Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)

BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE  (1958)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Budd Boetticher

    Randolph Scott, Craig Stevens, Barry Kelley,

    Tol Avery, Peter Whitney, Manuel Rojas,

    Fritz Field, George Irving, Virginia Walker

Randolph Scott rides into a border town where the main form of community entertainment appears to be watching people hang and seeing that they do. It's not long before Scott finds a noose around his own neck, but it's clear that these townspeople haven't seen any Randolph Scott movies, or they'd know better than to do something like that. Another morally shifty Scott/Boetticher western, with Scott going to great lengths to protect an admitted murderer from a crooked sheriff, a corrupt judge and a town full of cretins who aren't much more than a resident lynch mob. There's a sardonic element to Scott's performance that cuts through his customary stoicism (he had a knack for comedy), and L.Q. Jones makes an impression in an early role as a fellow West Texan who catches a bullet long before the picture ends.

The Flame and the Arrow (1950)

 

THE FLAME AND THE ARROW  (1950)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Jacques Tourneur

    Burt Lancaster, Virginia Mayo, Robert Douglas, 

    Nick Cravat, Aline McMahon, Norman Lloyd

"Robin Hood" transplanted to the mountains and forests of Northern Italy. A gleefully energetic costume adventure with a bracing Max Steiner musical score, obviously designed to showcase the acrobatic talents and gleaming teeth of its star. Nick Cravat (the one who doesn't talk) was Lancaster's partner in the circus before Burt got into movies.

Norman Lloyd

(1914-2021)

Gwendoline (1984)

 

GWENDOLINE  (1984)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Just Jaeckin

    Tawny Kitaen, Brent Huff, Bernadette Lafont,

    Jean Rougerie, Zabou Breitman, Andre Julien

A stupidly silly softcore fantasy in the tradition of "Barbarella" and "Flesh Gordon", starring Tawny Kitaen as a young woman who heads out into the wild, determined to track down her lost father, or capture the exotic butterfly he disappeared trying to get. Some of the art direction looks pretty cool, but there's a difference between making a movie that looks good and making a good movie, and "Gwendoline" demonstrates that. Original U.S. title: "The Perils of Gwendoline In the Land of the Yik Yak".

Tawny Kitaen

(1961-2021)

Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)

STEAMBOAT BILL JR.  (1928)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Charles Riesner

    Buster Keaton, Ernest Torrence, Marion Byron,

    Tom McGuire, Tom Lewis, Joe Keaton

Buster's last great movie. Keaton against the wind.

Speak Easily (1932)

 

SPEAK EASILY  (1932)  ¢ ¢

    D: Edward Sedgwick

    Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ruth Selwyn,

    Thelma Todd, Hedda Hopper, Sidney Toler

Buster Keaton plays a stodgy college professor who inherits a fortune (he thinks) and decides to invest it in a struggling theater company. You can see where a few of the gags in this might've gone somewhere, if Keaton had had any creative control, but at that point in his career, he didn't, and it all just kind of goes flat. Buster muddles through somehow - he always did - but you can't help thinking he'd rather be somewhere else. 

The Blacksmith (1922)

 

THE BLACKSMITH  (1922)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Buster Keaton, Malcolm St. Clair

    Buster Keaton, Virginia Fox, Joe Roberts

Buster Keaton plays a blacksmith at a time when blacksmiths were still shoeing horses, but also fixing cars. Much of the humor revolves around a white horse and a white automobile and what happens when they both end up in a blacksmith shop in the hands of Buster Keaton. Toward the end, it moves out of the shop and speeds up and gets crazy and the gags fly out in all directions, testing the limits of how much comic material a two-reel movie can reasonably contain.

Nympho Cycler (1971)

 

NYMPHO CYCLER  (1971)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Edward D. Wood Jr. (uncredited)

    Lorraine Casey, TV Edwards, Stud Stetson,

    Sherry Duz, Lotti Moore, Betty Boobs, Mary Wood

Ed Wood, the auteur behind such '50s classics as "Jail Bait", "Bride of the Monster" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space", spent the last part of his carer working in pornography, like this nudie flick about the sexual adventures of a photographer's model in and around hippie-era Los Angeles. Ed himself plays the photographer, who doubles as the model's cross-dressing husband and pimp. There's lots of bare skin to be looked at, but in any other way you can think of, this movie makes "Plan 9" look good. The actress listed in the credits as "Lorraine Casey" is Casey Larrain. "TV Edwards" is Mr. Wood. "Stud Stetson"? "Betty Boobs"? "Sherry Duz"? Heck, I don't know. Maybe they felt there was a reason to remain anonymous.