PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 150

I had not seen Latitude Zero before. I am sure I would remember it. It's a 1969 Japanese film with some American actors. There were to be some American producers with some American money but they ran away, leaving Toho with commitments to Joseph Cotton, Ceasar Romero, Richard Jaeckel and Patricia Medina. Toho still made the movie, by cutting the effects budget. We saw the English version of the movie from the recent Tokyo Shock 2 dvd set. There is a Japanese version that is shorter by a bit. You can see some pictures here. It really needs to be seen to be appreciated. It's a mixed bag with all sorts of ideas tossed in one after the other. Kind of like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea versus Master of the World, but with a more modern almost James Bond like touch, and griffins. Two Japanese science guys are joined by an American journalist, Jaeckel, in a diving device. They are lowered deep into the ocean and just as they touch down on the ocean floor an undersea volcano erupts. A wave of water hits them and snaps their life line. Knocked out, our heros, do not see who has come to their rescue. They wake up in a strange place. Turns out to be a 150 year old sub. Sure doesn't look  it's age and neither does Joseph Cotton. He claims to be over 200 years old. He's part of a super secret group that has their own undersea city. I don't know if that's better than the usual underground lair of your super secret organization, being underwater and all, but it's quite the place. The group is collecting the smartest men and women to save and create new knowledge. Ceasar Romero is the bad guy. He has a secret island base, and a submarine with a murderous, shiny leather clad female captain, but no undersea dome with it's own fake sun. He's also a science guy, but an evil one who does brain transplants. He puts the brain of his sub pilot in the body of a lion, and using the wings from a condor, he turns that lion into a griffin. He's given it a solution that magically makes it grow larger in seconds. You can find a picture of it at one of those links above. He's also made man size bats and rats. This is probably where the effects budget cuts really stunk up the house the most. These are not great costumes, still they get the message across. The actors costumes are also in the seen to be believed catagory. It's a slow moving film and all this stuff takes ages to unfold. It seemed like a lot longer than the 108 minute run time. Hours longer. And who knows what happened at the end. Again, must be seen to be believed.

Faster paced but not much better was The Halfway House. Sperhauk found it in the clearance bin at Half Price Books for $1 minus the 20% off sale that was going on. It sounded promising. Troubled girls in a Catholic halfway house with Mary Woronov as Sister Cecelia. Some kind of monster from another dimension ripped off from H P Lovecraft. The reality was it wasn't much better or worse than the average crap they show on the SciFi channel. More boobies. Lot of boobies. Poor monster though. Written and Directed by Kenneth J Hall who created the long lived, and so-so, Puppet Master series and Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout video. These aren't recommendations, more like warnings. Mary, a raped nun with emotional issues, is keeping an old one in the basement of the halfway house. She's feeding it young nearly naked girls. I guess the monster likes to eat panties. Maybe it's like dental floss, get the bimbo out from between his fangs. Anyway, Mary has help from some creepy guy who likes to spy on the girls in the shower. He's got a peep holes. The Priest, while not knowing about the other's strange hobbies, is a spanker. He's always laying on the paddle. To bare bottoms. I tell you this guy doesn't miss a trick getting some nudity into the film. But tricks don't make a good movie. Lot of boobies though. It's debatable if there was 80 cents of movie value. Certainly 80 cents worth of boobies. I somehow don't think I would add it to my collection, maybe for 80 cents, certainly not for full retail.   

Ship Shape

Before the holidays I made some ships from the LEGO set 4097 Mini Robots. I had bought a couple of sets on clearance back around early 2004. I thought I had just gotten one. I was going to put it on eBay and was looking at the parts which were still in the box. There were two instruction booklets in the box and it sure looked like I had two sets of parts there. I need to download an inventory for the set. I tried building robots with the parts back when I got it, but they sucked and I got bored quickly. I was moving into greens and brown and the darker colors, interested in making my own Harry Potter sets, and I wasn't interested in the brightly colored parts very much. I guess I stuffed both sets into the box and tossed it on a shelf, where it sat for the last three years.

Since I had the parts and a couple of hours I decided to build something else with the set. I didn't want to make any robots, so I settled on some space ships, in micro scale. I had liked the Star Wars mini sets that LEGO had out a few years ago. Here's the Mini Millenium Flacon and the first version in Minifig scale.

