Reviews

Adult Time waited only two weeks to reissue a pair of vignettes from Girlsway under a different VOD title, with a fresh segment added.

That newbie is titled "Happier Without You", a poorly written excuse for four young porn babes to have sex together on screen -the old quantity over quality issue.

It's transparent premise has Bella Rolland visiting ex-girlfriend Charlotte Sins at the home they used to share in order to pick up her belongings. She rather blatantly brings her new girlfriend, Alexis Tae, with her and makes a big show of PDAs with her to get back at Charlotte.

Charlotte conveniently has HER new girlfriend, alarmingly pale Hazel Moore, sitting on the couch, and soon we have each couple making out at separate ends of the couch to try and outdo each other.

It's silly, and gets dumber when the old lovers suddenly decide to patch things up, leading immediately to a daisy chain of all four of them having group sex. Lesson: have a very long couch available for just such a development.

The others were released in October 2024 on the VOD titled "Prepping Her". "Prepping Her for College". The sex makes up for a rather poor story by Penicio Del Toro in this Girlsway vignette, which features a third, NonSex, player with very little added value to the scene.

Freya Parker, after taking a gap year after high school, is college scouting, accompanied by her older sister Jay Taylor. Jay introduces her to her college girlfriend Haley Reed, and while Jay is away answering a phone call, Freya and Haley chat, with Freya dropping the fact that she's still a virgin. Haley seduces Freya in record time, and Parker doesn't bother to stay in character (as a virgin) while they hump away on the couch. Both girls look a bit sheepish when Jay returns to the living room.

At age 33, Jay Taylor has little to nothing to do in this vignette, and unfortunately she might be aging out (of starring roles) in an industry where youth plus MILFs reign supreme. She's an in-betweener.

"How to Catch a Coworker" benefits from a different structure: The show opens with delightful Charlie Forde in a solo masturbation scene, recording herself as bait for her coworker Summer Col to find on her laptop as a turn-on.

The trick works, and soon the coworkers are going at it hot and heavy on Charlie's couch. In essence, the fans get to enjoy two sex scenes for the price of one here.

I have seen Charlie in so many porn videos lately that now Jodie Comer reminds me of her rather than vice versa. I'm still waiting for talented Charlie to crossover into mainstream acting roles, which she obviously could handle if offered same.

This Adult Time VOD is unusually light-hearted in terms of Pure Taboo content, meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

Title scene jumps off from the ongoing huge Broadway hit "The Book of Mormon". This time, MILF Dee Williams regularly cheats on her husband with Mormon boys who visit her home in pairs to spread the Gospel (and jizm).

Celtic Iron is the veteran taking newbie teen Josh Rivers along as he visits Dee, and once Josh realizes they're there for sex rather than their missionary assignment, he refuses to participate. But fan favorite Dee's charms eventually win him over for a standard threesome on her living room couch, leading to a couple of money shots.

Most Pure Taboo segments end with a mean, negative mood, while this one is strictly tongue in cheek porn. Celtic Iron's Irish accent comes and goes - he's strictly a gonzo performer.

Ricky Spanish has fun playing a sleazeball for a change in typically misogynistic Pure Taboo story "Healthy Relationships". As directed in assembly-line fashion by the Anatomik Media couple, it's phony all the way.

Set at the "Immoral Proposal" mansion (though the entrance is in the back of the building rather than its imposing front double doors), it has Chad Alva as a sex therapist treating teen couple Laney Grey and Ricky Spanish.

She is hesitant to go the next step and have sex with him, and the mean-spirited gimmick here is that Chad has been bribed by Ricky to put on an act of being professional, when he's there merely to get Ricky laid (and be paid handsomely by Ricky's dad).

Laney is convincing as the shy young lass who's being bamboozled, but as usual she steps completely out of character once the gonzo sex unfolds, and Chad joins in for a threesome. Script by hack Midnight is quite poor, lacking any suspense.

Disanto is a UK director who has cranked out literally thousands of porn scenes over the years, often crafting quite good films. This recent Private video is classified as a "movie", but it's merely three hours of crudely made sex footage, quite a comedown for the director.

