TurboarrowIII

I thought this film was great escapist fun.

It may not be very believable but it is full of action and suspense.

Sinatra is great as Ryan. After being shot down he ends up in an Italian POW camp. He isn't too impressed with Trevor Howard and his men and thinks they should sit out what is left of the war rather than try to escape. He has only just arrived at the camp so doesn't fully appreciate how bad things are especially as the commandant of the camp played by Adolfo Celi is "a two bit Mussolini" according to Brad Dexter's character.

When Italy surrenders the prisoners attempt to get back to Allied lines. However, they end up getting captured by the Germans and are put on a train. Incredibly they manage to take over the train and hatch a plan to reach Switzerland after several attempts to abandon the train are thwarted. I really like the bit where the padre played by Edward Mulhare impersonates a Nazi officer and manages to get them through checks twice.

The ending is great too as the train is attacked by German fighters and then troops on a chasing train. They manage to replace damaged track and carry on to Switzerland. The twist at the end is when Ryan is killed.

Overall a fast paced and action packed film.

I thought this was a good film.

Roger Moore is great as the slightly dull family man Pelham who begins to have a meltdown when strange things start happening to him following a car crash. Apparently when he briefly dies on the operating table his "evil" or more exciting character is released and when he is brought back to life this leads to him having a duplicate. Therefore, his other side starts turning up and doing things opposite to what he would do thus causing him to slowly start to go mad because he was unaware of this.

The ending is a bit strange though because the other characters don't appear shocked enough when the two Pelhams meet. They seem to accept a bit too easily that the "evil" Pelham is the genuine one and the "real" Pelham is the phoney despite the fact that the "evil" one acts totally differently to the "real" one in that he is more of a daredevil. Despite this I still enjoyed it because it shows the sometimes real struggle of living a possibly dull everyday life and the wish to have a more exciting one.

Good performances make up for the slightly disappointing ending and overall this is a film worth seeing I think.

I had never seen this before today.

The title is misleading as there is only a very small part actually about D-Day itself near the end.

Two men, played by Robert Taylor and Richard Todd, are in love with the same woman played by Dana Wynter. They also happen to end up fighting alongside one another on a Normandy beach on D-Day.

A lot of the film centres on the relationship between Wynter and Taylor. Todd, who was already in love with Wynter, is meant to be fighting overseas for a lot of the time and doesn't feature that much. He discovers the affair towards the end and ends up being Taylor's commanding officer on D-Day. He takes the affair very well and doesn't even get angry with Taylor about it.

I found it very talky and there is only really any action in the last 15 minutes or so.

The stars put in good performances but it shouldn't have been called D-Day the Sixth of June simply because it features only briefly.

Overall this is a bit of a disappointing love story rather than an action packed account of the magnificent events of D-Day.

I thought this was an enjoyable film.

Bronson is good as Majestyk but Lettieri is excellent as Renda. Renda is a nasty and violent killer who Majestyk upsets when he takes him hostage when they are both in a police bus that Renda's hoods try to hijack to rescue him. Majestyk hopes to exchange Renda in return for the police dropping assault charges against him. These charges were brought by Bobby Kopas (Paul Koslo) who had tried to make Majestyk use workers he didn't want to to harvest his melon crop. Majestyk had not taken kindly to this and had smacked Kopas although Kopas was the one to blame.

Unfortunately for Majestyk Renda manages to escape and decides that he wants to kill Majestyk. His thugs "persuade" Kopas to drop the charges so that Majestyk is freed so that Renda can kill him.

There are some great performances. Koslo is excellent as the small time crook who thinks he is a big man. His scenes with Lettieri are great as his attempts to sound tough and clever are met with menacing disdain from Lettieri. Near the end he finally realises what an unpleasant killer Renda is when Renda deliberately sacrifices one of his "friends" in an attempt to flush Majestyk out. Lee Purcell is also good as Renda's girlfriend.

The "massacre" of the melons is also memorable.

Overall not a very complex film but enjoyable I thought with some great performances and a nice theme tune.

I watched the first episode on BBC 1 last Sunday.

I found it disappointing. Sound quality seemed poor although that may have had more to do with the mumbling of a lot of the cast than anything else.

It was unrealistic also I thought. At the start one of the top Nazi fighter aces was assassinated. Apparently the Nazis were satisfied with capturing the assassin and transporting his family to a "labour camp" as it was termed here. Everyone knows the brutal and evil Nazi regime would have rounded up a lot of innocent civilians in real life and murdered them to try to stamp out future actions like this. Also would a Brit really have got away with telling a Nazi officer to hurry up as he hadn't got all day. At the very least this would have earned a slap I think.

