Bruce's Deadly Fingers (1976)

Quality Bruceploitation action though in many ways a baffling film. Bruce Le for a change doesn't play Bruce Lee (though his character is called Bruce). Instead he is looking for Bruce Lee's book on finger king fu. Bad guy Lee Hung (Lo Lieh) is also looking for this book, and considers it more valuable than all the diamonds in the world for some reason.

But there are a couple of other guys looking for the book, quite why isn't explained. Bruce's sister (Yuan Man Tzu) is being forced to become a prostitute, scared into submission by seeing a woman tortured with a lizard. Thankfully Bruce saves her before she has to sell herself and he takes her to his friend Mina (Nora Miao) to look after. Not that Mina does a very good job as she and Bruce's sister are captured by the bad guys twice...

The other guys looking for the book turn out to be a cop (Michael Chan) and his new friend (Nik Cheung). All explained in the end then. After much muddled plotting, and random scenes, and lots of fighting (of course) the Bruce Lee book is discovered and Bruce learns finger kung fu. Unfortunately Lee Hung also gets the book and this sets the scene for a final gruesome showdown...

A clumsy film that contains a few too many strange awkward scenes (including a bizarre scene where the bad guys set a ring of gasoline on fire and begin to molest some unfortunate women in the centre of the fast approaching flames) though mid-1970s HK looks very groovy. Not a film for plot, a film for kung fu action which often is pretty decent. 

Stop Press Girl (1949)

In a sleepy little village barely touched by the modern world, young girl Jennifer (Sally Ann Howes) has a strange power, any mechanical device from a watch to a car stops working in her presence after fifteen minutes. However, she doesn't know she has this power yet. 

When she meets Roy (Nigel Buchanan) who drives a sports car and has a watch making business this strange power causes all sorts of mischief. Jennifer's uncle (James Robertson Justice), a dentist, scares Roy away when he tells him Jennifer's secret.

Jennifer decides to go to London herself, of course her powers cause mayhem. She meets Jock (Gordon Jackson), a journalist, who discovers the secret of her power but also falls in love with her...

A charming little comedy, the gimmick is stretched but the decent performances and gentle jokes will help the viewer retain interest, for at least longer than the fifteen minutes Jennifer would need to stop proceedings!

The Journey: Absolution (1997)

A very confusing film. An asteroid hits the Earth, thirty years later the world is now a frozen Hell, which seems to now consist of remote bases in the snow populated by near naked men who spend their days working out and indulging in military weirdness. Murphy (Mario Lopez) arrives at the base as a new cadet under the command of the deranged Bradley (Richard Greico), who is a man who worships Richard Nixon, smokes a lot of cigars and has a weird plan that involves torturing naked young men...

Murphy is in fact a spy, trying to find his missing comrade Lyles (Charles Mattocks) and also discover what on (frozen) Earth Bradley is doing. With the help of his friend Quintana (Nick Spano) and token female Wade (Jaime Pressly), Murphy discovers Bradley's plot to facilitate the final invasion of the Earth from another world...

This film truly is low budget sci-fi nonsense. The plot is hard to follow and doesn't make a lot of sense, the dialogue is frequently banal. A rather large proportion of the running time consists of muscular young men in their underwear, working out hard and getting sweaty - so it isn't all bad then! It is campy, ridiculous and (unintentionally) hilarious.

Dick Turpin (1925)

Dick Turpin (Tom Mix), of course, was a brutal criminal in reality though this film portrays him as a movie hero. Turpin is a dashing hero alongside his friend Tom King (Alan Hale) and this is standard swashbuckling fare with plenty of splendid horsemanship (with the famous screen horse Tony as Black Bess) and fighting (sword, guns and fists).

Dick Turpin has a girl (Kathleen Myers), but she is due to wed in a terrible marriage. Dick Turpin manages to get the girl after a series of adventures including a rather good boxing match. This is a typical silent movie epic with splendid costumes, sets and a huge cast of extras.

Tom Mix (with Tony the Horse) was the top on-screen cowboy of the silent movie era so it is interesting to see him in a different era, even if much of the action is similar.

200 Motels (1971)

As crazy as you imagine a Frank Zappa long-feature would be. This isn't really a film as such, more like a very long music video of Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention interspersed with various strange vignettes including Keith Moon as a hot Nun, Donald Duck on drugs and Ringo Starr playing... Frank Zappa!

Nothing makes sense of course, it is a freeform kaleidoscope of music and art. The music can be very good, everything else can sometimes be a bit more miss than hit but certainly worth seeing (maybe just the once). Frank Zappa said he wanted to show how touring could make you crazy. He certainly succeeded. 

The film is a little too self-indulgent if we are to be honest. A film of it's time, which can be a good and a bad thing.