Marabunta (1998)

Jim (Eric Lutes) arrives in Alaska for a spot of fishing, but his holiday gets off to a bad start when he finds a dead moose which has been eaten down to the bone in hours. Not long afterwards a human similarly consumed. And whats more... no fish!

Luckily Jim is an entomologist and soon discovers that meat eating ants from South America are to blame (obviously). With the help of the Sheriff (Mitch Pileggi) and teacher/future love interest Laura (Julia Campbell), the town is evacuated but no plan goes that smoothly...

Trapped in the town, our heroes are surrounded by ants as the town is overrun by the little things. As flamethrowers, guns and chemicals are not enough to stop the ants wiping out Alaska, Jim has a plan to blow up a dam to drown the ants. Only problem is to get the explosives required means going back into the midst of the ants...

Insect based monster films generally are cheesy and terrible, but Marabunta must rank as one of the worst. Low budget, ropey special effects, average acting and (as this was a TV movie) the action is nicely packaged for the regular advert breaks. It is terrible and somehow brilliant at the same time.

Another Fine Mess (1930)

The first official Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy film was 1927's Duck Soup, this was a talkie remake of it and is a madcap comedy short packed full of gags and crazy antics. Colonel Buckshot (James Finlayson) is heading off to Africa on Safari, his staff leave the house empty early. It is thus in this condition that Laurel and Hardy, a couple of tramps on the run from the police, find the house.

Lord Plumtree (Charles Gerrard) and his wife (Thelma Todd) arrive to rent the house. Oliver pretends to be Colonel Buckshot and Stan has to pretend to be both the butler and the maid, outfit changed where necessary. Oliver manages to agree a price with Plumtree but their plan all falls through when Colonel Buckshot arrives back home early...

This is a fun comedy short though maybe packed with too much going on at times. The comedy replies more on gags and comedic repetition than slapstick though it does end with some remarkable stunts.

Lady Ice (1973)

An enjoyably trashy though complicated crime movie. Andy (Donald Sutherland) is an insurance investigator who employs unusual methods to get back stolen gems. This includes handcuffing a fat man to a toilet and posing as a mechanic at the garage owned by Booth (Patrick Magee) as he knows Booth's daughter Paula (Jennifer O'Neill) is a top jewel fence along with Eddie (Jon Cypher). The law in the form of Pierce (Robert Duvall) are also after the jewels and Booth (who has suspicious sources of income) but is prepared to let Andy do the running for now.

A game of cat and mouse between Andy and Paula, who knows he is not what he seems - at first she just thinks he is just another thief. This ends up with Andy getting a kicking from Eddie's goons. Eddie wants Andy silenced permanently but Paula talks him out of it especially she now knows his true purpose and has taken a bit of a shine to his cocky charms... 

A jewellery store is robbed in Chicago, the jewels end up in Eddie's possession in the Bahamas but Andy arranges for Eddie to be mugged and gets hold of the jewels. He uses them in a complicated scheme with the police to get Eddie and his thugs busted and get Paula off the hook...

A decent film though a little hard to follow at times. It is also rather superficial, most scenes look cool (there are lots of hot sports cars in it for example) but lack much energy or much purpose and the plot does meander a bit. Treat it like a trashy airport novel.

Liberty (1929)

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy escape from prison. They manage to get away fine with some help, though in their rush to get dressed they appear to have put on each others trousers! Changing into the correct trousers is of course not as simple as it sounds, and Stan ends up with a crab down his pair! This causes more slapstick mayhem.

With the police still after them, they hide in a workman's lift on a skyscraper building site. They of course end up on top of the building and have to creep along the bare girders with various death defying stunts.

Not the best Laurel and Hardy comedy short but with plenty of invention especially in the skyscraper sequence though this part of the film might go on a bit too long.

Raffles (1939)

A jolly crime caper. Raffles (David Niven) is a top-class cricketer by day and a master criminal by night. He is responsible for a string of daring crimes across London as the "Master Craftsman", taunting Inspector Mackenzie (Dudley Digges). 

However, Mackenzie gets a clue. Raffles is planning to steal the jewels of Lady Melrose (Dame May Whitty) in order to raise funds for his out of luck chum Bunny (Douglas Walton). Raffles and Bunny are guests at the home of Lord Melrose (Lionel Pape) along with Gwen (Olivia de Havilland), Raffles' new love interest. Mackenzie also invites himself to the house...

To complicate matters a much more mundane thief (Peter Godfrey) is also after the jewels. Raffles ends up stopping this theft and ends up with the jewels himself. Back in London, Raffles plans to fence the jewels but Mackenzie by now knows who the Master Craftsman is. Can Raffles evade the long arm of the law?

