That first photo is another 'Iconic' one which has led off so many posts and isn't it easy to see why?! The most impossible list to make an attempt at would be my all time favorite photos, say my top 25 or perhaps a few more. Have posted so many tens of thousands how would it be possible to only have a list of 25 which would be way less than 1%, even just doing a list of Maria's π top photos would be an impossible task but wouldn't mind trying to create such a list! I often go into these posts with no set plan, usually I've already watched most of the American TV series I'll discuss but after that everything else is up in the air. Though have watched one movie and also two episodes of a Korean drama which I think will end off the post. EDIT: I often change my mind after writing this intro section up which is usually done a week before the post is completed so many things change. Won't have that Korean drama as four paragraphs aren't enough to properly explain what took place. Will try to figure out a way to recap it and have had that problem with other dramas, the title of the show is "Players" from 2018.
Last October I devoted these posts to reviewing Horror movies and will also do the same for this year. Will try to make those movies ones I have never seen before and there will be movies from at least six countries. So won't be viewing too many Horror flicks for the remainder of this month and that's okay as I have such a huge backlog of non-frightening flicks. But did watch one last night, am beginning this on September 7th so of course last night was the sixth. For only the second time watched the 1931 original "Frankenstein" movie and the previous time was about ten years ago. I had always thought it was kind of a boring and extremely slow paced movie but my opinion changed with this second watch as now I think this 71 minute film was ultra terrific! I'm not going to give a review of what took place as most of you reading this know the story and there has to be hundreds of reviews out there for it already. What I had done recently was to buy a DVD of this classic movie for only $5 and know it could be downloaded for free. However this DVD has over two hours of very interesting special features so it was worth that low amount of money and if you haven't seen this almost one hundred year old movie highly suggest doing so. For $5 also got the sequel "Bride of Frankenstein" which I have seen twice and to me it was better than the first movie. If you've read many of these 'My Current Watches' posts you know how much I love older movies in B&W, especially Horror films. Won't ever review the movies but I also have the boxsets for the old Universal Horror series "The Wolfman", "The Mummy" and my favorite monster which was "The Creature from the Black Lagoon". That came out in the mid-1950's while the others came out in the 1930's and early 40's.
Know it's only been eleven weeks since Maria left MM but ex-Idols have to strike while the iron is hot and Maria was a very popular member of the group. She loves Baseball so why isn't she co-hosting any shows about the sport plus will she be doing any regular modeling? It's gravure modeling that's made Maria popular and hope she continues in with that as can anyone top her photos from the past five years? We also need to see Maria at some events and has she also been thinking of acting(?), know I just mentioned many possibilities and it takes time to begin those but don't wait until the public has forgotten about you. I'm not being critical of Maria π at all and you viewers know how huge of a favorite she is of mine, she's the first woman I ever gave a rating of a 10/10 to so would love to see these posts continue on until the end of time! Maria didn't set a Hello Project record for photobooks but she had a dozen in all with her final one coming out on June 24th and that was her graduation date. With her books come DVD's and these screenshots are from that video for her final book, no woman has had better DVD's than Maria has had since 2020 and how bummed out I will be if there are no more of them in the future....
Another edit: Don't want to have a second month with no posts for Maria so will have an ultra super duper one to end off September and even if I sounded a bit harsh I only said some things for Maria π is someone who eventually could become my #1 woman of all time....
The title of that movie is "The Flower, the Storm and the Gangster", it was an 83 minute 1962 Japanese movie and the ones from that era are my favorites. But for the first time in eons I haven't been so successful in choosing what older Japanese movies to view. That film was a noir/gangster flick which was okay in a way though a bit confusing and all in all it wasn't much more than a time killer. But it had starred many actors I liked and even though the reviews weren't too positive decided to give it a view which wasn't a mistake but could have chosen something better. So will look for a different Japanese film for today and it'll be one from the same period of time that I haven't viewed before. But as I said in the intro will try to make the rest of September's movies non-horror ones. In the previous post wrapped up season ten of "Gunsmoke", am trying to finish up as many series as I can over the next few months so said this post would be talking about either the third seasons of "Babylon 5" or "Vampire Diaries" or the second season of "Grimm".... in true Nao style won't be talking about any of them!!!! EDIT #3: As far as "Grimm" goes began on the second season last night so will discuss that in the next post and what an action packed beginning to that season!
