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  • TonyDPTonyDP Inside the MonolithPosts: 4,279MI6 Agent

    @chrisno1 , You're right. It's been ages since I saw Tales of Terror but elements of The Cask of Amontillado were definitely incorporated into the story. Vincent Price's character was even called Fortunato Luchesi, an amalgamation of two characters from the story; and Peter Lorre was Montresor, who was the villain of the story as well.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent
    edited March 2022

    Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

    Ray Harryhausen 1977 

    Harryhausen is always awesome, but I wish to file a brief report because it stars Jane Seymour as leading lady Princess Farah, stunningly beautiful throughout, in a wardrobe both skimpy and flowing, suitable for warm climate. And to answer the pressing question of one film scholar up above, yes she takes off all her clothes, though only photographed from discrete tasteful angles.

    Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor) is also in this as a friendly wizard, I'll let you do your own google image search for his costumes in the film. but since Seymour is a BondGirl, in the name of Bond scholarship it is my responsibility to post these.


    which makes me wonder, how many BondGirls have been in Harryhausen movies? here's who I remember

    Jason and the Argonauts 1963 - Honor Blackman as the goddess Hera

    One Million Years B.C. 1967 - Martine Beswick as a rival cavegirl. I've forgotten how this film goes, but if I'm reading Wikipedia right, our gypsy girl Zora gets in a catfight with Raquel Welch?!!?

    The Golden Voyage of Sinbad 1973 - Caroline Munro as a slave-girl

    Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger 1977 - Jane Seymour as Princess Farah

    Clash of the Titans 1981 - Ursula Andress as  the goddess Aphrodite (she barely gets any lines, Olympus is crowded with better actors when she's onscreen)

    have I missed any? thats a good excuse to watch some more Harryhausen!

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD for me, a really great old fashioned sword & sorcery movie. I reviewed it a few months back. But yeah, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS takes some beating. However, Jane Seymour and Taryn Power sunbathing 'topless' / 'backless' was the stuff of matinee movie dreams when I was a kid in 1977.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent
    edited March 2022

    THE FEMALE VAMPIRE (1973)

    Spanish writer-director Jesus Franco takes some getting used to. For many lovers of European exploitation cinema, he’s an auteur akin to someone like Welles or Truffaut. He really isn’t. He made cheap horror flicks, laced with blood and nudity. Some of his early output, when he teamed up with Harry Alan Towers, showed touches of class – Venus in Furs, a couple of Fu Manchu movies, Justine – but later efforts tended to dip far into the realm of pornography.

    The Female Vampire, which he made quickly in Madeira in 1973, but never got released until 1975, is chief among his more salacious output. The movie stars the lovely Lina Romay as Countess Irina von Karlstein, an obvious cash-in on Le Fanu’s Karnsteins, and inspired no doubt by Hammer’s trilogy of blood curdlers: The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil. Franco reduces the gore content and ups the sex. Romay spends the entire film naked or dressed in the flimsiest of see-through garments. Her vampire technique is to hypnotise a victim, make love to and suck the life force from them, basically through their genitals, male or female. This allows plenty of scope for the sort of scenes which try to give pornography class but only succeed in lowering the tone of regular cinema. Curiously, despite this, the movie occasionally treads ever so close to actually being spine chilling and features has some marvellous cinematic images which wouldn’t look out of place in the premier horror market.

    Romay plays her mute role remarkably well. She’s careful, almost stately, hauntingly beautiful, silent, expressing emotion through her eyes and the merest hint of a smile. Two scenes in particular stand out. During the first, the Countess is being interviewed by a young female journalist, and rebuffs her inquisitive questions, the journo seeming to be receiving the answers telepathically. In the second, the Countess appears spectre-like in the same reporter’s apartment, rolls her tongue erotically across her teeth and simultaneously makes her host orgasm; throughout the extended scene she comes and goes and moves with an audible flurry of bat wings. At these moments, Franco’s clever enough to simply have her disappear, which is much how Dracula and Co are described as manifesting in the books.