There didn't seem to be any of the real terror or horror that there would have been if the Nazis really had invaded.

I might give it another chance but so far I have not been impressed. Not great acting, lots of mumbling and unrealistic events make it a big disappointment in my opinion.

I thought this was a very good episode.

It involves the murder of a teacher by one of his students. The murder occurs because the student (Kristoffer Tabori) wants the teacher (Tom Troupe) to change one of his grades. Tabori is pressured all the time by his father (Charles Aidman) to succeed and being anything other than the best isn't an option. Therefore, when Troupe refuses to change his grade or compromise in anyway it tips Tabori over the edge and he hits Troupe over the head, killing him. Tabori then tries to frame another student (Scott Colomby) for the murder. However, when Colomby realises it's Tabori who has tried to frame him Tabori pushes him over a cliff although he isn't killed.

Tabori unravels further when he realises he is going to be caught and threatens his family with a sword before going to apparently attempt suicide. However, he can't do it, breaks down completely and Michael Douglas has to talk him into going back with him.

I thought that Tabori was very good. He is quite scary and creepy although it's possible to feel slight sympathy for him because of the expectations of his father and the pressure he is placed under by him. However, he coldly tries to frame someone else for the murder and then also pushes him over a cliff in anger.

At the end it is revealed that his father is going to instruct his attorney to plead that his son is insane. Michael Douglas has spoken to the boy after talking him down and realises this isn't so and that the boy knows right from wrong. The parents want to know what went wrong and claim that they gave the boy everything but Douglas sums it up when he says "Except the right to fail".

The usual good performances and believable plot make this a very good episode I think.

The Streets of San Francisco is currently being repeated in the UK. I saw this episode today.

I thought it was good. Karl Malden and Michael Douglas work well together and it looks like they were friends in real life too as there is a relaxed feel to their on-screen relationship.

There was a bit of a twist in this episode too. It appeared that one of the boys (played by David Gruner) was being physically abused by his step father. However, it is later revealed that it is his mother (played by Mariette Hartley) who is the abusive one. When the step father is shot the mother tries to pin the blame on her son's friend (played by Clint Howard) although she did the shooting.

The performances are very good I think. Hartley is particularly good as the mother who realises she has problems and has been attending counselling for her abusive behaviour. Overall I enjoyed it.

I saw this for the first time today. Really wish I hadn't bothered. Acting is average to poor, especially poor from Tommy Sands. It's meant to be an anti-war film so there is lots of moralising about the point of it all. There isn't much point to this film though I don't think.

Sinatra produces, directs and stars. Not one of his better performances. He plays a boozy doctor also named Francis like him !. When he isn't drunk and spouting moralising stories he manages to expertly amputate the leg of a wounded Japanese soldier.

Others have mentioned Sands' performance. It really is awful and amateurish. Frank should have cut his whole sorry performance out and that would have improved the film...a bit anyway.

There was also too much insubordination and disobeying of orders especially on the Japanese side I thought. I don't think the Japanese would have behaved like that with their code of honour and obedience.

Overall a very poor film and maybe that was why Frank never tried directing again. Although to his credit he didn't try to come across as the big star and gave others a fair chance.

Watching The Professionals now it comes across as a bit dated but I still find it fun.

Collins and Shaw as Bodie and Doyle are great although sometimes their scenes together can appear a bit camp, especially the comic ones. They respect and trust each other as partners but there is sometimes an edge to their friendship as apparently there was in real life too.

Jackson is good too as their tough boss who realises that he can rely totally on Bodie and Doyle although he sometimes has a hard time keeping them in line.

I love the cars which get thrashed a lot. Particularly the Capri 3 litre S, Escort RS2000 and Granada 2.8 Ghia. Too many modern cars look the same and don't have the exciting looks that many cars had back then. The way they thrashed them must have meant they needed a lot of maintenance !.

Overall a very enjoyable series, which although it looks dated now, still has enough action and excitement to be worth seeing.

This is really awful I think. It's similar to when they badly remake great films like The Italian Job and Get Carter.

The original had charm and the visible strings and odd looking puppets were part of what made the show great. This makes them look like a computer generated boy band and a very poor boy band at that.

Even some of the voices sound dreadful.

Can understand them trying to cash in on a classic and modern day children may find some of it enjoyable but I don't think this is in anyway better than the original and certainly doesn't have any of the old magic.

I think this is an enjoyable and happy family film.

A Superfortress, flown by Elliott Gould, (As Noah Dugan..hence the title of the film) crashes on a supposedly uninhabited island after batteries in a radio cause the compass to read wrongly and make the plane go off course.

