Maigret 1988 Written by Arthur Weingarten, directed by Paul Lynch. A US TV film that was the pilot for a TV series. The film didn't sell the show. It came out on VHS but not on DVD.
Richard Harris was picked to play Maigret, after Richard Burton, Alec Guinness and George C Scott dropped out. He's not really like the character in Georges Simenon's novels, he rather more like Peter Falk's Columbo, but with a pipe and a mumble. He's no Bruno Cremer or Rupert Davies.
The story was OK but I can't say much more than that. I can see why it never sold the pilot.
The Card Player 2003 Story and screenplay by Dario Agento and Franco Ferrini, directed by Dario Argento.
A serial killer is kidnapping women in Rome. He sets up a web based card game with the police, if the killer wins the victim is tortured and murdered on screen. When a British citizen is murdered the authorities send a cop to help in the investigation. He works with a woman who's not well respected by her male colleagues. The team does well and eventually figures out who the killer was.
Generally watchable but lack luster, not better than average. As uninspiring as the poster above. I wouldn't need to watch it again.
My Family And Other Animals Series 1 1987 Based on the book of the same name by Gerald Durrell, screenplay by Charles Wood, directed by Peter Barber-Fleming. There were ten episodes that aired October 17 to December 19 1987. The book was turned into a TV film in 2005 and a 4 season series in 2016. Simon Nye wrote both the film and the TV show.
The Durrell family move to Corfu in 1935. There's plenty of activity as the family settles in, they stay for 4 years, then leave to make sure Gerry gets some real education. Hannah Gordon plays the mother Louisa and Brian Blessed plays Spiro Halikiopoulos. He's a local taxi driver who helps the family with finding a house and various things that come up. He's always driving them somewhere or hanging around with them.
Beside Gerald, who's commonly called Gerry, the rest of the family are Lawrence, Leslie and Margaret or Margo. They are all older than Gerry, he's ten, and they all have their annoying quirks. Their father died some time before they moved to Corfu. The family lived in three houses because they are rather foolish and self absorbed.
There's plenty of funny things happening, mostly animal related. The series was a join production by the BBC's Drama Department and Natural History Unit. It was agreed that there would be 3 mins of natural history for every episode. It seems like more than that. Gerry's animal collecting creates plenty of annoyance for the family and plenty of laughs for the viewer.
All in all it's fairly good and I was glad to see it. I read the book back in the 80s, as well as several other Durrell books. I've downloaded a bunch of his work and hope to get to read it sometime. I also need to finish the 2016 series, I'd only seen the first 2 series when the library stopped having the DVDs. I've recently acquired the whole series. Now to find a time slot to watch them.
The Day The Earth Caught Fire 1961 Screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz and Val Guest, directed by Val Guest. A British disaster film about the Earth being blown off it's axis by nuclear blasts.
We follow a reporter about just after the US and the Soviets conduct nuclear tests. The weather starts to change over a short period of time. The Earth has gotten hotter, rivers and lakes evaporate. It's found that the blasts have tipped the Earth by 11 degrees and things are awful all over. Shortly after it's revealed that the Earth is closer to the sun. The heat rises and many die. The governments of the world hope to correct that by blasting off 4 more big nukes.
It's a pretty good film. It's B&W except for some yellow tinted bits at the beginning and the end. It's a talky film but the script is good and there's a good cast behind it. I liked the scenes at the newspaper office as the staff deal with the crisis. There's a bit of romance mixed in with all the horrible calamity. It seems a bit bold for 1961. They use a good bit of stock footage to depict the disasters around the world. It's done quite effectively.
There's a rather ambiguous ending. Not sure why people do that sort of ending. Not my favorite story element. I watched a DVD from Kino-Lorber that has the 2014 remastered print. Looks nice. I'd want to watch it again sometime. Definitely worth seeing.
It Came From Somewhere 2022 Written by Steve Hermann and Bryan Parkerson, directed by Ashley Hefnew and Steve Hermann.
The movie is a modern attempt to recreate a low budget picture from the 1950s. It's a mash up of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Teenagers From Space. These parody films rarely work for me. The film makers never seem to understand that Ed Wood wasn't setting out to make a bad film. He thought he had something going on but he had more enthusiasm than talent.
This time the aliens are planning to take over the Earth by enacting Plan 10. The alien's soldier monster gets loose and befriends a little girl. One alien is a killing machine, the locals get blasted one after another, their skeletons pile up as the alien moves on. The other alien falls for an Earth woman. Ultimately the aliens fail in their mission. The Earth is saved until the next alien invasion.
Sadly it's not that good. Lucky for me it was only an hour. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. You can watch it on YouTube but I'm not going to watch it again. It's an insult after the first movie.
Billy goes to Ibiza in Spain to "write" on his mother's dime. He's not a writer, he's more a beatnik, he spends his days hanging out on the beach and at the local cafes, drinking coffee and beer, smoking cigarettes and cheap weed. Billy stays at the house of a local drug dealer called Eric. Billy meets and marries a German girl, they move to Barcelona where the marriage fails after Billy gets cut off by his mom.
