THE MAN FROM HONG KONG. British Empire Films, Australia, 1975. Released in the US as Dragon Flies. Jimmy Wang Yu, George Lazenby, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Roger Ward, Ros Spiers, Rebecca Gilling, Sammo Kam-Bo Hung. Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith.

   There’s no shortage of fisticuffs and fantastically choreographed martial arts fight scenes in The Man From Hong Kong. Directed by Ozploitation auteur Brian Trenchard-Smith, this entertaining, if deeply uneven, action movie features martial arts legend Jimmy Wang Wu as the titular character and one-time James Bond portrayer George Lazenby as his nemesis.

   Occasionally uneven in its pacing, this thrill ride of a movie nevertheless moves along at a steady clip, with bloody and brutal fight sequences interspaced with calm, romantic interludes that seem oddly out of place. But with some great car chases and a 1970s disco-inspired soundtrack, The Man from Hong Kong doesn’t stray from its mission of providing viewers with pure escapist entertainment for very long.

   The plot. Inspector Fang Sing Leng (Jimmy Wang Yu) of the Hong Kong Royal Police Force Special Branch heads to Sydney in order to extradite a drug runner (future Hong Kong director and producer Sammo Hung) held by the local authorities.

   But when a lone assassin murders Leng’s prisoner in broad daylight, Leng decides that he’s going to take down the entire international drug cartel run by an Australian businessman named Wilton (Lazenby).

   Leng fights his way through Sydney, leaving death and mayhem in his wake. But he’s determined to bring down Wilton, no matter what the cost. And when Wilton’s men murder Leng’s Australian love interest, all bets are off. Leng is set to wreak havoc. And wreak havoc he does. Look for the scene in which he stuffs a live grenade in Wilton’s mouth. It is pure grindhouse mayhem.

TOUGH GUYS. Touchstone/Buena Vista Pictures, 1986. Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Charles Durning, Alexis Smith, Dana Carvey, Darlanne Fluegel, Eli Wallach. Director: Jeff Kanew.

   A buddy movie. A message movie about how American society treats senior citizens. A comedy-crime film. Those are all perfectly adequate ways of describing Tough Guys. But at the end of the day, the movie was really one thing: a golden opportunity to bring Hollywood legends Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas together on the big screen for one last time.

   The two actors who appeared in a total of seven movies together, but who are perhaps best known for their work together in John Sturges’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (reviewed here ), portray best friends in Tough Guys. Best friends who happen to be finishing up a 30-year stint in prison for robbing the Gold Coast Flyer. These two men, the last two to rob a train in the United States, are truly the last of a dying breed.

   But if prison is tough, getting out is even tougher. Both men are fish out of water. Not only have times change, but they’re old men now. But they still love women.

   Through a series of romantic mishaps and comedic adventures, they learn the hard way that very few people want to treat senior citizens with much respect or dignity. There’s definitely a message here, one that Lancaster, in an interview with the New York Times, suggested takes the movie out of the real of action-comedy into something more meaningful.

   Despite this being a lightweight, perfectly innocent affair that doesn’t stay with you long after you’ve finished watching, Tough Guys works. The pairing of Lancaster and Douglas as two aging criminals trying to regain one last moment of glory is pure entertainment. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a good one.

   One last thing: without Lancaster and Douglas, this movie never would have worked. It’s their vehicle from start to finish.

F.B.I. GIRL. Lippert Pictures, 1951. Cesar Romero, George Brent, Audrey Totter, Tom Drake, Raymond Burr, Raymond Greenleaf. Director: William Berke.

   There are plenty of shadows in FBI Girl. Unfortunately, they are a product of bad lighting rather than a film noir aesthetic. And that’s not necessarily the worst thing about this rather poorly constructed black-and-white semi-docudrama crime film. No. The worst aspect about the whole affair is that it wastes the talents of both Cesar Romero and Raymond Burr on a movie with a less than compelling plot and stilted, unrealistic dialogue.

   Romero portrays FBI Agent Glen Stedman. He’s tasked with investigating the suspicious death of a female FBI clerk working in the fingerprint division. Little does he know that his investigation will lead him straight into a morass of political corruption in Capitol City and the shrewd machinations of Grisby, a Southern politician (Raymond Greenleaf) and Blake, his corrupt, violent henchman (Raymond Burr). Much of the film follows Stedman as he travels from Washington D.C. to Capitol City and back again in search of possible clues.

   It’s a potentially intriguing premise for a movie, but FBI Girl never really gets off the ground. It’s consistently bogged down by either poor acting, an intrusive score, or as I mentioned earlier, bad lighting. There’s also a sound stage quality to the whole affair, making it seem a lot less like a feature film and more like a television show from the same era. Overall, a rather below average production.

