The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2

Sting In The Tale

The Complete Adventures 
of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2
by Lee Savage Jr and Emmett McDowell
Altus Press
ISBN 9781618270702

Following on from the first volume (reviewed by me here), The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2 is the concluding collection of stories originally appearing in issues of the pulp magazine Action Stories between 1945 and 1949. And, having read the first volume, I’d have to say that these particular stories are not what I was expecting. 

Following an introduction by modern pulp writer Will Murray (one of the modern writers of Doc Savage who actually gets the formula right), we plummet straight into the first of the four stories collected here, Brand Of The Gallows-Ghost, from the Winter 1945 issue. 

This one, like many of the Señorita Scorpion stories, doesn’t feature the Scorpion, aka Elgera Douglas, herself in all that many sequences. She pops up here and there while other characters, like her romantic interest Chisos Owens, shouldering the majority of the action and deduction of the tale. The secret ingredient being that, as usual, everybody is talking about Elgera and she’s the focus point for the solution to the story. This yarn is pretty good and, once again, Lee Savage Jr uses his expressive language to craft a quite literary pulp, with wonderful passages like... “The moonlight dropped hesitant yellow fingers into the mysterious depths of Santa Helena Canyon…”. 

It’s all the standard Western tinted blood and thunder you could want... with a curious character name popping up. One of the female characters in the book is called Lupita Tovar and, I can only assume this is in homage to the 1920s-1950s Mexican actress of the same name, who my regular readers might remember best as being in the Spanish version of the 1931 Dracula, made on the same sets as the Lugosi Dracula (both reviewed here) during the evenings of the same shoot. 

The second story, Lash Of The Six Gun Queen, from the Winter 1947 edition of Action Stories, is where things get and, frankly, stay a little weird concerning the stories in this volume. This one is probably the stand out story in this collection but, unusually, it’s told in the first person from the point of view of a new character trying to bring Señorita Scorpion to justice (before falling for her and finding her innocent of her supposed crimes in the third act) rather than the standard third person. A good tale, though, nonetheless.

Then things get even weirder with the Winter 1948 tale Gun-Witch of Hoodoo Range, written this time by Emmett McDowell instead of regular writer Lee Savage Jr... and that change of writer shows in more than just the style, which is less expressive and poetic than Savage Jr’s prose (although it certainly has its moments too). However, the character of the Scorpion does not seem to be remotely like she was in the other books, always going around masked to hide a scar which she never previously had and with absolutely nobody referring to Elgera Douglas, nor indeed Chisos Owens, who is absent from both this story and, surprisingly, the next. In fact, the Scorpion in this is revealed to be a new love interest for a new character, who is the focal point of this one (none of the regular characters are in this at all) and, it’s revealed at the end that she duped everyone and that the real Señorita Scorpion died of wounds received half way through the tale. Wait... what?

This is a twist which is completely ignored when Lee Savage Jr returns to write the final tale, from Winter 1949, The Sting Of The Scorpion. This one has no mention of the events in the previous tale (as that one did of no events prior) and we definitely are back in the saddle with Elgera Douglas as the original Scorpion once more. 

That being said, this one differs from the others in that, a) there’s no Chisos Owens turning up or even mentioned here and b) this one stays with the Scorpion and she’s the main attraction of every story element, as we follow her adventure while she tries to prove her innocence, find out why she is being framed and identify who is doing it. It’s a pretty good tale but with no warning that it was intended to be the last. Actually, the main takeaway I got from the last two stories in this volume, both by different writers, is that a scabbard is not something which (unlike what the dictionary says) is just for holding swords. In these last two it’s referred to as the long holster on a horse which holds the rifles for the rider. So that was an interesting discovery... I need to do more research into that, I think. 

And there you have it. The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 2 is very much a different experience to the first volume but, this makes it no less entertaining and I certainly had a good time with it. It’s a shame Lee Savage Jr never returned to the character but I understand there’s a newish, overpriced, short volume of three modern tales by different writers which I may have to look into at some point in the near future... so there’s that to look forward to.

The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1

On A Sting And A Prairie

The Complete Adventures 
of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1
By Les Savage Jr.
Altus Press
ISBN: 9781453645376

Her kiss was flame, Her gun was doom!

In his foreword to the Altus Press compendium of tales, The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1, modern pulp writer Will Murray (who I best know for his modern takes on Doc Savage and The Shadow) talks about the writer of these tales, Les Savage Jr... which is handy because I knew nothing about him or his Señorita Scorpion yarns before now. He was apparently born in 1922 and died young at around 36 years of age but, though young, I can tell you he certainly has all the skills of a good pulp wordsmith. Perhaps he’s not quite as eloquent as Lester Dent’s Kenneth Robeson alter ego but, certainly head and shoulders above Walter Gibson’s Maxwell Grant, in my opinion. 

These first four yarns were published in the Spring, Summer and Winter 1944 issues of Action Stories and the Spring issue of the same magazine of the following year. They were apparently quite popular and, according to the intro, might well have even been an influence on various Hollywood contrivances such as the serial Zorro’s Black Whip (reviewed by me here).

Señorita Scorpion is the secret identity of Elgera Douglas, a woman whose family was trapped for generations in a secret area by a mountain and who, now the family has found a way out of the valley in which they were once trapped, operates out of this secret location... where no person alive who does not know her could find the secret entrance to. Yeah... actually, this really is Republic Pictures serial material, for sure. 

Enter Chisos Owens, the cool hunk of a man who is the only one who, by the end of the first tale after tracking her down, working initially for a man who did him wrong... can win her heart. Adventures ensue. Most of them involving the titular lady’s secret ranch and threat to its ownership from various parties. More regular characters get added to the roster, including a sheriff who is caught in a triangle with Owens for her affections. 

And it’s pretty good stuff. The lead in to the tales often seems to be approached by some other character (sometimes Chisos Owens and sometimes someone else like a villain) and while the lady is a formidable adversary, she’s not above being rescued in damsel in distress mode at various points in the narrative... although she does a fair amount of rescuing of people herself, to tell the truth.

The tales are quite addictive and also very descriptive of landscapes and situations. Being Western tales, some fight is often started at the drop of a hat and there are many metaphorical hats plummeting to the ground in these tales. One thing Savage Jr seems to have a neat gift for is the prose of the various gunfights and especially the fist fights that pepper his tales at regular intervals. Heck, one fistfight in the third story here, between the two characters vying for the affections of Douglas (before they all become friends, naturally), seems to go on for several pages with no let up. They are often quite violent too... one man gets a pick axe through his face in one story, for example... but don’t really dwell too much on the gory aftermath (the same chap comes back a little later with a bandage on his face with no real description of his wounds). 

Another specialty of the writer seems to be in making me reach for a dictionary every five minutes. Because the narrative deals with a lot of Western terms and iconography related to Texas and Mexico that I have just not come across before. So Vaqueros, Viejos and Wickiups were briefly on my radar, as were various native American plants and other terms for things which I’d never come across previously, mainly because I don’t think I’ve read any ‘wild west’ fiction before. 

Plus, I’d assumed the writer had made a mistake when an imposter posing as the reincarnated Montezuma, who is mind controlling various ‘good guys’ with peyote to help raise an army to wipe out the white man in America... fires four shots at an enemy with his derringer. However, there were indeed some four barrelled derringers around at the time. Something which I must have just plain forgot, since Sabata uses one in a number of his films. 

There is a slight continuity error, it seems to me, going through the stories, which are all set a little time after the previous adventure. The four tales are called Señorita Scorpion, The Brand Of Senorita Scorpion, Secret of Santiago and The Curse of Montezuma but, at the end of the third tale, after finding a hidden, secret gold mine with large bars of gold stored there, Elgera Douglas and her friends are rich. Why then, when her ranch is destroyed at the start of the fourth tale, does this leave her bankrupt... it kinda makes no sense, to tell the truth but, yeah, I liked these stories so much I’ll let that one slide. 

