An American animated adventure directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Hamilton Luske and Clyde Geronimi.
A man and his dalmation meet a woman and her dalmation. They all get together and the dogs reproduce. The woman's "friend" wants to buy the puppies to make a fur coat, but is denied. She sends her thieves to steal them and the parent dogs must find their puppies. The woman who wants dog coats has accumulated many dalmations by that point and they try to evade her together.
I count this among the good Disney films. The animation style is very traditional. An interesting casting not is that the maid is voiced by the same woman who voiced Mad Madam Mim in The Sword and the Stone (1963), another Wolfgang Reitherman masterpiece. The video on WRD (Wolfgang Reitherman Disney) films looks (and probably is) Technicolor. In contrast to the super-saturated colors of live action Technicolor, the animated ones have more subdued palettes, with lots of green, brown and grey. They still retain the augmented contrast and "old film" grit as live action. My new revelation recommendation on Disney films is to watch the WRD ones and ignore the rest. Nothing can compare to these. This is originally in 4:3 aspect ratio or close enough to look the same. I rate this good because I will soon be watching and writing about more and better ones. Watch this anyway.
An American comedy drama directed by Albert Zugsmith, starring David Janssen.
An Italian orphan is adopted by American soldiers. They accidentally smuggle him back to New York City, where he becomes lost.
This was hokey, almost defining the term. The simplistic plot and shallow characters were poorly written, based on a comic strip written between 1955 and 1986. It was in black and white, even though color film had been around for quite some time. It is also listed as one of the worst movies ever. It was definitely bad, but not worst. The scene that I thought was funny was when the American soldiers were on the ship and had already found Dondi among their luggage. The soldiers have one guy under the table where officers are eating and he uses comical methods to steal their food (image). One of the male officers is distracted by a female officer and the other female officer is supposedly too busy eating, but is staring right at the theft going on. I rate it poor. You really should not watch it.
An American western directed by Sam Peckinpah, starring Maureen O'Hara and Chill Wills.
A trio of cowboys enter a small town, intent on robbing the bank. They are beaten to the punch by other bank robbers and a local woman's son is accidentally killed in the ensuing gunfight. The cowboy who shot the boy accompanies the mother to the boy's father's hometown, with bank robbers in tow. They cross Apache country to the deserted town where a final conflict takes place.
This was a pretty standard western. The plot was just complex enough to hold my attention. The characters were stereotypical, but fit the genre and roles quite well. The video was rather straight forward, without much to really comment on. There were some nice sunset scenes, but there were also bad scenes where the screen turned almost completely black because of low light and underexposure. The audio was appropriate. I could hear all of the dialogue well and the music stayed out of the way. Overall, regular western. I rate it o.k.
An American sexploitation comedy by Russ Meyer.
A woman is pursuing a janitor. She says that she is trying to find his weak point to achieve her goal. Throughout the day, the man sees beautiful women who are sometimes naked.
This was kind of funny. The plot was helped by the woman's heavy narration and the handyman character was developed some. Foley sounds is what made most of the jokes funny. There were also a few art jokes toward the end. The soundtrack was decent, but a bit on the annoying side. It sounded a lot like Looney Tunes. What dismayed me most was the handyman's cleaning skills. He isn't exactly thorough. Overall, a decent, yet vapid film. I rate it adequate.
A British Spanish science fiction adventure directed by Cy Endfield with special effects by Ray Harryhausen.
A group of men crash their balloon on an island with giant animals. They find shipwrecked women there and make a life for themselves until pirates show up. They have a mysterious and hidden friend there who reveals himself after the pirate attack.
The plot was awesome. Lots of stuff happened and secrets were revealed. The characters were really bad though. They were all very generic. The video special effects were on par with the Flying Saucers flick that I reviewed recently. Lazy and half-assed, but still Harryhausen. The best one was the guy riding the stop motion giant bird. The audio was a little on the annoying side. I don't know if it was the inappropriate soundtrack or the honky sounding audio in general. The editing was very fast all the way through, lending an extreme sense of tension. Overall not something that I would recommend to anyone for any reason. I rate this poor.
