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Review: Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Frustrated author (Luigi Pistilli) spends most of his time hosting booze-soaked orgies at his family estate, and being a general abusive arsehole to his wife (Anita Strindberg). The black cat roaming the estate doesn’t treat wifey very kindly, either. Complications arise with a couple of murders taking place on castle grounds, and the sudden arrival of Pistilli’s niece (Edwige Fenech). The latter will spark an arousal in both Strindberg and Pistilli.   As much as I love Italian horror, the more I delve into giallo the more I think I might not be on board with this side of the Italian horror aisle. This 1972 Sergio Martino ( “Slave of the Cannibal God” , “Torso” – a decent giallo) film is one of the big misses. It’s well-acted but I don’t understand its popularity at all, it’s boring and filled with people I didn’t remotely care about. It’s not even very stylish, which isn’t something I often say about this subgenre. I didn’t pick the killer, but I also didn’t care enough to t...
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Review: Armed Response (1986)

Bar owner and ‘nam veteran David Carradine teams up with his crusty ex-cop father (Lee Van Cleef) to take on Yakuza boss Mako and his gang after they kill Carradine’s idiot brother (David Goss). Ross Hagen plays Goss’ turncoat partner, Michael Berryman and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa are henchmen, Dick Miller and Laurene Landon are another couple of crooks. Brent Huff plays Carradine’s other brother.   A pretty incredible B cast is at the mercy of C-movie veteran director Fred Olen Ray ( “The Tomb” , “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers” , “Beverly Hills Vamp” , “Wizards of the Demon Sword” ) in this deathly paced 1986 action movie. To call it one of the better Fred Olen Ray films I’ve seen says little in the film’s favour. The film is too damn short to be so damn slow, and there’s also a severe lack of action for a supposed action movie. Did we really need all those super slow-mo war flashbacks?   It’s also unevenly acted, with Lee Van Cleef and particularly Ross Hagen and Mako the b...
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Review: Martin’s Day (1985)

Hardened criminal Richard Harris breaks out of prison, steals a police car and eventually takes a 12 year-old boy (Justin Henry) as hostage when some coppers get ready to approach him. Thus begins a volatile road trip between a desperate convict and a quiet little boy who both happen to be named Martin. Lindsay Wagner plays a prison shrink, James Coburn plays a cop, Karen Black appears briefly as Harris’ ex, and John Ireland is Harris’ recently parolled prison buddy.   Truly awful 1985 Canadian film from former Hammer director Alan Gibson ( “Dracula AD 1972” , “Crescendo” ) is like an awkward, wrong-headed forerunner to Clint Eastwood’s “A Perfect World” . That film was uneven, but at least it gave us one of Kevin Costner’s better performances and never quite overdosed on sentimentality. Costner’s character was still a bad guy, just not quite as bad as his cohort. This film seems to want you to like its main character, and that creates disaster. The sole highlight here is a mer...
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Review: Escape From Sobibor (1987)

Set in a Polish ‘work camp’ (read: death camp) during WWII, Alan Arkin plays Jewish prisoner Leon, who bravely attempts to orchestrate a mass prisoner escape from their brutal Nazi captors. Joanna Pacula and a Russian Rutger Hauer play two other prisoners instrumental in planning and carrying out the escape. Jack Shepherd plays another prisoner who only slowly – and gut-wrenchingly – realises that his family has been exterminated in the ‘showers’.     If you can get your eyes on the full 2+ hour version, this 1987 TV movie from director Jack Gold (The mediocre “The Medusa Touch” ) is really worthwhile. It’s an important film about an important story that should never be forgotten. Possibly due to being a mid 80s TV movie that has more recently been viewed in truncated form (with about an hour cut out!), it seems to not be spoken about much these days. However, it was widely viewed on original run, and won Golden Globes for the film itself (in a tie with another TV film) an...
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Review: Assassin (2023)

Soldier Nomzamo Mbatha confronts Bruce Willis over her husband Mustafa Shakir’s current comatose state. Shakir is a drone pilot in the military, with Willis his superior. It turns out ‘drone pilot’ means something different here, as Shakir was part of a top-secret experiment using human bodies as drones . Basically, the mind of one soldier being able to be transported into the body of another. Now the technology has fallen into the hands of bad guy Dominic Purcell, and Mbatha will have to enter a drone body herself to flush him out and kill him. Barry Jay Minoff plays Marko, one of Willis’ not very nice associates.   If this 2023 film is as reported to be Bruce Willis’ final film, then he hasn’t gone out on the worst of notes I suppose. That’s about as charitable as I can be here, I’m afraid. If you’re still on the Bruce Willis train at this point, you should know what you’re getting here, it’s neither the best nor the worst of the direct-to-DVD/streaming era but not really wor...
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Review: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

Mr. Kite (George Burns) tells the story of the title band who entertained the town of Heartland until 1958 when the sergeant died of a heart attack. Their instruments still remain in town, and now a new incarnation of band (played by Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees) have picked up where the original band left off. Trouble comes in the form of greedy record company head B.D. Hoffler (Donald Pleasence) and a thieving git named Mean Mr. Mustard (Frankie Howerd), the latter of whom hopes to steal the sacred instruments, the former might just steal their souls. The only hope? The lovely Strawberry Fields (Sandy Farina).   I’m a Beatles fan, Sgt. Pepper is one of their best and most iconic albums. I’m also a fan of Steve Martin, Donald Pleasence, Billy Preston, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and Earth Wind & Fire. I also rather like some of The Bee Gees stuff, much as I’d love to never hear ‘More Than A Woman’ ever again. So I should like this 1978 all-star film right? No, and not just...
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Review: Men (2022)

Londoner Jessie Buckley needs a break after the death of her husband, so she rents a house in a small country village. Soon after, a disturbed and nude man tries to break in. Two things strike her as disturbing; 1) The rather disinterested attitude of the locals towards this disturbance, and 2) Said locals all seem to look alike. As in they all look a lot like Rory Kinnear in various guises. And that’s when things turn even more disturbing…and bizarre.   I seem to be on a lonely island of my own here, but this film from writer-director Alex Garland ( “Ex-Machina” ) is second only to Phil Tippett’s “Mad God” as my favourite film of 2022. I don’t think I’ve felt this isolated in praising a film so strongly since “Repo Men” was named as one of my favourite films of 2010, but this seems to be the one A24 film that people either were disappointed by or actively despise. That’s OK, I’ll have it. I really liked this one. If you like folk horror and/or you like psychological horror, ...
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Review: The Hitter (1978)

Ex-boxer and now drifter Otis (Ron O’Neal) defeats Louisiana Slim (Bill Cobbs) at a game of pool, in the latter’s own pool hall no less. ‘ol Louisiana Slim isn’t happy about that at all, so Otis makes a swift exit. Then he meets aging con artist Nathan (Adolph Caesar), who upon finding out what Otis used to do for a living, sees dollar signs for them both in the street fight caper. Sheila Frazier plays a hooker whom Otis romances, unawares that she’s also the squeeze of the already pissed off Louisiana Slim.   A small, overlooked 1978 drama from director Christopher Leitch (director of “Teen Wolf Too” , co-writer of “Universal Soldier” ), if you’re a Ron O’Neal fan you’ll want to check this one out. It’s got an archaic plot, and a bit of a mixed tone, but it’s a pretty entertaining watch. Ron O’Neal had enormous power and charisma as an actor, but was largely wasted throughout his career. “Super Fly” made him a star, and whilst he seems to think it also ironically ended his ca...
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