PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Mr Stink 2012

Mr Stink is the first BBC adaptation of one of David Walliams' books. As you can see the Beeb cleverly copied the book's title so as to lure the viewer with something which was familiar. A cunning plan that worked rather well, 6.34 million turned on their tellies and watched. I wish I would have seen it then, it was broadcast in 3-D. Sadly the DVD doesn't come with a 3-D version. Mr Stink is the second David Walliams novel, it came out in 2009, I've read it. I really enjoyed it, and to repeat that pleasure, I've sought out other David Walliams books, some of them from foreign countries. Imagine that.

I recently bought a 3 DVD set of the first 3 BBC adaptations of David's books. I'm watching the shows in order of production. I had already seen the last reproduced program on YouTube. It looked so poor I'm sure the DVD will be like seeing it for the first time all over again.

Nell Tiger Free plays Chloe and Hugh Bonneville plays Mr Stink.

Mr Stink has a dog called The Duchess. He hangs out on that bench in a park. Chloe befriends him after the horrible girl at her school hits him with a banana peel. It was a good shot, right out the bus window, but she's still a rotter.

Sheridan Smith plays Chloe's mom Caroline and Johnny Vegas plays Chloe's father Mr Crumb. He doesn't have a first name for some reason. He's out of work but hasn't told anyone. Caroline is running for Tory MP in her area and she's got it in for the homeless. I'd seen Caroline in some of the later episodes of Jonathan Creek and Johnny was the main reason Ideal was so good. Johnny looks so clean cut here.

Isabella Blake-Thomas plays Chloe's sister Annabelle, she's all wrapped up in being a busy child prodigy. Harish Patel plays Raj, the friendly newsagent. He appears in almost all of the Williams novels, and he's often quite integral to the plot.

Steve Pemberton, whom I'd been seeing on The League Of Gentlemen lately, appears on Politics Tonight with Mr Stink. Caroline had been invited but only "if she brings the tramp". Mr Stink is a hit on the program and he gets an invite to see the Prime Minister. David Walliams plays the PM and he needs a bit of boost in his popularity. He hopes to use Mr Stink for that but that's not going to happen. I believe something up the bum was mentioned.

We learn about Mr Stink's background  and Chloe's family problems work themselves out during the show. The family has a lovely family Christmas.

His job done, Mr Stink decides to move on.

I got a tear in my eye at the end when Chloe and Mr Stink part ways, both times I watched it. We'd all like a Mr Stink in our lives, at least once. If you get one, hope he isn't too pongy.

It's a hat trick of script, cast and production. The cast were just great, and no wonder, they had such a great script. David Walliams wrote that script with  Simon Nye. Simon has written plenty of good TV, I've only seen a bit of it, Men Behaving Badly, the Reggie Perrin remake, and the recent The Durrells In Corfu. In the short interview on the DVD David talks about changing the story for the TV program. There might be a lot of small changes but they don't do anything to change the core of the story. Declan Lowney is the director. Declan has directed a lot of TV, including Father Ted, Wired, Little Britain and a show I just received in the mail, Moone Boy.

It's a nice story, you can't find many much better either. There are plenty of jokes and it's got heart without being overly sentimental. I plan to watch this over again. I know I'll be reading his books over again too.

Lee Mack - Live 2007

Lee Mack - Live is Lee's first tour DVD and it came out in 2007. I think Mickey Noonan liked the show more than me. I thought it was OK but nothing special stand up wise. I laughed some. It's not like I'm sorry to have picked up these Lee Mack comedy DVDs, they were cheap on Amazon UK, and I did enjoy it enough to get to end. I'll even watch them again. I'll pick up Lee's third show someday, it's currently £3.50 on Amazon UK. There's an £11 box set of all three shows but it's a little cheaper to buy them separately. The extras include a short on Lee and Chris, Lee's opening act guy, staying for four days in Cartmel; a few sketches from The Sketch Show; a bit of an interview from The Lee Mack Show radio program; a picture gallery and a version of the show with swearing bleeped out.

Lee Mack - Going Out - Live 2010

I picked up a couple of Lee Mack's tour DVDs when I was ordering his TV series Not Going Out.

Lee Mack - Going Out - Live doesn't have anything to do with the series, other than a similar title. Lee does a show that's just under an hour and a half, there were a few laughs but I don't think I ever laughed out loud once. I did get a snort out. I'd put him below Jimmy Carr, Sean Locke and Dara O'Briain in enjoyment value but that's just personal preference. Everyone is going to different things that appeal about comedians. There's a short about being on tour as an extra. You can see the whole show on YouTube in the link above.

