Under the Big Top (1938)

Sara (Marjorie Main) has trouble keeping her struggling circus going, even more trouble arrives when her niece Penny (Charlene Wyatt) arrives to live with her. However her niece grows up into a fine young woman (Anne Nagel) who might be the best trapeze artist in the world!

Although to be fair her act isn't that special but Sara says so and she isn't the kind of person to take a back seat to anyone, she rules the circus with an iron fist and also pushes Penny hard. However she does undeniably love her niece. Trouble comes with Penny's two male fellow trapeze artists Ricardo (Jack La Rue - not playing a gangster for a change) and Pablo (Grant Richards). A love triangle develops on the high wire...

Somewhat cliched but a decent story. It does have some unintentionally hilarious elements, such as when the child Penny somehow saves the circus from financial doom by burning it down by accident when she was playing with matches with a monkey, so they could claim on the insurance!

Gammera the Invincible (1966)

A Soviet atomic bomb goes off when a bomber crashes in the Arctic accidentally awakening a gigantic turtle called Gammera who seems to want to destroy the world. How unlucky is that?! Unfortunately Gammera seems to be indestructible so that is quite a problem for Japanese scientist Dr Hidaka (Eiji Funakoshi).

So basically this is Godzilla's cousin in a shell and like his more famous counterpart Gammera also enjoys slowly smashing his way through half of Tokyo. This version of the film adds some American characters to add a more international air to the Japanese original though it doesn't add a great deal to the story. At the end of the day it is still a man in a rubber suit crushing model buildings.

The film is fun but frequently ridiculous. Including the music that appears to rip off the Batman theme. The main problem with Gammera in this film is that he isn't very scary, he just seems to waddle around destroying things by accident.

Sheriff of Tombstone (1941)

Brett (Roy Rogers) and Gabby (Gabby Hayes) turn up in Tombstone. Brett is mistaken for Shotgun Cassidy (Harry Woods) whom the mayor (Addison Richards) has recruited as sheriff in the town.

Brett decides to play along and pretend to be Shotgun. He soon finds out that the mayor has dark plans to take over the town using Shotgun as an enforcer. Meanwhile Brett is also looking for the men who have killed his brother...

A good example of a B-movie western. It is all good clean and straight forward fun with plenty of songs too. Rogers and Hayes make for a good double act.

The Vampire Bat (1933)

An interesting variation on the vampire horror theme. People begin to die in a village in mysterious circumstances, their bodies drained of blood. As there are bats also hanging around the village suspicion is that a vampire is at work...

Dr von Niemann (Lionel Atwill) is the one who suspects (and obviously seems a bit suspicious himself) vampires though the police in the form of Karl (Melvyn Thomas) is sceptical. The villages err on the side of superstition and when the village idiot (Dwight Frye) is found to have a fondness of bats it doesn't end well for him...

The film isn't bad though not that original, it incorporates elements of other horror stories (vampires, mad scientists, mysterious murders), but blends them together well. The low budget means everything is a bit sparse but this adds to the atmosphere.

Cyborg Cop II (1994)

Jack Ryan (David Bradley) is that underused movie trope: the maverick cop who doesn't play by the rules. During a long (very long) shootout during a drug bust his partner is killed by crazed drug boss Starkraven (Morgan Hunter). Starkraven is captured and sentenced to death row... but is instead sent to a secret base where he is turned into a cyborg...

Starkraven and some other cyborgs are intended as super warriors who will always be under control of the authorities, many fail safe measures are in place to make sure they can never turn on their masters. Naturally Starkraven escapes in minutes and releases his (small) army of cyborgs to conquer the world. Ryan meanwhile is tracking down what happened Starkraven and with the help of Federal agent Liz (Jill Pierce) and a lot of heavy firepower the stage is set for a showdown...

There is rather a lot of violence in this film. To be honest a bit too much. The opening scene in the drug raid seems to go on forever. The film has lots of plot holes and obviously isn't filmed in the US despite the setting (some of the accents of the supporting actors are hilariously bad). It makes little sense but is fine mindless fun.

The Pharmacist (1933)

A good W.C. Fields comedy short. In this he plays a pharmacist who has to contend with customers who play checkers instead of buying something, a daughter who eats a canary bird (Marjorie Kane) and another daughter (Lorena Carr) who is hanging out with someone called Cuthbert (Grady Sutton) a name he really dislikes for some reason.

Fields main method of coping with this is mixing regular martinis. It is all pretty funny especially the customer who rants about stamps.

Ator: the Fighting Eagle (1982)

For every Conan there were dozens are cheap rip-offs and here we have Ator, an Italian example and not bad at all if you take it for the nonsense it is. The Spider God rules cruelly over the land but prophecy says that the son of a hero called Ator will defeat the Spider God and his chief priest Dakkar. When that son is born the mysterious Griba (Edward Purdom) spirits him away before Dakkar's soldiers, who wear a lot of horns and unconvincing armour, can kill him.

Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) is given to a couple of peasants who raise him as their own son alongside their actual daughter Sunya (Ritza Brown). Ator, who somehow seems to have found a magic hairspray tree, falls in love with Sunya and wants to marry her despite thinking she is his sister (actually he doesn't think there is anything wrong with this). Luckily his parents reveal that they arn't brother and sister after all so incest outrage averted. Unfortunately Dakkar's troops kidnap Sunya (for some unexplained reason) on the wedding day...

Ator finds Griba who tells him his destiny to kill the Spider God. He meets up with a beautiful thief (in skimpy armour) Roon (Sabrina Siani) and they begin a quest across the land to finally achieve their destinies (in Roon's case to loot the Spider God's treasure)...

Despite the rather odd incest note and some ridiculous costumes the film holds together as a decent - if cheap - sword and sorcery film. Naturally the Spider God when he is finally revealed is ridiculous but you would be disappointed if he looked anything other than a cheap rubber prop lets face it.

A cute little bear cub is shown throughout the film, as it probably does the best acting in the film it holds the film together.