Wilkommen to another Wednesday in The Projection Room and what have we here this fine day? Certainly a vat of vacillating viewings, going the Gaumont and thar she blows, eastside,westside all around the houses. Drift catchers?
Happy Heist Hour. Here is a seminal masterpiece - The League of Gentlemen brought to you by dearest Basil Dearden. And the who's whoness is seemingly unyielding, with Jack Hawkins and Roger Livesey and that Attenborough chappie. Everyone is commanding, and some of them are even commando, so I have heard. Arthur Ibbetson is just cosmic with his camera and it''s sheer cushty.
And if you are wondering - what the truck? Trust me I am too, and while this film is not so much the king of the Road, as it is the Jester, there's no harm in engaging in a little escapism, or run for the hills while you still can. They really wanted to cast Patrick Swayze but with the twenty-three dollar and sixty-two cents budget, they had to settle on his younger brother Donny. I present to you - Driving Force (1989) directed by antipodean director Andrew Prowse
And if you loved Roger Moore vis a vis Keach, here he is again, partnering up with another beloved being in the name of Michael Caine. And who better to have engineered this train on the celluloid tracks, only occasionally hitting the third rail but Michael Winner. Born with his very own Hawthorne effect. Of course the critics were unkind but the leads are far too lovable to let this one escape completely from the cracks. From 1990 - Bullseye.
Time to shout it from the rooftops, for ...I love Stacy Keach. And was he ever the dark horse in 1976 when he teamed up with one of the Bonds, Roger Moore or less, in this AIP amethyst - The Sicilian Cross. And in the vein of Mr Dangerfield, this poliziotteschi hybrid got absolutely no respect. Even given the thoroughbreds on board behind the scenery, namely Ernest Tidyman who penned both Shaft and The French Connection
And now some screwball souffle, it was the japes of things to come, the inception year of screwball comedies. This is a 1936 affair starring the wow-worthy Evalyn Knapp who was the secretary with the mostest in 1933's precocious precoder His Private Secretary - and she also moonlighted as his private dancer, when did this dame sleep? Heaps of hijinks a happenin' in this directed by cinematic legend Phil Rosen - Three of a Kind (1936)
And why not a superish hero sojourn - not of the block-buster variety, more a marble-buster but these guys know how to rock either way. Why it's Supermen Against The Orient (1974) and against all odds I would be showcasing this, these films had an unconventional wedding with the earlier euro-spy entries you may have spied in my broadcasts. With a vibration all of their own, natch. It's an Italo-HongKongo production from 1974 and directed by one of the grand poobahs of peplum , director Bitto Albertini.
