PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

What I Read In April 2016

Wow, 4 posts on books in about a month. If it wasn't April this post I might say I was getting caught up. Only 8 books this month and not all are keepers.

Miss Pickerell Goes To The Arctic by Ellen MacGregor has Miss Pickerell go on a rescue mission to the Arctic. It all started with her asking the weather man is there might be a big snow fall in the coming winter. She has to leave her cow behind. I like the cow. Better to enjoy the cow in a book than in real life. The book was OK. There's a bit of science and some humor. This is the last of the four original novels that Ellen MacGregor wrote about Miss Pickerell. MacGregor died in 1954, three years before this book came out and 10 years before Dora Pantell started the series again. She wrote 14 books which I don't plan to read. I got the 4 originals for my Kindle cheap but they didn't have a download for the rest. I have so much to read currently that I can't see going looking for these.

Nancy's Mysterious Letter by Carolyn Keene is the 8th in the Nancy Drew series. I like the series enough to post two covers. The original cover to the 1932 book is up top. Not a very nice cover. The later cover, while not great, is much more interesting than the original. As you can guess from the title Nancy gets a letter. What's mysterious about it? It's a letter about an inheritance meant for another Nancy Drew. Nancy goes looking for that other woman and that starts the story. Soon Nancy gets involved with a crook trying to steal that inheritance. Not a bad story, I sped right through it, often the case with the Hardy's too, and one I'll put on the shelf. I'm collecting first 34 books in the series in the original versions. Like the Hardy Boy series Nancy's books were revised starting in 1959. I'm much less interested in reading the series after that.

 

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - The Magical Car by Ian Fleming was kind of OK but I decided not to keep it. I won't read it again. I wasn't much of a fan of the illustrations. I see Flemming was sick at the time he wrote it and that he died two months before it was released. It was first released as three slim volumes and later collected into a single book.

Roy Rogers And The Gopher Creek Gunman by Don Middleton was more entertaining than the previous book. It's just a typical Western plot, Roy up against a crook, but there was plenty going on to keep me interested. I have three or four of Roy's Whitman adventure series and they're all OK. I'll keep them until I decide to get rid of the Whitman's someday. I did not think much of the cover to the book.

 

Flights And Chimes and Mysterious Times by Emma Trevayne is set in an alternate universe London that's all steampunky. I don't really remember much of anything about the story at this point. It went up into the attic so I must have liked it enough to want to read it again.

May Bird And The Ever After by Jodi Lynn Anderson is the first book in the series. May disappears into the swamp near her home and winds up in the Ever After. It's where the dead go and she's got to get out of there. An annoying ghost named Pumpkin and her cat follow her to the Ever After. They have an adventure trying to find a way back to the human world before the evil Bo Cleevil gets her. I've got the other two books to read. I liked May and her cat but that Pumpkin is a right ass-wipe. He screws things up by being a complete idiot. There are other better characters to enjoy. I haven't decided to keep these yet. We'll see what the sequels bring.

Mrs Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald is the first of the series. Mrs Piggle-Wiggle has some magical methods of making kids behave. Who wouldn't like that, huh. Parents in the town ask her for help when they can't change their kids behavior. I found the short stories slightly amusing but kind of repetitive. I got tired of them before the end of the book. which was kind of sad. I had a three volume collection and a single book, bought and paid for, and I hate buying books that I don't read. I had like MacDonald's Plum And Nancy and these stories are nothing like that and nothing near as interesting. Admittedly the Mrs Piggle-Wiggle books are aimed at an even younger audience. I will work through the whole pile of them and put the books on the to go pile.

Only Joking by Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves is a book about jokes. There's a bunch of jokes and some history and joke theory. It was an OK read. I got several laughs out of the jokes included as examples. Carr and Greeves have another book but it's not at the library here and I haven't decided to buy a copy on Amazon UK. I didn't think I'd need to read it 10-12 bucks worth.

Now I've done a third of the year and there are only 9 months to catch up. I wonder what May will bring.