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In the middle is the star reporter Lois Lane and she's played by Teri Hatcher who was thirty in age for this season. There's plenty of photos below of Teri and she added some Oooomph to this series, she was quite a looker too. Next to Lois is the hero Clark Kent aka Superman who was played by Dean Cain and on this show he is one likable character. Dean has had quite an interesting life and while many not agree with his opinions he seems like the kind of guy I'd get along well with and a swelled head is something he doesn't have which is a rarity these days. The older couple are Clark's parents who raised him in Smallville once his tiny spaceship landed near their farm thirty years prior, their names are Martha and Johnathan Kent. Plus there's been plenty of interesting and known guest stars in each episode, like "Gunsmoke" those guest stars have been a huge positive to the series. My top episode so far has been the seventh which had the title of "That Old Gang of Mine" and this series was more popular than I thought as it had almost 20 million viewers! In that episode a scientist brought back to life many old criminals from the 1920's and 30's such as Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger along with Al Capone and a crime wave soon swept over Metropolis!!!! Another highlight was the ninth show which was for Christmas, making guest appearances were the Jeffersons who had such a popular 1970's sitcom, I know it to an extent but unsure if I've ever seen an episode.
So while there's many positives there are a few things that could have been better though they're not huge negatives. The big change I would have liked to see is more action and of Superman fighting, he does to an extent but at times too much focus is on Lois and Clark but think this series may have been more for them and not as much about Superman. But all in all I'm enjoying this series and will complete it, for now will take a week or two break and then finish up the remaining eleven episodes of season two. Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane is certainly some yummy candy for your eyeballs as you can see below but she's also been so terrific in this show and she's added a humorous side to Lois. I just reminded myself that the 1950's "Superman" series still needs to be wrapped up, have two thirteen episode seasons to view. Not sure and won't look as not to spoil it but think that Clark proposes to Lois in the final episode of the season, it's so obvious she's ga-ga over Superman but she's also in love with Clark. Which just reminded me Lois almost got married to Superman's #1 enemy Lex Luthor at the end of season one but he died.... after Lois said NO at the altar and in the second season an evil doctor is trying to bring the villain back to life! Above had mentioned how the seventh episode has been my favorite to date in this season and after the pictures is a segment from that show.
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Probably in the top five for being such an iconic and noted American actor is John Wayne yet I had never seen him in one of his 142 movies! But at the top above is a $5 DVD I gobbled up recently at the store, it has two movies plus some trailers and other features so how can you go wrong for only five hundred pennies?! You can't and the 1959 Western "Rio Bravo" is a film I had heard of, Western TV shows are favorites of mine but the only movies I've seen in that genre are the Clint Eastwood's five 1960's Westerns and to me all are classics. I wouldn't call "Rio Bravo" a classic but I enjoyed it quite a bit and soon will be viewing the other which I'll talk about in a future post. So while I had never seen a John Wayne film I have seen a few of Dean Martin's "Matt Helm" series movies which are quite entertaining. He's always been such an intriguing man to me and I recommend checking out his "Dean Martin Roast" show as most of them are on YT. The third star listed above is Ricky Nelson who was an early rock and roller, he was quite famous for starring in the "Ozzie and Harriet" TV series and they were his parents. I don't know Ricky's music too well but everything I've heard has been quite good and he too has a lot of videos on YT. There was only one main female character and that's okay as one can never get enough of looking at Angie Dickinson. She's the only character from the film that's still alive and on the last day of September will be celebrating her 95th birthday! Angie did make a lot of guest appearances on Westerns during this period but I have to highly recommend her 1974 movie "Big Bad Mama" which I've viewed a few times and the scenes with her unclad are too cold shower inducing to talk about, WOWOWOW!
