Treasure of the Amazon (1985)

A rough jungle exploitation film that rips off the likes of Indiana Jones quite shamelessly at times.

Gringo (Stuart Whitman) is a semi-crazed adventurer who once went into the jungle with his friends to find treasure and returned years later unable to remember his own name and with the shrunken heads of his friends in a bag.

But naturally he now wants to return to the jungle with a group of fellow adventurers and others after the loot including former Nazi Klaus (Donald Pleasence) and Barbara (Ann Sidney) who has found some diamonds but doesn't seem to have found the correct accent to use...

The film isn't very good to very honest. The narrative jumps around all over the place and is often shamelessly exploitative for example including scenes with naked native women wrestling and another one where a native eats a tarantula! It also has massive amounts of gore and violence. The sheer disjointed awfulness however makes it fairly entertaining.

Helen's Babies (1924)

Harry (Edward Everett Horton) has written a book on raising children, although in reality he doesn't have any and doesn't really know anything about it, in fact he doesn't really like children! Unfortunately for him he gets put in charge of his two young nieces while their parents are away. Cute antics to follow.

Harry does have some help though in the form of local girl Alice (Clara Bow). The two nieces (Baby Peggy and Jean Carpenter) soon get into trouble as they are pretty wild. Harry soon gets to love the chaos though but maybe loves Alice more...

It is a cute little comedy, a bit insubstantial and twee at times. The cast are great though and put in good performances across the board.

Paradise Island (1930)

A rather dated and uninspiring early talkie. Ellen (Marceline Day) arrives in Tonga to get married but finds her husband (Roy Armstrong) to be is a hopeless drunk. As Ellen is the only white woman on the island she soon finds herself the centre of attention from a number of men...

They include Dutch Mike (Tom Santschi), whom Ellen soon finds cannot be trusted, and adventure seeker Jim (Kenneth Harlan). Ellen finds herself to be the prize in a poker game between Dutch Mike and Jim but Dutch Mike has marked cards...

It is light froth which ends in a largely clumsy fight (more like a shapeless brawl) and has a few songs along the way. The film is OK but rather dumb.

Dick Tracy's Dilemma (1947)

Superior comic book adaptation as Dick Tracy battles The Claw...

The Claw (Jack Lambert), a criminal with a hook, has stolen some furs. However Dick Tracy (Ralph Byrd) knows that he is just a violent murderous thug so someone else must be the mastermind of the robbery. So begins a complicated case for the super detective assisted (in theory) by Pat Patton (Lyle Latell), Tess Trueheart (Kay Christopher) and over-the-top thespian Vitamin Flintheart (Ian Keith).

It is all very pulpy and trashy but that is the point. The Claw steals the show with his sinister super villain act. At times quite noirish.

The Edge of Hell (1987)

Years ago in a remote farmhouse a kid watches his parents killed by the Devil who lives in the fridge (next to the bacon we assume). Now an 80s hair metal band turns up at the same farmhouse to record an album (for some reason a 24-track recording studio is in the barn), what could go wrong?

A lot obviously as the members of the band led by John (Jon Mikl Thor) start to act rather strangely and start to die just as strangely, killed off by monsters who look like the Muppets on LSD. But then... after several monster murders and lengthy sex scenes, there is a massive twist which completely changes the direction of the film and seems to render everything that has taken place before as meaningless...

Well these kind of low budget films are supposed to make little sense but... well no idea what was going on in most of this. It doesn't really matter as the final act is fantastic and utterly over the top and ridiculous. It is a cheese filled masterpiece.