You may find it hard to believe that I found a spaghetti western that I didn’t like, but that’s the case with Return Of Shanghai Joe, a sequel that has none of the fun of the original movie.

Seen today, the sex education slash exploitation movie Because Of Eve is filled with moments that will make you laugh… when the movie doesn’t try to turn your stomach.

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THE PHANTOM EMPIRE (1935)

…in which the ancient civilisation of Murania is destroyed, and its technological secrets and scientific wonders lost forever.

Not to worry, though—Gene Autry makes it back to Radio Ranch in time for his two o’clock broadcast, and that’s all that really matters…

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The made-for-television movie Gargoyles is watchable, but at the same time you’ll see potential that was not quite realized.

Ya snooze, ya lose.

For ages I’ve been toying with the idea of taking a look at some of the serials of the 30s and 40s…and while toying was was still as far as I’d gotten, Ken nicked in with his hilarious take on The Green Archer for our Edgar Wallace Roundtable.

Ah, well…

Plenty of early serials called themselves “science fiction”, but a closer look reveals that they were rather action-adventure stories built around the struggle for possession of a “scientific” doo-hickey like a death-ray or a new poison gas, or the repeated kidnapping and rescue of a scientist with a “formula” (who usually spent all his onscreen time protesting that he only intended his death-ray / poison gas to be used for peaceful purposes).

However, they got there eventually…even if the definition of “science” remained just a trifle flexible…

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THE PHANTOM EMPIRE (1935)

…in which a lost civilisation located many thousands of feet below the surface of the earth finds its secrets under threat from a trio of unscrupulous scientists seeking to make their fortunes by locating the rich radium deposits which fuel the civilisation’s many marvellous scientific advances.

None of which is nearly so important as that fact that if a singing cowboy doesn’t perform at exactly two o’clock each day, he will break his radio contract, and he and his partner will lose their ranch…

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Despite a few bright spots, Black Samson ends up being a lesser entry in the blaxploitation genre.

The assassin in the anime feature film The Professional: Golgo 13 hits you with his best shot.

Thanks to some bewildering log-in trouble, I wasn’t able to announce my previous update on the blog.  Here’s everything I posted on my site while I was incommunicado.

First, the 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting Ultimate Hobo-Hunting Championship:

Deadly Prey (1987), which does the “Hounds of Zaroff” thing by way of Rambo…

Hard Target (1993), which is John Woo’s take on the subject…

and…

The Perverse Countess (1973), which is the first of Jesus Franco’s.

Then for the Carradine roundtable:

The House of Seven Corpses (1973), in which Carradine hams it up as a glorified red herring while a B-movie crew raise the dead…

and…

Voodoo Man (1944), in which he plays third or possibly even fourth fiddle to Bela Lugosi, who’s using black magic to repair his incapacitated wife this time around.

And finally, a bunch of stuff I just felt like watching:

Deadly Sanctuary (1968), in which Jesus Franco first tries his hand at the Marquis de Sade…

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), in which a depressed Iranian city is stalked by a depressed Iranian vampire…

Hitch-Hike (1977), in which an ill-advised vacation is made even worse by the garden variety David Hess psycho…

It Follows (2014), in which premarital sex is even more dangerous than you already realized…

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985), in which two unfinished scripts enter, and one Frankensteinian abomination leaves…

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), in which some schmuck who you’ll never convince me is Max Rockatansky does sod-all, while an overachieving Enzo G. Castellari movie smashes a terrific feminist action flick to bloody bits…

Showgirls (1995), which remains the worst movie I’ve ever paid full price to see in first run, even after 20 years…

Sunset Boulevard (1950), in which W. Lee Wilder’s smarter brother beats Robert Aldrich to the punch by twelve years…

Toxic Zombies (1980), in which the War on Drugs inadvertently becomes a war on the undead…

and…

Traffic in Souls (1913), which set the pattern for the first 40 years’ worth of American sexploitation movies.

Roger Moore had the right idea to try and convince audiences to see him beyond James Bond, but made the wrong decision to sign on to The Naked Face, an unusually dull movie from Golan and Globus.

… but I think those are words John Carradine must have muttered to himself on a regular basis. And this movie, Las Vampiras (“The Vampire Women”, 1965), probably had him saying it to himself even more than usual.

I’d planned on doing an Al Adamson movie for this Roundtable, but instead I ended up with something much worse. Las Vampiras is one of five — count ’em, five! — movies that Carradine made in Mexico in the late 1960’s. Excluding Carradine’s performance, it’s terrible. Factor in Carradine, and suddenly it becomes terrible in a whole new wonderful way. It wasn’t supposed to be a comedy, but John had other ideas…