PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

It's Not Cricket 1949

It's Not Cricket is a 1949 British comedy starring Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne. They were Charters and Caldicott in The Lady Vanishes. It was the first of four appearances as the pair of cricket fans. They appeared in a dozen films together but this is only the second where they get star billing. The other was the 1941 film Crook's Tour. I enjoy the pair.

It's Not Cricket was one of the last films that were made under the Gainsborough Pictures banner before they merged with the Rank Organization. It's directed by Roy Rich and Alfred Roome, the screenplay is by Lyn Lockwood and Bernard McNabb with some additional scenes by Gerard Bryant. This is Roy's first film, he only directed a handful of TV films after. Alfred was mostly an editor, he edited this film, and more importantly, for me anyway, he edited most of the Carry On movies after 1967. He edited Holiday Camp, Hotel Sahara, The 39 Steps (1959), Deadlier Than The Male and several others I haven't seen. Lyn and Bernard only wrote one other film, A Piece Of Cake in 1948. Bernard was a writer and a director, he wrote the screenplay to The Huggetts Abroad the same year.

Basil and Naunton are in Military Intelligence, they are stationed in post WW2 Germany when we meet up with them. They are going on leave and little do they suspect that their batman is really an escaped German war criminal named Otto. That gets found out and they are Demobbed and sent home to London. In need of work they set up a detective agency, three months later they have had no work but they've hired Susan Shaw as their secretary. Nigel Buchanan plays a man the detectives knew from the Military. Nigel meets Sally and dropping her off at the office he discovers his old army pals. Nigel invites them for a cricket weekend out at his family's big manor house in the country.

Diana Dors pops in for a brief scene, she was applying for the secretary job but didn't get it. Otto turns up again, he's stolen a diamond, but his contact let it slip out of his hand, he'd hidden it in a cricket ball, it got sold accidentally to Nigel. It's chaos at the cricket match when Otto and his pal turn up. Still, Basil and Naunton manage to catch Otto and return the diamond, business is good for them. There's a fair number of jokes and I even laughed out loud a couple of times. It's low key but entertaining to me. I downloaded a copy from YouTube but it seems to have disappeared in the interim. I'm temped to buy the DVD from the UK, it's pricey, 30-35 smackaroonies, so the download will do for now.

Science Fiction Sunday 563

Arachnoquake is a 2012 disaster movie that has imaginary spiders from the center of the earth. They don't look anything like the spiders in the poster above. The story is by Eric Forsberg, the script is by Paul A Birkett, the director is Griff Furst. He's the son of Stephen Furst. The only movie of his I've seen is Lake Placid 3.

The movie is set in New Orleans where earthquakes have damaged the ground, leaving huge holes in the roads, starting fires in the city, and releasing man eating spiders of various sizes. Bug Hall is a tour guide in charge of a cute little tram. That's his real life name. His movie sister and father are on a boat on the river. Both groups encounter killer spiders. There's plenty of chasing and being bitten. Often people break out in a big pusy sore that explodes.

Edward Furlong is the only one in the cast that I knew. He's got to drive a bus load of cheerleaders out of danger, he crashes the bus but they get rescued by some soldiers. Edward's wife in the film is a 6th grade biology teacher, she autopsy's one of the critters and figures out what inside the beasts. There's no real need for the info, stomping and bullets kill off most of the spiders. I guess it fills time and adds some gore value.

There's a real sloppiness to the movie. In one scene the tour bus stops at an intersection for a bit of business, it's facing an area we can't see, there are buildings on it's left and right. In the overhead shot it's in the middle of a street with a huge park on it's right side. We never see the park in any of the ground shots. Too costly for a continuity person I guess. There's more of that lazy film making going on, near the end one guy keeps commenting on what's going on, he spots Bug in his diving suit but Bug's face is obscured by the gear, that guy wouldn't have any way of knowing who that was just by seeing him. The movie isn't keeping my interest if I keep noticing all the mistakes. I suppose many of the viewers on SyFy wouldn't care. I don't either, what a crappy movie, way below average. I gave it a generous 2.

