Crime Story (1993)

A tough police drama, but quite unlike most Jackie Chan films.

Jackie Chan is a police inspector tasked with protecting a controversial businessman who fears he will be kidnapped. The businessman is indeed kidnapped for a huge ransom after a thrilling chase around HK island involving Chan. 

Chan leads the case to track down the kidnappers who are thought to be in Taipei. Chan is accompanied by experienced detective Hung (Kent Cheng). However, unknown to the police Hung is part of the kidnap plot...

A cool and stylish and pretty violent film. Unlike most Jackie Chan actions films, including the iconic Police Story series, there isn't the high octane slapstick action humour. There are some incredible stunts though. There is also a chance for Jackie Chan to do some serious acting too. A really great film.

Dick Barton: Special Agent (1948)

Completely over-the-top tosh but glorious with it.

Dick Barton (Don Stannard) has come to the countryside where he battles an evil Nazi plot led by Schuler (Arthur Bush) to poison London's water supply with a deadly bacteria. 

Barton has discovered the plot by accident when some lobsters are delivered to him by accident by a distracted boy who is more interested in his Dick Barton comic! Schuler and his inept goons try to kill Barton a number of times but fail miserably. Finally, Barton is locked in a suit of armour while the Nazis prepare to test their bacteria on him...

Based on a popular BBC radio drama, this is an enjoyable romp. Fast moving nonsense that shouldn't be taken seriously, though it is maybe a little too comedic at times. Snowey (George Ford) and Jock (Jack Shaw) are there to help/hinder Barton in equal measure.

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Mad scientist creates super strong super intelligent sharks, what could go wrong?!

On a research platform in the ocean, scientists are extracting a protein from sharks' brains to create a cure for Alzheimer's. What Dr McAlester (Saffron Burrows) doesn't tell her backer Franklin (Samuel L Jackson) though is that the sharks have been genetically modified to be bigger and highly intelligent (bigger brains you see)... 

During a storm the sharks plan to escape goes into action, can the crew aboard the platform survive the surging waters and the violent sharks?

Surprisingly, despite the fact sharks in film these days often means over the top cheese, this isn't a bad film at all. Well paced and with some terrific action scenes (and gore) and effects. Good performances too especially from Carter (Thomas Jane) and Preacher (LL Cool J).

One of the better shark attack films you'll see.

Taxi Driver (1976)

A classic dark tale of a troubled man pushed over the edge.

Travis (Robert De Niro), a veteran and somewhat mentally unstable, takes a job as a taxi driver on the night shift as he can't sleep. Here he is exposed to all of the sin of the big city lights, some of which he likes to partake in especially porn. He falls in love with (or maybe obsessed with) Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) who is working for an aspiring politician, though his date with her ends badly when he takes her to a porn cinema!

Travis then sees Iris (Jodie Foster), a twelve year old prostitute pimped by Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis tries to get her to leave her terrible life. He shaves his head and heads out with his guns, he wants to save Iris and make a difference and doesn't expect to survive...

A superbly crafted and paced film, a true highlight of 1970s cinema. A story that will shock but also surprises, especially the final twist.

Split Second (1992)

A complete mess of a film, which somehow works.

It is the future (well 2008 anyway) and London is semi-submerged due to the melting ice caps. Stone (Rutger Hauer) is a maverick cop with the London police who investigates a brutal killing in a club. It seems the murderer is someone who killed his partner years before and has a liking for tearing out human hearts. 

Stone is teamed up with eager young (and book learned) detective Dirkin (Alastair Duncan) to catch this serial killer. However, Stone doesn't believe the killer is human. Soon Stone and his girlfriend Michelle (Kim Cattrall) are being targeted by the killer, who seems impervious to their guns. So they obviously need bigger guns!

A complete car crash of a film with bizarre scenes, even more bizarre plot and even even more bizarre acting at times though Hauer, Duncan and Cattrall are great throughout. The film is utter nonsense but also utterly compelling and terrific fun. A film doesn't always need to make sense to be worth a watch as long as you can suspect believe long enough and enjoy the (soggy) ride.

Firehead (1991)

A Russian cyborg with super powers is running amok but (plot twist!) he isn't the bad guy!

Ivan (Brett Porter) is a Russian cyborg with special powers who defects to the West, however after a couple of years he is blowing things up in the good old US of A instead. Vaughn (Christopher Plummer), the head of a secret US government lab, sends the scientist Hart (Chris Lemmon) and special agent Meila (Gretchen Becker) to stop Ivan. However, Ivan is really the good guy and it is Vaughn who is secretly head of a mysterious secret society which is using Ivan's attacks to bring about World War 3...

