PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Dad's Army Series 4

I'm still working through the complete series of Dad's Army. The 4th series started airing September 25 1970 and there were 13 episodes. The series continues to follow the misadventures of the men in the Home Guard of the fictional seaside town of Walmington-on-Sea. It's on the south coast of England but the outdoor locations were mostly filmed at the Stanford Training Area which is near Thetford in Norfolk.

Left to right above we have Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier, Clive Dunn, John Laurie, Arnold Ridley, Ian Lavender and James Beck. They're the main men in the cast. Bill Pertwee plays the ARP Warden and he's always got an argument going with Arthur, over pretty much anything at all.

Arthur is a bank manager and a bit pompous. He took his rank of Captain when the HG was formed. John and Ian work for him at the bank. John is the Sergeant and Ian isn't old enough to enlist. He'd be too neurotic for the army anyway. Clive is the local butcher and John is the local undertaker. The show rarely enters their shops, most of the action is centered around the church hall where the men meet and prepare for the Nazi invasion. Arnold is a retired clerk who lives with his two sisters and James is a bit of a black market spiv who got discharged by the regular army because he's allergic to corned beef.

The episodes have plenty of silly things going on and lot's of slapstick. In the first the Home Guard has to compete with the Sea Scouts and the ARP for first place in the "Spitfire Week" Parade. Next week they have to capture a windmill in a training exercise. With the men being rather old they have a lot of issues getting around. In the 3rd episode Arthur has a concern for the men's feet and he takes them on a 20 mile barefoot hike to toughen them up. That doesn't go so well, as you can imagine. Ian gets caught in barbed wire in the middle of a mine field. The boy is an idiot at best. When the HG has to guard some Italian prisoners James uses his spiv powers to make a bit of profit out of the situation.

The men skip parade to have a darts match with the ARP men and Arthur gets a bit pissed off. The HG defend a lighthouse and Clive gets a visit from an old army pal. When Arthur lets women join the platoon things don't go well for him. That's followed by some more battling with the ARP, this time they have a cricket match. John gets promoted at the bank and moves to another town. His manager job is short lived when the bank is bombed out of existence. He returns to the platoon, sadder. The bank isn't the only thing to get bombed out, the ARP HQ is damaged and the men are forced the share the church with the HG. Arthur gets drunk in the officer's mess playing Cardinal Puff and ruins his reputation with his men. He gets it back when he saves them from a grenade.

I'm still having a laugh or two out of the series. Some of the slapstick and misinterpretation gags are a bit repetitive but that's part of the package. There are still enough jokes to go around. It usually turns out to be an enjoyable half hour.

Corner Gas Season 1

After swimming in some murderous melodramas it seemed like a breath of fresh air to dip back into Dog River. That's the tiny fictional Saskatchewan town where Corner Gas takes place. It's the creation of Brent Butt, a Canadian comedian, writer and actor. He plays Brent Leroy, the owner of the gas station next to a café called The Ruby. The first series started airing January 22 2004 and there were 13 episodes. Besides Brett the cast regulars included Gabrielle Miller as Lacey Burrows, Fred Ewanuick as Hank Yarbo, Nancy Robertson as Wanda Dollard, Eric Peterson as Oscar Leroy, Janet Wright as Emma Leroy, Lorne Cardinal as Sergeant Davis Quinton and Tara Spencer-Nairn as Constable Karen Pelly.

All the characters are highly entertaining and the scripts give the actors wonderful situations to play around in. The stories are simple, in the first episode Lacy Burrows moves to Dog River from Toronto when she inherits her Aunt Ruby's café. People are a bit upset when she paints the café and changes the menu a bit. They all forgive her when the new sign, naming the café The Ruby, goes up.

In the second episode Kids In The Hall member Kevin McDonald plays a  tax man who comes to Dog River to talk to Oscar about his past deductions. Oscar and Hank come up with a stupid plan to get the tax man. In another Lacey offers a free Pilates Class without knowing about Wanda's Mat Class and only Davis shows up. People don't communicate too well in Dog River and people in Saskatchewan and Toronto don't often speak the same language.