An American thriller directed by Ralph Brooke.
A group of teenagers land their boat on a seemingly deserted island. They are taken into the custody of a rich hunter who lives there and are suspicious of his hospitality. Other people living with the hunter inform them that their fears are well founded. When the escape attempt of the long-time residents fails, the hunter announces that he will hunt the new arrivals.
The Most Dangerous Game is the classic story of a rich man hunting whomever he pleases. This was not a good retelling of that plot. My favorite would have to be Surviving the Game (1994). The plot really gave the viewer the old runaround and the characters were not developed. There weren't any technical errors, but the overall quality was low. During the film, I found myself thinking "ugh, not more of this shit", "this is so stupid" and "why am I even watching this?". Needless to say, I did not enjoy it. I rate this bad. It would have been best left unwatched.
An American Puerto Rican comedy crime horror film directed by Roger Corman.
A boat full of criminals helps Cubans escape during the revolution. An American spy is among them. The criminals plan to kill the Cubans, take their money and blame it on a sea monster. The real sea monster shows up and starts killing people.
This was terrible in a bad way. The plot was messy and vague, with uneven character development that didn't make any sense at all. The audio was muffled and poor quality enough to make discerning what was being said difficult. To top it all off, the monster was lame. It looked hastily constructed and generally inferior. Some low budget public domain films are cool because of poor quality. This is not one of them. I rate this shit. It would be best not to watch.
An American horror adventure directed by Coleman Francis, starring Tor Johnson.
A Russian scientist gets lost in an American desert near a nuclear bomb test site. The radiation turns him into a monster and he hunts for people to kill. Meanwhile, a family stops for gas nearby and their children get lost in the same desert.
This was horrible. Even though it was less than an hour in duration, I had to turn it off because it was so bad. The heavy narration is what really kills it. The narrator sounds like he is from a hokey old instructional video and the "monster" is the lamest I've ever seen. The pacing is so quick that one is unable to get into the film at all because it is so rushed. I have to rate it shit because it's worse than Some Kind of Monster (2004). DO NOT WATCH!!!!
A Yugoslavian animation short directed by Dusan Vukotic.
A man goes to the beach and inflates every object, even the pump that he uses to inflate with.
Such style! I had seen this at the end of 9th grade in science class and have been looking for it ever since. The painted background is very nebulous and the "cartoon" style objects are very definite. Traditional anatomy is not considered, as the man is basically a triangle with stick arms and legs. The plot and characters are top-notch according to me. The pacing is very fast, as a whole beach adventure takes place in under 10 minutes.I rate this best. You should definitely check it out if you like weird animation.
An American science fiction directed by William Marshall.
In the distant and high-tech future (1980), spaceships have been disappearing after reporting that their instruments are malfunctioning. A spaceship is sent to investigate (redundancy?) and ends up landing on a moving planet. The astronaut exits the ship and has adventures with the inhabitants of the planet.
I thought it was cute. Such a hokey old science fiction film about foreign worlds and aliens seems endearing to me. The only thing it was missing was robots. The audio and video were relatively clear for the date. The plot and characters held my interest and the pacing felt right. I think that it was clearly presented and not a bad film at all. I noticed that the bad aliens flew their spaceships in a phallus formation (complete with testes), but I won't hold that against them. I'm keeping it because I'll probably watch it again sometime. I rate it adequate and would recommend it to anyone looking for an old science fiction film.
An Italian science fiction drama directed by Antonio Margheriti, starring Claude Rains.
A wandering planet enters the Earth's solar system. Scientists investigate.
This was pretty boring. There were spaceships, space suits and foreign worlds, but that didn't make it interesting. The quality in general was very low. People wearing space suits and talking about other planets entering our solar system is about as interesting as when they put on togas and talk politics. I rate this bad. Don't watch it.