Along with Gould are a missionary, played by Genevieve Bujold, two children played by Ricky Schroder and Tammy Lauren plus a lot of animals.

The island they crash on has two Japanese soldiers left there after WW2 who don't know the war has ended. Eventually they work together to turn the crashed plane into a boat which they use to try to get back to civilisation.

The performances are very good. Gould produces a great performance which is so much better than in Escape to Athena made just before this in which he hammed it up badly. Here he is sensitive and believable as the gruff but caring Dugan. Bujold is also good as the missionary. She is very good in the way she gets the two Japanese soldiers to work with them to convert the plane into a boat. Both the kids are good too. Especially Schroder who was very good at making people feel sadness with his heartfelt crying especially when one of the animals was going to be shot when it was injured.

This isn't a film with any real surprises and has the expected happy ending as they get rescued and Gould and Bujold get married but it is a pleasant, cheery family film which I thought was very enjoyable.

I think this is an excellent film.

Both Peck and Plummer are very good in their respective roles.

It shows that there were many people who risked their lives to save Jews and others from the Nazis. Despite the fact that the Roman Catholic church was criticised for not doing more to speak out about the crimes committed by the Nazis this film shows that there were members of the church who were prepared to try to save others.

Plummer and Peck engage in a form of hide and seek. Peck as O'Flaherty risks his life to save others and assumes different disguises to avoid capture. Plummer as Kappler is frustrated by O'Flaherty always managing to stay one step ahead.

I thought the end where it is revealed that O'Flaherty had saved Kappler's family was quite moving. Kappler had begged O'Flaherty to save his family despite the fact that Kappler had been responsible for awful atrocities. At the time it appeared that O'Flaherty had rejected Kappler's pleas because he was disgusted by the things that Kappler had been responsible for. Later, when Kappler has been captured by the Allies, we find out that Kappler's family had in fact been smuggled to safety. This shows that O'Flaherty had decided that his belief in God meant that he had to try to forgive so he had saved the family of a brutal tyrant.

It can't have been easy living in an awful period under a brutal regime like the Nazis. This film helps to show that people from all walks of life were brave enough to risk everything to stand up to them. Excellent performances help to make this a film well worth watching.

I think this is a poor film.

It seems to be trying to be a drama, comedy, slapstick and farce all in one but failing badly in all areas. Even for a film made so long ago and in the period leading up to war it appears poor. The fight scene in the luggage compartment of the train was particularly hammy and amateurish. It seemed like a pantomime scene and a bad pantomime scene at that. Unrealistic and so badly done it made it stand out as a particular low point amongst many.

The part where a couple of stereotypically portrayed bumbling Englishmen with a couple of pistols are able to stop troops from taking the train is ridiculous. The old lady spy is allowed to just run away and escape with no real attempt by the enemy troops to stop her. That is laughable but not meant to be I don't think. This was made when Europe was close to war and was presumably meant to show that Britain would stand up and fight but it isn't even a good propaganda film because of the laughable stereotypes and hammy nature of the whole thing.

This hasn't got anything going for it. The actors can't really perform because their characters are more like pantomime ones and the corny action scenes just look amateurish and totally unconvincing. Not good.

I think this episode shows what a great star and generous man James Garner was.

He is meant to be the star of the show but he allows guest star Tom Selleck to totally dominate and upstage him.

Selleck plays Lance White again. White is another PI who has been involved with Rockford in past cases and always gets the luck with clues etc.

Here they are investigating the murder of a senator at a PI awards dinner. Rockford shows frustration at the way everything goes White's way and how everything he does comes off. Garner was good at this type of light comedy. Even at the end Rockford finds out that the award he had supposedly won wasn't his due to a miscount and it actually goes to White.

I quite enjoyed this episode but it would have been nice if something had gone Rockford's way.

Not many stars in their own show would have allowed themselves to play second fiddle to a guest star I don't think and it was very generous of Garner to do so. Maybe this was one of the reasons why he was so popular and the regulars on the show always got along so well. This helped to make it the great show it was.

I think this is a realistic look at the seedy side of England in the early 70s.

It shows how run down and grey things appeared to be back then with dingy houses and bleak landscapes providing the backdrop for the unpleasant characters which this film is full of.

I think this is Michael Caine's finest performance. He plays the ruthless, unpleasant and thoroughly nasty gangster Jack Carter who goes back to Newcastle to find out what really happened when his brother died apparently while drink driving.

Carter eventually discovers that his brother was murdered because his daughter had been abused in a sordid sex film and he was going to go to the police. Jack Carter then sets about taking his revenge on the people involved. He shows no mercy and murders a number of them callously including throwing one off a multi storey car park which is being converted into a club. The fact that innocent passers by also get injured/killed when the body falls on their car doesn't bother him at all.

