PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Midsomer Murders Series 23

Midsomer Murders Series 23 It's nice to see everyone back at work. There's always a plethora of dead bodies cluttering up their stately homes.

Neil Dudgeon returns as Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby, Fiona Dolman as his wife Sarah, Nick Hendrix as Detective Sergeant Jamie Winter and Annette Badland as Dr Fleur Perkins. An entertaining cast.

I've only watched the first two episodes, there's 4 more 90 min episodes to go, but the stories are up to their usual standards, so I'm looking forward to the rest.

Science Fiction Sunday 721

Doctor Who 2 Series 3 The Infinite Quest Written by Alan Barnes and directed by Gary Russell. A series of a dozen 3.5 min animated chapters that aired April 2 to June 30 2007 on the Totally Doctor Who program. It was released on it's own DVD.

 

The Doctor and Martha stop an alien called Baltazar who wants to turn the human pop of Earth into diamonds. Baltazar is carried off by his giant metal bird Caw. The Doctor and Martha are given a data chip by Caw. It the first of a 4 data ships they need to find to locate the legendary spaceship The Infinite.

 

Once they find it Baltazar shows up but his dreams of it's vast treasure are dashed and he's taken off to prison.

The animation is of a rather limited type and the story is rather disjointed. I think I would prefer them to use animation to replace missing episodes from the 60s. The DVD has some extras but no commentary. Nothing much special about them.

Doctor Who 2 Series 4 Episode 0 Voyage Of The Damned December 25 2007 Written by Russell T Davies and directed by James Strong.

 

The Doctor crashes into the Titanic. He discovered that it's not the original liner but a space ship that's taking customers to visit Earth at Christmas. That plan is being scuppered by the skipped, he's going to crash the ship on the Earth and kill everyone on it.

 

The Doctor interacts with the people on the ship until the ship is damaged by meteors that the Captain let through the defense shields. The Doctor and some other passengers survive but they are being picked off by the angelic looking info robots. It's part of a scumbags plan to get back at the shipping company who kicked him off the board for running the company into the ground.

 

Most everyone the Doctor meets is killed. The Doctor gets into his Tardis and takes off for his next adventure.

 

A fairly decent story with plenty of action and death. There's is a nice remembrance card at the end of the episode for original Doctor Who producer Verity Lambert. The disc has a commentary that I mostly enjoyed. There's one of David's video diaries and a Children In Need short with Doctor David meeting Doctor Peter Davison on the Tardis.

Friday Night Movies 921

Slayer 2006  Written and directed by Kevin VanHook. TV movie that aired on the SciFi Channel.

Casper Van Dien is a soldier, he's just barely survived an encounter with some day walking vampires in South America. The Army downplays the vamps but 6 months later he's back in the jungle looking for those vampires. He's got an additional cliche to deal with, one of many, in that his wife is also down in SA in the same jungle. Linda Carter is his Colonel and his ex's godmother.

In the jungle Casper's best pal Grieves is turned. He starts leading the vampires with his military knowledge. There's some running around the jungle and plenty of vampire fighting. Since it's TV there's not a lot of gore and the fights are just so-so.

The whole movie is way below average. Weak plot, dialog and production. It doesn't get a 3.5 on the IMDb because everyone likes it. Lucky for me one of the other guys got it from Netflix DVD. I hear that service is being phased out next year. It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

The Intrigue 1916 Written by Julia Crawford Ivers and directed by Frank Lloyd. The film was photographed by James Van Trees, Julia Crawford Ivers son. The inclusion of a death ray weapon makes this silent film science fiction in some people's eyes. There's so little death ray it hardly counts.

An American inventor creates a ray gun but the US military turns him down when he offers to sell it to them. He heads for Europe and Baron Rogniat offers to buy the weapon. The Baron intends to kill the inventor but he's saved by Countess Sonia.

It's kind of interesting as a spy story with a bit of romance but there's no other SF elements, other than the ray gun, and that doesn't really get used much. You can see it on YouTube, click link above. It's got a bit of historical value in the end.

Tomorrow's Worlds: The Unearthly History Of Science Fiction 2014

Tomorrow's Worlds: The Unearthly History Of Science Fiction 2014

A four part documentary from the BBC that should have the word Film amended to the title. It deals with SF film history with random mentions of writers like Jules Verne and HG Wells. Most of the people interviewed were film people, though there was the occasional SF writer like Ursula K Le Guin.

