PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Lassie Buries A Body

For some reason I decided to tape some Lassie movies the other day. They were running a bunch of them on Turner Classic Movies. I got three on one tape. I wasn't too interested in keeping them, so why waste the dvd. I also recorded a couple of movies onto a dvdr. I though the last movie in this post might be good. I watched the tape first and finally got to the dvdr today.

First up was Son of Lassie from 1946. This was a sequel to Lassie Come Home but Lassie is only seen briefly at the start of the movie and again at the end. Mostly we see Laddie, the untrainable pup, and his owner Peter Lawford, who's dad is a dog breeder for a rich guy. They are working with the army to train some dogs for war. Laddie isn't doing a good job at his training. Peter is off to the Air Force and his pal has to stay home. Guess who shows up at the air base forty miles away. Yep. Laddie. He gets taken back and escapes again. Damn, that's a determined dog. He sneaks on a plane to be with Peter and they have to parachute into Germany when it's shot down. Peter is hurt and Laddie goes and gets some Germans to help him. Oops! Damn Dog. Seperated the man and dog make their way through the German countryside. Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada fills in for where ever they are supposed to be. Laddie keeps looking for signs of his master and Peter gets caught and escapes a time or two. Laddie keeps getting people into trouble. Some poor guy had hidden Peter and sent him on his way when Laddie shows up. After hiding the dog from the Germans, Laddie gives him away, and the guy gets blasted for his kindness. Then Laddie gets Peter caught by the German guy who is following the dog. He knows the dog is a British War Dog and thinks Laddie will lead him to his master. Yep, he does. Laddie saves Peter when the training he had been fighting kicks in. He bites the German. Finally. Good Dog! Eventually the pair get back to England and the movie is over. Don't need to see that one again. That Laddie was a real fuck up, getting that resistance guy killed like that. And as little of Lassie as we see in this movie the next movie has about as much Lassie as Zorro's Black Whip has Zorro. That is to say, none.

Courage of Lassie was a bit better as a movie, mostly from the presence of Frank Morgan and Elizabeth Taylor. She's the young gal that finds Bill, a lost pouch who had been seperated from his litter when he was a bit younger. Liz takes care of him and Frank trains him up to be a sheepdog. Bill gets shot by accident and some truckers take him to a vet. The vet turns him over to the War department and they turn him into a fighting dog named Duke. He sees some wicked shit and gets crazy. He sent back to the States. Duke escapes the War Dog Training Center and makes his way home to Liz where he becomes Bill again. He eats some farm animals on the way and the towns people are up in arms. Frank, after finding the War Dog tattoo on the dog, calls the Training Center and gets the dog's story. He gives an impassioned speech about the returning war vetran and their troubles adjusting to civilian life that choked me up. And he's not just talking about a dog here either. Sadly we aren't doing it much better 50 years later. Some shit never changes, huh.  Great preformance by Frank Morgan. I always enjoy him. You might remember him as the Wizard of OZ. Liz was a pretty young gal and a good actress in 1946 when this third Lassie movie came out. Worth watching but I don't think I need a copy. There would be four more Lassie pictures at MGM.

The Sun Comes Up is a weird one. Lassie doesn't do much here, he's just the catalyst for death and rebirth. Jeanette MacDonald stars as a singing star, and there's a lot of singing, certainly more than I needed. After a performance Jeanette and her son are heading for the chauffer driven car where the boy's dog Lassie waits. Lassie leaves the car and the boy, thinking the dog will get run over, runs right under the wheels of a passing truck. Cut to mom in bed, where she's been for the last few months. Her doctor recommends getting out of the house. She's guilt tripped into taking Lassie with her on a road trip in her car. She winds up down south somewhere. Percy Kilbride plays the owner of the town grocery store. You might have seen him as Pa Kettle in the Ma and Pa Kettle series. He was in a few other movies too. Margaret Hamilton, the wicked witch of the west, plays a local lady who likes a pinch of snuff now and again. Claude Jarman, Jr, who starred as the kid in The Yearling, plays an orphan boy from the local orphanage. He had a short career in the movies. Lloyd Nolan plays the handsome guy with a pipe. The country air and life style breaks down through the layers of guilt and reserve that Jeanette has been hiding behind and she gets her a new son and maybe a beau on top of that. Lassie has hardly anything to do in this tear soaked melodrama. Not unhappy I saw it but it wasn't much of a Lassie movie. I don't think I need to see this one again. I did enjoy Percy and his fountain of wisdom, but he's no Frank Morgan.