The gimmick is showing Euro porn actresses supposedly in England to learn the king's English, but all they do is chat with British studs, with very heavy accents, and have extended sex scenes. Everyone seems to be "winging it" and in the vein of Seinfeld (I'm kidding) what results is a video about nothing.

I felt sorry for Candie Luciani, looking a bit forlorn as she is literally covered in cum by a couple of studs, and also felt the other girls were treated here as sex workers rather than actresses. I'm sure that Disanto would admit that this sort of mindless filler is about all that can be expected working with today's austerity porn budgets. Niceties like storytelling and acting have been dispensed with.

This Girlsway opus is a poorly written excuse for four young porn babes to have sex together on screen -the old quantity over quality issue.

It's transparent premise has Bella Rolland visiting ex-girlfriend Charlotte Sins at the home they used to share in order to pick up her belongings. She rather blatantly brings her new girlfriend, Alexis Tae, with her and makes a big show of PDAs with her to get back at Charlotte.

Charlotte conveniently has HER new girlfriend, alarmingly pale Hazel Moore, sitting on the couch, and soon we have each couple making out at separate ends of the couch to try and outdo each other.

It's silly, and gets dumber when the old lovers suddenly decide to patch things up, leading immediately to a daisy chain of all four of them having group sex. Lesson: have a very long couch available for just such a development.

Vivianne DeSilva is added to the MissaX roster of beauties in this slow and sensual Stepmom sex scene. She looks really terrific covered in oil as her stepson Nick Strokes massages her.

Vignette also benefits from being shot at the "Immoral Proposal" mansion, making good use of the attractive setting. Story has Nick playing a layabout kid who doesn't look for a job or take care of himself, relying on mommy too much. When he turns over a new leaf and is more attentive, Vivianne superbly seduces him, to fill the lack of sexual fulfillment provided by his neglectful dad.

With pornography today almost entirely from the "Wham bam!" gonzo school, it's refreshing to watch a slow, meticulous 20-minute buildup before the inevitable half hour of XXX content begins.

This Adult Time VOD consists of three "Oopsie!" scenes, but two of them were already issued this year on the Devil's Film DVD titled "Push My Buttons", also an Adult Time label. Unwary customers might find out too late that they've already paid for the earlier release.

"Alley Oopsie" is the scene not previously on DVD/VOD. Slapstick on the basketball court is the topic of this "Oopsie!" episode, okay slapstick and another chance for the fans to watch the darling of the silly-porn genre, plumper Codi Vore.

Codi seems to do double-takes in every one of her porn vignettes, a silent era comedienne for the 21st Century. Her huge floppy tits are always the center of attention, especially when surrounded here by take-your-pick tattooed ladies: tall Rocky Emerson as a referee and dick-laden Gracie Jane as the inevitable trans lady.

They horse around on the basketball court playing Horse and then head indoors for a threesome. Sexually it's rather vanilla, but there's enough enthusiasm by the trio of actresses to make up for the mindless all-sex, pornspeak-only scenario.

"Push My Buttons" (which gave Devil's Film its overall DVD title) features a high energy trio of actresses. It's in the currently overdone "Stuck" school of porn, best evidenced in many a scene from competing label Brazzers. The action gets going, in slapstick-styled pantomime, with busty Summer Hart getting stuck in the elevator doors of an office building, with TS superstar Izzy Wilde pounding her pussy from behind inside the elevator while security guard Kasey Kei fills Summer's mouth with her cock from the outside.

The trio go at it nonstop and their spirit is infectious. The two trans meet one cis female is the most popular one for an "Oopsie!" romp and though director Stella Smut is definitely stuck in a rut this cast makes it work on a gonzo level.

"Club Swinger" is extremely poor, right from the mandatory silent-movie opening pantomime in which co-director Michael Vegas himself, bearing one of his silliest hairdos yet, tries to act with the ladies, to the dull lesbian threesome action involving Gracie Jane, Zariah Aura and Kenzie Taylor. It's not erotic, just mechanical sex footage culminating in a totally fake creampie shot. Siouxsie Q co-directed.

