PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 387

 

Super is a 2010 movie written and directed by James Gunn. His last movie was Slither which I liked quite a bit. It's a 2006 horror comedy that wasn't too popular at the box office. It's gotten a few fans since and they rate it a 6.5 rating at the IMDb. That's kind of where I would peg it. In 2000 Gunn wrote and directed The Specials, an amusing take on superheroes and their personal and group relationships. He also wrote the two Scooby Doo movies and the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead. He's the only guy to have written two #1 movies that were in the box office at the some time. Not that it means much when your last movie didn't make any money. Super was a hard sell according to the commentary by Gunn and Rainn Wilson. Gunn started the script in 2003 and a lot of actors had to sign on before they got any money. With a pretty miniscule budget of 2.5 million bucks the cast worked for SAG scale and they shot in Shreveport Louisiana with a small crew. It didn't make much of its cost back in the theatres but it didn't play in many of them. It did better on other delivery systems and it's IFC most popular film on VOD.

Super has a great cast in Rainn Wilson, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, Ellen Page, Gregg Henry and Nathan Fillion. Rainn is a cook at a diner which is where he met Liv Tyler. The two of them had gotten married before the movie starts. Liv's a recovering addict who slips back into her old habits and she leaves to go live with Kevin Bacon before the credits role. Kevin, a sleazy drug dealer, is, according to him, interesting. Michael Rooker is his right hand man. Rainn's encounters with Kevin and Michael don't go well and he's beaten pretty nicely. Rainn becomes more depressed and has a vision where tentacles come out of the wall and cut open his head so the finger of God can touch his brain. A series of events lead Rainn to think he should become a super hero to fight crime. He goes to a comic shop for some research and that introduces him to Ellen Page. He designs and sews his own costume and the Crimson Bolt goes looking for crime. He attacks drug dealers, child molesters and other scum. His pipe wrench of justice busts the jaw of crime with one mighty smote and a cinder block dropped from a 2nd floor fire escape can fuck up a drug dealer pretty well.

Rainn decides to take the fight to Kevin and attacks his house. The Crimson Bolt hadn't figured on guns and they got 'em. He runs off. One of the gang recognizes Liv's husband under the red mask and they give chase. The CB gets away but is shot in the leg. The thugs know where he lives so they head there and accidentally kill the police detective who figured out that Rainn was the Crimson Bolt. Knowing he can't go home the CB has run off to Ellen's and she flips out when he reveals his secret identity to her. She patches him up and lets him stay there. She wants to be his side kick so bad. She designs her own costume and becomes Boltie. That's Ellen in her Boltie costume above. It's a cute costume but it covers a murderous beast within. Things get more and more violent as the movie progresses and nearly everyone dies. Yet it has a happy ending of sorts. It's compared to Kick-Ass and it's not the same type of movie. Gunn says the movie is "about a guy who's on his own sort of spiritual quest and he just happens to wear a superhero costume during it. But it's really about the guy and not the costume." I liked it better than Kick-Ass when it all played out. It's dark and bleak and introspective so a lot of people aren't going to like that but I did. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone but some people are going to like it. There's a nice score by Brian Tyler who also did the score for our second feature.

 

Sperhauk had picked up the BluRay of The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and we watched that. It's a 77 minute cartoon from 2009 that was written and directed by Rob Zombie. Several other people helped with writing, like the two guys, Tom Klien and Mr Lawrence, who helped with additional directing. It has a Ren and Stimpy kind of look and Lawrence worked on that show for a while. He also worked on Rocko's Modern Life which I liked when it was on but haven't seen them in years. Klien worked on Christmas in Tatter Town and The New Adv of Mighty Mouse before this. He's been a producer on The Simpsons for the last three years. Papa is the voice of El Superbeasto and he's joined by a nice list of actors for the other voices in THWOES. Rod doesn't do any voices in his movie but he does in Super. He's the voice of God. Funny, huh. Rob's wife Sherri Moon Zombie does the voice of El Superbeasto's step sister Suzi-X. She's a sexy blonde in tight blue costumes who occasionally shows off her boobs. Paul Giamatti plays the skinny red headed guy who wants to be called Dr Satan and he's got a yen to rule the world. He kidnaps a striper El was interested in because she has the mark of the beast on her ass. That starts the ball of justice rolling. There's a lot of nudity, sex and violence as El Superbeasto puts a stop to the evil scheme. I laughed a lot but it's not going to be for everyone. Not my mom's cup of tea as it were. I think a lot of people might enjoy this. If only they could hear about it somehow. It's short, rude, quickly paced and earns it's R rating. I liked that it didn't take anything to seriously. I mean, it's set in Monsterland and there are Nazi Zombies. That picture up there reminds me it's also another movie with Hitler's head in a jar. What's not to like when it gets blown up real good.

