PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Live

After the two series of Saturday Live there was a bit of a cast change and the show moved to Friday night for one last series called Friday Night Live. It's the same format as the previous DVDs, little clips of the comedy and none of the music. There's plenty of Ben Elton ranting, too much of Harry Enfield and his bunch of annoying characters, and too little of Fry and Laurie. I did like the two bits of stand up by Jo Brand and the two Julian Cary pieces. All in all not as entertaining as the three previous sets of material from the series.

Donovan's Brain 1953

I hadn't seen Donovan's Brian for decades. I found the MGM Midnite Movies DVD today and thought I'd give it a go when I got home. It's directed by Felix E Feist, he wrote the screenplay from Hugh Brooke's adaptation of Curt Siodmak's novel. Lew Ayers is a doctor who works out of his home. He doesn't practice medicine, he experiments, his current project is popping the brains out of funny little monkeys. His work is to keep the brains alive. He's got them in an aquarium partially filled with a cloudy liquid. That's one below with Lew crouching in front of the tank. Nancy Davis plays his wife and Gene Evans is their friend and Lew's assistant.

A plane crashes near Lew's country house and the local police come to Lew to see if he can help. He goes along to the crash site. A millionaire was in the plane, he's smashed up pretty badly, he won't make it to the hospital. They take him to Lew's house but he can't save the guy. On the spur of the moment Lew decides to steal the millionaire's brain. He puts it in a bigger aquarium with some more cloudy liquid.

The trio keep the brain alive and eventually Lew contacts the brain telepathically. The dead millionaire slowly takes over his mind and directs him to collect cash from bank accounts. The Feds get called in and a nosy reporter learns of the brain. Gene and Nancy try to release Lew from his enslavement but the brain has grown pretty powerful. What a predicament!

I enjoyed the movie, it's a bit pokey, not much happens at times. I was still glad to add it to my collection.

Shadow Of The Hawk 1976

I'm not sure what possessed me to buy the Nightwing & Shadow Of The Hawk Blu-ray but there it is. I watched Shadow Of The Hawk today, I hadn't seen it before and I had just watched Nightwing fairly recently. 

Jan Michael Vincent is a half Indian living in the city. He's not much in touch with his native past but that changes when Chief Dan George comes to call. Chief Dan wants Jan to drive him back home. Reluctantly Jan agrees. They take a freelance writer, played by Marilyn Hassett, along for the ride.

Once they get going to turns out Chief Dan has another agenda, he wants Jan to take over for him as the Shaman for the village. Jan doesn't really want to but after he's nearly run off the road by a ghost car and beaten up by a bear he gets right into the shaman thing. Jan and Chief Dan battle the evil spirit and all is well.

Peter Jensen, Lynette Cahill and Norman Thaddeus Vane wrote the story, Norman wrote the script with Herbert Wright, and Gorge McGowan directed. It was OK but kind of slow. I might watch it again, I might not. I thought Nightwing was a better movie.

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb 1971

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb is a 1971 Hammer film that was loosely based on Bram Stoker's The Jewel Of Seven Stars. The screenplay is by Christopher Wicking and the direction came from Seth Holt and an uncredited Michael Carreras. Peter Cushing worked on the film for a day before leaving because his wife was sick. She would die soon after. Seth Holt would die on the set a week before shooting was completed. Michael Carreras directed the remaining scenes.

Andrew Keir stepped in, after Peter Cushing left, and took the role of Professor Fuchs. The man had found a previously unknown tomb of an Egyptian queen named Tera. She was so evil they put her in suspended animation, chopped off her hand, and buried her with her evil accoutrements. When her sarcophagus is opened Tera looked like she'd just been buried. Fuchs takes her and her sarcophagus back to England. He builds a secret room in his basement, recreating the original tomb.

Fuch's daughter Margaret, played by Valerie Leon, was born the moment he read Tera's name in the tomb. Margaret looks like Tera and has strange nightmares. James Villiers plays another member of the original expedition to Tera's tomb, Corbeck, who's got it in his head to revive Tera. He has to gather the evil artifacts from her tomb. Lucky for him Fuchs has Tera and her tomb in London so he doesn't have far to go. That and he has a flat across the street from the Professor's house.

