Speaking of alternate (or hypothetical) worlds… watched Netflix’ new BLACK CRAB (Svart Crabba) last night and kinda liked it. Some moments are even amazing, even though the movie makes a bunch of mistakes that land it a bit on the B category. Fascinating how the movie works without a word about who the invaders are (who would invade Sweden I wonder…)… worth watching, but no masterpiece 
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An entertaining double-bill on Sunday…A classic epic, and a classic horror.
’Gandhi’ (1982), directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year; whilst ‘Werewolf’ is now 41 years old.
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Jeepers! … I saw this at the cinema and wondered for a moment which werewolf film you could be referring to … 41, good lord! 
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Yep…1981, when the UK still had the X certificate. The same year that gave us ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’; ‘The Evil Dead’; ‘Mad Max 2’; ‘Escape From New York’; and ‘Chariots of Fire’.
“Time sure flies…it’s already past twelve…”
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You Can’t Take it With You (Capra / 1938)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz & Keighley / 1938)
Angels With Dirty Faces (Curtiz / 1938)
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock / 1938)
Room Service (Seiter / 1938)
Convict 99 (Varnel / 1938)
Night Alone (Bentley / 1938)
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The idea of a junkie turned government assassin sounded right up my alley so I watched Point of No Return tonight. Had a good time with it. Funnily enough, I thought the film was copying Pulp Fiction when they had Harvey Keitel play a cleaner but it turns out this one came out first.
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Still on that 30’s kick, Phil? Some great films right there.
I am @Dean .
Watching films from 1939 currently. Then will have a palate cleanser before I start in on the 40s 
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You can never go wrong with Christopher Lee. Scars of Dracula had potential from what I remember, but because Hammer used unfair tactics to get Lee to agree to star tainted its ability to be a favorite.
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I look forward to you giving The Wolf Man no less than 10/10
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“And his hair was perfect.” - Warren Zevon
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THE SWORD OF SWORDS (1968, Cheng Kang)
I watched this movie in honor of Wang Yu (1943-2022), the Taiwanese actor who passed away last week at the age of 79. Like Bruce Lee and David Chiang he was a part of my childhood.
In 1968 Wang Yu had become a star thanks to Chang Cheh’s The One-armed Swordsman, the first part of the classic Swordsman Trilogy. This movie clearly wants to get a piece of the pie: again Wang Yu is tortured, but instead of losing an arm, he loses his eyesight as well as the precious sword from the title, a magical sword he is entrusted with and that has protected his country against foreign invaders over the decades. Of course every villain around is trying to get his filthy hands on the sword but our noble hero will never forsake his duty, not even when his fiancée is kidnapped and half his family is slaughtered …
I noticed that The Sword of Swords is not very popular among genre aficionados. It’s slow-moving and with a running-time of 1h46 mns slightly overlong (most movies in this genre were fast and furious); the action scenes are few and far between and they lack the kinetic energy of some of the action in Cheh’s Swordsman Trilogy, but they are elegantly staged and the – extremely bloody - final battle is most certainly worth waiting for. One crucial duel set in a snowstorm is particularly well choreographed and may well have inspired Ang Lee to a similar scene in The House of the Flying Daggers.
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Didn’t know Jimmy Wang Yu had passed away. Sad news. I always really liked him in these films
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Finally finished my 1930s stretch.
Gone with the Wind (Fleming / 1939)
Stagecoach (Ford / 1939)
Drums Along the Mohawk (Ford / 1939)
Dodge City (Curtiz / 1939)
The Roaring Twenties (Walsh / 1939)
The Wizard of Oz (Fleming / 1939)
Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks / 1939)
At the Circus (Buzzell / 1939)
Son of Frankenstein (Lee / 1939)
A couple of good ones here but a few that have not aged well too. Gone with the Wind more of an ordeal than a pleasure for sure. Son of Frankenstein enjoyable but once you’ve seen Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein the police inspector can only make you smile now. Especially when he shoves the darts into his wooden arm. Stagecoach stands out as the best of the bunch by far.
