On Becoming A Guinea Fowl - 2024 - Zambia

On Becoming A Guinea Fowl - 2024 - 7/10

 
Driving home from a costume party, Shula sees a body in the road.
Her Uncle Fred – dead.  She phones her father, who is drunk but still begs for money.
A cousin appears, waving a bottle and bombed out of her mind.
Police eventually take charge, and Shula goes home to settle herself.
Until an auntie quartet arrives, wailing, hollering, issuing demands.
Why, I wonder, is professional woman Shula is still living there?
This “comedy” will play better for members of big, boisterous, nosy families.
And while the aunties may say, “We love you, our children” it becomes clear they loved Fred more.
For ostriches and those who always look the other way, avoid this.
Otherwise, an eye-opening view of Zambia.

Behind Stone Walls - 1932 - USA

Behind Stone Walls - 1932 - 5/10

 
The dinner party was breaking up anyway.
The District Attorney (aspiring Governor) is taking wife Esther to theatre.
Until the courthouse phones, saying only HE can handle an extradition.
With that, Esther slips off to play hide the sausage with the best friend.
Grade-C Pre-Code is loaded with sleaze.
Adultery, murder, blackmail (financial and sexual), and sly courtroom deals.
Acting is stilted, directing stagey, dialogue a river of pauses and gushes.

Arctic Circle - 2018 - Finland

Arctic Circle - 2018 - 6/10
AKA - Ivalo

 
A sexually transmitted disease breaks out in northern Finland.
Mating is OK, hosts are OK, but pregnancies turn into spontaneous, bloodied abortions.
If it spreads, extinction of humanity on a mass scale within generations.
Scientists and law enforcement work in tandem to track down and isolate carriers.
For a cure?  They need to find patient zero.
Potentially gripping thriller is weighed down with too many characters and side plots.
Minor characters are more like cameos, several of the breakaway plots simply vanish.
I suspect writers had enough material for a great 6-part series, but the show was 10 episodes.
Padding, and obvious padding at that.

Hot Enough For June - 1964 - UK

Hot Enough For June - 1964 - 6/10

 
Aspiring writer Nicholas, on the dole, lands a job with a glass firm.
Which is actually a front for MI6, now sending ignorant amateurs into the field.
In this case, Prague 1964, still very much behind the Iron Curtain.
Even as an innocent, our faux spy (Dirk Bogard) catches on quick.
And tumbles for his Czech minder, Sylva Koscina.
This starts as a satire, gradually grows more serious, though the tone stays light.

Escape Dangerous - 1947 - UK

Escape Dangerous - 1947 - 5/10  

 
Height of the French Revolution, the Terror, and aristocrats scramble to save their heads.
Literally.
Several find shelter with a shifty female … for a large fee.
Then there is Doctor Belhomme.  Refugees who sicken either die under his care, or vanish in his hospital.
All the makings of fine Gothic Horror, except this is dismal.
The directing is lackluster.  Static sets, no camera movement, reminiscent of an early talkie.
Best is Beresford Egan (?!!?) as the villainous doctor.
Script by Oswell Blakeston disappoints in every way.

Sex From Beyond The Grave - 1984 - Hong Kong

Sex From Beyond The Grave - 1984 - 5/10
AKA - Fung lau Yuen Gwai // 風 流 冤 鬼

 
During WWII, lustful Japanese murder her husband and son, then rape the beautiful actress.
Jump 40 years.  The ghost, after having killed guilty parties, now haunts the home.
The narrative jumps to a luckless gambler, comically inept.
And a professor, his wife and son who purchase the cursed house.
Confused?  The whole thing is a mess, with several nude dance sequences and other distractions.
Dylan Cheung provides a lively, if breathless, commentary ranging from the demise of Shaw Brothers, Hong Kong in the 1980’s, actors, films, in-jokes, locations, anecdotes, restrictions, much more.
Cheung never stops for air.  His commentary is more valuable than the film which is uneven and cheesy.

Candidate For Murder - 1951 - UK

Candidate For Murder - 1951 - 5/10  

 
A killer roams the London streets at night.
Headlines blare corpse number three, knife in its body.
We follow the “perpetrator” throughout then next day.
Mystery short borders on Experimental, using rapid editing, atypical of the 1950’s.
I sought this out as it is a rare Oswell Blakeston scripted film.