TS star Emma Rose and Leana Lovings demonstrate (CLICHE ALERT!) "great chemistry" in this otherwise mediocre Transfixed segment. Another alert to porn fans: no money shot, just a couple of actresses feigning an internal emission, about as dirty/censorable as Meg Ryan's comically fake orgasm in "When Harry Met Sally".

What constitutes a very brief "story" is Leana in a cafe ordering a blueberry muffin, and recognizing waitress Emma as an old college friend she hasn't seen in years. Leana lets drop that she's a lawyer now, which I took to be a dumb hint that a porn feature titled "Legally Brunette" is in her future. As Emma is closing up the establishment, Leana seduces her instantly and the XXX content begins.

Ricky Greenwood directed in his sleep, and trans lesbian porn fans got another weekly helping of sex from the Transfixed label.

Pat goes on vacay to Rio De Janeiro in this peculiar segment, so poorly done as to suggest an attempt at comic relief.

He improvises on a non-mission when a commander from British intelligence commandeers him to blow up a lost experimental submarine that has washed ashore and could be of great value to enemy agents.

A fine movie director Charles Frend is credited with this junker, which has many things wrong with it. The cast's accents vary and do not match the Rio setting; beach scenes are shot in the studio and there's no atmosphere of Brazil at all; and Pat's acting is miserable. None of the characters' behavior is believable and the ending is especially stupid.

One very odd element is the casting of Peter Sallis as Henry Gordon, Pat's boss back in America, and Helen Horton in a sort of Miss Moneypenny role. They comfortably play in the opening scene as if they were good old series regulars on "Danger Man", but this is their only appearance, near the end of the only 30-minute length season.

Even stranger, either a coincidence or more likely an item worth researching, is the fact that leading lady Nadja Regin co-starred in a minor British movie in 1962, a year after this episode aired, titled "Number Six", based on a 1928 novel by Edgar Wallace. The title Number Six referred to a mysterious secret agent. Sounds familiar? Of course, Patrick McGoohan starred as the iconic secret agent Number Six in his classic 1967 TV series "The Prisoner". Hmm...

The finale seemed forced to me, especially given that the filmmakers had two books to work with and obviously a legend to inspire them.

The quest for Bass to have a reckoning with Mr. Sundown made for some well-staged violence at the climax. Barry Pepper did a terrific job of creating a villain filled with contradictions, and the detailing of his somewhat majestic home and even a dinosaur skull amidst his animal trophies added some exotic touches.

But the resolution of his wife's story was extremely contrived and unsatisfying, especially as so much methodical buildup showing her daughter and family in a dangerous situation during Bass's absence was not properly resolved. The finale was a hokey attempt at a happy ending which did not fit the material.

There's a sameness to the four vignettes that make up the 80th edition of this popular Girlfriends series that detracts from enjoying this 3-hour VOD.

With wimpy piano or guitar music in the background, each vignette has a girl delivering voice-over narration as she lusts after another woman, often a roommate, and even masturbates as she watches her or just thinks about her. Ovecoming timidity, she tells the lady and instead of a prolonged seduction (with some resistance), it's instant sex time. As porn has reduced the "story/dialogue" component to a brief minimum, the effectiveness of a sex scene diminishes.

Three of the segments follow this format scrupulously. Sophia Burns eyes Gia Dibella sunbathing in her bikini, and then tells her of her infatuation, with friends becoming lovers. The oddly-named actress Katie Big Toys tells her new roommated Angel Windell she's going to move out, but Angel is flattered to learn of Katie's lust for her and suddenly they're making love. Busty Nickey Huntsman has been a roommate for a year with Nicole Aria, but they've been bickering in recent months. Yet Nickey is overwhelming attracted to her and when she says so, all recriminations are replaced with Sapphic sex.

