PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Les Creatures 1966

Les Creatures 1966 Written and directed by Agnes Varda.

Catherine Deneuve lives in a big old house with her husband Michel Piccoli. She doesn't speak, the result of Michel's bad driving and generally being an asshole. He's some sort of writer, he wanders the town imagining the locals as part of his novel. I find him very uninteresting. He has trouble with some crooked bed sheet salesmen and visits some regular folks. There's a bit of blur between the novel and reality though some novel scenes are tinted reddish.

It's gotten mixed reviews over the years and I can see why. It's pretty abstract. I didn't find it as interesting as some people did but I got to the end of the film. I didn't think I would need to see it again. So many other things I like better to see.

Shark 1969

Shark 1969 Based on the novel His Bones Are Coral by Victor Canning, screenplay by Samuel Fuller and John Kingsbridge, directed by Samuel Fuller. A Mexican American production that's was filmed under the title Caine, it's also known as Man-Eater.

Burt Reynold's a smuggler who's stuck in a small port town on the Red Sea. Manzanillo Mexico is filling in for the Red Sea. There's a story going around that one of the stunt men was killed by a great white shark that got past the shark netting. Life magazine did a story on it and the producers changed the title to Shark! to cash in on the publicity. Fuller quit the picture in disgust. He also said the film was butchered in the editing, he wanted his name taken off the picture, the producers refused.

Burt gets hired by Silvia Pinal to recover some gold off a sunken ship. The area has a lot of sharks floating about, some of them are human. There's a little bit of action and a lot of scuba diving. It's barely average and I can't credit that just to bad editing. You can see it on YouTube. Link above.

The League Of Frightened Men 1937

The League Of Frightened Men 1937 Based on The League Of Frightened Men by Rex Stout, screenplay by Guy Endore, Eugene Solow and Edward Chodorov, directed by Alfred E Green.

This time Nero Wolfe is being played by Walter Connolly. Edward Arnold decided he didn't want to continue in the role. Lionel Stander returns as Archie Goodwin. He's about the same character, minus the fiancée, but the scriptwriters have their own ideas about Nero Wolfe. He's a comical goof who spends more time out of the house than Nero spent out of the house in the 33 novels and 39 stories Rex Stout wrote. Edward Arnold was more entertaining.

Someone is sending frightening letters to some guys. A couple of them are killed off and Nero offers to help catch the killer, provided the men pay him if he does well. He sends Archie out and there's the usual running about with some fun bits of humor. Sadly, the movie isn't as good as the previous film. 

Rex Stout wasn't too happy with the adaptations of his novels and I can't blame him. They aren't the characters he created and he wouldn't let anyone use them for a very long time. After his death the estate sold the rights to do a TV show, that was the one that William Conrad was in.

Meet Nero Wolfe 1936

Meet Nero Wolfe 1936 Based on the Rex Stout novel Fer-de-lance, screenplay by Howard J Green, Bruce Manning and Joseph Anthony, directed by Herbert Biberman.

Edward Arnold plays Nero Wolfe and Lionel Stander plays Archie Goodwin. They aren't the characters from the books but they're entertaining. Nero Wolfe writer Rex Stout thought they were miscast. Can't argue with that. The lady in the picture is Dennie Moore, she's Archie's fiancée Mazie Gray. She follows him around complaining about not getting married for pretty much the whole movie.

A rich guy drops dead on the golf course. Rita Hayworth asks Wolfe to find her brother. Nero decides to take the case and the investigation leads to that dead golfer. There's a lot of running around and most of a good mystery. It's pretty darn goofy and there are a few good jokes. You can try it out on YouTube. Link above.

Nero Wolfe Season 1 1981

Nero Wolfe Season 1 1981 There were only 14 episodes in the series and then it was cancelled. Half the stories are loosely based on Rex Stout's novels, the other half are original stories. There's a definite effort to make Wolfe more human and that weakens the character in my mind.

There's a whole new cast with Frank Conrad as Nero Wolfe and Lee Horsley as Archie Goodwin. George Voskovec plays Nero's chef Fritz Brenner, Robert Coote plays Nero's orchid man Theodore Horstmann, George Wyner plays Saul Panzer and Allan Miller plays Inspector Cramer. I liked the cast for the most part, though I thought George and Allan were a bit wrong for their characters.

There's a good guest cast including Richard Anderson, Delta Burke, John de Lancie, David Hedison, Robert Loggia, Darren McGavin, Barry Nelson, John Randolph, Russ Tamblyn and Lana Wood.

There's a nice brownstone set and a nice orchid room. There's plenty of location shooting and a few fights here and there. They keep a good level of humor going and that's appealing.

