"Angel" starring Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall and Melvyn Douglas

Tonight's movie was called "Angel" (1937) starring Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall and Melvyn Douglas, and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. I discovered the film in a library database search of "Universal Vault" dvds. We have enjoyed and reviewed several of Lubitsch's stylish comedies in the past couple of years, including "Design For Living", "Trouble In Paradise" and "To Be Or Not To Be", so "Angel" seemed a sure bet to be another good one, and it was - in fact it was a minor masterpiece - but not in the way we have come to expect.

Lubitsch's milieu (sorry but I had no choice) is light comedy, slightly screwballed and expertly edited. He was known for the liquid technical excellence of his films, and "Angel" is no exception. Where it differs is in the subject matter and consequently, the tone. "Angel" is not a comedy, nor is it light (excepting a few comedic moments from supporting players). Instead it is a serious take on what can happen to a loveless marriage.

Dietrich is married to Herbert Marshall, an English diplomat with the League Of Nations, the precursor to the UN. Marshall is always away, visiting one country or another, and when he is home he never has time for his wife. All of this we learn as the movie progresses. As it begins, we see Dietrich arriving in Paris and checking into a hotel under the name of "Mrs. Brown". It is made clear that the desk clerk knows this is a pseudonym. He assures her his lips are sealed. She is free to conduct whatever business she desires during her stay.

A party is taking place, hosted by an expatriate Grand Duchess from Russia. You know it's an old Hollywood film, directed by someone like Lubitsch or George Cukor, when you have a Grand Duchess as a character. :)

At any rate, Dietrich seems to have a passing acquaintance with the Duchess, perhaps due to her husband. It really isn't explained. But she attends the party at the Duchess's mansion, and there she meets a handsome young Melvyn Douglas. I was asking myself, "who is that actor?....I know him....who is he?" It took me a few scenes to realize it was Douglas, who people my age mostly know from his many roles as a much older actor, one in his senior years. Here he is only 36. Anyhow, she has come to Paris because she is a neglected wife, and she is open to adventure, so when Douglas starts making advances, she reciprocates. By the end of a ten or fifteen minute sequence he has fallen in love with her and dubbed her his "Angel", hence the movie's title. It all happens quickly. There is only a kiss, nothing is consummated, but Douglas tells her he will never let her go. He is head over heels.

Marlene Dietrich, however, gets cold feet and runs off while Douglas goes to buy her some flowers. She is too secure in her lifestyle to Marshall the privileged government official to risk it for a one night fling. Still, that's exactly what she wanted when she left for Paris and registered as "Mrs. Brown". She wanted a fling; until she got one. Then she regained her senses and went back home.

Her marriage to the suave Herbert Marshall isn't entirely loveless. She is devoted to him and, in the tradition of 1930s movie wives, rich and poor, she is Ever Cheerful as she stands by him even though he pays no attention to her. She is constantly suggesting little things they could do together, like walks or shopping trips, or a night at the opera. But he always has a phone call to take instead, which always leads to another trip out of the country. He makes excuses about the job and his duty to the country, but we can see that he won't even spend a little time with her.

I must digress here to say that, though I've only seen her in a handful of films, Marlene Dietrich was a very talented actress with tremendous onscreen charisma. She could do it all, and it's nice to see her playing vulnerable here. Man is she great.

Midway through the film comes a twist in plot, and it livens things up considerably. I will briefly interject again to say that, for the first twenty minutes or so, the pace and direction of the movie seemed very wooden. In his initial scenes, Melvyn Douglas might as well have been cut out of cardboard, so dull were his line readings. I was thinking, "Where's the famous Lubitsch Touch"? Where's the Lightness, the Style, the Effervescence"? I didn't yet know it was to be a serious drama, and perhaps Ernst Lubitsch wasn't used to directing Serious. So my interjection is mainly to say that if you watch "Angel", please persevere through the opening twenty minutes of mollassed-paced plot, enacted partly by the near-corpselike Douglas. Maybe Lubitsch was finding his way with dramatic storytelling, I dunno, but once the film gets going, around the 30 minute mark, it never lets up (though still at a dramatic pace) and it eventually earns it's near masterpiece marks, trust me.

The twist is that Melvyn Douglas and Herbert Marshall will meet up themselves. They turn out to be old Army buddies who haven't seen each other in a generation, While they are drinking and catching up, Douglas tells Marshall all about this beautiful woman he has just met right there in Paris, a stunner whom he has dubbed "Angel".

He has no idea that "Angel" is Herbert Marshall's wife, and Marshall has no idea that his wife went to Paris with the intention of cheating on him, even though she never did. She walked right up to the point of no return but never crossed it.

Man, what a set up. Here we have the Great Screenwriting Principle at work once again. Just try to pull off a script this great nowdays, I dare you. The three actors in the triangle will pull out every possible nuance in the dynamic of love, trust, neglect, betrayal and redemption, and every last drop will be squeezed out of the proverbial downward spiral of the marriage that cannot be saved due to lack of compromise and loving communication.

This one will spiral out of control all the way to the end, with no moral compunction on the part of Melvyn Douglas, who - while he is not an out-and-out skunk - would be more than happy to break up the marriage of Dietrich and Marshall. Dietrich has tried to get rid of him, but he won't go, and anyway she can't resist him because he is Just Too Handsome (in keeping with standard 1930s romantic protocol).

But she also knows he's a Cad, even though a subtle one, and that may yet influence her decision on whether or not to keep her marriage. ////

"Angel" gets two Very Big Thumbs Up from me, despite it's somnambulent start, because of it's realistic and very human portrayal of how such a scenario of potential infidelity would play out. Whoever wrote the dialogue to this movie really understood what motivates a woman in this situation. I am not a woman, of course, but I'm a human being and this is a human story. The roles could easily be reversed, though in the 1930s there were traditional marital roles for men and women. A woman trapped in a marriage that "had everything", luxury, prestige, travel, social cache, really only had one way out, to summon the courage to find a man who actually loved her.

In the movie, Marlene Dietrich does find such a man, so there is a happy ending.

My highest recommendation for "Angel". See you in the morning in church.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoo :):)

Chrysta Bell + "What Now, Little Man?" starring Margaret Sullavan and Douglass Montgomery

Sorry I missed you last night. Grimsley came over and we did watch a movie, but it was one you've probably seen, "Nightcrawler" (2014) with Jake Gyllenhal, so I didn't bother to review it. I've seen it three times myself. Tonight I am a little disappointed because I missed the Chrysta Bell concert, which I had a ticket for and had been very much looking forward to. I'm a big CB fan, I've seen her four times since 2012. Tonight would've been the fifth, in a little 150 seat theater in Beverly Hills at a place called The Wallis Annenberg Center, but misfortune struck at the last minute. I was checking the Wallis' website for directions and I noticed a posted showtime of 7pm. I figured it must mean the time the doors opened, but I had Grim call them anyway, just to make sure. He was gonna go with me to the show. Grim called me back with the bad news : "Nope, that's the time she goes onstage". I had surmised that if 7pm was the actual set time, then it must have to do with the fact that The Wallis is in Beverly Hills, and BH is populated by elderly folks, who - if they go to shows at The Wallis - would want those shows to begin and end early.

Grim said I was exactly right, the person he spoke to on the phone told him as much : "we start most of our shows at 7 due to our clientele".

My question, which I didn't get to ask, was "why would Chrysta Bell play such a place? None of the centenarians who go to The Wallis would've even heard of her. Of course, her fans would still go, but how many of 'em would've had trouble with the 7pm start time? I sure did. There was no way I could make it down to BH by 7 during my evening break. I don't get off until 6:30, and with traffic......fuggettabouddit

So there was no way I could go, and I was hugely disappointed. I would've rather missed the King Crimson show, to be honest, because they play almost every year. CB rarely plays, and she's....well, she's CB. It sucked on wheels to miss this show. But what could I do?

Well, I could watch a movie and that's what I did. I saw an unusual, philosophical story about love and marriage set in Weimar Germany during the Depression. The film was called "Little Man, What Now?" (1934), starring the tempestuous Margaret Sullavan and the handsome Douglass Montgomery, who has the appearance of a Silent film star. Both are American actors and the movie is played in English, though Sullavan and Montgomery portray a young German couple named Lammchen and Hans.

She has just become pregnant, and Hans is struggling to keep a job in the faltering economy. There is also a political upheaval taking place, though no Fascist faction is shown, so the story must be taking place in the 1920s (no date is given). The agitprop is mostly coming from workers inflamed by the upstart of Marxism in Russia and Eastern Europe not far away. Hans steers clear of the political rallies. He has his own philosophy, summed up in one line : "A peaceful man will have no trouble".

All Hans wants to do is earn enough money to support his wife and soon to be born child. But he does lose his job to a tyrannical boss, and now the couple are forced to live with Hans' mother, an independent and forceful woman who has plenty of money. She likes to throw parties for her friends, and turns out to be a Madame, much to Hans' shame. But while they are living with her, Hans and Lammchen meet a debonair older man, Herr Jachman, who will end up as their benefactor.

Jachman is played to perfection by the great Alan Hale, father of "The Skipper". Hale Sr. was in so many movies in the 1930s that you couldn't have missed him. Here, upon meeting the couple, he flirts with the supple, leggy Lammchen and ignores Hans her husband. He's a rogue but ultimately a kind one. When he realizes Lammchen will never fall for him because she is devoted to Hans, Herr Jachman then decides to go the noble route, and help the couple rather than try to break them up.

He does this in a grand way (which is total Alan Hale, who I am a big fan of), but then we find out that Herr Jachman has a destiny waiting for him that we may have suspected was coming.

Hans and Lammchen continue their upward struggle. He finally gets a job as a salesman in a new Art Deco looking department store. But the bosses there have set quotas on the employees.

There is a lot of union politics expressed in the script, as well as some far out personal philosophies. The crew ask Hans if he is a Pacifist. Another salesman is a practicing Nudist (not shown, haha).

Remember that this is Weimar Germany, which had Expressionist Art and filmmaking and all kinds of far out cabaret nightclubs in the 1920s. The atmosphere was very liberal, but the economy was crashing, which led to the rise of Hitler.

"What Now, Little Man?", directed by the great Frank Borzage, is not a political film. It is a film about love conquering all, set against a background of political unrest and economic injustice.