Rather disappointing. Not something I would bother to watch again.

Strike Series 5

Strike Series 5 A four part adaptation of Troubled Blood that aired December 11, 12 and 18, 19 2022. Written by Tom Edge and directed by Sue Tully. Tom Burke is Cormoran Strike and Holliday Grainger is Robin Ellacott. They are partners in a detective agency.

It's a grim sort of world that Strike and Robin live in and they have their miserable problems. They take on a missing person case from 20 years previous. A doctor left her office and disappeared on the five minute journey to the pub. Everyone involved is old and worn out but there's still some danger, especially when murder is being covered up. People will kill to keep their secrets.

It's still a well made program but it's not really the sort of program I'm going to want to see again. I was thankful for variable speed control on VLC player for lessening the time to watch it.

Penny Points To Paradise 1951

Penny Points To Paradise 1951 Written by John Ormonde and directed by Tony Young. It's the debut film for the guys from The Goon Show, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a big Goons fan. Their humor is a bit miss for me.

Spike and Harry are a couple of pals, Harry wins big on the football pools, he's got £100,000 in a suitcase that he's carrying around with him as he's a big idiot. The pair of them vacation at the same seaside resort they always stay at. A couple of gals have eyes on Harry and Spike, they know about the money and don't mind being gold diggers. Peter Sellers plays an old man who sells fake investment opportunities and a Canadian salesman with the gift of gab. The disc has a short from 1951 with Peter in several roles. It's even worse than the movie.

A couple of counterfeiters move into the resort and substitute their fake cash for Harry's real cash. One of the gals is arrested for passing a fake bill given to her by Harry. The counterfeiters do a bunk but one of the gals finds their printing press before they go. It's a wax stencil duplicator that couldn't make a very passable bank note in anyway. I'm trying to ignore that glaring mistake.

The guys and gals go after the counterfeiters. The police are on the chase too. They all speed about the beach side streets of Brighton. The baddies make a break for it on foot and hid in a wax museum. They mug about in the wax museum changing into goofy costumes at nearly every scene change. The baddies give themselves away because they too are stupid. Harry and Spike marry the gals at gunpoint and run off into the distance.

The film did poorly at the box office, Peter Sellers called it "a terrifyingly bad film" and I have to agree with him. The jokes are poor and tired. It's a weak start to a film career for the Goon guys. It was thought to be lost but a 72 min version was created out of existing prints. The MVD Blu-ray looks fairly good for most of the film, some bits are a bit more fuzzy than others. I feel it was a wasted couple of bucks on clearance. I doubt I'd watch it again.

The Avengers Series 4

The Avengers Series 4 Twenty six episodes aired September 28 1965 to March 22 1966. It was the first series for Diana Rigg and the first series shot on film, it was the last series in B&W.

John Steed and Emma Peel continue the battle against the criminal element with plenty of punching and leather. There's more location shooting in this series and a bit more for the budget. It's a welcome improvement.

There seems to be a concerned effort to get Mrs Peel into some skimpy outfits.

They don't seem to hinder her ass kicking abilities. Mrs Peel tosses the baddies around quite well in her leather jumpsuit.

I suspect this was a publicity shot. Nothing gets the dad's watching than a bit of cheesecake.

I liked most of the stories and can't complain about the rest. I'll put the 4th series on the stack to watch over the next few weeks. I like to watch a disc or two each week.

Science Fiction Sunday 720

Doctor Who 2 Series 3 Episodes 11 - 13

 

Utopia June 16 2007 Written by Russel T Davies and directed by Graeme Harper. First of three parts.

 

The Tardis travels 100 trillion years into the future and dumps the Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack on the planet Malcassairo. There they find the last humans waiting to leave the planet in a space ship being built by Professor Yana. The Doctor helps launch the ship and Professor Yana launches his the old self.

 

Turns out he's the Master in a human shell. He battles with the Doctor but is mortally wounded by his old assistant. Before he regenerates he steals the Tardis and strands the Doctor and company in the future. Lucky for them Captain Jack has his vortex manipulator to travel to London in 2007.

 

The Sound Of Drums June 23 2007 Written by Russell T Davies and directed by Colin Teague. Second of three parts.

 

In London the Tardis gang find out that the Master is now Prime Minister. He's been there for 18 months and has a big plan to destroy the humans with metal alien balls from the future. Lots of humans are wiped out.

