A FORCE OF ONE (1979) – Fresh off the success of Good Guys Wear Black, Chuck Norris starred in this action film directed by Paul Aaron in only his second directing effort. The prolific Ernest Tidyman wrote the screenplay.
The Story: In a fictional mid-sized California city, a drug operation is thriving, helped along by bad cops who funnel confiscated drugs right back to the head of the narcotics pushers after pretending to have destroyed the seized goodies per department policy. The drug ring uses a sporting goods store as their front and use an aspiring karate champ as their chief enforcer.
That enforcer is a deadly human weapon and when cops keep turning up dead at his hands the department hires a local karate dojo master to teach the police better techniques of self-defense. That dojo master falls in love with a lady cop and winds up helping the police to battle the drug ring.
The Characters:
CHUCK NORRIS is in the role of Matt Logan, a former special forces man from the United States Army. He’s the defending Middleweight Karate Champion and also runs a karate dojo on the side. One of his students is his black adopted son Charlie (Eric Laneuville), whose late mother he had platonically befriended when … oh, don’t worry about it. They might as well have saved time by just having him be one of Matt’s students, PERIOD, since his only purpose is to get killed by the drug dealers, thus giving Logan a personal stake in the crusade to bring them down. Continue reading
DICK TURPIN (1925) – Western star Tom Mix took a break from his Wild West movies by starring in this highly romanticized film about the real-life English thief and highway robber Dick Turpin. John G. Blystone directed the movie for Fox Film Corporation. Tom swapped his six-guns and rifles for a sword and pistols in this flick.
The main villain of the film is Lord Churlton (Philo McCullough), who not only resents having been robbed by Turpin, but abuses his power and influence by menacingly trying to force Lady Alice Brookfield (Kathleen Myers) to marry him. 
THE ELUSIVE AVENGERS (1967) – This movie is often classified as part of the subgenre called “Easterns/ Osterns” – counterparts of Westerns. As an example of global cinema, The Elusive Avengers is worth a watch maybe once in a lifetime, but the cringe factor is heavy as it romanticizes four young guerilla fighters during the Russian Civil War. 
Judged purely on its production values and competent direction, The Elusive Avengers fascinates as much as it repels. In a world where a piece of garbage like deranged war criminal Vlad Putin runs Russia it can make a film like this a challenge to sit through without the real world intruding on one’s thoughts, but again, for anyone interested in world cinema history the movie is a revelation. 
For several years now I’ve meant to make a blog post recommending the YT Channel of Decker Shado, the often-hilarious figure who calls himself “The internet personality with the best hair.” He focuses mostly on genre films – new and old – and offers a lot of fresh insights on anything from schlock to blockbusters. 
January 8th is the combined marking of Elvis Presley’s birthday and the Battle of New Orleans, in which General Andrew Jackson and French Pirate Jean Lafitte defeated the British in the final battle of the War of 1812. 
LOVE ME TENDER (1956) – Elvis was the latest reason that the saga of the Reno Gang/ Reno Brothers got distorted on the big screen. The need to turn the Reno story into a vehicle for Elvis Presley made this attempt the most unintentionally funny of them all. 
PRIMER (2004) – HAPPY NEW YEAR! Yes, I’m just childish enough to pat myself on the back for that play on words in the title of this blog post. With that out of the way I know I’m late to the game when it comes to Primer but my own skepticism about it made me keep it on the back burner in terms of priority movies to watch. 
Shane Carruth stars as Aaron and David Sullivan portrays Abe. The pair are engineers who – on the side – run a tech business out of Aaron’s garage. As a side effect of a project they are working on the two discover a means of time travel. 
Reactions to Balladeer’s Blog’s reviews of silent movies have been positive enough that I’d like to offer a quick take on a few multi-part documentary series on the subject. Both were from British Film Historian Kevin Brownlow, who did a better job of depicting the Age of Silent Movies than any Americans ever did. 
PART ONE – From Vaudeville to Movies: Brownlow and his colleagues scoured the best available footage remaining from Buster Keaton’s silent comedies. (For newbies to silent film history I’ll mention that countless movies from that period are lost forever due to decomposition prior to efforts to preserve them.)
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2006) – This computer-animation version of the Dickens classic was produced by BKN and distributed by Genius Entertainment, Kidtoon Films and Image Entertainment. Ric Machin directed. The 48 minute film had a brief theatrical run in November of 2006 before being released on home video. 
SUPERSONIC SAUCER (1956) – In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday Balladeer’s Blog presents a look at another harmless, all-ages sci-fi turkey, this one from England. Supersonic Saucer was produced by our old friends in Great Britain’s Children’s Film Foundation, the same group behind 
Top-billed actress Marcia Manolescue, an English actress of Asian descent, plays Sumac, one of the students whose family could not pay travel fare home and back. Another such student is Greta (Gillian Harrison) and rounding things out is Adolphus (Andrew Mette-Harrison), the tubby youngest character. 
We viewers know the kids are in the right, and the spaceship/ flying saucer is really a Venusian youngster. That alien entity used its race’s ability to morph from Muppet-like form to amoeboid form to flying saucer form fit for interplanetary travel. 
The goofy looking Venusian resembles a thick, tall worm in a white hijab in its “normal” form but is hilariously rendered as a cartoon flying saucer with eyes for its airborne and spacefaring form. The “special” effect is as laughable as the cartoon spaceships in American movies like Invaders from Mars.
METROPOLIS – Volumes have been written about Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent movie sci-fi masterpiece. I love the film myself but rather than write the 9,899,974th glowing review of the 1927 original I will instead take a look at the 1984 re-issue, produced by Giorgio Moroder, who also did soundtracks for movies like Scarface, Midnight Express, and later Top Gun.
Rather than have the usual classical or similar music play as accompaniment to a silent movie, composer Giorgio Moroder wrote a rock and pop music score to attract a generation of filmgoers who might otherwise have never sat through a silent movie in their lives. Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar, Adam Ant and Billy Squier were among those performing Moroder’s score.
Not only 1984 audiences but all subsequent generations of viewers which were drawn to silent movies in general thanks to airings of Metropolis (1984) may never have brought the new blood and passion to the early cinematic artform if not for Moroder. 
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