IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 4 minutes, rated 4.7 by 1013 raters.
The brother of a kindly and diffident small town physician dies and at his funeral are many grim faces. While no one comes forward to stick pins in the body to make sure it is dead, per Herman (George Kennedy) in ‘Charade’ (1963), the relief at the brother’s death is expressed by one rather distraught woman who flings open the church door and delivers a rant that briefly livens up proceedings.
It is a nice touch to interrupt this conventional and somber scene with a vicious denouncement delivered by a mousey-looking woman.
She proclaims the deceased to be Satan’s spawn. ‘Must have parked in her drive way,’ mused the fraternity brothers, remembering the times those words had been directed at them.
The deceased is the identical twin brother of George Zucco, and George plays a double role. No, there is no flashback, because dead Brother is much in evidence. See title, though note it should be singular, Dead Man Walks, Talks, Nips, Sips, and More.
No sooner is Brother buried, despite the woman’s suggestion that he be burned, than Igor digs him up and opens him up so that Brother can join the Undead. Pedants note: The Undead also include zombies and that is what I was expecting. But no, here we have a vampire, but a second rate one since he has no cape, and — more importantly– he is not the singular Bela Lugosi.
The Undead are those who do not return the many books they have checked out from the library and have learned how to become a vampire by correspondence school. Brother graduated at the top of his class. Risen, this Evil Lazarus preys on the locals, well on George’s niece, sipping her blood every night to sustain himself. Though later an excited crowd accuses him of more, there is no indication in film he did anything more than dine at home on his niece.
This incestuous necking makes her intended mad, though why he is so far away at the sipping times is a mystery. He takes out his bile on innocent George. Denouncing woman offers helpful hints from ‘Women’s Weekly’ on how to cope with a vampire uncle in the family. After several bouts of sibling rivalry, George accepts the idea that Brother is Undead.
Igor is the weak link in this exercise, as he rumbles around the coffin on a wheel barrow at all hours. Obviously he is a Villain School drop out.
In the end George has to go down mano-à-mano with his evil twin Brother in the flames. Cain and Abel all over again, once more, anew. The end.
Zucco (1886–1960) played suave villains or mad scientists in many B pictures, including Professor James Moriarty. He has 98 credits on the IMDb and half would fall on the shady side of the moral street. But he always made an impression with his presence.
Here is a change of pace and yet not. In one part he is an innocent who slowly comes to realise the truth about his brother, though how he missed it in the first place is open to question, and also the evil brother. He managed to distinguish the two characters in appearance, voice, manner, and gait. Accomplished was this stager who was born in England but started acting in provincial Canada. Close observers will note he lacks two fingers on his right hand, a war wound.
‘The Great Flamarion’ (1945)
IMDb meta-data is run time of 1 hour and 18 minutes and rated 6.6 from 792 cinemitizens.
This is film noir at its best, simple, direct, dramatic, and basic. Erich von Stroheim is the title character who has vaudeville shooting act (sponsored by the NRA) where he hits everything but Dan Duryea. It has the requisite very femme very fatale in Mary Beth Hughes (seen in some Charlie Chan movies).
Femme decides to shed Dan and his many empty bottles, and seduces the Frog with the gun. Erich is no pushover since in an unstated backstory a woman ruined his life by taking his monocle. But over he goes, heels over head. Picture that. Dan has been unreliable for some time and Erich gives him notice with a .38 caliber bullet in the act!
Since Dan was stiff with drink, no charges follow. Frog promises all to Femme and she takes it. Scram. It takes Frog some years to figure out he has taken to the cleaners and dumped. He freed her from husband Dan and she freed him from all his dosh. Off she went.
Thereafter Frog dedicates himself to tracking her down for….revenge! He does and he does. The wages of sin are paid in full per the Code.
At one point Femme has four men on the string, and they not playing yo-yo. Whereas A pictures in 1945 were subject to much restraint both external and internal, B pictures like this one were allowed more license regarding sex. B pictures were often screened after the A picture to a dwindling audience.
Moreover, there is some eroticism with the guns in both the action and the dialogue. Why did I think of Charlton Heston stroking that rifle at the NRA convention? That scene is available on You Tube for those who wish to lose any respect they might yet have for Chest Heston.
Regrettably most of this film is told in flashback, and in this case that takes the air out of the drama. No doubt considerations of timing and cost dictated that approach. It means Frog delivers some of his best lines while dying on the floor.* The gossip mill says the Frog resisted the flashback approach to no avail. He always wanted linear stories and that is another reason to like him.
The director was Anthony Mann at the beginning of an illustrious career and he certainly shows his talents for pace, timing, mood, energy, angle, light and dark. Some of the double shots are startlingly even to this jaded viewer. He elevated a common story on a skimpy budget to something more for over an hour despite the draining flashback.
When trawling through You Tube offerings for Sy Fy I came across a thumbnail for this and recognised Erich von Stroheim. He is always must see, so I did. His transformation from Prussian autocrat to love sick puppy is forced by the run time but he carries it off.
Chapeux to Mary Beth Hughes who delivers lines with double and triple meanings with no apparent effort. She does not miss a beat as she turns from one man to another with a lie. How it is that she did not make the A list of stars is a mystery in itself. Fox Studios failed to renew her contract in 1943 and she found her way to Poverty Row with Republic Pictures. In time, she quit and worked as receptionist in a doctor’s office where she said she met a better class of people than in Hollywood. Perhaps she was a #metoo in her day.
