Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

A fine meaty role for the peerless Louise Brooks. 

She plays Thymian, daughter of a chemist (Josef Rovensky), who is raped by her father's assistant (Fritz Rasp). She becomes pregnant and is sent to a tough reform school (and her baby taken away from her) as she won't marry her rapist. Thymian eventually escapes and ends up working in a brothel. There is a way for Thymian to escape her dark life with the help of a Count (Andre Roanne) but will she be able to take it? Or will she be always haunted by her past?

This is a tough film which Brooks brings a lot of emotion into (but let's face it she is put through a lot). The film portrays upper and middle class society as moral free, sadistic and hypocritical. 

This is a melodrama for sure but so artfully and skill fully done. Louise Brooks is mesmerising. 

Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II (1989)

A sequel? Well not really as none of the characters from the first Wizards of the Lost Kingdom appear in this, which is just as well because all that was achieved in the first film has been thrown away and the land is under the control of evil wizards again! 

Broken down old wizard Caedmon (Mel Welles) is tasked to find a youngster who is the last hope to defeat evil. Caedmon soon finds Tyor (Robert Jayne), a floppy haired teenager who is to learn how to be a wizard and save the world. So this is a bit like Harry Potter, only in this case the teenage wizard is a bit of a whiny loser.

Caedmon and Tyor travel through the three kingdoms, meeting heroes including the Dark One (David Carradine) and defeating the evil wizard controlling the land with various awkward sword fights and mediocre magic. The scene is thus set for the final showdown which ends up being an incredibly clumsy romp where most of the protagonists stand out doing nothing as if waiting for their cue.

A campy and inept film with banal dialogue, terrible fighting scenes and cheap looking effects; it's not to be taken seriously. It is funny though I suspect not quite as the makers intended. The film feels like a comedy sketch show parody that went on far too long. Hilariously bad, and thus very watchable for that point alone.

The Tong Man (1919)

A rather dated view of Chinatown, containing a fair bit of action though certainly full of dated stereotypes. Louie Toy (Tojo Fujita) is a merchant (and drug smuggler) who refuses to pay the Tongs protection money. The Tong task their top assassin Luk Chen (Sessue Hakayama) with assassinating Toy. One complication however, is that Chen is in love with Toy's daughter Sen Chee (Helen Jerome Eddy)... 

Another complication is that Toy has given safe harbour to a murderous sailor on the run from the police (Yukata Abe), and he is obviously keen to have Toy's back. Yet another complication is the San Francisco Police sniffing around...

So, a world of opium dens, gambling debts, pigtails and endless intrigue and murder. The fact the Tong seem to get their orders from the statue of a dragon is genuinely hilarious. The film is a bit contrived but the film is well made, the story is nonsense though!

Time Chasers (1994)

A ridiculously low-budget time travel film. Nick (Matthew Bruch) has developed a time machine, which for some reason only works in a light aircraft fitted with a Commodore computer. Nick interests CEO J.K. (George Woodard) in investing in his machine. 

Unfortunately when Nick heads to the future with his lady friend Lisa (Bonnie Prichard) they find the future has changed and now has become a rather low-rent dystrophia.

Nick discovers that J.K. has misused the time machine and changed history for the worst. Nick and Lisa try and change history themselves by stopping J.K. which involves them heading back to the U.S. Revolutionary War but also crashing a car...

An enjoyable if ridiculous film which seems to have the budget of about $5. The film eschews any complications with time travel to keep things straight forward and reasonably exciting. The best thing about the film is that Nick and Lisa are so ordinary and yet have such amazing adventures.

Bruce Lee's Ways of Kung Fu (1979)

The title implies this is a Bruceploitation film though in reality this is standard Kung Fu fare which just uses Bruce Lee's name. The film takes place in the base of a Manchurian warlord (Ki-Ju Kim) and his eighteen female bodyguards. Many try to challenge the warlord but none get out alive, until Dragon Lee.

Dragon is seeking to avenge his father who was killed by the warlord, and does get badly beaten up but manages to escape and receives training from his new master (Choe Mu-Ling). His master is killed too by the evil warlord's forces but finally Dragon is ready to enter the base along with his friends Philip Cheung and Pearl Lin, defeat the eighteen female warriors and take on the warlord in a final showdown...

And it is all pretty terrible if we are to be honest. The film makes very little sense and sometimes feels like scenes from different films spliced together with various tangents and dubious comedy scenes. The fighting is not bad, frequently very over the top with the usual weird sound effects and lots of use of wires. Quite an experience for sure, from a cheese point of view it is highly entertaining.