In the 5th episode the mystery of the Grad 68 painted on the town's water tower is explained and in the following episode the town decides to build a big dirty hoe. You know, to celebrate the farmer, and his big dirty hoe. That doesn't turn out so well but most of the characters enjoy saying big dirty hoe a lot.

Brent and Davis clash over who has the smallest cell phone and Lacy puts a building on the historic register that would have been better torn down. There's a failed trip to the Grey Cup and a whole bunch more laughs.

Even though I've seen these episodes 2 or 3 times already, they still make me laugh. I would put the series in my top ten favorite sitcoms anytime.

Scott And Bailey Series 1

My brother's wife had said she liked Scott And Bailey so I decided to check it out since the library has the first two series in hand. The first series came out May 29 2011 and there were 6 episodes. The shows set in Manchester and it's pretty much a modern police procedural with women detectives. Kind of reminded me of Blue Murder which was also filmed in Manchester. In both shows the character's personal lives figure greatly in the story and the murders are topical.

Lesley Sharp plays Detective Constable Janet Scott and Suranne Jones plays Detective Constable Rachel Bailey. That's Scott on the right and Bailey on the left. The lady in the middle is their boss Detective Chief Inspector Gill Murray who's played by Amelia Bullmore. All the ladies have their personal baggage which eats up a big bit of the story each episode. Scott's got a mixed home life that isn't going so well. Bailey lives with a guy who's still secretly married. She comes home one day and finds herself tossed out. He's going back to his wife. He's also a lawyer and that complicates things when he turns out to be defending a person Scott and Bailey arrested. Gill also has family problems.

The stories are pretty much contained in each episode but there's a story arc that takes the whole season to play out. The murders are often brutal and 5 of the 7 people murdered are women. Much of it's rather unpleasant. I enjoyed the shows but they aren't the sort of thing that I would watch over again. I have the second series sitting on the table near me and I haven't watched it in the week it's been here. I renewed it and hopefully get to them in the next few days.

Science Fiction Sunday 343

Tomorrowland popped up on YouTube this morning so I watched that. It's wasn't that very good of a copy, a bit fuzzy, but it was watchable. I didn't bother putting a link in the title because I'm guessing that it will disappear quickly. Brad Bird co-wrote the screenplay with Damon Lindelof and directed the film. It's inspired by the Disney theme park ride Tomorrowland.

A older teen girl, played by Britt Robertson, finds a badge with a T on it. When she touches it the world around her changes. By moving around she sees more of this world. It leads her to an Audio-Animatronic droid recruiter, played by Raffey Cassidy, and George Clooney. There's plenty of action as some other droids come looking to kill them. George thinks that Britt is the one to fix the problem the future has and Hugh Laurie is the powerful dickhead who wants to wall himself off from the rest of the world and ignore their pending doom. Won't affect him, why should he worry.

There's plenty of effects and everything moves along quickly with lots of whooshing and yelling. I got a bit teary at the ending and I enjoyed the movie. I'll have to make sure to pick up a copy of the movie when the DVD comes out.   

Alien Outpost was also up on YouTube. It wasn't that good of a picture either. Not quite as fuzzy but it breaks up occasionally. I didn't mind that much, it was more another title to add to the Watched Movie List than a movie that I would want to see again. It's a 2014 movie that was directed by Jabbar Raisni who's mostly a visual effects supervisor currently working on Game Of Thrones. He's worked on Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, Fantastic Four, Machete, Predators and Fright Night. It's his first director job and he does fair to good on that end of things. Jabbar wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Blake Clifton. Sadly they both fall down on the writing part of the production. Blake is mostly works in the Camera Department. The script is much like a lot of SF films where the main story line is driven by soldiers fighting the invaders. There's a lot of yelling and cursing and people getting slaughtered. It's a UK and South Africa film and the filming was done in and around Johannesburg South Africa.