Trailer Park Boys Season 2

The Trailer Park Boys return with 7 new episodes in the 2nd season. Julian and Ricky leave jail and return to the Sunnyvale Trailer Park only to find the place has gone to hell. There's garbage everywhere and the bottle throwing kids are out of control. It turns out that Randy and Mr Lahey have split up leaving Lahey depressed, drunk and useless. Ricky finds Randy in the arms of Lucy, so he's pissed off. He figures he needs to get his Grade 10 and get a job or something like that to win her back. Ricky has a hard time with learning, what with being stupid and all. Sam, the veterinarian who patched up Ricky last season is trying to get Mr Lahey's job. He's got a bit of grudge toward Ricky because Ricky turned him into the cops and he last his license and his business. Ricky and Julian have come up with a scheme to make a big lot of hash and sell it to the guards in prison who sell drugs to the prisoners. The guys get a small trailer to grow in and they spend the season protecting their crop. J-Roc opens an illegal bar in the park but it gets shut down the same day. Ricky accidentally burns down the shed where Bubbles lives. Now Bubbles has to go live in a van. The rent is good, only 12 bucks. The guys set up Sam by casting him in a porno and giving the tape to his fiance. The show ends with a chase being covered by a helicopter. I laughed hard at Ricky hanging out of the car yelling at the chopper. The guys wind up in jail again. The good news is Julian sold the has before he got caught and in jail Ricky gets his grade 10. Ellen Page makes an appearance for a few episodes as Mr Lahey's daughter. I think I enjoyed this season even more than the first. Well worth a look for those that like a lot of swearing, bad behavior and jokes.

Science Fiction Sunday 426

I hadn't seen The Flying Saucer before. It's a 1950 low budget Indy film that stars Mikel Conrad and Pat Garrison. Mikel wrote the story that was turned into a script by Howard Irving Young. Mikel directed and produced the film but he was mostly an actor. I don't remember ever running across his name before but I see he was in several movies. I haven't seen most of them. Just before this movie he was in Abbott And Costello Meet The Killer Boris Karloff and after this he was in Francis The Talking Mule. His last film was Godzilla, King Of The Monsters. He only directed this one film.

Here's Pat and Mikel in Alaska. Mikel is a playboy that reluctantly takes on a job from a man in American Intelligence who wants Mikel to go to Alaska to investigate the sighting of a flying saucer. Pat is his nurse, their cover story is Mikel has had a nervous breakdown and he's returning home to Alaska with a nurse. They rent a cabin with a secret Soviet spy for a houseman. They set up investigating and eventually get some clues to the whereabouts of the saucer. It turns out a scientist, Roy Engel, has created the thing and Denver Pyle is his assistant. The Soviet spies are after the ship too and there's a bit of action when the American's and the Soviets come head to head.

It's not a great movie but I enjoyed enough of it to give it a 4 on the IMDb. It's currently scoring a 3.8 there and the largest number of votes, 21 percent, are a 4. There's some nice footage shot in Alaska but the story, and it's execution, are typical of a 1930s serial. You could see worse but so many are better. I found a copy on YouTube a while ago but it seems to have disappeared. You can see the trailer.

The Revenge Of The Teenage Vixens From Outer Space is a 1985 low budget comedy SF film directed by Jeff A Ferrell. He co-wrote the script with Michelle Lichter. It's Jeff's only movie, he was also the producer and cinematographer, his only interesting credit, at least to me, is he was the biker coordinator on the Twin Peaks pilot. Michelle played a scientist in the film and was also a producer, make up artist and editor. She has no other credits and neither does Lisa Schwedop who plays Karla. That's Lisa up by the crappy DVD cover. Too bad she never made another movie, she was OK in this.

Some alien teens come to California to breed with humans. They have no men on their planet, the aliens use plant mater for reproduction, but they like a bit of rumpy-pumpy once in a while. They aren't very nice, stealing the local girl's boyfriends by the hand full. Turns out the science teacher had mated with one of the alien women on a previous trip to Earth. His son is half alien but doesn't know it until the events of the movie unfold. He hooks up with Karla and they try to save the locals when the alien vixens start turning the human's into vegetables.

It's all pretty goofy and while it's not anything than about average I had a laugh or two. You can check it out on YouTube and maybe have a laugh too.

Friday Night Movies 617

Morgan is an American film that was filmed in Ireland and British Columbia. I thought that opening scene was British Columbia and it turned out to be true. The scenery looks pretty. The story is dull and kind of unoriginal. Some scientists make a human life and in 5 years it looks like a woman of 20ish. The creature starts to kill and a woman comes from the corporation to check up on the situation. It leads to everyone being killed and me being sad to have seen it. Others might like it more than me. I won't need to see it again.

The Lost Empire turned out to be a lot of dumb fun. It's 1984 and Jim Wynorski gets to direct his first film. He's also the writer and producer. It's a goofy romp that isn't made very well but was entertaining enough to get us to the end. It's packed with all sorts of genre cliches but the movie has enough of a sense of humor to make them OK. We've got several large breasted gals who are on a mission to stop the highly evil and immortal Dr Sin D0. To retain his immortality the Doctor needs to kill daily. He brings women to his island and tests them in his games. Girls who win in the games are turned into a long life for the Doctor. The losers are sold as sex slaves. Angus Scrimm plays the Doctor. What a dick, huh. You might remember Angus from Phantasm where he played the Tall Man. Robert Tessier plays his head henchman Koro. The guy seems to have trouble with his bushy eyebrows. They disappear from his head quite often. Mind you it's not a movie that much cares how it looks. There's a quote from Wynorski on the IMDb that says a lot.

In an interview with the director, Jim Wynorski, he said "I got my first break doing The Lost Empire for Plitt Theatres. The late owner, Henry Plitt (a decorated war hero), wanted to make a low budget sci-fi action picture as a tax loss. I never knew that when I made the show, so I put my heart and soul into the project. When it finally got completed, Plitt actually liked it enough to give it a wide theatrical release - where it actually made some money."

I wouldn't recommend it to everyone but some might get a kick out of it. It's got a lot of topless large breasted women. Some of those breasts were scary. I wouldn't want them crashing into me. You could break an arm. I don't know that I would need a copy but I was happy to see it. Still, after that first movie, anything could seem better than it might have been.

Adventures In Rainbow Country

There was only the one season of Adventures In Rainbow Country. It's a 1970 Canadian series that we watched when we were teens. It also played on Nickelodeon in the early 1980s. There were only the 26 episodes.

It's a family show about some people living in the wilderness of Northern Ontario. Lois Maxwell the mom, Stephen Cottier is the son and Susan Conway is the daughter. Buckley Petawabano is their Ojibwa friend and Albert Millaire, Alan Mills and Wally Koster are their rustic pals. They have Hardy Boy like adventures in the woods with smugglers, boats, kidnappers and planes. There's a lot of outdoor activity.

I enjoyed it when it was new and it seems like it's fun still. I'll have to spend some time watching them someday. You can take a look at the show on YouTube. The series isn't in order on YouTube but that doesn't really matter. If you care, and I did, you can take a look at the show's page on the Wikipedia for the broadcast order.

No Limit 1936

I recently got a couple of George Formby collections from the UK. They have 14 films between them and they all came out in the 1930's and 1940s. The cost was about 30 bucks for the pair. That's only about 2 bucks a movie. I'd seen 2 or 3 of George's 22 movies. I liked his comedy and even a bit of his singing. George's first movie was in 1915 when he was only eleven. His last was in 1957 and he died in 1961 at the age of 56. 

George Formby is a comedian, singer and ukulele player. He also plays the banjolele. That's one on the DVD cover on the left above. The other one is a ukulele. The banjolele was developed for the music halls when musicians wanted a louder instrument. In one of PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories Jeeves threatens to quit if Bertie takes up the banjolele. He was inducted in the Ukulele Hall Of Fame in 2004. His father was also star in the British Musical Halls.