A light and fast moving crime drama that ends up a bit of a romp. It is slightly marred by the terrible British accents by some of the American actors but Niven plays a great role. Not very substantial but definitely fun.

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968)

As with Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, this is an edited version of the Soviet science-fiction film Planeta Bur with added footage of mysterious women of Venus led by Mamie van Doren who wear sea shells and have some silver paint on their bellies! The astronauts, which include Gennadi Vernov and Georgi Zhzhyonov, are supposedly American but don't ask why their space ship has red stars on it!

Venus is a strange world inhabited by various rubber monsters including a flying reptile the Venus women regard as their god. However, when the astronauts kill the creature the Venus women call up a volcano and earthquake...

The film is very surreal. Despite the fact the film is made from two completely different ones the result is reasonably coherent though does at times drag slightly. The film is dubbed and the dialogue is sometimes rather clumsy to match the original Russian speaking lips!

The Finishing Touch (1928)

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are tasked with finishing a house in record time by Sam Lufkin, what could go wrong? a framework Actually let us rephrase that, what would go right? Because a building site is just an endless opportunity for slapstick mayhem. The poor policeman Edgar Kennedy gets dragged into the destruction, a hilarious scene sees him covered in tar and then a load of roof slates fall on him and stick to him!

To make matters worse, the nurse (Dorothy Coburn) of a hospital next door is demanding that Stan and Ollie make as little noise as possible. As you can imagine this is a forlorn hope...

This is a very funny and very silly film, the story is pretty basic and largely a framework for a series of comedic situations. The slapstick doesn't always work but the film races along a such a pace that you don't have time to dwell on it when it doesn't.

Brats (1930)

Sheer comic invention. With the wives away Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are looking after the boys, who look remarkably like exact mini versions of their Dads. However, while Stan and Ollie are trying to play a quiet game of draughts the boys are always up to mischief. Finally they are sent to bed but this is where the problems and destruction go up another level!

This is an incredibly inventive little film. All of the props were made twice, one normal size and the other larger so Stan and Ollie can realistically play children. 

The slapstick and visual gags are standard Laurel and Hardy fare but done so well, they are easily able to carry this film on their own.

Runaway (1984)

A rather strange, sometimes cheesy, but definitely fun future cop film. It is the near future (and looks like 1985) and robots are everywhere, doing everything from the cooking to construction. However, sometimes they go wrong and that is where the specialist police team led by Ramsey (Tom Selleck) comes in. Along with his new partner Thompson (Cynthia Rhodes) they chase and disable a runaway agricultural robot. But soon things become much more serious when they are called to the case of a robot which has killed people...

They discover the robot has been modified by an unauthorised microchip and under the control of someone else. That someone else is Luther (Gene Simmons), a rather over the top hoodlum and electronics expert, who wants to make these killer chips to terrorists and the mob. Ramsey seeks to stop Luther though he always seems one step ahead, plus he has a gun which fires heat seeking bullets...

A glorious mess of a film, completely ridiculous in many ways but always entertaining and with some interesting ideas about how technology would develop in the future (and they got a lot of things spot on). Tom Selleck seems a bit out of place in this film but that makes it all the more fun and to be fair he does a good job. Gene Simmons chews the scenery but it completely suits the film. Also look out for Kirstie Alley.

The Battle of the Century (1927)

A Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy comedy short most famous for it's custard pie fight! Before that though Stan Laurel is the world's most unlikely prize fighter and inevitably gets beaten. Oliver Hardy takes out an insurance policy on Stan (sold by the unscrupulous Eugene Pallette) and then tries to engineer an accident using a banana peel. Things don't go to plan of course and after the banana peel causes a custard pie salesman (Charlie Hall) to slip and fall all Hell breaks out in the resultant custard pie fight! 

The custard pie fight goes on for a long time, maybe too long but fulfils all the slapstick requirements of a comedy short of the period. The pie fight was said to have used at least 3, 000 custard pies (and maybe many more according to some sources!) This was one of the earliest official Laurel and Hardy films and they had yet to master their characters but the film is still good fun, though a bit disjointed due to missing parts of the film.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Gang violence is spiralling out of control in LA, after the police gun down members of one gang, it's leaders make a blood vow for revenge. Meanwhile Lt. Bishop (Austin Stoker) has gained a new assignment, look after Precinct 13's old police building on the last night before moving to a new building. His new "command" consists of a sergeant (Henry Brandon) and two secretaries (Laurie Zimmer and Nancy Kytes). But it will be a quiet night won't it?

