THE MEPHISTO WALTZ (1971)--Directed by Paul Wendkos. Stars Alan Alda, Jacqueline Bisset, Curt Jurgens, Barbara Parkins. An atmospheric thriller that betrays its television roots. M*A*S*H star Alda is possessed by the soul of a dying pianist (Jurgens). When wife Bisset realizes what has happened, she tries to help Alda, but only succeeds in provoking her own exchange with Satan. Also with William Windom and Bradford Dillman. Only excursion into feature films by TV cop show producer Quinn Martin; director Wendkos did dozens of episodes of various Quinn Martin shows.

MERCENARY FIGHTERS (1988)--Directed by Riki Shelach. Stars Peter Fonda, Reb Brown, Joanna Weinberg. Who would have expected to see EASY RIDER pacifist Fonda in a military actioner tailored towards the Stallone-Norris-Schwarzenegger crowd? Fonda leads a band of American soldiers of fortune hired to wipe out some African rebels who are interfering with an American dam project. After romancing gorgeous nurse Weinberg, mercenary Brown decides he's working for the bad guys, and starts fighting on the side of the rebels. Not much budget, plot or sense, but lots of explosions and bullets. Also with Ron "Superfly" O'Neal, Jim Mitchum and Robert DoQui. Made in South Africa.

MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE (2006)--Directed by Don E. FauntLeroy.  Stars Steven Seagal.  As Seagal’s 21st-century direct-to-video actioners go, this one isn’t too bad, but it isn’t really good either.  It opens with a violent, action-filled prologue modeled after SAVING PRIVATE RYAN or BLACK HAWK DOWN, but is so confusing and poorly shot that we’re left trying to figure out what happened long after the sequence is over.  Big Steve is a big-shot merc who is forced to help a slick-talking Eurotrash villain bust a gunrunner out of an African prison.  It’s really a plot to rob a bank using Seagal as a decoy, which really pisses him off.  Lots of flashy camera work, desaturated cinematography and thumping techno try to disguise the fact that there isn’t much here.  On the bright side, Seagal, known for not putting much effort into his DTV features, is actually on the set and providing his own voice most of the time, although an ill-matching stunt double does much of the heavy action.  Also with Jacqueline Lord and Luke Goss.  Former TV cameraman FauntLeroy also directed Seagal in TODAY YOU DIE.

MERCENARY 2: THICK AND THIN (1997)--Directed by Philippe Mora.  Stars Olivier Gruner, Robert Townsend, Claudia Christian.  French kickboxing expert Gruner stars opposite fast-talking sitcom star Townsend (THE PARENT 'HOOD) in this buddy movie filmed near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  Gruner reprises his MERCENARY role as Hawk, who's hired by businesswoman Patricia Van Lier (Christian) to rescue her partner Charlie Love (Townsend) from the clutches of a bald Zen druglord.  After extracting his target in a well-choreographed bang-bang action sequence, Hawk learns he's been given some bum information concerning Charlie's captors and finds himself on the run from not one, but two, sets of killers.  Although Gruner and Townsend seem to be a mismatched team, they actually work pretty well together (as long as you don't expect any Gibson & Glover-type fireworks).  Christian (BABYLON 5) shines in the film's best performance as the duplicitous Van Lier.  Also with Nicholas Turturro (NYPD BLUE), Sam Bottoms (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW), Tom Towles (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) and John Dennis Johnston (48 HRS.).  Music by Roger Neill.

MESA OF LOST WOMEN (1952)--Directed by Herbert Tevos & Ron Ormond.  Stars Jackie Coogan, Robert Knapp, Tandra Quinn, Harmon Stevens.  It's a good thing I wasn't feeling under the weather when I popped this into my DVD player; otherwise, I might believe I had dreamed the whole thing up in a sweaty, delirious haze.  Quite probably one of the worst films I've ever seen, MESA OF LOST WOMEN plays like a jittery delight, an ethereal neverland where normal laws of logic and physics don't apply.  A land of midgets and giant spiders, mad scientists and genteel psychopaths, where the women are stacked and the audience is stumped.

According to Bill Warren's essential KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES, MESA OF LOST WOMEN was produced in 1952, but not released in Los Angeles in 1956, during the period when the infamous Edward D. Wood, Jr. was flooding theaters with his peculiar style of cinematic ineptitude.  MESA even feels like something Wood might have concocted on the back of a cocktail napkin in a dive on Sunset; in fact, the maddening musical score composed for the picture by Hoyt Curtin later turned up on the soundtrack of Wood's JAIL BAIT.  Once you've heard Curtin's repetitive Mexican-guitar-and-pounding-piano opus, you aren't likely to forget it, as it drowns the picture in a cacophony of noise that sounds as though it were performed by a pair of monkeys locked in a junior high school band room.  An interesting footnote is that Curtin ended up at Hanna-Barbera, composing themes and scores for some of the most famous animated series in television history, including THE FLINTSTONES, THE JETSONS, JONNY QUEST and SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU?

MESA OF LOST WOMEN stars Jackie Coogan (that's right--Uncle Fester!) as Dr. Aranya ("That's Spanish for spider!"), a mad scientist living atop Mesa Zarpa, perched 600 feet above the Mexican desert.  For some idiotic reason, Aranya is attempting to breed humans with spiders in order to create a master race to do his bidding.  For an even more idiotic reason, the experiments transform the men into mute midgets, whereas the women become sexy Amazons with long fingernails.  Aranya summons a fellow scientist, Masterson (Stevens), to his laboratory in order to share his secrets with the scientific community.  The results drive Masterson mad, however, and he is sentenced to a mental hospital and lobotomized.  Somehow, he escapes, and shows up at a cantina, where Tarantella (Quinn) is performing a steamy spider dance.  Masterson shoots her and kidnaps a millionaire, his golddigging fiancé, his Chinese servant and Masterson's male nurse.  He takes his captives to their airplane and forces pilot Grant Phillips (Knapp) to fly them to Mesa Zarpa, where, uh, where not much happens, really.  The nurse and the millionaire are killed (off-screen) by a giant spider, and the rest of the party ends up in Aranya's underground lab, where Masterson recovers his sanity long enough to send Phillips and his new squeeze on their way safely, and then blow the lab all to hell, destroying Aranya's mad dream and himself in the process.

All of this happens in about 68 minutes and is actually more compressed than that.  MESA opens with a prologue that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, showing Tarantella planting a kiss of death on an unassuming male victim, and then a bunch of incomprehensible narration written by co-director Tevos (who doesn't appear to have made another picture) and delivered by Lyle Talbot (JAIL BAIT), another reminder of the Wonderful World of Ed Wood.  Talbot rambles deliciously about "hexapods" and the perils of Muerto Desert--"the desert of Death."

