The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

 

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI  (1947)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Orson Welles

    Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane,

    Glenn Anders, Ted de Corsia, Erskine Sanford

An adventurer played by Orson Welles meets a siren played by Rita Hayworth on a late-night coach ride in the park and hires onto a yacht, sailing in the company of the woman, her crippled husband (Everett Sloane) and his obnoxious legal partner (Glenn Anders). The climax takes place in an amusement-park funhouse, a metaphor that really applies to the entire film. There's enough deception all around to doom everybody. True to film noir, Welles' protagonist is smart, but not smart enough to stay out of trouble. He's enough of a sailor to know when he's swimming with sharks, and he is. He's a sap and he knows it. It's his nature. It's his fate. Welles was working on some personal issues, too, back then, which helps explain the casting of his soon-to-be ex-wife as the femme fatale. Watch any scene featuring Sloane and Anders and see which one you'd be more willing to murder yourself. 

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

 

THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS  (1967)  ¢

    D: Roman Polanski

    Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski, Ferdy Mayne,

    Sharon Tate, Alfie Bass, Ronald Lacey,

    Terry Downes, Iain Quarrier, Fiona Lewis

Roman Polanski's eccentric, unfunny vampire spoof looks like a movie that was pitched, shot and cut without a script, or maybe there was a script and somebody sucked all the blood out of it. Like, you know, vampires. Cool-looking titles, eye-catching set design, ear-catching music, and the vampires' ball at the end is playfully bizarre, but when a movie lasts an hour and 47 minutes and you're at the 25-minute mark thinking, isn't this thing ever going to end, I'm not sure that's a good sign, you know what I mean? Original title: "Dance of the Vampires".

The Killers (1964)

 

THE KILLERS  (1964)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Don Siegel

    Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes,

    Clu Gulager, Ronald Reagan, Claude Akins,

    Norman Fell, Robert Phillips, Burt Mustin

Robert Siodmak's 1946 version of "The Killers" had the distinction of being Burt Lancaster's first movie. Don Siegel's 1964 version has the distinction of being Ronald Reagan's last. It stars the Gipper as a gangster who plans a mail-truck robbery and hires an auto racer (John Cassavetes) to help with the driving. The heist nets over $1 nillion, and others with an interest in the loot include Reagan's two-timing girlfriend (Angie Dickinson) and a pair of ruthless hit men (Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager). The movie's tough, hard-boiled and wildly misanthropic, especially the opening sequence, in which the hit men, wearing dark shades, invade a school for the blind, rough up the blind receptionist, and gun down a teacher at point-blank range. And it's got Reagan, for once showing the malice that always existed beneath the affable, slicked-down surface. It's too bad more voters weren't paying attention. 

Manpower (1941)

MANPOWER  (1941)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D:Raoul Walsh

    Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, George Raft,

    Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, Barton MacLane,

    Eve Arden, Ward Bond, Walter Catlett

Raft and Robinson play utility linemen and Dietrich plays the hard-luck dame who comes between them. Who do you think will get the girl in the end? Spoiler Alert: It's probably not Edward G. Robinson.

Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)

 EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY  (1988)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Julien Temple

    Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, 

    Damon Wayans, Julie Brown, Michael McKean,

    Charles Rocket, Larry Linville, Rick Overton

A sci-fi musical comedy about three space aliens whose art-deco rocket ship touches down in a California swimming pool. It's awfully silly (and compulsively superficial), but there are some amusing bits, too, like the way the aliens pick up language by mimicking everything they hear on TV. Geena's tiny pink bikini gets plenty of exposure, and Julie Brown's vacuous beach-bunny anthem, "'Cause I'm a Blonde", is a scream.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

 

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL  (1951)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Robert Wise

    Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe,

    Sam Jaffe,Billy Gray, Frances Bavier, Lock Martin,

    Drew Person, Elmer Davis, H.V. Kaltenborn

Classic sci-fi starring Michael Rennie in his most famous role as an extra-terrestrial messenger who drops down on Washington in a flying saucer, bringing with him a giant robot and a warning the human race had better pay attention to. Gort, Klaatu barada nikto! And cue the theremins.

Listomania / Take 11

 

Some actors whose careers have lasted more than 50 years:

                                      Michael Caine

                                      Clint Eastwood

                                      Donald Sutherland

                                      Robert Duvall

                                      Dustin Hoffman

                                      Alan Arkin

                                      Robert Redford

                                      Warren Beatty

                                      Harrison Ford

                                      Bruce Dern

The Long Haul (1957)

THE LONG HAUL  (1957)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ken Hughes

    Victor Mature, Diana Dors, Patrick Allen,

    Gene Anderson, Peter Reynolds, Liam Redmond

The Great Victor plays an ex-G.I. who lands a job driving a truck out of Liverpool. He doesn't want to be there to begin with, and there are complications in the form of a mean, mousy wife played by Gene Anderson, a mobster played by Patrick Allen, and the mobster's girl, a platinum bombshell played by Diana Dors. As melodrama, this goes right over a cliff, but there's some good stuff, too, most notably a long sequence toward the end where Victor drives a truck over a treacherous mountain road, kind of like those four guys did in "The Wages of Fear" in 1953. And speaking of mountains, Diana Dors.

Nuns With Guns (2011)

NUNS WITH GUNS  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ike Henry 

    Tracy Stewart, Bethany Fang, Frank McFarland,

    Carolyn Chaney, Sonia Gomez, Fanny Bishop,

    Bingo Suzuki, Felix "Flagpole" Brown

When a psycho with a legally purchased arsenal shoots up their school, and the country's most powerful gun-rights organization reacts by declaring that more weapons in more hands can only make us safer, the good sisters of St. Mordred's lead a group of singing, praying six-year-olds in a peaceful march on the national headquarters of the NRA. Knowing a threat to the Second Amendment when they see one, the bastard sons of Charlton Heston open fire, unaware that the nuns and their underaged charges are packing heat, too. Body parts and rosary beads fly, and while I wouldn't want to give away the ending to something like this, it's safe to say that when a kid with an Uzi meets a goon with a grenade launcher, somebody's going to get splattered. And you can have Sister Mary Columbine's Bushmaster when you pry it from her cold, dead hand.

Mark of the Vampire (1935)

 

MARK OF THE VAMPIRE  (1935)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Tod Browning

    Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill,

    Jean Hersholt, Elizabeth Allan, Donald Meek, 

    Carol Borland, Holmes Herbert, Leila Bennett

A sound remake of Browning's lost silent, "London After Midnight", with Lionel Barrymore in the old Lon Chaney role as a detective investigating a suspected murder, and Bela Lugosi in the other Lon Chaney role as (what else?) a vampire. It ends with a twist that Lugosi, among others, did not entirely appreciate, but horror fans with a sense of humor probably won't object. Carol Borland makes a famously eerie impression as Lugosi's vampire accomplice.