Off the Record, which isn't a Lassie film, has a similar theme. Joan Blondell is a reporter for a newspaper. She digs out a story about kids working for gangsters. They beat up kids who use slugs in pinball machines. The kid in the movie had been following in his gangster brothers footsteps. The brother is pegged to be the fall guy when the heat from the article lights the mothers of the town into exploding with a demand that the local authorities do something about this deplorable situation. The brother gets 5 years and the kid gets sent to reform school. Joan, feeling responsible, decides to quit her job and marry Pat O'Brien so they can adopt the kid. It goes pretty well. They get the kid a job on the paper where he turns out to be a good press photographer. The brother escapes and gets some money from kid. The brother wants revenge and the kid tries to stop him but gets slapped down for hte effort. The brother and the boss die in the shootout. The kid has a spot of trouble and he gets shot. It all turns out ok in the end with the kid, Joan and Pat all a family. Not much of a comedy with all the melodrama in there.

Joan Blondell is in the second movie I recorded off TCM the other day. Three Girls About Town seemed like it had some potential. It has  no Lassie in it, but it's where the body comes in. Joan could have used Lassie's help in getting rid of the body that she finds in the hotel where she and her sister are working as Convention Hostesses. The manager is Robert Benchley, whom I always adore, and some guy with a mustashe is Joan's love interest. He wants her to marry him so they can have a family, but she wants to keep working so she can send her third sister to private school. The stiff is going to get the hotel in trouble and she's already got some trouble from the local spinsters who think the girls are loose women seducing their husbands with a rolicking good time. A group of magicians is just leaving the hotel as the movie starts and they are being replaced by a convention of morticians. There are lots of gags and the movie is easily the best of this lot. The gals drag the body around the hotel, and it's much more fun than a weekend with Bernie, while all sorts of things are going on. There's one mad cap antic after another. The third sister shows up and tries to steal mustashe guy away from Joan. He's not having any part of it. There are lots of great supporting character actors whom I did not know but still enjoyed. I enjoy a good screwball comedy and this was a good one. It ends with a happy ending and that's A-ok with me. Well worth a gander. Good joke at the end with the dead guy. Made me laugh.

Micropolis Central Station by Erik (eti) Smit

That's the main building to Erik's new train station. His LEGO group LowLUG is having a group Micropolis build soon. I hope they have some fun and we get to see the pictures. I liked his station and the backside is nice too. Check it out on his Flickr page. I like the big tree you can't see here and the headlight bricks used as windows in the roof. Nice. The clock works well there. I just got a whole huge pile of those clocks recently. More than I can ever use.

Science Fiction Sunday 47

I was diggin' through the dvdr's for something to watch this morning after laundry and vittle shoppin'. I was looking in the b's. My copy of The Black Hole came from Turner Classic Movies. I don't think it's something that I would buy on dvd, unless it was a couple of bucks, and you rarely see Disney dvd's that cheap. The version on TCM is letterboxed and looks ok enough for me. I'm sort of thinking a better copy might make the special efffects look poorer. Even though they are Academy Award winning effects they don't look too good by todays standards. The movie came out 30 years ago and was Disney's big buck attempt to cash in on the science fiction craze that was just starting. Now all these years later science fiction has been sucked into the mainstream. I kind of liked it when it was in the gutter but that's neither here nor there, huh. TBH has lots of movie stars to make up for the lack of great story. It's just a group of space scientists played by Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster and Yvette Mimieux finding a ship from the past floating near a black hole. Ernest Borgnine captains their ship with a couple of other guys and a robot. Maximilian Schell is on board the old ship, he's the only survivor, and he's a bit potty. He's packed the place with robots to take the place of the dead crew. The robots are a mixture of fair to poor in their execution. Some are obviously people under the suits. The crews pal V.I.N.C.E.N.T. is really annoying in a comic relief machine kind of way, even if he is a good shot with a blaster. They find an older model, called Old B.O.B. who's all banged up and being pushed aside by the new generation of whipper-snappers. The space guys want Schell to return to Earth but he's got it in his mind to go through the black hole and see what's on the other side. He's got a major domo robot, named Maximilian, that acts all large and in charge. Here's an interesting comment from a guy on the IMDb that talks about the robot and the ending of the movie. I didn't understand the ending. Very metaphorical. Who needs that shit. Life's too short.

