PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Little Murders 1971

Little Murders 1971 Based on the play Little Murders by Jules Feiffer, screenplay by Jules Feiffer, directed by Alan Arkin. It was Alan's first film. He didn't direct that many and I've not seen any of the others. I've seen a lot of of the movies he's acted in but I don't have a lot of them on DVD. At some point in the early 80s I decided Feiffer's sort of story wasn't the sort of story that I was interested. I did like some of the children's books he illustrated. I liked his art but not enough to keep up with him.

Elliot Gould is a photographer who currently specializes in photos of shit on the sidewalk. He's won a half dozen awards. He's out on the street all the time, often he gets bothered by the street punks. The noise, the crime, the violence is bad in New York they live in.

Marcia Rodd is an interior designer who helps Elliot when the street punks are attacking him. Elliot doesn't fight back, he's got some goofy thoughts on that. Marcia starts dating him despite his lack of interest. He's emotionally withdrawn, doesn't talk much and has very little interest in others. What's interesting to Elliot is his photography work. He goes along with her plans, she steamrollers right over him, soon they are wed.

Like most scenes in the movie the wedding scene is overly exaggerated, it starts with a big fight and ends with a smaller fight. Donald Sutherland plays a hippie priest. He's got some crazy babble coming out of his mouth. Most of the movie has goofy dialog. We meet the young couple's families and they're all damaged in some way. Things get worse before the movie's over.

I mostly liked the movie but there's a lot of message in the media. The message I got out of it was not to date that sort of person. I did like the cast, it's nice to see Lou Jacobi, I haven't seen him in a while. I probably won't get around to it again but I've got other movies to watch first. You can check out the movie on YouTube, link in the title. You might like it.

Bitter Harvest 1963

Bitter Harvest 1963 Based on the trilogy 20,000 Streets Under The Sky by Patrick Hamilton, screenplay by Ted Willis, directed by Peter Graham Scott. The trilogy was written between 1929 and 1934, the 1st novel is The Midnight Bell, the 2nd is The Siege Of Pleasure and the 3rd is The Plains Of Cement.

 

They aren't something I would read anymore. I might have one time in the distant past but the mainstream novel has never been more than of occasional interest. In the last 30 or so years I've barely read a handful. I'm more interested in genre fiction, SF, crime, YA, that sort of thing. Occasionally one slips through, most recently I've been reading Edgar Wallace and he slips in a novel once in a while. He tells such a good yarn it's not surprising I find them more palatable than the more mundane story.

 

I saw a copy of Bitter Harvest somewhere and downloaded it. Two names captured by attention, writer Ted Willis and actor Janet Munro. Ted Willis created and wrote a lot of 1950s British TV, most notably creating Dixon Of Dock Green. That was based on the 1950 film The Blue Lamp. I watched that fairly recently and quite enjoyed it. The film introduced Constable George Dixon, played by Jack Warner. Jack also played the character on the popular TV series for all 432 episodes. Sadly only 33 episodes are all that remain today. Willis created the Sergeant Cork series and I enjoyed those. He wrote the excellent film Holiday Camp in 1947, that was the start of the Huggetts series of four films, he also penned the 4th Huggetts film The Huggetts Abroad. Jack Warner played the father in all four Huggertts films.

I remember Janet Munroe from the 1959 Disney film Darby O'Gill And The Little People and the 1960 Disney film Swiss Family Robinson. She's in 3 other films I've liked, the 1957 film Small Hotel, the 1958 film The Trollenberg Terror and the 1961 SF film The Day The Earth Caught Fire. I've got the 1962 Basil Dearden film Life Of Ruth to watch. Straight up drama but Basil is one of the few directors that I'll give my time to for a drama.

A lot of her other work isn't of much interest to me. Turns out Bitter Harvest is one of those. It's a girl gone bad film and it's pretty much all downward spiral from beginning to end. There's nothing much interesting for me here and I wound up speeding up the film to get to the end quicker. I wouldn't need to watch it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 783

Clay's Redemption 2020 Written by Ivo Alexander and Carlos Boellinger, directed by Carlos Boellinger. It's the first feature for Carlos, he's directed a number of shorts before that. It's a UK production.

