Apocalypse Corman! (or 'Three actors, three days, and three bucks')

Last Woman on Earth (1960)
Starring: Betsy Jones-Moreland, Antony Carbone, and Robert Towne
Director: Roger Corman
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

A crooked business man (Carbone), his wife (Jones-Moreland), and his young attorney (Towne) through a fluke survive a mysterious disaster that kills every living thing on the surface of Earth's northern hemisphere, perhaps in the entire world. They attempt to forge a life on the now deserted planet, but how long can two men tolerate each other with just one woman between them? Not very long.

There isn't much more to this film that that paragraph. If I told you that one man kills the other, and the remaining couple lives happily ever after, I wouldn't be spoiling the film, because that's the outcome that's set up early on, and it's an outcome that's never in any doubt.

The cinematography and acting is serviceable for a film which was probably written on the back of cocktail napkins, for which much of the dialogue was probably ad-libbed (the only explanation I can think of for inexplicably repeated lines within the same scene), and which was only made because "Creature from the Haunted Sea" wrapped a few days early and director/producer wanted to squeeze as much work out of the cast and crew he had brought to Puerto Rico as possible.

But for a movie that was probably made in a single-digit number of days, it isn't all bad. The characters are interesting in a community theater one-act play sort of way, and the story moves along at a quick pace. While there isn't a whole lot that happens in this film, you can still watch it and not get bored. Antony Carbone is particularly interesting as the crooked business man, mostly because you know that he's going to kill someone before the film's over. The only question is who.

That's not to say that it's necessarily worth watching unless you're interested in what an "artsy" Corman film might look like, or if you want to check out the humble beginnings of the writer of "China Town". But in the final analysis, this is yet another Roger Corman production where the poster art is more interesting than the film itself.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Signs of the Bad Economy

She can't afford shirts...

... she can't afford pants...

... she has to ride the bus to work...

... and she gave her soul to a nameless Lemurian demon god
for a carton of cigarettes.

Picture Perfect Special: Princesses of Mars, Part Ten

More visions of Martian Princesses, as the series enters double-digits!

By Dave Hoover

By Marc Laming

By Rich Larson

By Gene Gonzalez

By Rafael Kayanan

This file could probably have stayed hidden

Secret File: Hollywood (1962)
Starring: Robert Clarke, Francine York, Sydney Mason, John Warburton, Bill White, and Maralou Gray
Director: Ralph Cushman
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A former private detective (Clarke) is hired by a scandal sheet to take pictures of celebrities for the publication. However, he soon discovers there is a dark and deadly side to the magazine's activities, and he find himself in the middle of blackmail schemes... and ultimately having to prevent his own murder.

"Secret File Hollywood" is a film that reminded me of the crime dramas from the old time low-budget studio PRC, an outfit that one could say was making film-noir movies before the subgenre existed. Like those films, "Secret File Hollywood" is populated almost exclusively by deeply flawed and unpleasant characters, living in a dank version of Los Angeles that feels all the more dirty and sleazy because of the cheap sets and low production values of the films. Glamour is the last thing you'll find in most PRC movies, although nihilism is present in large amounts.

The film's villain also shares a trait with many of those who moved through the plots of the PRC films with sneers, growls, and maniacal laughter; he is executing an insane revenge scheme in an unnecessarily complex fashion. And then there's the fact his secret identity isn't so secret, because the cast of characters is so small that there's only really one possibility as to who he might be.

The acting is decent and what you might expect if you consider the aura of a 1940s low-budget quickie that surrounds this picture. There isn't a scene where I wish they didn't pick up the pace a bit, but the actors generally provide solid performances of their stock characters.

The Milla Jovovich Quarterly

Milla Jovovich, ladies and gentlemen, presenting the unifying theme of this blog.

A Cab Calloway Classic

I'm starting the week with something a little different: An entire short film you can watch right here on the blog.

Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho (1934)
Starring: Cab Calloway, Fredi Washington, and Ethel Moses
Director: Fred Waller
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Jazz star Cab Calloway (Calloway) advises a porter to buy a radio in order to keep his wife from stepping out while he is away from home. Unfortunately, the wife (Washington) stays in with Cab Calloway himself.


This fun little ten-minute short features a trio of great Cab Calloway songs, including "The Lady with the Fan", a song written specifically for Calloway's Cotton Club show and performed here in his fictitious Cotton Club Show. They illustrate one of the things I've always found so much fun about Calloway's songs--characters appear in several of them, like Smokey Joe and Minnie--so they can combined to sort of tell larger stories. And then there's always the endless variation on the call "hi-de-ho."

Aside from the gag ending, this film is interesting from the point of view that it shows a black patron at the Cotton Club, a Harlem nightclub that was notoriously racist in its policy of only admitting white customers, despite specializing in black performers and black jazz music. By 1934, however, the policies had been been somewhat relaxed at the insistence of Duke Ellington, whose band and music had been a major part in building the club's high reputation. None the less, the black patron is shown separated from the rest behind a low wall.

Those were different times.

On the other hand, the film also shows that Cab Calloway would fit right into today's entertainment scene if he were a young musician and performer today. With the grasp of cutting-edge technology and tendency toward sex scandal on display in this film, Calloway might even be a politician Tweeting pictures of his penis for the world to see.

Blake should have stayed lost in the fog

Blake of Scotland Yard (1937)
Starring: Ralph Byrd, Herbert Rawlinson, and Joan Barclay
Director: Robert F. Hill
Rating: One of Ten Stars

Sir James Blake (Rawlinson) retires from Scotland Yard so he can help a pair of young inventors (Byrd and Barlcay) complete their death-ray machine and get it safely to the League of Nations so they can use it to end all wars. But spies opposed to world-peace are lurking in every shadow....


"Blake of Scotland Yard" is a movie that was created by editing down a serial... and it shows. Basically, it consists of a lot of characters running around and throwing punches at each other for unclear reasons, repeated establishing shots of the same strange French dive-bar, and sequences with a hunchbacked villain and his minions who seem to constantly change their minds about what their plans are in midstream.

This show was made in the late 1930s as a kids' program. I wonder how much kids liked it back in those days, but I'm certain they wouldn't like it today. Adults might get the occasional chuckle from some of the unintended comedy in the show, as well as some of the "topical references" which are just plain funny with 75 years of history between when they were made and now, but even they should be able to find better ways to spend their time... or at least something better to watch.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Bruce Timm Horror

Here's a gallery of horror illos from animator and artist Bruce Timm, who is perhaps best known for his work on kids' TV cartoons featuring DC Comics' characters.

If you like the spooky stuff, you should visit Terror Titans, my review-centric horror movie blog.