And I think that about does me with The Complete Adventures of Señorita Scorpion Volume 1, certainly enough to know that I’ll be buying both the second volume at some point soon plus another collection of stories from modern writers continuing her tales. If you are into the fast paced, rip roaring pulp fiction of the 1940s then you will probably have as much of a blast with this one as I did. This one may well be worth rounding up for your book case. 

The Millionaires Express

Off The Rails

The Millionaires Express -
Extended International Cut
aka Foo gwai lip che
Hong Kong 1986
Directed by Sammo Kam-Bo Hung
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

The Millionaires Express is directed by and also starring legendary Hong Kong comedy/action actor/director/producer Sammo Hung. He’s not the reason I’m watching this one though... it’s also the third film to star Cynthia Rothrock. Well, I say star but in truth she plays a minor role and really only has about three scenes in it. But this includes a nice fight scene with Hung himself at the end... more on that in a little while.

Okay, so the film is set in the early 20th Century and it’s a very convoluted plot. It’s not completely hard to follow but it has absolutely loads of characters and at least five different sets of interested parties (including large numbers such as the mountain bandits who Rothrock is a part of) intersecting on the path of a train... the titular Millionaires Express... in order to steal a map held by three Japanese samurai, which leads the way to the Terracotta Warriors ‘resting place’. And it’s quite convoluted and has lots of things going on. For instance, in the first 15 minutes of the film, Sammo Hung falls into an army trap in the snowy wastelands, dances in drag, escapes by using stolen explosives but then finds himself recaptured by a bounty hunter, who he escapes from with the two fighting and forming a giant rolling snowball... all this just to set up the quality of the kind of ‘honourable rogue’ Hung’s character is and also to highlight the bounty hunter before he returns for the final third of the film.

And from then on, the twists and turns of the narrative continue in a convoluted manner and, because it’s also a comedy, there’s lots of farce and physical humour throughout too. Not always so broad that it almost defeats the main narrative... such as it does in films like The Inspector Wears Skirts, to a certain extent (review coming soon)... but enough that you never get bored with the film at any rate.

Every character (and we’re well into double figures in main characters here folks... it seems to me), has their own story and stake in the narrative objective and the director manages to explore them all while still keeping a certain amount of action going. The setting, although its obviously supposed to be taking place in China, also borrows the tropes of the Western genre... in fact, the film very much seems to be taking some of its influences from Italian Westerns of the mid to late 1960s, it seems to me (which in turn looked back at Japanese chanbera, some of which looked back at the US westerns anyway, to an extent).

It’s a fun ride and Sammo Kam-Bo Hung does come across as a likeable chap, as he tries to redeem himself and make more profits for the town where he once lived. To this end, he manages to blow up the rails and stop the train just at the edge of his town so the place can profit from the many passengers for the duration of this unscheduled stop. And it’s here where the last 20 minutes or so of action take place, as all the main interested parties take place in a battle royale, with the camera cutting between various protagonists and antagonists for a very well choreographed and satisfying end game.

It’s in this final battle where Hung and Cynthia Rothrock have their final show down but, after the former has shown the latter his superior fighting skills, he lets her go and its revealed in the dialogue that she was once one of his followers... I think. It’s actually a bit reminiscent of that scene in Yojimbo where Toshiro Mifune lets a young thug live and escape rather than snuff out the life of someone who should never have got mixed up with the wrong people in the first place (even Tarantino had a moment clearly influenced by that scene in the House Of Blue Leaves section of Kill Bill Vol. 1). But Rothrock, who was suffering from a leg injury at the time of filming, certainly gives as good as she gets in the fighting stakes and she comes off pretty well here.

And there are so many other actors in this who turn up in a lot of these Hong Kong action films and are recognisable from a lot of them. I don’t know their names but, heck, there are a lot of ‘known’ actors in this and the whole film has the kind of epic feel of a Sergio Leone epic, for sure... when it’s not trying to be too slapstick, it has to be said. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Millionaires Express and I’ll certainly try to give this one another watch sometime in the future.

Outland

Io Pic

Outland
USA 1981 Directed by Peter Hyams
HMV/Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Full plot spoilers.

It’s been a while since I last saw Outland but I do try and watch it at least once on every home video format I eventually own it on... now it’s the turn of Blu Ray and, it has to be said, the film really hasn’t lost much of its power.

I first saw it at the cinema on the year of its release. I was 13 years old but the film was an AA rating, which was nobody under the age of 14... so I either lied about my age by a year or just wasn’t challenged on the door (I forget which).

The film is set on Io, the third largest moon of the five surrounding Jupiter, on a titanium mining colony run by Con-Am. Sean Connery plays the new marshal of the colony, Marshal O’Niel. He’s only been there a couple of weeks but his wife has had enough of being sent from one grubby outpost to the next and so she takes their son and goes to the nearest space station, waiting for a flight back to Earth (their son has never seen the planet he reads about in books). However, O’Neil can’t join them for now because there’s something bad happening at the mining colony and he’s onto something which is killing people. People are doing things like uncoupling their space suits while out on the surface (we watch in graphic detail as their blood boils and their heads explode as the air and organs inside fight to get out... at least, I’m guessing that’s the scientific idea behind those kinds of deaths... maybe they just look cool), travelling down to the outside in the lifts without any suit at all and just generally going mad.

Teaming up with Dr. Lazarus, played by the incomparable Frances Sternhagen, he discovers that these psychotic episodes went up hugely after the arrival of the branch director. So he starts digging and soon uncovers a bunch of people supplying drugs to increase manpower within the mining community, which also eventually makes their customers psychotic... and it all points back to the company, or at least the branch manager, played by Peter Boyle. However, after O’Neil finds and destroys a shipment of drugs, hit men are sent to kill him, arriving on the next shuttle. And, of course, nobody really wants to help him defend himself from these killers.

Okay, so when I was a kid there were two pieces of conventional wisdom about this film which I took with a grain of salt but do still acknowledge that there is something to them. Firstly that this is a remake of High Noon (reviewed here). Well, of course the last 25 minutes, where O’Neil’s potential allies abandon him to his fate and he has to take on the killers alone (more or less), is absolutely an homage to High Noon but, the film is not a complete remake because High Noon was all about that right from the start of the movie. The first two thirds of Outland, however, are a strong police procedural thriller, which happens to take place on a moon of Jupiter. It’s definitely got its own vibe going and it does what it does very successfully.

The other bit of conventional wisdom at the time of its release... and I remember reading this phrase at the time in Film Review, the ABC cinema chain’s monthly magazine that they sold in the kiosk... was that it’s a ‘poor man’s Alien’. Nope. Neither film has much in common other than the one huge influence of Alien (on pretty much everything at the time) of the lived-in, aged up sets with a kind of built in obsolescence. So yeah, it’s certainly gone down that route but, no, it’s a ‘poor man’s’ nothing.

What it is, is a top notch thriller with brilliant performances by both Connery and Sternhagen (who have remarkable chemistry together... how come these two weren’t teamed up in another film?) backed up by a, perhaps slightly simple but certainly solid story and what were, for the time, state-of-the-art special effects... which generally have, for the most part, aged well and don’t look too clunky on the Blu Ray format. What ages the film most is the nature of the computer graphics on the screens but, like a lot of speculative movie fiction, if the film makers had guessed how advanced things have gotten by today, then the films would have lacked credibility for the audiences of the time, for sure. I especially like the interactive, screen golf game that Peter Boyle’s character plays in his apartment.

And, added to this, it’s all supported by a really great score by the fabulous Jerry Goldsmith. He was in his phase where he was experimenting with very subtle electronic augmentation to the orchestra and it’s a truly wonderful score, mixing the dense atmospheric cues of the depressing environment the miners work in with some wonderful action cues which never let the toes stop tapping (I still listen to it on my bus journey home some evenings).

So that’s me on Outland. One of the great science fiction movies of the early 1980s and some of the best of cinema of that era, for sure. Definitely worth checking out if you’ve never seen it and especially if you like police procedural thrillers. 

Zorro’s Black Whip

 

Whipping Yarns

Zorro’s Black Whip
Directed by Spencer Gordon
and Wallace Grissell
Republic Pictures
Elstree Studios DVD Region 2
Double volume, six episodes on each.

