Soldier's Fortune (1991)

Somehow a violent tale of mercenaries and kidnap ends up being a bit dull.

After the daughter Jennifer (Cindy Guyer) of rich businesswoman Susan (Barbara Bingham) is kidnapped by armed men, Susan calls on her ex-husband (and Jennifer's father) for help... Robert Jones (Gil Gerard) happens to be a mercenary! Jones recruits some of his former buddies who are of course a motley crew of military stereotypes!

Jones' efforts to deal with the kidnappers do not go smoothly, due to an inside woman feeding them information but the stage is set for a showdown at the docks...

Apart from a few decent action set pieces, a lot of this film is pretty pedestrian where not a huge amount is going on. The film also does not do much with the main baddie (Charles Napier) until the end, an old enemy of Jones though this isn't really mentioned much in the earlier part of the film.

The Day the Sky Exploded (1958)

One of the earliest Italian science-fiction movies and truly isn't that good.

McLaren (Paul Hubschmid) is chosen to be the first astronaut into outer space in a multi-national mission. The launch goes as planned but soon disaster strikes and asteroids are sent hurtling towards the Earth causing disasters all over the world! 

The only way the world can be saved is by the West and the Soviets working together and using their nuclear arsenals for good...

The movie has some good ideas, and some of the plot points will re-appear in later films. However, this is all rather odd and poorly made and the poor special effects (though fairly standard for the time) are overly padded out with stock footage. The film is what it is, and is worth watching for the curiosity value and for the plot being quite novel in many ways.

After Midnight with Boston Blackie (1943)

Boston Blackie gets involved with the hunt for missing diamonds.

Ed Barnaby (Walter Baldwin) leaves prison after the theft of diamonds which were never recovered. He knows the mob will be after him and the loot so sends his daughter Betty (Ann Savage) to enlist the help of his old pal Boston Blackie (Chester Morris). Herschel (Cy Kendall) and his thugs end up killing Ed and then kidnapping Betty in order to force Blackie to give them the diamonds. Hapless Police Inspector Farraday (Richard Lane) as, as always, a few steps behind.

This is another fast moving, rich yet straight forwardly plotted, crime romp with plenty of good humour including a side-plot of The Runt (George E Stone) trying to get married. A highly enjoyable film.

The Brain Machine (1972)

Confusing and with a low budget, this is probably not going to go very well.

A group of people (including James Best as a priest) are selected to take part in a mysterious experiment led by Dr Roth (Doug Collins), the purpose of this experiment is never made clear but the fact the previous head of the programme ran away and ended up being executed by government agents does not bode well. 

During the experiment the patients are trapped in a room and then things take a turn for the worse, as the experiment is hijacked by secretive government agents. The patients are driven crazy, and in some cases want to kill...

The film does not make much sense, it probably needed a good edit and a bit of clarity in the plot. The paranoia builds nicely though and psychological terror in the last act is quite effective though but it takes a deal of tedium and many static shots of a swimming pool (for some unexplained reason) to get there. The IBM computer equipment is probably the real star of the film (for me anyway).

Light Blast (1985)

An insanely violent 1980s crime/science fiction film.

Dr Soboda (Ennio Girolami) is a renegrade scientist who has developed a death ray. He uses it to blow up a train and melt the unfortunate couple getting it on inside a boxcar. Soboda wants millions of dollars from the San Francisco authorities otherwise he will use his death ray again. He indeed does use this at a race track to deadly effect.

Supercop Inspector Ronn (Erik Estrada) is tasked with stopping Soboda. His investigations consists of getting into a string of fights including in a morgue! In fact there are a lot of fights in this, many many fights and many many deaths.

This is a fun 1980s action romp, full of stunts and action scenes and doesn't make a lot of sense. Not a film for character development, much in the way of plot or any logic. But the film is highly enjoyable as a mindless action romp so who cares?