Internet Is Back At Pearl's + "Phantom Of The Opera" (1925) + Hey Elizabeth

I am back, writing late night from Pearl's once again. We got our Internet service restored this afternoon on our sixth day of trying, after another ATT technician spent two hours troubleshooting the problem and finally got it solved. It was indeed coming from the tray at the ATT central office, so they installed a new tray at that location, and Jimmy (our tech) set up a new modem here at the house. Even then, it didn't wanna take hold, and the service light was still coming up red at first. But Jimmy was awesome, and he called the next level of ATT technical support ("Tier Two"), and after another half hour of them programming the new modem, the service light finally came up solid green. I almost couldn't believe my eyes.

This was The Computer Problem From Hell, folks. I'm no expert, but I have had some problems with modems and such, and they've always been solved over the phone, between me and technical support, even in complicated cases that took a long time to figure out (and part of the problem here has always been outdated circuitry), but anyhow, I've never seen a glitch like this one and I hope I never see another one like it.

I'll be a little bit nervous to turn off my computer tonight, because for the next week or so, until this vibe wears off, I will awaken half-expecting to see the red service light again. The Horror! (and there's an idea for a Halloween costume, The Red Service Light! ooohhh scary!

But if a week goes by and it doesn't come on, then the anxiety will begin to fade. I know I'm being a bit melodramatic, but as I explained, this is my only outlet, my only form of social life at present. I have been a caregiver for a long time now, and I am in the house for 17 out of every 24 hours. So it helps to have the Internet, noisy and chaotic as it can be, just so I can connect with the outside world.

Jimmy The Awesome Tech left me his business card and told me to call him if the red light comes back on. Hopefully it won't, but Jimmy rules. Thanks, Jimmy. ////

Tonight I watched another classic film that I had never seen before "Phantom Of The Opera" (1925) starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin. Pretty ridiculous that I'd never seen it, eh? I guess you could chalk my negligence up to the same fact as mentioned recently, that I just wasn't ready for Silent films for a long time, and also the snippets of "Phantom" I had seen looked so damaged and ancient, and also the film ran at faster speeds in some sections, causing a bit of a "Keystone Cops" effect here and there. I guess I thought it was a relic, even while acknowledging it's status as an historical work. But I knew I had to one day see it, and since I have been looking at the work of Lon Chaney this month, I thought the time was right to finally do so.

It is said that with the "Phantom", Lon Chaney created the first cinematic horror character, and while I don't know if that is accurate (though I suspect it is), one thing is certain : Chaney created a character so horrific and unforgettable - so dramatic - that regardless if he was the first horror actor, he was without doubt the first major horror actor, and this is also because of his talent as a makeup artist. The "unmasking" scene in "Phantom", which I watched for the first time tonight, not only holds up today - 93 years after it was filmed - but is still horrifying enough to impress adults and to give little kids nightmares.

Lon Chaney's makeup creations were so far ahead of their time that they were only even approached in the 1970s, with "The Exorcist", and that's not really a cogent example because the Regan character was a victim rather then a villain. Suffice it to say that Chaney's "Phantom" look set the bar for movie monsters to come, and it still does so today (CGI be damned as always). Nothing will ever top actual, physical makeup effects onscreen, and Lon Chaney was the movie's greatest makeup artist in the early years, and maybe ever.

I am still thinking about last night's incredible performance by Fredric March as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", really off-the-charts great, and I will bet that March was partly influenced by Lon Chaney's "Phantom" just six years earlier. Although March had the advantage of better camerawork (on an artistic and technical cinematic level "Dr. Jekyll" is a better film than "Phantom"), in watching his facial expressions and physicality, expressed in a manic desire to dominate his victims and later on to escape a mob, I got the feeling that March took his cue from Lon Chaney as the "Phantom" and decided to one-up him.

Both performances are so far off the charts that they are set apart. Last night, even though I only had a short time to write from my apartment, I wanted to convey just how outstanding was the performance by Fredric March. Not just great, but a cut above, up there in the Elite. And upon watching "Phantom" tonight, while it is not as advanced a film as "Dr. Jekyll" in the cinematic sense, it still blew me away, just for what the filmmakers were able to stage in 1925, especially with regards to the climactic scenes with "Erik" (the Phantom) as an angry mob chases him down to his hideout, deep in the cellars of the Paris Opera House. Only Lon Chaney could have pulled this off, and I would suggest you see this film not merely because of the horror but also because it is a classic Greek tragedy in which the theme of unrequited love is explored.

You already knew that, of course. It's been many a year since Andrew Lloyd Weber co-opted "The Phantom" and turned him into a Love Machine. But Lon Chaney is no such character. He does obsess on his love for Christine, but once she unmasks him, any hope for romance is over.

I have been watching some landmark Monster Movie performances of late, and I have to put Lon Chaney's role as the "Phantom" at the top of the heap along with Fredric March as "Dr. Jekyll" and "Mr. Hyde". I am glad I finally saw them both during this Halloween season. ///

Speaking of Halloween, I will be doing my usual trick-or treat thing here at Pearl's, handing out candy with The Black Kitty and The Spirit Of The Kobedog. I'll be carving pumpkins in the afternoon to prepare. If I have a chance, I would love to do a hike, even a small one as I haven't been "out there" in any of my spots for over two weeks now, since my trip to the Chumash caves. But even if I don't get out on a hike, we'll have a blast. I am like a little kid on Halloween, my favorite holiday of the year (well, tied with Christmas).

Hey Elizabeth, are you going to see Alcest tomorrow night? I am guessing "yes", and if you do go, post some pics, and have a Happy Halloween either way! I was glad to see your photo at the Arboretum this afternoon, the first thing I saw when my computer came back online. :)

I will be going to see Alcest on Friday night, although I am not thrilled with the venue, a sketchy place I have never heard of way down in the boondocks of L.A.

Well, one day at a time. Let's have fun on Halloween first. And thank goodness I've got my Internet back, here at Pearl's.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Still No Internet; Tech Coming Back Tomorrow + "Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde" with Frederic March

Just a quick check in for tonight, and a progress report (or non-progress as the case may be). I called ATT again this morning. This time, I got a guy on the line who was highly competent, thank goodness. He tried everything under the Sun to get the modem re-started and connected to the Internet, but for whatever crazy reason, it still wouldn't connect. Isn't this the weirdest thing? Long story short, they are gonna send another tech out to Pearl's tomorrow, between Noon and 4pm. I don't know that it will do any good, but I'll be there and see it through. The guy on the phone gave me a last-ditch option if nothing else works, and that is for us to have Pearl's setup completely rewired with fiber optics. The computer setup we have is pretty antiquated. I don't know all of the terminology, but anyway what we have is pretty slow compared to the latest technology. The guy said it would take about four hours to re-wire the house and he also said it would almost certainly solve the problem if tomorrow's effort fails.

There is no charge for the fiber optic rewiring,

So we'll see what happens tomorrow. Once again, wish me luck. I've never heard of such a computer problem before. Also, sorry about the tirade in yesterday's blog, but I had to vent after all the frustration. Sooner or later, something has gotta work to get me back online at Pearl's.

I just watched the original 1931 version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" starring Frederic March, another movie that you would think I'd have seen but I never had until now. All I can say is "wow". The performance by March has got to be one of the ten greatest in history by a male lead. And the movie itself may be the greatest horror film of all time. It's really that good and you should see it as soon as you can.

I wish I had more time to expound on it, but I must go on my walk and then back to Pearl's. I hope to have Internet service at her house pretty soon, but at this point I can't make any guarantees about when it will happen. Keep your fingers crossed.

See you tomorrow afternoon from here at my apartment.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)

Today's ATT Fiasco

Still no service. Today's ATT Fiasco involved me calling them up this afternoon after church, hoping against hope for a Sunday repair. I got a guy on the phone, and he asked me all the same questions I was originally asked on Thursday when I first contacted them. I tried to cut to the chase by telling the guy, "look. we had a technician come out here on Friday. He was unable to diagnose the problem after two and a half hours of trying". I told the guy on the phone that the technician at Pearl's house eventually concluded that the problem must lie within ATT's own equipment, located in their central office.

But the guy on the phone this afternoon wasn't listening. He had me wait on the line while he ran the same over-the-phone diagnostics that didn't work on Friday. Then he told me, "you line is fine, Sir", as if I was mistaken about the whole thing and the technician had never even been to the house. I was getting exasperated. I said, "I know the line is fine. That's what I'm trying to tell you, that the technician who came here said that the problem is probably in ATT's in-house circuitry".

The guy on the phone then went and got his supervisor, and they had me unplug and then replug the modem once again. And once again they tried restarting the service, even though I told them that it had already been tried on Friday, with three different modems. I also told them that the tech who came to the house had promised to call back on Saturday but never did.

Their attempt to reboot the modem over the phone didn't work, just as I'd told them I wouldn't.

I had been on the phone for over half an hour by this time. Finally the guy and his supervisor decided to send another technician out to the house. He said "please hold on while I schedule you an appointment".

I said "okay", and that was the last I heard from him. I waited on hold, and I waited. Ten minutes went by. Finally, the on-hold muzak was replaced by the gank-gank-gank sound that resembles a busy signal, but in this case it means the call has been cut off.

Please cue the Church Lady now. I need her to say, "Isn't that special"?

So to recap, I call ATT. The guy asks the same questions and goes over the same ground that was trod on Friday, when every attempt failed. I tried to tell him this; he didn't listen. I tried to tell his supervisor the same thing; the supervisor didn't listen either. Finally, they saw I was right, and the phone guy had me "hold" while he scheduled another appointment for another tech to come out to the house.

And after all of that, the call got cut off and I never got the appointment.

Now, one of the questions ATT asks you when you call, is if you have another number at which you can be reached just in case the call is disconnected. I gave the guy my cell number for that purpose. So when our call was indeed disconnected, I waited for him to call me back on my cell (or even on Pearl's phone, of which he had the number) so that he could finish making the appointment for another technician to come over.

I waited, and I waited. But he never called me back.

Why do they ask for your #@&$#@# ing number if they aren't gonna call you back?

