THE BEGUILED (1971)

 In my seemingly never ending quest to watch everything that Clint Eastwood was in during the 60s and 70s I came across this. It's not something I would typically be into from ol' Clint since it's not a western or action flick in any sense. What you get is basically a drama about a Northern Civil War soldier who gets injured and winds up in a Southern all-gals school. While this seems like it might be the perfect set-up for an 80s sex-comedy that's exactly the opposite route this film takes. It's all really  heavy and  also quite pervy as Eastwood either hits on or is hit upon by pretty much everyone regardless of their age and that goes down to a 12-year-old. There's also one slightly jarring dismemberment scene which I was not expecting. All in all a really well done film for what it is which is not surprising since the director is Don Siegel who, of course, is know for the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and working a bunch with Eastwood including the great DIRTY HARRY which came out right after this and made everyone forget it existed.
 At the time this was released it flopped since people wanted tough-guy action star Clint and not creepy kid-kissing, romantic guy but for something different it's worth a look.
 There was a 2017 remake of this with Nicole Kidman that looks way too glitzy and polished and I never want to be subjected to it.

This trailer makes it seem like we're getting a way more exploitative experience than you actually get!:

DIRTY HARRY (1971)

 One of the most influential movies when it comes to all the action movies, buddy-cop movies, vigilante flicks and many of the anti-hero characters that followed. Not to forget all the Italian poliziotteschi(crime) movies that hoped to emulate this classic. Clint Eastwood makes the smooth transition from westerns to gritty urban thriller. There's also some pre-politically correct Hollywood examples of racism thrown in to make the character more realistic. The psychopathic Scorpio character is a genuinely creepy degenerate that you can't wait to get his comeuppance and the ending is a nightmare to many of the more ultra-liberal types out there. A young girl gets offed, a schoolbus full of kids gets threatened and Harry does much gun-fu.

 There were 4 official sequels to this and a whole mountainous heap of rip-offs.

HANG 'EM HIGH (1968)

 After viewing a cheap-ass kung fu flick recently that stole the theme song from this movie and used it repeatedly I had to give this a re-watch. After having done the classic Leone spaghetti-westerns Clint Eastwood returns to the U.S. and stars in this, which in some ways is pretty similar to the Italian flicks with maybe the good and bad guys being more clearly delineated. It's also fairly similar in quality thanks to director Ted Post who did mostly TV work but is also responsible for the great bizzare-o film THE BABY which is one of my personal all-time favorites. What you get here is a man(Eastwood) wrongly hung and on the trail of revenge. It's pretty simple stuff but it features one of the best scenes of a group of men being executed by hanging that has ever been shot. Bruce Dern plays a bad-ass outlaw, Dennis Hopper appropriately portrays an insane religious-nutso and even Skipper from GILLIGAN'S ISLAND(Alan Hale Jr.) is a convincing tough guy. Even though I've seen this one pop up a million times on cable it hasn't ruined it for me and it has an excellent soundtrack!



                                  Italy meets America Double Western Feature!:

Spanish style!(THEY MADE TWO MISTAKES):

Sadly this song is not on the soundtrack:

THE ENFORCER (1976)

 In the third Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movie our badass cop teams up with that chick(Tyne Daly) from CAGNEY & LACEY and takes on a multi-racial gang of anti-American militant terrorists. Now never having actually watched CAGNEY & LACEY I have no idea if Daly's character is in any way similar to the one in that show but from what I recall from all the commercials during shows that I did watch back in the 80's they were some kinda detectives so I guess so.
 This chapter in the super popular series is pretty typical and doesn't come near the power of the first one or even some of the cool stuff in the second movie, MAGNUM FORCE, with the killer cops and stuff. Also the ending is not all that spectacular, excluding one thing that might surprise someone viewing this for the first time that I will not reveal, and it just kinda ends how you would think. Still Eastwood, as usual, is great in this role so worth watching just for that if you dig the man and if you dig 70's action movies at all you probably should.

