PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Murdoch Mysteries Season 13

Murdoch Mysteries Season 13 aired at the end of 2019 and into 2020, the show is currently near the end of broadcasting the 15th Season. I got the Season 13 Blu-ray some time ago and finally got around to watching it. Like the previous Blu-ray sets the picture is fine. There's little by way of extras, a short Q&A with Yannick Bisson and Daniel Maslany, that was recorded from a live stream by Acorn TV. Nice enough but nothing special there really.

There are 18 episodes and they still maintain a high quality of writing, there's some good amount of mystery in the murders, some humor, some serious personal drama, scads of social commentary and a good bit of delightful wackiness.

Detective Murdoch and Doctor Ogden get stalked by a monster in the Halloween episode, George Crabtree has his new book published and goes on a book tour, Doctor Ogden gets arrested for murder, the Inspector goes on a fox hunt that starts with a dead body and Murdoch gets arrested for murder. Some of those stories deal with morality but it's not heavy handed enough to be bothersome. I enjoyed the episodes, especially the more humorous ones. I look forward to Season 14, that's up next. It's a show that I can binge several episodes in a day.

Ladies Who Do 1963

Ladies Who Do 1963 Written by Michael Pertwee and John Bignall, directed by C M Pennington-Richards. Micheal is Jon's older brother.

I watched a copy off of YouTube but I see there is a DVD available on Amazon for for $6.51. I'd pay that for a nicer copy than the one on YouTube. I did find a better copy on the Internet Archive that is complete. The YouTube video has the end cut off the film, missing a whole gag. I wondered as the video ended with out credits but I also realize some of the people who post on YouTube are total bellends.

Those are the ladies who do, that's British slang for cleaning ladies who work in commercial offices or homes. I know a fair bit of British slang but I often run into people who aren't up on the lingo. Bellend is slang for dickhead. The lady in the middle is Peggy Mount, she does for Harry H Corbett.

That's Harry H Corbett on the right, the other fellow is Jon Pertwee, his partner in real estate development. Harry's big plan is to over extend himself financially and hope that all his long shots fall into place in order to meet his obligations. Peggy overhears the pair taking about a city take over bid that's failed. After they leave she takes an unused cigar out of the trash and passes it along to Robert Morley. Peggy is his part time cook and maid.

Robert's delighted with the cigar and he's even more delighted with the bit of paper it was wrapped in. It's a telegram that talks about the deal that Harry and Jon were talking about. Long story short, Robert bets his house on a stock deal and doubles his money.

Peggy is angered by Harry's comments about the locals, she joins with Robert and 3 other gals to form a company that will invest in stocks. They'll get their tips from the trash cans of the offices they work at. They do really well and crush Harry in the process.

All pretty much good fun with a little bit of mayhem tossed in to spice things up. One of Harry's better films, glad I got to see it. I'd watch it again someday. 

The Black Six 1974

The Black Six 1974 Written by George Theakos and directed by Matt Cimber. This is the second movie on the Alpha Video disc with The Black Gestapo. Sadly it's got an even worse script. The Black Six are a motorcycle gang, all 6 characters are played by 70s NFL football players, Gene Washington, Joe "Mean Joe" Green, Eugene "Mercury" Morris, Lemuel "Lem" Barney, Willie Lanie and Carl Eller. I didn't know any of them by name except Mean Joe. In the movie Gene's brother is killed by a white supremacist motorcycle gang for dating the leader's sister. The Black Six ride to the town to find out more. They get in some fights with the white supremacists and there's a big battle at the end of the film. It was apparently filmed with the Black Six dying but people didn't like the end. The film makers edited it so poorly that you can't tell what's going on during the battle. Really, it's a stunningly bad ending. The film makers need a bit of the old bish bash bosh from Paul Naschy's flaming skull. Apply liberally to their nether regions. You can check it out on YouTube above. I gave it a generous 2 on the IMDb. It's a stinker.

The Black Gestapo 1975

The Black Gestapo 1975 Story by Lee Frost, Wes Bishop and Ronald Goldman, screenplay by Lee Frost and Wes Bishop, directed by Lee Frost. It's a hard life being poor and black in Watts, the mob lays a heavy hand on the local black businesses. The all white gangsters rape their women and beat up their men. General Ahmed has started a small group to help the locals but they aren't too effective against the mob's thugs. After getting beat up pretty badly Ahmed lets Colonel Kojah start a more militant wing to protect the locals. That backfires as Kojah goes full on cray-cray and chops a mobsters balls off. He goes full on Nazi with his black shirted military unit. Ahmed gets tossed out of the group and he fights back to take down Kojah. I get the sentiment but the execution is pretty poor. There's no money and despite all the writers the script is weak. There's plenty of physical action but it's pretty poor. I gave it a generous 4 on the IMDb. I watched the Alpha Video DVD with The Black Six as a bonus. I'm off to watch that. You can watch the movie on YouTube, see link above.

