PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 799

 

Knocking On Death's Door 1999 Screenplay by Craig J Nevis and direction by Mitch Marcus. Produced by Roger Corman and shot at his studio near Galway Ireland. The movie is set in New England.

Newlywed students buy a haunted house to look for the ghosts rumored to be in the house. They're there to look for the ghosts. They soon find him. It's a much your typical haunted house story, a bit sexier than some, but really it all boils down to some poor sap getting murdered and he can't move on. David Carradine plays the local doctor, other than that there's nothing much special about the movie. It's part of a two movie DVD that came out in 2003.

The Doorway 2000 Michael B Druxman is the writer director. Also made at Roger's Irish studio and also set in the USA.

It's another haunted house story, this time there are 4 students looking for cheap housing. The jerky guy has made a deal to fix the place up for free rent and some cash. The other's aren't too happy with him once he's sprung this surprise. They aren't as unhappy as the demon that lives in the house. She's been murdered and walled up in the cellar. She's been stewing down thee for years and she's pretty nasty on top of being a mean angry demon. She gets busy and people start to die.

Roy Scheider is their professor, he goes to the house to help with the problem. It's pretty typical stuff and below average in interest to me. I might never get around to re-watching these two films but I'll have that DVD anyway.

Maigret S11-14 1990s - 2005

Finished the Maigret box set, worth the watch for me. Enjoyable mysteries with a good cast. Nothing much to say about the stories, they stayed at a good level of quality for the entire run. Here are some screencaps of stuff I liked.

Calm Yourself 1935

Calm Yourself stars Robert Young and it came out in 1935. George B Seitz is the director and Arthur Kober wrote the screenplay based on the book of the same name by Edward Hope.

After being fired from his job as an ad executive Robert starts his own business, Confidential Services Inc. He hires Madge Evans as his secretary and they have some adventures trying to help his customers. You'd be right if you guessed there's romance ahead. A baby and a great dane provides some additional comic relief.

It was alright, pleasant but average. You can find out if you like it on YouTube, there's a link in the title. There's a DVD from Warner Archive but at nearly 20 smackaroonies it's a bit dear. I'll gather up a YouTube download in case I want to see it again some day.

The Black & Blue Collection

The Black & Blue Collection is from Troma's Roan Group label. It's got three classic crime films starring Bela Lugosi, John Carradine and George Zucco. The films are all in the public domain and turn up on other collections.

Bluebeard 1944 Directed by Edgar G Ulmer, story by Arnold Lipp and Werner H Furst, screenplay by Pierre Gendron.You can see a copy of the film on YouTube, there's a link in the title.

John Carradine plays a Parisian puppeteer, times are hard, people aren't coming to his shows because of Bluebeard. That's the nickname for the man who's murdering young women on the dark streets of Paris. John's also a painter but uses another name. John's paintings bring out the worst in him and he's trying to stifle that urge.

Jean Parker and her friends meet John and take in one of his shows. Jean offers to make costumes for his puppets and John accepts the offer. One of John's painting is exhibited and a policeman recognizes the woman in the painting as one of Bluebeard's victims. Armed with a good clue to who the madman murderer is the police try flushing Bluebeard out with a decoy.

There are more murders before the climax and it's fairly exciting. It's better than average. I'd seen it some years ago and enjoyed it all over again.

The Black Raven 1943 Directed by Sam Newfield, screenplay by Fred Myton. Sam directed over 250 films in his career, including The Terror Of Tiny Town, The Mad Monster, The Monster Maker, White Pongo and plenty of westerns.

George Zucco is the proprietor of The Black Raven Inn, he's also a criminal called the Black Raven. The inn is located near the Canadian border and the BR can smuggle a fellow baddie out of the US and into Canada for a stack of greenbacks. Glenn Strange is George's dogsbody.

An escaped criminal tries to kill George one night and that's the start of all his troubles. Another gangster shows up, he wants the Black Raven to smuggle him to Canada but George isn't too keen on it. The heavy rain washes out a bridge and forces an embezzler and a pair of newly weds to take shelter in the inn.

