PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Fiesta of Satan's Harvest

Since I've been harvesting movies off of the Internet Archive site I have seen some pretty entertaining movies and some that are pretty crappy. Tonight I took a chance and watched Fiesta. It's a 1941 musical comedy set in the countryside of Mexico and it was ok. There's a lot of singing and dancing packed into the 45 minutes running time. There isn't much room for story, which is ok, there isn't much story and most of it's slapstick. A pretty lady named Cholita comes back to the small town where she was born. The people are singing and dancing in the town square. They are having a Fiesta. Cholita comes back to take over the family rancho. She's been living in Mexico City for a while. She brings along her possible future husband for her Uncle's approval. He's a hammy radio actor named Fernando. He does not like the country very much. He complains. The countryside does not like him much either. Cholita's old beau plots with some of the other town's people to get Cholita away from Fernando. They cook up some silly scheme to act like bandito's and scare off the city boy. That plan does not work so good and Cholita gets all mad and stuff. Local spitfire Cuca has her eyes on Fernado. He has a handsome exterior and he's a radio star from the big city. He quickly returns Cuca's interest, especially after he learns she has two ranchos. Cholita gets the right guy and Cuca gets a ride to Mexico City when Fernando leaves town. There's even more singing and dancing. I  bet this would have looked pretty darn good projected up on the big screen in technicolor. This print is not that good. The color is shifted to the red. I watching it on a 19 inch monitor full screen and it's watchable, certainly a little fuzzy. I did not down load the biggest file either. I downloaded the 184 MB MPEG4 version. There's a 700 MB Divx version. It was retitles Gaiety in a reissue. That's the banditos below.

 

I also took a chance on Satan's Harvest. Good title, but as we all know that means nothing. George Montgomery is a private eye in Miami. He's also the writer and director but under another name. If it was me I wouldn't want anyone to know either. I guess it leaked out. Sad. In the movie George inherits a ranch in South Africa from his Uncle. There's another uncle and his son living on the ranch. They are smugglers who are using the ranch as their base of operations and to grow drugs. They want to keep it. The evil uncle, with the bad hair cut and walrus mustasche, plots with another brother to kill George. First they try as he's leaving the plane. The hit man shoots another guy in the head. That sucks for him. Good reason to stay out of South Africa in 1970. The clothes don't help either. Even Tippi Hedron can't make some of her outfits look good. Her acting isn't much better. The baddies try to blow George up by putting a bomb in a car but as luck would have it he's saved at the last minute. The poor chauffer gets turned into puree. George fights his way about the countryside. He keeps getting knocked out and nearly killed. Eventually most of the badguys are slaughtered and the brother is headed for jail. I'm certainly glad it was a free movie to watch. Don't feel I wasted any money. After watching the movie for a bit I cranked up the playback speed on the VLC media player and watched the 85 movie in about an hour. That's a great feature. Totally variable. Makes bad movies shorter. I first gave the movie 3 stars on the IMDb but after a while I went back and changed it to 2 stars. It looks like there's no dvd of this movie. That might be a good thing.

One Less Nail In My Coffin

Even though my doctor would disapprove I couldn't resist picking up a bag of Sweethearts. I was interested in the new flavors, though I had a bad feeling about this purchase. I should have put the bag back on the shelf and went home. I did not like the new flavors at all and I'm not alone. Here's a guy who didn't like them. He has a poll. The Candy Blog has a good review of the new product and some pictures of the new candies. That's where the pic of the new candies below came from. It's a pretty entertaining blog about candy. Me like candy. The food guy at the Chicago Tribune rated each flavor, and he's not too happy either. They make me think of SweetTarts, there's a bit of a bite to them, and I don't care for SweetTarts. Here's the email I sent to the company.

Contact Reason: Complaints
Comments: I purchased a bag of sweethearts candies today. This was even after seeing the list of flavors on the back. I do not like the new flavors at all and feel that I wasted my $2.29. I will feed them to the squirrels so they would not totally go to waste. I miss the old lack of flavors.