Phoenix: The Warrior is another dip into the post-apocalypse genre. Unlike last weeks highly entertaining Turbo Kid, P:TW fails to elevate the PA film in any possible way. The movie is also known as She-Wolves Of Wasteland. It came out in 1988 and it was directed by Robert Hayes who co-wrote the script with Dan Rotblatt. Kathleen Kimmont plays Phoenix, she's one of the many women left after whatever happened happened. Men are scarce. She helps a runaway escape from Persis Khambatta. She works for an evil boss lady who experiments on people. Persis is her enforcer, she heads a gang of poorly clad ladies with guns. There's nothing good about the movie, it's a boring slog through all the junk yards and gravel pits in and around Riverside California. The Mojave Desert is nice but even that they manage to make dull. It's not worth a look, go watch the Turbo Kid. Fuck this piece of shit.

Friday Night Movies 763

Mega Time Squad is a 2018 New Zealand film about the effects of magical time travel. It's written and directed by Tim Van Dammen. Some dumb guy named John is in Shelton's gang. John and another gang member decide to steal some money from a Chinaman. The problem is that money was meant for Shelton. To top that shit cake with some whipped creme John's partner in the robbery turns John into Shelton. Now John faces death at the hands of Shelton's crew. Don't be like John.

John had also stolen a bracelet, a magical bracelet that sends the wearer back in time a few seconds. Comes in handy when you want to get the fuck out of there. With it he manages to escape from Shelton and his crew. The bracelet comes with a curse, the action of meeting yourself will call a demon and kill you both. John blunders about, skipping back over and over again, he winds up creating a whole gang of himself. Even as part of a group John isn't clever enough to keep some of the John's alive. He's got the Chinese gang after him as well as Shelton's crew. Lucky for John, none of them are competent. Lucky for us, the script is clever and the actors capable. There's a nice bunch of laughs and some bit of gore. I enjoyed the heck out of it and put a copy of the Blu-ray on my Wish List.

The Banana Splits Movie is a 2019 horror film that brings the Banana Splits out of retirement to murder people. It's directed by Danishka Esterhazy, the script is by Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas. Danishka is from my old home town of Winnipeg. I haven't seen any of her other films. Jed and Scott write together a lot, mostly stuff for kids, some Scooby-Doo videos, Paris Hilton My New Best Friend, R L Stine's The Haunting Hour and Celebrity Deathmatch. I've only seen a few episodes of the last show. The film is American but it was filmed in Capetown South Africa. It appeared on the SyFy Channel last October. I don't have cable anymore so I didn't see it there. We watched the DVD from our local library.

In the film reality, The Banana Splits TV show has remained on the air for ages. We visit the set with a little fan named Harley and his dysfunctional family. They have tickets for the recording of the show but only Harley is really happy to be there. His mom is nice but his stepfather is a jerk, his brother is nice but introverted. Tagging along is Harley's classmate Zoe, she's filling in for Harley's only friend who is sick. Just before the show starts the producer finds out the show is being cancelled and this is the last recording. We soon find out that the Banana Splits are all robots, their creator gives them a reprogramming and sends them out to the stage. Things start to go wrong and off stage the robots kill staff members, after the recording ends, the robots start to kill the parents too. The kids are all herded into a space and the show continues.

I enjoyed the movie when it started but about an hour in I was losing interest, once you get past the Banana Splits characters being killer robots there's not that much out of the ordinary about it. It did pick up a bit nearer the end but I didn't put it on my Wish List. I might want to see it again sometime, but who knows.

Man In The Moon 1960

Man In The Moon is a 1960 Kenneth More film. It's directed by Basil Dearden and written by Michael Relph and Bryan Forbes. Michael is mostly a producer but he did write 8 movies. I've seen The Assassination Bureau and The Man Who Haunted Himself but the others don't look familiar. Bryan is an actor, writer and director but I can't say I've seen much of his work. They often worked with Basil, he directed TAB and TMWHH. I have a handful of his films to look at but who knows when.

When we meet up with Kenneth he's been sleeping in a field. Not rough, that's for sure.

He's there as a paid research guinea pig and he's trying to catch a cold. He seems pretty immune to the common cold. A scientist working on a space project sees Kenneth and figures he might like to send that guy to the moon. He tricks him into thinking he's signing up for a high altitude test flight. They run Kenneth through all the astronaut tests, hot, cold, g-force, Kenneth stands up like no man.

