THE GIRL HUNTERS - Mickey Spillane IS Mike Hammer! (1963)

Well, some of us made it to 2015, now let's just see if we an get through it! Life ain't getting any easier so it's good to have tough guy, good guy around like Mikey Spillane when you're in a pinch!

This title card tells it all! It's a Colorama Feature, but "The Girl Hunters" is a black and white film! All future bets are off, and anything goes from here on out, and justifiably so! The snappy title theme was created by Phillip (Space Master X-7, Weasel While You Work) Green! Phillip also composed the music for 15 episodes of "The Huckleberry Hound Show, and 41 episodes of "Quick Draw McGraw!"

Indeed he is! Indeed he is! This is the reason I wanted to see "The Girl Hunters" so much! It's not often that you get to see a real writer, not an actor, acting out his own character the way he wrote it!

Frank Morrison Spillane was a rough and tumble guy, and his main character Mike Hammer was just as tough or tougher! Here's a couple of quick facts you might not know about Mickey Spillane!  He started his career writing super hero comic books before he starting writing novels! His books have sold over 200 million copies world wide! When he got out of the Army, Mickey worked with the Barnum and Baily circus as a trampoline artist, a knife thrower, and the guy who got shot out of a cannon! He worked undercover for the FBI! Later in life, he became a Jehovah's Witness!

"The Girl Hunters" starts off with private detective Mike Hammer just starting to come out of a seven year drinking binge caused by the mysterious disappearance of his secretary/lover Velda! Even after he stops drinking, he still always has time for a Pabst Blue Ribbon or two!

Mike Hammer's got good taste in cars! This T-Bird looks so perfect that it looks like a Matchbook toy car!

And what do you know? Here's the Barbie Doll! Shirley Eaton two years before "Goldfinger" as Laura Knapp, the wife of a recently murdered Senator! Mike Hammer has some hard questions for her!

A lot of the time he's delivering his lines, Mickey has a pained expression on his face like this!

A lot of the people that Mike Hammer knows start dying off....

....One at a time!

Great bar scene! So what are you doing here Gringo? You are not welcome here!

I'd like you to meet my little brother Ice-P!

Uh, No thanks, you answered my questions just fine!

There's always time to have another beer! In real life, Mickey Spillane didn't drink any hard liquor or smoke, but he would have an occasional beer! Mike Hammer, on the other hand, was a different story!

Mickey/Mike has a pensive moment!

Mike and Laura have been getting along pretty swell, but just before they are ready to go to dinner, Mike finds a shotgun with the barrel shoved down into the dirt of a large potted plant! He explains to Laura in no uncertain terms, that if the shotgun was plugged up with dirt, it would explode in her pretty face, and that would be it!

Well, I'm sorry, I'm just a girl!

Mike Hammer is so pissed off that he cancels their dinner date! He doesn't want to eat with somebody that stupid!

Down at the local news stand while picking up his favorite magazine, it hits Mike in the face like a mackerel, and he puts a whole bunch of pieces of the puzzle together in his mind!

After almost getting killed, it's time to head back and talk to Laura with a whole new set of questions!

Laura's got a different answer for Mike this time!

While it's not as good as "Kiss Me Deadly" by a long shot, no matter what, it's fun to see an author act out a character he created on his own terms! Mickey Spillane passed away in the year 2006 at the age of 88, and he'll never be replaced!  It's kind of hard to imagine him in this last shot, walking up to the door and offering up a copy of "The Watchtower!"

WHAT A CARVE UP! - “No Place Like Homicide!” (1961)

Greg Goodsell here after a very long absence -- So! Are you up for an "Old Dark House” comedy from ol' Blighty? No?

 TOO BAD, as we here are stuck with this abject stinker whose original title was NO PLACE LIKE HOMICIDE!

Here is our "hero" Kenneth Connor in the role of Ernie Broughton, a milquetoast whose job is copy editing horror novels. In truth this turkey is based on the book "The Ghoul" by Frank King, the same source novel for the rare Boris Karloff vehicle THE GHOUL in 1933. While that film was a surprisingly grim slice of pre-code horror, this film is strictly a comedy. Kind of, sort of.