Warning: Some spoilers.

Zorro’s Black Whip is a 1944 Western theatrical serial put out by Republic Pictures, one of their many chapter plays of this period. Although male co-star and surrogate damsel in distress George G Lewis somehow gets top billing as government agent Vic Gordon, the star of the show here is Linda Sterling who plays Barbara Meredith... who, after her brother, the crime fighting ‘Black Whip’ is shot and killed in the first episode, takes up his mantle to continue the legend of... The Black Whip.

Not Zorro’s Black Whip though... as the title would misleadingly have you believe...

Okay, here’s the thing. Zorro’s Black Whip and its crime fighting leading lady has absolutely nothing to do with Zorro in any way, shape or form whatsoever. It’s not set in Spain (the setting is the Old West), there’s no sword play and Zorro is not mentioned one single time throughout the whole serial. Except in the opening credits of each chapter where, in addition to his name bizarrely being on the title, he is also credited as a character to his original creator. But the actual character of The Black Whip in the story has nothing to do with Zorro except... okay, she kinda dresses like him with the black outfit, hat and mask (plus the whip, obviously).

So I don’t know what’s really going on here. It could have been that the producers were too frightened by the similarity of the dress of the character (which probably was just an old recycled Zorro costume) that they thought they should probably give the creator a credit and royalties rather than have to duck a legal fee. Or, perhaps, they were playing the old bandwagon game and riding the coat tails of the popular character. Certainly, you see this done time and time again in the history of cinema, with the Italians being especially good at providing ‘inspired’ rip off non-sequels under the guise of actually being sequels... such as the gazillions of Django movies made with very few of them actually being sequels and not all of them featuring a character with the name Django... for example. I don’t remember seeing it done in the US of A like this though but, perhaps I’m less familiar with the period so, yeah, there were The Creeper movies, I guess, inspired by Rondo Hatton’s ill fated character in a Sherlock Holmes movie (more on that when I put the review of that movie up on this site... hopefully this year, folks). If you know of any other USA knock offs cashing in on famous characters in their titles without actually including that same character, please drop me the info on the comments section below this review.

The story is about a corrupt governor in the sleepy town of Idaho, where they are about to have elections to find out if the people want to make it a state of the union... which goes against this particular high up and less than outstanding citizen’s plans. So he has his thugs go after anything which will swing the vote in the favour of becoming a state and it’s up to The Black Whip to stop all the trouble and give the people a chance to choose for themselves, to go forward into democracy... blazing away for justice with her guns and her trusty whip. Not to mention her horse who, in the denouement of the final episode, saves her life by stomping her main antagonist to death.

Okay, so, that established, this one is a typical Republic serial but with a female lead... kinda. She does fine in the action scenes but George G. Lewis gets a huge hunk of screen time too, mostly so he can be set up to be knocked unconscious or held prisoner in order for Linda Sterling to suit up and rescue him a little later. It’s fast and furious in the way that only the cheaply made Republic serials could be. Universal, Columbia and Fox all have their little identifying features which mark them out as serials coming from a particular stable and, with Republic, it was minimum of plot and characterisation and plenty of action. When I started watching this one with my dad and it was clear the first of many fist fights was about to take place, I reminded him that this was a Republic serial so, everything you see in the room of the fight... every piece of furniture or prop... was going to get broken over someone’s head or flung around and, sure enough, within a few minutes, the room was a total wreck. I’d hate to be the cleaner for a character who lived inside a Republic branded serial, for sure.

And yeah, by this point in Republic’s output, they’d got it down to a fine art... there’s ample chasing, fist fighting and shooting here. In fact, these guns they’re using are less like six shooters and more like one hundred and thirty six shooters. Don’t start counting the bullets because they hardly ever run out of shots... except when it’s dramatically pertinent for them to do so, in order for somebody to be captured by the opposition. Also, these people including the title character, are waving their pistols off dramatically and firing more into the air than anything else, it seems to me. Although, there are some wonderful stunts such as one early on where The Black Whip rolls herself down the slope of a cabin roof, arms by her sides and then lands on her horse and rides it off... nice stuff.

The dialogue is particularly stripped down on this one. Barbara Meredith’s real job is to run the town newspaper, which she does with the aid of her press room guy, Lucien Littlefield as the aptly named ‘Tenpoint’ Jackson. There’s a few comedy scenes with him doing a cut rate Gabby Hayes style comedy scene here and there but, it’s all about the action with just a few lines of dialogue to explain what’s happening, delivered by various characters, before the next action scene is upon us. It gets to the point in the final episode where The Black Whip knows that the masked villain has a welt from her whip on his wrist... so all she and Vic Gordon have to do is go back to town to the committee and see which one of them has the wound which will reveal who the enemy ring leader is. However, rather than have the usual reveal scene, we then just get a newspaper headline summarising that the villain’s identity was uncovered but he escaped, all in order to make way very quickly for the final gun battle where the heroine tracks him down again.

All in all, though, the serial delivers mostly what you’re expecting from it (except Zorro, obviously) and I have to say that Zorro’s Black Whip is a pretty entertaining entry in the pantheon of Republic serials of the time... if you’re not expecting more than lots of punching, shooting and galloping, that is. Eagle eyed viewers will spot one of the committee members in a few episodes being played by none other than John Hamilton, who would of course go on to play Perry White opposite George Reeves in The Adventures Of Superman TV show in the 1950s.

The Falcon Out West

Ranching Out

The Falcon Out West
USA 1943
Directed by William Clemens
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

The next in the series of The Falcon films, following The Falcon And The Co-Eds (reviewed here), starring Tom Conway as Tom Lawrence, sees the titular character, spreading his metaphorical wings and flying further afield, as the title suggests, in The Falcon Out West. And, once again, it’s very much a change of pace for the detective as he finds himself caught up in a plot which shifts to a standard Western movie, along with horse riding, gun play, cowboys and even a few Indians.

The Falcon attends a night club party, as an observer from another table, for a Texan who is due to be travelling back that night with his new fiance, who he plans to be marrying very soon. Tom Lawrence is there because the gentleman in question’s ex-wife suspects the new fiance is there purely for his money and not his heart. The Falcon declines the case until, before his and all the other guests’ very eyes, the Texan drops dead from a rattlesnake bite. Obviously, though, there are no rattlers to be found on site and things look fairly peculiar. The police, in the form of the series regulars Cliff Clark as Inspector Donovan and his flat foot sidekick Edward Gargan, playing Detective Bates, show up and start questioning people. While this is going on, The Falcon notices the fiance, played by Carole Gallagher, slipping away with one of the railway tickets... so he steals the other train ticket and travels back to the Texan’s ranch with her. When they get there the next day, her lawyer plus Donovan and Bates turn up and... all five of them take a coach to her ranch to stay, while they find out what’s at the bottom of the murder.

The stage goes out of control when a few shots are fired at it but they are saved by another of the female leads, played by Barbara Hale doing her best Roy Rogers impression. There’s another murder, a warning to The Falcon in the form of a death threat scalp held in place on his door with an evil looking blade, horse chases, attempts on various people’s lives and, much as I’d suspected, a special ring with two retractable snake fangs which hold enough venom for three. It’s  the usual shenanigans, which are always usually good enough, spiced up with cowboys and cowgirls and a nice ending where it turns out the very first person suspected by the police is actually the real culprit after all.

Points of interest might include a nice line of dialogue when someone is described as a good driver of the out of control stagecoach, when The Falcon quips that they’re from “the Ben Hur school of driving.” Of course this was in reference to the famous chariot race in Ben Hur but, at the time this film was made, which predates the famous Charlton Heston version by some years, the most recent version was the silent version from 18 years before this film (which I reviewed here)... so it’s interesting that this particular version was still very much in the public consciousness  and that the writers could get away with writing throwaway one liners about it like this.

