PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Maigret S1-2 1991

I've watched the first two series of the French production of Maigret with Bruno Cremer and really enjoyed them. They first aired between 1991 to 1993 and there are four 90 minute movies each series. The program ran from 1991 to 2004, there were 14 series and 54 episodes. The whole series have been released in the US by MHz. It's a bit pricey, currently $134.96 on Amazon but there are 27 disc with 4920 mins worth of quality storytelling. I picked up a set at Hamilton Books for $119.95 and, after seeing what I've seen so far, think it was a good purchase.

Series 1 has these four stories.

Maigret in Montmartre
Maigret and the Burglars Wife
Maigret and the Flemish Shop
Maigret and the Judge

Series 2 has these four stories.

Maigret and the Headless Corpse
Maigret at the Crossroads
Maigret and the Majestic
Maigret on Trial

I doubt I've read any of these novels. I know I read a few Georges Simenon books back in the 70s and 80s but I wasn't ever enamored enough with his writing to continue. That might have been the translations, so, the TV productions are much better for me. Maigret is an interesting character. He's been on the force for 30 years and is a bit old school, he's totally determined to catch the crook and will ignore the law to his purpose. It's not an action show but occasionally Maigret has to slap someone down. He handles himself well in a fight. He'll bully his way around, he's not always so pleasant, but neither are the people he's after.

The series is set in the early 1950s and there are plenty of nice locations and cars to bring that to life. I've enjoyed the stories so far and look forward to seeing the rest of of them.

Science Fiction Sunday 594

The Terror Experiment is a 2010 secret government organization has a big ass problem movie. This time those wacky nut bags have a highly dangerous chemical lab in the city. A rebel group sets off a bomb in the building and it releases some of the gas that turns people into aggressive psycho lunatics. Then the killing starts. Jason London leads a group of survivors from the top of the building to the ground. Judd Nelson, Robert Carradine, C Thomas Howell and Lochlyn Munro are the few cast members I knew. It's pretty much a by the numbers bit that is well below average. Not worth watching again.

Painkillers is pretty much the same. I saw it on Amazon and it will go away after a while. The first movie was part of a multi pack of random SF movie, I'm stuck with that until I can get rid of it.  It's a 2015 film with a secret organization looking for a power source in a cave in Afghanistan. The team wakes up in hospital with no memory of what happened. Colm Feore plays the doctor supervising their memories return. The soldiers don't know that he's really an evil greedy prick and he only wants the power source for his company's personal gain. The soldier's get crazy after being on a memory drug and there's some fighting and dying. The head of the squad stops taking the drug and he partially figures out what was going on. He doesn't have it quite right and some more people die. It all sorts itself out by the end and there's a hint they'd like to make another movie. What would be the point?

A Desperate Chance For Ellery Queen 1942

A Desperate Chance For Ellery Queen came out in 1942 and it's the 6th of the seven 1940s Ellery Queen films, there were 2 previous films in the mid 30s. From the 50s there will be some Ellery Queen on TV. It's based on an Ellery Queen play called A Good Samaritan, Eric Taylor wrote the script and James P Hogan directed. Eric wrote all 7 of this lot of EQ films and James directed the last 6 of the EQ films.

William Gargan plays Ellery, Margaret Lindsay plays his gal Friday Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin plays Ellery's father Inspector Queen and James Burke plays Sergeant Velie. There's blackmail, missing daughters and murder on Ellery's plate. Good fun and worth the watch. One last film to go.

Friday Night Movies 794

The Girl In The Photos turned out to be a crappy 2015 slasher film with little of interest other than it was the last film Wes Craven produced and it's got Kal Penn in it. He plays a jerky photographer who leads his entourage to their doom in a small town. Claudia Lee plays a woman working in a store in the town. One day she comes into find a picture of a tortured woman on the store bulletin board. The police put it down to a prank but it's some scumbag who likes killing and making  statements with bodies. It's not much fun and I wouldn't need to see it again.

Pyewacket is a 2017 horror film about a stupid young high school student who pals around with people who preform rituals for their own selfish gain. She gets pissed at her mother for moving them to a house in the country. Mom is depressed from the loss of her husband and she can't stand being in the old house anymore. I can understand that but the daughter, a selfish cunt, can't. She preforms a ritual to wish death on her mom. Of course it releases Pyewacket, a demon spirit who comes creeping around. Regretting her choice the daughter tries to reverse the curse but that goes south and Pyewacket tricks her into burning her mom alive. The police just don't seem to believe her demon story. What a useless person. Glad she's off the streets. Not a good thing to watch, kind of below average and hardly anyone is likeable. Never going to see that one again.

