What was the last movie you watched?

[stethacantus]

1/10th of Kung Fu Panda ( 2008 )
There were children staying over for Thanksgiving, so I was told not to watch anything violent on Saturday afternoon.  I thought I had a decent compromise with this film. Didn't get that far into the film when the kids kept complaining that they wanted to see something else. They wanted to see Moana. GDI! That movie was just on television last week! So I found Moana on one of the  In Demand channels and had to pay $$ for it to air, which meant having to call the cable company to authorize it. And after it was on for two seconds, the kids began complaining again. "No. We want to see the new Moana." Wait? Moana II? That just came to theaters TWO DAYS AGO. I have no idea if Disney+ was airing it, and anyway, I don't have Disney+. And these kids already cost me $$ for the first Moana film. So they began watching YouTube videos about Mindcraft and I watched nothing. Went back to my room and began killing people on GTA Online. I should point out that I am between Shaw Brothers sets, and plan to buy Vol.4 on Cyber Monday hoping for a sale price. And God knows when that set will be delivered. 







The President's Plane is Missing ( 1973 )
At this point I am cleaning up what is left of the made for television disaster movies that have been released on DVD. A frustrating thing to do as many were simply never given a home video release. Even Steven Spielberg's first two movies, both made for television, have no Home video release. I had to accept that many of these films would never be in my collection, and that would include SST: Death Flight. That is until this week when I stumbled upon another one of Echo Bridges multi film budget sets at a Dollar Tree while looking for last minute Thanksgiving decorations.  A five film set of air disaster films, including SST: Death Flight and this movie, which sort of counts as a disaster movie. It was filmed for the 1971 television season, but didn't air because of a request from the white house.  The film depicted China as the villain, and Nixon was trying to normalize relations between The United States and China. When ABC was able to air the movie for the 1973-74 season, Disaster Movies were suddenly a thing with the success of The Poseidon Adventure. 20th Century Fox announce they would be working with Irwin Allen to make a big budget disaster movie about a burning skyscraper, and Warner Bros. announce they were also producing a burning skyscraper movie. ( Allen would convince both studios to combine the projects as the single film Towering Inferno. ) Universal announce they would be producing a star studded big budget earthquake movie, as well as a sequel to Airport. ABC was eager to capitalize off of the genre, and green lit a  runaway train television movie. Since The President's Plane Is Missing  involved the crash of Airforce One, it was promoted as a disaster movie, and therefore is often included on disaster movie lists. Although I would say this just barely qualifies. The crash is not shown onscreen. Instead, the movie shows air traffic controllers watching Air Force One drop off the radar, and a day later the wreckage is found. The bulk of the film centers around the mystery f why the president's body was not found in the wreckage, and the vice president being pressured into going to war with China by cabinet  members who insist that the President was planning to do that.



Flight To Nowhere ( 1946 )
The Echo Bridge set was called Flight To Nowhere and 4 More Films. The cover is a 747 with flames shooting out of the windows, which I assumed Flight to Nowhere would be about. And with Saturday Night Live on a break for Thanksgiving, and The President's Plane is Missing being short, and this film only being an hour long, decided to watch it. Turns out it is an independent B film from the 40s. Someone has killed a Korean agent who has a map to an under water Uranium mine. The agent had just been at a party with six other individuals, all six who have just chartered a plane toa resort in Death Valley. The pilot of that plane just happens to be a retired government agent, who's boss shows up and asks him to keep an eye on the six individuals to find out which has stolen the map. That is as close as I can figure out the plot is about. The dialog is often unintelligible, not  just because of the poor quality of the print used for this DVD, but because the actors often mumble their  lines, and the sound in this  film was poorly recorded to begin with, and the musical score was so poorly mixed that it often drowns out the dialog. Oh, and there is a cut in the film print halfway through where a crucial scene where one of the characters is killed is missing. Judging by the run time Wikipedia gives this film, that means a good six minutes are cut. Anyway, got that film out of the way.

[Pastor of Muppets]

On Friday, while doing DoorDash pickup at the mall, I got literally trapped in the parking lot.  Since I had to kill a few hours while waiting for the traffic to thin out, I went to the nearby theater and saw Gladiator II.  It was about as good as the first one, although I found myself wishing I had seen the first one more recently so I could remember the plot and recognize the callbacks.  It was, like the first one, gory and silly and maybe not the most historically accurate, but still a lot of fun.

[stethacantus]

The One Armed Swordsman ( 1967 )
Well, some good news. I had preordered Shawscope Volume 3 months ago, and was told it would not arrive until this Tuesday, Dec 10th. I ordered Shout! Factory's Shae Brother's Classics Volume 4 on Cyber Monday for a discount, and it isn't due to arrive until Monday through Friday. So I was expecting to rewatch Police Story, and actually had the disc in the Blu-ray player when the deliveryman rang my doorbell. They were able to bump up my delivery of Shawscope Volume 3 to Saturday.  So, here is how that set stacks up.

One Armed Swordsman ( originally released by Dragon Dynasty )
Return of the One Armed Swordsman ( originally released by Dragon Dynasty )
The New One Armed Swordsman
The Lady Hermit   ( origially released by Funimation )
Intimate Confessions Of A Chinese Courtesan ( originally released by Image Entertainment )
The 14 Amazons  ( originally released by Funimation )
The Magic Blade ( originally released by Image Entertainment )
Clans Of Intrigue
Jade Tiger  ( originally released by Well Go  )
The Sentimental Swordsman
The Avenging Eagle ( originally released by Dragon Dynasty )
Killer Constable   
Buddha's Palm
Bastard Swordsman ( originally released by Funimation )

So about one third of the films in this collection have not previously been released in North America. That's not counting that Killer Constable was released on VHS by Master Arts Video retitled as Lightning Kung Fu without permission from Shaw Brothers, and a number of cheapo DVD companies re-released the pan and scan VHS master. However, Arrow Video is claiming Avenging Eagles was their own restoration, and the previous restoration from Celestial was missing a few scenes. I have not yet had the chance to see if those scenes were restored.

As for the first movie on the set. The One Armed Swordsman is what kicked off the martial arts boom of the Old School era. It was the first Hong Kong movie to earn $1 milling HKD, so was immediately followed by many other wuxia films, and eventually Kung Fu films in the 70s. The plot: A swordsman gets his arm cut off by  the daughter of his teacher when he rebuffs her. He is nursed back to health by a farmer girl, learns a new fighting technique for left handed swordsmen, and then saves his teacher from the treacherous Long Armed Devil.  One of the must see films of the Shaw Brothers catalog, not only for it's historic significance, but because it is a really good film.


