ONenslo Reviews

Cango: Korkusuz Adam (1967)

Turkish Spaghetti

[5/10 · 23 October 2022]

"Django, Fearless Man" is the Turkish version of the Italian version of the Hollywood version of the Wild West. Turkey can pass for that eternal desert that is the movie West, and the old quarry looks the same in any land or film. What would the cheap adventure spectacle be without the old quarry to blow stuff up in? There is someone to avenge and bad guys to be shot and a villain in a skeleton costume. The costumes of the Mexican characters come off pretty well, but at their worst the cowboys seem to be wearing cheap Halloween costumes, and their hats are far too small. I don't even know what they were trying to do with the cowgirl outfit. Of course it is never convincing for a moment as a representation of anything that could ever really have happened in the American West or anywhere else except in wonderland of the International Cinema. Morricone themes are pirated indiscriminately in the soundtrack, and overall quality is not much worse than a poorer Monogram western. It can be sat through, and if this is your trip you will groove on it. If you have a reason to be looking this up at all, I salute you as a friend and a sibling, and wish you what pleasure you can get from viewing it. Not the worst thing I have ever seen. Viewable with English subs on Internet Archive.

The Girls of the Golden Saloon (1975)

Belgian Nudie Western Comedy

[1/10 · 10 July 2021]

What comes to mind when you see the words Belgian Nudie Western Comedy? Well, it's worse than that. My pick for the worst western comedy I have seen was Trinity's Three Fat Brothers until I saw this. That at least had a reasonably coherent plot and was nearly watchable - endurable anyway. This... even the word atrocity would be a compliment... this sad, incompetent, incoherent mistake of a film's least incompetent bits were taken from a mediocre Spanish masked-hero western, which itself must have been pretty poor viewing, but when that footage begins, suddenly flinging a whole new batch of characters in your face with no way of knowing who they are or what they are doing, it only makes the "story" more confusing. It's not a story, it's a premise. It goes nowhere, ever. It exists only to get naked chicks on the screen, but it is hard to imagine being so desperate for nudity that this could be interesting or enjoyable. Seeing half a dozen naked women should not make you feel sad, but this film accomplishes that feat. The fact that this movie survived at all is a minor tragedy, and it is so poorly made in every respect that the English dub, made with amateur actors doing creaky groaning character voices to disguise the fact that there are not enough of them to do the job right, does not even stay in sync with the video from one shot to the next. There is not point in trying to adjust it because it just changes back in the next scene. I despise the type of review that tells you "avoid at all cost." I never tell anyone not to watch a movie but with this thing, if you have any other option, take it. Sleeping, taking a walk, putting your sock drawer in order, cleaning the top of the refrigerator. If you really need to see for yourself just how poor, sad, incoherent and incompetent this production is, I wish you luck. It is a matter of personal honor to me not to review a film unless I have endured it all, but I made it halfway through this and have no desire or incentive to inflict more of it on myself. I rarely grant a one-star review to a film because I am almost always able to find some redeeming quality to a movie, some little bit of creativity, humor or ingenuity that keeps it from being 100% lousy and terrible, but not this time. The only positive thing I can say about it is, at least those poor naked girls got paid. Belgium does not stand out in one's mind as having a strong film industry, but I am certain that nothing worse than this ever came out of it. Badfilm fan, if you must try this you will find it a new low. You will have a new point of comparison for how shoddy and feeble, crappy and pathetic a movie can be. As far as nudies go, even a Doris Wishman film is more competently made than this. And that's saying something. Just remember I warned you.

Storia di fifa e di coltello - Er seguito d'er più (1972)

Above average Franco & Ciccio costume farce.

[8/10 · 20 May 2021]

What I know about this film was learned online after viewing it - that it is a parody/sequel to Sergio Corbucci's 1971 Er più: storia d'amore e di coltello. A very informative review of that film says that its protagonist was played by a Milanese, noticeably non-Roman actor, a serious error which this seems to satirize by presenting Franco, a Sicilian, as his illegitimate brother, roped in by Ciccio to inherit the role of neighborhood bully/enforcer. Of course Franco is a wretched coward - until he wears his late brother's hat which transforms him into "The Best" of the neighborhood. The movie just looks good, very nice sets and costumes. Franco and Ciccio deliver the absurd antics we require of them, and it's a fun silly story. Some songs, some jokes, a little romance and an enjoyable experience. What more do you need?