The Lady In The Morgue 1938

The Lady In The Morgue is a 1938 comedy crime movie based on the Jonathan Latimer novel of the same name. Eric Taylor and Robertson White wrote the screenplay and Otis Garrett directed. It was the third film in a series of novelizations of Crime Club novels. Universal made eleven Crime Club films in all. I've read a few Jonathan Latimer novels but it was long ago and I didn't keep any of them. Eric wrote 15 films with Robertson and another 35 on his own. I've seen a good number of them, he wrote all 7 of the 1940s Ellery Queen films. He wrote the 1941 horror film The Black Cat, followed by The Ghost of Frankenstein, Phantom Of The Opera, Son Of Dracula and The Whistler.

A woman is found dead in a hotel room. Two rival crooks send their minions to check out the body and a detective agency sends Detective Bill Crane, played by Preston Foster, to try to identify the body for a client who wants to find out if it's her daughter. The body is stolen from the morgue and the attendant murdered. Crane's not too popular with the local cops but he's got enough attitude for 3 detectives. When pokes his nose into the crime scene, the antics with the elevator operator made me laugh out loud. Crane isn't popular with the local cops and as the movie plays out you can see why.

 

There's a bit of romance with Patricia Ellis and some banter with the police detectives. It's funny enough and there's a good enough story to get to the end. I got a few laughs out of it and would watch it again.

Keep Fit 1937

Keep Fit is a 1937 George Formby movie. It's part of The British Film series from Network. I just got it from the UK. Amazon UK is only shipping Global Priority right now. It took 5 days to arrive after being shipped but it took 2 weeks to package the order to ship. Anthony Kimmins is the director and he worked on the script with Austin Melford. Anthony would direct four more movies with George. He'd also direct The Captain's Paradise and 14 other movies. Now I've seen all his George movies and 3 others.

George plays a shaver in a barbershop in a big fancy department store. He's got an interest in manicurist Kay Walsh but she's more interested in the man in the athletic department played by Guy Middleton. Guy turns out to be a rotter, his theft from the barber shop till gets George in hot enough water to get him fired.

The local newspaper starts a Keep Fit campaign to draw in readers. George winds up in a boxing match with Guy. His pal from the store and a couple of other guys set George up in a training camp and he tries to get ready for the big fight. George sings some songs, he does some slapstick and he charms Kay back into his arms by the end of the film. I laughed and was glad to have picked up the movie. Sadly it's only available from the UK or Australia or a bootleg in the US.

Fifty Shades Of De Sade DVD set

Fifty Shades Of De Sade is a 4 film collection from Blue Underground. Unusually, each film has it's own disc. The first three films are all directed by Jesse Franco and form a loose trilogy of de Sade based stories. I looked at a de Sade book once, not sure which it was, it was a long while ago, and I didn't like the writing.

Marquis De Sade's Justine 1969 The movie is produced by Harry Alan Towers, who also provided the script, under his Peter Welbeck pseudonym. Jesús Franco is the director, he was credited as Jess back then. Harry and Jesús had worked together previously on The Blood Of Fu Manchu. The Wikipedia says Franco wanted to make an erotic film so Harry adapted Justine. He spent nearly a million on the film, Franco's largest budget, ever.

Romina Power, daughter of Tyrone Power, plays Justine. The Wikipedia says that she was forced on Franco by a Hollywood financier. Franco was unhappy, he didn't think she had much acting experience, comparing her to a window dummy. He's right. She's pretty, she's pretty naked, but she's pretty dull.

Justine has a series of bad luck, it keeps throwing her into the company of rapists and perverts. Maria Rohm plays her sister, she decides to take up the life of a prostitute and Justine moves on. She's quickly robbed and winds up being abused by some scummy people. Klaus Kinski plays the Marquis de Sade, he spends the whole movie in prison narrating the story as he writes. He adds little to the movie. Jack Palance has a smallish role, as do Mercedes McCambridge and Akim Tamiroff.

When the movie was released in 1969 it was heavily edited, the Blue Underground disc has the full 124 minute version. All in all I didn't think it was much more than average as a movie. It's certainly less sleazy than some of Franco later films which are more like soft core porn with vampires and lesbians. The IMDb lists 206 directing credits and 181 writing credits, and yet, I can hardly think of many I would like to watch again. Count Dracula and the Fu Manchu films, even though they aren't that great. Many I wouldn't like to watch at all.

Eugenie 1970 Another Harry Alan Towers production, he's also written this script under the name Peter Welbeck, Franco is the director. Marie Liljedahl is Eugenie and Maria Rohm is Madam Saint Ange.

Eugenie goes to stay with Madam Ange on her vacation island. Eugenie is seduced by Ange and her brother. Ange is shagging him and that the least naughty of the things she does. Eugenie is drugged and Christopher Lee subjects her to some weird masochistic sex stuff. The sex turns to murder, lucky for Eugenie she escapees for the sequel.

This one is struggling to get an average score from me. I'm not much into the spanking and torture and have a tendency to fast forward through those parts. Makes the movie shorter. Sleazier than the first.