Not quite, first of all a prison bus containing Napoleon (Darwin Joston) and Wells (Tony Burton) turns up requiring use of the cells. Then Lawson (Martin West) staggers in, on the run from the gang. He killed one of their members in revenge after they gunned down his daughter (Kim Richards) and now the gang are out for revenge themselves at any price. Bishop's police station is under siege but he lacks manpower. Can he trust those guys in the cells?

The siege is a thrilling battle for survival, the gang members are portrayed as a faceless and relentless army. The film is basically an old school Western or war film set in the modern city with a wave of "savages" mowed down by a small group of heroes. The film is violent and frequently dark, the senseless gunning down of a little girl buying ice cream for example. The gang's motivations are never explored, they just want to kill and no reason is given but that is one of the things which makes the film all the more scary.

Putting Pants on Philip (1927)

Although they had appeared together in a number of films beforehand (the first being 1921's The Lucky Dog), this was the first official Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy film. Ollie is at the docks waiting for his nephew (Stan) from Scotland. To his surprise, shock and the hilarity of everyone in town his nephew is wearing a kilt. That basically is the premise of the film, everyone finds a man in a kilt so funny, obviously they must be hard up for entertainment.

Fed up by all the attention, Ollie tries to get Stan some trousers. Stan isn't very keen on wearing them though, he is very keen on a flapper (Dorothy Coburn) though she doesn't exactly share the attraction.

So, a bit of a one joke film, which is fine if the joke is good but this one is a bit average. The film is watchable and quite funny but mostly of interest for historic value. The Laurel and Hardy double act was still a work in progress, soon it would conquer the world of comedy but not quite in this film.

Double Whoopee (1929)

A classic Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy comedy short. Laurel and Hardy turn up at a posh hotel to work though are mistaken for a Prussian prince and his Prime Minister. When the real Prince (Hans Joby) does show up he ends up falling down an empty lift shaft a few times thanks to the new lift man Hardy!

Thats just the start of the mayhem Laurel and Hardy cause in the hotel, which includes a fight with a taxi driver (Charlie Hall) and the accidental near unclothing of a female guest (Jean Harlow). It all ends in a huge slapstick fight of course.

It is all very silly and very funny and plenty of slapstick. This was one of Laurel and Hardy's last few silent comedies, they would conquer comedy in the sound era of course.

Sons of the Desert (1933)

An all-time classic Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy film. Stan and Ollie are members of the Sons of the Desert lodge and they have pledged to represent their lodge at the convention in Chicago. Unfortunately Ollie's wife (Mae Busch) won't let him go so he concocts a devious plot with Stan and a crooked doctor (or actually a vet). He pretends to be ill and now has to go to Honolulu on vacation for his health.

Instead the guys go to Chicago and have a jolly time but then a disaster strikes... literally. The ocean liner they were supposed to be on sinks, their wives now thinking they might be lost at sea... though Stan and Ollie's appearance on a newsreel scuppers breaks their plan. Ollie makes up a bizarre story to explain how they came to be found in their wet pyjamas outside the house instead of on a rescue boat but is honesty the best policy?

This is one of the best Laurel and Hardy films and proves their humour could be stretched into a full-length film. The mix of slapstick interspersed with clever gags makes this film truly hilarious and totally essential. One of the best comedies ever made.

Rough Cut (1980)

An enjoyable crime caper with a few twists and turns along the way. Jack Rhodes (Burt Reynolds) is a top-class jewel thief who combines his life of crime with a public life of respectability and style. Soon to retire, DCI Willis (David Niven) wants to take down Rhodes before his career ends and finds the perfect way to finally get his man in the lovely form of another jewel thief Gillian Bromley (Lesley Anne Down).

Bromley is used to lure Rhodes into a big heist involving a diamond shipment to the continent. However, the reluctant Bromley - who has fallen for Rhodes - tells him about Willis' trap. Despite this Rhodes decides to continue with the plot, get the diamonds and evade the law. Indeed the complicated crime, which stretches credibility and common sense a tad, goes through without a hitch but is there a final twist in the tale?

Although somewhat far-fetched and a little slow to get going, the film is a perfectly good crime drama with a good cast. The chemistry of the leads adds a lightness to the film and the final action packed act makes everything worth while.

The Music Box (1932)

A hilarious comedy short as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are tasked with delivering a piano. The problem for the guys is that they have to carry the heavy crate containing the piano up a long flight of stairs. Various mishaps occur (of course) resulting in the crate ending back at the bottom of the stairs.

