PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 541

I watched the pilot and first tow episodes of Space: Above And Beyond today. There was only the one season and lucky for me I was borrowing it. I had seen the show when it had first aired but I've forgotten the story line. Turns out it's aliens are attacking Earth Outposts and Colonies. It wasn't grabing my attentin but I will try another disc next week.

Friday Night Movies 736

Evil Ed is a 1995 Swedish horror comedy that was filmed MOS, or Mit out Sound, which means there wasn't any sound recorded at the time the scenes were shot. All the sound effects and actor dialog was looped in later. Only one of the actors dubbed their own scenes.It's directed by Anders Jacobsson, he worked ont he screenplay with Göran Lundström and Christer Ohlsson.

The movie is set in the world of film making. Ed is a film editor who gets assigned to finish editing Loose Limbs 5 after the original editor blows his head up with a hand grenade. The editing suite is in a mansion in the country. Ed slowly goes a bit nuts and starts hallucinating. People who come in contact with Ed don't fare too well, he kills his boss and puts the poor film delivery guy in the hospital. Ed's wife and daughter are worried because they haven't heard from Ed. They go to the house and we already know that's a bad idea. The wife manages to shoot Ed with a pistol and then taser him. Ed's carted off to the mental hospital, which he proceeds to turn into an abitour.

It's was fairly funny and fairly gory. I laughed a some of the jokes and situations. There were a good number of in-jokes, things like Ed's full name, Edward Tor Swenson, or characters using lines from other horror movies. Worth seeing for the horror fan. I thought I hadn't seen it but I had, back in 1996, back when it was on video tape.

Don't Knock Twice is a 2016 Welsh horror film that was ultimately kind of boring. There were some nice bits with the demon witch monster thing but there was a lot of family drama. There's a nice bit at the end with the monster but hardly enough to get me to like it more. It's more a drama that's got horror elements.

OSS 117: Double Agent 1968

In the fifth of the 60s OSS 117 movies John Gavin takes over the role of our main spy guy. OSS 117: Double Agent came out in 1968. The UN delegate to the Middle-Eastern Peace Process is killed and OSS 117 gets on the case. He goes undercover and joins a terrorist organization. There's a good bit of action and some dirty dealing. John Gavin was OK as a spy and the rest of the cast was fine. I found my mind wandering a bit in the last third. Quick flick of the speed button fixed that. Someday I'll watch these all again, same for the 2 French films.

A Touch Of The Sun 1956

I've been a fan of Frankie Howerd since I was a teen and first saw him in Up Pompeii around 1970. He's pretty camp and I love a camp comedian. Frankie didn't make many movies, a couple of dozen if you include the TV movies, and the most famous might be The Ladykillers with Alex Guinness. Frankie only had a smallish part, he had better bits in The Runaway Bus, Carry On Doctor, Carry On Up The Jungle, The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery and The House On Nightmare Park. The last film is on DVD as part of The British Film series from Network. Not much of his work has filtered into the US. A bit turned up on cable in the 90s and Up Pompeii ran on PBS back in the 80s, since then, not so much. Until the last few years I hadn't seen many of his movies, but an all region player has given me the opportunity to see a lot of what I missed. You can see some of his work on YouTube. There's plenty of material available in the UK.

A Touch Of The Sun is a 1956 film that was written by Alfred Shaughnessy and directed by Gordon Parry. They both worked on a lot of British TV. I've even seen some of their works.

Frankie is the hall porter at an upscale hotel and his knowledge has become very valuable to the hotel. He's helpful to the guests and one of them leaves him ‎£10,000. After a fling on the French Riviera Frankie decides he misses the hub hub of the hotel and the enjoyment of helping people. He comes back to London to find the hotel closed. He buys it with the money he has and tries to get some rich businessmen to invest in the place. The last third of the movie is a mad slapstick dash about the hotel with all the staff playing customers to make the place seen inhabited.

It's pretty much standard fare. It makes some noise and has some gags. Not all the best gags but enough make make me titter. I enjoy Frankie so I'm quite pleased to be watching. Others might not like him. Who knows.

There's Always Vanilla 1971

I thought I'd take a chance on There's Always Vanilla, it's a 1973 George Romero film and it didn't pan out. It's George's second film, after 1968's Night Of The Living Dead and the only zombies are regular folk trudging, slack jawed, through life. Rudy Ricci wrote the script, it's dull, and George refers to it as "a total mess".  Even having it on a nice Blu-ray doesn't make it more interesting. I'd give it a miss if I only knew what I was getting before I spent the money. I could have easily wasted that $14 on something else. Cake, even.

Forgotten Noir Volume 6

I'll Get You is a 1952 British film with George Raft. It's the first movie in the 6th volume of Forgotten Noir. It's written by John Baines and Nicolas Phipps. It's directed by Seymour Friedman and Peter Graham Scott. It was called Escape Route in the UK.

George Raft is a FBI agent who's come to Britain to investigate a series of missing scientists. He hooks up with Sally Gray, an agent from MI5, and pretends to be a nuclear scientist. Clifford Evans is the baddie, he gets suspicious of George, and I didn't blame him. There's some spying and some adventure.

I rarely see movies with George Raft in them. I have 3 or 4 and that's about all. He's OK here but, sadly, George was a bit too old for the part, his fight scenes are pretty weak. The movie was an average film but mostly enjoyable.

Fingerprints Don't Lie is a 1951 crime movie. It's got a story by Robert Hughes and a screenplay by Orville H Hampton. Orville wrote a whole bunch of movies and TV shows between 1950 and 1983. It's directed by Sam Newfield who started directing shorts in 1926 and continued to work until 1964. I know I've seen several of his films: Nabongo, Queen Of Burlesque and The Monster Maker to name a few of his over 250 features.

An artist is convicted of murder and the fingerprint guy is asked how it feels to send a man to the gas chamber. He thinks about the case and something makes him re-investigate the fingerprints again. He finds more clues and hooks up with the Mayor's daughter. They work to find the real killer and free the artist.

It was OK but nothing special. It gets a 4.3 on the IMDb and that isn't too far off the mark. What takes off some points is the continuous appearance of Sid Melton as a stupid news photographer who can't work his camera. Some of his lack of comedy scenes go on way too long. Sid was a favorite of producer Robert Lippert and he appeared in a lot of Lippert pictures.

Pigheaded 2016

Pigheaded is a 2016 documentary about Skip Williamson. He was one of the underground cartoonists who started back in the 60s. His first published cartoon was in an issue of Help in 1961. Bought by editor Gloria Steinem. Small world, huh. He ran a Chicago underground newspaper with Jay Lynch in 1967. Later the two added Robert Crumb and the Chicago Mirror became Bijou Funnies. One of Skips characters Snappy Sammy Smoot was played by Carl Reiner on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

Undergrounds as a money maker didn't last that long, just a few years. Only the big names like Crumb continued to sell comics through the years and make some money. Skip worked as art editor on Gallery, then Hustler in 1974, and Playboy in 1976. He created the Playboy Funnies section which brought some underground artists to much better light.

The documentary covers a lot of Skip's career and it spends some amount of time with Skip and his family. Sadly, Skip would die the year after this came out. He sure had an interesting and varied career. Some of the people who worked with him are interviewed: Stephen R Bissette, Kim Deitch, Denis Kitchen, Jay Lynch. Glad to have seen it.

The Night We Got The Bird 1960

The Night We Got The Bird is another British film from Network's The British Film series. It came out in 1960 and credits say it was freely based on a novel called The Love Birds by Basil Thomas. I'm not familiar with the novel. It was directed by Darcy Conyers, he co-wrote the script with Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton. I didn't recognize anything from their IMDb listings.

That's Brian Rix on the left, he's Bertie, a rather hapless antiques expert who comes to work for Cecil, played by Ronald Shriner. The lady on the right is Cecil's wife Julie, she's played by Dora Bryan. I hadn't heard of any of these actors, so often the case in some of these little seen films. I think I'm getting as much pleasure out of discovering these film makers and adding to the puzzle that is British cinema. I suppose I could read a book or two on their film history, get some more knowledge, but I don't mind plodding along on my own, with the help of the IMDb and the Wikipedia, of course. I think the only thing that would improve these films would be the occasional commentary.

Turns out Cecil is a bit of a crook and so is the shop's restorer, Chippendale Charlie. He's played by Reginald Beckwith, whom I have heard of, the same goes for Julie's noisy sister Fay , she's played by Liz Frazer who was in several of the Carry On film series. Terry Scott turns up as PC Lovejoy. I know him from a couple of British sitcoms I've seen on YouTube. Later in the movie John Le Mesurier turns up as the Court Clerk in a the courtroom scenes. I know him from many movies and TV programs. He had a big part in Dad's Army.

Bertie working for Cecil has that crooked git planning to use Bertie as a patsy if they get rumbled for selling fakes. You know the sort of thing, "It's his fault, he's the expert," and that might have worked if Cecil hadn't died in a car accident. Julie and Bertie wed and Cecil somehow comes to inhabit the body of a grown parrot that turns up in their flat as a wedding present. He haunts Bertie, no one else sees Cecil, and everyone thinks that Bertie is balmy. What a predicament! Toss in a gangster that Cecil had cheated, he wants the real bed he gave Cecil, not the restored copy he got back and there's a level of risk for our happy couple as well. Nothing to worry about, it will all work out in the end, it's that kind of movie. Another one I was happy to see.

Science Fiction Sunday 541

I finished the last two discs of Space: 1999 today and the less said about it the better. Very disappointing.

Friday Night Movies 735

We watched The Brain first, it's a 1988 movie that I hadn't remembered seeing. I looked when I got home and there's a listing on my Watched Movie List that says I watched a movie with the same name in 1990. Trouble is there's an earlier movie with the same name and it could be that movie. I didn't make any notes on the listing and my Week-At-Glance diary listing has no details for that day. Not that it matters, lets move on, I've already wasted enough time thinking about it. The Brain is written by Barry Pearson and directed by Edward Hunt. Haven't seen any of the other work they've done, probably won't at this stage.

The story is about David Gale, playing a scientist, who's got an alien organism that resembles a giant Brain in his lab. It's a dick of a brain and it eats people. David has a TV show that secretly uses the airwaves to take over the local's brains. Lucky for the rest of us the show is a local show, for local people. Oh, wait, it's planning to go national and then global. Not all the people receiving the transmissions wind up under the influence of the Brain. The transmissions affect their brains and some of the victims slip over the deep end and start killing.

Our hero is a knob named Jim, he gets in trouble at the start of the movie for tossing a brick of sodium into the toilet. It reacts and the water sprays out of the sinks and toilets. He's laughing until they come down hard on his ass. The whole sodium scene was kind of annoying, it's there to set up sodium, it will be important later. There are many times when the movie refers to Sodium, signs on walls especially, you could almost have a drinking game with the movie. Every time sodium popped up, anywhere, you have a drink. You'd be on your ass before the end credits. That's the Brain below. It gets out of it's tank and moves about. People are tasty sweaty snacks to it.

Harping back on that sodium sequence with Jim, the film makers want to get him caught for the prank. Not sure why, they make him out to be a dick, what's up with that? Annoying characters aren't my favs. Even with some annoying writing I didn't think it was a bad movie, just average. I don't know that I need to go buy that new Blu-ray, it was only released on April 30 and the thing is gone from Amazon. Luckily I downloaded a copy off of YouTube a couple of years ago. I never got around to watching it.

Shadow Builder is a 1998 horror film that was based on a Bram Stoker story that I never read. I read the novel Dracula 40 or so years ago, after Chester Cuthbert recommended it to me. That's where I got a copy from, I pretty sure I don't have it anymore, I got rid of so many books over the years. So many weren't ones I wanted to reread and there's always a shortage of room no matter where I hang my hat.

Shadow Builder is directed by Jamie Dixon, he's mostly a special effects supervisor with 70 credits in the last 29 years. SB was his first film, his second was Bats: Human Harvest in 2007. I liked B:HH but it wasn't quite as entertaining as SB. Michael Stokes wrote the screenplay.

Michael Rooker plays a priest who kills demons and people involved with demons. He shoots an evil Archbishop in the opening scenes. There's been some sort of ceremony and a man was killed. Michael travels to the man's town to see if he can learn anything. From the local priest he learns that the man had a son. It turns out that the shadow demon is after that kid. Things go downhill in the town once the shadow demon starts killing. He gains power from the killings and he needs a bit of power to do what he needs to do with the kid.

There's plenty of running about and lots of yelling. The gore and effects are fairly good. The story works well enough. I liked Michael Rooker and Tony Todd. Tony plays the local crazy person. All in all I liked the movie and would watch it again someday.