The one on the left is the mini and it's about 3 inches wide. 87 parts. The Minifig scale ship on the right is about a foot wide and it's got 671 parts. There were a whole bunch of the mini ships in the Star Wars series. Some of them were pretty fun. There's a huge new Millenium Flacon out right now. Cost half a grand and has 5157 parts. It's close to a couple of feet wide.

I wasn't planning to get one or build anything quite that big. I was building little space ships. The first one I built was ok. The rest not as interesting. I wasn't inspired by the parts very much.

 

 

The Bat Out Of Hell Express

Here's my train of the damned. The Bat Out Of Hell Express. It's Death's train.

 

That's him there on the caboose. It's like his own little spot of heaven away from the damned. Hanging out on the platform with your cat, drinking a nice cup of steamin' hot black coffee in a red mug, watchin' the scenery pass. That's Deathkitty, he's from the Holiday train set. I have two other white cats of the same type, but they are a bit older and they don't have painted faces. I have a black one which I don't think is painted. I'd have to go look. LEGO has gotten really good at printing on real small parts. There's another LEGO cat that I don't have. Soon I'll need to get a Bricklink order going and I'll be keeping an eye out for one, or two, or five. I think it comes in more than one color. I might need one of each. Too bad LEGO hasn't made a tabby color cat. I could use a Crookshanks for Harry Potter scenes.

     

Engineer Max is from the Holiday train. Somehow he just seemed to fit right in. I suspect he's been a bad boy, roamin' around the countryside. He looks so happy in his new job. I didn't notice the face on the front of the train until I was taking photographs. It was totally unplanned, a lucky accident, subconsciously born from my love of symmetry. It looks dragon like to me. Maybe that's just wishful thinking. Most of the train was figured out on the fly. Before I started building I was thinking of making a train that wasn't just a regular train. If I wanted a regular train I could build the Holiday train and leave the presents off. I was free associating and remembered the Savoy Brown song Train to Nowhere, which lead me to the same bands Hellbound Train. That put some images in my head. I also figured I wanted to keep it rather dark. Black and red seemed the right combination. I hardly use any of the primary colors in the stuff I want to build. Nice to use some red. Everything on the train is red or black except the wheels and axles, people and animals, lights and chains. I started rooting around and grabbed parts that might go well with the train. Many parts made it into the final mix. Some sad parts got put back into plastic bags and containers. Maybe next time, guys.

I heard Train To Nowhere for the first time on a Winnipeg radio station that had a modern music show in the evening. I think it was called Now Flower. It was 1969 or 1970. I called to find out what that amazing song was. It was like nothing I had heard before. You can hear it on the YouTube link above. The Train to Nowhere video has a great bunch of old music show ads from shows in the UK. I remember a lot of those bands but haven't listened to them in decades. I sold all the Savor Brown albums I had years ago. I quit listening to records in favor of cds. I tired of things and didn't replace many of the records I got rid of. The cover to the Savoy Brown album of the same name has a train on it. It's more your old school train, steam, with a cow catcher, but surrounded by demonic creatures. Who else would live along the road to hell? I wouldn't!

 

I wanted a cow catcher. One with spikes and points. Sharp edges. The kind that cuts you if you aren't careful. And I wanted a bat or two. I managed six. I like the LEGO bats. That's a train window surrounding the bat, same as in the passenger car. I have a bunch of them from the spare Harry Potter train sets I got on clearance. The big long spikey things are from the Harry Potter set 4727 Aragog in the Dark Forest. Somehow I got a bunch of them on you know what. $20 sets for 7 bucks. I wanted the brown and green parts. That set had a lot of each. I also got eight legs in each set. I kept wondering what I was going to do with a quart baggie full of legs. I gotta remember to start stayin' out of stores.

The top of the passenger car has those parts I mentioned yesterday. Black here. They were used as the roof of the engine in the Holiday set and I used some on the caboose. I liked those arched parts and wanted to get some of those worked in there somehow. I decided not to have any tentacles on the passenger car. I did want to use those black rods on the top and the red rods on the side. The roof comes off to see inside. I didn't use any hinges to open up the train to get a closer look. Very common in many sets. I have baggies full of hinges too. The car has room for 6 and two special guests. You can see the guy chained up in the picture below. He bites.

