"Svengali" starring John Barrymore and Marian Marsh

This blog was begun Monday night, March 30th and completed the next day :

Tonight's film was "Svengali"(1931), starring John Barrymore and Marian Marsh. Like you, I know of the proverbial use of that name to mean a man who manipulates another person, usually a woman and often a young one, through mind control or psychological exploitation. We've all heard the name "Svengali" used as a descriptive noun, as in "He is a Svengali", but after seeing the movie, I had to look it up to see if Svengali was a real person, like Grigori Rasputin, who he resembles in personality and, in this movie, in likeness. I discovered he was a fictional character created by French author George du Maurier for his 1895 novel "Trilby", about a young Irish girl who is seduced, then dominated by Svengali, a pianist with hypnotic powers.

John Barrymore brings him absolutely to life in the movie. If you've ever wondered why Barrymore is considered one of the greatest actors of all-time, this role is an excellent example. He turns Svengali into a real person (which is why I had to look it up), investing him with all sorts of little mannerisms and quirks, even a wry sense of humor, and his eastern European accent sounds authentic. As the movie opens, he is giving a singing lesson to Madame Honori (Carmel Myers), accompanying her on piano as she runs up and down the scales. Her voice is shrill enough to cause Gecko (Luis Alberni), Svengali's violinist roommate, to run from their apartment, but Svengali humors the woman because she is married to a wealthy man. After the lesson, their dialogue reveals that Madame Honori is having an affair with Svengali. "I've left my husband", she announces. This is fine with Svengali until he asks about her divorce settlement. When she replies that there won't be one ("I'd never take money from that beast"!), he changes his tone. He was only tolerating her for a chance at the fortune, though she thought he was in love with her. Now, Svengali only wants to be rid of her. He looks deeply into her eyes until she is hypnotised. Then she runs out the door. The next thing we hear is that her body was found floating in the river.

After this opening sequence, the movie takes a humorous turn. Svengali and Gecko are talented musicians, but poor, and as usual they are late on their rent. Svengali has an idea to "borrow" money from some painter friends of theirs who live across the street. The three painters - a Scot and two Englishmen - are moderately successful in their trade, and welcome Svengali and Gecko upon their arrival. They are boisterous gents, however, and before Svengali can explain the purpose of his visit, they chide him over his hygenic habits, or lack of same. "Aye, when was the last time you had a bath old chap"? Not recently, it appears. The painters spontaneously grab Svengali, stripping off his clothes in a roughhouse way. They throw him into a bathtub full of suds and then leave the house, taking the clothes with them. "Ahh, now he'll not be able to follow us", says the Scotsman as they head to the local pub, "nor ask us for any money"! The painters share a laugh over their prank, but it is Svengali who has the last laugh. With the help of Gecko, he finds a suit belonging to one of the painters. It fits him perfectly, and inside a pocket is a coin purse, with enough money to not only pay their rent, but all their other bills too, with enough left over to go to the pub and get drunk. There, they run into the painters, who aren't mad at Svengali and Gecko but admire their reprisal in a "touche" kind of way.

One day, while the painters are out, Svengali and Gecko "let themselves in" to their studio to look for more money. While inside, they hear a knock at the door. Svengali answers; it is a young model named Trilby (Marian Marsh) who has come to pose for a portrait. Rather than inform her that the painters aren't home, he pretends to be the one who hired her. Svengali knows he can use his powers of telepathy on the impressionable Trilby, and immediately sets out to do so, pretending to paint her while he spouts hypnotic "sweet nothings" into her ears. Suddenly Gecko rushes into the room to inform him that the painters are on their way back. He's been outside as a lookout. "They'll be here any moment"!, he warns. Svengali and Gecko quickly depart, but the die has been cast. He's got his mental hooks into Trilby just enough to make her want to see him again, and when she does she will become his captive. Before long, Svengali has Trilby entirely under his spell. He has even turned her into a fantastic opera singer, which in turn has made him her Maestro. They will tour the world together, playing famous halls to packed houses. Trilby will even marry Svengali, but there will be one man who is on to his scam; the young Englishman who was intended to paint her that day, now five years in the past. His name is Billie, and Billie will never forget. He was in love with Trilby. Now, he follows her from city to city, attending all her performances with Svengali, waiting and hoping to get her back. Svengali sees him in the audience but only sneers. Billie isn't worth the effort of a confrontation, so totally is Trilby in his thrall.

What will become of young Trilby, and......what will become of Svengali? Though he seems infallible, he does have a heart condition that is exacerbated every time he uses his hypnosis, which is the only thing keeping Trilby under his power.

Though it has traces of horror and is presented as a thriller, "Svengali" is really a love story, and at the film's end a touching one, at that. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it an "unrequited love story" about a man who desires love but is incapable of giving it, but a love story it is, and Marian Marsh is wonderful in the lead role as Trilby, only 18 when she made this movie but holding her own with the great John Barrymore in scene after scene. Barrymore, for his part is nothing short of tremendous as previously noted, and the supporting cast, including Donald Crisp as one of the painters, is superb as well. The art direction accentuates the subject matter, the sets look right out of a German Expressionist film and the lighting is appropriately shadowed and grim. The story may not go in the direction you anticipate. If, like me, you were expecting an examination of ultimate evil, or a portrayal of a total sociopath like the aforementioned Rasputin, "Svengali" doesn't quite go there. Though he is no prince, and certainly a bad guy, Barrymore fills him with too much humanity to make him a caricature. It turns out he's got feelings just like the rest of us. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Svengali". /////

That's all for the moment. I'm hanging in there and staying inside, except for my walks and a trip to the store every few days. Tomorrow I'm scheduled to sit with Pearl for an hour or two while her daughter does some shopping. I was originally supposed to return to work as her caregiver tomorrow, but now it looks like her daughter will be here until the quarantine is lifted, so I'm only "on call" and stuck inside The Tiny Apartment for now. Ah well.......it could be worse and I'm not complaining. Tonight I will draw again, finish my Neil Peart book and then watch another movie. See you a little later at the Usual Time. Stay well.

Tons and tons (and tons) of love!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Brain From Planet Arous" starring John Agar and Joyce Meadows

This blog was begun Sunday night March 29th, and completed the following day :

Tonight we knocked it out of the park with a movie called "The Brain From Planet Arous"(1957). The title alone gives you an idea of it's greatness, and after a single viewing I'm gonna place it in the Pantheon of Brain Movies, sitting at the right hand of "The Brain That Wouldn't Die". I found it in an IMDB list of public domain flicks. I'd never heard of it, which astounds me now because it's a freakin' classic, but because it had a Brain in the title and starred John Agar, I thought I'd give it a try. Agar is a name you can trust in '50s Sci-Fi, having been in the legendary "Tarantula" as well as "The Mole People". He was also married to Shirley Temple for a while, but that's neither here nor there. What was mostly great about his acting style was his high level of arrogance. Agar played characters that you loved to hate because they were so smug, and you got the feeling he was that way in real life, which made it all the better!

He's in Ultra-Smug Mode in "Planet Arous", where he plays nuclear physicist Steve March, who is working in an unnamed capacity for the military near the White Sands Proving Ground. I think he's monitoring fallout in the surrounding area following atomic bomb tests, because he has Geiger counters at his disposal as well as a device called a "Scintillator" that looks something like a blow-dryer. There's no mention of what it does, haha, but you can be sure it produces "scintillating" results! As the movie begins, Agar and his assistant Robert Fuller (of "Emergency" fame, looking very young here) observe an object in the sky behind Mystery Mountain (yes, that's what it's called). It shines like a star, descending slowly until it lands out of sight behind the mountain, where it's impact produces ground shaking similar to a medium sized earthquake.

Agar and Fuller drive out to the desert to investigate, bringing along the Scintillator of course. At a certain point, their path becomes impenetrable by Jeep and they have to get out and walk, climbing over rock formations on their way to the back of Mystery Mountain. When they get there, they see a tunnel that has been bored into the side. This tunnel (suspiciously resembling the Bat Cave in Bronson Canyon) hadn't been there before. Fuller's Geiger counter starts red-lining; could the fallen object have created the tunnel by crashing into the rock? Agar and Fuller enter to investigate, flashlights on, Scintillator at the ready.

You have to be prepared for what happens next, and I'm just gonna tell ya, because this movie doesn't waste any time. This will be a major spoiler, so read no further if you don't want to know.