Star Trek S3D4

   

John Meredyth Lucas had the destintion of being the only person to write and direct an episode of Star Trek. Elaan Of Troyius is the 68th show aired and that was on December 20 1968. The Enterprise in on a secret mission. The planets Troyius and Elas are fighting. They are on the edge of Klingon space and the Klingon's have an interest in them too. The rulers of the two planets hope to get peace by marrying a Princess from Elas to a Prince from Troyius. The Federation hopes that by helping in the process they can get the planets to lean toward them and not the Klingons. Kirk's job is to ferry the Princess Elaan, played by France Nuyen, to Troyius. They stop there first and pick up the Troyius Ambassador. He's a rather foppish gent with green skin and white hair. Zipping over to Elas they pick up the Princess and she's pretty much a nasty selfish bitch who's filled with anger, ignorance and entitlement.

   

After some screaming and yelling the Princess stabs the Ambassador and it falls to Kirk to try to get her ready to deal with her new life. The women of Elas have a special power. The Ambassador, stuck in sickbay, explains to Nurse Chappel and Doctor McCoy that tears of Elasian women can make men fall in love with them. Of course Elaan uses those tears to capture the heart of the Captain. One of her bodyguards sabotages the ship, destroying the dilithium crystals, then kills himself. Oh, oh, some Klingon's just showed up. They fix the ships power supply with the Troyian Royal Jewels just in time to kick the Klingon's ass. The Captain's power and honor have impressed Elaan and she winds up falling for the him. Sadly for the Princess, the Captain turns her down. It turns out Kirk loves his ship, and being the Kirk Unit, more than a spoilt Princess. Defeated Elaan give the Captain her special stabbin' knife and leaves for her life on Troyius. Not a great episode but still entertaining. The producer said they failed at trying to attact a female audience they wouldn't normally be getting.

   

 The first episode of 1969 premiered on January 3 and was called Whom Gods Destroy. The 69th episode was written by Lee Erwin from a story by Irwin and Jerry Sohl. The Enterprise stops at Elba II to drop off some new medicine. The planet is covered with poisonous gas that can kill you slowly and awfully. The only inhabitants are the guards and 15 criminally insane psychos. Keye Luke in charge of the place. He welcomes the Captain and Mr Spock to his underground prison. On a tour of the cells we see first a green Orion woman played by Yvonne Craig. She was Batgirl on that other show. In a second cell we see Keye Luke suspended in the air and looking pretty beat up. Turns out the Keye talking to Kirk and Spock is Fleet Commander Garth who's played by Steve Ihnat. He'd been a respected ship captain but had gone insane, had his crew mutiny, and been tossed into prison. He'd learned sharp shifting and can appear as anyone. That's helped him put the drop on the Captain and the Science Officer. Damn, huh.

   

You can see how surprised and disappointed Kirk is. Scotty is left holding the bag. Lucky for him he's got Doctor McCoy barking in his ear. That William Blackburn, as Lt. Hadley, sitting between McCoy and Scotty on the bridge. He would take home movies on the set and decades later they would appear on the dvd Extras. There's a lot of blather from some dumb ass psycho who thinks he's the king of the universe. He's not. The Enterprise is blocked from getting in by a force field and they can't attack wtihout hurting someone. Eventually Kirk has to fight himself and Spock has to shoot the right one. The real Kirk tells him to stun both men and Spock knows that it's the Captain. He blasts the other Kirk who turns back into Garth. The medicine is finally administered and Fleet Commander Garth is made into a docile prisoner. A good story for the most part.

   

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield was broadcast January 10 1969. The Enterprise spots a stolen shuttle craft and brings it aboard. It's got Lou Antonio on board, who's half black and half white, and after he recovers in sickbay he tells his story. Soon after the Enterprise encounters another spaceship and Frank Gorshin beams aboard. He's colored just like Lou but reversed.

   

The two men hate each other, and want to kill each other, because of their skin coloring. Each believes they are the superior race because of their particular color combination. They have been chasing each other all over the galaxy for 50,000 years. Frank wants the Captain to take them to their planet Cheron. Kirk refuses but Frank has some magical powers that take over the ship. I guess that shows they are superior dicks. When they finally get to Cheron it's a burned out husk that's been dead for a long time. The Cheron's hatred did a nice job destroying their civilization. The two men are blinded to the meaning and beam down to the planet to fight their final fight. A bit of a message show, huh. A little heavy handed but that's tv for ya.