So that was Today's ATT Fiasco. I don't usually do promos for products or companies but I'd like to do a negative ad today:

ATT Has The Worst Service I Have EVER, EVER experienced.  On top of that, they don't even seem to know their own circuits. My experience with them has been so bad, that if were my account, I would have cancelled the service by now and switched to Verizon or whoever else carries the Internet in our area.

The service by ATT could not possibly have been worse.

But wait a minute, Ad........there's always tomorrow. They might outdo themselves and screw up even worse! And I wouldn't be surprised if they do. Our Internet service at Pearl's has been out since Thursday morning, and ATT doesn't seem to care when, or even if, it is restored. Good Lordy Moses, what a bunch of lame-ass baloney. ////

End of tirade. But it's been pretty doggone frustrating as you can see. I am at Pearl's for 17 hours every day, and the Internet is my only lifeline to the outside world. Pearl herself is more or less non-verbal by now, and I have no one to talk to all day.

Yeah, I know......."poor me".

But all I am asking for is a simple fix, and this gigantic company, supposedly the electronics giant of the world, can't even figure it out, and they also have the worst service in the history of commerce.

Now it's truly the end of the tirade. Sorry about that.

Well, the Dodgers have just this minute have lost the World Series to the Red Sox, so c'est la vie until next year. This Boston team was just too darn good. The 'Gers never were gonna beat them. Thank goodness we've still got Rams football to look forward to, and a possible Super Bowl appearance.

I am gonna walk back over to Our Lady Of Lourdes across the street. They are having their Fall Festival all weekend and The Beatles are playing tonight.

I am referring to Ticket To Ride, or course, but they sound so good it's hard to tell the difference.  :)

"City Of The Dead" was incredible, the movie I watched last night. I don't have enough time to tell you about it tonight, but if you are a horror fan, it's a must see. Two Thumbs Incredibly High Up.

And the singing was good in church this morn. Tomorrow I am gonna try once again to have the service restored at Pearl's. Once more into the breach! Wish me luck.....

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):) See you tomorrow afternoon.

ATT Sucks

I'm still writing early and from home, and I suspect I might be tomorrow as well, since it will be Sunday, not the best day for any kind of service except at church. ATT officially sucks. I told you about the difficulty the technician had yesterday trying to restore the Internet service at Pearl's. He came up empty after two and a half hours of trying. Now, he certainly made every effort. It wasn't his fault, but he did promise to call me back today to report on any progress made by the ATT central office in locating the source of the problem, which he suspected was coming from an in-house circuit (meaning in their equipment at their location).

So this morning and afternoon I waited and of course he never called back.

That straight-up sucks, and it is bad service, plain and simple. I mean, first they can't figure out wtf is wrong. Isn't that what they're supposed to specialise in, knowing their own systems? But okay fine, it's some super-duper weird problem that they don't recognize......whatever.

The least they could do is follow up on it like the guy said they were gonna do. But they didn't, and now I will likely have to wait until Monday. However, I am gonna call them after I return from church tomorrow in order to try and expedite the situation.

But yeah, ATT sucks. It's now official. ////

Well, at least I am getting some reading done. I have almost finished Paul Tremblay's "A Head Full Of Ghosts", which is super scary (about a teenaged girl who is either losing her mind, or is possessed and in need of an exorcism, or is faking the whole thing. We don't know yet but I suspect I will find out tonight).

I am gonna watch a movie in a few minutes, entitled "City Of The Dead", starring Christopher Lee. I don't know anything about it, but it was recommended by Amazon so I took a chance. With Christopher Lee, the odds are always good.

Go Dodgers! again tonight. Last night was legendary. Tonight I can't take the pressure, so I will check the score after the movie. Some fan I am, yeah I know.....but I've always been this way. In 1987 I went out and sat in our garage at Rathburn Street during a pressure-packed Finals game between the Lakers and Celtics. And I'm in good company. Jerry West himself was known to leave the Forum and drive around for a while during high-pressure games, when he was the Lakers general manager.

It's only a game. Yeah right.

Go Rams tomorrow, too. That one should be easier.  :)

I'll write again from home sometime tomorrow afternoon.

See you in church in the morning, and Good Singin' to ya!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Even ATT Can't Figure It Out

I'm writing from home once again during my evening break because the Internet service is still down at Pearl's, which means that for the second night in a row I will be unable to write to ya late a night as I usually do. To be honest, I don't know if anybody even reads this thing, meaning anyone I know. There are always a few pageviews listed in the stats, but I don't know if The SB reads anymore since she rarely uses Facebook these days, and I have no idea if any of the other views come from folks who know me or if they are just anonymous peeps from Poland and Uzbekistan. But still I write, because I must. You could say it's a compulsion.  ;) So when I miss a night (or God forbid two in a row), it's hard.

I'm jonesin' to write a movie review, haha.

The ATT Guy was at Pearl's this afternoon, and he tried everything in the book. He tried three different modems. He checked the wiring in the house and up and down the street. He was on the phone with the techs at the ATT office for over an hour, troubleshooting this and that; stuff spoken in computer lingo that is indecipherable to me. The guy was at Pearl's for 2 1/2 hours, and he and the office techs couldn't figure it out.

They say it might be a problem with a circuit in the Central Office, wherever that is.

I think it's gotta be The Russians. :)

Well, anyhow. ATT is gonna try again tomorrow. I hope we have better luck than we did today. I am gonna go for my CSUN walk now. Grimsley is coming over in a little while, and after that I will head back to Pearl's as always. Hopefully I will have Internet service at her house by tomorrow afternoon.

Have a great Friday night, and Go Dodgers!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

An Early Check-In Because The Internet Is Down At Pearl's ("Dr. Renault's Secret")

I'm checking in early today to report that the Internet is currently down at Pearl's house. I called ATT this morning and the guy ran a diagnostic over the phone and it appears that the problem is with an outside line. Maybe the possum who comes over every night to eat the leftover cat food chewed through the cable where it connects to the house. Who knows? It's always some doggone thing, but what it means is that I won't have any Internet service tonight at Pearl's and will therefore be unable to write my usual late-night blog (right now I am writing from Chromebook One at my apartment). The ATT technician will be at Pearl's tomorrow, sometime between Noon and 4pm (which means between 3:45 and 4pm), so I won't have service there until tomorrow evening.

Dang possum.

I'll be back here at The Tiny tonight though, during my evening work break, and I'll check back in with you then, tell ya what movie I'm gonna watch or some such. Right now I am listening to Martha Argerich play Bach. That's enough to smooth out any minor problems of the day. Heading to Trader Josephus's as soon as the album is over, then back to Pearl's. See you at around 7:30pm.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

9pm: I'm back, getting ready to go on my nightly walk before heading back to Pearl's. I just watched a fantastic and very strange little movie called "Dr. Renault's Secret". I mentioned the title last night in my review of "The Howling". It's only an hour long, but has enough script to seem twenty minutes longer, and it is packed with visuals in every frame. I'll give a full review in tomorrow night's blog, trusting of course that the Internet problem at Pearl's house will be fixed by then. It should be, I think (I hope).

Well, that's all for now. Here I go on my walk, and I will see you tomorrow afternoon.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Howling" by Joe Dante, not quite as good as remembered

Tonight I went back to the early '80s once again with "The Howling" (1981), director Joe Dante's Werewolf movie that made a big splash at the time for it's makeup effects. It got good reviews upon it's release, partly for it's fresh approach to the Werewolf genre, but also for the man-to-wolf transformation scenes, groundbreaking at the time and still effective today, CGI eat your heart out.

My friends and I all went to see "The Howling", and like "The Fog" - which I reviewed last night - I think at the time I thought it was "pretty good", meaning that it wasn't near as good as a realistic horror film like "The Hills Have Eyes", but for a big studio production it wasn't too shabby.

In last night's blog I remarked that in hindsight I was wrong about "The Fog", which I had also thought was "pretty good" or simply "okay" at the time, but after seeing it a second time - 38 years later - I had a complete change of opinion and thought it was really good if not excellent. This was because I was better able to appreciate the film for it's atmosphere, which is eerily fantastic, instead of discounting it wholesale for it's lack of hardcore shock, the tack I'd have taken when I was twenty years old.

To be fair to myself, I was a pretty astute observer even at 20, and my take on things from a "gut feeling" standpoint would not be much different from what they are now. But as we all experience, the tendency to see things in extremes (or the need to have shock, or to listen only to heavy metal, or things of that nature) starts to fade as we go through the decades, from our early 20s to our 30s, and then through our 40s and 50s, when time begins to speed up. Through all that time (which thankfully rubberbands, i.e. slows down as well), we acquire a lot of nuance in our perspectives. And for me, as the years went by and as far as horror movies are concerned, I began to appreciate the atmosphere more and the shock value less. Don't get me wrong, I still love a good "gotcha" moment as much as I always did, but what I really love is a spooky sense of impending terror, or doom or any macabre feeling when it pervades an entire movie, such as the quiet but sinister feeling that lurks in a movie like "The Innocents". I might not have been able to sit through that film in my 20s because I would not have had the patience. Now, I've seen it several times and consider it to be one of the scariest films ever made, no contest.

All of this rambling brings me back to "The Howling", and why I was a bit disappointed that it did not hold up nearly as well as did "The Fog", after all these years. "The Fog", though infused with modern lighting effects and other "specialties", was made with no excess. In that sense, it was very much like a classic Universal horror film of old. Every scene built the suspense right into the next, and the sense of horror was built step by step and moment by moment, as the story was unspooled by a tightly constructed script. All of the best horror movies do this, they never relax the chain of events, except maybe for a few brief moments here and there. "The Fog" followed this formula, and though it was short on teenage "gross-out" moments, it was structurally brilliant. It looked incredible and it never let up, from start to finish.

"The Howling", on the other hand, began with promise. Dee Wallace (of "Hills Have Eyes" fame and later "E.T." as well) is a TV newswoman investigating a serial killer loose in Los Angeles. The street footage you see in the first ten minutes gives you a view into what Hollywood Boulevard looked like in the 70s and early 80s ; lots of neon-lit porno shops and prostitution fronts. It looked like New York in those days. Now, that aspect of the street is all gone, but in the movie it is the setting for news anchor Wallace to daringly meet up with an anonymous caller who is claiming to be the killer. She wants to be the heroine, the lady who solves the case and presents it to Los Angeles on TV.