DD also gives a fine performance, combining as only he could vulgarity and vulnerability in one line.
*Yes, I thought of William Holden face down in the pool, too. Why not when Billy Wilder’s older brother was credited as producer for this film as W. Lee Wilder. Of course Erich is there with William in that picture, too. It is perhaps thanks to Mann that this Lee Wilder production is miles better than most of the others he turned out, like ‘The Snow Creature’ (1954) reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
‘Starcrash’ (1978)
IMDb meta-data 1 hour and 32 minutes of Dali time, rated 3.9 from 4657 time wasters.
A cheap and cheerful exploitation of Star Wars from the heartland of such ersatz imitations, Cinecittà in Rome. This film is often cited at the spoor that released scores of Italian Sy Fy simulacra. It is also often proclaimed as the worst of the derivative spawn it spewed.
First the setup, then the tear-down.
Lord Bad’s lines are ‘Kill. Kill. Kill them.’ He knows what he wants and how to communicate it. His aim is to displace Plummy and rule the Ford Galaxy. Lemmy Caution would then not be able to visit Alphaville.
The only things standing between Lord Bad and success are the bikinis of Stella Starr! The fraternity brothers cheered!
Bond Girl struts around as Stella in a fur bikini on the ice planet, a metallic one at a rock concert, a feathery one with the Amazons, and more, sometimes less. David Hasselhoff’s bouffant displaces Marjoe Gortner near the bikini. The fate of the Samsung Galaxy depends on Bond Girl, Bouffant, and a boy with a woman’s name. Only the scriptwriter could save them.
Gortner had been a child evangelist who turned and tried his hand at this. He needed no make up to look alien. In a pinch Gortner has laser eyes so he can do his own cataract surgery. Handy. Nothing is ever forgotten or done only once at Cinecittà and the same gag is used at the end of ‘Escape from Galaxy 3’ (1981), reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
The effects are coloured paper and so are the characters. The dialogue is speech balloons from comic books. Recall Lord Bad’s dialogue as quoted above more or less in its entirety. There is neither science nor fiction though there is energy and zest. Altogether it looks like a failed animated Marvel Comics pilot, it lacks the pathos characteristic of Marvel heroes.
Looking disconsolate, Christopher Plummer, as Lord Good Guy, aka Plummy, after hiring Dr Who as a consultant, stops time. Indeed watching this treacle feels like time has stopped. Gossip is that Plummer signed for three days but finished in one to get it done and get out. He had to rush back to London to throttle his agent.
Then there is the Texas robot who keeps Bond Girl warm on an ice planet by holding her….hand.
Lord Bad Guy sports a Princess Leia hairstyle when shouting his monosyllables. With that hair bun it is hard to take him seriously.
See.
Disclosure Statement. About half way through I left it running and took the dog out for a turn in the park for thirty minutes. Did I miss anything?
Be warned! It has been released under a variety of titles to lure audiences to the miasma.
‘The Monitors’ (1969)
IMDb meta-data 1 Hour and 32 minutes of Dali Time, rated 4.7 by 243 relatives of the producer.
In psychedelic 1969 Chicago the world has been taken over by The Monitors who are silent men in long black over coats, black turtle neck sweaters, and black bowler hats who speak slowly and politely. Only if necessary do they spray sleeping gas to quell a disturbance.
With the advent of the Monitors peace and prosperity reign for one and all around the world. No more storm clouds over Lake Michigan. No more poverty, racism, corruption, war, disease, or reruns on television. In fact the only television broadcasting is testimonials to the benevolent rule of the Monitors.
In this Eden emerge NRA reactionaries who pine for the good old days when murder and mayhem were a constitutional right. They make SNL efforts to undermine the pacific order of the Monitors who in turn infiltrate secret agents into their ranks. These skits would have been rejected for SNL. Then lust or is it love rears up. This surge briefly aroused the fraternity brothers from their habitual lethargy, but not for long.
There is satire here but it is laid on like a load of bricks. Why would anyone revolt against perfection? So asked the Hall Monitor in Chief, and the hero has no answer. I wondered if the Chief Monitor was related to the Honcho Monitor in ‘The Island Earth’ (1955), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. He has the hair for it.
There are hip Sixties fashions piled high. There are a great many cameos by one and all from ChiTown from Xavier Cugat, Ed Begley, Sherry Jackson, Alan Arkin, to Everett Dirksen. But no Ernie Banks, Gale Sayers, Harold Washington, or Bob Boozer. Indeed this Chicago is all whitebread as are the Monitors.
Also absent are a story, plot, or purpose. The level varies from Sy Fy to slapstick and back. Then it tries for comedy with the finesse of the Three Stooges. Mugging does not comedy make.
Disjointed is the word for it.
The acting is mostly ham from Corporal Randolph Agarn, though the leads Vina and Dean’s older brother try. They act like they are in a different movie, and they would certainly want to be. The sets are bare but the cinematography in, around, under, and above Chicago is delightful.
Though the Monitors are all knowing and all powerful they cannot push open a door and retreat when assailed with rotten fruit. Sure. We never learn anything about them. Where did they come from. How did they take over? What is their purpose? Where did they park the flying saucer? Where did they get those hats? What did they do with Fox News? Did it hurt?
