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aka Tales of Tiffany Jones.
Tiffany (Anouska Hempel) is a model, in swinging London, who gets involved in an attempted coup d'etat against a foreign dictator, whilst he is in London on a trade mission. The dictator takes a fancy to Tiffany after seeing her in a newspaper, and tries to get to know her, which basically involves her shedding her clothes at any given moment.
This is a loose adaptation of a British newspaper comic strip about the daily life of a fashion model. Obviously this was deemed not interesting enough for a film so they added a spy twist. They then produced a cheap and not so cheerful film, which like most British sex comedies of the period promises more than it delivers; pitifully little sex, and definitely no comedy. Hempel, now a famous hotelier and designer, reputedly bought the rights to this film to prevent it ever been shown again. I don't know what she's worried about, not many would want to sit through this anyway!
aka CS Blues.
The notorious documentary of the Rolling Stones 1972 Exile on Main St tour. Notorious because of the no holds barred, access all areas film diary that was produced, then denied release by the stones once they got to see it! It's all here, the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll and the mind numbing boredom of a tour. The photographer Robert Frank gave everyone a camera and followed the Stones as they wandered North America. What he caught was a mostly bored band and entourage trying to entertain themselves, with groupies and drugs, and maybe some poker. Essentially we get to see the hollowness of tour life and how the fantasy isn't really all it's cracked up to be, and neither is this film. A rambling and incoherent film that manages to bore more than it entertains, whilst showing some seemingly shocking activity.
aka Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy.
Barbarella, a 41st century government agent, is given the task of finding the missing scientist Durand Durand (Milo O'Shea), who is believed to be in Sogo, the city of night. There she finds danger, and the evil great tyrant, a lesbian queen (Anita Pallenberg). She manages to hook up with the resistance movement lead by Dildano (David Hemmings), rescues an Angel (John Philip Law) and finds real love.
Based on the popular French comic strip, this is definitely a hip and happening 60's version of our spacey future. Beautifully filmed, on enormous, exotic sets, this is a scatty, episodic and extremely silly adventure with actors from many nations giving some very quixotic performances. One you either go with and love or dismiss out of hand as all style and no substance, which is true, but I still cant help but like it!
Slade play a fictional band called Flame. We meet the band members as they struggle to make it in the working men’s clubs of the midlands in separate bands. Once they meet and become Flame, everything starts to happen for them, fame, money, woman. But they soon learn that what goes around comes around and there are many people making claims on their talents. What usually happens when bands decide to do a film is that you get a bit of fluff, made to make as much out of the gullible fans for as cheaply as possible, but what the record company got in this case was a gritty look at the price of fame, marked all the way through with a desperate depressing air of the inevitability of failure. This is definitely the darker side of rock and roll, but all the better for it. An interesting film that plays with themes of gritty northern England, gangsters and band in-fighting. Not your average fluff piece by any means.
Richard Logan (William Franklyn) wakes on waste ground in Wapping, with no recollection as to how he got there. On returning home he’s told that he went to work three weeks previously and never returned. He realises that he's got selective amnesia and is told that he is a partner in a safe making firm. Could it be that there is a connection between these two facts? His wife then informs him that she sent a private detective to find him, and he was murdered three days ago, in Wapping! Then the phone rings, it’s a woman who makes out like she’s his mistress, but Richard denies having a mistress...things are getting trickier and Richard is determined to find out what he’s been doing for the last three weeks. All the while being questioned by his suspicious wife (Moira Redmond), and his doctor (Nigel Green).
A taut little thriller, with some nice dialogue, a strong cast and no nonsense direction.
aka Demon Master. The Infernal Idol. Neal Mottram (Jack Palance) is an art and antiques dealer with an interesting way of worship. He performs monthly sacrifices at the alter of the African god Chuku. With all the murders going on the police start to get suspicous and start to poke around. With the police sniffing, it becomes harder and harder to pick up potential sacrifices and keep up a good alibi. Also featured is Diana Dors as an old flame and Suzy Kendall as a dominatrix. The film comes across more like an expanded Hammer House of Horror episode, all be it with more sadism and sex. But even with it stuffed full with cameo's from some of Britain's better know actors at the time, and a story full of salacious details, it's still manages to be a bit of a damp squib.