SST: Death Flight ( 1977 )
Depending on how you look at it, this is the first film in the SST disaster movie trilogy that includes Concorde Affair 79 and The Concorde: Airport '79, or the second film in director David L Rich's airliner disaster films that began with Horror At 37,000 Feet and ended with Concorde: Airport '79. Either way, if not for bargain basement home video companies like Echo Bridge re-releasing VHS quality movies onto DVD, I could not complete either trilogy. SST: Death Flight was a made for television movie, so I was shocked to see tits. A brief scene between Bert Convy and  Misty Rowe where she is changing clothes in the lower gallery of the plane, and he enters the room and begins to remove her dress, briefly exposing her nude breasts.  This was not on the MST3K version. When you get this sort of PG nudity, it usually means the film was made for a theatrical release.  I checked IMDb but this movie was never given a theatrical release in the United States. But it was released theatrically outside of America. Yet the Echo Bridge DVD had a full screen version of the film. No need to actually review this as it was one of the films on MST3K, but for those of you who never saw the KTMA episodes, it is basically an airliner disaster film with an all star cast of television actors. Basically a months worth of Love Boat guest stars in the same disaster film. The plot is bits and pieces from previously released disaster movies. And it sort of works. My only complaint is tat they cheaped out on the eventual crash. Just as the SST is about to crash into a mountain, the film fades to black for the commercial break. We then fade into bits and pieces of the wreckage of the SST, and an amazing amount of passengers wandering around dazed yet unscathed. You would think that an SST plowing into a mountain would have resulted in a fiery explosion, the plane shattering to bits, and no possible survivors. Yet as far as I can tell, only two passengers are killed. One who probably died from the flu rather than the crash. If not for the flight crew members who are blown up midway through the film, the death toll would have stayed at two. SST: Death Flight is about as good as a made for television disaster movie got during the 70s. I got a couple more made for television airliner disaster films to go in the next couple of weeks, after which there are only a few disaster movies left before my collection is complete.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

When you get this sort of PG nudity, it usually means the film was made for a theatrical release.

If they know the TV show or TV movie will also be shown in Europe they will shoot scenes like that.

The Sci-Fi channel mini-series of Dune was filmed like that, if you get the DVD of the European version it has topless scenes.

[stethacantus]

The Return of The One-Armed Swordsman ( 1969 )
With The One-Armed Swordsman being the first Hong Kong film to earn $1 million at the box office, it was a certainty that Shaw Brothers would want a sequel.  And this is one of those rare sequels that are better than the first film. The One-Armed Swordsman Fang Gang is invited to a tournament to determine who will be the king of swordsmen. The tournament is being hosted by a group of evil swordsmen who make their invitations mandatory, and have their henchmen kill any swords masters who refuses to attend. Fang has promised his wife that he would drop out of the martial arts world and become a farmer, so refuses to attend. The henchmen are sent to kill him, but he proves to be more than a match for them. That can't be said for all the master swordsmen who attend the tournament. They are either killed or captured by the evil swordsmen, and their students are sent ransom letters demanding they cut off their right arm if they want their masters released. Since Fang is the only master swordsman not held captive by the villains, the students ban together to beg him to help them rescue their masters. The group make their way to the fort of the evil swordsmen, being attacked by each of the evil swordsmen along the way. This film has a lot of the tropes that Chang Cheh would use in his Venom Mob era of films, here used for the first time a decade earlier. If not for Jimmy Wang Yu being in the cast, I would swear this was a Venom era film.



Murder on Flight 502 ( 1975 )
The same day I found the Echo Bridge set of random airplane movies with The President's Plane is Missing and SST: Death Flight, I also found this as I dug through that bargain DVD shelf looking for more gems. And it was on a couple of disaster movie lists. At the least, it was one of a string of television movies made after the success of Airport involving airliners in trouble.  The case had a tiny picture of a jet, a slightly larger picture of Robert Stack, and dominating 80% of the box, a headshot of Farrah Fawcett. That can mean only one thing. She's probably in this film for less than a minute.  This was a year before her big break in Charlie's Angeles, so it was more than likely she had nothing more than a bit part. I am also well aware that these budget home video companies had a nasty habit of finding low budget independent films that a major star had been in at the beginning of their career, and featuring them on the box as if they were the star when they only had one line. Furthermore, I do not remember this film. And during the 70s I was familiar with every Farrah Fawcett film. Not only because she was all the boys at my school could talk about, but because even her worst movies like Someone Killed Her Husband got major promotion.  Logan's Run, which at the time of it's release was the most spectacular sci-fi fantasy ever made, was promoted as a Farrah Fawcett movie despite her character being on screen for less than five minutes combined. If she had a substantial role on this film, I was sure ABC would have re-aired it and promoted it as one of her films. Well, it turned out Farrah was in a lot of the movie. Instead of being a ticket agent you see once or some similar character, she was one of the two stewardess' on the plane, has a number of lines, and even turns out to be a pivotal character in a tacked on plot twist in the last five minutes of the film. But is nowhere near one of the lead characters. So why don't I remember this film? Perhaps there was another reason why it didn't re-air during the peak of Farrah's popularity. Although airing on ABC, it was not made by ABC Circle Films, but Spelling-Goldberg Productions. The same production company that would go on to produce the series Charlie's Angels a few months later. Farrah's inclusion in this film was most likely because Aaron Spelling already had her cast in Charlie's Angels and saw this as a way of promoting his new actress. However, there was Farrah was supposedly trouble the entire year she was on the series. Only agreeing to sign with ABC for four seasons, she was in a battle the entire season with Spelling over merchandising rights, and eventually announced she was quitting the show after Spelling put her on  the Charlie's Angles Topps trading cards without compensating her, or something like that. More likely she wanted out of the series because she had become so famous since the pilot movie that she was receiving offers to star in feature films which she could not do with the hectic filming schedule of the series. Since Spelling controlled the rights to Murder on Flight 502, he probably decided he didn't want to further promote Farrah and withheld the movie from further broadcast. Meanwhile, CBS was giving Logan's Run it's television broadcast debut,  and instead of promoting it as an effects driven sci-fi fantasy following the summer of  Star Wars, they were promoting it as a Farrah Fawcett film.