‘Five Days in London, May 1940’ (1999) by John Lukacs
The momentous five days are May 24 to May 28 1940 when Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and overcame the resistance to his leadership within the War Cabinet and stiffened British resolve to resist Hitler and Naziism.
In so doing Churchill felt the pulse of the British people far more accurately than his many opponents, most gathered behind him in the Conservative Party. British resistance at the time of Dunkirk prevented Hitler from winning the war so that later American gold and Soviet corpses would win it.
These two paragraphs above sum up this book, the nature of which will be discussed at the end.
The story is without parallel. At age sixty-five Churchill became PM in the deepest crisis ever for Great Britain. His energy and concentration alone are noteworthy. His hour had come and he lived up to it. He was certainly the Greatest Britain.
First to the internal resistance. When Neville Chamberlain, over seventy himself stepped aside, after tumultuous scenes in parliament, he remained in the five-man War Cabinet, literally there was no one else at the starting line but Churchill. As PM he alone, it seemed, could restore order to Parliament which was elected in 1935 in far different circumstances. And many in the Conservative Party thought it best to let him try …. and fail, and then the real heir apparent could sweep up and take over. That was Edward Halifax (who had so many names and titles I gave up trying to keep track of them).
An aristocrat to the core, Halifax could not push himself forward but would wait to be called. He was, after all, a personal friend of the King, and a vastly experienced parliamentarian, diplomat, cosmopolitan, and more.
Why no one thought of calling new elections is not considered in this text.
As darkness grew with the fall of the Netherlands, the surrender of Belgium, the defeat in Norway, the collapse of France, the entry of Italy on Hitler’s side, the neutrality of the United States, Spanish troop movements near Gibraltar, the aggressive noise of Japan in Asia, the reluctance of Canada, many Brits wanted a truce with Germany.
While the British Expeditionary Force flailed, Churchill spent five days out-manoeuvring Halifax, Foreign Secretary in the War Cabinet, who kept on about a truce, a pause, an arrangement with Germany, brokered by France, by Belgium, by Italy, by the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. On and on he went in the super secret discussions, which remained secret at the time. According to the author, efforts were made subsequently by weeding archives to bury the secrets.
Halifax minced words, explored semantics, twisted meanings to find a way to open a mediated dialogue with Nazi Germany, anything to avoid another blood bath like World War I. He talked repeatedly with the Italian ambassador until Italy invaded France. He sought out informal intermediaries. He lunched with the King.
If there were a way to stop the war and guarantee Britain’s freedom by making concessions to the Naziis, Halifax wanted to discuss it. While nothing concrete remains on paper such an arrangement would involve leaving Europe to Nazi domination. Period. It might also involve emasculating Britain sufficiently so as not to pose a threat in the future to German domination of Europe by reducing the British fleet, by forcing it to withdraw from the Mediterranean and sacrifice Malta, Gibraltar, even Suez. Further it might involve disarmament, as it did for Vichy France in a few weeks. Would it also involve compliance with Nazi racial policies….starting with sending back refugees.
Churchill took the view from the start, albeit muted, that there was no point in trying to negotiate with Hitler. Either Hitler would propose impossible demands, or, if not, he would not keep his word. In either case for it to be known that Britain had begged for a separate peace on such terms would destroy British morale on the domestic front and comprise British standing on the international front with the Dominions and the United States.
The author makes a tenuous distinction between public opinion and popular sentiment in the era. The former, public opinion, was formed by the intellectual classes in newspaper articles, letters to the editor, lectures, universities, BBC interviews, essays, and the like. The opinion leaders were fearful of Germany’s might and had little confidence in Britain’s ability to withstand it. As a consequence many in these ranks were Defeatist to one degree or another. Some were admirers of Hitler. A small number wore the black shirt of Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980).
Popular sentiment in contrast was the silent majority of the day, largely working class, generally uneducated and unaware of the wider world, although a great many had served in World War I and the author seems to forget that. The author makes extensive use of reports from the Mass Observation Survey, begun in 1935, as a window on to this stratum. These reports were qualitative surveys of doorstop interviews, pub conversations, overheard remarks on buses, talk in queues at the market, or discussions exiting cinemas. Unsystematic to be sure, but rich in detail. Yes, that is true but it is also true they were a lot more like gossip than systematic observations in the specimens I have read.
Popular sentiment was resolutely patriotic with none of the weakening cosmopolitanism of the intellectual classes. Germans were the Hun, not the progeny of Brahams, Beethoven, and Bach. It also had a rugged confidence in muddling through and took pride in that. They had once crossed the Siegfried Line and could do it again. This was the heart beat that Churchill felt, because he shared it, and which he mobilised.
While it is not emphasised Churchill’s mastery of the forms of British parliamentary democracy and cabinet government gave him an advantage. He timed meetings of the cabinet of thirty where he had many supporters, War Cabinet where he had none, parliament, BBC speeches, and personal meetings to create support and momentum for his commitment to war, war, and more war, and so to undermine Halifax’s position. In part his publicity campaign was to show to the United States and the Dominions that Britain would prevail.
While Dunkirk is mentioned, it is not the focus. In the foreground is the tactical conflict between Churchill and Halifax across the meeting table against the backdrop of the war. War Cabinet met two or three times a day.
