PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

James May's Toy Stories

I ordered a copy of James May's Toy Stories from the UK because there wasn't any good copies of it on YouTube. There are 6 episodes of this 2009 BBC production.There were 4 more programs in the series, produced in 2011, but they aren't collected together in a set yet and I didn't buy the single discs. Too much money. 

In each episode James looks at a different toy and builds something large with it.

Episode 1: James’s Spitfire Spectacular - May's was a plastic model maker when he was a child. He gets some school kids to build Airfix Models and then they build a full size Spitfire.

The kit was made from fiberglass with a bit of bracing for support. The kids paint it and it winds up in the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford for a while. It's still in their hanger.

I used to build plastic models when I was a kid. I had many types of kits; cars, superheroes, monsters, planes, boats and whatever I can't remember. A lot got wrecked over time and one summer I blew up everything left with fireworks. That was fun and the alley was covered with little bits of plastic for ages. I was never that good at painting models so many of them were unpainted.

Episode 2: James Builds a Plasticine Garden - James gets to build a 35 square yard garden of plasticine for the Chelsea Flower Show. It didn't get any official awards due to a lack of real flowers. The top picture shows the garden as it appeared at the flower show. The statue is of William Harbutt, the man who invented plasticine. The picture below was taken at the Mall that the garden wound up in for a time.

It did win the flower show's People's Choice award and a special Gold Award (made from Plasticine) for his efforts. Hundreds of people pitched in their help making flowers. It's really quite nice.

I built all sorts of things with plasticine but got out of the habit because I was a poor sculptor.

Episode 3: James Builds a Meccano Bridge - James builds a rolling bascule bridge and a swing bridge over a canal in Liverpool with the help of Engineering students and a Meccano club. I did learn that Meccano is now being built by a French company.

We had Meccano when were kids but only a couple of small sets. I didn't find much of interest in it.

Episode 4: James’s Great Scalextric Race - At the site of the long closed Brooklands Grand Prix track in Surrey James and the locals build a 2.95 mile long electric car race layout.

It follows the old tracks route and that takes the track through businesses, down streets, over fences, through sewers and across ponds. It's pretty amazing.

We got an electric car racing set when we were kids. We used it for a while. I don't remember if we wore it out or broke it someway or gave it away. I haven't really been interested in that sort of racing since I was a kid.

Episode 5: James’s Model Railway Madness - James recreates the 10 mile train trip from Barnstaple to Bideford with a little model railroad. Hundreds of people pitched in to set up the track and take it down in one day. They had more trouble with this than the other programs, people vandalized the track and stole batteries so the train ran slow.

Sadly the 5 trains they sent down the track all died over the route. May had hoped to send his 37 year old train along the route but it failed right away. It hadn't been used in many years so it's not surprising. The last one traveled 7 miles before it died. That's still pretty amazing.

We had a little train set when we were kids but it never stayed up much, same reason as the racing car set, just no room to leave it anywhere. I do like the hobby but not enough to actually get into it.

Episode 6: James Builds a Lego House - James uses 3.5 million bricks to have a 2 story house built. There's a wooden superstructure inside the walls and holding up the floor. That sort of superstructure is what LEGO does with it's large models. James has a cocktail party to celebrate the house and then stays over for the night. Sadly they tore it down and tossed it away. Not too surprising.

All in all a nice fun bunch of shows.

Western Wednesday 3

I'm seeing a bit better quality of Western today. Recently I had picked up Volume 2 of Classic Western Round-Up used at a local shop. I found Volume 1 at Amazon for only $4.49. I ordered it and it came Sunday. I watched it through the day today. Both the Classic Western Round-Up sets have 4 movies. Each set has one movie from the 1930s, one from the 1940s, and two from the 1950s. The 1930s movie is in Black & White and the rest are all color. The movies are longer than the public domain movies on the Mill Creek 50 Movie Pack that I'd been watching for the first 2 blog posts of Western Wednesday. They're usually about an hour. In this set 2 films are just over 80 minutes and the other 2 are over 90 minutes. Most of the public domain films I had been watching are in pretty sad shape. They're watchable but grainy and noisy. These Universal movies are so much better in all ways, picture and sound quality, bigger budgets and stars, great locations.