Since the whole story is set, for the most part (barring the odd chase scene or two and the opening sequence), on two ranches... and since the police have travelled down to be on the scene... Clark and Gargan have much more to do here than they do in their usual Falcon series appearances, although their regular running comical joke, sadly doesn’t make a reappearance here. Alas, this was to be the last appearance of these two characters, who bow out of the series at this point. I can’t remember back to the last time I watched these (in the early 1980s) as to whether they were replaced by regular characters or different equivalents in each film but there were five more of these films after this one so, I’ll let you know.

In the last review, for The Falcon And The Co-Eds, I mentioned that the regular feature of The Falcon being called to another case might actually get a follow through on this movie. I was basing that on what I read on the IMDB and, once again, the IMDB totally let me down. It doesn’t follow the last one at all. This one has another ending which sees The Falcon taking a train to Havana at the urge of another young lady. Well, I’m guessing it won’t tie up with the next film in the series either, which is called The Falcon In Mexico but, well, I’ll just have to wait and see. The Falcon Out West is another fine film in the series but I wouldn’t call this one a jumping on point in any way because, well, it’s not the lead’s usual setting and so has a slightly different flavour than the regular capers. It’s also not nearly as entertaining as the previous film but, still, an enjoyable watch and I’m looking forward to where they go next.

The Mandalorian Series 2

Bounty Lines

The Mandalorian Series 2
2020 USA Created by Jon Favreau
Eight episodes.

Warning: Loads of big spoilers.

Well... I’ve been holding off from writing this review for a week or so* because... Series 2 of The Mandalorian was okay. And that’s all. And that’s pretty much the problem here. When I was a kid and later a teenager, Star Wars was a hallmark for something really special (even the two not so good movies, Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith). If there was a new piece of the franchise coming then it was something to be looked forward to. It was something to set your sights on to get you through the year. And then George Lucas sold it to Disney. For, I’m sure, the best of intentions actually but, well, here we are.

The Disney treadmill got under way with a good start on The Force Awakens but then managed to turn out the somewhat ‘out of synch in terms of continuity’ Rogue One and the disastrous The Last Jedi (which looked really great but completely managed to screw the franchise up completely). When we got to the Star Wars film which did capture a lot of the things which made the originals special without being too ‘in awe’ of the lineage, Solo, the film under performed at the box office... something I personally believe was solely to do with stepped up bad timing and the lack of studio recognition as to how badly people thought previous release was (The Last Jedi). The last movie, The Rise Of Skywalker was pretty good but it spent most of it’s time trying to take away the bad taste of The Last Jedi to the point where it just seemed to jump the shark a little and swerve in a bit of the wrong direction.

And then there’s The Mandalorian. The first season followed it’s old TV western formula and managed to have some really good episodes, tempered with some less than stellar ones. Series Two is, I have to say, more consistent in its tone but, alas, somewhat straddles the line between great and terrible and seems, I dunno, just a little bland and mediocre. It’s a nice thing to watch and that’s no bad thing... but it’s not a great thing to watch, I’m sad to say.

The two main highlights which actually got me bothering to tune into this thing again were the return of two key characters from the main film franchise... Bobba Fett and Luke Skywalker. Alas, although Bobba Fett was played by the actor Temuera Morrison, the person who played Bobba’s father Jango Fett in the aforementioned Attack Of The Clones, he doesn’t make too much of an impact here. Granted, he elevates a couple of the episodes with his presence but ultimately, doesn’t serve much purpose other than to draw the audience interest from the original movies and to have a post credits sequence at the end of the last episode where he sets up a new Bobba Fett TV show.

His sudden reappearance from the dead is never really explained (I think it might have been already explained in some cartoons) and, due to some fast thinking from the writers in terms of the way the story goes in the last episode, he never gets to meet Luke Skywalker so Luke can kick his backside for what he did to Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. I’m guessing that would have taken too long out of an episode to write in and so, yeah, they don’t even try to cater for that confrontation.

And as for Luke Skywalker... well. I’ve got a lot of respect for Mark Hamill but this is the worst return of the jedi I could have imagined. They keep his black hood up when he’s lightsabering to death a new squad of battle droids which, frankly, look like they’ve been cribbed from Hammerstein wearing his old war head from The A.B.C Warriors strip in 2000AD comic. Presumably this is to give the effects team less CGI because, when he does reveal his face, they’ve used that technique which is sometimes successful and sometimes not, of making people look like they did decades ago. Alas, here it just looked as fake as the CGI generated Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia from Rogue One. Also, despite ‘The Child’ being an obvious Force user, Luke just seemed somewhat out of place in the world of The Mandalorian, truth be told. At least that’s how it felt to me.

Pedro Pascal and his semi-regular companions were all on top form again but even special guest appearances such as Rosario Dawson and Katee Sackhoff, two very fine actresses, didn’t really distract from the ‘lack of special’. It was a nice and somewhat entertaining show, for sure but... yeah, it feels like Star Wars has really lost its magic since the Disney deal and I do believe that they are going to disprove the old adage “nothing succeeds like excess” next year with a whole host of Star Wars TV shows and another movie which, I suspect, will dilute the brand down even more. I’m trying to stay positive here because Star Wars has been in my life since I was nine years old, when I first saw the original movie in cinemas at the tail end of 1977 but, yeah, it feels like its almost becoming a chore to watch, in some ways. And now that The Child, aka Grogu, looks like he’s departed the series for good (possibly to be slaughtered by Kylo Wren in a decade or so after the setting of this show), it seems to me that the powers that control the current version of the Star Wars universe may be pushing their luck a bit if they are thinking of continuing this for a third season. I guess we’ll see what happens but, believe me, I am sorry I couldn’t be more positive about this latest show. But it just feels like more counterfeit Star Wars to me.

*At time of writing, last year sometime. Sorry, if I could get more excited about it I’d have got it up sooner.

Jessi's Girls

Stormin’ Mormon

Jessi's Girls
(aka Wanted Women)
USA 1975
Directed by Al Adamson
Manson International/
Severin Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Some spoilers within.

You know, as I rummage my way through Severin’s beautiful Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection, I’ll occasionally come across a hidden jewel. For every terrible Brain of Blood (reviewed here), Blood Of Dracula’s Castle (reviewed here) or Horror Of The Blood Monsters (reviewed here), there’s an unpolished gem of a movie such as Psycho-A-Go-Go (reviewed here), Five Bloody Graves (reviewed here) or The Fakers (Smashing The Crime Syndicate, reviewed here). Jessi’s Girls is one such precious stone of a movie. I mean, sure, it’s ragged around the edges... this is an Al Adamson film after all but, it’s engaging and pacey and makes for a good evening’s entertainment, for sure.

Now, I’ve not seen Bad Girls (got the Goldsmith score though, so I should get around to rectifying that situation in the near future, I guess) but, from the looks of the plot outline, it doesn’t stray too far from this rape/revenge western and I can’t help but think the writers/producers might have had the memory of this one in mind when they went forward on that movie.

After a not too inspiring opening title shot of Jessi’s Girls riding the open country, Adamson gets straight down to the plot when we meet the young, mormon couple of Jessi (played brilliantly by Sondra Currie) and her husband, travelling on their lonesome in their covered wagon. As they set up camp and try to get a fire going, we are treated to Jessi bathing naked by a waterfall and then doing sexy things with her main man before they are approached by the old timey Western equivalent of a thuggish, Al Adamson style motorcycle gang (but, you know, on horses).

In a particularly unpleasant sequence, the husband is tied up while the seven or so bandits take turns raping Jessi. They then shoot both Jessi and he husband dead and go off on their merry way. But what’s this? Jessi’s still alive after receiving the wound in her shoulder and, after digging the bullet out with her hot dagger (bizarrely, the shell is still in its casing which, according to IMDB... and presumably history... is not the kind of bullet wound you would get in the Old West), she starts walking her way out of the desert until she comes across a homestead and, in her primitive and brutalised state, she is befriended by the grizzly guy living there, who teaches her how to shoot so she can pursue the filthy scoundrels. He even gives her his shotgun, which he calls ‘Judy the equaliser’.

Meanwhile, as Jessi is being taught good shooting and such and such by her new ‘vengeance coach’, Adamson cross cuts the footage with three other events to set up the other members of... Jessi’s Girls.