George was pretty darn popular in the 1930s and 1940s, at one time he was the UK's highest paid entertainer. His popularity faded in the 1950s and he didn't get as much work.

I started with George's 1936 movie No Limit. George thinks he can win the Isle Of Man TT races. He's built his own bike, he's mooched money from his grandfather but the old man doesn't know, and he's meet a nice lady. He gets to the races and does a bit of crime solving, mostly by accident.

It's nice and light hearted, there's some good number of jokes, funny blather, and some slapstick. I'd actually heard about the TT races on The Grand Tour. That reminds me to go watch that too.

Jack Frost 2 2000

I picked up one of those multi movie DVD sets, one with only 12 movies, called Fright Fest. and it turned out to be a mixed bag in quality and content. Not many of the movies were much worth watching. I did like Jack Frost 2: The Revenge Of The Killer Snowman even if it's pretty dumb. At least it has a sense of humor. It's the sequel to Jack Frost which we watched at Friday Night Movies recently. It was the reason I picked up the set, it was only $1.60 plus tax. The movie has the same cop, played by Christopher Allport, and some time has past. He's still disturbed by the Jack Frost incidents in the first movie. His wife takes him to the south seas for a vacation but Jack manages to regenerate, escape the lab he's stored in, and swim to the tropics. He starts killin' and even makes it snow. Blood looks so good on the white snow. There's a double fistful of goofy characters and lots of victim extras. There's a few jokes and plenty of slaughter. It's not great or anything but I had a laugh at the tiny snowchildren. They look like snowballs.

Jack Frost 2 might not be worth the $1.60 but there are 11 other movies in the set to help offset that cost. I see there's a copy of the set on Amazon for 43 cents. The other movies are mostly worse, and they're quite a mix.

Devil In The Flesh 1998 Rose McGowan as a crazy young woman who murders people. Pretty much a time waster.

Devil In The Flesh 2 2000 Some other young woman plays the crazy woman from the first movie. She runs off from the sanitarium and takes up residence at college. She starts killin' again. Not a good movie, worse than the first. Not one I needed to see in the first place. Lucky for me my memory is going quickly.

Diary Of A Serial Killer 1997 Gary Busey in drag. Not something you see that often. Arnold Vosloo is a serial killer that journalist Gary sees murder someone. Arnold doesn't kill him when he discovers Gary spying on him. No, he wants to get his story out there and he tells it to Gary. Arnold soon targets Gary's wife and Gary has to put a stop to that. I'm not a serial killer story fan. I didn't care for this much at all.

Evil Behind You 2006 This movie scores a 1.7 on the IMDb. It's got 569 votes and 379 are a 1. It's a Christian horror film with middle eastern style terrorists doing some sort of medical experiments. It's absolutely poor in every way.

The Fear: Halloween Night 1999 Not much good.

Ice Cream Man 1995 Clint Howard plays a crazy guy who makes ice cream. He mixes his victims into the product. Not going to win any awards with that ice cream. Clint is pretty crazy and the movie doesn't take itself too seriously. It's never really great but occasionally I got a laugh. I might watch it again but who knows.

The Killing Grounds 1996 A movie about some stolen gold. A plane with the gold goes down in the mountains out west. People die trying to get it back to civilization. It's just poor and not worth the time spent watching it.

Naina 2005 Interesting because of what it is not what's in the movie. It's a Hindi version of The Eye, a Hong Kong horror film from 2002. That was a much better film, the Indian film never gets that interesting.

Night Feeders 2006 I watched this on Amazon Prime one Sunday last May and enjoyed it. Nice to have a copy so I can watch it again someday. It was as enjoyable the second time through. Not that little diamond I'm looking for but maybe a nice ruby.