This wasn't just a Farrah movie I didn't know existed. It was also a Sonny Bono film I didn't know existed, and a pre-airplane Robert Stack movie I didn't know existed. But is it a disaster movie?  The plot: after an airliner full of 200 passengers takes off on a flight from New York to London, a note is found in the first class lounge of Kennedy Airport saying "By the time you read this, you will have already heard of the murders on flight 502..." and going on to say that if he didn't survive that he wanted everyone to know the murders would be justified. Airport security contacts the pilot ( Robert Stack ) and informs him about the note, and that he should try to find the killer before he strikes, which he does with the help of a police detective who is also taking the flight. Coincidentally, on board are a few passengers who hold murderous grudges against some of the other passengers. So for most of the film, there are no murders, and it looks as if the letter was nothing but a hoax, when a passenger is strangled to death, followed by another murder. So, does this count as a disaster movie? I questioned if it did, when in the last ten minutes the killer fires a gun on the plane, causing a fire and for the airliner to make an emergency landing. So, just barely counts as a disaster film.  I still got one more of these made for television airliner disaster films in que, and from there move on to a Towering Inferno rip-off television film, and a television film about the Titanic, at which point I have gone through every television disaster film from the 70s' that I know of being released on either DVD or Blu-ray.

[stethacantus]

New One-Armed Swordsman ( 1971 )
This film, which introduced David Chaing as a new one Armed Swordsman, was not so much an attempt to keep a franchise alive when the original actor was no longer available, but Shaw Brothers way of saying "f$#k you" to Jimmy Wang Yu. The feud between the actor and his former studio went like this:
In 1967 Chang Cheh directed the first film to earn a million dollars at the Hong Kong box office with The One-Armed Swordsman which starred Jimmy Wang Yu. Chang and Yu would go on to collaborate on other Wuxia films that earned a million or more at the box office, including Return of the One-Armed Swordsman. Meanwhile in Japan, the future of Zatoichi, the film series which inspired The One-Armed Swordsman, was in doubt after it's studio, Daiei, went bankrupt. Rival studio Toho agreed to pick up the Zatoichi series, but on condition they included event films. The first, Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo ( 1970 ), paired Zatoichi with a Swordsman character  Toho owned, and was the lead character in two acclaimed Akira Kurosawa films. A year later Toho wanted Zatoichi to meet Shaw Brothers One-Armed Swordsman, but was unable to get permission from Shaw Brothers to use the character or lend them Wang Yu. Meanwhile Yu was unhappy with the Shaws as he had become the biggest star in Hong Kong, yet was still being paid under the contract he had signed to be a bit player. The Shaws tried to appease him by allowing him to write and direct The Chinese Boxer ( 1970 ), the first film to update the Kung Fu genre the same way as Wuxia had been updated.  But the success of that film, and still no raise, had Yu deciding to break his contract and leave the studio.  Around the same time production managers Leonard Ho and Raymond Chow were planning to leave Shaw Brothers to form a rival studio called Golden Harvest and were recruiting many of the Shaw Brothers talent under the premise that their contracts with the Shaws only precluded them from working on films in Hong Kong for the duration of the contract, which could easily be worked around by shooting their films in Taiwan.  Yu would be the first to break his contract, followed by a third of the Shaw Brothers actors and crew, all shooting cheap martial arts films in Taiwan for Golden Harvest. 

Yu's first film for Golden Harvest was shot in Japan. Raymond Chow made the deal with Toho and Katsu Productions for a Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman movie starring Jimmy Wang Yu, avoiding copyright violations by renaming Yu's one armed  character.  Shaw Brothers tried to sue anyway, but the case was thrown out because Golden Harvest was only the distributor, and they could not sue a Japanese company through a British court. Never the less, the film was distributed as Zatoichi Meets His Equal (1971 ) in Hong Kong to avoid any copyright claims for the words "One-Armed Swordsman" in the film title. Shaw Brothers was extremely pissed at Yu for a lot of things. Abandoning his contract, leaving the studio at the height of his popularity, encouraging an exodus of stars, directors and crew to Golden Harvest. And bringing the One-Armed Swordsman franchise to Toho. Shaw's response for that was to take their One-Armed Swordsman franchise back with The New One-Armed Swordsman, casting their latest star as the new one armed character, making Yu's movie seem illegitimate. ( which it was. )  Yu responded  by combining his Chinese Boxer character and One-Armed Swordsman as a new franchise beginning with the film One Armed Boxer ( 1972 ). Shaw Brothers responded by rush filming and releasing their own One-Armed Boxer film called Thunderbolt Fist ( 1972 ) which didn't violate Wang Yu's copyright on that one armed character by not cutting off the boxers arm, but instead having the Japanese villains deaden the arm by cutting the muscles so it no longer works. If Yu was going to make a One-Armed Boxer franchise for Golden Harvest, then Shaw Brothers was going to have a competing One-Armed Boxer series.  This tit for tat continued four years later. In 1975 Shaw Brothers had success with The Flying Guillotine, a movie about a disk shaped weapon on a chain that decapitated heads. Predictably they began work on a sequel. But Yu rushed out his own competing movie Master of the Flying Guillotine ( 1976 ) which was also the long awaited second film in the One-Armed Boxer franchise.  Rumor was that Yu initially intended the film to be The One-Armed Swordsman vs The Flying Guillotine, but had second thoughts of ripping off two Shaw Brothers IPs in the same film, so retooled the script so that his character was the One-Armed Boxer.  This even meant time jumping the One-Armed Boxer character back 100 years, even though the first movie took place in the Republic era. Later that year Yu f$%ked with the Shaws again when David Chaing was temporarily between contracts and agreed to star in One Armed Swordsmen ( 1976 ), where Yu and Chaing played two one armed Swordsmen who team up. Chaing would sign a new contract with Shaw Brothers while Yu would go on to make two more films that year where he played a one armed swordsman.