A workaholic and reclusive scientist (Jack MacGowran) finds a model (Jane Birkin) has moved into the next apartment when a hole in their connecting wall projects an image of her into his apartment. He soon becomes obsessed about her life and watching it. Slowly as the compulsion, (or mental breakdown), takes hold, he creates more holes, as he views the hedonistic events and inadvertently becomes involved in her personal life when he gets to know her boyfriend and learns of their troubles.
A perfect example of the psychedelic 60's if ever you needed one. The plot such as it is is a simple one, the film relying on the imagery and the music, (supplied by George Harrison), to carry it. You'll either let this wash over you, or get mind numbing bored. So sit back, pop your favourite psychedelic and float away...
Its 1944 and the war is in full swing, with Hitler using V-bombs in his last ditch attempt to terrorise Britain. The staff at a small hospital are at a dance after a local postman died in their operating theatre. The theatre sister (Judy Campbell), interrupts proceedings to tell everyone that it was far from an accident and she has proof it was murder. Then she too meets a grizzly end, and its time to bring in Police Inspector Cockrill (Alastair Sim). A most unconventional man, with unconventional methods of solving cases. He thinks one of five people in the surgery must be responsible. Could it be Mr. Eden (Leo Genn), Nurse Linley (Sally Gray), Dr. Barney Barnes (Trevor Howard) or Nurse Sanson (Rosamund John). Each has a motive, but which did the deed. All this is played out whilst awaiting the next doodlebug to land.
A wonderful detective story, with a great performance by Alistair Sim at the centre of it, voicing his concerns and unveiling the story for us. This is a most interesting of detectives, one who can barely contain his joy at being in the middle of a murder mystery, and his enthusiasm is infectious.
aka Bride of the Atom.
Dr. Varnoff (Bela Lugosi) with the help of his assistant Lobo (Tor Johnson) is using atomic energy to try and create super beings. Local townspeople are full of stories of a monster in the swamps attacking people, so the police send Lt. Dick Craig (Tony McCoy) to investigate. Janet Lawton (Loretta King) a feisty journalist also gets involved and gets too close to the story for her own good. Varnoff deciding that she would be ideal as his bride and the first superwoman, but Lobo has taken a shine to her as well.
Full of over acting, and would be snappy dialogue, if only the actors could do more than recite the lines as if still learning them! This features a 73 year old Lugosi, in his last speaking part. Not a really bad film, just stilted, badly edited and very very cheap. But if you like bad films, this is a good one to watch. Ed Wood always seemed to strive to actually make decent films, with decent plots, unfortunately he lacked the money and his imagination was not quite good enough, but that didn't stop him trying. This alone makes his films worth a watch.
aka Much Ado About Murder .
Theatre critics are being killed in a variety of methods inspired by deaths in Shakespeare plays. The police suspect a serial killer, and would think it was Edward Lionheart (Vincent Price), but for the little fact that the ham actor committed suicide some years previously, due to being passed over for an prestigious award, by the self same critics that are now dying. They are in fact right, Lionheart is back. Aided by a group of vagrants and a biker, he is taking his revenge in the only way he knows how. The police seem powerless to prevent the ever more bizarre and comical deaths, as they struggle to protect the ever dwindling circle of critics.
Very much in the mould of Price's Phibes films, this a fun and campy, comedy horror. Directed with some flair and with some fine turns from such people as Ian Hendry, Michael Horden, Robert Morley and Diana Rigg as Lionheart's daughter.
aka Immediate Disaster. The Venusian.
A stranger (Helmut Dantine) turns up at a village pub and asks for a room for the night, but has no money, name, or a pulse when checked! Then Susan North (Patricia Neal) arrives at the pub, shaken from crashing her car, but with scars that look at least a few weeks old. Evidently the stranger has helped her. He then tells them that he is from Venus and is there to help set up talks with his political masters. Unfortunately, as is usual in such films, the government gets involved and attempt to get hold of his technology. Meanwhile Susan is developing a real bond with the Venusian, much to the annoyance of her fiance (Derek Bond), the government official trying to steal information about the technology the Venusian is using.
This stilted and either detached or underplayed film, (depending on your point of view), borrows liberally from The Day The Earth Stood Still, and also its leading lady. Little or no effects, lots of talk and a very stagey feel makes me feel this is for sci-fi completists only and screams 'quota quickie'.
aka There's No Place Like Space.