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My wife and sister recently went to an outlet mall about an hour away. My brother-in-law and I stayed behind, grilled some steaks, and did a triple feature of Stagecoach, Red River, and The Searchers. It was the first time I had watched Stagecoach in at least ten years and I am ashamed to say that I had forgotten just how much I enjoy that film.
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With SCREAM 5 in cinemas, I thought it was a good idea to revisit the original movie from 1996 as well as its twin movie I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
SCREAM (1996, Wes Craven)
Scream was called a meta movie, a movie about movies: the characters – most of them high school students - are all diehard horror fans and never get tired of discussing movie tropes, not even when a masked killer pops up in their midst and starts killing people. It was this tongue-in-cheek approach that made the movie so successful. Made on a shoestring it made a fortune and was mainly responsible for the revival of teenage horror movies in the 1990s.
Some 25 years later the film is still very watchable. Neve Campbell remains an attractive heroine (sexy and not too stupid) and David Arquette and Courtenay Cox are great as, respectively, a plucky (but not too clever) police detective and an uppity (but resolute) journalist. However, in retrospect this postmodern, referential style – thought to be very hip at the time – feels a little goofy, needlessly eccentric. And if you thinks about it afterwards (once the identity of the killer(s) is revealed) you’ll notice that the whole thing doesn’t make much sense.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1997, Jim Gillespie)
I remembered Scream quite well, but had forgotten most of this one, but that’s of course not a bad thing when rewatching a horror flic. The premise is quite simple (and quite nice): four teenagers cover up a road accident in which they killed a man. One year later they start receiving messages from somebody who says that he knows what they did last summer …
Anyway, both Scream and this movie were written by the same screenwriter, Kevin Williamson. Surprisingly, the two movies are quite different. I Know, etc. refrains from the gimmick-ridden, tongue-in-cheek, postmodern, referential style that dominated the Scream series (and most 90s horror flics), it’s more in the style of the horror movies of the previous decades, a straightforward horror flic with a mean, lean killer (a man with a hook!)
The whole thing is pretty forgettable (no wonder I forgot most of it), but it’s also pretty enjoyable, if only for the two female stars, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Geller. The latter revealed that they were asked to wear Push-up bras throughout the movie. For this reason, the movie was called I Know what your Boobs did Last Summer by some.
Conclusion: Scream is the quirkier of the two movies and also the one with the better performances, but I Know, etc. Has the better premise (at least it makes some sense) and the better title. An yes, the better boobs as well.
Both *** out of 5.
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That’s a very personal film to me, being the first classic western I ever saw when I borrowed it from the library when I was like 7-8. I loved it so much that I must have watched it at least 2-3 times within a month.
My favorite scene - or at least the one I recall being most amazed by as a child - is the final duel between Ringo and the bad guy (forgot his name) where you - spoiler alert - only hear a couple of shots, and then they cut to the bad guy walking back into the saloon with a laconic grin, leading the viewer to think he won… only to collapse and die from the gunshot. Now that’s brilliant direction!
Haven’t watched it since then though, maybe I should give it a rewatch?
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Stagecoach is such a basic western, coined so much typical genre motives, things which were in the following decades reiterated to death, so that they long have become total cliches, as well visually as thematically, that I cannot enjoy it completely. It dose help of course that Stagecoach was the beginning, but still I can only watch it with the knowledge of all that followed it up to today.
I rewatched several of Ford’s important westerns in the last years, and while I never enjoyed Wagonmaster, My Darling Clementine and The Searchers as much as I did last year, Stagecoach stays where it is. And it is the overly theatrical The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance which sunk in my estimation. That one belongs now clearly in the category “overrated classic”.
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Forgot the other 1939 western I watched last week.
Destry Rides Again (Marshall / 1939)
Very enjoyable, although Marlene Dietrich’s character Frenchie again couldn’t be separated from the Mel Brooks parody of her played brilliantly by Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles. It’s a fun film though and Jimmy Stewart is excellent.
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