PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive

I'm always on the look out for a movie collection. Usually that means a lower cost per film. The Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive is a collection of 5 films from the 1940s. I'd only seen the last in the list below so it was a nice treat for me. I got it from Amazon, $13.99, not bad for 5 movies. They're short ones, most about an hour, and they're all packed on 2 discs. The movies look and sound fine but there are no extras, other than 3 trailers. You can see John Carradine and Bela Lugosi on the box. They both worked a lot for Universal. They're joined in this box by Basil Rathbone, Milburn Stone, Lon Chaney Jr, Alan Ladd, Martha Vickers, Broderick Crawford, Paul Fix, Lionel Atwill, Russell Hicks and plenty of other good character actors who worked at Universal Studios.

The Black Cat is a 1941 horror picture that lays on a bit of comedy. Horror movies of the time were pretty lightweight when compared to the ones you see today. It's got a script from Robert Lees and Robert Neville with Albert S Rogell directing. Albert directed a good number of pictures in a career that started in 1921 and ended in 1954. Half of his 124 credits were silent films, half of those shorts. I just wasn't familiar with most of them. I'd recently seen his Painted Faces with Joe E Brown and his 1940 film Lil Abner.

The Black Cat is based loosely on the Edgar Allan Poe story. An elderly spinster is on her deathbed and the greedy relatives are hovering for a paycheck. With that start you won't be surprised that there's a murder shortly after. Th corpses start piling up, even the cat isn't spared.

Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi, Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford, Anne Gwynne and Alan Ladd are the cast members that I had heard of before. I liked it despite the annoying character that Hugh plays. That guy got on my nerve. Broderick was more fun. The house was fun too, lots of secret passages and nicely dressed sets. The story was full enough for the short running time of 71 minutes and there was fun stuff for the actors to do. It's probably my favorite in the set.

Man Made Monster is a 1941 mad scientist film. It's got a script by Harry Essex, Len Golos, Sid Schwartz and director George Waggner. This was one of 2 dozen movies George directed between 1938 and 1951. He directed the next film in this set and in 1942 he directed The Wolf Man. After that I can't remember seeing any of his other movies. In 1954 George started directing TV and he worked on a lot of popular shows. The last two programs he worked on were the 1966 seasons of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Batman.

Lon Chaney Jr is a carnival sideshow guy who does an act with electricity under the name Dynamo Dan, the Electric Man. Lon's just been in an accident, a bus hit a high power line, everyone was killed but Lon. Lionel Atwill and Samuel S Hinds are doctors and scientists. They take Dan into their home and laboratory to study the effects of electricity on him. Lionel is the guy that pushes Dan, charging his body with larger and larger doses of juice. Dan becomes a slave dependent on the current Lionel supplies.

Samuel tries to stop Lionel from going further but Lionel isn't going to put up with losing his greatest medical break through. He desires to create emotionless, brainless, electrically powered slaves out of humans. He can't seem to see how that's a bad thing. He orders Dan to kill Samuel and poor Dan has to obey. Powered up Dan can kill with the touch of his hand. Dan's tried and sent to the electric chair. Ironically, the juice makes him into more of a monster. He escapes and goes after Lionel, hellbent on revenge. Someone's days are numbered. It was pretty entertaining, they pack a lot into an hour. Nice sets and effects too.

Horror Island is a 1941 horror comedy that was based on a story called Terror Of The South Seas by Alex Gottlieb. The screenplay is by Maurice Tombragel and Victor McLeod with George Waggner directing.

Dick Foran and Fuzzy Knight are the owners of a boat that owes a lot of cash. They help Leo Carrillo out of spot of trouble and he shows them his treasure map. He has half of the map and some masked man has the other half. The masked man keeps chasing after Leo. The treasure map gives Dick an idea to raise some cash. He's going to use his island to host a treasure hunt event at 50 smackaroonies a head. Of course once they all get there, the bodies start piling up and the chase is on. There's some silly stuff going on and a bit of romance. It was entertaining.

Night Monster is a 1942 horror mystery about a vicious revenge. Clarence Upson Young wrote the script and Ford Beebe is the director. Ralph Morgan invites the three doctors who saved his life, but left him a cripple, to his house. There's a variety of characters there. Soon after the doctors are settled in their rooms, the killing starts.

