William Clemens | 65 mins | download | 4:3 | USA / English | PG
In American colloquial language, “coed” or “co-ed” is used to refer to a mixed school… As a noun, the word “coed” is used to refer to a female student in a mixed gender school.
I Wikipedia’d that just to check, because in his fourth outing as the Falcon, Tom Conway investigates a mystery at an all-girls school.
Minor oddnesses aside, The Falcon and the Co-eds is one of the series’ better entries. I suppose these days the plot would only sustain a TV murder mystery rather than a theatrical release, but it’s a solid whodunnit — not something these Saint and Falcon films can always claim. Here, the students of a remote girls’ school are suspicious that the death of a teacher wasn’t sudden heart failure as the faculty claim, and one who previously had a dalliance with our titular hero calls on him to investigate. Mystery and intrigue ensue, with a plot that thickens and an array of potential suspects.
Alongside this is the series’ trademark humour. Here it’s served by both the college girls’ infatuation with our suave English hero, and a trio of younger lasses who are part Greek chorus and part sidekick team. The series’ regular comic relief, Inspector Donovan and Detective Bates, are on hand too, thankfully without their grating catchphrase. It’s not all light, though: the film was cut on its original UK release, presumably for the things noted in its 2012 classification: “references to suicide and a drugs overdose”.
In fact, the worst thing about the film is purely a result of its age, and that’s the occasional bout of misogyny. Let’s face it, the girls going all giggly over the Falcon is pretty defensible (look at modern-day reactions to the likes of One Direction, Justin Bieber, or even Benedict Cumberbatch), but the bit where he picks a twenty-something girl up to smack her bottom is a bit much. Still, it opens with a great bit: the Falcon parks his car, a girl immediately runs up to it: “Mr Lawrence?” “Yes?” She jumps in, instantly kisses him full on the lips, and when she pulls away all he can say, with a slightly surprised look, is, “Nice!” You could put that in something today and it’d still work.
The Falcon’s high point to date was surely the previous film, The Falcon in Danger, which was also directed by Clemens and featured two of the same leading ladies — I guess RKO didn’t think anyone would notice, even when the films were released just a few months apart. Co-eds perhaps doesn’t reach quite that level, though it makes a good fist of it. The twisty plot is engrossing and the humour entertaining, though I felt more could have been made of the potentially atmospheric remote cliff-top setting. It’s the kind of film where I began imagining how it might be remade to even greater effect. That may sound like a criticism but, when it comes to B-movies of this vintage, 
such thoughts always endear them to me.
I often find star ratings a bit useless on these long-running series. They all fall into roughly the same bracket in the grand scheme of movie-watching, but within the series there are distinct highs and lows. In Danger is the only one so far I’ve seen fit to give a whole 4 stars too, but Co-eds sits right behind it.
When 
hiding that fact from her disapproving guardian (Morris Chestnut). Meanwhile, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) wants revenge on Kick-Ass for murdering his father, but is being kept out of the way by his mother and the remains of his father’s mob organisation… until she dies in a freak accident, when Chris dubs himself “the Motherfucker” and sets about forming a gang of supervillains…
the sequel doesn’t feel as focussed. The themes are somewhat familiar — superheroes leading to supervillains, as seen in 
Wadlow does make welcome changes to Millar’s notoriously nihilistic comic, however: instead of gang-raping Kick-Ass’ girlfriend, the Motherfucker can’t get it up (I guess because Kick-Ass isn’t dating his mother (ho ho!)); instead of murdering Colonel Stars & Stripes’ dog, he remarks that “I’m not that evil!”; and so on. The film version still has its points of offensiveness and some outré ideas, certainly, but the needlessly-harsh edge has been taken off, especially when it comes to punishing characters who are innocent. With the exception of Kick-Ass’ dad, but then that’s a superhero staple… just one that’s more violently executed here than normal.
So is Kick-Ass 3 a good idea? Kick-Ass 2 does provide a kind of conclusion to the story… but it also leaves it wide open for more, not to mention that Millar & Romita’s third comic book miniseries (currently running) is supposed to be the definitive final act for the characters. It would be a shame not to see that completed on screen, but perhaps with more care in how it’s executed.
Based on a true story, this film noir sees two chums on the way home from a fishing trip pick up a hitchhiker. As you can tell from the title, he turns out to be rather significant: he’s a murderer on the run, and pulls a gun on the men so they’ll do his bidding, which is take him to Mexico so he can escape justice. Oh dear.
But does her gender add any different perspective? I think perhaps it does. If you read 
Director Robert Wise certainly had an eclectic career. Depending on your genre predilections, you may feel he’s best known for 
Even today, it’s quite a nasty little work, although tastes have evolved to the point where “discriminating people” are likely to be attracted to it — though not purely for the violence. You’d imagine that would pale by today’s standards, but even now the opening double homicide — presented pretty much in full on screen — is quite shocking, especially because it seems so horrendously plausible. Much movie violence is heightened, involving gangsters or spies or whatever, but here it’s a lover in a jealous rage killing two people in the kitchen of a regular house. Grim.
sometimes develop a cult following.
I don’t like Lee Child. I’ve never read one of his novels, but I’ve read and seen interviews with him, and always felt he comes across as intensely pompous and irritating. I disclose this up front because it leaves me predisposed to dislike Jack Reacher, the first (they hope) movie adaptation from Child’s series of novels starring ex-military policeman and now all-purpose vigilante Jack (you guessed it) Reacher.
How much you consider the twists to be twisty will depend on which suspects your guesswork picks out, but in that regard it’s as strong as other similar genre examples.
Some say this is the worst of the series, and I think I agree. 
Dogged by comparisons to 
A B-picture from the middle of the classic film noir era, Armored Car Robbery is perhaps most notable today for being one of the first films directed by Richard Fleischer, who would later call the shots on 
Helmed by acclaimed director Nicholas Ray (
On the plus side, Bernard Herrmann’s score is unequivocally excellent, particularly the pulsating opening theme and the insistent action climax.
This came in for quite a bit of stick on release — how dare they re-make a British classic, etc etc. It didn’t help matters that one of the stars, Edward Norton, was apparently forced to appear against his will as part of his contract with the studio.
and while Edward Norton’s performance is hardly remarkable, it doesn’t smack too much of being phoned in.
100Films.co.uk 