It is complete nonsense of course, and rather inept in execution. Hilarious for all the wrong reasons (of course). It's probably better not to wonder what exactly the relationship of super smart tweenager Smith (Lauren Levy Neustadter) is to Hart, or quite why no one can shoot straight. Why does the secret society have pictures of Mussolini on the walls of their lair? Also wonder why did Plummer and Martin Landau agreed to appear in this cheap madness. Just enjoy the fact they did and helped create an incredibly inane but enjoyable film.

Juggernaut (1974)

A superbly tense thriller set aboard an ocean liner loaded with bombs.

Under the command of Captain Brunel (Omar Sharif) the ocean liner Britannic sets off on it's first voyage after a refit, the passengers barely entertained by hapless entertainment officer Curtain (Roy Kinnear) though the incredibly rough seas don't help. Soon, however there is some excitement. A mad man contacts the shipping line to tell them various booby trapped bombs are aboard, and unless he receives a couple of suitcases full of cash the bombs will go off sinking the liner and all aboard her.

While the police in the form of McCleod (Anthony Hopkins) try and hunt down the bomber, expert bomb disposal officer Fallon (Richard Harris) and his team and parachuted into the Atlantic and clamber aboard the liner. With the timers fast counting down Harris and his team desperately try and defuse the incredibly complicated bombs before it's too late...

A great film with a brilliant cast. The bomb disposal scenes make great use of close-ups. The final twist is delicious.

Burn 'Em Up Barnes (Serial) (1934)

Burn 'Em Up Barnes is a highly successful racing driver, not someone who often crashes as you might imagine from that name!

Barnes (Jack Mulhall) and his mate Bobby (Frankie Darro) help Marjorie (Lola Lane), the owner of a bus company, who also owns a plot of seemingly worthless land. Of course the land isn't really worthless, it contains rich oil reserves which crooked race promoter Drummond (Jason Robarbs) wants for himself. He will stop at nothing to achieve his evil plans in a series of death defying cliff hangers!

Unfortunately it all gets a bit repetitive after about half a dozen episodes though the stunts are often amazing (though the speeding up of racing footage is obvious at times). Not the best 1930s serial but an enjoyable romp all the same.

Hurricane Smith (1952)

A tale of treasure and freebooters on the South Seas which gets mired in calm seas.

Hurricane Smith (John Ireland) and his crew are marooned on an isolated island in the Pacific (why is never quite explained, it feels like they missed the first 20 minutes of the script out) but escape by stealing the ship of slaver Raikes (Emile Meyer). Later in Australia, and badly in need of coin, Smith's boat and crew is hired by Gorvahlsen (James Craig) to explore the flora and fauna of the South Seas but really Gorvahlsen is after gold.

Obviously because it makes perfect logical sense, Smith has pressganged Raikes into his crew, the two of them want the gold for themselves. The beautiful young Luana (Yvonne De Carlo), whom Smith falls for, also complicates matters of course.

Filmed in Technicolor, the film looks gorgeous and has plenty of swash buckling action and a fast moving plot but despite the bright blue skies ultimately the film is a bit dull. The film isn't very original and lacks a spark, though is a reasonable watch.

The Perils of Pauline (Serial) (1933)

This shares a title with the famous serial which more or less started the genre, 1914's The Perils of Pauline but little else. This is, though, a pretty decent little set of cliffhangers.

Professor Hargrave (James Durkin) and his daughter Pauline (Evelyn Knapp) are in Indo-China during a time of revolution, Hargrave is working on a deadly gas which in the wrong hands would be a terrible weapon. Evil Dr Bashan (John Davidson) has those "wrong hands". With Bashan in pursuit, the Hargraves along with Robert (Craig Reynolds) seek out an ivory disc with the formula written on it...

The serial starts out strongly with a good budget and good use of newsreel footage though gets a bit stuck in the middle during an overlong stay in the Indonesian jungle (which for some reason, due to re-used sets, includes an Ancient Egyptian temple!) The climax in the US is a return to form though the ending is rather sudden.

This fulfils the brief for a perfectly acceptable movie serial, good cliffhangers, re-use of whatever sets and costumes were available and ridiculous plot lines (complete with a superbly evil baddie). Excellent entertainment.

The Wild Women of Wongo (1958)

A very strange film, that somehow could only have been made in the 1950s.

Some time in the distant past, the jungle village of Wongo apparently has a problem, all the men are ugly and all the women beautiful. So beautiful in fact they look like they just came out of a salon instead of living in the prehistoric jungle and worshipping an alligator god. Then a young man called Engor (Johnny Walsh) from another village arrives asking for help against some wild men. Apparently in his village all the men are handsome hunks and the women ugly!

The daughter of the king of Wongo (Jean Hawkshaw) decides she doesn't want to marry a local ugly man and instead she wants the handsome guy from elsewhere. After disrespecting the alligator god (a prop which looks it was bought in a zoo souvenir shop) she and a group of other Wongo girls head off to hunt... guys.

