Once again will say that this series has been much more successful than I imagined it would be. These posts have been getting 400 or more views which is nowhere near what a dazzling photobook would get but that total is about twice as many views as drama and movie posts used to get. Started this 'My Current Watches' series for my reviews of things was getting a bit out of hand for how long they were, thought if other sites could discuss a whole drama season or a movie in 3-4 paragraphs why couldn't I do the same so that was a major inspiration for this series and have been doing three or four posts a month. Those 'quickie reviews' were actually beginning to get long again and in the last two posts have begun to make them shorter which should continue on into this post. There's no need to explain so many details and to give away a vast amount of spoilers, the point is to give a brief overview of what I viewed, my thoughts about it with reasons for why I did or didn't enjoy that drama or movie.
Another big positive about this ongoing series has been discussing some of my bigger favorites, such as the ones who have seemingly disappeared or about certain 'fave's lists'. Well, all done with those talks as even though it's been a slowish period no one I try to do posts for has gone AWOL for a while. So had been talking about the letter M and about how many of my huge fave have names that begin with that letter, on the other hand my faves having names beginning with K may have only two names! Here in America names beginning with the letter Y is extremely rare, I can only think of a small handful of females I've met that have Y as the first letter. That's not the case in Japan and a list to rival the letter M could be with Y, Yui 😍 beginning the post off would be my runaway choice of being #1 and why not as she's also probably my number one woman of all time! But not with you viewers as Yui over the last two years as become perhaps the most unpopular woman I do posts for so thought she deserved to be in the spotlight again for this post....
Whew, another list could be of those women thirty or older in age which could be the best one of all! Will have one final Y woman and after my top two it'd be such a fierce battle for the spots between third and sixth as the women are all so close but squeezing into third could easily be my first favorite gravure model Yurina Yanagi who still does a lot of acting these days but it's been four years since her last gravure photos. Two other models have passed Yurina as being my favorite model but that's only because she's retired from gravure modeling or it appears she has, last month she hit the age of 32. Have to admit I was kind of surprised Yurina doffed her duds in a 2018 movie but then again will confess I wasn't complaining at all, whewwww!!!! Yurina is yet another of my huge favorites that is thirty or older who has never been married, I must do posts for 25 women that are older than thirty yet still single but that's much more common these days in almost every country.
After this scorching set of photos will begin on what I've recently viewed and as mentioned in the beginning you viewers have really taken to this series. Usually I'll watch something and then write up the mini review right after so I don't forget anything and in the end run it makes writing these up easier. However didn't do that for any of today's five watches which will be one TV show and four very obscure movies. Every movie to date has been decent and often better than that but the first film I'll quickly look at was just so-so at best but in an odd way wasn't all that bad. To date have done reviews for things from America, Britain, Canada, South Korea and of course Japan so five countries in all. But the last two movie reviews will be from a sixth country and one you wouldn't have thought you'd see here but the films were so enjoyable. First up will be an older American TV series, for a while had bought many boxsets so have been trying to include more American shows than Asian ones in these posts. A goal is to start finishing up some shows but today's was such a long series it may take me another year. Have one season to go in the "Supernatural" series which was it's 15th, will wait a few weeks until completing that series and instead of talking about it in a post such as this one will dedicate a whole post to the show which I have loved to no end....
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So I'm glad I took a chance and bought that massive boxset above which did cost $185 yet in a way was a bargain. For the set has 143 discs with 635 episodes that last for over 440 hours plus there's special features so all in all I consider that boxset to be worth every penny. Had taken a long break from viewing this series to catch up on some others, will be tough but it'd be nice to finish this up by this time next year! Have viewed 341 episodes, that's how many there were by the end of season nine and TV series for so long had 35-39 episodes in a season. There's 296 more shows to go or 27 a season, the first nine averaged 38 episodes a season. This ninth season aired in 1963/64 yet was still filmed in B&W, color episodes didn't begin airing until season twelve. No sense describing the action too much as there's plenty of sites out there devoted to the show and you wouldn't think so because of all the posts I do for J-Pop Idols but Westerns have become my favorite thing of entertainment. The setting was Dodge City which is a real place in SW Kansas, the stories took place between the late 1870's and early 80's. James Arness played the hero Marshal Matt Dillon and was in all 635 episodes, he was hit by bullets in at least fifty shows yet of course none of them were fatal. One reason I never paid attention to this long running series is because I had thought it was a fluffy family show and was I ever wrong as there is much action and suspense in this series which I highly recommend.