First up we have wanted outlaw Rachel McBride played by Jennifer Bishop, riding in the desert with her somewhat damaged horse. A marshal, called Clay, catches up with her and takes her in. It’s at this point for the sake of not driving myself mad, that I have to point out that Clay is referred to by other characters as either ‘Marshal’, ‘Sheriff’ or ‘Deputy’ quite randomly throughout the entire running time of the movie. I don’t know why but I can only guess that the script kept changing or they were shooting different revisions each day and so his character, who is quite definitely a lawman (of sorts) has a kind of vague title. He does seem to be running things though so, for this review, I’ll just continue to refer to him as... Marshal Clay.

Next up we have prostitute Claire (or sometimes Clara, depending on what script was being read on the day, I suspect), who is played here by Al Adamson’s wife, Regina Carrol. For some reason, she starts shooting at a client after a good night’s sleep (portrayed by Hugh Warden, the same guy who played the heart attack client in Girls For Rent, reviewed here) and so Marshal Clay next arrests her.

Finally, we have Ellyn Stern as Kana, who gets left behind by her gang during a bank robbery, by the same bunch of bandits who attacked Jessi and her man at the start. So, of course, Clay arrests her too and puts her in a jail cell with the other two girls, ready to take them on the long, cross country trip to ‘territorial prison’ the next day.

And, naturally, the next day when he and a deputy (who also refers to him as deputy?) are trying to transfer the girls, it’s also Jessi’s first day of riding around, trying to catch up with the gang what ‘done her man in!’ She kills the deputy, wounds Clay and recruits the girls, grabbing the marshal and taking him with them for a bit so she can dress his wounds and 'sex him up for information' as to where the infamous gang hide out... which is apparently a ghost town feared by lawman and bounty hunters alike at Copper Creek. She lets Clay escape and the girls start off on their way there in pursuit of both justice and, also, the money from a recent bank robbery... the slight twist being that the robbery was the same one that Kana was at, who is the main squeeze of the gang’s leader.

After a fair amount of sexing, rogue bandit/indian killing and various other exploitation elements such as a fist fight between Kana and Claire, which is actually quite well staged and has some satisfying sound effects... we end up with the surviving three girls all arriving independently at Copper Creek for the big showdown. At the end of the confrontation it’s only Jessi and Clay, who has been following the trail of corpses left in the gal’s wake, to gun it out because... Clay just wants the bounty on the gang all to himself. The last shot is a humdinger and makes a nice, abrupt ending to the movie and, seriously, I would have easily watched a sequel to this one if somebody had thought to make one.

It does look rough and ready, for sure and, yeah, the cinematography isn’t monumentally stylish (although the fastly edited, frenetic hand held stuff in the fistfight I mentioned earlier gives a nice, kinetic feel to proceedings). But it does have a bunch of good performances at its heart which elevates things past the limitations of the script and the budget, with Sondra Currie being especially good in this movie, holding things together and looking, in my eyes at least, like a young Julianne Moore. The scene where she is raped is something she’s especially good in, as you see her eyes deaden to her plight as she loses her innocence and this intensity informs her fierce performance for the rest of the picture.

Also, the stunt work in that final gun battle, which includes Claire’s memorable last words as she is shot down, “It still beats whoring for a living!”, is actually pretty good. Some of these guys take some pretty hard and spectacular falls and I was especially impressed when Jessi does the old spaghetti western gag of lighting sticks of dynamite with her cheroot and blowing up a big wooden tower with a stuntman still standing on top of it... falling to earth midst the splintering wood fragments. Some nice action which, I dunno, feels kind of raw in that good way that you think, maybe some of today’s action directors could learn a thing or two from, by looking at movies like this once in a while.

So there you have it, Jessi’s Girls is definitely an Al Adamson diamond in the rough and I’d have no qualms about recommending it to anyone. I absolutely loved it and will watch it again no question, if I don’t run out of time first. If you’re going to do a rape/revenge Western then this is definitely the way to do it.

Maverick (1994)

 

Place Your Brets

Maverick
USA 1994 Directed by Richard Donner
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: This review contains a big
spoiler about a character from the outset.

Maverick was a big budget reboot, by director Richard Donner and actor Mel Gibson (the director/actor team of Lethal Weapon fame) of the classic James Garner small screen character of Bret Maverick, who had been in many iterations of the show (you can read my reviews of the various variants of Maverick here). And it’s kind of open to interpretation to just who Gibson is playing in this one as he’s called Bret Maverick and, just like Garner used to, provides a voice over narrative as he goes along on his adventure... although I could have honestly done without the added swearing here because it didn’t seem quite right sitting in the Maverick universe but, hey ho, I guess the writers maybe imagined it was edgy or something.

The thing is, though, James Garner also plays a major role in the movie, as a Marshall called Zane Cooper, which I’m assuming is an homage to the two Western writers Zane Grey and James Fenimore Cooper. However, at the end of the film he is revealed to also be a Maverick, running an elaborate con with his son, Bret. Now, you can either take that as he’s playing Pappy (as he did once in the original show where he played both father and son in one episode) and Gibson is the original Bret or, like me, despite the lack of timing continuity between pretty much every iteration of the show in various forms, you can interpret it as he’s still playing Bret Maverick and also called his son the same name. Either way, this is a fairly affectionate nod to the original show (asides from the swearing) and is a nice addition to the original stories.

It has a stellar cast such as Jodie Foster as the main romantic lead (another con woman and this is not unusual for what would have been an episode of Maverick), Alfred Molina as a villain and James Coburn in another prominent role in the last third of the movie. There are also a lot of old time cowboy show (and Maverick show) cameo appearances by various actors such as Leo Gordon (Big Mike in the original show and also one of the original series' writers) and Doug McLure, not to mention lots of uncredited cameos too, including Garner’s brother turning up once again, plus some country and western singers too, for some reason.

One cameo moment is wonderful when Danny Glover, Gibson’s co-star from the Lethal Weapon movies, comes face to face with Gibson while robbing a bank... and the music suddenly goes into a dead-on parody of Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton’s score for the Lethal Weapon films. That’s very nicely done.

Another great uncredited cameo, larger but still short, is the inclusion of a character played by Margot Kidder. Of course, Kidder also played James Garner’s regular love interest in his post-Maverick TV show Nichols (which I reviewed here) and it’s nice to see the two sharing the screen together again (come to think of it, she also worked for this particular director in her most famous role as Lois Lane in Superman The Movie and its sequels).

And, getting back to the musical cameos... Randy Newman’s score for the film incorporates a heroic melody line for Gibson’s Bret character that is almost, but not quite, an instrumental version of the shows original theme and song. It’s like he’s been asked to do it straight but delete one note and change two others and I can’t quite understand why because, well, Warners would surely have owned the rights to the music from the original show. Maybe, going with the idea that this was actually the original Bret Maverick’s son, the composer decided to make it a variant, possibly intending to bring the full version of Garner’s theme back later for... the big reveal. That doesn’t happen but, it’s quite close and fans of the old show will certainly hear the old theme in it when Gibson does anything heroic here.

And it’s a nice film with some interesting scenes, nice action and a real suspenseful finish to the big poker game near the end of the movie. It’s also very humorous, in exactly the way the original show was although, certainly Gibson’s young Bret is more willing to pull his guns out, it seems, than the original character was. There’s a big problem with the film though... and I’m not just talking about the waterwheel on the ferry changing speeds between long shot and close up in one scene either...

I’m sure the various plot twists... Jodie Foster actually after Maverick’s money whenever she can thieve it, the James Garner reveal, the Indian who turns out to be an old pal of Bret... would have seemed fresh or at least unpredictable to the younger segment of the audience who were unfamiliar with any of the various versions of the show over the years. Old hands at Bret’s game though, through Garner’s always pitch perfect and immensely entertaining portrayal, will see a lot of the reveals coming way before they happen because they’ve become almost cliché by this point in the franchise. So, yeah, I think this movie appeals to two different audiences but, luckily, it holds it own quite well and at least meets the expectations of an older and more familiar crowd.