The problem with gathering up all those cursed artifacts, they case the death of the person who had them last. Soon there's a pretty good body count going.  Fuchs learns that Tera's awakening will kill Margaret. He'll have a tough time going up against the evil queen. She does like her jewels.

It was about average for a Hammer film. I enjoyed it well enough. There's something going on, nice sets and locations. There's a couple of interviews, one with Valerie Leon and one with writer Christopher Wicking, some TV & Radio Spots, and a still gallery as extras. The DVD came with a DVD of 20 Hammer Trailers, it runs 47 minutes, and it's a nice thing to have.

Murdoch Mysteries Season 10

Murdoch Mysteries Season 10 aired in 2016 and 2017 and I just got around to buying the set. I waited for the Blu-ray set to fall in price and it finally got to a price I felt was good. I usually have a bunch of seasons of TV programs on my Amazon wish list and check them regularly for price drops. There are 18 episodes on 4 discs and a few making of featurettes. I hadn't even mentioned the series before but I have been a fan for a while. I just don't have the time to post about everything. I liked them enough to buy the Blu-rays and I hardly have any TV shows on Blu-ray. 

As usual the series delivered 18 episodes that were entertaining and filled with action and comedy. There's plenty of murder and detecting. There's a massive cliff hanger at the end. Who's dead? We'll see when I watch Season 11. Lucky for me it arrived today.

Science Fiction Sunday 522

Today I watched the two part film Dark Planet and Dark Planet: Rebellion. The first part came out in 2008 and the second part came out the year after. It's a Russian production and the Wikipedia says it's the most expensive Russian science fiction film. It's barely made back it's $36 million cost. It's directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk and the screenplay is by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko and Eduard Volodarskiy. The movie is based on a novel called Prisoners Of Power by the Strugatsky Brothers.

It's about a guy from Earth who gets stranded on another planet. They've got a military dictatorship going on and our alien gets drafted into the army. He eventually topples the government. It reminds me of the kind of story that used to appear in SF mags and novels of the 50s. One guy brings down a crappy bunch of dictators. That sort of thing.

I enjoyed it and even at 215 minutes it still manages to move along fairly well. There's always something going on and there's plenty of big sets and nice props. The action is pretty good too. I'm not going to bother with a DVD. There isn't one out here in the US, I saw it on Amazon Prime, but there is one in the UK.

Friday Night Movies 713

Mausoleum is a 1983 horror film. It's got a screenplay by Robert Barich and Robert Madero with Michael Dugan directing. It's stars Marjoe Gortner, Bobbie Bresee and LaWanda Page. It sounds like the producers were classy twats. From the Wikipedia: On the DVD commentary, Bobbie Bresee revealed that producers set up bleachers for crew members to watch the filming of her sex scene.  

Marjoe and Bobbie are a couple and LaWanda is their maid. Bobbie's mom died when she was young and after the funeral she got a bit of demon in her. Now that she's thirty the demon starts killing people. First she blows out the top of a guy's head, then she balls the gardener and kills him. Marjoe tries to rid his wife of the demon. He needs some help.

Despite the below average script I mostly liked the movie for the first half. At that point it got kind of dull and I was having a hard time staying awake. It picked up a bit near the end but not enough to make me give it more than a 4 on the IMDb. The effects and make up were fair but nothing special. The actors were a mixed bag, not all were that good. I don't think I'd need a copy, there's not enough to make me want to watch it again any time soon.

Cutting Class is a 1989 comedy horror film set in a high school. Steve Slavkin wrote the script and Rospo Pallenbeerg is the director. Rospo only directed this movie but he wrote on 5 films starting in 1977 with uncredited work on John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic. It was followed by two more John Boorman films, Excalibur and The Emerald Forest. I liked Exorcist II: The Heretic but I don't care much for the other two. I haven't seen the last two films he worked on.

