THE MAN IN THE ATTIC (1953)

  Jack Palance acts his ass off in the title role of a movie that asks the question of "what if Jack The Ripper was your upstairs tenant?" It's clearly very loosely based on the facts since I don't think they ever got this close to catching ol' saucy Jack in reality. There's no gore or anything since this was the 50s but it is a good gloomy period piece with solid performances. Aunt Bee from THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW herself(Frances Bavier) is Jack's landlord and has a few freak out scenes as she is wont to do. 

 This is technically a remake of 1944's THE LODGER though that one was more of a mystery and was itself a remake of a few earlier film adaptations of a 1913's book called THE LODGER starting off with Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG.  There was also a 2009 THE LODGER movie. 

                                  

                                     Simply known in Spanish as JACK THE RIPPER: 

CHATO'S LAND (1972)

 If you ever wanted to see how amazingly fit Charles Bronson was in his prime this would be a good place to discover that. When I say "in his prime" that's not exactly accurate since he was a little over 50 years old at this point but I can't imagine how he coulda been in any better shape at any point. This is the film where Bronson plays a half-breed American Indian, named Chato, who is on the run from a posse, lead by Jack Palance, seeking revenge for the killing of a white-man that Bronson made in self-defense. For a lot of the movie Bronson stays unseen and Palance is really our main focus portraying a Civil War veteran who leads our justice-seeking band of fairly racist pale-skins. Papa Walton(Ralph Waite) is another memorable member and a real jerk here. There's rape(offscreen), a scalping, a cooked dog and some other exceptionally violent bits that I would imagine could never be acceptable in any PG-rated movies for the last 40 years. A great cast and top-notch acting put this one towards the top of the western and Bronson heap for me.
 Director Michael Winner would work a whole bunch more with Bronson after this. Most importantly on the first 3 DEATH WISH films.

   

Weird-ass double-feature paired up with this comedy/drama from a  few years earlier:

RULERS OF THE CITY (1976)

  This one is a sort-of mix of a gangster flick, an action movie and a touch of kung-fu on the side. Of course it's mainly a mobster movie with Jack Palance as MISTER SCARFACE (which is also the more common title of this). Who heads of a crime organization that goes up against one headed by Edmund Purdom. Palance is not actually the star though, even though he has top-billing. Our main character (Harry Baer) is a young mobster who goes around collecting money and throwing flying kicks when he has to. I would probably rate this film higher if it had more Palance in it or if it wasn't directed by Fernando Di Leo, whose "Milano trilogy" is an example of some of the best Eurocrime films out there so I expected more. Also it gets a bit too action-y in spots which may not be a bad thing if you just want to see a somewhat silly action flick. AKA THE BIG BOSS and BLOOD AND BULLETS

ALONE IN THE DARK (1982)

 Not to be confused with the shitty Uwe Boll-directed video game movie from the 2000's with the same title, this is the 80's sorta-slasher flick starring the stellar line up of Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau and Jack Palance as a nutty psychiatrist and two psychopaths respectively. I think the main thing I like about this is that it plays mostly like a slasher movie but it's very atypical of the genre primarily because there's so many kill-crazy psychos running around. The other big plus is there's a punk rock club where The Sic Fucks are always playing which is pretty sweet. Strangely enough the guy who played the nutty character of Murdock on THE A-TEAM is one of the few sane people here as a doctor trying to protect his family from a bunch of kooks on the loose. There's also a killer who wears a hockey-mask before Jason found his, small but perky naked boobs and that huge Baldie from THE WANDERERS as a monstrous, backbreaking, child-molesting hulk of a nut-job. A great crazy 80's horror flick with a great soundtrack.

The timeless classic featured in this film!:

BLACK COBRA (1976)

 Not to be confused with the Fred "The Hammer" Williamson action film of the 80's with the same title this BLACK COBRA stars Laura Gemser, best known from the BLACK EMMANUELLE series, as a stripper who does an act featuring a large snake. Jack Palance catches this act and just so happens to be a snake-loving herpetologist who really digs Miss Gemser's act and has his own large collection of slithering friends. Luckily he's a filthy rich scientist who offers her anything she wants just to live in his house and basically become part of his collection. Palance also has a creepy brother who likes to occasionally let a very poisonous snake out to chomp on a lady-friend or two. Gemser herself has a super jealous ex-boyfriend and all these characters come into play against one another in one way or the other. As with most films directed by the great Joe D'Amato and featuring Gemser there's plenty of nudity with ample amounts of lesbianism on show here. You also get some gratuitous snake butchering and someone shockingly gets a hungry cobra shoved up the anus which is pretty gross. There's a censored version of this titled EMMANUELLE GOES JAPANESE, which is a strange choice of titles since this movie doesn't take place in Japan. Other AKA's include HOT PANTS, BLACK COBRA WOMAN and EROTIC EVA.

ONE MAN JURY (1978)

Unless you're a big fan of Jack Palance there's not much reason to check this out. Palance plays Jim Wade, a cop that breaks a lot of rules to get justice. You know, rules like don't murder criminals without a trial and little things like that. Joe Spinell shows up as a gangster boss looking very classy, and not as sweaty as usual, in some scenes. While the scenes with Palance dishing out vengeance are great there are really not enough of them to keep the movie flowing along and the whole thing kind of plays out like a Charles Bronson movie without Bronson. Watch MR. SCARFACE instead for some quality Palance action.

Don't fuck with Palance: