Any non-Bond film.....Comments while you watch...

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Comments

  • Posts: 15,804
    The climax set on the castle rooftops .

    The Creature grabs Elizabeth and Frankenstein sets him ablaze and into the acid!!!!!

    The Creature also dies in a tub of acid in THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN.

    Back to the present and Victors begs Paul to confirm his story to the authorities.

    Cushing's performance is superb. He is terrified of the guillotine.
  • Posts: 15,804
    .........and Cushing is escorted to the guillotine as the credits roll.

    Excellent Frankenstein film. The sequel, THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN picks up right where this leaves off. Interestingly, that film has a completely different feel.
  • edited July 2018 Posts: 6,844
    Watching Rollerball '75 for the first time. Fair number of Bond alum: Shane Rimmer, Maud Adams, Burt Kwouk. Actually better than I thought it would be, but what has impressed me the most is how much parts of this feel like a Bond film. I think it's all of those retro-futuristic sets, the abundance of beautiful women lounging and posing in their dated outfits, and James Caan strolling around painfully cool like some kind of American James Bond. There's even a scene straight out of Moonraker (yes, I know, four years earlier, etc.), where a girl turns up in Caan's hotel room like Manuela.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Watching the greatest film of all time...................................






    ROAD HOUSE (1989)


    Released by United Artists summer of '89.

    The late great Patrick Swayze.
    His character's name is Dalton.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Kevin Tighe. Met him a few times when I was working for a theater company where he was performing. Nice guy. I should have asked him about EMERGENCY, Jack Webb, etc

    I didn't and just let him do his work.
  • Posts: 15,804
    I remember the ads for this film that wonderful summer of '89. I missed this one in the theaters, though sadly. I did see GHOSTBUSTERS II, STAR TREK V, BATMAN, INDY 3, LETHAL WEAPON 2 and of course, Bond.

    The summer of sequels.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Every time I watch LTK and get to the Barrel-head Bar sequence, I feel like watching ROAD HOUSE.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Swayze first goes into the bar bar he's hired to clean up.

    Scoping the place out.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Kathleen Wilhoite. She was funny in MURPHY'S LAW a few years earlier with Charles Bronson.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Fight breaks out. Swayze watches on.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Swayze is wearing a slightly over sized beige blazer, olive dress shirt and jeans.
    Timmy D gets thrashed on the forums for his over sized suits in LTK.
    Swayze makes the casual loose fitting blazer look alright.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Swayze and a few other cast members are sporting the mullet.
    Back then it wasn't exactly named a mullet as far as I remember. It was just long hair in the back. Very popular from about '86-'94.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Swayze's motivational speech scene. Great stuff.

    "Be nice...until it's time to not be nice".
  • Posts: 15,804
    Michael Kamen score. I always thought he should have had a second crack at Bond.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Ben Gazzara pounds his henchman.
  • Posts: 15,804
    The great Sam Elliott. You can do no wrong with Sam Elliott.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Sam Elliott rescues Swayze. This fight scene is pretty funny.
  • Posts: 15,804
    THE GIRL HUNTERS (1963)

    Mickey Spillane himself portraying Mike Hammer 6 years after the previous entry.
    This one was filmed in England and features Shirley Eaton as the femme fatale.

    She's great here. Far more screen-time than in GOLDFINGER.
    Kind of a NSNA theme here where Hammer has been in retirement for years after his beloved secretary Velda turned up missing. His old buddy Pat Chambers drags him out of a drunken slump to work on the murder of a politician.


    Hammer is making out with Shirley Eaton here.

    I love this one, but MY GUN IS QUICK (1957)
    remains my favorite of the Mike Hammer B movies.

    IMO, Spillane looks good in the role, and for a non actor isn't bad. Same may argue that point.
  • Posts: 15,804
    This, to me is the tail end of classic noir. In fact, I feel that genre and style really ended in the '50's and this is more of a throwback. I believe it was intended to be shot in color, which would have changed the whole feel. I'm glad this is in black and white.

    Hammer has a fight in a wood workshop. Buzz saws and everything. He's getting thrashed a bit. This is where he nails his opponent's hand to the floor.
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    Posts: 13,012
    The Girl Hunters is great for the reasons you stated, @ToTheRight. Spillane and Eaton.

    So is My Gun Is Quick. Even the Darren McGavin tv series is worth checking out.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Spillane was going to follow this up with THE SNAKE, but that never came to be.


    So ends THE GIRL HUNTERS a solid Mike Hammer entry, It would be nearly 2 decades before we saw Hammer again, in the 1981 remake of I, THE JURY, and the television film MARGIN FOR MURDER.

    Been 20 years now since Stacy Keach last played the role. I wonder if we'll ever see another Mike Hammer grace the television's or big screen?
  • Posts: 15,804
    The Girl Hunters is great for the reasons you stated, @ToTheRight. Spillane and Eaton.

    So is My Gun Is Quick. Even the Darren McGavin tv series is worth checking out.

    I loved Darren McGavin's series.
    I recently caught the 1953 I, THE JURY with Biff Elliot as Hammer. That has a definite noir look and feel. Elliot is quite a different Hammer as well. Good stuff!
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    ToTheRight wrote: »

    Hammer has a fight in a wood workshop. Buzz saws and everything. He's getting thrashed a bit. This is where he nails his opponent's hand to the floor.

    With a hammer or is he just using himself?
  • Posts: 15,804
    ToTheRight wrote: »

    Hammer has a fight in a wood workshop. Buzz saws and everything. He's getting thrashed a bit. This is where he nails his opponent's hand to the floor.