Although a handful of minor B-movie actors signed on to Tevos and Ormond's lunacy, including Allan Nixon (PREHISTORIC WOMAN) and Richard Travis (Lou Gehrig in THE BABE RUTH STORY), the only performer you're likely to recognize is Coogan, who later played the eccentric Uncle Fester on THE ADDAMS FAMILY.  A very famous child actor, Coogan had not yet made many waves in his adult career, starring in an obscure syndicated series with the unlikely title of COWBOY G-MEN.  He doesn't appear to be enjoying MESA very much, basically walking through the (probably) two days he spent on the set.  Sporting thick eyeglasses, a goatee and a mole, he almost looks as though he's trying to hide, thankful for the house payment he was able to make that month because of his MESA paycheck.  Coogan went on to appear in a couple of Albert Zugsmith productions, including the magnificent HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL as a drug kingpin, and even produced and directed an obscure espionage B-flick under his own Coogan Films banner before hitting it big opposite John Astin and Carolyn Jones on THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

MESSENGER OF DEATH (1989)--Directed by J. Lee Thompson.  Stars Charles Bronson, Trish Van Devere, John Ireland, Jeff Corey, Charles Dierkop.  Bronson's next-to-last film for both Cannon and director Thompson, with whom he worked nine times.  A shotgun-wielding assassin murders nine women and children from the same Mormon family.  The lone surviving family member, husband and father Orville Beecham (Dierkop), refuses to identify the killer.  Bronson plays Garrett Smith, a Denver newspaper reporter investigating the massacre, whose path leads to Orville's father Willis (Corey) and Willis' brother Zenas (Ireland).  Both men hate each other passionately and each blames the other for the murders.  As the intrafamilial blood feud boils over into violence, Smith becomes a target for murder himself by mysterious employees of the Colorado Water Company, a corporation owned by one of Denver's richest and most respected families, one with little connection, it would seem, to the wild-eyed Beecham clan.

MESSENGER OF DEATH is a solid action film with an unusual setting and an interesting supporting cast, but it doesn't quite come together satisfactorily.  Bronson is a passive observer this time out, fighting only when attacked and not even firing a gun once.  He doesn't ferret out the identities of the baddies on his own and plays little part in their apprehension.  He does battle with a trio of water trucks, a chase nicely staged by Thompson, but even there, Bronson is the victim.  Paul Jarrico's screenplay doesn't completely hold water (pardon the pun), and his climax feels like an extended episode of MURDER, SHE WROTE, as all the red herrings gather in a parlor waiting to be identified by a convenient witness.  The Colorado locations and Robert O. Ragland's score add some novelty, but there isn't much here to distinguish it from most of Bronson's other Cannon pictures.  It opens powerfully enough and dabbles in themes of religious persecution and revenge, but devolves into a TV-movie.  Also with Laurence Luckinbill, Daniel Benzali, Marilyn Hassett (underused as Bronson's girlfriend), Penny Peyser, John Solari and Gene Davis (10 TO MIDNIGHT).  Jarrico was blacklisted during the '50s and ended up writing spaghetti westerns in Italy.  This was his last filmed work.  Look closely, and you'll see a truck explode just a moment too soon, before a semi smashes into it.  Oops.

METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN (1983)--Directed by Charles Band. Stars Jeffrey Byron, Tim Thomerson, Mike Preston, Kelly Preston. One of the greatest movie titles ever. An evil warlord named Jared-Syn (Mike Preston) is taking over the land following a nuclear war. A heroic ranger (Byron), aided by sidekick Thomerson, tries to stop him. The plot is totally incomprehensible, the special effects shoddy, the photography murky, the climax completely confusing. Other than that, it's kind of fun in a campy sort of way. I saw it in a theater in 3-D! The start of Thomerson's (DOLLMAN) long association with the Bands that includes 5 TRANCERS sci-fi pics.

METEOR (1979)--Directed by Ronald Neame. Stars Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Karl Malden, Trevor Howard, Joseph Campanella, Henry Fonda. One of the last in the disaster-movie cycle of the 1970s. Connery (as an American scientist) and an all-star cast try to prevent an out-of-control meteor from smashing into the Earth. Its approach causes all sorts of natural disasters, including tidal waves, mudslides and avalanches (courtesy of stock footage from previous AIP disaster flicks). Keith steals it as a Soviet scientist who speaks only Russian, while Landau is hilariously over-the-top as a Commie-hating general. Malden as the head of NASA seems to be sporting the same hat and raincoat he traveled THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO with for five seasons. The special effects range from OK to pretty bad. Still, this is better than ARMAGEDDON (which METEOR influenced more than the makers of the newer film would probably like to admit). From the director of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. I kind of liked the score by Laurence Rosenthal.

MEXICAN HAYRIDE (1948)--Directed by Charles T. Barton.  Stars Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Virginia Grey, Luba Malina.  Abbott and Costello meet Cole Porter?  Bud and Lou followed up their smash ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN with another Universal-International comedy, this one set south of the border and based upon a Porter stage musical that opened four years earlier.  The film contains just one song and doubtlessly bears little resemblance to the show, besides the presence of actress Malina in both.  Sucker Joe Bascom (Costello) pursues con artist Harry Lambert (Abbott) to Mexico City, where he accidentally becomes embroiled in Harry's latest scam, which involves selling phony silver-mine stock.  Through an unlikely turn of events, Joe is chosen the U.S.'s honorary ambassador to Mexico for a week, which involves him hiding behind the name "Humphrey Fish" and fending off the advances of avaricious Dagmar while trying to patch up his relationship with Harry's partner Montana (Grey).  Highlights include Costello in a bullfighting ring and the wordplay of Sid Fields, who confuses Lou with a "Who's On First?"-type of routine.  Also with John Hubbard, Tom Powers, Pat Costello and Fritz Feld.  Music by Walter Scharf. 

MIAMI BLUES (1990)--Directed by George Armitage. Stars Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward, Charles Napier. A veteran of Roger Corman exploitation movies of the 1970s, Armitage hadn't directed a film in almost fifteen years until getting this opportunity from producer and fellow Corman alum Jonathan Demme (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS). This violent black comedy stars Baldwin as a not-too-bright conman who accidentally kills a Hare Krishna at the Miami airport by breaking his finger. He shacks up with prostitute Leigh while hiding out from detective Ward. Ward finds Baldwin, but after a fight, Baldwin escapes, stealing Ward's badge, gun and false teeth in the process. May be brutal for some viewers, but Armitage keeps a lively pace, and the actors are good. Cinematography by Tak Fujimoto. Based on a novel by Charles Willeford. Despite this film's quality and its association with Demme, Armitage didn't direct again until John Cusack's funny 1997 comedy GROSSE POINTE BLANK.

MIAMI HORROR (1986)--Directed by Alberto DeMartino.  Stars David Warbeck, John Ireland, Laura Trotter.  Rock-'em-sock-'em TV journalist Craig Milford (Warbeck) finds himself battling a psychic alien fetus in this dull Italian SF film.  Evil businessman Anderson (Ireland) hires a gunman to steal some alien DNA from a university and uses it to grow this fetus in his home laboratory.  I'm not sure why.  At any rate, Milford ends up a target of Anderson's gunsels after teaming up with a benevolent alien (Trotter) who wants the fetus back with her people.  The special effects are anything but special, and DeMartino fails to provide any spice, presenting shootouts and an airboat chase that go nowhere.  Opening with the title in the same font as MIAMI VICE and a crappy synth theme ripped off from Harold Faltermeyer's Axel Foley music, MIAMI HORROR is nothing like those films though. It isn't really like anything, least of all anything good. 

