Crazy Blood (1983)

Olivia Cheng plays a social worker married to a police photographer. They have one son upon whom the husband (Eddie Chan) dotes on to an almost unnatural degree whilst she is busy saving the lives of the teenage tearaways in her care...

The streets of Hong Kong never looked so dark (literally - there looks like there was not much budget for lighting so often its hard to see what's going on - and morally). Rape, arson, prostitution, violence, drug taking... seem endemic on the mean streets of Kowloon!

A tragic string of events that starts off with a brutal rape leads to the death of Eddie's and Olivia's son and then Eddie goes - well crazy. He starts to kill off his wife's clients using various methods such as apartment window assisted projection.

As the film continues he becomes more and more insane, in the end wanting to kill himself and Olivia as he thinks his dead son is lonely and is waiting for them. The ending is a bit unsurprising though rather gore splatter-tastic.

A recommended little horror gem from the early 1980s. Don't expect a barrel of laughs though.

Tarzan's Revenge (1938)

A middling jungle romp. Eleanor (Eleanor Holm) is on a trip to Africa with her parents and her fiance (George Meeker), who is a bit wet though likes shooting animals with his rifle. The local sultan Ben Alleu Bey (C. Henry Gordon) likes the look of Eleanor who fancies adding a feisty American woman to his harem...

Tarzan (Glen Morris) also takes a liking to Eleanor when he finds he stuck in a pond. Nobody believes Eleanor when she tells the others about Tarzan. However their paths soon cross again...

Not the best Tarzan though, he acts rather childish and barely says a word. However as Morris was a former Olympic decathlete he certainly had the physique! Eleanor makes the film though, which is just as well as there isn't a great deal of acting going on from anyone else. Expect dated stereotypes, animal exploitation and a rather thin plot. It shouldn't be taken very seriously.

To Live (1994)

The Cultural Revolution, one of the most terrible and bloody periods in history, is recalled in all this horror in this masterpiece starring You Ge and Gong Li. They are a couple who start off quite wealthy but lose everything due to You Ge's gambling as China is shattered by military conquest and then civil war. Reduced to the status of peasants they have to fight to survive, to live, in Mao's China.

The couple and their childrens' lives and experiences are used to show how China changed under Mao, with communist propaganda affecting everyday life, collectivisation and later the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. This final act results (in a round about way) in tragedy...

Great events are sometimes best told through the eyes of normal people at the bottom of society as is the case with this film. Sometimes you wonder how people can survive such hardships, to live. These people did.

Nancy Drew... Reporter (1939)

Schoolgirl Nancy Drew (Bonita Granville) is at a newspaper on some sort of work experience gig when she gets onto a real case instead of reporting on a squirrel stuck up a tree. The case involves poisoning but Nancy doesn't think the suspect Betty (Eula Denning) did it. She wants her lawyer father (John Litel) to take the case but he won't do it until there is solid proof she is innocent...

Nancy is helped (usually reluctantly) by her neighbour Ted (Frankie Thomas Jr) to find evidence to clear Betty but stumbles upon a real mystery, just who is a man with a strange ear (Jack Perry) who is involved in the case?

It is light hearted fluff on the whole but features some nice detective work and an amusing set piece in a boxing gym. It also includes a rather strange but endearing musical interlude by a teenage Mary Lee.

Sewers of Gold (1979)

Also known as "The Great Riviera Bank Robbery" this film is based on the true story of a bank robbery in France in the 1970s. It stars Ian McShane as a right-wing terrorist who has the great idea of breaking into a bank safe deposit vault in Nice to raise funds for his fascist uprising. His friend Jean (Warren Clarke) is a bit sceptical of messing with the criminal underworld but soon is persuaded to go ahead with the plan... which consists of getting into the sewers below Nice and then digging through metres of rock.

Although the film has little in way of spark (and we must remember our "heroes" are rather unpleasant thugs who have a liking for swastika wall coverings) it is fascinating to see the mechanics of a bank raid covered in detail. At times it is more like a long version of The Sweeney or Professionals but that is not a bad thing...

Although all the characters are French luckily the British actors use their own accents and not some weird kind of Franglais.