For Halifax what was a stake in the war was the future of Britain. For Churchill what was at stake was Western Civilisation. It seems laughable to a jaded intellect today to say that, but that was both Churchill’s rhetoric and his perception. Naziism was a ravening and devouring beast that could not be caged, tamed, constrained, or reduced by negotiation and treaties. Even to try to treat with it was to become corrupted by its touch in one’s own eyes and in the eyes of the world. To plead with this beast from a position of weakness was suicidal. In a few weeks the French example would prove that point.
While Halifax evidently thought negotiation, even if it failed would enhance rather than diminish Britain’s claim to the moral high ground. It would show that Britain had done everything possible to avoid war. That almost makes sense, until considering the sacrifices that would have to be offered or made to a Nazi dominated Europe and Mediterranean. The willingness to bargain away the defeated countries (some of which had formal alliances with Britain, many of whose fleeing citizens had taken refuge in England) and those that might follow would never be forgotten nor forgiven.
He also differed from Halifax and his ilk in another way. He saw Naziism as the greatest evil and threat to Western Civilisation. Whereas Halifax and his kind feared Communism above all else, and many had earlier seen in Naziism a bulwark against the Red Tide, as earlier had many German nationalist, liberals, monarchists, bankers, musicians, and jurists who supported or tolerated Hitler at the outset.
The comparison has to be France, where nothing was ever secret and where the disputes within cabinet were blood thirsty. Every remark in cabinet was in the boulevard press within the hour. The conflicts between cabinet members were personal, religious, regional, and racial as well as ideological. Finally, the French generals gave up before the politicians. They were ready to surrender before Paul Reynaud, the last Prime Minister. Indeed Reynaud resigned rather than surrender.
Three things then distinguished Britain, secrecy, impersonal argument, and military resolve.
John Lukacs has a long list of impressive publications.
The book does not do the events justice. It treats Dunkirk and the decision-making about that as an annoyance to the cabinet machinations rather than central to it. It is replete with asides and ruminations that lead no where. Much of it is parsed in the negative, e.g., ‘he was not entirely wrong,’ ‘there is some truth in this matter,’ and so on. A manuscript like this submitted blind to a publisher today would be unlikely to be produced. ‘While the references to the Mass Observation reports are interesting, it is not convincing unless one is already convinced and then it confirms.’ That would be one of the many things an anonymous assessor might say.
I read it years ago and did not find it satisfactory but recent stimulation about Dunkirk brought it back to mind and I tried it again with the same result.
‘The Abominable Snowman’ (1957)
IMDb meta-data 1 hour and 31 minutes rated 6.5 at from 2846 cinemitizens.
The majesty of the roof of the world in Tibet provides the background to this tale. Peter Cushing is the very British scientist scouting high altitude plants and Sergeant O’Rourke is the bluff American showman. They join forces to search for the Title Character is this Creature Feature with many a difference.
The crass showman explains his desire to profit from the increasing curiosity of people about the world which can now be satisfied by radio, television, and movies. His interest is commercial but he sees a larger meaning in it. Like Benjamin Franklin, he wants to do well by doing good. Cushing’s interest is a personal obsession since he once saw the footprint of a gigantic Title Character. While he is a Sensitive Victorian Age Chap in manner with pipe, tea, and scarf, his interest is personal, not scientific.
Though muted, the collision course is set. Cushing wants to take pictures, open a dialogue, exchange email addresses, and become Facebook friends with the Title Character. Sarge wants to cage one and take it back for show and tell. Maybe run it as a Republican for the Senate from Wyoming. As tensions rise, the worst comes out in each of them.
Sarge gets more huckster and Cushing gets more sanctimonious. They compete vigorously in stereotyping.
Is the Abomie an offshoot of human evolution? Is Abomie an alien hiding out in the mountains, waiting for Zontar? Is Abomie the successor to humanity so that after we all kill each other and leave the Earth will Abomie and company come down out of the mountains to claim the world? Is Abomie id?
There are many nice touches. The telepathy of the Lama and the Abomie added to the spookiness, as did the dark interior of the lamasery. Then there is the whistling and whispering wind in the mountains.
Then one dark and windy night in the high peaks, they shoot and kill an NBA player, eleven feet tall with the shoe and ego size to prove it.
Big.
But dead. Well a dead NB-Abomie might still be worth something, both of scientific and commercial value. Time to pack up and go home.
Ah huh.
Turns out Abomie has family and friends and they want … to give his body an Himalayan burial, cash-in his Opal card, take revenge on the murderer, keep their secret by killing the whole group, or watch 7Mate.
It is 1957 and everyone smokes, even on Mount Everest they stop for a fag.
Before the body count starts.
Between smokes the party of five is reduced, to four, to three…. The guide runs away. Two of the dead have no marks on them, yet they are dead. One of them commits suicide, more or less, and the other dies of fright after reading the script to the end. Two little Indians remain on the India side of the mountains.
To bait a trap Sarge had convinced one of the party to be a scapegoat. And arms him with a rifle loaded with blanks. Nice guy. His excuse was to avoid killing another creature. Not out of concern for the creature but to have a live example to exhibit. Nice guy. Now he has a dead scapegoat.
Yet later Sarge tries to expiate his guilt and finds himself trapped in an avalanche of his own making. As he turns to face it, perspiring, exhausted, gaunt, his fatalism is complete. But that pales next to Cushing’s final confrontation.
Yes, there is no Yeti.