MICHAEL SHAYNE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE (1940)--Directed by Eugene Forde. Stars Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Douglas Dumbrille, George Meeker. This quickly paced, entertaining mystery stars Nolan as Brett Halliday's smart-talking redheaded private dick Michael Shayne, who's hired by a wealthy friend to keep an eye on his compulsive gambler daughter Phyllis (Weaver). Shayne tails her to a swanky casino owned by Benny Gordon (Dumbrille). After she runs up a $2000 debt, Shayne convinces Gordon to return the money, delivering Gordon's chief flunky Harry Grange (Meeker) a sock in the jaw in the process. To throw a scare into her, Shayne dummies up Grange as a fake murder victim, a plan that bites him in the rear when Grange really does turn up with a bullet in the brain--with Shayne as the chief suspect. Nolan is a lot of fun as Shayne, tossing off plenty of well-timed wisecracks and looking lively in the action scenes. The screenplay by Manning O'Connor and Stanley Rauh (based on a Halliday novel) serves up plenty of red herrings, and cute Weaver is a spunky heroine. Also with Clarence Kolb, Joan Valerie, Walter Abel, Elizabeth Patterson, Michael (Adrian) Morris and Donald MacBride as Shayne's nemesis, Police Chief Peter Painter. Nolan played Shayne in six more 20th Century-Fox programmers over the next two years before relinquishing the role to Hugh Beaumont (LEAVE IT TO BEAVER). Fox also produced several Charlie Chan movies at the time. Richard Denning (CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON) portrayed Shayne in a one-season MICHAEL SHAYNE television series.

MICKI & MAUDE (1984)--Directed by Blake Edwards. Stars Dudley Moore, Amy Irving, Ann Reinking, Richard Mulligan. Hilarious comedy starring Moore in one of his best roles as a TV reporter in love with two women, so he does what any man would do in the same situation--he marries them both! The fur really begins to fly when both wives (Irving, Reinking) become pregnant. The climatic hospital scene with both women giving birth at the same time is one of the funniest sequences Edwards has ever directed. Mulligan shines as Moore's best friend. Also with George Gaynes and Wallace Shawn.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)--Directed by John Schlesinger. Stars Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Brenda Vaccaro, Bernard Hughes, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver. Only X-rated film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Voight (in his first major role) is Joe Buck, a stud from Texas who goes to New York to become a gigolo. He moves in with sleazy conman Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman). They try to take care of each other while being victimized by the big city. Depressing drama made a big star of Voight and catapulted Hoffman (coming off THE GRADUATE) to superstardom. Nilsson had a hit with "Everybody's Talkin'". Script by Waldo Salt, whose daughter Jennifer plays Voight's Texas girlfriend.

MIDNIGHT MADNESS (1980)--Directed by David Wechter & Michael Nankin. Stars David Naughton, Debra Clinger, Stephen Furst. Frantic Disney film aimed at teenagers about a nighttime scavenger hunt involving jocks, nerds, kids and pretty girls. Most notable because of an early supporting role by Michael J. Fox. Also with Maggie Roswell and Eddie Deezen--the poor man's Jerry Lewis.

MIDNIGHT MOVIES: FROM THE MARGIN TO THE MAINSTREAM (2005)—Directed by Stuart Samuels.  Stars Alejandro Jodorowsky, Richard O’Brien, George A. Romero, John Waters, Perry Henzell, David Lynch.  Made-for-cable documentary looks at six cult films that found their audiences playing urban midnight showings between 1970 and 1977.  Samuels tracks down each film’s director (or writer, in the case of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW’s O’Brien), as well as various critics, fans, distributors and exhibitors to get their take on how these films changed cinema, both in how they were made and how we watch them.  In addition to ROCKY HORROR, Samuels picks EL TOPO (Jodorowsky), NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (Romero), PINK FLAMINGOS (Waters), THE HARDER THEY COME (Henzell) and ERASERHEAD (Lynch).  All the filmmakers are engaging interview subjects, and while the subject is too broad for an 86-minute movie, Samuels makes his point quite concisely.  Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), J. Hoberman (Village Voice), Jonathan Rosenbaum (MIDNIGHT MOVIES) and New Line Cinema’s Robert Shaye also take part.

MIDNIGHT PLOWBOY (1971)--Directed by Bethel G. Buckalew.  Stars John Tull, Nan Cee, Debbie Osborne.  This amusing sex comedy actually has little to do with MIDNIGHT COWBOY, although the double entendre title is a good one.  Hillbilly Junior (Tull, who played more or less the same role in at least two other Buckalew flicks) hitchhikes with a swinging couple to the big city of L.A. and finds lodging at a whorehouse.  Not that he knows what a whorehouse is, our lovable Junior, overalls and all, is so naive.  The madame (Cee) hires him on, though, as the driver of her new Love Shack on Wheels, a van with a bed in back to entertain clients on the move.  Junior also has sex with all the girls, but falls only for pretty Bernice (Osborne).  If you've seen one of Buckalew's softcore "corn porn" flicks, you've seen them all, but PLOWBOY is an easy-going way to see cute nude women if you're in the mood.  Executive producer Harry Novak's sex films are a bit more graphic than your typical Shannon Tweed Skinemax flick, so beware of popping one in in mixed company.  Believe it or not, there does appear to be someone actually named Bethel Buckalew, but he didn't direct any movies.  He was a production assistant who was given credit by the real director, Peter Perry, who reportedly came from a religious family and didn't want his name associated with raunchy films.

MIDNIGHT RUN (1988)--Directed by Martin Brest.  Stars Robert DeNiro, Charles Grodin, Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton, Joe Pantoliano, Dennis Farina.  Brest followed BEVERLY HILLS COP with another fun, foul-mouthed action/comedy filled with wonderful performances, not just by the leading men, but all the way down to the supporting players, almost all of whom are given opportunities to be funny.  Rough, rude loner bounty hunter Jack Walsh (DeNiro) is assigned to find Jonathan Mardukas (Grodin), a meek mob accountant who skipped bail, and transport him from New York back to Los Angeles in five days, or else bail bondsman Eddie (Pantoliano) forfeits his $500,000 bond, and Walsh misses out on a $100,000 payday.  The cagey, silver-tongued Mardukas and the crude Walsh don’t get along, of course, but had better learn to work together when their journey is rudely interrupted by FBI agents who want to bring Mardukas in themselves and mobsters who need to kill “The Duke” to keep him from testifying against their boss, the icy Jimmy Serrano (Farina). 

Brest nicely handles the script’s many chases, stunts and shootouts, but the emphasis on comedy is just as important as the action, making MIDNIGHT RUN a great entertainment.  Although Universal chased several dozen potential co-stars before settling for Grodin, he and DeNiro have a marvelous chemistry together, and I wonder if he gave any comic acting tips to his Method co-star.  Equally as good are Kotto as a frustrated FBI agent, Ashton as an even cruder rival of Walsh’s, Pantoliano’s frantic bail bondsman and Farina, whose formidable dialogue stirs fear, rather than fun, in the audience, which is important in that he informs Walsh and Mardukas’ comic misadventures with an underlying sense of danger.  Wendy Phillips, Jack Kehoe, Richard Forojny, Tracey Walter and Philip Baker Hall round out the supporting cast, which followed Brest on location all over to Chicago, Las Vegas, Arizona, Michigan and even New Zealand!

MIDWAY (1976)--Directed by Jack Smight. Stars Charlton Heston, James Coburn, Henry Fonda, Toshiro Mifune, Hal Holbrook, Robert Mitchum. All-star account of the Allies' battle at Midway, where the Japanese troops received a resounding beating. Fact-based story mixes studio and newsreel footage to give it a semi-documentary feel. The realism was enhanced by its release in Sensurround!