Hans, being a "peaceful man" (his words) and Lammchen his ever optimistic wife, are immune to all that is going on around them, because they have each other, and most importantly, they have a baby on the way.

This is a movie about the supreme importance of love and family above all other concerns, even politics, even economics or any other socio-political "hive mind" propaganda you care to name.

I'll not tell you the outcome, but everything hinges on Hans having enough money to take his wife to the hospital to have her baby. The monetary issues are so similar to today that it will seem, in that sense, that you are watching a new release. Ditto the politics, and the naive return to socialism that is being proposed by a few current candidates.

We've been through all this before, folks, almost 100 years ago. Communism didn't work then any more than Fascism did, and neither will work now.

But love and family will always work, and having faith. Just simple personal faith, not the grandstanding type.

"Little Man, What Now?" is a beautiful movie, with wonderful performances from Sullavan and Montgomery, and especially Alan Hale. There are many themes in the script, and there are other supporting characters I haven't identified who play important roles in the outcome.

You know how "they don't make movies like this anymore"?

This film could be Exhibit A in that discussion. They couldn't even try to make it today. /////

I give it my Highest Recommendation, Two Huge Thumbs Up. The world needs movies like this one.

See you in the morning. Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Unfaithfully Yours" starring Rex Harrison and Linda Darnell

Tonight I watched a very funny (and wicked) black comedy from director Preston Sturges, called "Unfaithfully Yours" (1948). The subject, as the title implies, is marital infidelity. Rex Harrison stars as a brilliant but demanding orchestra conductor. He is middle aged but married to a much younger woman, the beautiful Linda Darnell. She dotes on him, he loves the attention and he loves Darnell too, but is more focused on his career and music. He buys her nice things to make up for it.

He's a bit of a prig - as only Rex Harrison could play one, English-style - and he has a brother-in-law to match, or even out-prig him! Legendary early actor and crooner Rudy Vallee, he of the full length raccoon coat and megaphone shtick, plays the bro-in-law who is married to Linda Darnell's sister. Vallee is a multi-millionaire but a crashing bore. His wife Barbara Lawrence is always making wisecracks at his expense. He is the type of guy who, lacking an interesting life of his own, uses his money to stick his nose into other people's business.

Rex Harrison is an in-demand conductor, so on one trip to London he has asked Vallee to "keep an eye" on his wife. He only means for Vallee to check in on her, see if she needs anything, and maybe invite her to dinner or a movie with him and his wife. Vallee, however, interprets the above quoted phrase to mean he should "keep an eye" on her comings and goings. Spy on her, in other words. Being that he is wealthy, he goes it one better by hiring a Private Eye to do the detective work for him.

When Harrison returns from London, his brother-in-law Vallee has a full report waiting for him, courtesy of the detective agency. Seeing that Vallee has mistaken his instructions, he tears the report to shreds without even reading it. He trusts his wife. Why has Vallee hired an investigator?

Meanwhile, he is on a busy schedule (shedge-ool) and has concerts to conduct. But the issue of the report keeps coming up, first by a hotel manager who has pieced it back together for him, and then by the Private Eye himself, whom Harrison pays a visit to order him to steer clear of his wife. The detective turns out to be a big fan of Harrison the conductor, so there is a turn in the plot here. Harrison's ear becomes more sympathetic to the insinuations that Darnell may have snuck out on him while he was away. The detective has an address that Rex Harrison knows. It is the home of his personal valet (played by the Bowie-lookalike Kurt Kreuger). Apparently, while Harrison was in London, Darnell was seen at this address one night, wearing only a negligee.

My Goodness what a setup!

Now Rex Harrison is not only having second thoughts about his wife, he is straight-up believing she has cheated on him, even though the Private Eye has said that she was only observed in the man's doorway and there is no other evidence.

From this point comes the black heart of the movie. Harrison becomes so crazed with thoughts of what Darnell might have done, that he is consumed by revenge. The centerpiece of the plot takes place during a prominent concert performance, during which all the parties are present. Onstage and conducting with nerve-wracked energy, Harrison begins to fantasize about getting back at Darnell. This takes place in a triptych of scenarios, The first is downright diabolical, the second self-pitying and the third ruthless, cruel and final.

All of these possibilities are played as sophisticated comedy, Preston Sturges style, so don't worry. But it is nevertheless the blackest of black comedy, and Rex Harrison is positively evil at times.

Linda Darnell, on the other hand, is the soul of sweet devotion throughout the movie. Is she only playing the middle-aged Rex? It doesn't seem so. Maybe he is fooling himself into believing she doesn't love him. He is hung up on their age difference, and therefore convinces himself she must be attracted to the Bowie looking valet, who in the movie is clearly a gay man.

During the concert, Harrison pictures in his mind all of these scenarios and plots his revenge, and when he gets home after the show he starts to put his plan into action. But his fantasy involved a highly technical element - the making of a voice recording - that in real life will baffle and befuddle him in a long scene of classic pratfall comedy that Rex Harrison pulls of to a "T".

He is trying to set up a foolproof situation for the murder of his wife, but all he ends up with is a mess in his apartment.

Then she comes home, with the entire entourage from the concert, and the confusion is all straightened out. I wouldn't have told you this had you not seen it coming. The point of the movie isn't the surprise, for you knew all along what it was. The point is the "moral of the story", told in a lighthearted yet ironic way. This was the era of highbrow comedy for intelligent people. Preston Sturges, who also directed the classic "Palm Beach Story" and wrote many more as primarily a screenwriter, was a master of Sophisticated Screwball with a cutting message.

Rex Harrison gives a knockout performance as the egotistical but insecure conductor. Linda Darnell is likewise excellent as his unwavering wife, who cannot understand why her husband is so worked up all of a sudden. Darnell was one of the most beautiful actresses to ever grace a screen, and she was versatile too, appearing in films from high comedy to gritty noir, adventure movies to westerns.

Unfortunately, like so many actresses of talent and great beauty during that time, her life was short and tragic. You can Google it if you wish but make sure to remember her for her work, for she truly was a Hollywood  legend. /////

Two Very Big Thumbs Up for "Unfaithfully Yours". The dvd is on Criterion, which tells you something about it's standing in the world of cinema.

My highest recommendation, see it soon if you can. Heck, see it with "Tarantula" on a double bill, two of the best movies I've watched in recent weeks!

That's all for tonight. See you in the morning. Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Tarantula" starring a less obnoxious John Agar : One of the greatest Sci-Fi movies ever made

Sorry about the Trump Tirade last night. I didn't mean to bog things down with politics or go off on a tangent about that idiot, but I got thrown off track by the title of the Tim Holt movie ("Rio Grande Patrol") and once I mentioned that Tim and Chito portrayed border agents in the film, I was off and running because of the topicality of that subject in the news. Also - re: my tirade but on a lighter note - perhaps Robert Mueller read last night's blog too. If you recall, I referred to him as "the disappointing Robert Mueller" but lo and behold today he turned around and agreed to testify, in public and on camera. Think he read the blog?  (wink, nudge).  :) I still don't think the House Intelligence Committee members will extract much new information out of him, but let's hope.

In any event, I do have a movie for you tonight, and boy is it ever a good one : "Tarantula" (1955), starring John Agar once again, Leo G. Carroll and the beautiful Mara Corday, who we saw last year in "The Giant Claw". The movie came from my recently purchased Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection dvd set. It is well-known in sci-fi circles but for whatever reason I had never seen it, but once I pressed "play" I was riveted to my seat for the next 80 minutes.

Agar, thankfully less annoying than he was in "The Mole People", plays a doctor living in the small Arizona town of Desert Rock, and in fact the film was shot in the Arizona desert near a sandstone formation that resembles a smaller version of the Alabama Hills (site of many a classic Western).

Dr. Agar flies his own plane and has just returned from an appointment in the city. Immediately upon landing, he is met on the barren dirt airstrip by the local Sheriff, who is agitated and asks Agar to meet right away with the town funeral director to have a look at a body the director is preparing for burial.

We the viewers have already seen the dead person. As the movie opened, he was stumbling around the rocks, in his final moments of life, wearing his striped pajamas. And there was something very wrong with his face.

John Agar, after having a look for himself, is told by the funeral director that the cause of death was acromegalia, a rare disease caused by overactivity of the pineal gland. You can Google it for good measure, but rest assured that the "Tarantula" version of the disease is worse than anything you are gonna see online. Agar has heard of acromegalia, knows a little about it, and suspects that the funeral director may have it wrong, as the disease is very rare. The director suggests he visit the local microbiologist, played by Leo G. Carroll (because every small desert town must have a microbiologist, right?)

Carroll worked with the dead man. They were partners in a laboratory experiment involving animals and a synthetic nutritional serum designed to supplant normal food. Carroll is a Futurist who is planning ahead for the eventual overpopulation of the Earth, when food supplies will at some point run low. Thus he has developed his nutritional serum and tested it on rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, monkeys and a tarantula spider. All have not only been able to live on the artificial food but have thrived on it.

Every animal in the experiment has grown exponentially since ingesting the serum. Some can barely fit in their cages.

John Agar visits Leo G. Carroll, but becomes even more suspicious when the scientist doubles down on the post-mortem declaration of acromegalia, concerning the dead man.

Agar knows that Carroll, an MD himself, should know better. Carroll is lying about something....and

....meanwhile, John Agar drives back to the town center, which consists of just a few buildings, and - while checking in with the postmaster/hotelier, he is introduced to Mara Corday, a young biologist who has just arrived to work with Dr. Carroll. She needs a ride out to his place, which is of course waaay out on the outskirts of the desert, and Agar agrees to take her there (which you or I would do as well).

While he is at the laboratory, Agar takes it upon himself to question Carroll about the diagnosis of acromegalia on the dead man. Carroll insists this was the cause of death, but Agar is not convinced and this will soon become a point of contention. Leo G. Carroll does take the time to show Agar around his lab, though, showing him all the oversized animals, and the serum.

Agar has become friendly with Mara Corday, who has settled in with Dr. Carroll as they continue their work on the nutritional serum.

Meanwhile.......and folks this is simply horrible......and it happens out of the blue.....

A Mutant breaks into the lab while Dr. Carroll is working. He wrecks the place, attacks Carroll, and injects him with the serum! What in the world!.....(man oh man).