In a display of spunk rare for a 1950s damsel, Cushing’s scientist wife whom he left back in the lamasery making tea and cataloguing the specimens, sets out to find him, fearing the worst. By force of will she drags along his assistant and she finds him. Atta girl! Whew!
There is intelligence and wit in the screenplay that rises above the stereotype of the Creature Feature genre and the subsequent reputation of Hammer Films. Let be said that the reputation is largely undeserved, but there it is.
The comparison has to be ‘The Snow Creature’ (1954), reviewed elsewhere on this blog, which stems from the same premise, scientist and showman in search of the Yeti in the Himalayas, and the two films differ thereafter in every respect. In ‘The Abominable Man’ the natives are accorded respect and even deference, as it is their country. While the showman is crass he can explain and justify his approach and he shows remorse later. The party consists of mixed characters and not disposable cardboard. And Abomie is granted a spirituality denied to the lab specimen in the telephone booth.
The ice and snow came from a second unit working in the Pyrenees, and it is marvellous. No CGI there but guys slogging through snow.
Nigel Kneale wrote the story and then the screenplay, and it is directed by Val Guest who mastered mystery, pace, locale, tension, drama, who dared leave much to the imagination of the viewer. This started as a story called ‘The Creature’ for the BBC two years earlier. This combination of Kneale and Guest produced quality time and again.
Sergeant O’Rourke did several B picture in England like ‘The Strange World of Planet X’ (1958), reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
I found it on Daily Motion and the print I watch was jerky but easy enough to watch and hear.
‘Journey to the Center of Time’ (1967)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 22 minutes of Dali time 3.7 from 538 cinemitizens
Having just inherited the vast Stanton fortune, Scott Brady descends on the Stanton Institute for Time Research to get his watch repaired. Brandishing KPIs he demands results! The lab coats there cannot even change the battery in his Rolex! Useless! If they cannot do better he will divert the funding to Weapons of Crap Destruction and start with Hollywood!
Whoa! Under that gun the Senior Scientist skips pages in the Time Traveller’s Manual and throws all the switches. ‘More power,’ Igor, the ever present assistant, cries and more power he gets from somewhere.
They get comfy and tune in the same television I had in grad school with endless horizontal rolling and showing nothing but very old, very tired reruns on the only channel it can receive. They watch about 30 minutes of the film excerpts from public domain stock footage of rubber dinosaurs, fake cowboys, playful cavemen, decent Republicans, forbearing Christians, and other forgotten pre-Fox News relics glimpsed briefly when the horizontal roll pauses. ‘Comfy,’ well there is only one chair. Guess who occupies it? Yes, Scott Bully.
The time lab where they watch television. Note the sunken floor.
The other notable accoutrement of the lab is an elevator that descends two steps to the sunken floor of the lab. Brady makes ostentatious use of it when he comes to crack the eggheads. Later, as below, when he is running for his life, he skips the elevator and uses the steps. Makes sense, but why is it there in the first place. We’ll never know.
Well Brady is impressed that the time travel lab seems to travel in time, but where is the dollar in the past? Let’s try the future. Hmmmm, but it is his dime so Senior and Igor with the requisite female on screaming duty comply. They go looking for Yvette Mimieux and the Eloi in the future. The fraternity brothers cheered.
Whooska, and they flit through time to…. some time. There they find a spaceship and Blue Poles, yes, Slavs standing on plinths. See, it’s like this. Bully Brady, Senior Scientist, Igor, and Screamer are standing in their sparsely furnished time lab blaming each other for forgetting to order Indian takeaway before launching into the future, when the men in blue… No, wait, that is the blue men kick in the door and take them away at finger point. Thereafter the blue men, showing their superiority, climb on top of the plinths to lecture them. Well, it makes as much sense as some of the training seminars I have had.
Then in another empty room they encounter the rest of the Blue Poles who recite gibberish from the script about being in the middle of a war.
Here was Bully Brady’s chance at some technology transfer for his weapons industry. But does he take it? No, he is too busying plastering his remaining hair to his forehead to make a deal, grab a phaser, steal a super secret blue print pinned to the notice board, slip a plinth in his pocket, or anything.
Seeing how useless these travellers are, the Blue Poles send them back to the Time Shed amid a hail of sound effects. Once there levers are levered and switches switched, though what the power source would be out there is unknown to them and to us. They go whirring back to 1967 hairstyles.
But wait, Bully Brady annihilates himself. That was a nice touch, but completely incomprehensible. In short, he played chicken with himself and lost. That was one ka-boom we all cheered.
This film is proof that things can always get worse. After a run B films rated below 5.0 comes this entry. The director, writer, producer David Hewitt came to this movie after his remarkable ‘Monsters Crash the Pajama Party’ (1965) in his own search for the bottom of the barrel. This latter film has proven illusive on the inter-web but the fraternity brothers continue the search during their conscious hours.
Hewitt’s efforts are ably assisted by Scott Brady who exudes bad will with a thuggish air few could equal. He is perfectly loathsome but waiting a long time to see him get his comeuppance was boring. The direction seems to have consisted mostly of Brady turning his head to the left, and then… to the right. Wow! That’s entertainment, not. Was he rolling his brain into the socket, watching a tennis match, feeling water in the inner ear, or doing as he was directed? Decide now!
For most of the cast this is the single entry on their IMDb vitae. The fraternity brothers had no trouble predicting that.
The production values are well below Dr Who. Indeed a Dalek or two would have livened up the otherwise dead script. Moreover, the 1967 Tardis was a luxury craft compared to this Time Shed.
