Category: Film Review

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.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour 19 minutes, rated 3.80 by 1062 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy FY.

Verdict: Time stood still.

Mars Needs women again (see below).  Rather than place ads on Facebook to recruit airheads, they send a cute little Tardis space ship, three times as big inside as outside.  Head of Mission is a snide queen of the Nile abetted by a bald garden gnome with triple ears that you want to tweak.  

At the same time NASA, which is presented as a military operation, has found the perfect astronaut: handsome for photo ops, silent so as not to give anything away, and stupid enough accept this role.  He is great grandpa Data, an android.  This fact is super secret least the American public fail to support spending money on droids.

The two missions cross paths when Droid aborts, ejects, and bails over Puerto Rico!  Why? Good question. Would the answer be tax credits to film there?  There is a little travelogue of beaches and seaside.  

Nile’s minions in white overalls and fishbowl helmets round up party girls who seem to take it is all as part of the fun.  Meanwhile, Droid’s keepers have come looking for him. The trauma of the abort injured him and now, as a public service, he goes around strangling people listening to pop music.

Of the 79 minutes, perhaps 35 of them are stock footage of beaches and waves and USAF planes taking off, landing, parking, sitting, more sitting.  This footage insures there is no momentum or pace.  Splicing this free footage then shows the minders boarding one kind of jet in Miami, flying on another, and landing in San Juan in a third.  Mid-air refuelling we have all heard of, but mid-air passenger transfer was a new one.

Nile keeps a retreaded monster ITT for devouring bystanders as an accessory on the spaceship and Droid and ITT duke it out.  The fraternity brothers claimed the monster was a well-known Delt whose name they have forgotten, like their own some mornings.  

Noteworthy moments in this parson’s egg include:

1.When Droid froze at the press conference, and the assembled blood suckers did not seem to notice.

2.The following scene when Droid’s coif is peeled to reveal the heartless brain of McKinsey manager.

3.The several sidelong, sneering glances exchanged between Nile and her Gnome reminded me of the reaction of some one-time colleagues to any sensible suggestion.

4.The many bikini-clad Anglas who party-on.

5.The complete absence of Hispanics in Puerto Rico.

6.The many off-duty GIs who stand around at parade rest, earning a few dollars as film extras. Plus see point (4) above.

The end, these were such welcome words as I watched this film on Isle de Saint Vincent.

Mars seems to lurch from one shortage to another.  For proof see the following:

The Devil Girl from Mars (1954) – who come for men!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) – who went with toys

The Night Caller (1965) – who has come for women

Mars needs Women (1967) – guess

Lobster Man from Mars (1989) – air

Mars needs Mums (2011) – guess

Now Mars needs Dogs, now that would be epic.

IMDb meta-data runtime of 1 hour and 31 minutes, rated 6.7 by 923 cinematizens.

Genre:  ODH wanna be (that is, Old Dark House).

Verdict: energetic clichés.

In mid-career a much published krimi writer seeks inspiration in a change of scene, and reluctantly moves to Greenwich Village with his vivacious and enthusiastic helpmate who has neither a career nor a mind of her own.  Credit Loretta Young’s extraordinary thespian talents to sell such a pretence.  He is the droll Brian Aherne who is reluctant because wanted to live by a lake or stream, not a busy street.

While he has published a lot of krimis, to judge from the piles he moves around, none has been a best seller or satisfying.

The apartment (old dark) House has a cast of boarders from the doleful owner, to the snoopy restauranteur, oily art dealer, the terrified ingenue with an over-protective husband, the hysterical cleaning woman…. but no black stereotype for which omission much thanks, though it meant no pay-check for Will Best.

It is a great cast that includes Charlie Chan Tolar as the police officer come to sort out the body in the garden. Spider Woman is also on hand, though underemployed compared to the turtle.

Good scenes include the bed clothes slowly slipping off….  In 1945 that must have been close the censorship line.  And it happens twice. And that’s the problem with the whole film: repetition.  

The sticking door was amusing the first three or four times but not thereafter, and certainly not at the fifteenth time with musical accompaniment.  The door is never explained and does nothing for the plot. 

The plot holes were many.  It was said that the corpus delicti in the garden was naked; if so why?  Where did the clothes go? What was the motive for that murder?  Indeed what was the whole blackmail narrative about?  How did any of that relate to the cab driver’s opening comment about hauling away two stiffs? Did any of it relate to the missing previous half-owner of the establishment? 

Released on 10 December 1942 there is no reference to war. In that month the Australian 7th Division pushed the Japanese from Buna, trailhead for the purgatory of the Kokoda Track.  More generally, the Afrika Korps was trapped (by forces that included the Australian 9th Division) in Tunisia, the Germans were encircled in Stalingrad, and the Japanese had lost Guadalcanal where Royal Australian Navy ships served). Hindsight reveals that it was the beginning of the end for them.

Literati note. These books were published late 1942. I have read them all.  What’s holding you back?

Le Silence de la mer by Vercors (Jean Bruller)  – an idealistic German soldier gradually realises the fake news he had accepted when billeted with a silent French family.