A chemical fire breaks out in the process that destroys half the lab. The Mutant is killed; Dr. Carroll miraculously survives. The next thing you know, he is burying the Mutant out in the desert, doing all the shovelwork himself, so that no one will know what happened. This way, he will be able to continue working on his experimental serum with Mara Corday, his lovely assistant.

But Carroll has been injected with the serum and soon something is wrong with his face. It is elongating, the bones are jutting out and shifting, everything is growing too big. One eye is moving lower than the other.

But even worse is that during the fire, the tarantula has escaped.

Now it has turned into the Tarantula, as big as a football field. And boy it it hungry....and pissed.

This may sound cheesy on paper, but I assure you it's not. "Tarantula" was made by Universal and they put good money into the special effects. This is a movie where, had I seen it as a seven year old on late night TV, it would have scarred me for life.

All the ingredients are in place for one of the greatest sci-fi movies of the 1950s : the remote desert location, the inquisitive young doctor, the mad scientist who is lying about his experiments, the local sheriff who is confused about how to deal with the situation until it is too late, and lastly the ubiquitous beautiful woman who gives the hero a personal stake in the outcome.

Meanwhile, while Agar is out in his car, driving around the rock formations to try and locate the Tarantula, Mara Corday is isolated in the remote laboratory with Leo G. Carroll, who is starting to resemble The Elephant Man.

I'm telling you, this is major league horror as great as any sci-fi of the classic black and white 1950s era.

I know I've revealed a lot of spoilers, but I had to tell you how awesome this movie is.

The last thing I will say, hopefully without spoiling anything, is that if you stick around til the end, you will get a surprise that will have you cheering. But you've gotta keep your eyes peeled. /////

"Tarantula" gets my absolute highest rating for a Sci-Fi film, Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, Ten Out Of Ten Stars. This is classic Atomic Age stuff, well directed and shot by Jack Arnold, who would go on to helm a majority of the "Gilligan's Island" episodes, as well as other motion pictures.

Beyond highly recommended, "Tarantula" is an absolute Must See. I am shocked that I didn't see it for myself until now.

That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morn with tons of love sent.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)

Donald Trump Should Be Sent To Prison For The Rest Of His Life + Tim Holt

Tonight's movie was "Rio Grande Patrol", a 60 minute Tim Holt Western, so I don't have a lengthy description for you because the plots in these films have a certain set of ingredients that are interchangeable. It's not a case of "if you've seen one you've seen 'em all" because each film does have it's own story, but the structures are all similar variations on the Good Guys vs. Bad Guys theme. Hour long Western such as Holt's or Jack Starrett's were usually distributed as serials, to be shown as part of a Saturday afternoon matinee accompanying a longer more standard feature.

I love 'em, of course, or I wouldn't watch 'em, but there isn't much to describe in the way that I usually break down the plot for you, spoiler that I am.  :)

I do love to see the Iverson Ranch used in almost every movie. It was used in Starrett's "Durango Kid" flicks as well, and there are always a few scenes in each film where the action winds up at The Garden Of The Gods, with it's unmistakable towering boulders. In this picture, Tim Holt and his partner Chito Rafferty (the comic relief) are border patrol agents, which is timely for today, except that Tim and Chito are decent guys and would never take part in the actions of ICE vis-a-vis the Trump Camps that imprison children. I will try not to politicize my movie reviews because you hear enough bad news all day long, but as I was watching the movie, the issue stood out enough that I felt a need to mention it.

Plus, I detest Trump with a passion as you know. You do too or you wouldn't be reading this. But I am sorry to say I have given up on the Democrats doing anything about him. We sat there for two years, waiting for Robert Mueller to kick his butt and, sorry to say again, but Mueller turned out to be a major disappointment. He seems to be a Mythical Figure who is never heard from in public, and his much vaunted "Report" was watered down and then co-opted and further watered down to the point of irrelevance by the arch A-Hole William Barr. So Trump won again.

He might very well win re-election and nothing punitive at all will ever happen to him. I mean, whatever happened to the supposed New York investigation of him? Whatever happened to "Individual One"? Nothing ever came of that, either.

But no matter what happens, Trump will never, ever, succeed as a "president" (lower case "p" and quotation marks are essential here). Worst case scenario is four more years of the same pointless chaos. The press and his own dwindling staff will keep him in check......hopefully.

But what will become of America in the process? What will become of the Idea Of America?

Will Trump have permanently lowered the bar so that the "presidency" becomes an Executive Branch version of Reality TV? I sure hope not. That is why I am so dismayed by the Democratic failure to hold Trump accountable. It doesn't matter if you don't have enough votes to remove him from office.

Impeach him anyway.

Why? Because he is a criminal. It bears repeating that Trump is not just an obnoxious person but a proven criminal. This makes it imperative to begin impeachment proceedings, whether you have the votes to remove or not.

I mean, look - if Joe Biden is the candidate, Trump is gonna get re-elected anyway. Might as well get something for your trouble, and who knows,,,,,,,,an impeachment investigation might just force people like the very disappointing Robert Mueller and the lowlife treasonous William Barr and the phony baloney Hope Hicks to testify.......and it might reveal to the nation, on camera, some testimony of the litany of criminal evidence against Donald Trump, which could, in a just world if we are ever to have that again, lead not only to removal from office for Trump, but to his imprisonment.

Trump needs to be put in prison if America is going to recover from his "presidency".

He needs to be imprisoned because he is a criminal who became president through fraudulent means, helped by the evil and murderous Putin, and if that weren't enough, he then used his position to commit further crimes to enrich himself, and to destroy the image of the Presidency as a position of Honor, and to nearly destroy our democracy in the process.

If Donald Trump doesn't deserve to go to prison for the rest of his life, I don't know who does.

Do you?  /////

That will have to count as my review of "Rio Grande Patrol" starring Tim Holt, who I would vote for in a heartbeat against Trump. I love my old Western movies with real heroes, not fake ones, where the Good Guys will surely go after the Bad Guys, but they won't screw over the ordinary folks nor especially the downtrodden in the process. ////

That's all I know for tonight. I should have some new full length movies coming soon. In the meantime I'll be listening to Hellhammer and reading my Robert Heinlein book......  :)

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxo  :):)

"The Prince And The Pauper" (last night) + "Tales Of Tomorrow" (tonight)

Sorry I missed you last night. I actually did write a blog - most of one anyway - but then I became too tired to finish, and it was also Church night. So, I finished it up just now and here it is :

(from Saturday June 22, 2019) Tonight I watched a classic from Old Hollywood called "The Prince And The Pauper", starring Errol Flynn, Claude Rains and a couple of boys known as The Mauch Twins, Billy and Bobby. This is one of those Golden Era movies that I'd almost guarantee you saw as a child on Saturday afternoon TV, or later in life on a cable station like TCM. At the very least, I'm certain you've seen snippets of it because it's an iconic early costume drama that has had staying power over the many decades since it's release.

In the first decade of sound, Hollywood often looked to England for story lines. Movies about Kings and Queens and knights were popular, as was the mythical tale of Robin Hood, which was turned into another Errol Flynn classic that I am also sure you've seen.

Despite the fact of his stardom entitling him to "above the title" status in this picture, Flynn's role is closer to that of a second lead, due to his limited screen time in the 119 minute film. He doesn't show up until the 53 minute mark, and even then his scenes, while lengthy, are intercut with those of the other characters whose story has already been in play. Still, Flynn's charisma and general "Errol Flynn-ness" give the second half of the movie an extra zip, so his star status is well earned as always.

But "The Prince And The Pauper" really belongs to The Mauch Twins. Unlike Errol Flynn, these boys were not stars nor even prolific child actors. Their IMDB lists 17 credits for Billy, five for Bobby, but they were talented enough to carry a major motion picture and to hold their own in scenes with talents like Claude Rains, Flynn and Alan Hale, among others. They were born in 1921, almost 100 years ago, but they will always remain high-spirited boys because of this film.

"The Prince And The Pauper" is based on a book by Mark Twain (of all people), and the story is a version of the Old Switcheroo involving twin brothers, much like "The Man In The Iron Mask" or any number of other stories. Didn't you ever know a pair of twins in school who would do goofy things like switch classes and take each other's tests?

Well anyway, The Mauch Twins are identical and you can't tell 'em apart, so what happens is that Mauch One is the son of King Henry VIII, and Mauch Two is the son of a brutish bull of a man, a commoner who has no job and who expects his boy, once he is grown, to beg in the streets for him, and even to steal. The father is played by the great character actor Barton McClane, who often showed up as the "heavy" in many a Bogart movie.

The plot is very long and involved, and I'll not have time on a church night to explain it all to you, but suffice to say that the young heir to the throne does not want to rule in the manner of his father Henry the 8th. He is aware that his Dad has had six wives and that none of them are around anymore, including his own mother. His father, monster that he is, loves him however, and gives him the privileges one would expect a young prince to have. Now that his father is dying, the boy extends those privileges to going outside the castle grounds so that he can see how the poor folks live. Remember that this is a Mark Twain parable. While the prince is out, he encounters the poor beggar son of Barton McClane. Seeing as how the boy is beaten down, he invites him back to the King's castle for something to eat. There they bond, and play kid's games like Blind Man's Bluff, and trade stories.

Then they notice that they look a lot alike. The prince tells the pauper to wash up, and to switch clothes with him. Now you can't tell who is the prince and who is the pauper. The real prince - dressed as the pauper - ventures outside the castle walls again just to see what he can see away from his sheltered life. His can get away with this because his father Henry VIII is near death.

But there is an evil controller in the wings, a Noble Lord played by Claude Rains.

From there, the plot will take flight, and will become very involved. Errol Flynn will show up later on as a mercenary soldier, poor but honorable, to rescue the new "pauper" (the actual prince in the pauper boy's clothing) from his tormentors, who range from gutter dwelling drunks at the corner Inn, to local city police who are after the boy for thievery, which he has been forced into.

The story is a fable about the English class system that lasted until the end of Queen Victoria's reign (or is it still going?). It's also about putting yourself into someone else's shoes to see what life is like for that person. Interestingly, Twain used children to demonstrate this principle. The boys are unencumbered by fixed adult opinions and prejudices. All either one wants, once the situation goes haywire, is to be returned to their home, so they can live the only lives they know - their own.