But she gets a lot more than she bargained for, and to be honest, the scene of her meeting with the killer in the porno shop is borderline disgusting and would probably not be released by a major studio in this day and age. But the early 80s were a time of experimentation. Anyhow, despite the repellent nature of that scene, the opening 20 minutes of the film sets the viewer up for an exciting story, a taut thriller. The action is quick, the story is in motion, what will happen next?

Well, director Dante and screenwriter John Sayles made the decision to make a 90 degree angle turn into black comedy after that, by throwing the entire frame of reference from Hollywood to travel up to "feel good" Northern California, to a coastal retreat akin to the Esalen Institute or some other phoney baloney "encounter group" conglomerate. The newswoman, Dee Wallace, is sent to this institute by her boss to recover and to have a psychiatric evaluation by the resident doctor, after she is attacked by the serial killer in the porno shop in Hollywood. But at the Institute in Northern California, things only get worse, for Wallace and for the viewer.

For some reason, when he gets to "Esalen", Joe Dante decided to go the black comedy route, only twenty minutes after he had established the beginnings of a serious thriller. Now we are amongst a bunch of kooks, the kinds of which California is unfairly stereotyped for, and the movie meanders around these people for the next forty minutes, taking up the entire middle of the film. Man is that a bummer, and it almost had me considering to turn the movie off at one point, but I persevered. Dante throws some Werewolf sex into the middle of this miasma as if he knew it would be the only thing to keep you watching at that point.

I was saying to myself, "well, you can't win 'em all", when all of a sudden the movie rebounded, thirty minutes from the end. Other reviewers have remarked about this too. The last half hour is great, and delivers the promise of the first twenty minutes. This is when the major Werewolf action breaks out, and now you finally have the horror film you've been waiting for, with great makeup effects courtesy of industry legends Rick Baker and Rob Bottin. Watching this sudden rebirth, I went from thinking "two thumbs down" and "man, I should have went with 'Dr Renault's Secret' instead", to thinking "wow, this must be why I remembered 'The Howling' as being so good".

I remembered it fondly because of the final half hour, which is pretty doggone good, and at that point you are made aware, via some dialogue, why the entire Esalen Institute encounter took place at all. It seemed ridiculous for Joe Dante to shift the action there, but it turns out he had a reason.

That reason, plus the last thirty minutes and the promising start, were ultimately enough to get me to change my mind about the two downwardly depending thumbs and to reposition them so that they are both pointing upright, but I do so with caution.

Two cautious thumbs up, therefore, for "The Howling", but they are not strong thumbs by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that I thought one thumb was not enough, and two without reservation were too much.

Two thumbs in this case means that the movie is worth watching, especially to catch the time period of the carefree early 80s, and for it's Werewolf effects, but the thumbs are wobbly because of the middle 40 minutes, when the story turns goofy and becomes unfocused from time to time.

If you are gonna see a black comedy werewolf movie, watch "An American Werewolf In London" instead. But give "The Howling" a shot, too, if you have nothing better to watch tomorrow evening.

It's not a classic, but you might find something redeeming in it, as I did.

See you in the morn.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Fog" by John Carpenter, really good! + Allergies? No Thanks

Tonight I watched "The Fog" (1980), director John Carpenter's eerie ghost story about some 19th century inhabitants of a leper colony who return 100 years after their deaths to seek revenge on the residents of a small community on the coast of central California. The lepers had negotiated with settlers and a local priest a deal in which they would be allowed to move closer to the mainland (lepers being the equivalent of bubonic plague victims back then), but the priest played a sly hand and tricked them. He and the settlers only wanted the substantial amount of gold offered by the head of the colony, a wealthy man who found himself banished when he contracted the awful disease.

After the deal was struck, the lepers sailed down the California coast toward their new home. But a thick fog enveloped their ship at night, and they could not see well enough to continue sailing. Suddenly, they saw a very bright fire that directed them toward the shore. It was a trick, though, and their ship was dashed against the coastal rocks. It sank with all men aboard.

This happened in 1880, and in 1980, the lepers returned from their watery grave, which looked to be right off PCH, somewhere in the Lompoc area of coastal California. John Carpenter, by now a star director after "Halloween" in '77, was given a budget for special effects, and I must say that they hold up 38 years later.

I had been meaning to re-watch "The Fog" for several years now, but I kept putting it off. I think I had a sub-par memory of it, and at the time, in the late 70s and early 80s, I was going to see a lot of extreme horror movies like "Don't Answer The Phone" and "Don't Go In The House", and it is possible I was judging "The Fog" against these far more violent and exploitative films, because I was only 20 years old and everything had to be hard core as far as horror was concerned. If a movie wasn't gritty or really over the top, I might have said, "yeah, it was okay", while thinking that it was nothing compared to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". What I did remember about "The Fog" was that Carpenter's special effects received a lot of critical attention because they stood out at the time.

Maybe it was the look of the film that stuck with me all of this time, because I just recall telling my buddies that, "yeah, the movie was pretty good", but thinking that the story wasn't all that spooky.

But man, has my appreciation for atmosphere ever grown since that time. And it is the atmosphere (and a few choice "gotcha"-type shocks) that makes "The Fog" not only one of John Carpenter's best works, but also makes it one of the best ghost story horror films in that sub-genre.

It's really good, because for one thing, it looks fantastic. Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey know how to use saturated color in small amounts to highlight the darkness around the colored objects. You'll see a brightly lit liquor store refrigerator after closing time. The perimeter of the frame is in shadow, with pockets of lighter greys, flat colored pockets. But then you see these big, standout colors in smaller, focused POV areas that your eyes are immediately drawn to, like the illuminated dials of an old plastic radio. Carpenter used pinpoint lighting in a lot of scenes to separate objects and characters in a room or space, and he combined this spatial effect with small amounts of specifically placed colors in a wide pallette surrounded by blackness. I am only describing the start of the film, but it's look is something you notice right away.

I was watching tonight, expecting the story to be mediocre as I'd remembered it, but I was wrong on that score. Maybe it's because my tastes have changed as I've grown older, and I'm nearly two times as old as I was when I first saw "The Fog" (holy smokes!), but on this second viewing almost 40 years layer, the story not only became scarier, but I was able to see the economy. This is one of those horror movies in which there is no waste; nothing extraneous, no scenes that don't need to be there.

Everything moves the story forward, anchored by a radio host (played by Adrienne Barbeau) who broadcasts out of her lighthouse and is the first to see The Fog as it rolls across the ocean, lit from inside.

I wasn't expecting too much when I began the film, so I was pleasantly surprised by the look of the film, it's direct telling-of-tale, and also it's use of sound which is tremendous. Carpenter added an electronic score of his own to the existing music, and the "door-pounding" sounds of the Leper Pirates are loud and frightening enough to cause you to turn the sound down a notch while you crane your neck around to look at your own door.....  :)

On my second view of "The Fog", 38 years after my first, I conclude that I was wrong in my initial thoughts. Now I will give it Two Very Big Thumbs Up. It is an atmospheric gem of darkness, color and suspense, with a varying group of character personalities to build the terror.

If you've never seen it, give it a try. I am talking about the original 1980 version, not the remake. I am glad I finally listened to my intuition and gave it a second chance. Now I want to revisit more 1980s horror, perhaps in the new year. ////

Last night Grimsley came over, and though I did end up watching a late night movie on Youtube, called "The Monster Walks", I wasn't feeling well enough to write and review it as I had developed another allergy, this time in my sinuses. It's weird, because though I was allergy-prone all my life until I was 35, I hadn't experienced but maybe five allergies in all the time since. Lately, though, I've had minor flareups, and I am thinking it's gotta be because of the cats. Big Orange & Grey, I think. She's an attention hound, and even though my hand swelled up last time I petted her, yesterday I relented and scratched her between the ears with the tips of my fingers. But my head was close to hers, and whatever is in her fur I must have inhaled, because I was all stuffed up a couple hours later.

It was that old feeling from my teens and my twenties of being congested, drowsy and light-headed, trying to hold back watery eyes and a sneeze.

Luckily, it never became full blown, but allergies suck.

If you suffer from them, I know the feeling and I sympathize. I just don't wanna develop them ever again.

That's all for tonight. I will try not to miss any more days for a while. :)

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo.

"The Black Camel" with Warner Oland as Charlie Chan + Bela Lugosi + Good Singing + Edwards Airshow

Tonight I watched a very early Charlie Chan movie from 1931, called "The Black Camel", starring Warner Oland as Chan. I had yet to see Oland in the role. If you remember back when I was watching a whole bunch of Charlie Chan movies in Jan/Feb 2017, all of those featured Sidney Toler as the Honolulu Detective. He was a great Chan, but now that I've seen Warner Oland, he's good too, and he was the first, not counting some unsuccessful Chan films made in the Silent era with different and unknown Asian actors alternating as Charlie Chan. As far as the major studio releases go, "The Black Camel" was the second Chan film that was produced. It co-stars Bela Lugosi, which made it a no-brainer to pick up when I was browsing movies at Mid-Valley Libe this afternoon (Mid-Val being one of the few libes that is open on Sunday).

I am trying to watch only horror movies as Halloween closes in, and they don't have to be strictly from the horror genre, just so long as they have the atmospheric tinge. Having Bela in the cast qualified "The Black Camel". He plays a psychic advisor to Hollywood movie stars, one actress especially who uses him the way Nancy Reagan once used her astrologer (and hey, I'm all for it except I prefer to do it myself, whether psychic stuff or astrology or whatever. But you know I'm not a doubter.)

Bela Lugosi was at his peak in 1931, a point I am certain I made about another recently seen Bela role, and I see so many movies that I cannot recall which movie it was from at the moment, but the point is that he was once a very imposing screen presence: tall, serious and sinister, with that one of a kind accent and mesmeric diction. In his later roles he looked drawn and worn out as a result of his heroin addiction, and his acting, though still passable, became somewhat of a caricature.

But in 1931, you can easily see the threatening yet charming charisma that made Lugosi one of the great movie stars of all time. He was a good actor, too. Here, in the Chan movie, he teams with Charlie to solve the murder of a famous actor. Sally Eilers, of Buster Keaton movie fame, plays the dead man's girlfriend and is therefore the prime suspect.