There's a fairly good cast with Donovan Leitch Jr, Jill Schoelen, Brad Pitt, Roddy McDowall, Martin Mull and Dirk Blocker. Brad's a jock, but a bad one, Jill is his girlfriend, Donovan is a mental case now back in society. Roddy is the principal, Martin plays Jill's father and Dirk is the coach. I think they bring a below average script up a notch.

Jill's father goes hunting and gets an arrow in the chest. He's left for dead but he wakes up later in the film and spends the rest of it trying to get home. Martin's the funniest thing in the movie. After Martin's puncturing, the murdering moves to the school and we start the usual picking off of the locals. There's plenty of running about the school and related teen activity. Sadly, there's hardly enough nudity. My other complaint is that it's supposed to be a comedy but I hardly laughed. I did enjoy Roddy as the creepy principal but he is a pervert. I looked on My Watched Movie list and it said I had seen the movie back in 1992. I sure didn't remember it and I don't think I'd bother buying one.

Power Of The Press 1943

Sam Fuller wrote the story for Power Of The Press, a 1943 film set in the newspaper world. Robert Hardy Andrews wrote the screenplay and Lew Landers is the director. Lew is noted as a prolific director, often compared to cinematic workhorses, Sam Newfield and William Beaudine. I'd just seen one of his early films, The Raven, the other day. POTP was his first feature length film, his 5 previous efforts were all serials. He's got 175 credits on the IMDb and a lot of the later ones are TV listings with multiple episodes. If he hadn't died in 1962, at age 61, he might have had an even longer listing.

Guy Kibbee is a small town newspaper editor who inherits a newspaper in a big city. The previous owner was murdered when he said he was going to start using the newspaper to support the war effort. Guy steps in and immediately has trouble with Otto Kruger. Otto's a scum bucket of the more heinous kind. He's power mad and an isolationist, he has people killed when it suits him. He framed a man for the killing of the newspaper owner and covers for the real killer. Joining Guy in the good fight is Gloria Dickson who had been the owner's assistant. It's a tough fight as Otto cheats and schemes to stay in control of the paper.

Otto will get his in the end but it's touch and go there for a while. A good solid story that I found entertaining. It's totally something we've got going on today. They even mention fake news.

Adventure In Sahara 1938

Sam Fuller only wrote the story to Adventure In Sahara, a 1938 film about a guy who joins the Foreign Legion. Maxwell Shane wrote the screenplay and D Ross Lederman is the director. It's a story of vengeance. The Captain is a sadistic man who's responsible for the death of many men under his command. The brother of one of those poor victims comes to the post for revenge. It's barely an hour and it moves along quite well. There's a fair bit of talking, some action and a bit of romance. Oh, yeah, there's a good bit of vengeance too. That Captain was really a prick.

Fire Maidens Of Outer Space 1956

Fire Maidens Of Outer Space  is a 1956 British SF film that was written and directed by Cy Roth. I found a used copy of the uncut Olive Films DVD at DreamHaven. You never know what you'll find there, most visits find me bringing more stuff home.

The Wikipedia tells me: many critics have dubbed the film the "worse movie ever made". I know I've seen worse but there's been a lot of film through the movieola since 1956 and those critics haven't seen some of our modern cinematic disasters. Some of the stuff made for the SyFy channel is less entertaining to watch.

Earth scientists discover life on the 13th moon of Jupiter and they decide to send a space ship to check it out. When they arrive they are attacked by a big ugly man like creature. Bullets do little but it runs when they use a gas bomb.

They find the remnants of the people of Atlantis. The doomed Atlantians moved before their city sank and slowly their numbers have swindled. Only 17 people are left, all women, except for the old man who leads them. There's not a lot of action, a guy does climb a tree, but they do shoot their guns a good bit. Not that it does much good. Romance develops between one of the women and lead astronaut Anthony Dexter. The other women are interested. Still, there's a good bit of dead time when people aren't up to much. There's a silly dance in front of the sacrifice. All in all I enjoyed watching even though it's not that great.