Odd scene out has interior decorator Pristine Edge infatuated with her client Richelle Ryan (the fact that big-butt queen RR wears an exceedingly tight skirt helps explain this attraction), but is afraid to tell her for fear of ruining their professional relationship, but once she does, the voluptuous employer gives in immediately.

As a sort of "easy listening" type of porn, these eight beauties are certainly watchable, but the dramatic content that made this series work is absent here.

Ricky Spanish has fun playing a sleazeball for a change in typically misogynistic Pure Taboo story. As directed in assembly-line fashion by the Anatomik Media couple, it's phony all the way.

Set at the "Immoral Proposal" mansion (though the entrance is in the back of the building rather than its imposing front double doors), it has Chad Alva as a sex therapist treating teen couple Laney Grey and Ricky Spanish.

She is hesitant to go the next step and have sex with him, and the mean-spirited gimmick here is that Chad has been bribed by Ricky to put on an act of being professional, when he's there merely to get Ricky laid (and be paid handsomely by Ricky's dad).

Laney is convincing as the shy young lass who's being bamboozled, but as usual she steps completely out of character once the gonzo sex unfolds, and Chad joins in for a threesome. Script by hack Midnight is quite poor, lacking any suspense.

The ongoing huge Broadway hit "The Book of Mormon" lends an unlikely starting point for this Pure Taboo bit of silly porn. This time, MILF Dee Williams regularly cheats on her husband with Mormon boys who visit her home in pairs to spread the Gospel (and jizm).

Celtic Iron is the veteran taking newbie teen Josh Rivers along as he visits Dee, and once Josh realizes they're there for sex rather than their missionary assignment, he refuses to participate. But fan favorite Dee's charms eventually win him over for a standard threesome on her living room couch, leading to a couple of money shots.

Most Pure Taboo segments end with a mean, negative mood, while this one is strictly tongue in cheek porn. Celtic Iron's Irish accent comes and goes - he's strictly a gonzo performer.

Taylor Sheridan works on a large canvas, with this finale of the first season of his epic "1923" building considerable tension as he creates intense drama in each of the disparate subplots of this "Yellowstone" prequel saga.

It reminded me of a Silent Era movie, especially D. W. Griffith's ambitious classic "Intolerance", which had a similar theme and structure, plus the now-antiquated setting up of Good versus Evil writ large. There's little nuance here as Sheridan piles on, with an emphasis of near-hopelessness, the tribulations of the good guys, all of whom have the odds stacked against them.

Of course, we know the Duttons and their vast ranch will survive, as this after all is a prequel, but what will happen to the other protagonists, especially the Native Americans, is left uncertain. In the capable cast, I was grateful for the participation of Bruce Davison, a terrific character actor whose work I have enjoyed ever since "Willard" and "Last Summer", cast here as an unsympathetic British royal.

I suppose "Cheeky" in the title signalling anal sex or at least some ass-worship in the VOD contents, but at any rate this trio of lesbian sex scenes is rather standard issue all-girl porn.

"Hold the Phone: Cheeky College Girls" has a rather silly set-up, in which Gizelle Blanco and Penelope Kay chat about planning a bake sale and profess to lots of goody-goody religious attitudes, in order to present themselves to perhaps nosy parents (likely to overhear them) a false impression. Instead, they head to the bedroom to have Sapphic sex. Not exactly what the nuns might approve of (unless this was a nunsploitation video, which it's not.

An anal fixation is prevalent in the next vignette, titled crudely: "Is That a Buttplug??". The actresses are almost upstaged by the modern decor of yet another new rental home where porn shoots can be held. Penny Barber plays Nicole Kitt's mischievous girlfriend, who has a penchant (stolen from frat boys rather than sorority girls) for pantsing her.

The tables turn, somewhat ridiculously in Penicio Del Toro's dumb script, when Nicole successfully debags Penny, only to discover that the older woman is not wearing any underwear and has a buttplug in her ass.

That buttplug inspires Nicole to seduce her pal on the spot, and the resulting sex scene is stronger stuff than usual, including Penny fisting herself. It all adds up to a hot XXX vignette, albeit a stupid one. It was previously released just one week earlier (!) in the VOD titled "Prepping Her".

