the relevant boxes. It has drag racing, it has the good girl pitted against the bad girl, it has half-baked psychoanalysis to explain the characters’ motivations, it has high school dramas treated as the stuff of epic tragedy.

Most of all it has that peculiarly American concept, high school as a metaphor for life.

Matt Stevens is the Al Capone of his high school. He runs a protection racket, plus a very lucrative racket in stolen exam papers and a crooked dance racket. To ensure the growth of his criminal empire he needs to be elected as student body president and it goes without saying that the election is accompanied by widespread corruption and intimidation.

Matt has a rival. His rival’s name is Kelly. Kelly is just as good-looking and popular as Matt, and he has his own band of devoted followers and supporters. The difference is that Kelly is a responsible and decent young man. He organises drag races, but he is careful to make sure they take place on deserted stretches of road so that no-one will get hurt.

Matt’s loyal lieutenant is a kid known as Cricket. Cricket is in awe of Matt, because Matt controls everything that matters. Matt’s corrupt organisation produces a healthy financial profit in which Crocket shares, plus Matt controls access to the girls. When Cricket says he wants to date the new girl at school, the beautiful blonde Wanda, Matt assures him that he’ll organise it.

This is where Matt’s smooth organisation encounters its first problems. He instructs his girlfriend Lita to inform Wanda that she will now be dating Cricket, but Wanda prefers hunky blonde nice boy Bob to creepy and geeky Cricket. And Lita starts to show signs of rebelling since she suspects that Matt has eyes for Wanda.

Of course a showdown between the two rival leaders is inevitable, and being a juvenile delinquent movie the showdown must take the form of a drag race. And now Matt’s supremacy is really endangered, since his dad’s Cadillac convertible proves to be no match for Kelly’s car. Matt is humiliated, and vows he will have his revenge. Meanwhile Cricket has been humiliated as well. Wanda just refuses to understand that she’s supposed to date the boys Matt tells her to date. And when Matt can’t deliver on his promise to provide his second-in-command with the girl he promised to him Matt’s prestige really starts to totter. The tragedy is moving to its inevitable conclusion.

No movie of this sort would be complete without a psychiatric explanation of the failings of the juvenile delinquent. We learn that Matt is fabulously rich, but he’s all alone. His parents send him monthly cheques, very substantial cheques, but they’re too busy jet-setting around Europe to bother with their son. He has lots of money, and he has servants, but it doesn’t compensate for the lack of parental love. He’s a poor little rich boy.

He has a lucky gold coin that his father gave him, a coin that will play a vital part in the plot, but it’s also a symbol. It’s all his father has given him, but Matt didn’t want a gold coin, he wanted a real father.

John Ashley plays the role of Matt and surprisingly enough he can in fact act. I’m not saying he’s a great actor or even a very good one, but he’s competent. The other actors are up to basic B-movie standards, but they’re all quite entertaining.

Daria Massey makes a rather effective bad girl. We know she’s the bad girl because she has black hair, as distinct from the good girl Wanda who has blonde hair because she’s, you know, the good girl.

High School Caesar is in the public domain and can be obtained from the usual sources for such movies. My copy came in the St Clair Vision boxed set Classic Teenage Rebels - all PD juvenile delinquent movies, the transfers are what you expect but it’s cheap and the movies are terrific.

High School Caesar is everything you could ask for in a juvenile delinquent movie and if you enjoy the genre then it’s highly recommended.

Sins of Sister Lucia (1978)

The existence of a sub-genre of Japanese anti-Catholic nunsploitation movies, such as Sins of Sister Lucia (Sudojo Lucia: kegasu), might at first glance seem surprising but once you become familiar with the world of 1970s Japanese exploitation movies it starts to make sense. Such movies appealed to the strongly anti-western, anti-authoritarian, anti-traditionalist, Marxist ideology that is so characteristic of 1970s Japanese cinema.

The better Japanese directors of that era infused their movies with enough style and enough weirdness to make them enormous fun in spite of the heavy-handed political messages. But in the hands of lesser directors it could get a bit tedious.