    Sadly the rest of the movie really isn’t up to much. It’s mostly a miss, and descends into a bloody wallow of emotional guilt. There are several versions of the movie including one with more fangs and another with more f-g. I think I saw the in-between version, but the film’s been cut about so much over the years I’m not entirely certain.

    Fans of Franco’s work include it among his best. A footnote is worth writing about Miss Romay. She was only nineteen at the time the movie was made, was married to the film editor while openly having an affair with the director. She and Franco went on to make dozens of films together, eventually marrying. She died at the relatively young age of 57 in 2012 and Franco followed her the next year. Despite the dubious quality of their movies, they certainly did love their lives together. 

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited March 2022

    I'm tempted to go watch "Hopper - the hunt for the hamster of darkness" (I think it's Belgian) at the cinema! If only NTTD had a title half as good ...

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited March 2022

    Think about it. "James Bond - the hunt for the nanobots of darkness"!

    Or even better: "James Bond - the hunt for the DouDou of darkness"! Dark and gritty .....😁

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    I started watching THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) tonight. Those first forty five minutes are cinematic OO7 pleasure. Unfortunately, I have things to do, so I clawed myself away.

    Instead, especially for @Napoleon Plural

    LOVE ME TENDER (1956)

    Elvis Presley’s debut movie is a melodramatic romantic musical western which touches vaguely on the lives of the Reno Brothers and the Jackson Gang, a group of vicious outlaws, robbers and murderers who terrorised Midwest America in the years immediately after the Civil War. These career criminals were so violent and their behaviour outraged so many, that when the Pinkertons Agency final caught them and prepared to transport them to prison, vigilantes broke into gaols and halted steam trains to haul out the criminals and lynch them. You’d never know this from watching Love Me Tender.

    In fact, the initial few Reno Brothers raids are quite well represented by the opening train robbery, although literary license is used, suggesting the gang were still members of the Confederate army and did not know the war had ended. This is untrue. The Reno Brothers and their hanger’s on were deserters and serial enlisters, what were known as bounty jumpers. They’d enlist, take the sign on money and promptly desert. Their first robbery was of a post office where the post master was shot [in the movie it’s the station telegraph operator, who would nominally be employed by the U.S. postal service at the time]. After their first train robbery, a witness identifies them – as happens in the movie – leading to the Brothers arrest. The witness was shot dead and the Brothers acquitted, whereupon they continued their life of crime.

    This sanitised version attempts to so thoroughly obscure the true story it even changes the character names. It does a fairly good job of pretending the real Reno Brothers never existed. It also throws in a few songs for Elvis to sing. I don’t know if there is any documented evidence to suggest any of the gang could sing. Here, the foursome are portrayed as honourable, wholesome farm boys. Vance, Brett and Ray, the war veterans, display dignity, a respect for their kin and community, of the decent way of living. The only one of the four who sticks out is Elvis Presley’s Clint. Too young to go to join General Lee [although apparently he’s twenty-two, so that seems unlikely] Clint has been stuck on the farm, protecting his aging mother and his older, pretty, practical wife, Cathy. Unknown to Clint, Cathy was deliriously in love and planning to marry Vance, but a letter informing the family incorrectly of his death threw her into the King’s welcoming youthful arms. Vance’s return resets her fires a-burning.

    I can’t figure out why. Compared to the hip swivelling, ball of fire and sexual inferno cast by Elvis, Richard Egan’s Vance is steadfast, loyal, true and ever so dull. I can’t image what Cathy must be thinking. There’s an oblique reference to the central quandary when she asks Vance what he’s thinking every night when he knows she and Clint are lying “side by side.” He ain’t thinking side-by-side, honey, I can almost hear Elvis sneer.