"Maybe You Should Give Girls a Try!" is a title that gives away the corny plot upfront. Maya Woulfe is despondent as all her dates with boys lately have been disappointing, so her pals Alison Rey and Lilly Bell easily seduce her to have a lesbian threesome together, and all's right in Maya's world.

Quite suspenseful, "Last Rites" (from a tightly-woven script by Margarita Matthews) depicts an intriguing parallel between Gibbs and Franks. Both are long-suffering from traumas, and here we have Gibbs the observer and storyteller while Franks is the protagonist.

He must deal with an old case he never could bring to closure: Christopher Redman as the killer is now facing execution only days away, and Franks had promised the victim's twin sister he would locate sis' body, but over the years could never get the killer to cough up the information. Parallel to his predicament, concise flashbacks show Gibbs in a coma following his wartime injury after the murders of his family, with his medical issue very movingly resolved at the episode's end.

This segment nicely balances the team's hard work on solving this old case, with insights into what makes both Franks and Gibbs tick, while also managing to help flesh out the supporting team's characters' personalities. Of special note, Redman, as a psycho villain in the Hannibal Lecter tradition, underplays his sinister part wonderfully, reminding me of my reaction at a pre-release screening over 3 decades ago to "The Silence of the Lambs", before it became the critical and audience hit of its time. I much preferred Brian Cox's subtle approach to the Lecter character (5 years before in Michael Mann's "Manhunter") over Hopkins' bombastic performance, and seeing Redman resist the temptation to use hokey effects here has newly convinced me I was right all along.

Adult Time compiled this mishmash of a VOD: consisting of two previously released 3-ways from "Oopsie!" vaults plus a fresh Transfixed segment cast in the unpopular boy/trans configuration. Not top-drawer content.

I was impressed with the setting Jim Powers used for the minor Transfixed segment titled "Spying on the Boss's Wife": the "Immoral Proposal" mansion, with its striking white-on-white decor. TS beauty Brittney Kade, boasting outstanding decolletage, greets architect Steve Rickz at the mansion entrance and then heads upstairs to take a shower while he waits to see her husband, his boss. He can't resist the lure of the sound of the water running, and ascends the stairs of the iconic spiral staircase to peep at her in the shower, giving fans a nice,lengthy softcore interlude.

Once finished showering, Brittney easily seduces him and they have stand-up sex in the bathroom. That's all she wrote in this standard trans sex scene, ending with an appropriate load shot on BK's massive breasts.

Thanks to Kade and the location it's a photogenic scene, with producer Bree Mills taking a couple of screen credits, yet once again contradicts her mission for the Transfixed website, still displayed on screen, to feature "translesbian eroitca" therein.

The sexual variety is impressive in an "Oopsie!" threesome segment titled "Pitching a Tent", providing plenty of high-energy humping for the loyal audience of this light-hearted series. The only fault is that the scene runs too long, continuing over half an hour, lingering past the point of repetitiveness.

The set-up is extremely simple: chaperone Dee Williams spots the two girls on a sleepover in a tent pitched indoors like when they were younger: Izzy Wilde and Hailey Rose having sex in their tent, but rather than reprimanding them for such behavior she joins in to have a torrid threesome.

Dee has handy a pair of strap-on dildos: the first one is huge, which she applies to TS star Izzy's posterior, much to the delight of the flexible youngster. Later, she puts on a normal size dildo to use on Hailey. Wilde enjoys being the meat in a sandwich position, and plenty of other variations on trans/lesbian sex positions are trotted out enthusiastically. Hailey impresses as a newcomer with very large natural breasts, flopping around as she hops aboard each of the other women in turn. Segment was issued in April 2024 on the DVD "Three Course Meal".

"For Better or Worse" (previously released on a DVD of the same name in March 2024) is a rather uninteresting "Oopsie!" segment of mechanical sex featuring two cis-females and one trans-female. Story element is quite weak: the newlywed couple of heavily tattooed Emma Magnolia and TS star Emma Rose have threesome sex with September Reign, latter checking the box of interracial sex in this formulaic porn scene.

