Sep 30
Guadalcanal Diary (1943)
Posted by monsterhunter Under Action, All Reviews, Classic, War on Wednesday Sep 30, 2009
This was the kind of movie that as it went along I grew less and less fond of enlisting in, its emphasis on facts and detailing the chronology of the battles at Guadalcanal forcing me to retreat in the face of a withering assault on my entertainment senses. I’ve got digital cable so I’m pretty sure that if I wanted, I could hit channel 566 or so and come up with a World War II Channel where they run documentaries about the Greatest Generation twenty-four hours a day. Read More
There’s been some iffy Best Picture winners in the history of the Academy Awards. Mrs. Miniver’s win back in 1942 over Kings Row and The Magnificent Ambersons comes immediately to mind as does Forrest Gump’s win over any other movie released in 1994, but 1952’s selection, The Greatest Show On Earth, is easily the worst movie to win the biggest award in the movie biz. 
Director Sergio Corbucci (
What do you need to know about this, the twenty-sixth animated feature from Walt Disney? Just that while there were at least five books starring Basil, the mouse detective, there has only been just this one single movie based on those books. Not a sequel, not a Saturday morning television series, not an icecapades version or Broadway show, not even one of those money-grubbing straight to video knock-offs that pop up like a polyp on a middle-aged guy’s colon. 
The Great Lie recycles the same plot as an earlier Bette Davis movie, 
Obviously, this movie might be classified as a chick flick since it deals with subject matter that only a woman could enjoy. At least a woman from 1885 that is. I frankly think that most modern women who see this Bette Davis flick would think she was a doormat for no good reason. The guys who see this movie are obviously just trying to suck up to their girlfriends or probably have no use for girlfriends. 
Director Sergio Martino is an old hand at these types of movies (Italian trash), having been behind 
This may come as something as a shock to many of you, but sometimes even the most minutely planned diamond heist can go horribly wrong. Grand Slam follows the formula to the letter right down to the doublecross at the end of things that you pretty much had to see coming, if only as a way to explain one character’s sudden change in behavior during the middle of the movie. The only way the movie could have turned out that would have genuinely surprised me was if the big steal was pulled off without a hitch and everyone got their fair share of the booty. 
Obligatory full disclosure: there isn’t anyone in this movie named Goliath. In fact, you’ve got Gordon Scott (Hercules Vs. The Moloch, Samson And The 7 Miracles Of The World) cinching up the leather girdle as some dude named Maciste. Not to worry though because Maciste is pretty much the same in the muscle-movie biz as Hercules, having nearly as many crazy adventures under nearly as many aliases as the daring demi-god himself! 
Made very early in the sword and sandal cycle of the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s, Goliath and the Barbarians attempts to get by solely on the fact that the biggest name in the genre, Steve Reeves, is the featured player. The movie fails to rise above “forgettable strongman epic” but the fault in no way lies with big Steve. Steve and his Goliath-sized guns grunt and groan mightily in an effort to heave this movie into something approaching interesting, but even his mammoth chest, no matter how much it’s glistening with hunk-sweat, can’t overcome the dull story of barbarians harassing Steve’s lower class village.