Finally the crate reaches the top of the stairs but the house owners are not in, Laurel and Hardy decide to basically break in and install the piano, cue more mayhem and destruction. When the house owner Professor von Schwarzenhoffen (Billy Gilbert) arrives home he is less than impressed with the piano never mind what has happened to his home...

A very funny film packed full of terrific slapstick and nonsense. Wonder too, despite many mishaps and crashing back down the stairs several times the piano is still undamaged when it is removed from the crate. It obviously was packed very well.

This film is an example (and there are plenty of others too) of Laurel and Hardy at their best. The staircase that causes them so much trouble still exists and is Los Angeles, you really wouldn't fancy carrying a piano up there.

The stair case, on Google Street View

False Faces (1919)

The story of a criminal (the Lone Wolf played by Henry B Walthall) who is tasked by the Allies in the First World War with stealing a cylinder containing vital information from behind the German lines. German agents are aiming to stop him of course, with the usual twist in movie land the head of the German agents (Lon Chaney) is the man who earlier killed Lone Wolf's sister and nephew...

Unfortunately this isn't that great a film despite the promising story. The film, made so soon after the end of the war, suffers from veering too much into propaganda. The Germans are portrayed as vicious animals, the Allies are perfect good guys of course. Most characters are fairly one-dimensional. The plot is also rather incoherent with a lot of back and forth shenanigans which have little end product. The scenes aboard a submarine are ridiculously unrealistic. 

An interesting watch from the point of view of an early war film but thats it! The film has some interesting ideas, such as the use of ghosts to portray guilt and torment but the execution is usually pretty flawed.

The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935)

An enjoyable Ellery Queen murder mystery. Ellery (Donald Cook) and Judge Mackin (Berton Churchill) head off to California on holiday. Immediately they are drawn into a crime mystery as Stella (Helen Twelvetrees) is found bound and gagged in their chalet after her uncle has been apparently kidnapped. When they return Stella to her parents' home they find the first of a number of murders has been committed...

While Sheriff Moley (Harry Stubbs) stumbles his way through the crime scene, Ellery pretends he is not interested in the situation though he is very interested in Stella. He, of course, manages to discreetly steer Moley away from arresting everyone on sight while finding the real culprit...

A very agreeable country house mystery with a number of possible culprits and red herrings. A seasoned crime film watcher will probably quite quickly realise what is really going on but this is a well made little murder mystery.

The Bat (1926)

A very odd though fascinating film. Van Gorder (Emily Fitzroy) and her niece Dale (Jewel Carmen) have taken over a remote country house, unknown to them the previous and now dead owner's money has been concealed in the house. Now a mysterious character and master criminal who dresses as a giant Bat has come to steal it! What follows is a series of spooky antics via hidden passageways and red herrings.

Brooks (Jack Pickford), Dale's fiancé, is the man suspected being behind the (quite frankly) bizarre Bat character. With the help of Detective Anderson (Eddie Gribbon) the Bat is finally run to earth, quite literally thanks to a man trap. But who was the Bat? At the time audiences were asked not to tell people who it was (an early example of no spoilers!), we'll honour that too!

This is basically a dark house mystery with some added suspense and horror and indeed humour thanks to the Bat. The thought of a man dressed as a giant bat to commit murder and robbery is quite surreal and the wonderfully atmospheric sets and clever cinematography really make this film something special. This film was remade in 1930 and that version of the Bat was said to have been a big inspiration behind Batman! 

The Hideous Sun Demon (1958)

Awfully low budget science-fiction nonsense, Scientist Dr Gil (Robert Clarke) is exposed to radiation, however it does not appear to have harmed him... until he sits in direct sunlight and he turns into a reptile! Naturally the only thing to do when this miracle happens is for Gil to be allowed out hospital and live alone in his mansion! He hits the bottle, seduces singer Trudy (Nan Peterson) and kills her minor hoodlum boyfriend George (Peter Similuk) when he faces the sunshine again and re-enters lizard mode.

The police are on the case, well vaguely. Considering a mutant murdering lizard-man is on the loose the police search is rather low-key. But Lizard Gil is finally tracked down to a showdown atop a gas holder...

The film is rather cheap and makes little sense (of course). Gil apparently has a thing for fellow scientist Ann (Patricia Manning) though that doesn't stop him with Trudy. The lack of interest from the government also makes no sense, but then again this was the 1950s so crazy science accidents and bizarre monster threats was probably quite mundane. It might not make much sense but scores high on the cheese-ometer of course.