The pantomime slapstick format isn't amusing here, and the trio making faces, followed by mechanical humping isn't erotic. As a result, it's no surprise that early voting on the website gives this one a significantly lower rating than usual. Time to vary the tired formula for this series.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Armando Crispino; Produced by Artur Brauner; released in America as "The Dead Are Alive" by National General Pictures. Screenplay by Crispino and Lucio Battistrada; Photography by Erico Menczer; Edited by Alberto Gallitti; Music by Riz Ortolani. Starring: Alex Cord, Samantha Eggar, John Marley, Horst Frank, Enzo Tarascio, Carlo De Mejo and Daniela Surino.

Excellent, effective Italian-Yugoslavian horror film in the "Psycho"/"Marnie"/Cat o' Nine Tails" genre, with the eminent cinematographer from Argento's "Cat": Erico Menczer. Clever use of Verdi's "Requiem" as comping for horror in the red herring plot of Etruscan legend coming true in a tomb-dominated milieu.

These four faux incest vignettes from Devil's Film and Adult Time are, perhaps intentionally, an insult to the viewer's intelligence, but that's par for the course in porn these days.

Sexiest scene stars Lauren Phillips, her big butt and breasts dominating the visuals. It's one of two segments with the same premise: a stepmom catching her stepson masturbating and then helping him out sexually, in this case Nick Strokes being the lucky kid. The other one using this gimmick features Annie King and Elias Cash. All the scenes, per the title, end with a creampie, very fake looking.

Seth Gamble, porn's busiest stud lately, is way too old for the role opposite MILF Andi Avalon, so the lame dialogue has him remark on that fact. He's staying with her while visiting his ailing dad in hospital, and she turns out to be a horny nymphomaniac who turns to Seth for sexual relief. I don't know what the pay rate for actors in porn is these days, but one wonders why Seth, in demand for major Adult movies, would stoop to junk like this.

A newcomer Mighty Dee, gets to hump his beautiful stepmom Danielle Renae, who wants to be impregnated, due to her hubby's low sperm count. Like so many Black porn performers lately, he can't act whatsoever, just on the payroll as a sex worker.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Peter Jeffries; Produced by John Sichel for ITC, teletape broadcast by ABC-TV in "Wide World of Mystery" series. Screenplay by Brian Clemens; Photography by George Dibie; Music by Laurie Johnson; Design by Michael Eve. Starring Paul Burke, Polly Bergen, Dinsdale Landen, Meriel Brooke, Vernon Dobtcheff and Basil Henson.

Typical lightweight Clemens psychological thriller, based on the premise of sudden compulsive possession by another's personality, occurring spontaneously, finally explained away as the result of Korean War brainwashing. Contains a great supporting performance by Dinsdale Landen.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Freddie Francis; Screenplay and Produced by Anthony Hinds for Hammer Films, released in America by Universal Pictures, telecast with much additional footage by NBC-TV. Photography by John Wilcox; Edited by James Needs; Music by Don Banks; Special Effects by Les Bowie. Starring: Peter Cushing, Sandor Eles, Peter Woodthorpe, Duncan Lamont, Katy Wild, James Maxwell, Howard Goorney, William Phipps and Kiwi Kingston.

Latterday Frankenstein series entry benefits from strong Freddie Francis direction, fluid camera movement and some atmosphere, but plot is ultra-trite. Put-upon by townsfolk once again, Cushing returns home and unfreezes the monster, but not before we are treated to tedious ripoff-type flashback sequences. Universal added irrelevant TV padding footage in 1968, starring marvelous William Phipps, who acts with appropriate seriousness.

This collection of four hot MILFY scenes, each made by a different director, hits the spot on DVD.

Most stylish is Kayden Kross's "Roll", making fine use of actress Dana Vespoli's talents. She plays a female boxer (see the Sweetheart feature "Lefty" as an example of her ability at fisticuffs) who spars in the ring with muscular Maximo Garcia, followed by their having sex in the ring. Dana's styling is quite alluring, and her prowess at anal sex is on display.