Anche se volessi lavorare, che faccio? (1972)

Aimless but endearing dramedy

[7/10 · 20 May 2021]

If I wanted to work, what would I do? A group of unskilled and unmotivated young men in a remote Italian hilltop village, who survive by participating in the local industry of selling plundered Etruscan artifacts on the black market, decide to go for the big score by robbing the local archaeological museum. They ally themselves with a self-described local expert and professional grave-robber - but his Evil Eye brings chaos and disaster wherever he goes and he won't hesitate to betray everyone he possibly can for his own benefit. Luckily for them all, the local authorities feud over jurisdiction to the point of making themselves utterly incompetent and farcical. The settings are consistently photogenic and fascinating and the young men are appealing and witty. Pasolini's muse Ninetto Davoli, always charismatic, is pursued by an eccentric young woman, and the minor characters are unique and interesting. I think they were trying to go a little more improv and less plotted with this, and it seems as if they didn't really know how to end it, but it never becomes uninteresting, and provides a window into a region and way of life rarely seen.

The Virgin President (1968)

Very much of its time

[5/10 · 4 August 2020]

In The Virgin President, founding members of the Second City comedy group imagine a future documentary of the sad last days of America at the end of the 20th century. Term limits have been abolished and the President for Life has been assassinated by his cabinet, to be succeeded by his vice-president, his son, who has been kept in isolation in a bomb shelter for thirty years. There are a few incisive comments on a political system that thrives on conflict and war, but mostly it is absurdity and silliness for its own sake. I imagine it must have been quite amusing to see at a midnight movie in a crowd of stoned hippies, and it probably appeared at the time to be a damning indictment of the establishment. Time has not been kind to this work, however, and the worst case scenario of fifty years past now seems quite benign in comparison to the atrocious farce we see enacted in reality every day. A very fine print of this has been preserved at Cinemageddon, but frankly there is little reason to seek it out unless you are an obsessive scholar of obscurities like me. In short, mildly amusing, mostly harmless, and a reminder that science fiction of the past often falls far short of predicting the bizarre realities of the present.

Ghost Diver (1957)

A Cave Diving movie

[5/10 · 2 March 2019]

The star of a TV adventure show promises his viewers he will recover a lost treasure, and accompanied by his secretary (the brains of the operation) and his son (struggling to live up to his father's reputation) encounter an unscrupulous and deadly adversary in the person of their native guide, and an exotic love interest and manhood test for the son. A pair of romances, some jealous scuffles and similar domestic struggles liven things up a bit, but you know if it is a diving movie you can expect a lot of scenes of people in scuba gear swimming past the camera. That is exactly what you get. In addition to cave diving there is also cliff diving to add novelty appeal. People scuba dive in caves, and dive off cliffs into the ocean, but not at the same time. There is some puzzle solving with the placement of an idol in an underwater temple to reveal the hidden treasure, and a sort of a ghost diver maybe, but the grand finale comes completely out of left field and caused this viewer the most excitement, bafflement and consternation of anything in the film. No, you have to sit through this yourself if you want to know what it was but believe me it is a real surprise. A fairly okay B movie is made weird by its semiprofessional co-writers/directors' ideas of where a plot ought to go, and it seems they never did it again. This occupies the time fairly well, but rarely gets exciting until that one minute or so of "what the heck is THIS?" that almost makes the preceding events worth sitting through. Not a real recommendation, I know, but if you are the type who likes this sort of challenge, it is okay to see once.

Kuroi Mehyô M (1974)

An entertaining B movie

[7/10 · 12 January 2019]

A gangster with domestic troubles and an unconvincing toupee is getting too big for his territory so his superiors call in the female assassin known as M to settle his hash for him. More of a martial arts movie than a yakuza tale, much of the interest is in the extended footchases through trashed and abandoned industrial sites, ending in karate standoffs of the type that require a lot of heavy breathing and twisting the hands into contorted shapes to enable one person to whoop the tar out of eight or nine hapless fools. The brief gratuitous nudity is the result of violent attacks by men on women, which are quickly avenged with injury or death by the skilled assassin M. There isn't much more story than that, but it maintains a good pace, and there is some striking camera work making good use of the decaying industrial settings. Reiko Ike as M is moderately attractive and well-dressed in stylish contemporary duds, but the main pleasure is seeing her pound those blouse-ripping louts. There is some spattering of brightly colored blood and a few slightly grotesque stabby demises, but nothing too grisly for the sensitive viewer. All in all an enjoyable entertainment for fans of the genre.