Bela and Lionel get top billing on the poster but they aren't the main characters in the film. There's a mystic in the film and he really teaches the baddie to materialize missing flesh. Not quite as fun as the others but still entertaining.

Captive Wild Women came out in 1943 and it's a heavily circus themed story. It's directed by Edward Dmytryk, the story is by Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher, and the screenplay is by Ted Fithian and Neil P Varnick. John Carradine is a mad scientist, he takes the glands from a live woman, killing her, and puts them into a gorilla. The gorilla turns into a pretty girl who gets a job at a circus. She's played by the lady on the poster, the shockingly savage Acquanetta. Her job is to stare at the lions while the lion tamer does his act, her eyes calm the lions. It's got way too many lion taming scenes and I was right quick on the fast forward button. The least interesting of the films in the set. Still, the whole package is mostly above average and that's fine with me. A good addition to my collection and some of those films I'll watch again.

What I Read In January 2017

Here's some books I read last January 2017. Another couple of months has past and I'm even further behind than I was before. Oh, well. On the plus side, I did read 19 books in January. That's a good chunk of words.

The Tripods 3 - The Pool Of Fire by John Christopher The last of the trilogy. Was OK but not keeping them.

The Secret Of Pirates Hill by Franklin W Dixon. The 36th of the series, came out in 1956. This is still part of the original series. The book would be rewritten in 1972 but I'm not interested in the rewrites. Frank and Joe go skin diving for missing gold and go up against some scumbag criminals.

Dragon Breath by Ursula Vernon. Something I picked up remaindered at DreamHaven. Turns out it was too slight to continue on with the series.

The Three Investigators 4 - The Mystery Of The Green Ghost by Robert Arthur. A fun series with three kids investigating, in this case a ghost. I picked up a few of these for under a buck each. I remember reading some of them when I was a kid. Not a keeper.

The Case Of The Rolling Bones by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason takes on a case involving a murder in the gold rush days. It leads to a murder in the book's present day.

The Three Investigators 9 - The Mystery Of The Screaming Clock by Robert Arthur. About average for the series.

The Three Investigators 21 - The Secret Of The Haunted Mirror by M V Carey. Same with this one.

When The Tripods Came by John Christopher. A prequel to the series that was included in the trilogy box set. It was OK but I'm not going to reread them again so they are already gone.

Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon. Another remainder from DreamHaven. More enjoyable than Dragon Breath but not going to keep this one either.

Claudine At St Clare's by Enid Blyton. The fifth novel in the St Clare series. Typical Blyton school stories with some girl out of whack to the place. The other girls put her on track behavior wise, after some troubles.

The Three Investigators 20 - The Mystery Of The Monster Mountain by M V Carey. About average. I've already forgotten what the monster was. Going bye-bye.

The Jinx Of Pay Rock Canyon by Troy Nesbit. I've read several of Troy's Whitman books and they all have been OK reads. I still have them but come the big purge, I think they will go. The stories are all set in the Colorado mountains and usually have interesting stuff happening.

Five On Kirrin Island Again by Enid Blyton. The Famous Five are back on Kirrin Island and there's some dirty doin's going on there. Enid wrote 21 Famous Five books, the first was in 1942, and by the end of 1953 they had sold over 6 million copies. Today they continue to sell 2 million copies a year and the total of the series sales have topped 100,000,000 copies. I enjoy them immensely and have been slowly filling in the series. I have most of them.

The Case Of The Baited Hook by Erle Stanley Gardner. The 16th Perry Mason book, someone gives Perry a third of a $10,000 bill to represent a masked woman in a future problem. It takes him most of the book to figure out who his client is. A fun read.

The Black Gang by H C McNeile.

Leven Thumps And The Gateway To Foo by Obert Sky. I got through this one but wasn't diggin' it too much. I had the second, started it, put it down after 50 to 60 pages. Not going to continue on. Just didn't care for the characters and such, much.

Mr Lemoncello's Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein. The second Mr Lemoncello book, this time the wacky games guy has a special library and there are puzzles to figure out. OK, but probably going to go someday.

