Bruce Lee : Martial Arts Master (1994)

An interesting if limited biopic of Bruce Lee, this one concentrating more on his movie career.

The film tells the story of Bruce, moving to the US after a troublesome upbringing in HK. Soon he was making waves with his brand of kung fu and coming to the attention of Hollywood. Bruce's first forays on screen were in TV series like the Green Hornet but when he returned to HK his film career took up in a short but incredibly bright career...

Talking heads such as James Coburn, Jackie Chan and Bolo Yeung share anecdotes and memories of working with Bruce. Plenty of classic clips from his films (though not his TV shows) are fitted in throughout. This is a decent documentary however, if you are a fan of Bruce it really won't tell you anything new.

Squirm (1976)

Part of the 1970s wave of animal attack films, but in this case even more weird than usual, but also rather more compelling too.

A storm has bought down the electric lines in rural Georgia, the electricity flows into the Earth and brings millions of meat eating worms to the surface! City boy Mick (Don Scardino) is in town to see his local girlfriend Geri (Patricia Pearcy). Being a smart ass from Noo Yoick and therefore not a hick he knows that something strange is up already (of course) though the strangely smug Sheriff (Peter MacLean) won't hear anything about it...

Things really start to deteriorate when the somewhat odd Roger (RA Dow) has worms fly up into his face and literal masses of worms appear everywhere, eating people left right and centre. Mick has to try and save Geri and her family and fight a strangely zombified Roger...

Truthfully this film is a total mess, but a glorious one all the same. It makes little sense and at times the red necks are as scary and dangerous as the worms. The film is full of cheese, strange characters, gore and stereotypes. It is actually pretty great... somehow.

The Phantom Planet (1961)

Middling science-fiction thrills, nothing too original overall except for one thing...

It is the future (well 1980 anyway) and USAF spaceships are going missing, thrown off course by a mysterious force. Captain Chapman (Dean Fredericks) is sent to investigate, his ship is also seized by a force and his ship lands on an unknown planet. Chapman heads out in his spacesuit and sees tiny people, then he passes out and his suit is opened. When he breathes the air of this planet he is also shrunk! Luckily for the film's classification although the rest of his clothes remain normal size his underpants also shrink with him...

Chapman is captured by the people of this planet, he is told he cannot leave but can have his choice of two beautiful women (Coleen Grey and Dolores Faith) as a wife! That doesn't go down well with one of the girl's beau Herron (Anthony Dexter) who challenges Chapman to a deadly duel. When Chapman wins but spares Herron's life they become friends. Herron offers Chapman the chance to return home but first he must help them battle the brutal aliens Solarites who are attacking...

So fairly familiar stuff, the plot is mostly what you may have seen before in other films (and probably made better too). The shrinking of Chapman is an interesting twist with some decent effects. The film is not great but is perfectly reasonable.

Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

Like the shrunken people it is about, this film is small but mighty!

Sally (June Kenney) gets a job at a doll maker called Mr Franz (John Hoyt). She notices that he keeps some remarkably lifelike dolls in glass containers however, she doesn't think any more about it. Or that Mr Franz has a strange looking machine in his back office that he likes to keep locked, or that a number of people who have worked for him have mysteriously gone missing...

Sally falls for salesman Bob (John Agar) and eventually plans to leave her job and move to another city with him, which disappoints Mr Franz. However, Bob is next to go missing. Sally then discovers that Mr Franz has shrunken Bob to doll size, and does the same to her! Like a number of other victims, Sally and Bob are now doll sized people who are let out of their glass cages for Mr Franz's amusement...

This is a lovely little film really, it may be small in budget and not well known but it is very watchable. The special effects may be a bit cheap, some of the outsize props are a little off in proportion but this is very fun stuff indeed. Hoyt is superb as the outwardly kind but secretly monstrous Franz.

Firehead (1991)

A Russian cyborg with super powers is running amok but (plot twist!) he isn't the bad guy!

Ivan (Brett Porter) is a Russian cyborg with special powers who defects to the West, however after a couple of years he is blowing things up in the good old US of A instead. Vaughn (Christopher Plummer), the head of a secret US government lab, sends the scientist Hart (Chris Lemmon) and special agent Meila (Gretchen Becker) to stop Ivan. However, Ivan is really the good guy and it is Vaughn who is secretly head of a mysterious secret society which is using Ivan's attacks to bring about World War 3...

It is complete nonsense of course, and rather inept in execution. Hilarious for all the wrong reasons (of course). It's probably better not to wonder what exactly the relationship of super smart tweenager Smith (Lauren Levy Neustadter) is to Hart, or quite why no one can shoot straight. Why does the secret society have pictures of Mussolini on the walls of their lair? Also wonder why did Plummer and Martin Landau agreed to appear in this cheap madness. Just enjoy the fact they did and helped create an incredibly inane but enjoyable film.

Wings Over Africa (1936)

A bright and breezy quota quickie set in the jungles of ...er.. Shepperton. 

A skeleton is discovered by Tony Cooper (Ian Colin) and Dalton (James Carew) in the African bush. With the skeleton is a letter to Wilkins (James Harcourt) in London. Cooper naturally makes the very long trip to act as the postman. Wilkins, an ornithology obsessed clerk, says the letter is from his brother and that he discovered a fortune in diamonds in Africa.

Cooper and Wilkins recruit Trevor (James Craven) and Carol (Joan Gardner) to fly them to Africa. The natives are friendly though the other white men already there not quite so. Dalton is also rather annoyed at Cooper who he thinks has tricked him out of the diamonds. The diamonds are discovered but then the deaths begin. Who is killing off the party to keep the diamonds for themselves? 

A straightforward film with a basic story padded out with plenty of wild animal and native footage. More a murder mystery than a jungle adventure though you pretty much guess who it is before very long. Not a bad little film at all.

The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918)

A bio-pic made on an epic scale of the wartime prime minister (and hero), but never shown at the time and thought lost until discovered 75 years later and finally shown to the public.

This film had the blessing of Lloyd George and his family, it starts off with photos of his birth certificate and him as a baby! We see the actual house he grew up in and various scenes from his life are dramatised by actors. Some scenes are on a massive scale with thousands of extras!

The film is quite propaganda-ish in feel at times (despite that the Liberal Party had the film suppressed for fear of harming Lloyd George before the election). Obviously being a silent movie quite a lot of the impact of various dramatic speeches he made are lost! The film is a remarkable achievement, though watchable mostly due to it's historic value and novelty more than anything else.