Filmmaker Jack Conrad has one of the most ruthlessly efficient filmographies one will see on IMDb. He has some unremarkable work editing and assisting a director, and then BAM! All of a sudden, in 1973, he’s writing, producing, directing, editing, and starring in Country Blue. Then it’s back into anonymity until he produced The Howling in 1980. Fin! He hasn’t been heard from since. Conrad went from being an auteur, to producing one of the most iconic horror flicks of the 1980s, and that’s it. There have been shorter film careers featured in Shitty Movie Sundays, but Conrad got a lot out of his cup of coffee. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Country Blue, aka On the Run”
Month: November 2024
Shitty Movie Sundays: Savage Hunt, aka Condor’s Run
Once upon a time, sunny Greece, one of the jewels of the Mediterranean, and the historical home of critical thinking, was ruled by a military junta. From 1967 to 1974, Greece was not a free country, its citizens politically isolated from the emerging European Union. That all ended when, after a number of disastrous mistakes both domestically and internationally, the Regime of the Colonels was overthrown. This left an indelible mark on Greece, and gave low rent Italian filmmaker Romano Scavolini an idea for a story.
George Ayer stars as Adam, a professional photographer from the United States, who is carrying on an affair with Irene (Mary Hronopoulou), an aging lounge singer with a tobacco-forged voice. She is the toast of the Athens social scene, taking Adam around to fetes attended by all the big luminaries. She even has him take their pictures…with her camera. Unbeknownst to Adam, he’s being used. The same roll of film with all those VIP pictures also includes photos taken at a torture session, where those same VIPs, along with some American embassy staff and CIA agents, watched while a dissident had very bad things done to him. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Savage Hunt, aka Condor’s Run”