Another flashy scene was directed by Ken Shiro, titled "Game on the Line". It features Kianna Dior having a blow-bang with seven studs, after her husband Ken Feels bets on a match they're watching on TV and loses, meaning that his wife has to give all his pals a blow job. Half of the segment is devoted to Feels getting to hump his wife afterward. Dior is an amazing, larger-than-life MILF, whose career longevity is impressive, as is her well-preserved figure at age 53.

DVD cover girl Bunny Madison is solid in the title scene "Soccer Moms", directed by Jay Rogue, in which she takes on the coach of a team, Anton Harden, for BBC interracial sex action. RIchelle Ryan seduces a young soccer star Victor Ray, after massaging his leg cramp in a quality segment directed by Derek Dozer.

Three beautiful blondes ending up in a threesome - that's the highly erotic payoff in "Starved for Love", a two-part feature released by Missa X's Allherluv label.

Addison Vodka and River Lynn star as a couple of stepsisters who find their way into bed together when River helps her sibling do real-life "research" for Addison's erotic novel.

Things escalate when River suggests that they invite Addison's literary professor Addyson James over to discuss the writing project, and the two naughty siblings have little trouble seducing the mature beauty. The resulting threesome literally climaxes with a realistic (not overdone) squirting by the prof.

All three lovelies due a fine job acting their roles and performing in bed together - a real crowd-pleaser!

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by J. Lee-Thompson; Produced by Martin Ransohoff and John Calley, for Filmways, released by MGM. Screenplay by Robin Estridge and Dennis Murphy; Photography by Erwin Hillier; Edited by Ernest Walter; Music by Gary McFarland; Titles Designed by Maurice Binder. Starring: Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Sharon Tate, David Hemmings, Donald Pleasence, Flora Robson, Edward Mulhare, Emlyn Williams and John Le Mesurier.

Trick editing of the hokey sort and roving camera are the main features of this devil worship tale which at times unsuccessfully strives to recreate the mood and photography of "The Innocents". An incredible waste of talent in an absurd "sacrifice to save the vineyards" plotline, with Lee-Thompson's au courant film structure quite irritating and counter to the creation of a horror mood.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Screenplay and Directed by Larry Buchanan; Produced by Buchanan for American-International TV. Photography by Ralph Johnson; Edited by S. F. Brownrigg. Starring: John Ashley, Cynthia Hull, Warren Hammack, Chet Davis, Bill Peck, Charles McLink, Nathan Wyle, Jody Daniel and Travis Wayne.

Typically amateurish Buchanan outing, stolen freely from Edward L Cahn's "Invasion of the Saucer Men". As with his "Zontar" epic, Larry's wholesale lifting of scenes and dialogue results in mucho deja vu action for the dedicated horror fan, especially when he recreates the ludicrous teenagers from lovers' lane headlights killing the creatures climax.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Tom Gries; Screenplay and Produced by Allan Balter and William Read Woodfield for MGM release, telecast by ABC-TV. Photography by Michel Hugo; Editing directed by Buddy Small and executed by Henry Berman; Music by Lalo Schifrin; Special Visual Effects by J. McMillan Johnson;Technical Advisor: R. Buckminster Fuller. Starring: Gary Lockwood, Tony Franciosa, Mariette Hartley, Scott Hylands, Gary Merrill, Hari Rhodes, Inga Swenson, Edgar Bell, Lew Ayres, Bart Burns, John Carter, Diana Webster and James Hong.

Straight sci-fi extrapolation, made with NASA cooperation, extensively uses "2001: A Space Odyssey" techniques (especially docking in space seen externally and internally with models) in telling a story of a space station/"nation" orbiting Earth and facing nuclear bomb difficulties with Red China. Direction is good but story is too straightforwardly told, with soap opera lapses, to be a current theatrical release. Slipups: in the first reel a key plot feature assumes that Red China is not in the UN. Presence of numerous guest stars and a minor episode plot indicate that this is a TV pilot.