‘The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie’ (2009) by Alan Bradley.
A krimi with energy, wit, chemistry, zest, and pigtails. It starts and ends with our heroine Flavia de Luce bound and gagged. As if that could stop this dynamo.
It is rural England of 1950. Flavia with her older sisters Ophelia and Daphne lives with Father in the crumbling estate of Buckshaw. Ophelia and her co-conspirator Daphne delight in tormenting Flavia who reciprocates with chemistry.
Unwisely stepping into this combat zone of sibling rivalry are a pair of villains who seek postage stamps. Yes, they want to send cards home to mum with Penny Blacks!
Father came back from the war a colonel with Dogger, the handy man, and both are largely silent. Dogger had been a POW on the Burma Railroad, and he goes blank now and again. The Colonel spent four years in Changi.
Father’s wife, mother of the girls, Harriet disappeared and then died. As the story opens Father spends most of his time with stamp albums.
Flavia does chemistry upstairs in a laboratory fitted out and left by a remote forbear. Daphne reads, often aloud, from the English classics lining the decrepit shelves, and Ophelia, the oldest at 17, preens constantly in the reflections of tea spoons, mirrors, water glasses, windows. She knows who is the fairest of them all and wants to know it constantly.
Then at 4 am one morning, while waiting for an experiment to percolate, Flavia comes across a dead man in the cucumber patch! Zounds! What to do? There are many house rules against ever intruding on Father and they would likely involve capital punishment at 4 am. Dogger, then. Yes, and for a man more of less comatose he proves very practiced at dealing with the dead. Flavia reflects on the fragments she has heard about him.
Plod arrives and dismisses the ‘little girl’ Flavia with a wave. Big mistake. That sets her off on her own mission. She tries to figure it out like a problem in chemistry: identify the interactions, resolve the components, assess the intensity, and so on. She interviews neighbours ever so subtly, researches in the county library, examines parish church tombstones, walks the woods for time and distances, talks to the old school tie, climbs on roofs, and more, all with the obsessiveness only a tweenager can muster. Meanwhile Dogger confesses to shield Father who confesses to shield Dogger, and Flavia, what else is a chemist to do to buy time for maturation, confesses to shield them both.
Then there is the itinerant architectural researcher tramping about. Is he really what he seems? Or did he come from Norway? Who ate the slice of cream pie? Why was the dead bird left on the back door step? Why is the county library closed just when essential information has to be found?
This title is the first in a series, and it is a delight. The erudition spills off the page with vitality. The learning is immense but the load is light as air. Flavia’s constant resort to chemistry provides the pole star. The plotting is meticulous and integrates everything. There is nothing superfluous. Every detail dovetails into the plot like Shaker furniture joined without a nail.
The denouement does drag on, but it works a delight when comes salvation in white. Loved the convoluted chain of reasoning that Flavia developed to arrive at Norway, matched to that of Plod who found it on a clothing tag.
Alan Bradley is a Canadian with many writing credits. There seem to be nine in this series to date.
‘Leonardo’ (2017) by Walter Isaacson
An irreligious and illegitimate, left-handed vegetarian homosexual pacifist with one name and a shock of flaming red hair who dressed as dandy, seldom finished a job, and never published, that is Leonardo from Vinci (1452–1519). He would be banned by the NRA in Alabama, hung by the Veep, and not get a job at a university today.
Never hit a KPI. No tenure. No promotion. Try imagining his 360-degree review. Go on, try!
He was the illegitimate son of a notary and a servant girl. His father recognised and accepted him though for the first twelve years or so he was brought up by his mother, the servant girl, and her new husband. At about twelve Leonardo went to live in his father’s home. There is no doubt the first eleven years were formative. Read on.
His father’s house.
While in the care of his mother he was free to roam unshackled by the conventions of the notary’s higher social status and rigidly conventional family life. Roam he did through hills and dales where he began the close observation of nature that never stopped. Like the boy who became Peter the Great, he was free of the inhibitions of the status that he later acquired.
His father soon realised that this boy was never going to be a notary. He was dreamy, always scratchy away at things, doodling in the dust, pulling things apart. His father arranged to apprentice him to an artist’s workshop in nearby Firenze. It was hog heaven for the lad. He did the work assigned to him, starting with crushing shells to make paint, cleaning brushes, and sweeping floors. Then he went on to preparing the surface of boards, walls, and canvases for paint. He worked his way up from these entry jobs, very quickly, to painting backgrounds like sky and hills. Next he was painting background figures which soon got him promoted to foreground figures. While a teenager his talents surpassed the master of the workshop.
Leo stayed an apprentice for longer than usual because he was content, but eventually his father staked him to set up his own workshop, and perhaps assisted in getting some early commissions for him. Leo’s talents bloomed. His only ambition was to keep puzzling away at things.
He took commissions and worked on them, in some cases for years, without finishing many of them. As he did so, he invented new techniques, the most significant being oil painting, which in turn led to his famous technique of sfumato. Together these two measures allowed him to produce colours and dimensions unlike anything previously done in tempura. Later he would stress the goal of creating the illusion of three dimensions on two. As did Ludwig von Beethoven, so Leonardo invented form and content together.
