The Mystery of the Hooded Horsemen (1937)

Standard but well made B-movie Western adventures.

Tex Ritter encounters a dying man who has just been shot by a gang of masked thugs. Tex and Stubby (Horace Murphy) head to check a gold mine which the Sheriff and locals seem to want to keep people away from. Tex infiltrates the gang of Hooded Horsemen but is discovered and only just manages to escape. 

Who is the ringleader of the gang, can Tex find out before he either gets shot by the gang or arrested by the law?

This is a decent film, though apart from the bad guys in black masks there isn't anything you will have already seen in dozens of other B-movie Westerns. It has the usual fast horseriding, gun fights, a fight in a saloon and a few songs by Tex! 

Nancy Wilson provides the (another staple of these films) love interest.

The American Angels: Baptism of Blood (1990)

Ah this sounds like it could be a tough and gritty film from the violent world of wrestling, actually no this is a largely bloodless though frequently soft core bit of sexploitation.

Lisa (Jan Sebastian) is one of a number of girls who want to train to become wrestlers and join the American Angels organisation. Lisa has a secret though, her grandfather was Killer Kane (Robert D Bergen), notorious for killing someone in the ring. Luckily Lisa doesn't follow in his footsteps, yet. She is desperate to fight the champion Mimi (Mimi Lesseos) and will even seduce the show owner Diamond Dave (Tray Loren) to get her shot. As Diamond and Mimi are a couple this adds extra spice to the final showdown...

OK its fairly obvious who this film is aimed at, it's full of scantily clad fit and toned young women getting sweaty (so not all bad then). Despite all sexploitation nonsense, it isn't that bad a film and has some decent in ring action, assisted by real wrestlers like Susan Sexton. 

Not great but could have been a lot worse.

Galaxina (1980)

A campy science-fiction comedy that unfortunately isn't that funny.

A police space cruiser captained by Captain Butt (Avery Schreiber) - the name features in a number of jokes, as does Uranus, thats the level of humour here - is sent into deep space to discover a jewel called the Blue Star which contains unimaginable power. 

His crew are mostly misfits except for gorgeous android Galaxina (Dorothy Stratten) who basically runs the ship. Indeed the rest of the crew seem more interested in getting stoned and getting their legs over with either alien prostitutes with three breasts or Galaxian herself...

The film meanders along fairly amicably, the weirdness keeps you interested. In some ways this film reminds me of Dark Star, though this film is no where near as good or funny. It needed to be a bit more subtle. 

It's watchable, pretty ridiculous but could have been so much more.

Take an Easy Ride (1976)

What starts out as what appears to be a public information film on the dangers of hitch hiking soon becomes something much much darker indeed...

A number of stories of young girls hitch hiking are intertwined, the most notable being the one with Margaret Heald and Helen Bernat who want to go to a pop festival. Unfortunately, they accept a lift from a leather glove wearing porn obsessed pervert who ends up taking them into the woods and brutally raping them. Another hitch hiker accepts a lift from a posh couple in an expensive car and ends up becoming their drugged up sex toy in a hotel...

The abruptness of the film from interviewing foreign students to savage sex crimes is nearly as shocking as the actual crimes. It is grubby, exploitative though for a nostalgic look at the roads, cars and music of the 1970s it surely scores. But you'll probably feel like you need a wash afterwards.

The Night the World Exploded (1957)

Low budget though not low interest science fiction.

Dr Conway (William Leslie) has developed a machine that can predict earthquakes. Unfortunately he has predicted that an earthquake is about to hit California in the next twenty four hours and even more unfortunately his machine appears to work when a quake does hit!

Conway's machine detects more imminent earthquakes but doesn't know what is causing these quakes. With his assistant Laura (Kathryn Grant), he descends into a cavern to see if he can discover the cause. He discovers a dangerous new element which could destroy the world in days...

This is a bit of a pedestrian film that takes a while to get going but ultimately is worth persevering with. An fairly intelligent science-fiction plot (for the period especially) and good use of stock footage overcomes the shortcomings with the budget. A reasonable little film.