Holiday (1930)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1931	Nominated	Oscar	Best Actress in a Leading Role Ann Harding
			Best Writing, Adaptation Horace Jackson

Pathe Exchange
Directed by Edward H. Griffith
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Easy-going and free-thinking Robert Ames falls in love with wealthy socialite Mary Astor. Her stuffy father refuses to grant permission for the marriage unless he agrees to work for him in the banking business. He talks things over with Astor's sister Ann Harding, whose point of view is closer to his than Mary's will ever be. He begins to doubt his upcoming marriage, while falling in love with Ann. Snappy dialogue, realistic characters and some jabs at high society living make this a winner.

Sarah and Son (1930)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1930	Nominated	Oscar	Best Actress in a Leading Role Ruth Chatterton

Paramount Pictures
Directed by Dorothy Arzner
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Ruth Chatterton is just awful in her Oscar nominated role as a wife in an unhappy marriage whose good-for-nothing husband kidnaps their baby only to give him away to strangers. She goes off to Europe in search of them, finding her husband, who is fighting in WWI, on his death bed in a hospital. His last words are the name of the family he gave the baby to, and she returns to America to claim him. Chatterton is barely comprehensible in a thick accent and hilariously overreacts more than once to bad news.

The Trespasser (1929)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1930	Nominated	Oscar	Best Actress in a Leading Role Gloria Swanson

United Artists
Directed by Edmund Goulding
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Gloria Swanson falls in love with the son of one of the richest men in Chicago. They elope, and although he stands to inherit a fortune she insists that they make their own way and work. His father objects and talks the son into an annulment, then sends him off to Paris. Months later she has a bouncing baby boy and raises him alone and penniless. Years pass, she reveals the son to his father, setting off a custody battle between her, the father, his wife, her lover and the wealthy grandpa. Despite inheriting her own fortune, somehow she gives up the child. Don't worry, there is a happy ending. Swanson's acting style is clearly stuck in the silent era: she over-emotes by drawing out every sentence with long sighs and mournful looks.

Eijanaika (1981)

Shochiku
Directed by Shohei Imamura
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Hulu)

A man returns to his Japanese homeland after being shipwrecked and spending several years in America. His wife works in a carnival sideshow as a "blow girl", patrons pay to literally blow on her through straws, with a little extra paid work on the side afterwards. She has also taken up with a local gangster whose thugs control the town. He still loves his wife and they continue a very rocky relationship. He tries to convince her to return to America but she refuses. He becomes the unlikely leader of a peasant revolution that takes up much of the running time. Long, boring story, laced with explicit sex and violence, with no one to root for other than a bunch of drunken revolutionaries parading through the street yelling, "Why Not?".

A Woman of Affairs (1928)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1930	Nominated	Oscar	Best Writing, Achievement Bess Meredyth No official nominees had been announced this year.

MGM
Directed by Clarence Brown
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Melodramatic story of Greta Garbo's unhappy love life. The "only man she could ever love" takes a job in Egypt to satisfy his father, leaving poor Greta behind. Years pass, Greta has numerous affairs which make the society pages, while her former lover gets engaged. They have a one night stand in Paris, but he gets married anyway while she ends up in an insane asylum. He rushes to her side, she is cured and his wife grants a divorce. Did I mention the multiple suicides?

The Devil's Holiday (1930)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1930	Nominated	Oscar	Best Actress in a Leading Role Nancy Carroll

Paramount Pictures
Directed by Edmund Goulding
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Headstrong Nancy Carroll uses men for money and power. She hatches a plan to marry country bumpkin Phillips Holmes, then blackmail his wealthy father. They move to his sprawling farm in the country where his family fights over her, leading to an accident. Carroll is paid off and returns to the city, but begins to have second thoughts. Holmes is naive, and the plot in general is overly sentimental, but Carroll has energy and persona to burn, it's no surprise she was one of Hollywood's biggest stars in the early 1930's, though largely forgotten today.