   

The Enterprise visits the planet Gideon as a representative of the Federation whcih he hopes to get the planet to join. The Mark Of Gideon was the 71st episode broadcast and that was on January 17 1969. The Gideon's won't let anyone but Captain Kirk beam down. He arrives in an empty Enterprise and while wondering the corridors he runs into Sharon Acker. Spock is told by the Gdieon Ambassador that Kirk never go there and no one else can beam down. Kirk and Sharon spend some time together while Spock tries to figure out what's going on. The Federation are no help. They are afraid of upsetting the negotations.

   

Turns out that Gideon is filled with people and it's so crowed that it's become a living hell. The people have long lifespans, are immune to disease, and have self regenerating bodies. They hold life sacred and don't want to use contraceptives. So they choose to introduce death to their society via disease. The Captain has one that they aren't immune to so they trick him into infecting Sharon. She almost dies from the encounter but she's saved by McCoy after Spock beams down and gains the upper hand. At one point the Ambassador tells them that Sharon was to be a role model for the youth of his world. Her death would be inspire them to step forward and give their lives for the good of the society. I like that he wants the youth to step foward to get snuffed, rather than say encouraging a condom, or offering up his old sorry old ass. Same all over the Galaxy, toss your children to the flames. If I was the Federation I wouldn't let these scumbags join. A little bit of something to think about when all said and done. No matter where the Enterprise goes, there will be some assholes to encounter.

Lonely Street - She (1985)

Here's a couple of things I saw on Comcast's On Demand. I always look in the free section, trying to make the monthly cost of cable be worth something. Occasionally I find something that's a keeper. The first movie is the keeper, the second movie isn't.

 

Lonely Street is a 2009 movie with Jay Mohr. It's based on a novel of the same name by Steve Brewer. I haven't read it or even heard of it. I have been a bit of a fan of Jay Mohr for a while. His 1999 tv series Action is one of my favorite shows. It's not in the top ten but certainly it is in my top 50 favorite series of all time. It has a super sarcastic and bleak look at the movie business and Lonely Street has a bit of that darkness. Mohr plays a low level private dick who takes whatever job he can get. He'll tell you about it in the trailer but don't judge him, at least not yet. When Mike Starr comes knocking with a job he goes off to see the reclusive Mr. Aaron. Robert Patrick plays that character and I did not recognize him. Mr Aaron hires Jay to keep an eye on a fan who's been spying on him. Joe Mantegna plays a sleazy record producer. Mohr's real life wife, Nikki Cox, plays a reporter who gets involved with the case. I didn't know much about her until I went and looked at the IMDb. She'd been in plenty of tv that I never saw. Another reporter, played by John F O'Donahue, gets murdered and his boss, Lindsay Price, comes snooping around. Lindsay plays the love interest for Jay in the movie. There are plenty of goofy characters to help fill up the movie. There's a lot of jokes and some of them were pretty funny. For some reason I enjoyed the game that the hustler played by William Katt runs. You get a group of people and they stand around in a circle. They toss some money into the middle of the circle and someone jumps in and tries to get the money while everyone kicks them. Jay jumps into the circle to raise some money. Just some goofy shit that struck me as funny. It all works better with Jay's voice over. I'm going to keep an eye out for the dvd on this one. I just looked and it's under 4 bucks at Amazon as I write this. It also comes in a three pack with a couple of other indie films that I don't know anything about but look vaguely interesting. You can go look if you are inclined.

 

The 1982 version of the H Rider Haggard's She is pretty bad. The story was originally set in the past but for this low-budget Italian production it's been changed to a post-apocalyptic future with a lot of people trying to live while thugs come rob and murder them. I know if I was H Rider I'd pop these guys right in their nut sacks for ruining a good adventure story. Sandahl Bergman plays She. She's never been anyone I cared that much to see. There's plenty of mediocre fighting and people getting slaughtered. There are lots of odd ball characters in goofy costumes. Some of the links will take you to reviews that have a lot of pictures. A lot of fans seem to like the movie because it's so bad. It gets a rather high 4.4 on the IMDb. I could barely give it a three. Occasionally it's mildly humorous but mostly I just laughed at what was on the screen. I wouldn't recommend it.  

