PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 543

I watched the new animated version of The Macra Terror today. It's the 7th serial in the 4th season of Doctor Who. Patrick Troughton is the 2nd Doctor and he's got Polly (Anneke Willis), Ben Jackson (Michael Craze), and Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) as his companions. The 4 episode serial aired March 11 to April 1 of 1967 and the episodes were lost in the big purge of tapes and copies. There are audio recordings, a tiny bit of video and many stills available.

The animation will do, it's available in Black and White or color. It's more fun to watch than the still photo reconstruction of the show which in turn is more fun to watch over the audio only. It's nice to have both, the photo reconstruction at least lets you see the actors and sets as they were. Some of the animation drawings of the characters didn't look much like the actors.

The story was OK, it's written by Ian Stuart Black and John Davies was the director. Davies appears in a taped interview on one of the episodes commentaries. The story has the Doctor and pals land on a planet that has a colony that seem a bit odd. Turns out they've secretly been taken over by some giant lobster like critters. They've drugged the humans and use them to mine the gas the Macra need to survive. The Doctor kills the clawed pricks off with a big ass explosion. Nice one, Doc.

It was be nice to see them do the missing episodes but I wish they would speed up the process a bit.

The Key Man 1957

The Key Man is another film from Network's The British Film series. It came out in 1957 and was known as Life At Stake in the US. It's based on a play by J McLaren Ross, he wrote the screenplay and the director was Montgomery Tully. I didn't recognize anything by J McLaren and I have only seen a couple of Montgomery's numerous films, Battle Beneath The Earth and The Terrornauts were his last two films, I've seen them and they were watchable, average but entertaining. I have one of his other films, The Counterfeit Plan, in my to watch pile.

In The Key Man Lee Patterson is a crime radio show host, he's on the trail of the loot from an old robbery. I didn't remember Lee being on Surfside 6 but I do know I watched that series back when it was new. Lee's Canadian, I didn't know that either, and he worked in the US and Britain. He appeared in episodes of shows like The Avengers, Combat!, Perry Mason, The Virginian, and The Alaskans.

Back in the movie, the crook who absconded with the loot has just gotten out of prison. Lee goes hunting for him and runs into another interested party. They're after the loot and they'll toss some violence at our poor Lee. Nothing really special here, average with a decent script that moves along at a nice brisk pace, it's only 63 minutes so there's not much time for shenanigans. Glad to have seen it. I'd look at it again sometime.

Friday Night Movies 742

The Happytime Murders is the Melissa McCarthy movie with the puppets. It came out in 2018 and I found the Blu-ray for 4 bucks. The local Half Price Books have started to charge more for their clearance Blu-Rays, up a buck from the previous norm of $3. So far, no raise on the DVD, in fact, I found a whole bunch of interesting things on DVD for 2 bucks each at one store. Typically DVDs on clearance are 3 bucks. What you find varies week to week.

I've been picking up Melissa's movies when I see them on the clearance shelves. Some are more entertaining than others. This was in the less entertaining category.

Melissa's a cop and Phil is a puppet, he was a cop, they worked together, there was some trouble, now he's a private eye. They're brought together again when someone starts killing the old cast members of the TV show The Happytime Gang. Phil's brother was on the show and he's the second cast member to get killed. It's got all sorts of crime cliches but with added aspect of puppets living with humans. The humans treat the puppets as second class citizens.

It's supposed to be a comedy but the jokes are pretty darn weak. I did like the look of the film and the puppets, especially that squirting cow. I just didn't get hardly any laughs out of it. I guess I'll keep it and watch it again someday but it's going to be a while. I figure to have a Melissa McCarthy retrospective once I get a whole bunch of them and some time passes. There are others like Spy, Ghostbusters, The Heat, that are more entertaining.