What happens is that, as Agar and Fuller go deeper into the tunnel, they see a light shining off to one side. The Geiger counter is going crazy, but then........it abruptly shuts off. The scientists are armed, Agar points his pistol toward the light and says, unsmugly for once because he is frightened, "just come out of there. We don't want any trouble". After a moment of silence, we hear a deep booming voice : "Haha! You might as well put down your insignificant weapons, gentlemen. They will have no effect on me"!, and as we are hearing this, the source of the voice comes floating into view......

It's a Giant Brain! Well, maybe not a giant one. But it's oversized for sure, probably ten or twenty times bigger than a normal brain. And.......it has Eyes! Yes indeed, it has eyes and it can see you, or rather it can see Agar and Fuller (and probably you as well!).

The Brain introduces itself as "Gor". He comes from a Planet of Brains, out of which he considers himself the supreme intellectual. Talk about smug! John Agar's got nothing on this guy. As Gor makes his intentions known, it quickly becomes clear he's a megalomaniac bent on world domination. He kills Robert Fuller on the spot, burning him with radiation that Gor "thinks" at Fuller. Then he explains to Agar that he, Gor, is going to inhabit Agar's body and there is nothing Agar can do about it. Gor has chosen him deliberately after much study of the human race. His reasons are twofold. Firstly, Agar works at White Sands, where an H-Bomb is about to be tested. "I will use you to conquer humanity"!, he boasts. Gor's second reason for selecting Agar out of 3 billion earthlings (in 1957 numbers) is because he's got an attractive fiancee (Joyce Meadows). Yep, ol' Gor is a hot blooded Brain. He tells Agar that there are no such pleasures on his planet. He can't wait to get his hands on Meadows, which he can only do through Agar himself.

Agar returns home late that night, acting "formal" and half-zombified as people do in these movies when they've been taken over by malevolent Brains. Meadows senses something is wrong but he assures her he's fine, before pawing at her like a teenager in the backseat of a car. That's Gor at work, naturally. Agar shifts back and forth between being himself and this "other" personality, until he's mostly Gor and by now, Meadows is afraid of him. Also, unbeknownst to her, he's walked out into the desert that night and blown up an airplane in the sky, just by "thinking" at it. He gets a big kick out of this, a warmup to his much bigger plan at the atomic test site.

Meadows becomes so scared of him that she calls her Dad to intervene. He comes over and has a talk with Agar, who smugly reassures him that everything's okay. This seems to pacify the father, who explains to Meadows that "it's probably just stress. He's got a lot of responsibility with this big bomb test coming up". But then........another Brain shows up! This Brain is named Val, a Good Brain who has tracked Gor to Earth and is now prepared to stop his Evil Quest to rule the planet. Val explains everything to Meadows and her father; that Gor - an arch criminal - has taken over Agar's body. Gor is exceedingly dangerous, but Val has the power to stop him, if an Earthling will volunteer his or her body for Val's use. He suggests Joyce Meadows, but she is terrified by the prospect. "It's got to be someone who is close to Steve", he says (meaning Agar). "Someone he trusts. Otherwise Gor will become suspicious". The father offers himself for the job, but Val declines. "He'd wonder why you were hanging around all of a sudden". Then a solution is reached : The dog! Yes, George the dog will be the ideal choice, as Steve loves him and takes him everywhere. He's also a big German Shepherd who can do some damage. Val will inhabit George's body in an attempt to kill Gor.

But how can he do this without killing John Agar?

This will prove to be a moot point, but I shant tell you the reason. Gor - via Agar - will soon hatch his Master Plan at White Sands, and I'll leave you to see that for yourself as well. I'm telling ya, you don't wanna miss this one. I don't care how cheesy it sounds, or how cheesy it may be!, "The Brain From Planet Arous" is not only one of the best Brain Movies ever made, it's also a Certified Classic of 1950s Science-Fiction, an accolade that has weight, coming from Yours Truly. It's got it all; John Agar, Joyce Meadows, great location shooting, scientific hardware, military scenes (meetings of Generals), a nostalgic depiction of '50s domesticity, and most of all........it's got Brains! Not one, but two! The production values are good, it doesn't look cheap (even if it was), the actors are invested in the plot, and the Youtube print looks like it was just released in the theater, shot in crisp black and white.

I loved this movie so much I'm gonna give it my highest rating, Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. Now, such a rating would also go to a film like Bresson's "Diary of a Country Priest", but don't get the wrong idea, haha. The rating in this case takes into account the type of film it is representing, but in that context, it is well merited. We struck gold with this one.  ////

That's all for the moment. I'm gonna go for a CSUN walk, then come back and attempt to draw for a little while before seeking out tonight's film. Elizabeth, you inspired me with the beginning of your drawing last night. Is it a doggie? It looked like one, from the nose and mouth. I don't know what I'll draw yet, but I'll think of something during my walk.

See you later tonight at the Usual Time. I trust all is well.

Tons of love!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Neil + Skibo Castle + Elizabeth + "The Hoodlum" starring Lawrence Tierney

I am really enjoying Neil Peart's book "Roadshow", in which he details his motorcycle journeys all across America during Rush's R30 tour in 2004. Neil is a great writer, as you know from his lyrics, and not only does he bring his personal travels vividly to life but he gives you a real sense of what life is like for a giant rock band on the road, all while throwing in doses of humor and enough personal anecdotes to make you feel as if you are one of his many friends (he seems to know "half the world", to paraphrase a Rush song title). In sum, the book is much more than a travelogue because you get a good idea of just how expansive Neil's life was. He lived a huge life by anyone's standard, packing in more action in a day than most folks could in a month. So even though his time on Earth was short in comparison to many people, it seems like he lived twice that long, so much did he see and do, and accomplish. I'm especially loving his descriptions of the places he visited on that tour, not only on days off but on concert days as well. Accompanied by a traveling partner (his bodyguard) he would ride his motorcycle between Rush shows, out into the back roads of a state, and in doing so he probably covered as much of the American highway system as any professional trucker or driver. He literally rode all over the place. I mention all of this because he also did this in Europe on that leg of the tour, and one of his destinations was to the Skibo Castle in Scotland, a place I had never heard of.

The castle was built by Andrew Carnegie around the turn of the century. Carnegie, of course, was one of the giants of the steel industry and at one point was the world's richest man. In the book, Neil gives some history of Carnegie's life, including the fact that he so loved organ music that he had 700 pipe organs built to be installed around the world. Clearly a man after my own heart! He had some serious dough, and you can see for yourself if you check out the Skibo Castle website. Well, the place is so awesome, and Neil's account of his night there so enthralling, that I thought "Man, I just have to see Skibo Castle someday". He describes dozens of stops he made on this tour, but the Castle sounded like the most impressive of them all. As I am the opposite of Neil in travel - I've barely been out of my home state - I thought, "y'know, I am gonna do me some traveling, and even if I don't have the cash to stay at a place like Skibo, I'd like to see it anyway".

So my point is : who wants to come with me?

Elizabeth, would you go? 

I'm just askin'.  :):)  Google "Skibo Castle" and check out the website. You could even go without me, lol. Or you could be the lead and I could tag along.  :)

But yeah, "Roadshow" is an incredible book even for non-Rush fans, and it's awakened the travel bug in me, big time.

Elizabeth, I also liked your photo from home this morning. Your coffee table and chair, corner light near the ceiling and walls all blend with each other in the soft light, but retain their lines to create a designer look ala Charles Eames, with the whiteness offset by your painting. Your coffee nook, if it is that, could be set in the corner of a modern art museum, at least from the looks of that picture. The rectangle of light coming in through the doorway tops it all off. A great shot. :)

Tonight I switched from Sci-Fi to Film Noir, still watching on Youtube and public domain. I found a movie called "The Hoodlum"(1951), and right there I knew had a winner, "Hoodlum" being one of the great descriptive words in the English language, haha. Another indication came from the film's stars, Lawrence Tierney and Marjorie Riordan, who we recently saw in a Sherlock Holmes flick. Tierney became known to modern audiences as Joe Cabot, leader of the robbery crew in Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs", in which he had the classic "Mr. Pink" discussion with Steve Buscemi. I had never heard of Tierney before that, but it turned out he had a long career specializing in Film Noirs and Crime Thrillers, and over the years I saw several of them : "Dillinger", "Born To Kill" and "San Quentin". Tierney always played the "heavy" and created a memorable onscreen persona with his menacing physique and grim vocal delivery. So, when I saw he was starring as "The Hoodlum" I knew it was a cinematic match made in Heaven.