Maverick, the movie version, is a real hoot, to be sure and definitely one to watch. It doesn’t come close, it has to be said, to many of the earlier versions of the character but, that’s okay, Gibson does well in the part, as does Foster and they’re both helped out tremendously, in my opinion, by the presence of James Garner returning, effectively, to his roots here. A lovely, romantic Western flavoured with just a favourable dash of its powerful legacy of ingredients. One to watch.

Nichols

 

Sans Sheriff

Nichols
Airdate: September 1971 - April 1972
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD 24 Episodes

Warning: Some last episode spoilers.

Nichols was a one season TV series featuring James Garner as, arguably, the titular character (give me a sec, I’ll get back to that soon). It’s said the show struggled because it wasn’t just some kind of a rehash of his old Maverick character (which, admittedly, was amazing, I review various TV iterations of it here) with some new paint slapped on. Apparently the ratings were bad although, from what I can make out, a lot of people including Garner himself loved the show and, honestly, once it was cancelled, none of the programmes shown on the same channel from the following year did as well as Nichols so, yeah, they should have renewed it, I think.

The series remains a footnote in the annals of television history but it certainly shouldn’t be and perhaps that’s why there’s even a DVD edition of it. The show was certainly an unusual one and a cut above a lot of stuff that was airing at the time (and most stuff airing these days, to be fair).

Nichols is set in that transitionary period in the early 1900s when the Old West was just starting to get modernised and it was half in/half out of the barbaric and violent times of confrontation which delineated the two periods, to a certain extent. So it’s set in a small town where everyone carries their six shooter and goes to the local saloon for a drink but, at the same time, one of the main characters has a car and there are even airplanes featured in two episodes. Garner himself is more often than not on an early Harley Davison motor cycle rather than a traditional horse.

It starred James Garner as Nichols, who was a long serving soldier in the cavalry but who didn’t really like guns all that much and preferred to shy away from them due to the old truth that they tend to place you in more danger if you are carrying one. He was a good soldier but, at the start of the first episode, he sees a demonstration of a new type of Gatling gun which does untold damage to whatever it’s aimed at and, that’s enough for Nichols, he quits being a soldier and finally returns to his home town of... Nichols.

Yeah, okay, so the title of the show could be the character name and could be the name of the town, which is named after Nichol’s family who started the community many years before. However, when he gets back home, he finds his parents dead and his land grabbed. He no longer has ‘legal’ entitlement to his former home and property but, during the course of the first episode, the town’s matriarch Ma Ketcham, played superbly by Neva Patterson, cons Nichols into taking the sheriff’s job for the town. Patterson is one of a few, highly talented cast members who had regular recurring roles on the show.

The pick of the bunch for my money would be a pre-Superman Margot Kidder as the astonishingly beautiful Ruth, Nichol’s sometimes girlfriend and confidant. She actually does an amazing job in this and it’s the most sympathetic character I’ve seen her play. Then we have future The Rockford Files and Bret Maverick co-star Stuart Margolin as the slobby, cowardly deputy Mitch. Margolin would be alongside Garner often in the course of his television career and also went on to become a very good TV director with many Emmy award nominations to his name. And then there’s the local bully and half-villain, half ally character of Ketch, Ma Ketcham’s disappointing son, played by John Beck. Beck is a very under appreciated actor in my book, who readers might best know from his roles as Moonpie in Rollerball (reviewed here) and as one of the rebels in Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Beck would also star in two episodes as pilot Orv, who looks no different from Ketch and the only eyebrows raised is when people say he looks like someone back in the town of Nichols. Go figure.

And yeah, it was a really unusual programme, mostly because it’s really well written and the plots don’t go anywhere near where you think they are going at the start of an episode. For the most part these are not the formulaic plots you would know from their appearances in various guises on other shows and quite often the obvious conclusion to the story comes half way through... and then it goes off on another tangent. There’s even, for instance, a story where the majority of it depict how Nichols and a young man are trying to figure out how to get a horse out of a basement they’ve been trapped in after an earthquake in a neighbouring town, without getting shot up by the local ruffians.

The pacing is gentle, a little like Maverick... but no less intriguing and it’s probably the most entertaining show that got aired that year. And it’s a shock somewhat when, presumably due to the pending cancellation, the writers decided to retool the show and make it into something that could be perceived as a more traditional show worth renewing. So something happens in the last episode that changes things slightly but at the same time, serves as a nice ending to the show if it didn’t get picked up again (which it obviously didn’t).

A shock because, in the last episode, before the pre-credits sequence is even done, Nichols is shot dead by a hoodlum in cold blood. After the credits of a smiling James Garner, we are at the wake in the local saloon and in walks... Nichols. Except it’s Nichol’s previously unheard of older brother, played also by James Garner and looking exactly the same apart from a big black moustache. He spends the last episode ensuring his brother’s killers are brought to justice and he’s offered the job of sheriff by Ma Ketcham at the end. He declines but says he might be back (so he could take over if a second series was requested) but... as it is he rides out of town at the end on his brother’s motorbike, passing a street sign reading ‘You are now leaving Nichols.’ It’s a lovely ending but it sure is a shame that the character I grew to love over the previous 23 episodes was buried in a hole in the ground before the opening credits were even rolling. However, it does give the show a sense of closure and that’s admittedly a lot more than most shows get.

Nichols is well worth a watch if you’re an admirer of the great James Garner and the ensemble cast do an amazing job, rising to the high quality of the writing and lifting it somewhat above the average TV fodder of the time. This might possibly rank somewhere in my top twenty best TV shows and it’s certainly something some of you might want to check out, I think.

Maverick (TV shows)

Poker Hunters

Maverick
Airdate: From September 1957
to  July 1962 (Five series)

The New Maverick
(TV Pilot for Young Maverick)
Airdate: 1978

Young Maverick
Airdate: 1979 (8 episodes)

Bret Maverick
Airdate: 1981 - 1982 (One series)

All on Warner Brothers Region 1 DVDs
and Warner Archives Region 1 DVDRs

Maverick was a show I heard about constantly when I was a kid, as my dad used to often talk about it and how he used to watch it with his dad. In the late 1970s/early 80s, I got a brief taste of the later shows trying to cash in on the success of the original, the role which made James Garner a household name and, as far as I can understand, paved his way to many film roles and a successful Hollywood career. So I was pleased when, a decade or so ago, the originals started being released on US Region 1 DVDs. I got these to watch with my dad which we did, sporadically over the years... and we’ve just finished revisiting them.

Now, I’ll say up front that my dad was only interested in the James Garner episodes so, of the original series, we’ve only watched the first three seasons (which feature James Garner and Jack Kelly alternatively playing one of the Maverick brothers... sometimes they would team up). After Garner walked on the show due to, from what I can gather, being treated poorly and underhandedly by Warner Brothers, one third series episode starring both Garner and Kelly was held over to the fourth season (an episode we also watched). So, in the first three series, James Garner played Bret Maverick and Jack Kelly played Bart Maverick. After Garner left, Kelly stayed on for a while and Roger Moore took over alternate weeks as cousin Beau Maverick. Another brother, Brent Maverick, also jumped into the show, played by Robert Colbert who was presumably chosen for his physical resemblance to Garner. I’ve not, at time of writing, seen any of the Moore or Colbert episodes but I have seen the entirety of the first three seasons.

And it was a great show. Every week, one of the Mavericks would enter one town or another in the old west and make their way as a professional gambler, sometimes in the money but more often than not out of it, sometimes having to rely on the very last 1000 dollar note which they kept pinned to the inside of their jackets as a last ditch stake. The shows were not often about gambling on its own but that would more likely become a sub plot or motivation for one or other of the characters to get involved with some scheme or con or caper or what have you. Bret and Bart would rarely resort to gunplay, rather choosing to back away from a fight (or run quickly in the opposite direction) but they could be handy with the Derringers hidden in their sleeves if things got a little too hairy.

