Cross-Examination (1932)

You can't beat a good courtroom drama and this is a superior example of the genre. It stars Don Dillaway as David Wells, accused of killing his father Emory (William Mong). David was about to be disinherited by his father (to be honest he was about to disinherit everyone) and when Emory is found dead David is the natural suspect.

H.B. Warner plays the defence attorney who does an excellent job though the case isn't blown open until David's mother Mary (Sarah Padden) turns up to tell the true nature of Emory and David.

The film takes place mostly in the courtroom with flashbacks to show the testimony of the witnesses. The courtroom scenes are excellent and tense, the whole film being well paced. The only problem with the film is that the case against David is actually pretty flimsy in the first place. The police don't seem to have done a lot of investigation and not found any actual direct evidence he did anything. Still the truth is out in the end.

Phantom from Space (1953)

A low-budget science-fiction romp. Flying saucers, aliens in strange suits et cetera. A UFO is spotted heading over the US but later disappears.

Lieutenant Hazen (Ted Cooper) is with the Federal Communications Commission investigating mysterious radio signals and comes across two men stricken by radiation. A survivor claims a strange man in a suit attacked them. A man with no head.

Later on more mysterious deaths occurred, explosions at an oil refinery and more radio interference. Unfortunately for our heroes (but fortunately for the budget) the alien is invisible outside of his suit...

It's a reasonable film though thats start off with little real action though does improve later on. There isn't much in the way of characterization (that is invisible like the alien) or much in the way of plot but it's not a bad film. One good aspect is that the female lead Betty (Lela Nelson) does more than just run around screaming. It also has a fair amount of suspense and some interesting "Invisible Man" type effects.

Philo Vance's Gamble (1947)

A Philo Vance story with Noir-ish elements (i.e. people get bumped off at regular intervals). An emerald has been stolen but before the fence (Dan Seymour) can double cross his syndicate of backers and his mistress he is bumped off.

Unfortunately for Philo Vance (played by Alan Curtis this time) he is present due to an association with Laurien March (Vivian Austin) and thus the police include him as a suspect.

Vance conducts his own investigation assisted/hindered by his rather dopey detective Ernie (Frank Jenks) who provides a bit of comic relief. The film is fast paced with some decent lines and nicely dark in the right areas. The ending also has a really nice twist.

American Ninja (1985)

Ninja films were all the rage for a time in the 1980s, this might be considered the high point of the genre. At least it looks like it had a budget of more than 20p.

The story is fairly basic: it starts a boy who has grown up on the wrong side of the tracks (Michael Dudikoff) but is now in the US Army gets tangled up with ninjas but has their skills himself. He is later found to have been bought up by a Japanese soldier/ninja but has forgotten his past due to amnesia (of course).

Meanwhile a black marketeer is stealing US Army weapons and hiring ninjas. Now it falls to our hero to save the day of course. So that's the story, naturally it is just a flimsy framework for a good deal of martial arts action. The action is often pretty decent and the film seldom has chance to get boring.

Naturally it is also pretty cheesy, especially when viewed nowadays. I particularly liked the evil ninja who had laser guns and mini rocket launchers.

Troublesome Night 4 (1998)

The Troublesome Night series of horror films amazingly went up to nineteen but let's stick with one of the earlier efforts.

A group from HK go to the Philippines for a tour, and here are three ghost stories set around their tour. One guy is transporting an urn containing the ashes of a Filipina who died in HK. As he heads to deliver his pack he keeps seeing a girl in the mirror and even in the shower. She looks exactly like the girl whos ashes he's now carrying!

So that is the kind of fare on show here. The frights are more the Carry On Screaming type than the Driller Killer kind of horror. Plenty of ghosts appearing suddenly and people screaming. And it's all quite funny, sometimes intentionally too.

The film is a typical late 90s silly HK slapstick packed with contemporary pop culture and HK life references. If you like that kind of thing you'll like this film, though some of the references are dated now. The honeymoon couple story (starring Louis Koo and Pauline Suen) and the urn story are reasonably good ghost stories, the third story about three horny guys is a bit of a zombiefest yawn but you can't win them all.