PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Cool Mikado 1963

The Cool Mikado 1963 Adapted from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Mikado by Maurice Browning, screenplay by Michael Winner, directed by Michael Winner. A British musical with Stubby Kaye and Frankie Howerd. I'm always interested in seeing Frankie Howerd material I haven't seen.

A group of people are flying back to the US. Stubby Kaye recounts some of his touristy action, a soldier called Mike tells Stubby how he meet his future wife Yum-Yum. Their stories are filled with comedy and music. Frankie plays Ko-Ko Flintridge, he's a local gangster who's fiance is the woman that Mike is going to marry. There's a whole lot of time spent on that subplot, other minor characters sing, dance and joke about.

Sadly, many of the jokes aren't the best and the production suffers from the low budget. Frankie is his usual entertaining self, Stubby is as good as he normally is and Burt Kwouk is fine as a couple of different characters. A good bit of the music from the opera is gone, the remaining musical numbers are changed to make them more modern, not necessarily making them better. I enjoyed Frankie but I can't say I thought the movie was any great shakes. It gets a 3.6 on the IMDb with only 83 votes. I gave it a 4 because of Frankie. I might watch it again someday but who knows when.

Hillbillys In A Haunted House 1967

Hillbillys In A Haunted House 1967 Written by Duke Yelton and directed by Jean Yarbrough. A musical horror comedy film that's a sequel to The Las Vegas Hillbillys.

Ferlin Husky plays band leader Woody Wetherby, he's heading to Nashville with his band. Their car breaks down, Woody and company take shelter in an abandoned house. Turns out the place is haunted. Turns out the house is secretly occupied by three spies. They're played by Lon Chaney Jr, Basil Rathbone and John Carradine. They're there to steal a rocket fuel formula.

There's some gags and some of them were funny. There's a handful of songs but nothing to write home about. Despite being rather poor, I sort of enjoyed it, I might even watch it again sometime. I'm downloading the first movie from Rarelust but it will take a while. You can watch this movie on YouTube.

The Mermaid 1965

The Mermaid 1965 Screenplay by Cheh Chang and directed by Li Kao. A Hong Kong Huangmei opera play from the Shaw Brothers. Ivy Ling Po plays a male character, a common thing in the Huangmei opera, like it was during Shakespeare's time.

Zhang Zhen is betrothed to the daughter of Prime Minister Master Chen. Zhang visits the family compound to meet his obligation. He isn't well received by the PM. Zhang's family has fallen on hard times since the agreement was made and Zhang isn't seen as a good candidate for a husband. The PM tells Zhang that he'll reconsider him if he becomes a top scholar.

A year later Zhang hasn't done as well as he hoped and his betrothed Peony has long since forgotten him. No matter Zhang has made friends with a carp and the fish in a pond outside his study. The carp spirit visits Zhang disguised as Peony and he thinks she's interested in him. Time passes before he sees her again. If fact, when he does, he's seeing the real Peony, she rebuffs him again.

Thing go around and around and there's way too much singing and dancing about for me. Goddesses get involved and bring about a happy ending. It was mostly entertaining and I did like the under the water sets, all the fish and the underwater flora. You can take a crack on it on YouTube. Maybe you'd like it.

Dateline Diamonds 1965

Dateline Diamonds 1965 Original idea by Harold Shampan, screenplay by Tudor Gates, directed by Jeremy Summers. A British crime film set in the world of pop music.

A ex-military man is in the stealing diamonds biz, he blackmails a guy who is the manager of the Small Faces into helping him steal the diamonds and smuggle them out of the UK.

Conrad Phillips plays the Inspector who is after the diamond thief, he's got some help from a foreign inspector. The crooks use the pirate radio ship to transfer the diamonds.

The Small Faces are joined by The Chantelles, Kiki Dee and Mark Richardson. It's the performers lip-syncing to the music. Sadly it's often so poorly mixed with crowd noise it's hard to hear what's being played. The weak music only makes the below average script look worse. Not a film I'd recommend to anyone much. You can check it out on YouTube. Link above.

Be My Guest 1965

Be My Guest 1965 Story and screenplay by Lyn Fairhurst, produced and directed by Lance Comfort. A British film shot at Pinewood Studios and was released as a the B movie for the Morecambe and Wise film The Intelligence Men. It was the sequel to Live It Up! 