Eugenie De Sade 1973 Franco adapted the de Sade novel Eugénie de Franval and directed the film. He made it in 1970 but it didn't get released until 1973. It's not really a sequel to the previous movie but it has similar themes. It ups the anti with some incest. Eugenie reads one of her fathers erotic novels and fancies her dad. He takes advantage of that and introduces her to his secret life of sex and murder. They are a creepy couple and I wasn't much interested in their activity. Once again Franco reminds me I don't respect for his story telling ability. He can go suck an egg.

Justine De Sade 1972 The most torturey film of the lot, I fast forwarded through a good bit of it. Least interesting of the lot.

Well, that was some wasted money, hopefully I can sell the DVDs when the set goes out of print.

Science Fiction Sunday 593

Sheborg 2016 is an Australian goopfest about an alien invasion. It's from Amazon Prime where for some reason they think it came out in 2018. They are often wrong about the date a movie was released because they are twats. I got the poster from the IMDb, they've recently pissed me off by stopping right click downloads of their images. Now you have to tell it you want to do a screen capture and crop the image out of the background and then download it. Another bunch of cocks. Daniel Armstrong is the writer and director and he calls the film Neo-pulp. The Wikipedia has this quote from him. "Neo-pulp lovingly embraces the most extreme, cliche, and supercilious elements of pop culture and pulp literature and puts them in a human context. SHEBORG MASSACRE itself is a 50s teen rebel flick set in a B grade sci-fi world from the early 80s, with horror style violence. It’s not a spoof, it’s not horror, it’s not action, it’s not sci-fi, it’s not drama. It’s all of these things. It’s neo-pulp."

Pretentious bullshit aside the film delivers a lot of goopy mess and plenty of yelling and running about. The fights are fair to poor and the CGI is low budget weak. The two main characters continuously get covered in blood. It's fun but not that great. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Even worse was Fatal Conflict, a 2000 cliche filled space adventure that doesn't have a pretentious description. It's just Kari Wuhrer battling some scummy criminals on a space ship.  There's a lot of running through corridors and a good number of fights. It's still not that good. Some of the dialog is laughable and the rest dull. Hardly worth the time for me to look at it, lucky for me I can skip ahead 10 seconds a click on the Amazon player. Not going to watch it again, that's for sure.

A Close Call For Ellery Queen 1942

A Close Call For Ellery Queen is the 7th of the Ellery Queen movies from the 30s and 40s. It's from 1942. Erick Taylor wrote the screenplay, it's got some additional dialog by Gertrude Purcell, the director is James P Hogan. This film has anew Ellery, played by William Gargan, Margaret Lindsay returns as Nikki Porter, as do Charles Grapewin as Inspector Queen and James Burke as Sergeant Velle.

Ralph Morgan is a rich guy who's looking for his lost daughters. Ralph's secretary asks Ellery to help him get rid of some annoying guests. Ellery falls right into blackmail and murder. Nikki and Ellery help the real daughter in getting back together with her father.

It was about the same as the other films, good bit of comedy, some murdering, a lot of running about, and a good ending. Nothing special but certainly above average. So far I'm thinking that I would want to watch the series over again. Sadly they aren't readily available, mostly the DVDs out there are bootlegs. I don't torrent but I suspect they might be available there.

Friday Night Movies 793

First up, Knives Out, an entertaining mystery movie. It came out last year and it seemed to create a bit of a buzz. It turned up on Amazon Prime for free and that seemed like a good test price to see if I would want to pick up a disc. It's written and directed by Rian Johnson who's announced Knives Out 2. Rian's last movie was Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, before that it was Looper in 2012, I'm not familiar with any of his earlier work.

Christopher Plummer plays the rich head of a really scummy family. He's supported them but after he commits suicide it turns out that he's not left them any of his fortune. Daniel Craig plays a southern private eye who's been hired anonymously to investigate the death. Most of the action takes place in a big old house filled with plenty of nooks and crannies and stairwells. It's a nice old place but too many stairs for me nowadays.

The money helps bring out the family's evil side and they are some scum suckers. Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford, Jeeden Martell, Riki Lindhome and Chris Evans are the family members. Ana di Armas plays the health care worker who gets the prize. Can she keep it. We'll have to wait for the second movie to know.

There's a good complicated story going on with good dialog and good actors to make it work. The characters are interesting, though some of them are truly repulsive. My only complaint was some of them didn't get punished so much, that might be mitigated by the second movie. I had plenty of laughs and was real happy to have seen it. I'd watch it again sometime, but I'll probably  wait for a 2 pack with the second movie before buying it.

 

I can't think of anything good to say about Unearthly, a 2013 low budget POS that was on AP. It's a totally directive and unoriginal. A 15 year old girl is on the hunt for a powerful medallion and some scumbag is also after it. Her dad, mom and boyfriend go after her. It's mostly people tramping about in the woods. There's nothing of interest there, sad dialog from stupid characters, crappy CGI, poor jokes and embarrassing action. It's the kind of movie you want to tell to Fuck Off.