DARK CITY. Paramount Pictures, 1950. Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, Viveca Lindfors, Dean Jagger, Don DeFore, Jack Webb, Ed Begley, Harry Morgan, Mike Mazurki. Director: William Dieterle.

   In this film Charlton Heston is a small-time grifter who, along with his gang of cohorts, fleeces a LA businessman (Don DeFore) in a game of cards. When the man commits suicide, his brother (Mike Mazurki), not altogether sane, doesn’t take kindly to it and decides to do something about it.

   This wasn’t Charlton Heston’s film debut, but it was close. He had done a very early experimental film (Peer Gynt) back in 1941, then one other film (Julius Caesar) earlier that same year, plus a single episode of an obscure TV show called The Clock.

   While I think the movie is a small gem, it would be stretching it to say that you could tell from seeing it that Heston would soon be a major star. In fact, in old movies such as this one, I usually enjoy watching people such as Jack Webb, Ed Begley, and Harry Morgan performing a whole lot more.

   One other thing. This movie was released a long time before Jack Webb and Harry Morgan teamed up to do Dragnet on TV. Webb plays a shifty-eyed hood named Augie, with a wide-rimmed hat twice the size of his head, while Morgan is a punch-drunk hanger-on with a heart as big as all outdoors.

HARRY IN YOUR POCKET. United Artists, 1973. James Coburn, Michael Sarrazin, Trish Van Devere, Walter Pidgeon. Music by Lalo Schifrin. Producer-Director: Bruce Geller.

   Bruce Geller is best known for his work on the television series Mannix and Mission: Impossible. He also directed one feature film: Harry in Your Pocket, an offbeat study of the lives and times of a coterie of high-end pickpockets as they make their way from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia, and eventually to Salt Lake City. Filmed on location, the movie defies easy categorization.

   With a prominent score by Lalo Shifrin, one that occasionally overwhelms what’s happening on screen, the film at times seems to be as much a musical as a crime drama. At the end of the day, the movie is best understood as a drama, even a tragedy. It’s a study of human frailty and character flaws, wrapped up in a package with the words “quirky crime film” written in black marker.

   The plot. Harry (James Coburn) is a pickpocket, living a luxuriously itinerant life on other people’s money and credit cards. Joining him for the proverbial ride is Casey (Walter Pidgeon), an aging pickpocket with a cocaine habit.

   They eventually join forces with Ray (Michael Sarrazin), an ambitious young pickpocket, and his girlfriend Sandy (Trish Van Devere). Soon, however, each of the gang’s personal flaws begins to take a toll on the group’s cohesion. Harry’s too rigid and is a womanizer. Casey has a drug habit and is ashamed that he is no longer as steady on his feet as he used to be. Ray is too ambitious for his own good and becomes increasingly jealous of Harry’s infatuation with Sandy. And Sandy. She’s the linchpin in all this. Even Harry says that he thinks she’s going to be trouble.

   While it’s not what I would call an excellent film, Harry in Your Pocket is a quite captivating work. It’s subtle and Coburn puts in a solid performance. It’s Pidgeon, however, in one of his last leading roles, that made the most memorable impression on me. Look for the scene in which he is instructing Ray on the “art” of being a pickpocket. He reminisces about the good old days before mugging, when pickpockets took their craft seriously and there was a code and honor in the “profession.”

   It’s that sense of melancholy and nostalgia that stayed with me. A product of the 1970s, Harry in Your Pocket could be easily interpreted as an extended cinematic metaphor for the generational divide in early 1970s American society.

KISS ME A KILLER. Concorde-New Horizons, 1991. Julie Carmen, Robert Beltran, Ramon Franco, Charles Boswell, Sam Vlahos. Director: Marcus DeLeon.

   This late night attraction on one of the pay channels we’ve just signed up for is the first I’ve taped that turned out to be more than I was hoping for. You may or may not believe me, but what this is is an authentic, down-to-earth throwback to the noir movies of of the 1940s, done semi-salsa style.

   It takes place in L.A., where the middle-aged (and white) owner of a bar has a good-looking but bored younger wife, and when he hires a new Latino singer for the house band, fireworks begin to happen.

   In spite of a list of actors who’ve been around but who are still pretty much unknown (at least to me), the acting is top-drawer, if not quite top notch, the music is fine, the pace is fast, and the story makes sense. Julie Carmen, a sultry brunette with a voice so husky it could pull an Alaskan dog sled, as the saying goes, I would not mind seeing again either. This one’s a keeper, that’s for sure.

DANCE HALL RACKET. Screen Classics Inc., 1953. Timothy Farrell, Lenny Bruce, Bernie Jones, Honey Bruce and Killer Joe Piro. Written by Lenny Bruce. Produced by George Weiss. Directed by Phil Tucker.