Dick Tracy Meets Cueball, The Claw and Gruesome

 

The 1946 film Dick Tracy Vs Cueball was the second Tracy feature film and it again starred Morgan Conway as Dick Tracy. He's ok but the theater owners wanted Ralph Byrd instead of Conway and they got him with the next movie. Dick Wessel plays Cueball and he's a murderous dick. He kills for some already stolen diamonds and keeps on killing until Dick takes him down. Anne Jeffreys is Tess Trueheart and Lyle Latell is Pat Patton. It would be a fairly average cop film of the time but for the unusual characters which make it fun to watch. The 720p copy from the Internet Archive is better than the copies I have on dvd. The movie turns up in those cheap public domain dvds all the time.

 

The third Dick Tracy film, Dick Tracy's Dilemma, came out in 1947 and it starred Ralph Byrd as Dick. Byrd had played Dick in the four 1930's Dick Tracy serials and that really typecast him as Dick Tracy. That's Hollywood, huh! That's Ralph Byrd and Lyle Latell in the picture above. Lyle is the one with his mouth open. There's a new Tess Trueheart who's being played by Kay Christopher. The Claw is a guy who's got a hook for a hand. He's pretty nasty. The guys chase his metal handed ass down and the movie ends with Dick and Pat leaving Tess and Vitamin without dinner again. That happens at the end of every film so far. You'd hope they have gotten used to it.

 

They saved the best for last and had Boris Karloff play the villian in Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome. Ralph Byrd and Lyle Latell are Dick Tracy and Pat Patton. That's Skelton Knaggs with Boris Karloff in that picture above. Skelton plays Rudolph X-Ray, Gruesome's henchman. They have a nerve gas that causes temporary paralysis, people appear dead, which they use to rob banks. Anne Gwynne plays Tess Trueheart. The movie would be another average one but for Karloff. He's great as the villian, all somber and murderous, yet he's still fun to watch. All these movies are short, about an hour, and ove fairly quickly. There's a good bit of humor in them, some funny, some not so. The link on the IMDb takes you to the 720p version that looks pretty darn good. If you watch just one of these films this is the one to watch but I'm partial to seeing Boris in nearly anything. He's one of those actors I noticed as a boy and have liked for well over 40 years. It helps that he's in the sort of movies that I often want to watch. Can't say that about every actor.

There wouldn't be another Dick Tracy film for 43 years. In 1990 Warren Beatty played him in a goofy highly stylized version of Chester Gould's world called Dick Tracy. There weren't any more films after that one. I've never been a Warren fan for the most part. The films he made weren't ones that I rushed to see. I did see his Dick Tracy when it came out. I actually went to see it in the theater. I briefly had a copy of the movie I taped off of HBO but I didn't watch it enough and taped over it. I never bought a dvd, by the time it came out I had last all interest.

There was a 1950 tv show with Ralph Bryd playing Dick Tracy again. That only had a short run and it ended when Bryd died in August 1952. I just put the series on my NetFlix queue. Who knows when I'll see it. There was a cartoon in 1960 that was not too good. I watched it moths ago. In 1967 there was a pilot made for a Dick Tracy tv show but it never got past that.

Science Fiction Sunday 193

 

The War of the Gargantuas is a 1966 Toho film that was released in Japan as Frankenstein's Monsters: Sanda versus Gaira フランケンシュタインの怪獣 サンダ対ガイラ Furankenshutain no Kaijū: Sanda tai Gaira. It's sort of a sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World. Ishiro Honda directs and co-wrote the script with Takeshi Kimura. Eiji Tsuburaya heads up the special effects team and Akira Ifukube creates the music. I have a copy on dvd from Classic Media. It comes in that 2 movie pack with Rodan. As the movie opens a small ship is attacked by a giant octopus. The attack is interupted by a giant ape like critter who saves the men from the octopus. Then the giant ape critter sinks the ship. One surviving man is questioned by the police who just don't believe him. Russ Tamblyn and Kumi Mizuno are scientists. That's them below on the left. They were taking care of a baby gargantua 5 years earlier but it escaped. The authorities think it's now grown up and attacking ships in the sea. Russ and Kumi don't think that's the case and they try to find the one that escaped.

 

Soon enough they do find out that there are two of the critters. The brown one is the one they raised 5 years earlier and it doesn't attack people. We find out the green gargantua is the man eater when he snacks on some tourists. The brown gargantua pulls a tree out of the ground and beats the green guy with it. The scientists try to keep the army from attacking the brown gargantua but the army isn't listening. They feel they need to kill both creatures. The giant monsters get into Tokyo and there's a good bit of damage to the city as the brown and green guys battle it out. Not Godzilla level but still pretty good. The army pitches in and gets buildings tossed on them for their troubles. When the two monsters get into Tokyo Bay the army bombs them. That causes an underwater volcano to open. It sucks them out of sight. Here's a picture of the two guys who played the monsters. Haruo Nakajima played the green guy and Yu Sekida played the brown guy. I'm not sure which guy is which. Then there's a couple of pictures of Eiji Tsuburaya on the set coaching the monsters in the upcoming scenes.