Science Fiction Sunday 674

Doctor Who 0059 The Daemons Five part story that aired May 22 to June 19 1971. Written by Guy Leopold and directed by Christopher Barry.

The story has another encounter with The Master, this time he's playing a vicar in a small town. There's something unusual buried there that The Master is interested in, it turns out to be an alien spaceship with a giant Devil like alien. He's been under the dirt for 100,000 years and his past appearances have created the Devil myth.

I wound up liking the story a bit better than I did in 2013 partially because I've come to like Jon Pertwee's Doctor quite a bit. He's usually quite entertaining. He's still annoying too.

Doctor Who 0060 Day Of The Daleks Four part story that aired January 1 to 22 1972. Written by Louis Marks and directed by Paul Bernard.

The Daleks are a nice change from The Master. The Daleks have taken over the Earth but 200 years in the Doctor's future. Rebels send some men back to kill a guy, they hope to change the time line and stop the wars that reduced the humans to their vulnerable state. The Doctor jumps right in to set thing straight.

There's plenty of stuff going on and I enjoyed the Doctor running about. There's plenty of gun battles and explosions. I enjoyed it about as much as I did back in 2013. I just skimmed through a bit of the revamped serial. The BBC added some poor CGI to jazz up the images and did a bit of story tampering. Neither were needed.

The Invisible Maniac 1990

The Invisible Maniac 1990 Written and directed by Adam Rifkin under the pseudonym Rif Coogan. It's Adam's third movie, he followed it with my favorite of his films The Dark Backward. Some of his early films stood out from the crowd and I've followed his career much more than many other film makers.

A repressed boy grows up to be a sexually repressed scientist named Dornwinkle. His mother caught him spying on his neighbor getting undressed when he was a young boy and she let him know how naughty and evil women are. As an adult he goes mad at a science conference when his invisibility serum doesn't work. Some of the scientists laugh at him and he kills four of them. Dornwinkle is sent to the State Institution for the Criminally Insane, six months later he escapes and gets a job teaching science at a high school.

Dornwinkle is harassed by some of the students and it makes him angry. He's perfected his invisibility serum but it has some side effects. The principal of the school, played by Stephanie Blake, tries to seduce Dornwinkle but he doesn't want any part of it, things turn ugly and the poor principal gets murdered. It's just the start of a spree as Dornwinkle takes out his revenge on the student body.

It's rough around the edges, a bit sick and pretty over the top but it's filled with laughs. Not the kind of film everyone is going to like but there you go. Sadly there's no legit DVD release out, there are bootlegs but I haven't bothered with one. You can see it on YouTube, link above. You can find a better copy to download at RareLust.

Naughty School Girls 1975

 

Naughty School Girls 1975 Written by Alonzo Pye and directed by Jean-Paul Scardino. The Blazer Girls seems to be the original title, the copy on YouTube I found has the Naughty School Girls title.

A comedy set in a private girls school, five girls want to raise $500 by selling their virginity at a $100 each. It's pretty typical of it's genre, there's a goofy story, a fair bit of nudity and some sexier bits. The jokes are so-so but the girls are cute. It's about average. You can see a so-so print on YouTube, it's watchable, but should you. Depends on how much time you've got left. YouTube has a plethora of these type of films, I haven't seen many of them, some might be better than this.

Friday Night Movie 874

The Thing Below 2004 Written by Raul Inglis and Keith Shaw (under the name Lindsay James), directed by Jim Wynorski under the name Jay Andrews. According to the IMDb Jim left the production before the special effects were done. They sucked and that might be why he changed his name credit.

A substance was brought up from a deep sea drilling project. No one's sure what it is so they send a sample to another location by ship. The stupid people in charge are idiots and in a big hurry, they send the ship out in a severe storm. The jar containing the substance is broken in a classic display of bad lab safety. The dark mass turns into an intelligent telepathic murdering mass of tentacles. The transport ship goes missing.

The Captain of the missing ship has a brother who has a ship. The brother goes to the rescue and finds the missing ship, the Captain is the only one left alive on his ship. They leave the ship and travel to the oil rig to see if anyone is left alive. Hardly anyone is and some more of them die.

Sadly it's all pretty poorly written, with plenty of cliches and coincidences mouthed by all sorts of cartoon cutout characters. The CGI of the ship on the sea and the creature are both really poor. I thought I hadn't seen it but my Watched Movie List says I had, four years ago almost to the day, probably something on Amazon Prime. Totally forgettable, shouldn't have watched it the first time, let alone today.

