For my contribution for the Secret Santa roundtable, thank El Santo for assigning me the British comedy Whoops Apocalypse. I must admit I was dreading the task of watching this movie. Considering the quality of the movies the B-Masters assigned each other years earlier for the first Secret Santa, and considering there are few things worse than a failed comedy, I thought I would be in for a rough time. But to my surprise… no, I didn’t like this movie, but I have to admit that I didn’t find it completely bad.

Sorry, folks.  I was supposed to kick off the “Secret Santa’s Revenge” last night, but events conspired to put me in bed by 8pm.  (Alone and trying to sleep, lest you think that I blew you off for some nookie.)

Nevertheless!  I’m here bright-eyed and bushy-tailed*, to present you with the feature which was “gifted” to me by Greywizard of The Unknown Movies: Titanic: The Animated Movie (2001).  Enjoy!**

*As far as you know.

** Technically impossible.

Announcing my belated contribution to the Roger Corman Roundtable:

It might have been Corman’s best film, and Vincent Price’s finest hour… had it not been for…

…but Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (2010) proves that, even with a budget of $200,000 a filmmaker can craft a movie to be proud of.  (Better not let Hollywood know, or Michael Bay might never work again.)

In Hyper Sapien: People From Another Star, future soap opera star Ricky Paull Goldin meets a female alien from outer space. Don’t worry, by an amazing coincidence this alien happens to look completely human, so there’s no sight of him snuggling up with a creature with multiple tentacles in this family film. Though quite frankly, a sight like that would have made the movie more interesting than it is now.

Golden Eyes: Secret Agent 077
In the genre ghetto of India’s B movie industry, attempts were being made at churning out spy films that hued a little closer to the European model. Unfortunately for these films, while the attitude might have been there, the cash wasn’t. Given that, the end products were frequently films that tested the notion of just how sparely represented the basic tropes of the spy genre could be in a film without it falling short of being a spy film at all.

The 1968 film Golden Eyes: Secret Agent 077 fits pretty neatly within this last described category. It’s the sort of movie where bare-walled sets are dressed by way of colored lighting (it’s amazing what 1960s movies could accomplish with just a couple lights and some primary colored gels) and a super villain’s high-tech lair is represented by having what looks like the contents of an old Radio Shack “Build Your Own Ham Radio” kit strewn on a wooden table. In another villain’s hideout, the only decoration is a giant inflatable whiskey bottle

Si Muore Solo Una Volta
Si Muore Solo Una Volta is not a masterwork, but it’s linear and makes sense, something which many other Eurospy films can’t claim. In many respects it is better than many of the more readily available Eurospy productions on the market – but still, realistically this is only one for Eurospy completists – and if you are one of those aforementioned completists, then you’re going to want to watch this anyway, regardless of what I have to say — good, bad or indifferent.

Superseven Calling Cairo
Director, Umberto Lenzi, in the 1970s, with many of his hard and fast Euro Crime films, proved that he can make taut, and tough films, with proficient action scenes in them. It didn’t matter that they were almost bound to the one city, such as Rome, Milan or Naples. In fact, he made that work in favour of the stories. But here, much of the time is wasted on shots that simply seem to be inserted into the story for the sake of the location. The sequence at the pyramids is a perfect example – cutting it from the movie, wouldn’t detract from the story at all. But then again, when you promote your film as being set in Egypt, I guess some skylarking amongst the antiquities is expected. But it doesn’t make it a better film.

Lightning Bolt
Although the production is cheap and the plot is outlandish, this is actually a pretty fun little adventure. Anthony Eisley looks tough and handsome, and he’s probably one of the few spies in any of these movies who begins his mission by trying to buy off the bad guys — with a check! Imagine Sean Connery asking Robert Shaw how much money he’d need not to kill Bond, then saying, “OK, mind if I write you a check?” They don’t even accept checks at the grocery store where I shop!

And then he’ll see you again, and again, and AGAIN:

Before I Hang (1940), in which Boris Karloff plays a doctor who becomes a serial killer when he has himself injected with an experimental serum made from the plasma of an executed murderer…

The Devil Commands (1941), in which Boris Karloff plays a doctor who becomes obsessed with transdimensional telepathic communication when his wife is killed in an auto wreck…

The Man They Could Not Hang (1939), in which Boris Karloff plays a doctor who gets himself resurrected in order to take revenge on the people who got him unjustly executed for murder…

and…

The Man with Nine Lives (1940), in which (you guessed it) Boris Karloff plays (you guessed it again) a doctor who accidentally freezes himself and several of his enemies for ten years using an experimental cryogenic technique, and picks up the feud where he left off when a second doctor finds and defrosts all the preserved bodies.

 
And in addition, because I just couldn’t bear to do an update devoted solely to turn-of-the-40’s mad doctor moves, I also give you:

 
I Am Legend (2007), in which Will Smith is not only much better than Charlton Heston, but is nearly as good as Vincent Price…

Let the Right One In (2008), in which the Swedes show us all the correct way to do an adolescent vampire love story…

and…

The Toolbox Murders (1977), in which a guy with a toolbox commits a whole bunch of murders.

December is a month full of spies and espionage at Teleport City, and we’re kicking things off in…well, not style.

DEVIL’S MAN As alluded to earlier, The Devil’s Man‘s production exhibits an almost poignant level of impoverishment. It’s interior scenes are so tightly shot that, for all we can see, they could just as easily have been set in a curtained-off corner of a warehouse or the cramped basement rec room of the director’s house as in an actual studio — and I suspect that in many cases their backdrops consisted of little more than a blanket hung over an exposed drain pipe. The resulting over-reliance on extreme close-ups and tight two-shots makes for a claustrophobic viewing experience, to the extent that your enjoyment of the film will depend a lot on how much you’d like to be locked in a closet with Guy Madison for seventy-five minutes.

Plus…

BOTTLED IN BOND Repeal Day in the US is December 5th. So we thought we’d put a twist on our espionage theme and revise and expand considerably our Bond’s Bar material to give you BOTTLED IN BOND, a rambling, insane primer on how to drink whiskey like James Bond.