TV REVIEW OF "ALIAS SMITH & JONES: Return to Devil's Hole" (1972)

Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry act like evangelists for the straight and narrow lifestyle in director Bruce Kessler's "Return to Devil's Hole," (**** out of ****), another splendid example of their social capitalist's strategy of networking with people who someday might help them out if they get into trouble. Everything in this episode written by Knut Swenson from a story by Roy Huggins using his pen name John Thomas James reinforces the show's theme about our desperado heroes going straight to obtain amnesty from the territorial governor. The big difference in this first season episode is that Kid Curry remains the periphery while Heyes carries out the bulk of the task. Hispanic star Fernando Lamas, Diana Hyland, and Brett Halsey guest star in this episode. Interestingly, Halsey returned for a second appearance on "Alias Smith & Jones" during its third and final season in episode eight for director Jeff Corey's "The Day the Amnesty Came Through" (1973), but Halsey played a different outlaw, Ed Starr, hiding out with a different band of outlaws with the woman as his girlfriend.

Hannibal Heyes (Pete Duel) escorts a determined but duplicitious dame, Clara Phillips (Diane Hyland), to Devil's Hole. Clara claims that her husband is hiding out with the gang, even though her husband has been cleared of any criminal charges. The good citizenship theme gets a thorough work out here as Hannibal eventually convinces his old friend and outlaw chieftain Big Jim Santana (Fernando Lamas), who has spent the last seven years in prison, that he should forsake the owlhoot trail. Clara persaudes Hannibal to take her to the Devil's Hole so that she can tell her husband whose hiding out there that the authorities have cleared him of all criminal wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Heyes leaves Kid Curry behind because they are expecting to see a man about a job for them and Heyes doesn't want to miss a chance at doing something honest. After a lengthy ride across the wilderness, Heyes reunites with some of his old companions, among them Big Jim Santana (Fernando Lamas) who is in charge of the gang now. Big Jim and Hannibal swap blows and then guzzle some rotgut whiskey. Big Jim has a terrific idea for one big job. This robbery, in his words, will be "the biggest the Devil's Hole gang ever did." Afterward, he plans to retire to South America. Big Jim aims to hold up the Wells Fargo clearing house in Denver and he has recruited an army of outlaws.

No sooner do Heyes and Clara reach the Devil's Hole than she shoots on sight one of Big Jim's men Hamilton (spaghetti western actor Brett Halsey of "Roy Colt & Winchester Jack") and accuses him of corrupting her 17-year old daughter. Big Jim is considerably upset by Clara's wounding Hamilton and demands the truth from both parties. Indeed, Big Jim adheres to an unusual honor code. He explains, "You see, in my business, I have to have faith in my men, and my men must have faith in me. Without it, we don't . . . Well, we don't have a chance." Since Hamilton is going to be riding with Big Jim, then Big Jim must know with certainty that he can trust the man. Learning the truth turns out to be difficult as neither person wants to come clean. Big Jim and Heyes talk to a wounded, bed-ridden Hamilton and he confesses that he knows Clara, but he never corrupted her 17-year old daughter. What he did do is steal Clara's $25-thousand dollars' worth of jewelry. Big Jim wants to get to the bottom of these lies. Clara says she has a picture of her daughter, but it is back in town in a suitcase. Big Jim sends Heyes back to fetch it.

When Big Jim isn't trying to get to the truth ("When I say I demand honesty from my men above all else, that is exactly what I mean.")he grilles Heyes about the incredible notion of going straight. "Those stories about you giving up are not true, are they?" Heyes nods, "They're true. Times have really changed since you've been gone." Big Jim agrees, but adds, "Well, I know times change and we change with the times. It's part of the progress." Heyes points out, "Well, that's what I did. I progressed right out of the business." Nevertheless, Big Jim has a difficult time accepting Heyes as a law abiding member of society, especially one who has to hide out. Heyes explains that he has to "walk on eggshells" ... "until I prove to the governor that I can lead an honest life." This means that they have to "duck out of the way of every passing lawman." Big Jim spent seven years in prison and doesn't plan to go back. Now, he has been collecting a gang to attack a major money sorting place in Denver, the biggest job that he has ever staged. The search for the truth and the turnaround that Big Jim experiences makes this one of the best "Alias Smith and Jones" episodes.