The Texas Rangers is a 1936 film from director King Vidor. It's based on a story by Walter Prescott Webb. Vidor wrote his version with Elizabeth Hill and Louis Stevens turned that into a screenplay. Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie are a couple of stage robbers who join the Texas Rangers when things get too hot for them. They plan to use the info on gold shipments and feed it to their pal Lloyd Nolan. He'll do the robbing and give them a split. Slowly Fred and Jack go straight from being in the Rangers and that causes a rift with Lloyd. There's a bit of a romance between Fred and Jean Parker but that takes a long time to develop. It's a good solid western and better than most.

Canyon Passage is a 1946 film directed by Jacques Tourneur of Cat People fame. It's based on a novel that Ernest Haycox wrote for the Saturday Evening Post. Ernest Pascal wrote the screenplay. Dana Andrews plays an Oregon businessman who has a store and runs cargo wagons from town to town. He gets into one bit of a pickle after another. Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, Lloyd Bridges, and Ward Bond are in the cast. Hoagy Carmiachel wrote some songs for the movie and he has a fair size role in the film. It's a rather brutal film with women and children killed by the local Indians. This was after Ward Bond had raped one of the Indian women. It's a good looking film, with interesting scenery and color. Worth seeing.

Kansas Raiders is a 1950 film about Jesse James and Quantrill's Raiders. It's written by Robert L Richards and directed by Ray Enright. Audie Murphy plays Jesse. He's got a hatred of the Yankies for killing his parents and burning their farm. Brian Donlevy plays William Quantrill and he's way too old. Quantrill was 27 when he died. He was pretty much a piece of shit and Jesse doesn't care much for the man's ways but he stays with him up to the end. Jesse and his gang would go on to be bank robbers and scum. Tony Curtis, Marguerite Chapman, Richard Arlen, Richard Long, James Best and Dewey Martin are in the cast. Good movie but not much of anyone to root for. I wouldn't encourage anyone to watch it.

The Lawless Breed is a 1953 film about John Wesley Hardin with Rock Hudson in the title role. It's got a script by Bernard Gordon and Raoul Walsh is the director. They make Hardin out to be a mixed up guy who killed those guys in self defense, honest. Julie Adams, John McIntire, Hugh O'Brian, Dennis Weaver, Lee Van Cleef and Glenn Strange are the ones I knew in the cast list. Even with that cast it's the least interesting movie in the lot. I'm not sure what they were thinking to white wash Hardin like that but there you go. Hollywood bio pics are dicks. Not really recommended.

I'll probably wind up watching the first two films again someday but I'll be less likely to watch the last two films again. What's the point.

Captain Midnight

There was a 1942 serial called Captain Midnight and it had 15 chapters. It's based on the radio show, which I haven't heard. In the serial Dave O'Brien is Captain Midnight. Here's the description of the serial from the Wikipedia.

Captain Midnight was only one of the many aviation serials released in wartime whose leading characters were derived from early pulp magazines and radio favorites. In this serial, Captain Albright is an extremely skilled aviator better known as Captain Midnight, who is assigned to neutralize the sinister Ivan Shark, an evil enemy scientist who is bombing major American cities. Our hero leads the Secret Squadron, whose staff includes Chuck Ramsay who is Midnight's ward and Ichabod 'Icky' Mudd, the Squadron's chief mechanic. Shark has developed a highly efficient mercenary organization, being aided by his daughter Fury who is highly intelligent and second in command, Gardo the henchman and Fang, an Oriental ally. Unfortunately, Shark is after a new range finder invented by the altruistic scientist, John Edwards, whose beautiful daughter, Joyce, the villains attempt to capture to blackmail the inventor.

It's about as good as most serials. I liked it but I doubt I would get back to it. There are plenty more serials out there and some are a bit better. Plus there's a whole bunch I haven't seen yet.

There was a Captain Midnight TV series that had 39 episodes. I've only glimpsed a bit of it. I downloaded the lot from YouTube and will watch them in the future. Maybe. Who knows.

Richard Webb plays Captain Midnight. He had a career that started in 1942 and lasted until 1977. You've probably seen him in something, especially if you watch a lot of TV and movies from the time he was working. I know I do and I've seen him in a bunch of stuff over the years. Some of it, like Perry Mason, I'm revisiting again.

