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Hibari torimonocho: Kanzashi koban (1958)
Entertaining Mystery / Swashbuckler
Case of the Golden Hairpins is the second of the three-picture Detective Hibari series from Toei. Each was designed as a showcase for superstar singer / actress Hibari Misora, one of the studio's biggest stars. This is arguably the best in the series. The script by Torao Setoguchi and Tatsuo Nakada is a lightweight patchwork of comedy, action and songs designed to show the star at her best advantage. The characters (both continuing and unique) are interesting and the story is well told. The mystery is simply the thread holding the episodes together. Case of the Golden Hairpins opens at a beauty pageant in medieval Edo (Tokyo). Misori wins the competition. The top three winners each receive an antique golden hairpin. During the palanquin procession following the contest, one of the winners is murdered and her prize stolen. This gets Detective Hibari involved in the case. Aided by her comic assistant Shunji Sakai and drunken swordsman Chiyonosuke Azuma, Hibari unravels the mystery which involves a fantastic treasure, the fate of a clan and a gang headed by a treacherous clan official. The supporting characters are well etched with the swordsman's blind masseur friend a standout. Azuma gets to show his martial arts skills in several well-staged fights and his comic gifts in a couple of nice sketches. The best is a drunken musical duet with Hibari in a tavern. Sakai is showcased in several nice comic bits and comes off well. As in the previous entry, Hibari sings several good songs, shows she can handle her end of a fight and delivers her dialogue with an easy charm. The highlight of the movie has her replacing a Kabuki star the lead role of Benkei, a male warrior monk. Director Tadashi Sawashima is good with actors and has a solid visual style. Case of the Golden Hairpins plays well at 85 minutes and is great fun.
Kaoyaku akatsukini shisu (1961)
Nothing Special from Toho Studios
Big Shots Die at Dawn (1962)
Unlike rival studios Nikkatsu and Toei, Toho never had a feel for Yakuza movies. It was like major league MGM vs minor leaguers Columbia and RKO when it came to films noir. Still, the big Japanese studio had a popular stable of contract players and some very big stars. Big Shots Die at Dawn (the bizarre title has nothing to do with the picture) was a vehicle for actor / singer Yûzô Kayama. His career took off with his next picture Daigaku no wakadaishô, the first in the long-running "Young Guy" series. Here, he plays the "black sheep" son of the mayor of a Japanese city. He returns from running forestry services in Alaska to discover his father was assassinated, the old man had married his secretary who is now living in the family mansion and the city has been taken over by two warring Yakuza clans. Kayama proceeds to investigate the murder while alienating the police, the Yakuza and his "mother." Thanks to a clumsy plot, he manages to solve the crime without mussing up his hair. The screenplay by genre specialists Ichirô Ikeda and Ei Ogawa has some nice twists, but lacks drama and excitement. Young director Kihachi Okamoto adds some nice stylistic touches and a little subversive humor to the movie. However, he lacks the flair and intensity of a genre master like Kinji Fukasaku. One of the main problems with Big Shots Die at Dawn is star Kayama. His smart-ass character is pretty hard to like. Well produced, the film benefits from the efforts of familiar supporting actors like Akihiko Hirata and Kunie Tanaka.
El misterio de Cynthia Baird (1985)
Miserable Rubbish
El misterio de Cynthia Baird aka El retorno de los vampiros is an ultra- cheap exploitation picture. It was shot in one location in Madrid in the early 1970s and then sat on the shelf for more than a decade. It was finally released in 1985 to cash in on the video rental boom. It has a cast of four, little action and no thrills or chills. It seems to be a talky meditation on marital relations in Spain during the sexual revolution. When one of the two main actors looks at a copy of Goya's Saturn Eating his Sons, they fall into a trance, sprout fangs and attack the other actor. This silliness is accompanied by clips from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique seemingly chosen at random. The sound editing is so poor that you can hear the needle drop on the recording. There is some plot about the main actors really being long dead lovers, but it is undeveloped. Director Jose Maria Zambalza specialized in bottom-of-the- barrel westerns, gangster pictures and comedies. He is best known for The Fury of the Wolfman, the worst of Paul Naschy's werewolf series. Naschy had nothing good to say about him. El misterio de Cynthia Baird is talky, unimaginative and almost fatally dull.