Tierney plays Vincent Lubeck,  a criminal since childhood. He's been arrested for everything short of murder, and is about to be paroled after serving half his sentence for armed robbery. The leniency of the parole board is due to a plea from his mother, who has come in person to the hearing to beg mercy for her son, who she says is still young enough to turn his life around. The board votes to release him, against the wishes of the prison warden, who warns them Lubeck cannot be reformed : "He's not like other criminals. He's a Hoodlum! Laws and rules mean nothing to him". But now he's back in society. Will he be able to go straight?

He goes to live with his elderly Ma and his brother Johnny (played by Tierney's real life brother Edward). Johnny owns a gas station. Ma suggests he give Vincent a job there. Vincent doesn't want to work for Johnny, who he resents, but has to show employment to his parole officer, so he grudgingly accepts the offer. While pumping gas, he takes notice that the station is right across the street from a bank, and that an armored car makes a daily pick-up at a precise time every afternoon. Hmmm...probably not good for Vincent to see such a thing, being that he's a Hoodlum who can't stop committing crimes. Vincent is also pretty fast with the ladies. One day Marjorie Riordan pulls in to the station, and it isn't long before Vincent has her on a date. It turns out she works for the bank, so Vincent ever so casually inquires about the methods of the armored car crew. "Gee, y'know I see those guys every day across the street. How many of 'em does it take to make those deliveries? Does one guy stay inside? Oh man, I'll bet they carry a lot of dough"! He pries a few numbers out of her without arousing suspicion, and by the next day he has succumbed to the old criminal urge, calling some ex-jailbird buddies to arrange for "a big job".  They're gonna pull an armored car heist.

Vincent is a careful planner. He's learned a lot during his years in the joint, listening to lifers talk tricks of the trade. He knows the key to a successful heist is strategy, working out every last detail in case of contingencies. He tweaks the plan til it's perfect, but he's not so meticulous in his personal life, and this could get him into trouble. His brother Johnny has a fiancee, Rosa (Allene Roberts from "The Red House"), who has a proverbial Heart of Gold. She is always sticking up for Vincent when his brother (and boss) rides him for laziness or insolence on the job. Vincent takes advantage of this situation to play to Rosa's sentiment. He steals her away from Johnny and an illicit romance ensues. Rosa falls in love with Vincent, not understanding that he is incapable of love, or any real feelings for anyone. He's a sociopath, or - as they called such a person in those days - a Hoodlum! Yep, Vincent is a hoodlum, which may not bode well for the romance, but we'll have to wait and see because we have a job to pull, er.....I mean Vincent and his crew have a job to pull.  :)

Did he mess up by getting involved with Rosa? Will it interfere with his concentration during the heist? Worst of all, what if Johnny finds out, about Rosa, or the robbery, or both?! He's a real Straight Arrow, that Johnny. No way he'll keep his mouth shut.

"The Hoodlum" is a heckuva good Noir, with two top-notch scenes. One is the heist itself, as good as any of the bank jobs you've seen on film, with a novel get-away plan involving a funeral. The other noteworthy scene comes at the end of the movie. I don't wanna tell you much about it but it features the actress Lisa Golm, playing Vincent's mother in a harrowing, riveting performance, one for the ages in Noir iconography.

Running 61 minutes, "The Hoodlum" has a multi-layered script, not as jam packed with twists and turns as other short films we've seen, but complex nonetheless. Lawrence Tierney didn't possess great range as an actor, but he's able here to get under Vincent's skin and show us his psychology, his resentment and the insecurity it arises from. He's very good in the role, and he was said to be a bit of a tough guy in real life, so maybe that helped, lol.

Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Hoodlum", then. We'll do more Public Domain tonight, so stay tuned. It's now Sunday evening. I went to Santa Susana today for my first hike in three weeks. There were people there, maybe a couple dozen all told which is more than usual, but the park is so huge you can't help but social distance by hundreds of yards. I stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home but there was a line outside so I left. My inner George Bush kicked in : "Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent". Now I'm listening to KUSC as I write. CSUN walk coming up shortly, then tonight's movie. See you at the Usual Time. :):)

Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Amazing Transparent Man" directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

This blog was begun Friday night March 27th and completed the following day :

Tonight's movie was yet another Mad Scientist Masterpiece, "The Amazing Transparent Man"(1960), directed by noted low budgeteer Edgar G. Ulmer, a Hollywood craftsman who could make a film in almost any genre, just so long as it was B or C-grade. A few of his movies rose to prominence; "Detour", a Film Noir, is considered one of the best in it's class, and "The Man From Planet X" is a near-classic of 1950s Science Fiction. An early work, "The Black Cat" from 1934 starred both of the giants from the Universal Horror era - Karloff and Lugosi, and was as creative and well produced (if a whole lot weirder) as any of the better known fright flicks from that studio. Ulmer had the talent to be a major director, or at least a steady and stylish one, but for whatever reason his career veered all over the map, and he became known in later years as "The Thinking Man's Ed Wood".

From that description we can examine this evening's showcase. A safecracker (Douglas Kennedy) has just escaped from prison. As he runs across a hillside, a car pulls up to meet him on a wooden bridge, driven by his girlfriend (Marguerite Chapman). She takes him to a house out in the sticks that looks suspiciously like the one we saw last night, and no, I'm not kidding.

These coincidences are getting out of hand. Once again I chose the movie only for it's title and the fact, as noted in a Youtube summary, that it featured a Mad Scientist. These days I've just gotta have my Mad Scientists, as you know. But when the film was over, I checked IMDB again because of the house, and sure enough......."The Amazing Transparent Man" was shot in and around Dallas, Texas.

The house the safecracker is driven to is a near replica of both the Chainsaw house and the one we saw last night, the only difference being the lack of surrounding woods in this film. Still, it's located near Dallas, so I guess in Texas it was common in the 20th century to stick a three story Victorian mansion in the middle of nowhere. Wow, two houses in a row, in Dallas, in two Mad Scientist movies. Really weird.

But then we like Weird, don't we? What would life be if it wasn't weird? Boring is what, so let's be glad for weirdness, coincidental or not.

But back to the movie, when the safecracker and his woman arrive at the house, they are greeted by the man who arranged the prison break (James Griffith, a tall angular actor whom you've seen in a million movies). This man, a Major in the armed forces (branch unspecified) owns the house which has a laboratory in the basement, where a famous German physicist works.

I must take a moment here to note the recent frequency of German physicists in our movies.

So yes, there is such a physicist in the basement, and of course he's an ex-Nazi, but in this case he is remorseful, so I'm not sure it fair to call him a Mad Scientist. What he's doing is certainly Mad, but he's being forced to do it against his will by the Major, who has his daughter captive - locked up in room - and won't let her go unless the physicist carries out his experiments. He's working with high level X-Rays in order to produce invisibility, which he's achieved in small animals. Now he's ready to try it out on a human being, which is why the Major broke Kennedy out of prison.

You see, the Major is a Crazed Psycho, a megalomaniac who wants to create an army of Invisible Soldiers to achieve World Domination. But he's gonna need a huge supply of radium to make them all invisible, and the radium - a dangerous element - is kept locked up in a vault at the local Army base. This is why the Major needed Douglas Kennedy. As a notoriously skilled safecracker, he is reputed to be capable of picking any lock, no matter how secure. The plan is to make Kennedy invisible so he can walk past the base's checkpoints unseen. Then, he can go straight into the building containing the vault, open it up and bring the radium back to the lab. It all sounds so foolproof, and it might be if Kennedy didn't have ideas of his own. You see, once he becomes invisible he plans to head over to the bank instead of the Army base. He's gonna unload enough dough to take himself and Marguarite Chapman to Mexico, or maybe Europe, where they can live out their days in peace, away from the law and the Major, who they think is nuts (and he is).

The Major has a Loyal Henchman, of course, who overhears Kennedy tellling Chapman of his plan. This is where the trust starts to break down between the Major and the other two, and from this point the plot will move in several different directions as the Major tries to force Kennedy to comply with their original bargain, which was his freedom in exchange for the theft of the radium. There's also the reluctant physicist, who's only going along to protect his daughter. Will he continue to obey the Major? And what of the Henchman? Will he remain Loyal in light of a secret being kept from him? The Major is playing a rather weak hand, I'd say, but then I'd never bet against James Griffith in any situation.