The Pauper doesn't want to be King. He wants to be back home in Offal Court, his village. And while the Prince doesn't want to live the life of a pauper, having experienced a taste of that life he has new sympathy for what the poor folk endure on a daily basis.

The Mauch Twins pull this off with a lot of flair. Claude Rains is dastardly as the villainous Lord Protector. Errol Flynn is young here, just 28, and so still has the somewhat more innocent "who, me"? charm of his early roles. He was still great later on, but he dissipated quickly in mid-life and only lived to be 50.

Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Prince And The Pauper", a movie whose message is just as relevant today if not more so. You probably already saw it when you were a kid, as I say, but watch it again all these years later for a dose of classic Hollywood Magic. /////

(tonight, June 23 2019) : This eve I did not have a movie, but I watched an episode of "Rawhide" and also one of my last few "Tales From Tomorrow" episodes, in which a shyster criminal, a "general practitioner" who will take on most any job as long as he doesn't have to risk his neck, is approached in his makeshift office by an authoritative woman (Esther Ralston) who makes him a proposotion.

She wants him to break in to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to steal major works. He scoffs that it would be impossible. The woman, who has an Amazonian bearing and who is filmed at a disconcerting angle that establishes her dominance, then extends to the goofy lowlife a device that she says will enable him to steal the artworks in question without a problem.

It is an "accelerator", worn on the wrist like a watch, that emits a beam that will cause the wearer to move about at nearly the speed of light.

She tells him he will not even be seen by the museum guards, let alone be caught.

Who is this woman?, the thief wonders. But he is more preoccupied with the money she has offered him. He accepts the job, and then sets out to recruit an assistant. He shows a few crook friends his new device, to mixed results. Finally, Jack Warden (who would later play "Jigsaw John" on TV in the late 70s) agrees to help him steal the artworks.

Time is stopped when they enter the museum. But a newspaper headline is touting an H-Bomb Test that is scheduled the same day. My goodness, folks.

"Tales From Tomorrow" was produced in the years 1951 -1953, at the height of the Cold War and the bomb scares of the era, the fear that a Hydrogen Bomb would explode and end life on Earth as we knew it. This fear - and it was very real - was played up for it's dramatic value in many a sci-fi anthology show. The episode of "Tales" was extremely effective; I had Goose Bumps at the end when the question is left hanging.....

The singing in church this morning was good. Now I am Super Tired but will see you in the morning once again after a hopefully restorative sleep. Tons of love are being sent at this very moment......

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Psych-Out" starring Jack Nicholson and Susan Strasberg

Grimsley brought over another Hippie Movie tonight, "Psych-Out" (1968), starring Jack Nicholson and Susan Strasberg, who was also in last week's "The Trip" (which Nicholson wrote). Once again, LSD is involved, as you might've guessed by the title, and in both movies the use of the drug is at first promoted by the protagonists in each film, but then is experienced as a nightmare by the young people who take it. Peter Fonda has a horrible trip in "The Trip", and Susan Strasberg will have one that nearly ends in her death in "Psych-Out". Neither film, then, is pro-acid, just in case you were wondering.

But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves

Strasberg stars as a young runaway who is newly arrived in the Haight/Ashbury district in San Francisco, which was ground zero for Hippies during the height of Flower Power mania. As is now well known, the CIA introduced the drug LSD into American cultural circles in the late 1950s to early 1960s, starting with the intellectual crowd, and movie stars. Then they had a brainstorm idea in the mid-60s, when well-organized student groups were agitating for an end to the Vietnam War, to which the young men were being manditorily drafted into. As a way to get the youth to stop protesting, the CIA spread LSD around the Hippie scene in San Francisco, as well as in other metropolitan centers where the youth culture was prominent. The whole drug scene of the 1960s was a CIA creation, this is verified fact if you care to read the books and do the research, and as further proof, the Agency did a repeat performance with the introduction of crack cocaine into the inner cities of Black America in the 1980s, which took down not only the beautiful and creative musical achievements of the black community to that point, and replaced them with rap - which has never gone away since - but it also destroyed the voice of the black intellectual movement that existed in the 1960s and early 70s and has since been replaced by "bling bling" n-word culture, which the black youth have been trained to call themselves, something the more enlightened African American folks from the 60s never did.

I was there as a kid in the 60s, so I know.

And I tell you all of this just to provide a background on how LSD came to be used by the Hippies of the late 1960s, and came to be thought of as a wonder drug by many. For others, like Syd Barrett, the founder of Pink Floyd, it was a nightmare that ruined his life and sent him spiraling down into schizophrenia.

This is what the CIA knew from their research into the drug, that it had a very strong effect on the mind and the sensory organs and could push the young people far away from their present political concerns. They knew it would make the kids lackadaisical and "out of it", and that's exactly what happened. Kind of like what the legalization of ultra-potent marajuana is doing now, making Stoners out of everyone, which again is not good. I know about that, too, and am beyond grateful that I stopped smoking pot 22 years ago.

So that's the end of my tangential tirade (sorry) and now back to the movie.

Susan Strasberg has arrived in The Haight looking for her older brother. The two siblings are survivors of a horrific childhood, the brother (Bruce Dern) has dropped out of society and become a Jesus freak in San Francisco. He is clearly schizophrenic. Susan has her own disability; she is deaf.

Just off the bus from the Midwest, she enters a psychedelic cafe and runs into Jack Nicholson and his bandmates. Jack is a long haired lead guitarist for a band that is trying to make it big in the SF music scene. He is wary of acid but his bandmates all take it. Everybody talks in Hippie lingo. Jack looks too clean cut for his role (this is before he became a raging alcoholic and coke fiend), and so does his friend Dean Stockwell, playing a bandana wearing Counterculture philosopher who pontificates on the nature of reality and the "game playing middle class".

Man, I couldn't have hung with a guy like this even if I had been old enough to be a Hippie. He is beyond pretentious, and Jack thinks so too. He spends most of the movie trying to get laid and get his band a coveted gig at "The Ballroom".

Now, there are a bunch of Rednecks - big, macho men - who hang out at the local junkyard. They hate Hippies and in particular Bruce Dern the Jesus Figure. He preaches in Golden Gate Park, and these guys hate it - "all that talk about peace and love", they say. They can't stand him and are gonna clobber him one way or another, even though the band members kick the rednecks' butts in a classic Hippie Punchout that had me laughing out loud unintentionally.

To bring things to a head, the Dean Stockwell character, who is supposed to be above such pursuits, covets Susan Strasberg, who is nominally Jack's girl but he is after other women anyway. Stockwell knows this, and so he plies poor Susan - who is deaf - with phoney attention and caring, and then he drugs her with an even worse hallucinogen.....STP.

STP was notorious as an extreme psychedelic, deadly in some cases.

After Strasberg ingests the STP, she goes on an even worse trip than Peter Fonda had in "The Trip".

The movie turns into a horror film at that point, and I will let you see it for yourself to examine the wreckage.  

Whereas "The Trip" was a rather arty examination of LSD culture, thoughtfully made, and even if cheesy it had a good script, "Psych-Out" on the other hand was more of a conventional Hollywood picture - "B" Grade - that was produced to capitalise on the Hippie scene.

It feels less focused as a story. In the last 15 minutes though, it becomes a horror movie, complete with fire effects ala "Carrie", then it ends with a scene on the Golden Gate Bridge that will surely steer you away from ever using STP, if you ever had an inclination to do so (and if they still even make it).

As I said to Grimsley when the movie was over : "That was some seriously weird stuff".

I'll give "Psych-Out" Two Regular Thumbs Up just for curiosity value, for you to see how strange things got in 1968. Though I must say that, as a kid, I didn't see any Hippies this weird).

If you watch it, watch it with an ex-Hippie if you know one, or someone who was "almost a Hippie" like Grim. He was only 15 in 1968, not quite old enough to be a Hippie. I was only 8 and didn't know Grim then, but anyway, try to get in the spirit of the times if and when you watch "Psych-Out".

It will help you enjoy it more.

See you in the freakin' morning! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Ghost Story" + Robert Heinlein + Hellhammer

No movie tonight because I am awaiting another shipment from The Libe, and I don't wanna pound all my new Sci-Fi flicks one after another; wanna dole 'em out so they last at least a few weeks. Tonight was a TV night therefore, and I watched one episode each of "High Chaparral" and "Ghost Story". The GS ep was not as scary as most of the others in the series but it did have a quaint and even touching storyline the might be appreciated by fans of horror cinema. John Astin plays a security guard at an old defunct film studio that is soon to be torn down. He works the Graveyard Shift, which is also the title of the episode, haha. Lately, the security crew has had trouble with a neighborhood gang of white surfer dudes who are breaking into the lot and sneaking around the sound stages, donning old horror costumes to scare the guards.

Astin vows to shut 'em down and run 'em off the property, but when he tries to do so, something goes wrong. The gang themselves are running off the lot before he even gets to them. They have been spooked plenty bad. Astin will soon see why.

Meanwhile, Astin's real life wife Patty Duke Astin -  better known as Patty Duke - shows up in the middle of the night while all of this mayhem is taking place. She is pregnant and wants hubby John to be home with her, but he is staying long hours at the studio and seems to be harboring a secret.

Early in the episode, we learn that Astin was once an actor at the studio he now guards. It was a small operation that specialized in horror movies. Monsters were their stock in trade, and 25 years past, John Astin played supporting roles in all the hit films from the studio. But then he had an on-set accident that ruined his leg and finished his career; then he became a security guard, the job he's held ever since. And now the studio is out of business and is scheduled for imminent demolition.

And the noises Astin is hearing at night, coming from the sound stages, aren't from the gang members. They've all run out in a panic, remember?

When he investigates, he sees that the noise is from the Monsters themselves, the ones that made the studio famous. They are on set, trying to make a new film. They even have a director and cameraman, but everyone looks tenuous and ephemeral. You can see right through them - they are ghosts.

Initially they seem pitiful, sad in their attempt to avoid being forgotten. Their home - the studio - is about to be torn down, and the poor monsters just want one more chance to scare the fans. Horrormeister William Castle, the creator of "Ghost Story", even makes a cameo as the owner of the studio who shows up to reminisce with Astin about the good old days of terrifying an audience.