The Other Side 2006 A guy is murdered and wakes in The Pit. It's some sort of place in Hell. He escapes, with some other men, and makes it back to Earth to find his murderer. Reapers, the figures in the poster, are sent to blast the escapees back to Hell. There's plenty of gunfire, stabbing and running about. It was almost a good movie but not quite. Glad I didn't invest more than what I did.

Within The Rock 1996 Miners are sent into space to tunnel into a meteor that's headed for Earth. They'll plant explosives in the hope of knocking it out of Earth's path. Of course, they have a hat trick of trouble, stupid greedy management, stupid greedy miners and a monster. The asteroid has a platinum prison at it's core. They find it and the miners think they should tear it apart and keep the platinum as their bonus for working so hard. Like they never considered that their selfish ways might be a problem if the asteroid isn't diverted. Try eating that platinum, guys. The monster is released and it gets busy. The minors have to fight back with what they brought with them. Lots of them die and there weren't that many to start with. Will the monster keep them from saving the Earth? It's watchable but not above average. It came out two years before Armageddon and someone on the IMDb said that the latter ripped off the story. I can't see that as a bad thing, they certainly improved everything about the idea of miners in space, diverting asteroids and saving the world. And you know the science on Armageddon was none too good. I'd watch Bruce and Ben save the world again before I get around to Within The Rock again.

Sometimes a couple that are worth looking at again is all you can expect from these multi movie packs. I don't mind, especially at that price.

Perry Mason Season 7

Nothing too much different in the 7th season of Perry Mason. Perry helps out some people each episode. In one episode he actually loses the case at the start of the episode and he has to spend the rest of the program figuring out who's the real killer. I actually just read that novel a few months ago and like all the novels that got adapted it's been pared down to the bare bones of the story. Mostly what gets cut are all the scenes with Perry sending Paul off on some investigation and then more discussion. There isn't as much Perry sending people off to hide from the police and fiddling around with the law. In some of the books he's gets into pretty hot water and it's only his good deducing powers that keep him out of the hands of the law or from getting disbarred. Lt Tragg in the books is much like the TV version. Calmly going about his work, keeping his eyes and ears open. He likes Mason for the most part, even when Mason blows his case apart and finds the real killer. Lt Anderson is the other homicide detective in the show, his counter part in the book hates Mason with a passion. 

For some reason Della was off the show for four episodes. I couldn't find a reason listed anywhere. Just another mystery.

There were plenty of good guest stars this season. Ones I recognized were Beulah Bondi, Hugh Marlowe, Ivan Dixon, Billy Mumy, Denver Pyle, Diane Ladd, Arthur Hunnicutt, Archie Moore, Strother Martin, Julie Adams, Mike Mazurki, Milton Selzer, HM Wynant, Pippa Scott, James Hong, Richard Loo, Jeff Morrow, Otto Kruger, Alan Hale, LQ Jones, John Hoyt, Alvy Moore, Richard Anderson, Joyce Bulifant, Dabbs Greer, Phyllis Coates, Ryan O'Neal, Les Tremayne, Francis X Bushman, David McCallum, Jackie Coogan, Arthur Franz, Stacy Keach, John Napier, Jerry Van Dyke, Victor Buono, Tom Conway, Malachi Throne, Michael Ansara, George Tobias, Peter Breck, Ted De Corsia and Pat Priest. It seems like a lot but there were hundreds that I didn't know.

All told a good batch of stories. Only two more seasons to go, then I'll take a break before I get back to the series of Perry Mason TV movies Raymond Burr did a few years later.

Not Going Out Series 4

The 4th Series of Not Going Out came out in January 2011 and there were 6 episodes. Lee Mack, Tim Vine, Sally Bretton and Katy Wix all return to the show. Miranda Hart was doing her own series and she's now gone for good. Lee continues to co-write the show with the help of several other writers. Nick Wood is the director. The show had been cancelled while the 3rd series was airing but reversed with good DVD sales and an online petition. The ratings start at 4.75 million viewers and a 19.4% share on the first episode with the ratings falling to 3.74 million viewers and a 15.6% share. That's a big increase for a show that started with 2.8 million viewers and ended series 3 with 2.4 million. 

