Peeping Tom (1960)

To say this film is somewhat disturbing would be an understatement. Mark (Carl Boehm) is a film studio worker who has a side line in soft core porn, he also likes to film the look of terror on young women's faces before he kills them...

Mark explains to a potential victim (Anna Massey) how his (mad of course) scientist father filmed him constantly as a child and liked to stimulate fear in him with various props including lizards, filming his reaction. Mark is pretty screwed up and acts incredibly weirdly but then again with his twisted upbringing is it any wonder?

A controversial film to say the least but what made it most shocking was probably the humanisation of the murderer. Mark is as much a victim as the unfortunates he kills, a difficult message to portray back then (even now), the film destroyed the director Michael Powell's career but survives as a testament to intelligent and daring film making.

Dr Pyckle and Mr Pride (1925)

A parody of the well-known Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde story (and an earlier movie version of the story), Dr Pyckle (Stan Laurel) is a scientist who tests a drug on himself to see if it change his personality. It does, it turns him into a Mr Pride who can't stop playing jokes on people...

Dr Pyckle did have higher hopes for this transformation than to someone who steals ice cream and scares ladies with loud noises! It is very funny, once we get to the Mr Pride stage. It is also interesting to see Stan Laurel without Oliver Hardy, we were still a couple of years from their immortal double act. This is quite a different performance in many ways, playing both title roles gave Laurel a lot of scope to show just how versatile he was as a performer.

Mariners of the Sky (1936)

US Navy flyboy hi jinks. A rather contrived plot involving a baby and a bunch of Naval airmen. Tex (Addison Randall) learns that his wife back home is pregnant. Unfortunately by the time his aircraft carrier reaches port he finds out she died in childbirth. His sister-in-law Bernice (Claire Dodd) wants to take the baby away but Tex wants it bought up on the ship (for some unfathomable reason)...

Soon afterwards however Tex is critically injured in a car accident. He pledges his child over to his buddy Red (William Gargan). However Bernice and her lawyer are out to get the baby off him...

There then follows various mayhem which includes a gangster (Paul Fix) stealing the baby and Red stealing a plane. Well everything ends up happily in the end and they all go home for tea, and Red and Bernice get married. There isn't much depth to this film (which is ironic considering it involves the Navy) but it is a reasonable bit of fluff.

God Father (1980)

A fairly enjoyable HK genre romp starring a young Chow Yun Fat. You can probably guess what this film will be like: violence, ropey kung fu with badly matching impact sound dubbing, dubious comedy, overacting and a weird convoluted plot. But of course these are the ingredients of many a classic HK film!

Chow plays a minor card shark / mechanic who tries to tangle with the local hood. Chow thinks he has the magic card skills from his god father, an ex Minor Deity of Gamblers but hes not quite that good. So he ends up owing the Boss thousands of HK$ and gets a good kicking for his cheek. But then his god father calls upon his old mate, a real God of Gamblers and the revenge begins... amid a rather convoluted plot. The Hood ends up in gaol and all the good guys go and visit him to laugh at him. 

Is this film any good? Well its not God Of Gamblers but fairly decent entertainment all the same. Seeing Chow Yun Fat so young is quite entertaining.

The Avenging Hand (1936)

An intriguing crime caper. Lee Barwell (Noah Beery) is a Chicago gangster over in London on holiday. He gets involved in (or rather blunders into) a plot to steal a lot of cash which includes a hapless match seller who is to look after the key to a safe where the loot is. When the match seller is found dead Lee decides to find out the killer...

The film is basically a low-budget whodunnit which takes place in a posh hotel. Lee the gangster starts off wanting to take the loot for himself but becomes the good guy very quickly when the match seller, who be earlier befriended, is bumped off and turns detective. Along with Pierre (Louis Borel) and Gwen (Kathleen Kelly) he brings the criminals to justice. The plot is a fairly standard mystery with a few clues like scented cigarettes thrown in, there is also a degree of farce.

The plot is actually fairly mediocre, and not without a few holes, but Beery's performance as one of the most unlikely detectives on screen completely makes the film. The dialogue is sharp and not without some humour.

Fear in the Night (1972)

An assured horror film that doesn't mind taking it's time to set the scene.

Peggy (Judy Geeson) is recovering from a nervous breakdown and thinks she had been attacked by a man with a mechanical arm. Now married to Robert (Ralph Bates) who works at a boarding school she moves in and encounters the rather sinister headmaster (Peter Cushing) and his even more sinister wife Molly (Joan Collins)...

Peggy is attacked again by a man with a mechanical arm though Robert doesn't believe her. Is she imagining things? Why is the school so strange and eerie, is it even really a school?

This is a psychological horror film full of suspense with a rather interesting twist.

Laser Mission (1989)

Incomprehensible low-budget action nonsense. Michael Gold (Brandon Lee) is a mercenary sent to recruit Professor Braun (Ernest Borgnine) who is an expert on lasers. The CIA want to keep his knowledge safe and stop terrorists blowing airliners out of the sky with lasers (obviously the CIA want to be able to do that themselves)...

Gold is sent to... well who really knows... it could be Africa, it could be Latin America it could be a film set which oddly mixes both. There are plenty of Cubans and Russians around but none of them can shoot straight, except Colonel Kalishnakov (Grahem Clarke). Gold meets up with Alissa (Debi Monahan) who is supposed to be Braun's daughter but also seems incredibly handy in a fight. Endless shoot outs and chase scenes across the desert thus follow...

It is terrible but strangely compelling at the same time. The fight scenes are so bad that the cannon fodder bad guys often drop dead even before the heroes start firing. The meagre plot is stretched so thinly that half a dozen pointless action scenes had to be inserted to fill the film out. Oh and the dialogue is frequently awful. And this is why it is brilliant obviously.