David  Hemmings is in a band with his mate Steve Marriott. David's parents have inherited a seaside hotel. The band helps get customers to stay at the hotel. That's pretty much the plot, the rest of the movie is filled with musical numbers by a diverse group of musicians.

It was fun and breezy. I skipped up through a few of  the musical numbers. Others might like them more.

It's All Happening 1963

It's All Happening 1963 Written by Leigh Vance, directed by Don Sharp. After this film Don would direct a good number of movies for Hammer Film Productions and others. You might have seen The Kiss Of The Vampire, Curse Of The Fly, Rasputin The Mad Monk, The Face of Fu Manchu, Jules Verne's Rocket To The Moon or Psychomania. I know I have.

It's All Happening is part of Network's DVD series The British Film. My absolute fav DVD series. There are over 500 releases in the series and a small number of them have more than one film. It's pretty close to 600 titles and they add the new titles all the time.

Tommy Steele was an actor and a singer who had already made 5 films by the time he starred in It's All Happening. He'd had several hit records and he appeared on lots of TV. He's still working at 84 years old. He's also still married to Ann Donoghue, they married in 1960. He was awarded the Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in 2020.

In IAH Tommy plays a good hearted but shy guy who works for a music company. His boss treats him poorly but he's well received at the orphanage he grew up in, he brings presents and treats for the kids. It's here we see get to see that Tommy is a good singer, he does a number with the orphans, it turns up again in the final scene.

There's plenty of strife in Tommy's life. Angela Douglas plays his girlfriend, she's on his case to stand up more for himself, she also works at the same company. His boss doesn't like him, he keeps telling Tommy to work harder, he'll eventually make up some baloney and have Tommy fired. Tommy spends a lot of his work time searching for new talent and this comes in real handy when the orphanage develops some cash flow problems.

Tommy decides to put on a concert and get some of the talent he's works with to come and do a number. Their written invites don't get mailed and the night of the concert no one is turning up to sing or dance. While Angela tries to find some of the acts, Tommy faces his fears, steps on stage and gets a happy ending.

Tommy is a charming fellow, I liked him and I liked his movie. I liked seeing Bernard Bresslaw, Jean Harvey, Michael Medwin, Walter Hudd and all the rest of the cast I didn't know. I wasn't as big a fan of some of the singers, some were a bit soppy. I didn't know most of the entertainers but I'm not as fond of pre-Beatles pop as I am of post-Beatles pop. All in all, entertained, I'd want to watch it again sometime.

Science Fiction Sunday 576

Aniara is a 1960 Swedish TV movie that's based on the 1956 Aniara poem by Harry Martinson. It's been turned into a science fiction opera Karl-Birger Blomdahl and Erik Lindegren. It was preformed several times in 1959. The TV version was directed by Arne Arnbom. There's a 2018 adaptation that I haven't seen.

The story is about a spaceship that is transporting people from Earth to Mars. It has a collision with an asteroid and winds up lost in space. It's a very minimalist production, there are only a few sets, you can get an idea of them from the pictures. Sadly there seem to be very few images available online and the download I found crashes VLC Player when I try to do a screen capture. The download has English subtitles. I found it a hard slog, it helped to speed it up a bit. There's not a lot of story exposition, between the singing bits there is a good bit of dead space with nothing much happening. There's also a good bit of interpretive dance. I thought the concept was interesting, I liked the costumes and sets, the opera style is of little interest to me, though I have liked bits of opera music from time to time. Glad to have seen it, I'll keep the download but it's likely I won't bother to watch it again. You can read about the poem and see the TV movie in the links in the titles above.

Astro is a 2018 SF movie directed by Asif Akbar, he wrote it with Bernard Selling. It's about a rich guy's space program, Alexander Biggs is working with some ancient aliens from another dimension. They've built a space craft and taken it into space, they returned with a captured alien that has the DNA of a guy named Jack, a guy that Biggs knew from his Army days. Biggs wants to know how that DNA got there and he goes after Jack. There's plenty of running about and stuff you'd expect in a low budget SF movie, lots of yakking and walking through corridors. It goes on and on and I was not liking it much at all. Especially when it ended on a cliff hanger. I speed this one up too. I'm getting to old to waste time on this sort of thing. Don't watch it. I found it at Dollar Tree for a buck, I'll keep it to remind me that I wasted that buck. I won't watch it again, out of spite.