MIGHTY APHRODITE (1995)--Directed by Woody Allen. Stars Woody Allen, Mira Sorvino, Helena Bonham-Carter, Peter Weller. Average Allen comedy, bolstered by some unusual narration by a Greek chorus (featuring F. Murray Abraham, David Ogden Stiers and Olympia Dukakis) and an Oscar-winning performance by Mira Sorvino (daughter of character actor Paul Sorvino). Sportswriter Allen and art gallery owner wife Bonham-Carter decide to adopt a baby (she doesn't want a pregnancy to get in the way of her career), but afterward, Woody becomes obsessed with the baby's genes and tracks down the baby's mother--a prostitute and porn actress named Linda (Sorvino). Despite a rough occupation, Linda--blond, tall and sexy--is also very sweet, naive in many ways and a bit of a dim bulb. I don't think Sorvino delivers an Oscar-worthy performance (Joan Allen's Pat Nixon in NIXON was spellbinding), but it is terrific and well-rounded.

THE MIGHTY GORGA (1969)--Directed by David L. Hewitt.  Stars Anthony Eisley, Scott Brady, Megan Timothy.  Beware of one of the worst monster movies ever made.  LAND OF THE LOST has better special effects.  Heck, it has better dialogue and more action too.  Eisley, who starred in DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN the same year, plays Mark Remington, owner of a small, financially insecure circus who refuses to sell out to a greedy bigger circus.  However, unless he can come up with $86,000 in six months, he'll lose the circus anyway.  What Remington needs is a big feature attraction, something so amazing that people will flock to see it.  Hearing rumors of a giant gorilla in the African Congo, Remington leaps on a plane for the continent (without taking any luggage or equipment) to meet a great white hunter named Tonga Jack.  Instead, he finds lovely April (Timothy), Tonga Jack's daughter, who stands to lose her compound unless she divvies up six large to evil hunter Dan Morgan (Brady).  In the same boat together, Mark and April hike through the African jungle (which looks nothing like the Congo and a helluva lot like Southern California), where they meet "Indians" (played by white actors, of course, not to mention, uh, Indians?  In Africa?), a mean dinosaur and, finally, the Mighty Gorga itself.

Using words to describe the special effects is a big waste of time, since no printed description could possibly convey the stunning ineptness of Hewitt's work.  Gorga, whose perspective is always off--is it ten feet tall or a hundred--is played by an actor in the rattiest gorilla suit imaginable, complete with mussed hair and crossed eyes.  The dinosaur is literally a plastic children's toy, and the scene in which it battles Gorga is no less than a highpoint in B-movie history.  Not only do the creatures look completely silly, but Hewitt attempts to put his live actors in the same shot, not by using blue screen effects, but by standing the men-in-monster-suits in front of a regular movie screen showing Eisley and company out of focus and facing the wrong direction.

Not that the acting and sets are much better.  Eisley is okay, I guess, considering what the working conditions must have been like.  At least he's trying.  But everyone else just says their lines and wonders what's supposed to happen next.  Hewitt, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is certainly no help, incompetent enough to recycle the same footage of villagers fleeing the attacking Gorga in two separate scenes.  There's much more talk than action anyway, and the dialogue is laughable at best and headscratchingly obtuse at worst (I love the scene in which Eisley and his guide try to figure out if the other speaks English).  Not that you can always hear it, thanks to the frequent camera rattle that's recorded a lot louder than the actors are.

No question about it.  THE MIGHTY GORGA is some kind of classic.  But what kind is something only the bravest or most tolerant movie lovers will ever learn.  Also with Gary Kent, Kent Taylor, Sheldon Lee, editor and cinematographer Gary Graver, Lee Parrish, William Bonner, Greydon Clark and Bruce Kimball in two roles.  Most of the cast appeared with Eisley in DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN and the ridiculous fake dinosaur showed up (along with Kent) in ONE MILLION AC/DC, a softcore sex comedy written by Ed Wood!  Producer Robert O'Neill later directed DIRTY O'NEIL and ANGEL.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1998)--Directed by Ron Underwood. Stars Bill Paxton, Charlize Theron, David Paymer. Oscar-worthy visual effects by Rick Baker and a luminous performance by South African-born Theron (2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY) propel this fun adventure (a remake of a 1949 movie released by RKO) that's aimed at kids, but is also exciting enough for adults. It starts out promisingly in the African jungle, where young Jill Young's mother (Linda Purl in an excellent casting move--she looks just like Theron) is murdered by poachers. 12 years later, a grownup Jill (Theron) still makes her home in the jungle, where she serves as protector to Joe, a 2000-pound gorilla thought by the locals just to be a frightening legend. Joe is spotted by American conservationist Gregg O'Hara (Paxton), who convinces Jill to allow him to take Joe back to the United States, where he can live safely on an animal preservation. For some reason, screenwriters Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal (THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES) felt the need to add a human villain to the mix, so Joe becomes the target of the same poachers who had killed Jill's mom years earlier.

Baker's FX are mostly a mixture of animatronics and a man in a gorilla suit (some CGI is used in the long shots), but they are fabulous as Joe boldly interacts with his human costars, and in the finale when Joe climbs a burning ferris wheel to save a trapped boy. Paxton, usually a fine actor, is in full TWISTER mode here, delivering most of his lines in a stoned monotone, but doing it likably. On the other hand, Theron absolutely shines--she was born to play a white jungle goddess, and she finds the right note as a young lady raised in a primitive setting who finds herself slightly out of place in love (with Paxton) and in a strange land (Los Angeles). James Horner's score is a pretty good mixture of African rhythms and orchestral work. Also with Peter Firth, Regina King, Lawrence Pressman and Christian Clemenson.

MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977)--Directed by Meng-Hwa Ho. Stars Evelyne Kraft, Li Hsiu-Hsien, Feng Ku. This shoddy Hong Kong-lensed ripoff of Dino DeLaurentiis's 1976 KING KONG remake received a surprising theatrical re-release by Miramax, thanks to one of its biggest fans, Quentin Tarantino. The plot is almost exactly that of KONG: an expedition into the Himalayas led by greedy capitalist Lu Tien (Feng Ku) and good-guy guide Johnny Fang (Li Hsiu-Hsien), who's shell-shocked by the recent discovery of his girlfriend in bed with his brother, discovers the Mighty Peking Man, a 10-story-tall prehistoric apeman which allegedly has been preying upon the local villagers for years. After an attack by the monster, Johnny becomes separated from the party, and is presumed lost. This isn't as bad for Johnny as it sounds, since he soon becomes acquainted with the Mighty Peking Man's only friend, a sexy blonde jungle girl in a very skimpy leather bikini called Samantha (Russian-born Kraft). Johnny convinces his new girlfriend to accompany the Mighty Peking Man to Hong Kong, where he eventually runs amok, trashes the city (represented by cheap-looking miniatures much worse than any seen in a Japanese monster movie), and climbs a skyscraper while fending off Army airplanes.

Previously released (barely) in the U.S. as GOLIATHON, MIGHTY PEKING MAN is pretty inept in every way, but thankfully is just inept enough to make it great entertainment. The acting, dubbed dialogue, special effects and musical score are among the silliest Ive ever witnessed, while the very fake-looking monster suit that represents the Mighty Peking Man makes the title creature in ROBOT MONSTER look like a Rick Baker creation. You can also keep your concentration from flagging by keeping an eye out for tantalizing glimpses of Kraft's nipple, which makes an appearance now and again. Miramax released MIGHTY PEKING MAN under Tarantino's Rolling Thunder label, which also rescued the blaxploitationer DETROIT 9000 and Jack Hill's seminal girl-gang opus SWITCHBLADE SISTERS from junk-movie oblivion.