Charles B Middleton plays the idiotic sheriff, he stumbles into the action but can hardly catch a cold. Eventually everything works itself out. It's looking up at average but it's sense of humor saves it for me. Like all the movies on the disc, I'd seen it before, I gave it a an OK on my Watched Movie List and I'd still watch it again.

The Black Dragons 1942 Directed by William Nigh, story and screenplay by Harvey Gates. Another on you can see on YouTube.

A bunch of scumbag businessmen are secretly 5th columnists sabotaging factories critical to the war effort. Bela Lugosi shows up and starts killing the men, all of whom are part of the Black Dragon Society. The BDS are Japanese and they're working with the Nazis.

The police are baffled by the stack of bodies but eventually they get enough clues to figure it out. It's even more below average than the previous film. It started filming a month after Pearl Harbor and seems like they rushed it out without spending time to make a better movie. Still watchable.

All in all nothing too special here, just average examples of low budget films of the time. Still glad to have them.

Late Extra 1935

Late Extra is a 1935 British film with James Mason and Alastair Sim. It was James first film and Alastair's 5th. The script is by Ingram D'Abbes and Fenn Sherie, the director is Albert Parker.

James is a reporter and Alastair is his editor at a newspaper. The movie opens with a murder by a fleeing bank robber, he's killed a copper and the newspapers offered a big reward for his capture.  James wants that story but his editor isn't sure. Virginia Cherrill is also a reporter and she wants a meatier story too, something more exciting than the woman's stories she normally gets assigned.

Soon enough she gets her wish. James gets an assignment and takes her along. Pretty soon they're in the middle of a mess with that murderer bank robber. It's a good mix of jeopardy and japes. Sadly, the copy on YouTube I watched is pretty poor. You can see what's going on but it's a struggle. I got through to the end and so could you.

Science Fiction Sunday 598

Up first is The Final Programme, it's British, it came out in 1973, and it's the only film adapted from a Michael Moorcock novel. The movie was called Last Days Of Man On Earth in the US and a few other places. Robert Fuest is the writer and director. His previous two films were the Dr Phibes series and they were much more entertaining.

I first saw it back in 2001 and rated it "fairish" on my Watched Movie List. After watching it again I'm not thinking it's much better than that and that ain't even barely average. I got more enjoyment out of the cinematography than the story. It's very stylish and colorful. The locations are quite interesting. It's the characters that are annoying. What a load of jerks and assholes.

It's somewhat in the future and there's been an incident or two, Amsterdam is ash, the Vatican is gone, it might be the end of civilization. Jerry Cornelius's father has died and he's left a programme to develop a hybrid human that's immortal and self replicating. The programme is on microfilm and it's in dad's safe at home. Some scientists, headed by Graham Crowden, want it.

Jerry leads a raid on the house and his brother defends the place. In the struggle Jerry accidentally kills his sister but the evil Miss Brunner gets the microfilm. Miss Brunner somehow consumes people. Jerry's brother shoots Jerry but he doesn't die. There's a good bit of chasing about by these two knobs. Again, the locations were more interesting than most of the action.

Eventually the microfilm, the scientists, Miss Brunner and Jerry are all in one place. The experiment goes on with a nice laughable ending. It's supposed to be a comedy but I'm often laughing at stuff that isn't jokes. I'll probably never get back to the DVD, lucky for me it was used and fairly cheap.

Victor Frankenstein is a 2017 re-imagining of Frankenstein. There's little of the novel in the movie and the whole thing is now being told by a completely new character. He's one of a legion of new characters. It crapped out at the box office and I can see why. Those characters suck.

Total Film compared the movie to the Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes films, loud, flashy, busy, but I find it's lacking the interesting characters that come with Guy's films. The screenplay was written by Max Landis and the director was Paul McGuigan. His previous film was Push in 2009 and I didn't think too much of that, before that he directed the 2006 gangster film Lucky Number Slevin. That was a bit more entertaining.