The Ghost OF Blackwood Hall by Carolyn Keene. The 25th Nancy Drew book, actually written by Mildred Wirt Benson. This book finds Nancy recovering stolen jewels. Nancy and her pals travel to New Orleans investigate. 

From Shadow To Light - The Life And Art of Mort Meskin by Steven Brower with Peter and Philip Meskin. The book came out in 2010 but I missed it back then. I used to be a fan of Mort Meskin when I was a DC comics reader in the 70s. I moved on and hadn't read any of those comics in decades. A few years ago I downloaded a bunch of House Of Secrets and re-read some of his Mark Merlin stories, they were OK. Someday I'll get back to those comics. The book about Mort was interesting. I just found a collection of Mort stories that the editor of this book put together. I'll have it soon and maybe read it some day.

Science Fiction Sunday 490

I couldn't sleep anymore so I got up real early and started watching crappy SF movies on Amazon Prime. The first two were from there and the other three are Netflix discs that arrived on Saturday.

Destination: Outer Space is a 2010 Christopher R Mihm film. He makes 50s style low budget films and in the last dozen years has achieved a bit of a following. I don't care much for his films and this isn't one I could recommend to anyone who wants a good movie to watch. It's not as interesting as that poster and the poster sucks.

First Man On Mars is another embarrassing SF film. Ludicrous script and characters didn't make me laugh. Even a couple of ladies in bikinis shooting couldn't help this film. It came out in 2016 and there isn't anything that I can recommend here either. Like the previous film, it's just a dull thing that should be ignored.

Bokeh is a 2017 Icelandic film about a couple that might be the last people on earth. They wake up in their Reykjavik hotel and no one is about. They go into the city and no one is about. In the country they find a guy but he dies soon after they meet. The whole movie is about the two of them falling apart and that was sure uninteresting. It looks nice and the scenery in Iceland was occasionally nice to look at. Sadly not a reason to watch the movie.

Epoch is a 2001 movie that's about the best of the lot today and it's still below average. David Keith is a science guy who gets taken to a weird thing that's appeared in Bhutan. They open the cone and inside get a message that leads them to think that the cone is a device for terriforming the planet. It's about to start up and the Chinese come calling with nukes to blow it up. David has to work hard to save the earth and his own ass. It's a TV movie with a TV movie budget and production values. I enjoyed it more than the others but don't need to see it again. There's a sequel but I'm not searching it out.

The Device is a 2014 that I won't need to see again. It's almost all bickering between two sisters and the husband of one of them. They find a strange metal ball in the woods and it cuts their hands. They keep it with them and eventually some poorly lit and hard to see aliens come over to listen to some yelling. Nothing much ever happens, just the three of them yakking. The aliens appear near enough to the end of the film many would have bailed by then and missed them. I was glad when it was over. There isn't anything like the image on the poster in the film. Give this a big miss.

Friday Night Movies 682

First up the 1989 horror film Warlock. It was written by David Twohy and directed by Steve Miner. Twohy would go on to write and direct the Riddick series and Alien 3. Julian Sands is an evil wizard who lives in 1691 Boston. He's been captured by Richard E Grant and awaits killing after a trail. That's a big mistake, the court should have dragged him from the court and chopped him up in the street. Julian manages to escape into the future and the magical whoosh pulls Richard along. Julian crashes through the window of a house that has Lori Singer and and a guy, who's dies soon after we meet him, living there. Richard shows up after Julian has gone and teams up with Lori to go after Julian. The evil warlock is after the three parts of the Grand Grimoire so he can destroy creation with a magical word. What a dick, huh. Richard and Lori stumble along and eventually save the world. I thought it was alright, I'd seen it back in 1992 and remember liking it more than I did this time. There are two more sequels and all are in a single set. I considered buying one but after seeing the movie again, I probably won't bother. Maybe if it was cheap, say a fiver.

Our second movie was the 1944 action fantasy Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves. It's got a screenplay by Edmund L Hartmann that doesn't follow the original story very much. Arthur Lubin is the director, he's later direct 131 episodes, out of 145, of Mister Ed. He directed The Incredible Mr Limpet and the first 6 of the Francis the Talking Mule movies. He's had plenty of work over the years and usually does an OK job, here he's kind of weak. The movie has a nice look to it but it drags along. We all enjoyed Andy Devine as the prince's protector. I watched the 1940 Alexander Korda film The Thief Of Bagdad recently and that was a more entertaining film.