The Devil and Maximillian by ozscript (from the IMDb) 

I've just watched this movie for the first time, so this is pretty speculative.

I read Maximillian as the devil. Whatever else he is, however he was created, he represents the evil that Reinhart bargained with to create his technological, frankensteinian paradise.

This is a Disney film, so the imagery is not that subtle. Notice that Maximillian is red. He's clearly different from the other robots (and robotocized crew). He's working with Reinhart, even following Reinhart's orders, but Reinhart is afraid of him: "Protect me from Maximillian."

Although Maximillian appears to be Reinhart's servant, he seems to always have his own agenda. He wants Reinhart to enter the black hole (presumably, he knows what's waiting for him there). He attacks the intruders who threaten that goal. But, when Reinhart is dying, and begs for help, Maximillian clearly looks--and then looks away--turning his back on his "master." Now that they are finally headed into the black hole, Reinhart has served his purpose. His life doesn't matter anymore. All Maximillian wants is his soul.

This, to me, also explains the ending. In hell, Maximillian catches up with Reinhart, and takes what is rightfully his. The final sequences seem to be a pretty clear homage to Kubrick's 2001 (albeit with a heavy dose of Christian symbolism). Maximillian "ingests" Reinhart, and Reinhart is treated to the hellish punishment that best fits his sin (a la Dante's Inferno). Like the crew, his mind is now helplessly trapped forever inside a robot's body. And Maximillian is the victor--the devil gets his due.

As for Kate, Vincent, and company, it's unclear what happens. In what is most likely an effort to appear "deep," the film gets rather muddled and confusing. After being guided by an angel out of hell (more Christian symbolism), are they witnessing sunrise in a new universe? Are they seeing the black hole being reborn as a new star (I'm sure that's bad science, but it seems like a plausible reading of the imagery)? Or did they simply make it back home? In any case, Maximillian has no claim on them. The good are rewarded; the evil are punished. The morality play wraps up very neatly. It is Disney, after all.

And that sure doesn't make it great, which really is the reason that I wouldn't buy a copy. The movie also reminds me of Forbidden Planet but that movie is so much better in every way. That's a movie that is worth buying and watching again and again. I like stories you can understand, like my next selection.

I have the The Black Scorpion on a dvdr that I had made from a tape copy from AMC when Bob Dorian still introduced the movies. It looks pretty good for what it is. Richard Denning and Carlos Ravis are scientists investigating volcanos. One explodes and creates a mountain. A crevise forms and some giant scorpions get out. They kill people and cattle. On the way to take in the new volcano our heroes stop to see what happened at a house. They find a wrecked police car and rescue a baby. Some big hat wearing vaqueros are fearful for their lives but the beautiful land owner Mara Corday sweet talks them back to doom work. Luckily, only a few are killed by the giant scorpions. The two docs do some spelunkin' with a troublesome kid. There is a nest of the buggers down below. They blow the mountain but a few giants escape and head for Mexico city. After attacking a train and eating all the people the scorpions turn on each other and the big one kills all the rest. In the city the military lures the big guy with a truck full of cow carcasses and kills him. During all the hectic activity Richard Denning and Maria Corday fall in love. Giant scorpions always make me hot. I have always liked Richard Denning, who's also in The Creature From The Black Lagoon, he usually does a good job. He's fine here, and so are the rest of the cast, except for that annoying kid. The animated scorpions are a mixed bag. Designed by Willis O'Brien of King Kong fame and animated by Pete Peterson. The movement and sets varies from good to fair, not too unusual for a low budget 50's monster movie. They over use a shot of the creature. The camera zooms in to the monster, the music goes nuts and the drool streams out of the creature's mouth. It's not a very good shot. The rest of the movie is much better. It's not the best of it's era but it's still fun.

