*contains spoilers It was Darren McGavin’s (1922-2006 heart disease) tv portrayal of Hammer in Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958-59) that followed this film and McGavin is a decided improvement over Bray even though it’s a half hour tv format. The violence is there if not the sex of the Spillane novels. But McGavin’s Hammer again…
Read more The Cult of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (Part Two)
*contains spoilers Author Mickey Spillane (1918-2006 pancreatic cancer) called his writing “the chewing gum of American literature”. I guess he meant once you’ve chewed over it, you could throw it away. It’s disposable literature. Others perhaps wouldn’t be so kind, while others would rate Spillane’s work as better than that. I read Spillane’s first detective…
Read more The Cult of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (Part One)
*contains spoilers While he was filming Longstreet, Jimmy set up the James Franciscus Celebrity Tennis Classic to raise money for the now politically incorrect titled charitable organisation Foundation for Retarded Children of the Desert. Held in the Palm Desert area, the classic appears to have run a few years and should have helped Jimmy get…
Read more The Cult of the James Franciscus Facial Tan Club (Part Two)
*contains spoilers There are a trio of movies by Italian director Sergio Martino (1938-) made all around the same time of each other known as his “Adventure Trilogy”. They are Mountain of the Cannibal God aka Slave of the Cannibal God (1978), The Great Alligator River (1979) aka Big Alligator River aka Alligators and Island…
*contains spoilers The Lonely Lady is a much better prospect, both as a movie and performance by Pia. The script is by far an improvement on Fake-Out despite its reputation. Incidentally, Matt Cimber was first attached to the project but he was replaced. Based on the Harold Robbins bestseller (1976), The Lonely Lady has long…
*contains spoilers If it weren’t for my respect and obsession as a schoolkid for actor James Franciscus, I might have never known and fallen for Pia Zadora. Ever since Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Franciscus was cool, made even more cool by his evil Paul Diller in Killer Fish (1979) which I saw…
Cult Film Alley 