I covered most everything with flat plates called tiles. I like the look of it. I wanted smooth sleek surfaces. Especially on the passenger car. It's a contrast to the engine and the caboose, which I feel reflect their place in the scheme of things. The engine, wild and chaotic power, the caboose, serene and reflective. Days later I almost feel I should build another passenger car, for further distance between the two end cars, but I'm out of the black arches. I used most of my red tiles. I just didn't have that many. I don't know how many pieces I used. I should have been counting as I went along, but sadly, it didn't occur to me until near the end. Close to a thousand. Maybe more. Nine minifigures. I bet it would be a hundred bucks if it was a LEGO set.

 

Here a shot of Deathkitty and his pal.

   

The train to nowhere

Last Saturday I was all fired up to go to the Sunday afternoon LEGO Train show at some church in Edina. That's a suburb to the west. It's 9.88 miles away according to Mapquest. For some reason I had been thinking of making a train. Not to seriously. I'm liking the LEGO trains but it's not a part of the hobby I want to get interested in. Building a layout takes up too much space, just like real model railroading. But, it was on my mind. I had just gotten a LEGO train set from the Mall Of America LEGO store. I had a $10 gift card for the LEGO store and I was planning to buy a Batman Arkham Asylum set. It was on clearance for half price. Sadly, they were all out of the Batman sets. So, I got a train set. There isn't always a large selection of sets I need in the LEGO store clearance section. I don't need Technics sets for any reason that I know of and I successfully keep myself from buying that one little thing. It's sad really. Anyway, I was there with credit burning a whole in my pocket, wanting some parts, and I bought one of the 2006 Holiday themed train sets. It's just four cars. Not motorized. You can buy a motor kit. An engine and a caboose, two freight cars. You can see the presents in one of the flatbed cars, evergreens in another. One of the presents was the three wheeled trike. I like those bikes. Haven't any use for it right now, but who knows. The yellow part there came in black and I sure found a good use for them.

I liked a bunch of the parts from the Batman Arkham Asylum set, too. Lot of dark parts. Since there won't be any more Harry Potter sets I have to rely on my own stock and what ever sets come out with parts and colors I like. If I wasn't so limited in my scope I should be able to build something with yellow or red in it. I wasn't going to keep either, the Batman, or the train set intact. I find I have two catagories for sets. Part of my system. Some I keep whole and store them away for future rebuilding. I kept the Harry Potter sets, Time Twisters, the Ninja sets, and a few here and there I liked. The rest I am keeping are sorted out and used for other projects of my own. Common enough. Recently, I read a page by Chris Doyle, who talked about collecting LEGO, storing LEGO, and the evolution of his work space. It's a nice space, taking up most of the spare bedroom. People I know with lots of stuff will admire the organization. I fail at organization. The God of Order and I don't speak anymore.

Chris's blog lead me to an article on The Evolution of LEGO Sorting by Remy Evard. I was telling Sperhauk, earlier today, that I knew, from experience, what they were talking about. I had sorted my LEGO in various types of storage containers that lent themselves to various systems. From paper to plastic. That's the way I am moving, although I did backtrack for a LEGO storage box that is made from paper. It's very colorfull. The LEGO store was clearancing them out at $10 each, and I got 4. Two are filled with Minifigs and two with Minifig accessories. All sorted out into their little bins. For most everything else, I have baggies which go into containers. Cardboard boxes are free, plastic storage systems cost money. I settled on Target's frequent sales to keep me in Sterilite. I just bought 8 more plastic containers today at Target. They were on sale. Again. There was no good LEGO sets on clearance at the Richfield Target. Again. It's ok. I got a Harry Potter Hogwarts today. It would just be more to sort. Mind you it's always something I seem to get back to. In every part of my life.

Saturday I sorted out the parts for the Holiday Train, along with the two Batman sets I had, putting most of the parts with their brothers and sisters. I have a constantly churning pile of stuff that I keep meaning to sort. Some goes in there. I had a lot of train parts that I wouldn't keep. I already had a bag full of train parts from the spare Harry Potter train sets that I had already parted out. New jargon for ya. I did keep a copy of each of the Harry Potter train sets for my collection. Someday my brother or his kids will let a fortune pass through their hands. I got my first white rabbit from this train set. And Engineer Max and this nice looking lady in the blue jacket.