Sid Melton play Ichabod 'Ikky' Mudd and Olan Soule plays Aristotle 'Tut' Jones. Ikky is the comic relief mechanic and Tut is the science guy. They're color coded for easy identification.

Captain Midnight and his gang have a fancy plane and live in a nice matte painting. That's their base on the right. Nice, huh.

8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown Series 9

I'm such a big fan of 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown. I don't know why I've become such a fan of the British panel show but I'm glad that people post them on YouTube. It's an amazing place to share video with other fans. The video police pull episodes but there's a tsunami of electrons being up loaded continuously to replace them. I'm grateful. The 9th Series has been on since August and I've watched the first 6 episodes on YouTube more than once each.

Here's the links to Series 9. The last one will be aired October 1 and usually posted a day or so later. If I remember I'll update this post. If the links are dead, go look on your own, I doubt I would go back and fix them. Who's got the time. I have more TV to watch.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

It's got Jimmy Carr hosting as usual. He cracks 3 jokes in his stand up bit at the start of the show and then plenty more while introducing all the people. There's 8 people on stage for the show and they are being joined by others as the show plays out. Fabio and his shirtless friend still make appearances but sadly Joe Wilkinson only popped in for episode 1 of this current series. He used to be a regular and I miss him. He's out there comedy wise but occasionally quite amazingly funny.

Rachel Riley on the numbers and letters and Suzie Dent in Dictionary Corner.

Sean Lock and John Richardson are the team hosts and there are plenty of guest stars. Each team has a guest and there's a spot in Dictionary Corner for a 3rd guest. This Series sees a visit from Henning Wehn, Victoria Coren Mitchell, Tom Allen, Roisin Conaty, Nish Kumar, Adam Buxton, David O'Doherty, Natasia Demetriou, John Kerns, David Mitchell, Katherine Ryan, Brett Domino Trio, Claudia Winkleman, Johnny Vega, Reginald D Hunter, Sara Pascoe, David Walliams, Jonathan Ross, Joe Lycett, Isy Suttie, Miles Jupp, Lee Mack, Catherine Tate and John Cooper Clarke. They all provide a lot of gags and laughs. I laugh at some of the jokes the second and third time I've heard them. I wish they did a few more shows but I'll take them in small batches.

I do wish they would make a new series of 8 Out Of 10 Cats. They haven't had a regular series of that panel show since the end of 2014. There were 2 specials in December of 2015 but so far nothing on the horizon. Mind you I downloaded all of those and I occasionally watch an episode. They make me laugh the 2nd and 3rd time I see them too. Good value!

Top Gear On YouTube

I hadn't been posting links to Top Gear on YouTube when I watch each Series because they disappear so fast. It's not like people couldn't find them on YouTube by themselves. Here's a link to a current playlist on YouTube that has a lot of episodes gathered together. Right from Series 1 to Series 23. It's missing a few episodes and I found most of those on uploaded by other YouTube users. The link gatherer might get around to adding those to their playlist at some point. I'll be checking back to fill in the few gaps I have. I know the episodes from Series 4 were just uploaded, you can tell from the date posted. The thing is they weren't there in August, I was looking for them then. That's the wonderfulness of YouTube, stuff can linger for years, or be gone in a few hours, and someone comes along and reloads the item. I don't know who long they'll be up there. You can watch them or download them with the Firefox YouTube download app. I did the latter to continue watching Top Gear in reverse order. I have DVDs though Series 10 coming from the library, a set each week or so, but after that there are no other DVDs to watch. Now I have Series 1 to Series 9 ready to watch. It's not DVD quality but it's better than nothing.

Science Fiction Sunday 408

Today I've got three science fiction short movies from the Children's Film Foundation. They appear on a British DVD from BFI called Outer Space. I've gotten a few DVDs from BFI, the two TinTin movies and two CFF Famous Five serials. I'd seen this DVD listed but hadn't bought it. Someone loaned me a copy out of the blue and I watched it today. Here are the stories and their description from Amazon UK in italics. I added some screen caps.