So New One-Armed Swordsman was more of an attempt to retake the One Armed Swordsman franchise from Jimmy Wang Yu. The plot takes some shortcuts. David Chaing plays a master swordsman who is framed for a robbery and tricked into cutting off his own arm by another martial arts master who is secretly a villain. He retires from martial arts and becomes a waiter.  Ti Lung plays another swordsman who befriends Chaing.  Ti is also tricked by the villain, but refuses to cut his arm off, and ends up being killed. Which leads to Chaing coming out of retirement, mowing down the army of henchmen working for the villain, and defeating the villain in a one on one fight. Unlike the first film in the franchise where Yu needs to learn a brand new fighting technique for left handed swordsmen, Chaing merely picks up his sword and is immediately an expert left handed swordsman. Some of this is explained as Chaing being an expert in using two swords in both hands at the same time prior to having his right arm cut off. But Yu's character needed to use his fathers sword, which had the top half broken off during a battle, because without his right arm he was off balance during fights, and needed a shorter sword. Chiang seems to have no problem wielding full sized swords. Aside from this film being far less thoughtful than the first two, it is just as much as a crowd pleaser. Especially with that finale with Chaing taking on an entire army of armed henchmen on   a bridge.




Terror on the 40th Floor ( 1974 )
I intended to finish with the made for television air disaster films this weekend. But this finally arrived in the mail,  and I read the synopsis on the back of the case, and it takes place at an office Christmas party. And as this is the weekend before Christmas, and last year I rearranged my movie queue to watch Poseidon Adventure on the weekend before New Years, so decided to do it again this year. There is a debate over this film as to if it was a rip off of The Towering Inferno or not. Those defending the film point out that it's broadcast date was two months prior to The Towering Inferno's theatrical release, so could not possibly be a rip-off.  However, it had been well publicized that Irwin Allen's follow-up to The Poseidon Adventure would be an all star disaster film taking place in a burning skyscraper.  And based on this being set near Christmas, there is little doubt the network originally intended for it to air around the week The Towering Inferno was in theaters and not in September, but for some reason moved up the air date by three months. It was directed by Jerry Jameson, who would direct several other made for television disaster movies, as well as Airport '77. The company who put out this DVD is called FilmRise, and had put "Digitally Remastered" on the cover of the case. I suppose this was to differentiate this release from the previous two DVD releases of the same film, both which were mastered from a previous VHS release from a bargain company that had what looked like a third generation VHS copy with a chunk of the film missing. This so called "Digital Remaster" is sourced from the same VHS release, and is still missing the same ten minutes of the film. The cut happens just as a secretary named Ginger  discovers smoke coming through the air vents, and picks up after the characters realize the doors are locked and the elevators have been shut off. The plot: At a Christmas office party, the CEO of a company invites his two top executives and the best looking secretaries working for the company into his office for an even more private party with the good alcohol. Meanwhile, the rest of the employees stumble out of the office building drunk, and convinced everyone has left the building, the security guard locks the doors to the staircases for the Christmas break.  A janitor attempting to repair some machinery on one of the lower floors accidentally starts a fire which soon engulfs the entire floor. The responding fire department is told that no one is in the building, so shuts off the elevators to prevent the fire from going up the shaft. This leaves the office workers trapped with no way to escape as the fire slowly rises from floor to floor below them. There is a secretary who panics and runs through a plate glass door, and a worker who plumets to his death while trying to climb down the elevator shaft, but otherwise nothing much happens as the trapped employees wait for the fire department to finally figure out there are people trapped on the top floor and attempt a rescue. This, after all, was a low budget television movie, so is the bottle episode of disaster films. Still, a shame  this is just another one of the 70s television movies only available in poor condition. I have two television films left hat have been released on home video, and those two promise to be professional releases directly from the original camera negatives. Yes, after more than a year of watching nothing but 70s disaster movies with only a months break to watch the films updated as part of my superhero collection, I am down to my final six films, and then I have every 70s disaster film released on home video so far. I never imagined it would take this long to go through them.

[Cyrusso]

Just saw Mufasa. While I think it could have been paced better and a bit shorter... it was really great. The photo realistic look doesn't bother me at all. Me and my friend had an absolute blast. We loved it.

[stethacantus]

The Lady Hermit ( 1971 )
Sometimes a Wuxia film could be called a superhero movie. The swordsman travels around China seeking out martial arts villains and bringing them to justice ( or killing them and all their henchmen in the new school era ). The hero has a nickname, wears a distinctive costume, and at times has a secret identity. That is pretty much a description of Zorro, who is considered a proto-superhero in American culture. In this case, the heroin calls herself The Lady Hermit, wears a costume that disguises herself with a veil, and when not fighting crime, has a secret identity as a lowly servant. In this case Lady Hermit is keeping a low profile as she is trying to recuperate from an injury from a villain called The Black Demon who has sharp metal fingernails. However, her identity is soon accidentally exposed by another swordswoman who seeks the Lady Hermit out to be her teacher.  And there is a love triangle. All of this is just the McGuffin for what the Shaws really wanted from this film, which was yet another Wuxia film where the hero mows down an army of henchmen with his/her sword. By 1971 Wuxia was on it's way out, as Kung Fu and unarmed combat films would take over in popularity, thanks in part to Jimmy Wang Yu's Chinese Boxer a year earlier, and Bruce Lee's [i[The Big Boss[/i] which would be released seven months after this film. still, even thought this represented the Wuxia film at the time the formula had been worn out, it is still a very satisfying action movie.

Cold Equations ( 1996 )
With SNL on Christmas hiatus, I decide to watch another film in my Echo Bridge five airplane movie set, this one being about a space ship, so sort of out of theme. This was a very familiar story to mee, which I saw before on The Twilight Zone. No, not the original series. After making a Twilight Zone movie, Steven Spielberg was enthusiastic about reviving  it as a weekly television series, only with stories written by him. But CBS decided to revive the serries without Spielberg. He then tried to revive The Outer Limits. but the same thing happen when the copyright holders decided to revive it themselves without him. Still determined to make an anthology series with his stories, he eventually got the publishers of the old Science Fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories to allow him to use their IP. So i the fall of 1985 CBS debuted The Twilight Zone, NBC debuted Amazing Stories and in addition revived Alfred Hitchcock Presents. With high expectations for the Spielberg series combined with one two many weak episodes, and a general unacceptance from viewers for revivals of Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock presents when both hosts were long dead, all three series began to tank in the ratings. Alfred Hitchcock Presents was the first to be cancelled, but was immediately picked up by USA Network for additional seasons. Both Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories continued into a second season, after which CBS and NBC cancelled both respectively, bringing an end to anthology series on network television. For whatever reason, a third season of Twilight Zone was produced for syndication with cheaper, half hour episodes. I have no idea why I followed Twilight Zone to syndication, other than I still didn't have cable and there was barely anything good on the broadcast networks ( which now included FOX ). It was during the third season that they decided to adapt the short Sci-fi story from the 1950s called Cold Equations. The basic plot, a pilot of a space ship bringing urgent medical supplies to a colony on another planet discovers a girl stow away. The problem is that his ship only has just enough fuel to land with his weight and the weight of the medical supplies, and with the added weight of the girl, they will crash. He is left with a decision. Dump the cargo, and everyone on the colony will die in a pandemic. Or jettison the girl into space.  Twilight Zone adapted the story, and it just barely filled the half hour slot. Ten years later USA Network decided to adapt the same story into a television film, which is four times the running time of the Twilight Zone episode. So yeah, there is a lot of stuff added just for padding. And a plot element of a cover up added which cheapens the outcome of the story. So yeah, despite this having a bigger budget, the cheap half hour made for syndication Twilight Zone episode is a much better adaption.


