PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Dad's Army Series 3

 

Dad's Army had a couple of big changes the 3rd series, they went full colour and they increased the number of episodes to 14. As they were through the whole series the episodes were written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft. David produced the program and directed 69 of the 80 episodes. This series Harold Snoad directed episodes 3 and 11. Everything is pretty much the same with the Home Guard. They have their usual tribulations as they try to go about guarding the coast from the Nazi invasion. Arthur Lowe is Captain Mainwaring and he's the self appointed head of a troop of older men and Pikey. He's a lad of 16 or 17 who is too young for service and a right bone head. Mainwaring's main comment to him is to call him a "stupid boy." He does deserve it, no matter how hard he tries, he can't get things right. It's a show with lots of jokes and physical humor. Butcher Jones's van joins the show and has a pretty big part to play for the whole series. They cut holes in the side and disguise them for secret gun ports, same with the roof, so they can shoot out at German planes flying or the men who jump from them. The platoon gets in trouble for using all their ammo shooting at a plane. Mainwaring and his Sergeant Wilson, played by John Le Mesurier, get trapped under a bomb that falls into the bank. That was pretty funny, though it was touch and go there for while. Private Frazer, played by John Laurie, has a phrase for situations like this: "They're doomed, doomed." They weren't.

One episode touches on a sensitive subject. Private Godfrey, played by Arnold Ridley, tells Mainwaring that he was a conscientious objector during WWI and Mainwaring kicks him out of the platoon. Godfrey saves Mainwaring's life, which leads to Mainwaring finding out that Godfrey holds the Military Medal for bravery under fire. He was a medical orderly during the war he objected too. Everyone invites him back into the platoon. Arnold was a playwright and one of his plays, The Ghost Train, was made into a movie, of the same name, with Arthur Askey. Godfrey is a delightfully gentle soul and one of my favorite characters. The show has a nice touch of sentiment along with the comedy with out being sappy. I really enjoyed the series and I plan to soldier on but at a slow pace so I don't tire too quickly.

Circus Of Fear 1966

Circus Of Fear is a 1966 thriller that's based on the Edgar Wallace novel Three Just Men. I don't recall ever reading anything by Edgar Wallace. Can't read everyone. Harry Alan Towers produced and wrote the script, it was directed by John Llewellyn Moxey. Towers was involved with the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu films and several other low budget films. Moxey was an Argentian who wound up in Britian. He was a film editor before he was a director. He worked a lot in British TV directing shows like Man of the World, The Edgar Wallace Mysteries, Armchair Theatre, The Baron, The Saint. In the US he directed episodes of Judd for the Defense, Hawaii Five-O, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, Kung Fu, Miami Vice, Magnum, P.I., Murder, She Wrote, the pilot episode for Charlie's Angels and many more. He also directed a number television films including the Darren McGavin Kolchak film The Night Stalker.

 

It's got money from the UK, US and German companies. The film's called Das Rätsel des silbernen Dreieck in German and Psycho-Circus in the US. I really liked the US poster and the German one isn't too bad either.

It stars Christopher Lee, Suzy Kendall, Cecil Parker, Klaus Kinski and Victor Maddern. Keep an eye out for Nosher Powell is a small role and John Carradine narrates. The story starts with a robbery and the money is hid in a circus. Soon people are dying with throwing knives in them. The police come and sort it all out but not before there are more killings. It's an ok film, a bit slow at times, but usually there's something happening to keep me looking. I had seen the film before this but when I saw there was a commentary by the director on the disc from Netflix I put it on my queue. It was a fairly good commentary with a fair bit of interesting stuff. I'd watch it again, someday.

