FILMS I JUST COULDN'T FINISH ROUND FIVE

FILMS I JUST COULDN'T FINISH ROUND FIVE. 

As noted previously, these are not reviews, per se, but notes on films that I watched or suffered through until I just gave up on them for one reason or another. Sometimes I skipped to different sections just to get a sense of what was going on or to see if the film became more entertaining. Not all of these pictures are necessarily bad, they just didn't hold my attention. If you see one on the list that you think deserves another look, let me know.

The Spider's Web (1960) is based on a play by Agatha Christie but I could hardly finish a quarter of it when I turned it off. Glynis Johns is irritating and the whole flick comes off as a witless sitcom. I couldn't care less who murdered the man found in a closet.  

FX-18 (1964) is a poor Eurospy film with Ken Clark of Attack of the Giant Leeches playing a womanizing agent sent to Majorca to smash a spy ring that operates out of a yacht. Clark is okay in the part but the picture's pace is too slow and there is no style whatsoever. 

Secret Agent FX-18 /aka The Exterminators/1965)-- not to be confused with the just plain FX-18 -- stars Richard Wyler as another Eurospy who deals with sinister Egyptian agents, a French rocket, assorted thugs and the like, but the picture never amounts to much in spite of a lot of running around in different locales. 

Fireball 500  (1966) teams Frankie Avalon and Fabian Forte as rival race car drivers with songs, giggling gals, romance, and the like thrown into the mix but after awhile you realize there really isn't much to this picture. 

The Spy with Ten Faces (1966) stars Paul Hubschmid ("Paul Christian" in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) as "UpperSeven," a super-spy who wears so many masks that his enemies don't really know what he looks like. This device, borrowed from old pulp stories and serials, might be the only really interesting element of this mediocre eurospy flick, directed by super-hack Alberto De Martino. Although Hubschmid is fine in the lead and there are some good scenes, this is not a contender. 

I gave up on The Man from O.R.G.Y.  (1970) rather quickly, although I did try to stick it out for my customary quarter of the running time. This stars Robert Walker (Jr.) as a weird agent for a sex-based organization called O.R.G.Y. Walker is assigned to find three young heiresses who have a strange tattoo and gets involved in ludicrous, allegedly kinky scenarios. A complete waste of celluloid. 

I had wanted to see the strangely-titled Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things about Me?  (1971) for decades but was sorry when I did. With a poor and silly script by Herb Gardner, and an off-putting style from director Ulu Grosbard, this movie about a singer (Dustin Hoffman) who is supposedly bedeviled by a person saying bad things about him to his friends, never becomes remotely compelling. Leading Lady Barbara Harris shows up very late in the film but although she was inexplicably nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for this stinker, she's hardly enough to save this mess. 

The Sender (1982) is about a strange young man who tries to drown himself and winds up in a mental hospital where a woman tries to treat him despite his odd, almost supernatural, abilities. Despite the presence of Shirley Knight and the talented Zeljko Ivanek in his first starring role, this movie is so slowww and dull that I gave up on it halfway through. 

Fatal Instinct (1993) was meant to be a spoof of Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, and I must say Armand Assante, Kate Nelligan, and Sean Young are right on-target in their performances, but this is basically a Carol Burnett Show spoof stretched out to over an hour and a half  -- after awhile this Carl Reiner-directed comedy begins to wear very thin. 

The Nurse (1997) stars Lisa Zane as a woman who comes to care for a paralyzed man she feels is responsible for the death of her father. No one in the movie seems to realize how awful the situation is for the patient, who can't move or speak but is able to think constantly about his horrible predicament. Eventually this whole situation becomes irritating, but in any case the movie doesn't grip.

The Woods (2006) has a young lady being sent to an exclusive girls' school where she has to contend with bitchy classmates, weird teachers, and the possibility of witches in the woods. This horror film may have been intended for a teen audience, but it just didn't hold the interest of this adult viewer. 

Triangle (2009) features a young woman with an autistic son who goes on a yachting party with a guy she's dating and his friends. They wind up on a deserted ocean liner where someone appears to be killing them off. Instead of a linear and tense suspense film, which this could easily have been, writer-director Christopher Smith gets metaphysical, silly, and unoriginal -- and creates a mess, The movie is professionally shot, acted, and directed -- quite well made, in fact -- but seeing the same scenes from multiple points of view quickly becomes tedious. The movie attempts to add some depth and poignancy relating to the little boy, but the screenplay is awkward, and all told, poor. After an hour I skipped to the end.

Nerve (2013) concerns a man who learns his wife is having an affair shortly before she is killed in a car crash. He becomes friends with a hooker and visits his psychiatrist regularly after having a nervous breakdown. I gave this alleged thriller more than twenty dull minutes waiting for something of interest to happen, but the placid style and slow pacing was so off-putting that I found myself longing to switch to anything, even an umpteenth rerun of Dr. Phil. I skipped ahead to see what the "alleged" twist was all about and am glad I didn't waste another full hour actually sitting through this.

The Last Days on Mars (2013) has astronauts planning to leave the "red planet" when they come across some kind of dangerous contagion. When the actors began foaming at the mouth and attacking everyone like something out of Night of the Living Dead I figured this was another trip to the well I didn't need and switched it off. 

78/52 Hitchcock's Shower Scene (2017) is a documentary about Psycho, especially the famous shower murder sequence. Well after about fifteen minutes I gave up on this. I mean, there was some pretentious film journalist babbling on about the movie along with minor celebrities like Elijah Wood and Bret Easton Ellis offering their opinions and whose observations were neither insightful nor interesting  -- who cares? 

Normally I love monster movies but I quit Rampage (2018), despite some good FX work, about a quarter of the way in because it came off like just another "Rock/Duane Johnson" action movie that I felt I had seen once too often. Just had no great desire to see it to the end. 

Although I did like Inglourious Basterds (with reservations), I still don't count myself among the fans of Quentin Tarantino. Nevertheless I checked out Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood  (2019) because people I know and whose opinions I generally trust recommended the film, so I gave this tedious and meandering movie a try. Everyone said that the ending was a knock out, and that may be the case, but I just couldn't stick around until it got there -- there were too many other films I really wanted to look it. I may return to this some day, but for now ... Besides, even if the ending is good that may not justify how long it takes to arrive there. 

Other pictures I stopped watching or skimmed through include: I'm From Arkansas with Bruce Bennett; Carnival Lady (1933); and the "eurospy" pictures Red Dragon with Stewart Granger; Secret Agent Fireball with Ray Danton; Agent OO3: Operation Atlantis with John Ericson; Dick Smart 2.007 with Richard Wyler;, The Big Blackout; Kommissar X: Death Trip; and Kommissar X: Operation Pakistan.