The Clara Phillips character is unusually headstrong. She spends quite a bit of time scouring the west in a privately rented stagecoach to find Heyes and Curry so that she can get to Devil's Hole. After Heyes leaves to retrieve the picture of Clara's daughter, Clara and Big Jim get to know each other intimately. Clara asks Big Jim how he became an outlaw. Big Jim observes that it had "something to do with my family being cheated out of our lands in New Mexico." He adds, "I suppose I inherited a certain disregard for the law."

This is one of the most visually beautiful episodes, too, with a "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" type song called "Take A Look Around" played over visually scenic outdoor shots. However, it came as a rude awakening when I heard a portion of the same song used in a "McCloud" episode.

As Big Jim rides off to San Francisco with Clara in the stagecoach, Curry observes, "You know, Heyes, I think we did a whole lot better by Big Jim than we did by ourselves." Heyes shrugs, "I don't know. I think we have a very good and important friend in San Francisco now, if we wever get into serious trouble."

Each episode of "Alias Smith & Jones" has our heroes making believers out of law-abiding as well as non-law-abiding people about their intentions to live the straight & narrow lifestyle.

TV REVIEW OF ''ALIAS SMITH & JONES: "Return to Devil's Hole" (1971)

Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry act like evangelists of the straight and narrow lifestyle in director Bruce Kessler's "Return to Devil's Hole," in a splendid example of their social capitalist's strategy of networking with people that someday might help them out of trouble. Everything in this episode written by Knut Swenson from a story by Roy Huggins using his pen name John Thomas James reinforces the show's theme about our desperado heroines going straight to obtain amnesty from the territorial governor. The big difference in this first season episode is that Kid Curry remains the periphery while Heyes carries out the bulk of the task. Hispanic star Fernando Lamas, Diana Hyland, and Brett Halsey guest star in this episode. Interestingly, Halsey returned for a second appearance on "Alias Smith & Jones" during its third and final season in episode eight for director Jeff Corey's "The Day the Amnesty Came Through" (1973)but Halsey played a different outlaw, Ed Starr, hiding out with a different band of outlaws with a woman.

Hannibal Heyes (Pete Duel) escorts a headstrong but duplicitious woman, Clara Phillips (Diane Hyland), to Devil's Hole. Clara claims that her husband is hiding out with the gang, even though her husband has been cleared of any criminal charges. The good citizenship theme gets a thorough work out here as Hannibal eventually convinces his old friend and outlaw chieftain Big Jim Santana (Fernando Lamas), who has spent the last seven years in prison, that he should forsake the owlhoot trail and go straight. Clara persaudes Hannibal to take her to the Devil's Hole so that she can tell her husband whose hiding out there that he has been cleared of all criminal wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Heyes leaves Kid Curry behind because they are expecting to see a man about a job for them and Heyes doesn't want them to miss a chance at doing something honest. After a lengthy ride across the wilderness, Heyes reunites with some of the old companions, among them Big Jim Santana (Fernando Lamas) who runs the gang now. They swap blows and then guzzle some rotgut whiskey. Big Jim has a terrific idea for one big job. This robbery, in his words, will be "the biggest the Devil's Hole gang ever did." Afterward, he plans to retire to South America. Big Jim aims to rob the Wells Fargo clearing house in Denver and he has recruited an army of outlaws to do it.

No sooner do Heyes and Clara reach the Devil's Hole than she shoots on sight one of Big Jim's men Hamilton (spaghetti western actor Brett Halsey of "Roy Colt & Winchester Jack") and accuses him of corrupting her 17-year old daughter. Big Jim is considerably upset by Clara's wounding Hamilton and demands the truth from both parties. Indeed, Big Jim has his own unusual honor code. He explains, "You see, in my business, I have to have faith in my men, and my men must have faith in me. Without it, we don't . . . Well, we don't have a chance." Since Hamilton is going to be riding with Big Jim, then Big Jim must know with certainty that he can trust the man. Learning the truth turns out to be a difficult as neither person wants to come clean. Big Jim and Heyes talk to a wounded, bed-ridden Hamilton and he confesses that he knows Clara, but he never corrupted any 17-year old daughter. What he did do is steal Clara's $25-thousand dollars' worth of jewelry. Big Jim wants to get to the bottom of these lies. Clara says that she has a picture of her daughter, but it is back in town in a suitcase. Big Jim sends Heyes back to fetch it.