Sunday rolls around. I have some train parts and I am thinkin' about going to a train show. Maybe I can get some ideas. Kind of spark my interest. I don't mind borrowing an idea for a different use for a part. Sometimes that idea can turn into a new idea. So, I head off to the show, even thought it's been snowing for hours. It's not too bad I tell myself. I made it a quarter of the way and it took nearly a half hour. I stopped at a grocery for some supplies and headed home. I shoveled some snow and settled back into the house with a nice cup of tea. Sittin' there I figured I could build my own damn train. To hell with the weather. It's getting late and I need to get some snooze time in. More on the train tomorrow.

Toy R Us sucks

I went to Toy R Us on the way to lunch. Looking for any post holiday mark downs. Big sign in the window yelling about Clearance items inside. I was surprised to find the LEGO Hogwarts Castle set, until I looked at the price. $105, which was a fin higher than the price before Christmas. I had seen them there just 3 weeks ago at $100. I complained to a manager and after bitching a while they marked it down 5 bucks. I hate crap like that, raising prices before the holidays. Manager lady said that it probably was the MSRP, but I said that LEGO priced the set at 90 bucks and their price was higher than that before they jacked it up for the holidays. I didn't tell her that there just aren't many left to buy anymore.  I've seen reseller selling them on Amazon for $130 plus.

Toys R Us has been slowly raising the prices of their LEGO for a while. Used to be that LEGO was the same price all over. We used to joke about price fixing. I heard Toy R US had been hurting sales wise and I figured they were using that to sweeten the bottom line. I rarely shop there, cruising the shelves for sales and clearance items. Not much of either so far this year. Why shop TRU when you can buy the same set at the LEGO Store for cheaper.

Target on the other hand had several sets on clearance but I wasn't as interested in the Exo-Force sets, which seemed to be all they had. Not many LEGO sets left at the Burnsville Target at all. The Target near my house has the City Airport set for $56, marked down from $80. I don't need a plane, I'd rather buy another Holiday train at the LEGO Store, some interesting parts in there.

Friday Night Movies 149

We watched the new Futurama movie Bender's Big Score. It's an 89 minute episode that has some good jokes. It made me laugh out loud a few times. It looks great, lots of 3-D animation, so if the Zapp Brannigan jokes aren't going your way, at least you've got the fun action and scenery to look at. The movie opens with the Professor explaining that some idiots over at the Box Network cancelled their delivery licence a couple of years ago and he just forgot to fire everyone. Just as the staff are all kicked into the street the Box people call and renew their contract. Back to work. The first delivery is to the nude beach planet. Everyone goes to celebrate getting their jobs back and we are treated to the first of a long series of shots of man ass. Fry's ass gets exposed at the nude beach and it turns out he has a tattoo of Bender's head on his right buttock. The tattoo reveals the secret of time travel. During all these goin's on there are a trio of nude aliens who swindle the Professor out of Planet Express and the rest of the Earth people out of their planet. Having that wealth just seems to whet their naked appetite and they use time travel to steal from the past. There's a hitch to this E ticket ride, it's only one way. Bender is sent into the past to steal. You can imagine how excited he would be. He loves his stealin'. Bender then waits in the caverns below Planet Express for thousands of years and brings the aliens their gleefully gotten gains. It's amazing he lasted so long, after making the trip dozens of times. The other main story is Fry's unreturned love of Leela. You can read more about it over at Wiki link above. They also mention that this movie and 3 others will be chopped up and run as a 16 episode season at Comedy Central. Better to see it as a feature. It mostly works pretty well and something is bound to be cut with all the credits needed for four episodes.

Gorgo is a 1961 British movie with a giant monster in it. Big monster fans here at FNM. The monster isn't very good but the story isn't bad. Some treasure hunters have some trouble at sea and pull their crippled boat into a harbor in Ireland. They are treated coldly and sent packing by the man in charge. Stuck! Lucky for them, they get first hand knowledge of the monster. They strike a deal with the head man, who's also running a salvage operation on a thousand year old Viking ship sunk just of the bay, to get rid of the monster. Instead of killing the monster they capture it and take it back to London. It's to be displayed at a circus. Some photographer snaps a flash shot and the monster gets excited and kills some people. It's recaptured and put into it's cage. There's some talk and stuff, then the science guys drop the bombshell, the 65 foot tall Gorgo is a baby. The mom could be 200 feet high. And pissed off. Of course she runs over, just about everything in her way, and rescues her baby. There's plenty of collateral damage, including Big Ben and the Tower Bridge. Mom can't move down the street without crushing some of the local terrified citizens. She strolls through their houses and pushs the buildings aside like they were stalks of wheat. It has a happy ending as mom and baby swim off to sea. I have always been a fan of these low budget monster films. They used it on MST3K. I hadn't seen it for a while. It not a great dvd but the picture, while slightly green at times, was pretty good.