   There’s something sort of fitting about Lenny Bruce dong a tame 1950s skin-flick, but the good news here is that this film is too seldom shown to damage his reputation — which, come to think of it, he did pretty well all by himself. The other good news is that aside from Bruce, Dance Hall Racket is not a waste of anyone’s talent; the talents here assembled are perfectly suited to this sub-nudie effort, and navigate the seedy screen like they were born for it.

   We get Timothy Farrell as Umberto Scali, running a dime-a-dance joint as a front for various & sundry illegalities, such as murder, diamond smuggling and maybe a touch of prostitution; Lenny Bruce and Killer Joe Piro as flunky-hoods; Honey Bruce as a dancer who changes her clothes a lot, and Bernie Jones (formerly of Spike Jones’ ensemble) as a dumb Swede who stops the action every so often to tell excruciatingly bad jokes.

   Dance Hall Racket exists primarily as an excuse to show attractive young ladies in stages of undress, highlighted at various intervals by an actual glimpse of a bare breast (GOSH!) but there’s a sort of tawdry plot here: something about Timothy Farrell buying hot ice and planning to abduct a recently-released con and find out where he stashed the loot.

   We also get an undercover cop worming his way into Farrell’s scene and a neophyte taxi-dancer resisting temptation, but Dance Hall Racket is too disjointed to weave any of these threads together; like I say, it’s an excuse to look at nekkid wimmin, and a pretty feeble one at that, shot on shoe-box sets by a cameraman who looks like he was thinking of something else at the time.

   Getting back to the talented people who made this film, well, Lenny Bruce is legendary, and his wife Honey was played by Valerie Perrine (who got an Oscar nomination) in the biopic Lenny, but the others are almost as fascinating: Producer George Weiss started out with Test Tube Babies in 1948, went on to Glen or Glenda? (1953) and continued on into the 90s making films he should be ashamed of.

   Right after Dance Hall Racket director Phil Tucker tried going “legit” with Robot Monster, a legendary mess in fake 3-D, but was soon back to doing things like Strips Around the World and Bagdad After Midnite. He continued working sporadically in the movies as late as the 1980s.

   My favorite though is Timothy Farrell, here the gang boss, but in real life an L.A. County Sherriff’s bailiff (he appeared as himself the next year in A Star Is Born) who acted in nudie movies and religious shorts on the side. He eventually made County Marshall (despite having one of his films seized in a police raid) but was fired for using his deputies as political activists in 1975, indicating a personality much more interesting than this bizarre little film.

DEAD PIGEON ON BEETHOVEN STREET. Episode 25, Season 1, of Tatort, Germany, 07 January 1973. Original title: Tote Taube in der Beethovenstraße. Glenn Corbett, Christa Lang, Sieghardt Rupp, Anton Diffring, Stephanie Audran, Eric P. Caspar. Screenwriter-director: Sam Fuller. Novelization: Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street, by Samuel Fuller (Pyramid V3736, paperback original, 1974).

   This is the story of a private eye named Sandy (Glenn Corbett) who comes to Germany on an extremely important case. He’s been hired an United States senator with presidential aspirations to obtain a negative that in the wrong hands could prove to be extremely embarrassing. His partner, who arrived before him, is dead. His objective: find the killer, infiltrate the gang of blackmailers, and save the senator’s hide.

   The killer, as it turns out, is a fellow named Charlie Umlaut. Sandy’s gateway to the gang is a girl named Christa (Christa Lang) who is also the girl in the compromising photograph. She also knows who the leader of the gang is (Anton Diffring), and to gain her confidence, Sandy poses as a rival in the blackmail business. But can Christa herself be trusted, even when propinquity (between herself and Sandy) takes the way of nature and least resistance?

   This was filmed at a low point in Director Sam Fuller’s career. The story had nothing (or very little) to do with the rest of the German series it was filmed as part of. But Fuller had name value, and he was given a a free hand, more or less — given budgetary considerations. The movie (which is what I will call it) is filmed in beautiful colors and fanciful camera angles, and in those two regards, I should consider it a huge success.

   But the story, at least in the longer, restored director’s cut (in the DVD recently released and remastered through the UCLA Archives) becomes repetitious and boring, and the acting is stiff and the dialogue on occasion seemingly ad-libbed. Christa Lang’s awkward body motions, speech patterns and facial expressions can easily become annoying, if you allow them. (She was married to Fuller at the time and until his death.)

   Some reviewers have really disliked this movie. Others call it a work of genius, calling it an inspired collision with (and combination of) Noir and the New Wave. I don’t know as I’d go that far, but Fuller usually knew what he was doing, and while I also don’t know if he did here, maybe he really did. Either that or the movie is a complete failure, and once that is admitted, then perhaps that’s what it was how it was intended, as a complete spoof of the crime genre.

   And maybe this review makes sense too, and maybe it doesn’t.