When Big Jim isn't trying to get to the truth ("When I say I demand honesty from my men above all else, that is exactly what I mean.")he grilles Heyes about the incredible notion of going straight. "Those stories about you giving up are not true, are they?" Heyes nods, "They're true. Times have really changed since you've been gone." Big Jim agrees, but adds, "Well, I know times change and we change with the times. It's part of the progress." Heyes points out, "Well, that's what I did. I progressed right out of the business." Nevertheless, Big Jim has a difficult time accepting Heyes as a law abiding member of society, especially one who has to hide out. Heyes explains that he has to "walk on eggshells" ... "until I prove to the governor that I can lead an honest life." This means that they have to "duck out of the way of every passing lawman." Big Jim spent seven years in prison and doesn't plan to go back. Now, he has been collecting a gang to attack a major money sorting place in Denver, the biggest job that he has ever staged. The search for the truth and the turnaround that Big Jim experiences makes this one of the best "Alias Smith and Jones" episodes.

The Clara Phillips character is unusually headstrong. She spends quite a bit of time tracking down Heyes and Curry to get to Devil's Hole. After Heyes leaves to retrieve the picture of Clara's daughter, Clara and Big Jim get to know each other intimately. Clara asks Big Jim how he became an outlaw. Big Jim observes that it had "something to do with my family being cheated out of our lands in New Mexico." He adds, "I suppose I inherited a certain disregard for the law."

This is one of the most visually beautiful episodes, too, with a "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" type song called "Take A Look Around" played over visually scenic outdoor shots. However, it came as a rude awakening when I heard a portion of the same song used in a "McCloud" episode.

As Big Jim rides off to San Francisco in the stagecoach with Clara, Curry
observes, "You know, Heyes, I think we did a whole lot better by Big Jim than we did by ourselves." Heyes shrugs, "I don't know. I think we have a very good and important friend in San Francisco now, if we wever get into serious trouble."

TV REVIEW OF ''ALIAS SMITH & JONES: The Wrong Train to Brimstone" (1971)

Hannibal Heyes (Pete Duel) and Kid Curry (Ben Murphy) masquerade as a pair of Bannerman detectives on a train carrying a load of gold in Jeffrey Hayden's "Wrong Train to Brimstone," (**** out of ****) one of the better episodes in this western comedy-drama from the first season. "Wrong Train to Brimstone" points out that no pictures of Heyes and Curry exist so it has been difficult for the authorities to apprehend our heroes.

You'd think that our heroes would stop boarding trains and stagecoaches because of the odds that somebody would recognize and arrest them. No sooner have Heyes and Curry sold their saddles and horses than Curry recognizes a couple of lawmen in the town of Bramberg and they have to get out fast. The livery stable owner refuses to sell their saddles and horses back to them for the same price. Our haunted heroes try to catch a stagecoach, but there isn't one. In this lively little episode loaded with irony, our heroes wind up aboard a train armed to the teeth with guards employed by the George Bannerman Detective Agency and supervised by Harry Brisco (J.D. Cannon of "McCloud"). "The Wrong Train to Brimstone" contains the first of several appearances that Cannon would make in the series as bumbling Brisco.

Initially, Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry were just trying to get out of town to avoid detection by the law. They swap places rather forcibly with two Carl Grant (Charles H. Gray) and Fred Gaines (William Bryant) and masquerade as them on the train. They learn that the train is transporting a gold shipment three times the usual amount--a mite more than a quarter of a million dollars bound for the Denver Mint--as well as a crate of sour mash. Apart from Harry Brisco and his 15 Bannerman guards, Jeremiah Daley (William Windom of "Hour of the Gun") and Sara Blaine (Beth Brickhill of the 1975 "Posse")are VIP passengers. Jeremiah has set up the gold shipment to lure out the Devil's Hole Gang, and Sara is there because she has seen the real Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry and can identify them. Jeremiah is suspicious about them because he knows the real Grant and Gaines. He confronts our protagonists about their identity and then backs off and leaves them alone. Heyes and Curry get off the train at Brimstone and intercept the telegram that Grant and Gaines have sent about getting left behind.

Heyes and Curry find themselves having thwarting a railroad heist by the Devil's Hole Gang, lead by stuntman Hal Needham, because their amnesty ranks higher in importance to them. "There ain't one in the bunch who ever killed anybody in their entire lives," Kid Curry defends his old cronies in crime. "And we cant sit on this train and let all of them get shot." The suspense grows out of the one and only female passenger who assures Heyes and Curry that she has meet them before during a train robbery. Not only do our heroes discourage the gang from attacking the train, but also they expose the twosome on board the train who are going to rob it from within. An awful lot of bullets are fired in this episode and only two Devil's Hole Gang members bite the dust. At the end, Heyes and Curry earn $500 from Brisco for helping him out. Furthermore, our heroes convince Harry Brisco that the descriptions of Heyes and Curry are inaccurate and they embellish those features with scars. Pete Duel and Ben Murphy are at their charismatic best. William Windom guest stars as a corrupt Bannerman agent. The detectives come extremely well-armed on their train with a Gatling gun.

The violence in this episode consists of guns being fired and people slamming into each other. There is no blood.

FILM REVIEW OF ''MAX PAYNE'' (2008)

“Flight of the Phoenix” director John Moore and rookie writer Beau Thorne have turned the popular third-person shooter video game “Max Payne” into a big, dumb, loud, bullet-riddled actioneer with former Calvin Klein underwear model Mark Wahlberg as the vengeance-driven anti-hero. This shallow but supercharged saga about a relentless New York City Police detective searching for the felons that murdered his wife and infant child qualifies as a straightforward, formulaic crime thriller. Despite its painfully predictable plot, “Max Payne” (** out of ****) boasts top-notch digital visual effects, an eardrum-splitting soundtrack, and atmospheric, film-noir cinematography.

Since the mysterious murders of his wife and child three years ago, former homicide detective Max Payne has confined himself to the nether regions of the New York City Police Department’s cold case unit. Max scowls in his black-leather jacket and dark slacks as he peruses old reports. He walks around loaded down with an arsenal of guns. Max believes he has found a new lead in his wife’s murder, but it turned out to be a dead end. Later, he crashes a party thrown by a former snitch. Our hero hooks up with a drop-dead gorgeous Russian honey, Natasha (Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko of “Hitman”), and they head off for his apartment. Max refuses to sleep with Natasha, so she storms out in anger. She steals Max’s wallet, too. Manhattan’s desolate, snowy streets aren’t a safe place for feisty Natasha. Gigantic winged demons descend upon her. When the NYPD find her remains the following day, they have to scoop up the pieces.

Initially, circumstantial evidence implicates Max for Natasha’s death. Ex-partner Alex Balder (Donal Logue of “Blade”) grilles him about Natasha without luck. Bad vibes alienate Alex and his ex-partner over the unsolved murders of Michelle Payne and their baby. During his investigation of Natasha’s murder, Balder spots similarities between Michelle’s dead killers and Natasha. At this point, Natasha’s gun-toting sister Mona Sax (Mila Kunis of “The Bionic Woman”) who works for the Russian mafia enters the picture. Mona wants a piece of Max whose own fortunes tumble further when he discovers Alex’s corpse in his apartment. Alex had found a link between a winged Valkyrie tattoo on Nastasha’s severed limb and those of the killers that Max gunned down when he came home that fateful day three years ago. Nevertheless, the chief culprit in Michelle’s death has managed to elude Max. Now, our hero must clear himself not only of Natasha’s murder but also Alex’s death.

Max’s wife Michelle (Marianthi Evans of “Thirteen”) had planned to blow the whistle on Aesir, a giant pharmaceutical firm where she worked, that had experimented with a powerful hallucinogen called Valkyr to turn U.S. troops into fearless fighters in the war on terror. Predictably, Aesir’s experiments backfired. Soldiers either died or mutated into subhuman winged predators resembling gargoyles. Just when everything appears to be heading south for our hero, his old police buddy BB Hensley (Beau Bridges of “Stargate Continuum”) comes to his rescue like the U.S. cavalry. Now, BB works as Aesir’s chief of security. While BB has Max’s back, our hero also has to contend with Internal Affairs investigator Jim Bravura (Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges of “2 Fast 2 Furious”) who is not sure who to believe.

In Remedy Entertainment’s 2001 video game, Max was a DEA agent, not a New York cop. The Italian Mafia was Max’s enemy. Moore’s melancholy action melodrama replaces the Mafia with Aesir. Moore retains the Valkyr plot, but Mona doesn’t die in the showdown at Aesir. The video game was first to use the ultra-slow motion ‘bullet time’ effect that Andy and Larry Wachowski popularized in “The Matrix” trilogy. Further, the video game aped Asian director John Woo’s flamboyant Hong Kong action epics. However, Moore prefers unvarnished violence instead of John Woo’s balletic bloodletting shoot-outs. Imagine a stone-cold Charles Bronson revenge opera with the drug plot from the Sean Connery sci-fi thriller “Outland,” and you’ll have an idea about what to expect.

“Max Payne” amounts to a polished potboiler, with few surprises that strike you like a bolt from the blue. Thorne’s screenplay relies primarily on cliches. You’ll know before Max does who killed Michelle and their newborn. Moreover, you’ll spot the chief villain before he confesses. Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Chris O’Donnell, and Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges co-star with Wahlberg. Wahlberg delivers a toned down performance as Max. Basically, Wahlberg sports one expression. He never laughs. He is all business. Mila Kunis looks like she could vanquish Laura Croft. Beau Bridges excels as chummy Max’s friend. Poor Chris O’Donnell gets lost in the mix.

“Max Payne” bristles with action during its 100 minute running time. The shoot-outs are loud but antiseptic. Occasionally, a combatant will exhaust their supply of ammo. Thousands of ejected shell casings chime against concrete during the gunfights. John Moore, who also helmed “Behind Enemy Lines” and “The Omen” remake, loves to show guys and gals loading their firearms, blasting away with them, and then reloading. Moore captures the hyperactive state of the Valkyr-drugged soldiers. The scenes where Valkyries hover over those who have consumed Valkyr are mildly spooky. Only once does “Max Payne” give us a glimpse of these winged hellions. The filmmakers never reveal if the Valkyries are either apparitions or the actual thing. Moore and Thorne relate two-thirds of the story in flashback. After the opening predicament, the scene shifts to ‘one week earlier.’ When the present finally catches up with the past, our hero has a date with the villain on a helipad atop a skyscraper as storm cloud gather. “Max Payne” doesn’t deviate from the B-movie action formula. This derivative, one-dimensional thriller ranks as a solid but unexceptional thriller.

FILM REVIEW OF ''QUARANTINE'' (2008)

Imagine "Cloverfield" taking place in a creepy apartment complex with residents trying to elude zombies rather than in New York City as a "Godzilla" monster tries to stomp them, and you'll have the gist of "Full Moon Rising" director John Erick Dowdle's "Quarantine." Like "Cloverfield," "Quarantine" (** out of ****) tells its story from the perspective of a television news videographer. The entire movie is literally seen through the camera viewfinder. This tense, eerie, sometimes exciting epic will only frighten filmgoers who have never seen a good zombie movie. What could have been a surefire horror classic is marred by a hammy lead actress and the marginal originality of writer & director John Erick Dowdle and co-scenarist Drew Dowdle's screenplay. The Brothers Dowdle have remade the formulaic Spanish horror thriller "REC" (2007) that co-directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza wrote with Luis A. Berdejo. In "REC," a reality TV crew shadows fire department personnel as they try to free a woman holed up in her apartment. The Dowdle Brothers have appropriated the bare-bones Spanish supernatural saga and added more zest to their flesh-eating disease chiller, but their low-budget and lack of imagination undermine them in the long run.