The biggest change to date in this series happened in the 28th episode of this ninth season as an original character left the show. That was Dennis Weaver who played Dillon's deputy Chester Goode, he had appeared in 290 of the 341 episodes. Weaver was a popular actor and left because he had the chance to have many lead roles, for the first few seasons he was my favorite character. In season ten taking his place as the Marshal's deputy will be Festus Haggen who was a semi-regular in this season and would remain until the series ended. Not much more I can add in about this series and did say stability was one positive about this show as while the stories were always different you also always knew what to expect. The first few photos below are of Chester and there's also a short video after the pics of him.
Always have to add in a few photos of Amanda Blake who played the role of Miss Kitty. She owned the Dodge City tavern Long Branch and a woman owning a saloon was such a rarity 150 years ago. Miss Kitty was in the first nineteen seasons but by choice didn't appear in the final season, had the show continued on she would have made a return. I think Amanda has to be the most underrated beauty of all time and she had such a demurely yet alluring look about her in "Gunsmoke". To date have posted many photos of Amanda but all have been in B&W, once season twelve rolls around will have some pics in color as that's the first season it aired that way. That's going to be such a shock for me seeing Amanda on the screen in color as her hair was red and you wouldn't know that by these photos or by viewing the show. But you have an early peek at that for after these pictures is a short video featuring Amanda from the series and some of the footage is in color.
Here's the film that I said in the intro was just so-so which is true yet in an odd way it was a decent watch. What hurt was that the story was so confusing and wonder if a reason was because I didn't know any of the cast so had a hard time remembering the character's names. Before I forget the title of this 1949 film is "Ghost Cat of Nabeshima" but it also goes by a few other titles, there's also a few other films featuring a cursed cat. Nabeshima is an island in this movie but that's not an actual place in real life but is a well known line of Japanese porcelain from the 1700's and it appears that the film was set during that time. There was a cursed cat(neko) which we never saw but we did see the deranged character in the first screenshot below who would appear to do the cat's acts of violence, think the deranged man not being a cat would have worked better. The main story revolved around a Go board that was cursed, a retailer Irie ended up selling the board to the movie's villain Tanuma who in turn gave it to the island's feudal Lord who was never named so will just refer to him as Lord.
The Lord was very impressed with this Go board and whoever made it did such a tremendous job. But over time the board had become known to be cursed, the owner would either go raving mad or be killed, raving mad is what happened with the Lord. Tanuma at first appeared to be his friend but was actually a rival who wanted to take the Lord's title away from him, that was unknown to all except for Tanuma's friend Komori who tried to warn the Lord of Tanuma's scheme but to no avail. On the small island there was a lack of expert Go players except for one man named Matashichiro who was planning on leaving Nabeshima to travel to Edo(Tokyo) and train to be a Go pro with a master. But the Lord summoned Matashichiro for a game and immediately he knew the Lord's board was cursed. Whatever spell the Go board gave off affected Matashichiro and soon he got into a tussle with the Lord, that's when a cat cried out but it was actually that deranged man below who slew Matashichiro to death. Right after the Lord became crazed so that part of the curse was true, to Tanuma it was only a matter of time until he ruled the tiny island! Even though the isle was small there were still over a thousand cats living on it, the Lord became so frightened of them he ordered them to be round up and slaughtered! Of course that's so hard to accomplish but quite a few cats were slain but not the cursed cat.
Matashichiro had been going steady with a woman named Toyo who began to work for Tanuma at the island's castle. She was frantic with worry about the disappearance of Matashichiro, though the curse killed the man it was all because of Tanuma's scheme to be Lord of Nabeshima! To make a confusing story shorter in the end of course it was a cursed cat that killed Tanuma, once again the cat took the shape of this deformed and crazed man. That's enough of a review as I'm sure no one will ever view this ultra rare film and though the story jumped all over the place I did find that it was an okay watch but won't be viewing it again. The biggest positive about this film was the music which was often creepy and suspenseful, unlike the movie but most Japanese horror flicks from around 1949 weren't too frightening either. There was no trailer for the film so won't have a video, the movie is on YT but got is in four unsubbed sections but do have plenty of screenshots below.