LEGO Users Group

I went to my first TWINLug meeting. That's the name of the local group that just started meeting about three months ago. This was the 4th meeting. Sunday 1-4:45 pm in the Rondo Community Library on the corner of University and Dale, in St Paul. That used to be a pretty bad corner. The previous business on the site was the Faust Entertainment Complex. It was a porno palace, with strippers, video booths, full size theater, books and magazines, the whole 9 yards. That was the area that those business were centered in. Eventually the city kicked them out and cleaned up the area. I used to stop over in that area in the early 90's and hit all the Chinese video stores looking for Hong Kong movies. Most places just charged a buck a tape for a day or two. I hadn't been over there for years, except to drive through on University Avenue.

The meeting is mostly informal. People sitting about. I brought some small vignettes that I had build to show off. A guy named Kyle brought a robot. Mecha is very popular in the LEGO world. I used to be interested but hadn't built any robots in ages. The new bricks that come with the Mecha inspired sets lend themselves to better robots. A guy, who's name I forgot, brought a nice castle MOC. MOC = My Own Creation. New jargon to learn, just like any hobby. I'll tell you about SNOT later.

Friday Night Movies 148

I had to pick up Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this week. In order to spread my money out a bit farther I have been avoiding new release tuesday for the last year. I find I have most of the older movies that I want, and I don't mind waiting for many of the new popular movies to drop in price, which happens much faster these days. Target often has movies for under 8 bucks within the year. They had the 4 pack of the Lethal Weapon series on sale for 9 bucks, not a single movie but a 4 pack, on two double sided discs, the first three of which were the director's cuts. I had been interested in seeing them. I have a nice box set of the regular dvd's. I will get rid of that and keep the director's cuts, which take up one fourth the space. All for a sawbuck, when not on sale. There are several of these multimovie packs out there, getting cheaper. Nice.

I just noticed that Amazon has a bit of a peak at the J. K. Rowling book The Tales of Beedle the Bard. It's a book that features heavily in the last Harry Potter book. Rowling made 7 of these hand written books, 6 of which were given to people that she wanted to thank for being there during the writing of the series. The other sold at Sotheby's for 1,950,000 British Pounds. Money goes to charity. www.amazon.com/beedlebard

Anyway, I didn't want to wait for Harry to get cheaper. Who would? I picked up a copy at BestBuy. I shop at their flagship store, which just happens to be along the way home. You can see their world headquarters just down the freeway. That was a local scandal several years ago, the city of Richfield forcing some skanky old car lots off the land and plunking BB down there. Remember my old boss, the mayor who got turned into a statue? He was right in there, waving the iron fist of blight, and pokin' their asses with the sword of eminent domain. "They're takin' our land!" Yeah, they are. I don't hold it against them. Any of them, they are just doin' what comes natural. Kickin' people off their land is a human tradition. Ages old. I don't think we need to single out any group here. You have to watch them all. Business men, whata ya' gonna do? Politicians need to watch them, then we need to watch the politicians. Someone isn't doing their job here.

The marketing people at Warner Brothers are doing their jobs. They have many ways to buy Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. There is a single disc version, with just the movie, in widescreen and full screen. A 2 disc Special Edition with the movie and a disc of extras. There is a Best Buy exclusive with a mask and some cards. It seems to have the 2 disc Special Edition pack inside the sealed box. There are Blu-ray and HD dvd's and a 5 year box set in regular, HD and Blu-ray. Target has an exclusive wiggle picture on the box of their copies. When I was heading home it was about noon. I had the afternoon off and after stopping to pick up a copy I got home, made some lunch, and sat back to watch the movie for the third time. I  had seen it over at the Mall of America's theater and a month or so ago at The Riverview. The latter is our local second run theater. It's $3 for most shows with $2 shows before 6 pm. It's a nice place that I don't go visit very often. I used to go there once or twice a week.

Now I'm having lunch and I got the movie on and I am digging it all over again. I watched all the extras. There are additional scenes, one of which is a great long goofy bit by Emma Thompson. She's Professor Trelawny. There's a featurette on the series, and one on editing a scene. You can edit a simple scene and replace the music. That's kind of lame. There is a nice bit by Natalia Tena where she takes us on a behind the scenes tour of the studio. She's pretty fun. I like her Tonks.