Second we watched Dark Waters, a 1993 Russian and English movie which was called Dead Waters in it's previous video release in the US. It was shot in the Ukraine. A young woman goes to see her friend who is staying at a convent on an island. She was born on the island and has a troubled past. Going to the convent pretty much fucks up the rest of her life. It's got a Lovecraftian type story that moved along way too slow for me. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Taskmaster Series 1-8

I've been watching the Taskmaster series on Daily Motion. They disappeared off of YouTube after I saw some last year. YouTube didn't have all the episodes and DM has all but two. Series 1 has 6 episodes, 2 & 3 have 5 each, 4 & 5 jump to 8 episodes each, series 6-8 jumped to 10 episodes each. There's a 2 episode Champions series after series 5 and there's a pilot that was live at the Edinburgh Festival. Alex Horne is the creator and Greg Davies is the Taskmaster. They work well together.

Each series pits 5 contestants against each other in a series of tasks. There are points awarded and a winner declared at the end of each episode. There's a series winner, the person with the most accumulated points. The contestants are mostly comedians, a mix of male and female. They all compete in and around the Taskmaster house in London. Some tasks take seconds most minutes and occasionally one takes some months. Some tasks are simple and some are hard. They range from emptying a bath to filming a video.

The tasks are filmed and the films edited to get the most laughs. One of my favorite things about the show are the interstitials between scenes, often they are surreal and strangely beautiful. The music is very important, as you might expect with Alex Horne being the man in charge. For those that might not know Alex heads Alex Horne and the Horne Section. An entertaining group of musicians who mix music and comedy.

All in all I'm totally sold on the format and I'm not much of a game show fan. I also recently found out there's an App for downloading from Daily Motion available for Firefox. It's a slow download compared to YouTube but you can have multiples going at the same time.

Cuckoo Series 2

Series 2 of Cuckoo aired back in 2012, just under two years after the first series aired. Greg Davies returns as Ken, Andy Samberg, who played Cuckoo in the first series, is gone, replaced by Taylor Lautner as Cuckoo's son Dale. Helen Baxendale and Tyger Drew-Honey play Ken's wife Lorna and son Dylan. Ken's daughter Rachel is now being played by Esther Smith.

Robin French, Jon Foster, James Lamont, Ben Edwards, and Kieron Quirke are the second series writers and Ben Taylor is the director. The series was followed by a Christmas Special the same year.

I found all 7 episodes hilarious and was glad to have seen them. I don't miss Andy Samberg at all, Taylor is a suitable replacement, he's a troubled young man who was raised in a cult, he often has different takes on what's going on around him, plus he's terribly naive. I've got Series 3 on deck with Series 4 coming from the UK. Sadly, there is no US version out now.

Cracker Series 1

I had seen a couple of episodes of Cracker years ago, I'd checked it out because Cracker is played by Robbie Coltrane. I wasn't too keen on them and after missing a couple of episodes I quit watching the series. The first series has 7 episodes with three stories, 2 two part stories and a 3 part story. Hard to follow along each week when you miss part of the story. At least the DVDs give each story a whole disc and eliminates the repetitive opening and closings. I've ordered the UK DVDs because they were cheaper.

Cracker is a heavy smoker, drinker and gambler, he's so good at his destructive lifestyle it's ruined his marriage. He's a psychologist who starts working with the Manchester police. He's a complete piece of shit but he gets results. He rubs people the wrong way, then lights them on fire. Often he's punched for his trouble. I find him hard to take and often fast forward through some of the family drama. There's a lot of it. Crime parts are much better but the police are a mixed bag of competencies. Christopher Eccleston plays DCI Bilborough and Geraldine Somerville is DS Penhaligon.

The scripts are good and Robbie is great, even though he's an unpleasant jerk who's hard to be around. He did win three BAFTAs for the role. I'll be working my way through the series.

Shallow Ground 2004

Shallow Ground came out in 2004 and it was written and directed by Sheldon Wilson. It's a pretty average weird murderer story. A naked bloody teenage boy comes walking out of the forest and he brings death to a town. The get him to the police station to try to figure out his identity. Trouble is, he's got fingerprints of 6 missing or dead people. At the same time someone is killing people in the woods. The tortured bodies of the dead are piling up and the sheriff is stumped.

It turned out to be fairly entertaining, I liked more of the characters than I usually do and there was a decent monster. I got it as part of a 3 film set. I might watch it again someday.

