Wednesday, August 23, 2017

MOOM PITCHER REVIEW! HAND OF THE ASSASSIN (Spain, 1967)

This moom reminds me of some of those films that they usedta show on THE HOULIHAN AND BIG CHUCK SHOW back inna mid-seventies---y'know, one of those cheapo foreign jobs that somehow had something to do with the mystery/horror/sci-fi idiom that was sooooooo bad that both Hoolie and Chuck would be apologizing for just how bad a film it was, wondering if any viewers were left before going into the latest Kielbasa Kid skit. Then the next week the two would be apologizing again, not for the quality of the film but for the brief tit-rubbing scene that someone at the station felt fit to leave in probably because it was getting close to quitting time and well...who watches these things anyway???

There weren't any tit-rubbing scenes in HAND OF THE ASSASSIN but maybe if there were it woulda been a livelier moom pitcher than it had been. Actually this Spanish import ain't as zilch-D as one would think, it being a nice li'l cranker-outer murder mystery that doesn't tend to bore you whether you're watching it in broad daylight or at one inna morn like many of us probably did at one point in tee-vee history time

HAND's basically that ol' murder mystery set in a spooky house, or in this case a spooky health spa where a group of seedy in their own ways individuals are marooned during a severe rainstorm somewhere inna north of Spain. After a suitcase filled with loads of twenny dollar bucks accidentally falls open the owner is killed (during a musical number which is the only part of the film featuring the original soundtrack, everything else is dubbed in including the professor, an obvious Paul Frees job) which leads to a whole load of speculation as well as a few more offings in the process. A whole buncha nice li'l twists and turns can be observed with the usual false premises popping up and of course the scene where you think it's all over but it ain't and... Well, I've wasted a good seventysome minutes on worse things like certain Dave Marsh books and that's no jive!

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