THE NARROW MARGIN (1952)

Police detectives Charles McGraw and Don Beddoe are assigned to escort a mob witness (Marie Windsor) from Chicago to Los Angeles on a train.  Not even twenty feet outside her front door, Beddoe is gunned down, so now it's up to McGraw to get her the rest of the way all by himself.  They safely get to the train only to discover that there's an unknown number of mafia hitmen with itchy trigger fingers on board.

At only 71 minutes, THE NARROW MARGIN doesn't mess around, but still, despite the quick pace, I just couldn't stretch my imagination enough to believe that the police would allow a single cop to escort this supposedly super important witness across country by himself.  Not only that, but they knowingly allow all of these armed killers on board a normal passenger train?!  I call shenanigans.  I understand that the 1950's is light years away from the present time, but still the story seems pretty far-fetched to me.  That said, the acting and the camerawork are both good and I was mildly entertained.

THE NARROW MARGIN is not a bad film, just too improbable for me to get into.

THE WEREWOLF OF WOODSTOCK (1975)

I'm not sure if this is based on a true story or not...but according to this film, right after the 1969 Woodstock Festival, a dude who lives nearby is up on the stage throwing lumber around while screaming "Freaks!  Miserable freaks!!!" when he's electrocuted by a hanging wire.  Badly burned, he's bandaged up and told by the doctor that he needs a lot of bed rest.  Later on a electrical storm rolls through and turns him into a werewolf.  He goes out and kills a dog, only be be back in his bed the next morning with all of his bandages in place.  

As far as hippie-hating, electric werewolf movies go, THE WEREWOLF OF WOODSTOCK has to be the most illogical one of the entire genre!  First off, the film states early on that electricity turns this guy into a werewolf (thunder storms, for example), but then, later on, he's a werewolf while it's bright and sunny outside.  No electrical trigger for his lycanthropic transformation at all.  Also, he supposedly hates hippies, but he never kills a single one!  The only people he kills are a cop and a doctor.  He has multiple chances to kill some hippies, but never does.  In fact, he kidnaps a female hippie and carries her all over the place with him.  He even drives her around in a stolen dune buggy.

For what it is (a cheap, mid-70's entry into ABC's anthology series "The Wide World of Mystery") THE WEREWOLF OF WOODSTOCK isn't too bad.  The production values are low and the dialogue isn't too terribly impressive, but the story is just so dumb that I was entertained for the entire 74 minutes.  Overall, I found it to be an interesting historical oddity.  I'd love to know more about it. 

Entertaining, but viewers with a low threshold for bad movies should probably just stay away.