PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Amazing Mr X 1948

The Amazing Mr X 1948 Original story by Crane Wilbur, screenplay by Muriel Roy Bolton and Ian McLellen Hunter, directed by Bernard Vorhaus. Another film shot by John Alton, he uses a lot of shadows here too. The film was re-released under the title of The Spiritualist.

Turhan Bey is a spiritualist called Alexis, Lynn Bari is Christine, she's lost her husband and she's hearing his voice and favorite music. That's Lynn on the right, the other lady is Cathy O'Donnell, she plays Christine's sister Janet. Richard Carlson plays Christine's fiance Martin.

Christine starts consulting Alexis about her dead husband, she gets some comfort at first. Unbeknownst to her Alexis is doing all sorts of tricks to make her husband's voice audible. The police are snooping around Alexis but they've got nothing to go on.

Things take a deadly turn when Christine's dead husband Paul shows up in the flesh. He'd faked his death, sizing up the current situation he creates a complicated plan to marry Alexis to Christine's younger sister Janet and then killing Christine so Janet and Alexis get the inheritance that he's expecting a cut from. That all falls apart as the movie plays out.

A nice tight story that looks pretty darn good despite the low budget and short 3 week shooting time. I've seen it a couple of times and it holds up better each time. There's a good commentary with plenty of info by Jay Fenton.

The Thief 1952

The Thief 1952 Screenplay by Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse and directed by Russell Rouse. A spy thriller with no dialog. It follows Ray Milland's decent into despair.

Ray Milland is a nuclear physicist who's selling secrets to some foreign agents. We spend a good bit of time with him as he goes about his spying duties. Ray grows more and more worried and apprehensive after an agent in the ring is killed and the microfilm recovered. He's moved to a safe house and given a ticket on a ship out of the country. He kills an FBI agent while collecting some money and a fake passport. Life isn't going good for Ray, he should have left the spying to professionals.

It's kind of interesting and you can infer most of what's going on by everyone's actions. Occasionally some info is passed on via some gimmick, like a telegram. Ray works his face a lot, watching that helps pass some of the time but it is a bit pokey.  It looks and sounds good and it wasn't hard to get through. Nice interesting change.

Kin-dza-dza! 1986

Kin-dza-dza! 1986 Written by Georgiy Daneliya and Revas Gabriadze, directed by Georgiy Daneliya. A Russian SF comedy that some one pointed out to me on YouTube. MOSFILMS has over 100 Russian films with subtitles.

A man called Vladimir gets sent out for some groceries and winds up on another planet. All he did was talk to a stranger called Gedevan, they helped an alien with no socks and a transportation device. Vlad doesn't believe the man's nattering and he triggers the device. Quick like they wind up on a desert planet with strange people and weird customs. They meet some aliens, learn some of those weird customs, become famous and wind up back on Earth some time later.

The movie runs 135 mins and there's not always much going on. People tend to stare off into the distance a lot. It's kind of goofy and minimalist. I thought it was fun at times, at times it dragged. You can try it out on YouTube. I don't think I would need to buy the disc. I might not watch it again.

Reign Of Terror 1949

Reign Of Terror 1949  Story and screenplay by Philip Yordan and Æneas MacKenzie, directed by Anthony Mann. The film's working title was The Black Book but changed before release, later that same year the title was changed back to The Black Book. I first saw it under TBB on an old Alpha Video DVD a few years ago. This VCI DVD looks much better than that.

The movie was the work of cinematographer John Alton, he also shot the other movie on the Classic Noir Volume 3 disc, The Amazing Mr X. I've seen several of his films, most of them in the noir genre, He Walked By Night, Lady And The Monster, I, The Jury, Bury Me Dead and The Big Combo. John won an Oscar for the ballet scene in An American In Paris. Reign Of Terror was a really low budget film and mostly shot with lights on the floor. That produces a lot of shadows to play with and it's quicker to set up than over head lighting. John has a reputation of being able to quickly light a set and that speeds up production.

It's 1794 France and Robert Cummings plays Charles D'Aubigny, Richard Basehart plays Maximillen Robespierre and Arlene Dahl plays Madelon. It's the last days of Robespierre and his Reign of Terror. Charles kills and impersonates prosecutor Duval who's been summoned to Paris by Robespierre to recover his Black Book. It's got the names of those Robespierre wants to denounce and have executed. It's not something he wants to be made public.

There's plenty of intrigue and double crossing going on. There's plenty of punching and sword fighting, horse riding and yelling. Madelon helps the fake Duval escape and there's a bit of romance going on too.

It's an entertaining film that looks great despite the lack of a budget. Production designer William Cameron Menzies does a great job on the sets, many of which are simple one and two wall designs. They were also able to use some sets left over from the 1948 film Joan Of Arc. The DVD has an interesting and informative commentary by Alan Rode with clips from his interview with Arlene Dahl.