Herman's Hermits play themselves as they tour America. They are under constant watch by their manager (Bernard Fox), being followed by a would be starlet and a NASA scientist, after the astronauts kids voted to name the next rocket after the group. Then Peter Noone, (or Herman as they insist on calling him), meets and falls for Louise (Shelley Fabares).
As daft a film as it sounds! This was merely a way of cashing in on the popularity of the group in the US at the time, but has some fun moments. If you like their inoffensive 'bikini beat', and some of the corniest jokes ever, then you'll like this. Me I prefer their next film, Mrs Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter, where they had more personality and wit in the script. Bizarrely for a lad from Manchester Pete is obsessed with Brighton throughout the film, it was probably the only British seaside resort that the scriptwriters thought the audience would know of!
Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) is the nerdy busboy at a Beatnik café, determined to become an artist like many of the customers. He accidentally stumbles on how after he kills the landlady's cat, by covering it in plaster to hide the evidence. When he shows his 'work' he is acclaimed a brilliant sculptor. Unfortunately the cafe's customers want to see more of his work. This means Walter has to find more bodies, and lacking any neighborhood cats resorts to people. But will anyone twig the source of Walters genius?
Another one of Corman's quick exploitation horror classics. This one is a black comedy classic as Corman satirises the art scene with Walter's rise from collecting coffee cups and source of derision to faited genius.
Andie (Molly Ringwald) is is poor white trash in a school full of the rich and popular. Her two friends are Iona (Annie Potts), who owns the record store Andie works in and Duckie (Jon Cryer). Duckie makes no secret that he likes Andie, but she only has eyes for Blane (Andrew McCarthy), one of the cool rich kids. Blane in turn likes Andie, but they are from two seperate worlds, can they manage to work things out, whilst all around them disaprove?
Personally I prefer Sixteen Candles if I need a jolt of 80's teen comedy, less angst, but for many this is the one. The culmination of John Hughes' teen fixation. A sort of high school Romeo and Juliet with cliques rather than families.
Samantha (Molly Ringwald) is having a bad day. It's her sixteenth birthday and none of her family remembers, as they are all too rapped up in her older sisters imminent wedding the next day. To top it all she inadvertently lets onto the school hunk (Michael Schoeffling) that she has a crush on him! Can the day get any worse? Well yes it can, when she has to take Long Duc Dong (Gedde Watanabe), a foreign exchange student to a dance, whilst also being hit on by the schools A1 geek (Anthony Michael Hall).
A classic teen comedy that started it all for John Hughes. Everything is here that will feature in his future Shermer comedies, including the self obsessed and annoyingly humour free Ringwald - was she ever in a movie where she didn't just frown her way through? It also features the rise of the geek, where by the end of the film he develops a certain self-awareness of his embarrassing behaviour and manages to get the hottest girl in school! Watch out for one of the other geeks, a certain John Cusack, he wasn't to remain a geek for long! For me this is the one, it's got far more comedy and far less of the annoying self obsessed teen than Pretty in Pink.
A mission from earth arrives on Altair IV, to find out why the settlers there have stopped communicating. They find only two survivors from the mission that arrived twenty years before, Dr. Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and his beautiful daughter Altaira (Anne Francis). Morbius is extremely unwelcolming and tries to get them to leave as soon as possible. He neglects to mention Alaira to them, but when Commander Abrams (Leslie Nielson) and his men meet her they become much more interested in staying! All seems to be running routinely, but then some sort of entity made of pure power energy starts to menace the ship. The crew believing that not only they but Morbius and the girl are in danger and try to pursuade Morbius to leave. Something that Morbius is reluctant to do. But where is this creature coming from? Could it be some remnent from the Krell, a vastly intelligent race of beings that previously inhabited the planet? Or is there a more menacing reason for the creatures existance.
A retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with dashes of Adam and Eve, mixed with Freudian psychoanalysis, makes for an intriguing mystery, well delivered in true 50's sci-fi style using CinemaScope and an initiative electronic soundtrack. It all adds up to a sci-fi classic and is more importantly the film that kick-started Robbie the Robots career.
aka Tales of Tiffany Jones. 