It's good stuff, though the Chan formula is set out from the beginning. The Charlie Chan movies are more about characterization than story. The players interact within an ensemble, like a "Ten Little Indians" scenario, while Charlie and his nincompoop son piece together the plot puzzle. The "Number One Son" is cast in all the movies as comic relief. He is eager to please his Dad, and is relentless for clues but not too bright. Charlie basically tells him to go play on the freeway while he solves the case on his own, or this time with Bela's rather strange form of help.

The Charlie Chan movies are all about fun, which is achieved to differing levels in the seven or eight films I have seen so far. Most are at least a 6.5 out of 10, and I'd call "Black Camel" one of the better efforts, not only because it has Bela Lugosi in his prime as a co-star, but also because Dwight Frye pops up in an important supporting role. I was going, "that's gotta be Dwight Frye", and though he wasn't listed in the credits, I IMDB'd the movie and found him in the unlisted roles at the end of the scroll. I knew it was him, and it "made" the movie. You cannot go wrong if you have Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye in a Charlie Chan film. So Two Big Thumbs Up, then. ////

We had good singing in church this morning. In addition to our anthem (our weekly song), one of our hymns was "I Sing The Mighty Power Of God", which is a favorite of mine, as it has that "ladder climbing" style of melody that sounds very English, as if a schoolboy choir should be singing it.

I was also excited this afternoon to see an FB post from Edwards Air Force Base, announcing that they have worked out a contract to bring back airshows to Edwards as soon as next year. I will keep my fingers crossed, because I haven't been to an Edwards Air Show since 2006, and the last one I am aware of took place in 2009. After that, a budget shutdown took effect, but now it looks like shows may be coming back.

If you like jets, there is nothing like an airshow at Edwards. It is the home of the Air Force Flight Test Center, where the sound barrier was first broken in 1947 by Chuck Yeager in the Bell X-1, and later it was the place where the X-15 rocket jet flights took place from 1959 to 1968. And those were only the two most famous programs.

In the 1990s, I went to several airshows at Edwards with my Dad and Mr. D, and in 1995 my Mom went with us too. That day we saw both the Stealth B2 and the F-117 for the first time. It was a day that I will never forget, and though I do not believe in war, I do believe in flight, and that is what Edwards is all about. I can't wait to see another airshow there.  :)

That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Indian Summer + Grand Marais + "Roland West's 'Alibi' ", a movie between Sound and Silent

Indian Summer is in full effect here in the Valley. T'was 92 degrees today and bone-dry, though thankfully not windy. This morn I put up the Halloween decorations here at Pearl's and then took her on a wheelchair push around the neighborhood so we could enjoy the weather and look for other cool Halloween houses, of which we saw about a dozen.

Elizabeth, I liked your sunset photo this morning, and the little tower in the background that appears to have a light on. Is it a lighthouse? The tower is one of those small details that can give a picture an exclamation point, so to speak. I looked up Grand Marais and see that it is a resort with only a small permanent population. I asked Pearl if she knew it but it is hard for her to remember names nowdays. She is from Mankato, a suburb of Minneapolis, so she would have been about the same distance from Grand Marais as you are in Madison, give or take a few miles. It sure is a beautiful place. I'm glad you got to go and thanks for posting the pictures! Keep shooting, wherever you may be.  :)

Tonight I watched a movie that was both really good and unusual : "Roland West's 'Alibi' " (1929). The name of the film would technically have been "Alibi" but for some reason the studio found it necessary to include the director's name, maybe because the movie had been a hit play beforehand, or maybe because Roland West was a name director and thus a "draw" in that era. I do not know. At any rate, what is unusual about "Alibi" is that it was made in 1929, the year that movies transitioned into sound. I need to make an aside here to say that it sort of blows my mind that all movies were silents only 31 years before I was born, which makes me feel ancient, but only because the Silent Era feels ancient.

But it wasn't ancient. It just looks that way on screen. As advanced as motion pictures have become, they are still not much more than 100 years old. As usual, time is short and long at the same time, the old rubber band effect.

1929 was a transitional year for movies because it was the year in which the Sound Era was ushered in. All of a sudden actors and actresses had to use their voices and speak dialogue. Some had the great faces necessary for Silent films but not the vocal dynamics for sound pictures. In "Alibi", a movie about a gangster who has just been released from prison and appears to have gone straight, it is interesting to watch the various actors as they adapt to a movie with sound. The star, Chester Morris, who went on to continue his career in sound pictures, is still mugging for the camera here, using the exaggerated facial expressions of silent film. He is very good as The Gangster, although his voice wavers between weak and strong. You can see him adjusting to the new format, which would have been a substantial leap for any actor who had not done previous stage work. Another actor, Regis Toomey, who went on to have a major career as a character actor for several decades, is also good in his role as an undercover policeman, but his diction is so constrained and off-kilter as to be downright weird. It's as if he doesn't know the technique to speaking into a boom microphone (as I am pretty certain there was no voice-over looping in 1929).

When we did our Buster Keaton retrospective at CSUN a year ago, Professor Tim showed us some documentary footage from one of the movie sets, and you could see how bulky and unwieldy the original sound recording equipment was. It took up a lot of room and got in the way of the actors, who now also had microphones hanging over their heads. So yes, it was quite a transition for the actors and a great many fell by the wayside when sound became the standard, either because they didn't have A Voice or because they could not adapt to reciting dialogue, which in silent films they only had to approximate by moving their lips at times.

"Alibi" is still one heck of a good movie. The script is rock solid. It had been a play, and has the seamless quality of that form of writing, which became the form of writing for the screen, i.e. the screenplay. I discovered "Alibi" during a search for movies that included William Cameron Menzies as an art director. After I saw his work in the recently reviewed "Mark Of The Vampire", which was incredible, I wanted to find more. "Alibi" was the one film that came back, that I hadn't seen.

It has the look of a German Expressionist picture, which - when coupled with the oddball styles of actors adjusting to sound - makes for an art house result that is pre-Lynchian in places. Regis Toomey's performance in particular is so off-the-wall as to evoke Dean Stockwell's act, 57 years later in "Blue Velvet". It's that weird, though the weirdness is clearly not intentional by Toomey.

The recitation of dialogue by all the actors shows a grappling with the new sound technology, and with the timing of how an actor should deliver his lines following another actor's cue.

But the direction is excellent, which is why Roland West got his name attached to the title, and the sets by Willian Cameron Menzies give "Alibi" the crazy art clubhouse look of "Dr. Mabuse" in places or even "Dr. Caligari".

Mostly it's a gangster pic, though, and a very good one strictly on that level.

But watch it for the 1929 changeover from Silent to Sound and you will see what I mean.

Two very big thumbs up for the accomplishment.

Dodgers win! See you in the World Series.

And in church tomorrow morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Man From Planet X" + Tremblay

Last night Grimsley came over, which was why there was no blog. When we hang out, the topics are mostly politics and current events, and I imagine no one would wanna read yet another blog about Trump. I'll be happy to write one after he is out of office (which hopefully will be soon), and then we can all celebrate. But for now, let's all just keep our eyes on MSNBC (or CNN if you prefer) and get our Trump news from them. And, make sure to vote on November 6. I know you can't wait. :)

I did watch a movie tonight, a sci-fi, and not only was it not cheesy this time, but was instead a near masterpiece, albeit of the B-Movie variety. But those are the type of flicks that made science fiction so great in the 1950s, the black and white films with low budgets and imaginative special effects, like "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still".

Tonight's film was called "The Man From Planet X" (1951), a title that is fairly well known, even to movie fans outside the genre. I had heard of it since my teens, but it was another case of only ever seeing snippets of it on late night tv. I'd never seen the entire movie, and it was the main reason I purchased the recent 4-Pack that also contained "The Angry Red Planet", et al. I bought that set mainly for "Planet X" because it was high time I saw it, and I was not disappointed.

The story is set on the Scottish moors, at night in the fog. A scientist stationed on the coast in an ancient stone tower is monitoring the orbit of the newly discovered "Planet X", which has arrived suddenly from outside our Solar System and is on track to pass closely by Earth in a few weeks time. An American reporter (Robert Clarke), a friend of the scientist from WW2, has arrived at the remote location to report on the impending catastrophe. He is picked up at a small local airstrip by the scientist's daughter (played by an actress named Margaret Field, Sally Field's mother), and a semi-platonic love interest is created. She is younger than the reporter, and was a kid during the war. She had a crush on Clarke, and he is protective of her as the story advances. The romance is mostly unstated but is present.

The main thing is that, while reporter Clarke is out snooping around on the Moors, with Sally Field's mom, they run across something that looks like a larger version of a ray gun. Like a table-top version, not hand held.

"Holy smokes"!, right?

I mean, you're on the Scottish Moors, the fog is so thick you can barely see, and you find a magnetic energy reflector (I think I've got that right).

But that find is nothing compared to what comes next. In the distance, just across a bog, they see a flashing light. Instead of walking away, or running, which is what any non- "inside a movie" person would do, they advance upon the flashing light. And as they get closer, they see that it is a.....

Space Ship, partially sunken into the swampy bog.

Me, I'd be outta there. At best I'd be keeping a safe distance because of cosmic rays and the like. But reporter Clarke and Sally's Mom walk right up to the conical, bulbous ship, and peer into one of it's windows. At first they don't see anything. But then.......

A face appears. The face is encapsulated inside a glass bubble, and is particularly scary if not hideous. It looks like a double-sized and elongated version of a human face, and when it appears it is one of those classic sci-fi moments that scared the bejeezus out of you as a kid.

This is The Man From Planet X, and at first it seems that he is on a peace mission, coinciding with the passage of his planet past Earth. But in junior high school we all learned the basics of dramatic conflict ("man against man, man against nature", etc) and so we know that if The Man From Planet X has come in peace, then to sustain a dramatic script there must be an adversary, and this comes in the person of William Schallert, the erstwhile Dad on "The Patty Duke Show", and a former president of the Screen Actor's Guild. Schallert was not known for playing bad guys, but he does so here, as a rival scientist who wants to exploit the technology of The Man From Planet X in order to enrich himself.