There are some great scenes in "The Amazing Transparent Man", including some of the unintentionally humorous variety, as when Kennedy is stealing the radium and gets into an "invisible" fight with one of the guards. On the more serious side, or at least as serious as you can get in a movie like this, the physicist's laboratory is very well rendered, and has enough machinery, gauges and dials to satisfy the most discerning '50s Sci-Fi fan. There is a lot of conflict in the plot, too. Almost everyone will turn against someone in the film's 58 minutes, and some outrageous schemes will be hatched. The ending is a shocker, which you might be expecting given the dangers of radium, but you'll be impressed even so. I'd like to know where Ulmer got his footage for the final scene; it didn't look like a typical Stock shot.

"The Amazing Invisible Man" gets points for an inventive script and good B-movie acting. There isn't as much location shooting as I'd have liked, but lab experiments and invisibility sequences make up for it. I'm gonna give the movie Two Big Thumbs Up, in a less than classic sci-fi way. This isn't a cheesy movie or worse, a Good/Bad one, but it's no work of art either. My high rating and recommendation, therefore, is based on Fun, and it's a lot of that. //////

I'm gonna go for my walk now. Back in a little while at the Usual Time.

Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"The Yesterday Machine" starring Tim Holt and Jack Herman

This blog was begun Thursday night, March 26th, and completed the next day :

On my walk tonight it was truly weird to see no cars coming down Zelzah. Actually, I saw one or two, but that was in a four minute span as I went north from Nordhoff to Prairie. You wouldn't even see that few on Christmas. It was as if Zelzah was a remote highway out in the desert. I mean there was no one. It's good that folks are honoring the stay-at-home though, weird or no weird. I am obeying it, too, but I've gotta get my walks in to maintain my health and my sanity. You can still walk in L.A, thank goodness, and wasn't it ironic and prophetic that "Missing Persons" was the group who said nobody did that?. Aliso is closed and I assume Santa Susana is too (haven't checked), so thank God for the university, or as I call it : "my backyard". If I didn't have it, I couldn't live here. But yeah.......it's a real Ghost Town out there.

Tonight's movie was called "The Yesterday Machine"(1965). I found it on Youtube, in continuing with our recent trend, and while it was a black and white low budget sci-fi, it did not have the production values of the other films we've seen during our run in the Public Domain. That's putting it charitably. In contrast, "Indestructible Man" was the equivalent of a Summer Blockbuster and "27th Day" of an Oscar nominated Art Film.

Howww-ever, and there's almost always a "however" in my blogs, despite an aesthetic that makes "Plan 9" look extravigant, "The Yesterday Machine" holds your interest with an intelligent script, if little else. As the movie opens, two college kids are stranded in the Texas outback, their car broken down on the roadside. It is nighttime, and the students, a young man and his girlfriend, make their way across a sparsely wooded field to look for help. They come to a barbed-wire fence, replete with "No Trespassing" sign, and of course they ignore it and pass through, pulling apart the wires to gain access. In the distance they see the lights of a house, and in true Texas Chainsaw fashion they approach, heedless of the danger ahead. This could be because the film was made in 1965, a full nine years before the Massacre was known to theatergoers, but as they walk through the woods a long tracking shot reveals that Tobe Hooper might have seen this film and been inspired, and that is not all. The rest of the evidence, though, will have to wait.

For the moment, our couple is accosted on their way toward the house by two armed men whom we never see. Our POV faces the college boy as he begs them not to shoot. Who are they? Are they thieves? Psychos? Residents of the house? "Negative on all three, good buddy". That's me saying that.

We in the audience will be privvy to who these guys are, but like the college kid, we will hardly believe what we have seen. Holy Smokes and my goodness gracious, how could this be possible! Despite his plea, the gunmen do open fire on the couple. The kid is wounded but his girlfriend gets away. The next we see him, he is in the hospital being questioned by the local police detective (the legendary Tim Holt, one of our favorite actors). We don't hear what is being said. Back at headquarters, Lt. Holt is visited by a newspaper reporter looking to get a scoop. Holt tells him he'll never believe the kid's story.

"Try me", he replies.

Holt repeats the kid's tale, of crossing the woods and over the fence onto private property. "We needed to find a phone, to call for help". As Holt speaks, we are shown in flashback what took place. As the couple walked closer toward the house, suddenly the two men jumped seemingly from out of nowhere. "It was like they appeared out of thin air". Now, we in the audience are shown these men. They are civil war soldiers.

The reporter isn't fazed. "Okay, so you've got some guys playing dress-up. That's not uncommon out in the boondocks. There's fellas who're history buffs, who do recreations of famous battles. Maybe these guys just got liquored up afterwards and decided to scare those kids, and it got out of hand".

"But I've got something to show you", Holt says, unwrapping a cloth he's taken from his desk. He holds up an odd looking bullet. "This slug was removed from the young man this morning. Have you ever seen one like it? I haven't, and I've been a cop for over thirty years. We had it examined down at ballistics and they couldn't i.d. it either. Finally, because of the kid's story, we took it to a military historian in Dallas who knew right away what it was. He showed us an encyclopedia with a picture in it. This slug was from a bullet made only for Springfield rifles between the years of 1860 and 1865. It was made as ammunition for the Civil War".

The reporter remains skeptical. "Okay, so these guys wearing the costumes are into authenticity. Let's say they had a few old bullets lying around".

Holt continues :"Besides the historian, we talked to several manufacturers. Firstly, that ammo was strictly regulated. Slim chance it would ever get into civilian hands. Second and more importantly, the powder wouldn't fire after a hundred years. That bullet should've been dead as a doornail".

Now the reporter is intrigued. "Okay, so what're you getting at"?

"That kid's story", says Holt. "He swears those guys just appeared out of thin air. And there's something else. His girlfriend ran off, she got away, but I've had my deputies combing those woods and every road in the area. They can't find her anywhere".

Holt then leans back in his chair and looks the reporter in the eye. "You know, when I was in Germany during the war, my unit was one of the first to liberate a concentration camp........".

He goes on to describe that instead of finding emaciated prisoners, they found healthy young people wearing clean new clothes. He goes on to explain the history of Nazi experimentation in advanced science. Now the reporter understands.

"Are you saying they had a Time Machine at that place"?

"That was the conclusion", replies Detective Holt. "The Nazis used the prisoners as guinea pigs for the first experiments. The early version was likely more of a 'de-aging' machine because it didn't transport the prisoners off the premises, only made them younger. But we captured the scientists involved in that project, and they confessed they were working on a Time Machine".

"Okay - but all of this was twenty years ago! All of those Nazis are dead or in prison. What does your story have to do with what happened here"?

"Well you see.......there was one scientist who was never captured. He escaped to South America and over the years was said to have entered the United States. Here's the kicker - he's rumored to have hidden out here in Texas, though it's never been investigated. And he just happened to be the lead man on the project. He was the designer of the Time Machine".

So there you have it! The college kids were accosted by Actual Civil War Soldiers who came out of a Vortex created by a Time Machine! The machine was invented by a Nazi Scientist who appears to have taken up residence near Dallas! Lately I've had a tendency to almost write down the entire movie for ya, so I'll try not to do that here (gotta go for my walk, lol), but what will happen is that Lt. Holt, the reporter, and the sister of the missing girl (a nightclub singer), will all go in search of the Mad Scientist and his Time Machine, which they fear has transported the girl into Another Century.

As you can guess, they will eventually find the Scientist, and this will be the best part of the movie, and redeem it from it's lousy production values and lack of action. The Nazi Scientist is played by an actor named Jack Herman, who (it says on IMDB) was a veteran of Yiddish Theater. The irony, right? But there have been many instances in movie and TV history when Jewish actors have played Nazis, in order to ridicule them. Think of Colonel Klink in "Hogan's Heroes". And here, in "The Yesterday Machine", Jack Herman gives a tour-de-force performance as the Mad Scientist, obsessed with going back in time to save Hitler and win the war, "So vee can rool zah voorld for zee next touzand yeers"! There is an extended scene where he explains the physics behind the Time Machine, and it somehow makes sense, haha. It's just a great, great bit of motion picture entertainment in that "Good Bad Movie" way. The final twenty minutes with Jack Herman is reason enough to see this film and for me to give it Two Solid Thumbs Up (and Two Huge Thumbs for Herman himself). Finally I want to mention his house, the one the college kids were walking toward when they were attacked at the beginning of the movie. When we eventually see it, it looks almost exactly like the house in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre". That was the other bit of evidence I was talking about regarding Tobe Hooper and the possibility that he saw this film and was influenced, knowingly or unknowingly. When you combine the house with the surrounding scrub woods and the fluid and lengthy tracking shots that follow the kids in the darkness, it all bears a resemblance to what we'd see nine years later in "Chainsaw", at least in essence.