Caine plays Carter very well. He is totally without scruples and is a cold, calculating killer who uses people anyway he wants just to get his way.

Carter is a total anti hero. The majority of the other characters involved are just as nasty. However, the way Carter uses everyone makes feeling any sympathy towards him impossible. Some people who help Carter are treated just as badly by him. He is utterly without morals.

In the end it appears that Carter has succeeded because everyone connected with his brothers death has either been murdered or is likely to spend time in prison. The way he chases, kills and then disposes of the body of Ian Hendry's character is particularly nasty.

The twist at the end is that Carter is killed by an assassin hired by the boss of the gangster gang (well played by John Osborne) who Carter had double crossed by informing the police about his involvement in the sex film and other activities.

This is a tough, gritty and realistic look at the grim, unpleasant underworld. None of the main characters are very nice and the run down, dingy Newcastle of the early 70s makes it appear even more melancholy.

Overall I found this a bit disappointing and not helped by the time it was shown as it couldn't be more graphic.

It tells the story of 2 men from either side fighting in WW1. The acting was very good I thought and the attention to detail was fine. However, I found it difficult to get really involved as it seemed to jump a bit between both sides.

The ending was particularly disappointing and I thought contrived with both of the main characters meeting in no mans land while trying to repair damaged barbed wire. The fact that they then end up fighting and killing each other minutes before the war ends was a bit gimmicky and predictable.

So overall not the greatest although it did convey how awful it must have been to fight in the war as well as the despair of seeing so many friends die. Spoiled by the contrived and quite predictable ending I thought.

This is a cheap but certainly not cheerful film.

It borrows lots from other films like Operation Crossbow and 633 Squadron. So it was obviously made on a tight budget.

Most of the actors look bored and there isn't a decent performance from any of them. David McCallum is poor. He shows no real emotion or depth in his performance. It almost looks like he felt he was forced to make the film and so couldn't be bothered. Maybe that's true as he certainly performs badly. He was much better in The Great Escape but that was a much better film than this. This is another film where the love part of it feels staged and not realistic.

Special effects are average but the film just doesn't have enough going for it to raise it above mediocre.

The Sweeney was a great series in my opinion.

I thought this was one of the best episodes ever.

Vic Labbett, brilliantly played by James Booth, is a violent and unpleasant crook who has returned to England to pick up some cash from a previous robbery. However, he intends to exchange the hot money for some diamonds by using a go between. He is calculating, manipulative and ruthless in the way he uses people including John Rhys-Davies who helped him get away before, Veronica Lang as his wife and Helen Gill as his mistress. Labbett shoots the go between, played by John D Collins, because he believes that he has betrayed him to Regan and co but in fact Regan and co already knew he had returned by the fact that Labbett had been spotted by one of Regan's snouts.

Labbett is eventually caught when Regan tells his wife about his mistress which she didn't have any idea about and his wife tells Regan where Labbett is likely to be picked up from by plane.

I thought this was a great episode. Booth produces a great performance as the unpleasant crook. The other characters are also excellent, especially Lang as the faithful wife cruelly cheated on by Labbett. It is good that Labbett gets his just desserts at the end. Even then he still tries to pretend to Rhys-Davies that the police are making up the story about the diamonds because Labbett had intended to get away without returning or giving Rhys-Davies any of his share. There is even a pretty good car chase at the end with a Triumph and Jaguar getting wrecked !.

This is an uplifting film. Obviously it was meant to be and it is very good propaganda. In 1943 the Nazis were still far from beaten and this film shows the defiance of ordinary Norwegians against a brutal oppressor.

Errol Flynn isn't somebody who many people would think of to play a Norwegian. However, I think he is very good as one. He provides his usual heroic performance, albeit more understated than normal, and shows the sort of determination that many people were showing in real life at the time to defeat the Nazis.

The ending is good especially when the German captain played by Helmut Dantine shoots himself. I believe this was meant to portray the fact that a devout Nazi, as Dantine's character was, was so shocked that the Nazis could be defeated by anybody that he couldn't take it so had to commit suicide. This was meant to show that by fighting back against the Nazis they could crack.

An undoubted propaganda film made at a time when the war was still not definitely decided I thought it was very good at getting the message across that there was at least light at the end of the tunnel in the fight to rid the world of Nazism.

I don't think this is a very good film.

There are a lot of iffy accents. An all star cast don't seem to have any enthusiasm. Donald Sutherland puts in just about the worst performance I have ever seen from him. He talks in a monotonous drawl and just seems bored with the whole thing.