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Chiba as Tachibana was a bit of a wimpy man and so wasn't his superhero character Iron Sharp, the boys below dubbed him that nickname in the beginning when Tachibaba saved the boys from the first attack of the Neptune(ians?). Iron Sharp had no special powers, he couldn't fly nor did he have any super strength but his vehicle/plane was unbeatable in a one on one duel though it doesn't look too formidable. The aliens never once spoke to the Earthlings and didn't reveal what their intentions were but all their actions were violent. For instance attacking those boys early on and soon they became even more ruthless as an attack killed 84 at a nuclear plant. The aliens from Neptune could even control the weather, though it was June it began to snow in Tokyo and someone had better find a way to rid Earth of these creatures which seemed to number only a dozen or else mankind could be facing extinction! The nuclear professor Tanigawa had surmised the aliens were attacking certain places that are filled with massive amounts of energy such as that nuclear plant and it's because the race from Neptune needs that energy to stay alive. What I thought was kind of neat was how the aliens could manipulate energy and make it do odd things such as records playing backwards and trains going in reverse! While there seemed to be only a dozen in their small spaceship the aliens could fire out drone like saucers which were attacking cities and energy plants, things were looking dire for a while. Tanigawa was able to develop an Electro Magnetic Barrier that was able to stop most attacks but that wouldn't last for ever, time yet for our superhero Iron Sharp?
Yes and no, the yes for he did make two appearances at the end to save the Earth from the aliens from Neptune. No for we saw Iron Sharp in only three scenes for about a total of seven minutes, this was just a 74 minute movie which to me is an adequate length. You can follow the screenshots below to see what happened, after he seemingly died in a power explosion in the final few minutes Iron Sharp made a heroic reappearance and with his inept looking plane was able to thwart the attack drones the aliens from Neptune were using and soon the main ship returned to its home planet. Like most superheroes Iron Sharp only wore a small mask to cover up his eyes, no one deduced he was the young scientist Tachibana and the film ended on a happy note with Iron Sharp being the savior of Earth. I found this to be a very fun movie and it zipped right along as there were so few down moments, wish we saw less of the boys and more of Iron Sharp fighting the Neptune aliens but it was still a decent movie. Chiba was only 22 in age at the time and had just become a star after appearing in the 1959 TV series "Seven Color Mask", I have the movies but Chiba wasn't in those and this may have been his only sci-fi film. Of course he's so well known for his action movies and as mentioned will be getting to some very soon, after the screenshots is a trailer for this "Invasion of the Neptune Men" 1961 film.
Two more movies to go in this post and they'll be a pair from the sixth country that is featured in this series. The pair are also the first movies I've ever seen from Mexico and I have no idea whether or not they've had a long and respected movie history. If they have bet most films are mainly cult movies outside the country and there's nothing wrong with that, I enjoyed these two films so know I'll be looking for others and do have another pair in this long running series. Which began in 1961 and by the time this series ended in 1982 there were fifty films, all starred the same lead actor. Who was a pro wrestler born in 1917 so was almost 65 in age for the final Santo film, in real life the man's name was Rodolfo Guzman (Huerta), that last name wasn't used all the time. I'll refer to Rodolfo as Santo which means Saint in Spanish, his character also had the word enmascarado used to describe him which means masked (wrestler). Santo was a popular 1950's wrestler even though he often was the villain at matches but over time became a hero to wrestling fans, also a film hero for saving the world and Mexico many times over. There's enough info out there about the man's life and he truly was one of Mexico's most famous stars, he died in 1984 and a week before his February death was when Santo revealed to the public his true identity for the first time.
In this long running movie series Santo was the Mexican equivalent of such heroes as Superman or Ultraman but the huge difference was that Santo had no super powers and looked like your average Earthling. A stronger version though and he needed that power to defeat whatever evil forces he fought against, a huge plus was his knowledge of wrestling moves which was usually how Santo won his battles. This first film I viewed was from 1967 and titled "Santo vs. The Martian Invasion", it came out the year before in Mexico and these films usually didn't come to America for another year or two. You can see some of the Martian females above and that planet certainly developed it's women very well, especially the one in the right! What I've noticed in most sci-fi movies from any country is that it's often just one alien ship with about a dozen to twenty people to fight the whole Earth, that was the case in this film. But the Martians were a deadly race and perhaps only twenty soldiers were enough, they had a powerful ray gun that could disintegrate thousands of innocent people at once as Santo witnessed that at a soccer match where the entire crowd was slain and their bodies disappeared! The Martians could not breath oxygen but had developed a pill to allow them to breath for short amounts of time, their original plan was to only remain on Earth for a few days and return to Mars. Their plan to take over the Earth can't be accomplished until they can breath the oxygen as their pills are only good for up to an hour, the Martians did take a dozen prisoners to bring back to Mars and to study their lungs and internal organs so they can adapt their own bodies to the Earth's atmosphere. But after tangling with Santo twice and losing on both occasions the Martians extended their stay a bit in the attempt to take Santo back to Mars!