Turns out that Kenneth has a weak spot, it's that pretty lady, played by Shirley Anne Field. They meet in the field, she was walking home from a job, she's a stripper. In this case she was to jump out of a cake. That worked fine but the host got all grabby and she left. Eventually there's a rocket test down under in Whoomera and Kenneth winds up in the outback.

There are a few people in the cast I like to see beside Kenneth, Norman Bird, Michael Hordern and Charles Gray, all great character actors. Sadly, there weren't a nice bunch of jokes for them. It was kind of bland, still above average, but not more than a 6 for me. It's still fun but there are better Kenneth More films and better British comedies by a long shot.

Hell's Kitchen 4 US

Season 4 of Hell's Kitchen jumped to 15 episodes with 15 contestants battling for a prize worth $250,000. The woman that won didn't actually get the head chef job, a Sous Chef job was offered and taken. I read that the runner up, Petrozza, just died last week. Sad, life goes on, huh. I'm still getting a kick out of the episodes but I think I'll wait a while before tackling another, a big batch of movies came in and I want to take a gander at those.

The Flying Squad 1940

The 1940 film The Flying Squad is the third adaptation of the Edgar Wallace novel, there were films in 1929 and 1932. The British Film series has a fair number of Edgar Wallace films in their collection. The screenplay was written by Doreen Montgomery and the director is Herbert Brenon.

Doreen Montgomery wrote a good number of films, sadly I'm not familiar with them, on the other hand, I'm sort of familiar with some of her TV work. She wrote scripts for Hawkeye And The Last Of The Mohicans, William Tell, HG Wells' The Invisible Man, Danger Man, Sir Frances Drake and The Avengers. I hope to run into more of her films.

This was the last film for Herbert Brenon, he mostly directed silent films, over 50 shorts and over 50 features. The Wikipedia tells me that he directed the first adaptations of Peter Pan and Beau Geste. He directed Sorrell And Son and got an Oscar nomination at the first Oscars. Of his 120 plus films all I've seen is the 1928 Lon Chaney film Laugh, Clown, Laugh. Good film but not something I'm likely to get back to any time soon.

Sebastian Shaw is Inspector Bradley, Jack Hawkins is Mark McGill, Phyllis Brooks is Ann Perryman. Those are the main three characters. Mark runs smuggling ring and he killed Ann's brother. The brother had been in the ring but he's been having second thoughts and wanted to leave. Mark killed him and tossed him in the river. Mark also killed an old man who saw him killing the brother.

The Inspector want to catch the crooks but he's having a hard time getting any solid evidence. Ann comes to town and Mark convinces her that her brother was killed by the police. She quickly joins the gang for her own mad reasons. She's not a clever girl, easily swayed by a scumbag. On her first run she has a car accident, the Inspector helps her out without telling her he's on her case, he lets her go to see who she contacts.

It's a fair decent story, the film is only 59 minutes, sometimes it seems like it's missing scenes. It does move along nice and briskly, I like that. It's got a nice sense of humor too. My favorite scene is one where the Inspector introduces Mark to a man at the courthouse, he tells Mark he'll be meeting the man again sometime. The other detective tells Mark that he'll be meeting him "professionally." Marks asks if the man is a policeman and the Inspector says "No, he's the public hangman." Made me laugh out loud. What a guy, that Inspector. Glad to have seen it, I'll watch it again someday, I'll bet I laugh when the hangman shows up.

Cat Girl 1957

Cat Girl is a 1957 British film that's called The Cat Girl in the US. It's written by Lou Rusoff and directed by Alfred Shaughnessy. Lou wrote the fan favs, It Conquered The World, The Day The World Ended, and The Sea-Creature. Alfred was more a writer than a director, he only directed 4 films. I haven't seen any of them but I do have a copy of Six-Five Special, it's some sort of pop music film from 1958.