A particular problem with nunsploitation movies is that there are really only a couple of basic nunsploitation plots and most movies in this sub-genre adhere fairly closely to a rigid formula. Again it’s not a problem if you have someone as talented as Norifumi Suzuki in the director’s chair, as is the case with his gloriously outrageous School of the Holy Beast.

Sins of Sister Lucia, from Nikkatsu Studios, shows dramatically what could go wrong in the hands of an unimaginative director such as Koyu Ohara.

This film suffers from yet another problem. Any nunsploitation movies is going to be sleazy. That’s part of the fun. But there was a tendency in some Japanese exploitation movies for the sleaze to become merely vicious and unpleasant rather than fun. That’s definitely the case here.

The plot is pretty standard. Rumiko is the daughter of a corrupt politician. She not only steals the bribe money he had stashed away, she also stabs one of his cronies. She must be punished, but without a scandal, so she is sent to a nunnery. She is now Sister Lucia. It’s the sort of nunnery you find in nunsploitation movies - the nuns are all ex-crazed and most are lesbians. It’s all symbolic of the hypocrisy and corruption of all authority, at least in the eyes of radical film-makers in the 70s.

The arrival in the nunnery of two violent criminals on the run leads to more violence and more sex, until mercifully the police arrive and the movie ends.

There is one extremely good scene, in which the other nuns entrap Lucia in a huge spider’s web of woolen yarn. It’s the one moment of true visual inspiration in the movie. Apart from that it’s all rather pedestrian.

You’d expect copious quantities of sleaze and you certainly get it, but mixed with just a little too much nastiness for my tastes.

Mondo Macabro’s DVD presentation, as always with this company, looks superb and includes some nice extras.

If you want to explore the world of Japanese nunsploitaton you’re much better off seeking out a copy of the movie to go for is School of the Holy Beast (which is also available on DVD).

Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

I usually have a pretty high tolerance for plot incoherence when it comes to Italian giallos and horror flicks but Francesco Barilli’s 1974 Perfume of the Lady in Black (Il profumo della signora in nero) really challenged that tolerance.

Mimsy Farmer is Silvia Hacherman, a pretty blonde scientist who appears to be going slowly mad. She is haunted by memories of her childhood, rather confused and disjointed memories, but memories that obviously relate to something sexual. She is also involved with people who seem to be dabbling in voodoo.

Her hold on reality is gradually becoming more tenuous. As her childhood memories become clearer, her madness grows. Sometimes it’s better to leave the past in the past.

For the first 90 minutes or so it seems to have the potential to be a reasonably entertaining giallo, but then comes the final ten minutes. And that’s when you realise you’ve just wasted 100 minutes of your time as the movie spectacularly self-destructs. Sometimes this can be can a morbidly fascinating experience, but sadly not in this case.

There have been occasions when I’ve watched a movie and I’ve been underwhelmed by it, but then when I listen to the commentary track or see an interview with the film-maker I find myself inclined to judge the move less harshly. In this case the accompanying interview with writer-director Francesco Barilli actually made me dislike the movie even more, although it did at least explain a great deal about why this movie turned out to be such a trainwreck.

Bariili had been working on two separate projects, one involving madness and one involving voodoo (and other related elements but I’m trying not to reveal spoilers). Bariili got the bright idea to combine the two projects. Unfortunately they aren’t actually combined, they just exist side-by-side without really meshing. And then the producer insisted on the addition of another pointless sub-plot, which just makes things worse.

None of this would matter because this is after all Italian horror which is all about style rather than substance, except that what we have here is an incompatibility of mood which is far more serious than a plot that doesn’t make a lick of sense. The final ten minutes seem like it belongs to a different film, and it just doesn’t fit stylistically or atmospherically.

It might still have been salvageable had it been made by someone with real visual flair but Barilli’s directorial style is just a bit too pedestrian.

On the plus side Mimsy Farmer is quite good.

Raro Video deserve credit for releasing such an obscure movie although they’re a little overenthusiastic in describing two pages of text and two very small illustrations as “a fully illustrated booklet containing critical analysis.” The desperate attempts to compare it to Argento’s movies and to Rosemary’s Baby also ring rather hollow.

Ultimately Perfume of the Lady in Black is just not worth the effort and I can’t recommend this one at all.