Dangerous Paradise (1930)

A somewhat clunky early talkie. Heyst (Richard Arlen) is a hermit (though rather well dressed) who has his own island in the South Seas. On a visit to Surabaya he encounters Alma (Nancy Carroll) in a bar who is a rather harassed young musician. The bar owner Schonberg (Warner Oland) makes no secret of his aim to get into Alma's pants so the young girl stows away on Heyst's boat...

Unfortunately some bad men also soon arrive on Heyst's island. They are convinced there is treasure to be found despite Heyst's protestations. Can Heyst and Alma survive this incursion and (obviously) fall in love?

A reasonable little (and short) story though suffers from sound problems at times with the dialogue being unclear or drowned out. The film is interesting to see the future Charlie Chan as a sexual sleazeball.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)

An excellent and bleak spy drama, and a very good John Le Carre adaptation. Leamas (Richard Burton) is a burned out spy running British intelligence operations in Berlin. Back in London Leamas is given a new mission to pose as a defector with the aim of discrediting Mundt (Peter van Eyck) of East German intelligence. 

Leamas builds a new identity of a washed out drunk, though enters a relationship with naive young communist Nan (Claire Bloom). Once he defects Leamas is interrogated by Mundt and his rival Fiedler (Oscar Werner). Leamas soon realises that he is just a pawn in a bigger game, and to his horror Nan is another pawn...

A deep and rich spy drama. The inhumanity, grubbiness and cruelty of the Cold War spy game has seldom been better portrayed. Burton's and Werner's performances are truly excellent. One of the best L'Carre adaptations, maybe one of the best spy movies of all.

Rock City: London 1964-73 (1973)

The story of the British rock scene from the early 1960s to the 1970s, well a kind of documentary. It is mostly a series of (mostly) great live performances - and some early music videos - interspersed with interviews.

If we are to be honest a lot of the interviews are not very illuminating (though Pete Townsend's anti-drug stance is interesting, as it comes alongside footage of Brian Jones' troubles). It doesn't really matter as the songs from the likes of the Rolling Stones, Cream, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Joe Cocker and Jimi Hendrix (and many more) are incredible. 

It is a bit of a hippy-fest, a film of it's time, but what a time.

Devil's Bait (1959)

A neat little B-movie. Frisby the baker (Geoffrey Keen) and his wife (Jane Hylton) have a problem with rats at their bakery. They employ an alcoholic rat catcher Mr Love (Dermot Kelly) to get rid of them. Mr Love uses some cyanide for his baits and ends up using a loaf tin to mix it. Then he goes off to have a drink... and ends up dying down a railway embankment. Unfortunately Mrs Frisby has used the poisoned tin to make a loaf...

Police Sergeant Malcolm (Gordon Jackson) begins a race against time to find out who bought the loaf and stop them from eating the cyanide laced bread...

A fast moving film with plenty of suspense. A limited film but makes the most of what it has.

Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967)

An incredibly weird film, despite the title it isn't really a horror film. It is more like a goofy spy comedy (though the humour is mostly unintentional) film with added country music. 

Three country singers (Ferlin Husky, Joi Lansing and Don Bowman) are on their way to Nashville, to avoid a storm they stay in what appears to be an abandoned house. However, the house is really the secret base of a bunch of spies (John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr, Basil Rathbone and Linda Ho) plus an unconvincing man in a gorilla costume. They have a basement torture dungeon and are after a secret formula at a nearby missile plant...

The spies try and scare the country singers away with a collection of rather lame "ghosts". Though there is a real ghost in the house which stirs the pot a bit...

A very strange film, at times so unbearable but at the same time so watchable. Country tunes (some of which are pretty good) are thrown in seemingly at random and with little real justification with respect to the plot. Don't expect many scares, but do expect some real oddness and awkwardness. 

This was Basil Rathbone's penultimate film (and his last in English) and he co-starred with Merle Haggard. A terrible film and great at the same time.