The story is about an alien invasion that happened ten years before the movie takes place. The human's fought back and the alien ships took off. They've left behind many of their ground troops, nicknamed Heavies, who continue to fight the humans. They are heavily armored hunks can be killed but it's a hard thing to do without special phosphorous bullets. We don't see a lot of the heavies until was into the movie. It's not a huge budget film but they have a fair bit of stuff going on in that department.

The soldiers we meet are part of Outpost 37, which is part of a series of defense stations that are supposed to keep the Heavies at bay. It's in an unnamed Middle Eastern country where the local human population have turned against the USDF. They occasionally attack the Outpost. There's a lack of resources in the Outpost and in the military. Things fall apart and the guys get a clue that there's something going on at a location a little distance away. They head there and things don't go so well. It all ends with another wave of aliens on the way. Who needs that, huh. Independence Day might have been goofy but it had a much more Yahoo! ending than this. The whole story is pretty average and while the average score on the IMDb is a 4.6 I wouldn't give it much more than a 4 myself. Not needed to re-watch, barely good enough to watch. I didn't bother with the YouTube link in the title, you don't really need to see this, go watch something better.

Friday Night Movies 534

Sperhauk got the Blu-Ray of The Castle Of Cagliostro and wanted to watch that. I was game even though I've seen the film oodles of times. It's a darn good one and it's been a couple of years since I've seen it. Time flies while you're crammin' new video into your eyeholes. Joe said he didn't think he had seen the film but I thought we had watched it at a FNM night before. We had, Friday Night Movie 86 - December 2 2006.

We started with the usual what-do-you-want-to-watch palaver and finally settled on The Castle of Cagliostro. It's a Hayao Miyazaki film from 1979. I really like it and so do these guys. I've seen the movie maybe 10 times. At the end of last August Manga Video and Anchor Bay released a new version of the DVD. The dvd packaging looks a lot like the ongoing Disney series of Miyazaki films. I picked up one and watched it, comparing it to the first Manga Video version. The first version isn't anamorphic, the new one is. The new dvd also looks better, especially on my TV. I have to zoom the non-anamorphic version to fill the screen and that makes the picture poorer. The biggest difference is the title sequence change. The original has animation under the Japanese credits. The new version has still pictures with new English language credits. I wind up keeping both dvds, just for that opening scene.

   

The rest of the movie's no slouch either. It's got everything I like in an action movie. The story is fun, fast paced and extremely explosive. Me like boom boom. There's a princess to rescue, a creepy bad guy to foil, and some stealin' to get on with. Then there's the massive destruction. In a nice range of size and intensity. There's a marvelous car chase, as good as any by Rémy Julienne.  And I like the characters. Ignore the animated TV series. They suck the big one. Their infantile sexual antics are embarrassing to watch. The movie is much better in every way. The new dvd has a version of the movie in storyboard format and a nice interview with one of the animation directors. He's pretty entertaining and has some interesting stories and opinions. He did say that they made the movie in 4 months working day and night. That intense focus really paid off.

Back to me in the future of that post. The Blu-Ray does look good and there are different soundtracks and subtitles for the film. We watched the 1992 version.

Sperhauk had borrowed the DVD of The Zombie Diaries and that was a sad fuckin' picture. Not because the people are up against the zombie hoards, nope, it just sucked. It's a 2006 British film written and directed by the team of Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates. They did a sequel to this in 2011, followed that with The Paranormal Diaries: Chophill in 2013 and Treehouse in 2014. None of them get rated very well on the IMDb. The Zombie Diaries gets a 4.1 and that's just nuts. This isn't as good as an Ewe Boll movie. Of the 4122 votes there were 260 that gave the film a 10. The film makers must have a lot of friends. I couldn't see giving it more than a 2. It cost £8,100 and actually made $2 million. Unbelievable.

Here's a couple of quotes from the film box.