Ye lin chun lian (1969)

Kind of an Elvis movie with only half an Elvis.

[7/10 · 28 November 2018]

Aspiring singer "defies his parents' wishes for him to work at the family business and instead goes to work as a tour guide at his girlfriend's agency." That is quoted from the IMDb plot summary of Elvis's Blue Hawaii, and it is the exact plot of this movie as well. Also included is the surly spoiled teen girl trouble-maker suddenly flinging herself at the protagonist and sneering at everyone else's fun. I don't remember if Blue Hawaii had a farcical bar brawl in a wildly unconvincing night club set, but you get one here. The difference between the two films is that this starts in Singapore and follows a driving route to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia and Penang Island. It's mild, harmless entertainment, brightly colorful, and while the songs may seem rather poor to western ears they are mercifully brief. Admirers of '60s modern furnishings will find the interiors droolworthy indeed, and the various tourist locales - museums, mosques, temples (including the world's third largest reclining Buddha!) and scenic viewpoints are something you are unlikely to see in any other film. So, kinda interesting, kinda fun, and a pleasant way to fill an evening.

Dead Lucky (1960)

Mildly Amusing

[5/10 · 6 March 2018]

Synopsis to the contrary, the film is in fact about a pair of reporters attempting to infiltrate a gambling ring that sets up illegal parties in rented premises. The comedy is a bit heavy handed, but the film is brief enough not to be annoying. There will be many familiar faces for viewers who have enjoyed British cinema from that era. Overall, a harmless and occasionally interesting story, if you enjoy period decor and street scenes. Will neither kill nor thrill, but it passes the time in a not entirely unpleasant manner.

Shura no mure (1984)

Historical melodrama of the yakuza

[7/10 · 22 November 2015]

Translated as The Story of a Man Among Men, Shura no mure is an historical melodrama tracing the development of a Yokohama-based yakuza group from the mid-1930s to recent times through the rise of one member, Inahara, from initiate to boss. The film has some pretensions of being a serious historical document with brief narrated intervals and references to specific events and circumstances, and it does give a bit of the feeling of the social changes people experienced at the time, but ultimately it is a three-hankie bromance. The protagonist Inahara has vowed revenge on the system that deprived his family of their home and honor through his father's gambling addiction, and he takes that revenge not by defeating the gamblers but by becoming the boss of them. That is a point of logic I cannot pretend to comprehend. Inahara emits honor and manliness like a pheromone, causing men to plead for the boon of becoming his follower. There are women, a few, but their purpose is to be devoted to their men. The real emotional relationships here are between men and their pride, honor and manliness.Their sincerity and mutual devotion brings more than one very masculine tear to the eye before the story is told. These are gangsters, not hoodlums; keepers of order, protectors of the innocent, the children's friend. There is an occasional implication that there might be some sort of criminal activity involved, but what we see is that they run gambling and that's it. Their violence is reserved for disorderly louts who are slapped down with a few swift moves, to the general approval of grateful bystanders, or for extensive brawls with their rivals. This is not The Godfather; the brawls are more in keeping with the martial arts tradition with violence only occasionally so grotesque as to provoke startled laughter, and while it is a fairly well-produced film it never creates enough feeling of realism to break out of the realm of stagy formulaic melodrama. There are no real surprises and anyone who has watched movies for a while can easily call the shots long before they happen. Ultimately the film appears to be the story of the Yakuza as they imagine themselves; guardians of tradition and men of honor, gangsters but somehow not really criminals. I would not be surprised at all to learn that the film was funded entirely by Yakuza, a vanity piece and public relations project. It is an entertaining fantasy and culturally educational, but at times a bit absurd in its dedication to avoiding the reality of drugs, prostitution and brutality which is the true basis of organized crime. Fans of Japanese cinema will recognize many familiar faces from similar films of the samurai and yakuza genres, and overall it is entertaining and enjoyable, but more for its exaggerated melodrama than for its historical or social accuracy. Don't kill yourself trying to find it, but if genre film is your thing, you could do a lot worse than to watch this.

Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit (1944)

Classic Heavy Melodrama

[7/10 · 24 July 2013]

The strains of a familiar folk song send a haggard street-walker down the corridors of reverie to trace her long downward path. From her beginnings as a fresh-faced country girl in the joy of first love to her miserable decline, the men who loved her, betrayed her, or tried to aid her are examined one by one and the ironic twists of fate that snatched happiness from her grasp are laid bare. Like 1937's Stella Dallas, Maija is a proud and strong woman who does the only thing she can do to support her daughter in a world that is stronger than she is, where women are "prisoners... like fish in a net." It's not a happy story but it is well-told. My first thought on seeing the opening moments of this film was that they don't shoot movies like that any more. It is not always sophisticated and the technique owes much to expressionist European films of years before - at times it seems more like 1924 than 1944. The scenes of her early days resemble Soviet films with their healthy peasants dancing under big skies. For me the background music was the weakest point, not always entirely appropriate to the mood of the scene, but the overall effect is strongly emotional and at times quite beautiful and stirring. It was interesting for me to think of how certain events and scenes would be done very differently if the same story had been made in Hollywood - it is refreshing to see a more bluntly realistic depiction than the cleaned up, smoothed over American version would have been, and a more stylized and symbolic presentation of strongly emotional events that hearkens back to silent picture style. For fans of genuine old time melodrama, or for those with an eye for sincere unsophisticated yet effective filmmaking, this can be a very enjoyable experience.

Pasha (1968)

Colorful and Stylish Crime Fantasy

[8/10 · 25 September 2012]

I think it an error to judge this film on plot alone - the story is the skeleton of a brightly stylized action fantasy which surely owes much to the garish Japanese crime films of the mid '60s. The police offices are not the grimy smoke-stained green-painted reality of battered wood desks and clattering file cabinets, but more nearly resemble the lair of the master-criminal with pivoting wall maps, poster-sized mug shots, and moving silhouettes cast on frosted glass walls. Police activity is a montage of blinking lights, fingers pressing buttons, walls of TV screens, streams of punched tape, and they thunder around the city in streamlined sports cars, not blocky grayish sedans. The inevitable night club is half surrealism, half agitprop performance, through which the stolid and always immaculate protagonist floats like an iceberg. The criminals drag their elaborate apparatus from the trunk of a huge sculptured American car and shoot gouts of flame and bazooka rockets in an eternally gray French winter, setting the snow itself on fire. They pour out of bright yellow mail trucks and blast machine guns at an army of police through obscuring clouds of drifting smoke. Le Pacha deserves to be viewed with fresh eyes because every scene and setting is stimulating and rewarding.

Robotropolis (2011)

Quite adequate robot rampage B movie.

[6/10 · 22 September 2011]

I guess I am not critic enough to slam a movie I haven't even watched like other "reviewers" of this film, so I can tell you I watched all of Robotropolis; not to look for things to gripe about but to take it on its own merits and just have some fun. It's about robots going berserk and killing people - and that is what happens. The CG design and integration into the live action was pretty good, the locations were unusual and interesting, the action kept up a good pace, and it didn't get excessively grisly, though there is some moderately graphic unpleasantness. There were occasional flashes of wit in the dialog and a little inventive camera-work in the chase scenes, but in the end it's a robot rampage movie. Sometimes it's going to be kind of silly. If that's not what you want in a movie, don't watch it. I found it adequately entertaining, it kept my interest and I don't feel I was cheated of my time as I sometimes have with flashier, more expensive movies. Just a decent B movie. Comparisons, they say, are odious and taking it for what it is, not what I think it should have been instead, I think everyone involved did a pretty good job. Some things are just for fun and I liked this fine.