I watched the movie again Wednesday, along with the first disc of the new Disney Treasures Disneyland DVD. Some interesting stuff going on during the building of Disneyland. Walt died Dec 15, in 1966. I used to enjoy him on the tv when I was a youngster. I still enjoy him, but not as much as I enjoy Harry Potter. So, tonight was the 5th viewing. I'm getting caught up to the other's in the series. I've been watching the first four once or twice a year. I think HPATOOTP has become my favorite of the series, or it ties with Harry Potter and the Prisoner Of Azkaban. I think the new script writer, Michael Goldenberg, did a good job. He managed to capture the feel of the book, and the main forward movement, quite well. It's a massive book, lots to see, lots to cut out. I rarely miss much out of the books. This is the first movie where I really do miss a scene from the book.

After Mr. Weasley is attacked in the Ministry everyone goes to see him at St Mungo's magical hospital. Looking for a coffee Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny all meet Gilderoy Lockhart in the stairwell. He's wondered out of the long term care ward. A nurse thinks they are visiting him. Too embarassed to say different they all follow her into the ward. Gilderoy's still pretty out of it, but he's learned joined up writing, and he's still signing autographs. He just doesn't know why. Nice. A good fitting end for that faker. It nicely juxtiposes with the real story of the ward. Just as they are turning to leave Ron spots Neville Longbottom and his grandmother. They are visiting his parents, which is something Neville hasn't talked about to the other kids. His parents were mentally damaged, beyond repair, by Bellatrix LeStrange. Neville's grandmother is delighted to meet everyone, and I have always been delighted to meet Neville's grandmother. She's great in the last book. In the fifth book she spills the beans about Neville's parents to everyone. Harry had already known, but he'd been asked to keep it to himself. The other's are shocked. It adds a new layer to Neville. People questioned timid Neville being put into Gryffindor, the house of bravery, but as the series developes you do see he belongs there. It's a nice touching scene that I wished had made it into the movie. I'm slowly putting together all the parts I need to build the scene in LEGO. Neville's grandmother's hat will be a challenge.

There's so much to like about this movie. Thestrals, Luna Lovegood, the great battles at the Ministry, and feeling good about hating Delores Umbridge. She's worse than Voldemort. Hooray for the Centaurs! And hooray for Harry leading the DA classes and Ginny changing the Hall of Prophecies to the Hall of Broken Glass with her Reducto curse. Now there's a girl who can kick your ass. You occasionally see a glimpse of her face as Harry chases after Cho Chang. So sad, but we don't have to worry about Ginny. It's a great looking film by David Yates. Dark and moody with bursts of color. He's directing the next film. Hope he stays on for the last. I enjoyed Nicolas Hooper's score. His IMDb page says he's done a bunch of British TV, much of it with David Yates. He's doing music for the next film, too.

Our second movie had a bit of action but the effects were pretty poor at times. The Monster That Challenged The World is a 1957 giant mollusk movie with a lot of marine secretions. Slime to you non-nautical types. It all takes place at and near the Salton Sea. Some mollusk's get some radiation on them and set up house keeping in a fissue in the bottom of the sea. The monster doesn't look quite that menacing and the story lags a bit. The monsters get into the canal system. Some folks are eaten. Some science guys, headed by Hans Conried, help the Navy get rid of the monsters. There's even a bit of romance, and a pregnant woman looses her husband. Sad. Life goes on. Hopefully without giant sea creatures coming to eat you.   

Friday Night Movies 147

There were a plethoria of mouldy oldies about tonight and I'm not talkin' about what was watchin' the tv but what was on the tv. Our choices included all sorts of monsters, some of them, as old as us. You'll hear more about the rest in the weeks to come. We picked Sneaky Robots and Murderous Martians to amuse us tonight. The Creation of the Humanoids and It! The Terror From Beyond Space. An unlikely pair brought together by fate and a 20% off sale at DVDPlanet. That's the beauty of movie night, there's often a real variety of choices, that, and not knowing if you're going to be delighted or poleaxed. And speaking of such, I am more delighted than whacked on the noggin with Shangri-la, the Jackie Chan album I am listening to. It's Chinese pop from 1986. I guess I have gotten used to Jackie singing in his movies 'cause this sounds pleasant to my ears. It's kind of bland, I have to admit, but I'm not going to listen to it all the time. I'm guessing it's mostly love songs, some of which are in English. I actually like the Chinese language songs better. Most of them are peppier. English for the love ballads. Doesn't Jackie look cute there in his red outfit. He was 34 then. He'd had a nice string of hit movies. The year before this album he made Police Story which made me a fan. I had just rewatched the latest Police Story movie New Police Story over the weekend. It's out in a two movie set with Jet Li's Black Mask for a fairly low price. I found one on sale for 10 or 12 bucks. I don't remember where. I forget a lot.

