PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong Series 1 & 2

Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong is a 2008 British TV game show with Alan as the host. Series 1 has a group of 5 Celebrities versus a group of 5 Civilians. The questions are meant to show the divide between the two groups. There's a nice prize for the winning group. There's non-stop banter from Alan and that's usually fun. The show moves briskly for a game show. Series 2 changed the types of groups that were pitted against each other. Apparently there were complains from the Civilians so they changed the format to all Celebrities. The type of groups competing are EastEnders vs Coronation Street or Strictly Come Dancing vs I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here, or boy bands vs girl bands. It's silly and noisy, with Alan occasionally doing a bit of sketch. There's a DVD, how I learned about the show, that pulls some of the best game show bits out of the 1st Series and cuts them into a long sketch where Alan goes to interview Liz Hurley. He always says at the start of the show that's where the Civilians name came from, Liz called them that. Alan plays Liz, who never appears on the show. I found the lot on YouTube and have been watching them the last couple of days. It's never going to be my favorite game show but it's pretty silly and I'd watch them again.

Man Down Series 2

Rik Mayall died before they filmed the second series of Man Down. The first series ended in November 2013, there was a Christmas Special in 2013 and another in 22014. They dedicated the Christmas show to Rik Mayall and Bob Davies. Bob was Greg Davies father, he died about the same time. Greg says in the Behind The Scenes featurette that he thinks that Rik would have like the madness of the second series.

The second series is madder than the first series and it's even funnier. I already like Greg Davies and Roisin Conaty from seeing them on the panel shows and their stand up. Neither are great actors but they are perfect for their roles here. Rik was playing Greg's dad, his adversarial role has been filled by Stephanie Cole, playing his sister. She's playing a similar character to the one she played on Doc Martin, a gruff and practical farmer lady, but she's much more over the top in Man Down. She winds up moving into Greg's mum's house, Greg lives in the attached flat, and she makes his life a living hell. One I can enjoy, let me tell you.

That's Mike Wozniak, Roisin Conaty and Greg Davies, they're playing pals who have known each other since school. They're still pals since hardly anyone else would be their friends. Their characters are going to a wedding on The Heath. Roisin is the one getting married. They're lost in the woods where there's supposed to be a strange beast that leaves near human size piles of shit.

I'm sure I laughed even more at this series than the first. I'd be looking forward to the 3rd and 4th series but so far no DVDs of of either series. Those series aired in 2016 and 2017 and still no word if there will been another series. I sure would watch it. I know I'll be enjoying these two series again sometime.

Alan Carr - Tooth Fairy Live 2007

Tooth Fairy Live is Alan Carr's first live arena tour. The tour came out in 2007 and the show is about 90 minutes. The DVD is packed with a CD of the show. Nice, not that I would ever bother to play it. I enjoyed the show and would want to watch it again someday. The DVD set also had a best of a show Alan did about the same time. I'll get to that soon.

Man Down Series 1

I finally ordered the first two series of Man Down by Greg Davies. He created it and writes it with Stephen Morrison, Sian Harries, Barry Castagnola and Ed Gamble. Matt Lipsey is the director of all 6 episodes and the Christmas Special. All are contained on one DVD with a making of featurette.

Greg plays a school teacher called Dan, he lives with his girlfriend in a flat attached to his parents house. Dan's not overly fond of teaching but then, he's not that good at his job, nor is he good at getting along with people. Before he was a comedian Greg was an actual teacher for over 10 years, teaching drama and English. They film the show in the same school where Greg really taught. The scenes with the drama class are some of my favorites.

I would love to see their Christmas play Scrooge 3000. Too bad they didn't put that on as an extra.

Deirdre Mullins plays Dan's girlfriend Naomi, Gwyneth Powell plays Polly, Dan's mum, and Rik Mayall plays Richard, Dan's dad. Richard is completely crazy and spends much of his on screen time torturing Dan in strange ways. Polly seems completely oblivious to this. I'm always happy to see Rik Mayall and I'm still sad that he died. I wish he could have done a 2nd series of Man Down. Or anything else. Happily, there are DVDs of The Young Ones, Filthy Rich And Catflap, and Jonathan Creek on the shelf. I can enjoy those over and over.

Roisin Conaty plays Dan's friend Jo and Mike Wozniak plays Dan's friend Brian. Jo's much more out there, totally deluded about life. Roisin is ever so funny. Brian is more down to earth, he's often caught up in Greg's plans because he hasn't the guts to say no. Neither can help Dan when much. That's the main theme of the scripts, Dan's bad time, made worse, of course, by his behavior. It's a common thing in British sitcoms, a guy who's life is filled with failure. Dan sure struggles. I've come to like that sort of comedy. The cast are all great and the situations and dialog made me laugh out loud. I'm looking forward to series 2.

Science Fiction Sunday 541

I watched the pilot and first two episodes of Space: Above And Beyond today. There was only the one season and lucky for me I was borrowing it. I had seen the show when it had first aired but I've forgotten the story line. Turns out it's aliens are attacking Earth Outposts and Colonies. It wasn't grabbing my attention but I will try another disc next week.

Friday Night Movies 736

Evil Ed is a 1995 Swedish horror comedy that was filmed MOS, or Mit out Sound, which means there wasn't any sound recorded at the time the scenes were shot. All the sound effects and actor dialog was looped in later. Only one of the actors dubbed their own scenes.It's directed by Anders Jacobsson, he worked ont he screenplay with Göran Lundström and Christer Ohlsson.