    With a hammer or is he just using himself?

    Both. Had this been shot a few years later it would be more graphic.
  • edited September 2018 Posts: 15,804
    COUNT DRACULA (1977) BBC version

    In honor of the Dracula thread we have on this site, I feel compelled to enjoy my annual viewing of this version of the Dracula story tonight.

    My favorite Dracula films were the ones I saw initially as a child of 7 or 8. This one I didn't catch until I was more like 28.
    That said, it gets to be a favorite, but not for the nostalgia value.

    I do find this to be the truest to the novel alongside the Coppola version. Little details aside, Quincy Morris is combined with Arthur Holmwood here. Dracula physically looks like Kamal Khan in black, and Dracula is staked as opposed to beheaded and stabbed with a Bowie knife.
    No reincarnation subplot or added scenes of romance.

    Louis Jourdan's Count is oily, smooth and eerie. He is dressed in all black as the Count is in the novel, and occasionally wears a cloak as in the novel.

    Stoker doesn't go into any great detail regarding Dracula's clothes. His face was vividly described:

    His face was a strong – a very strong – aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.


    The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.


    Doesn't exactly describe Jourdan's features, but I suppose his hair could have been whitened and he could have sported a mustache.

    Harker and the Count have met and Jonathan is trying to shave. Bosco Hogan is Harker here and does an excellent job, IMO. Not sure about his Danny Cooksey Diff'rent Strokes bowl cut, though.

    TSWLM
    's Sue Vanner appears in a bit as one of Dracula's brides.
  • Posts: 15,804
    I wonder how tall Jourdan was? He and Harker appear to be the same height.
    Lee was probably the tallest Dracula at 6'4" or whatever he was.
    Gary Oldman and Udo Kier weren't quite as tall.


    In all my years doing theater Dracula is one role that eluded me, when I was so close to actually doing it, a'la Pierce in TLD.

    In high school we rehearsed it and were a couple weeks away from the performance date when it got cancelled due to some school auditorium event.

    That sucked.

    Years later I got cast as Dracula in a musical version. Unfortunately I was doing another play at the same time and couldn't work it into my schedule.

    That sucked, too as did the show I was already performing in. Looking back, I think I was too young for the role anyway................a bit too blond and short for role as well LOL!.

    Hmm sounds like someone else who gets discussed on these boards a lot.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Sue Vanner and the other brides attack Harker.

    Jourdan stops them but hardly seems as furious as the novel's Count in the same scene. Christopher Lee could play that rage quite well, but Jourdan seems mildly annoyed. Actually he's more amused.

    This version has a mixture of film and video technology. Certain video effects look akin to what a public access station back in the 1990's could come up with, and it doesn't quite work.

    However, the overall atmosphere I think is superb. Dracula's castle has the right look, IMO, and the later England sequences were shot in Whitby where the novel takes place.

    Here we see Renfield played by Jack Sheppard.
    I think he makes a solid Renfield, but not sure where I'd rank him along the likes of Dwight Frye, Klaus Kinski, Tony Haygarth, or Tom Waits.

    This is a long version of the story running approximately 2 and a half hours.
    It ran on two nights when initially aired I believe. Then it was trimmed for later broadcasts removing the bit where the brides feast on a baby.

    Here's one of my favorite scenes in the Dracula story where Harker finds the Count sleeping. Here he attempts to behead Dracula with a shovel, but to no avail. Jourdan just smiles at him creepily.

    Now back to Whitby where Mina (Judi Bowker) and Lucy (Susan Penhaligon) spend their summer together. Good casting as Bowker makes an excellent Mina, IMO.

    I wonder if Coppola might have been inspired by this film with Lucy as Sadie Frost's Lucy reminds me a bit of Penhaligon here.



  • Posts: 15,804
    I can remember a Halloween when I was around 12 that this version DID air on our local equivalent to BBC and PBS. Sadly, no cable station covered the area where we lived and had to rely on antennas. The station barely registered, and I only caught the scene where Dracula is staked. My friend and I watched FRIGHT NIGHT that Halloween instead.

    Here's where Mina catches Dracula feasting on Lucy in the grave yard.

    Creepy scene and Jourdan looks great here.
    I really like his costuming. Long black coat. Black gloves. His cloak is pretty cool as well.
  • Posts: 15,804
    One version I should watch sometime is the Denholm Elliot version of 1968. It's on YouTube and I've looked at it, but so far have never had the desire to watch it all the way through. Really because I don't want to have my first experience seeing this version on a small YouTube screen. To my knowledge the Denholm Elliot DRACULA has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray.
    Seems pretty cool though, and I like Elliot's "look". Black and white version. Saw a color photograph and Elliot was actually wearing a dark blue cloak as opposed to traditional black.

    Louis Jourdan wears and inverness cape.

    Frank Finlay plays Van Helsing here. He might have made a decent Dracula himself.
  • Posts: 15,804
    Most Dracula movies would be ending around this point, but we're halfway through.
    Van Helsing is tending to Lucy.

    Peter Cushing in HORROR OF DRACULA is without a doubt my favorite Van Helsing. No contest, though I do love Edward Van Sloan and Anthony Hopkins. Frank Finlay isn't bad. I've always liked Nigel Davenport's Van Helsing in the Jack Palance version.

    Dracula visits Renfield outside his padded cell. Jourdan is quite effective here.

    Dracula breaks through Lucy's window in the guise of a wolf. Lucy's mom has a heart attack and kicks the bucket.

    Dracula (thru use of video effects) transforms back to his human self and puts one final bite on Miss Lucy.

    Lucy dies.....................................
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