Mondo Balordo 1964

Mondo Balordo is a 1964 documentary that's narrated by Boris Karloff. Boris reads the script by Francesco Torti and Guido Castaldo. Roberto Bianchi Montero and Albert T. Viola are the directors.

Here's the shocking contents ripped from pages of the IMDb:

Shocking images from around the world. The sketches are: Strange characters' gallery, a dwarf singer, bodybuilders, English women in a gymnasium, desert Bedouins, election of a Miss Pullover, Hong Kong nightclub, Japanese photo-models for rent and photo magazines, elephant hunting, an exorcism in India, compulsive smokers, a coca plantation, Chinese houses, the rain miracle, Jehovah Witnesses, the Berlin Wall, the Napoles Wall, smugglers, compulsive lottery players, an eye deficiency, the last of the Valentino clones, southerners' needs, via Margutta in Rome, luxury pet dogs, similarities between animals, Arab hair-stylists, American natives, a marriage of American natives, Macumba session and choir, Romeo and Juliet in Borneo, Jamaican home, a marriage of convenience, Chinese district, German beer-house, mad people, the Marlene cult, Berlin nightclub, Luna Park attractions, a camping for foreign ladies, London by night, clandestine affairs in Rimini, a fake woman tourist, Sicilian ...

It sounds better than it is, often it's kind of dull, and the script that Boris reads is often terrible or unintentionally funny.

Science Fiction Sunday 452

Area 51 is a 2015 film about some guys who think they should break into Area 51. It takes ages to get to the area and these guys are rather dull. When they finally get inside they break some stuff and let the aliens out. Two of the guys manage to escape only to be abducted by those same aliens. It's done in the absolutely over worked found footage/documentary style and that's some played out shit. It's written and directed by Oren Peli. I'd have given it a miss but I just can't seem to learn my lesson.

Into The Forest is a 2016 tedious and predicable post-apoc film with Ellen Page stuck in a forest. She's living with her father and sister, deep in the forest, when something causes the power to go out permanently. They get delayed into getting into town because of stupidity and there isn't much food left. They get a bit of gas and return to the house. A time passes and dad dies because of a chainsaw accident. Now it's Ellen and her sister, until they are joined by a Ellen's boyfriend. After a while he decides to leave for Boston, because there's supposed to be power, but Ellen can't leave her sister. The sister gets raped and later has a kid. The two sisters become more reclusive and when the cabin receives heavy damage from a storm, they burn it down and move deeper into the forest. I was bored with it and found myself using the 10 second button a lot. I wouldn't recommend it to me but others might get more out of it. It's got a 5.9 on the IMDb for some reason.

Friday Night Movies 643

High-Rise is the 2015 adaptation of the JG Ballard novel of the same name. I haven't read the book, I think I've only read one Ballard novel, and I didn't care enough for it to want to read any more of him. Amy Jump wrote the script and Ben Wheatley is the director. It's got some good cast members, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Luke Evans, Elisabeth Moss, James Purefoy, Reece Shearsmith and some I didn't know before.

The story is about Tom and his new apartment in a new exclusive, high-end, high-rise out of the city. It's supposed to have all the things that would make you want to stay in the building but the reality is that not everyone gets to sample the amenities when they want them. It's all cold and soulless and the walls of Tom's apartment are, as Joe said: "Painted with shit." Shit with a bit of rust in it. The Architect of the building is a nut job with little contact to reality. There's a class structure in the building and the snobbery at the top is sick making. I have to admit I would side with the lower classes, they are more interesting and likeable. Once the power, water and sewer fail it turns all Lord Of The Flies and Piggy gets it in the ass. By the time the movie ends, nearly everyone is dead, and Tom's drifted off into his head.

The story didn't always keep me interested, even though it's a well made film. There's a ton of allegorical butter slathered all over everything and I'm not sure what message I was supposed to get. I know it's supposed to be about the failure of society but when the building failed I couldn't understand why no one bothered to leave. It's not like they were trapped like the kids were on the island in The Lord Of The Flies. The society turned to barbarity right quick, less than 3 months, with no apparent off screen reason to believe it would have happened. I guess I like my allegories more literal. Others are going to get more out of it than I did.

I enjoyed our second feature more than the first. One Dark Night is a 1982 horror movie about some bad girls who have it in for Meg Tilly and a dead paranormal knob. Director Tom McLoughlin co-wrote the script with Michael Hawes.