"The Yesterday Machine" is no classic, not even close, but it's more than worth a view for Jack Herman's incredible performance and for a highly literate script (with some interesting scientific concepts regarding time and space). See it if you like "Good/Bad" Sci-Fi.  /////

Well, that's all for the moment. Whew! Man......am I overdoing it with these long reviews? If so, sorry, but I've got nothing else to do, haha. I'm not working at the moment, and I can only read for so long. I'm trying not to go to the store any more than necessary, or even go out at all except for my walk. So, I write. Hope ya don't mind. See you tonight at the Usual Time.

Tons and tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

'War Of The Satellites" directed by Roger Corman

This blog was begun Wednesday night March 25th, and completed the following day :

Tonight's "Youtube Spectacular" was "War of the Satellites"(1958), directed by Roger Corman and starring Richard Devon and Susan Cabot. Ever since we reversed course on our opinion of Corman we've been having luck with his movies, and though "Satellites" doesn't match the low-budget brilliance of his mid-60s horror classics, it's a pretty solid early effort. In hindsight, I should never have called Corman a hack. I just had the misfortune to see two of his genuinely bad movies as my first experience of his work ("The Terror" and "Little Shop of Horrors"). Every picture I've seen since however has ranged from good to top notch. This one falls somewhere in between those two ratings.

Richard Devon, a character actor you've seen many times, plays Dr. Pol Van Ponder - "Van" for short - a brilliant scientist who has developed a program to send man into Outer Space. Keep in mind this is right after Sputnik, when satellites were very much in the public eye. Van's breakthrough idea is to launch a manned satellite inside the standard vehicle of a three stage rocket, and to take it past the orbital level where it will be free to push forward into space, to explore the Final Frontier as it were.

In their initial attempts, Dr. Van and his satellite crews have encountered a Mysterious Barrier at an unquantified distance. Think of Felix the Cat and his attempts to break the Sound Barrier on his trips to Mars. This barrier has a similar repulsive force, but it's unnatural, and in fact it's being produced by - you guessed it! - an Alien, the same kind of smug, know-it-all we encountered in last night's "The 27th Day". What is it with these dudes, anyway? Why the conceit?  ;)

Well, as usual, it turns out he's down on humanity, got a low opinion of us, although this time it's not specified why, exactly. He simply says, in a Grand Pronouncement, that he likens us to an "infection" in the interstellar scheme of things, and therefore he has set up the barrier as a preventative "quarantine", to keep us from spreading into the far reaches of the Universe.

Now I must take a moment to swear an affidavit that no, I did not seek this movie out under search terms relating to the coronavirus. Actually I chose it because it was made by Roger Corman and had a great title. But out of the blue came these coincidental words of dialogue, infection and quarantine, which made the viewing both timely and a little unnerving.

A meeting is held at the United Nations, during which it is discussed whether the Sigma Project, as it is now being called in reference to the Alien's use of Latin, should proceed. Both viewpoints are presented, pro and con, by many of the sponsoring nations. Some argue against continuation with the dire fact that many satellite crews have already been lost. Naturally in favor are Dr. Van Ponder's team, including Cabot, his main assistant. The UN Mediator asks to hear from Dr. Van himself. "Is he here? He was supposed to attend this meeting". Cabot assures the mediator that Dr. Van is on his way. He'd informed her that he might be late, as he's been working overtime on his new "three pronged" satellite, which will have enough power - finally - to break through the alien force field.

It is here that Corman cuts to a shot of Dr. Van driving down a country road on his way to the meeting. You'd think he'd be in Manhattan, or on a nearby freeway, but Corman was filming on a budget and had to use a local canyon, haha, probably Malibu or Kanan. Anyhow, as he is driving he suddenly finds it increasingly difficult to steer. There is a high pitched ringing noise and a Bright Pulsation in the sky that resembles  a supernova. The Alien is messing with Van's car! Man, he's just like a Mafioso. Why didn't he just fix the brakes? Oh well, I guess the steering wheel is just as effective. Now Dr. Van can't turn it at all. He goes off a cliff, the car explodes and he is dead. Except.......

Just as the UN Mediator is about to call off the debate, in walks Dr. Van. You and I know it's not The Real Him but the others do not (though his zombified gait and overly formal manner should be a clue). This "Dr. Van", who of course is The Alien, has no choice but to argue in favor of the project. To do otherwise would arouse suspicion, as he has always been it's biggest champion. Plus, he's been working on the latest satellite, the 3-in-1, or he had been, before he was killed. The Alien knows all of this, so, as "Dr. Van Ponder", he gives a rather stiff speech in support of Sigma, assuring the assembly that he now has the means to break through the space barrier. Behind his human disguise, he knows he can destroy the satellite by other means.......by captaining it himself!

From here, the plot takes on the conflict typical of a Star Trek episode, like when Spock turns against Captain Kirk or Mr. Sulu mutinies. Impressed with his speech, the UN gives the go ahead for the Three Pronged launch. "Dr. Van" assumes command of the mission and the delegates - not knowing who he really is - are impressed with his willingness to put his own life on the line. As he is inspecting the solenoids the day before launch, a blowtorch falls over and badly burns him, charring his hand to a crisp. The head engineer (the project's Scotty) runs to get a doctor, but "Dr. Van", knowing he'll be relieved of duty if examined, rubs his hand until it's healed completely. Now it looks as good as new, and when it was burning he didn't even feel it! When the doctor arrives, with the engineer in tow, "Dr. Van" simply says the supposed accident never happened. The engineer must have imagined it, but it's okay, he's been under a lot of stress don't you know.

The doctor shrugs it off and the mission is still "go", but big-time suspicion is created on the part of the engineer. "I know what I saw"!, he reiterates, and what he saw was a Charbroiled Hand without a wince of pain from his boss.

They get ready to blast off the next day, and here, Roger Corman has created a really cool look for the scene, using a giant matte painting featuring three gigantic rockets of classic Atomic Age design. They are streamlined and monolithic, and the matte looks so much better, even in all it's staged unreality, than does CGI. I just had to get that in there as an aside, not that CGI is horrible because it has it's uses. But it's been overused to the point where it all looks the same, and while matte painting (and the use of models) was more primitive cinematically, it was also a lot more fun to look at. And there are a lot of super duper 1950s special effects in this movie, including a truly bitchin double exposure when "Dr. Van" leaves his body in order to replicate.

But to finish off the plot, or at least what I'm going to tell you, now that they've achieved liftoff, "Dr. Van", i.e. the Alien in disguise, is ready to carry out his Nefarious Plan and guide the Three Prong into disaster. Can the engineer stop him? Can he get Susan Cabot, or Dick Miller the copilot, to believe that it's not the real Dr. Van onboard? He's gonna need some help, that's for sure, because "Dr. Van" has a hand grip that's similar to the Spock "shoulder pinch", and now that I think of it, I wonder if Gene Roddenberry was a fan of this movie? Roger Corman himself has a nice cameo as a dead serious Mission Control operator. Given his typical low budget, it's impressive the care he took with this film, to avoid it being cheap looking or corny, which it decidedly is not, even though it has "1950s Sc-Fi" written all over it. Like "The 27th Day", it has a simple plot and an "either/or" level of conflict (i.e. no twists or complications) but it has better sets and more "space hardware" than that movie. It doesn't have "27"s existential considerations or philosophical dialogue, but it's just as enjoyable in a Saturday Afternoon "Rocket Ship Movie" kind of way. I give it Two Big Thumbs Up! It was another great print on Youtube, once again in black and white, as all 1950s Sci-Fi should be.  ////

That's all for the moment. I'm gonna go for my evening CSUN walk in just a few. We're still doing the Winter Thing here, it's Four Layer Chilly and windy, too. When I get back I'll do some reading, and then search Youtube for another classic........

See you tonight at the Usual Time.

Tons of love!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Elizabeth

Well Elizabeth, that is a very beautiful song. I can tell it is intensely personal for you, and you have written in the tradition of the classic singer/songwiters - straight from the heart, as you refer to directly in your chorus. If you don't mind me saying so, you are indeed "full of heart", and it shows in everything you do. Your vocal melody is just lovely here, it delivers the rise and fall of the emotion in your lyrics, just like ocean waves.