I shall tell you no more of the plot, but "The Man From Planet X", unlike other cheesier sci-fi films recently reviewed, should be regarded as downright scary. The whole thing takes place at night, on a fog shrouded sound stage, lol, with great backdrops, and the art direction has the look of old Universal Horror from the '30s. And "The Man From Planet X" himself is without doubt a frightening boogeyman.

Really, it's as much a movie to watch on Halloween night as much as any other favorite you might have. It's that good and has that much atmosphere, all at night, all on the remote moors, with superstitious townspeople.

Two Very Big Thumbs Up, therefore. You should watch it soon. Me, I need more classic sci-fi because this was the last movie from my four-pack. I can't run out this close to Halloween. :)

I did start another book by Paul Tremblay, though. He's the guy who wrote the recently read and reviewed "Cabin At The End Of The World". I am now reading his prior book, "A Head Full Of Ghosts", which I am finding to be scarier and more subtle. Tremblay's books are quick, easy reads, though literary, descriptive and invoking a gradual feeling of dread. Also highly recommended for fans of horror. :)

That's all I know for tonight. Go Dodgers tomorrow. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Hey Elizabeth + The Greatness Of Lon Chaney

Elizabeth, it was nice to see your photos today. I am glad you had a chance to do some photography, and wow, that is quite a landscape up there in Northern Minnesota. I guess Canada would be on the other side of the water? You have a lot more courage than I would have, to get as close to the edge as you do, lol, but you got some great shots of the falls as a result, and the the colors of the trees seem to stretch on forever. Have a blast on your travels and keep shooting, and posting too if you want. I was happy to have had the chance to do a few hikes and photos on my recent days off, especially at the Simi Indian Caves. Now I am back at Pearl's until Thanksgiving week, but I'll keep posting stuff too, as often as I can. :)

Well, tonight I am very impressed by Lon Chaney. A couple of nights ago I wrote about his performance in "The Unknown", and I mentioned that I had never seen an entire Lon Chaney movie until then. Now I've seen two more: "The Ace Of Hearts", which I saw last night but didn't get around to reviewing because of my attention toward "First Man", and "Laugh, Clown, Laugh", which I watched tonight and thought was a masterpiece.

I went from never having seen a Lon Chaney movie to seeing three in the past four days, and I think I can say for sure that he is one of the greatest actors I have ever seen. You'd have to watch his performances for yourself to see what I mean, but if you did I think you'd agree, especially if you saw him as "Tito" in "Laugh, Clown, Laugh", a Pagliacci story of two clowns in Italy who have a traveling act that they take to local halls. One day by the side of the road, Tito finds a small child, a girl of about three, who has been abandoned. His partner wants to leave her there for the church to take care of, but Tito says that God would want them to take her, as they are the ones who have found her. Tito names her "Simonetta" and adopts her as his own. Years pass and she is now a teenager, played by Loretta Young, who was only 15 at the time. Tito has trained Simonetta as a tightrope artist and she is part of the act.

But now that she is becoming a young woman, Tito is experiencing different feelings for her. She was not his biological daughter and he is falling in love, though he keeps his feelings to himself. Meanwhile, Simonetta has gone out one day to pick roses for her hair, on the property of a resident Count. The Count, a tall, handsome gent with total Silent movie star looks, sees her and offers his help, instantly enamored with Simonetta.

This begins the setup. Two men are in love with young Simonetta. One is Tito, the man who raised her, not as a father but as a professional circus clown. He trained her in what he knew and she has been successful. Therefore, his secret love is not portrayed as incestuous or creepy, but rather as something he keeps to himself as a gentleman, but that has little chance of fulfillment, especially because the younger Count Ravelli is also in love with Simonetta. Ravelli is dashing and extroverted; he lavishes gifts upon her and makes no secret of his intent to marry the young beauty.

Simonetta has had an unusual effect upon the two men. Tito the clown cannot stop crying because he loves her and cannot show it. Count Ravelli cannot stop laughing because he loves her too, and feels no need to hide it. He is overcome with joy while Tito is overcome with sadness.

Both men wind up in the office of a psychiatrist, and there they meet for the first time.

"Laugh, Clown, Laugh" is an incredibly moving story with a performance by Lon Chaney that must have set a standard or at least a very high bar for dramatic actors in the last years of the Silent era. You can't take your eyes off of him. Loretta Young was a natural for her role as Simonetta, she was exceptionally beautiful, and Chaney was able to play off of her youth and innocence. He works himself up into several states of emotion, his face is a map of what he feels from moment to moment. When you see the more subtle facial expressions on the great screen actors of today, this is where those techniques came from. I read an internet article this evening that referred to Lon Chaney as "the first great actor", and I cannot disagree. I think he's one of the greatest actors ever, as i said last night, and if you want to see for yourself, watch "Laugh, Clown Laugh", which is a masterpiece of the Silent era.

You can also watch Cheney in "The Unknown", which I reviewed a couple nights ago, or in "The Ace Of Hearts", a very unusual murder mystery involving a secret society of which Chaney is a member. I did not have time to review that film, but it is also a 10/10, with Lon Chaney playing another entirely different type of character, as he did in all three of the films I have now seen. If there was ever a guy with infinite range who could not be typecast, it was Lon Chaney.

I will be looking for more of his films, and I highly recommend all three of the ones I have mentioned from The Lon Chaney Collection that I got from the libe.

"The Unknown", "The Ace Of Hearts" and "Laugh, Clown, Laugh".

All three of these films are as good as movies can get. Two Huge Thumbs Up for each.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

A Return To The Chumash Caves + "First Man"

Today on my last day off I drove over to Simi Valley to see the Chumash caves for the first time in four years. I had a lot of fun, and it's pretty awe-inspiring to sit down in the caves, next to the cylindrical bowls carved into the sandstone by the Chumash many centuries ago. Local archaeologists say between 2000-5000 years. So it kind of blows your mind to sit there and imagine their presence in the cave. I also felt like apologizing to them for modern humans, because some idiot had used the last few of his remaining brain cells to paint graffiti all over the side of the cave. May the Great Spirit look down upon him with disfavor.

While I was there, I hiked partway up the Chumash Trail, which goes way back into the Simi Hills. The first (and only other) time I tried this trail was in Summer 2014. That time I got halfway up but had to stop because it's really steep and I wasn't yet an experienced hiker. Today it was a lot easier, but there really isn't much to see except beige colored, dried out hillsides, so I only went in about a half mile and then came back. Also, I had another reason for going to Simi today. A while back, somebody gave me a gift card for a movie chain that has no theaters in the Valley. The closest one is in Simi, and because I don't go there very often except for occasional hikes, I've had this gift card since about 2013 and had only used it for one movie, "Nightcrawler", also back in 2014. I still had fifteen bucks on the card, so since I wasn't working today I figured I'd go back to the same theater after my Chumash visit, to see "First Man", which I did and it was really great.

It's not quite the type of Mega Space Movie I was expecting, although there is a lot of Space Action, and the sections of the film that depict the Gemini and Apollo missions of Neil Armstrong are incredible, showing the most amazing - and harrowing - recreations of those flights that could be achieved in a dramatic depiction. You really feel what it must have been like to be inside the capsules with the astronauts, and you have a whole new appreciation for how tough they were, because for the first time, as far as I know, a director has paid attention to the physical aspects of rocket propulsion; the extreme buffeting, the G-forces, the blackout-inducing gyroscopic malfunctions that send a capsule spinning out of control. Watching the terror of the near-catastrophies the astronauts had to deal with gives you a perspective on just how difficult it was to get to the Moon.

The film is 50% about Neil Armstrong the man, and about his relationship with his family. This is also the film's emotional core. Armstrong was known to the public as a quiet, almost silent man. After his NASA career ended he almost never gave an interview and was more or less out of the public eye for the rest of his life. He is played exactly this way in the movie by Ryan Gosling, who does a good job of capturing Armstrong's reticence. Gosling shows Armstrong's personality only from the inside. Everything is held in, little to no emotion is expressed, and yet you can see the courage in his eyes, and you can see how much he wants to be chosen for the Apollo program. You can also see why the NASA bosses selected him to captain Apollo 11, the first mission to land on the Moon. Gus Grissom had been tagged to be the first man initially, but he was tragically killed in the fire onboard Apollo One, during a flight test. All of us who were kids back then remember the horror of that fire.

Armstrong is not shown to be a great pilot, not in comparison with other astronauts. He makes mistakes that almost get him grounded, and yet......he has a determination and dead serious demeanor that the bosses seem to like. Also, he is a top-notch engineer, a guy who can solve in-flight problems quickly. This gives him the edge to be The First.

I won't tell you any more about the story. Much of it is prominent world history anyway. The guy went to the Moon, and was the First Man to set foot on it. I - and millions of others - watched it happen. Neil Armstrong was like a rock star to kids my age, but he really didn't want to be.

The publicity for the movie reveals a major plot point that I was not previously aware of, nor I doubt was the majority of the general public. I will not mention this point, and you may already know of it if you are following the movie's release.

Neil Armstrong was a family man, an old fashioned do-your-job-and go-home kind of guy. Some of the other astronauts had bigger personalities and egos. Armstrong kept all his feelings inside, but his drive to succeed was stronger than all the others, driven perhaps in part by loss and hidden heartbreak.

There is a brief scene in the movie that I disagree with. It's not even a full scene, really, just a 30 second shot. I won't tell you when it comes, but I feel that the director took way too much dramatic licence to include it. I almost feel that it's an insult to Neil Armstrong to include this shot, because it blatantly didn't happen.

The shot in question doesn't detract from the quality of the movie, which is as much a family drama as it is a space film, and by "family" I include the families of all the astronauts.

But I just feel that if the director, a very young man of the new generation who did a great job on the film but was not alive at the time of Apollo 11, if he had known the true postwar stoicism that produced men like Neil Armstrong (and Gus Grissom, et al), he would never have included such a "well meaning" but entirely manipulative and deluded shot of dramatic fiction.

Most importantly, the shot is unfair to the memory of Neil Armstrong.

