Month: April 2020

IMDb meta-data is six episodes of 50 minutes each, rated 7.2 by 2459 cinematizens.

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: Leaden.  

Bucharest in Romania 1983 that most communist of the satellite states, where Red is best.  A typical cop show with an imagination-deprived screenplay saturated by tropes seen scores of times before.  Our unkempt and odiferous hero is a man’s man and has the snarl to prove it.  He and his partner set out against orders to make a big bust, spouting Communist slogans as they go. They will be worker-heroes, again. Parody, I know, but — news flash! — that does not make it funny. 

Yes, the Fraternity Brothers anticipated it.  

This time Macho and macho are the fall guys and his partner — aka as ‘Little Macho’ — is murdered before his very eyes, though strangely both the CIA drugs imported to sap the Red Will of the people and the American dollar payoff Monopoly money are left behind.  Even stranger the villain wears a Ronald Reagan mask and ascended from two stories out of a window by means unknown, but not before he leaves a hand written message which must have been prepared in advance for his hirsute hipster pursuer.  Sure.

Aside, in effecting escape this Reagan neatly and gratuitously shot dead an old babuška in an apartment he ran through but no one gives this victim a second thought. It is all about the partner.  

Needless to say Snarly feels guilty about the partner, not the babuška, and takes it out on his new partner with whom first has a macho fistfight and then he promptly engages in an unsanctioned investigation into the murder of dead Old What’s Name. Psst, Little Macho was his name. 

Time to reveal the obvious.  It was made in 2017 as though it were a cop show made in 1983. Hence the rich array of clichés, like the unity of the fist.  Fists were much used in Romanian law enforcement it would seem.  Few things change. 

In 1983 Romania was the front line of the Cold War!  Not even the Soviets can be trusted with the Red Grail. There is no crime and corruption in Bucharest except that fomented by AMERICAN agents who, there among the dust bunnies, are to be seen under every bed. The film makers add their own prejudice by making the US Ambassador a drawling and drooling southerner who seems to have the run of the city for no other reason than to annoy our Heroes.  Yet they do not notice the diplomatic-plated limousine when parked a few meters from a crime scene in a direct line of camera sight. Macho get an eye test from the Red health service!  

The parody is supposed to be intriguing and funny I guess but the hand is so heavy even the fraternity brothers pined for the finesse of Rambo.  To cite one of many examples.  Our Heroes investigate the murder of their colleague by going to the American Embassy often where they yell anti-capitalist slogans. Take that! A police procedural it is not.  On each visit in the lobby of the Embassy are two obese men (one wearing a baseball hat) wolfing down an enormous pile of hamburgers. See what I mean about subtle?  See what I mean about writer’s own prejudices?

There are non sequitur David Lynch touches as when first meeting the Ambassador they see an elderly woman drinking tea, who does not thereafter figure in the actions. What is it with these babuškas?  

It was filmed on location with Romanian actors in some of the roles, and it does offer some travelogue of Bucharest. The slogans on the crumbling walls celebrate the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime — amid the grime, ruin, disappearances, and poverty — for saving the people from clean water, sanitation, and other fiendish Western plots.  Why do I think of Comrade Numero Uno in Cuba?  

Somewhere I saw discussion questions for parents with children.  I guess they could discuss why ‘f***’ is pretty much every fourth word.  

Romania’s current efforts to look to the west are many, and this film is probably one example.  It pokes fun at Romania’s Red Past, while today earning Euros.  

We saw a Rick Steves travelogue about Bucharest the other night that made it seem nice.  But the EU doubts the commitment to the rule of law, rather than fists, by the quasi-fascist regime.  That did not deter the film makers.  

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 28 minutes, rated 6.9 by 2455 cinematizens. 

Genre: ODH (Old Dark House)

Verdict: Curate’s egg. 

An heiress is reunited with her long lost father, accompanied by her friend, Joan ‘Firecracker’ Blondell, who steals the show, as usual.  Roland Young is her hapless victim. Don McBride plays the hopeless Plod, again for the hundredth time.  

Death is only the beginning for Joan, returning as a ghost.  Firecracker saves the day when she clobbers the villain.  She recruits Roland to help.  Eddie (Rochester) Anderson plays the black stereotype, pining for Mr Benny; nonetheless, he has the best line in the film – ‘every hair on my (fur) coat is standing up.’

Daddy’s house is replete with suspicious stereotypes starting with that master of menace, that doctor of dread George Zucco, a grim house keeper, an icy butler, and more.  They all skulk around looking for the plot with no success. Later there are trap doors, sliding panels, and hidden passages.  

The villain goes around in an invisible man get-up with a cape. This is a look that will catch on Newtown.  It has quite a twist at the end which remains my little secret.  