I didn't care much for the film. It's way too dark, the fights are poor, and there's a confusing vague story with little going on. Mostly characters walk around in the dark. I'm sorry I saw it. You can see it on YouTube. I don't recommend it to anyone.

Sputnik 2020 Written by Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev, directed by Egor Abramenko. A Russian movie set in 1983.

A pair of astronauts are coming back to Earth when something happens. The capsule lands with one astronaut still alive. They lock him up in a secret isolated building and announce to the world he's in isolation for debriefing. They bring in Dr Tatyana Klimova to help them figure out what happened to the astronaut but the head guy is slow to tell her what they know already. It's pretty bad. Dr Klimova finds out what's happening on her own, the head guy gets her to help him but things get out of hand and lots of people die.

It's way to slow for me at 111 mins but the story is fairly decent. I'd probably watch this one over again sometime. You can see it on YouTube too.

Friday Night Movies 983

Watari The Ninja Boy 1966 Based on a manga by Sampei Shirato, screenplay by Masaru Igami and Shunichi Nishimura, directed by Sadao Funatoko. A Japanese live action fantasy film. We watched the Blu-ray from Shout! Factory's collection of 1960s Japanese Tokusatsu films.

A local baddie is stirring up animosity between the Iga and Coga clans. Watari is a young lad who fights with an ax on a rope and some magical ninja techniques. He discovers someone has been kidnapping children and forcing them to become ninja slaves. It all ties in with the plan to make the Iga and Coga clans fight. Watari has to fight various ninjas, they don't do so well, the boy is deadly. He has help from a few of the kids.

There are plenty of fights and many die, including some kids. There's plenty of great looking, massive sets and models. It's entertaining, colorful and amusing. If you're a fan of the manga from that era this might appeal to you. The Blu-ray set seems to be an exclusive from Shout! Factory, I'm ordering one today. Hope the other films are as entertaining. There's a copy on Tubi you can watch, link above.

I Vampire 1957 Story by Piero Regnoli, screenplay by Piero Regnoli and Riccardo Freda, directed by Riccardo Freda, an uncredited Mario Bava was involved with the script and direction.From the IMDb trivia page:

Ricardo Freda made the film on a bet to producers that he could complete in 12 days. After day 10, Freda realized that the film couldn't be finished on-schedule. After his requests for an extension were denied, cinematographer Mario Bava re-wrote the script so that the film could be finished in two days, and directed the remaining scenes himself.

The IMDb says it was the first Italian horror film of the sound era. It was called I Vampiri in Italy, a chopped up version called The Devil's Commandment was released in the US, where it was also released as Lust Of The Vampire.

A mad countess has a pet mad scientist in her castle. His job is to keep her alive. He has a formula and a machine that transfer's the blood from young and healthy women to the countess. The young and healthy aren't able to survive the process. The bloodless bodies are starting to appear and the papers are saying it's the work of a vampire. There isn't any vampire. Just a horrible old lady who's insanely afraid of getting old.

Of course the process doesn't work so well after several treatments. A local reporter finds a couple of clues that help him and the police figure out who the villain is. It ends with plenty of murder.

It was mostly OK. While I wouldn't rush out to buy the Blu-ray I would take a download. You can see it on YouTube with English subtitles. 

World's Most Dangerous Roads.

World's Most Dangerous Roads

I have been watching the 5th series and have liked the first half of the series quite a bit. There's 8 new episodes and they've got a returning traveler and plenty of new ones. Each episode has a pair of travelers in a car driving in remote and hazardous places. There's plenty of good scenery and plenty of swearing. Most of the travelers are comedians, the rest are actors and TV presenters.

Rhod Gilbert was in the first series with his pal Greg Davies. So far he's the only person to return to the series. This time Rhod's on a trip through the Italian Alps with comedian Angela Barnes. He's just gotten over having cancer treatments. There's a good bit of swearing in the episode, so much that they filled 4 swear jars before the 5 day trip was over. Beautiful scenery and swearing, what's not to like.

The first three series aired between 2011 and 2013 on the BBC. In 2023 Dave picked up the series, the 4th series aired that same year, the new one dropped February 18th 2024. There were only 3 episodes in each of the first 3 series, the 4th and 5th have 8 episodes each. In the US you can see the first 3 series on Amazon Prime and Roku TV, the later with commercials.

