EASY AS 1-2-3

 

RIGHT GRIER, RIGHT NOW

The amazing Pam Grier spent her onscreen career being treated appallingly, then getting revenge. In Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981) she has a brief but pivotal role as a drug addicted prostitute who, unable to take any more shit, goes on a killing spree. Spree makes it sound tres jolie: it isn't, and it doesn't do Pam any good, either, as she, in turn, is killed shortly afterwards, her body fly-tipped on one of the Bronx's numerous building sites.

In a few key scenes, Pam conveys the abject misery and hopelessness of life on the street, and the overload of mental anguish that has led her to murder. It seems obvious to say that her character deserves better, almost everybody in this rather depressing film does.

AN IRONIC SORT OF END

Enter The Ninja (1981) is actually a decent enough movie, especially when you consider the appalling quality of the majority of films of this type. Franco Nero is a slightly leftfield but ultimately rather good choice as the Western Ninja Warrior, but the addition of Christopher George as the main villain is a masterstroke. 

George's Charles Venarius is a multi-millionaire playboy who lives in a penthouse with a harem of beautiful, adoring women he is training to be a synchronised swimming team. Venarius is flamboyant, camp, spoiled, petulant, ruthless and totally incredulous that his numerous minions can't seem to do anything right, including dispose of one lousy Ninja. 

When Venarius finally meets his end, at the sharp points of Franco Nero's throwing star, he meets it wryly, simultaneously amused and amazed that anything as vulgar and ordinary as death could touch someone as wonderful as he believes himself to be. 

EASIER READ THAN DONE

 

From 'How To Make Dinosaurs' by Eve Barwell (Studio Vista, 1974).

GAPPA GAPPA HEY

 

In Gappa (1967), a scientific expedition goes to a remote tropical island in order to assess its value as a holiday resort. While there, they find a massive egg in a cave. When what they think is a previously unknown lizard hatches out of it, they take the baby creature back to Japan for study. 

The stolen infant's parents (actually more bird than lizard, and with the ability to breathe out blue fire) are understandably furious, and fly to Tokyo to regain custody. What follows is brutal, costly (the Gappa seemingly destroy half of the Japanese air force) and totally deserved, and although there is time for a happy ending, it's a close run thing. The moral of the story: don't nick other people / animals / species kids. It's astonishing how obvious that is, of course, but we're talking about humans. so it still needs saying.

DNANGER!

 

From 2020: Texas Gladiators, a post-apocalyptic science film made in 1983. It's easy to scoff at this obvious spelling mistake, but if English is your first language, try writing 'explosives' in Italian without Googling it first*.

* It's 'esplozivo'.

HBTM

 

It's my birthday. I'm 58. Please see above.

Not really, I want nothing but light and love for all of you who read this. Everyone else can take their chances.

UNSWEET DREAMS

All of the above.

BAZOOKA FOR DUMMIES

 

In Italian crime thriller Killer Versus Killers (1985), hard-bitten hired assassin Henry Silva's weapon of choice is a rocket propelled grenade launcher. No hastily substituted mannequin is safe, no matter how nattily dressed.

FAIR WARNING

From Planet Of The Female Invaders (1966), a Mexican film in which stunningly beautiful space women come to Earth to kidnap some fat, jug-eared blokes in order to further the plan to quit their own planet, which is bathed in burning daylight all the time. None of it makes much sense, but it's hugely entertaining, which is very much a win, or la victoria, as they say en Espanol.