 

Nativity! 1-3

I found the first of the series, Nativity, on Netflix. I wanted to see the other two and wound up ordering DVDs of the trilogy from the UK. The third film isn't even out in the US.

Nativity! is the first and it came out in 2009. Debbie Isitt wrote and directed. Martin Freeman, Marc Wooton, Jason Watkins, Pam Ferris, Alan Carr, Ricky Tomlinson, Rosie Cavaliero and John Sessions are cast members that I knew. There's a passel of kids, some of them are pretty funny. Martin is a new teacher and Marc is Mr Poppy, the teaching assistant. Mr Poppy is totally straight up nuts and a big barrel of laughs. He's better experienced in a movie, you wouldn't want to be working with the guy. There's plenty of jokes and a bit of a romance to straighten out.

Nativity 2: Danger In The Manger! came out in 2012 and Debbie is at the helm again. This time David Tennant is the new teacher. David plays twin brothers, they are, of course, totally different. Marc Wooton returns as Mr Poppy. I enjoy his catastrophic enthusiasm, at a distance. Jason Watkins, Pam Ferris and Rosie Cavaliero are also back. They are joined by some of the same kids and a couple of other familiar faces, Ian McNeice, Joanna Page and Jessica Hynes. Funny but the twins thing was kind of tired.

Nativity 3: Dude, Where's My Donkey? came out in 2014 with Debbie once again writing and directing. Martin Clunes is the new teacher and Catherine Tate is the romantic interest. Marc Wooton is Mr Poppy. He's still crazy. Glad I'm not the new teacher. The donkey proved to be so popular last film they brought him back. Too bad they didn't bring the jokes back. It falls a bit short in the laugh department. I still enjoyed it but not as much as the first. The whole Martin amnesia plot was weak but it's better than it's 3.6 score on the IMDb.

I'll watch the lot again sometime. The kids are fun to watch. They make me laugh.

Western Wednesday 48

The Naked Spur is a 1953 Jimmy Stewart Western. It's directed by Anthony Mann and the screenplay is by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom. Anthony directed 42 films in a career that started in 1939 and ended in 1968. His first movie was The Streets Of New York and it was a TV movie. It's was his only one.  A lot of his movies were Westerns. Sam Rolfe on the other hand wrote mostly for TV, he developed The Man From Uncle and wrote an episode. Harold wrote a lot of TV also, some of which I've probably seen.

Jimmy is a bounty hunter looking for dirty criminal Robert Ryan. Ralph Meeker is a dishonorably discharged Union soldier he meets on the trail. Millard Mitchell is an old prospector that gets dragged into the story and Janet Leigh is hanging with Robert for some reason. Ralph helps capture Robert and invites himself in for a third of the $5000 reward. He offers another third to Millard, who helped. Jimmy wants the whole reward to buy his ranch back and Ralph wants the whole reward for himself 'cause he's a snake in the grass. Millard is just stupid and he pays for that later. I enjoyed the ride as the group tries to get to Abilene. The $5K causes a lot of problems and it hardly ends well for anyone. Good movie and one I went and ordered now that I've seen it. You can often find a few good bargains on eBay.

The Scalphunters is a 1968 Western comedy with Burt Lancaster, Ossie Davis, Shelley Winters, Telly Savalas and Dabney Coleman. It's written by William W Norton and directed by Sydney Pollack. Burt is a trapper who gets his furs traded for Ossie by some Kiowas. He follows and see the Indians killed by Telly and his gang of scalphunters. They kill any Indians they see for the $25 bounty on their scalps. Telly is the leader and Shelley is his gal. They take Ossie and plan to sell him in Houston for $1500. They have the furs and Burt is right on their trail, worrying them, picking them off one or two at a time. Eventually it all sorts itself out and the movie ends with Burt and Ossie just one step behind the Kiowas and those furs. Not a bad bit of fun, but not one I would bother buying.