    The King’s really good in this supporting, but essential role. He’s great playing the slightly spoilt youngster, a man who clearly wanted to go to war, playing like a big kid with his brother’s sabre, asking about the battles, bored with farming. A little more of this might have created a character dynamic and familial conflict for him and the cast to work with. But because he was a singer, real life took over and, after the announcement of his casting provoked such a phenomenal fan response, executives at 20th Century Fox decided to include a few musical numbers and expand his part. Thus he gets to strut his stuff a couple of times, once on the homestead’s front porch, a peculiar scene where We Gotta Move amuses everyone but his wife – Debra Paget, beautiful as always, doesn’t even tap her foot – and Love Me Tender seems sung to the audience instead of her. When the lovelorn Vance walks off mid-recital, you’d think Clint might follow him, understanding the meaning of the song for his brother, but Elvis ‘The King’ has to finish the number.

    Later on, we get to see him show off some signature hip and leg-shaking moves to Poor Boy and Let Me. These two songs are more a reflection of the bluegrass inspired country tracks he recorded for Sun Records between 1954 – 55 than the uproarious rock n rollers he captured teenagers hearts and minds and sex lives with in 1956, all that Heartbreak Hotel, Love Me and Don’t Be Cruel. It’s disappointing to remember that as Elvis’ career continued he became more and more deported against these improvised jive moves. I don’t know if that was his choice, the director’s, or the guidance of ‘technical advisor’ Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ manager and the man responsible for both his meteoritic rise and subsequent long fall.     

    The film passes amiably enough. Elvis kicks off when he discovers his wife still has feelings for Vance – oh, how could she! audiences must have been stunned by that development – and the little bruiser gets so mad he even dispatches a swift jab to the poor girl’s jaw, you can see the bruise [make-up, of course]. It’s too late for a happy ending. The Reno Brothers are being chased by the army, Elvis turns on Vance, it all gets mighty ugly and the King takes a bullet for his mistaken, but well-founded, trouble [and strife].

    Elvis didn’t want to die in his debut acting role, but his then girlfriend, June Juanico, said audiences remember the people who die in a tragedy. She was right too. Who remembers Richard Egan and Debra Paget? Everyone knows Elvis Presley sung Love Me Tender. They changed the name of the movie late on, after the single had shot to number one, his fourth in eight months. It doesn’t matter much, but it doesn’t really make any sense.

    The movie’s okay. No great shakes. It could have made a reasonable western, but the songs throw it off kilter a little, although they are not numerous enough to disturb the tragic tone. Even if you don’t know how it ends, you can sense it coming the moment Clint reveals he’s Cathy’s wife. Still a pleasant afternoon of nostalgia for when the King seemed to have the world at his feet.

  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent

    After a long day at work I decided to watch 'Rambo Last Blood'. I have heard of the character but not seen any of the other films.

    Oh dear!

    I found it to be mindless rubbish held together by a very flimsy story.

    I don't know if the other Rambo films are as bad as that one but I think I'll not bother to find out!

    I've never seen Sylvester Stalone in any other film except 'Escape To Victory' (which I actually quite enjoyed).

  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent

    Monty Python's Flying Circus is being shown on 'That's TV' in the UK.

  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,417Chief of Staff

    You should watch the original Rambo film - First Blood - all the others are just cash-ins 🙈

    YNWA 97
  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,417Chief of Staff

    I’ve tuned in to watch a couple of these as well…brings back happy memories 😀

    YNWA 97
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (1990)

    Tom Clancy’s doorstep bestselling Cold War thriller was the perfect piece to adapt for a Glasnost-seized Hollywood, as filmmakers suddenly wanted to treat the Soviets a little kinder. Relating vaguely to conspiracy theories about a couple of historical incidents involving missing Russian submarines, Clancy’s narrative involves his CIA pen pusher Jack Ryan persuading various levels of the US military that an experienced Soviet Admiral plans to defect using his country’s sleek new submarine as bait.