The Three Stooges - The Outlaws Is Coming 1965

The Outlaws Is Coming is a 1965 film starring the Three Stooges and Adam West. It's another film from the 6 movie DVD set that I got from Amazon. It's got Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Joe DeRita in the drivers seat. I'm not a big a fan of Curly Joe but he's a hell of a lot better than that awful Joe Besser. I hadn't seen the movie before that I know of and was surprised to see Adam in the cast. I actually recognized his voice before I recognized his face. It was directed by Norman Maurer who co-wrote the script with Edwood Ullman. Norman is Moe's son-in-law and he's credited with the creation of the CineMagic process used in the 1960 film The Angry Red Planet.  Maurer created the first 3-D comics with his brother, Leonard Maurer, and Joe Kubert. It was the 1953 Three-Dimension Comics featuring Mighty Mouse. Edwood wrote a bunch of short films, many of them Stooges shorts, and a few features. He would go on to write Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini right after this film. I remember going to see Dr Goldfoot in the theater.

Some creep named Rance plans to kill off the buffalo to rile up the Indians. He hopes they will wipe out the Cavalry and he can take over the west. A magazine sends Adam West and the Stooges to investigate the buffalo slaughter. Adam's a pretty whimpy guy but he gets a hand from Annie Oakley, played by Nancy Kovack, and winds up sheriff. These things seem to happen a lot in the movies, don't they? Rance sends his gang to kill the sheriff but the Stooges help out by secretly gluing the guns to the holsters. Adam and the Stooges convince the gang to give up their life of crime and go straight. They also foil Rance's plan to sell arms to the Indians by getting a picture of the sale.

It's all pretty goofy and silly. I found it a more entertaining film than the Rockin' In The Rockies and that's mostly because it kept the Stooges together. They are getting pretty old by this time but they were still movin' pretty well. Larry would last about 5 more years and Moe ten. Emil Sitka turns up in 3 parts and Henry Gibson plays the Indian Chief's son. The outlaws in the film were local TV hosts from stations across the U.S. that showed the Stooges Columbia short films. As I said, I enjoyed it and would watch it again.

I Am Groot

I was looking through some comics and found a reprint of the story that featured the first version of Groot. It was first in Tales To Astonish 13, dated November 1960, and reprinted in Weird Wonder Tales 19 which was dated December 1976. Marvel was one for reprinting. DC was no slouch either. I bought a lot of reprint books, even when I was buying the back issues, the stories were usually cheaper. It's a goofy story, a lot of their SF was monster based and a lot of the stories are goofy. This Groot is evil, bent on world domination, but easily enough to fight. Once you find that Achilles heel. You'll probably get a bit of a laugh out of the story anyway.

     

   

The Phantom 2009 Miniseries

I'm watching the 2009 Syfy channel remake of The Phantom. It's based on the Lee Falk comic strip. directed by Paolo Barzman and written by Charles H. Knauf and Daniel Knauf. Barzman has directed a lot of TV shows like Highlander, Queen Of Swords, Haven, Being Human and Lost Girl. Knauf was a producer and writer on Carnivàle, Wolf Lake and a good number of other programs. Some of those programs are better than this new adaptation. It takes forever to get to The Phantom and I'm already fast forwarding to get through some of the boring parts.

The story starts with Kit Walker's mother driving off a pier with her son in the car. The boy survives and the people chasing her don't know he's ok. Twenty years later Kit has another name and he's living with a family who gets murdered right quick. The Singh Brotherhood is looking for him, they've been tipped off that he's still alive. Kit's gathered up by the Bpaa Thap which is the Jungle Patrol, an organization that was set up by the first Phantom. They are now a high tech law enforcement agency. The Director of Field Operations Abel Vandermaark introduces him to the organization and Guran is assigned to him as his aide. There's the usual, why me, blah, blah, blah stuff. There's some training and the like.

Kit calls Renny, the ambulance driver he liked in his home town. Cameron Goodman plays Renny. She was in a lot of TV that I never saw. The SB goes after her and her cop father. Kit goes home but they shoot the dad while he was standing right next to him He takes Renny and her dad to his Bangalla (a fictional island nation in the Indonesian archipelago) HQ and goes after the criminals. There's plenty of fighting and the like. Some of the locations look nice but I bet they are stock footage.