In your words you refer to following your stars and trusting the path you are on, and all I can say, as I have always said, is that if you keep following and keep trusting in your journey, you will never go astray in your life. Part of the journey does consist of feelings of uncertainty, of being "at sea" as the saying goes, and the shore always feels safest no matter life's circumstances. But you are a lady of great talent, intelligence and resourcefulness - not to mention extreme creativity! - and you have already ventured out into some fairly deep waters, to continue the metaphor. :) You've traveled to far off countries, you've piloted an airplane; you're not short on courage, that's for sure. I know the song is dealing with other stuff too, but as far as life is concerned, you are not only going to continue to have an amazing life, you're already having one. I always tell people, "look at the track record". When worries about the future weigh heavy, like they are doing now for everyone, I always say, "Look at what we've made it through already, and also look at the things we've worried about that never came to pass". Look at the 'track record' of our lives, and of your life in particular, and you may find that, despite the times we feel anxious or unsure, things have a way of working out, and especially if you always keep the faith. It doesn't have to be religious faith if you don't feel that, but just faith in your spirit and your path, and that God - however you perceive God - is always watching over you. These are things you already know, of course, but I just say them anyway.  :):)

You are a great songwriter, so whatever you do - keep writing! Look at what you can do with just a guitar and voice. You're writing in the tradition of Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Nick Drake and even Eric Johnson on his new, acoustic album "EJ 2". As long as you continue to "bring it", to dig deep and really bring out the emotion and the all-important vocal melody, to "let the song come to you", you will continue to come up with songs as heartfelt and beautiful as "The Ocean". Thanks so much for posting it (and writing and recording it!). Your music means a lot to me and so do you. You made my day as always.  :):)

Stay safe and well. 

I send you tons of love.   xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

  

"The 27th Day" starring Gene Barry and Valerie French + Elizabeth

This blog was begun Tuesday evening March 24 and completed the following day :

I went with Youtube Public Domain again tonight and came up with another good one, "The 27th Day"(1957), starring Gene Barry and Valerie French. An Alien pays a visit to five people from different countures : An English woman lounging on a beach, an American newspaper reporter working in his office, a German physicist on his way to the airport, a Chinese lady living in Communist turmoil, and a Russian soldier stationed near Moscow. Each person he visits is hypnotised, and when they "come to" they are all together aboard the Alien's spaceship. He's an articulate gentleman, human looking and wearing a spacesuit not unlike that of The Ruler from "Plan 9 From Outer Space". This film will prove to be a tad more thoughtful than that masterpiece, though maybe not quite as much fun.

The Alien, as he prefers to be called, presents each person with a small container in the shape of a pill box. Then he rolls out his spiel : His planet is dying (and isn't this always the case in these movies?). His people need another world to move to or they're gonna be toast; Earth would be perfect, however, they know that humans would never accept an Alien presence. Though they are technologically superior (and isn't that always the case?), their strict moral code prohibits them from wiping us out to take the planet for their own.

Therefore, The Alien has gathered these five people together to allow them to make the choice whether the human race, and the Alien civilization, should live or die. The boxes he has given them each contain three capsules (about the size of a Vitamin E pill). He explains that his scientists have developed a weapon far superior to anything humanity has come up with. The capsules contain highly concentrated radiation, enough to wipe out all human life in a 1500 mile radius. When multiplied by a factor of 15 (three capsules times five boxes), there is enough to kill every person on Earth. The Alien then goes on a tirade about the destructive nature of humanity, how they've been fighting since time began and how it's led to the logical conclusion of the H-Bomb. "You are now set to destroy yourselves, but your weapon will also destroy your planet. That we cannot allow, because we need it. Therefore, with these capsules we are giving you a choice. Each box can only be opened by the thought processes of the person to whom it has been given. Each of you can open your own box, and no one else. You must think it open; no amount of physical force will suffice. If you decide to open your boxes, the three capsules inside will be at your disposal. You can designate each one for a specific longitude and latitude. The choice will be up to you whether to kill off your entire race, and thereby leave the planet to us, or whether to leave your boxes unopened, in which case we will perish. In any event, we will not intervene. The choice is now yours as to which civilization will continue".

Now, that's a pretty big responsibility to have laid down upon those folks, don't you think? Especially when all five concerned were merely minding their own business just moments before.

C'mon, Mr. Alien! Aren't you being just a tad heavy handed?

Not in his mind, he isn't. He's dead serious, and the next thing the five humans know, they are each back in the locations from whence they were taken. No time has passed because in the Alien's ship they were flying at light speed. The only difference is that now, each one has the box he or she was presented with. For the Chinese girl it is all too overwhelming. Her village is under siege from the Red Army. Her hut is on fire and she barely has time to think, so she runs over to a local shrine and begins praying to Buddah. Then she falls over dead, her prayer perhaps being answered (the reason for her death is never made clear but is alluded to as suicide).

In Germany, the physicist cancels his flight at the airport to return immediately to his university. He plans to study the capsules to see if they can be invalidated, made harmless. He is brilliant and world-renowned, which presents a problem when he publicizes his trip with The Alien and his unfortunate "gift" of the capsules. Soon he will have spies in his midst, doing everything they can to get ahold of them. And of course, the spies will come from.......

Russia, where the soldier has now been summoned and sequestered. By now, you see, The Alien has gotten word of the German physicist's disarmament effort, and has taken over the broadcast capability of all the world's radio and TV stations. Now he's making a planet-wide speech, once again ranting against human violence, while proclaiming the power of his capsules. He's a bit of a hypocrite, wouldn't you say? But worse for his remaining four subjects, he's ratting them out by name and address! What a total jerk. Now everyone in the world knows who they are, which is gonna cause chaos. A silver lining for the Chinese girl is that she won't be around to face it, but the Russian soldier is immediately called to an Imposing Marble Office in The Kremlin, where sits a grim-visaged Man in Uniform who resembles Joseph Stalin (sans moustache).

"Vhat do you know about these cap-schyooles"?!, he demands.

The soldier, being a Heroic Figure, feigns ignorance, claiming he can't remember anything about the Alien encounter. He knows that Stalin can't open the box; only he can, with his thoughts. But if he explains that, he will be tortured into doing so. So he plays dumb and Stalin tortures him anyway. In addition, Uncle Joe also sends his spies to Germany to try and kidnap the physicist.

This leaves only the American reporter and the English beach lady free and at large, but their names have been mentioned too, and it won't be long until they've been hounded into confinement. The English woman quickly realises this. She books a flight to Los Angeles, looks up the reporter and calls him at his office. "All we've got is each other"!, she pleads. The next thing you know, they are hiding out at Hollywood Park, a famous horse racing track (recently torn down to make way for the Rams new stadium). It's an ingenious idea to hide there, as the track is closed for the off-season. The two set up shop in a horse barn, and for a while the movie switches into "domestic drama" mode, as Barry and French discuss what would happen if they became the only two people left on Earth.

I'm not gonna tell you every hook, line and sinker as I did with "Indestructible Man" yesterday, because I wanna do a CSUN walk and then some dusting inside my Tiny Apartment. But, I will say that Barry and French will eventually have to leave their hideout. The German physicist will work tirelessly to find a way to disable the capsules, and the brave Russian soldier will.........ahh, that I can't tell you.

One thing I forgot to mention has to do with the movie's title : you see, if the five subjects can keep from opening their boxes, or being forced to open them, for twenty seven days, the radiation inside the capsules will expire and the human race will be saved. In turn, The Alien and his civilisation will die. So there are a number of possible outcomes, and a twist that you'll never see coming. There isn't a lot of action in "The 27th Day", much of the dialogue is doomsday-based philosophy, and in that respect it resembles an extended episode of "The Twilight Zone". For saucer movie fans, though, there are some good special effects and "military hardware" scenes toward the end. Once again you have some cool L.A. locations, especially Hollywood Park, and once again you have a near perfect print shot in glorious black and white. "The 27th Day" wasn't quite the All Out Blast we had with "Indestructible Man", but it was a good 'un nonetheless. Last night I was gonna give it Two Solid Thumbs Up, but today upon reflection I think it was better than that, so let's up it a grade and give it Two Big Thumbs. For what it lacks in energy it makes up for in original ideas. Give it a watch and let's keep going with the Public Domain flicks for now.

Elizabeth, I hope you are hanging in there. I liked your photo of the snowdrops and I'm glad you are finally getting some Spring weather. It's still overcast and cold here (four layers were required last night, haha). It's supposed to rain again tomorrow (enough already) but after that we're finally gonna get a run of sunshine, or so they say. I can't wait to see those beautiful blue skies again. Man, I've never seen 'em like that, just so deep and blue. So that's one positive aspect of this crisis. I've gotta get my drawing pencils out, my Prismacolors. So far I've found it tough to concentrate because of the constant unsettling news, but as this thing continues I wanna get creative as you are doing. Keep posting whenever you can, it always makes my day.  :):)

That's all for the moment. Stay safe and well. I'll see you on FB and back here tonight at the Usual Time.

Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Indestructible Man" starring Lon Chaney Jr.

This blog was begun Monday night, March 23 and completed the following day :


Tonight's movie was a previously unknown gem called "Indestructible Man"(1956), starring Lon Chaney Jr. as "Charles 'Butcher' Benton", an inmate on Death Row at San Quentin. "Butcher", as he is known, was part of a gang that pulled off an armored car heist. In the process, he killed the driver and now awaits his date with the gas chamber. When the movie opens, we see him talking through the bars to his lawyer (Ross Elliott), a scheming chiseler whose only concern is where the loot is stashed. The robbery netted 600k, a ton of dough in '56. Before he was arrested, Butcher hid the money. Elliott tries to coax it out of him, the location, but Butcher won't tell him. He knows that Elliott masterminded the job and set him up to take the fall. He swears revenge, saying "I'll get out of here, and when I do I'll kill you"! Elliott laughs in his face at that statement. "You'll be dead in twelve hours", he smirks.

Elliott is right, because in twelve hours Butcher will be sitting in the gas chamber, but he is also wrong, because.........well, because this is another movie with a Mad Scientist in it, just like "Donovan's Brain", and once a Mad Scientist enters the picture all bets are off. Butcher is indeed executed the next morning. His crooked lawyer Elliott hears about it in a bar in Downtown Los Angeles, the city where the robbery took place and where the money is likely hidden. He goes right away to visit a burlesque dancer (Marian Carr) who was a friend of Butcher's, but she swears no knowledge of the hiding place. For the moment, Elliott is stymied.

Meanwhile, back up at San Quentin, Butcher's body is being removed by the coroner, who takes it not to the local morgue but to the laboratory (pronun.) of a nearby Mad Scientist. At first glance, this doctor appears to be at least somewhat altruistic (and aren't they always, haha). He claims he is doing "cancer research" and needs the corpse for an experiment. Of course, this is against the law, so he pays the coroner off to keep him quiet. Then, with the help of an assistant, he lifts Butcher's body onto a gurney, placing electrodes on the chest and forehead. "He's big and strong", says the Doc. "And fresh, too". The assistant then utters the movie's best line : "So you're actually going to give him 287,000 volts"?

Now, let us be absolutely clear on that point. We aren't talking about 300,000 volts, or 250,000, or even an unrounded but still multiple-of-five number like 265. No - we are talking exactly 287k. I don't know how they arrived at that specific number unless it was by trial and error, so it is likely that Butcher is not their first guinea pig. But beyond that, what in the world does this have to do with cancer research? That question is never explained, as the switch is thrown and Butcher is filled with the full force of the electricity. It's positively Frankenstinian, I tell you! And just like ol' Frankie, you know Butcher's gonna wake up, and you know he's gonna be incredibly pissed off. He gets up off the gurney and stumbles about, something Lon Chaney Jr. was very good at (being a veteran of monster movies). The Doc attempts to calm him down, but Butcher ain't having any. He reaches out with both arms at once, finds two necks - belonging to the Doc and his assistant - and begins squeezing. So much for those guys and their "research".

The next we see of him, he is stumbling across the countryside of Northern California. It is pitch dark. He comes to a road, and wouldn't you know it, a pretty girl is standing there, next to a stalled car. She asks for Butcher's help (having no idea who he is, of course), but he doesn't answer her. You see, as our narrator explains, when Butcher was zapped, the high voltage destroyed his vocal cords. His mind, however, was left intact! And oh  yes - I realise now I neglected to mention the narration, which begins at the start of the picture, and is done by the Lead Detective on the case, in "hindsight" mode.

So anyway, yeah, Butcher's mind was left intact, which means he can understand what the girl is saying. As she continues her plea for help, a man steps out from the shadows. Lo and behold, he's a carnival barker. No, I'm not kidding. The whole thing has been a publicity stunt, to drum up customers for his tent show down the road. After all, who wouldn't stop to help a pretty girl? Butcher wasn't pissed before, but he is now. He was all set to help before the barker appeared. So, he picks the guy up and tosses him about fifty yards, pushes the girl aside and jumps into the car. Lo and behold, it starts! Remember that his mind is intact, so he can drive, and drive he does, en route to L.A. 

On the way there, he is stopped at a roadblock. The pretty girl has called police and the Highway Patrol is checking all cars for a Man of Incredible Strength (remember that he tossed the carnival barker half a football field). Butcher knows he can't stop, so he floors it and crashes through the barrier. The cops give chase, surround his car and force him out. When Butcher charges them, they fill him with lead.

Or.......um........I should say that they try to. They empty their guns at him, from point blank range, so by all accounts he should be dead, am I right? He should be dead and full of holes. But he ain't. One of the effects of the high voltage, you see, was to thicken his skin. It has become so dense as to be impenetrable. The bullets just bounce off him, and after tossing several cops down the road, he gets back in the car and continues his journey. By the time he arrives in L.A., the word is out to all police agencies : "Be on the lookout for an Indestructible Man"! They don't actually use that phrase, of course. Police language is always stark and specific, never speculative or....(heavens!) goofy sounding. But I needed to get the title of the movie into a sentence, so I used the description myself, and as a side note, I should mention for clarity's sake that there is no "The" in the title. It's not "The Indestructible Man", just "Indestructible Man". So yeah, or I mean no, the cops don't refer to him as "Indestructible" because they don't actually know that. Not yet, anyway. What they do say in their APB is that their bullets bounced off him, and he was of incredible strength (something also noted by the pretty girl earlier in the evening).

At LAPD headquarters, lead detective Max Showalter (also our narrator), thinks he can explain part of this : "The guy's probably wearing a bulletproof vest".

"But what about his strength"?, asks the Captain. "The CHPs said they were thrown around like rag dolls".

Hmmmm........no explanation for that one.

Meanwhile, back at the Burlesque Theater, the sleazy lawyer has returned and is again pressing Marian Carr on the whereabouts of the stolen dough. She swears she has no idea where it is. "I didn't know Butcher that well! I only met him a few times. I knew nothing about the robbery until he was caught"! They've both heard the news of Butcher's execution that morning. Neither, however, has any idea he's been brought back to life (how could they?) and is on his way to Los Angeles. Carr, the burlesque dancer, has an envelope from Butcher that he gave to her on her final visit to San Quentin. "To be opened after my death", it reads.

"Well aren't ya gonna open it"!, asks the scheming lawyer. Carr tells him it's private, for her eyes only, but then she is called back onstage to perform her encore and the lawyer sees his chance. He opens the envelope, and voila! It's a map, showing the sewer system beneath the city. A big "X" marks the spot where the treasure is certainly hidden! All he's gotta do is go down there and get it. He hires a couple of thugs to help, offering them a pittance of course, but before they can begin - it's not easy planning a sewer escapade, after all - word comes through on the news that one of the original henchmen from the armed car robbery has been murdered. He too had gone free when Butcher took the fall, but now he's dead. Who could have done it? The cops have no idea. Could it be the Man of Incredible Strength who got away from the roadblock? Hmmmm.......can't rule it out.

Not long after that, just the next day in fact, a Second Henchman is found murdered. This was the third and final member of the robbery crew. He'd escaped jail but he couldn't escape Butcher, who as we in the audience know has arrived in town and is exacting his revenge. Elliott the sleazy lawyer is getting a sick feeling about the murders, recalling Butcher's final words to him the night before the execution. But it can't be. How could Butcher be the killer? He's dead for God's sake! Could he have hired a hit man to carry out the deed? At any rate, the situation is creeping Elliott out big time. Better he just find that money and split town.

The cops, for their part, have made a breakthrough, though it isn't making any sense. They've found fingerprints on the body of one of the Henchmen, that match Butcher's prints exactly. But how could this be, they wonder? Butcher is dead! Hmmmm........does he have a twin brother? Anybody know? No, he doesn't have a twin, not that the detectives are aware of, and even if he did, the prints would be slightly different. These are exact. What in the world is going on?