Crisis In Mid-Air ( 1979 )
Back to the disaster movies. And unless I find another budget DVD at a Dollar Tree, or anywhere else Echo Bridge videos are sold, then this is the final airliner disaster film in my collection. Or is it a disaster film. I was beginning to think I got duped by this being on several disaster movie lists. The film opens with Air Traffic controller George Peppard having a nightmare about a mid air collision which is over in a few seconds. It seems that he had been the controller when a private jet and an Airforce jet collided, and is now under investigation. This is one of many plots in this movie. Plot #2, a baggage handler at the airport is a serial killer who targets taxi drivers. Plot #3, George's wife wants to leave him because he is to obsessed with his job. Plot #4, George has to train a controller who has transferred in from Chicago. Plot #5, the airport has hired a psychiatrist to observe the air traffic controllers, who are constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown as there are constantly near misses between planes at this airport. With all these plots in what felt like some sort of backdoor pilot for an Airport based series, I thought that the only disaster takes place in George's nightmare. Finally, near the end of the film, the cops figure out who the serial killer is, and he makes a run for it. He shoots a the pursuing cops  and somehow hits the tank of an airliner taking off, causing the engine to burst into flames. They need to make an emergency landing immediately, but the serial killer has hijacked a bus and has parked it on the airport's only runway, threatening to shoot his hostages if anyone comes near him. To make matters worse, George's wife is on that plane, as well as the girlfriend of the air traffic controller he is training. So you do get an airliner disaster in the final ten minutes of the film. Which makes this just barely count as a 70s disaster movie.

[stethacantus]

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972 )
Shaw Brother's first Category III film with a hint of wuxia mixed in. Lily Ho plays a poor country girl who is kidnapped and brought to a brothel where she is forced to become a prostitute. Vowing vengeance against the four johns who rape her on her first day, madam who runs the brothel, and the gang of thugs who kidnapped her, she becomes a professional prostitute who kills her clients. This was the first Hong Kong film to depict a Lesbian relationship, and an early hit for director Chor Yuen who would revolutionize the wuxia film a few years later with Killer Clans. Not much of a martial arts film, but a very good revenge film, and an excellent cat and mouse sub-plot between lily and the police detective who knows she is killing her johns, but can't prove she is the killer.
         
Airborne ( 1998 )
So SNL is still in it's Christmas hiatus, so I decided to finish up watching the films in the Echo Bridge "Flight To Nowhere and 4 Bonus Movies" set which I only bought for SST Death Flight and The President's Plane is Missing, but cant just have those three other films without watching them at least once. Airborne came out just two years after another film called Airborne. And apparently there are a lot of films called "Airborne" as it is one of those titles that can no longer be copyrighted. Anyway, this is the Airborne which is a direct to video Canadian action thriller starring that great action star Steve Guttenberg. He is the leader of an elite CIA squad who are tasked with retrieving a stolen biological weapon. The entire film is low budget and formulaic, but oddly entertaining enough not to be boring. Or at the least, not bad enough to make you want to turn it off.

The Crazies ( 1973 )
As I get close to completing a 70s disaster movie collection, the next couple of weeks I will be watching films that don't really seem to be disaster movies, yet for some reason have made every 70s disaster movie  list. I am not sure why this George A Romero  film is considered  a disaster movie while Dawn of the Dead isn't. I guess because while Zombie Apocalypse movies are in the realm of fantasy, this movie is science fiction, which makes it plausible. A plane crashes. You do not see the plane crash, which apparently happened a week before this movie takes place, so is not why this film is considered a disaster movie. But it's cargo is a biological weapon which gets into the ground water and begins to infect a small town. It turns the infected crazy just before they drop dead. The film opens with one of the infected having stabbed his wife to death, setting fire to his own house with his kids inside. So this film has a house fire, which is as close to a traditional disaster this movie has. So what it comes down to is if you consider an epidemic a disaster or not. The army wants to keep the virus from spreading to the rest of the country, so quarantines the town and forces everyone to relocate in the school gym. That is, except for a few townspeople who grab their shotguns and hide in the hills to avoid the soldiers.  This includes the hero of the movie, his buddy, his pregnant girlfriend, and a father and his daughter who join them as they hide. Gradually everyone becomes infected, including the soldiers, causing the townsfolk and soldiers to shoot at each other. This story is definitely in Romero's wheelhouse being not that different than the living dead films. But instead of making the infected rabid, they mostly wander around like they are stoned, and only occasionally become violent. Which means it could have been a lot better than just a cult movie.

[stethacantus]

The 14 Amazons ( 1972 ) This was the last hurrah for Shaw Brothers wuxia films. Or at least that was what they intended. A few of their other wuxia productions like The Water Margin were delayed and not completed for  another couple of years.  But by the time this was shot, most of Shaw's biggest female stars had either retired from acting to raise a family, or had defected to Golden Harvest. Through the 60s, Shaw Brothers biggest stars were all women, leading to a lot of wuxia films where the lead character was a swordswoman. This began to change when their most profitable director, Chang Cheh, decided he preferred movies with male roles, and proceeded to make a number of wuxia and other martial arts films with all male casts, with any actresses being reduced to  the roles of girlfriends or prostitutes. Besides that, Jimmy Wang Yu's Chinese Boxer had made unarmed Kung Fu films popular, shortly followed by the monster success of Bruce Lee, which had the entire Hong Kong film industry switching from wuxia to kung fu. So this was to be their last wuxia film starring every actress still remaining at their studio. The plot is about the historic ( and often legendary ) Yang family who for several generations produced successful generals that defended Southern China against invaders. In this a famous Yang general and all of his sons and army are wiped out while defending China against an invasion from the empire of Xia. Learning that the government wants to sue for peace with Xia by allowing them to keep the conquered territories, and wanting revenge against the generals of Xia, the widows of the Yang generals and their soldiers put together an all woman army to invade the conquered territory and kill the king of Xia. It is a thrilling film with the Amazons  outnumbered but able to defeat the enemy with cunning tactics, and a set piece where they are able to cross a canyon by making a human bridge. A decent farewell to the wuxia genre, despite  a few delayed wuxia films being released in the next couple of years, and director Chor Yuen reviving wuxia a few years later.