A MIGHTY WIND (2003)--Directed by Christopher Guest.  Stars Eugene Levy, Christopher Guest, Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean.  It's always fun to see great actors clicking on all cylinders.  And that's really what's at the root of A MIGHTY WIND, the latest "mock documentary" (the director claims in interviews to hate the term "mockumentary", so I'll refrain from using it in deference to him) by Christopher Guest, a former SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE repertory player and co-creator of THIS IS SPINAL TAP who previously skewered small-town theater in the very funny WAITING FOR GUFFMAN and dog shows in BEST IN SHOW (which, sadly, I haven't seen).  Guest's target this time is the folk music scene of the 1960's, a period in which performers like Peter, Paul & Mary; Joan Baez; The New Christy Minstrels and The Kingston Trio were pounding the BILLBOARD charts and appearing on network television shows like HOOTENANNY with great regularity.  It was also a period of great political and social upheaval in the United States, a climate that was enormously important to the development of the folk scene, but which has been ignored by Guest and his co-writer/star Eugene Levy.  Whether this decision by the filmmakers was dictated by today's conservative political tenor, I don't know, but any portrayal of '60s folk music without any reference to Vietnam doesn't feel right. 

Or perhaps I'm taking things too seriously.  Guest certainly doesn't.  His setting is a memorial concert for Irving Steinbloom, a legendary folk impresario who handled most of the 1960's biggest groups.  His son Jonathan--a nervous, stage-presence-challenged sourpuss played by Bob Balaban--decides to organize a reunion of his dad's bands to headline AN ODE TO IRVING, a concert to be performed at New York City's Town Hall and broadcast live on public television.  Those groups include The Folksmen, a trio of genial middle-aged faux-hipsters that also serves as an unofficial Spinal Tap reunion, in that they are portrayed by Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean; The New Main Street Singers, a "neuftet" of sweater-vested squares that includes only one original member (Paul Dooley); and Mitch & Mickey, a once-romantically-involved duo who made a huge splash when they kissed on a national television show during their hit, "A Kiss At the End of the Rainbow."  Levy and Catherine O'Hara, who have been performing together since their Second City days in Canada during the early 1970's, portray Mitch and Mickey in WIND's best performances, work of magnitude that will undoubtedly be ignored at Oscar time, but will surely stand among the great comedic achievements of the year.

And that's what I mean about watching actors at work when they have characters with meat to them and they truly "get" what their roles are about.  The often-thin line between comedy and tragedy has rarely been tightroped with as much bravado as in the scenes involving Levy and O'Hara.  O'Hara's Mickey left the music scene completely after the duo's personal and professional breakup, eventually landing in the suburbs, married to a catheter salesman.  For Levy's Mitch, the split was more emotional, following two unsuccessful solo albums with a stay in a mental hospital.  Essayed by Levy (who also strummed a guitar in his very first film, the Canadian horror movie CANNIBAL GIRLS, thirty years ago) in a gray wig, landing-strip beard and constantly bemused expression, Mitch is a '60s casualty whose misfortunes, absurd though they may be, make him more human than WIND's other characters combined.  O'Hara's deft "straight man" helps Mitch & Mickey emerge as a colorful, dramatic couple, almost independent of the subtle skewings elsewhere in Guest's film.  The rest of the cast is in equally fine form, even with less defined characters to play.  Fred Willard receives the biggest laughs as a gleefully obnoxious and insincere former sitcom star who has taken over management of the New Main Street Singers, while Ed Begley Jr. scores (the first time I've ever written those four words together) as a Swedish Jew in charge of the telecast. 

As wonderful as the acting is, A MIGHTY WIND would never have worked without strict attention paid to the period detail, mainly in the form of (fake) old album covers and film clips, and especially the music.  Like they did in SPINAL TAP, Guest, McKean and Shearer have painstakingly recreated the sound and vibe of '60s folk music, while adding an almost imperceptible mockery to it.  It's always fun when good performers have to pretend to be bad ones, and the amount of detail that went into shaping these songs is admirable.  So admirable that, despite the silliness of the lyrics they're singing, you might be surprised to find yourself sitting in teary suspense as Levy and O'Hara perform their climactic number.

Note:  According to the MPAA, A MIGHTY WIND received a PG-13 rating for "sex-related humor."  Not that children under 13 would have any interest in a subtle character-based parody of 1960's folk music, but there's no reason they should be warned off this movie.  The so-called sex humor contains no profanity and would doubtless not be understood by kids.  This is a PG movie in my mind, and that it received an identical rating as the scatologically drenched AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER is another example of the MPAA's inconsistency in assigning parental ratings.

MILITIA (2000)--Directed by Jim Wynorski (as Jay Andrews).  Stars Dean Cain, Frederic Forrest, Jennifer Beals, Stacy Keach.  Palm trees in Wyoming?  Anything's possible in the Wynorski Universe, where stock footage from several different movies is often pieced together to save the director a few bucks.  Look for explosions, chases and action shots from such films as DELTA FORCE 2, TERMINATOR 2 and AMERICAN NINJA 2, while laughing at all the unbelievable machinations Wynorski and his writers go through to justify, for instance, why one character takes off his shirt before boarding an Army helicopter (why, to match the guy in the chopper footage shot a decade earlier, of course!).

For what it is--a cheap, silly action movie--MILITIA isn't half bad.  Ex-Superman Cain (LOIS & CLARK) plays Ethan Carter, an Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms agent involved in a raid on the heavily armed Wyoming compound of the Brotherhood, a survivalist group led by William Fain (Forrest).  In the attack, Fain's wife and son are killed, and he takes a bullet to the shoulder, courtesy of sharpshooter Carter.  Two years later, Ethan, now relegated to a desk job (presumably because of his lone wolf attitude) is recruited by beautiful ATF analyst Sanders (Beals) to infiltrate the Brotherhood after the group is suspected of swiping anthrax from a government facility.  His key to getting behind enemy lines is Fain, who has been promised a release from prison if he helps the government bring his old organization down.  Now led by right-wing radio personality George Montgomery (Keach), the domestic terrorists plan to load the anthrax into a hijacked missile, and send it plowing into a Los Angeles hotel during a speech there by the U.S. President.

To give writers Steve Latshaw (GALE FORCE) and William Carson credit, they do attempt to interject a few serious thoughts on gun control and government interference between the many explosions, and I'm sure it isn't easy to write a script based around a handful of unconnected scenes from other movies.  Wynorski lends the low-budget proceedings a professional sheen, and while Cain might be slightly miscast, the actors work quite well with the material handed them.  Look for sitcom star Brett Butler (GRACE UNDER FIRE) as a blowsy barkeep and an unbilled Jeff Kober (CHINA BEACH).  Also with John Beck (THE BIG BUS), Christopher Maleki and Michael Cavanaugh (THE ENFORCER).  Neal Acree composed the score, except for the theme by Joel Goldsmith.