Noires sont les galaxies (1981)
The Galaxies Are Boring
This four episode French TV series is a tough slog for even the most determined science fiction fan. It is slow, arty and dull. The screenplay by Jacques Armand has an intriguing central premise, but spends too much time following the characters around as they do everyday things. Daniel Moosmann's direction compounds the problem by shooting very long shots and stringing together long meandering sequences. In the second episode, for example, we follow lead Richard Fontana as he walks through an abandoned factory for what seems like a half hour. A better director could have done it in four or five shots. The final nail in this movie's coffin is the casting. Leads Catherine Leprince and Richard Fontana are neither particularly attractive nor particularly interesting. While the series' creators may have been making a point about the quality of life in France, it does not make watching these people eat, drink and walk around entertaining. While the movie's plot is scarcely fresh, it does have promise. Creepy Stéphane Bouy is busy making, buying and stealing corpses. The lead couple gets involved when they accidentally kill Leprince's nightclub owner boss François Perrot. Bouy arrives and removes the body. As Leprince and Fontana get more involved, they are shocked to discover some of the corpses they delivered reanimated and given new identities. The bodies are now being used by aliens exiled from their home planet. Unfortunately, this storyline is hidden deep in each episode under layers of mundane details. It actually seems as if the filmmakers were consciously trying to make Noires Sont Les Galaxies as dull as possible. As it exists now, the series could have easily been edited to half its length with no damage done.
Dr. Satán y la magia negra (1968)
Supernatural Fun from South of the Border
The sequel to Doctor Satan (1966) centers on the conflict between two infernal powers. Dr. Satan serves the Demon King and his adversary Yei Lin serves Lucifer. Both are after the Sorenson formula, which turns base metal into gold. Yei Lin's henchmen murder Sorenson and steal the formula. Dr. Satan, with the aid of his two zombie women, survives several attacks and defeats his rival. Filmed in Eastmancolor, Dr. Satan v Magia Negra has all the earmarks of '60s Mexican horror films: garish colors, rubber bats, bubbling test tubes and lots of Universal-style ground fog. However, the script is coherent and interesting with the stock characters well defined. Rogelio A. González Jr.'s direction is tight and stylish. Joaquin Cordero is a cool and aloof Dr. Satan working to ensure he achieves his "eternal rest." Noe Murayama is fun as his rival. Murayama's tongue is firmly planted in cheek as he pops his vampire fangs and changes into a bat. He also has the best line in the picture. After biting Dr. Satan's female slaves in the neck as a bat, he transforms back to his usual form and says, "Zombies! Disgusting." The score by Luis Hernández Bretón is an interesting mix of generic horror movie and electronic music. A busy composer, Breton scored some of Luis Bunuel's Mexican films. Dr. Satan v Magia Negra was produced by Sidney T. Bruckner for Producciones Espada S. de R.L. Overall, it is much more entertaining than many of the spy and horror films being produced in Europe at the same time.
Caribbean Basterds (2010)
Great filmmaking, terrible film
Caribbean Basterds is proof positive that director Enzo G. Castellari can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Unfortunately, the Italian director has been handed three times as many sow's ears as silk purses. Caribbean Basterds is one of those soft core porn efforts designed for late night cable. The script by Sandro Cecca and Luca Biglione (with tweaking by Castellari and others)is a combination of genre clichés and unpleasant sexuality (incest, rape, etc.).The son and daughter of an arms dealer hook up with a local thug and become pirates of a sort. After a series of rapes and robberies, they break into a mansion and steal a fortune in coke. This angers the local drug kingpin who sends his army of gunmen to eradicate them. The three leads are all buff and beautiful. Because the picture was shot in English, they also struggle with the simplest lines. The picture is essentially a beautiful people in beautiful places piece with abundant nudity and sex. It plays much longer than its 90 minute running time. The script's central trope is A Clockwork Orange, but several other movies are referenced including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Even Castellari fans will find this stinker tough sledding. You have better things to do.
Bôsô panikku: Daigekitotsu (1976)
You Have Never Seen Anything Like This
Like its title, this crazy Toei film from 1976 falls neatly into two parts. The first details the exploits of two bank robbers who specialize in "smash and grab" style heists. Evidently, Japanese banks of the period left huge piles of cash laying around on filing cabinets and end tables. The thieves dream of escaping Japan and going to Brazil. Charismatic lead Tsunehiko Watase gets involved with Miki Sugimoto, a strange girl with a severe mental problem. After a bank robbery goes wrong and his partner is killed, Watase is assaulted by his dead partner's thuggish brother who wants the loot.