But the movie monsters aren't as benign as they seem. They aren't merely nostalgic for the old days, but want to live on, literally, in real life. They want to become alive.

You knew Patty Duke's pregnancy was going to have some reason for being in the script, and this is it.

That is all I will tell you. As noted, the episode is not as frightening as some of the others, and some fans at IMDB have bagged it for that reason. I, however, enjoyed it for it's true purpose, which is to celebrate The Monsters of Cinema, who have given us so much pleasure in life by scaring The Bejeezus out of us, as William Castle recalls in his cameo scene. ////

I have also started a novel : "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by the legendary master of science fiction Robert Heinlein. This is my first book by him. Though I am a huge fan of sci-fi movies, I'm not normally a big reader of science fiction books, and in hindsight I think this is because the ones I have tried in the past were all written in what I will call "the language of sci-fi", where you have to adjust to a whole new world - not of this Earth - and thus the writer creates a whole lot of technical lingo to go along with it. This is in contrast to horror fiction, which - even though equally fantastic as compared to real life - happens right down here on Terra Firma to real people, so no New World Lingo is necessary and hence the reading is easier, for me at least.

However, even though the Heinlein book typifies this style of writing (the lingo starts from Page One and the main character speaks in a Russian/English slang), I am finding it to be a page turner, much to my surprise. I checked the book out from Northridge Library after reading a recommendation from Dr. Joe Farrell, whose every book I have read. You all know Dr. Joe, so when he makes a recommendation I tend to listen. Obviously, Robert Heinlein is the Dean of sci-fi writers, this is known even to newbies like myself, but if I can finish this book and train myself into the unorthodox style of writing, I may have a new treasure trove of material to delve into when I am in between Conspiracy Books, or should I say Truth Books........(that's what I should say, because "conspiracy" is just a put-down term for small minded folks who place blind trust in the government version of given events and who can't believe anything out of the ordinary could ever happen).

Well anyway, I also got in the mail a much coveted copy of "Demon Entrails", the two CD album of Hellhammer's complete demo tapes, remastered and released in 2007 by Tom G. Warrior and Martin Ain. The CDs are a collector's item, out of print and selling for 40 bucks and upwards online. I was unaware of "Demon Entrails" until I read about it in Tom G's book, which I've recently reviewed and called a "must read" for any fan of metal, or music in general, or for any artist.

Once I read about the availability of these Hellhammer demos, I knew I had to have them. I had the original Hellhammer album on vinyl in 1986, long since lost unfortunately.

But now I have acquired this double CD of the original demo tapes, the official release on Century Media and not a Russian bootleg, and I was lucky enough to score it for just 12 dollars plus shipping from a record store in Arlington, Texas.

Thanks, guys! I listened to the first CD tonight while I was working on my Howard Schaller drawing, and though the recording is only garage band quality, it has nevertheless got to be The Heaviest Metal I Have Ever Heard.

If you read Tom G's book and hear this music in conjunction it will all make sense. I am so grateful to have gotten a copy of the album for a basic price and not through the extortion of scalpers.

I am going to play the Hellhammer out of it!  :):)

Hope you had a good day. See you in the morn when Summer starts. xoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

"The Mole People" starring John Agar

Tonight I watched a real gem of low budget 1950s science fiction called "The Mole People" (1956), which was one of the five films included in my newly acquired "Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection Vol. 1" dvd set. The movie stars John Agar as an archaeologist working with his team on an ancient Mesopotamian dig. An Arab boy brings them a relic he found high on a mountaintop, a golden incense burner. Agar wants to move the dig to the mountain, but the local guides tell him no. "It is the home of Ishtar", their God, and if Agar climbs the mountain he will be punished with death.

Now, John Agar was a staple in 50s sci-fi movies, and if you've ever seen him you know that arrogance was his stock in trade. He was also famous for his marriage to Shirley Temple when she was only 17, and he even managed to say crude things about her later on after their divorce. So when John Agar is your star, you know you are in for an annoying treat, and you wouldn't be watching a movie like "The Mole People" in the first place unless you were accustomed to his "performances". I mean, God help you if "The Mole People" is your introduction to classic sci-fi and also to John Agar. Hopefully you've built up some experience beforehand, haha.

In truth, it's not that bad a movie. In fact, it could be considered a "bad-good" classic. The story is "epic". The scientists do make an expedition to the mountaintop, where they discover an ancient Sumerian temple. Then suddenly, one member of the team takes a wrong step and the ground caves in beneath his feet. He falls into a seemingly bottomless hole in the earth. Agar, who is not only a know-it-all but also a hero type, makes the decision for the rest of the team to descend into the hole to locate the missing man. You get the feeling that he is doing it for self-serving reasons and you may be right.

The fallen scientist is found dead (of course), so Agar is now free to lead the remainder of his team farther into the bowels of the Earth. Soon, they encounter The Mole People, who overpower them and drag them down even further, through mole holes that open into a cavernous underground city.

This is where the movie gets campy, and you will have to refer to the posts I made tonight on my FB page, for footage to reference it by. As often happens in "so bad they're good" 50s science fiction flicks, there is an adversarial leader of an undiscovered or alien society who happens to be a fop. Think of the "Ruler" character in "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and you'll have the idea. If you watch the trailer I posted for "The Mole People", you'll get a glimpse of a similar character played by Alan Napier, who went on to play Alfred the Butler on the "Batman" tv series.

Napier is the High Priest of this underground society who have descended from the Sumerians. They are a fussy bunch who take out their paranoia on the lowly Mole People, whom they enslave and beat down with whips. John Agar isn't gonna stand for this abuse, and he discovers that both the Mole People and the folks of the Underground Society are extremely sensitive to the flashlight he brought down. In fact, it is deadly to them. Now he has power over Alan Napier and the King of The Society.

But only until his flashlight batteries run out.

This is another one of those nights where you are gonna have to do some work of your own to complete the movie review, because I am tired and because the movie was "The Mole People".

Now, don't get the idea that I didn't like it - quite the contrary. It never lagged, it ran a compact 77 minutes, and the script was good and featured location changes, mountain climbing scenes, avalanches, and some pretty decent underground sets, including a fantastic matte painting backdrop to the gigantic underground city. Plotwise, it's got all the ingredients you expect in "B" grade science fiction, and it's technically well made, photographed in dark black and white.

It's just that when the campiness starts, it gets very campy, so as long as you can handle that aspect, you will probably enjoy "The Mole People" as much as I did. And you also have John Agar to counteract all of this by giving the most overbearing performance of his career, so you really can't lose.

I needed some classic Sci-Fi for Summer, and now it's off to a great start with "The Mole People", to which I give Two Very Big Thumbs Up.

In the genre of 1950s "B" or even "C" grade sci-fi, there are a huge difference between movies that outright suck and movies that are, say, eccentric and perhaps don't have the greatest acting or direction, but have quality production values and an interesting story to make up for it.

"The Mole People" is such a movie, recommended for 1950s Sci-Fi fanatics like myself. ///

That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning with lots of love sent in between.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Next Voice You Hear" starring James Whitmore & Nancy Davis + Elizabeth (Quebec Photos)

Tonight I watched a strange little movie called "The Next Voice You Hear" (1950), starring James Whitmore and Nancy Davis, who of course later became First Lady of The United States. The director was William Wellman, a Hollywood legend whose film "Wings" won the first Best Picture Oscar. Given his inpressive filmography, you wouldn't think he'd make an unusual picture about God and faith, but that is exactly what we have here.

James Whitmore plays "Joe Smith", an average middle-class American. He has a wife and son, a small but tidy house in Culver City, and a job at a nearby aircraft manufacturing plant. But he is barely making ends meet. He can't afford to by his kid a bike, and now Nancy is pregnant with a second child. Whitmore drives an old clunker that won't start half the time, and when it does and he peels out of his driveway to avoid being late for work, there is a sadistic motorcycle cop who hides just around the corner, waiting to give him another speeding ticket to add to his woes.

So much for the American Dream of the 1950s, though to be fair, the decade was just getting underway. Maybe the booming postwar economy hadn't yet kicked in, or maybe the aviation industry wasn't unionized, I dunno. For whatever reason, Whitmore is busting his butt, but is broke.

No wonder he is a grouch who is always snapping at his tolerant wife and the son who idolises him. Whitmore, usually seen in supporting roles, was a fine actor and he is perfect in this role. He never overplays his frustration. Whenever he loses his cool, he always rebounds to give wife Nancy a kiss, or to give his son a ride to a ballgame. This is an All-American story about wholesome values, and it makes you (or at least me) wish you had lived in the mythical version of the 50s. There was never a time quite like it.

One night, after a trying day at work, Whitmore is sitting in the living room trying to unwind. He's got the radio on (television hasn't really kicked in yet), and his boy will pop in at any moment to ask if Dad wants to listen to their favorite program, a detective serial. But Dad is sullen tonight and just wants to sit by himself. He doesn't know it, but his life is about to change, as are the lives of every human being on the planet Earth.

This is because The Voice Of God comes on the radio, overpowering the broadcast of the regularly scheduled show and cancelling it out. God has a message for all human beings, and as Whitmore rushes into the kitchen to tell his wife what he has just heard, we can see that he is very shaken up.

The next day at work, everyone on the crew is talking about it. Later that evening on the news, it is reported that the God broadcast apparently happened all over the world, in every known language. In fact, if a Frenchman and an Egyptian happened to be listening in the same place, they each heard it in their own tongue.

God has freaked everyone out by coming over the radio, and as crazy as it sounds, this concept is played in a very solemn manner. At first, Whitmore thinks it's a hoax, like Orson Welles' infamous Halloween broadcast of Martians landing on the East Coast. Nancy agrees, though in real life she was pretty far out. She had astrologers in the White House and probably knew all about all the Area 51 stuff, haha. She and Ronnie were ultra-right wing for their day, but compared to Trump they seem like liberal Democrats. At least the Reagans were nice people.

Well, in the movie, things are getting even weirder, because God makes a second broadcast on the next night, at exactly the same time. An FCC official is interviewed and he states that it cannot be a hoax, because they have technology in place that could identify a rogue broadcaster with the megawattage to send a signal round the world. They haven't been able to find such an operator, nor a hidden station, and so they are as much at a loss as is everyone else.

Is it really God on the radio? Some people say yes, some say no, but most folks are growing nervous. The more fanatical are freaking out, saying that The End Is Nigh.