 

It's snowing too much right now to leave them out for the squirrels. Maybe after it stops. We'll see if they take them back to their nests. I got a response today from the New England Confectionary Company, who changed the flavors after 145 years. According to Terry it was because their customers asked for it. Here's her response.

Dear Garth:

I wanted to personally thank you for all of your input on our new Sweethearts.  They are a great US made product and I am glad to hear you are a longtime fan. Over the years, our number one product requests have been -around producing a more flavorful and softer product. Sweethearts have been America’s favorite Valentine’s Day candy for over 145 years now and we needed to ensure that Sweethearts continue to delight people of all ages.

It’s never easy to change something that hasn’t been changed for a very long time and we appreciate your support as we continue to come up with new flavors and ways to say “I Love You”. Here’s more information about all of our exciting changes:

Our new softer Original Flavors now include: Green Apple, Blue Raspberry, Strawberry, Lemon, Grape and Orange. The color of the hearts were changed to match the flavors so people could tell what flavor they were eating before they even tried them. The new expressions on the Sweethearts were chosen by over 10,000 Americans at mysweethearts.com back in the summer. The complete list of the top new sayings includes both contemporary expressions like Tweet® Me and Text Me and beloved classics like “Love Me” and “Sweet Pea.” The packaging was changed to make the product easier to find at shelf. And, our little 1oz boxes are now slightly smaller with no window, to be more sustainable and easier to handle for tiny kid’s hands. The back of our 1oz boxes was also changed so that kids could write in their To/From names in pencil.  You can find the old flavors at the following locations: Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Family Dollar, 99 Cent Only, Freds, Odd Lots, Wakefern, and Sav A Lot.

If you are looking for something to share with the little girls in your life be sure to check out our new Sweethearts Dazzled Tarts with flavors including: Pink Lemonade, Wild Berry Grape, Sour Apple, Watermelon, Extreme Tangerine and Blue Raspberry. These new Sweethearts are dazzled and have crowns and shoes on them!

So, thank you for your feedback and please stick with us. Let us know what you think of our other Sweetheart products. Also, check out mysweethearts.com for free recipe ideas and craft projects.

Best,

Theresa Denis

Customer Service

New England Confectionery

 
Back to me.I thought it was interesting that the older of the candy is available at those dollar stores. They changed the flavors in the middle of the production run. I read that in the Candy Blog. It doesn't really matter, they lost me as a customer. The other thing I found interesting was her mentioning that they changed the packaging to "make the product easier to find at shelf." I couldn't see it to easily at the local Walgreens since the new package blended in with all the other pastel packages on the shelf. That distinctive red package of the old conversation hearts was a stand out on the shelf. I also liked seeing what was inside the package. I liked the yellow ones best. I did read on one or another of those pages that they changed the NECCO Wafer candy too. More natural. I haven't seen those yet. I don't know where that picture of the gal in the underwear came from but it made me laugh. Here's a nice picture of an old NECCO Wafer Truck. I like cool advertising stuff like that.

 