Vampire Academy 2014

Someone spent $30M on this movie and it only made $15.4M back. I guess there probably won't be a sequel, so the cliff hanger won't mean anything. Much like the rest of the movie.

5 Against The House 1955

5 Against The House is a pretty good heist film from 1955. It's got a good cast, Brian Keith, Kim Novak, Guy Madison, Kerwin Mathews, Alvy Moore and William Conrad. It's based on a magazine story by Jack Finney. His next story to be made into a movie was Invasion Of The Body Snatchers in 1956. The screenplay was written by Stirling Silliphant, William Bowers and John Barnwell with an uncredited Frank Tashlin helping out. Phil Karlson is the director. Phil directed about 50 films but I've only seen The Big Cat, Kansas City Confidental, Kid Galahad, Alexander The Great (with William Shattner), Ride The Wild Surf (uncredited), The Silencers and The Wrecking Crew. The last two are my favorites of his work, they are two of the four Dean Martin Matt Helm series.

5 Against The House is about some college students that are having a bit of a break in Reno. Two of them get swept up in a robbery and released. Kerwin starts to develop plans to rob the casino, return the money, and get something from that, other than jail. I felt his idea that they wouldn't be arrested if they robbed the place and returned the money wouldn't really work well in the real world. He starts the works going and gets Brian and Alvy in on the plan. They need a fourth guy and trick Guy into going along for the weekend. When he finds out about the robbery, Guy's not interested, but before they can go home, Brian pulls a gun and the robbery is on. It all goes downhill from there. Brian is a Korean War vet with PTSD and that's going to complicate things. It all gets sorted out at the end. It's got a decent script and the whole PTSD thing is petty timely. Worth having a look at.

Science Fiction Sunday 489

Taking Earth is a 2017 movie with yet another alien invasion story. It's sure a popular theme. Seems you can't swing a womp rat without hitting another invading alien. It's a South African film, with a $250K budget, that was directed by Grant Humphreys, he wrote the screenplay with Michael Harrison and Grant Knight. The invading aliens aren't at all interested in Earth or the human race. They want one young man, he's been hiding on Earth for the last 7 years. Now the human race is going to get wiped out because of that young man. What dicks these aliens are! The young man does his best to help the humans from being exterminated and he succeeds. Yay! Still, not a very good movie, better than a college film production, but not too much. The actors are of mixed quality but pretty straight up white. I was surprised to only see one black guy in a fairly large role and one black lady in a smaller part. Odd for a movie made in and around Joburg. There's a lot of running about and talking. That's one of the plus double good things about your alien invasion movie, lots of outdoor shooting, often with no actors. Sadly, the nice outdoor scenes and such aren't shot that well, the images are rather dull and lackluster. Perhaps they only shot on overcast days. In the end it falls down, impaled by the script, and it can't get up. I wouldn't need to watch it again. As a positive I did like the robot guys and some of the space ships.

Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter is another 2017 SF movie. Neil Johnson is the writer and director. It's the future and the humans are under attack from the AI's they built. It isn't very interesting. Yak, chase, shoot, repeat. Not much else going on. The movie scores a 5 and I gave it, what I thought was, a generous 3. The movie's user ratings are skewed with 47.3%, or 569 of the 1204 votes, a 10. It has 307 1s which I assume is people trying to correct the imbalance. If you take everything that's left, half the votes are a 2, a 3, or a 4. No wonder I hate people. They sure suck.

Primer is a 2004 time travel film by Shane Carruth. It's mostly a couple of guys talking and talking and talking and talking and talking. It makes 77 minutes seem like all of time. I was bored out of my mind.

Heavenly Days 1944

Heavenly Daze is a Fibber McGee and Molly movie. It came out in 1944 and Howard Estabrook wrote the screenplay and directed. The McGee's are in Washington DC to visit their cousin. Somehow or another, McGee gets right into the middle of some political shenanigans. It's sort of funny but the public didn't flock to it and it lost $205,000 on release. If you like Fibber and Molly, you'd probably like this. Sadly, it's not got the star studded cast the other two McGee films had, nor any of the supporting characters from the radio show. Barbara Hale and Eugene Pallette might be the other big names in the cast.