by ·Comments Off on Danger: Diabolik (1968, Mario Bava)

Possibly the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie I’ve ever watched on its own – though I followed up by immediately rewatching the episode. Somewhere along the way I heard that the movie is actually excellent, and that’s not true; it’s Italian Batman Mabuse 007, but the color really pops on the new blu-ray and I got to listen to Ennio’s “Deep Down” for four hours.

Eva:

Eva (artist’s rendition):

Diabolik was in Barbarella the same year, and those would make a great double-feature: jokey genre movies with high fashion and design. He’s the villain hero, out to steal whatever he pleases, for no reason but that he can, and only Inspector Michael Piccoli and Gov’t Minister Terry-Thomas can stop him. Oh I’m kidding, they can’t stop him at all, in fact Diabolik shows up at their press conference and drops “exhilarating gas” to cause a laugh riot, just to humiliate them.

One of ten-ish movies produced by Dino De Laurentiis that year, Bava between horror movies, enlisting his idiot son Lamberto to assist. Diabolik’s chick is Eva of Ken Russell’s French Dressing. She wants an emerald necklace she saw on TV, so her man goes out to steal it, starting a war with his archrival Valmont (white-haired Adolfo Celi of Thunderball) who runs a ridiculous nightclub. Hundreds more things happen: a cop has a wacom tablet, Diabolik uses emeralds for bullets, falls out a plane and fakes his own death, a woman makes a Robin Hood reference (but to Piccoli, not Terry-Thomas). Diabolik finally Fight-Clubs the country’s tax office buildings, then after the country melts all of their gold into one giant chunk to make it easier harder(?) to steal… he steals it. Technically he’s still alive at the end, encased in gold, but there would be no sequels since there was nothing left to steal.

by ·Comments Off on Soldier of Orange (1977, Paul Verhoeven)

Good twisty wartime spy story from Paul “subtlety is for cowards” Verhoeven. Not one of his best movies – too plotty and obvious – but clearly crucial to his whole deal (it wouldn’t be his last film about resistance fighters betraying their own people for profit).

Rutger and his college buds bond over his hazing experience by entering WWII (“a spot of war would be quite exciting”), ending up on different sides, then bumping into (and/or killing) each other. Guus (4th Man star Jeroen Krabbé) becomes a bigwig friend of the Queen, sleeping with her secretary Susan (of psychic horror Patrick), while Robbie becomes a Gestapo collaborator to save his skin. Guus and Rutger team up in England, running missions back into the Netherlands. Only Rutger and his friend Paul from Turks Fruit survive (no definite word on the cockatoo).

Pre-war college dickheads:

Post-war, a dickhead in an outhouse is about to eat this grenade:

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Feest! (1963)

Since I’m watching early Verhoeven movies, I dug up this short. Slick b/w little near-drama about a schoolboy who likes a girl. After days of glances and whispers, they hang out at the school dance, dancing occasionally but with nothing really to say to each other. Meanwhile up in the tower the older boys are playing a blindfolded couples kissing game, our couple plays along but she’s not into it, slaps him and runs off. The movie’s highlight: a boring assembly speaker is named Albert Vogler.

by ·Comments Off on Journey Into Fear (1943, Norman Foster)

My movie watching is outpacing my progress on the James Naremore book, so I don’t know the whole deal with Norman Foster and this Mercury Theater production, but it stars all my Kane and Ambersons buddies and is obviously a part of the big Welles picture. Annoyed to discover that there’s a longer reconstructed version with ten extra minutes that played MoMA a decade ago, but which never came out on video, so I watched the dull censored version, and it was still pretty great.

The Kane Boys:

An assassin is after arms dealer Joe Cotton, but this was during WWII so we’re supposed to be rooting for the arms dealer, not the assassin. Turks and Russians and nazis are involved, Cotton is sent undercover on a small ship but the assassin is also onboard (very nicely introduced via his skipping turntable). Now we get to meet all the other passengers and try to sort out their loyalties in time to save Cotton’s life.

Major Ship Captain Amberson:

Orson is apparently an ally, Major Amberson great as the ship’s captain, Agnes not great with a French accent, Dolores del Rio hot as a dancer in a catsuit. Cotton (a married man!) gets pushed around by everyone, has no plan or confidence, is overly insecure about the dancer, then when they arrive on shore he escapes a kidnapping attempt through actual quick thinking and defeats the assassin during a rainy rooftop struggle.

Remade in the 1970s with Sam Waterston, assassin Ian McShane, Shelley Winters in the Moorehead role, and some crazy additional cast (Zero Mostel, Vincent Price, Stanley Holloway).

by ·Comments Off on Help! (1965, Richard Lester)

I’m on a 1960s rock & roll kick. Rewatched this a few months after Anthology, getting some nice HD screenshots of Eleanor Bron, including when I seen her in the arms of Paul saying “I can say no more.”

by ·Comments Off on Mistress Dispeller (2024, Elizabeth Lo)

For our final movie of 2025, K wanted to watch a better doc than Predators and… we didn’t quite manage. Good badminton scenes, at least. Wife hires a consultant/confidante/spy who finds excuses to get alone time with husband and his mistress in order to (successfully) talk them out of their relationship.

by ·Comments Off on Reflection in a Dead Diamond (2025, Cattet & Forzani)

If I’m following the story (lol), Young Mr. Diman (Yannick “brother of Jeremie” Renier) played Superspy John in a movie series, got recast after his movie vs. diamond Serpentik failed. Now older Connery-looking Mr. Diman (Fabio Testi of a Zulawski movie) is getting kicked out of his hotel after trying to pay with fake diamonds, and thinks Older Serpentik (Maria de Medeiros) might be living next door.

But really it’s just a fragmented romp of distilled genre pleasure. Maybe half dreamed/imagined (there’s a character who hypnotizes victims into believing they’re in a film). A surprisingly high number of Hellraiser-reminiscent scenes, what with the fishhook-haired woman raking people’s faces off, all the skin-cutting in closeup (sometimes with hooks), and fragments of victims’ exploded faces on the ground. Sicinski liked it.

by ·Comments Off on Billion Dollar Brain (1967, Ken Russell)

1960s movie about the threat of artificial intelligence, shot in high style for a British spy drama, which is medium-low style for a Ken Russell picture.

Caine covering up Karl and Francoise:

Villain Ed Begley is a wacked out texas oilman whose computer tells him how to overthrow communism. Oskar Homolka is the KGB man trying to stop him from starting WWIII. Karl Malden and Francoise Dorleac are getting rich playing multiple sides, toting a carton of eggs injected with lethal viruses. Guy Doleman is the British spy boss trying to retrieve the eggs. And all of these groups befriend and/or kidnap special agent Michael Caine, who doesn’t exactly solve the case, but is at least present while it solves itself.

Nazi-coded Texan:

by ·Comments Off on Black Bag (2025, Steven Soderbergh)

Spy/hunter Fassbender gets five potential spy/leakers together (including his wife Cate Blanchett) and pits them against each other, while he and Cate carry on like a low-budget True Lies. The rare movie where the polygraph test is the best scene. I accidentally just watched Naomie Harris’s earliest and latest movies about havoc caused when an internal science experiment is freed from its lab.

by ·Comments Off on Top Secret (1984, Zucker & Abrahams)

Extremely cold war comedy with Val Kilmer (RIP) as a sort of Beach Boy Elvis who meets a girl and gets caught up in her family spy plot. The ZAZ group’s followup to Police Squad, pretty decent.

Omar Sharif: