PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Whispering Ghosts 1942

Whispering Ghosts 1942 Written by Lou Breslow and Philip MacDonald, directed by Alfred L Werker.

 

Milton Berle appears as a radio host who does a show about true crime. He gets mixed in a real mystery when he tries to solve the murder of a sea captain from several years ago. Brenda Joyce plays the grand niece of the sea captain. She shows up to claim the ship he left her. Supposedly there's a cash of diamonds hidden aboard. Free diamonds attracts the wrong sort of people.

John Carradine and Renie Riano are a pair of reprobates. Willie Best is Milton's servant and driver, the two of them are fun to watch. There's plenty of running about, some good jokes, and a murder or two.

Generally fun but nothing too exciting, a smidge better than average. I found a copy on YouTube. I'd watch it again.

Captive Wild Woman 1943

Captive Wild Woman 1943 Screenplay by Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher, directed by Edward Dmytryk. A Universal picture it was followed by 2 sequels Jungle Woman and The Jungle Captive. All three films are collected in the 5th volume of the Universal Horror Collection along with The Monster And The Girl. Each film gets it's own disc and a commentary, a couple of the films get a trailer, and all have new 2K transfers. I wouldn't recommend the series for everyone but the Universal Monsters are favorites of mine and I was happy to pick the sets up. This post is an update of a post I did last year when we watched the movie at a Friday Night Movie Night.

John Carradine is a doctor scientist who's working with glands as a method of curing deformities. He takes an opportunity to steal a gorilla and turn it onto Acquanetta. John has to kill someone to get the glands to transplant in the gorilla and he's the sort of doctor who doesn't see a problem with that.

Mildred Davenport is Acquanetta's real name, she appeared in 10 movies between 1942 and 1953. She didn't appear in another production until she guested on The Adventures Of Grizzly Adams in 1990.

Milburn Stone is a big game hunter and lion tamer, he's supplies the lions and tigers for Lloyd Corrigan's circus. He's the one who captured the gorilla. Evelyn Ankers is Lloyd's secretary and Milburn's gal. Martha Vickers is Evelyn's sister, she's getting some curing at John's clinic. Clyde Beatty does Milburn's lion taming scenes via footage from The Big Cage and Ray "Crash" Corrigan plays the gorilla.

I thought it was entertaining but I found the circus lion taming scenes to drag a bit. I guess I'm just not that interested in lion taming. Seems unnecessarily dangerous and nothing good for the cats. The movie looks nice.

The commentary by Tom Weaver has some comments from a man who's knowledgeable about lion taming. Clyde used to dominate the cats with a chair, a whip and a gun. Now they use treats. Still dangerous. Weaver's commentary features words from the gal that plays the gorilla as a human, Acquanetta, they were recorded by an actress from a printed interview in a horror magazine. She had some interesting stuff to say and some stuff I would take with a grain of salt. She sounds very new agey to me. Weaver had enough other stuff to say to keep it interesting.

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.

Friday Night Movies 897

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore 2022 Based on a screenplay by J K Rowling, screenplay by J K Rowling and Steve Kloves, directed by David Yates.

Second viewing in a few days gave me a chance to notice more of whats going on in the background, little things that I missed the first time. It's a busy movie, plenty going on. I enjoyed it all over again.

One Million BC 1940 Written by Mickell Novack, George Baker and Joseph Frickert, directed by Hall Roach and Hall Roach Jr.

Some hikers seek shelter in a cave during a rain storm. They find a man studying the cave paintings. He starts to tell them the story on wall and the film turns into a flashback of the story. Victor Mature is a caveman in the rock tribe, after an altercation with his father, played by Lon Chaney Jr, he winds up in the river. Victor floats down the rive and eventually winds up in the territory of the Shell tribe.

Victor meets Carole Landis and the rest of the tribe. The Shell people are much more civilized, sharing food and providing care to the young and old alike. There's plenty of danger as the area is packed with dinosaurs. When the volcano erupts the two tribes are brought together and the movie ends with them staying together. Probably best for safety and breeding.

I'm sure I've seen it but my watched movie list doesn't have anything listed. Some parts were familiar. I did enjoy it, there's usually something going on. The VCI Blu-ray looks pretty darn good. I'm tempting myself by putting a copy in my Wishlist. I'm thinking I'd watch it again someday.

Friday Night Movies 863

Motivational Growth 2013 Written and directed by Don Thacker. It's Don's first feature, he made one more in 2016, the other 30 plus entries in his IMDb page are all short films. I haven't sen any of his other work and don't plan to look for it. The IMDb estimates the budget for MG at $176,199, I can't imagine it made back that money. 

Adrian DiGiovanni plays Ian, a guy who hides in his filthy apartment because he's depressed. He rants on, mostly sitting around in his t-shirt and y-fronts, while a stream of visitors come calling. Jeffrey Combs voices the sentient pile of mold in the corner of the bathroom. He talks to Ian and makes his life better and worse at the same time. Part of the problem is the movie changes the reality again and again, what's real and what's not, who knows. Not Ian. Not me.

At the end of MG I don't know what happened to underwear guy, is it all in his imagination, is he dead, who knows. I didn't care at that point. I wouldn't recommend this for most film fans, it's really one of those personal films that has something going on that will remain a fungus wrapped mystery to me. I'm not planning to add it to my collection.

The poster quote from the totally irrelevant Ain't It Cool News says "Unlike anything you've seen before" but it reminded me of the 1991 film High Strung, a film with Steve Oedekerk sitting around his apartment and raging about his  demons. Steve has a level of intensity that is pretty amazing, even the Devil, played by Jim Carrey, can't deal with him for long, he admits defeat in his attempt to claim Steve's soul. Steve is a better actor and writer, he wrote the script for HS with Robert Kuhn. Steve is the creator of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and he wrote several popular comedies and cartoon shows.

Cobra Woman 1944 Story by Scott Darling, screenplay by Gene Lewis and Richard Brooks, directed by Robert Siodmak. A Universal Pictures release with Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Sabu and Lon Chaney Jr. Both Maria and Sabu died when they were only 39.

Maria plays a double role, she's the lovely native girl Tollea who's going to marry Ramu, played by Jon Hall, she's also Naja, Tollea's twin sister and the high priestess of Cobra Island. Sabu is Jon's best pal Kado, big hearted but a bit of a clumsy goof.

Maria is kidnapped by Hava, played by Lon Chaney Jr, and taken to Cobra Island, Ramu and Kado follow in hopes in rescuing her. The Queen of Cobra Island is the twin's grandmother, she wants Tollea to replace Naja as the High Priestess, Naja is an evil creep and the locals are unhappy with her. Naja really likes sacrificing the locals to appease the volcano.

Ramu and Kado get to the island and Ramu mistakes Naja for Tollea. Naja falls for Ramu but as soon as he realizes who's who he's not wanting any part of her. Naja gets all nasty and sends plenty of the locals to the volcano. Our heroes put a stop to that and they can't stop the Queen from being murdered in Naja's power grab. Naja is defeated and Tollea assumes the throne of Cobra Island.

We watched the Kino Lorber Blu-ray and it looked fine. It's a good example of a fun adventure film. It's quick and breezy, packing plenty of story in it's 71 mins.