"A bloody powerhouse of a movie." - Film Threat

"the most realistic zombie film ever made." - Twitch film

The movie doesn't live up to either of those quotes. I can't even find the review of the film on the Twitch site but they have a pretty shitty search feature. What I did see when I searched with Google is that there were a lot of "I don't think so." from reviewers that tried watching the film. I just got tired watching the film, It's a found footage film and by now I've little in that genre. They pay homage to The Blair Witch Project by shooting a lot of footage of the ground while the characters are running, whimpering and crying through mucus filled nasal passages.

The film opens with some people trying to survive after a virus has been turning people into shambling flesh eating zombies. They're filming their adventures for pretty much no reason and their recordings are as poor. Like those crappy phone shot videos people post on YouTube. At least the film makers managed to turn the camera horizontal in the film. The movie follows those people for the first month. They make a lot of stupid decisions and get chomped by zombies. Most of the scenes are your typical zombie genre fare but during the the last 10-15 minutes the film turns into a torture story with a couple of psychopaths kidnapping, torturing, and killing some of the survivors. The film's a mishmash of familiar scenes and not worth anyone's time. Sadly Sperhauk had borrowed the film so he can't toss it into the river for that satisfying kerplop. He'll have to return it and then some other sad person will experience the film. Perhaps it will toughen them up for the apocalypse.

The Twilight Zone S4D5

The 5th disc has three more episodes of the hour long version of The Twilight Zone.

The New Exhibit  April 4 1963

Written by Charles Beaumont and directed by John Brahm. Martin Balsam works in a Wax Museum. We meet him and the owner on the last day that the place is open. Martin pleads with the owner to keep the pace open. When that won't happen he pleads for the owner to keep the statues, especially the 5 figures on Murder's Row which were made by a famous Frenchman. Martin gets the owner to give the figures to him and he puts them up in his basement. He spends a lot of money on an air conditioner. Their money in the bank dries up and the wife really wants him to get rid of the figures. Martin comes home from an errand and finds his wife stabbed. Jack the Ripper's knife is all bloody. Martin buries her in the basement. Things don't go so well for the wife's brother when he comes snooping around. When the owner comes to tell Martin that the figures have been sold Martin becomes distraught. The figures like their new home, you can guess what happens next. This time we actually see the figure move. I guess that's how you know you're in The Twilight Zone, huh. Not one of my favorites of the Beaumont stories, it's kind of padded out, and I think it would have been better as a half hour program. All the wax figures are played by actors. The only bonus feature is the isolated score.

Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville  April 11 1963

Written by Rod Serling and adapted from the short story Blind Valley byMalcolm Jameson and directed by David Lowell Rich. Albert Salmi is an older business man, in a bad bald wig, who has made his money in various commodities. He wants a man's tool and die company and he's taken a loan note on that business so he can demand the owner pay it off right now. The owner can't and he leaves a broken man. After having a few celebratory drinks by himself Albert talks to the janitor who came from the same small town, Cliffordville Indiana. Albert wishes he could go back and start over, the fun was making the money, not having the money. He leaves and winds up ont he 13th flor where he stops into a travel agency, Devlin's, where he meets Julie Newmar. She offers him a trip to 1910 Cliffordville. He winds up there young and ready to make his fortune. Things don't go so well for Albert, he's just another man fooled by the Devil, and I didn't much care as he's just a big asshole who turns out to be a pretty poor businessman. It one of my least favorite episodes. There's the radio version of the episode and an isolated score.

The Incredible World Of Horace Ford  April 18 1963

Written by Reginald Rose and directed by Abner Biberman. Pat Hingle is Horace Ford, a toy designer and a big kid. He thinks about his childhood and talks about it all the time. He's designed a robot that sure looks like Robby the Robot. His boss thinks he's crazy for designing a toy they can't make any money on. Horace's wife and mother are worried about him as he keeps bringing up his childhood. He gets mad and goes to his home street. He runs into the kids he used to play with and freaks out when he realizes they are the same age as they were when he was young. He returns again and again only to learn that his childhood sucks and he was stupid. It was better than the other two but still could have been better served by a shorter running time. Not that I can complain too much about the running time, I'm watching these at the 1.5 speed so that the 51 one minus is only about 34 minutes. There's a nice interview with Pat Hingle, the radio version of the story and an isolated score.