This movie was a long one at 140 minutes but hopefully it won't be too lengthy of a review, try to set a limit of four paragraphs but have already used one up! Seems 80+% of the action took place at the Sheriff's office, a bar or the main street of this small town located in the county of Presido, Texas and I can't recall the town's name nor could I find it at any website. Of course the main character was John Wayne who plays the town Sheriff John T Chance, will always use his last name. When the film opened up Chance was breaking up a fight at the main(only?) town bar, it involved the town drunk Dude(Dean Martin) and a toughie named Joe Burdette. After the skirmish was broken up Joe turned his gun on an unarmed man named Danny and shot him to death, right after he fled the bar. At one time Dude was the right hand man of Chance and is a superior marksman, three years ago he threw it all away to run away with a saloon girl. Who in turn dumped Dude and he's never been the same since as he spends every day getting sloshed to the nines! We kept learning more about Dude as the film went along and he truly wanted to change his life around, Sheriff Chance knew that and asked his old mate Dude if he wanted to help in the arrest of Joe Burdette. Which Dude agreed to and he proved to be so helpful in the arrest, also so invaluable at many times in this movie though Dude at times did have some serious problems on occasion because of stopping his drinking cold turkey.
Back in those days(1850-90) a US Marshal would travel to smaller towns to collect their prisoners and bring them to a county/state jail until their trial. The Marshal wouldn't be coming through town for a few more days which usually wouldn't be a problem but the prisoner Burdette could be one. For his brother Nathan is an extremely smart and rich fellow who owns quite a large ranch, he can gather up a posse of forty men within hours and that's what Sheriff Chance is worried about, Nathan arriving in town and breaking his brother out of jail! For besides the not-so-reliable Dude the only other person to help the sheriff out is his part time deputy Stumpy(Walter Brennan) who is in his fifties and is called Stumpy for a reason! So it's Chance and two so-so helpers(one other at the end) against a possible gang of forty who have to hold off Nathan Burdette's gang until the Marshal hits town and for the most part keeping Joe Burdette under lock and key was the main focus of the last 80 minutes. The older brother Nathan is a sharpshooter but doesn't like to get his hands dirty, a few times he hired small gangs to get into the jail or to get Dude drunk but none of them worked. As a matter of fact I thought Dude(Martin) was the key to why Joe Burdette was never sprung from his cell and that didn't go unnoticed by Chance. Stumpy was also an important figure in maintaining order, he couldn't move around well but was an excellent marksman and stayed in the Sheriff's office most of the day to guard the prisoner. While that was going on rolling into town was a visitor and what a Queen she was, that woman's name was Feathers played by Angie Dickinson. She only used a nickname, the same went for Dude, Stumpy and Colorado Ryan(Ricky Nelson). Hadn't mentioned him until now and while not an important character through most of the film Colorado was a key man at the end and was the best shooter of the bunch. He had been a guard for a businessman named Pat Wheeler who did a lot of trading in town, when he was gunned down by one of Nathan Burdette's henchman Colorado vowed to get revenge and did get it at the end.
Final paragraph and it's hard to squeeze 140 minutes of action into 3 1/2 paragraphs but think you've understood what the story was about. Feathers was supposed to be only stopping over for a night but she hit it off so well with Chance and if the film was any longer we may have seen them get hitched! Feathers was an ace Poker player and caught a man cheating in a game, that's how she met Chance who was mighty impressed with her and not just because of that! To make a long review shorter Nathan Burdette's gangs made a few attempts to break his brother Joe out of jail and even though it was three against forty Chance's team came out on top! Nathan was arrested for the murder of Wheeler and also had a string of other charges lodged against him, he was thrown into the cell next to Joe and the following day the Marshal took the pair away to a different Texas jail. The best part of the movie were the final dozen minutes as there was an intense shoot out between Chance and Burdette's gang, what helped Chance, Dude, Stumpy and Colorado was that they had found a cache of dynamite and used that to their advantage, in these old Westerns the good guys always come out on top! Even though "Rio Bravo" is such a known movie have noticed the reviews for it were mixed, most viewers did enjoy the movie but there were also many who thought it was overrated. To me this wasn't as good as Clint Eastwood's 1960's Westerns but the 140 minutes flew right by and though there wasn't a ton of action the movie never dragged. I thought Dean Martin as Dude was the best character and of course John Wayne was solid too, need to see a few more of his films and by the year 1959 he had already been appearing in films for almost 35 years! So I will recommend this film if you enjoy Oaters or any of the cast, there's another movie in this two DVD set titled "The Searchers" so will be vwatching that too and will be also be reviewing that. Below are some pictures from the film followed by an exciting trailer, after that are reviews for a Japanese movie from 1958 and a 1970 Mexican film, unsure if there will be any more films as three should be enough.