The Big Pond (1930)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1930	Nominated	Oscar	Best Actor in a Leading Role Maurice Chevalier

Paramount Pictures
Directed by Hobart Henley
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Claudette Colbert falls in love with Maurice Chevalier in Vienna. Broke, she convinces her wealthy father to give him a job in his chewing gum factory back in the States. Little does she know that her father intends on working him so hard that he leaves her. Instead, Chevalier makes him a fortune with alcohol flavored gum. However, in the process Chevalier has become so Americanized that Claudette no longer wants him. Don't worry, there is a happy ending. Tolerable Colbert-Chevalier pairing, spiced up with dialogue by Preston Sturges.

Bulldog Drummond (1929)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1930	Nominated	Oscar	Best Actor in a Leading Role Ronald Colman
			Best Art Direction William Cameron Menzies

United Artists
Directed by F. Richard Jones
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Dapper Ronald Colman is a bored and wealthy, so he puts an ad in the paper for "adventure" and answers one from a pretty girl in distress. He heads to a country inn and meets her at midnight. Her uncle has been kidnapped and being held in an "asylum" run by a diabolical doctor and his minions. Can Colman and his bumbling assistants rescue the uncle? More importantly, can he seduce Joan Bennett? Of course! Occasionally atmospheric thanks to the "settings" of William Cameron Menzies, but it can be talky and has an unsatisfying ending.

Dynamite (1929)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1930	Nominated	Oscar	Best Art Direction Mitchell Leisen No official nominees had been announced this year.

MGM
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Socialite Kay Johnson stands to lose her inheritance unless she gets married within the week. She's in love with a married man whose wife won't give him a divorce, so she gets hitched to Charles Bickford who is about to be hanged for murder. After Bickford's name is cleared, his moral upbringing won't allow him to get divorced so he tries to stick it out with Johnson despite their obvious incompatibilities. The fight and bicker, so he moves back home to a small town and works in the coal mines. Johnson soon follows, and eventually her fiance, leading to a ludicrous finale in a coal mine. Somehow manages to be entertaining despite all of the melodrama, Cecil B. made sure of that.

A Ship Comes In (1928)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
1929	Nominated	Oscar	Best Actress in a Leading Role Louise Dresser

Pathe Exchange
Directed by William K. Howard
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

An immigrant family arrives in America to start a new life. They get a big apartment and the father gets a job as a janitor in a federal building. Five years pass and he qualifies for citizenship while his son joins the Army and leaves to fight in a war. Meanwhile, a dissatisfied immigrant plans to assassinate a judge who sentenced a friend to hard labor. He slips a bomb inside a cake box meant as a gift from Schildkraut, framing him for murder. He is tried and convicted. The real killer is tormented by guilt in some interesting scenes featuring clocks. American justice triumphs and their son becomes a war hero. Succeeds despite the patriotic propaganda, mainly due to the performance of Rudolph Schildkraut as the father, although ironically it was Dresser as the mother who got the Oscar nod.

Return of the Kung-Fu Dragon (1976)

Directed by Chi-lien Lu
My rating: BOMB
IMDb
(YouTube)

Juvenile story of a princess battling an evil magician. The dubbing is atrocious, the sound effects ludicrous and the sets amateurish, in other words your typical mid 70's kung fu flick.

What's So Bad About Feeling Good? (1968)

Universal Pictures
Directed by George Seaton
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Mary Tyler Moore, a folk singing hippie, and her boyfriend George Peppard, also a drop out, live in a sort of communal apartment with their intellectual friends reading philosophy, taking drugs, etc. A toucan carrying a "happy virus" enters their window and infects them all. Soon enough, they get cleaned up, get real jobs and are living "normal", productive lives. The virus starts spreading across the city which starts to resemble a musical with everyone singing and dancing. The politicians are concerned no one will vote, or pay taxes, and set out to capture the bird and find a cure for the virus. It's basically a one-joke comedy that makes its point and then has nowhere to go. There are very long, boring subplots with the police stalking the bird, Moore and Peppard hiding the bird and the scientists performing experiments, including spying on them on their wedding night. It's very dated and never funny.

