Boston Blackie's Rendezvous (1945)

Boston Blackie films are usually played fairly light though this one, with it's bodycount, has a bit of a darker tone.

Blackie (Chester Morris) is enlisted to help a friend whose nephew Jimmy (Steve Cochrane) has escaped from the asylum. Soon Blackie is face to face with Jimmy and discovers that Jimmy is obsessed with a young woman, and is also homicidally dangerous! 

Jimmy kills a friend of the woman he is obsessed with, naturally Blackie's nemesis Farraday (Richard Lane) thinks Blackie has killed the woman. Blackie must try and save Sally (Nina Foch) who is now a prisoner of Jimmy and keep out of Farraday's clutches...

With two women killed and another in deadly peril, the usual Blackie and Runt (George E Stone) antics can sometimes jar a bit, especially when they go blackface! This is an enjoyable, if complicated, crime romp. The character of Jimmy brings plenty of menace.

Sky Heist (1975)

A classic TV movie about an audacious crime, and the hunt for gold and criminals by the LAPD air department.

An LAPD helicopter piloted by Trumbell (Don Meredith) is hijacked, the pair of hijackers wanting $100K in cash. Unbeknownst to police captain Ballard (Joseph Campanella) this is all a diversion. The criminal gang have really hijacked a plane carrying gold bullion and now have $10 million in gold bars on a disguised bus! Ballard, Trumbell and company have to try and unpick the complicated (though flawed - see below) plan by Hardings (Frank Gorshin) before it's too late...

This film just screams pilot for a planned TV series, which unfortunately was never made, which is a shame as it probably would have been pretty good. The story is straight forward, characterisation laid on hard and fast (though the characters are largely well-worn stereotypes) and the action exciting with many helicopter shots if pretty bloodless. 

Harding's heist plan is mostly well worked out and even quite ingenious though you will wonder why they didn't switch the gold from the bus to another vehicle. Though as a police detective once said, if criminals never did anything stupid then the police would hardly ever catch anyone!

The Bubble (1966)

Given the time period for the sci-fi genre, and the fact the film was originally shown in 3-D, you might think this film could be awful cheese... but actually it is a surprisingly good film.

Mark (Michael Cole) and Catherine (Deborah Walley) are trying to get to a hospital before Catherine gives birth. Their private plane is caught up in a strange storm and lands in a mysterious small town. Everyone in the town seems to act like zombies, repeating the same lines and the same actions over and over again and living in a trance. 

Together with their pilot Tony (Johnny Desmond) they try to escape the town but find it is surrounded by a clear impenetrable barrier. Every seven days a mysterious light in the sky plucks someone to an uncertain but likely to be unpleasant fate up into the heavens above...

The film builds a creepy and mysterious world slowly. We don't really see the aliens (apart from perhaps in one scene) but their presence is everywhere. The leads do well in portraying a growing sense of eerie unease and paranoia. Much remains unanswered but thats no bad thing with a film like this.

The Woman Condemned (1934)

A decent if confusing crime drama that ends with an enjoyable twist.

Radio star Jane (Lola Lane) goes missing after some menacing phone calls, private investigator Barbara (Claudia Dell) is arrested after breaking into her apartment looking for clues. At court reporter Jerry (Richard Hemingway) gets interested in the case, or rather interested in Barbara, and ends up getting married to her there and then! Next however Barbara is arrested for Jane's murder, she does not seem to want to help herself or get Jerry's help on anything.

Jerry finds a phone number which leads to a private hospital where the mysterious Dr Wagner (Mischa Auer) is a plastic surgeon, and Jane is alive and well as Dr Wagner was removing a birth mark from her face. So, who is the dead woman, and what exactly is going on?

It is rather confusing though the plot has some interesting aspects, the conclusion is satisfying even if getting there is a rather choppy ride.

North Sea Hijack (1980)

The tension builds and builds in this slightly eccentric action tale.

Criminals led by Kramer (Anthony Perkins) seize an oil rig tender in the North Sea and hook up explosives to two rigs, they want millions in cash or there is going to be a rather large explosion. Admiral Brinsden (James Mason) is to negotiate with the criminals, though his assistant ffolkes (Roger Moore) is really an expert in anti-terrorist operations at sea and his team are planning an attack...

The film has a great set-up though you have to wait a long time for the big action set-piece (which probably isn't that big after all). It is worth the wait though as the tension is built up very well thoughout. Ffolkes character is superbly odd (and very unlike Moore's Bond in many ways) and adds a great deal of interest to this otherwise fairly straight forward tale.

The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976)

The Gaulish comic hero reaches the big screen, with good effect, by Toutatis!

Julius Caesar's Roman legions have conquered Gaul, well all except a small village which is holding out against the might of Rome thanks to a magic potion created by their druid. This allows the villagers, especially our heroes Asterix and Obelix to defeat Roman attacks time and time again thanks to the super strength granted by the magic potion.

Caesar tires of the Gauls, whom some Romans call gods, and challenges them to twelve tasks a la Hercules. If Asterix and Obelix can complete all of the tasks then Caesar will surrender, if they fail then the villagers will become Rome's slaves...

This is a fun adaptation of the indomitable Gauls which stays true to the storyline on the whole and is very entertaining. An inventive story, i especially liked the bureaucratic task. Voice actors in the English version include Sean Barrett and Michael Kilgarriff and they do an excellent job. 

Candles at Nine (1944)

A sometimes silly but interesting crime drama.

An old rich man (Eliot Makeham), who in the best traditions of the movies is mean and spiteful, is about to announce who is the sole beneficiary in his will to his assembled family and staff. However, he dies in mysterious circumstances before he can tell them. When his will be revealed, everyone is shocked to find young actress Dorothea Capper (Jessie Matthews) is not only his niece but also gets everything!

This enrages the old man's maid (Beatrix Lehmann) who wants the money for herself. She first tries to intimidate Dorothea out of claiming her inheritance then, when that fails, plans to kill her. Luckily Dorothea has an ex-detective (John Stewart) on hand to help and advise her...

A fun little film that doesn't take itself seriously, indeed at times it resembles a bit of a send-up of the mystery house genre. The light antics can be taken a little too far and the film does include a song and dance routine (which is mercifully brief). A decent and well flowing film if sometimes a bit annoying. Look-out for Patricia Hayes in one of her earliest roles.