I enjoyed the series but it wasn't up to Friday night's hit The Dukes Of Hazard in the ratings. Moving it to Tuesday didn't save it. All gone. Compared to the recently seen Italian version of Nero Wolfe, this series pales, and the Italian version is really changed from the books. It carries it off with style and passion. And those nice old cars. Bellissimo!

The 1981 series doesn't fare well when compared to the 2001 A&E series either. Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin were highly entertaining as Wolfe and Goodwin. Each episode adapts a book and they don't keep everything from the original story. It still works well, the scripts are clever and the production captures the briskness of the books and the oddness of Nero Wolfe. Sadly they only produced two 10 episode series before A&E changed their format to attract the younger viewer with crappy reality TV. No matter, I don't watch A&E anymore and I haven't got anything good to say about them. I bought the DVDs of Tim and Maury's show and I can watch it anytime I want.

Nero Wolfe 1979

Nero Wolfe 1979 Based on The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout, written and directed by Frank D Gilroy. A TV movie pilot that aired on ABC television two years after it was made. It's part of a DVD set with the 14 episodes of the 1981 TV series. It's got a different cast than the TV series. Originally Orson Welles was to play Nero but he bowed out and Gilroy found Thayer David, that's him on the left, the other fellow is Tom Mason, he's playing Archie Goodwin. Sadly, Thayer died before the movie aired.

It's a good adaption of the novel. Nero is asked by a rich lady to get the FBI off her back, she sent out hundreds of copies of a book that spoke badly about Edgar and his gang. Now the FBI are following her and she's pissed off. Nero eyes the massive fee and plunges right into to setting a trap for the FBI. The Bureau throws it's weight around but they're no match for Nero.

It's well written and plotted, the cast is good and they do a great job. Anne Baxter plays the rich lady and Brooke Adams plays Archie's romantic interest. I liked Lewis Charles as Saul Panzer. David Hurst plays Fritz, Biff McGuire plays Inspector Cramer with John Randolph, Frank Campanella and John Hoyt in smaller roles.

It's quite fun and it kept my interest up right to the end. Thayer and Tom have a good bit of chemistry together. There's a good sense of humor too. Worth seeing. I'll watch it again sometime.

 

Science Fiction Sunday 707

Doctor Who 0152 Battlefield Four part story that aired September 6 to 27 1989. Written by Ben Aaronovitch and directed by Michael Kerrigan. The first story of the last series.

The Tardis takes the Doctor and Ace to Earth in 1989. The Doctor meets up with  Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart for the last time in the current series. They have to battle Morgaine and her soldiers, Morgaine is played Jean Marsh. There's plenty of battling going on with explosions and a high body count. All in all still amusing.

Doctor Who 0153 Ghost Light Three part story that aired October 4 to 13 1989. Written by Marc Platt and directed by Alan Wareing.

The Doctor and Ace visit the town she came from, only a 100 years in the past. There's a spooky house that Ace has a connection to in her day. Some thing evil lives there and the Doctor needs to sort that out. It's still a rather clumsy story but I got to the end.

Doctor Who 0154 The Curse Of Fenric Four part story that aired October 25 to November 15 1989. Written by Ian Briggs and directed by Nicholas Mallet and an uncredited John Nathan-Turner.

The Doctor and Ace are still on Earth, this time it's World War 2 and they are on the Northumberland coast. A good story with plenty of action.

Doctor Who 0155 Survival Three part story that aired November 22 to December 6 1989. Written by Rona Munroe and directed by Alan Wareing.

Ace makes it home to Perivale and has an adventure with some alien cats. Oh, yeah, the Master shows up for the first time in 3 years. It was a decent story and I'm a bit sad to see the Doctor go.

No worries, there will be more Doctors, next week in fact, I'll watch the 1996 movie and the two 60s films with Peter Cushing as the Doctor. I have Blu-rays of the latter and I've heard they look very nice.

Paper Orchid 1949

Paper Orchid 1949 Based on the novel Paper Orchid by Arthur La Bern, screenplay by Val Guest, directed by Roy Ward Baker.

I'm always on the search for Sid James movies, there's still a few of his earlier films I've not seen. Sid still gets some love in the UK, they're still making documentaries about him nearly half a century after he died. I first started seeing Sid in the 60s on British TV shows and the Carry On films. Some might remember him from The Lavender Hill Mob with Alex Guinness. He's in one of my favorite films Hell Drivers. It's got a great cast beside Stanley Baker and Sid, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, Patrick McGoohan, William Hartnell, Sean Connery and Alfie Bass.

That Hugh Williams and Sid, Hugh is the editor of a newspaper and Sid's a reporter. The owner of the paper dies and his wife takes over. Some of the staff leave and some are driven out, Hugh in the latter lot. He gets a job on a rival paper that's in the midst of change too.