LEGO Toy Story

I picked this picture off of the Eurobricks site. It's the display at the D23 convention. I hadn't seen the larger brick versions of Buzz or Zurg. They look pretty fun, though Zurg seems a bit slim in the torso. D23 is an official Disney convention. They have a D23 site that has lots of activities but the only reason I go there is they have some comic strips running. There's a Mickey Mouse strip, a Donald Duck strip and a Scamp strip. They are all daily newspaper strips, they started at the beginning of their runs, and they have been at it for 6 months. I've saved them all so far. But this isn't about Mickey and the gang, it's about Woody and the gang. I saw some pics of the minifigs on The Brothers Brick a bit ago.

They have some neat new parts and colors. People are already excited over the army uniforms. I like the minifigs, especially Zurg, and the donkey. The martian looks great too. There are also the Prince of Persia and Car tie-ins coming. The first sounds interesting, there's an ostrich and a camel, and some nice new costumes.

Friday Night Movies 237

I don't know if it was one of those harmonic convergences you hear about or just a daft bit of luck but tonight both our selections turned out to be entertaining, especially our second feature. Both Joe and Sperhauk had films from Netflix, and each had the others movie in their queues. I guess that's NetFlix for ya.

I hadn't heard of Onechanbara Bikini Samurai Squad before. It's based on a Japanese video game set in a world where zombies are over running the place and killing the living for snacks. The zombies move slowly but have super fast kung fu skills when there's a meal to be had. Our heroine Aya is a troubled young lady with a tragic past. But then again, the current zombie fest doesn't bode well for anyone. Anyone except the doctor who created the zombie horde with his genetic experiments that is. What a dick guys like that are, ruining everything with their selfish desires. He's still at it in his odd shaped building, screwing with people. He's the man responsible for the death of Aya's father. Aya's teamed up with a tubby yakky guy who doesn't look like the end of the world kept him from eating well. He talks all the time and runs screaming when there's a fight. He only has a knife. We all guessed he hadn't gotten enough game points to get a sword yet. They are joined by a gal with a magical shotgun that never needs reloading. Unlike our heroine she isn't wearing a bikini. So far there isn't much of a bikin squad. At least that fat guy isn't wearing a bikini. They run about and meet up with a never ending supply of the undead. There are a few lulls in the action for some introspective backstory. Turns out they all have it against the doctor, and Saki, his schoolgirl uniform wearin', sword tottin' sidekick. In one of those melodramatic backstory moments we find out that Saki is Aya's little sister. Saki was passed over for her dad's favorite and she, feeling spurned, burns her bridges behind her by running off with the doctor and slashing her dad a good one while Aya watches in the bushes unnoticed. They have some sucky life huh. There's lots of zombie killin' and rushing about. Swords flash and shotguns blast. Fatty gets his ownback when he finally gets enough points to pick up a sword and finish off the evil doctor. Sadly shotgun gal doesn't make it. I bet if she had worn a bikini she might have lived. Naughty schoolgirl Saki doesn't fair too well getting sliced into nothingness by the finally avenged Aya. Her and yakky head into the sunset ready to kick some more zombie ass. Certainly more entertaining than many video game adaptations but not an entertaining as our second feature.

Pineapple Express stars Seth Rogan and James Franco as a couple of pot heads who have a big adventure. You might have seen the two guys come into their own since they worked together on Freaks and Geeks back some years ago. Rogan also co-wrote the screenplay that was directed by David Gordon Greene, a director of some movies I haven't seen. Seth witnesses a murder. Gary Cole and Rosie Perez are the bad guys and they done the murder. Seth runs to James, the pot dealer that he's only known for 2 and a half months, and brings a shitstorm of trouble to that poor sap. Gary finds a roach that was tossed into the street where Seth was parked and he recognizes the weed. It's pineapple express, and Gary only sold some to Red, who only sold some to James. Oh, oh. That's a darn easy trail to follow. Seth and James start running and pretty much don't stop. There's a lot of physical comedy sandwiched in between the life threatening situations. Mostly only bad guys get slaughtered, especially near the end when there is a massive shootout at the secret underground lair that Gary grows his bud in. It blows up real good. I thought it was a non-stop laugh riot with lots of fun stuff going on. It'll be 7 bucks at Target before too long. I'd certainly pick one up when I see it.