Its a truly terrible film to be sure though the sheer camp makes it compelling. The actors look good in their designer animal skin swimwear though recite their lines like they are under duress. A parrot appears throughout the film making random squawks, certainly not annoying at all!

The Girl from Rio (1969)

A bizarre crime action film. There are many films which make little sense, but this film makes none whatsoever.

The all-female queendom of Femina, under the rule of Sumitra (Shirley Eaton), wants to conquer the world. Jeff (Richard Wyler) has arrived in Rio with $10 million. The gangster Sir Masius (George Sanders), whose men drive around incognito in gaudy hearses, is after his money though his hoods are pretty useless in a fight. Sumitra also wants the cash as well and captures Jeff. Jeff is take to Femina and ends up in a glass cell along with Ulla (Marta Reeve) being tortured. We discover that Jeff is really here to rescue her. Though, he seems to pick up quite a harem along the way.

It's terrible campy nonsense really, but looks pretty funky. Sumitra's fortress is a concrete Brutalist marvel. Her tortures involve many strange early electronic noises. Her army of females are (of course) fairly scantily dressed. Well it was 1969, who needed acid when films like this were around?

The Soldier (1982)

Insanely violent, insanely confusing, its just... insane.

The KGB led by Jeremiah Sullivan steal plutonium from the US to make a nuclear bomb (quite why they need to steal some when they have plenty of their own is never explained). The bomb is placed at an oil field in Saudi Arabia. An ultimatum is issued to Israel to withdraw from the West Bank or the bomb will be detonated and wipe out half of the world's oil reserves...

While the US plan to attack Israel, the CIA have their own secret weapon: The Soldier (Ken Wahl). He is an elite, and unpredictable, operative. He, and his team (which includes Steve James), are tasked to stop the Russian plot. He does this by hijacking a US ICBM and threatens to start World War 3...

So, the film makes no sense whatsoever. The plot is a mixture of mad right-wing conspiracy theorist wet dream and sub-Bond weirdness. The violence is gratuitous, and doesn't always serve to drive the story forward in any way. It's a great watch of course.

Viva Knievel! (1977)

Evel Knievel was a huge star in the 1970s, but could he act? Well this performance win't win any awards but it is generally competent. Unfortunately the film is as bad as you think it might be...

Evel is doing his death defying motorbike jump act in front of adoring crowds (or people who want to see him crash anyway). Drug lord Millard (Leslie Neilsen) has an evil plan, he will take Evel to Mexico, cause the crash and death of the superstar and then smuggle drugs into the US using Evel's corpse...

Evel is manipulated into heading to Mexico by drugged up rival Jessie (Marjoe Gortner). There, Millard arranges for Evel's mechanic Atkins (Gene Kelly - no really!) to be locked up in a sanitarium so the bike can be switched for a booby trapped one. Can Evel and his new squeeze Kate (Lauren Hutton) stop the evil plan?

By now Evel was filling out his jump suit a little too much, so to speak, so the action scenes are pretty low voltage and sometimes go on a little too long. The plot is clunky as well with almost infinite amounts of cheese. It is terrible, and great of course. Unfortunately, just after the film came out Evel beat up his promoter for real with a baseball bat, kind of ruining his hero image a bit!

In the Line of Fire (1993)

This is a superbly tense thriller involving the protection... and assassination of US presidents.

Frank (Clint Eastwood) is a grizzled old Secret Service agent, his claim to fame/infamy was that he was present when JFK was shot. Frank discovers a plot to kill the current president who is seeking re-election. Nothing too unusual there but it soon transpires that this is not a normal threat to POTUS. Frank begins a cat and mouse chase with a mysterious and deadly foe called Leary (John Malkovich) who will stop at nothing to achieve his aims.

As the election campaign reaches it's final stages, Leary prepares to strike. Can Frank stop him and gain redemption (and get his leg-over with fellow agent Lilly (Rene Russo))?

Leary's plot is pretty intricate and maybe slightly far fetched (though his amazing abilities are later explained). Eastwood does a great turn as the veteran with plenty of past demons, Malkovich superbly dark and menacing. 

Wonder Women (1973)

Completely incoherent, shamelessly exploitative and violent trash. I loved it obviously. 

Someone is kidnapping top athletes. In the Philippines, Harber (Ross Hagen) is hired to investigate the disappearance of one such athlete (whom we see captured by a number of young women and then taken away in a hearse). In fact this is a nefarious plot by Dr Tsu (Nancy Kwan) who is conducting medical experiments and plans to start doing brain transplants: transferring the brains of rich old people into young fit bodies...