   

Another movie that was fairly entertaining but not great. The monster costumes just aren't that convincing and they're probably the worst thing in the movie. Packing the movie with Rodan makes the dvd set worth having. Of course that's mostly for Rodan. TWOTG is presented in both the 88 minute Japanese version and the 92 minute US version.

The US edition of King Kong Escapes is all there is on the Universal dvd of the movie. I'm not sure why they I hadn't bothered to go find a Japanese version of the 1967 movie called King Kong's Counterattack キングコングの逆襲 or Kingu Kongu no Gyakushū. The Japanese version is 104 minutes and the US version is 96 minutes. Honda, Tsurburaya and Ifukubi all worked on the film. It was co-produced by Rankin-Bass who had a Saturday morning cartoon call The King Kong Show. I couldn't remember if I had seen it but this clip on YouTube reminds me that I had. Here's the US trailer for King Kong Escapes.

 

White haired Dr Hu has found some of the highly rare and highly radioactive Element X underground at the North Pole. He develops a mechanical King Kong to dig it out. It collapses from the radiation. When the doctor hears about the real King Kong living on Mondo Island he captures it and ships it to the North Pole. His hynotism didn't work as well as he hoped it would and King Kong escapes. Bet you saw that coming, huh. King Kong heads right to Tokyo for some reason. The Dr follows thinking he can catch Kong again. He pits his mechanical Kong against the real thing. There's some smashing and bashing and near by buildings all fall down. The beast from Mondo Island proves to be tougher than he looks. He holds his own with Mecha-Kong who eventually gets shut down. The evil Dr gets drowned while trying to escape in his ship. Kong return home to Mondo Island. The sets and the props and the scenerey are pretty good but the King Kong costume is so poor. They managed to re-use it for some other kaiju tv shows anyway. The crazy Dr Hu is the most entertaining character in the movie. He's a scumbag who kills anyone who opposed his plan. Nice see see him deep 6'd. Not my favorite of the Toho monster movies but it's still mostly fun to watch.

Friday Night Movies 386

Joe picked Lockout to put on his NetFlix queue and we watched that. It's a 2012 French SF film co-written by the Irish directors James Mather and Stephen St Leger from a story by Luc Besson. Guy Pearce is Snow, a CIA spy guy, who is mistakenly thought to have killed another agent who really was his friend. The friend gives him a lighter before he dies. Snow has a briefcase that has infomation about a double agent in the agency. When agents come to get him he passed the briefcase along to his friend Mace, who hid it in a locker. While in custody Snow finds out Mace is sentenced and sent to the orbital space prison. Snow is going to get put into statis for 30 years in the same place. Before Snow gets popped into suspended animation the daughter of the US President, Maggie Grace, travels to the prison to check out the way the prisoners are being treated. Her security guard breaks the rules and brings a gun into the prison. That's such a tired plot device, huh. The foolish warden picks one of the worst guys in the prison for an interview with the President's daughter so of course he gets the gun and it's all down hill from there. A lot of people in the movie seem to make the wrong decisions. The single prisoner with a gun manages to open all the cells with the convenient Open All Cells button. Now there are 500 dangerous men running about. Vincent Regan and Joseph Gilgun play the two brothers who lead the prison takeover. Vincent is the saner of the two psychopaths, he only kills some of the people he meets, Joseph is the guy who kills nearly everyone he meets. Of course he's left in charge of the hostages. Guy is offered a chance to get out of his prison sentence if he can get in and rescue Maggie. He gets on board and the chase is on. More mistakes are made and lots of people die, incuding the guy that keeps the prison from falling out of orbit. The crazy brother dumps him out the airlock for a bit of a laugh. Things get pretty bleak but it works out ok for Guy in the end. It's mostly an ok space action spy crime thriller. Parts of the movie make little sense but it doesn't seem to care much so why should I. People online, and at FNM, have commented that it's very much like a Snake Plisken film. It's not quite as entertaining as Escape From New York but the sets and props are for the most part better. It looks pretty good for a $20 million movie. The film was shot in Belgrade, Serbia and you can get a lot of production value in a place like that. The CGI is good to poor. The space shots were about average, the work filling in backgrounds, and the like, was somewhat better, but the big fancy motorcycle chase looked like a shitty video game. Not a great movie but slightly above average. It gets a 6.1 on the IMDb and that's about where is should be. I find both of the main stars less interesting than some of the other actors in the movie. As always Peter Stormare is good and the two crazy brothers were great charactrers. Lennie James plays another agent and I liked his work. Worth a look at. I probably won't bother picking one up but it was fun enough to watch.