Science Fiction Sunday 65

I'm been prowling around the Internet Archive most of the last week. I downloaded The Whispering Shadow to watch this morning. It's a 1933 serial with Bela Lugosi. It's barely science fiction what with the main technology being radio and all. Some guys have a storage and trucking company that is being robbed by the Whispering Shadow. He's after something. They don't know but we do. It's the Czar's Crown Jewels. Ohh! They are hidden in the warehouse. How the heck did they get there? Bela has a human figure waxworks business in that warehouse and a daughter. There's a hero guy who's out to get The Whispering Shadow, the invisible villian who killed hero guy's brother. The hero guy is played by Malcolm McGregor. He was mostly a silent film guy who didn't last long in the talkies. He's not so good at the speakin' and actin' part. He moves with big movements like a silent movie guy. Mind you a lot of them did in the early talkies. It's pretty low budget, filmed in 12 or 18 days by Mascot Films. They made a lot of movies before being bought up by Republic. TWS has a radio death ray which kills remotely. Sounds cool, huh. Turns out our villian has to hide a small radio reciever disc on the victim so it's not that great. TWS's appearance as a shadow also comes from his radio gear. His shadow is really drawn in and it does speak in a whisper of sorts. TWS has a gang and they are after the jewels. There's lots of fighting and people are always getting captured by one group or another. The suspicion falls on two or three men who could be The Whispering Shadow; Bela being one of them. There's lots of chasing and driving about. Sometimes a car or a truck falls off a cliff. Hardly any of them explode. There is a helicopter crash. It's done with a model as are several of the car and truck accidents. The model work isn't too bad at all. Even with all that action the story drags at times. To save some money and time the film makers toss in some flashbacks in the form of repeated footage through several of the later episodes. That doesn't help much. It's not completely awful and parts are entertaining in a small e kind of way. You can download the whole serial as one file over at the IA. It comes in various sizes. I downloaded the 512kb MPEG4 file. It was about 900 MB and looked ok on the VLC media player. The MPEG2 is 7.6 gigs. It might look better. There are regular dvd's of the film over at Amazon for 16 bucks. I don't think that's worth it really, now that I've seen it. I did like the poster.

Since I had gotten up so early, and was still working on the LEGO project I got goin' on, I put on the second serial I downloaded this week and continued working. Battling with Buffalo Bill is a 1931 serial by Universal. It had a bigger budget than the Mascot film. There are dozens of Indians riding horses at one time or another.  BB is played by Tom Tyler. I'd just watched him in The Adventures of Captain Marvel serial and I'm going to be looking for him in the 1943 film The Phantom. BWBB is set in the west during the California Gold Rush. Some bad guy wants to grab all the land around them parts fer his own. He's got a gang of dirty unwashed criminals, creatin' trouble. They need a killin'. There's lots of bush-wackin' crookery,  dad burn double dealin', a steady stream of gun blastin' and some murder. The bad guy's stir up the Indians so they will fight with the town's people. Unfortunately Buffalo Bill Cody and the Cavalry arrive to put a stop to that crap. A lot of times when the Indians speak they don't put in subtitles. What are they sayin'? There's a lot of sign language. Like the first serial I watched today, there's always someone getting captured by one group or another, then they escape or are rescued. The story is based on William F Cody's life and it's mostly entertaining. The film is a bit dark and hard to see at times. There's a dvd on Amazon that might be better. I'll probably never know, it's 27 bucks right now so you know I'm not in the market for one. You can download it or stream it over at the IA for nada. Here's chapters 1-5 and 6-12. Here's a bonus Buffalo Bill film called Young Buffalo Bill with Roy Rogers. I haven't watched it yet.

Friday Night Movies 258

Sperhauk found the 1990 French Film Baby Blood on NetFlix. It's also know as The Evil Within. I was leary but curious, sometimes French films are pretty good. Greg was interested because it has a circus. He's a circus freak fan. The circus owner is a mean hard man with a penchant for hitting. His wife Yanka doesn't care for him much, she tries to talk a truck driver, smitten with the huge gap between her two top front teeth, to take her away with him. He runs away, alone, after she needily slobbers all over him. A new large cat arrived and it acts weird; all jumpy. Is it evil? Nope, just filled with evil. The evil escapes leaving the leopard in a gorey mess. The evil, which we see as a tentacle poking into the frame, crawls into another warm safe place. Yanka's womb. It takes over or merges with her baby and the killin' starts. The evil critter starts talking to Yanka and it demands blood to survive. That's not going to go well. Yanka leaves her hubby and moves to a shithole in Paris. There's more killing as the evil critter builds it's strength and Yanka slids into madness on a swath of blood and gore. It's a splattery movie with lots of Yanka in her birthday suit, often covered in blood. Oddly, her blood covered body doesn't seem to bother many of the French citizens she meets in the streets. None of them ever mention it. Personally I always give blood spattered people a wide berth when I see them on the street. Not that I ever go out much. Who needs to see that. The evil monster is finally born and it ends badly when the bus crashes and mysteriously explodes. Thus ends the monsters plan of world domination. He was going to take over from the humans when he evolved in 60 million years. There's a lot of gore and blood for the goofan but the story sure lags at times. Other times the story is just stupid. I didn't care for any of the characters and some of the film making choices were odd and off putting. The monster wasn't too bad. It doesn't add up to much future interest. There are so many better monster movies and so little time to check them all out, let alone watch all the good ones over again. Best to move on.

