Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977)

The last of the Confessions series, either completely hilarious or utterly dated drivel depending on your point of view.

Timmy (Robin Askwith) and his brother-in-law Sidney (Anthony Booth) are still at it, "it" being sleeping with as many young women as possible. They are now working at a grim holiday camp, obviously this gives them plenty of opportunities. 

But then the camp is taking over by Whitemonk (John Junkin), a former prison governor, who thinks a holiday camp should be run using iron discipline. Naturally he disapproves of Timmy and Sidney. However, Sidney has the great idea of holiday a beauty contest...

This film is crude, sexist and vulgar. The humour is dated, obvious and repetitive. I loved it. This is one of the funniest films around. It is one of the final glorious examples of British saucy comedy and working class culture that was soon to be swept away by the uncertainty of the 1980s, enjoy (a bit of) it while you can.

Mystery Broadcast (1943)

An enjoyable amateur detective romp.

Jan (Ruth Terry) has a radio show where she dramatises unsolved crimes, unfortunately the ratings are on the downward trend so she decided to try and solve one of these unsolved crimes! The crime she sets out to solve is a murder, this seems to rattle some feathers including people working on her radio show. When these people start winding up dead she knows she is onto something for sure!

She is helped by rival radio presenter Michael (Frank Albertson) and her long suffering effects producer Smitty (Mary Treen). Along the way they encounter a number of suspicious characters and dangerous situations...

This is a great little crime drama though not that original. It is a perky little adventure that flows smoothly from situation to situation driven by the great performances of Terry and Treen. The resolution is a little sudden and relies on the old trick of the culprit unmasking himself. The workings of live radio are well portrayed and always interesting.

Deluge (1933)

One of the earliest examples of the disaster movie genre, and the norm with these films often having impressive visuals but a disappointing story seems to have been there from the start.

A combination of a massive earthquake and huge storm strikes the USA at the same time, destroying basically everything. We see the skyscrapers of New York collapse with the population fleeing in terror. As usual the massive disaster is personalised through the lives and struggles of a few ordinary people. Those being Martin Webster (Sidney Blackmer) and his wife (Lois Webster) and children. Martin is separated from them after the main disaster strikes. 

Martin spends time alone, not knowing if anyone else survived. Then he discovers Claire (Peggy Shannon) who has escaped from a rough gang led by Jepson (Fred Kohler)...

This isn't that great a film, the acting is rather stilted and the film takes a long time to get going. The effects are good though especially for their day. The film also includes an interesting surprise for Martin and a rather awkward situation. An interesting watch but not much more.

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).