The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) Movie Review

The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) (IMDB)

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) movie poster

The Man With The Golden Gun is the ninth James Bond film and the second (out of 7) starring Roger Moore. The plot revolves around a professional assassin with a golden gun who charges a million dollars per kill. Christopher Lee plays the assassin, named Scaramanga who trains against other assassins in a room that is set-up like a fun-house, and which includes multiple mirror mazes (we learn all of this in the opening sequence that James Bond films are famous for!). If you want to train against other assassins who better to train against than James Bond ? (Léon, John Wick, Ray, The Jackal, Jef, Vincent and Jules, The Bride, Vincent, Nikita are a few options in a list that I started, then kept expanding as I went). I made a strong case for a few others, but James is still probably in the top 10. Is The Terminator considered an assassin ? I’m getting off topic.

Can Bond find the man with the golden gun and spoil his current plot that revolves around solar energy ? 007 does some investigating and follows clues around the world from London to Beirut, Macau, Hong Kong, and Bangkok.

I want to give a shout out to one of my favorite actors from the 70’s and my childhood, Hervé Villechaize. If you do not know the name you probably know him from his catch phrase on a late 70’s tv show “the plane, boss, the plane”. He plays a servant to Scaramanga in the film. Also important is the Bond girl, played by Britt Ekland who had a nice run of movies at this time of Get Carter (1971), The Wicker Man (1973) and this film (1974).

As far as James Bond films go, this one is entertaining and worth a look. It falls firmly in the middle of the pack The cool gadgets that were fun in 1974 are less cool today but you still get the idea !

I give it a 7/10.

Check out the trailer:

Labyrinth Within (2010) Movie Review

What makes a foreign film not so foreign ? How about when it has no dialogue at all ? That is what we have with the short film Labyrinth Within.

Labyrinth Within (2010) (IMDB)

Labyrinth Within (2010) movie poster

A short film with no dialogue. Chances are that is enough to know if you would like this film personally or not. I could speak to the extensive dance sequences in a ballet style and the classical music score that is excellent IMO but even without knowing those things the first line told you if you wanted to see this or not. I could add that there are 3 characters and it is about jealousy - because that is what I read.

Now, if you search for this movie there is a good chance you will be directed to the David Bowie song Within You from the movie Labyrinth, so if you want to take some time and click on the link - - I’ll wait for you. Of course the best part of that is his hair with the MS Escher - Relativity inspired room a close second. Did I get off track ? Labyrinth Within is a ballet short. Not for me, but maybe you’ll like it ?

Here is a link to watch the trailer:

The Lady From Shanghai (1947) Movie Review

The Lady From Shanghai (1947) IMDB

The Lady from Shanghai (1947) movie poster

Rita Hayworth plays a vixen that gets director/actor Orson Welles mixed up in a murder plot in this film-noir classic. If you are a fan of film noir this is a perfect representation of the genre. The film was based off of the book If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King.

The plot revolves around a possible planned murder and the use of corpus delicti laws that were common at the time. That means that in order to be convicted of a crime you need to prove that a crime has been committed. We have a husband who is suspicious of his wife (Rita) and is having her followed by a private investigator. We get double crosses, misdirection’s and questionable decisions from from our characters.

In the last act our characters find themselves caught in a fun-house mirror maze in a key plot moment that involves gunshots…if they can find what they are shooting at ! One of the few maze films that involves a funhouse mirror maze but is not a horror film. Also a film that doesn’t just contain a maze, but uses it in a major way to move the plot and story forward (like The Shining). Side note - I could listen to Orson Welles speak all day. About anything.

A very solid movie. 8/10.

Check out the trailer:

Eye in the Labyrinth (1972) Movie Review

It’s time to review another maze/labyrinth movie ! This one is a standard low budget horror film from Italy called L'occhio nel labirinto or Eye in the Labyrinth.

Eye in the Labyrinth (1972) (IMDB)

L'occhio nel labirinto (1972) movie poster
Eye in the Labyrinth (1972) movie poster

Nothing like an Italian film dubbed into English where the voice doesn’t match the person speaking ! This isn’t an old Japanese film where things get really wild when a character speaks but the version I watched was dubbed instead of subtitled and this did change the presentation of the film. That said, when you are tired, not having to read subtitles is a plus.

Let’s start with some education. This is an Italian giallo film, which means yellow in Italian. A giallo film is a genre of Italian film making that features a murder mystery with elements of horror, slasher, and sexploitation mixed in. Typically the murderer is not known until the very end of the film in a big reveal. The genre got it’s name from murder mystery books printed in Italy starting in 1929 that all featured a yellow background color. You can read more about all of this if interested on Wikipedia.

The opening title card states “A labyrinth is constructed to confuse the human mind. It's architecture rich in symmetry, is subordinated to that result. - José Luís Borges”. And that’s the last of the maze/labyrinth references although there is plenty of confusion in the movie which may remind you of solving a maze.

The film starts with a man being chased in what appears to be an underground concrete structure. It seems like this could represent a maze/labyrinth since he is trying to escape. Things do not end well for him. Part of me wanted to say SPOILER before that, but if something happens in the first minutes of a film to set-up the entire premise what are you really spoiling ? OK, on to the main part of the film - a woman ends up trying to find her missing lover, the psychiatrist (ok, ok we did not know his profession at the time - you win) we saw being chased in the first scenes of the film. Because if a person is missing there is one rule movies are famous for and that is DO NOT go to the police. The best thing to do is clearly to start your own investigation, because movies. I can’t tell you how many important investigations my friends and I have started throughout the years. Except we didn’t call them investigations we called them capers. So many stories.

Back to the movie. It is well directed, has good acting and nice camera work in some very nice settings (across Tuscany, Italy) that will make you want to take a vacation. But this is a mystery thriller that never felt tense. I felt bored watching it and that is a problem for a thriller. Say this is on tv and you are watching it and someone says ‘hey we need to leave’, you would not protest at all, just turn off the tv and go never caring what happened to the characters. But also, if nobody bothers you, you probably wouldn’t be annoyed enough to turn the channel either. I give it a boring, but well made 6/10.

Here is the trailer, or you can watch the entire film directly on YouTube with this link !