    John McTierman’s impressive movie doesn’t bear too much close examination. Sean Connery plays the stately Admiral featuring his trademark Scottish-Russian accent [similar to his trademark English-Scots, Norwegian-Scots, Irish-Scots, American-Scots, Arab-Scots – you see where I’m going with this]. Alec Baldwin is about right as Jack Ryan. When Harrison Ford took over the role, he looked too old. The support cast is long. Women don’t feature. Lots of silliness in subs ensues and some of the underwater manoeuvres look and feel impossible. The film succeeds by creating moments of high tension, even if overall the story doesn’t make any sense.    

  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent

    I have been told that the first Rambo film is good. It can't be any worse than the last one. It seems to be on ITV4 regularly so I will probably watch when it comes on again.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    joshua said:

    Monty Python's Flying Circus is being shown on 'That's TV' in the UK.

    not a film, but a teevee show of course!


    elsewhere number24 was asking for more episode-by-episode subjective review threads. Monty Python's Flying Circus would be a good project for someone to take on, I'm sure most of us are familiar (even obsessed) with it and would join in

    one thing I'd love to see is a list that makes it clear which classic sketches appear in which episode. Thats hard to guess when picking an episode to watch. Just about each episode has one classic sketch, surrounded by non sequiturs and surrealistic segues and Gilliam's cartoons. a list of all content per episode would make it harder to see as theres usually at least a dozen smaller bits, but for example the original version of Nudge Nudge sketch is in the third episode.

    then of course for each of these classic sketches we would have to analyse all the ways they differ from other versions, like in And Now For Something Completely Different, or the Charisma record albums, or the multiple different live versions

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    Good review of the film, but I totally disagree that "Let Me" and "Poor Boy" reflect his Sun records which are in a different league entirely. Those two (+ "We're Gonna Move") are trivia, while "That's All Right" etc changed everything for Elvis and music in general.

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    Rambo movies are really beyond criticism, Sly, Arnie, Chuck and co., just churned out mindless actioners which entertained you while you swigged a few beers and ate a pizza, perfect for a night in. First Blood was a first rate movie in its own right, though, and is recommended viewing.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited March 2022

    Ransom ("The terrorists" in the US) 1974

    Sean Connery plays the head of the Scandianavian secret service! Strictly speaking this would place the story somewhere between 1397 and 1523 since that's the only period we had a Scandinavian state, but it's actually set in the 1970's. The plot is about a hijacking of a passenger plane and it's almost entirely shot in Norway. It's fun to see the buildings, police cars, signs, the skis on Connery' car and the little boy who says "Bæsj" (poo) to a terrorist when leaving the toilet. 😁

    I liked Ransom. It's a solid thriller and the passenger plane hijack plot seems both fairly believable, but it also has some inventive twists. I think at least most of them are good. Connery is also good, and his Norwegian accent is just as convincing as his Russian, Spanish, Egyptian and other accents he interpreted.

    There are actually two links to the real world of espionage in the movie, and I've posted about both in AJB. One of the few Norwegian actors is Knut Wigert. He was an SOE agent in WWII and his sister Sonia was a movie star and high-level spy for Sweden and the USA. Sonja Wigert - Movie star and spy — ajb007.

    The owner of the plane and part financier of the movie also has a dramatic story: Real stories from the world of espionage and special operations - Page 3 — ajb007

    Here's the movie: The Terrorists (1974)💎 - Bing video


    This poster is very groovy!


  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited November 2022

    Margrete - queen of the north (2021)

    Here's a movie that actually takes place in the kingdom of Scandinavia. In the late middle ages Denmark, Sweden (including Finland), Norway (including Greenland, Iceland and other cold places in the north Atlantic) were ruled by the same monarch. This movie is about Margerete I (Trine Dyrholm Brosnan's leading lady in "All you need is love" by Suzanne Bier) who was the first ruler of this union. By all accounts she was a good leader. At the start of the movie she is about to negotiate the engagement between her adopted son Erik and an English princess and create an alliance with England against the German Hanseatic League. Then a man turns up who claims to be her son Olav who was believed to have died fifteen years earlier. The man (played by Jakob Oftebro who's a star in Scandinavia and has potential on a global scale) has the potential to destroy the alliance with England and the union itself.