Barbara Shelley finds out her family is cursed, they turn into leopards when they are jealous and angry. She doesn't believe it at first, after her uncle is killed she starts to think differently. Robert Ayers plays a psychiatrist who is trying to help her. He thinks it's all in her mind and it's not really sure that it is happening to her in real life. There's a real leopard in the story to muddy it up. It's not quite as sophisticated as Cat People but it was entertaining enough. It's short and it moves along quickly. I was glad to have seen it and will have to pick up a copy to add to my accumulation of British films. You can see it at the link in the title above. You might like it. 

Dr Goldfoot & The Girl Bombs 1966

Dr Goldfoot & The Girl Bombs is the 1966 sequel to Dr Goldfoot And The Bikini Machines. It's an American International co-production with an Italian company. Here's a bit from the IMDb trivia page for the film:

This movie was originally intended to be a sequel to Goldginger (aka The Amazing Doctor G (1965)), Italian comedians Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia's Goldfinger (1964) spoof. When American International Pictures came on board as a co-financier, it was decided to shoot one movie but make two identifiably different films, one each for the Italian and English speaking markets, the Italian was to be a vehicle for the two Italian comedians and the English a Dr. Goldfoot sequel thus achieving two commercial goals of two different national investors. As such, this film was edited into two completely different movies.

What a stupid idea, huh. That's film producers for ya. Fuck those guys.

Mario Bava is the director. It was the only time he worked for AIP, they weren't happy with the picture, it was a bit of a flop. The version on the Kino Lorber DVD is the American picture, it would have been nice to see the Italian cut. Bava's mind wasn't on the film, he was depressed his wife had gotten fat.

Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia wrote the Italian script, Franco Dal Cer added some dialog and Fulvio Luscisano came up with the idea. Louis Heyward and Robert Kaufman wrote the English screenplay.

Vincent Price returns as Dr Goldfoot, this time he's blowing up NATO Generals with his robot girl bombs. Price later called the film "the most dreadful movie I've ever been in. Just about everything that could go wrong, did.

Fabian is the secret agent working on the case. Frankie Avalon was supposed to be in the movie but he decided to stay home with his new child instead. The Italian comedians mug about and fall down a lot.

It wasn't as funny as I thought it was in the 60s. It's still sort of entertaining but the commentary by film historian David Del Valle and film maker David DeCateau was more interesting. Still glad to have it and I will watch it again someday.

 

French Dressing 1964

French Dressing is a 1964 British comedy that was directed by Ken Russell. It's his first movie, previously he'd been making documentaries for the BBC. I'm not much of a Russell fan, I stopped watching his movies in 1991. There's too much to watch, can't follow everyone's career.

The script is by Peter Myers, Ronald Cass and Peter Brett with additional dialog by Johnny Speight. Peter and Ronald wrote the original story. Myers wrote a bunch of TV ad a handful of films. You might have seen The Snorkel for Hammer or Summer Holiday with Cliff Richards.  Ronald wrote a lot more TV and a few films, some of it was with Myers. Brett was mostly an actor, he only wrote the one screenplay. Johnny wrote oodles of TV programs and created and wrote the original story for Till Death Do Us Part.

James Booth and Roy Kinnear are the deck chair attendants at the beach resort town of Gormleigh. It's not a great place and tourism is down. James goofs around on his job but he has the idea to spark tourism with a film festival hosted by a sexy French actress. He can't get Bridget Bardot but he does convince Françoise Fayol, played by Marisa Mell, to come to the town.

James spends much of his time with Alita Naughton. She's only in this one movie, she was in one of Ken's documentaries and after she was in an episode of Gideon CID and a documentary.

 

There's plenty of running about and noise but the movie is weak on jokes. They kind of fall flat as does the slapstick. I can't say much positive about James or Roy but Alita and Marisa are fun. I wish it was better but it's barely average.

Hell's Kitchen Season 3

Season 3 of Hell's Kitchen added an 11th episode to the season. It's still the same stuff, people yelling, people crying, food getting tossed in the trash, Gordon yelling, plenty of punishments. I enjoy the contests within the show and the punishments but I often skip quickly through the rewards. Some of them, like a trip to a spa just aren't that interesting. There was a guy that collapsed and had to got to the hospital. He was very nervous and way over his head. He died a few years later. The guy that won the show actually got the head chef job but only stayed a year. I'll head onto the 4th season soon enough.