It’s a gentle show and doesn’t push violence at all and, in this way perhaps, it marked itself as something much different to the many other westerns carving a name for themselves on the American airwaves in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It also had a host of both well known guest stars such as John Carradine, Buddy Ebsen and future uber producer Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (popping up every now and again as Dandy Jim Buckley)... not to mention a load of appearances by ‘current nobody/future somebody’ actors such as Joel Gray, Lee Van Cleef, Clint Eastwood, Adam West and Robert Redford... starting out in their first tentative steps in Hollywoodland.

It was great fun while it lasted and pretty much every episode, while devilishly entertaining, also had a strong moral heart at the centre of the story. And, although my dad wasn’t too keen on him, I even liked the Jack Kelly ones too. He was the more romantic Maverick and also got himself into as much trouble as James Garner’s iteration of the role. Perhaps the show was at its most funniest in the two or three times per series when both Bret and Bart would team up and carry a story together... more often than not having them setting up an elaborate con in the name of justice when the two shared an episode.

After series five (a series which was half repeats of previous Garner episodes plundered from earlier seasons, by all accounts), the show was cancelled and Bret and Bart didn’t return again until the TV movie The New Maverick in 1978. This was an uninspired but quite watchable and entertaining movie which had Garner returning as Bret to work the angles on a new caper and newcomer Charles Frank as Ben Maverick, the son of Roger Moore’s cousin Beau. Since the ‘old west’ didn’t last that long as a period of time, I don’t know how you could have multiple generations of Mavericks but who am I to argue. Frank, who I also saw playing a nazi spy in two episodes of Wonder Woman prior to this, does alright in the role and has a certain charm of his own. Susan Blanchard also appeared in both this pilot and the subsequent spin off series, Young Maverick and, it has to be said, this wide eyed wonder of an actress adds a certain entertainment value playing a kind of broad comedy partner to Frank’s more ‘straight up’ Maverick. The chemistry between them is kinda electrical and this might explain why, in real life, they are also husband and wife. Jack Kelly comes into the movie for the last ten minutes or so and its nice to have Bret and Bart playing opposite each other again.

Young Maverick, continuing on from that TV movie, only ran for eight episodes and, while we saw all eight over here in the UK at the time, only the first six were shown in the US before it was cancelled. This was nowhere near as fun as the original James Garner shows but it certainly has its moments and I honestly don’t know why it was cancelled so quickly. The show used a rearranged version of the old theme tune/song from the original show and that was a nice touch. Garner is said to be, on pretty much every internet reference to the show I can find, in a cameo in the first episode but that information is false. Bret is name checked but never actually turns up in the regular series (although I’m sure there must have been plans for him to cameo if it had turned into a longer show). It also, in its few episodes, gets a number of ‘early career appearances’ from well known actors today such a young James Woods (playing a bad guy and bad poker player, obviously) and a not quite ‘seasoned veteran’ appearance by Harry Dean Stanton as a professional gunfighter in one episode. There’s also a double episode which was obviously meant to start the series off (because of the relationship between Frank and Blanchard’s characters) and act as a second pilot but this is just plonked into the middle of the show with no rhyme or reason. Blanchard’s character is actually unnecessary as a regular and each episode seems to have the two bizarrely just running into each other in a new town by coincidence... yeah, that’s pretty bad writing just there. However, I was sad to see the show just disappear off the airwaves at the time with no warning and remember eagerly awaiting its return.

What we got instead, two years later, was James Garner’s triumphant return to the role of Bret in the one and only season of Bret Maverick. This had Bret winning a saloon in a poker game in the first episode and he decides to settle in the sleepy town of Sweetwater as a silent partner of the saloon (with the ex-sherif of the town) and buys a ranch just out of town. So what we had here for the first time in a Maverick show was a strong cast of continually returning regular characters, which was nice. This was a brilliant iteration of the show (almost as good as the original) and I was sad to see this one end. It had a new title song but, honestly, it was pretty catchy and the show completely captured the strengths and morally upright tone of the original (which, to be fair, all the various iterations of the show managed to retain). The chemistry between the various actors was brilliant and, in a nice (possibly obvious twist), in the last episode, the man who turns up who is supposed to be ‘a mark’ but who is actually trying to con Bret is revealed to be Jack Kelly as Bart. The idea for a second series was for him to alternate with Garner again, with Garner going back on the road for adventures outside of Sweetwater while Kelly would run the saloon and take over things at that end. Alas, a second series never materialised but this was not quite to be Garner’s last stand as Maverick... more on that in a review coming up here in a few days. I believe Jack Kelly turned up again in a cameo as Bart in one of the sequels to Kris Kristofferson’s The Gambler TV movies but, I’ve not seen it myself.

All in all, the original Maverick shows are definitely recommended viewing but the follow up series, while not ‘jumping on’ points to start watching, often lived up to the originals and are also worth checking out. It’s a shame the new attempts were curtailed so quickly but this was definitely Garner’s part (and I’m pretty sure a lot of the plots from various episodes of the originals were just recycled into his later big TV show, The Rockford Files, on a regular basis). Luckily, we have these classic episodes of Maverick now resurrected in DVD form so at least they have been, somewhat, rescued from oblivion.

Half Way To Hell

Mexican Stand Off

Half Way To Hell
Directed by
Victor Adamson as D. Dixon
(and Al Adamson, uncredited)
USA 1960 IIP/Severin Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: I guess, technically this thing has spoilers on it.

Well, if there’s one thing that starting to delve into Al Adamson’s body of work has done for me for certain then it’s made me trust the IMDB even less than I did before. I don’t know who’s filling this stuff in on Adamson’s films but, at the very least, their interpretation of the facts seems to be at odds with what you can see with your own eyes in Severin's amazing box set, Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection.

For example, Al Adamson is in this as, it turns out, the main bad guy. However, the character name listed for him in the IMDB is of another major character in the movie... who is also listed as another character. Seriously IMDB, sort yourselves out. I’m used to looking for movies which have no entry or a bare bones of an entry or often no information about a release whatsoever but, presenting the wrong information goes one step further. For something which is supposed to be an industry standard database to impart the facts about movies, the IMDB is pretty much the only game in town but it’s seriously lacking. Anyway... back to our main feature.

This is the first (and probably the last) time that Half Way To Hell has seen the light of day on home video. It’s been painstakingly restored as best they could do it by Severin... from what they could get. So, barring a couple of cuts where the odd snippet of dialogue may be missing along with some questionable damage to the film stock, this is pretty much the whole thing.

And it’s a black and white Western made by Adamson’s dad. Half Way To Hell is the last of literally hundreds of films that Victor Adamson produced and directed since 1910 (and after this he was still turning up in things as an actor and, not just in his son’s pictures, presumably because he was so well respected in the business). It’s written and co-produced by Al Adamson and, like I said, stars the younger Adamson as the lead villain.

And... it’s kinda terrible but also amazingly interesting.

Shot in black and white but in a widescreen aspect ratio, the films plays like a typical 1940s Monogram or Republic Western but, perhaps, with not quite the same high energy. Still, it has fairly fast plotting, the odd fist fight and a little intrigue on board. It also, I think, seems to be making a political point with its pro-Mexican uprising stance which, I suspect, was an unusual thing for some of the Westerns being made at the time.

The story is of a Mexican lady called Maria, played by Caroll Montour (the film is narrated by her as a voice-over as well) and her friend Joanne (played by Shirley Tegge, the final role in a very short career). They are trying to get across the border and out of Mexico to flea Maria’s former boyfriend Escobar (played by Lyle Felice), the leader of the group of outlaws who are orchestrating a revolution and fighting for the freedom of Mexico (as they see it). She wants nothing more to do with him and so they, with their armed escort, are getting out while the getting’s good. They pick up a hitchhiking prospector on the way, Jeff played by David Lloyd, who is right away set up as the hero of the tale, with Escobar firmly highlighted, at this stage of the game at least, as the villain.

Unfortunately, Lloyd is left for dead along with all the others that Al Adamson as Slade (billed as Rick Adams) guns down with his gang, on orders to take the girls back to Escobar. However, in the words of a famous villain from a well known space fantasy franchise, Slade and the gang want to ‘alter the deal’ and change the terms of their agreement by ransoming the women back to Escobar instead.