    It's rare to see a movie about medival court intrigue at the cinema nowadays and few people know this story. But it's a good story and the fact that it's little known works to it's advantage. We also get top-notch actors. While much of the story takes place in in grey medival castles it's given breathing space in outdoor scenes were the weather and landscapes are stark and brutal. This isn't done by accident.

    Like Tosca this movie isn't for everyone, but if you like quality historical drama you won't regret watching this movie.

    Trailer: Margrete Queen Of The North - Official Trailer - YouTube

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)

    It’s been a few years since I last saw this and having completed the new TV version I thought I would watch again. Harry Saltzman took time off Bond duties to produce an alternate view of the spy world, this time going for realism rather than the glamour of the Bond movies. Michael Caine stars as Harry Palmer (dubbed in the press at the time as 003 1/2) who has a dubious past but now works for the MOD, he is transferred to another section working for Major Dalby to investigate the disappearance of a scientist. What follows is gritty and intriguing as Palmer pieces together the mystery. Several Bond crew members are involved in the production and John Barry provides a memorable score.

    This is one if the standout movies of the 60’s and is highly recommended, excellent all round.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent

    The Thirty Nine Steps. I watched this and enjoyed it. It was so entertaining that I will make sure I see it again some time. Here is the trailer.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YyI51ciTD8

  • The Red KindThe Red Kind EnglandPosts: 3,119MI6 Agent
    edited March 2022


    I thought Rambo was pretty good. Second best of the series. Haven't seen the latest one as the trailer told me all I needed to know (and avoid!)

    "Any of the opposition around..?"
  • The Red KindThe Red Kind EnglandPosts: 3,119MI6 Agent

    Glad you enjoyed it Joshua. I also like this version and Robert Powell's portrayal of Richard Hannay. However, it is still a clear second best to the original Hitchcock version from 1935. You MUST watch that!👌

    "Any of the opposition around..?"
  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent

    I didn't know there was another 39 steps film. I will look out for it.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    Alfred Hitchcock made the 39 Steps in 1935

    it was the second of five spy films he made in the 1930s, based on a novel by John Buchan

    very entertaining such an early film, but also highly influential

    here it is on youtube in decent quality


  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Oooh, the Kenneth More one is a bit rubbish! Sort of remakes the Hitchcock one - we've discussed this, it's not really derived from the book, more the Hitchcock film which riffs on the book a bit like a Roger Moore Bond movie, not that similar to its source - and it's a shame because, set in the 50s, they could have tapped into the Cold War paranoia vibe that Hitch himself was doing, sort of remaking 39 Steps with North by Northwest.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    I agree, that version doesn't hold a candle to the Hitchcock one.

  • The Red KindThe Red Kind EnglandPosts: 3,119MI6 Agent

    And then there's the 2008 TV movie, Rupert Penry-Jones version. Not bad but not as good as the 1935, 1978 versions IMO.

    "Any of the opposition around..?"
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited March 2022

    Juggernaut (1974)


    My second tense terrorism movie from 1974 I've watched in a few days. The story is based on a real incident two years earlier when the cruise ship "Queen Elizabeth II" rescieved bomb threaths and a group of Special Boat Service operators were dropped to the ship to find and defuse the bombs. Thankfully it was a hoax, but that's not the case in this movie. Tense thrillers must have a good cast. This one has Richard Harries, Ian Holm, Omar Sharif, Antony Hopkins, Julian Glover and more. The standout is Richard Harries as the veteran bomb disposal expert. The bomb disposal scenes are among the best I've ever seen. This movie is an overlooked gem!

    Juggernaut 1974 with Anthony Hopkins, Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and David Hemmings - Bing video

  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent

    @caractacus potts thank you for the link. I will definitely watch this.


    @Number24 I watched Juggernaut a few weeks ago. It was a good film. I didn't know it was based on a real event

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