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Review: Dorian Gray (1970)

Set in London in the late 60s, the vain young man of the title (Helmut Berger) is aimlessly drifting through life when he poses for his artist friend Richard Todd. Meanwhile he is encouraged into debauchery and decadence by jaded Herbert Lom, as Dorian also takes the virginity of young actress Marie Liljedahl. But Dorian starts to resent the portrait that is ageless whilst he’s doomed to mortality. Well actually, a funny thing starts to happen with that painting…   Schlock producer Harry Alan Towers gives us a relatively serious adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novel in this 1970 film and almost pulls it off. The film is OK for what it is, but none of the actors beyond Helmut Berger and Herbert Lom offer up accomplished enough performances to make this approach work. So it might’ve been better for Towers to encourage director Massimo Dallamano (cinematographer on two of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy) to ratchet up the exploitation content. Or better yet, bring in old friend J...
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Review: Pit Fighter (2005)

Dominique Vandenberg plays an amnesiac pit fighter, who is managed by mafia-connected Steven Bauer. Vandenberg keeps having flashes of a woman (Stana Katic) whose identity he can’t yet place, but slowly it all starts to come back to him. Scott Adkins has a non-fighting role as a man from Vandenbeg’s past, whilst Stephen Graham plays a character connected to Katic.   An early collaboration between writer-director Jesse V. Johnson and martial arts actor Scott Adkins, this dreadful 2005 film is a long way from “Savage Dog” , “Accident Man” , and “Avengement” . Adkins was still in the early stages of his career and thus is barely an extra here in what may be the worst film he’s been involved in. Yes, worse than “Max Cloud” , “Black Mask 2” , “Dead Reckoning” , and “The Legend of Hercules” . It’s been poorly edited, it’s needlessly confusing and dreadfully boring. I wonder how Johnson looks back on this one because his films are usually competent at the very least, whereas the narra...
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Review: The Boxer’s Omen (1983)

Lung-Wei Wang plays a boxer who gets permanently disabled by the hulking, cheating Bu-bo (Bolo Yeung). His brother Chan Hung (Phillip Ko) a small-time crook, is having a bit of a tough time of it himself. Not only have the chieftains of his criminal gang been killed by rival gangsters, but Chan Hung himself gets kidnapped only to be saved by some kind of ghostly monk. More ghostly visions occur, so he goes to a Buddhist temple where he learns his arrival was foretold by the deceased chief abbot. This abbot tried to put an end to some black magic practitioners who eventually destroyed him, or at least part of him. His soul remains alive inside his decaying human body. Now Chan Hung has arrived to fulfill the prophecy, he is asked to become a monk and help the abbot take down the black magicians. But first, he takes on Bu-bo in revenge for his brother.   If you enjoyed 1986’s “The Seventh Curse” , director Chih-Hung Kuei and co-writer On Szeto (who wrote the enjoyable “The Magic ...
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Review: Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)

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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