 

The Tardis gang are captured, the Doctor is aged a 100 years, Captain Jack is chained in a basement, Martha escapes with a mission from the Doctor.

 

Last Of The Time Lords June 30 2007 Written by Russell T Davies and directed by Colin Teague. Last of three parts.

 

Martha returns from her mission a year later to find the Doctor is a little guy in a bird cage. The Master has a big plan to invade the universe but the Doctor has a plan too. He wants to save the Master but the Master's wife has something to say about that. Martha decides to leave the Doctor and rejoin her family. Captain Jack returns to his rebuilt Torchwood to fight for the Earth.

 

I really enjoyed the story, it had all sorts of things I liked. I didn't even mind seeing the Master return.

Friday Night Movies 920

Valley Of The Dead 2020 Based of the novel Noche de difuntos del 38 by Manuel Martín Ferreras, screenplay by Jaime Marques Olarreaga, Alberto Fernández Arregui and Cristian Conti, directed by Javier Ruiz Caldera and Alberto de Toro. Original Spanish title Malnazidos.

It's Spain in 1938, the Spanish Civil War is going on and stink of Nazis is everywhere. The Nazis arrive in a small town while there's a wedding going on. The Nazis kill all the people in the town square. They dump some blue powder on the bodies and take off.

The tall guy with the mustache in the poster is in a bit of trouble, luckily his uncle saves him from the firing squad at the last minute. He's sent on a mission to deliver a message to a general in a bad area. He takes a short cut and runs into a Nazi roadblock. He bullies his way into the area and gets caught by the enemy just as the Nazi experiment fires up a horde of murderous zombies. A small group locals with mixed political and religious views have to pull together to fight off the dead scum.

The group makes their way out of the valley but they're hindered by the rapidly growing zombie pop. One by one most of the characters fall, often with a nice bit of personal glory. It's got a nice bunch of characters and the script gives us just enough of their story before moving along.

There's a great variety of fighting and plenty of explosions. The CGI head shots are a bit samey but some of the other bits of action are well done. It's a 102 mins and it doesn't seen over padded or stogy. I'd be happy to watch it again.

Army Of The Dead 2021  Story by Zack Snyder, screenplay by Zack Snyder, Shay Hatten and Joby Harold, directed by Zack Snyder.

A zombie heist film set in Las Vegas in the near future. A military transport accident released the original zombie and it quickly took over Las Vegas. The army fought them and then walled in the city and left them alone. Six years later it's decided to nuke the place.

Before the big bomb boom an ex-soldier gets asked to sneak into Las Vegas and steal $200,000,000. He can have a quarter to split with his team. Dave Bautista plays the ex-soldier, he doesn't want to go but he wants the money to start a new life for him and his daughter. Moronically he lets his daughter go along on the heist.

Dave gathers a group of people, enters the city and meets up with the locals. There's a good bit of fighting and zombie killing. There's also a good bit of personal story, more than I cared for. It's a 140 min movie and rather indulgent. A good chunk of that run time could have been trimmed to create a leaner meaner movie. The CGI and physical effects are pretty good. I enjoyed the zombie tiger and zombie horse. Some money was spent, $70-90 million according to the Wikipedia. It didn't make any money at the Box Office, only a million smackaroonies from it's short theatrical release. It was popular on Netflix when it appeared there.

There's nothing new here, some guys fighting zombies in areas that look liked video games. I was bored with the dull parts, especially all the character back story. Snip! Snip! I wasn't sorry to have seen it but I wouldn't bother with it again.

The Indian Doctor Series 2

The Indian Doctor Series 2 Created by Deep Sehgal and Tom Ware, written by Nicholas Martin, Sian Naiomi, Catrin Clarke and Rob Gittins, directed by Gwennan Sage and Lee Haven-Jones. The five episodes aired February 27 to March 2 2012.

Doctor Sharma and his wife Kamini get a visit from Kamini's mother Pushpa just as a smallpox outbreak occurs in the village. Pushpa is blames as there is an outbreak in India. She's been vaccinated but the locals are scared. They don't even want to get vaccinated even after the Doctor arranges for a vaccination unit to be brought up from Cardiff. It takes a while to bring the locals around to getting their jab. So like the current day.

Another good series that I enjoyed despite the heavy level of drama. Good script and good cast. There's another series to watch, I'll get to it in a bit.