Don't Talk to Strange Men (1962)

A neat little thriller warning nice middle class girls of the dangers of talking to strange men.

Jean (Christina Gregg) is heading home, waiting at the bus stop the telephone rings in an adjacent phone box. She answers it and speaks to a smooth voiced man. Jean gets a bit teenager giddy about it, telling her younger sister Ann (Janina Faye) though not her parents. Every day she speaks to the man again, falling in love, and eventually arranges to meet him for real.

Meanwhile there is a manhunt going on for a maniac who murders young women. Jean starts to get cold feet but is it too late?

A modest but well made film, the pacing is slow but the tension rises. You know Jean is making a big mistake but her teenage innocence drives her on and, well we have plenty of examples of how that innocence has been taken advantage of by groomers in real life. A good film.

The Trespasser (1929)

An early talkie, sometimes a little melodramatic but an interesting film all the same.

Marion (Gloria Swanson) is a stenographer who falls in love with the boss' son Jack (Robert Ames). They elope and get married but the father-in-law disapproves of his son marrying a poor girl. The marriage is quickly annulled but Marion is already pregnant. Despite great difficulty (this is the 1920s after all), Marion raises the boy herself. She suffers all sorts of troubles (she has some remarkably bad luck) and ends up losing the son but can she regain him and Jack?

This was Gloria Swanson's first talkie (though the film was made in sound and silent versions) and her triumph earning her an Oscar nomination. Some of the acting is a hybrid of the highly expressive silent era style and the new more static talkie style. The film is rather melodramatic, cliched and a bit corny but a very interesting and stylish watch.

The Gold Express (1955)

A nice little crime drama, though the criminals are rather inept!

A gang plan to steal gold which is being bought down to London on the sleeper train. Their heist will involve Rover (Patrick Boxhill) overpowering the guard in the van and then tossing the gold out while the train is travelling very slow uphill to where his mates are waiting (after being stopped multiple times by the police for dodgy lights or speeding).

Also on the train is newly married journalists Bob (Vernon Gray) and Mary (Ann Walford), Bob combining writing a piece on the gold with his honeymoon. Also there are the rather eccentric old ladies Agatha (May Hallett) and Emma (Ivy St Hellier) who write bloody crime novels. Plus the determined Pearl (Delphi Lawrence) who plans to shoot Rover...

All rather bright and breezy, cheap and cheerful with a motley crew of standard British characters. Not a great film though certainly worthwhile.

Empire of the Ants (1977)

A film about radioactive giant ants, probably as good as it could have been which isn't saying much.

Marilyn (Joan Collins) is arranging a tour of a Florida island, which she wants to sell plots of land to naive customers. Don't show the drum of nuclear waste which has been dumped on the beach. Some ants get enveloped in leaking nasty stuff.

Marilyn and her motley crew of 1970s disaster/monster film stereotypes are soon menaced by human sized ants. Their boat is attacked and destroyed leaving them marooned on the island. A battle for survival begins as they try and flee the giant ants, many falling and being torn to pieces in some rather graphic scenes...

It is ridiculous of course, the giant ants don't look too bad as puppets in close-ups (though scenes with magnified real ants not so good) but the horror and gore hit the spot. The film lacks some menace though for some reason and the plot is the usual nonsense with people behaving very strangely and annoying. For a giant insect monster film however, it isn't bad, though that isn't exactly a high bar.

The Comedy of Terrors (1963)

A comedy horror romp that skirts a little too close to the edge between hilarious and terrible.

Smug undertaker Waldo (Vincent Price) is horrible to everyone including his assistant Felix (Peter Lorre) and his wife Amaryllis (Joyce Jameson). He is also trying to kill his father-in-law Amos (Boris Karloff). However, Waldo has a problem, there isn't enough business and he has a big bill to pay given to him by Mr Black (Basil Rathbone). 

If enough people arn't dying in the town then Waldo has a dark and depraved way to solve that... kill people himself!

An interesting black comedy with a superb cast. It does include some truly delicious wickedness (i like the joke that Waldo reuses the same coffin over and over, tossing the occupant out when everyone has gone and taking the coffin home for a clean!) At times though the film is a little too goofy and cheesy. The cast makes it worthwhile.

Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)

Nothing that new in the genre perhaps, but pretty well done. An enjoyable 1950s monster film.

From the ruins of Pompeii a petrified gladiator is unearthed. It doesn't take long for terrible things to start happening, the gladiator comes to life and kills the driver taking it to the museum! Dr Mallon (Richard Anderson) begins to investigate and finds that the gladiator carries a curse though is sceptical that the gladiator's body is still alive however, soon he comes face to face with the brutal creature.

Meanwhile, Mallon's secretary Tina (Elaine Edwards) begins to have strange visions of the gladiator. A link between her and the gladiator starts to develop. Maybe the monster's motivation isn't just to destroy but something a little deeper...

An interesting film that raises itself above the herd (though lets face it a lot of that herd are pretty terrible). The film is well constructed and paced. The monster scenes just edge the right side of the chills / cheese divide. The story has a little bit more intelligence than usual.

The Primrose Path (1925)

A decent melodrama though it certainly packs plenty in.

Bruce (Wallace MacDonald) is well off, unfortunately he spends his money on gambling and booze. Despite the fact he is a bit of a loser, his gal Marilyn (Clara Bow) sticks by him. Bruce ends up gambling with the boss Tom (Stuart Holmes) of the establishment where Marilyn works as a dancer. Bruce loses big and can't pay up. To avoid jail he has no choice but to be involved in diamond smuggling with Tom.

The troubles however, continue to rack up for Bruce. He gets involved in a death and it all spells ruin (and the electric chair) for Bruce, and despair for his widowed mother and crippled brother (just in case you haven't got enough melodrama!)

An emotional film but handled with enough subtlety to keep things just about bearable.