The Ghost Goes Gear 1966

The Ghost Goes Gear is a 1966 British pop music comedy starring the Spenser Davis Group, Acker Bilk, The Lorne Gibson Trio, The St Louis Union, Dave Berry, The Three Bells, and The M6. I knew of the first two but the rest are all strangers to me. There are a lot of numbers in the movie. They're all pretty short but the movie is only 79 minutes and there's barely any time for the story that supports the music.

The manager of the Spenser Davis Group is the son of Lady Rowthorpe. She's broke but she owns a haunted manor. The son works for the cash to help keep the estate afloat. The band comes to visit and suggest charging the public for a look around. Maybe they'll see the ghost. Another idea to attract crowds is to have a pop concert. All the talent above show up and there's oodles of lip synced singing.

Hugh Gladwish and Roger Dunton wrote the thing and Hugh directed. They do a good job getting something to look at up on the screen but they fall short on the story. I wanted to like the movie more but the haunted house story is weak, the jokes are weak and except for Spenser and Acker, the rest of the musical acts are kind of weak too. They aren't awful, they're just bland. I never laughed out loud but I snickered a couple of times. I found a copy online, there's a DVD on Amazon UK but it's £28 and there's only the one. I'm not getting that. You can see the movie, or download it, by following the link in the title above. I just wish it was better.

Smashing Time 1967

I really enjoyed Smashing Time, a 1967 British musical comedy with Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave. They play a couple of gals from the north of England who come to London to see Swinging London. Periodically the gals sing songs in a voice over while the action continues on screen and they are proper musical type songs, observational ones that move the story ahead.

George Melly wrote the screenplay and Desmond Davis directed. George only wrote 2 films, this one and another called Take A Girl Like You in 1970. I haven't seen that movie but I have seen George acting in Demob, a 1993 mini-series set after WW2. George was a jazz singer and Demob is about a couple of jazz musicians wanting to get some BBC radio action. Martin Clunes and Griff Rhys Jones play the musicians. I picked it up cheap because of those two guys.

Desmond is probably best known for directing the 1981 Clash Of The Titans. He only directed 7 theatrical features, starting with Girl With Green Eyes in 1964. That film also stars Rita and Lynn. Desmond directed several TV movies and a good number of TV episodes. I can't say I've seen any of it except for the 1983 TV movie The Sign Of Four and an episode of The Agatha Christie Hour.

Rita and Lynn come into London on the train. Lynn is smitten with the idea of being a big star. She's read all about Swinging London and Carnaby Street but she's hardly hip. Rita is even more unhip but she's practical and protective of her friend. Lynn is shallow and oblivious to what's going on around her, she treats Rita rather poorly.

Lynn meets up with hip photographer Michael York, he spots her on the street and takes her picture. It runs in the paper the next day as an example of a fashion travesty. Of course, Lynn gets instant fame and becomes a trend setting pop star. Her song, I'm So Young, is a wonderful poke at youth culture that reminds me of Julie Brown's I'm A Blonde. Julie's on-screen persona is very like Lynn's character but with a bit more sass.

Rita has hurdle after hurdle placed in front of her but she too becomes famous for 15 minutes when Michael uses her as a model. Everywhere Rita goes she causes chaos. There's a massive mess created in a cafe, an art gallery and in a shop that only sells pie. Their fame peaks and the girls head for home.

I really enjoyed their trip to London and all the chaos. There's plenty of location shots that were fun to see. It's a nice combo of jokes and slapstick. I enjoyed the heck out of it. I picked up the Kino Lorber Blu-Ray during a sale and it was well worth it. The image is nice. I also enjoyed the commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger. She had lots of info and interesting stuff to say. I'll certainly watch it again someday.

Play It Cool 1962

Play It Cool is a British musical from 1962. Its directed by Michael Winner with a screenplay by Jack Henry. Billy Fury is the singer in a band who are trying to get to Spain for a band contest. They get on the plane but it gets turned back. On board is a rich guy's daughter that the press are hounding. She hooks up with the band for noisy fun at some London nightspots. There's plenty of music but it's dull stuff, man, I can't swing to it. It got fast forwarded through. I don't have time to waste on dull pop songs by people I don't know. It's a comedy but they're short on jokes, what with the music and all. I liked the characters some and that's always a good thing. I'd watch it again someday.