 

We watched The Blood On Satan's Claw. It's a 1971 British film that Sperhauk had recorded off of On Demand in HD. It's not out on DVD in the US for some reason. I'd gotten a copy off of Turner Classic Movies a few years ago. The HD copy looked really nice for something that was streamed. Better than the whole movie that's currently on YouTube. Me pointing to the above embedded video. The story is set in 17th century England. Some peasent is out tilling the fields and turns up some bones with his plow. There's a weird skull that has an eyeball with a worm on it and some tufts of hair. He fears it's evil and goes to the manor house where a visiting magistrate is staying. They get back to the field and the skull is gone. The magistrate thinks the farmer saw some animal bones and thinks little of it until that night when the future wife of the son of the mistress of the house goes crazy and develops a clawed hand. Men from Bedlam come and take her to the mental hospital. That would be a horror. Other weird things happen and quickly a group of devil worshipers forms around the naughty Angel. The group all have some mark of the devil on them, patches of hair, clawed hands, parts which a demonic beast is harvesting for it's resurrection. Angel grows the devil's eyebrows. There's some murders and craziness and the movie moves along at a fair pace, a little slow at times, but it kept our interest til the end. Eventually the evil is put to rest, at least until the next movie. It's fairly nicely filmed and there's even a bit of nudity for those who like that. Worth a look for the horror fan, especially those that like the Hammer Horror type film.

The Starlost Disc 3

   

Disc three of the series has four episodes. The 9th, Mr Smith Of Manchester, aired November 24 1973. The trio go into another dome and meet up with Ed Ames. He's Mr Smith, the head of a dome filled with weapon producing factories. Their rampent industrialization has filled the dome with near lethal smog. That'sgood, since it makes the poor models a lot harder to see. Not that Mr Smith has to put up with it. They have nice air in the part of the dome he lives in. He thinks that Devon, Rachel and Garth are spies and has them interrogated and then tortured with those light boxes that stoners used to buy for their stereo systems in the 1970's. You know the ones with a bunch of christmas lights in a box and a piece of that transparent prism plastic that you'd find over a florescent light fixture in the ceiling. You could buy the light boxes at most stereo shops and they were pretty easy to make cheap. The lights blinked on and off and you stared at them. Groovy, Baby. I'm pleased to say I never bought one of them.

   

You can see that this episode has a lot of that green foam that the set designers sure liked. There's some on the floor by the doors, some stuck to the wall of the interrogation room, that round couch and lining for the box of weapons Devon, Rachel and Garth defend themselves with. The finally help bring Mr Smith to his knees and leave for the next dome.

   

The Alien Oro was the 10th episode but it got bumped up the schedule for some reason and it was broadcast on November 3rd 1973. It doesn't really change anything, there's not much of an ark going on here, the stories are pretty much self contained. Devon, Rachel and Garth don new silver suits and find Alexandra Bastedo in a dome. I first saw her on some British tv. She was in a couple of episodes of The Saint and  the one season of The Champions. Sandwiched between those shows she was in Casino Royale. After that she did all sorts of tv and some movies. The IMDb has her still working in 2008. Alexandria is all alone in the dome but she say's not alone. Someone named Oro lives there and when he shows up we find he's played by Walter Koenig. He's all moody and unhelpful. He only has getting back to his own planet on his mind. He's got a nice little space ship and he gets everyone to help him fix it.

   

Oro proves to be a bit of a dick and he doesn't help anyone much. He leaves and no one's going to miss him. The green foam turns up in the usual place in front of some doors and on the seating in the room they are living in. Oro's ship isn't too bad and it was kind of nice to see Walter in something else other than Star Trek.

   

In Astromedics Devon walks into an area where he gets some radiation poisoning. Don't worry, he'll be ok. It's the 11th episode and it was broadcast on December 1 1973. I know I watched these episodes when they were aired but I sure don't remember anything of them. Certainly less than what little I remember of the Star Trek shows I've been watching and those are 8 years older. A medical team of father and son show up in their shuttle clinic and get Devon some help. The medical ship has been stuck out in space since the Ark's accident. That red thing is the ship. I could build something better out of LEGO and I suck at ship building. The medical team are in contact with other planets but they must not have been in contact with anyone who can help them fix the Ark. The son is played by Stephen Young who I remembered from the Canadian tv series Seaway. It ran one season, 1965-66, before it was cancelled. I enjoyed the cops and crime show that was set along the St Lawrence Seaway but I haven't seen it since it aired.