An Italian American fantasy adventure film directed by Arthur Lubin, starring Steve Reeves.
A poorly matched suitor comes to the palace to ask the princess' hand in marriage. A thief mugs the suitor and impersonates him to meet the princess and they fall in love. When the real suitor is found and the princess turns him down, he uses a love potion on her that will make her sick if she loves someone else. Since she loves a thief, she becomes sick and lots of men are sent to find the blue rose that will cure her illness.
Compared to the other films of this title, this one had a simpler plot that lacked many of the adventures of it's predecessors. There was nowhere near the amount of magic being used or fantastic genies and monsters. The video looked dirty like a '60s sword and sandal flick (hmmm, I wonder why) and the audio was inconsistent. Above all else, this lacked style and seemed forced or fake. If this was the only one, I would rate it o.k., but since there are 2 films that were made before this that are also better than this, I rate it bad. This is an empty shadow of the the films by this name. Don't watch it.
A French Italian sword and sandal action adventure film directed by Vittorio Cottafavi.
After being forced into a sea voyage, Hercules meets a god called Proteus who is holding a young woman captive. After defeating the god, Hercules brings the woman to her home in Atlantis where he finds out that she was sacrificed by her mother, the queen.
Yet another sword and sandal flick that is just as worthless as the last. I think I only have a few more of these to go. No style, vague and muddy plot, forgettable characters, you know the deal. Rating it bad.
An Italian sword and sandal action adventure film directed by Ferdinando Baldi and Terence Young.
After years of war between Rome and Alba, triplet brothers from each place arrange to fight and have the outcome of their conflict determine the end of the war.
Yet another inferior sword and sandal flick that seemed to drag on forever. These things follow a formula just like generic kung fu flicks and are indeed very similar. Wretched audio and video? Check. Light on plot and characters difficult to differentiate? Check. If I were reviewing how well it fit the mold of this genre, it would get a "best" rating. I'm not.
A movie should be something special and different in some way. It should have characters that feel like old friends by 10 minutes in and a plot that seems to determine the fate of this world (if not other worlds as well). Creative camera angles with good quality video that is easy to see and convincingly tasteful special effects should be a feast for my eyes. Audible, clearly spoken dialogue and an epic musical score of a soundtrack should push it into the realms of ear-candy. A good film should have consistent style and flavor; it should be identifiable as that film at any part in it's duration. In the first 5 minutes, my interest needs to be lured into the world of the film. By half an hour, I need to be engrossed in the story. At about an hour to 1:30, I should not want it to end. At the end, I must desire to watch it again at some point. That is what makes a good movie.
THIS was NOT a good movie. It contained 1/16th of what I described in the paragraph above. The dialogue was clearly spoken and audible. I'm going to rate it bad because it was a cookie cutter piece of crap.
A thriller by Jack Clayton.A nanny gets a job taking care of the spoiled and neglected children of a rich man. She sees ghosts of a pair of servants around the house.This is one of the films that I call a "pretty waste of time". The camera-work and framing of the scenes was great, but the plot was not so great. The boy is more eloquent and well-spoken than any child could be these days and the girl lets out these blood-curdling screams. I have to give the little boy credit for being more "black metal" than me. He sleeps with dead birds in his bed like Pelle from Mayhem. It wasn't very good, so I'm rating it poor.
An action film directed by Akira Kurosawa.A samurai stumbles upon a town ruled by 2 gangs and decides to get involved in the conflict.The audio was in Japanese and subtitles were included. The video was in black and white.check out: The amount of sake in this little town. No wonder the old man let the hero drink for free!If this film was set in America, it would be called a western. I guess it must be an eastern. I think I'm starting to like these old samurai flicks. If you're not brainwashed into English language color full screen movies, you should probably watch this. But then, if you like new Hollywood bullshit, you probably aren't reading this.