Colossus: The Forbin Project ( 1970 )
I really doubted that this is a disaster movie. It was released a month after Airport which meant it went into production about the same time, so could not possibly be meant as part of the disaster movie genre. It is one of those science fiction films I heard about for decades, but never got around to watching. And in every synopsis of the film I ever read, there is no mention of a disaster. But it is included on every 70s disaster movie list. So I ordered it. And, after watching it, I really do not think it is a disaster movie at all. Despite some stunning sets built for the opening scene where you see the inside of the building with the massive Colossus computer,  this movie is low  budget. A couple of nice sets showing the inside of a futuristic control room and apartment, but tat is just about it. Forbin is the scientist who has created and programed the massive Colossus computer which is built inside an impenetrable base. Colossus is designed to control the nuclear arsenal of the Unted States, and monitor all telecommunications and satellite feeds in order to detect any attack from Russia, and determine the appropriate response. Only Colossus ends up linking with it's Russian counterpart, another super computer called Guardian, becoming one with it, and ending up controlling the missiles of both countries which it uses o threaten mankind into  obeying it as the new ruler of Earth. And pretty much that is the entire plot. There is an entire Russian town wiped of the map by Colossus to prove it isn't fu*#ing around when the humans disobey it, but all you see is the path of the missile on a map in a control room, and hearing a report over the phone that the missile hit it's target. No money was put into any effects, so you never see the town explode. This movie is so cheap, that aside fom it's opening, it could have easily been produced for television.

[stethacantus]

The Magic Blade ( 1976 )
Not really a magic blade in this film, but rather a Peacock Fan, which is a metal pendant with removable darts which when thrown can kill anyone within five feet with mystical explosions. Ti Lung and Lo Leih are  two swordsmen having a duel to the death to determine who the greatest swordsman is when they are both attacked by assassins. It seems the mysterious master Yu, who is trying to take over the martial arts world,  wants them both dead because the only three things he is afraid of in the world is hose two, and the Peacock Fan, the only three things capable of killing him. Realizing Yu's next move is to steal the Peacock Fan, Ti and Lo postpone their fight and team up to stop Master Yu from obtaining the fan. Another of Chor Yuen's adaptions of a Gu Long novel, this one less complicated and with fewer characters to keep track of.


S.O.S. Titanic ( 1979 )
This week I am back to something that is a proper disaster movie. And the only one of the 70s to be based on what was the most famous disaster of all, the sinking of the RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage in 1912. It is one of several movies based on the disaster, but at this time I have no plans to collect them all. This was both released as a theatrical film in Europe, and as a three hour television film in the United States, both versions which are presented in the same set by Kino Lorber. It's a decent enough retelling of the Titanic story, but is sadly in the shadow of James Cameron's Titanic and A Night To Remember.

[stethacantus]

Clans of Intrigue ( 1977 )
Three martial arts masters are murdered, and the murder weapon appears to be the magic water of the Holy Water Palace, a poison which causes the persons killed to inflate after death. The high priestess of the Holy Water Palace blames master thief Chu Liu Xiang of stealing the water as he is the only person capable of breaking into her palace, and gives him a month to prove someone else is the culprit, otherwise she will kill him. Another complicated Wuxia Gu Long tale directed by Chor Yuen with a lot of characters to keep track of. 

The China Syndrome ( 1979 )
This is the end. With this movie I have completed collecting every 70s disaster movie that was released on DVD or Blu-ray.  This includes a lot of films that are not exactly disaster movies, like Rollercoaster, which aside from a coaster train derailing in the first ten minutes, has no death or destruction for the remainder of it's running time. No, I would not consider Rollercoaster a disaster movie. Nor would all those pissed moviegoers who left the theater after seeing this film on it's original release.  But it was promoted as a disaster film, so does count as being in the genre. I am not going to remember every single disaster movie released in the 70s, so compiled my own list based on lists provided by Wikipedia, IMDb, Letterbxd, and Google. These are all user generated lists, so there were bound to be a few movies on those lists that were not promoted as disaster films in the 70s, but some completest thought he would be smart by having a movie on his list that no one else had. If any of these questionable films were on more than one list, then I added it to my own list. In some cases there was enough onscreen disaster for them to qualify.  Others were a stretch.  The movie needed to be released in the 70s, but I accepted films released prior to the 70s if they got a major re-release during the decade, or were made in the 70s and not released until the 80s. Films were to be Hollywood, as the disaster craze was primarily an American phenomenon, but accepted any foreign film that was distributed in America and promoted here. Basically any disaster movie that could be found in U.S. theaters between 1970 and 1981.

I was able to get all but two theatrical releases.  The Neptune Factor from 1973 is on every list, but is out of print and is expensive on eBay for even a used copy. It was one of those iffy films, so before I spent a lot trying to get a copy, found the entire film uploaded on YouTube.  It is a science fiction film with one brief disaster scene where an under water tremor causes an underwater habitat for oceanographers to go over the side of a chasm, necessitating a rescue via submarine. The bulk of the film is the team of rescuers looking out of their submarine windows at the giant fish apparently swarming below 50,000 feet. Basically a rip-off of Fantastic Voyage which was not worth paying the $100 most of the sellers were asking for. And as mentioned before, Roger Corman's Tidalwave has never been released on physical media outside of a VHS bootleg of a television broadcast.  It was a re-edit of a Japanese science fiction film The Sinking of Japan with new footage of Lorne Green added, and I could have bought the Japanese version, but decided only the re-edited Corman version was part of the 70s disaster movie genre.