The Martians appeared to be stronger than Santo but in four or so matches he was able to hold his own against the aliens even though he was outnumbered. With Santo being a champion wrestler of course you're going to see a lot of wrestling in these films, this was a 91 minute movie and about a third was of Santo in the ring against the Martians as one match was against an alien who wore a mask. However none of these attempts to take down Santo was successful, like most Superhero movies the military or other countries weren't called in to help the hero! Of course to make this quickie review brief had to leave many details out but in the end Santo did defeat the Martians and blew up their spacecraft, if the aliens had gone back to Mars instead of trying to take Santo as a prisoner who knows if the Earth would have survived! So my first ever watch of a Mexican movie was a smashing success and the next review will be for another Santo film, watched both back to back and glad I took a chance with these movies. Below are many screenshots to help you follow the film better and also have a trailer for the movie after them which is subbed in English. One thing Santo movies are known for are having some ultra voluptuous women and that could be a reason I'll be viewing many more of these in the future....
Final review for today, the above Santo movie was filmed in 1966 and was the last one in B&W. That was released in America the following year and and while not the final B&W film "Santo attacks the Witches" was the last of the non-color movies to come out in America. It was filmed in 1965 but didn't come out in the U.S. for almost three years, that was common for many foreign films back then. At the time Rodolfo Guzman who portrayed Santo in all fifty films was 48 in age, that's him above in this film and he does look to be older but sure he could top most pro wrestlers half his age. He has quite a lengthy Wiki page so recommend checking that out as it would take a hundred paragraphs to list all of his accomplishments and he did seem like a very likable man. The film above was more of a sci-fi one with some horror thrown in, this time our hero wrestler has to battle witches though wouldn't call it a horror flick but it did have all of the necessities such as spiders, cobwebs, coffins, raging storms and like the first Santo movie above will recommend this one.
This was a 76 minute film and after a 300 year slumber the powerful witch Mayra has arisen in the cellar of an old and haunted mansion. Mayra has taken the form of a woman named Elisa who died fifteen years ago and that was to get closer the the mansion's new owner Orfelia who had just inherited the estate from her deceased parents. Mayra had known Orfelia from years ago and according to lores of Witchcraft when a witch uses a host body she can't obtain full strength until a ritual is performed using three sacrifices. One is of a person who the host body knew, in this case it's Orfelia and the main reason for choosing her was because the mansion's cellar made for an excellent HQ. A second sacrifice has to be someone close to Orfelia, in this case it was easy as chosen was her soon to be husband Arturo. A third subject was needed for Mayra to gain full power, once she does her leader the Lord of Darkness would also have unbeatable powers. This third has to be an esteemed leader or hero, of all people chosen by Mayra and her coven of witches was the champion wrestler Santo!!!! The easiest way for Mayra and her coven to attack Orfelia, Arturo and Santo was via their dreams, if she could kill the trio at once in a dream ritual then their deaths would take place in real life. Then Mayra would obtain her full powers and her leader the Lord of Darkness may be strong enough to rule the world. Three times Mayra attempted to kill the three in their dreams but each time was thwarted by Santo, it seems in Mexico killing or defeating a Witch is almost the same as killing a Vampire.
For Mayra and her coven cannot stay in the sunlight, if so they become very weak and may burn to death. Fire is also another way to kill a witch but the most powerful and easiest way to do the deed is with a cross, the bigger the better. Santo does have strong willpower for twice in his dreams an overly seductive woman tried to seduce him and take advantage of his weakened state, both times failed and one is in an above screenshot. What I found odd was that Santo had an office on the tenth floor of a building and it appeared he's also a PT private investigator besides being a champion wrestler, our hero also drives a souped-up sportscar and he had the same one in the previous movie. Of course there was also plenty of wrestling as that's what Santo(Saint) is most known for, the matches are entertaining but may go on for too long. Three times Mayra attacked Santo and the two others in their dreams, all failed and her fourth try to kill the trio in a ritual happened right at the end, it took place in Orfelia's new mansion and she officially wouldn't inherit it until she lived there for a year. While Santo may not have any super powers he was able to break the chains holding him, he then raced to get a huge cross he had hidden. That's Santo in the bottom screenshot holding it, that cross burned Marya and her coven of witches to death which is how the film ended. Thought the first movie was a bit better but this too was such an enjoyable watch and do have two more Santo films that need to be viewed, can also get a few more. Plenty of screenshots below from the film, Mayra looked out of this world(!) and she's the tallish woman with dark hair. There's also a mini trailer at the bottom and there wasn't an official one for this movie that was the twelfth in the Santo series.
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