Left Over Turkeys: Last Glory of Troy, Search for Danger, Sargent and the Spy, and Who Has The Black Box?

LAST GLORY OF TROY (aka The Avenger)
This is a sequel to the Trojan Horse.

Trojans, fleeing from the remains of Troy end up in Italy and get mixed up with the Etruscans. The Trojans want a place to stay, but... The king is cool with it,the prince is not. A princess loves Reeves, but ends up involved with the prince... The prince sets up the Trojans and after 40 to 45 minutes of court intrigue a war breaks out, but its dull. Ultimately it comes down to Reeves and the prince fighting in silly helmets, which isn't revealing anything since its supposedly history and its in the trailer.

I paid for this?

Don't make my mistake, avoid this film.

SEARCH FOR DANGER
Anemic murder mystery is the last of the John Calvert run as The Falcon has the PI trying to uncover the murderer of another PI and a thief. While better than the previous entry in the series it’s not as good as the first go round. Its also hampered by sets which look as if they might collapse at any minute.

SARGENT AND THE SPY
(and no there is no The before Sargent)
Weak unfunny and forced military comedy has soldiers on leave going on leave and getting mixed up with spies. Dreadful on almost every level the height of cleverness is that everyone wears dark glasses to be incognito. I got about twenty minutes in before I turned it off as it became a game of diminishing returns.

WHO HAS THE BLACK BOX?
Claude Chabrol misfire peaks interest in the odd moment but mostly it’s an espionage thriller that doesn’t thrill and just lies there. The story of small black boxes appearing all over Greece that are being used to jam American military radar, the film focuses, after about a third of its running time, on the wife of an American agent (Jean Seaberg) who has to clear herself of the frame for her husband’s death. To be honest watching the film my interest waned. Things only happen in fits and starts when they happen its very good but mostly it seems to ramble around with an occasional joke and no suspense. I really didn’t care and let the film finish largely because I was too lazy to turn it off.

Thanksgiving Turkeys- Bad Girls Do Cry, Diplomatic Passport, Giants of Thessaly, Appointment with Murder and Acquasanta Joe

BAD GIRLS DO CRY
Beyond awful film concerns a woman who goes to a new city, becomes a model, is raped drugged and prostituted. Running a brief 58 minutes it feels as though it's 58 days long. Filmed silent the film feels unbelievably cheap. any dialog is heard from behind the person speaking except for the occasional moment when the cut was ill timed and we see the person's lips not moving. Nominally a racy exploitation film, it is no longer racy in the least despite the characters walking around in their undies. If you're give a choice of watching this film or drinking battery acid, I'd go with the acid

DIPLOMATIC PASSPORT
Painfully slow film about a newlywed couple arriving in London on is first posting a diplomat. He immediately gets called away on assignment and things go wrong from there. An okay cast is undercut by dreadful pacing which draws sequences out for no good reason. There is no through line of a plot more a seeming series of digressions tat eventually come together to form something- I'm not sure what. I was largely done by the half way point. I hung into see how it came out and wasn't shocked to discover I had been right about a chunk of what had been going on. A void unless you need sleep.

APPOINTMENT WITH MURDER
Second of the John Calvert Falcon films is as bad as a program mystery can be. An odd mix of cheap sets and bad acting (the Italian accents are embarrassingly bad). The film has something to do with murder and mayhem tied to a painting in Milan Italy and ere in the states. Lots of sound and fury dignifying nothing I never cared who did it or why, I simply wanted my time in the torture chamber to end

GIANTS OF THESSALY
More talk than action retelling of Jason and the Golden Fleece has the Jason and his men off on their trip while back home the regent plots to take the throne and bed the queen. It’s a lot of people standing around (often in front of fake backdrops)talking while not much happens. The high point of the film, and the only reason to see the film is the giant cyclops attack which happens about 40 minutes into the film. A wonderful men suit action sequence it makes the boredom of the first half of the film worth enduring…. And sadly it makes the second half intolerable and squirm inducing and sleep producing. The film never recovers and as such the film can not be recommended.

ACQUASANTA JOE
Messy spaghetti western has a bounty hunter trying to get his money back from the robber who took it from the bank he had deposited it. He then crosses and double crosses everyone on the way to getting the cash.

Odd mix of comedy and action never finds the right tone anywhere along the way. Making things even more complicated is the fact that there are huge gaps in the plot which lead one to believe that they either made this up as they went or they only only filmed part of the script. The result is a film that isn't a fun sort of bad rather its just a bad film that will make you squirm.

Dream of Zorro (1952) aka Sign of Zorro

Hands down this is the worst Zorro film I've run across. This Italian monstrosity should be burned where ever it is found.

The grandson of  Zorro is an infantile nudnick who plays triangle in an orchestra. Having so sense of the world he dresses like an over grown child.  Brought home by his grandfather who wants to have him become Zorro. Cringe worthy  things happen.

Bad all around action comedy has horrible jokes, embarrassing performances and weak action sequences. While definitely not helped by a dubbing that gives the young Zorro an effeminate voice the poorly done physical jokes and worse verbal ones just make this film nigh unwatchable.

I will be haunted by our hero's childish dress for years to come. The over done hat and the rest of the costume is the sort of thing you have to see to disbelieve.

I hate this film a great deal.

If you ever run across you'll know you've reached cinematic hell

Frankenstein On Campus (1970)

One of the worst films I've seen in ages is a horrible mix of Frankenstein and campus sex film.

After being thrown out of a university in Europe Victor Frankenstein travels to Canada. There he tries to fit in while working on a brain control device with one of is professors.

Long scenes of people partying are mixed with some sex scenes, moments where Victor does weird things and sequences were the students protest the use of computers on the grounds it will dehumanize the world. None of it hangs together despite the fact there are characters in common. That may sound like a no duh statement but at times the various part of this film plays like different films.

This might have been a good bad film except that how Victor Frankenstein is drawn, with a big  stick up his ass, results in a character that grates on us. We don't like him at all and it's painful to be around him. And everything he does is just WTF.

The biggest WTF - and it's the best thing in the film- is the denouncement. Its awesome, it's out of left field and it arrives just as the end credits roll.

This is a burnt turkey of a film and should be avoided.

August Rush

You will either buy into this contrived tale of orphan who hears music then runs off New York to find his parents or you won't.I didn't.

Cloyingly cute I had no patience for it and squirmed from the opening bits of the kid conducting the wind, through the flash back meeting of young rock star dad and rich girl cellist torn apart by her disapproving dad, on to the really annoying Robin "Please put my head in a duck press to make me stop screaming" Williams and then to the oh gee ending. I hated almost every moment other than the music. Whats worse was I didn't bail when I had the chance (what would it take stand up and walk out) and stayed to the hand holding ending in the hope that it would all turn around and I'd get weepy. No such luck. Hey this might click for you, it did for several ladies in my office, but for me it was time I won't get back

hey things are looking up I have eating aluminum foil on the slate for dinner and after my bath I will be combing my hair with a rusty cheese grater