The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck – an austere dialogue about the time to act set in rural Norway. Completely different from his other novels, a roman à clef.

Crazy Horse by Mari Sandoz – a fictional autobiography of a reluctant charismatic leader.

Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner – the grief of the title figure when his wife dies and the actions of those around him the very Deep South. 

L’étranger by Albert Camus – Meursault stays ice cold under the blinding Algerian sun.

IMDb meta-data is 49 episodes of 50 minutes each, rated 7.3 by 6734 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy FY

Verdict: Zzzzzzz.

The moon has solved Earth’s only problem, namely, where to bury the spent uranium to keep Kim Ill Jung’s hands off it.

The leads are a catatonic Martin Landau and confused Barbara Bain, the latter’s entire script consists of screenwriterese for medical gobbledegook.  To create tension between playing with toys, see below, she objects to his actions on cue with the nonsense. No wonder she split.  

So underwritten I watched only one episode in 1975 and painfully another in 2020.

In one part, it was an effort to cash-in on the market revealed by syndication of Star Trek, and also to continue where UFO (1970), another Anderson production, had left off.  The Andersons, say no more. See below for more!

The leads were Americans with a following from their tenure on Mission: Impossible (1968+) but the production was Brit and Empire (including one Strine).  

All of that is reduced to Lego toys by those very British producers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (yes, Thunderbirds Are Go) from swinging London. Toys. Check. The second hallmark of an Anderson production is the absence of script. Check. The third is the absence of any humour, wit, or insight in favour of boring mechanical movement so we can see the toy models.  Check. In spite of the Anderson kiss of death, it lasted two seasons, but took a hit below the waterline when the Andersons divorced and their lawyers fought over the IP, before the concept existed.  

A few differences from ST are quick to see.  The cast is only human. No Spock. But the biggest difference is the approach to problem-solving.  When the usual problems are thrown-up (yes, that is exactly the right word), the response is for all eyes to turn to Landau. Leaden direction. Check. Another Anderson hallmark. He then goes into a catatonic close up.  The fraternity brothers went the fridge for beer, and stayed there at this point.  Then ignoring evidence or suggestions of others, he embarks on derring do.  Still on the Anderson check list: stupid.  Check.

Whoa! Martin Landau as an action hero?  Hardly. 

In ST for all of his action-hero posturing, Kirk always put the team to work, had conferences with them in private to canvass options, asked for evidence, delegated research for precedents. Two of his common lines in staff meetings were: ‘We need options’ and ‘Find answers.’  Off the specialists then went to seek and find….  along way Kirk would fight bare chested a few aliens and turn his bedside manner on for woman, human or not.  The point is his staff didn’t stare at him waiting for oracular utterances, but instead worked at enlightenment pseudo science.

Then there are the nylon double-knit body suits with flared pant legs in beige.  The less said about the fashions, the better. That is Barry Morse crouching in the lower left, trying to hide from the camera. At least he had enough sense to do that.

Mr Moto (1938-1939)

In setting up PLEX at home to use with the DVD collection, I started with the eight Mr Moto films to renew acquaintance with an old friend who can keep me company as I do the NYT crossword puzzles in the evenings, after Eggheads and Antiques Road Show (UK). Moto was sired by J. P. Marquand of Massachusetts. More on PLEX below.  

Marquand went on to chronicle Boston’s Beacon Hill snobs in such satirical novels as The Late George Apley (1938), a best seller in its day and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Those that followed include Wickford Point (1939), H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941), and Point of No Return (1949).  While searching for themes and voices in haute literature which was his abiding ambition, Marquand wrote spy novels to make a living.  The first was Mr Moto Takes a Hand (1935) with five more to come. The ever so prim entry in Wikipedia brackets the Moto novels apart from Marquand’s ‘Literary novels’ in the way the semi-literate do. The Moto novels are completely omitted in the section on Marquand’s life and work but relegated to a seperate ghetto, lest the children be upset.   

Taken as a whole there are two interesting things about the Moto novels.  The first is that they were written by society author with no interest or knowledge of the worlds therein portrayed.  Second, the central character is a secret agent who is cold, calculating, and deadly — licensed to kill long before the NRA came along and granted every drooler that right — in the service of the expanding Japanese Empire.  Marquand no doubt wanted his spy to be different in a crowded market of fictional spies, and he succeeded.

The popularity of Charlie Chan movies inspired the transfer of Moto from page to film in 1937, and a transformation from a reptilian assassin into a genial cicerone for naive American innocents abroad in the big wide world.  Into those new shoes stepped Peter Lorre, who was desperate for work.  He became the Good Jap(anese) in these films directed by Norman Foster whose pace seldom slackened, though for no sane reason Foster was replaced on the last two films.  Hungarian László Löwenstein became a yellow face, as it was called at the time, Japanese.  And, though Lorre was a sickly weakling, by this transformation he became a cat burglar, judo expert, marksman, and endurance athlete.  His perennial bad health and heavy smoking were no matter on film.  

