PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly 1970

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly 1970 Loosely based on a play called The Happy Family by Maisie Mosco, screenplay by Brian Comport, direction by Freddie Francis. It was retitled to Girly when it was released in the US. It's Maisie's only writing credit. Brian has 5 other films to his credit, they appeared between between 1968 and 1972. Brian's first two films were documentaries, MNS&G was his first feature film, I haven't seen any of his other features. 

Freddie was both a cinematographer and a director in both TV and feature films. I'd recently seen The Scamp, or Strange Affection in the UK, and he was the director of photography. He was the DOP for David Lynch on The Elephant Man, Dune, and The Straight Story. He directed several films for Hammer and almost as many for Amicus. He directed episodes of The Man In The Suitcase, The Champions and The Saint. I've seen a good bit of his work.

Freddie wanted to film a film in Oakley Court, it was a location that was used in several Hammer films and plenty of other films including The Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can read about it on the Wikipedia page. He'd shot three Hammer films there but all exteriors, he wanted to use the interior for his own film.

That's Vanessa Howard as Girly, Ursula Howells as Mumsy, Pat Heywood as Nanny and Howard Trevor as Sonny. They all live in the house and play The Game. It's got it's own rules and they must be followed, breaking them gets you a one way ticket to visit the Angels. Girly and Sonny leave the house to lure young men into the place, to be their New Friend, usually the New Friend doesn't last so long.

It's a house with a pecking order, Mumsy is in charge, Nanny below, the two children are on the next rung down with New Friend below them. The latest NF is slowly figuring out The Game and he starts playing the characters off of each other. It's a dangerous ploy, they could turn on him at anytime and it's off to see the Angels for New Friend.

It's pretty goofy. I enjoyed it. You might, you can see in the link above.

Friday Night Movies 812

Dr Frankenstein On Campus 1969 Robin Ward plays Frankenstein, some might remember him as the boring guy from Starlost. Here he's the boring guy on campus. He's been tossed out of one University for experimenting and he's moved to Canada to get thrown out of another university. This time he's been sort of framed by the local radicals, he was passed a joint just as someone took a picture, then it got published. The others at the swinging party were reprimanded but allowed to stay at the school. Frankenstein then gets his revenge by killing some of the radicals that set him up. It's pretty piss poor and not worth watching.

Wrestling Women Vs The Killer Robot 1969 A mad scientist has invented a robot that he can program to kill. He's kidnapping scientists help in his evil project. The police join up with a couple of wrestling women to catch him. Not very entertaining. The slowness of the story isn't enhanced by the repetitive scenes of women wrestling. Not the best of this sort of thing, below average.

Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things 1971 Two criminals on the run are hiding out in Miami. Stanley is really immature and a problem, Paul is disguised as his aunt, he tries to keep Stanley from fucking up. It leads Paul to killing people who find out too much about them. He should have just killed Stanley, it would have saved him a lot of aggravation. Well below average, not one I'd probably see again.

Red Peony Gambler 6 Oryu's Return 1970

Red Peony Gambler 6 Oryu's Return 1970 Director Tai Katô co-wrote the screenplay with Norifumi Suzuki.

Oryu is searching for a 16 year old girl with cataracts, the girls parents were part of the Yano yakuza family. She hears of a young woman working for a theater group in Tokyo and travels there. Along the way she helps out a guy, he later shows up for the big end battle.

In Tokyo Oryu settles down in the yakuza house hold of theater owner Teppo Hisao. The girl Oryu came to see isn't the girl she's looking for but her luck holds out and the right girl shows up, in trouble. Oryu sorts out the trouble then there's a bigger problem. The hear of a rival theater, a real sack of shit, wants to take over Teppo's theater and has the man killed. Oryu steps up to lead the theater company and there's a series of escalating fights until the usual battle to the death.

Since there are two more sequels I knew she'd be OK, most everyone else is dead, especially on the side of the scumbag theater owner, plenty of jobs available on that stage. It's about as good as the rest but hardly anything much different. Hopefully I'll get to the last couple soon and wrap the series up.

Dixiana 1930

Dixiana 1930 Story by Anne Caldwell, script by Luther Reed, directed by Luther Reed. Another film partially filmed in two strip Technicolor. They shot the last twenty minutes in Technicolor but it was thought lost until 1988 when the sequence was found and restored to the film. Max Steiner received his first credit for orchestration.

The third film for Wheeler and Woolsey still doesn't bill them as a team. This time the boys are circus performers in the antebellum south. Wheeler and Wolsey are partners in an act with Dixiana. She decides to leave the circus to marry the son of a rich plantation owner and they tag along to see the wedding.

The guys reveal they are circus folk and that goes down with the rich parents not at all. A big hubbub happens and the trio return to New Orleans. Unable to get their old jobs back Dixiana takes a job in a music hall run by a crooked scumbag. He wants to use Dixiana to ruin the rich family who spurned her, not to help her out but to make money for himself. Eventually it all works out.

I got a laugh or two, Wheeler and Woolsey have some better jokes and there's plenty of running about and yelling. You can see the film, click the link above.

The Cuckoos 1930

The Cuckoos 1930 It's based on a 1926 Broadway musical called The Ramblers by Guy Bolton, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. It was adapted for the screen by Cyrus Wood, there's a uncredited credit for Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, it was directed by Paul Sloane.