Slade and another gang member go to make some unsuccessful negotiations with the Mexican leader while, back from the dead, Jeff (the hero of the piece) returns and guns down, with the help of Maria’s new romantic interest gang turncoat, the remaining outlaws. About this time Slade catches up to them but then they are all caught and taken back to Escobar. There’s a whip fight between Escobar and Maria’s new guy, then another between Escobar and Jeff. Then Escobar sees the error of his ways and releases them all but Slade catches up with them after they leave so he can steal Jeff’s gold.

Yeah, it gets twisty and turny and there’s not a lot of great acting going on. Maria’s narrative seems to be striving to capture the hearts of a sympathetic Mexican audience but I don’t know if this film had much effect as a political bullet. However, a couple of really interesting things happen that  quite surprised me. The first and main one being that, in a fight with Slade, ten minutes before the narrative’s conclusion, Jeff the hero (who has literally just become romantically entangled with Maria’s friend Joanne) is punched off a cliff by Slade and falls to his death. David Lloyd seems to be one of those actors who has the uncanny power to let his bones turn to jelly and do a fair imitation of a flopsy dummy that has been dropped off the cliff instead. There seem to be a lot of those ‘actors’ in Adamson movies so far, I’ve noticed. ;-) End of the hero character and, yeah, wasn’t expecting that so it was a nice rug pull moment, far from the formulaic movie which houses it.

The other thing is that, by the end, Maria dumps her new boyfriend, decides that Escobar is okay after all and goes off to help fight in the revolution with him. Now you'll know, if you read this blog regularly, that I’m completely clueless about political issues but this seems to me to be, I dunno, some kind of bold statement and, again, not the kind of ending I would associate with those old oaters, to be honest. So, while it’s all humdrum but fairly watchable stuff for the most part, I found it to be a lot more interesting than I had at first expected it to be.

The framing in some of the shots is okay too and there are some high points. The film starts off with a really nice, speedy shot of the Mexican band of ‘revolutionaries’ riding their horses with a dog running at high speed between them and the camera and, well... cute dog. I like dogs. This was the absolute best thing in the movie for me. More shots of dogs running please studios!

Other than that, there are some really bad things about the film too. There’s a scene towards the end where it looks like Al Adamson’s character has been added in insert shots to maybe clarify some of the action or possibly to pad the time (the film runs for an hour and six minutes). So in the master shots, Slade has a nice bit of stubble under his chin. However, some of the closer shots of him in one scene have him looking almost unrecognisable as the character... with either too much fuzzy stubble of almost bear-like proportions or, even, clean shaven in another shot a few seconds later. So, yeah, definitely reshoots of insert scenes on different days I would guess. Also, in one scene where the romantic relationship between Jeff and Joanne is being superfluously developed, I’m pretty sure I can hear an aeroplane or possibly a car engine in the background sound for a few seconds so, yeah, I suppose not much, if any, re-dubbing was done in this one and the ‘wild sound’ tracks were relied on pretty much throughout. I guess that’s cheaper, right?

So, yeah, once again I’m left with a film which I didn’t think I was going to get much out of but which turned out to be entertaining enough and had some unexpected moments which I’m not going to forget in a hurry. For some reason, this Severin box set is rekindling my enthusiasm with film somewhat and, although Half Way To Hell is certainly not a great movie, or even a good one, I liked it fine and I appreciate Severin’s great efforts to get this one in a half way watchable state for people. It’s a good time to enjoy films. I suspect, when physical media finally dies, that options like seeing films of this nature just won’t be there for an audience so, yeah, make hay while the sun still shines, is my advice.

The Pale Door

Coven Hoofed

The Pale Door
USA 2020 Directed by Aaron B. Koontz
 Paper Street Pictures

Warning: Some spoilerage ensues.

Okay, so the first thing I want to say here is, I can’t believe the unbelievably bad, bordering on overtly hostile, one and two star reviews The Pale Door has over at the IMDB. I mean, it’s like the people writing in have never seen a low budget movie before. Let me be clear, I’ve seen a lot of low budget movies prior to this and this one doesn’t even come close to the low production values and lack of basic competence that many of them have. Frankly, this one looks like a gazillion bucks when you compare it to a lot of the stuff out there.

Secondly... yes, it’s a fairly simplistic movie but I don’t understand why people are having a hard time with that. There are a lot of simplistic films out there which are pretty damned good and, frankly, I had a great time with this movie. I don’t understand why some people thought it might be trying to be a comedy because, honestly, I think there’s rarely a lick of humour in it so, yeah, this is one of those head scratching puzzles of a film where I can’t figure out why my response is just so out of kilter with the majority of the audience response so far.

Thirdly... and much to my surprise... this film has the great Bill Sage on it as one of the main, supporting roles and, frankly, he’s always worth watching. One of the great actors of our time and he also has an associate producer credit on this. Not quite sure what an associate producer does, to be honest but I guess that means he believed in the film enough to really get involved.

The movie has a nice set up, after a picturesque credits sequence of black magic/witchcraft books burning up... where two young brothers escape their home while witnessing the slaughter of their parents. Skip to years later and one of the brothers is a famous outlaw (this is a Western movie) and he’s about to hold up a train guarded by Pinkertons’ finest with his gang when, one of their number gets killed in a petty gunfight. So the younger brother volunteers to fulfill the missing gang role and... as you would expect... the heist goes wrong.

The valuable trunk on the train contains a bound and gagged young woman and the older brother is gut shot while the gang of outlaws are trying to get away. The puzzling ‘girl in the box’ takes them back to her home ‘town’ to help but, it soon becomes apparent when she takes them to the local brothel of her friends, that this is a coven of witches who plan on eating the outlaws.

So yeah, it a low budget Horror Western and, frankly, it’s a romp. The performances of all the main outlaws and some of the witches is great and although the thrifty attitude to the reuse of sets and stuff is... well, like I said, it’s thrifty... the production values are pretty good and it really doesn’t look as economical as you might expect. I’ll obviously single out Bill Sage here who I mostly know from his turns in the marvellous films of Hal Hartley and who plays a character who is somewhat against type, I think. He starts off as a quite ruthless and villainous personality (he does things with spurs you might not want to be on the receiving end of) but, of course, by the end of the movie he has a somewhat bonding arc and redeems himself in the eyes of the younger brother, whom the witches want for his innocent blood.

The other actor I liked in this was a guy called Pat Healy, who plays a quiet, somewhat authoritative member of the outlaw gang and brings a certain sense of confidence and weight to the rag tag group. Well, until something happens to him after the witches steal a lock of his hair, that is. Things get a little unfortunate for him after that.

However, if you are a fan of gory horror films where monstrous creatures are used as violent gun fodder and where life, mortal or supernatural, is cheap... then I reckon you should have a good time with this. Also, the cinematography is wonderful and, dare I say it, quite spectacular in certain shots where the outlaws are riding away from the scene of their crime.

There are lots of nice little set pieces and visual commas throughout the thing too... such as a rainstorm of blood, a nice 180 degree camera movement which I won’t spoil for you here and a nice sequence where a crow bursts forth, in a not too pleasant way, from an outlaw’s stomach... working it’s way up the throat and out the mouth, obviously killing him in the process.

My one complaint on this might be that the language of the characters, living in the Old West as they do, seems a mite modern and more naturalistic to contemporary times than, perhaps, it might have been back in the late 1800s. I’m guessing this was a deliberate ploy to help make it accessible to a younger audience but, yeah, I think the writers might have made more of an effort to make the dialogue a little more antiquated, to be sure.

Still, other than that one, minor flaw (as I see it), I thought The Pale Door was a nice little cross genre piece which deserves to find an audience. I think it’s more likely to appeal to horror fans than most other sections of its potential audience but, I suppose that’s why it’s been chosen for this year’s October FrightFest. Certainly not a great work of horror art, for sure but, nevertheless, a thoroughly competent and, it has to be said, somewhat charming entertainment. And that’s as good a thing to say about a movie as most, I believe. Definitely worth a watch if you like body count horror such as zombie movies and such like.