The Dowdles do a solid job of setting up the premise. Budding TV journalist Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter of "The Exorcism of Emily Rose") and her cameraman Scott Percival (Steve Harris of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman") cover the night shift at a Los Angeles Fire Department station. While they await an inevitable 911 call, fellow firefighters Jake (Jay Hernandez of "Hostel") and George (Johnathon Schaech of "The Doom Generation") bond with the heroine and show her the ropes in what amounts to a variation on the John Travolta movie "Ladder 49." Giddy Angela gets to slide down the fire pole while her poor cameraman records her escapades. These two carefree firefighters compete each other to see who can get Angela in the sack first. Alas, they have forgotten that they are still wearing their microphones from an earlier interview and she can hear them. About a half-an-hour into the action, our heroes get more than they could have imagined in their worst nightmare when they respond to an alarm at an ordinary downtown apartment house. Arriving at the scene, the LAPD accompany our firefighters into the apartment complex and discover an older woman bathed in blood that doesn't look too congenial at first sight. Before our heroes know it, she takes a bite out of them and eventually everybody turns into skin-eating zombies.

Later, we learn that one of the residents had taken his infected dog to a veterinarian and the doctor diagnosed a mysterious virus in the canine's system. The LAPD and a crew from the Center for Disease Control surround and seal off the apartment complex. A heavily armed S.W.A.T. team brandishes their assault rifles and threatens to shoot anybody inside who sets foot outside the complex until their own haz-mat personnel can get inside to examine the bodies. Meanwhile, the firefighters and our heroine struggle to find a way out. Before long they learn from a television broadcast that they don't stand a chance in Hades of getting out alive. Initially, residents who appeared mildly sick now mutate into zombies and our heroine and her cameraman record everything as evidence.

Sadly, "Quarantine" suffers from several problems. First, the flighty TV journalist displays an obnoxious penchant for screaming at the least provocation. Furthermore, none of the characters emerge as remotely sympathetic. They emerge as nothing more than victims. Second, the Dowdles rely on the first-person point of view of the cameraman to generate thrills and chills. At one point, Scott uses his camera to bludgeon a zombie. Even the other dogs in the building turn into flesh-eaters. However, the filmmakers do nothing with these mutant zombies that horror movie fanatics haven't seen in previous films. Third, the authorities don't know how to kill zombies. Fourth, since the zombies never die, they multiply rapidly and munch on the residents as if they were Lays potato chips. For example, a uniformed LAPD officer pours a hail of bullets into the old Hispanic woman and the impact knocks her down. Nevertheless, he doesn't blow her head off, so she gets back up later and keeps on gnawing. Every zombie movie fanatic knows that the only way to kill a zombie is to shoot the sucker in the head. Mind you, the panicky camera work and the claustrophobic apartment complex with its shadowy premises will keep some people poised on the edge of their seats. "Quarantine" knows how to set-up a scary scene, but the pay-off is too predictable to make any of this exercise in helter-skelter chaos seem chilling. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the best part of this nail-biter with an ending lifted from "Silence of the Lambs."

FILM REVIEW OF ''BANDIDO'' (1956)

In a distinguished career spanning over four decades, film director Richard Fleisher called the shots on a number of memorable, well-made motion pictures. In the 1950s, he gained acclaim with his hard-nosed crime thrillers, among them "Armored Car Robbery" (1950), "The Narrow Margin" (1952), and "Violent Saturday" (1955). Later, he would turn to true-life crime with "Compulsion" (1959), "The Boston Strangler"
(1968), and "10 Rillington Place" (1971). Many remember him for his ground-breaking sci-fi films, among them "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954), "Fantastic Voyage"
(1966), and "Soylent Green" (1973). Fleisher also ventured with serviceable results into the realm of fantasy with the seminal Kirk Douglas & Tony Curtis saga "The Vikings" and then later teamed up with Arnold Schwarzenegger to helm "Conan the Destroyer" (1984) and "Red Sonja" (1985). Fleischer directed the Darryl F. Zanuck-produced World War II epic "Tora, Tora, Tora" (1970) long before Michael Bay's turgid, soap operatic "Pearl Harbor," and he directed one of the more controversial biographies of the 1960s: "Che!" (1969) with Omar Sharif as the legendary Argentinian Communist revolutionary and guerrilla fighter Che Guevara and Jack Palance as Fidel Castro. Mind you, he has also made his share of turkeys: "Doctor Doolittle" (1967) with Rex Harrison and "Mandingo' (1975) with James Mason. During those 40 years, Fleisher experimented with virtually every genre. He made one Biblical epic "Barabbas" (1961) and "Amityville 3-D" (1983).