Some of the Wheeler and Woolsey films have been collected into 2 sets of DVDs, one with 9 films and the other with 6 films, the rest are released as single DVDs. The films in the sets aren't in any chronological order.

Wheeler and Woolsey are in Mexico, hanging around a casino resort. They run afoul of the local gypsies. Wheeler has fallen for a young gypsy woman called Anita. Troublesome, as the head man in the gypsy camp wants her for his bride. Anita isn't interested in the gypsy at all but he's a scumbag who isn't going to take no for an answer. Another woman at the casino, Ruth, is in love with an aviator named Billy. Ruth's aunt wants her to marry a creep called The Baron. Spurned, the Baron and the gypsies team up for a spot of kidnapping.

Wheeler and Woolsey have to come to the rescue, wading through one song after another. The guys get top billing after the success of Rio Rita and they do get more screen time. The songs are about as uninteresting to me as Rio Rita. I don't watch the films for the music. Like Rio Rita parts of the film are filmed in two strip Technicolor. The copies on the Warner Archive sets are usually pretty good. The jokes are about the same as the last movie. I got a few giggles and one time I laughed out loud.

Rich Hall's Continental Drifters 2011

Rich Hall's Continental Drifters 2011 Rich Hall takes a look at buddy movies for this BBC special. He covers a good number of movies and it's fairly entertaining.

21 Days 1940

21 Days 1940 Written by Graham Greene and Basil Dean, directed by Basil Dean. Based on a short story and play called The First And The Last by John Galsworthy.

Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh are lovers and Leslie Banks is Laurence's brother. Vivian's foreign husband shows up looking to get some money and Laurence kills him in a fight. Laurence hides the corpse and tells Leslie what he done. Leslie is an attorney and in line for a judge post. He doesn't want a murdering brother cocking up his chance for a nice post. He wants Laurence to leave the country but he won't go.

A tramp is arrested for the murder and Laurence plans to give himself up after spending his last 3 weeks with Vivian. Lucky for him the tramp dies before Laurence turns himself in.

It's all rather a shade dishonest and a good reason to hate the posh knobs. It's kind of dull on top of the wishy washy morality. Not one I'd bother with again.

The Cat Burglar 1961

The Cat Burglar 1961 Written by Leo Gordon and directed by William Witney. The IMDb listing for William is pretty amazing in regard to how much of it I've seen over the years. It helps to be interested in classic film and TV. Leo I've known more as an actor, he has a packed IMDb listing, he's written a dozen films and over 80 TV episodes. His films include some low budget favs: The Wasp Woman, Attack Of The Giant Leeches, Tower Of London and The Terror.

A bunch of stupid spies transfer some important papers via the one man's secretary. She arrives home from her trip only to be burgled while in the shower. Now the spies are mad and her boss is in trouble for not doing it himself. She contacts a crook to see if he can find out who did it and get the papers back. The numbers of crooked pawn shops must be small in that town, they find the right guy right away. Everyone's greedy and stupid in the crooked side of the group and some of them wind up smoked.

It's not too bad, about average, it was entertaining while it was going on. It's short too, only 65 minutes, so it hasn't any time to waste. Some of the coincidental connections to the burglar are a bit weak. Still, there's time for a bit of a shoot out at the end. I'd watch it again but it's unlikely to happen.

The Child 1977

The Child 1977 Written by Ron Lucas and directed by Robert Voskanian.

A young woman is hired to take care of a man's daughter. They live in an isolated area next to a wooded area. The daughter is a real jerk who has mental powers. She decides to use them to get back at the people she thinks caused her mother's death. The daughter's powers include raising the dead to do her bidding. You can see who survives by watching the movie on YouTube like I did. There's a link above. I found it near average but points off for being a bit dull.

Science Fiction Sunday 610

Crossbreed 2019 This SF film from Amazon Prime has some mercenaries trying to kidnap an alien from a space ship. Turns out there has been some gene splicing going on and the alien is a manufactured warrior done up by another alien race. One that's headed for the area to retrieve the being. Vivica A Fox is the president of the US area and Daniel Baldwin is Secretary of Defense. They are the one that sent the team in there. Another evil government official has sent his own team in there to steal the thing. It all falls to shit and all pretty formulaic and familiar. Lots of shooting and fighting and yelling. No need to see this one again, nor the next movie.

Battle Star Wars 2020 I normally skip movies by The Asylum but I didn't notice the logo when I clicked on the AP Watch button. It's up to the companies usual level, there's an unimaginative title and an unimaginative script. The acting is about average for a low-budget film, they do as well as they can with the script. Perhaps one of the good things about The Asylum and other low-budget film companies is they give a chance to young actors who might not get hired for a larger budget film, it's an add to their CV and some experience.

The IMDb trivia page says is: This film is a ripoff of a famous film series called Star Wars. That's sort of what it is, just done poorly, there's more yelling and story is less interesting. I have to say that the SF effects, spaceships and the like aren't as bad as their normal CGI efforts. They lucked out and got someone good at the job. I suspect they'll be able to get a better job soon enough. Not really worth bothering with, unless you need to see all the SF films there are.