I Am Here... Now (2009)

A challenging and thought-provoking film

[2/10 · 6 March 2011]

Yes, it's a challenge just to sit through this crazy thing, and the thoughts it provokes are, What the hell? Why are there doll heads in the desert? Did that dolphin just poop? Do all the women in Las Vegas wear those spaghetti strap blouses with the two top buttons open to show their chests? Couldn't they get any actors for this? Why do they use the same scream over and over? What's with the monster mask? Why, why why am I watching this? SO MANY QUESTIONS. Writer, Producer and Director Neil Breen stars as a space Jesus who comes to Earth in a glass paperweight to check up on his failed experiment - humanity. The corrupt politicians and lying lawyers play out their efforts to hamper the development of sustainable energy systems in halting stilted monologues. Economic conditions force people into crime, dismemberment and depravity, and the space Jesus makes the bad guys bleed from their eyes for menacing a cancer patient in a wheelchair. I wouldn't be fool enough to compare this unique creation with anything else - it's created a whole new reality for itself. It's like a metaphor - FOR LIFE. I only hope we are ready when Neil Breen's glass paperweight returns once more to Earth.

Lotosblüten für Miss Quon (1967)

A not-too-thrilling thriller

[3/10 · 4 February 2011]

A dissolute American living in a generic southeast Asian country finds a cache of diamonds, leading to complications. It's hard to reconcile the character's dissolute drunken gambler lifestyle with his job as elementary school teacher, and little else is convincing in this aimless and episodic tale. There is a little local color and a moderately interesting night club scene but events seem to follow each other senselessly, characters are introduced and eliminated, suddenly something blows up, and none of it seems connected in any way. The most notable feature of this film is some of the poorest day-for-night shots I have ever seen; people are wandering in bright sunlight under a white sky with only the sound of crickets to remind you that a moment ago they stepped out of a night club at midnight under a glowing neon sign. Eventually it seems as if they give up even trying to convince you it's actually night and there is little to make you care either way. This movie is a cultural artifact and not much more.

Carambolages (1963)

Corporate Black Comedy of Errors

[6/10 · 3 February 2011]

Carambolages is a mildly amusing French look at climbing the corporate ladder. Brialy is the subservient brown-nosing youngster who needs quick advancement up the hierarchy to pay for the modern lifestyle he is buying on credit. Seeing that marrying his immediate superior's daughter will not get him the results he wants, he begins plotting the demise of the head of the company. The company itself specializes in holiday travel and unscrupulously brutalizes its customers for maximum profit, spending more thought on publicity gimmicks than customer service, and de Funes is good as the head of the company, perpetually distracted except when scheming to terrorize his customers or to dispose of the man having an affair with his wife. Nothing goes as planned, this being a comedy, but there are enough murderous ploys going around to take out quite a few of Brialy's obstacles. Corporate culture seems to have been branded as a primarily American phenomenon by the U.S. films of the '60s, and this was a refreshingly different view. Not what I consider screamingly funny, but amusing enough, and fun to watch.

Ren she shu (1977)

Unique premise, standard execution

[5/10 · 26 November 2010]

Also known as Fangs of the Cobra (1977), this is a lite contemporary romance adventure from Shaw Brothers studio, not the usual costume martial arts for which they are best known. Young man returns from studying abroad to take over management of the large family farm, and falls for the daughter of a tenant farmer. The unique twist is that her pet, best friend, confidante and protector is a cobra - but he hates snakes because his mother was bitten and killed by one when he was a child. The scheming cousin who wants to marry his money ends up naked quite a lot more than I expected, though without sufficient attributes for me to find it anything but surprising. There are conflicts, and some fighting, and some misunderstandings about people's motives, all pretty predictable except for the hero snake idea. Unique and startling in a few small ways, while remaining quite mediocre overall.

The Legend of the Sky Kingdom (2003)

Remarkably inventive technique

[8/10 · 13 July 2008]

I was highly impressed and filled with admiration at this "junkmation" adventure, and was surprised and pleased to learn that it was Zimbabwean. The story is a simple Pilgrim's Progress allegory, and is the weakest aspect of the film, but it is made up for by the fact that every character, prop and set is made entirely out of junk and trash. The characters are engaging and have a remarkable degree of personality, the animation is painstaking and highly imaginative, and the overall effect is remarkably sophisticated. I hope all involved will continue to have opportunities to exercise their inventiveness and creativity in the future, as this is a real little gem of animation, unique and brilliant.

The Homecoming (1973)

My Mind Parasites must be dead.

[2/10 · 30 June 2008]

Colin Wilson wrote of Mind Parasites that make people think things are wonderful when they are just dreadful tripe. The protagonists of his story manage to kill their Mind Parasites and are appalled to find out what a load of crap is being fobbed off on the world as high culture and intellectual experience. I don't mean this as a slight upon anyone who appreciates or finds interest and enjoyment in this film, I just can't see how it is possible to do so. And I really tried. I just ended up feeling confused and stupid.