Snow Beast 2011

Snow Beast 2011 Written by Brittany Wiscombe and directed by Brian Brough. An American horror film set in Canada. Some of the movie is shot in Quebec and other bits in Utah and New York City.

A Yeti is roaming around a ski resort. He's killing animals and people. John Schneider is a wildlife researcher, Danielle Churchran is his daughter Emmy, and Jason London is a local forest ranger. The Yeti proves to be a formidable opponent. Many die.

It's got some nice scenery but the story is familiar. There's nothing new or interesting here. It gets a 3.5 on the IMDb. I gave it a 3 and 40% of the votes were 3 and below. I don't think people liked it very much. I know I wouldn't need to watch it again.

Home Sweet Homicide 1946

Home Sweet Homicide 1946 Based on Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice, screenplay by F Hugh Herbert, directed by Lloyd Bacon.

 

I've been reading through my Craig Rice books the last 3-4 months. Most are available for the Kindle. This last week I was reading my favorite of her books, Home Sweet Homicide, and decided to watch the 1946 movie with Randolph Scott. It's never had a official DVD release, the copy I had is really poor but I watched it anyway. After I was done I ordered a bootleg, hoping it would look better, it arrived today and it does look better than the copy I had. The copy has already been deleted.

 

Home Sweet Homicide is a comic novel about a woman mystery writer and her three children. While mom is slaving away at the typewriter the kids get themselves involved with a murder. The woman next door is killed and the husband is wanted for questioning by the police. The kids hide the husband and play around with the clues to the annoyance of the police.

In the movie Randolph Scott is a detective with the same name, Bill Smith, as the mystery writer's main character. Lynn Bari plays mystery writer Marian Carstairs, Peggy Ann Garner plays her oldest daughter Dinah, Connie Marshall plays April and Dean Stockwell plays Archie.

 

James Gleason plays Sgt O'Hare, a fellow with 9 children in the book but only 6 in the movie. The Carstairs kids are a handful for O'Hara, conning him out of nearly 4 bucks for chop suey and chocolate malts, and Bill Smith, who has no children of his own, isn't much better at handling them. There's a few suspects besides the husband and it takes a while to figure out which one is the murderer.

 

The movie and the book end happily and there are good laughs in both. I posted a link to the movie on YouTube, it's pretty fuzzy. The DVD I bought looks quite good by comparison but it's still a bit fuzzy and a few scenes are of lower quality. Be nice if they could restore that one. 

Science Fiction Sunday 782

The Area 51 Incident 2022 Written by Tom Jolliffe, Rhys Frake-Waterfield and Scott Chambers, directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield. A British alien invasion movie. I found it on Amazon Prime but it had ads so I looked at YouTube. There was a copy Flix For Free,  with no commercials, the movie after this one was from the same site.

Aliens invade Earth through a portal and start killing people. They infect the human's bodies with a parasite snake critter and force them to attack the non-infected. A small group of people make it to a military base. The soldiers let them in and the aliens pick them off one or two at a time. Nothing much new there. Plenty of running about and yelling right up to the end.

I thought it was pretty average. Nothing much new here. I'd not need to watch this one again.

The Dawnseeker 2018 Written and directed by Tristan Price. This is another film found on Flix For Free. This and the movie above were produced by Uncorked. It has short and infrequent commercial breaks. Amazon has 2-4 minute commercial breaks about every 15 mins. Links in titles.

Some soldiers are sent to a planet to harvest some Stardust. It's going to be used to revive the Sun and save the Earth. Once on the planet they encounter an alien killing machine. Yelling and running about commences. They meet up with some more humans and lots of them get slaughtered. The ending sort of peters out.

It's pretty unoriginal and it gets a deserved 2.9 on the IMDb. I gave it a generous 3.  I stare at the voting statistics on the rating page for the movie, over 70% are an 8 to a 10. The page says the score is weighted to reflect unusual voting patterns. I've been annoyed by fake block voting to drive the score up for a long while. The unweighted mean is a 6.7 and there's no way that this movie would score so high based on realistic voting. I wouldn't need to see this one again either.

