Tag Archives: 1960s

Daibosatsu toge: Kanketsu-hen / Satan’s Sword 3 – The Final Chapter (1961) Kazuo Mori, Raizô Ichikawa, Tamao Nakamura, Katsuhiko Kobayashi, Action, Drama

Satan's Sword 3 - The Final Chapter (1961)
The Dai-bosatsu toge trilogy is based on Kaizan Nakazatos unfinished long series of novels (41 books, written from 1913 to 1941). Set in the last period of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Daibosatsu Toge tells the story of Tsuke Ryunosuke, a nihilistic swordmaster who doesnt hesitate to kill anyone, bad or good.
Read More »

Panic in Year Zero! (1962) Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Panic in Year Zero! (1962)
While on a fishing trip, Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland) and his family hear an explosion and realize that Los Angeles has been leveled by a nuclear attack. Looters and killers are everywhere. Escaping to the hills with his family, he sets about the business of surviving in a world where, he knows, the old ideals of humanity will be first casualties. Not one to give up, he holds up a store for supplies and hides the family in a cave.
Read More »

Toto and Peppino Divided in Berlin / Totò e Peppino divisi a Berlino (1962) Giorgio Bianchi, Totò, Peppino De Filippo, Nadia Sanders, Comedy

Toto and Peppino Divided in Berlin (1962)
Who but Totò could come up with a send-up of the erection of the Berlin Wall mere months after its completion? Totò and Peppino are hired by some former Nazis to pretend to be Admiral Canarinis and his assistant — wanted war criminals — but the American authorities don’t believe them and deport them to East Berlin. There, they’re captured by the Russians, who do believe them, and demand they reveal the whereabouts of American spy planes. In the always politically charged atmosphere of Italy, the film sparked controversy among Totò’s admirers on both the Left and the Right.
Read More »

Django (1966) Sergio Corbucci, Franco Nero, José Canalejas, José Bódalo, Western, Action

Django (1966)
Sergio Corbucci crafted one of the most popular and widely imitated of the Italian “spaghetti westerns” of the 1960s with this violent but stylish action saga. A mysterious man named Django (Franco Nero) arrives in a Mexican border town dragging a small coffin behind him. When he attempts to save a woman who is being attacked by a group of bandits, he finds himself in the middle of a conflict between Mexican gangsters and racist Yankee thugs, with the innocent townspeople and a fortune in Mexican gold stuck somewhere in between. Django becomes a force to be reckoned with when it’s discovered his coffin actually contains a Gatling gun. Django proved so popular in Europe that over 30 sequels and follow-ups were produced, though Franco Nero would not return to the role until 1987’s Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno (the only sequel endorsed by Corbucci), which proved to be the last film in the series.
Read More »

Lorna (1964) Russ Meyer, Lorna Maitland, Mark Bradley, James Rucker, Drama, Erotic

lorna
Lorna has been married to Jim for a year, but still hasn’t been satisfied sexually. While Jim is working at the salt mine, she is raped by an escaped convict, but falls in lust with him. Meanwhile Jim’s buddies are giving him a hard time about Lorna’s supposed infidelity, not realizing how close to the mark they really are. Trouble starts when Jim gets home early from work because it’s their anniversary.
Read More »

Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Psycho (1960)
Phoenix secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), on the lam after stealing $40,000 from her employer in order to run away with her boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), is overcome by exhaustion during a heavy rainstorm. Traveling on the back roads to avoid the police, she stops for the night at the ramshackle Bates Motel and meets the polite but highly strung proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a young man with an interest in taxidermy and a difficult relationship with his mother.
Read More »

Kuroi jûnin no onna / Ten Women in Black (1961) Kon Ichikawa, Fujiko Yamamoto, Keiko Kishi, Tamao Nakamura, Drama

Ten Women in Black (1961)
Weary of their lot, ten women – all mistresses of the same philandering businessman – join forces to wreak revenge upon him. A comedy of reversed expectations, gleefully upending traditional onscreen representations of gender (the women here act and talk like men, while the men are weak, confused or ineffectual), it’s shot in an exaggerated noir-ish manner – complete with multiple flashbacks and highly stylised visuals – that serves highlight the artificiality of its conceit.
Read More »

Targets (1968) Peter Bogdanovich, Boris Karloff, Tim O’Kelly, Arthur Peterson, Thriller

Targets (1968)
Seemingly happy gun enthusiast Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) tells his wife Ilene (Tanya Morgan) that he’s feeling disturbed, but she hasn’t time to hear him out. Aging horror film star Byron Orlock (Boris Karloff) reluctantly agrees to a public appearance at a drive-in, even though he’s bitter and has announced his retirement. Their paths will eventually cross, as Tommy embarks on a wave of modern horror that outpaces anything in Orlock’s old movies.
Read More »

The Knack… and How to Get It (1965) Richard Lester, Rita Tushingham, Ray Brooks, Michael Crawford, Comedy

The Knack… and How to Get It (1965)
In England, the times are a changing: it’s mods and rockers. On the day Nancy gets off the London train, cases in hand, looking for the YWCA, Colin has had enough of missing out on the sexual revolution. He begs his smooth (and misogynistic) pal Tolen to teach him ‘the knack’ – how to score with women. Serendipitously, Colin and his new lodger Tom meet up with Nancy while Colin’s buying a bed larger than Tolen’s. The three hit it off, but their simple fun ends when Tolen meets Nancy. Colin is jealous but impotent, and Tolen both attracts and repels her. She swoons, wonders what happened, and cries ‘rape.’ Impish serendipity rubs against unsettling ambiguity; Tolen bolts.
Read More »

Some Girls Do (1969) Ralph Thomas, Richard Johnson, Daliah Lavi, Beba Loncar, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Some Girls Do (1969)
A series of unexplainable accidents befall the people and companies responsible for developing the world’s first supersonic airliner (SST1). A British agent is sent to investigate and with the help of another agent uncovers a plot masterminded by Carl Petersen who stands to gain eight million pounds if the aircraft is not ready by a certain date. The evil Petersen has developed a number of “robots” (actually rather beautiful girls with “electronic brains”) to help him sabotage the SST1 project by means of “infrasound” (extreme low frequency sound waves) which can be directed at people or objects with devastating results.
Read More »

The Stranger / Lo straniero (1967) Luchino Visconti, Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Karina, Bernard Blier, Drama

The Stranger (1967)
In an atmosphere of political tension when the French still control Algiers, an Algerian is killed on the beach and a French man who has lived in Algiers all his life is arrested for the murder. A trial takes place. One of the witnesses was at the funeral of Arthur Meursault’s mother. It bothers other mourners and Mersault himself that he showed no emotion when his mother died. His eventful day at the beach takes place a short time after the funeral when he is examining what his life has been and what path should he take in the future.
Read More »