I Cover the Waterfront (1933)

Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) is an investigative reporter and the waterfront is his beat. He is convinced that Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence) is smuggling in illegal Chinese immigrants (though sometimes they end up drowned!) However, Joe cannot get a lead on Eli and his editor is on his case. Then Joe discovers Eli's lovely daughter Julie (Claudette Colbert) and thinks he can get the information he needs through her. Love gets in the way of his plan...

An enjoyable film, Eli Kirk is a fascinating character who thinks nothing of throwing his human cargo overboard to their deaths if the Coast Guard are approaching. The romance between Joe and Julie flows very naturally, Claudette Colbert really steals the movie though. Any scenes she is in are dominated by her presence. All the mains have some moral ambiguities to some degree which adds some needed layers to what is, on the main, a standard tale of smuggling.

The Trouble with Women (1959)

Brad (Chet Davis) has a problem, and that is women. Pesky women ruining his lovely workplace. Some of them just want to get married damn it! Luckily Brad is given a talk by his friend in Personnel and finds out that (gasp!) women are actually good at their jobs after all! 

A rather dated and unintentionally funny public information film promoting gender equality. We've come a long way, though a long way still to go. Not quite as long a way as Brad needed to go.

The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

A very strange film indeed. A meteorite crashes into a lake awakening some kind of Lock Ness like monster (with some decent stop-motion animation) and begins to eat people. So far so good. However the film is made so badly with random sub-plots and weird characters. We have a couple of rednecks Arnie (Glenn Roberts) and Mitch (Mark Siegel) who hire out boats on the lake and seem pretty oblivious to everything that is going on around them. Their attempts at humour are as painful as being eaten by a monster...

Half way through the film we suddenly see a rather botched shoot out in a liquor store, what has this got to do with the rest of the film (apart from the fact the gunman eventually ends up another snack of the monster)? Why was this character added so late into proceedings? Like much of this film it doesn't really make a lot of sense.

The Sheriff (Richard Cardella) is a hoot, early on the film he seems the laziest cop in the world but in the end is willing to take on the monster on his own with a bulldozer and a handgun.

Not a good film at all, the acting is poor, the plot and pacing all over the place and continuity mostly missing. It is good fun though, camp nonsense. The monster special effects are not bad, especially for their day.

Wheels of Fire (1985)

A rough but good (in it's own limited way) Mad Max rip-off. It is the post-apocalypse and men dressed in leather drive muscle cars with spikes and flamethrowers fighting over the remaining resources of mankind. As usual.

Our hero is Trace (Gary Watkins), a nomadic super warrior of sorts. When his sister Arlie (Lynda Wiesmeier) is captured by the evil warlord of the wastelands Scourge (Joe Mari Avellana), he seeks to get her back.

He gets help from Stinger (Laura Banks), who has a bird of prey. A powerful faction called the Ownership Army is aiming to wipe out Scourge but the evil warlord has a plan...

Low budget, ultra violent and shamelessly exploitative. Weismeier's large breasts get more screen time than most of the supporting cast. The plot is pretty basic and the film is mostly just a series of violent set pieces with large body counts. It is trashy and utterly unoriginal but undeniably entertaining.

The Steel Key (1953)

A fast moving though rather complicated crime/spy caper. A scientist who has worked on a formula for hardening steel has died in America. Johnny O'Flynn (Terence Morgan) arrives in the UK pretending to be the colleague of the dead scientist to try and find the formula. He discovers that the only man who might know the formula, Professor Newman (Esmond Knight), has just died...

O'Flynn enlists the help of a nurse at a sanatorium where Newman died. Doreen (Joan Rice) had serious misgivings on the treatment given to patients. Doreen helps O'Flynn discover that Newman is still alive, and a gang led by Dr Crabtree (Colin Tapley) are trying to sweat the information out of Newman...

A complicated plot with various double crosses and changes of identity. The film is fairly light and breezy in tone, despite a certain amount of murder and brutality... all in the crisp, chipper nature of an early 1950s British film.

Hideout in the Alps (1936)

A breezy crime caper involving forged bank notes and skis. Jim Kent (Ronald Squire) is an old lag who has been released from gaol for forgery. He vows to go straight but discovers to his horror that his nephew Gilbert (Arthur Macrae) may have got into the same game. He follows Gilbert and his niece Linda (Jane Baxter) to the Alps where he finds a forging gang using the cover of a hotel to commit their crimes.

The police in the form of Inspector Forsyth (Anthony Bushell) are in the Alps too. Jim recognises old bill already and tries to save his nephew from being caught with the help of Linda...

This is a good fun film that travels from England to the Continent and back a couple of times. It is fast paced, often feeling a bit like a serial. The film climaxes with a rather entertaining chase scene through the snow. Margaret Rutherford plays a good role as one of the crime bosses.

Welcome Back, Norman (1979)

A curious little short film about a rather inept man who returns home... and makes an incredible mess out of getting out of the airport car park! Norman (Douglas P. MacIntosh), presumably a travelling businessman, is a bit of a reverse Midas. When he reaches his car he finds the other cars are parked too close so he has to squeeze in with much discomfort. Oh no, he has left his brief case on top of his car, lets hope he doesn't run over it...

There isn't much to this film but it a little bit of fun. The bumbling ineptness of Norman resembles the hapless Captain Mainwaring. Most of the fun is from the sheer oddness of this little film, the fact it exists and quite why it was made?