THE MILLION EYES OF SU-MURU (1967)--Directed by Lindsey Shonteff. Stars Frankie Avalon, George Nader, Shirley Eaton, Wilfred Hyde-White. There's more comedy than you might expect in this British spy tomfoolery featuring Eaton (GOLDFINGER) as Sax Rohmer's literary villainess Su-Muru, who has concocted a plan to rule the world using her army of sexy women. Avalon and Nader imitate Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis, Jr. (but come closer to the level of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi in LAST OF THE SECRET AGENTS) as American secret agents sent to Hong Kong to stop Su-Muru's evil plot. Shonteff shot this in widescreen, but the TV print I watched was fullscreen (not even panned-and-scanned), so I mostly saw the walls of the sets between two cropped talking heads. Pretty silly, but if you like Frankie (who doesn't sing, even though it's plain he wants to), you might like it. Nader is his normal pretty stiff self. Filmed on location in Hong Kong, there was even a sequel with Eaton called RIO '70.

MIMIC (1997)--Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Stars Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam, Charles S. Dutton. Atmospheric horror tale about giant cockroaches breeding in the sewers below New York City. Married bug experts Sorvino and Northam accidentally created the killers years earlier, but thought the string had died out. In fact, the critters learned to adapt to their environment, and, in the dark, can even disguise themselves as people! Despite the silly-sounding plot, Del Toro accomplishes quite a bit of creepiness as the bug experts end up trapped in an underground abandoned subway car with a street-smart transit cop (well-played by Dutton) and a boy and his grandfather. The $30 million feature was Dimension Films biggest film to date. Sorvino isn't entirely convincing as a scientist, but she sure does look cute crawling around in the muck with dirt smudges on her cheeks. Music by Marco Beltrami (SCREAM).

MIND PREY (1999)--Directed by DJ Caruso. Stars Eriq Lasalle, Sheila Kelley, Titus Welliver. Based upon John Sandford's best-selling series of novels about detective Lucas Davenport. ER star Lasalle plays Davenport in this made-for-TV thriller, out to rescue a woman (Kelley) and her daughters who have been kidnapped by a psychopath (BROOKLYN SOUTH's Welliver). The cast is pretty good, but there isn't really anything new here, and the downbeat tone can be pretty unrelenting. Also with Luis Guzman and ex-AVENGER Linda Thorson. Also known as JOHN SANDFORD'S MIND PREY.

MIND RIPPER (1995)--Directed by Joe Gayton. Stars Lance Henriksen, Claire Stansfield, Giovanni Ribisi, Natasha Gregson Wagner. Pretty dull ripoff of ALIEN stars Henriksen as a scientist with two teenagers who was involved in an experiment that restored life to a man killed in an accident. He left the project when it was taken over by the government, which was more interested in the military uses for research that could endow its subjects with superhuman powers. When the guinea pig, Thor (Dan Blom), goes crazy and begins slaughtering the occupants of the remote desert outpost, Henriksen is called in to stop the menace.

Most interesting for its cast--Ribisi went on to FRIENDS and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, Wagner (daughter of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood) to TWO GIRLS AND A GUY--which is way superior to the action on display here. Stansfield is a strong lead in a Linda Hamilton kind of way (although she is subjected to the usual gratuitous nude scene), and Henriksen is always great. Also with John Diehl, Gregory Sporleder and Adam Solomon. Also known as WES CRAVEN PRESENTS MIND RIPPER and THE OUTPOST. Craven's son Jonathan was an executive producer, which has to be the only reason Wes would want to be connected with this lifeless thriller.

MINDHUNTERS (2004)--Directed by Renny Harlin.  Stars Val Kilmer, Christian Slater, LL Cool J, Kathryn Morris.  Dimension kept this serial-killer thriller stuck on the shelf for a long time.  Filmed in 2002, MINDHUNTERS began playing internationally in 2004 and didn’t hit U.S. screens until after Bob and Harvey Weinstein left the company in 2005.  Like many shelved movies, it isn’t as bad as you’d expect, and you would think some gruesome killings and a name cast could have drawn an audience.  The premise is intriguing enough--FBI agent Kilmer takes a group of young recruits to a deserted island for training, only to discover that one of the seven is a serial killer who’s systematically wiping out the others using Rube Goldbergian gimmickry.  For instance, a radio on a timer kicks over a line of tumbling dominoes that leads to an elaborate series of mechanics that ultimately freezes solid in liquid nitrogen one agent, who then falls over and shatters.  Heavy on gore and light on logic, MINDHUNTERS is instantly identifiable as a Harlin movie, which was made before--but released after--he took over the EXORCIST sequel from Paul Schrader.  Also with Jonny Lee Miller, Clifton Collins Jr., Patricia Velasquez and Eion Bailey.  Filmed in the Netherlands.

MINDWARP (1990)—Directed by Steve Barnett.  Stars Bruce Campbell, Angus Scrimm, Marta Alicia.  FANGORIA magazine produced this low-budget retread of MAD MAX, GALAXY OF TERROR and TOTAL RECALL.  It has some good parts, including a lot of nifty gore effects by KNB, and an excellent performance by Scrimm (PHANTASM’s Tall Man), but the ending sucks, and Barnett makes no use of Campbell’s sense of humor.  In the post-apoc future, rebellious Judy (Alicia in what appears to be her only film) is exiled from the prefab virtual reality of “Infinisynth” to a harsh sandy wilderness.  Rogue Stover (Campbell) saves her from cannibalistic mutants called Crawlers, but both are soon captured and taken below ground to a brutal, bloody society led by a masked cultist (Scrimm) who occasionally sacrifices a minion to a machine that grinds it into pulp to be drunk by his followers.  Screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris, who went on to the big time (TERMINATOR 3), have a lot of juicy ideas, many of them taken from other movies, that are skillfully re-enacted by Barnett.  MINDWARP was shot in and around a landfill in Gay, Michigan, as well as a studio in Wisconsin.  I’m surprised there isn’t a larger cult built around this film, though if it were more fun, maybe there would be.

THE MINION--See FALLEN KNIGHT.

THE MINI-SKIRT MOB (1968)--Directed by Maury Dexter. Stars Jeremy Slate, Diane McBain, Ross Hagen, Sherry Jackson, Patty McCormack. The most unbelievable bikers ever (they ride Hondas, for crying out loud!), THE MINI-SKIRT MOB is led by long-legged Shayne (McBain sporting a platinum 'do so lacquered up, shrapnel couldn't penetrate it), whose old flame Jeff (Hagen) has just married a wimpy bank teller (Jackson) and left the gang for a new life on a ranch. Hell hath no fury and all that jazz, so Shayne--backed up by Lon (Slate), Spook (Stanton), her little sister Edie (McCormack) and the rest of the Mob--organizes a vengeance-riddled plan of terror and destruction against Jeff and his wife.

Best enjoyed as camp, THE MINI-SKIRT MOB serves as pretty entertaining late-night cable trash with its far-out fashions, silly dialogue and frequent fights and chases. Stanton is always a welcome sight, and Jackson is one of the most beautiful women ever captured on celluloid. Hagen's reptilian presence is always a negative. The location footage of the Arizona desert works to the film's benefit. Screenwriter James Gordon White also wrote THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT and THE THING WITH TWO HEADS for American-International Pictures. Also with Ronnie Rondell, Barbro Hedstrom and Sandra Marshall. Les Baxter's loungy score sounds like it was pulled from an old TV show. McCormack also performs the hilarious theme song ("Disregard their good looks/they're just a bunch of dirty crooks...").