Here is Ernie's flat mate Sid Butler, played by Sid James. These middle-aged gents live together -- and I kid you not, sometimes share the same bed together! Homophobes need not worry - Ernie has a female love interest later on.

Here we go, one of the few reasons to see this thing -- DONALD PLEASANCE. Hailed by my father as the "greatest actor in the English language," Pleasance is best known as Sam Loomis in the HALLOWEEN film series. You should check out the Australian shocker WAKE IN FRIGHT, which stars Pleasance at his most slimy! Here, he plays sinister lawyer Everett Sloane, who informs Ernie that his Uncle Gabriel has died and must hie himself to his gloomy ancestral mansion for a reading of the will!

Here's a de rigueur spooky moment in all of these films -- a spooky train conductor who warns the guys not to venture out to the spooky old mansion. This cliché is sacrosanct as it's been included in virtually every Brit horror flick, as recently as THE LADY IN BLACK as recently as last year!

So we arrive at the mansion, and who should one of Ernie's relatives be but venerable actor DENNIS PRICE! Price started off his film career with classic Ealing Studio comedies like KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, and was something of a romantic male lead until alcoholism and closeted homosexuality -- in spite of marriage and children, got the better of him. He would end his career performing in the films of JESUS (Focus! Focus! FOCUS!) FRANCO before passing away at the age of 58 in 1973. Franco himself began playing a harp earlier this year....

My! This tired ol' thang has an unusually strong cast! It's horror movie fave Michael Gough as the butler, long before he began essaying the role of Alfred the Butler in the recent BATMAN series. Gough would act in many of the British horror films of producer Herman Cohen, such as KONGA, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM and THE BLACK ZOO. His last film work was providing the voice of the Dodo bird in Tim Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND before passing in 2011 at the ripe old age of 94. Trivia note: Both Gough and Price would appear in the cheap-o horror classic HORROR HOSPITAL in 1973.

YET ANOTHER celebrated British actor, ESMA CANNON plays the dotty Aunt Emily, stuck in the Edwardian age and still campaigning for women's suffrage! Cannon was from Australia and enlivened many a CARRY ON comedy! While she plays an old lady, Cannon was only 56 when she made this film. Sadly, she would end her acting career in 1963 and pass away in 1972 at the age of 66.

There is the reading of the will -- and Pleasance informs the gathered relatives that they have been left with nothing, nothing and more nothing.

Guy Broughton (Price) and sister Janet (Valerie Taylor) are understandably perturbed! Taylor likewise had a lengthy acting career on the silver screen. Her most noteworthy genre credit is as the loathsome Madame Denise in director Roman Polanski’s horror classic REPULSION in 1965.

Blustery character actor George Woodbridge plays Dr. Edward Broughton. He figures larger in the film later on … I don’t like him, but I don’t think we’re supposed to.

Now we're talking -- the chief draw for movie cultists -- Shirley Eaton as the comely nurse! You may not remember Eaton without several coats of gold spray paint. That's right -- she was the victim of James Bond baddie Goldfinger in GOLDFINGER (1964)! As we try to drive that Shirley Bassey theme song out of our heads, Eaton is still very much alive and well and making the rounds of the James Bond movie memorabilia conventions!

Michael Gwynne stars as Malcolm Broughton, foreboding and yet fey Cousin Malcolm! He's given very little to do here other than provide to the body count. Gwynne played Hermes in Ray Harryhausen's JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS as well as VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. He played the prosecutor in Hammer Studios' most horrifying non-horror film, NEVER TAKES SWEETS FROM A STRANGER, a daring drama on the sexual abuse of children. The fact that he's given so little to do here verifies my belief this was a big waste of time for everyone involved! Gwynne was only 56 when he died.

People begin to drop off at the isolated mansion and Shirley Eaton finds an excuse to get semi-naked.