WICKED WOMAN. United Artists, 1953. Beverly Michaels, Richard Egan, Percy Helton, Evelyn Scott, Robert Osterloh, Frank Ferguson. Written by Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse. Produced by Clarence Greene. Directed by Russsell Rouse, who later married Beverly Michaels, making this a tight-knit ensemble indeed.

   I’m getting to the point where my memory is not to be trusted. Lately as I drive in to work, I can’t recall if I remembered to feed the cat, and it’s even later in the day when I realize I don’t have one. But such are the vagaries of the human mind that when I saw this at CINEVENT I remembered Andrew Sarris making a passing positive reference to it in an article from 1974.

   It’s well worth the mention, a film that floats at the edge of James M. Cain territory like a threatening cloud. Beverly Michaels blows into town on a greyhound, and from the moment she lights a cigarette and asks where to find a cheap room, we can see this dame is trouble and headed for more.

   In short order Bev gets a job as a waitress in a neighborhood bar owned by Evelyn Scott (who is a bit of a lush) run by her hunky husband Richard Egan. She also takes advantage of a mousy – no make that ratty —neighbor across the hall at the boarding house, played to perfection by Percy Helton. It’s obvious from the first that he has a letch for Beverly, and equally obvious that she has only contempt for the little wheezy-voiced fat man, but we shall see…..

   It’s surprising how natural the acting is here. Ms. Michaels seems the perfect tramp, Egan the brainless jock, and Scott the bitch who’s getting in the way as Egan and Michaels start a torrid affair and dream of getting away somewhere — Mexico maybe — if only they could sell the bar without Scott objecting…..

   Using passion instead of brains, Egan and Michaels hatch a plan for her to impersonate the wife and sign the necessary papers, then skip town with the dough. But it seems neither of them knew the paperwork takes a week or ten days to process, resulting in an enjoyably suspenseful stretch with the lovers trying to conceal the deception, even when the new buyer wanders in to look things over.

   And there’s an even nastier wrinkle when the ratty little neighbor tumbles to the scheme and blackmails Michaels for sexual favors — believe, me, there’s nothing as scary or sinister as pipsqueak Percy popping out in the passageway with a cheery “I’ve been waiting for you!”

   From this point on, the plot could have gone any number of places, but it went where I wasn’t expecting it to go. And maybe you won’t expect it either. Suffice it to say, this is tough, cynical and as downbeat as any noir buff could wish for.

   And incidentally, the title song for this enchanting film is sung (belted out, rather) by none other than Herb Jeffries, the Bronze Buckaroo himself!

THE ANATOMIST. Made for British TV: A Towers of London Production, 06 February 1956. Televised as part of the series ITV Play of the Week. US release, 1961.Alastair Sim, George Cole, Adrienne Corri, Jill Bennett and Michael Ripper. Written by James Bridie (play) and Harry Alan Towers. Directed by Dennis Vance.

   Perhaps the oddest film ever made about the Burke and Hare thing. Which is not to say it’s any good; this is, in fact, a rather dullish film about body-snatching, murder, riots and young love — but there’s no denying it’s a strange one.

   We open in a stylish drawing room where medical student George Cole (Alastair Sims’ perennial side-kick) is explaining to fiancée Jill Bennett why he has to stay in Edinburgh and study under the great Dr. Knox, instead of setting up practice and marrying her. In due course Dr Knox himself appears, played by Mr Sim himself (surprise!) and a lively discussion ensues about the merits of medicine and marriage.

   It’s refreshingly outré to see the redoubtable Alastair Sim turn his comic gifts to serious, borderline-sinister effect, but the novelty wears off as the characters keep talking… and talking… and talking… and…

   You get the point? The writers and director keep everyone wandering around one crummy set throwing dialogue at each other for about 15 or 20 minutes that seem much longer. Finally though, we get out of the drawing room and into a sleazy pub, where Burke and Hare (Hare is played by Michael Ripper, who would soon become a regular in Hammer films) start cozening a lady of easy virtue and ill repute (Adrienne Corri) plying her with strong drink and sweet words. And more words… and more words… and more….

   Suffice it to say that by the time they got her out of there, I was ready for any sort of action, though I would have preferred that mayhem be committed on the makers of this thing.

   And so it goes. Cole recognizes Ms. Corri’s corpse in Sim’s lecture hall and they discuss the matter till it’s talked to death. The scene shifts (restlessly) back to Bennett’s drawing room where someone tells us about Burke’s trial and the ensuing riots, just in time for the remainder of the cast to debate the proprieties of the situation. And then…

   Well, dull as it is, I’m not going to give away the ending of this thing except to say it was a merciful release and even a bit of a surprise, not that I cared much by that point. The Anatomist takes an unusual view of the whole body-snatching business (though to be strictly accurate, neither Burke nor Hare ever snatched any bodies) and it’s always a pleasure to see Alastair Sim strut his stuff.

   But I would have preferred less strutting and more movement.