Nonetheless, two Humongous Thumbs Up for "First Man", carried by Ryan Gosling's determined portrayal and enriched by a wide supporting cast, most notably Claire Foy who plays his wife Janet, and the actor who plays Ed White, the first American to walk in space who is also the Armstrong's neighbor and close friend.

I don't go to many movies at the theater these days (and they showed 20 minutes of CGI movie previews beforehand, almost all comic book stuff), but "First Man" was well worth it. It's not precisely a Space Movie in the way of "Gravity" or another similar spectacle, but as far as the historical space missions that are recreated, you will never see a more accurate depiction. This is mindboggling stuff, showing what many consider to be the greatest technological achievement of the human race, landing a man on the Moon.

See it if you are so inclined.

I will be back at Pearl's tomorrow, and will see you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Unknown" (1927) starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford, directed by Tod Browning

Tonight I did not watch a cheesy science fiction movie, although I promise to make it up to you in the near future, perhaps even tomorrow. What I did watch instead was pretty interesting, a silent film from 1927 called "The Unknown" starring Lon Chaney and a young Joan Crawford. Lon Chaney (or Lon Chaney Sr. to differentiate him from his son, Lon Chaney Jr.) was known as The Man Of A Thousand Faces, for his ability to create memorable characters through the use of makeup and prosthetics, which he applied himself. He was his own makeup man, and a very talented one at that. He was also known as The King Of Horror, because before there was Boris Karloff as "Frankenstein" or Bela Lugosi as "Dracula", there was Lon Chaney as "The Phantom Of The Opera" and as "Quasimodo" in "The Hunchback Of Notre Dame". He played many other roles, too. IMDB lists 162 credits, quite a few considering that Cheney only lived to be 47 years old. Some of those movies were horror and many more may not have been, but almost all of them were silent. Cheney only made one sound picture before he died in 1930. And he was the first Horror Star.

I have only gotten into silent films in the last ten years or so, and have only become a lasting fan since about 2014. Now I love Silents (capital S), my favorites being in the German Expressionist Horror genre. I haven't seen a lot of Silent Movies, I'd guess somewhere around 25 (and I promise to build that number), but I have seen epics like "Ben Hur" and Fritz Lang's "Dr. Mabuse : Der Spieler" and "Die Nibelungen", and quite a few others. Maybe I should raise my estimate to about 35 films, but no matter.

The thing is, or was, that I had never seen any Lon Chaney films. I've seen Lon Jr. in a ton of stuff, and he's always been the Lon Chaney that I knew, as "The Wolfman" or in the "Inner Sanctum" movies. Lon Jr. was great, too, but I had never seen his Dad, who was said to be The King. I mean, I've seen film clips of "Phantom" or "Hunchback", and stills from many of his famous roles, which I would not be able to name, but I know the faces.

But what happened was, since it is October and we are closing in on Halloween, my favorite holiday, I was in need of horror movies to watch. I am always on the lookout for unseen films of any genre, and last week I found "Spider Baby" starring Lon Jr. That film was such a blast that I looked for more Jr. but couldn't find any movies with him that I hadn't seen. So then I thought, "what about his Dad"? And that led me to "The Lon Chaney Collection", discovered in the library database. The two dvd set arrived today at Northridge Libe and I watched "The Unknown" this evening. It was my first Lon Chaney movie ever, and I can see why he is held in such high regard. He has such an expressive face, an unusual face, rugged yet vulnerable, with deep dark eyes that can express mania or go shiny while holding back tears, all in the same scene.

In "The Unknown", he plays Alonzo, an armless knife-thrower in a traveling circus. He is in love with Joan Crawford, the daughter of the circus owner. She acts as his target in the knife-throwing act (which he does with his feet), and this is a different Joan Crawford than you are accustomed to seeing, because she is only 21 here and she looks more natural and less sculpted than she would later appear when she became a star. In fact I did not recognise her and was unaware it was she until I looked up the credits later on.

Alonzo has no arms, and he loves Joan, his beautiful target, who has come to detest men because, in her words, "they all want to paw me". She confides in Alonzo and trusts him because he has no "paws", no hands or arms. He mistakes her sharing for something more, but she doesn't love him, which begins to drive him mad. Wanting to remain close to her, Alonzo then sets Joan up with the circus strongman, certain that he will "put his paws" all over her, and one more rival will be eliminated.

But the strongman has a sensitive soul, and Alonzo's plan backfires. Joan Crawford falls for the strongman's heart, and then his muscles too. He has kept his hands off her until she was ready, and now they are to be married. Alonzo is crushed, and Lon Chaney plays this to the hilt. You cannot take your eyes off him in these scenes. Remember that in silents, the face had to tell the story. There was no dialogue. Boy, could Lon Chaney use his face.

Now, something is up with Alonzo the knife-thrower, besides the fact that he is obsessed with Joan Crawford, and that he has tried to trick her into rejecting the circus strongman.

That is all I will say. It's a short film, listed on IMDB at 63 minutes but the version I saw was only 50 minutes long. Perhaps footage was lost over the years. Though short, it is a complete story, and gives you a crash course in the greatness of Lon Chaney, and also of director Tod Browning, who went on to make "Dracula" four years later, just after Chaney died. Browning and James Whale were the great artistic visionaries of early horror cinema. Their work for Universal in creating an atmosphere and establishing Horror as a franchise will never be surpassed.

But yeah, Lon Chaney. It took performers of great expression to make cinema catch on with the public. Imagine if movies, this new technique of moving pictures, had come out with amateur actors or stories that were not well written or produced or art directed. The motion picture industry would never have gotten off the ground. So it was performers from the stage who made it happen, actors like Cheney and Crawford, who was also a dancer, who had already been performing in front of live audiences before they learned how to act in front of a camera. The history of cinema is an interesting subject, and it is fun to go back and watch the actors who laid the foundation for what became the art form of the 20th Century.

Two Thumbs Up for "The Unknown" which I think could be considered a Horror Film, weird as it is.

I have a couple more Lon Chaneys to come.

This aft, I did get up to O'Melveny for a nice hike. Nothing fancy, just the usual trail.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Time Travelers" + Ib & Ub + Vilmos + SB + Myspace

Okay, I did indeed watch yet another Cheesy Sci-Fi Movie from my four pack, and this one really was cheesy, extra cheesy in fact, like a special order at Del Taco. It was called "The Time Travelers" (1964) and was directed by the same guy who made "The Angry Red Planet" which we saw last night. His name is Ib Melchior, and not only is that an awesome name, but I think it would have been great if he could have made a film with the legendary Disney animator Ub Iwerks, because then you could have had Ib and Ub in the same movie. How amazing would that have been, and could you imagine their first meeting?

"Hello Ub, I'm Ib".

"Nice to meet you Ib, I'm Ub".

If Ib Melchior and Ub Iwerks had made a movie together, they could have put that meeting in the bonus material of the dvd, and it would have ruled.

But alas, they never met, so we have to console ourselves now with two of the flicks that Mr. Melchior did leave us with, one that was Pretty Doggone Good ("Angry Red Planet") and one that was Pretty Doggone Bad But Still Had Redeeming Qualities ("The Time Travelers").

Once again, some scientists (three this time, two men and a woman) are on a mission. They are again operating in a roomy laboratory with plenty of reel-to-reel computers, floor space, and circuitry. They are powering up their system to dangerous voltage levels in order to open up a Time Portal, 48 hours in the past. Suddenly a rectangular opening appears on the wall - a window to the recent past! But something is wrong. The entire onscreen panorama looks like dead ground, barren like Mars or the Alabama Hills.

During these proceedings, a clerk has entered the lab. He is there by the order of the unspecified company's president, who has tasked him with telling the scientists that they are using too much electricity. The company cannot afford it (must be a fly-by-night time portal enterprise), but while he is waiting for the scientists to wrap up their experiment and turn the machines off, he instead witnesses the Opening Of The Portal, which in true Ib Melchior fashion actually looks pretty cool, like a 46" flat screen tv.

Ib isn't the best with scripts, but he's pretty good with special effects, especially for the early 1960s.

Well anyway, this nitwit clerk, played by a guy named Steven Franken, whose face you have seen a thousand times, does something really dumb; he jumps through the Time Portal into the Barren World, which as it turns out has been obliterated by nuclear war. We learn this through some oft-seen but still shocking stock footage from Bikini Atoll.

How did this happen, and how could it have happened 48 hours ago, in the past? Well, as it turns out, the scientists are not looking at the past. What they are seeing on the giant flat screen is the future, about 107 years worth (give or take). What happened is similar to the mistake that was made the other night in "Beyond The Time Barrier". Remember when the rocket pilot made a slight wrong turn and went Beyond The Time Barrier? Well tonight, the scientists cranked the voltage too high and instead of opening a Time Portal to the past, they opened one into the future, and they saw that the Earth had been destroyed.

But that's not important for now, because the nitwit clerk has jumped through the portal! He can't get back, and so first one scientist also jumps through to try and rescue him. Then another scientist jumps through to save those two. Finally, the last scientist jumps through the Time Portal to save all the others, and now all four of them are trapped in the mountains outside Barstow (um....I mean "in the future"), and the Time Portal is collapsing. Now they cannot get back.

Things happen fast once the Portal closes. Mutants quickly appear at the crest of the ridge and haul ass over the side. They are tall and skinny and have bald heads, and are very hyper, just like the Mutants in "Beyond The Time Barrier", which was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Maybe director Melchior saw that film and copied Ulmer's Mutants, or maybe Mutants have a universally recognized standard, where if you've seen one Mutant, you've seen 'em all. Anyhow, they sure seem to be aggressive, perpetually upset about something.

I am not gonna tell you too much more about "The Time Travelers" because I am falling asleep - it is Sunday night after all - but I will finish by saying that instead of making a really scary time travel movie, Ib Melchior turns around and places the scientists underground, where the last survivors of the human race are ensconced. They include an eccentric European scientist with a blonde comb over, an a-hole captain in a Ziggy Stardust suit, and a Playboy babe. With the help of some SAG extras they are constructing androids to help them build a rocket to get the hell out of Dodge, because the Earth is toast. A conflict arises because all The Time Travelers want is to get back home to their own time, but the Undergrounders won't help them, and the Mutants are about to break through the walls and can't be stopped as always.