While director / writer Kinji Fukasaku handles the first section with his usual skill, his style cannot overcome the sleaziness typical of Toei pictures from this period. We get lots of gratuitous nudity and an unnecessary S&M sidebar involving a gay doctor and a garage mechanic. This is all overlaid with a dreadful Toei canned score.
However, the movie takes off during the "Big Crash" finale. This is a combination car chase, demolition derby and Keystone Kops comedy. Watase plans a last heist to get enough money for Sugimoto to turn her pitiful life around. The main characters seem to have congregated around that bank including the thug brother and a corrupt cop that has been looking for Watase. As he escapes, the chase starts. Initially, it involves the crook, the cop and the brother in a tow truck. As accidents happen, we add a beer truck, a taxi and some civilians. Following more accidents and some casualties, a motorcycle gang, a broadcast van, more police cars and several civilians join the chase. The racers crash through roadblocks and other barriers until they hit a massive police barricade. At this point, chaos ensues. There are crashes, explosions, assaults and a mass attack on a police car by enraged citizens.
Director Fukasaku really shows his mastery of the medium during this extended action sequence. He keeps everything moving at a manic clip and tosses off stylistic flourishes effortlessly. Even the music improves, only lapsing back to the canned stuff at the end of the movie.
Tsunehiko Watase carries the movie by himself. He is tough and terribly cool. Former model Sugimoto is no actress, as anyone who tried to watch her "pinky violence" / delinquent girl movies can attest. Fukasaku uses her effectively as a living prop with minimal dialog. The rest of the cast is reasonable, despite some mugging and overdone comic bits. Still, Violent Panic: The Big Crash is a lot of fun. For fans of the director, it is a treat.
La isla de los dinosaurios (1967)
Scientists crash on mysterious island full of stock footage
There is literally nothing you haven't seen before in this cheap Mexican dinosaur picture. The old "plane crashes in unknown area inhabited by prehistoric animals" plot is used to frame a prehistoric romance between a female scientist and a hunk in a bearskin. Their story is built around extensive footage from One Million B.C. Leads Armando Silvestre and Alma Delia Fuentes are even costumed to more or less match Victor Mature and Carol Landis in the stock footage. The producer also throws in some Hollywood gorilla suit shots. The monkey suit used for the gorilla attack in the new material looks like someone's Halloween costume. The only original dinosaur on the island is a papier-mâché creature glimpsed behind a log in the river. The story revolves around a scientific expedition to discover the remains of lost Atlantis. The scientists' plane makes a crash landing on an island during a storm. While they repair it, they study the island. It is inhabited by a tribe of cave dwellers led by burly Silvestre. Fuentes is frightened by a dinosaur while swimming and is kidnapped by the caveman, who has been ousted from his position. Despite their cultural differences, they fall in love. This is handled in "me Tarzan, you Jane" fashion. La Isla de los dinosaurios a pretty dull affair despite reasonable production values. The cinematography by award-winner Agustin Jimenez is outstanding. That said, there are better ways to spend 87 minutes.
Undercover Men (1934)
Entertaining Modern Mountie Picture
Undercover Men is an entertaining modern Mountie picture that plays like a B-western in disguise. Charles Starrett plays a Canadian bank clerk. When gangsters rob the bank, he is unable to fight back because his girlfriend is in the line of fire. Accused of cowardice, he leaves town and joins the Mounties. Back home, the gang is causing a reign of terror. Inspector Wheeler Oakman leads a contingent of Mounties back to the city to smash them. When a gangster assassinates one of the Mounties' undercover men, Starrett replaces him by using the old 'drummed off the force' trick. He tracks some heavy ammunition sales to a hunting lodge owned by the town's skinflint banker. His no-good son, Kenne Duncan, is the brains behind the mob. When they try to rob a payroll shipment, the gang is captured. Duncan is nabbed trying to make his getaway and Starrett gets the girl. Working from a good script by Murison Dunn, director Sam Newfield delivers a nicely constructed low budget melodrama. He puts together several effective sequences including a long subjective camera shot to mask the identity of the big boss. While Starrett's acting ability is limited; he is big, good looking and has a million dollar smile. Oakman is very good as the stern Inspector and Kenne Duncan is a surprise as the flashy villain. Shot in Brampton, Ontario; Dominion Pictures released Undercover Men in Canada and MGM handled the U.K. distribution.