I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973)

United Artists
Directed by William Witney
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Jim Brown and Christopher George are prisoners on an isolated Caribbean island. For the first half of the movie they endure various forms of punishment and torture from their brutal captors. They escape by building a raft out of animal hides, float around on the ocean and end up on the mainland. They encounter a leper colony then a tribe of friendly natives while being pursued by the police. They eventually end up at a carnival in town where they escape by using fireworks. Excessively violent, but even worse excessively boring, film from Roger Corman and company, including a gratuitous real pig slaughter that got it banned in many countries.

Harlequin (1980)

New Image
Directed by Simon Wincer
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Slick but empty story of a "faith healer" who is hired as a clown at a birthday party for a terminally ill boy with leukemia. He cures the boy, then sticks around to have an affair with his mother, the wife of ambitious, and crooked, politician David Hemmings. The "faith healer" has all kinds of ridiculous supernatural powers which he uses to torment the politician and other people he doesn't particularly like. He is shot multiple times but doesn't die, rising from the dead for one last attempt to kill the bad politicians. It all plays out like bad Brian De Palma.

Remember My Name (1978)

Columbia Pictures
Directed by Alan Rudolph
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Released from prison after 12 years for murder, Geraldine Chaplin stalks her ex-husband Anthony Perkins and his new wife. Chaplin starts by following Perkins to work, then throws rocks through his window until finally walking into their house and pulling a knife on his wife, apparently just in jest. Arrested, she opens up to Perkins in jail while he tries but fails to explain the whole thing to his wife. They get drunk and sleep together, but he wakes up to find Chaplin's maintenance man, who is in love with her, asking difficult questions. Although the ending is subject to interpretation, it's that kind of film, some kind of tragedy unfolds between Perkins and the maintenance man. The pairing of Chaplin and Perkins doesn't always work, they have similar personalities, and it almost seems like they are brother and sister rather than lovers. Their characters are neurotic and dysfunctional, eliciting little sympathy other than getting them into psychiatric care. The blues soundtrack by Alberta Hunter is good by itself, but I'm not sure it belonged to this film, scenes that should be sinister instead make you want to tap your feet to the rhythm.

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary (1975)

Black Lion
Directed by Juan Lopez Moctezuma
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

US-Mexican production starring Cristina Ferrare as a struggling artist. She spikes the drinks of strangers, and occasionally friends and boyfriends, with a drug then drinks their blood. The police investigate but are so inept that they don't even suspect her despite her carelessness. More bodies show up, also drained of blood, only this time it's John Carradine dressed head to foot in black and with a black mask over his face doing the killing. Some people finally notice him drinking the blood of a victim in a cemetery and chase him away. He meets up with Cristina who turns out to be his daughter, but nothing is really explained other than having some kind of "incurable disease".

Death Weekend (1976)

American International Pictures
Directed by William Fruet
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Brenda Vaccaro and her date are driving to his isolated house in the country for a weekend getaway. They encounter punks in a souped-up muscle car, but thanks to her driving skills force them into a ditch. Her date ends up being a jerk who watches her undress through two-way mirrors, but as she is leaving the punks show up and take them hostage. They proceed to ransack the house, murder the guy and rape Vaccaro. However, she is determined to escape and outwits the thugs one by one. The final showdown with Don Stroud, leader of the gang, is particularly memorable. Although not as well known, it compares favorably to other films with a strong feminine survivor, such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit on Your Grave or Halloween.