Interestingly, Fleischer is least remembered for his three westerns: "Bandido"
(1956), "These Thousand Hills" (1959) and the Lee Marvin outlaw epic "The Spikes Gang." Robert Mitchum plays Wilson, an American adventurer in a white linen beneath the Mexican border trying to arrange an arms deal between a trigger-happy Hispanic bandit colonel (Gilbert Roland of "The Torch") and another well-heeled gringo merchant Kennedy (Zachary Scott of "Mildred Pierce") who initially plans to sell his ordinance to the Mexican Army. Director Richard Fleisher helmed this atmospheric, 1916-circuit shoot'em up on actual Mexican revolutionary battle sites with extras who had served on both sides of the fracas and swapped lead with each other. Scenarist Earl Felton penned the exciting but occasionally contrived screenplay. Interestingly enough, "Bandido" (*** out of ****)qualified as the fourth collaboration between Fleischer and Felton. Earlier, they had worked together on Fleischer's hard-boiled crime thrillers. Compared with the westerns of the 1960s and the 1970s, "Bandido" is more noisy than bloodthirsty. Indeed, thousands of rounds of ammunition are expended, but you don't see blood-splattered bodies tumbling every which way as they would later in the films of Sam Peckinpah. Nevertheless, when this Mexican revolutionary melodrama came out in the 1950s, there weren't that many westerns of its kind being released. Indeed, Italian writer & director Sergio Corbucci drew inspiration from "Bandido" to make a couple of trendy Franco Nero spaghetti westerns: "A Professional Gun" (1968) and "Companeros" (1970). This type of spaghetti western became a sub-genre of its own during the 1960s and the 1970s. (Not only did Fleischer's "Bandido" inspire these Euro westerns, "The Vikings" had given rise to the short-lived Viking peplum movies such as "Erik the Conqueror" and "Knives of the Avenger.")

Anyway, our money-hungry mercenary hero shows Escobar the bandit colonel how he can obtain the arms that he so desperately needs. Escobar and his peasant army commandeer the train that the Mexican government has provided Kennedy. At the same time, the villainous Gunther (gimlet-eyed Henry Brandon, best known for his treacherous Indian in the John Wayne epic "The Searchers"), the go-between Kennedy and the Mexican generals, suggests to Kennedy before the train falls into Escobar's hands, to send the Mexican revolutionaries on a wild goose chase to a sea-side villa where Gunther will arrange to have the soldiers rescue him. Gunther then escapes capture and heads off to warn the Mexican General about this turn of events. Instead, a wily Wilson convinces Escobar to hold Kennedy captive and send Kennedy's beautiful wife Lisa (German actress Ursula Thiess) with an escort to where the guns are stashed. Escobar is the kind of character who doesn't let people lie to him more than once. At the last minute, Wilson suspects that Kennedy has dispatched his wife and the revolutionaries on the wrong trail, so he rides after them. Wilson saves Lisa from being gunned down, but he puts himself at odds with Escobar who is only too willing to kill him. Eventually, Escobar's resourceful men capture Wilson and throw him in jail with Kennedy who realizes the error of his ways. At this point, Felton's screenplay gets a little too cute. When the bandits decide to execute Wilson, they allow him to take his jacket with him. Earlier in the action, our hero made a big deal out of the hand grenades that he kept in his suitcase with his linen, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that he uses a couple of hand grenades to break Kennedy and himself out of jail. They escape through a swamp and Kennedy grudgingly reveals the whereabouts of the ordinance. Predictably, when Kennedy bad mouths Wilson about his treachery, Escobar is nearby and learns what a nice guy that Wilson is and allows him to live. Kennedy dies in a blaze of gunfire and our heroes find the ordinance and save the day. The romantic subplot between amorous Wilson and Kennedy's unhappy wife generates few sparks and it's easy to see why Thiess' career foundered. Meanwhile, the camaraderie between Mitchum and Roland is first-rate, just the kind of stuff that Italian westerns who pay homage to. Later, Roland made several spaghetti westerns as a Mexican bandit type. If you can catch a letterboxed copy of "Bandido," you can see some truly gorgeous scenery and camera work. Mitchum would later encore in a similarly themed western from the same era entitled "The Wrath of God," where he would play another adventurer who lugged around a Thompson submachine gun in a suitcase rather than a pair of hand grenades.

