LATITUDE ZERO (1969) – Just as absence makes the heart grow fonder, the unavailability of certain movies over extended periods lends them a certain mystique that they can’t possibly live up to when they are finally released once again to the public. Recently Balladeer’s Blog dealt with this while reviewing the long locked-away movie Toomorrow, starring a young Olivia Newton John. Now it’s Latitude Zero‘s turn.
This Toho Studios movie is noted for being the final collaboration among Director Ishiro Honda, Special Effects Artist Eiji Tsubaraya and Musical Conductor Akira Ifukube. A few decades back Latitude Zero was locked away in the Toho vaults and was unavailable on home video, leaving all of us fans of cult movies panting for the day when it would be re-released.
Unfortunately, it’s neither the “science fiction classic” nor the “so bad it’s good masterpiece” that it was hyped as during its period in video exile. A bathysphere containing two scientists and a newsman is rescued from destruction by a futuristic submarine and taken to an underwater utopia. Japan misleadingly marketed the movie as if it was a sequel to Atragon, oddly enough.
The usual Raymond Burr Syndrome applies as we get American actors sprinkled in with the Japanese performers. Continue reading
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STARTED IN DODGE CITY – The Las Vegas in this article is Las Vegas, NEW MEXICO, not the more famous Las Vegas in Nevada. This lesser known Las Vegas held a degree of renown from the 1846-1848 war with Mexico onward. Its earliest history dated back to the 1600s. 
BLACKOUT 
LONDON 
Powers: London was in the peak of human condition and excelled at unarmed combat. He also possessed the agility of an Olympic gymnast. In addition, this hero was a crack shot with the handgun he carried. 
Comment: This superhero may SOUND run of the mill, but there’s just something about the name “London” plus the great font for the letter “L” on his forehead that makes him more appealing to me than other “regular guys in a costume” heroes. 
Carmen Best, Seattle Police Chief and Martin Luther King Person of Courage, recently spoke out about the way Democrat politicians in Seattle have been furthering their war on the police (see links below) and yesterday added to her earlier comments by pointing out the terrorist warfare gear that was seized as it was being handed out to Democrat RIOTERS (not protestors – RIOTERS).
The lasers have already been used frequently in Portland, OR, against Federals who had to be sent in TO PROTECT FEDERAL BUILDINGS IN THE CITY. Most adults recognize that the Federal Government HAS ALWAYS been able to protect Federal Buildings in cities across the nation, but in recent weeks it has been especially necessary because Democrat mayors and/ or governors attack federal LEO’s because of Democrats’ obsessive hatred of President Trump. 
I will say once again that my biggest regret in life is that I used to belong to the fascist organization called the Democrat Party. Join so many of us and #WALKAWAY from that repulsive organization that is waging war on the rest of us because they lost an election four years ago. 
When he was age 16 Charles’ well-to-do parents gave up trying to force him to continue his schooling at an eastern military academy and let him move to Montana, where, clad in a brand-new buckskin outfit, he worked on a friend’s sheep ranch north of Helena. It took skill with a gun and a true survival instinct to live through encounters with rustlers, hostile cattlemen and their hired gunmen but Charles, already being called Kid Russell, thrived and felt more at home in this rough and tumble lifestyle than among his family’s hoity-toity friends in St Louis high society. 
Nina Turner, the black woman who served as the co-chair for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign – which was once again sabotaged by the corrupt Democrats – recently compared voting for the senile and possibly demented Joe Biden to eating “a bowl of shit.” (Link below)
Turner also pointed out “WHILE BERNIE SANDERS HAS ALWAYS STOOD UP FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS, JOE BIDEN HAS REPEATEDLY LET US DOWN.” Joe Biden has long been behind draconian legal measures against African Americans, often in concert with Hillary “The Human Herpes Sore” Clinton, who notoriously called African American males “super-predators.” (No, Hillary, career politicians like YOU are super-predators. And career criminals, too.) 
Even though there are signs here and there that audiences are getting fatigued with the oversaturation of superhero adaptations for the big and small screens, there still doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. 
The central character uses his powers in World War One but afterward must cope with the limits of “super-powers” when it comes to dealing with political corruption and other problems that can’t be solved with violence. Or in which flexing his super-muscles would be counter-productive, maybe even ushering in a dictatorship. 
COMIN’ AT YA! (1981) – Directed by Ferdinando Baldi, Comin’ At Ya! is often credited with starting the pointless and bizarre 1980s revival of 1950s-style 3D movies. The film stars Tony Anthony, famous to us Spaghetti Western fans for the movie series in which he played a gunslinger called the Stranger. He appeared in others, as well, some reasonably good and others, like Blindman, so bad as to be virtually unwatchable. 
Our main character, Triple H, ain’t havin’ it and sets out to recover his new bride and set free the other unfortunate women seized by the Thompson Gang. Needless to say he’ll also kill every member of the gang as well as some of the snobbish, upper-class Mexican aristos – male and female – who buy the ladies at an elegantly-appointed mansion/ former convent now used for slave auctions. 
De facto Third Party President Donald Trump continues to be the most helpful president for the working class and the poor in decades. His four new Executive Orders will save – in some cases – FIFTY PERCENT on prescription drugs! Trump’s efforts to rein in Big Pharma have once again yielded positive results. 
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