PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Western Wednesday 8

Four more movies from the Cowboys & Bandits 50 Movie Set. It's one of those 12 disc sets that Millcreek Entertainment puts out. Much of what they put out is in the public domain and they tend to pack a lot on a disc. Still, it's often the only place to find some these old films. The price is certainly right, usually I find these sets for under a tenner and that makes the movies under 20 cents each.

Law Of The Rio Grande 1931 Bob Custer is an outlaw who decides to go straight. He hires onto a ranch and soon has trouble with an old outlaw pal of his. There's the usual cowboy stuff but the movie isn't much more than an average oater.

Ghost Patrol 1936 It's one of those more modern Western that have airplanes, cars and scientific gadgets. A professor invents a magical ray that causes airplane engines to stall out. Crooks have kidnapped the professor and they use his machine to down planes so they can rob them of valuables. Tim McCoy goes undercover to infiltrate the gang. Not too bad either. You can watch it and see if you like it.

Cavalier Of The West 1931 Harry Carey is a Lieutenant in the cavalry. He has to defend his brother in a murder trial. It's kind of melodramatic and there's a bit of a sad ending. Not bad but not better than average.

Stormy Trails 1936 Another one of those movies where the evil villain wants a poor saps land. He uses all the trick he can to get that land. Rex Bell is the poor sap and he fights back. It was better than the rest on the disc.

It might be because it was directed by Sam Newfield. He's a B-Movie director who's got an impressive list of stuff on the IMDb. He started directing shorts in 1926 and continued working until 1964. He worked in TV in the 1950s directing episodes of Ramar Of The Jungle, Captain Gallant Of The Foreign Legion and Hawkeye And The Last Of The Mohicans. The script was by Phil Dunham. His acting career ended in 1953 with 250 credits. It's not too surprising, he started in 1913. Phil also wrote, he started writing shorts in 1917, over 30 in the next dozen years, and between 1933 and 1940 he wrote a dozen films. The only one I've seen is Secret Agent K-7. I don't remember anything about it.

Not the best bunch of films but all watchable. I'll forget them soon but so that goes with most everything.

Maigret Series 2

Pretty much more of the same in the second series of Maigret. Michael Gambon, who has a corner of the Top Gear Test Track named after him, plays the French Police Detective in 1940's Paris.  During his interview with Sir Michael Jeremy Clarkson mentioned a 2000 TV movie called Longitude that he liked. You can see a watchable copy on YouTube. It might be good but I haven't watched it myself. Maigret I liked quite a bit and would want to watch them again. I'll be keeping an eye out for a cheap set.  It's 29 bucks on Amazon right now. I might have luck and find a cheap used one someday. I can wait a bit. I'm curious about the French Maigret series with Bruno Cremer. It's got 9 DVD sets listed on Amazon but they're each about the same price as the Gambon Maigret set.

Time Team

Twice in the last week I heard mention of a TV show called Time Team. The first mention was during an episode of Have I Got News For You and the other was by someone on Facebook who was watching the series. So I looked up the show, both on the Wikipedia and on YouTube, and found out it had been on for 21 years and there were about 280 episodes. The host of this Channel 4 Archeology program is Tony Robinson. You might remember him from Black Adder where some say he didn't have a cunning plan.

I've watched a few random episodes of the program and was liking them enough to download the whole lot of them from the YouTube page I linked above. It's got all 20 series and all the specials and extra programs. There's a couple of other historical programs on there too.

Each episode the Time Team crew dig a hole in the ground and look at the dirt. They mostly dig in the UK but occasionally they travel to other countries. They even dug up the lawn at three of the Queen's palaces. The story that was told on Have I Got News For You was about Tony getting caught having a wee on a tree at Buckingham Palace. He wasn't there just for a quick slash, he was there to film the program. He needed a pee and couldn't make it to the portapotty.

The show is pretty low key but there's usually an interesting place to visit. The things they find aren't earth shattering, more mildly interesting. It lasted a long while but in the last few years the ratings had dropped and the show got cancelled. The 20th series ended in 2013 and the last special aired in 2014. I'll get back to the series at some point and start watching them the programs in order. I've got a few other things that I want to watch sooner than that.