   

Stephen doesn't want to take the time to operate on Devon because he feels the medical ship needs to go help the aliens on a nearby planet who are having problems with a plague. Of course it gets done after some father - son drama and the trio are off to the next dome. The green foam turns up on the floor by the doors, on the wall of the room that sickens Devon and on the medical table that Devon falls out of later in the episode. That's the alien in the last shot. his makeup is kind of sad looking so I'm pretending he's got that plague they were troubled with.

   

The Implant People aired December 8 1973 and it's about a dome filled with people who are controlled by a chip in their heads. Looks like they live in a  nice place, too bad they have mind control. That high rise model looks so poor. I have built better buildings out of LEGO and I know they tried their best with no money. It's too bad they didn't think to keep some of the smog from the earlier episode to cover it up a bit. You know, pretend it's fog.

   

There's a bit of fighting. Hope that nice piece of green foam doesn't get trampled on. There's some on the floor by various doors, that seat and in those prison booths. They stick you in the booth and you can't move. Eventually the trio meet up with the resistance and help them foil the ones in charge. It's a pretty familiar plot and one I've seen on Star Trek. The trio in The Starlost have no prime directive to break. It's fix the Ark or die trying for Devon and the gang.

Here's a couple of ads for the show I found on another site which also had the fake Starlots novel cover.. They are fairly uncompelling ads but the book cover looks real.

 

Another disc is done and there's one to go. The show suffers the usual writing, acting and production value failures. I just can't get too excited about them that's for sure. I wouldn't recommend the series to anyone really but people can waste their time any way they want.

Horror Hotel AKA City Of The Dead 1960

The Internet Archive has a nice 720p copy of Horror Hotel. That was the US title of a British film released in 1960 as The City Of The Dead. It's a creepy little film with Christopher Lee and a bunch of people that I haven't heard of before. It's in the public domain and you can find it on various dvd editions.  The movie is the first feature by John Llewellyn Moxey. He had a 30 year career that was mostly in tv, both in the US and Britain. He directed a lot of shows I've probably seen. I know I've seen the tv movie The Night Strangler, it was the first pilot movie for the Darren McGavin Kolchak series. He directed episodes of The Saint, Mannix, The Avengers, Mission Impossible, Kung Fu and many others. 

  

While made in England the movie setting is New England in the US. Venetia Stevenson is a student at a Massachusetts College. That's her on the left. She's taking a class on witchcraft from Professor Christopher Lee. He tells his class a story of Elizabeth Selwyn who was burned at the stake some 300 years ago. We see it as a flashback. Venetia is fascinated by the subject but her boyfriend and brother think it's crazy stuff. Venetia is looking for a small town to do some research for her term paper. Lee recommends the town of Whitewood and the Raven's Inn. It's the only place to stay in the town. She travels to the fog filled town and it's pretty creepy. The buildings are rustic and the church really run down. The few people she sees all stare at her. Not a place I'd want to stay.

 

The Priest tells Venetia to leave and the maid keeps trying to tell her something but the stern proprietor of the Inn keeps interrupting. The turns out the town is in the hands of a coven of witches and they are sacrificing a young woman tonight. Guess who's been picked for that job. When Venetia doesn't show up at her best friend's birthday party a couple of weeks later people start to worry. The boyfriend and brother call the cops and after that's a bust they travel to Whitewood themselves. You can imagine what they find. Lucky a bit of lumber will save some of them. It's black and white and pretty short. The version is the regualr US edition, 76 minutes long. There were a couple of minutes cut from the movie but it doesn't seem like the scenes amount to much. Ot's an ok piece of entertainment. Christopher Lee was 40 when the movie was made and he's already been acting since 1947. That's 65 years ago. Nice.

A Close Call For Boston Blackie

Here's a nice introduction to the Boston Blackie series. A Close Call For Boston Blackie is a 1946 film starring Chester Morris. George E Stone plays The Runt, Blackie's sidekick. They did 14 films together and this is number 10. Blackie gets involved with a dame he used to see. She married a bum who got sent up river. She shows up at Blackie's place with a kid in tow. She tells Blackie and The Runt her story and they offer to help. The husband, released yesterday, shows up at Blackie's place, creates a scene, and is murdered. Don't worry it wasn't Blackie what did it. He was just framed by some guy who's got a plot going on to get some dough from the grandfather of the kid. The flat feet show up and roust Blackie who has to give them the slip so he can figure out the plot and keep his butt out of the slammer. It's an entertaining picture, kind of light hearted and flip, with some murderous types who get brought down by Blackie. 

