The Firemen’s Ball (1967)

I picked up a copy of The Firemen’s Ball (1967) last year on a whim, which is a recently restored print, purchased maybe after the passing of director Milos Forman and realising I’d not seen any of his pre-America films made in his home country of Czechoslovakia. This 71-minute film about a chaotic ball organised […]

The Mercenary (1968)

In my never ending quest to watch movies scored by Ennio Morricone (particularly as popularised and used by Tarantino – ‘L’Arena’ from this film was used in Kill Bill Vol. 2 when she busts out of the grave), I watched The Mercenary (1968 – Il mercenario), another spaghetti western. A smooth Polish mercenary with a […]

The Haunted Palace (1963)

In The Haunted Palace (1963), Vincent Price gets to play a sinister warlock burned to death by angry townsfolk in the opening scene – and 100 years later, a distant blood relative who moves to the town with his wife on account of inheriting the Warlock’s palace. Braving the cursed, suspicious townsfolk (check out the […]

Duck, You Sucker/A Fistful Of Dynamite (1971)

A long running gap in my Sergio Leone movie watching was the one with two titles – Duck, You Sucker (1971) aka A Fistful Of Dynamite has always been underrated or not as celebrated. Maybe because it doesn’t have Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson? Instead you have James Coburn with an Irish accent as an […]

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)

While a Criterion Collection streaming service is still absent in Australia, SBS OnDemand at least offers a good selection of art-house titles and acclaimed foreign films in its library. The recent season (from Sony Pictures networks, I believe) of Quentin Tarantino programming a ‘Swinging Sixties’ line up of movies from that era, to tie into […]