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Have no idea why but it seems when I get a bit confused when viewing a movie 98% of the time it's one from Japan! That's a mystery why that is and it just started recently, is it me or the types of films I've been viewing? For this movie "Voice Without a Shadow" it was the film as many other viewers were scratching their heads, more of the bafflement was cleared up at the end but it'll be hard explaining the actual details but all in all this was a terrific film. There is a trailer after the screenshots, it's an excellent one which does help explain a bit of what the movie is about. The first pic above is the boxset this movie is from and I also have another Nikkatsu set called "Nikkatsu Noir" and that's my favorite movie set. There's three films in this set, reviewed one title "The Rambling Guitarist" that starred Akira Kobayashi. Soon, perhaps even for the next post, will review the third film of this boxset which featured the mega star Yujiro Ishihara. That film is from 1958 and titled "Red Pier", I think that could be the best of the bunch so am looking forward to it. Today's film from that boxset also was released in 1958 and did say the title was "Voice Without a Shadow". It starred Hideaki Nitani and the boxset was named Diamond Guys for the trio were the studio's most popular young actors from the period of 1957-62 and all remained stars for many more years. Nitani had the lead male role in this movie but the main lead was played by Yoko Minamida who was such a distinguished actress. I've seen her in many other films and she passed away in 2009 at the age of 76 which in a way is young as so many of the Japanese actresses I've mentioned here are still alive and are often 85+ in age!
Yoko was 25 in age when this movie was filmed and that's her in the first three screenshots plus plenty more. This was a 92 minute film, her character of Asako Kotani nee Takahashi had most of the screentime in the first half of the movie, Nitani's character did in the second half. As the first screenshot shows Asako was an operator for the Maicho newspaper and back then newspapers were the dominant source of news and other kinds of info so Asako rarely had time for a breather. The paper's new ace reporter contacted Asako and asked her to connect him to a professor named Akaboshi, the reporter was Hiroshi Ishikawa(Nitani). However Asako had such a problem calling this professor, her first attempt was a wrong number as the person at the other end said it was a pawn shop. Asako looked the number up in the phone book and dialed that not realizing she was calling the same number as she didn't read the Kanji correctly. This time the person at the other end gave her a hard time and said Asako had called a crematory which in a way she did. For the caller and his two partners were at the time killing five people in the pawn shop which is in the fourth screenshot. When Asako heard that news she contacted the police and told them of her calls but also that she could be a possible witness. For Asako had such a unique talent which was of recalling every voice she heard so she could identify the person she talked to or even perhaps one of his partners who spoke in the background. But the police never had any suspects for the brutal crime so Asako's talents weren't needed but they would many years later. When this happened the new reporter Ishikawa had been yearning to ask Asako out for a date but then learned she was engaged, a few months later she quit the Maicho newspaper.