I felt like I got the "joke" of this film in the first five minutes and then had to sit through nearly two hours of dreary repetition. Awful people babble at each other like brain damaged degenerates. This one is pointlessly vicious, that one tells aimless cruel anecdotes, and they all just behave irrationally at regular intervals, over and over. Ultimately it doesn't matter what happens because it's a roomful of lunatics being their own version of normal. The worst thing is I believe there really must be something there I am incapable of seeing, that I am missing something genuine that others see and I don't. I really tried to understand it, and asked my wife to explain it to me afterward. I am absolutely baffled by the fact that so many people can see so much depth in this thing when it seems to me to be so obviously, transparently, pointless irrationality for its own sake, that goes nowhere and has no reason to exist. I can't imagine writing such a thing and thinking I had done a good job, or reading such a thing and thinking it ought to be produced, or being able to act in such a thing without saying, "What on earth is this supposed to be about, and who would ever even sit through it?" It was only a few days ago that I came up with this dictum: Speak nonsense with a straight face if you wish to be thought profound. It is my opinion that The Homecoming is an example of this principle in action. I envy anyone who is able to watch this without feeling robbed of two hours of their lives.

Faustina (1957)

A rather entertaining semi-comedy

[6/10 · 7 January 2007]

I was lured into spending a dollar for the DVD of this film at the grocery store by my memories of Maria Felix's striking performance in La Escondida, and the tiny stills on the back of guys in devil costumes. Amateur cave explorer Fernando Rey digs into unexplored territory only to find red-headed and well-dressed Juan de Landa sitting gloomily by a campfire. It seems he is Mephistopheles, ostracized for his inept handling of the Faustina case, and most of the movie is his recounting of the tale with occasional returns to this framing sequence for Rey to ask another question. In the story itself, Mephistopheles appears in a small town to purchase an old woman's soul, and to transform her into the magnificent Maria Felix. This Mephisto's task seems to be to foil his client rather than to fulfill her wishes, but she continually outsmarts him, winning a beauty contest and becoming a nightclub performer by her wits and despite his best efforts. She wows her audience by literally reading them the newspaper. There are occasional visits to the head office in Hell, an industrial environment as brightly lit and colored as an old Batman or Star Trek set, with the damned wallowing in their fire pits outside a floor-to-ceiling window. These are Spanish devils, shirtless with goat legs and long tails which they use to swat flies and light cigars - very different from the red-faced Mexican gent in the tuxedo. Those who share with me an eye for spectacular fashion will enjoy repeated scenes of Maria Felix flinging open various wraps and overcoats to reveal her hourglass figure wrapped in one outstanding gown after another. Though I am sure it is far more enjoyable to understand the dialogue, I still got quite a bit of pleasure from this and would recommend it in a subtitled version, if such exists, or to anyone with a good knowledge of the Spanish language.

El castillo de las momias de Guanajuato (1973)

Momias si, Quanajuato no

[2/10 · 7 January 2007]

I'd hate for anyone to have to say "I waited and waited for them to show Guanajuato and they never did." This was filmed entirely in Guatemala, and seems pretty poverty stricken compared to other titles in the genre. Masked wrestlers usually have pretty good taste in automobiles, but these three tour together in a VW bus, and go after the bad guys in an old clunker with no hubcaps and a taillight out. The shoddy torture lab is clearly the biggest expenditure in the movie, and the graveyard from which the mummies arise is something even I could build. That said, it is not without its highlights, most notably the nightclub chanteuse in her startling red wig and skin-colored bodysuit which hoists her upper deck and swings it out over the audience in a remarkable way. Unfortunately her musical number lasts just about one minute. For bondage fetishists there is quite a bit of it, with bound victims being bloodily tortured by mummies. Not the greatest wrestlers versus mummies movie ever made, but it won't kill you to watch it.

