~ A FEW TABONGA! LAFFS FOR A FRIDAY ~

Short day today, here are a few attempts at humor in the form of some Tabonga! Laffs. Hope you like them and they give you a little chuckle or two!...

Well, there you go, a few laffs for a Friday!!

DEMIR PENÇE - "Iron Claw The Pirate" (1969)

 

It's time for yet another Weirdass Wednesday in The Dungeon and another classic 60's Turkish turkey!

 

 

This film is titled "Demir Pençe," "Korsan Adam," and/or "Iron Claw The Pirate," whichever way you want to go!

The music is not by Iron Butterfly...............

 

...........But is very cool, just the same!

This dancer is from the opening sequences of the movie.

Although there are many scantily clad women throughout this film, including this exotic dancer, there is no real sex or actual nudity in the movie. This is about as racy as it gets.

The life of a hero can often be quite lonely!

Cool location for a fight scene.

60's Turkish filmmakers were shameless, and borrow whatever they want to use however they feel, so you end up with notorious French villain Fantomas as the the bad guy known as Fantom'un Adami.

 

The hero, a sort of Batman character has a female caped sidekick to assist him, and they ride around on motorcycles.

This is one of the oddest looking sets I've ever seen.

Fantom'un Adami's henchmen are a bunch of F'ers, which makes for a continuous sight gag, intended or not.

This movie is not in English, and the copy I was able to round up doesn't have any sub-titles, so I really didn't know what the Hell was happening most of the time, like it really matters.

Fantastic imagery like this is plentiful!

It's very commonplace for them to tie up women in these vintage Turkish films.

Fantom'un Adami's right hand man Iron Claw is there on on the left.

Just to be fair, they like to tie up guys too!

There's even a little time for a romantic moment like this!

Here's a nice closeup of our hero as played by Demir Karahan. With 67 credits to his name, Demir was still acting up to last year.

We've been through this before.

A couple of  F'ers guard this bridge to the other side.

One of our hero's super powers is he knows how to shoot a gun!

This is actually a shot from earlier in the movie, but seemed like as good of a place as any to end.

Well, now that I'm done, I did a search and found a copy of this film with sub-titles, so now I can go back and watch it again myself. It might even possibly make sense the second time, but maybe not!

As a public service, here's a location where you can watch or download it yourself.

DEMIR PENÇE - "Iron Claw The Pirate"

TALES OF TOMORROW / "The Great Silence" - 1953

Here's a fun little episode near the end of the run of Tales From Tomorrow. It's kind of a comedy with creepy moments for balance. The main stars are Burgess Meredith and Lilia Skala, Burgess was one busy actor (for good reason, he's an animated guy!)  with 182 acting credits. Lilia has 72 credits, her first movie was in 1931 and worked until 1990, she was born in 1896 and passed on in 1994 at the grand old age of 98!

In this story, a strange phenomenon is taking place in the Pacific northwest, and it is spreading from there across the US. People are losing their ability to speak as it effects the vocal cords. The government goes on the radio and TV to say that they believe the problem is the result of an experimental H-Bomb test, and the radiation is causing the loss of speech. And they say it is only temporary, don't worry, things will be back to normal soon...

An illiterate couple, Paul and Mathilde, are messing with each other since they can't speak. Mathilde is hungry (portrayed in pantomime) and threatens to shoot Paul unless he goes out and brings back a rabbit to eat! NOW!! 

So, Paul goes out in the woods but sees something lying on the ground, and it freaks him out! What in the HELL!

He walks back and picks the thing up... It's a small weird looking glove with only two fingers on it! Now come on, that's creepy.

Then he sees a spaceship hidden by some brush, and at top is a smoke machine, that's actually the reason for the loss of speech, and it's spreading across the country from this ship!

Paul crawls up to the window and looks inside. What he sees sends chills down his spine and he heads back to the cabin.

The little monster dude inside has fairly creepy makeup for this episode. The 'visitor' is played by Glenn Styres, he has one acting credit, for Tales Of Tomorrow, this one and he played the Martian in "Plague From Space" which I've already reviewed.

Back at the ranch, Paul shows up without a wabbit and Mathilde is angry! But, Paul tries to explain what he saw in the woods. She's not getting it until Paul turns a cup upside down on a saucer. After he lays the cup on the table, he picks the cup up and points inside. She's starting to believe him and even picks the cup up and looks inside it!

Paul listens to the radio, the announcer says that the radiation is ready to hit D.C. and a second later he stops talking, since he's in D.C. and all.

The only thing Paul can think of doing is go to the county commissioner....

The Commissioner is played by the always entertaining Paul Ford. Paul (in the story) is illiterate and so acts out the story. There's only so much to work with in the office so Paul points to a star on the flag indicating their state, he walks around using his fingers as devil horns, grabs the Commissioner's cigar and blows the smoke in his face, indicating the smoke coming from the ship...

The Commissioner goes along with the whole thing until he pushes a button and Paul is escorted out of the building.

He goes back to the cabin and gets an idea!! There it is, a pack of TNT...

Paul lights the long fuse but steps on a bear trap and cannot get away!

The explosion goes off and the spaceship is blown to pieces, including the visitor!

Suddenly, Mathilde shows up and thinks Paul has been killed, but he's alive and they can speak again, Paul covers his ears as she screams his name!

THE NINTH GATE - "Leave The Unknown Alone" (1999)

 

This week's Saturday Night Special is a Roman Polanski film titled "The Ninth Gate." It was released in 1999, and starred Johnny Depp! You know I never planned on doing movies this new, and then I realized that what I think is new, is now 22 years old.

 

A lot of people think if you watch enough movies, you'll get smarter, but it's not really working for me! I regularly watch stuff like The Three Stooges or "Burn Notice," and probably shouldn't even be watching films like this where you have to actually think! Hence the age olde question, should entertainment be mentally painful?

 

So.............Pull my finger, and you just might find out!

Or............Do what Johnny and I do to relieve the pain and confusion, pour another one!

"The Ninth Gate" pits Frank Langella as Boris Balkan vs. Johnny Depp as a guy named Dean Corso.

Supposedly there are only three copies of a ancient book in existence, and Boris owns one and wants Dean to find out if the other two are legit or not, and he's willing to pay him a lot of cash to do it!

Dean travels to Europe to try and compare the books, and the other owners keep dying mysteriously!

Never ever trust a woman who has that particular tattoo in that particular location!

Dean Corso consistently finds himself in a lot of trouble, over and over, and over again!

To say that Roman Polanksi has a sketchy past is a bit of an understatement, but there's no denying that the man has an incredible eye, and has made some great films. His "Chinatown" is a real fave of mine!

Dean Corso starts noticing that some of the plates in the books are different. Why nobody noticed before is anybody's guess. If they had, there wouldn't be much of a story!

Time for more serious research! You would too, if it happened to you!

These two plates are so radically different, it's extra difficult to believe nobody ever saw the differences before!

The women in the movie are an odd lot! There's the Girl from Where, and the dead Baroness, or is it Memorex?

This is how Roman Polanski feels about your impression and understanding of his movie!

This is a large assemblage of creeps you're never going to know anything about, except that they are a bunch of freakin' devil worshiping weirdos!

"The Ninth Gate" was shot in Spain, Portugal, and France, and has some really beautiful scenery in it!

I believe this is the Château de Puivert in Aude, France. 

 

At this point, Dean Corso's problems are nowhere close to being over! More pain needs to be inflicted first!

I truly believe that if "The Ninth Gate" made more sense and was about 30 or 40 minutes shorter, it would be one of the best movies ever made, but that's a big 'if.'