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American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally

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  • Title: American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally
  • IMDb: link

Feeling like a Made-for-TV movie that Al Pacino got suckered into, American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally offers a half-hearted attempt to examine the post World War II trial of Mildred Gillars (Meadow Williams), an American actress who worked for the Germans during the war broadcasting Nazi propaganda under different names including Axis Sally.

It’s easy to pick out the two scenes which peaked Pacino’s interest in his character, the lawyer assigned to defend Gillars in an American courtroom on eight counts of treason. It’s harder to find a reason for anyone else getting involved. Williams plays a character who things happen to and we’re left with no better picture of who Gillars was than when the story began. The film is weak in terms of courtroom drama, doesn’t have the time or interest for character study, and doesn’t take a stance of Gillars, leaving the film by writer/director Michael Polish dead on arrival. 

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Steel Dawn

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  • Title: Steel Dawn
  • IMDb: link

Set in a post-apocalyptic future where water is the most precious resource, 1987’s Steel Dawn stars Patrick Swayze as a former soldier turned nameless traveler, credited only as “Nomad,” whose search for the killer (Christopher Neame) of his mentor (John Fujioka) leads him to a farm run by a widow (Lisa Niemi) under attack by a ruthless nearby landowner (Anthony Zerbe).

Steel Dawn offers your basic western plot (borrowing more than a little from Shane, complete with a young boy taking a shine to our hero) with a modest amount of sci-fi trappings featuring weird mutants in the desert wasteland and struggle over scant resources. Re-released on Blu-ray, the film is at most a curiosity for Swayze fans and holds little other actual value other than the extended fight between our hero and the assassin.

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Halloween (1978)

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  • Title: Halloween (1978)
  • IMDb: link

The 1978 film directed, scored, and co-written by John Carpenter (along with Debra Hill) introduced the world to Michael Meyers and launched a franchise of, to date, 13 films. Looking back on the original Halloween, it’s surprising the small amount of bodies dropped and blood spilled compared to more recent horror films. Instead, Carpenter counted on thrills, ambiance, tension, and the menace of an unstoppable killing machine, without conscience or remorse, who took his first life on Halloween night when he was only six years-old.

After the opening scene involving a first-person look through the Halloween mask of Michael killing his teenage sister, the film jumps 15 years in the future where Michael has escaped the sanitarium where he has been locked away and returned to the sleepy town of Haddonfield, Illinois to begin a killing spree on Halloween.

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Bulldog Drummond Escapes

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  • Title: Bulldog Drummond Escapes
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from the the novels of H. C. McNeile, and part of Paramount’s series following the First World War veteran turned gentleman adventurer, Bulldog Drummond Escapes was released in 1937 starring Ray Milland as the title character, Guy Standing as the disapproving local police inspector, and Heather Angel as a damsel in distress.

Re-released as part of The Film Detective’s Restored Classics, Bulldog Drummond Escapes feels a bit dated in places no more so than the opening sequence involving Drummond’s plane landing back in England. Getting into trouble his first night back, he stumbles on a murder, has his car stolen by a young woman who is later recaptured by those holding her against her will, gets on the wrong side of the local police with the help of his old friend (Reginald Denny) and butler (E.E. Clive), and eventually uncovers a counterfeit plot and, of course, saves the girl.

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Halloween (2018)

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  • Title: Halloween (2018)
  • IMDb: link

Retconning all the Halloween sequels that came before, 2018’s Halloween is a direct sequel to the original. Set 40 years later, the film’s set-up shares story elements with Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, catches up with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her family decades after her encounter with Michael Meyers. Taking a page from Terminator 2: Judgement Day, this version of Laurie went into survivalist mode after her experience with Michael, leaving a broken family in her wake, always believing he would eventually return.

The method of Michael’s return involves a bus crash, a pair of true crime podcasters awaking something in the killer that has spent four decades in a mental institution, and Michael’s psychiatrist (Haluk Bilginer) who has far warmer feelings to his patient than Dr. Sam Loomis ever did.

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