Secret of the Incas (1954, USA)
You know who would make a great Indiana Jones? Charlton Heston would! Here he goes about tomb raiding Inca ruins in full Indy outfit, and he’s twice the rogue Ford was. All that’s missing is the whip. And the script. Watched it all. It’s trash, but it’s Indy, or at least the inspiration for two iconic Indyisms: His look, and that whole bogus puzzle tomb setup.
Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (1954, Japan, Inagaki)
Japan didn’t need to send their armies to conquer Asia. They could have had the entire world with second-rate samurai epics. Watched: 25 minutes. This one got an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which I attribute to the voters never having seen a samurai film before, and being awestruck by what a fantastic concept this is. What excuse more recent fans have I don’t know.
Kasserer Jensen (1954, Norway)
The timid accountant looks exactly like a famous criminal. Watched: 6 minutes, then fast-forwarded to identify all the Oslo locations I was able to, and locate them in Google StreetView, which is really the main reason to watch old Norwegian movies.
Hell Below Zero (1954, USA)
Never mind the rest, but I love the scene where Alan Ladd gives a sleazy con-man a righteous punching. That’s the spirit! Watched: 22 minutes.
Just discovered your site and loving it. This is great.
As a movie fan I admire your movie marathons and are recently stuck in 30s and 40s of your retrospective (as is my taste).
I adore your style because and movie mini reviews (and they are similar to Robin Cross’s ’2000 Movies’ Books which I like very much) with their brevity, expression and opinion and fencelessness.
O, and your minutes “rating” – that is such fun and so, so very movie lover incorrect. I mean, remember what they have done to Roger Egbert when he wrote the review of a movie he saw only 8 minutes of!
So, carry on, Bjorn! You will get more minutes of my reading.
Thanks! I haven’t read Robin Cross. I actually try to avoid reading movie criticism for the period I’m watching, because it’s so much fun to watch it all unprepared. But I’ll check out his 1940s book.
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