Living in bustling Firenze, Leo extended his close observation to people. He begun to carry a small notebook night and day and he sketched endlessly, as he observed. He also wrote notes and puzzles. About 7,200 half-quarto pages from these notebooks have survived that is, perhaps, a mere portion of the original total. Still this is more on paper than a contemporary biographer of Steve Jobs could find because Jobs worked in digital media from the get-go and most of it has disappeared with the passing of floppy discs, hard discs, and web sites.
Instead of finishing a commission, Leonardo would spend hours examining the condensation on a glass of cold water on a hot day, ants on a leaf, the faces of men in a pub, or applying the eighteenth coat of oil paint to a tree in the background of a painting. While he concentrated hard on what he did, he did not focus on completing tasks. All trip, no arrival.
The anonymous accusation was a common practice of the time and much emphasised in Firenze. Write out an accusation and drop in the box. Done. (This was a practice revived by the Naziis in Occupied France.) These accusations covered everything from tax dodging, to cheating business partners or customers, short changing deliveries, adultery, and homosexuality. While sodomy was a moral sin and a capital crime, it was also much practised in Firenze. Hypocrisy is not confined to D.C.
One such latter accusation was made against Leo but it was unsubstantiated upon investigation and he saw it off. Other similar accusations, however, followed. Whether any specifics in the assertions were so, it is true that he preferred boys to girls or women. True or not, sustained or not, the accusations and innuendoes were making his life and work difficult. After he left Florence, nothing more is heard of such accusations, though it is clear that was his way of life.
In Milan the usurper Il Moro, was buying legitimacy by attracting entertainers like Sharon Stone to Milan. To make peace with the new ruler of Milan, the Signoria of Firenze commissioned Leo to make a lyre of silver for Il Moro and personally to deliver it. While so doing, Leo also applied for a job as engineer, maestro, painter, and celebrity pet. The duke commissioned him to do a giant equestrian statue which of course remained unfinished during the seventeen years Leo spent on Moro’s dime.
He did earn his keep by producing entertainments for the duke. These shows included automatons, flying hoists, tableaux, and all manner of smoke and mirrors. The author makes the point that with these shows, Leo had to deliver on time, on target, and on budget. And he did! Repeatedly.
Being an impresario distracted him from the equestrian bronze but made a great reputation for the duke. (Later this duke would invite the French to come to his aid and that precipitated more than thirty years of incessant war in the Italian peninsula. The French liked shopping in Italy, and paid with swords, crossbows, siege guns, cavalry, and more.)
In these shows Leo’s engineering and artistry were united. They also demonstrated his management ability to prepare and stage them. He spent years in Milan and only left when Il Moro’s world collapsed. He returned to Florence briefly and then in a dream come true King Francis I of France offered him a pension, not a commission for a specific work or works, but retainer to do what he liked.
He set up a house and pottered away.
While he had been a strapping red head in his prime, he aged rapidly and badly. Those who met him for the first time in his fifties and later routinely took him to be ten or more years older than he was.
There is some reason to believe that Raphael used him as the model for Plato, as above, in his great painting of the Academy for a Pope.
Most of Leonardo’s engineering ideas were never tried, and he completed few paintings, yet he was recognised far and wide as the genius of the age. How does he compare to Paris Hilton, that is a question to consider. His recognition infuriated toiling rivals like the religious zealot Michaelangelo who tried to blacken Leo’s name at any opportunity.
To commission a work from Leonardo was difficult and almost always fruitless. He often played hard to get and declined commissions. When he accepted, whatever the notarised contact said, it was done in his way and on his terms. That most famous of all paintings, the Mona Lisa, which the author details at length was never finished. While Signor Giaconda commissioned it, he never saw the completed work. Instead like several other paintings Leo carted it from Milan, to Florence, to Rome, to France, daubing at it off and on for years.
It was not procrastination. His technique took time. In Lisa’s case, the canvas had a base of white lead, which even with other coats of paint over it still reflects light like nothing else. The lead coating took time, and by the way, this unique property of white lead paint was recognised by others and commonly used on the eyes of portraits. An artist who licked his brush to get a point with this lead for the white of eye developed lead poisoning and this killed many.
Over the white lead Leonardo added very thin coat of oil paint and then waited weeks or months for it to dry. Then another with a wait. And so on. At times he changed his mind and altered a painting and waited. He out waited all of his patrons except Francis who had hired him as a companion more than anything else and they seemed to enjoy each others company. When Francis had time off from murdering Protestants or sacking Italy, he visited Leo for a natter. Though I did wonder, without enlightenment, what language they spoke together.
Leonardo was never idle and in the weeks of waiting for paint to dry he would take up a new project and do, say, a series of drawings of water falls, or rivers. He was always fascinated by the motion of water. Indeed at times he speculated that water to the Earth was as blood to the body, and he meant that literally as much as figuratively. Though for all his polymath genius he never understood the fifth grade science of evaporation.
While he learned much from reading, he never published his own research, though he spoke of doing so, but those words became another unfinished project. He had been an autodidact in his early years and had so little education he could barely read, and he was defensive about that for years. More or less secretly he spent years trying, off and on, to learn Latin with little success. (Miss Vera Earl, MA, would have put his declension in order in no time!) Gradually he came to read Italian and learned from the tomes he read. Perhaps there was a psychological barrier to publishing because of his early life in which books were for others.