Ernie gets a clandestine peek -- the voyeur!

Ernie prepares for bed, and I don't think anyone in the history of the world EVER wore pajamas like that, no not ever!

.... and Ernie sleeps in the same bed with Sid! AAAAAAaaaaahhhhhh! Bickering like an old married couple only to retire in the same bed at night, one wonders what was going on here. Ernie hears a noise –

Here is the film's only real semi-scary or semi-funny scene. Ernie is occupied as the towering Malcolm sneaks up upon him –

And it’s a case of “Roses are red, Violets are Black, You Look Your best With a Knife in Your BACK!” for poor old Malcolm!

Have we seen this type of scene before in horror movies? I stumble to think? Have we seen this image before?

I’ve just gone over my pictorial allotment for this entry so this means I can get on with my life now! HOO-ray! An excellent cast in a stale, unfunny film (folks on the IMDB Like it a lot, though), you’re probably just better seeking out other “old dark house” thrillers like – like, THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932) instead! This is Greg Goodsell and I’m outta here – for now!

THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU - "She Rules A Palace Of Pleasure... For Women!" (1967)

Of all the movies we've really looked forward to seeing after spending uncountable hours trying to locate a copy, "The Million Eyes Of Sumuru" turned out to be one of the most disappointing of all, kind of like looking through your own armpit!

After seeing "The Seven Secrets Of  Sumuru" aka "The Girl From Rio" and writing about it a couple of years ago, I was hot to trot to see this one which was made two years earlier, but it sure wasn't worth the wait!

Now how could a movie like this possibly be bad? Maybe it's because Jess Franco directed the other one!

"The Million Eyes Of Sumuru" is rife with talent, pop culture, and beauty like Shirley Eaton, who was also Sumuru in "The Seven Secrets Of Sumuru,"  but honestly, I preferred her in that film, "Ten Little Indians," or even "Goldfinger!" Shirley was also in three of the 'Carry On' films, "Carry On Sergeant," Carry On Nurse," and "Carry On, Constable." She quit acting after making "The Seven Secrets Of Sumuru!"

Two Dungeon faves for sure, George Nader as Agent Nick West, and Frankie Avalon as Agent Tommy Carter both have roles that are completely unbelievable, and it's fair to say that it was meant to be that way, but it doesn't make it work any better! Their minds must have both been in a phone booth at the beach somewhere, because it seems like they just phoned in most of their lines!

All the most beautiful and dangerous girls in the world can't make it any better, and not even some music by the likes of the brilliant John Scott or Daniel White is going to do the trick!

George Nader is awesome in all the Jerry Cotton movies, but in this one he just seems surprised and perplexed, a gay man in a society ruled by women!

This is the kind of excitement I'm talking about! It just ain't happening!!

"Robot Monster" is a lot more adventuresome!

The tantalizing Maria Rohm was also in "The Seven Secrets Of Sumuru," and "Ten Little Indians" with Shirely Eaton!

More talent out the wazoo, Klaus Kinski as President Boong is one of the more interesting characters in this film!!

I swear to you, I honestly believe that his is how serious George Nader takes the whole thing, not one iota, and I'm not talking about the 9th letter in the Greek alphabet!!

"The Million Eyes Of Sumuru" is a Shaw Brothers production, so there is a big firefight at the end, and even Frankie has had it with the whole ordeal!

Not even the amazing actor Wilfrid Hyde-White is going to be able to save this mess! Here's my suggestion for any film buff, rather than seeking out "The Million Eyes Of Sumuru," just go back and watch Wilfrid in "Let's Make Love," with Marilyn Monroe, Shirley in "The Seven Secrets Of Sumuru" or "Ten Little Indians," Klaus in "Aguirre" The Wrath Of God," Maria in "The House Of 1000 Dolls" (with George Nader), Frankie in "Horror House" or any beach movie of your choice, and George in any, or all of the Jerry Cotton films!! This is one movie where the sequel is much better than the first one, at least that's my humble opinion!