Adam at Six A.M. (1970)

National General Pictures
Directed by Robert Scheerer
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Dissatisfied with his life as a young college professor in California, Michael Douglas drives to Missouri for the funeral of a distant relative. He ends up staying the summer, getting a job as a manual labor for the electric company. He hangs out with his good ole boy coworkers, including Joe Don Baker, getting drunk, picking up women, etc. He falls in love with local beauty Lee Purcell, but they are obviously not suited for each other. He has dreams of traveling the world, she just wants to settle down. Nonetheless, he proposes marriage, only to have second thoughts. The plot is a bit too predictable, and Douglas' character is ultimately selfish and unlikeable, but entertaining in a laid back, unassuming way.

And God Said to Cain... (1970)

Directed by Antonio Margheriti
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Dull western with Klaus Kinski getting released after 10 years on the chain gang, seeking revenge on the man who framed him. Filmed almost entirely at night, people and places are barely visible in the murky streets of a windy western town. The motive for the killings is not revealed until nearly the end, leaving the viewer to wonder why Kinski is on his rampage.

J.C. (1972)

Avco Embassy Pictures
Directed by William F. McGaha
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

JC is the leader of a harmless motorcycle gang in Georgia. He decides to take the gang to his old home town in northern Alabama and visit his sister, where they encounter redneck racists led by sheriff Slim Pickens. A black member of the gang is arrested for smoking pot, beat up by the police and locked in jail. JC leads the gang into town to get him out, resulting in violence and many deaths. Other than some obnoxious Christian rock songs on the soundtrack, the Christian symbolism is not all that obvious. JC has visions of a "winking eye in the sky" that tells him what to do, and there is some talk about his evangelical father, but JC is no saint: revenge drives him to murder. It is technically inept, with more boom microphone sightings than any film I can remember.

The People Next Door (1970)

Avco Embassy Pictures
Directed by  David Greene
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

The generation gap is exposed by a sixteen-year-old girl living in the suburbs with her family. They find her one day in the closet talking about "seeing God" and "being electric". It turns out she is an acid freak and is having a bad trip. Her older brother, the leader of the progressive rock band "The Glass Bead", talks her down but it doesn't take long for her to runaway to her boyfriend drug dealer. Her dad, Eli Wallach in one of his better roles, goes to take her back, but not before she tries to seduce him. They send her to a public asylum where they have group sessions with patients with even worse problems. It's not until mom gives her a stern talking to that there is any hope of a normal life. Dated, to be sure, but also an earnest depiction of the hopelessness of drugs, for both the user and the people around them. Deborah Winters as the young Maxie gives a stand out performance.

Le Orme (1975)

Directed by Luigi Bazzoni
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Dreamlike story of a woman searching for her past identity on an idyllic Mediterranean island in the Middle East. Florinda Bolkan is a translator in Italy who wakes up one day only to find out she has somehow forgotten the past three. She flies to Garma, a fictional island off the Turkish coast. The people there seem to remember her, including a little girl on the beach and a mysterious carpenter. People, places and objects gradually rekindle her memory. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention her recurring dreams of an astronaut abandoned on the moon, watched over by mad scientist Klaus Kinski. The ending implies that she has been carried off to the insane asylum and the whole thing was just mad paranoia. I'm not sure the film would have been better just leaving out the whole sci-fi angle. Nonetheless, it's intriguing, haunting and superbly photographed by Vittorio Storaro, who worked with Bertolucci on The Conformist and The Spider's Stratagem.

The Secret Killer (1975)

Directed by Umberto Lenzi
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

This Italian giallo, better known by its American title Eyeball, is a sly mystery that throws more red herrings into one film than the entire Charlie Chan series. Every character is either a suspect or a possible victim. Just when you think you've got it figured out, a new plot thread is introduced and another character becomes the prime suspect. Lenzi's screenplay manages to combine a certain playfulness with grisly murders. When the killer is finally caught in the act, it is both shocking and ludicrous.

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

Regal Films (UK)
Directed by Freddie Francis
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

The first of several horror anthologies from Amicus Productions. A group of strangers on a train each have their tarot cards read by Peter Cushing. Their futures are familiar horror territory: a werewolf, a vampire, a disembodied hand, a creeping vine and voodoo. The stories are brief but handsomely mounted, like reading an old familiar comic book. The wraparound story saves the best twist for last.

When You Comin' Back Red Ryder (1979)

Columbia Pictures
Directed by Milton Katselas
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

The first hour or so is a slow, meandering look at the lonely lives of several dysfunctional couples in a dusty west Texas town, and you begin to wonder where it is all leading. Eventually everyone converges on the diner, where the plot takes a left turn and becomes a tense standoff with a loudmouth hippie with a gun. Marjoe Gortner has a knack for getting under everyone's skin, probably including the viewer's, and forces the people in the diner to act out increasingly demeaning fantasies. At one point he gives the gun to his girlfriend who takes it outside to watch over the mechanic, but he still has complete control over the group with nothing more than a violin. You are never quite sure when it will turn violent, which ratchets up the intensity even further. While Marjoe is fascinating and quite convincing as the psycho, even more interesting is connecting the relationships and characters which took so long to establish in the first part of the film to their actions, or inactions, in the diner.

Up in the Cellar (1970)

American International Pictures
Directed by Theodore J. Flicker
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Poet and college student Wes Stern has his scholarship cancelled by the university computer. He takes his case to university president Larry Hagman, an ultra conservative, who rejects him. After a failed suicide attempt, Stern moves in with the local student radical group who convince him to try to ruin Hagman's life by seducing his wife, daughter and mistress. It's mostly a dated sex comedy, but there is just enough social commentary to keep it somewhat interesting. Larry Hagman has a blast with his role as a hypocritical aspiring politician.

Island of Terror (1966)

Planet Film Distributors (UK)
Directed by Terence Fisher
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

A bizarre death on a remote Irish island brings in expert scientists Peter Cushing and Edward Judd to try to solve it. Strange creatures, sort of like armadillos with one long tentacle, are eating the bones and leaving deflated, jelly-like bodies behind. The trail leads to the scientific research of a doctor looking for a cure for cancer. Cushing loses an arm in the battle, and the island's cattle don't fair too well, but good prevails, unless you count Japan in that ending. It's played deadly serious, but in all honesty is very silly.

Hammersmith Is Out (1972)

Cinerama Releasing
Directed by Peter Ustinov
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

This reworking of the Faustian legend is a complete failure. Richard Burton somehow keeps a stone face throughout as a mental patient who thinks he is, or perhaps really is, Satan. Beau Bridges is the dumb asylum worker who sets him free in exchange for wealth and power. Elizabeth Taylor is a waitress he picks up along the way. He becomes a multimillionaire in no time at all, but after reaching the top ignores Liz. He orders Burton-Satan to kill her, but instead he makes a new bargain with Liz, getting her pregnant and permanently sending Bridges to a wheelchair. Luckily Peter Ustinov, who also directed this mess, comes along and brings him back to the asylum. 

Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971)

Columbia Pictures
Directed by Mark Robson
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Essentially a filmed play, Kurt Vonnegut's story of a macho hunter and war hero who shows up at his wife's apartment after being presumed dead for 8 years is excruciatingly bad. His wife (Susannah York) is engaged to the doctor who lives next door. His peace and love philosophy clashes with Rod Steiger's macho facade. Poor Susannah is caught in the middle and doesn't know what to do. Their son, played by Steven Paul in a horrible performance, is torn between idolizing his father and accepting his new one. The final scene where York convinces her son that her husband's obsession with death is unhealthy is simply not convincing, even if you agree with her. Mixed in with all of the yelling are scenes in "heaven" where recently killed 10-year-old Pamelyn Ferdin plays shuffleboard with a dictator, an alcoholic and Jesus Christ himself. Even Vonnegut fans are going to be disappointed by this one.