James Whitmore has a more immediate concern, his wife's pregnancy. She is having "false labor" pains, causing them to run to the hospital again and again, and to make matters worse, his fundamentalist Aunt has come to stay. She is totally freaked by the God broadcasts, and now she is voicing her own superstition about the "dangers of a second pregnancy". In the movie, women are said to be at the greatest risk when giving birth to their second child. So now Aunt Ethel has James Whitmore even more on edge. She's got him convinced Nancy will die giving birth.

Meanwhile, God is about to make a third broadcast the next night, providing further instructions to those who believe.

He wants His people to see the good all around them, to take all He has provided, especially the human capacity to love, so that they can make their own Miracles. He says they must do this first. Then, if he is satisfied they have changed their ways, he will bring them the Godlike Miracles they've been awaiting.

Whitmore's life is changed by this revelation, and I don't want to reveal any more to avoid spoilers, but I do want you to see this film. For one thing, it was filmed on the side streets right across from the MGM lot, one street over from where I used to park for my job at Metrocolor. So you get great black and white Culver City footage from 1950 as a bonus. But really, you've never seen a movie that has this combination of deep spirituality and a tinge of sci-fi paranoia.

I thought : "This is almost like a David Lynch movie, if he were a conventional director".

"The Next Voice You Hear" gets Two Big Thumbs Up from me. You couldn't get a movie like this made now even if you had the biggest stars in the business as leads, because society is too cynical, and if they did make such a picture, it still would not possess the unfeigned sincerity that actually existed in the world 70 years ago. You cannot fake or recreate 1950s atmosphere. So this movie exists in a weird little time warp of it's own, but it's a good place to be stuck in, and I recommend seeing it with my highest praise. ////

Elizabeth, if you are reading I wanted to mention that those were beautiful photographs of the park in Quebec. My favorites were the one with the canoe and also the picture of the cabin. Maybe that is where the Ranger lives. Can you imagine living in such an enormous wilderness?  :)

I am glad you had the chance to do some outdoor traveling, and especially the opportunity to take some pix, just like the old days. I hope you get to do more this Summer, and if you do, keep posting 'em!

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Champion" starring Kirk Douglas (with proper pronunciation included)

Tonight I watched a movie called "Champion" (1949) starring Ki(e)rrckk! Dugglace! Like last night, this is another one of those situations where correct pronunciation of an actor's name is a must. This time I figured I'd make it easy for you by spelling it phonetically. I know we've done Kirk Douglas before, but I thought it couldn't hurt to refresh your memory. In the above reference (in boldface), the "e" in parentheses is only hinted at, just with a slight touch of accent, so that you aren't saying the name flat, as in "Kerk", or "Kurk". It should be pronounced almost  like "KEERck" but not quite, so just go easy on the "e" sound but don't leave it out entirely.

And make sure to use the exclamation points on each name, first and last. All of this will work best if enunciated in an aggressive and stilted fashion, with a clenched jaw and through gritted teeth. I know it's a bit of a chore, but it really is important and I thank you for your effort.

So how was the movie and what was it about? "Champion", as the title might imply, is the rags to riches story of a boxer, played by Douglas. As the movie opens, he and his brother (Arthur Kennedy) are dirt poor and riding the rails. They have hopped into an open boxcar in the night, only to be thrown out of the moving train by a pack of Hobos, who have also robbed them of their last few dollars.

The next morning they are thumbing a ride in the middle of nowhere and are picked up by a boxer and his gal. The boxer's name is Johnny Dunne, an up and coming challenger who is headed to Kansas City for a fight. Kirk and his bro are trying to get to Los Angeles, but any ride, even part way, is a good ride. When they get to KC, Johnny Dunne suggests they try to pick up concessions jobs at the boxing arena. It could help earn them the dough to get to L.A. The boys do get the jobs - selling soda, etc. - but Douglas is such an ill-tempered SOB that he can't take instructions from anybody. Soon he is in a punch-out with a co-worker.

By sheer coincidence, in an office inside the arena, there is trouble with a fighter on the evening's card. The ABA doctor won't clear the dude because he has an unhealed cut over his eye. The fight manager is at a loss - what to do about replacing the boxer?

Being that this is a Hollywood movie, and therefore coincidences are necessary, into the room bursts Kirk Douglas (remember pronunciation please!). He is ready to quit his recently acquired concessions job. He's just been in a fight himself and wants to get paid so he and his brother can leave.

A light bulb goes off in the head of the arena fight manager : "Oh.....so you're a tough guy, eh? How'd you like to make 35 bucks for twenty minutes of work"?

All Kirk has to do is go four rounds with the other fighter on the card. The manager promises the boxer will go easy on him. "Just try to make it look good", he says. Douglas reluctantly agrees. When he gets in the ring, we can see he is in good physical condition, but he has no training against a real boxer and predictably he gets his butt kicked. Then he gets ripped off on the payment of his 35 bucks as well, netting only 10 after the manager takes out his "expenses".

Welcome to the fight game, Kirk Douglas. "Champion" is an anti-boxing movie, and a brutal one at that. It has to be, in order to make it's point.

Douglas and his brother then make their way to L.A., Malibu specifically, where they expect to take part ownership of a roadside cafe. This business partnership was promised to them by a friend who turns out to have been just as shady as the boxing manager back in KC. There is no "ownership deal", another man owns the cafe. Douglas' friend was only an employee who scammed Kirk on the buyout plan. Now he and his brother are stuck in Los Angeles, just as broke as before. The cafe owner feels sorry for them and offers them jobs. This time, their employment goes better, because the owner has a fetching daughter (Ruth Roman), who quickly succumbs to Douglas' chin-dimpled charms. Nights on the Malibu sand ensue.

But Kirk is still restless. Having been dirt poor all his life and basically an orphan, raising his gimpy brother (Arthur Kennedy walks with a cane), he is ambitious for money. Lots of it. Whereas you or I would be content to stay on the beach with Ruth Roman, even if we had to work for minimum wage, Kirk is not so easily satisfied. Now, the cafe owner is pissed because he had told Kirk from the get-go to stay away from his daughter. Now he is insisting they get married as it's the only moral thing to do.

Kirk goes through with the marriage only because the owner has pointed a gun in his face. As soon as the vows are made, however, and the ring is on her finger, Douglas ditches Ruth Roman. He leaves the cafe, the Malibu beach, and heads with his brother to Downtown L.A. There he sees a boxing gym with advertising out front : "We Train Champions". Recalling his brief stint in the ring back in Kansas City, a light bulb goes off in Kirk's head......."maybe I can do this after all".

Now, all of what I have described takes place in the first 40 minutes of the movie, which once again demonstrates the high level ability of the 1940s screenwriters to pack a Ton Of Story into a short timeframe. We still have an hour to go, and that hour will chronicle the rise of Kirk Douglas as he uses his inner toughness to become a boxer. He works hard and trains for long hours. Soon he will begin his rise to the top, but along the way his ambition and his ego will get the better of him. Really he has been an a-hole from the beginning, a sociopath more or less. His upbringing explains his personality but does not excuse it. Before long, he is winning every fight, making money hand over fist, and now he is having affairs with the wives of his new manager, and when he gets tired of her, the girlfriend of a wealthy boxing patron who has influence in the way top contenders are ranked. This guy can make or break you, and Kirk is cheating with his gal.

I have to interject a little bit here, and wonder if Kirk, who is still alive and is 102 years old, is more than just a great actor. He certainly is that, but he played these tough guys with a conviction bordering on real life. The womanising in this movie feels realistic, and I hate to say it because I don't know if it is true, but in the interest of the MeToo# movement I feel I should at least mention the ongoing rumour that Kirk Douglas raped Natalie Wood during a private audition in his apartment, when she was just a teenager.

This legend has been going around Hollywood for quite a while. Given Douglas' onscreen persona, it would be easy to accuse him of something like this after the fact, decades later, by people who weren't even born when it allegedly happened. But Natalie's sister is his main accuser. She was there in the aftermath on the day it happened. She swears it is true, and if so, it takes the luster off Kirk Douglas as a person, great actor though he may be. If true, it could be said that this part of his onscreen persona - the on-edge tough guy who is always ready to explode - is just Kirk playing himself in real life.

I don't know which is true, and I make no judgement, but I do encourage you to research the information for yourself. Just do some Googling about Kirk Douglas and Natalie Wood.

He does play a hell of a role as the boxer in this movie, however. He will become the "Champion" who will stop at nothing to remain at the top. The only thing he doesn't figure on is that the boxers don't run the fight game. Mob-connected moneymen do. His own desire to keep fighting, and getting his brains bashed in, will become his undoing.

"Champion" is a grim. gruesome film, but it tells an important story, an epic one involving youthful struggle, the finding of true love, and the throwing away of same in the quest for self-importance, and the lives of others affected along the way.

I give it Two Huge Thumbs Up, even though I don't like boxing or boxing movies in general. I said the same about "Gentleman Jim" which we saw last month. That film, with Errol Flynn in the title role, was more a celebration of a champ, the real life Jim Corbett. It shows the downside of boxing, too, but "Champion" on the other hand is just plain ugly, and Douglas' character makes it even more so.

It's a horrible story about a lowdown bum of a man, but as a movie it is really good (in a dark way) and thus highly recommended. /////

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Cross Of Iron" by Sam Peckinpah (can you believe it?....a near masterpiece!)

Tonight's motion picture was "Cross Of Iron" (1977), an ultra-realistic and action packed WW2 film directed by.........Sam Peckinpah.

You ask: "What are you, Ad, a glutton for punishment"? and I reply halfheartedly that I had already checked out "Cross Of Iron" from the Libe along with "Junior Bonner" and "Major Dundee", and I wanted to finish up my Peckinpah mini-fest even though "Dundee" was one of the worst films I've seen in years, and "Bonner" - while fairly engaging - didn't have much of a story. Also, I've long hated "The Wild Bunch" (don't get me started!), and I just generally wasn't a fan of Sam. He always seemed like a degenerate to me, though as I've said he was no doubt a technically proficient filmmaker.