Much, too much, is played for slapstick. The heiress is the luminous Carol Landis. Her duties include posing, fainting, and screaming. She had 49 credits. The best in my book is It Happened in Flatbush (1942).  At 29 she committed suicide with an overdose of drugs after five failed marriages, the first at 15, recurrent but unspecified health problems, depression, and a stalled career.  Tant pis.

What Topper has to do with it is anyone’s guess.  Anyone?  

It was released on 21 March 1941. At the time Australian troops participated in the Siege of Giarabub in Libya.  

Genre: Mystery

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 2 minutes, rated 6.1 by 102 cinematizens.

Verdict:  S l o w.

Philo needs vitamins to perk up.  He is slow as molasses in this outing. stopping in front of every mirror to check his pencil mo, or so it seemed.  I have never warmed to Mr Vance.  Maybe it is that first name: Philo. If ‘Phil’ was good enough for Marlow why isn’t for Vance? Mail your answers to someone else as soon as possible. 

Jewel thieves double cross each other, and Philo sorts them out with a very little help from Plod.  

Dan Seymour is always a good heavy but he is murdered in the first act, well…after that not much is left.  

The body count is high.  There are so amusing touches with the butler’s tweenager niece that single this screenplay out.  But not much else.

Released on 12 April 1947, the month that Jack Robinson broke the colour barrier in baseball in a one-man Iliad.  

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 13 long minutes, rated the 5.4 by 1152 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict:  Jekyll and Hyde part.

Dauntless globe trotting foreign correspondent goes to interview a reclusive Japanese Mad Scientist in a lab located on a remote mountain fastness before returning to home and hearth.  In a step up from the norm, this Mad Scientist has a Fetching assistant rather than a deformed Igor(ess).  Journalist turns on the worldly charm by lighting cigarettes.  S-m-o-o-t-h.

Mad Scientist has been experimenting on his family and has succeeded in turning them into monsters.  Well, monsters are good, but he wants expand the boundaries of knowledge still more to control evolution or devolution.  The fraternity brothers wanted to rush some of these monsters.  

Mad Scientist has run out family and invites the journalist to hang around…the fetching assistant, while he prepares a new experiment!  In no time at all, well it seemed a lot longer, Foreign Correspondent gets an injection of (d)evolution juice in the neck!  While the drug is working he whines and dines Fetching, ignoring telephone calls from his New York wife to come home and fix the backdoor.  Whines is right.  He feels very sorry for himself.  

Then, like some deans I have known, Foreign Correspondent grows a second head!  Yes, if one dean is bad, imagine a double dose demanding budget cuts, throughput increases, and improved morale!  Two budget cuts!  Twice as much teaching! Twice as many research grants! Half as many staff. Dancing in the hallways!  

At the denouement there is an unexpected but rather striking division of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde into two creatures: the monster and the man, hence manster.  Oops, that is a spoiler. 

There are some discernible themes in this mishmash.  One is the Japanese culture is threatening, corrupt, lascivious, decadent, and it weakens the moral resolve of American Foreign Correspondent.  He goes all animal when overexposed to Japisms, Geishas, sushi, public bathing, sake, and…..[see Geishas above].  

Everyone smokes and drinks like real men.  His distant wife is a clinging vine.  Why Fetching shuts herself away on the mountain top with Mad Scientist is a puzzle and stays that way.  Correspondent spends a lot of time feeling sorry for himself because of how hardworking he is, yet the only thing we see him do is chat, drink, and smoke.  Exhausting!  The ostensible interview with Mad Scientist consisted of smoking and drinking.  No notes are taken, no information is imparted and Correspondent seems happy with that.

It is a Japanese production with United Artists shot in English with European leads. Currency restrictions meant profits from United Artists films shown in Japan could not all be taken out, so some was used to make films like this.  Though, rather unusual for the time, some of the extras speak Japanese, but all of the principle Japanese speak English.  

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 26 minutes, rated 5.0 by 2321 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: Cheap and nasty.

Near a secret research laboratory men are dying…of cardiac arrest…after sex.  Time to send in a top agent who flashes his way into the library. Cheap.

One of the best moments is a town meeting dominated by the beer-swilling bully.  Seems realistic to me.  

That top agent orders a pizza delivered while his new girlfriend is nearly raped. Nasty. He comes in time to beat up the three drooling NRA members, and another guy to keep in practice.  

The body count rises, but we see more deaths, than agent man is aware off, and he never does catch on.  S l o w.

By accident cosmic rays have turned the women at the laboratory into queen bees who seduce men into drones.  In the middle is a tedious documentary about bees to add to the pace.  Not.  

The film has hints of lesbianism, women’s liberation, Amazon warriors, safe sex, and stupidity to go with the sexploitation.  

For a comparison seen Roger Corman’s Wasp Woman (1959), though truth to be told those wasps were bees in disguise.