  

Most of the show looks pretty good but I sure don't much like the costume. It's all high tech carbon fiber ya'd ya'd. Poor Isabella Rossellini plays the developer of a mind control program you can download to people over their cable box. They use it to brainwash viewers to kill people and then kill themselves. The Phantom and team rumble their game and the leader of the SB has her team wiped out. Sandrine Holt plays Guran. Some might remember her from the John Woo series Once A Thief. It wasn't as entertaining as I hoped, I thought it was all about average, and it seemed too modern to be The Phantom. It's a story that needs to be set in the past. I enjoyed the Billy Zane film from 20 or so years ago. It was more like the comic was and the 1920's is a great era for The Phantom. I'll re-watch that but I would bother with this version of the story again.

Gallery Of Horrors 1967

Gallery Of Horrors is an alternate title of Dr Terror's Gallery Of Horrors. It was too close to the Amicus film Dr Terror's House Of Horror so it got some new names; King Vampire, The Witch's Clock and The Blood Suckers. It's original stories were written by Russ Jones and the screenplay was written by director David L Hewitt, under the name David Prentiss, and Gary R Heacock. John Carradine introduces 5 short stories each with a little horror payback. The stories are familiar and it's wasy to guess the payback long before it appears. I got the disc from Netflix and was glad I hadn't bothered to buy it. I wouldn't need to see this again.

The Three Stooges - Rockin In The Rockies 1945

Rockin' In The Rockies is a 1945 film with The Three Stooges. It's got Moe, Larry and Curly and it's their first film with the three of them in the lead roles. It's part of the 2 DVD set with 5 other films that I picked up on Amazon for a fiver. It's a musical comedy that was written by Gail Davenport, Louise Rousseau, J Benton Cheney and John Grey. It was directed by Vernon Keays with music by Paul Sawtell. It's a short little number, only 63 minutes, and there are a good number of songs. The writers take Moe out of the Stooges for some reason. He's the fill in foreman on a ranch. He'd rather be prospecting but he's helping out his cousin Rusty who's off to Agricultural College. Larry and Curly are a couple of bums who win some money at the roulette wheel in a casino in Reno. Moe takes them under his wing and makes them slightly unwilling partners in a prospecting trip. They invite a couple of young lady singers to stay at the ranch and join them in the propecting. Rusty returns home to find the place a mess and things all stooged up. There's plenty of yellin' and slappin' but the breaking up of the team makes for less comedic situations. Sadly it was only a few weeks before Curly has a stroke and he doesn't seem at the top of his game. I did like the Western Swing guy Spade Cooley and the country swing jazz band the Hoosier Hot Shots. They're like a country version of Spike Jones but with more brass instruments. I hadn't heard of them, that I recall, but the Wikipedia says they never made it big outside of the country music field. You can find a lot of their music on YouTube. I still enjoyed the movie and I don't think it's a bad film or anything. I would agree with the 5.5 on the IMDb and I would watch it again.

Girls, Guns and G-Strings - The Andy Sidaris Collection

 

I picked up this 12 movie set at Half Price Books ages ago. It was about 5 bucks with a discount coupon and currently it's $5.70 on Amazon. It's got 12 films on 3 double sided discs so they aren't too bad looking. I was curious about what sort of films low-budget film maker Andy Sidaris made. Turns out they were crappy ones. He started making the L.E.T.H.A.L. film series in 1985 and the last one came out in 1998. You might have seen them on cable, apparently they appeared on Cinemax and the like. I never saw them but I probably wouldn't have bothered to watch them even if I had the channels at the time. Andy writes and directs a lot of the series films and Christian Drew Sidaris writes and directs the rest.

Here's the line up: The Dallas Connection, Day of the Warrior, Do or Die, Enemy Gold, Fit to Kill, Guns, Hard Hunted, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Malibu Express, Picasso Trigger, Savage Beach and Return to Savage Beach. The stories are all sort of similar, there are agents fighting drug dealers or spies. There's plenty of nudity, some of the bare naked ladies are Playboy Bunnies, but most of the ladies have giant fake breasts, which is kind of sad. I enjoy the naked ladies, but the fake boobies, not so much. I'm sure that the fans of the films remember all those boobies. There's plenty of chases, some on water and some on land, gun fights and explosions. The production values are good and they get a fairly good looking film on the screen.