Supersonic Saucer (1956) tells the heart-rending story of Meba, an adorable baby flying saucer from Venus with extraordinary extra-terrestrial powers who arrives on an exploratory mission to earth. Adopted by a group of children, he helps the youngsters prevent a robbery at their school.

The alien is a puppet that doesn't look that great but I can forgive that because the budgets are pretty tiny in those programs. He does have googly eyes that cry. I liked the kids, there are two girls and two boys that are stuck at school for the holidays when the alien stops by. He's from Venus and that's his planet above. The puppet turns into an animated spaceship that can get through cracks under doors. He causes some trouble because he's young. Eventually he helps stop the robbers and goes home because there isn't anything he can eat on the Earth.

In the delightful Kadoyng (1972) it looks as if nothing can stop the village of Byway being demolished to make way for the new motorway. Until, that is, a jovial visitor with an unusual appendage descends from the planet Stoikal and helps a trio of children prevent the construction work. This enjoyable escapade starts stalwart comic actor Bill Owen (Last of the Summer Wine).

Kadoyng has an onion shaped appendage growing out of his head. He has some magical powers and that helps keep Bill Owens from forcing the motorway through the town. It's rather silly and I enjoyed the story.

The award-winning The Glitterball (1977) sees two young boys come to the aid of a tiny spherical alien who is trying to return to its mothership, while being pursued by both the Air Force and a devious petty crook. A perennial CFF favourite starring veteran British actor Ron Pember.

They use stop motion and gravity to move the ball and give it some personality. That all  works fairly well. I liked the small spaceship the ball came in, that's it in the upper left, and the mothership in the lower right picture is OK too. It's got some humor and slapstick. I'm putting the DVD on my want list at Amazon UK. It's only 6 pounds.

Ragdoll 1999

Here's the third film int he Full Moon Doll set. It's called Ragdoll and it's got a story by Charles Band. Benjamin Carr wrote the screenplay and Ted Nicolaou is the director. Ted directed several pictures for Full Moon and I've seen a few of them. Ragdoll is set in the dirty world of entertainment. A rap group is told they're going to sign up with a gangster agent and producer. They say no and he beats the singer's grandmother, putting her in the hospital. The singer uses his grandmother's book of magic to have a demon kill the baddies. Unfortunately the demon wants some payback, for every life he takes for the singer, he'll also kill one of the singers friends. That's some fucked up shit right there! The actors are OK, it has a bit of a sense of humor, and the script is fair. It's just not quite as good as the other two films in the box. I doubt I would need to watch it again in the future.

Demonic Toys 1992

Here's a Full Moon film called Demonic Toys that's packaged with 2 other Full Moon killer doll movies: Doll Graveyard and Ragdoll. I got the 3 DVD set for $5.50 on Amazon and it's about worth that. Producer Charles Band wrote the story that David S Goyer turned into a screenplay. Charles has some sort of doll fixation and he's written several movies with dolls in them. The Puppet Masters series is his too. David is an interesting writer, some of his work is great, Dark City, and some is crap, like Man Of Steel. Here he's at the beginning of his career, the script isn't great, but it's way better than Man Of Steel. Peter Manoogian is the director.

In Demonic Toys Tracey Scoggins plays a cop. She's undercover with her boyfriend and she tells him she's pregnant. The gun sellers come and the boyfriend is killed when he tries to bust the crooks. Tracey follows the two baddies into a toy warehouse. There's a security guard and the delivery guy from the nearby fast food chicken place in the office but they don't notice the criminal come it until there's some shooting. One of the crooks is wounded and out of the picture and Tracey secures the other crook in a storeroom. The noise brings the guard and the chicken guy. They find Tracey and she sends the guard to call the cops. As he goes to call for help some toys come alive and the killing starts.

The rest of the movie is the bunch of people trying to escape the murderous toys. Turns out there's a demon that wants Tracey's unborn baby. He's worked his magic to lure her to the building but his plans go south when the shooting starts. There's plenty of fighting, shooting and killing. The movie has a bit of a sense of humor, even if the jokes aren't always that great, and the little murderous dolls are kind of fun. I'd probably watch it again sometime. Who knows.