Obtaining television movies was a lot worse. I lucked out with Shout! Factory recently releasing all the Irwin Allen produced television films in one set, but otherwise only about a third of the other films are available on DVD, and half of those are probably bootlegs. Among the unavailable films are Runaway!, about a Runaway train, Heatwave!, Hurricane which is not to be confused with the theatrical film of the same name, Smash-Up on Interstate 5 about a multi car pile up, A Fire In The Sky about a comet heading towards Earth, Disaster on the Coastliner about another runaway train, The Elevator about people who get stuck in an elevator ( Yep. Some of these television movies were scraping the bottom of the barrel.  ), Short Walk to Daylight about a group of people trapped in a subway after an earthquake, Condominium about a residential building that collapses, and a bunch of airliner disaster films including Terror in the Sky, Crash of Flight 401,  and The Night They Took Mrs Beautiful about a plane full of beauty pageant contestants that is hijacked, and was supposedly released on DVD in North America, but Amazon only lists an out of print region locked foreign release. And two films I regret not being able to add to my collection, Red Alert about a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, and The Death of Oceanview Park about an amusement park on a pier that begins to act like it is possessed after it is damaged in a storm, causing the electric  wiring to get messed up, and concluding with the pier collapsing and taking the amusement park with it into the ocean. A really dumb film that I would have loved in my collection. I started watching these films in December of 2023, and factoring in the break for adding more live action superhero films, took me about a year to watch one disaster movie a week.

I purposely saved The China Syndrome for last. When I first began buying these films in 2023, it was OOP, but there was a new release coming out for pre-order. New releases are usually cost about $10 or more than the second and third printing, and the pre-order was asking for $35. So not just an incentive to wait, but a lot of the other big disaster movies were OOP and running low on stock at Amazon, so needed to be purchased as soon as possible.  Realizing that this was the best reviewed disaster movie of the 70s ( and the most acclaimed disaster movie until James Cameron's Titanic ) I decided to save it for last, as to end on a high note. Technically, this wasn't part of the disaster movie cycle.  It was meant to be a political thriller, was promoted as such, and featured a near disaster rather than mass death and destruction. By the time it was released, the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, which both topped Jaws in box office revenue, had studios investing in effects driven fantasy rather than disaster. The writing on the wall was Superman: The Movie, which had been promoted as a superhero film, and completely left out the climatic earthquake in their promotional.  Superman is a disaster fest including two air disasters, a train headed towards derailment, a burst dam, nuclear missiles headed towards major cities, an entire planet blowing up and the forementioned earthquake. I am sure the disaster angle was what got the film green lit, and why the super showdown with Zod was saved for the second film.  When released in 1978, it was promoted as a film with a hero who could fly, shoot lasers from his eyes, and came to earth from another planet.  There were still a few more disaster movies in production, most green lit when the genre was still at it's peek of popularity.  But by the time The China Syndrome went into production, the disaster movie genre was pretty much over, which is probably why there was no mention of disaster in the promotional material, but instead asks people to watch the film to find out what the term China Syndrome means.

The plot: A local news anchor ( Jane Fonda ) has been asked to do a fluff piece on a local nuclear power plant when she and her cameraman accidentally film a an accident where the core nearly has a meltdown. The spokesman for the plant insists that what they saw was a routine switch of pumps, but then also threatens to sue the station if any of the footage is aired. Meanwhile the plant's  head engineer suspects the accident was caused by faulty construction, and if they attempt to power up the plant again, that there will be a full meltdown.  The owner of the plant want's this covered up, and is willing to have anyone killed who will make the evidence public. As this film was made after the disaster movie craze was over, it ends with the meltdown averted. Had this been made a couple of years earlier, there is little doubt this film would have ended with the plant exploding and Los Angeles in ruins. And most likely Charlton Heston playing the reporter instead of Jane Fonda. Strangely enough, while disaster movies were over, you would not be able to tell. Most years averaged about three theatrical disaster films. Including The China Syndrome, 1979 had eight disaster movies in the theaters. The China Syndrome was the first that year to be released, followed by the Italian film Concorde Affair 79, Hurricane which was finally completed after years of production delays, another long delayed film, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, the Canadian contribution to the disaster genre City on Fire, the final film in the Airport franchise Concorde: Airport 79, the delayedDamnation Alley, and the Shaw Brothers produced Meteor. There were only two  disaster movies released in 1980. When Time Ran out was Irwin Allen's final disaster film for theaters. Most of the cast was obligated to make the movie due to signing two picture deals with Allen in the past. Warner Brothers slashed the budget in half, resulting in cheap effects. While tagged the film that finally killed the disaster movie genre, the fact that Warner cut the budget to an Irwin Allen film meant the genre was already dead. The only other disaster movie left in the pipeline was a parody by the comedy team that made the cult classic Kentucky Fried Movie, a little film called Airplane!.  So the 70s disaster genre ended with a laugh.

[stethacantus]

