…It just kind of turned out that way.

The Black Sleep (1956), in which Le Borg is just a little too early to take advantage of the late-50’s resurgence of gothic horror…

Calling Dr. Death (1943), in which Le Borg’s most determinedly noir-ish efforts are simply not enough to overcome one of the dumbest ostensible mystery scripts in creation…

Things to Come (1936), in which H. G. Wells embarrasses progressively inclined admirers everywhere by trumpeting the virtues of Science Fascism…

The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960), in which Charles Schneer hires Ray Harryhausen to do Bert I. Gordon’s job…

and…

Trader Horn (1931), in which nearly everything you’ve ever seen go wrong in an old-school jungle movie stubbornly refuses to put in an appearance.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: an enormous animal unexpectedly kills a young woman. Other attacks follow, including one on a little boy. A law enforcement officer teams up with a cynical war veteran and an eccentric naturalist in an attempt to put a stop to the killing. Meanwhile, local authorities hamper their efforts because of fear of damage to the economy if news of the attacks becomes public….

 Yup, you guessed it:   GRIZZLY (1976)

THE PHANTOM OF SOHO
So for the past month or so, I have been almost entirely unable to sleep properly, averaging about three hours a night. I have used that time in a variety of constructive ways which include working on a book, writing Teleport City reviews, watching movies, reading history books, and playing Wii Sports — which I’m sure my downstairs neighbors appreciate at three in the morning. Anyway, this review is a product of a recent sleepless night, and my mental state is evidenced by the fact that, in the middle of a modest review of a movie about a killer stalking London’s Soho district, I somehow end up spending an entire paragraph or two talking about the diplomatic battle over whether England or France had rightful ownership to the mustache of Kaiser Wilhelm. It really has nothing to do with the movie itself, and I apologize.

Anyway, it’s another guy dressed up as a skeleton. I honestly didn’t plan to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on movies where guys dress up as skeletons, but it seems I’m well on my way to that throne. I’ll start growing my Kaiser Wilhelm mustache today.

Wings of Danger (1952) does feature an ex-pat American pilot in Britain suspecting that his small cargo airline employer is involved in some shady business, but that really doesn’t compare.  I’m sorry.  Mid-’50s drive-in suspense B-flick producers just didn’t know from REAL entertainment, did they?

TAHALKA
The lines between good and evil in Bollywood movies tend to be pretty broadly drawn, but never so broadly, it seems, as when the great Amrish Puri was cast as the villain. Deep of the voice, wild of the eye, and massive of the brow, Puri, though a versatile actor who played many diverse roles in his four decade career, truly made his mark with his portrayals of over-the-top bad guys in countless Bollywood action and masala movies. (And yes, yes, I know…as Mola Ram in that Indiana Jones movie. Give it a rest, for chrissakes!) Many of these portrayals were iconic, but–while Puri would star in nearly four hundred films by the time of his death in 2005–there is one film for which he is remembered most of all.

Tahalka, however, is not that film.

I’m kicking off another marathon “Netflix Diary” adventure, wherein I review everything that comes to me via Netflix — good for forcing me to review outside my comfort zone and diversify the contents of Teleport City. Although our first film, A Hammer Studios pirate film with guys dressed up in skeleton suits, hardly finds us in uncharted waters…

NIGHT CREATURES (aka CAPTAIN CLEGG)
Things start off piratey enough, with the mutilation and stranding of a crew member for attacking the wife of the captain, a mysterious and ruthless pirate by the name of Clegg. Leaving the dastardly crewman to his fate sans food, water, ears, or tongue, the film then skips ahead a number of years to the remote British town of Dymchurch, which is being visited by no-nonsense British Navy captain Collier who suspects the small hamlet of being an offloading center for liquor smugglers. But Dymchurch hardly seems to be a den of smugglers and rapscallions, populated as it is by jolly coffin makers, upstanding squires, upstanding squire’s sons, and the benign local parson, Blyss. Collier, however, is an experienced hand at flushing out smugglers, so he’s hardly taken in by innocent looks alone.

You know, I really didn’t intend to follow up my examination of a Turkish Exorcist rip-off with an examination of an American Exorcist rip-off; but there I was, all alone in the house one night with my DVD player, and suddenly this strange force overcame me, and….and….

 Aw, hell.

ABBY (1974)

Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen
Most of the heroes and villains of fumetti did not possess super powers. They simply liked dressing up in outlandish body stockings and kicking people in the head. Needless to say, the combination of gratuitous sex appeal in the form of various Eurobabes slinking around in mod 60s mini-wear, combined with garish space-age sets and amoral violence really speaks to a sophisticated man like me. So I tend to gravitate toward these fumetti-inspired films whenever I can find them, and I’m always happy to discover new ones (such as the ones from Turkey). However, it ain’t all steak and onions, and if the 1968 fumetti film Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen proves nothing else, it proves that it is possible to make a film that will disappoint even someone like me with my incredibly low standards.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Planetfall demonstrates the incredible tools available to no-budget indie filmmakers to realize densely-layered visions. But all of the desktop FX software in the world can’t rescue a story that’s lacking.

Tony Falcon, Agent X-44: Last Target
The road that lead me to Tony Falcon was a somewhat long and circuitous one. It began when I was watching the third Christopher Lee Fu Manchu movie and found my attention drawn to the actor Tony Ferrer, who was playing the fairly substantial supporting role of Shanghai Police Inspector Ramos. Ferrer was certainly charismatic, and handled himself admirably in his action scenes. But what really struck me was that here was a Filipino actor playing a character whom the filmmakers had gone out of their way to identify as Filipino. Given that this was a film in which a pasty-faced Englishman with putty on his eyelids was being sold as Chinese, made at a time when few in the movie business were losing sleep over whether their Asian casting was race or nationality appropriate, this seemed to me like an unusual consideration.