Meg is dating Julie's ex and Julie isn't going to let that go unpunished. Julie pretends to like Meg and she convinces Meg that she could join up with Julie in her exclusive club of stuck up and useless high school teens. They call themselves The Sisters.

Julie sets it up that Meg will have to stay overnight in a mausoleum as an initiation. Julie plans to sneak back into the place a scare Meg. It's a huge mausoleum, with lots of corridors of dead people. I thought it looked like the mausoleum in Phantasm but that was a fake one and this movie uses the outside of one place and the inside of another. Both are located at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Part of the real mausoleum was re-created on a sound stage.

Back in the movie, Meg is set up in the mausoleum. One of The Sisters decides to walk away from the harassment and she spills the beans to Meg's boyfriend. The mausoleum is the home to the recently dead Karl Raymarseivich Raymar. At the beginning of the movie we see his dead body and there are 6 dead women in his closet. After the funeral, his daughter gets a visit from a writer on the occult. He knew Raymar and he claims that her father was a psychic vampire. He would suck the energy out of frightened women and use it to power his telekinesis. Adam West plays the daughter's husband, he doesn't believe any of this occult stuff but the daughter comes to believe.

After Meg gets settled in, Julie shows up and Raymar's corpse breaks out of the crypt. He animates some of the other dead to attack the girls. Meg's boyfriend comes to help, after Meg and he are joined by the daughter, they manage to escape. The Sisters don't fare so well.

I was entertained, it's got a couple of giggles and some yelling and screaming. The baddies get theirs, hooray.  It's still not much above average. At best I would give it a 6 on the IMDb but I'm not going to run out and buy it.

YellowBrickRoad 2010

YellowBrickRoad is a 2010 horror film that was co-written and co-directed by Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton. They are from New Hampshire and the movie was filmed in Lancaster with local actors. The movie has a group of documentary makers follow the trail created 70 years ago when a whole town got up and walked into the woods. Half of the 572 were found dead, frozen or murdered in various violent ways. The other's disappeared. No one had been on the trail for years, it was kept secret, now a knob has the route. He leads the crew into the wilderness and soon enough there are way too many interviews with the film makers. Some weird noises and music appear from nowhere, the sound is all around them, it slowly drives them nuts. Then the killing starts. Once most of them are dead, the guy who lead them to their dooms wanders into a theater for a bullshit ending. It's low key and pretty yakky to boot, and there's way too much tree time for me. I know you can die in the woods, I don't need some supernatural shit to make me stay out of the woods, woodland critters, they suck enough for me. It gets a 4.7 on the IMDb and that's about what I'd give it. 

The Hidden Enforcers 2002

The Hidden Enforcers is the last of the Sammo Hung four movie pack. It's a 2002 film with Sammo as an ex-policeman who has raised a group of kids into adult hit men. He uses them to kill off criminals that have killed police officers or avoided going to jail. It all goes to shit as the youngsters kill nearly everyone they meet including their friends and innocent cops. Sammo didn't train some sense into them. It's pretty stupid and the ending is poor. I didn't care for it that much.

The Gambling Ghost 1991

The third movie in the 4 pack of Sammo Hung films was The Gambling Ghost. It's a 1991 film with Sammo playing 3 parts. He plays Fatty, his Father and Grandfather  Hung Kau. Fatty works in a hotel but he wants to be rich so he gambles. Unfortunately he isn't so good at the betting and his dead Grandfather comes back as a ghost to help him out. Grandfather would like a favor, he wants the man that killed him killed. Fatty can't kill someone so he plans to get the murder in trouble by getting evidence. There's not so much action as some of Sammo's films and it takes forever to get to it. It's just above average, nothing much special in it, and the jokes aren't too plentiful. It gets a 5.9 on the IMDb and I gave it a 6, it's better than a five but surely not a 7.

Burger Cop 1995

Burger Cop is the second movie on the first side of the two sided disc of four Sammo Hung movies. It's from 1995 and it's a lot better than The Mandarin Magician, Sammo has the lead in this film. The movie's Hong Kong English title is Don't Give A Damn. Sammo after some drug dealers. He gets assigned a new partner, Takeshi Kaneshiro, whose younger and has different ideas on being a cop. Yuen Biao is a Customs officer and he's after the same gang. They all manage to get along enough to get the job done. It was entertaining and worthy of the 6.1 on the IMDb.