The dirtiest Harry of them all!(not really but that is a great tagline!):

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977)

 This one has got to be one of the strangest examples of Bruce Lee-sploitation ever. If you described the plot of this movie to your average lame-brain civilian they would probably assume you were on some heavy psychedelics.
 OK, so, intermingling reality with fantasy, Bruce Lee(or in this case Bruce Leong doing his best Bruce Lee impression) dies and is sent to this underworld where he becomes friends with Popeye, The Sailor Man and The One-Armed Swordsman, from the kung-fu flick THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN. There's a gang of bad guys consisting of Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman, Clint Eastwood and James Bond(why all these heroic characters are now evil here I have no idea, but they are). This gang is led by a couple of fellows named The Exorcist, who has an unexplained French accent, and The Godfather. I guess in Hong Kong popular movie titles make for good names. They also pal around with Emanuelle from all those soft-core classics except here she has an English accent for no reason. If this isn't enough idiotic insanity Dracula shows up along with that Cobra Kai gang in the skeletons suits(who I think are supposed to be zombies?) and a bunch of mummies. Everyone does kung fu(usually very badly!) and it all ends with Bruce Lee floating away like a balloon.   
 You might think this is a movie for children, and I would too, except there's sex scenes and very ample boobs and almost complete nakedness on display. The whole thing reminded me of on of those crazy Turkish superhero films where copyright is no issue and even Spider-Man himself might be a murdering bastard. I was fortunate enough to see an actual film print of this last night in a theater and it surely made me question my sanity. I was also a little sad that I will probably never find another Brucesploitation film that will top this in the bat-shit wacky department. AKA DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU

The title sequence alone might be better than anything Hollywood has ever attempted:

TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA (1970)

After Clint Eastwood made all those epic westerns in Italy with Sergio Leone he came back to Hollywood and pretty much played the same character here for a few years before going on to Dirty Harry and all that stuff.  Some of his American westerns were really good but this one is only so-so.  It doesn't have the down and dirty grittiness of Leone's pictures or anywhere near the stylish direction.  Director Don Siegel, who's most famous for the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, does pull off some beautiful shots using the Mexican landscape unfortunately plot-wise the movie drags quite a bit during the mid-section of the film.  It seems like endless scenes of our two heroes just riding around and talking take place.  If you make it to the end there is an all-out battle scene with limbs getting chopped-off, swords getting stuck in faces and other assorted bloody fights but it's a long sit to get there.  Co-star Shirley Maclaine went on to make mainstream garbage that probably won a bunch of awards and also became some kind of a koo-koo nutso proponent of psychic-powers who claims to be able to talk to ghosts and that sort of thing.

"Mr. Action himself!":

REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955)

I recall them airing this flick a few times back in the 80's on local TV as one of those special 3-D showings that you would get once or twice a year.  It was also colorized in that crappy early way they used to colorize black and white stuff for added cheesiness.  It is altogether a pretty pointless film, I mean THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON needs a sequel about as badly as a cow needs another pair of tits, but Hollywood being the greedy ass-hats that they are, and obviously were even back in 1955, this was thrown together a year after the original monster movie classic.  The creature, even though he was clearly killed at the end of the first film, is somehow alive again and taken to an aquarium where he's put on display.  Yeah, screw science and research and all that kind of thing, let's just charge people to see him swim around while we poke him with a stick, brilliant!  The movie isn't a complete waste though since you get Clint Eastwood's first film role(he appears for about a minute as a lab assistant) and you get an awesome little monkey wearing clothes doing tricks who also should have gotten way more screen time!  To top things off the end scene is just a replay from the first movie, where the monster dies again, to leave you with that completely ripped-off feeling as the movie closes.  Of course the creature would be back once more in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US but I don't recall anything very exciting from that one except that they completely changed the creature into a bulky, generic, air-breathing monster who wears clothes.

MAGNUM FORCE (1973)

This one is a sequel that you could argue is better than the original.  I haven't seen the original DIRTY HARRY in a while but I recall Eastwood's character not being quite as like-able in that one.  They flip things around a bit here in that Harry, instead of being pitted against a psycho nut-job, is up against fellow vigilante cops.  Cops that are sorta the logical extension of the Harry character from the first film.  I mean if you are supposed to uphold the law and then you take the law into your own hands, where is the line drawn?  If a system doesn't work whose responsibility is it to mete out justice?  These questions are never really answered and in this case are just used to set-up a really good action movie.  Not being a particular fan of the brainless action genre in general this one has at least a sliver of thought put into it, no doubt being due to the fact that it was made in the era when you were still allowed to question the actions of the police and not accept authority blindly as the majority of sheep do today, and it's also a good example of the vigilante genre alongside 70's greats like DEATH WISH.  You also get Hutch from STARSKY AND HUTCH as the main vigilante cop, Suzanne Somers topless in a pool, a hot Asian chick and lots of gratuitous gun-fu.