Gamera vs Zigra (1971)

After what was a pretty good film, at least by the standards of original Gamera movies, the series plummets back to its usual form with this 1971 effort.

It is the last years of the 20th Century.  Humanity is expanding into space.  Japan has even founded a moon base ... but we are not alone among the stars.  A strange spaceship appears and devastates the moon base, then flies down to Earth.  There, it kidnaps four humans in a small boat.  This being a Gamera film, two of the four are "cute" (for which, read "obnoxious") children.

The alien invaders then explain their evil plans of evilness.  Why the aliens do this is anyone's guess, since they demonstrate they have the ability to broadcast to the whole planet.  Anyway, it's your typical "conquer the planet and eat the humans" deal.  Humans seem like they'd be a very inefficient food source, to me.  Pigs have more meat and grow to maturity much faster, alien dudes.

Then we follow the standard drill: Gamera turns up to stop the aliens.  He gets beaten in the first fight of course, though not until after he smashes the alien ship, which is revealed to be just a shell for the actual alien, which is a massive shark monster.  Later, Gamera recovers and wins the day.  In between those few minutes of "excitement", we have lots of ... not much, really.  The alien uses its brainwashed human minion to chase the obnoxious brats for a while, and then there's lots of scenes of people standing around looking worried while mouthing painfully bad dialogue.

Not even entertainingly terrible.

Love Nest (1951)

Jim Scott returns home from the war to discover that his wife Connie has bought an apartment block with the wages he's been sending home.  Not a bad idea on her part, on the face of it: it gives them not just a place to live, but also rental income from the tenants.

Unfortunately, Connie rather got fleeced by the unscrupulous previous owner.  She paid above the market price, and there's the little matter of faulty plumbing, crumbling plaster, and dodgy lights.  The place is, in other words, a money pit.  Just how much of one becomes clear when the Department of Housing gives them two weeks to fix all the wiring or the building will be condemned.

All of which would put any marriage under strain, but Jim rather compounds the problem by renting one of the apartments to an old army buddy.  An old army buddy who happens to be a member of the Women's Auxiliary Corps.  An old army buddy, in other words, who happens to be Marilyn Monroe.  A wife who hasn't seen her husband for nearly three years might be forgiven for feeling a little threatened in the circumstances.

But at least there's nothing else for Jim and Connie to worry about.  I mean, it's not like the nice old man who just moved into the place is secretly a notorious confidence trickster, or anything like that, right? ... right?

This is a pretty fun little situation comedy.  None of the situations it throws up are going to be unfamiliar - after all, they weren't exactly new when the film was made, and the movie's old enough to draw the pension, now - but it has a breezy air to it that's quite appealing, and the actors playing Jim and Connie work very well together.

If you're in the mood for something feather light and fun, this isn't a bad option at all.

Department S (1969)

I believe I've said before that writing mystery shows is pretty tough.  You've got to come up with a crime that's convoluted enough the solution is not immediately obvious when the show starts, but simple enough that the audience can follow along ... and then you have to set it up, stage the investigation, and hit a satisfying conclusion all in the space of 45 minutes.  Oh, and if you could work in some character stuff in the process, all the better.

It's probably not surprising therefore that a lot of shows rely on a bit of prestidigitation to help them along: either by introducing some means of magical mystery-solving (Holmesian "logic" in any Sherlock Holmes adaptation, forensic science in any brand of CSI) or by distracting you with other things.  For an example of the latter, consider Castle, which has the romance between the leads, a solid dose of humour, and the charisma of its supporting cast, to make up for any deficiencies in the mystery of the week.

Department S goes for a little of both strategies.  On the one hand we have the uncannily accurate deductive leaps made by Jason King (he of the mustache, above).  On the other we have the gimmick that the mysteries they face are inevitably peculiar.  "Why would someone break into a morgue and shoot a corpse?" or "Why would someone steal a crate of soup cans ... and then dump all the cans?" being typical examples.

Alas, neither of these devices really work that well.  In fact, the latter one often actively detracts from the show, as the answers to the questions are almost never as interesting as the questions themselves, which kind of inevitably leads to disappointment.  There are some reasonably fun episodes - the soup can one is pretty good, and there's one involving chemical weapons which I also liked - but more often than not you're left with the feeling that if the criminals / Soviet agents responsible for the mystery had simply chosen a less bizarre method of completing their objective, they'd have had a much greater chance of success.

The show is also let down to some extent by the cheapness with which it was made.  There's an unintentionally hysterical scene where two characters are "jogging", for instance, and it is painfully clear they're running on the spot in front of a green screen.  But if the hit vs miss ratio of the mysteries were better, I could forgive stuff like that.

If you're looking for groovy 60s detectives, I suggest you stick with Steed and Mrs Peel, instead.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (2009)

I very much enjoyed the sober, methodical style of the first film in this series: it made a refreshing change from the more action-oriented tone of a Hollywood techno-thriller.  I was therefore a bit disappointed when the sequel became exactly what I'd liked the original for not being.

This last film of the trilogy (or at least the original trilogy: apparently there's been a fourth book by a different author) continues to be more in the "car chases and fistfights" oeuvre, though it is significantly more restrained than its immediate predecessor.  There's no scene of Lisbeth Salander clawing her way out of her own grave this time, for instance.

Though to be honest, there's no scene of Lisbeth Salander doing much at all in this film.  She spends most of the movie's run time in police custody, either at hospital or in a cell, while other characters do the work of disproving the allegations brought against her by a secret cabal of intelligence officers.  It's an unfortunate position for the title character and one-time proactive, independent woman to be in.  Even the script itself seems to realise that, as it includes a sub-plot that exists solely to give Lisbeth an action scene to take part in, right at the end of the film.

Neither the above flaws nor the film's other weakness - a distinct failure to generate any real tension over the outcome - prevented me from enjoying the movie while it was on, but it never rises above the status of being a tolerable time-waster.

Messiah of Evil (1973)

You probably haven't heard of this film, either under the title above or the alternative appellation of Dead People.  Had it been released six months later, however, things might have been different.

This is not because the film is all that great.  Nor is it because the extra time would have let them fix its problems - the issues are too profound for that.  It's because the husband and wife who wrote and directed this film were also the co-authors of a little film called American Graffiti, which hit cinemas three months after this.  Had the order been reversed, this might have got a higher profile release.

Or maybe it wouldn't, since as I mentioned, it is a deeply flawed film.  Not entirely without merit - there are some interesting visual themes and a couple of really well staged sequences that frankly deserve to be in a better film - but deeply flawed.

The two biggest flaws?  First is its tendency to tell, not show.  There is a lot of narration in this film.  A lot.  There's narration over a chase scene.  Frankly, part of what makes the good sequences stand out so much is that they are among the few times the narrator shuts up.

The second biggest flaw is that for all the narration, the characters' motivations aren't at all clear.  We get to see (and hear) what they do, but there's little indication why.

The plot's straightforward enough, albeit told in a deliberately obfuscating manner.  A young woman comes to a seaside town in search of her father, a well known artist.  She falls in with a trio of alternate-lifestyle-types who are also from out of town, and spends her time alternately reading her missing father's diary and sort-of-flirting with the male member of the trio.  Eventually, we learn what happened to daddy: vampires.

As I said, there are two really well done scenes in the film (the supermarket and the cinema, should you want to try googling them), and some interesting visual themes (the vampires are all dressed in respectable upper/middle class attire, putting them at clear odds with the more counter-culture 'good guys').  These interesting elements can't save the film, however.

Gamera vs Jiger (1970)

This is one of the better entries in the original series of Gamera films, but that's honestly more down to how bad some of the others are than how good this one is.

World Expo 1970 was held in Osaka, and this film makes use of that fact in its story, with much of the action being set there.  Most importantly for the film's purposes however, the Gamera-verse Expo will feature a mini-sub (which looks suspiciously similar to the one in last week's review) and also a strange, ancient statue from tiny "Wester Island".

When a team of archaeologists begins their plan to airlift the status off the island, Gamera turns up and attempts to stop them.  Apparently these guys have somehow managed to not hear about any of the big turtle's previous adventures, because they treat him as a dangerous monster and open fire with rifles.  This can't really hurt Gamera of course, but it does distract him enough that the helicopter with the statue is able to leave.

Surprise surprise, a giant monster subsequently emerges on Wester Island.  This is Jiger, a bulky reptilian quadruped with a truly odd assortment of powers: it can jump great distances by expelling steam from its body, shoot quills from its head, emit an arc of high frequency sound, and inject eggs into other giant monsters via an ovipositor-like barb in its tail.

It'll use all of these abilities in its subsequent tussles with Gamera, of course, with the ovipositor having the largest story role.  Injected with a larva, the big turtle falls into a coma, and the inevitable group of precocious kids must pilot the minisub inside him and perform a Kaiju-sized abortion.

If you're a guys-in-rubber-suits-fanatic, you'll probably get some value out of this, but everyone else can safely skip it.

Let's Make It Legal (1951)

Like the last two films from this pack, this movie dates to the period where Monroe was still making her mark, and she again has only a minor role: that of a young model unsuccessfully trying to win the attention of millionaire bachelor Victor Macfarland.

The reason for Monroe's character's failure is Mrs Miriam Halsworth, whom Macfarland loved twenty years earlier, but lost to another man.  Miriam is on the verge of divorce however - the man she married was an inveterate gambler, and though he was actually quite successful at it, she grew tired of him paying more attention to the race track and the poker table than he did her.

Macfarland sees his opportunity and begins a pursuit of Miriam.  This does not sit well with the soon-to-be-divorced Mr Halsworth however, who has ambitions to win Miriam back.  Not that he seems to be inclined to give up his gambling habits as part of pursuing those ambitions, mind you.

It's nice to see a film structured around a romantic tussle over a woman who is explicitly a grandmother in the script, and who is played by an age appropriate actor, but my appreciation is definitely undermined by the fact that neither of the men chasing her appears to be worth a damn.  Macfarland is just as quick to put his business and political ambitions ahead of her as her ex was to prioritise his gambling, and I've already pointed out the obvious problem with the latter man.

The film itself has good performances and some amusing patter, but at the end of the day my dislike for both suitors made it hard for me to care who Miriam chose, and on that basis, I can't recommend it.