Daniel Radcliffe plays Igor, he's the narrator and he's got a hunchback. Victor, played by James McAvoy, finds Igor in a circus, acting a sad clown, but he's really knowledgeable about human anatomy. He's all self taught. Victor rescues him and the owner calls the coppers. A man was killed during the escape by a scummy circus guy and that's blamed on Victor and Igor. A completely insane Scotland Yard detective takes the case and when he finds out more about what Victor is up to, he goes full on religious zealot. He throws away his career in his drive to get Victor.

It goes on and on, though only 91 mins, it seems much longer, I was getting tired of spending time with Victor. It's nicely produced, the sets and locations look really good but all the flashy crashy stuff can't make up for a weak story. There are better Frankenstein films out there. I'd watch those again before I would watch this once more.

Friday Night Movies 798

I didn't spend much time on Black Wake, a 2018 horror movie dressed up in a pseudo-documentary skin. I turned the speed up to 1.5 and passed this turd in less than an hour. Still time wasted.

Murder By Death is the film adaptation of Neil Simon's play, it was directed by Robert Moore. Robert worked mostly in the theater, he only directed two more films, The Cheap Detective and Chapter Two, both were based on Neil Simon plays. I hadn't seen any of those movies but I do have a recently arrived copy of TCD. Murder By Death has poster art by Charles Addams, the design is also used in the opening and closing credits.

I'm not a big Neil fan, his work is of little interest, I often don't find it funny. I though I would take a chance on Murder By Death when I saw it used for 3 bucks. I am a fan of the characters that are parodied in the film. The story pits 5 pairs of detectives against each other and the guy who set the whole thing up. They are all called to the a mansion by Lionel Twain, there they are challenged to solve a murder that will take place at midnight, there's a million dollar prize for the winner. Truman Capote plays the mysterious Mr Twain, Nancy Walker is the maid, and Alec Guinness is the butler. 

Starting at the left it's James Coco as Milo Perrier, behind him is James Cromwell as Milo's driver, Milo is based on Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Then it's Eileen Brennan and Peter Falk as Tess Skeffington and Sam Diamond, he's based on Sam Spade, the hard boiled detective in stories by Dashiell Hammett. He's the only hard boiled detective in the lot, the rest are more cozy detectives.

The two ladies in back are Estelle Winwood and Elsa Lanchester as Miss Withers and Jessica Marbles. Another parody of an Agatha Christie character the elderly Miss Marple. Miss Withers is Jessica's nurse but she's gotten old and Jessica takes care of her. The Withers name might be a reference to Hildegarde Withers, a spinster amateur detective who appeared in several novels and stories by Stuart Palmer. There's a nice 6 film Hildegarde Withers collection on DVD from Warner Archives. I've seen all the films and they are a little more enjoyable than the film I just watched.That's mostly for the interplay between Hildegarde and the irritated police detective played by James Gleason.

Peter Sellers plays Inspector Sidney Wang who is based on Earl  Charlie Chan. You can't really seen him but Richard Narita plays Inspector Wang's adopted Japanese son Willie. I know, weak ass wang jokes, Neil you let me down in the smallest ways. On the far right are David Niven and Maggie Smith, they play Dick and Dora Charleston, and they are based on Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man series. Asta becomes Myron.

I found it kind of amusing but hardly a laugh riot. A number of the jokes were very dated and kind of sad. It seems slow on top of that but that could be me. I don't know if I would bother with it again but I have it so I might. I'm still going to take a crack at The Cheap Detective.

Since I had the time I put on The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming. I had just picked it up today, another on used for 3 bucks. I used to have a copy from TV but that tape failed and got tossed out. It's based on a novel of the same name by Nathaniel Benchley, the screenplay is by William Rose, Norman Jewison is the director. The movie came out in 1966 and WOW, what a difference compared to the first two movies.

