Shameless Self Expression

Jenny Tamburi’s mother has died, supposedly by suicide. She comes to stay at her late mother’s villa, but finds that it is currently occupied by Rosalba Neri, a photographer who just happens to be the current squeeze of Tamburi’s stepfather (Silvano Tranquilli). Pervy stepfather seems rather taken with the sixteen (!) year old, something Neri notices as well. Before long, young Tamburi starts to suspect that the couple are trying to killer her for her mother’s inheritance money.   Another day, another giallo film with Rosalba Neri. This 1972 film has Neri pairing up with her “Amuck!” director Silvio Amadio. The Sapphic action is barely existent this time around, and it’s hardly a great film. However, it’s still a fair bit superior to “Amuck!” overall. Neri is perfect, lead actress Jenny Tamburi is cute as a button, and quite a deal more interesting than the gorgeous Barbara Bouchet was in “Amuck!” . She also gets naked quickly and often, for those who like that sort of thing. In

Pool shark Nick Casey (James Coburn) is the title character, who along with his idiot gambler partner/protégé Billie Joe Robbins (Bruce Boxleitner) is headed for a big pool tournament where the winner gets to face off against The Deacon (Omar Sharif), this film’s version of ‘The Man’, whom Casey has some history with. For the most part though, the film is mostly Nick and Billie Joe travelling around and making silly bets and hitting on women. Enter Ronee Blakley, a country singer the duo meet along the way. Jack O’Halloran turns up as a hulking thug with a seeming grudge against one of the pool-playing characters here, Michael Lerner is the chief organiser/emcee of the tournament, while Calvin Lockhart is an effete but dangerous weirdo named Snow White.   Although James Coburn is much more agreeable company than Paul Newman in “The Hustler” , this 1980 pool hustler film is a pretty crummy dry-run for the later “The Colour of Money” . Directed by Robert Ellis Miller (the flawed but

As the title suggests, an account of the Battle of Midway in which a small US Navy force is tasked with taking on the much larger Japanese fleet, becoming a pivotal turning point in WWII. Charlton Heston is a Captain whose Navy Lieutenant son (Edward Albert Jr.) is currently dating an American-born Japanese girl currently interned with her parents for security measures. The Japanese are led by Admiral Toshiro Mifune (dubbed by Paul Frees), with Pat Morita and James Shigeta as his subordinates with differing ideas on tactics. Henry Fonda turns up as Mifune’s American counterpart, with Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Robert Webber, Robert Wagner, Cliff Robertson and others playing the various American Navy brass. James Coburn has one scene as a (fictional) Captain, and Hal Holbrook plays a Commander in charge of the Intelligence unit trying to decrypt Japanese Navy codes.   A gigantic cast is predominantly wasted in this dramatically inert 1976 WWII movie from Jack Smight (whose best fil

A tortured artist named Lansac (played by Philippe Lemaire) blackmails disgraced doctor Howard Vernon into using his skills in experimental surgery to restore the once beautiful face of his disfigured wife.   Yet another film about a man driven to deadly deeds to restore the once beautiful face of his disfigured love ( “Eyes Without a Face” , “Corruption” , “The Skin I Live In” , etc). This 1970 French film from director Claude Mulot (whose background is in adult entertainment pictures) and his co-writers Jean Carriaga (Mulot’s “Sexyrella” ) and Edgar Oppenheimer (Mulot’s “Manhunt for Murder” with Sydney Chaplin!) is as stuffy and dull as the awfully smug lead performance by Philippe Lemaire, a block of wood if ever I’ve seen one. Mulot is acting like this Franco-esque exploitation trash material is “8 ½” and it results in a film that is no fun at all. Howard Vernon is quite good as a disgraced surgeon, and the film both looks and sounds immaculate. The women are hot, too. I just

Professor Peter Cushing leads a scientific team including Tony Britton, Virginia Maskell, and Kenneth Griffith. They’re conducting experiments on super bugs that could work to eliminate bubonic plague and other epidemics. Sewell and the rather impatient Britton would like to publish, but the Minister of Defence (Raymond Huntley) believes that publishing their findings could potentially lead to the bugs getting in the hands of those who wish to do national harm. Just to make sure Cushing and co. stay in line, the Minister employs the services of security officer Thorley Walters, who isn’t quite as daffy and absent-minded as he might appear. Walters in turn enlists Griffith to be his mole on the inside of the laboratory. Whilst Cushing reluctantly accepts the Minister’s order, the rather indignant and hot-headed Britton takes another tact entirely. Sir Ian Bannen plays Maskell’s double-amputee partner in a passionless relationship (she tends to his medical needs, but they’re no longer ro