Zorro, The Masked Avenger

With the MocOlympics taking up so much time of late I haven't had much time to blog about anything at all. I got a bye the first round and lost the second round to Dave Kaleta. He had a cooler entry that the judges picked. Now I don't have to worry about the contest anymore and I can work on the stuff I wanted to make for the comic convention next month. Hopefully we are having a table there.

Worked in with the LEGO were all sorts of distracting events going on in the last couple of weeks. The MocOlympics generated over 2800 emails from the comments section in the last three to four weeks, and there was some drama that luckily passed quickly. Then there was the various Pick-A-Brick finds and last thursday there were grab bags in the LEGO store. So there was a massive wave of new parts coming in to sort and none of which I could use in the MocOlympics. Last thursday was also the first day of the Half Price Books 20% off sale. I went to a store that day and another on sunday and a third on the monday holiday. I got a bunch of nice books to read and several movies to watch.

One of the dvd sets was a 3 disc Zorro serial collection. Monday I watched one of the serials and today I watched the other two and the bonus feature. Zorro Rides Again is a 1937 serial with John Carroll. It's set in the modern day of the time, people have cars, and Zorro is the the great-grandson of the original. He has to help some people with a mine and there's a railroad. There's plenty of ridin' and shootin' with cliff hangers every chapter but the last. Not too bad, but hardly the Zorro I grew to like as a kid. I mean the Disney version with Guy Williams. That tv series is scheduled to come out in November. Both seasons at one time. I'm looking forward to that.

Zorro's Flying Legion is a 1939 serial that is set in the time of Zorro. Some guy wants to take over Mexico and become Emperor. He has a suit of gold and keeps the local Indians in line by pretenting to be a God. What a dick. He has people shot with golden arrows too. They believe him and Zorro has to convince them to stand up to their tin god and obtain their freedom. Zorro is joined by masked men who help out. I guess if one Zorro is good, many are mighty. Not as good a production as the other two, but more like Zorro should be.

Zorro's Black Whip is a 9144 serial that doesn't even have Zorro in the movie. He's not even mentioned in the movie. Some guy is a Zorro clone called the Black Whip. He's killed in the first chapter and his sister takes over the fight for statehood. She gets help from an undercover agent. Some bad guys want to keep the place a territory. No law = do what you want. It's 1889 Idaho in the movie and they use the telephone a lot. No cars though, which is good, but that doesn't make up for the lack of Zorro. There is a lot of whipping and mostly it's a good story.

The Bold Caballero is a 1936 film. The first talkie Zorro. It's more traditional and ok. A bit short at 68 minutes but it has all the elements of a Zorro story. Swords and horses and saving the day. All told a nice addition to a pretty good package, especially for 8 bucks plus tax. Glad that I picked it up. They are fun enough to watch again.

Friday Night Movies 236

Greg bought a whole bunch of movies from one of his customers. He brought a grocery bag of crap for us to pick from. We picked two, perhaps the worse two. We might never know if we avoid the rest of the bag.

Marronnier is a Japanese film from 2004. Sperhauk said he liked the writer Junji Ito, who also created the Manga for Uzamaki. I wasn't a big fan of the movie adaptation. Just not my cup of tea. The director of Marronnier is Akira Kobayashi, who also wrote, edited, composed and did all the post production work. The IMDb doesn't list any more movies for him. That's a good thing, if only he had not made this one. I joked as we sat through this dismal, disjointed, and highly over indulgent piece of crap that some one would give it ten stars on the IMDb, where it scores an average of 3.5, and low and behold there are two people who gave it ten stars. Unbelievable. Of course most slammed it with a couple of stars or less. That would be me, one star, and only because that's the lowest. If only there was a lower rating, say a slap in the face or a foot in the ass, I'd have picked that. The story makes nearly no sense, most of it's not explained and there aren't really any likeable characters. There's some gore but it's mostly unpleasant. The score sucks big time. The music comes in short bursts like the scenes, and often seems to have nothing to do with the pictures. It's like Kobayashi found a cd of free music samples and randomly selected a bit for each scene. You couldn't call it a score without insulting all other scores by using the name. The editing and shooting style of the movie are hard to watch and it's boring on top of that. There's absolutely no reason to watch this film. None. The end.