A Russian submarine runs aground near an island off the New England coast. Some sailors paddle to shore, they want to get a large boat to tow them off the bar. Alan Arkin, in his first movie, plays the head of the shore team. John Phillip Law plays the handsome Russian sailor, Theodore Bikel plays the Captain of the submarine.

The sailor's come across Carl Reiner and his family, Eva Marie Saint plays the wife, they have a couple of kids. The sailors get rumbled right away and take over Carl's vacation home. They cut the phone line and take the car to town, leaving Jude in charge of the two kids and the pretty babysitter. Hardly anything goes right for the poor Russians and it's the middle of the Cold War. They're all worried they'll get shot by the locals.

The town starts hearing about an invasion and goes nuts, especially after being stirred up by Paul Ford. He's a big ol' veteran and the local head of the Legion, sadly, he's lacking any smarts. Police Chief Brian Keith has a hard time keeping things in line, Jonathan Winters is his deputy. There's plenty of frantic running about and occasional gun fire. Luckily, no one get hurt too much. Eventually the chaos builds to a tense stand off after the sub makes it's way to the harbor dock.

There's a short Norman Jewison interview on the DVD and he talks about showing the film in Russia to a bunch of Russian film makers. They didn't care much for the build up to the stand off, the Captain thinks the town has captured the missing shore party, he's ready to shell the town with his cannon, his sailors stand ready with machine guns. The towns people stand ready with their rifles and pistols. When the tension breaks, in a good way, the Russian film makers clapped and cried. I too.

There are such great performances here, a great script. It was a pleasure to watch and it's a bit of an important film in ways you can read about here. I'll watch it again.

Red Peony Gambler 2 Gambler's Obligation 1968

Red Peony Gambler 2 Gambler's Obligation came out in 1968 and it's known as Hibotan bakuto: Isshuku ippan in Japan. Norifumi Suzuki directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Tatsuo Nogami.

Sumiko Fuji returns as Red Peony Oryu, a gambler trying to resurrect her fallen house. She travels about and stays with people until the local baddies are all dead. Kind of like Zatoichi but with less blindness. Tomisaburô Wakayama returns as the comedy relief machine but he's not really that integral to the story.

This time it's another gang take over that needs some attention. Red Peony joins forces with another loner to wipe out the cruel crime boss. There's plenty of gambling and a good bit of action. Hardly anyone is getting out of this one unscathed. Good solid movie, well worth a look.

Blithe Spirit 1945

Blithe Spirit is a 1945 British comedy directed by David Lean. It's based on Noël Coward's play of the same name, the screenplay is by David Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan.

It's got Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond, Margaret Rutherford, Hugh Wakefield and Noël Coward as the narrator.

Rex is a crime novelist, he invites a medium, played by Margaret, over to the house, he's got research in mind for a novel. Unfortunately she brings the ghost of his dead wife to the house and she causes all sorts of issues. Rex and his current wife end up dead by the end of the film and it made me glad ghosts aren't real. It's kind of funny but not Topper funny, I didn't laugh at all the jokes anyway. It's not going to be one of my favorite ghost stories that's for sure. I'd still watch it again sometime. Who can say when. Too bad there aren't liars fortune tellers to let me know when that would be happening.

Valley Of The Zombies 1946

Valley Of The Zombies is a 1946 horror film directed by Philip Ford. Dorrell McGowan and Stuart E McGowan wrote the screenplay from Royal K Cole and Sherman L Lowe's original story. It was on a double bill with The Catman Of Paris. I found a vaguely watchable copy on YouTube and watched it.

Blood stolen from a hospital lab leads to murder. Turns out a guy who has a strange condition needs it to stay alive and he'll kill to get his blood. A doctor and a nurse help the police capture the murderer. It's pleasant enough, about average, but no zombies. The closest thing is the ability of the murderer to hypnotize people into doing his dirty work. I was glad to have seen it and I might want to see it again someday.