Censor 2021 Director Prano Bailey-Bond co-wrote the script with Anthony Fletcher. Prano is Welsh and it's her first feature film, she'd directed some shorts a few years ago.

Niamh Algar plays Enid, she works at the British Board of Film Classification in 1985. There was a big stink back then as people reacted to some of the more nasty horror films coming out on VHS. Some were nicknamed Video Nasties and video shops would rent out these movies for anyone to watch. There was a group for decency working to ban these horrible films and the authorities helped. Business's were raided and prosecuted. You can read more at the link above.

Enid and her co-workers watch the videos to classify them and recommend censoring the film where needed. Some films are simply beyond the pale and they get banned. Most of the films have been released uncut in the UK in recent years.

The video nasties are really the set dressing for the stage where Enid rapidly loses her mind and becomes a homicidal psychopath. It all stems from Enid's missing sister, lost when they were children. Enid took her into the woods and then couldn't remember what happened to her. It's caused a big rift between her and her parents. They've declared the sister dead but Enid clings onto to the belief that she might still be alive.

Enid watches a film that has a scene that appears similar to the memory of her trip into the woods with her sister. She finds another film by the same director and becomes fixated on an actress, thinking she looks like her sister grown up. A visit to the producer ends poorly to say the least and a visit to the set of the film the actress is currently working on ends with even more slaughter.

Decent into madness films aren't always the ones that I want to watch but I'd rather watch this than the one with the what are you looking at guy. It's quite well made with a good cast but I don't have any urge to watch it again. I gave it a 6 on the IMDb, it's current average, I might have given it a 7 but it yelled in my face and that's so rude.

The Silent Partner 1978

The Silent Partner 1978 Based on the novel Think Of A Number by Anders Bodelsen, screenplay by Curtis Hanson, directed by Daryl Duke. A Canadian movie shot and set in Toronto.

Elliott Gould is a bank teller who discovers a hold up note on a deposit slip. He suspects someone is going to rob the bank and got scared away. Turns out he was right, Christopher Plummer, working as a mall Santa, has the plan. It works too, he gets a bag of money from Elliot and gets away. Christopher is really pissed when he finds that Elliott has glommed onto a large chuck of cash and blamed it on him. A big part of the movie that follows is devoted to Christopher trying to convince Elliott to part with the cash. Elliott refuses and things get ugly, Chris turns out to be a violent psychopath. After hearing the cash info on the news Christopher beats up a young woman for no reason.

Another chunk of the movie is devoted to Elliot's love life and the goings on among the bank staff. Many of the characters are morally ambivalent, there's a lot of cheating going on in their lives. Soon the two streams mix and people start to die. It becomes a fight to the finish. The cast was fairly good, Susannah York does alright as Elliott's main romantic interest, John Candy has a tiny part, as does another SCTV alum, Tony Rosato. The script was fairly decent in moving all the characters around but I found some of their personal melodrama to be a bit tedious. The film plods along using 106 mins to tell the story. It does pick up in the last act. My lack of interest in the characters only makes it slightly above average for me. It might have been a more effective thriller in 1978 though I don't think it's better than Marathon Man which came out a couple of years before. That's a much more tense thriller. I bought the Blu-ray and I might want to watch it again someday. 

Sleepy Eyes Of Death 7: The Mask Of The Princess 1966

Sleepy Eyes Of Death 7: The Mask Of The Princess 1966 Story by Renzaburô, screenplay by Seiji Hoshikawa, directed by Akira Inoue.

The Shogun's disfigured daughter Princess Kiku returns for another attempt at killing Nemuri Kyoshiro. Her face was disfigured at birth and it's driven her mad. She'd been banished from Edo for torturing and killing men and women. The Shogun is embarrassed by her behavior and like many royal figures they just send her off to live in a big house in the country. Nemuri ran into the princess in the fourth movie and she's still mad that he's not dead.

She hires some assassins who attack Nemuri at various times. There's plenty of swordplay and Nemuri's body count is 44. The baddies try framing him for murder but that doesn't work, their traps fail. Nemuri buys the contract of a young woman and gets her a job. The baddies kidnap her and threaten to hurt her if Nemuri kills any of their men. Stupid move, it's like signing your own death warrant.

I thought it was quite entertaining. There's plenty of action and running about and yelling. Just about all the characters are double dealing scum. I was happy for them to get stabbed up a bit. It's a nicely shot film, I enjoyed the images. There's some nice soundtrack music and plenty of time when there's no sound at all. They pack a lot in an 83 minute movie.