It is a wonder, in an age without knowledge of germs, he lived as long as he did. That the white lead did not kill him may be down to his slow pace of painting. But also, where local circumstances were conducive, he did hundreds of autopsies with accompanying drawings of the muscles and bones of the human body without much hand washing, sterilising of knives, and such. Since most of the cadavers he could work on came from the poorest strata of society, often they were diseased and infested, yet he lived.
This quintessential embodiment of the Italian Renaissance, this son of Firenze, this Tuscan-speaking Italian died in France and King Francis gathered his mortal possessions, so that in time the Mona Lisa and many of the drawings passed to the Louvre, where I once saw Lisa behind a bullet proof glass and over the heads of and in the storm of flash bulbs from hundreds of Japanese tourists. I also saw for a few seconds two of his completed, smaller religious works in the Hermitage in a squeeze play.
Isaacson has a prosaic explanation for Leonardo’s (in)famous mirror writing, which is best read in its entirety. It demystifies this practice, and disqualifies Leonardo from the Rosicrucian Hall of Fame.
He was a contemporary of Niccolò Machiavelli, who signed for the city of Florence a contract commissioning Leo to paint a triumphal scene. Needless to say it was never completed. Isaacson supposes Machia and Leo were friends, but I rather doubt it. The evidence is circumstantial at best, and as personalities they had nothing in common. Geniuses do not always attract each other.
Still Isaacson’s book is extensively researched, measured in its inferences, and concentrates almost always on available evidence, which is almost always art, paintings, sketches, models, and drawings, much of it from the notebooks Leo always carried. He succeeds in bringing alive this man who could spend hours examining the condensation on a glass of cold water, drawing the shapes as they came and went, or simply staring intently at the glass as if it alone existed in the world.
The notebooks were numerous and many have been lost. Some were sold off to admirers on his death, and so valuable was anything of his that some notebooks were ripped up and the pages sold separately. In this practice was room for forgeries. Yet much of them remains and they are the only autobiographical source for this remarkable man. On the pages are his many interests, and lists of things he wanted to do, find, understand, know, and test. By the way, though he was pragmatic enough to keep it to himself one entry in the notebooks says that ‘the sun does not move.’
He was so remarkable that even in his lifetime apocryphal stories of his powers were circulated and these multiplied after his death. The journalist of the time, as now, were completely unscrupulous in the exaggerations heaped upon his name to peddle their wares. Thus he became encrusted with myth and legend. Part of Isaacson’s achievement has been to strip away those layers that readers may see the man within.
‘Even the Dead’ (2017) by Benjamin Black
Dublin in the early 1950s is a world unto itself turned inward. Dr Quirke is a pathologist who observes much and suspects more. When a road accident victim’s corpse is examined he finds a contusion on the temple that is inconsistent with the car crash. Musing follows. In time, he mentions his doubts to the Inspector Hackett of the Serious Crimes Squad who noses around and finds unpleasant emanations. This is the seventh entry in a series and it is tired, but perhaps complacent is the right word: ‘If I write it, the reviewers will praise it.’ He did and they did.
Though the spring weather is benign, the choking conformity of Maxima Catholic Dublin is inescapable. All in Dublin is more Catholic than the Pope. It is certainly more Catholic than the Rome of the time. The Bishop’s Palace is the seat of power in Dublin, not Tithe an Rialtais, the large Edwardian building enclosing a quadrangle on Merrion Street wherein dwells the Taoiseach by which we once walked.
There is only one escape permitted from this suffocating pall and that is alcohol. Frequently in Quirke stories, and no doubt in 1950s Dublin life, the pregnancy of unmarried women is paramount. Moreover, every thread, however long and ravelled, eventually traces back to the Catholic Church and its baleful tentacles.
These books are very well written and the picture of Irish life seen through Quirke’s eyes is to travel back in time. Yet in these books there is precious little detection, no police procedure despite Hackett’s occasional plod, and no mystery. Much is also predictable, as Quirke’s sexual conquests. As soon as a women is introduced into the story, we know she will soon succumb to his charms.
Instead we have Quirke, holder of a prestigious and authoritative position, a highly trained and accomplished medical doctor, a widower, father of a bright grown daughter, comfortable of income, handsome and attractive to women, who spends nearly every minute feeling sorry for himself in a self-imposed melancholia where he wallows for pages and pages, smoking cigarette after cigarette, drinking drink after drink. Evidently his pathologies did not involve lungs or livers.
Instead of detection we have meals, drinks, cigarettes, meals, drinks, cigarettes, meals….. On it goes. Yes, the prose is polished and the observations of life’s details exact, but repetitive and inert. There seems to be neither point nor purpose to the the prose. Some of the characterisations are profound, like Quirke’s terminally ill brother but have no place in the plot.
There is no doubt John Banville, Benjamin Black’s after ego, can write. The portrait of the victim’s father is striking and sympathetic. The contrast, however, is the government official whom Hackett interviews, who is little more than a cartoon character, flustered by the simplest question. Banville has respect for the father and none for government officials and it shows as he makes up the reader’s mind. Take that all those who work for the government, including those who uphold the intellectual property and copyright laws that secure Banville’s income. all those who regulate and maintain the internet services that provide a platform for his novels, all those who police crime and who had to deal with IRA on the border for a generation, all those who make difficult decisions about troop deployments on UN Peace Keeping missions, these are all clots!
I also found the reference to the Spanish Civil War confusing. The International Brigades were certainly there but the specifics mentioned in the story did not compute.