Now it's three years later and Ishikawa noticed Asako walking along a Tokyo street, she had bent down to pick up some cigarette butts so was she down and out? Yes for Ishikawa followed Asako to her apartment and hadn't been noticed but the reporter did see Asako with her husband. Who we learned was the reason for Asako having to resort to picking up butts off the street for him as Shigeo Kotani had only been working off and in for the past two years so their finances were practically nil. But Kotani had just got a new job and this was the key to the movie as the position was for an agency called Tokyo Advertising. It was 'operated' by a con man named Hamazaki whose role wasn't large but extremely important. He was played by one of my top five actors Jo Shishido and he didn't become a much bigger star for another four years. Hamazaki would have Kotani do all of his dirty work such as meeting with potential clients and giving them Kotani's business card plus also dropping off envelopes and packages for Hamazaki. The con man also convinced Kotani to have a Mahjong game every night at his small apartment and before long those nightly games nearly gave Asako a breakdown! One of the players was a pharmacy store owner named Kawai, he was played by another favorite actor of mine named Nobuo Kaneko. Kawai told Kotani Hamazaki was using him badly for if the police were ever involved the trail would always lead back to Kotani for the client's had his business cards, he delivered all of Hamazaki's packages and the Mahjong games were always at his apartment. Hamazaki was a shrewd man which would soon be his downfall as he was murdered a few days after Kawai had told Kotani that helpful info. But before that murder Asako had called Hamazaki on the phone for her husband to inquire why was Hamazaki late for their nightly Mahjong marathon? What Asako heard over the phone shocked her to no end as she realized the voice she heard was the same one from the pawnshop murders three years ago! A voice is different over the phone which is why Asako didn't realize that Hamazaki was the man she talked to when working at the newspaper. When Hamazaki arrived that evening it appeared to us viewers he knew that Asako finally figured out who he was and would she also be rubbed out?
Final paragraph and who knows if Hamazaki would have hurt his 'partner' Kotani's wife for the next morning Hamazaki was found murdered! This was the part that confused many viewers and I won't discuss every detail as thar's not the point of these mini reviews. But the key to discovering the true killer(s) was COAL as Hamazaki had some on him yet that kind of coal could only be found five miles from where Hamazaki's dead body was found! At first Asako's husband Kotani was arrested as a suspect though we all knew he was innocent, a few hours before he was killed Hamazaki had beaten up Kotani badly so the police wondered did he want revenge? No and Asako believed her husband was innocent, so didn't the reporter Ishikawa who had reentered Asako's life. Ishikawa would have made a fine homicide detective as it was him who did most of the investigating and thanks to Ishikawa Kotani was cleared and the true killers were found. There had been two of them, one man was Muraoka who had also been Hamazaki's partner in the pawnshop murders. The other was a man named Mimura and he had been so tired of being blackmailed by Hamazaki though there was no evidence of that for because Kotani was being used by the con man Hamazaki it appeared Kotani was the blackmailer.... make sense? However those two thugs had a boss and that was the pharmacist Kawai who had also been swindled by Hamazaki so the final ten minutes had many twists to the story. As far as the coal went Hamazaki was killed at a mining site and his dead body was moved five miles away which was only discovered by Ishikawa. Of course much more happened but won't give away too many details or spoilers, the point of these reviews is to give a quickie synopsis of what happened. My choices with Japanese movies lately have been hit or miss with too many misses but this was a decent movie and with a second viewing sure everything will fall into place better. Perhaps if the film was fifteen minutes shorter that would have helped but it was an interesting story plus it was nice to see a trio of my top actors in a film together before they became bigger stars. Have plenty of screenshots below and also a very good trailer for the film, after them is this post's final movie review.
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Not all three movies for today are 'must watches' but they were all so enjoyable and how I've been loving these El Santo movies! This is the seventh to be reviewed but don't think there will be many more as there's a total of 52 Santo films and I'd probably grow tired of the character if I viewed them all. There is a tag for Santo movies so recommend clicking on it to read the other reviews and also to find out so much info about Rodolfo Guzman who portrayed Santo in all 52 movies. Rodolfo was such a popular Mexican wrestler and could be one of the most iconic figures in that country's history! He died in 1984 at the age of 66 and always wore that silver mask wherever he was but two weeks before his death Rodolfo took it off in public for the first and only time! The previous two Santo films that were reviewed had also starred another popular Mexican wrestler named Blue Demon, he also had many of these 'Save the Earth' films so you may see some of them in the future. You'll also be seeing more Mexican horror movies coming up and it's hard to believe how many they had from the mid 1950's up until the end of the 70's. I've viewed some of them but have never done any posts for them, Mexico was such a different country many decades ago and think a much better one. In 1962 there was a film released titled "Santo vs. the Vampire Woman" and have reviewed it. This 1970 movie "Santo and The Revenge of the Vampire Women" was a semi-sequel even though it came out eight years later. It actually had very little to do with that first movie but was of course entertaining and let's finally get to this post's final review, the movie opened up with that first screenshot and the year had been 1730.
