SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS (2023) still suffers from Zachary Levi’s man-boy performance as the Big Red Cheese—lampshading that he doesn’t display the wisdom of Solomon doesn’t excuse it — but it’s still a vast improvement on the first film. Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu are Titans determined to reclaim the power Shazam stole from their father to create his mortal champions, forcing Billy and his foster siblings to battle the two women, monsters and killer unicorns to save the world. Overall this was entertaining but Wonder Woman providing a deus ex machina ending was a cheat. “Maybe we could float out of here like a fart.”
FOXY BROWN (1974) is a disappointing blacksploitation film in which a drug syndicate kills Pam Grier’s cop boyfriend (just as they were young, happy and with everything to live for!) sending her off on a revenge spree. I like the syndicate’s method of handling the cops (partnering with a high-class call girl ring to pay off judges and others) but this is sub-part, involving too much gratuitous T&A and making Grier much less formidable than she was in Coffy (a much better revenge story) 0r Friday Foster. “The charge, your honor, is assault with a very un-deadly weapon.”
In DEAD RECKONING (1947) it’s Humphrey Bogart who’s out for revenge. A WW II veteran, he’s returned from Europe with his buddy-in-arms, both of them due for a medal ceremony in Washington — only his buddy promptly ducks out and disappears. Bogey manages to track him to his home town, discovers he’s dead — but was it an accident? Why did he run back home? Is pretty Lizabeth Scott a good girl or a bad girl? This is an excellent film noir with Bogart less of a tough guy than usual — yeah, he can handle himself but he’s no match for Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. “If you force me to leave you to his tender whims, I will never forgive you.”
I’m not sure why I put COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE (1970) in my Netflix queue as I saw it once and didn’t care for it. It proved a good choice as I found it a thoroughly enjoyable, low-budget vampire film (as my friend Ross says, one sign of the budget is that while the film hints Yorga’s servant is a werewolf, he never shapeshifts). Robert Quarry plays the urbane occultist Count Yorga whose dinner guests include a couple of attractive women to add to his set of vampire brides. Their menfolk, of course, are not down with this though they can barely grasp what kind of threat they’re up against (like the classic Night Stalker, this came out when the idea of vampires in the modern world was way out there). Much better than I remembered it. “Can you say unequivocably that all those horror stories we read as children were fiction and not fact?”
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