Anyhow, so I checked out all these Peckinpah movies from the Libe last week, just because I needed something to see. Having watched the other two, I figured I'd give "Cross Of Iron" a go this evening. The timing was right; I'm in between books and have yet to begin a new drawing (the new one I'm practicing for is super difficult), so I had the entirety of my evening break to devote to the lengthy film (132 minutes). I was prepared to turn it off at the very first slowdown or patented Peckinpah curveball, where he diverts the action to an endless drinking scene, or cuts to a sudden romance that has nothing to do with the movie.

But to my great surprise, not only did I not turn the movie off, but.....I was riveted to my seat throughout.

I guess I owe Ol' Sam an apology. I mean, I still think "Major Dundee" sucks in a record-breaking way, and I detest the critical popularity of "The Wild Bunch". Please see it for yourself and tell me it's a great film, it isn't and it's terrible.

But maybe Sam's forte wasn't the Western. Maybe if he had made a "bunch"  (wink wink) of WW2 flicks instead of outlaw oaters, I might be touting Sam Peckinpah as one of my favorite filmmakers.

Because, and I almost hate to say this but I have to in the name of honesty : "Cross Of Iron" is one of the greatest war movies I have ever seen. I would put it in my top five WW2 films for certain.

There is no fooling around with this movie, no attempt to be cute or to present his actors as macho icons (a previous Peckinpah downfall). This is just straight-up "War Is Hell" filmmaking from start to finish. You are in the war every bit as much as the actors. The action footage is very advanced for 1977, and is edited to a high degree of precision, a Peckinpah staple even in his lesser films.

Okay, so the war is happening and it's in your face. James Coburn is a corporal in the German infantry. Right away, we see that he is one of those "mythical" movie soldiers who aren't destined to die, no matter how many artillery shells explode around him, nor bullets whizzing by in crossfire.

If you've heard the song "Rooster" by Alice In Chains, Coburn is like Jerry Cantrell's Dad.

"He ain't gonna die". And so all the soldiers in his platoon trust him, even though the German Army in is retreat in the middle of Russia, where they are getting hammered by bombs and enemy fire on an hourly basis. Coburn is only a Corporal, the lowliest of soldiers excepting a Private, and yet he commands the respect of even the higher-ups down in the command bunker several miles away.

The Major in command of the battalion is Chames Mason. I just thought I should mention that, and please don't forget the correct pronunciation of his name. If you need help, just raise your hand.

Mason and the other command officers (including David Warner in a brilliant performance) have given up on the war. They are just going through the motions in giving out orders because the Russians are kicking the daylights out of them. James Coburn, however, is out in the field with his men. He can't afford to give up. Every moment is life or death for his platoon.

Into this picture steps Maximillian Schell. Man, what a great actor he was. He plays a Captain who has been on R&R on the French Riviera but is now reassigned to the Russian Front. He claims that he asked for the reassignment in order to face combat. He tells Corporal Coburn specifically that he intends to be awarded The Iron Cross, Germany's version of the Purple Heart.

Schell desires The Cross simply because he is a bourgeois Prussian Aristocrat, a wealthy man who has become an officer merely because of his position in life. He has no combat experience, yet he shows up in the bunker and singles out Coburn for punishment, simply because he has heard all the foot soldiers praising him. Coburn as a Corporal is leading his squad because there aren't any sergeants left. The Germans are using teenagers. The Russians are using little kids and women.

Peckinpah shows you the real thing, including brief glimpses of scenes so horrifying, of what soldiers really saw, on the ground, of what happens to a person who used to be a human being, that you will need to simply let the footage register and pass by. To linger on images like these is not healthy for the mind.

The plot will come down to an end game struggle between Captain Schell, the privileged Prussian who will stop at nothing to obtain The Iron Cross, and Corporal James Coburn, who is only trying to get his men safely back from behind enemy lines. He is going though sheer hell while Maximilian Schell hides out in his bunker......though he is getting increasingly shelled himself. Russian tanks are crawling over the German encampment.

Man, what a movie! There are a few subplots taking place as well, including a stay for Coburn in an Army hospital due to concussion. There, he hallucinates past battle scenes in footage that would now be considered evidence for PTSD.

And yet he removes himself from the hospital, against Nurse Senta Berger's orders (which you or I would follow), so that he can rejoin his men. His entire life has been shaped by his combat experience. All he knows is that he must lead his platoon out of their horrific situation in Russia. Forget the hospital, forget the orders coming in from the bunker. This is do-or-die.

And Captain Schell resents him for his loyalty. ////

I shant tell you any more, but I will give "Cross Of Iron" Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, and will recommend it to anyone who is a fan of classic World War Two films. It's one of the very best I've seen, even a near masterpiece, a rendering of the terrible chaos of battle so immediate that you are in the platoon yourself, stepping over the ruined bodies of your fellow soldiers as you dodge incoming rounds and machine gun fire.

I've said it before but it bears repeating : How anyone got through WW2, I'll never know.

It was a time when the Devil took over the Earth. ////

Kudos to Peckinpah for "Cross Of Iron". See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Black Legion" staring Humphrey Bogart, tremendous yet scary

Tonight I watched a very dramatic Humphrey Bogart movie called "Black Legion" (1937). Bogie plays a drill operator working in the machine shop of an unnamed factory. He is well-liked and also a top worker, so when an opening comes up for shop foreman, he expectantly believes the job will be his. When another young man is given the promotion instead, Bogart fumes silently. He has already made promises at home : a new car for his wife, baseball gear for his boy. He was counting his chickens, however, and they didn't hatch. He is forced to come home and tell his wife and son the bad news.

The young man who is given the job as the new foreman is a cut above the average blue collar tradesman. He is shown reading engineering books on his lunch break. He has already invented a cooling system for the drill presses that has saved the company a lot of money in time and equipment.

His name is Joe Dombrowski. He lives on a chicken ranch with his father. They are Polish immigrants trying to make good in the United States, and they are American citizens.

This is where the movie turns, and keeps turning until it gets downright scary.

You see, while Bogie is fuming about the foreman job he thought was his, there are other people who are much more upset than he, about "immigrants taking our jobs". Holy Trumpian Smokes, folks.

Fascism is never far away in America, and in 1937, there were a lot of people who sympathized with Hitler, and more to the point of this movie, with the Ku Klux Klan.

There are a couple of Bogie's co-workers who have openly called out the promotion of Joe Dombrowski for shop foreman. They make fun of his intelligence, as the mooks will do when faced with their own lack of same. See Trump once again. But far more threatening is their hatred of Dombrowski's ethnicity. Humphrey is not by nature a bigot, but he takes note of the bigots who are sticking up for him. Then he hears on the radio a strange program advertising membership in a Nationalist political group, a group that is "standing up for American jobs, and values"!

I am telling you, folks - though this dialogue was written 83 years ago, it could have just as easily been written today. Nothing has changed on the Xenophobia Front.

One of Bogie's factory cronies is a particularly vicious bigot. The focus in this movie is on a general prejudice against "foreigners", but the message is clear : we could be talking about black folks or Jewish people, and the movie came out in 1937 at the height of Hitler's power. So Bogie has this co-worker who sees how upset he is at losing his promotion to Dombroski, and he talks Bogie into joining his secret lodge, a group of violent racists made up of local workers and businessmen. The group is called "The Black Legion" and they are a frightening bunch indeed.

In one of the more blatant scenes in early studio movies, Bogart - after he joins the group - is made to participate in an initiation ritual that differs not much from a Satanic Rite. The Legion members are all decked out in their Klan-style hoods and gowns. Their hoods have a skull & bones on them (Hey! Skull & Bones, anybody?) Bogie is made to swear his oath to the group with a gun pointed to his head, outdoors around a campfire. This is some really weird stuff for a major Warner Brothers release in 1937, I kid you not.

But now that he is sworn in, he can't leave. He will be killed if he tries. The Black Legion are neo-Nazis, and the first victims on their agenda is to be the Dombrowskis and their chicken farm. Bogie gleefully takes part in the violence against this family, and soon he is fully involved in the Legion's evil doings.

Back at home, his loving wife (the stunning early actress Erin O'Brien-Moore) can't understand the sudden changes in his behavior, why he stays out so late and why he snaps at her for no reason.

His best friend (Dick Foran) doesn't get it either. Foran is one of the good guys at the factory who gets along with everyone. He has recently straightened up his own act to stop drinking and break up with his floozy girlfriend so that he can marry his sweetheart neighbor Ann Sheridan (who you would marry, too, if you had the chance). Foran had supported Joe Dombrowski when the mooks of the factory tried to undercut his new position of leadership, and now that he and his family have gone missing, Foran senses something is wrong. He notices the same things about Bogart that the wife has mentioned. Something about Bogie has changed, and it's getting worse.

The nighttime excursions of the Black Legion become regular and increasingly more bold. Now they are going after other factory workers and anyone in town who supports equality. We are shown that there is a financial motive for those who head up the movement, men who never take part in the action (like Trump) but who have the money to build it into a national front, and thus profit from membership dues and the sale of handguns to the members.

I mean.......folks!......here is a movie, in 1937 - 82 years ago! - taking on the f%@#king NRA, perhaps the most evil lobbying group in American history, and in the film they are showing the businessmen at the top of the organisation tallying up their profits from the sale of mandatory handgun purchases to their members.

This is one Hard Core truth telling motion picture, my friends. And made so long ago, but still current and even more so today.

I won't go any further with the plot to avoid spoilers. It does turn into a courtroom drama for the last 10 or 12 minutes, but here I want to harp on script development one more time, just because I love great movies and because the script has so much to do with the success, or failure, of any film.

The running time of "Black Legion" was 83 minutes. In addition to the main plot, there are a few subplots involving Bogie's wife and her allegiance to her husband, and another more developed theme about Dick Foran's involvement with the floozy, who tries to steal him from Ann Sheridan. This subplot is played in intervals to show Foran's turnaround to a wholesome life, and his realization that his friend Humphrey Bogart is in deep trouble. Foran, having recovered his own values, will try to rescue Bogie.

But he is up against some amoral and sociopathic gangsters, real nutjobs, and it will be hard going for him in his attempt to set things right.

Wow. This is some Early Bogie, one of his first dozen roles, and I think it is up there with his best. He has to really emote in many of the critical scenes, rather that just doing his Humphrey Bogart thing, and these are my favorite movies by him, when he shows what a great actor he was, given the chance.

