The Lost City (Serial) (1935)

Superbly over the top serial sci-fi adventure. Mad scientist Zolok (William Boyd) seeks to conquer the world with electrical impulses sent from his machine in his secret base in deepest darkest Africa. The impulses are sending weather in the rest of the world crazy...

Engineer Bruce Gordon (Kane Richmond) has electrical machines of his own and he detects where the impulses are coming from and heads off to Africa. There he discovers Zolok and his crazy plans as well as his ability to create an army of giant men. Zolok also has a genius scientist (Josef Swickard) and his beautiful daughter (Claudia Dell) captive...

So all the usual ingredients for a sci-fi serial. Plenty of sparks and humming machines (because in the 1930s unless you had arrays of high voltage electricity sparking away it wasn't SCIENCE), endless fights, cliff hangers and re-used sets and costumes. Nothing we haven't seen before but campy, frenetic fun as a 1930s serial should be.

Terror By Night (1946)

Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) and Dr Watson (Nigel Bruce) are hired by Roland (Geoffrey Steele) to protect the valuable diamond owned by his mother Lady Margaret (Mary Forbes) as they travel back up to Edinburgh on the train. However before very long Roland is found dead and the diamond is missing! The murderer and thief must be still on the train.

The investigation begins of the other passengers on the carriage, several of whom are suspicious though there are red herrings a-plenty even a mysterious coffin. Sherlock Holmes deduces that Moriarty's henchman Moran is involved...

Although low-budget (nearly all the film takes place on one set) this is an excellent little mystery. Though it is somewhat marred by Watson's attempts at humour and some dodgy accents.

Kill and Kill Again (1981)

Low budget martial arts films of the 1970s and 1980s seldom made much sense but this South African film takes that to another (low) level...

Dr Kane (John Ramsbottom) has developed a way to produce gasoline from potatoes, a side effect of this is a powerful mind control drug. A criminal mastermind called Marduk (Michael Mayer) kidnaps Kane and wants to use the drug to create a perfect society of slaves and take over the world!

Martial artist Steve Chase (John Ryan) is recruited to rescue Kane and stop Marduk. He assembles a motley crew of martial arts stereotypes (big guy, zen master, jokey guy) and they head off to take on Marduk and his army of goons in matching t-shirts...

The film is complete nonsense, the action comes thick and fast but is fairly light. The tone is fairly jokey and heavily cheesy. Even for films of this genre it has so many plot holes and unexplained elements as to defy belief. It is watchable just because it is so so strange and terrible.

The Oklahoma Cyclone (1930)

An early talkie Western and not that good to be honest but not without some charm. The story is fairly straightforward: cowboy Jim Smith (Bob Steele) is looking for his father who appears to be held captive by a gang led by the Black Diablo (Charles King)...

Jim disguises himself as an outlaw, the Oklahoma Cyclone, to infiltrate the gang and finally finds his father and has a showdown with the Diablo. Jim does a bit of singing too and romances Rita Rey...

The film is rather slow unfortunately and the actors are, as so often with early talkies a bit awkward and stiff when it comes to dialogue, but the numerous musical interludes lighten the mood.

Day of the Animals (1977)

The hole in the ozone layer has allowed lots of radiation in and it has sent animals at high altitude MAD!

So the science is maybe a little suspect but this late 1970s disaster movie at least has a good collection of stereotypes (former sports star with a secret, blonde TV woman, butch advertising executive, mum from Beverley Hills) who set off for a hike in the mountains with Steve (Christopher George).

Unfortunately the animals are waiting for their moment to attack and it finally comes after much staring by eagles and vultures. Mountain lions and bears menace the group. The party are struck by human conflict too as Leslie Neilsen decides Steve is a loser and takes a breakaway group in a different direction. Leslie also ends up affected by the radiation and commits murder, attempts rape and then decides to fight a bear in unarmed combat. That thankfully is the last we see of him.

The film is complete nonsense though does have some genuinely scary moments especially the rather unfortunate victim who is bitten by a rattlesnake and then savaged by a dog. A policeman is also attacked by flying rats which is more laughable than anything else. The budget was low but what they had they used well.

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.