Maigret Series 1

I saw that the library had the 1992-93  Grenada Maigret TV series with Michael Gambon so I ordered that up. It arrived at the library, I picked it up today and watched the first series when I got home. There are only 6 episodes in the 1st series so it didn't take too long. The stories are each based on a Georges Simenon novel. I've read 3 or 4 of the novels and didn't really ever get around to anymore. I was curious to see Michael Gambon in something else than Harry Potter and I was surprised to find the characters of Jules Maigret and Albus Dumbledore rather similar. They're both compassionate caring men who are after the truth. They both have a sense of humor and co-workers often can't keep up with them. A lot of the mannerisms that Maigret uses I see in Dumbledore. Not too surprising since it's the same actor. Each of the stories have an interesting mystery and some interesting characters to keep you intrigued as Maigret and Sgt Lucas dig onto the murder. The scripts are good. It's a great looking series with lots of nice sets and props. It's set just a few years after World War 2 and Budapest Hungary fills in for Paris and other French locations. I was happy to watch it, I was just going to try out one disc and watch something else. Yet when the first three episodes were over I immediately put in the second disc and watched that instead. I'm saving the 2nd series until tomorrow. As an interesting bit of trivia, ITV had cast Richard Harris, the first guy to play Dumbledore, as Maigret in a 1988 adaptation. Too bad that isn't on YouTube, at least that I could find.

Science Fiction Sunday 417

I spent some more time with Joe 90 today and didn't find the second disc much more entertaining than the first. Joe has 7 adventures this disc and he gets into some big scraps working for World Intelligence Network. They aren't the best employer that's for sure. The guy who's Joe's contact with WIN, a guy called Sam, is supposed to be a pal of Joe's dad but he's sure willing to lie and cheat to get Joe into some scraps. He sends Joe on vacation with the wrong imprint, a military weapons expert instead of a surf boarder's experience. Then he follows Joe and his dad to the vacation spot he recommended and gets Joe to go on the mission by screwing up their vacation. Why Joe or his dad would trust Sam after that I can't figure.

That's the office of Sam's boss, it looks like the corner of a crappily designed ballroom in a shitty hotel. What were the designers thinking. Hadn't they been in an office before.

Some of their other buildings look better on the outside. It doesn't help the stories much but at least I have something to look at. The new puppets were smaller, lighter and more humanly proportioned. The problem was that they were difficult for the puppeteers to handle and they don't move the characters around much. Often walking is from the waist up with the puppet looking like it was being moved on a dolly or something. Just adds to the disappointment. Only two more discs to go.

Friday Night Movies 608

I Drink Your Blood is a 1970 horror film about hippies, rabies and crazy killin'. It's written and directed by David E Durston who got his script ideas from the Manson killings and a deadly rabies epidemic in Iran. He directed a half dozen films over 12 years and this is his most famous film. And that's probably because it was the first, or one of the first, movies to receive an X Rating from the MPAA for violence alone. They released the film with instructions for the theaters to trim the film in their area and that resulted in a huge number of slightly different prints coming back to the distributor.

Some hippies are having a Satanic ritual in the woods when we meet them. One of the guys brings a local girl and the other members beat her up, rape her and drive her off. The next day they try to leave the area and their van breaks down. Rather than fix it they push it down a hill with one of the guys inside sleeping. Nice bunch of people, huh. Nearby there's a small town that's been evacuated for a dam project the hippies take over a small hotel. The grandfather goes after them and they beat him up. His grandson decides to get even by giving the hippies some meat pies laced with rabies laden blood from a dog he'd killed. The hippies turn rabid and attack the men in the dam's construction crew. There's some general mayhem and the movie is over. Hardly anyone survives.

It's about average, we got a few laughs, though some of it is pretty goofy. Worth a look for the fan of the exploitation film. The new Blu-ray looks nice and there are the two versions of the movie on it. I'd get one if it got cheap enough.

I have a copy of the 2014 psychological horror film The Babadook but I might get rid of it. I found it for a couple of bucks on clearance and we watched it tonight. I had heard of it and people seemed to be liking it. It was written and directed by Jennifer Kent and it's her first director's job. It's Australian and it's based on a Kent short film from 2010. Essie Davis is the main lead and I did not recognize her from Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries where she plays Phryne Fisher.

Essie is a single mom and she lives with her son in a grey house. Really the whole place is a wash with monotonous grey. It's no wonder that weird things happen there. Her son was born on the day his father died. He had been in an accident on the way to the hospital. Essie's son is one of those hyper active kids who just won't shut up. That's a horror to me. When going to bed the son picks a book to read and it turns out to be the Babadook pop up book. It leads evil into the house and they spend the rest of the movie going crazier and crazier. It's a mental illness movie as opposed to a monster movie. I'd prefer the latter thank you very much. Not one I'm going to be bothering with again.

A Woman For All Men 1975

A Woman For All Men is another Arthur Marks film. It's from 1975 and the script is by Robert Blees. Robert wrote a good number of movies and a bunch of TV. I particularly like The Black Scorpion and Screaming Mimi. The latter is based on the Frederic Brown novel but with some changes to the story. Both are worth tackling. A Woman For All Men is a weird murder mystery about a young woman who marries an older rich guy. Judith Brown plays the young woman and Keenan Wynn plays the rich guy. Andrew Robinson, Paul Hooten and Patty Bodeen play the grown children and they are worried that their new mom might be muscling in on their inheritance. Things get tense after Judith and Andrew have a fling. Things get more tense after Keenan drives his car off a cliff. Alex Rocco is a cop who comes to tell them about the accident. Things deteriorate in the house as the various greedy guts all take a whack at each other. I hit the fast forward a bit near the end. It's part of a two movie disc from Netflix. The Roommates was the first movie on the disc. I would need to see this one less often than I would The Roommates.