"Black Legion" is an unusually hardcore movie from a Hollywood studio in the Golden Era. I give it Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for it's realism and courage to face the truth.

It's not for the squeamish, but then again it's only 1937, so there's nothing too graphic.

Highest recommendation. See you in church in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Trip" starring Peter Fonda, directed by Roger Corman (Grimsley brought it over)

Tonight's movie was "The Trip" (1967), directed by Roger Corman and starring Peter Fonda as a director of television commercials who goes on a nightmarish LSD "trip" after his wife (Susan Strasberg) divorces him.

Now wait a minute.

"Hey Ad! What are you doing watching a movie like this"?

Good question. For starters, Roger Corman is high on my list of worst directors, perhaps even higher than Sam Peckinpah. It's not that Corman pretends any different. He is celebrated for making low-budget C-Grade films and he has made a career out of it. He has no pretense to being an artiste (ala Peckinpah, who is in my doghouse at the moment), and so can be forgiven the lack of quality in his motion pictures. With Corman, you know what you are getting going in, which is why I generally don't watch his films. I mean, I enjoy movies that are "good" bad, like "Plan 9" or something of that ilk, but Roger Corman movies, by and large, are "bad" bad.

The other thing is, I generally am not a fan of movies from the 1960s. This is not to say that there aren't many good and even great films from that decade. See "2001: A Space Odyssey" for evidence. It's just that the Studio System, which produced so many hundreds of great films from the 1930s through the early 1960s (up to 1962), was collapsing by the time the counterculture of the mid-60s got rolling. By 1966 or so, many independent filmmakers were trying to cash in on the emergent youth culture by making movies about hippies, or drug usage, or both. Most of these films were B-Grade garbage or worse, and if you try to watch them now, they seem hopelessly dated, whereas you can watch an even older, professionally made Studio film from the 40s, and it is timeless. The Studio films play just as well in 2019 as they did when they were released.

Not so the films from the Hippie Days. Many of them (not all) are cringeworthy bad.

Please note that I am not picking on Hippies here, just crummy movies. I was a kid in the 60s - and it was a decade like no other - I thought Hippies were fun (and weird) and though I never wanted to be one, they were on the whole cool people who helped define their generation. They believed in peace and love, and most of them went on to lead productive, successful lives even after their acid taking days were over. Interestingly, they were also the last generation to carry on the tradition of marriage and family, which my own generation seems to have thrown by the wayside, but the deal is, before the Hippies settled down, they were Pretty Far Out There for a few years, say from 1966 to 69.

And that was because of hard drugs like LSD, which was introduced into the youth culture by the CIA, but that's another story.

But back to my premise, I would not ordinarily watch a movie like "The Trip", simply because nostalgia for the hippie days and acid trips aren't my trip. I won't misrepresent myself, I took a few trips in the late 70s at Van Halen concerts and the like, but LSD wasn't my thing. It was fun for an hour or two but you couldn't turn it off. And in the movies made in the 60s, to commemorate those times, the young people taking these trips are portrayed as hopelessly naive and lackadasical, and frying their brains on drugs, exactly as the CIA wanted them to.

Though I took my share of drugs as a young person, I stopped 22 years ago, and now I don't think it's a good thing. I could go on a tangent here, or even a tirade, but I think that the exponential upswing in marajuana use among young people now is just terrible, because the pot is legal - they can buy it in pot shops - and it is quadruply stronger than it used to be.

You pot smokers are frying your brains and you don't even know it, because you are doing it slowly, like the frog in the pot of gradually heating water. Man, am I glad I quit. Thank you, Lord.

Grimsley brought the movie over, and that is why we watched "The Trip" tonight. I do have a nostalgia for the fun parts of the 1960s, and the year 1967 (when the movie was made) was the year of Flower Power and also of The Summer Of Love. The Beatles put out "Magical Mystery Tour" that year, so I mean....c'mom. It was an amazing time.

And most of the musicians took at least one acid trip. Paul McCartney was the first Beatle to do so, even before John Lennon. All of the famous pop music we know and love was influenced by drugs in one way or another, usually in a direct way.

But none of this makes Movies About The Hallucinogenic Hippie Days very interesting, because almost all of them were made by B or C grade filmmakers. "The Trip" does have a few interesting scenes, when Peter Fonda runs out of the house he is tripping in, and heads down to the Sunset Strip and the psychedelic rock scene that is in full force in the clubs. His nightmare will continue, now amidst the crowds.

There is a lot of colorful painted scenery in "The Trip", and a brief entry by Bruce Dern as The Guy Who Supplies Fonda With The Acid. Dern is Fonda's "guide", he doesn't take any acid himself.

Most of the movie's 80 minutes are taken up by sequences of strobe-lit kaliedoscopic color patterns double exposed over actors having sex, or Peter Fonda freaking out. There are Go-Go Dancers in the clubs wearing body paint, gyrating away while a wild 1960s style of bluesy jamming plays over the scenery as a soundtrack.

This is Grim's world. He is seven years older than me and his heart is clearly in the Hippie Years of the 1960s, especially in the psychedelic part of that era.

I sat through the film, and it wasn't too bad, not nearly as godawful as last night's "Major Dundee", which was a major studio movie.

But really, "The Trip", though it had an interesting premise and some very colorful and disorienting photographic effects to portray Fonda's experience, really didn't have anything resembling a lasting story, and this is the demise of many an attempted motion picture. So be it, LSD or no LSD.

Don't take drugs. The 60s were incredible but don't hang your hat there. See you in the morn.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Major Dundee" by Sam Peckinpah.....man is it ever bad

Tonight's movie was "Major Dundee" (1965), a 136 minute Western directed by Sam Peckinpah, whose much shorter "Junior Bonner" (99 minutes) we enjoyed and reviewed last night. We noted that even though the film had very little in the way of story, Peckinpah managed to make it entertaining by keeping things moving.

This time, with "Major Dundee"? Not so much.

I mean, yikes! This movie got so slow by the 100 minute mark that it almost ground to a halt. I only stuck it out to the finish because I had already invested so much time.

Note to self : don't do that anymore. If a movie starts to suck, and still sucks fifteen minutes later, turn it off. Life is too short. Sitting through the last hour of "Major Dundee" was excruciating, and as Sheriff Bart said to The Waco Kid : "Why you do that to yourself"? I have no legitimate answer to that question tonight, except to say that I had already watched the first 90 minutes, 75 of which weren't bad, so when the next 15 began to suck - as if somebody pulled the plug from the production - I kept watching only because I hoped the film would recover.

My new rule, stated above, will prevent me from making that mistake ever again.

I am loathe to go into a lengthy description of "Major Dundee" because I am wiped out from watching it, but I will try to give you the basics of the beginning. In 1864, in Arizona Territory, the Apaches have annihlated a settler's camp. The adults have been tortured and the children taken away to be raised "Apatch", as the white men pronounce it. In depicting this massacre, Peckinpah shows a preview of the blood and guts approach he will use to maximum effect in the heralded (but crummy) "The Wild Bunch" four years later.

Charton Heston is an Army Major, relegated to captaining an Arizona prison camp due to his insubordinations during the Civil War. When he gets word of the civilian slaughter by the Apaches, he vows on the spot to avenge it, and to bring the stolen children back home as well.

Sounds like a good plot for a Western, eh? Maybe even a classic one, when you have a cast that includes not only Chuck Heston but also Richard Harris in a co-starring role as a Confederate prisoner in Heston's charge, Jim Hutton as a by-the-book Lieutenant, James Freakin' Coburn as a one-armed scout, and a slew of Great Western supporting actors including everyone from Ben Johnson to Slim Pickens to Dub Taylor to R.G Armstrong.

What could go wrong with a cast like that?

Plenty, because the director was Sam Peckinpah. His success with "Junior Bonner" notwithstanding, I am beginning to wonder if he wasn't one of the most overrated filmmakers in motion picture history. I am gonna ask you to do the reviewing work for me tonight. Do you think you could do that, just this once? All I need you to do is to go to IMDB, look up "Major Dundee" and scroll down to the bottom of the page, where there will be a single review posted by a random viewer. Now, this movie has an inexplicably high rating of 6.8. There are nearly 75 reviews in all, and many of the reviewers give the film high marks but then qualify their praise by calling the movie a "flawed masterpiece" or something of that nature. These are the folks who think Peckinpah was a genius, and even they say, "well, it's a great movie but".....

What I want you to do, is to use the link at the bottom of the page that says "see all reviews", and to then scroll through them until you come to the occasional ones that give "Dundee" 3 out of 10 Stars, or right around that level. The reviews that agree with what I am telling you. There are several of them within easy scrolling distance.

Please read a few of those, because they will tell you everything you need to know about "Major Dundee", including how Charlton Heston had to assume the directorial duties at one point because Sam Peckinpah became so dissolute that he wasn't even showing up on set anymore. Peckinpah loved Mexico, where the movie was filmed, because he could indulge himself there in undisclosed ways that weren't possible in the United States. If I am not mistaken, he wound up living there.

According to one reviewer, Heston was so worried that the film would not get finished that he donated his salary so that production could continue. Another reviewer says that in his autobiography, Heston spends more time talking about "Major Dundee" than any other film he worked on, because it was such a debacle. He said that Sam Peckinpah was making the film up as he went along, and it shows.

Unbelievably, he actually had a halfway decent picture happening until the 65 minute mark.

You've heard me say that "such-and-such movie" was 15 minutes too long, or maybe 20. On rare occasion maybe even 30.

"Major Dundee" was 50 to 70 minutes too long, depending on your tolerance level. But the thing is, it actually could have been a good movie (not great but good), even in the hands of Peckinpah, had he not been such a crazy s.o.b.

I mean, he is still not even close to being a great director, even if he had completed "Major Dundee" and made it into a decent film. I reiterate this opinion because I detest what I will call "critical hipness" that says a filmmaker is great simply because he was an outrageous person.

Sam Peckinpah was a technically talented director who made films that were okay at best. His image, of a rough and tumble outlaw, so outweighs the quality of his movies that it's a shame he has been raised to legendary status.

This is not to denigrate the man as a person, but just to say that the critics - as usual - are vastly wrong.

I'd have been better off watching "Crocodile Dundee" than "Major Dundee".

See you in the morning. Don't watch movies that suck, and I'll try to take my own advice on that score too.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoo  :):)