Harber's investigation, which includes the seduction and long chase of one of Dr Tsu's henchwomen Linda (Maria De Aragon), takes him to the wonderfully Brutalist lair of Dr Tsu (which looks incredible, she doesn't look so bad either). Here he witnesses her twisted experiments and also indulges in a spot of brain sex with her. All hell is about to break loose of course...

A confusing film, especially in the last act which leaves many threads up in the air. Maybe they were expecting a sequel? Nothing really makes much sense and it is stacked high with 70s cheese and badly choreographed fights. You just wonder if the taxi driver (Vic Diaz) is still waiting for Harber on that island.

The Wizard (1989)

A charming if somewhat troubling film. Poor Jimmy (Luke Edwards) is a troubled kid, bad affected by his broken family. He keeps trying to run away to "California", finally his brother Corey (Fred Savage) helps him get out of his children's home. After meeting Haley (Jenny Lewis), who also seems to be wandering around small town America without anyone batting an eyelid, they discover that Jimmy is ace at video games so plan to head to LA to take part in a lucrative video game competition...

Complicating matters is that a creepy lost child hunter (Will Seltzer) has been sent after them, though amusingly Haley accuses him of being a child molester to get them out of one jam. Jimmy and Corey's father Sam (Beau Bridges) and big half-brother Nick (Christian Slater) are also after them...

So, a fun children's adventure in some ways, and a feature length Nintendo advert. However, the film does include a number of adult themes and in reality the kids would have probably ended up dead (or worse). But if you just enjoy the fantasy for what it is then it's a very enjoyable film.

Rescue Me (1992)

What on Earth is going on in this film? Nerdy Fraser (Stephen Dorff) is obsessed with Ginny (Ami Dolenz) at High School, so much so that he takes lots of photos of her and stalks her on his moped, its ok though this film takes place in the early 1990s when being a stalker of High School girls was cool. 

However, everything changes when Fraser accidentally stumbles upon some kind of criminal activity involving two dumb thugs and another thug and Ginny ends up kidnapped by the two thugs (William Lucking and Peter DeLuise).

Fraser blackmails the other thug, Mack (Michael Dudikoff), a former Vietnam vet to rescue Ginny. Mack wants to get back his stamps and/or his cash from the thugs. Fraser and Mack follow the pair across America to California, just a bungled attempt to stop them, a shoot-out in a hotel, and a car chase along mountain roads to report. Fraser and Mack begin to bond and Mack introduces Fraser to the joys to sleeping on beaches and with teenage prostitutes. Ginny meanwhile has escaped her hapless captors in Los Angeles but Fraser and Mack are in town too...

Quite a ridiculous film which makes little sense though is definitely fun in the great trash film tradition. The film is played pretty light, almost comedic though most of the humour is unintentional of course. Low on thrills, high on early 90s cheese.

Omega Cop (1990)

An incredibly low budget, high violence post-apocalyptic movie. It makes no sense naturally.

It is 1999 and society has broken down, due to solar flares which turns people into crazies (somehow). Travis (Ronald Marchini) is one of the last cops in the city (and soon the last one), sent by Prescott (Adam West) - with whom he has a hate-hate relationship - to stop slave traders. The raid, against the leather clad warlord Wraith (Chuck Katzakian) and his gang, goes badly and all of Travis' buddies die. He does save Lena (Meg Thayer) from a life on her back however.

As Travis wanders around the broken down city he also picks up two other women, and regularly fights gang members for almost any reason, including to get back his hat! After endless martial arts and gun battles, Wraith descends on Prescott's compound. Travis heads in for a showdown with Wraith... which doesn't actually happen.

The film is rather grubby and seems mostly to contain lost extras from Mad Max ripoffs and late 80s pop videos. The story is nonsense, the action isn't bad, the cheese factor is high. This makes Omega Cop quite a reasonable entry in the post-apocalypse movie genre to be honest.

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)

(Unintentionally) hilarious big game hunter nonsense... where the game is man (and woman).

Bob (Joel McCrea) is on a yacht which hits the rocks by a mysterious island, he is the only survivor and discovers a fort on the island owned by a Russian count (with a Scottish accent) Zaroff (Leslie Banks). The count introduces Bob to two other survivors from an earlier shipwreck Martin (Robert Armstrong) and Eve (Fay Wray). Zaroff then goes on at length about his obsession with hunting...

Eve though tells Bob she suspects foul play on the island, fears confirmed when Martin is soon found dead. Zaroff is indeed a hunter but he hunts humans. He sets Bob and Eve off into the wild and prepares to hunt them in a game of death...

Although the film does verge dangerously close to complete tosh, this is at times an exciting film with a decent bit of jungle action, especially some of the later chase scenes as the camera passes through the jungle. The characters are all rather two-dimensional though, apart from Zaroff who is hilariously over the top. Fast moving and efficient, a flawed but enjoyable film.