The stories are about the same. The guys do stupid things and have to figure out a way to get out of their predicament. Tim takes the wrong coat at a bar and winds up with a kilo of coke. He gives it to the wrong guy and Larry the Butcher wants his drugs back. It winds up costing Tim a lot of money. It was his fault so that's fair. Lee finds out he's a father in the second episode. Then they think it's Tim but it was a midget. Lee wants to make 500 pounds renting out Lucy's flat and get in trouble when it turns out to be a bondage porn film. Lucy's father moves in when his marriage goes south. It was all Lee's fault. An old lady with a memory problem beats the hell out of Lee in the 5th episode. I never laughed so hard. She swings a mean cane. The only way to top that is to have Lee hit by a car in the last episode of the season. He's in a coma and having a bit of a dream. Eventually Lee wakes up and the show goes back to normal.

There's plenty of fun jokes in every episode. Occasionally you might need a hint at the gag's content. "Dogging" is a night time activity, people meet up in isolated areas to have sex in cars while people watch. Jimmy Carr has a joke about dogging that ends with "your car looking like a plasterer's radio". Don't make me explain that. I'll be checking out more of the series as I get time. I've got a boxed set with all 7 series in it so I've got plenty more to watch. The 8th series is running right now and there are two more contracted after that. You can see a lot of the episodes of the series on YouTube including the first 2 episodes of the 8th series that have just aired.

Science Fiction Sunday 425

Space Master X-7 is a 1958 SF movie about space rust that could destroy the world. It's written by George Worthing Yates and Daniel Mainwaring with Edward Bernds directing. George wrote a good number of movies and TV episodes. You might know Them!, It Came From Beneath The Sea, Earth Vs The Flying Saucers, The Amazing Colossal Man and Frankenstein 1970. Daniel wrote the screenplay to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Most of the other material he's written is stuff I haven't seen, 40s & 50s Crime and Western films mostly. Edward's career started in 1928 and he first worked as a soundman. He started directing in 1944, mostly short comedy films and then plenty of features. He worked with The Three Stooges on several of their shorts and a couple of their feature films.

It's kind of semi-documentary like with a lot of narration and stock footage to move the story along. Paul Frees is a scientist working on a fungus gathered from space. He feeds the cultures and they grow. The fungus needs protein and it grows quickly. Paul's wife visits at the start of the movie. They have been divorced and she wants their child now that she's remarried. He's kind of a dick and when he grabs her she beats him on the head. He gives her the divorce papers and she leaves. When the blood rust takes over the house the next day Frees is killed but not before he leaves a warning on a tape recorder. The government gets involved, they burn the house down. The salvaged tape leads them to the wife. She hears the news of hubby's death and house burning down. Not wanting to get involved because it would shame her new hubby she takes it on the lam. The government manages to track her down eventually but it's touch and go for a while.

It's not a great movie but it's OK. Of course I'm quite happy with a scientist hero movie pretty much anytime. It gets a 5.3 on the IMDb and that's not too far off to me. I'm surprised that it only has 274 votes. I've seen it a couple of times over the years and hopefully will see it again.

The Eye Creatures is also called Attack Of The Eye Creatures. It's a 1965 remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men that was produced and directed by Larry Buchanan for American International Pictures. Larry worked with AIP on several low-budget remakes for TV. The Wikipedia says that the budget was $40,000 and lead actor John Ashley says half of that went to him for a salary. There isn't much on the screen, that's for sure. It was a season 4 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in 1992. That's when I first saw it. I've seen that version several times over the years but I haven't seen the non-riffed version for a good number of them. I might have to stop watching it without the guys helping me along. It's just not that good, a 2.0 on the IMDb, and even 1.5 speed doesn't help. Sadly, it's also one of Larry's better films.