"The Time Travelers" was not easy to sit through, but it wasn't that hard, either. I've seen worse low-budget sci-fi, and this one had a lot of charm, some comic relief, some 1960s style sexy romance, and some very colorful sets in the underground control rooms, colors that looked like technological jewels.

An interesting credit was listed at the beginning of the film : Cinematography by William Zsigmond.

I thought, "It's gotta be him", and so after the movie ended I checked him on IMDB. Sure enough, it was Vilmos Zsigmond, who early in his career was still using the Americanized version of his name.

Vilmos Zsigmond went on thirteen years later to shoot one of the greatest science-fiction films ever made, "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" by Steven Spielberg. That film was also known for it's colorful special effects. Maybe Spielberg saw "The Time Travelers", too.

Zsigmond went on to be known as one of the greatest cinematographers in the history of motion pictures.

I will give "The Time Travelers" one single, but very strong, Thumb Up for the positive qualities I have mentioned above. It's super cheesy, the story is unfocused, and yet if you are an old time sci-fi fan you must see it because of it's value as an artifact. ////

Elizabeth, if you still read this thing, I was glad to see you back on FB today, even in just a "memory" post. You mentioned Myspace, and you know, it's funny because Myspace is now considered something long gone and forgotten, and decidedly uncool, a word you used in the opposite way to describe not having had a Myspace page. Not many people would describe Myspace now as having once been cool, but I think it was. I liked Myspace, and I wrote a ton of stuff there, and the reason I liked it was because it was one-on-one. There wasn't a newsfeed with a ton of spam, and there wasn't a multitude of people posting their emotions all day long. Myspace was set up so that you had your own page, which you could customise, and if you wanted to interact, you could look at another person's page - one page at a time. It was one on one, Facebook without the chaos.

Of course, FB took over quickly for exactly that reason, because it allowed social chaos. And you can alleviate it somewhat by blocking stuff, etc. And we have had a lot of fun on FB over the years, no doubt. But Myspace was the original, and I think it was pretty cool, too, despite the uncool reputation it has unfairly been labeled with in recent years.

I am glad you posted and hope all is well.  :):)

We had good singing in church this morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Doug Pinnick at Harmon/Kardon + "The Angry Red Planet" (with classic special effects)

Something a little different today. I went over to the Harmon/Kardon building on Roscoe and Balboa to see Doug Pinnick play a half-hour set with his band. Doug is of course the bassist and lead vocalist for King's X. He had announced on Facebook this morning that he would be playing as part of a Guitar Center promotion billed as "Harman Live". The larger objective was to draw musicians and fans to check out Harman gear, like a mini NAMM. They had the gear booths inside, the stage was outside. I got there just a few minutes before Doug was to go on, so I didn't go in the building, and I was right up against the stage when he did play, as you can tell if you saw the close-up photo I posted on FB tonight.

It was a lot of fun. There were perhaps 75 to 100 people milling around the stage area in the parking lot. Many of them had come to see Parliment Funkadelic, who were headlining. I came to see Doug, who played several Jimi covers, a heavy version of "Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers, and a Poundhound song to open. His band was really great, and included a fantastic guitar player I had never heard of before, a guy named Rafael Moreira, who according to Wiki does a lot of television and session work. He was on fire, and Doug was great as always. The Harmon/Kardon building, which used to be more like a campus until a recent shopping development was built there, was formerly the site of JBL Systems in the 1980s (JBL made great speakers) and before that, in the 1960s, it was very famous as the site of RCA.

So that was a nice thing for today, a free concert by Doug, even if a short one. After the show I went out to Santa Susana for a two mile hike. No climbing cause the ground was muddy after last night's rain. I just stayed on the main trail and headed back when the sun went behind the mountains.

So........whataya think I did tonight? You guessed it! I watched another "classic" (or possibly not) science-fiction movie from my four film collection.

I know I'm the world's most boring guy, but if you're reading this ("you" being the General or Specific You) then you're stuck with me and we're in this together, and I promise - but will not guarantee - to be less boring in the future. But for now we forge ahead.  :)

Tonight's movie was called "The Angry Red Planet" (1959), another great title that hints at things to come, just as "Beyond The Time Barrier" did last night. In "Angry Red", four astronauts are on their way to Mars, aboard one of those 1950s sci-fi movie rockets that looks like a rocket on the outside but inside has a capsule that's as big as a living room, with walls of computer equipment and plenty of floor space. The captain (Gerald Mohr), a macho Humphrey Bogart lookalike, spends much of the first 20 minutes trying to make inroads to the heart of the crew's red-headed biologist, played by Nora Hayden. The film starts with Cool Air Force Stuff just like "Time Barrier" did last night, but then succumbs to scenes of trivial banter inside the space capsule, initiated by Mohr toward Hayden. Mohr is such a hairy chested hard guy that you get the feeling he's as impressed with himself in real life as he is in the film. The cast is rounded out with two more astronauts : a Brooklyn wise guy who is in charge of security, and a goateed scientist, because in the 1950s it helped you to be taken seriously as a scientist if you had a goatee. Kinda the opposite of now. :)

Just when you are thinking that this movie is destined for Schlockville, the rocket arrives on The Angry Red Planet, and everything turns around in a hurry. Looking out the spaceship's portals, all the crew can see is red. The sky, the ground, the plants, everything is red. (wait a minute......the plants?). Yep, plants on Mars. In fact, it looks like a regular jungle out there.

But the Redness is what counts, because now that our four astronauts are on Mars, everything is going to be depicted in something called Cinemagic, which looks like someone put a red filter over the camera and then partially solarised the negative. Actually, the Cinemagic scenes look pretty cool to be honest, and the special effects are of the kind that would have scared the bejesus out of you, had you seen this movie as an eight year old kid. All of the Mars scenes in the film are really good, even cheesily good, because of the Cinemagic effects. One reviewer said that the Blu-Ray looks amazing, and I am tempted to buy it because the FX are that good.

But wait! I don't own a Blu-Ray player! Holy smokes, Ad. You almost jumped the gun.

Okay, so scratch that. But you probably do own one, because you (being again the General or Specific You) are more technically up-to-date than I am. So it is you who should purchase the Blu-Ray of "The Angry Red Planet", just so you can see the Mars scenes in all their Cinemagic glory. I think they are even better than the more realistic (but not half as effective) scenes in a modern Mars movie like "The Martian". And who knows, maybe "The Angry Red Planet" is the more realistic of the two.

Lord knows, Mars has a lot to be pissed about. It's probably got high blood pressure and that's why it's so red. If you go there, it may be best not to swagger around with your shirt open and your chest hair showing, ala Captain Mohr, because there is a nebulous three-eyed dude running the joint. He is in no mood to deal with Earthlings, as he makes clear in his arrival speech, and what's more, he controls a Giant Blob that lives in the Martian lake. One signal from Three-Eyes to The Blob and you are done, no matter how many drama classes you have taken back in New York.

This is the Real Thing you are dealing with on "The Angry Red Planet", and because the special effects signify the seriousness of the situation, I am going to give the movie two thumbs up, despite the aforementioned Gerald Mohr Factor and accompanying dialogue.

It's not an overall classic like "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers", but you still need to see this film for the Mars scenes, which - though slightly cheesy - are one of a kind.

That's all I know for tonight, and I've gotta get up in a few hours for church, so I'll see you there in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Beyond The Time Barrier" + The Time Domain as per Col. Bearden

I'm writing from home tonight, off work as mentioned in last night's blog. We had a freak thunderstorm a few hours ago, which cut short my usual walk, but earlier in the evening I did go over to my photographic perch on the roof of the CSUN parking garage to snap a few pix of the sunset. We hadn't had a good one all Summer because there was never a cloud in the sky (and no chemtrails, either), but this afternoon when I got home from Pearl's I saw the clouds approaching and thought there might be a chance for some photos, one of which I posted on FB, and another on my Flickr account. I love taking photos, and I need a new cam because my Linux has a dust smudge on the sensor, and I have to work every photograph around it. I try to hide the smudge in a dark area in any given photo, but it isn't always possible and anyway I am tired of doing it. So, a new cam is in my future in the new year.

And hopefully some new road trips to take pics at places I haven't been to.

Tonight on the Movie Parade, I watched a science fiction "classic" (well, not really) called "Beyond The Time Barrier" (1960). The imposing sci-fi title helps to save the film from C or D-grade movie status, and so does some awesome Air Force stock footage of the takeoff and flight of an F-102 fighter jet, posing as a rocket craft called the "X-80". Me being an X-15 fan, I was loving the first 10 minutes of the film, which makes use of a miniature F-102 to take the rocket plane scenario into space. The craft is supposed to fly to 500,000 feet, and the special FX are pretty good for a low budget movie. The pilot has flown to the desired altitude and is now approaching the speed of Mach 17 or some such, and what happens is that he makes a wrong turn, and at that speed it takes him Beyond The Time Barrier, fulfilling the promise of the title, which is very important.

I think that - besides fulfilling the promise of your movie title - that if you are going to fly an X-80, that you'd better keep both hands on the steering wheel so you don't make a wrong turn, because if you do you will have gone Beyond The Time Barrier, and if that happens - good luck to you.  :)

At any rate, for the first 10 or fifteen minutes, I thought I may have stumbled upon a heretofore unknown sci-fi classic. It had Air Force footage, it was shot in black and white (a must for early science fiction), and it had a serious plot, ala the mission of the test pilot, who ultimately breaks through the Time Barrier. I have been reading this book for several months now called "Free Energy From The Vaccum" by Col. Thom Bearden, all about electrodynamics and how electrical systems interact with what Bearden calls the "time domain". We know that time is a dimension, as part of spacetime (Einstein's fourth dimension). Col. Bearden says that electromagnetic energy comes from the time domain, which is a physical thing. Time is physical, and it contains highly compacted energy.

Don't listen to me, just read the book because it's a life changer. It's 900 pages long, and quite a slog if you don't have a degree in electromagnetic engineering, but holy smokes is it ever a mindblower. It has taken me nearly four months to read because I only tackled about 7 or 8 pages per day. I wanted to comprehend everything I was reading, which is very technically oriented, and I am now near the finish line and will call it one of the greatest books I have ever read.