Friday Night Movies 982

Santet 2 1988 Written by Naryono Prayitno and directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra. An Indonesian sequel to Santet. It's part of a double film Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome. 

Having killed off the baddie in the first movie Katemi tries to give up the black magic life and settle back into village life. She's forced back into the black magic lifestyle by Nyi Loreng, the ghost of the long dead master of Katemi's recently dead master Nyi Angker. Nyi Loreng puts a curse on Katemi which turns her into a tiger. At night she terrorizes the village as a tiger. Nyi Loreng wants revenge for the murder of her pupil but Katemi doesn't want to kill anyone.

The son of the baddie in the first movie is a drug smuggler in Jakarta. The same actor plays father and son. The son moves to the seaside village to run his business. The local police are rather dim but the Jakarta police are there to wreck the son's drug smuggling operation. Luckily the local Muslim teacher helps Katemi fight the bad influences. Eventually things are sorted out and Katemi gets to marry the local Muslim teacher.

It wasn't as much fun as the first but I did get a few laughs. There's not as much black magic stuff going on in this one. It's more a comedy with a large bit of on screen time devoted to the local comic relief machine constable and his wife. It's pretty lowbrow and only marginally funny. I was laughing at the film making more than the jokes. The effects are fair to poor with the tiger suit getting plenty of laughs.

Infinity Pool 2023 Written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg. A science fiction movie that's heavy on the drama.

The movie is set in the fictional country of Li Tolqa. Tourists have to stay in the resort as the locals are a bad lot. A writer and his rich wife are befriended by a couple who convince them to take a trip to a beach outside the resort. On the way back the writer is driving the car, he hits a local who dies. They leave the body there and run away after the husband of the other couple convinces the writer that the police are corrupt and it will go bad for them once they fall into the police's hands. It's astonishing to me that people would pick that country for a vacation.

The next morning the police come and arrest the writer and his wife. They know everything and the writer is given the dead penalty. He's also given a tourist out option, for a large pile of cash the police will provide a clone for the dead man's family's eldest son to kill. It's a pretty old school, an eye for an eye, sort of country so you know there's plenty of opportunity for corruption. He takes the option and pays for the clone. They have sit and watch the son of the dead man kill the clone.  His rich wife is horrified and really wants to leave.

It's just the start of a downhill slide for the writer. He becomes a complete piece of shit joining some other tourists who have been cloned before in beating a local police man. More badness follows. Eventually he finds out his new pals are just fucking with him, trying to turn him into another murder tourist like them. They break his brain and he winds up sitting in the monsoon rain staring out to sea across the infinity pool. 

I certainly didn't care for the pieces of shit that the writer got involved with and for the man the writer became. I can't see spending time with that sort. The movie is a good reminder to distrust the rich and powerful. It's not hard to imagine many of them turning into murder tourists and killing for fun. I didn't care much for the movie despite it being well made and the cast doing a great job. I wouldn't need to watch it again.

The Bloody Judge 1970

The Bloody Judge 1970 Written by Enrico Colombo, Jesús Franco, Michael Haller and Anthony Scott Veitch, directed by Jesús Franco. A Spanish, Italian and West German horror film produced by Harry Allan Towers with Christopher Lee as a nasty judge in seventeenth century England. It was released in 1972 in the US under the title Night Of The Blood Monster. It was released in Italy in 1970 under the name Le Trone Di Fuoco. It didn't get released in Britain until 1999. Dennis Price isn't in the movie, he had a part but had to bow out after they had printed the posters.

Christopher Lee is Judge Jeffries and he's a pretty messed up guy who judges harshly. He heaps torture and death on those who come up before him. He's a sex pervert on top of that. It was easier for the rich and powerful to get their kink on in the old days. Still, all the judge's naughtiness catches up to him when the king runs away. The new King isn't so keen on the bloody judge and bungs him in the tower. I just read a book on the kings of England and it's was often a dangerous time with all the wars and fighting. A lot of officials ended up in the tower.

It's a barely average movie but I still enjoyed some of it. It's not as good as the similar Witchfinder General. It's not overly gory despite the torture and the fake looking blood. There's a good bit of nudity but some of it's is pretty gratuitous. Parts were cut for some releases. The version above is mostly uncut but some scenes are sourced from foreign sources.