Reginald Rose originally wrote "The Incredible World Of Horace Ford" as a teleplay for Westinghouse Studio One, which originally aired live on June 13, 1955, starring Art Carney in the title role, with Leora Dana as Laura. The original ending was somewhat downbeat, and producer Herbert Hirschman asked Rose to create a slightly different (and happier) ending. Accordingly, the Twilight Zone version of the script is largely identical to the Studio One version, except that an epilogue has been added. In the Studio One version, the story ends at the Fords' apartment, with the audience invited to assume that Horace has been permanently transported back to his miserable past. In the Twilight Zone version, the story continues on: Laura leaves the apartment to find Horace, who magically transforms back into an adult and vows not to live in the past any longer. -Wikipedia

Again I'm feeling less interested in the stories than I might have thought I would be. Oh well, huh.

Sea Hunt Season 2

I jump back and forth between TV seasons or series while I've been watching Sea Hunt a couple here, a couple there. Lloyd Bridges is Mike Nelson and he's a scuba diver. Each episode he's got something under water to check into. The stories are pretty varied: there's a jail break in one, another has an underwater bank heist, retrieving a missile guidance system from a sunken test boat, testing an underwater radar system and more than one has someone in danger while diving. The show does emphasize diving safety. There's a bit of excitement once in a while, the occasional fight and plenty of underwater footage. It's rare that anyone dies.

The guests this season include Leonard Nimoy, Ted De Corsia, William Boyett, Robert Conrad, Ross Martin and Whit Bissell. Some of the guests return for second episodes. I suspect that there just aren't that many actors with underwater training. There's plenty of lady guest stars but I haven't heard of most of them. Sometimes the underwater sets are kind of fake looking and obvious they are shooting in a pool. Sometimes they say they are many feet down but the picture shows the divers bubbles hitting the surface just above their heads. The natural locations vary in interest. They are still entertaining and I'm going to watch a the other two seasons in the next few weeks.

Perry Mason Season 2

The second season of Perry Mason started airing September 20 1958 and there were 30 episodes. There were the usual murders, snooping about, law talkin' and Perry's putting the fear into the witness on the stand. He can sure suck the guilty out of them. They pretty much stick to a formula, we meet some people, someone gets bumped off, Perry has a client, there's more detecting and a long bit of courtroom activity. They change it up once in a while and have the guilty person confess in another location. Sometimes Perry travels out of town, both to investigate and to appear in court, it makes a nice change and DA Hamilton Berger doesn't always have to lose. There's enough difference in the stories that they don't get too boring.

There's a few guests I recognized, William Ching, Elisha Cook Jr, John Denher, Arthur Franz, Jesse White, Edgar Buchanan, Cecil Kellaway, Hugh Marlowe, Marion Ross, Frankie Laine, Bobby Troup, Benson Fong, John Agar, Dick Foran and Biff Eliott. The last guy, Biff, played Mike Hammer in a 3D version of I, The Jury. He's not a good actor but the movie is highly entertaining.

I'm still enjoying the series but will take a break for another season of something else.

Robbie's Daddy

Someone posted this on Facebook and I saved it.

Dangerous When Wet 1953

Dangerous When Wet is a 1953 musical comedy starring Esther Williams, Fernando Lamas and Jack Carson. It's written by Dorothy Kingsley and directed by Charles Walters. Esther is part of a family of dairy farmers who start their day with a song and a swim. William Demarest plays the father. Jack Carson is a travelling salesman who falls for the farmer's daughter. He gets to know the family a bit and after seeing how crazy they are for a swim he suggests they all swim the English Channel, you know, because they're in a musical comedy, but only Esther is strong enough to do the swim. Fernando is a Frenchman who meets Esther on the water. Now she's got the English Channel to swim and two blokes chasing after her.

Esther has a dream where she swims with Tom and Jerry. It's pretty silly. When she wakes she swims the English Channel and picks a guy. There's plenty of songs, jokes and splashing about. I enjoyed it and had a laugh.