Patrick started out a lot better. Actual scenes and dialog with actors and locations. Like a real movie. Unfortunately, it's over indulgent and bloated at 112 minutes. Lucky for us Greg had picked up the longer Australian cut. It's directed by Richard Franklin who later directed Psycho II. It's a 1978 movie about a mother murderer who's in a coma in a private clinic. He didn't like his widowed mother having it on with her new fiance, so he tossed an electric heater into the bath with them. He's been a lump ever since. A young woman takes a job at the clinic. She's the afternoon nurse watching Patrick. Turns out old P has some mental powers. He can move things with his mind. Too bad he didn't send a message through my computer with a warning not to watch this movie. He falls in love with the nurse, who did touch him in his special place, and tries to kill the people that she doesn't care for. It just takes so bloody long. And there's another problem. The box promised us some bloody scenes and there were none. The head nurse, who is only one of several unlikeable characters, does die a rather horrid death by electrocution, but even that isn't very bloody. She just looked like she'd been baked a bit. The characters are a mixed bag. I didn't care for the nurse but the head of the clinic was sort of entertaining in a creepy hair way. The head nurse was a really twisted bit of work. It would have been a better movie if they had edited it down to 80-90 minutes and picked up the pace. The US version is 98 minutes and that might be ok but shorter is better is some cases. Not much point in seeing this movie either.

The Band - SNL 10/30/76

I might have mentioned in the past that I hardly listen to bands anymore. It's been an on going thing. Sometime years ago I switched to soundtracks because I didn't want to buy anymore albums that had one good song and some other stuff I didn't like. If I listen to some band nowadays it's usually something from the 70's. It has a time weighted familiarity that I find comforting. As one event often leads to another, my purchasing the Saturday Night Live dvd's lead me to watching them, and that action lead me to The Band. I used to listen to them, ages ago, but I never kept their albums. As I moved around stuff fell by the wayside, lost but not always forgotten. My record collection grew by the hundreds to over 2500 at it's peak. Now I have an arm load of records that I never managed to shake off, and a record player in a box somewhere in the basement. There are some hundreds of records down there. They aren't mine and that's another whole long story, maybe for another day. Hopefully they are going away soon.

I watched the first season of SNL about a month ago. I have mixed feelings about the show. It's not as funny as it was when I saw it for the first time. It's probably me, but really, some jokes aren't funny, and some don't need repeated telling. I laughed at some of the things that were funny, and skipped through the odd thing that went on too long. Still in all I wasn't sad to spend 20 bucks on 20 odd hours of mostly good tv. I skipped through many of the musical acts. James Taylor wasn't a guy I listened to back them. Too mellow. That's all I'll say.

I started the second season over the weekend and tonight I listened to the episode with The Band. Buck Henry introduced them and mentioned they would be performing their last show on Thanksgiving. It was a month later that they shot the ledgendary Martin Scorsese documentary The Last Waltz at the Winterland Ballroom. The show was November 25, 1976 and the movie came out in early 1978. It's a great movie and a great concert. Certainly one of the best you can find. The Talking Heads would later push it's way to the top of the heap of great concert films with Stop Making Sense. My best friend at the time picked up tickets to see David Bryne and Jonathan Demme host a screening of the movie just before it was released. That was a cool evening. I did see The Last Waltz in the theater and I bought the three record set of the music. The records are long gone and I never bought the DVD though I did record the movie off TCM a while back.

The Band did three songs on SNL that night on October 30, Life is a Carnival, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and Stage Fright. It was a really great set, short at 10 minutes, but long for even late night tv. They did a nice version of Georgia near the end of the show. Stage Fright is my favorite song of the bunch but Dixie always makes me whistle and sing along. It's so joyous for such a sad song. I linked to some others for fun. Cripple Creek, The Shape I'm In, The Weight. It was Cripple Creek that sold me on the band and made me seek out what ever record it was on. I bought all their albums eventally, then sold them when I moved to the US. Occasionally some blast from the past pops up, like The Band on Saturday Night Live, that reminds me how much I used to enjoy it. Luckily, some of the best of it still holds that old magic.