Monolith Monsters 1957

I was excited to see that the Monolith Monsters was coming out on Blu-ray. I ordered one before it had dropped in price because it's one of my favorite of the 1950s SF films. It sure looks nice. Makes me wish I had a larger TV. Someday.

The Blu-ray has a different aspect ratio, the box says 2.0:1 and 1.85:1, and aspect ratio is 1.33:1 on the older Universal DVD. I don't think the cropped version looked too bad. There's a lot of head room in the 1.33:1 version. I'll keep both, the Monolith Monsters comes as part of a set of ten movie set, many of which are turning up on Blu-Ray from Shout Factory right now. I don't need all of the new Blu-rays since I have that nice set. Admittedly some of those other movies don't mean as much to me as TMM and I'd rather spend that money, over 20 bucks a Blu-ray, on some movies I haven't seen before.

I was excited that the new Blu-ray had two commentaries, until I heard them. American film historian Tom Weaver doesn't seem to care for the movie much and I was certainly disappointed in his audio track. He has lots of info but his sarky attitude is annoying. Where's the fleshless skull of Paul Naschy when I need it for some ball cracking mayhem. British film historian Mark Jancovich spends much of his commentary talking about other movies and Jack Arnold. I'm still listening to it and right now he's switched to talking about Orson Wells, left wing politics, and Citizen Kane. What the Fuck? He's also pretty poor at narrating his commentary, he "uumms" and "ahhs" continuously, or his sentences trail off into awkward silence. Another disappointment. Oh, Shout Factory, what dorks you are for putting those track on the disc. Still, the movie looks great and I won't have to waste my time listening to those two commentaries again.

Martin Clunes Islands Of America 2018

I ordered the British DVD of Martin Clunes Islands Of America, the program is just airing in the US now and the DVD won't be out for 3 months. It was cheaper buy it from the UK, $27 as opposed to the $35 pre-order price. I could have waited for it to get cheaper but sometimes I just don't want to wait.

It's a good program, 4 episodes, just over three hours, gorgeous photography, interesting commentary. Martin's as entertaining as usual. He spends some time in Hawaii looking at the eruption of May 2018, Alaska, San Juan Islands in Washington State, the Channel Islands National Park which are known as America's Galapagos. There are visits to the Tabasco factory on Avery Island in Louisiana and a cannabis farm on Vashon Island. That's just the first two episodes.

This is third Islands Of program from Martin, the others were Britain and Australia. All are recommended for the person that likes a bit of scenery but can't be arsed to go outside.

Science Fiction Sunday 544

Attraction is a 2017 Russian SF movie that's directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk. In December last year I watched his films Dark Planet and Dark Planet: Rebellion, here's the blog post which says I mostly liked them but wasn't going to buy the DVD. I guess the same could be said about Attraction. It's an alien encounter that has the Russian air force shoot down an alien spaceship. It crashes into Moscow and kills a couple of hundred people. A general in the Army meets with the alien, it just wants to get some repairs and go home. The government let the thing get on with it but some locals stick their fists into the pie and people die. Seems Russia is filled with stupid people too. The movie does well with the alien spacesuit, the spaceship and smashing up stuff effects. I bogged down on some of the characters, especially the daughter of the general, what an asshole. Her tastes in boyfriends is objectionable, he's stupid, petty and violent. I was glad to have seen it on Amazon Prime.

Hostile is a 2017 post-apocalypse thriller with a huge dramatic flashback that killed the movie for me. A woman is driving across the desert when she has an accident and rolls her pickup truck. She'd been going around looking for food. Now her leg is screwed up and she can't walk. No one will come for her until the morning. There are mutants about at night and no one wants to go out. She's got to survive the long dark mutant filled night. Mostly the one mutant, he persistent, and she's only go so many bullets. The woman keeps flashing back to her life in the pre-apoc world. That's some dull drama. Disappointing.

Daylight's End came out in 2016 and it was a simple people trapped in a building by zombies movie. It didn't look familiar at the start so I kept going. Soon something popped up that made me wonder, quick bit of research, sure enough, I had seen it just last September. It's pretty forgettable I guess, that and I've gotten pretty forgetful.