Friday Night Movies 599

Dune Warrior was the first pick. It's a 1991 David Carradine post apocalypse film set in a quarry. David's a wanderer who has a grudge against the baddie played by Luke Askew. Jillian McWhirter is a woman in the village with a nice endless water supply. Lew wants to set up camp there and he sends a group to hold the place until he gets there. The village has little by ways of weapons and they're easy prey for the heavily armed thugs. Jillian leaves to find warriors to fight back and she runs into David. He takes her to a town where three con men fall into their hands. They meet up with a warrior woman on the way back to the village. The fight for the town is long and deadly. The townies win and the group breaks up.

It's all very much a Seven Samurai inspired story but marked down to 5. There's plenty of fighting and explosions. Too little nudity and hardly an scenery but the desert and rock quarry. It's written by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver  and directed by Cirio H Santiago. Both worked heavily in the low budget genre. Thomas wrote a dozen movies and this is the only one I've seen. Cirio directed a 100 movies, many of which were made in this home town of Manila. He made a bunch in the US in the 70s and 80 with movies like TNT Jackson, Vampire Hookers and Equalizer 2000. He continued to make films into the 90s but has slowed down, directing only one film since 2005.

It's not great nor is it quite fun enough to make me give it more than a 4 on the IMDb. It scores a 3.9 there now but only with 199 votes. I did like seeing David Carradine but he's not quite enough to make me think about buying the movie. I might never get around to wanting to watch it again.

Our second feature was the 2005 Charles Band film Doll Graveyard. For some reason Charles has an doll fixation. His dolls are magical murderous creatures that enact vengeance on those that cross them or their masters. Band wrote the story that Domonic Muir, under the August White moniker, turned into a screenplay. Dominic worked with Charles Band on many occasions. Sadly some of his films include the Evil Bong series and the Gingerdead Man series.

Doll Graveyard opens in 1905 with a girl playing with her dolls. That's one of them in Jared Kusnitz's hand. He's just found it buried in his garden. The girl in 1905 had broken a glass ornament while playing and as punishment her cold stern father made her dig a grave for her dolls. After she places her dolls into the grave she falls back while climbing out of the shallow grave. She is knocked out or dead, it's not established, and her father buries her. Years later the samurai doll is found and placed on a shelf in Jared's room. His father later finds the watch belonging to the buried girl's father.

Jared's sister invites 2 of her girl friends over for girly stuff. One girl is a cheerleader, blonde, stuck up and annoying, the other is more normal. The cheerleader invites a couple of jocks over and things go down hill from there. The jocks rough up Jared and crush the package of one of his action figure collectables. That signs their death warrant and the other three dolls crawl out of the ground looking for some killing. One of the jocks gets speared right in his crotch and that's the end of him. The rest of the movie is trying to survive the doll onslaught.

It was OK but nothing special or original. I liked it a bit better than our first feature tonight but like Dune Warrior it's all something I've seen many times before. It gets a 4.1 on the IMDb and I'd give it a 5 because a 4 seems low, especially when I'm giving a 4 to Dune Warrior. Since I bought Doll Graveyard, in a three pack of Full Moon productions, I'll have it for a while but who knows if I'll ever get back to it.

Top Gear Series 14

The 14th Series of Top Gear came had 7 episodes and the first one aired 11-15-09. There's the usual car driving and noise. Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond travel about and show off different cars and terrains. They travel to Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Barbados and Bolivia. 

I do enjoy the scenery, there's an amazing road in Romania called the Transfăgărășan and it goes left and right and up and down. That's it below.

I doubt that I'll ever get to Romania and I'm not bothered. It's a long way to go to look at a road and then I'd have to spend a lot of money to get there. Add on the cost of renting a sports car and paying any speeding tickets. There's a packet of money gone.

They build an electric car that looks like crap. It's called The Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust. It gets in the way on the streets of Oxford. They smash some airport vehicles into each other in a series of tests.

May marries a camper to a blimp and takes a flight. The trio take over the Middlesbrough Institute of Art for a car related art show.

Off roading in Bolivia. The Bolivia Special took the whole hour and there were none of the usual news or Star In The Reasonably Priced Car. The Stars in the Reasonably Priced car were: Eric Bana, Michael Sheen, Chris Evans, Guy Ritchie, Ross Kemp, Jenson Button and Seasick Steve. They have the 2009 Top Gear Awards in the last episode.

Another entertaining series.