The acting ranges from poor to fair for the most part. No one's winning any awards here. They weren't hired for their acting chops but they don't get great scripts to work with anyway. I suspect a lot of the smaller male parts are acting stunt men. Mixed in with all the actor's that I hadn't heard of are a few names that were familiar: Pat Morita, Julie Strain, Danny Trejo, Eric Estrada, Sybil Danning and Art Metrano.

I watched them all over several months, fast forwarding through some of the uninteresting fights and chases. These are movies I can't gorge on, gulping them down one after another. I watched a couple at a time and then let the set sit awhile. Even at under half a buck per movie I sure wasn't getting any sort of ROI on my entertainment investment. I'm never going to watch these over and I'll put the DVD collection into the pile of DVDs to garage sale or sell to a store. I might be able to get a buck or so. That would be better than the pile of plastic sitting there taking up space.

Casanova's Big Night 1954

I found a copy of Casanova's Big Night at the Family Dollar store in Bloomington. It's slated for closing in the big merger with the Dollar Store and the DVDs were 30% off. Mostly they don't have anything good in their selection but here was a Bob Hope movie I hadn't seen before for $3 which after discount was only $2.10. It's a 1954 movie that was written by Aubrey Wisberg and directed by Norman Z McLeod. Bob stars with a nice bunch of actors: Basil Rathbone, Joan Fontaine. Hugh Marlowe, John Carradine, John Hoyt, Robert Hutton, Raymond Burr, Lon Chaney Jr and Vincent Price in a cameo as Casanova.

Bob is a tailor's assistant and he gets involved with a scheme to impersonate Casanova so money can be made. He had already tried impersonating Casanova to gain the affection of a local lady but Casanova caught him in the act. Casanova owes a bunch of money to everyone in town. He runs off leaving them just as rich Countess from Venice arrives. She tells his servant, Basil Rathbone, that she will pay Casanova a huge pile of cash to test their son's fiancé's fidelity. Seeing a chance to make some cash for his master, and get his 8 months back pay, he introduces Bob as Casanova and they all run off to Venice.

There's all the sort of antics you could expect from Bob and company. Bob falls in the canal a fair bit and there's the usual sort of slapstick and silliness. I enjoyed it but I've had a resurgence of interest in Bob's films. Not for any particular reason, just one of those things. I was glad to have found it and will add it to the pile of Hope films I've been massing. I'll want to watch them again.

Science Fiction Sunday 337

I got Have Rocket, Will Travel in a 6 movie DVD set of Three Stooges films. I got it on Amazon for 5 bucks. It's a 1959 film with Moe, Larry and Curly Joe. It was Joe DeRita's first film with the other two. The poster says it was their first feature film but that doesn't count Rockin' In The Rockies which they headlined in 1945. The group was in films in the 1930's but they weren't the big stars. RITR is also in the 6 movie set.

Have Rocket, Will Travel was written by Raphael Hayes and directed by David Lowell Rich. Hayes wrote over 50 TV episodes, some of which I might have see. Rich was a bit busier, he directed over 140 TV episodes and 31 TV movies. I know I have seen quite a bit of his work and will see some of it again when I watch Route 66 and The Naked City in the near future.

The Stooges are janitors working at the space program. They work for a lady scientist engaged in rocket fuel research. They just wanted to help their boss. She's not getting enough oomph out of her formula so the guys help her out and accidentally invent a better fuel. It was the sugar that did it. There's the usual Stooge antics that put eventually put them on the rocket. They blast off and wind up on Venus. It looks much like California and you can breathe the air. The guys get befriended by a unicorn.

They meet up with an multi-armed robot computer that creates evil twins of the boys. They all rush about for double the Stooge slapstick activity. I enjoyed it though the musical numbers put a bit of a drag on the story. I have a tendency to speed up the DVD during those. The slapstick is about average as is the whole film.  It's was all pretty silly but I'd watch it again down the road. Sometime down the road I'll be coming to The Three Stooges Ultimate Collection. All 190 of the Stooge shorts on oodles of discs. At one time I had all 190 of them on VHS tape but they were at the slowest speed and they didn't get saved. Now I can see them for less than I paid for those blank VHS tapes.