I'm pretty sure I had seen Syngenor before but it isn't in my watched movie list. It's a 1990 film too. Greg had picked it up for a couple of bucks and it's got David Gale. He was the crazy doctor in Re-Animator. Here's he's a crazy business man. The syngenor is an organic super soldier that replicates itself, via an egg, every 24 hours. It was meant for dry desert fighting. A map points to Iran pretty frequently. Turns out our ugly monster has a problem with water. He gets all Wicked Witch of the Westy. Luckily there's no water in the desert, huh. There's a bunch of characters in bad 80's clothes and hair that I wasn't havin' much interest in. Some of the business types are trying to take over control of the company from David Gale. He doesn't react very well and between the two groups the syngenor gets let out pretty much all the time. It's part of their tedious plans. Killing of civilians and staff is just part of the cost of doing business or justified by the political gain. People, they're just so fucked up sometimes. We thought the lab looked remarkably like an institutional kitchen with some signs plastered on the walls. The syngenor's are in the walk in freezer. From the credits we learn that the movie was shot at a large hotel. A poorly disguised hotel. There's a reporter and the niece of the science guy who developed the syngenor. They are the good guys but I didn't care for them too much. Their romance is quick and awkward. Uncle has quit the company and he's killed with his own creation. That's a tough exit interview. At times the movie is pretty poorly made. The story isn't very orginal and poorly told. David Gale is pretty crazy and that's mostly entertaining but not enough to carry the movie. Not one I'm going to go out and pick up.

Manta Raider

 
Max built this cool manta shaped vehicle for the TwinLUG underwater layout at the upcoming comic convention in St Paul. I think it's great! You can see more pictures on Max's photostream.

Gateway of the Squid 8061

 

After seeing the dark red squidman minifig online I was sure interested in getting one. That guy could be used for all sorts of story lines. Even though the Atlantis theme is set in some undersea fantasy world that set could play as a Lovecraftian type appearance of an elder god as well. Just take the guys with the scuba gear out and put in a couple of robed humans. Toss a victim on the alter, good to go.

 

I actually built the set and it's still sitting on my work table a month later. It's partially because I like it and partly for inspiration. I'm working on an undersea themed diorama with Brian and Matt for the May Comic Con over in St Paul. I have one thing started and a couple of other ideas. Brian said he is kicking around some thoughts in his noggin. We need a bunch of stuff going on if we want to fill up a space 160 by 128 studs. That's 50 by 40 inches. Holy Crap! I better get busy.

   

It's a fairly good set with 354 pieces for 40 bucks. That averages about 12 cents a part and some of the parts are good ones. You get that nice red squid guy, two humans in their great scuba gear and lime green flippers. I saw someone stick them on the back of the legs pointing straight down so the minifig looks more like he's swimming. I'm using that in our diorama. The different uniforms on the various minifigs from the undersea themed sets over the years will add a variety to the activities in the diorama.

 

You get 8 of those green spiney viney pieces above. That will come in handy for some sort of undersea plant. You get 4 of those barbs in white and another of the disc keys. This one with a squid on it or is that Cthulhu? You get a fairly good assortment of tentacles in black and white. You get a lot of pearl gold parts. I'm sure we'll see a lot of those golden gates in MOCs to come. Those dark tan plates will come in handy as will the tan inverted arches. I always find the dark blay parts useful, especially the slopes and log bricks. There are some good tan plates. I guess I should be taking this set apart, I'm going to need a lot of tan for the seabed, so every bit will help.