Jade Tiger ( 1977 )
To be honest, I never thought of Chor Yuen as one of Shaw Brother's great directors until this past year.  Most books on Hong Kong films and the old school Martial Arts genre would cite King Hu, Chang Cheh and Lau Kar Leung as the only great directors the studio had. Hu only did one martial arts film for the studio before quitting. He would go on to do some great films independently, Dragon Gate Inn and A Touch of Zen. However, the one film he did for Shaw Brothers, Come Drink With Me, would be a ground breaking martial arts film that kicked off the old school martial arts era. Chang Cheh had spent most of the previous years as a screen writer for the studio and had only just begun directing for them when they asked him to take over directing wuxia films for the departed King Hu. This lead to the first Hong Kong film to earn $1 million at the box office, The One Armed Swordsman, and would lead to a string of box office hits made by Cheh, most of which were considered classics in the martial arts genre, and would continue through the 80s with the Venom Mob films. Lau Kar Leung was Chang's fight choreographer up until the mid 70s where he left the director after a dispute on one of their films, and went on to direct his own films for Shaw Brothers, almost all which would also be martial ats classics. The only other mention a Shaw director got was  Sun Chung in Ric Meyer's book, but mostly because of his success directing films for Billy Chong after leaving Shaw Brothers. I didn't learn that Lo Wei was a Shaw Brothers director until about a decade ago when Image began releasing some of his Shaw Brothers films. The reason is a bias in the martial arts movies n America. Here, martial arts is Kung Fu, fists and kicks. Swordplay films did not catch on here. So while Come Drink With Me and The One Armed Swordsman get mentioned in American books on Hong Kong films, it is only because they lead to The Chinese Boxer in 1970 and the unarmed martial arts films that followed. From that point on, wuxia is ignored up until Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. A good 30 years of wuxia not mentioned in most American books. True, in Hong Kong wuxia went out of fashion once Bruce Lee released The Big Boss in 1971. But Chor Yeun revived the genre in 1976 when he adapted a Gu Long novel with the movie Killer Clans.  Chor Yuen would go on to direct a lot of other hit wuxia films for Shaw Brothers, adapting novels written by Gu Long, including Jade Tiger. All ignored in American books on martial arts because wuxia was seen as a genre only popular in Asia. But after the success here of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, director Ang Lee's tribute to the Wuxia films he remembered from the 60s. This put the genre on the map in the United States, and had film historians reevaluating wuxia films. As mentioned, Lo Wei was a director at Shaw Brothers. Read any of the old martial arts books and Lo was a hack director who got lucky when he directed Bruce Lee's first two films. Supposedly it was Lee who directed most of those films as Lo supposedly showed up to the set and just sat in his director's chair studying  horse racing forms while co-directors and choreographers did his work for him. Lo seemed to ern his reputation when he left Golden Harvest to start his own film production company, and released a series of box office bombs starring a young Jackie Chan. However, at Shaw Brothers, Lo was just as successful a director as Chang Cheh, responsible for a number of box office hits. But those hits were wuxia, and therefore ignored by American historians. By the time the Shaw Brothers films were being released on DVD for the first time in the early 2000s, companies like Image and Dragon Dynasty began to take notice of the box office success of other films in Hong Kong and began releasing a lot of wuxia, much to the confusion of American martial arts fans who were expecting most of the usual fist and kicks films to be released. Thanks to the commentary tracks on the recent releases of the Shaw Scope and Shaw Brothers Classics, I now know the historic significance of the wuxia films, and how they too were cinematic masterpieces. Sure, I prefer the kung fu genre over swordplay, but I am finally appreciating this genre as well. What can I say about Jade Tiger but that it is yet another wuxia film with a lot of characters to keep track of, a lot of sub plots going on, and a complicated plot with a lot of twists. Not as hard to follow as say, The Brave Archer, but still another film you need to pay attention to all the time. And with Shout! Factory's Shaw Brother's Classics being mostly wuxia, and Shaw Scope Volume 3 being more or less entirely wuxia, I have little choice but to appreciate the genre.

Batman: Gotham Knight ( 2008 )
I haven't really begun collecting any of the animated superhero films. Live action films was the priority, and most of the animated films were probably mostly cheap direct to video animation, or expanded episodes of Saturday morning cartoons. Well, I did have a few animated Batman cartoons. Mask of the Phantasm was long part of my Batman film collection for having a legitimate theatrical release. I mostly got Batman vs Dracula to qualify for Amazon's free shipping. I was a few dollars short, and at the time it was only a few dollars. And then there are the three Lego movies. I thought I may eventually get around to adding some of the animated films and television series for a complete Batman collection. I am still winding my way through the 1966 live action series, and was not gong to think about that until after I was done with that. But then I was given the Batman  80th Anniversary Collection by a nephew who didn't even realize I collected superhero movies. Just saw the DVD in the store and thought "Mom said I have to get a gift for Uncle, so I think I will get him this Batman thing." Oh well. Guess it saves me the trouble of getting these films independently. It is an 18 film set, which I suppose is a bargain. Is it every animated Batman movie? I haven't checked yet, but while it has Mask of the Phantasm, it is missing Batman vs Dracula, so at least is one film shy of being a complete collection. The first movie in this set, Batman: Gotham Knight isn't even a movie. Made by the cast and crew who brought you Batman: The Animated Series, it was a co-production with Japanese anima studios. And is actually six different 15 minute films. The stories are either too short, or are too weak. ( Such as the one where Bruce Wayne goes to India to learn how to meditate. ) . If you remember MTV's Æon Flux and how unsatisfying those individual episodes were, then you get the picture on how unsatisfying these short films are.


The Domino Principle ( 1977 )
And I am not really done with the Disaster Movies just yet. When Shout! Factory released Cassandra Crossing, they did so in a two film double feature set which included a non-disaster film called The Domino Principle. So before I put all these disaster films I collected over the past year and a half away, I decided to watch this film so I get my full money's worth. I actually remember when this film came out and the commercials for it were on all the time. And then I never heard of it again. I do not recall ever seeing it on television, any of the networks airing it, or it ever showing up in the television listings. I imagine some cable channel must have aired it. The plot: Gene Hackman is a former Army sharp shooter who is  in prison for life for murdering a man. He is sprung by a secret government agency as long as he agrees to do a mission for them. That mission is to assassinate someone for them.  While we see this person assassinated at his summer home, the film never tells you who he is. Despite being nearly a two hour film, it is a plot that is so thin that it could have been done in one of those 15 minute Batman films. No wonder it disappeared shortly after it's theatrical run.

[stethacantus]

The Sentimental Swordsman ( 1977 )
Once again, a wuxia film directed by Chor Yune based on a Gu Long novel starring Ti Lung as a swordsman who is framed for a crime and has to find the identity of the real culprit.  This one was one of Shaw Brother's biggest box office hits. It is also the first time I have ever seen this film after hearing about it for years a one of the great martial arts films, and my reaction to it is that I don't think it was any better than any of the other Chor Yune films. Interesting plot, nice visuals, some nicely choreographed fights, but nothing that made me go "Wow!"

Batman: Year One ( 2011 )
Batman: Under The Red Hood ( 2010 )
A delay in delivery meant no new films this week, so back to the Batman Animated Movies set. Both are based on story arcs from the Batman comic books, and I cant really summarize the plot of either without spoilers. But both were pretty good, especially the Red Hood one which had some really good action sequences.

[stethacantus]

Avenging Eagle ( 1978 )
I reviewed this twice already here. This time it is the Arrow Video release, and they did restore it. As far as I can tell, the ending fight is complete. But the torture scene is still missing. It s only about 30 seconds of Ti Lung screaming in pain, but a shame Arrow either didn't or couldn't restore it.

Godzilla Vs Kong ( 2021 )
Rewatched this because I was going to watch...

Godzilla X Kong: The Hidden Empire ( 2024 )
No, this was nowhere as good as Godzilla vs Kong[, so maybe a mistake to rewatch it just before this film. Still, a pretty good film.