And because of it, I had a head start on the theory of going Beyond The Time Barrier. But then, when the pilot makes his wrong turn, instead of more awesome Air Force weird stuff, the movie turns into a set piece, and a level of "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is aspired to.

Well, perhaps things don't get that bad (or good), but it looks like someone on the production team fell in love with a location called the Dallas Fairgrounds. You might not expect that Dallas, Texas would be the place where 1960s "futuristic" architecture could be encountered, but I guess that some sophistication slipped through the cracks because the fairground set looks like something out of "Star Trek". The set is used as an underground "Citadel" where the pilot is taken, when he lands the X-80 sixty four years in the future, in 2024.

This means that he hasn't landed yet in our time, but in the movie, he's there.

The people who have captured him after he lands are victims of a worldwide plague, caused by cosmic rays that broke though the ozone layer because of too much atomic testing. These people live in the underground Citadel, besieged by Mutants with bald heads. They are on the verge of being depopulated, and so they want the pilot, who is healthy and not afflicted with plague, to be the sire of a new human race. In this regard, the Citadel leaders introduce him to a beautiful young deaf mute played by Darlene Tompkins (who was in "Blue Hawaii" with Elvis).

While it would be hard to turn down this offer, the pilot remains stoic in his insistence that he be released so that he can attempt a return flight to his own year of 1960 (a good year if I do say so myself). He gives a solemn promise that, if successful in his return to the past, he will make every attempt to prevent the future plague from happening.

"Beyond The Time Barrier" starts off in classic B&W/Air Force sci-fi fashion, then detours into socio/theatrical weirdness for the middle 45 minutes. The midsection of the movie has the feel of experimental theater, when everyone was exploring themes of the human psyche via the sci-fi format, in shows like "Outer Limits". The acting ranges from okay to pretty bad, though director Edgar G. Ulmer does keep things moving.

But the story does rally at the end, in the final 15 minutes, when the test pilot does make his return flight. I am revealing a lot of plot and giving spoilers, but in this case I have to, or you will never be compelled to see this movie, which I feel you need to do.

I can't give it Two Thumbs Up, and yet One Thumb is not enough. It is cheesy to be sure, but there's also that jet footage at the beginning and the end, and that romance in the middle.

Plus, there's that title.

At the end of the day, you know you have to see any movie called "Beyond The Time Barrier". Sci-Fi fits the Halloween paradigm, so you're good on that score, and anyway.....there's Mutants.

You can't go wrong with Mutants, right?

You of course agree, and so all is well.  :)

I will see you in the morning after a sleep-in.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Chandu The Magician" with Bela Lugosi + Disneyland Won't Wait Much Longer

Tonight's film was "Chandu The Magician" (1932), a fun horror/fantasy starring Edmund Lowe as an American magician who has become a Yogi after studying Hindu mysticism in India. As a Yogi (and I am very tempted to make a cartoon reference here, but I won't), he has learned the power of hypnotism to control men's minds. He learned other tricks as well, such as how to bring his spirit out of his body so that it appears to an enemy as his ghost. This comes in handy when Chandu is confronted by Bela Lugosi's thugs as he chases the madman down. Bela plays "Roxor", a crazed megalomaniac who seeks control of a Death Ray invented by American scientist "Robert Regent". He kidnaps Regent and holds him hostage in his Rock Palace abode, a mansion/laboratory set into the side of a high granite wall.

"Chandu" in real life is Frank Chandler, a friend of the Death Ray inventor and his family. As Chandu, with his new mesmeric ability, he can help to free Robert Regent, who has refused to give the evil Roxor any information about The Ray, even when his family is lured to Roxor's Palace and captured to be used as bait.

Enter Chandu, wearing a jeweled turban, who just happens to be visiting the area to look up his old flame Princess Nadji (played by Irene Ware).

An "Indiana Jones" style adventure ensues, as Chandu and the Princess set out to rescue the scientist Regent and his family, and in the process to stop Roxor from getting his hands on the Death Ray.

The movie owes it's success to Lugosi's high energy performance and the art direction of William Cameron Menzies, an early Hollywood genius who later created the sets for "Gone With The Wind". The laboratory he designed for this film, and the artillery-sized Death Ray, replete with large glass vacuum bulb and ringed transducers, looks like the ultimate Mad Scientist workshop, and gives Bela Lugosi a chance to tear into humanity as Roxor is about to realize his dream of world domination.

The sets and miniatures are amazing for 1932. What makes "Chandu" so entertaining is it's combination of styles. It's a horror movie, but also an adventure into exotic Eastern culture, but then it's also a fantasy with all kinds of mystical elements pre-Harry Potter.

It's purely for fun. I acquired it this week as part of a three movie set called "Fox Horror Classics Volume 2", which I ordered from Amazon. I already had "Volume 1" of this series from years ago, so because it is October I figured it was high time I ordered "Volume 2".

Now I need to order "The Return Of Chandu", which became a weekly serial in theaters. Serials were episodic, like a TV show at the movies, and in this one they turned around and made Bela Lugosi the good guy. They cast him as Chandu in "Return", because in the original movie, the star Edmund Lowe was not seen as having much charisma, which is a fairly accurate assessment. But yeah! - I've gotta get the "Return Of Chandu" because of Bela Lugosi, who I think was one of Hollywood's greatest movie stars. He did exactly what was expected of him, and in doing so he created indelible characters of cinematic horror.

To compare, try finding an actor now who could remotely pull off Lugosi's natural style. Even if you got a technically brilliant RADA-trained Englishman, it still wouldn't work, because Bela was doing Bela, and he had an irreplicable voice and face and body. That is what makes a star, among other things.

Well anyway, I am probably jabbering. I am kind of on a Work Treadmill right now, where all I do is my job and then take a break in the evening to watch a movie. I know it must be boring to read about movies day after day, but that's my life at the moment.

Tomorrow night I will be at home, off work for a few days. I have contemplated going to Disneyland, because it is Halloweentime there, but I would have to go by myself, and Disneyland is the one place that you absolutely positively cannot go by yourself.

Can you?

I mean, it would be horrible, but on the other hand I haven't been to D-Land since October 2011, and I am gonna die if I don't go soon, and my sister Vickie (my former Disneyland partner) is never gonna go again, she just isn't interested. So I have no one to go with, but if I don't go soon, it won't be good.

And yet to go alone might be terrible.

At some point I will have to go, because Disneyland won't take no for an answer, not from me anyway.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Sadie", an excellent new film, at CSUN tonight

Tonight I went back to the Cinematheque at CSUN to see a new movie that opens this Friday in select theaters. It's an Indie film called "Sadie" (2018), about a thirteen year old girl who lives with her Mom in a trailer park outside Seattle. Her Dad, who she worships, is a soldier stationed in Afghanistan. As the movie opens, she is reading (in voiceover) a letter she is about to send him, expressing her hope that he will soon be able to return home. It seems that her father is in no hurry to do that, however, because although he had promised his wife and Sadie that he would be back when his previous tour was over, he went and re-upped anyway. His wife understands that he isn't in a hurry to return home because he is addicted to soldiering and also, he has fallen out of love with her during his time away. He still writes regularly to his daughter Sadie, though, and she rationalizes his broken promises of return by saying that his country needs him more than his family does. In identifying with her distant Dad, she has developed a military complex of her own, dressing in a green fatigue jacket and pulling her long hair up into a knit cap.

Sadie's mother is lonely. She works as a nurse and comes home to her alienated daughter, knowing her husband isn't going to return home, even when he comes back to America. But then a new tenant moves into the trailer park, a smiling but rough around the edges auto mechanic played by an actor named John Gallagher Jr., whose face you will recognize from various TV shows and movie parts over the past ten years. He is excellent as the newcomer into Sadie's Mom's life. We learn his back story and how he developed an addiction to painkillers. Sadie hates him for moving in on her Mom, who tries to explain the adult complexities of a broken marriage. Sadie only knows her Dad's letters. He loves her, so he must love her Mom too. Oh how hard is the passage from adolescent belief in what should be true to the gradual adult knowledge in what actually is true.

Kids know more than adults do when it comes to matters of the heart, because they aren't yet broken.

But when they become so, they try to fix the break, rather then resign themselves to it.

This is what Sadie tries to do. She sees Gallagher's character "Cyrus" for part of what he is : a guy moving on her Mom while her Dad is away. But what she doesn't see is that Cyrus knows her Mom has given up on the marriage. "Sadie" the movie has realistic characters. No one is a complete victim or bad guy. But Sadie sees things in black and white, and in identifying with her Dad, she develops a soldier's methodology for getting rid of those she considers her enemies. She does this to save her family, a child's most basic foundation of stability.

"Sadie" is one of the best independent films I have seen in recent years, reminiscent of the films of Kelly Reichardt, who also works out of the Pacific Northwest. "Sadie" was directed by Megan Griffiths, who I was not previously aware of, but she has a more polished technique than Reichardt, who uses non-professional actors in some roles, and whose films have a rawer look. "Sadie" is slicker, in a good way, meaning that it looks like an Indie film but plays like a major release because of the way it is shot and edited, and it's locations and lighting, but most of all because of it's cast and writing. Besides being a character study, it has the qualities of a thriller. Griffiths wrote the story, which feels like real life, with tweaked dialogue to make the characters stand out. Comic moments are provided by an 11 year old actor named Keith L. Williams, who steals every scene he is in. He is Sadie's best friend and neighbor "Francis", from an African-American family living in the trailer next door. Francis is a chubby nerd and a shrimp, and is a perfect foil to Sadie's taller, stoic stick figure.

The actors are all first rate, and the chemistry between them makes this story feel like real life.

This is a movie where I do not want to reveal much plot, but I will say "see it because it's really good"!

And I don't say that about very many Indie films, or even many new films in general.

"Sadie" is played by a young actress named Sophia Mitri Schloss. Her Mom is played by Melanie Lynskey, who I had not previously heard of but who is a New Zealand actress who has been in many well known movies. She got her start with Peter Jackson in "Heavenly Creatures".

Two Very Big Thumbs Up for "Sadie". Here's hoping that more independent films with have this level of quality, and attention to story and character.

That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)