The movie is set in the world of film making. Ed is a film editor who gets assigned to finish editing Loose Limbs 5 after the original editor blows his head up with a hand grenade. The editing suite is in a mansion in the country. Ed slowly goes a bit nuts and starts hallucinating. People who come in contact with Ed don't fare too well, he kills his boss and puts the poor film delivery guy in the hospital. Ed's wife and daughter are worried because they haven't heard from Ed. They go to the house and we already know that's a bad idea. The wife manages to shoot Ed with a pistol and then taser him. Ed's carted off to the mental hospital, which he proceeds to turn into an abitour.

It's was fairly funny and fairly gory. I laughed a some of the jokes and situations. There were a good number of in-jokes, things like Ed's full name, Edward Tor Swenson, or characters using lines from other horror movies. Worth seeing for the horror fan. I thought I hadn't seen it but I had, back in 1996, back when it was on video tape.

Don't Knock Twice is a 2016 Welsh horror film that was ultimately kind of boring. There were some nice bits with the demon witch monster thing but there was a lot of family drama. There's a nice bit at the end with the monster but hardly enough to get me to like it more. It's more a drama that's got horror elements.

OSS 117: Double Agent 1968

In the fifth of the 60s OSS 117 movies John Gavin takes over the role of our main spy guy. OSS 117: Double Agent came out in 1968. The UN delegate to the Middle-Eastern Peace Process is killed and OSS 117 gets on the case. He goes undercover and joins a terrorist organization. There's a good bit of action and some dirty dealing. John Gavin was OK as a spy and the rest of the cast was fine. I found my mind wandering a bit in the last third. Quick flick of the speed button fixed that. Someday I'll watch these all again, same for the 2 French films.

A Touch Of The Sun 1956

I've been a fan of Frankie Howerd since I was a teen and first saw him in Up Pompeii around 1970. He's pretty camp and I love a camp comedian. Frankie didn't make many movies, a couple of dozen if you include the TV movies, and the most famous might be The Ladykillers with Alex Guinness. Frankie only had a smallish part, he had better bits in The Runaway Bus, Carry On Doctor, Carry On Up The Jungle, The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery and The House On Nightmare Park. The last film is on DVD as part of The British Film series from Network. Not much of his work has filtered into the US. A bit turned up on cable in the 90s and Up Pompeii ran on PBS back in the 80s, since then, not so much. Until the last few years I hadn't seen many of his movies, but an all region player has given me the opportunity to see a lot of what I missed. You can see some of his work on YouTube. There's plenty of material available in the UK.

A Touch Of The Sun is a 1956 film that was written by Alfred Shaughnessy and directed by Gordon Parry. They both worked on a lot of British TV. I've even seen some of their works.

Frankie is the hall porter at an upscale hotel and his knowledge has become very valuable to the hotel. He's helpful to the guests and one of them leaves him ‎£10,000. After a fling on the French Riviera Frankie decides he misses the hub hub of the hotel and the enjoyment of helping people. He comes back to London to find the hotel closed. He buys it with the money he has and tries to get some rich businessmen to invest in the place. The last third of the movie is a mad slapstick dash about the hotel with all the staff playing customers to make the place seen inhabited.

It's pretty much standard fare. It makes some noise and has some gags. Not all the best gags but enough make make me titter. I enjoy Frankie so I'm quite pleased to be watching. Others might not like him. Who knows.

There's Always Vanilla 1971

I thought I'd take a chance on There's Always Vanilla, it's a 1973 George Romero film and it didn't pan out. It's George's second film, after 1968's Night Of The Living Dead and the only zombies are regular folk trudging, slack jawed, through life. Rudy Ricci wrote the script, it's dull, and George refers to it as "a total mess".  Even having it on a nice Blu-ray doesn't make it more interesting. I'd give it a miss if I only knew what I was getting before I spent the money. I could have easily wasted that $14 on something else. Cake, even.

Forgotten Noir Volume 6

I'll Get You is a 1952 British film with George Raft. It's the first movie in the 6th volume of Forgotten Noir. It's written by John Baines and Nicolas Phipps. It's directed by Seymour Friedman and Peter Graham Scott. It was called Escape Route in the UK.

George Raft is a FBI agent who's come to Britain to investigate a series of missing scientists. He hooks up with Sally Gray, an agent from MI5, and pretends to be a nuclear scientist. Clifford Evans is the baddie, he gets suspicious of George, and I didn't blame him. There's some spying and some adventure.

I rarely see movies with George Raft in them. I have 3 or 4 and that's about all. He's OK here but, sadly, George was a bit too old for the part, his fight scenes are pretty weak. The movie was an average film but mostly enjoyable.

Fingerprints Don't Lie is a 1951 crime movie. It's got a story by Robert Hughes and a screenplay by Orville H Hampton. Orville wrote a whole bunch of movies and TV shows between 1950 and 1983. It's directed by Sam Newfield who started directing shorts in 1926 and continued to work until 1964. I know I've seen several of his films: Nabongo, Queen Of Burlesque and The Monster Maker to name a few of his over 250 features.

An artist is convicted of murder and the fingerprint guy is asked how it feels to send a man to the gas chamber. He thinks about the case and something makes him re-investigate the fingerprints again. He finds more clues and hooks up with the Mayor's daughter. They work to find the real killer and free the artist.

It was OK but nothing special. It gets a 4.3 on the IMDb and that isn't too far off the mark. What takes off some points is the continuous appearance of Sid Melton as a stupid news photographer who can't work his camera. Some of his lack of comedy scenes go on way too long. Sid was a favorite of producer Robert Lippert and he appeared in a lot of Lippert pictures.