The setting had been the infamous region of Transylvania that is located in Romania, the woman in the top screenshot is Countess Mayra who had just been pierced by a wooden stake. She was responsible for many deaths in the area, while she was sleeping in her coffin Mayra was killed. Her fellow vampires were also being hunted so they grabbed the Countess and fled Romania, they ended up in Mexico and had created a burial tomb for Mayra and the other dead creatures of the night from her pack. Quickly the movie flash forwarded to the year 1970 and the tomb had not been opened for 240 years but it would on this very eerie night. An extremely intelligent yet crazed professor(aren't they all in horror flicks?) named Igor Brancov had finally found the sacred tomb after years of searching, he was with his two henchmen Boris and Carlos. Brancov had heard the tales of Mayra's hidden tomb and he was so infatuated with her legend, wonder if thought with her resurrection they could be a couple? The trio brought the coffin of Countess Mayra pack to Brancov's laboratory and opened it, you can see what the Countess looked like after 240 years in the fourth screenshot below! According to the professor Mayra is still somewhat alive and could be resurrected with vast infusions of young women's blood, the first stop was a 1970's disco! Where Boris and Carlos grabbed a dancer and whisked her back to Brancov's lab, in about the tenth screenshot you can see a blood transfusion taking place which brought the Countess Mayra back to life! However she's still in a weakened condition so will need a constant supply of blood for a while, guess you can figure out what the main story is for most of the movie.
But there was one other important story to the movie which is that Mayra is seeking revenge on those who killed her! Of course those people are long dead but somehow the Countess knows of a living descendant and it happened to be none other than our hero (El)Santo!!!! We didn't see him until the eighteen minute mark of this 85 minute film but it was still a decent film in the beginning. Santo's ancient relatives were monster/vampire hunters in old Romania(!) and he knew the legend of those tales which he related to the three others he'll be working with to take down the Countess Mayra. In the tenth screenshot the woman on the left is Paty(NormaLazareno) who was a reporter, next to her is Paty's boyfriend Detective Robles and then there's his assistant Pablo and of course the masked wrestler Santo needs no introduction. The coolest scene of the film may have been right after that as that evening Santo was in a match, having front row seats were Mayra and Brancov. The Countess was the first vampire I've seen who has telepathic powers, first she sent waves to Santo's brain to lose the match and badly! Mayra also sent evil suggestions to Santo's opponent to kill the popular wrestler which came so close to happening, of all the seven movies I've seen this match was Santo's most difficult as he really did come so darn close to losing and being killed! That match is in some below screenshots and there's also many of the Countess Mayra who was getting more powerful by the day as Brancov and his assistants were bringing in vast amounts of fresh blood each day which of course hadn't gone unnoticed by Santo and the police.
Last paragraph for this post and every Santo movie follows a formula of the evil doer(s) getting the upper hand at first and against all odds Santo, often with help from his mates, comes to the rescue and saves the Earth! Which of course happened in this film but unlike other films Santo wasn't challenged as fiercely as he has been except for the wrestling match. With Brancov getting so much blood the other vampires in Mayra's tomb were also brought back to life though they weren't much of a factor as Santo, along with Robles and Pablo, defeated the dozen vampires at the end. Though that wasn't quite the end as the finale was similar to how the film began with the Countess Mayra having a wooden stake pounded into her chest and being entombed again but if she could be brought back to life before could it happen again? Bit of a quickie final paragraph for this film and didn't want to drag it on for too long as in a way if you've seen the ending to one Santo film you've seen them all! Which doesn't mean it was a hum-drum finale and overall this was another enjoyable Santo movie, all seven I've viewed have been. There's also plenty of action, monsters and eeriness plus the Earth's savior Santo is such a likable hero so while these films may not be easy to obtain I do recommend all that I've viewed. For the second time there wasn't a trailer on YT for this film but have an even better treat. I haven't viewed the first Santo movie from 1961 but will be on the hunt for it, after the screenshots is the trailer for that first film "Santo vs. The Evil Brain" and doesn't that look like one fun movie?!
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