Fury At Smugglers Bay 1961

Fury At Smugglers Bay 1961 Written, directed and produced by John Gilling. John wrote a fair number of decent movies, some for Hammer Films, he directed a good number of decent movies too, the same can be said for his TV work.

Peter Cushing is Squire Trevenyan and he lives in 18th century Cornwall. Bernard Lee is Black John, a local scumbag who's in the ship wrecking business. BJ is blackmailing the Squire to keep his trap shut. The Squire's son is in love with a local gal who's father is a thief who's being sent to a penal colony. William Franklyn plays a local thief who's a nice guy at heart. He helps the local gal to put an end to Black John's activities.

It's an average movie with a good cast. There's some intrigue, some fist fights, some sword wavin', a bit of romance and a nice rescue. There's a poor copy on YouTube, a better one on Rarelust, and a DVD that I'm not sure I would need at 15 smackaroonies.

An Extra Slice Series 4

An Extra Slice Series 4 Ten episode series that aired in 2017. The episodes air a couple of days after each episode of The Great British Bake Off Series 8. Each week host Jo Brand is joined by three show biz guests and the baker who left the tent that week. Occasionally TGBBO judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith will turn up on the panel. The audience is invited to bring bakes and occasionally the panel will try a slice or two.

It's all pretty much good fun and a nice compliment to the regular series. I had seen TGBBO Series 8 before but I hadn't seen these, they were a nice treat. I've got more episodes to get through as I get the time.

Science Fiction Sunday 703

Doctor Who 141 Timelash Written by Glen McCoy and directed by Pennant Roberts. Two episode story that aired March 9 to 16 1985.

Fairly typical story with the Doctor rescuing some oppressed people. I'm finding the Doctor more and more annoying, same with Peri. HG Wells shows up in the story and he was annoying as all get out. The story is thought to be one of the worst of the series. I'm not thinking their wrong.

Doctor Who 142 Revelation Of The Daleks Two episode story that aired March 23 to 30 1985. Written by Eric Saward and directed by Graeme Harper.

Davros makes another appearance, he;s lured the Doctor to Necros, a burial planet, where Davros is using the dead to make his version of soylent green. Alexi Sayle is one of the guest stars, he plays a really annoying DJ. He was so awful sounding I speed through his scenes. The Doctor and Peri are at their most annoying in this episode. Sward is both writer and script editor, he seems to be working to take the fun out of the series. I found it one of the worst of the series.

Poor scripts and plenty of violence put the show on hiatus until September 1986 when it returned with a 14 episode story called The Trial Of A Time Lord. I plan to watch the whole thing next week. Lucky for me there's only 4 series left and the number of episodes that air each series will drop.

Friday Night Movies 903

Crimes Of The Future 2022 Written and directed by David Cronenberg.

David returns to his love of body horror for the first time since 1999s eXistenZ. The film he made seems to me to be very much in that world and made in that era. I'm not a big fan of eXistenZ and I didn't find COTF to be even as entertaining as that film. Over the years I've come to see Eastern Promises and A History Of Violence as my favorites of all his films. I doubt I'd need to see it again.

The Spine Of Night 2021 Written and directed by Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King.

It took 7 years to make this rotoscoped fantasy adventure. It seems to take a long time to play out it's 93 mins. There's a decent but unoriginal story about creeps seeking power and the people who rise to stop them. It plods along at at one point it was nearly putting me to sleep, I wasn't the only one. I sure don't think I'll need to see this again.

The Brokenwood Mysteries Series 8

The Brokenwood Mysteries Series 8 Another 6 episode series with my favorite detectives from New Zealand. The episodes aired July 1 to August 1 2022.

Neill Rea plays Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Shepherd, Fern Sutherland plays Detective Kristin Sims, Jarod Rawiri plays Detective Constable Daniel Chalmers and Cristina Ionda plays Dr. Gina Kadinsky. There's the ones who deal with murder in the imaginary town of Brokenwood.

They've got interesting murders in interesting places, like the museum, a music festival, a beach house called a bach, the champion of the world Spoofing bar game is dead in a fountain, a woman is murdered over a giant gold nugget that's said to be a myth, a guy is found burnt after a shed fire.

The show is light -hearted and there's a sense of humor that I like. The stories are well written and the production values give it a nice look. I hope they keep putting the show out on DVD, I'll pick this up when it does.

The Fringe, Fame and Me 2022

The Fringe, Fame and Me 2022 Directed by Eric Haynes.

A history of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival through the voices of some of the people who appeared there. A good number of my favorite comedians are in the mix: Stephen Fry, Bill Bailey, Alexei Sayle, Lucy Porter, Paul Merton, Eddie Izzard, Michael Palin, Frankie Boyle, Stephen K Amos, Henning Wehn, Maisie Adam, Nish Kumar, Rose Matafeo. Emma Thompson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Miriam Margoyles. It was all really quite good.