To the very limited extent that the German science fiction series Raumpatrouille Orion (full English title: Space Patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Starship Orion) is known in my own United States, it tends to be the victim of a certain unfair association. On those pitifully rare occasions when it’s mentioned, it’s seldom withoutContinue reading “Raumpatrouille Orion”
Author Archives: Todd
Some Girls Do
Some Girls Do is the second attempt to bring Bulldog Drummond into the late twentieth century, and if you enjoyed Deadlier than the Male, there is no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy this one as well.
Reparata and the Delrons
Reparata and the Delrons were a girl group that spent a career plumbing the lower echelons of the pop charts. Their early repertoire was heavy on teenage melodrama and heartbreak.
Burt Bacharach: Casino Royale
Burt Bacharach’s soundtrack is probably the least maligned aspect of producer Charles Feldman’s 1967 film version of Casino Royale. One doesn’t have to love the movie to enjoy the soundtrack.
Kara Murat Fatihin Fermani
Kara Murat Fatihin Fermani, though a little rough around the edges, is still an incredibly enjoyable film, full of Cuneyt Arkin doing somersaults over his enemies and flinging scimitars across a room with deadly accuracy.
Francoise Hardy: Midnight Blues
Francoise Hardy may have been the most stereotypically French of the Yē-Yē girls: Aloof, sophisticated and beautifully melancholy. Nevertheless, her sound was one that was largely made in England.
Honey Ltd.: The Complete LHI Recordings
Honey Ltd. got their start at Detroit’s Wayne State University. With a gift for seamless four part harmony, the group’s sound was essentially a timely update of the classic girl group sound of the early 60s
The Great Silence
The decision to film The Great Silence in Spain’s snowy Pyrenees was the result of Sergio Corbucci wanting to take a skiing trip. Whatever the case, it’s a decision responsible for giving the film a unique and visually striking character.
The Stabilizer
Compared to the appellations given to the protagonists of other 1980s action films — the Exterminator, the Punisher, the Executioner — the Stabilizer sounds pretty benign. You’d almost think that he was given that name only because all of those others had already been taken. But then you learn that what the Stabilizer is inContinue reading “The Stabilizer”
Golden Boy
So, yes, if you’ve seen a James Bond movie, you know exactly what tropes Altin Cocuk holds in store. But the film nonetheless offers distinct pleasures in the course of watching them unfold.
Dark Heroine Muk Lan-fa
In the mid sixties, Hong Kong’s Cantonese language film industry, faced with the emerging dominance of the considerably more well-funded and increasingly action-oriented Mandarin language Shaw Brothers Studio–as well as changing audience tastes in a rapidly modernizing society–found itself in need of retooling its output. Melodramas, romances and period martial arts films featuring heroic femaleContinue reading “Dark Heroine Muk Lan-fa”
Black Rose
The Black Rose takes the female-centric swashbuckling of wuxia cinema and the heroics of Chinese folklore and places them in a contemporary setting. It also pays service to the James Bond films.
Teleport City 