MINNESOTA CLAY (1965)--Directed by Sergio Corbucci.  Stars Cameron Mitchell, Georges Riviere, Fernando Sancho.  Corbucci's first western (he later made the classic DJANGO) stars American leading man Mitchell as Minnesota Clay, a gunfighter with failing eyesight who escapes from a prison work camp and returns to his hometown to find the witness who can alibi him for the murder for which he was convicted.  Unfortunately, the witness is his childhood pal Fox (Riviere), who's now a corrupt sheriff shaking down the quivering townspeople for protection money.  Corbucci seems highly influenced by television westerns, and although CLAY is well-paced and performed, it doesn't transcend the western genre the way Sergio Leone's collaborations with Clint Eastwood did.  It is a good action picture though, featuring a sympathetic performance by Mitchell, nice Spanish locations and plenty of gun-battlin' action.  Ethel Rojo and Diana Martin provide the eye candy, and Piero Piccioni the score.  The international version ends on a happier note than the three-minutes-shorter cut released in the U.S. by Harlequin International Pictures in 1966.  I believe Harlequin may have been owned by 3 NUTS IN SEARCH OF A BOLT writer/director/star Tommy Noonan.

A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE (1967)--Directed by Franco Girardi. Stars Alex Cord, Arthur Kennedy, Robert Ryan, Nicoletta Machiavelli. Cord (born Alex Viespi) plays epileptic fugitive Clay McCord, who travels to a toddlin' New Mexico town where the governor is offering amnesty and fifty bucks cash to any outlaw who promises to hang up his guns and go straight. Besides his seizures and the frequent flashbacks to a troubling childhood where he witnessed his father's murder and blasted the guys who did it, McCord's biggest problem is the $10,000 bounty on his head, since nearly every bounty hunter in the West appears to be staking out his appearance in town to collect. Teaming up with a sympathetic marshal (Kennedy) and the very hands-on state governor (Ryan), McCord manages to both kill nearly everyone in the cast and stumble upon a cure for his seizures.

A pretty solid spaghetti western with a remarkably evocative title, A MINUTE TO PRAY... perhaps doesn't stack up with the genre's best--which would include titles like ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and DJANGO--but delivers a lot of bang for its buck. Cord (I think this is the first time I've ever seen him without a mustache) is an effective lead in one of his earliest screen appearances, Kennedy and (especially) Ryan lend firm support, and brunette Machiavelli is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.

Executive producer Selig J. Seligman worked primarily in television, shepherding such series as COMBAT! and GARRISONS GORILLAS. Co-writer/producer Albert Band's credits as a director include the moody Richard Boone thriller I BURY THE LIVING, DRACULA'S DOG with Alice Cooper and the busted TV pilot HERCULES AND THE PRINCESS OF TROY.

MIRACLE MILE (1989)--Directed by Steve de Jarnatt. Stars Anthony Edwards, Mare Winningham. Tense thriller starring ER's Edwards as Harry, a Regular Guy trombone player who meets and falls for cute waitress Julie at a museum. They make plans to meet that night after Julie's shift at the diner where she works, but Harry oversleeps, and doesn't arrive until nearly 4:00am. Picking up a ringing telephone in the booth outside the diner, Harry hears a frantic voice on the other end claiming that the Army has just set off a nuclear attack, and Los Angeles will be destroyed in just over an hour. Frenetic, frightened and unsure of whether or not to believe the mysterious man's claims, Harry makes a desperate attempt to find Julie and escape with her to the safety of Antarctica before the bombs explode.

Although the leads are a bit bland and some of the '80s fashions have dated, de Jarnatt's film is a neat tale of gripping suspense, highlighted by the fact that, up until the very end, we have no idea whether or not the nuclear threat is real. Just when it seems as though it is, de Jarnatt throws in a twist to make us lean the other direction, and then back again throughout the picture. As the situation grows more out of control and panic begins to strike the public at large, we become uncomfortable that it may be all for naught--that the threat is indeed a false one. Edwards does a nice job conveying his stress, and is aided by a nice supporting cast including Denise Crosby, Robert DoQui, Mykel T. (now Mykelti) Williamson, Lou Hancock, Claude Jones, Earl Boen, Brian Thompson (as a gay bodybuilding chopper pilot), Jeanette Goldstein (ALIENS) and genre great John Agar. Droning score by Tangerine Dream. De Jarnatt's screenplay was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He also wrote and directed CHERRY 2000, worked behind-the-scenes on THE X-FILES, and reunited with Edwards to direct some ER episodes.

MISCHIEF (1985)--Directed by Mel Damski. Stars Doug McKeon, Kelly Preston, Chris Nash, Catherine Mary Stuart, Jami Gertz. Teen sex comedy is better than most other genre offerings, thanks to a more sensitive screenplay and gentle performances. Nerd McKeon is given lessons in love by stud Nash. McKeon woos stunning blond Preston, while Nash experiences trouble in his relationship with perky Stewart. You get a good glimpse of Preston's attributes.

MISERY (1990)--Directed by Rob Reiner. Stars Kathy Bates, James Caan. Bates became the first star of a horror film to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was pretty much an unknown when she snagged this role of a psychotic fan of a romance author (played by Caan) who coincidentally manages to rescue Caan from a car crash in the mountains and keeps him prisoner in her snowbound house. Despite its stagebound nature (most of the film takes place in the house, and most of the house footage is set in Caan's room), MISERY never lags, thanks to Reiner's direction and terrific performances by the leads. Caan in particular is gripping in a role originally intended for Warren Beatty; Caan is one of the most physical actors of his generation, and spending almost all of the movie's running time trapped in bed must have been torture for him, but his underrated performance is at least as strong as Bates's. The squeamish may want to avoid the hobbling scene. William Goldman based his screenplay on a story by Stephen King, and the very good supporting cast includes Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, J.T. Walsh and Lauren Bacall as Caan's editor. Music by Marc Shaiman, with cinematography by future director Barry Sonnenfeld (MEN IN BLACK).

MISSILE TO THE MOON (1958)--Directed by Richard Cunha.  Stars Richard Travis, Cathy Downs, Gary Clarke, Tommy Cook, Michael Whelan, K.T. Stevens, Nina Bara, Leslie Parrish.  In 1958, Hawaiian-born Richard Cunha made a quartet of science-fiction films that are legend among fans of bad movies. Cunha's filmography is strange, starting with these four films in the same year and ending with just two more credits spread across the early 1960's. But with Cunha, quality--as in "lack of"--definitely wins out over quantity, as GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN, SHE DEMONS, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER and MISSILE TO THE MOON have won legions of devoted fans, despite--or, I should say, because of--their incompetence.

Check out this plot for MISSILE TO THE MOON, as concocted by screenwriters H.E. Barrie and Vincent Forte. Middle-aged scientist Dirk (Whalen) is pissed off when the government steps in to confiscate the rocketship he had constructed with his partner Steve Dayton (Travis), who seems content to slurp up bourbon with his fiancé June (Downs). Determined not to allow his baby to fall into the hands of the military, Dirk steps into the rocket, which is parked in his backyard, and discovers a pair of juvenile delinquents hiding out in it. Lon (Clarke) and Gary (Cook) are prison escapees who go on the lam inside the ship, because Lon had read about it in the newspaper, and, hey, who the hell would look for escaped cons inside a nearby rocketship?

Dirk forces the pair to help him fly his ship, which also includes among its crew Steve and June, who become reluctant stowaways. Needless to say, the inside of this ship looks like it wouldn't drive a go-cart, much less a space vessel traveling to the moon. A stupid accident inside an asteroid belt kills Dirk, but the remaining foursome lands safely on the moon's surface, where they encounter large rock creatures that appear to be made from rubber and chase the landing party at an approximate speed of .15 miles per hour, which leads to a not-so-riveting chase.