The Murder Mansion (1972)

Avco-Embassy Pictures
Directed by Francisco Lara Polop
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Several people are lured to a remote house by a cemetery on a foggy night. Forced to spend the night, they are tormented by two supposedly dead people killed in an automobile accident decades earlier. Their host seems to have a part in this, as well as one of the guests, who has flashbacks to her past as a younger woman. Once the bodies start turning up, one of the surviving guests decides to investigate. There is a rational explanation, but little in the way of motivation. A couple of scares, but the scenario is so familiar it's a chore to sit to the end.

Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970)

Universal Pictures
Directed by Frank Perry
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

Uneven but not uninteresting story of bullied housewife Carrie Snodgress. She is married to Richard Benjamin, who plays perhaps the most obnoxious husband in cinema history, and she quietly carries out his daily orders about laundry, food, Christmas gifts, etc. She meets a selfish writer at a club where Alice Cooper is on stage and destroying their set, and they start an affair. He's not much better than her husband as far as personality, but they seem to hit it off in bed. A Christmas party for her husband's snobby friends ends in disaster and he afterwards admits an affair, but she does not admit hers. A tacked-on ending shows Carrie talking to a support group with her psychiatrist. Carrie is very good in her Oscar nominated role, but you have to wonder why she hangs out with such unpleasant men.

Shoot (1976)

Avco-Embassy Pictures
Directed by Harvey Hart
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

A group of friends out for a weekend hunting trip stumble upon another group of hunters in the woods. They stare at each other across a river for a few minutes, then shots ring out. They return fire and kill one of the other hunters, who drag his body away then disappear. Back in their hometown, paranoia gradually sets in, causing their leader, an unstable ex-military commander, to take drastic measures. He organizes the local group of gun nuts who still think they are in the Army and leads them back into the woods for another showdown. Cliff Robertson mumbles his way through an unsympathetic role as the leader. Ernest Borgnine is the conscious of the group, but gives in too easily. It's hard to say if the film intends to glorify guns or be against them, it could be interpreted either way, depending on the politics of the viewer.

Dougal and the Blue Cat (1972)

Anglo-EMI Film Distributors
Directed by Serget Danot
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

In this UK version of the French film, Dougal is a dog living with his owner and friends in the "magic garden". His idyllic life is interrupted when Buxton, a blue cat, is adopted. Buxton visits the factory on the hill overlooking the garden and is crowned king by a disembodied voice calling herself "Madame Blue" who plans to take over the universe and turn it blue. Buxton's first job is to convert the magic garden and take its inhabitants prisoner. Dougal sets out to rescue his friends, but first takes a trip to the moon with Buxton. This children's fantasy is loaded with British political innuendo. Dougal is a conservative and Buxton a person of color who threatens his way of life, but I'm not sure who Madame Blue is supposed to represent. The stop motion animation is in the style of the better known Rankin-Bass TV specials: simple yet effective.

Speedtrap (1977)

First Artists
Directed by Earl Bellamy
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)

The police hire private eye Joe Don Baker to catch a car thief known as the "Roadrunner". He ends up chasing every stolen car in southern California, none of which turn out to be the one they want. In his downtime he romances cop Tyne Daly or his psychic Lana Wood. The car chases are the only reason this movie exists, but about the only one I remember is a crash through a stack of beanbag chairs. The big twist ending involves the identity of the Roadrunner, but you will have figured it out long before anyone on screen.

Gold Diggers in Paris (1938)

Warner Bros. 
Directed by Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros.)

A bankrupt nightclub owner in NYC takes his show to Paris on false pretenses. The girls are taught ballet for an international exhibition, although their talents obviously lie elsewhere. The real ballet troupe is not happy and tries to get them deported. Rudy Vallee falls in love with a ballerina while his ex-wife tries to milk him for alimony. The day of the big show finally arrives, and the girls abandon ballet and put on a pathetic number filled with French caricatures and a giant sailor's hat. The Busby Berkeley numbers suffer from a lack of budget, they pale in comparison to previous films in the series. Instead, we get The Schnickelfritz Band, a novelty jazz act that makes funny faces and wears dumb costumes while playing frantic music in the style of Spike Jones.