The Roommates 1973

I got The Roommates from Netflix. It's a 1973 film about some college gals who go on summer break to a small resort town. They have some sexy times dating the locals, at least until the killin' starts. It's a mix of naked boobies, relationship observations, psychological murder mystery, teen angst and summer camp shenanigans. It doesn't quite do any of them well, except for the boobies. Those were nice. The script is by John Durren and director Arthur Marks. Arthur had directed 76 episodes of Perry Mason earlier in his career. Those usually had better scripts than this movie. John Durren is mostly an actor, this was his first script, his second was Devil Times Five which I haven't seen. The Roommates isn't much better than average and occasionally I was getting tired of waiting for something to happen. I was glad to have gotten it from Netflix instead of buying it.

Kibakichi 2004

Kibakichi is the US title of Kibakichi: Bakko-yokaiden and from that Japanese title we can see it's about Yokai monsters. It's world wide English title is Werewolf Warrior. It's a 2004 film about a werewolf guy who stops at a town to find the local gambling den is run by Yokai posing as human. They eat some of their customers. The Yokai have a deal with the local Boss and they are left alone. At least until the Boss's henchmen get a Gatling gun. They kill the Yokai and the young blind girl that hangs out with them. Werewolf guy goes off on a revenge fueled bitey marathon and wipes out the Boss's creeps. It wasn't bad but it wasn't great. It kept me going to the end but I was a bit frigidity. The same material in a more deft hand would have been more interesting. The DVD plays with the default to English. The English dub track is nearly as poor as any I've heard. Luckily you can switch to all Japanese with English subtitle. That helps a lot.

The director is Tomo'o Haraguchi and he's mostly a special effects guy who directed 8 films. I've seen his 2010 film Death Kappa and thought it was a bit poor. I'd seen his Sakuya: Slayer Of Demons and my one word comment on my Watched Movie List was "fair". I guess I wasn't too enthused about it. I'm not too enthused about Kibakichi but I did get to the end and I will watch the sequel. It's not something I'm going to rush out and buy as I wouldn't need to watch it again too soon.

Midsomer Murders Series 18

Series 18 is the most current series of Midsomer Murders and they aired starting in January 2016. There were 6 movie length episodes.The 18th series brings the number of total episodes up to 110. That's like a 165 hours of programing. That's good bit, huh. The writing, acting and production values continue to be top notch.

Neil Dudgeon plays DCI John Barnaby, Gwilym Lee plays DS Charlie Nelson, Fiona Dolman plays Sarah Barnaby and Manjinder Virk plays the new pathologist Dr Kam Karimore.

Habeas Corpus has a body disappear out of this big old house. The detectives are driving that Volvo nowadays. John asks if it's body snatching or someone covering up a murder. John and Charlie look into that and root out the villains. There's the usual kind of Midsomer happens going on.

The Incident At Cooper Hill returns to the world of UFOs. There was a UFO episode several years early. People are being murdered by being dipped into some unknown goo and left in the woods in a rubbery cocoon. The local UFO crowd thinks it's a sure sign the aliens are here. The incident in the title also is a big ass lie.

Breaking The Chain has murder in the world of competitive bicycle racing. That's Charlie and Kam, they're just about to take part in a race when they get the call to check out the dead guy. There's tension in the village over the annual bike event. Some like it and some don't but that isn't the reason for the killings. There's secondary story confusing the murders.

A Dying Art takes place in the Sculpture Park on a big estate. The rich guy gets murdered on the day he opened his Sculpture Park. Some others soon follow, their bodies fouling the sculpture. Serious art criticism? Hardly, just another dumb ass murderer.

Saints And Sinners has guest star Julia Sawalha, whom I'd just been seeing in Jonathan Creek, as an archeologist. They've just found the bones of a local Saint. Problem is there are already set of bones in a church that are supposed to be the same Saint. The bodies start piling up.

Harvest Of Souls is set in and around the funfair at Whitcombe Mallet. The steam powered rides are from a real fair that operates in England. The local squire is murdered and the village has mixed reactions. The man was not too popular with the locals as he was evicting many of them so he could expand his horse stable business. Reason enough to kill him right there. There's others, mostly involving the rich family of the dead man. Not too surprising there.

The series continues to entertain me. I think there must be a few other people who are liking them since they are coming back for a 19th series in 2017. I did read that Gwilym Lee has left the series and there will be a new partner for DCI Barnaby. He was a good character, I'll miss him. I still miss Tom Barnaby but I have the DVDs to watch so there's that.