They hide inside a cave, where Steve discovers the atmosphere is breathable (!), so the party ditches their spacesuits, just in time to be captured by a society of sexy space honeys in skintight clothing. Most of them, especially the youngest and hottest, have never seen a man before, which raises the libidos of young Gary and Lon. Meanwhile, the ladies' leader, the Leto (Stevens), wants to steal the rocket and bring all of the women to Earth. Her conniving assistant, Alpha (Bara), wants to whack the Leto and become the new moon boss. She also wants a piece of the Stevester, which makes June so jealous that she accidentally gives up a vital piece of secret information in her green rage. Women.

MISSILE TO THE MOON is only about 75 minutes long, but still manages to include a pointless if sexy dance number, a giant spider called the Dark Creature that attacks June, a cache of priceless diamonds, a sizzling race across a fatally hot moon desert (!), another encounter with the "ooooo...scary" rock men, and a misogynist final scene.  The special effects are particularly pathetic. In fact, the rocket landing on the moon's surface is depicted by running its takeoff from Earth in reverse. The problem with that is that the launching pad is plainly visible on a lunar surface where one shouldn't be. The sets are beyond cheap, the dialogue is ripe, the performances are undistinguished, and the credits proudly proclaim the presence of (alleged) international beauty contest winners, including Miss Illinois (!), as Moon Girls. The credits also hide the appearance of actress Leslie Parrish, who appeared in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and many other films and TV shows. Parrish is billed using her real name of Marjorie Helen, just before she changed it to play the pivotal role of Daisy Mae in LI'L ABNER. Sci-fi fans will remember her as dishy Carolyn Palamas, the Enterprise lieutenant who fell in love with Greek god Apollo in the STAR TREK episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?"  Also with Laurie Mitchell (QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE), Henry Hunter, Lee Roberts and the Moon Girls.  Music by Nicholas Carras.  Astor Pictures also distributed GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN.

THE MISSING (2003)--Directed by Ron Howard.  Stars Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Aaron Eckhart, Eric Schweig, Jenna Boyd, Evan Rachel Wood.  THE MISSING is the western that Ron Howard went on to direct after his attempt to make THE ALAMO fell through (Howard served as a producer of that film, which will be released next spring).  For whatever reason, the former Opie had sagebrush in his blood, and the result is a beautiful (thanks to cinematographer Salvatore Totino's paintbrush renderings of the New Mexican countryside) and surprisingly brutal action film.

It's 1885, and Maggie Gilkeson (Cate Blanchett) survives on the range by serving as the local healer.  She doesn't especially like Indians, but she's a "Christian woman" and is unable to turn away one in need, no matter his ethnicity.  Life is tough but calm for the Gilkesons, who include Maggie's teenage daughter Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood) and young Dot (Jenna Boyd), until one morning when Lilly, Dot and Maggie's wrangler lover Brake (Aaron Eckhart) go out to brand some calves and never return.  All are eventually accounted for in one way or another but Lilly, who has been kidnapped by a mystic, scarred Apache named Chidin (Eric Schweig) and his bloodthirsty renegades, who plan to sell all eight young abductees into white slavery in Mexico.  With the Army no help, Maggie turns to her estranged father Jones (Tommy Lee Jones), an expert tracker who left his family behind to live with the Indians many years before.

If you're thinking that this all sounds very much like John Ford's great THE SEARCHERS, well, it is, right down to specific lines of dialogue that echo that John Wayne classic (Ken Kaufman's screenplay is adapted from a novel, THE LAST RIDE, by Thomas Eidson).  Of course, that film added extra drama to Wayne's quest of finding kidnapped niece Natalie Wood by making his character a virulent racist; you didn't know whether Wayne was more obsessed with rescuing the girl or killing her after she became assimilated with her captors.  Howard's approach is more politically correct.  Dr. Maggie, Medicine Woman may not like Indians all that much, but she does provide them with free medical care, and white men are shown to be in cahoots with Chidin's gang.

Jones has played this type of craggy, sardonic outsider often enough to have it down to a science.  He's very good, as usual, and provides THE MISSING with an occasional flash of welcome humor.  Blanchett does nice work too with a character that is not so interesting--Maggie is a bit too stubborn for her own good--and her quieter scenes with Jones suggest a realistically uneasy camaraderie.

At 135 minutes, THE MISSING is a bit of a drag in its latter reels, but the strong performances, well-drawn gun battles and resonant feminist themes make it fit well (along with OPEN RANGE) with the 21st-century renaissance of smart adult westerns.  Also with Val Kilmer, Clint Howard, Elisabeth Moss, Simon Baker, Ray McKinnon, an unbilled Max Perlich and Rance Howard.  Music by James Horner.

MISSING IN ACTION (1984)--Directed by Joseph Zito. Stars Chuck Norris, M. Emmet Walsh, James Hong. Chuck is a badass special-forces soldier who was imprisoned in a Vietnamese POW camp. He broke out, and, years later, is asked by the American government to go back to rescue other prisoners. He does, killing gobs of Vietnamese in the process. Typical Norris film, except he largely abandons karate for machine guns. That's unfortunate; his martial-arts skills were about the only thing differentiating him from Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Bronson and other action stars of the '80s. From the director of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2. Shot in the Philippines.

MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING (1985)--Directed by Lance Hool. Stars Chuck Norris, Soon-Tek Oh, Steven Williams, Cosie Costa. In the original MISSING IN ACTION, Chuck Norris, as Col. James Braddock, returned to Vietnam to rescue American prisoners of war years after the fall of Saigon. This prequel shows how Braddock was captured and tortured at the hands of brutal Colonel Yin (Soon-Tek Oh). At least Yin is creative in his sadism; he taunts one soldier by aiming an unloaded pistol at his temple, injects another with an overdose of opium disguised as life-saving medicine, and--the piece de resistance--hangs Chuck upside down and ties a burlap sack containing a ferocious rat around his head!

For whatever it's worth, MIA2 is the rare sequel that's better than the original. Hool, who co-wrote and produced the first MIA, does a nice job of keeping the action flowing, while Norris discovers new methods of beating the brains out of his enemies. Strangely enough, Norris mostly abandoned his martial arts skills at the height of his '80s popularity, preferring to maim his screen victims with heavy weaponry instead. That said, MIA2's highlight is the prolonged karate climax between Braddock and Yin, although flamethrowers, machine guns and grenades play a major role in the destruction.

Sitcom scribes Arthur Silver (HAPPY DAYS) and Steve Bing (MARRIED WITH CHILDREN) cobbled together the screenplay along with Larry Levinson. The fine musical score is by Brian May (THE ROAD WARRIOR), who is not the Brian May from Queen. Also with Bennett Ohta, Joe Michael Terry, Christopher Cary, Professor Toru Tanaka (YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE) and "introducing" John Wesley. The West Indies substitute for Vietnamese locations. Norris returned to Vietnam again, this time to rescue his wife and child, in the inferior BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III. From the director of STEEL DAWN.

MISSING IN ACTION 3--See BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III.

MISSION BLOODY MARY (1965)—Directed by Sergio Grieco.  Stars Ken Clark, Helga Liné, Mitsouko.  American leading man Clark is CIA agent Dick Malloy, Agent 077, in this European spy romp lensed in Rome