Dames (1934)

Warner Bros.
Directed by Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Entertaining, if predictable, backstage musical, one of the endless rehashes of 42nd Street. The ever-grinning Dick Powell needs money to put on his latest production. Joan Blondell blackmails a gullible old man for the dough, and the show goes on. The highlight are the usual Busby Berkeley gargantuan production numbers, which start with a giant face of Ruby Keeler and end with a giant face of Dick Powell.

The "Human" Factor (1975)

Bryanston Distributing
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Dark Sky Films)

After his family is murdered execution style, George Kennedy vows to find and kill the terrorists responsible. He uses the computers at his NATO workplace and enlists the help of coworkers John Mills and Rita Tushingham. However, despite all of the antique computer nonsense, it is a help wanted ad the eventually leads him to the killers. Kennedy is not particularly convincing as a family man turned vigilante. Disappointing final film from Hollywood legend Dmytryk.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)

United Artists
Directed by Stanley Kramer
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Blu-ray, MGM/Fox)

Stanley Kramer's epic slapstick comedy is basically one long chase. A dying man reveals the location of buried cash to a group of strangers on a remote California highway. They can't agree how to divide it equally, so it's winner take all for whoever gets there first. Jonathan Winters stands out in a cast of comedy greats, as an angry truck driver who is taken by Phil Silvers and vows to get revenge. Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett end up in an out of control airplane, Sid Caesar and Edie Adams get trapped in a hardware store basement, Milton Berle and Terry-Thomas bicker about his mother-in-law or their nationalities, etc. Dick Shawn is hilarious as a way out California beach bum. It all ends under the big W. This was fun as a kid, but a bit overlong and tedious now, though it does have some great stunts.

A Man Called Django! (1971)

Directed by Edoardo Mulargia
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Timeless Media Group)

One of the countless Django films that followed in the wake of the 1966 original, here blue-eyed Italian Anthony Steffen does a fairly good job as Franco Nero's character. After his wife is brutally murdered in the opening scene, we join him a year later hunting down the members of the gang responsible in a dusty western town on the Mexican border. A friendly, if dumb, saloon owner leads him to someone who knows the names of the men he is seeking. The man agrees to help if he can have all of the loot from their lucrative gun trading business. They become uneasy friends and track down the killers one by one. The usual shootouts and fistfights follow, although Django comes up with some clever tricks that prevent them from becoming too cliche.

Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

Allied Artists
Directed by Robert Aldrich
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Blu-ray, Olive Films)

Burt Lancaster convinces his prison buddies to break into a missile silo, promising them millions of dollars while he makes a political point. His plan is to threaten to start WWIII, take the president hostage and force him to read a top secret document to the American public which implicates that a former administration knew the Vietnam War was hopeless and sacrificed lives to prove a point with the Russians. The military tries to stop him by placing a bomb in the silo, but get tripped up at the last second. They have no choice but to give in to his demands and send in the president. Overlong, talky and a bit dated, but occasionally riveting, especially the bravura finale.

A Small Town in Texas (1976)

American International Pictures
Directed by Jack Starrett
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, MGM Limited Edition Collection)

Typical southern drive-in fare that combines action and melodrama. Timothy Bottoms returns to his small Texas home town after being framed by the sheriff and serving 5 years in prison. In his absence, the sheriff has been sleeping with his wife. Bottoms waits for his opportunity to get revenge. The sheriff soon obliges by taking a bribe to assassinate a political candidate, which Bottoms witnesses. Filled with the usual car chases, fist fights and good ole boys drinking moonshine. Susan George as Bottoms' wife provides the melodramatic breaks. Bo Hopkins plays a sheriff for the millionth time.

Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938)

Twentieth Century-Fox Film
Directed by James Tinling
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Fox)

A Charlie Chan script was rewritten for Mr. Moto after the death of Warner Oland, but the characters are vastly different and it really doesn't work. Moto-Chan is teaching a detective class, including Number One Son Keye Luke as a student and bungling amateur, when a murder at a boxing match catches his attention. He uses it as a teaching device, following up clues in class with diagrams and explanations. There are the usual array of suspects and red herrings, with the unlikely killer eventually unmasked for the ending. This probably should be considered a Charlie Chan film, with Peter Lorre stepping in for Oland, as it is closer to a pure mystery and lacks the usual Moto exotic settings.

Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939)

Twentieth Century-Fox Film
Directed by Norman Foster
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Fox)

Mr. Moto is in Egypt to thwart spies with plans to blow up the French navy with mines. Most of the action takes place in a dive bar where the spies like to congregate and exchange information. Moto hides behind a false identity as an Oriental antique dealer, but is eventually given away. As usual, his jujitsu skills, at least those of Lorre's double, and luck keep him alive. John Carradine is a British agent and George Sanders the spy from an unnamed country, presumably Germany. No worse, and no better, than any other film in the Mr. Moto series. Look fast for the movie theater screening newsreels and a Fox Charlie Chan film!

Twist (1976)

FFCM (France)
Directed by Claude Chabrol
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Pathfinder)

Disappointing Chabrol "comedy" about unhappily married writer Bruce Dern and his sex starved wife Stephane Audran living in Paris. She has frequent fantasies, always shown overexposed to distinguish them from reality, of her husband having affairs with various women. Eventually those fantasies turn to murder, suicide and other unpleasantries. She fakes his signature, sells the apartment and buys a crumbling mansion in the countryside to try to get away from it all. Unfortunately, they are just as miserable, and the fantasies continue. Bruce eventually asks his lover Ann-Margret to move to New York with him, but when she refuses he reluctantly returns home and decides to try to make it work out with his wife. Dern's character is pathetic, the fantasies are often silly and Ann-Margret has a constant smirk on her face.

Thirst (1949)

Svensk Filmindustri
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Criterion Eclipse)

Confusing story of a couple on their way home to Stockholm by train after vacationing in Germany. Through flashbacks, we find out that she was previously involved with a married man which led to an abortion and sterility. Meanwhile, the plight of his ex-lover is presented not through flashbacks but contemporaneous to their train ride. She is under the care of a lecherous psychiatrist and fights off the advances of a lesbian friend. Back on the train, the couple bicker endlessly, eventually contemplating suicide and murder. While there are glimpses of the Bergman we all know and love, for example a train stop in post-war Germany where mobs of homeless beg them for food through the window, the narrative structure is a chore to sift through and the story too frequently melodramatic.

Island in the Sun (1957)

Twentieth Century-Fox Film
Directed by Robert Rossen
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Fox)

Tropical melodrama revolving around race relations on a Caribbean island. James Mason is the son of a wealthy British plantation owner who commits murder in a jealous fit of rage, all for naught, since his wife is innocent. Joan Collins falls in love with a visiting military man and gets pregnant. She won't marry him because there might be a Jamaican in her family history and she doesn't want to spoil his English pedigree. Harry Belafonte is a local who falls in love with pretty Joan Fontaine, but he won't go through with it for fear of losing votes. The murder plot is by far the most interesting, but gets the least screen time, the rest of it is just fluff.

Detective Belli (1969)

Plaza Pictures
Directed by Romolo Guerrieri
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Code Red)

Franco Nero is an amoral cop paid off by a lawyer to shield his son from a murder charge. Nero delves into the Italian fashion industry to find the real murderer, with plenty of stops along the way for beautiful women. It is an over-plotted, dialogue-heavy mystery with too many wrong turns and too many suspects. Even with Nero's dubious character, the ending is still a bit of a surprise. Good location shooting around Rome.