Los campeones justicieros (1971)

A superior example of the genre

[9/10 · 7 January 2007]

There is hardly a slow moment in this remarkable film, with one darned thing after another the whole time. From the obligatory wrestling match at the start it's all action with a little man in scarlet tights and cape unfolding his portable radio into a machine gun, and blasting away at the ring. A mad scientist's army of masked Midget Wrestlers kidnaps contestants in the Miss Mexico contest to be frozen and shipped off in crates. The little men are put under a sort of compression dome and given electric bracelets, making them unusually strong and able to wail the tar out of the Champions of Justice. The villains' car is equipped with machine guns in front and oil slicks in back, sending Mil Mascaras on his motorcycle over a cliff to dangle for his life. Blue Demon plunges out of an airplane with its pilot and rides the parachute to the ground, there is an exploding boat and spear-gun wielding frogmen. And that ain't the half of it. It's certainly the best, and probably the best budgeted, Masked Wrestler movie I have seen yet, and one that didn't require me to fast forward through long minutes of tedious explanation or flat and uninspired fight scenes. If you see only one Mexican Wrestler movie in your entire life, make it this one.

La mansión de las 7 momias (1977)

Actually there are nine mummies.

[3/10 · 5 January 2007]

Masked wrestlers BlueDemon and Superzan must aid a young lady in undergoing three ordeals to inherit a treasure. Although hampered by my near total ignorance of the language, this movie was not too tough to figure out. Satan Himself appears and eggs on the bad guy, and there are some fights between wrestlers and mummies. You can keep knocking those mummies down and they get right back up again. Sometimes when it is supposed to be night time it is rather sunny. Filmed on location in Antigua Guatemala, and the locations are pretty strange and interesting. Though quite cheaply made and not very lively, I still watched it all with some interest. Look out for the surprise ending - some people you think are good guys turn out not to be and someone you think is a bad guy was only a poor communicator. Available in a set of 6 1970s masked wrestler movies, "Los Luchadores Invencibles" which I got from the public library.

Misterio en las Bermudas (1979)

Not as Bermudian as one might expect.

[5 January 2007]

Though I do not understand much Spanish, this story was not too hard to follow. I was fascinated by the enigmatic presence of the Bermuda Triangle plot line. Mysterious storms and vanishments are caused by a mirrored sphere arising from the waves. A fisherman finds Santo's silver mask on the end of his line. Perhaps the whole intervening story is being told by the fisherman to his friend, I'm not sure, but they show up again in what seems to be the conclusion of a framing sequence. After saving the fisherman from a shark, Santo, Blue Demon, and Superzan are hired as bodyguards for a Karate-expert Iranian princess. A criminal organization sends three women after the heroes, but one of them is kidnapped by teleporting men in silver who take her away in a boat to the Bermuda Triangle where she finds her long-lost father. It seems that this resort hotel where a lot of people in silver clothes hang out is a Utopia of peace and immortality, and there she stays. There is no other apparent connection to the ongoing battles against would-be assassins of the Iranian Karate Princess. Internal evidence indicates that it was all filmed on South Padre Island off the Texas Gulf Coast, not Bermuda at all. The world map which opens and closes the film is in German, just to add to the confusion. This is available as part of a six-film set "Los Luchadores Invencibles" which I got from the public library.

Hands of Steel (1986)

Delightfully crappy!

[5/10 · 19 December 2006]

I got a real kick out of how cheap and crummy this was. The addition of flexible ductwork and/or John Saxon seems to make any movie automatically futuristic. When Saxon is both the most famous and least horrible actor in the movie you have really got something there. I have to give him credit - he always does his best, Just being a workmanlike performer as he is, in comparison with the poor acting of every single other person in the film, makes him look like Sir Laurence Olivier or Richard Burton. The creaky archaic computer graphics, and the odd clunking noise each letter made as it appeared on screen, the Competitive Armwrestling sub-plot, the grand finale shot at Arcosanti (Paolo Soleri's abortive utopia which even twenty years ago looked like a futuristic ruin) all combine into a weird stew of goodbadness. It isn't often that a movie reaches a real crescendo in its final moment, but this film's "how the hell do we end this?" finale is a real masterpiece of inadvertency. Strangely, I was never bored for a moment as every scene was at least as screwed up as the next. I have rarely witnessed a scene more affecting than the torn-off head of the female cyborg grating out "THEY WILL DEE STROY YEW" in her atrocious accent, an even worse accent than that of Paco's nemesis Raoul. I don't believe I will ever watch this again, nor could I recommend it except as punishment, but it was quite a thing to see once.