Billy runs back to Ibiza to stay at Eric's again. Eric thinks the layabouts need to start contributing a bit of cash to the upkeep of his casa. One of the women suggests robbing an older man she used to date. She was with him when he was robbed before and he didn't put up a fight. Eric wants Billy and another lad to do the job but Billy is scared and doesn't want to do it. Eric brow beats him into getting the rob on and off they go. Of course things don't go so well. These aren't competent young men.
As a film it's below average but interesting as a bit of social history. I can say the same for a segment of the film near the end. Billy is on the run, he's gotten back to Barcelna, he sees two cops down the street and ducks in Antonio Gaudi's Casa Mila to hide. There's a short scene of him outside, inside and on top of the building. I'm such a big Gaudi fan I decided to keep a copy of the film in case I wanted to see that segment again. You can see the film over at YouTube. You might have an interest.
Murder At The Vanities 1934 Play written by Earl Carroll and Rufus King, screenplay by Carey Wilson, Joseph Gollomb, Sam Hellman (dialogue) and an uncredited Jack Cunningham, directed by Mitchell Leisen.
The Earl Carroll Vanities were a series of Broadway revues that appeared between 1923 and 1940. The main draw was the big lavish production numbers with dozens of showgirls dancing and singing. There were other acts featuring singers, dancers and white comics in blackface. Real black entertainers had jobs too, Duke Ellington appears in the movie just like he would have appeared in the revue.
Jack Oakie is the backstage manager at the Earl Carroll Revue, he's on his own, Earl is out of town, and he's worried about failing. Carl, the main singer, is going to marry Ann after the show, she's his partner in the show. Carl's old girlfriend is upset but his mother is happy, she's the seamstress on the show but that's a secret. Things percolate as the story progresses.
That's one of the cactus ladies in the Sweet Marijuana song. That song got a lot of flack and not for the nearly naked lady. It was the weed itself that people were complaining about, there was even comment at the League of Nations. Paramount was supposed to cut the song from the film but lucky for us Paramount didn't and we can see it today. That lovely ladies is about to have blood dripped on her by the first victim of the movie. It's pre-code so it's a bit more risque than it will be for another 30 years.
There's a good cast beside Jack Oakie: Carl Bisson is the main singer suspect, Victor McLaglen is the homicide detective, Kitty Carlisle is Carl's main partner in the revue, she's the gal he's going to marry. Gertrude Michael is the ex-girlfriend and Jessie Ralph is Carl's secret mom with a bad past. There's over 100 showgirls, they're often scantily clad.
The murders ramp up and there's plenty of running about between musical numbers. The show is known for the debut of Cocktails For Two. I didn't know it was from the movie but I was familiar with the song from 60s and 70s TV variety shows. People are still singing it today. Eventually the music is over, the murderer confesses and everyone leaves the theater.
I thought it was fairly entertaining but I wasn't that keen on some of the musical numbers. I watched the Kino Lorber Blu-ray and then listened to the commentary by film histories Arthur Slide. He had plenty of info and presented it well. I'll probably give it another watch sometime down the line.
Filth - The Mary Whitehouse Story 2008 Created by Patrick Reams, directed by Amanda Coe, directed by Andy DeEmmony. Julie Walters plays Mary and Alum Armstrong her husband Ernest, Hugh Bonneville plays Sir Hugh Greene, Director-General of the BBC.
Mary Whitehouse was a 1960s British housewife who waged a morality war with the BBC. She thought there was too much sex, violence and blasphemy in the world. She was on TV all the tine complaining about BBC creators and their lack of morality. Not something that was too hip in the swinging sixties. She often attacked gay people who wrote poems and films she thought were blasphemous. Not a pleasant woman by any stretch of the imagination.
Kiss Of The Tarantula 1975 Written by Warren Hamilton Jr and Daniel Cady, directed by Chris Munger. A low budget horror film shot in Columbus Georgia and Burbank California. This was Chris's 3rd and last film, in 1978 he directed an episode of The Life And Times Of Grizzly Adams.
A young girl grows up in a crappy household, her only friends are her tarantulas. She grows up and uses them for revenge on people who wronged her.
Sadly, it's noticeably below average. I got through it but wouldn't need to buy the 2019 Blu-ray. I saved a download off of YouTube on the off chance I might want to watch it again. That's just optimistic baloney, there's no reason to double dip.
Mockingbird Lane 2012 Based on The Munsters by Al Burns and Chris Hayward, written by Bryan Fuller and directed by Brian Singer. Bryan Fuller is responsible for three of my favorite shows, Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies.
Mockingbird Lane is the first thing of his I've seen since those 3 shows. I sort of liked it but it's not the family from The Munsters. They were monsters who were nice, the new Munster family are monsters who will kill you.
It's nice looking and there's a dragon. There's a good bit of slaughter and it's fairly amusing. It's just not The Munsters. I can kind of see why no one picked up the series based on this pilot. Life goes on, unless you run into Grandpa. He'll kill you and suck out all of your blood.