There's a certain level of humorous friction until the sculpture guy gets his throat cut. The crime investigation is over shadowed by the newspaper story and that's OK, it's those people that are interesting. I found it entertaining and enjoyed Sid quite a bit.  You can check it out on YouTube, sadly the copy is fuzzy. I still watched it.

Friday Night Movies 907

I Am A Hero 2015 Based on a manga by Kengo Hanazawa, screenplay by Akiko Nogi, directed by Shinsuke Sato.

Hideo is 35 years old and an assistant to a manga artist. He can't get any publishers to publish his own stories. His girlfriend of 15 years decides she's had enough of him on the day before a zombie outbreak happens in Tokyo. She kicks him out of the house, when he returns the next day it's too late for her, she's turned.

Hideo spends the movie shuffling about the city with his shotgun. He's about the only one with a gun. He falls in with some people along the way, most of them die. It's a lot like a lot of zombie films but there's a good bit of personal melodrama in it's 126 mins. A little trimming would help that.

The action is fairly good and the pace picks up once they get to the Outlet Mall. It's supposed to be a mall near Mount Fuji but the movie filmed in a failed mall in Korea. The IMDb Trivia page says the Japanese government has such strict gun laws that they wouldn't let the filmmakers shoot the shotgun in the movie. They had more freedom to shoot the shotgun in the Korean mall.

I enjoyed some of the film but it takes a while to get to the hero part. It's only about average to me but I would watch it again for some of the action bits. I'd give it a 5 on the IMDb but wouldn't think it's worth a 6.

Reborn 2019 Written by Michael Mahin and directed by Julian Richards.

Barbara Crampton is an actor who had a stillborn child 16 years before. Turns out that the baby wasn't dead when it went to the morgue. It revives on it's own and the creepy attendant steals the child and raises Tess as his sister.

Things go bad on Tess's sixteenth birthday, her brother is supposed give her some details about her birth but he doesn't. Instead he comes on pretty rapey. The stress causes Tess to awaken her powers over electricity. She kills her brother, then opens his safe, a clue leads her to the physician that birthed her. He doesn't do well from the encounter but Tess finds out the name of her birth mother.

Tess visits Barbara but doesn't reveal her ID at first. Barbara gives acting lessons and she thinks Tess is a new student. Barbara isn't getting a lot of job offerings anymore. In fact, her agent says Barb better get that part in the Bogdanovich movie she's auditioning for or she won't have an agent anymore. Tess kills a couple more people and the cops are on her trail. Michael Pare plays the police detective.

Monty Markham plays Barbara's therapist. He sends Barbara to look for closure with her dead daughter. He wants her to visit her daughter's grave but it can't be found. Tess eventually reveals who she is to Barbara and things don't go so well there either. Eventually there's a bit of a showdown between Tess and Michael.

I liked the movie for the most part but it wasn't more than average. It's better than it's 4.2 on the IMDb but I wouldn't give it a 6. I think they did a good job of packing a lot of story into it's 77 mins. I doubt that I need to see it again.

Viy 1967

Viy 1967 Based on Viy by Nikolai Gogol, screenplay by Konstantin Yershov,  Georgi Kropachyov and Aleksandr Ptushko, directed by Konstantin Yershov and Georgi Kropachyov. Ptushko is the director of Sampo and Ilya Muromets. Viy is the first horror film under Soviet Russia. The story has been made into several films including the 2014 film Viy, shown in the US as Forbidden Empire. The US version is shorter than the Russian version. You can get Blu-rays or DVDs of bother versions.

Three seminary students travel home for a vacation. They stop at a farm and ask an old woman if they can sleep in the barn. Later that night the old woman tries to seduce Khoma but he refuses her advances. She turns out to be a witch,  putting him under a spell she rides him around the countryside. Khoma realizes she's a witch and beats her. The old woman turns into a beautiful young woman and he runs off, returning to the seminary.

The Rector of the seminary sends him to preform prayers for the dying daughter of a local farmer. Guess what, it's the same young woman that Khoma beat. She dies before Khoma gets to the farm and he doesn't tell anyone he did the beating. Khoma has to read prayers at night for 3 nights and all manor of weird things happen. The dead woman rises and attacks him, the only thing saving him is the chalk circle around the podium. The nights events get worse and worse until poor Khoma collapses.

That's the viy, he's as ugly as the movie is entertaining. There's plenty going on and the production is fairly good. The special effects and make up are fairly good. It's got a nice level of grotesqueness and a bit of humor. There's a Severin DVD/Blu-ray out but I watched in on YouTube at Mosfilm. Link in title.