FILM REVIEW OF ''BETRAYAL FROM THE EAST'' (1945)

When RKO released "Betrayal from the East" (** out of ****) World War II was into its waning days. Nevertheless, the Japanese are portrayed as vicious, omniscient antagonists with the Nazis running a close second in this tale about pr-Pearl Harbor espionage. A couple of Americans in Tokyo have gotten hold of some volatile information about high-ranking Japanese military officials in the United States, but they are killed before they can get the information to U.S. military intelligence referred to here as G-2. One of the Americans—a leading newspaperman—dies from a mysterious fall while the other vanishes into the ocean on his voyage to San Francisco. It seems that the wily Japanese want information about the Panama Canal so that they can shut down the canal and prevent the U.S. from shipping men, munitions, and ships through this important point. That's when carnival barker Eddie (Lee Tracy of "Bombshell") finds himself lured into the story. The Japanese contact the wise-talking Eddie and he assures them that he was not only stationed in the Canal Zone during his six years in the Army but also that he knows a sergeant who can get him to the plans to the zone. The Japanese pay his expenses on the way south to the canal. Before they set out for Panama, they show him what they do to double agents. We see a gardener that the villains have captured and Eddie watches for a moment or two as they try to sweat information out of him then approach him—the gardener—with the glowering end of a steel rod. Later, Eddie learns that an attractive clothing designer that he met on the train trip to L.A. was another agent. Although he has made a deal with the Japanese, Eddie goes to G-2 and they reveal that they have been tailing him the entire time. Despite the threat of torture and execution, our intrepid hero decides to play along with the Japanese. Unfortunately, the scenarists have written Eddie as a dim-witted idiot who finds himself in over his head and makes virtually every mistake that can be made. Meanwhile, the Japanese villains are portrayed as experts and nothing is too devious for them. "Betrayal from the East" is the kind of Hollywood propaganda that the studios churned out to the chagrin of the U.S. Office of War Information (O.W.I.) during World War II that painted the Japanese as double-crossing, back-stabbing dastards. Along the way, the clothing designer Peggy Harrison (Nancy Kelly of "Tarzan's Desert Mystery") falls in love with Eddie and stages her own death to protect from the Japanese. Actually, the Japanese placed a camera in Eddie's apartment so they knew that Harrison was a U.S. spy. When Eddie reaches the Canal Zone, he meets with an Army sergeant (Regis Toomey) who is impersonating the Eddie's fictitious friend and they arrange to pass the Japanese false, out-of-date Canal Zone defense plans. Prolific scenarist Audrey Wisberg and director William A. Berke then pull a real boner by reinserting the Harrison character back into the story in the Canal Zone (much to Eddie's surprise and consternation as a woman with impeccable credentials who is a Nazi agent's girlfriend. The Japanese suspect the Harrison character from the get-go as untrustworthy and eventually the Nazis come around to their way of thinking. Peggy blows her cover when she warns Eddie about a plot to murder him by his Japanese employers. Yes, Eddie is so incredibly cretinous that he does things that a four-year old would never do when he tries to outwit the Japanese. Now, "Betrayal from the East" not only kills off both Peggy (she dies in a sauna bath) but also the chief Japanese villain (Chinese actor Richard Loo) kills Eddie just as G-2 breaks down the door. Journalist Drew Pearson appears in a prologue where he warns Americans that this kind of treachery must never happen again. Actually, if you want to see this story done with great credibility and more dramatic impact, watch the Warner Brothers 1942 release "Across The Pacific" with Humphrey Bogart where he strings along with Japanese saboteurs who want similar information about the Canal Zone.