9468 The Vampyre Castle

Here's a set that has colors I like, interesting pieces and some nice minifigs. It's the largest of the Monster Fightersets with 949 parts for 100 smackaroos. Bricklick says there are 27 extra parts in the set so that helps get that average closer to the dime a piece I like to see. There's a lot of bluish gray parts, 245 of the light blay and 303 of the dark blay, plus a nice mix of other colors in various small quantities. There are 62 of the dark blay 1x2 log pieces. That's a nice quantity in a single set but I'm not needing them much. I got a huge pile of them in the local LEGO store's Pick-A-Brick wall. There's a good number of blay slopes, various types including inverted, mixed in with a good assortment of other blay elements. On the light blay side there are 25 of the 1x2 brick bricks and 2 dozen of the 3x3x6 corner wall. The whole castle is built on octagonal 10x10 plates. There are 6 in the dark blay and one of those has an open center. You get 8 of those same octagonal plates, in dark tan, for the base of the castle. Below there's a back shot of the castle so you can see those tan plates in action. That selection of octagonal plates and wall panels makes a quick and easy way to build some tallish castle towers. Certainly more important for the younger set, who might get bored quicker, the idea appeals to me, who gets bored pretty quick. Once you get to that picture below, take a look at the top of the two tallest towers, see those 6x8x9 tower roof pieces. They look good in black. I love 'em in sand green but that's one of my favorite colors. Black is better in some applications, especially if you want to get all evil and the like. The builders use that 6x6 round corner slope in black to add some flare below the roof. The small tower uses plates and it just doesn't look as good. Some of the castle is pretty reminiscent of the recent Harry Potter sets.

 
As a play set it seems a good size with plenty of places to act out your monster fighting fantasies. Or you evil monster fantasies, if you like playing the blood sucking fiend instead. I like the few printed pieces in the set. The moon disc is kind of neat, the transparent jewel or rock pieces might come in handy, and that coffin is rather elegant. There are a nice bunch of accessories that the minifigs can use. There's a couple of glow in the dark critters, a rat and a spider. There's a pair of bats and a green frog. The spider is attached to a flick missile. I guess it's a jumping spider. I hate those. I'm not sure how much I like the sand green car. It's kind of goofy looking. I like that color and I'd take the pieces and use them for something else. All the vehicles in the MF sets are very weird looking to me. The car has a net tossing cannon on the back. I'm sure I've seen that idea used in another set but I can't remember what it is and I'm too lazy to figure out what it is. The castle  seems to have a lot of the iconic bits that you'd expect to find in a castle that's home to a vampyre and his bitey bride. It's a good starting point for the newer builder and it might inspire them to make something better. You know, after they get 8 or 15 of these sets.

The vampyre has a plan to use his nefarious device to pull the moon so it blocks the sun and the world has continual darkness. Vampires, they're such assholes. I have to admit the nefarious device that the vampyre has at the top of the tallest tower doesn' t look that nefarious. It does have a pretty simple feature that turns the gem stones inward. That's the most interesting part for me. Here's a picture of the fiendish device in action from the LEGO website. They have a lot of right clickable images that you might want to save to your computer. You know who you are, those that need to.

If you are wondering how that simple bit of action is created you aren't alone. I had to go look at the instruction booklets that I downloaded off of Brickset. You can see the mechanism starting page 50 in the 2nd volume. It's pretty simple but that technique could be put to some other use. Maybe evil, I don't know. Other people in the local clubs have said they too like to either build the set for ideas or look over the instructions.

That's the whole collection of fancy gem or rock pieces. They go in the nefarious device. We can only hope that Doctor Rodney Rathbone and Jack McHammer can kick the count's ass and put a stop to his evil plan. They have tough odds, two against four, and those man bats are pretty fierce looking. I hope those guys are wearing pants.

   

Lord Vampyre doesn't have much of a name, which is sad. And even sadder? That pretty lady is called Lord Vampyre's Bride. I guess that's better than Mrs Vampyre. I do like the dress and the hair. Both of the vampyres have two faces. Doctor Rodney Rathbone has a steam poowered artifical leg and a nice boweler hat.

   

That's Jack McHammer, 1 of the 2 man bats and a old style skeleton. A good assortment of minifigs with good costumes.

Mostly a pretty good set for me. Nice bunch of parts that could come in handy. Not sure if I'll buy one. I'd certinly keep an eye out for it on sale or clearance. You never know what might turn up tomorrow.