I could not remember seeing The Creation of the Humanoids from the title. Turns out I  have an ep copy on an old MST3K tape. It's not on my master watched movie list for some reason. Mind you that list is pretty incomplete. Once we got watching it I remembered The Cragis, played by Don Megowan, who also played The Gill Man (on land) in The Creature Walks Among Us. That's the guy who might be the hero if this movie had such a thing. It's hard to even like the guy. Maybe it was that robot guy who was the hero, or the mad scientist. In this 1962 version of a post apoca-future robots are being manufactured to do men's jobs, and some of the robots are human like. But not too human, only 70 percent allowed. There is an anti-robot movement, who have the worst costumes, swaggering about the streets, lording it over the citizens, and thumbing their nose at the police. Some citizens are ok with the robots and a bunch of those are in rapport with their robots. Mentally connected human and robot have a relationship. Not long ago I read something on MSNBC about robots companions being available in the near future. Even for sex they speculated. I could see it. So does this writer from the 60's. Secretly the robots are building near human robots, an illegal 96%, to infiltrate the human world. The Cragis, a leader in The Order of Flesh and Blood, discovers the robot's plot the same day he finds out his sister has gone into rapport with a robot. Betrayed by his own flesh and blood he visits his sister to demand she stop doing that. He insults her robot, but Pax can't be offended, it isn't programmed into him. The sister's friend stops by and falls in love with The Cragis. He too is smitten with the curvatious, yet slim, blonde. They talk all night and press their faces together. It was hard to watch. At 4 am there is an ironic surprise. I won't tell you. You can see the trailer here.

It! The Terror From Beyond Space didn't live up to it's title. The monster came from Mars. The first expedition that lands gets wiped out but for Marshall Thompson. He gets rescued and the crew thinks he killed everyone for their lunch. They load him on board their ship, along with an unseen passenger, and head back to earth. After that it's like the low budget Alien of 1958. The crew gets picked off one at a time. They fight back but the creature, who looks pretty bad, is nigh indestructible. They blast it with nuclear power, electricity, bullets, hand grenades and even a bazooka round. Nothing. Flame keeps it at bay for a time. Now the crew believes Marshall didn't kill those people. The truth hurts. The story was written by Jerome Bixby. I have liked some of his science fiction in book form. Here's some pictures, an introduction to the movie by The Film Crew, a trailer, more pictures, and the whole movie. It's only 69 minutes, let me know what you think.

My Neighbor Totoro

I just wanted to mention again what a wonderful movie My Neighbor Totoro is. I was looking at some blog that I hadn't been to for a time. They had a couple of pictures of a Totoro pumpkin.

That lead me to the Wiki page on the movie. One of the links at the bottom of the page was Roger Ebert's review from 2001. It's a good review. Ebert likes this beautiful world as much as I do. Too bad we can't live there. People, what'a ya gonna do. Watch the film again. It's like comfort food. I was just watching Hide-Out with Robert Montgomery. He's one of my favorite actors, and here in this 1934 comedy he's a gangster on the lam. He gets shot and is taken in by a farm family in a small town. Not too far from New York, where he was in the protection racket. He falls in love with Maureen O'Sullivan, the farmer's daughter, who falls back. Unfortunately, he's got the great Edward Arnold after him. Arnold and the always enjoyable Edward Brophy are New York City cops working the rackets. Mickey Rooney is an enthusiastic kid. It's directed by W. S. Van Dyke, who's previous film was The Thin Man. He'd direct 90 films when he was done, some pretty good ones. Hide-Out ended happy, even though Robert had to go to jail for 18 months, and I put the new English dub of My Neighbor Totoro from Disney on the tv. I still like the English dub of the Fox version and I also watch the Japanese version. I mix them up. The Fox dvd is not widescreen, the Disney version is and on top of that it sure looks darn good. I love that cat bus.