There is a third oddity with Moto that fades as the series continued.  He murders villains.  He does not arrest or sequester them, he just kills them.  No European, still less a white-hatted Western, hero of the day would do that, taking the law into his own hands.  The censor would not permit it, but they did permit it for an oriental.  So in some of the early films he does what he did frequently in the book, saves time by murdering the villains. Only later does he go soft and start arresting them.  

To balance that dark side, he is transmogrified into an American-educated, genial friend and protector of Americans abroad, while working for the International Police. He also got a first name: Kentaro. In the books, one of which I have read, he had only in initials, to wit, I.  M. Moto.  Say it out loud to get the point. It worked.  The films were popular, but Japan was not and they came to an end. There is an uninformative entry on Moto in Wikipedia.

The films and their settings are these: 

Think Fast, Mr Moto (1937) – Shanghai

Thank you, Mr Moto (1937) – Gobi Desert and Peking

Mr Moto’s Gamble (1938) – San Francisco 

Mr Moto Takes a Chance (1938) – Siam jungle

Mr Moto’s Last Warning (1939) – Port Said, Egypt

Mr Moto in Danger Island (1939) – Puerto Rico

Mr Moto Takes a Vacation (1939) – San Francisco in  archeological museum

Moto, Chan, Holmes were all broadcast after school and before dinner or practice.  That is when and where I first became acquainted with them.  Then some years later a series of Great Detectives aired on the CBC after the late news, and I watched most of them again.  

The PLEX media player promises a custom-made private service akin to Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime.  After loading the movies on a computer acting as a server, it translates and transmits them via the home wi-fi network to the television.  In our case the computer is upstairs with the telly downstairs.  Selecting a film is done with the Apple TV remoter. Sounds easy.

Kate, Queen of the Buttons to Push, had the devil of time setting it up, stopping and restarting at least once when nearly defeated by the comPLEXity of PLEX.  Once that mission was accomplished, my part has been to load the database with movies and I, too, have found that perPLEXing.  There is a mountain of information on the web, including You Tube, which I find of no use.  It is like looking for a unicorn in a constellation to find answers to my simple questions among the geekerati.  Most of the sites are in Geekese, while those that are not as technical are dedicated to showing how to change the background colours, but none about how to get it work in the first place.  

Leaving those grumbles aside, when it works, it is a welcome luxury.  No longer is there a hunt to find a DVD (shelved upstairs where there is some order, in the garage where there is none, or is it in the office), cleaning it, inserting it in the DVD player which can be shy at times, cleaning it again and reinserting it, (finding it is damaged [by canine teeth marks!] and will not play), finding the dedicated DVD remoter (with its usual dead batteries), and then watching the DVD skip over damaged sections though it has never been played before.        

For further reading see ‘Plex (software)’ on Wikipedia.  

The Brasher Doubloon (1947)

IMDB meta-data is 1 hour and 12 minutes, rated 6.5 by 845 cinematizens

Genre: krimi

Verdict: Chandler Lite.

Montana’s own Philip Marlowe encountered a duplicitous son, an unscrupulous mother, a deranged secretary, a sty-eyed Peter Lorre wanna-be, incompetent but not venal cops, a crooked coin dealer, the mandatory blackmailer, and assorted thugs led by Michael Anthony, all in a day’s work.  He got beaten up a couple of times without taking any aspirin.  He outsmarted Plod and got the girl.   

It has superb cinematography by Lloyd Ahern who makes the viewer feel that Santa Ana Red Wind from the Mojave desert, and prepares each scene with a shot worthy of the best noir film.  This was his first credit and it is superb.  It was followed by the Miracle on 34th Street. He spend most of the 1960s and 1970s in television.  Leaden direction was by John Brahm (a Nazi refugee who surely moved faster in real life than in this still life).   

The screen play derived from Raymond Chandler’s novel The High Window (1942) which had been the basis of the Mike Shayne film Time to Kill (1942), which film has more wit and energy than the title under consideration, but lacks the cinematographic artistry of Ahern.    

By the way, the coin really was minted in New York in 1787 and one sold in 2011 for $US 7.4  million Iron Men!    

This was George Montgomery’s first major lead, and a casting mistake  This clean-cut, well-dressed and pressed, callow, neatly combed. and innocent country boy with a western slur is not the clipped, chipped, shopworn, exhausted, cynical, and jaded city-slicker Marlowe of Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, or even the elegant Robert Montgomery, who each played the part once.*  On the other hand, Nancy Guild is perfect as the edgy naif secretary, though her career only offered a mere 11 credits.  Let’s hope that she quit while she was ahead.  

But while acting kudos are on offer, the best has to go to Florence Bates as the murderous and thieving mother who put Ma Barker to shame.  Bates had majored in mathematics at the University of Texas, and then completed a law degree and practiced for sometime in San Antonio.  All this would have been unusual for the time and place for a woman. The Great Depression uprooted her and drove her into acting to make a living.

*Later incarnations of Philip Marlowe include Robert Mitchum and Powers Booth, both of whom certainly qualified as shopworn, and two another egregious mistakes: a twitchy Eliot Gould and a geriatric James Caan.  

By the Canino Test I speculate that Bogey, Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum would survive, but not Gorgeous George, Robert, and certainly not Jim or Eliot.  Powers Booth?  A borderline maybe.