There is some action but it isn't very exciting and the whole film seems gloomy and grey with no real spark.

As I said the cast don't look like they really want to be there and appear to be going through the motions.

I haven't read the book so not sure if the film is like it or not but if the book is as poor as the film then I wonder why they bothered to make it.

An all star cast ought to have meant a better film but this is definitely not very good in my opinion.

I think this is a reasonable film.

It goes down the sabotage route. I found it to be believable. George C Scott isn't too bad but I thought Roy Thinnes, best known for his role in The Invaders, here playing a typically nasty SS man was better.

It mixes actual footage of the disaster with modern film and this doesn't look too great because some is black and white while the rest is in colour. It helps to convey the enormity of what happened though and it must have been terrifying for all those caught up in it. It seems like a bit of a miracle that there were any survivors.

William Atherton plays the saboteur who planted the fatal bomb shown as the cause in the film. He was quite convincing although better later on in Ghostbusters I think.

It does drag a bit in places but overall I found this film reasonably exciting although tension isn't that high because the eventual outcome is already known.

This used to be shown nearly every six weeks summer holidays in England back in the 70s.

It might be old but I think it is great. From the stirring and uplifting theme tune to the quite lavish costumes and battle scenes it does have a fairly epic feel. It was also quite well dubbed into English which I think is much better than subtitles.

Never recognised any of the actors because it was a foreign series but they all do a capable job and there is enough action to keep things moving along at a good pace.

This seems to have had quite a high budget judging by the costumes, number of extras and overall professional look and it was certainly good, entertaining viewing in those long ago summer holidays of the 70s.

This film isn't bad.

It tells of a mission to destroy a Nazi rocket installation. George Peppard and Jeremy Kemp are the two men who get inside and manage to find a way to open the rocket launching doors to mark the position of the installation for Allied bombers. Although I think they both put in good performances I preferred them in The Blue Max made just after this. Anthony Quayle is also good as a Nazi. Tom Courteney bravely holds out under torture from Quayle and his thugs and ends up getting shot without revealing any information. Sophia Loren doesn't have much of a part but she is good as the ex wife of the character Peppard is pretending to be. She also surprisingly gets shot by Lilli Palmer because although Peppard thought he had found a way to save her Palmer knows that the mission is too important and too many peoples lives depend on it to be able to trust Loren.

The final part of the film is tense where Peppard and Kemp have to open the doors to mark the position of the installation for the bombers.

This has a star studded cast. As well as those already mentioned there are Richard Todd, Richard Johnson, Trevor Howard, John Mills and Sylvia Syms amongst others.

Not the greatest film but certainly not bad and it shows how the Allies managed to lessen the threat of the V1 and V2 terror weapons launched against England.

I think this is an enjoyable series. I remember seeing it for the first time when I was growing up in the 70s.

Roy Thinnes is very good as architect David Vincent. He is desperate to show the world that aliens are trying to take over and is very good at conveying this desperation. He knows that it is difficult to trust anybody which can, at times, make his character appear cold and unfriendly. However, given the difficulty of his position this is understandable.

There are times when the invaders do appear a bit incompetent however and could have killed Vincent on a number of occasions but this doesn't spoil the series. It is enjoyable to see how Vincent manages to survive.

There were a number of stars who appeared in episodes including Gene Hackman, Jack Lord and Barbara Hershey.

The music is good too. It adds to the tension and eeriness.

Overall an enjoyable series with tension, action and excitement as well as a feeling of unease about the possibility of aliens taking over the world.

I think this is an enjoyable film. It is not very much like the book though.

Jon Voight is great as the journalist (Peter Miller). His German accent is very good too.

Maximilian Schell is also great as the German war criminal (Eduard Roschmann) now living as an apparently reputable businessman.

There are some tense moments including when Miller fights and kills the man who was sent to kill him. This is just before he obtains the Odessa File of the title which gives the new identities of Nazi war criminals. This shows him where he can find Roschmann. He has a personal reason for wanting revenge on him as he murdered his father in the war. He found this out from the diary of an ex concentration camp inmate who had killed himself because he had seen Roschmann living comfortably and felt that nobody was doing anything about war criminals. The ending is very good. Roschmann denies that he actually killed any concentration camp inmates. Even when Miller makes it clear that, although he is sickened by what Roschmann and the Nazis did, he is only really there because he wants revenge for his father Roschmann rambles on about being innocent of any killings of Jews. Miller is so disgusted by Roschmann that he can't even kill him although he is forced to when Roschmann tries to shoot him.

I found the acting to be excellent. There are a couple of faults including obviously 1970s cars in one scene when the film is set in the 60s but overall I think this is a tense and enjoyable film.