Just then they receive a call from up north. San Francisco PD has new information from the coroner, who has confessed to selling Butcher's body to the Mad Scientist. They've crashed his lab, which turns out to be located underneath a power plant. So that's where he got the 287,000 volts! The coroner cops a plea and tells all, how he needed a few extra bucks and so sold the corpse on the down low, to the Scientist who told him he was only working on a cure for cancer. He didn't mean for this to happen! The SFPD have found the bodies of the Mad Scientist and his assistant, observed that their necks have been crushed and suddenly it all makes sense. It's got to be The Man of Incredible Strength, the same one who's been tossing coppers around. It's gotta be The Butcher, crazy as that sounds! They tell all of this to the Captain at LAPD, who puts out his own APB to look out for a man fitting the description of Charles "Butcher" Benton. Then he gets a visit from that crook Elliott, the lawyer, pleading for police protection. Though he knows nothing about Butcher's resurrection, he's got a weird feeling that Butcher must have escaped somehow. After all, the two Henchmen are dead and he may be next. Butcher swore revenge, remember? Elliott is so scared he confesses to being the mastermind of the armed car robbery. "Please, put me in jail", he begs. "At least I'll be safe there".

The cops agree to jail him, but first he's gotta show them where the money is hidden. Elliott produces the map, and now the race is on, to recover the cash and to stop Butcher in the process. I've told you a hell of a lot, more than for most plots haha, but only because this was such a great one, for a B-Movie horror/crime flick anyway. I found "Indestructible Man" on Youtube while browsing public domain movies for viewing. It was short (71 minutes) and had Lon Chaney Jr, a favorite of mine. It also had that great title, so I gave it a shot and now I'm giving it Two Big Thumbs Up and a strong recommendation for all films fans of any stripe. One of my favorite things about this movie, besides it's inventive plot, was it's fantastic use of actual Los Angeles locations, many of them fallen by the wayside now, like the original Angel's Flight before it was moved in the late 60s. The burlesque theater appears to be real as well, and so does an old rooming house when the Henchmen are holed up. There's a ton of great street footage from late 50s L.A., shot in classic black and white, on a print that's close to perfect. You can't ask for much more, and for a time like this it was the perfect movie. Even the title was hopeful sounding; wouldn't we all like to be Indestructible right now?  :)

I'm gonna search public domain again tonight, and if I can find anything even half as good as "Indestructible Man", I'll be happy. Watch it for a much-needed diversion.  //////

That's all for the moment. I am gonna head out for a CSUN walk in a little while. I hope all is well with everyone. See you later tonight at the Usual Time.

Tons of love!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Elizabeth + Corona Diary + "Donovan's Brain"

This blog was begun Sunday afternoon, March 22nd and continued later that evening :

Elizabeth, I love your idea of recording outside! I saw your prior post, where you had set up a studio in your Mom's closet. Maybe that turned out to be too confining, or not resonant enough? Well anyhow, I'll look forward to hearing your song if you decide to post it. :)

Right now it's raining pretty hard here. I was lucky to get in a three mile CSUN walk at 1pm, or I'd be going pretty stir crazy by now, haha. In your post you weren't able to check the "spring weather" box, and neither can we. Even though we had beautiful blue skies for a couple of days, it's still been "three layer" cold, meaning you (i.e. me) need two t-shirts and a sweatshirt to avoid freezing. And, now it's raining again anyway, like it has been for most of the last ten days. About those blue skies, though, I've gotta say that I can't remember when I've ever seen it looking like that. The blue was almost translucent, and didn't look flat. It was like you could see through it, and the puffy white clouds made the sky look three dimensional, like looking through one of those old GAF Viewmasters. Nice to know how fast the air clears up when nobody is driving.

My building is dead quiet, the exact opposite of how it usually is, with people running up and down the stairs, doors opening and closing, voices in the courtyard. I feel like The Last Man on Earth, haha, like if I opened my door and looked out, I'd be in the middle of a Twilght Zone episode.

Last night's movie was "Bullet Code"(1940), a George O'Brien serial Western, so there isn't much to describe because these films are formulaic, but Big George was great as usual, helping a rancher and his daughter fend off an Evil Land Surveyor who has designs on their property. In the script formulas for hour long serial Westerns, very often the Bad Guy is the local surveyor, lol. George O'Brien can always see them coming a mile away, just like Tarzan.

Tonight's movie was "Donovan's Brain"(1953), taken from my own personal collection and selected because it has Brains in it. As you know, anything with Brains is automatically good, regardless of other factors, and while this film doesn't reach the heights of "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" or "Fiend Without A Face" it still has an appropriately evil plot. Lew Ayers is a research scientist, working from home in his state-of-the-art laboratory (pronounced La-BORE-a-tory. You should never say "LAB-ra-tory" in the context of a sci-fi movie). He is assisted by his wife (future First Lady Nancy Davis) and best friend Gene Evans, a neurosurgeon. They are experimenting with monkey brains, trying to keep one alive independent of the body in order to study the cerebral wave functions. One day there is a knock on the door - it's the local ranger, informing Ayers that a plane has crashed in the Chatsworth hills. One passenger has survived, but just barely. As the only doctor in the vicinity, Ayers' help is needed at the scene. He brings the survivor back to his lab where he and Dr. Gene try to save the man, but their efforts are in vain. The guy dies, and before Nancy can call the coroner, Ayers gets an idea.

"What if we had a human brain to study"?, he asks. "It could advance our research by years"!

Nancy and Dr. Gene look at him like "you've gotta be kidding", but he isn't. Nancy even tries telling him that "it's against the law to operate on a corpse! You'll go to jail"!, but that doesn't deter him either. Dr. Gene invokes medical ethics : "It's wrong to steal a man's brain"! Still Ayers is determined. "Leave the room if you don't want to be part of it"!, he cries, and they do. They leave, and he removes Donovan's Brain, which is not only the name of the movie but also the name of the guy who owned the brain in question, Mr. Donovan.

Now, Mr. Donovan was a very wealthy man, worth 100 million dollars, and that's in 1953 money. But according to people who knew him, he wasn't a nice man, ruthless in fact. He was known for trying to ruin his competitors financially. Ayers doesn't care about any of that - at least for now. All he wants is to study Donovan's Brain for it's wave patterns, as he was doing with the monkeys. He believes that it will one day lead to brain transplants that will save the lives of clinically "dead" patients. In a whopping turnaround, both his wife Nancy and his partner Dr. Gene are now on board with the experiment. They're okay with the brain, and are helping Ayers to keep track of it's progress. It seems to be eating well, consuming several milliliters daily of the nutritional solution it's soaking in. They've got it submersed in a fish tank, hooked up to electrodes and oscilloscopes and all the stuff any self-respecting Mad Scientist would use when studying a brain. It's also exhibiting an extraordinary amount of electrical activity, which is showing up as beta waves on the scope. Ayers has a feeling that it's trying to think.

Well of course it is! This is a Movie About A Brain, for crying out loud. You didn't expect it to just sit there, did you? So yeah, it's trying to think, which gives Ayers a further idea. "What if I was able to know what it's thinking? We'd be on the verge of a major breakthrough"! He then sets about trying to read the brain's mind, using mental telepathy. Though he will have success, it will prove to be a double edged sword, as The Brain will now have access to his mind as well. And remember, this particular Brain belonged to the ruthless Mr. Donovan, who made his fortune by screwing people into the ground. The question must be asked, what will he now do to Dr. Ayers, or rather.......what will Dr. Ayers do to others, to anyone who opposes him? You see, The Brain is now going to use Ayers to take care of Donovan's unfinished business, and then reinstate Donovan in Ayers body. It's a downright fiendish plot, I must say, and while I won't tell you much more, I should mention that there's a Nosy Reporter hanging around, played by Steve Brody, who might try to blackmail Ayers, once he gets word there's a brain in the lab. This gives the film a Noir aspect as well, a nice little touch not usually seen in sci-fi movies.

Again, it's not a classic like the abovementioned pictures, but it's good enough to warrant Two Solid Thumbs Up, and a recommendation from me to all fans of 1950s science fiction. You also get some great Wilshire Boulevard location shooting by the great Joseph Biroc, and in rich black and white no less. I've seen it several times over the years and it hit the spot tonight when escapist fare was badly needed. Man....I'd like to see this Brain (or any Movie Brain for that matter) kick this virus in the butt. In fact, I'd like it if Tarzan, George O'Brien and Donovan's Brain all ganged up on it. Screw you, coronavirus, you'd be toast! /////

I hope you're hanging in there. It was hard to miss church again this morning. I hope we still have a congregation when this is all over. Please may it be sooner rather than later. God bless everyone, stay well and I will see you on FB in the morning and then back here tomorrow night at the Usual Time.

Tons of love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Staying In, with Eric Johnson and Tarzan + Elizabeth

This blog was begun Friday night, March 20 :

Stayed inside most of the day, with the exception of two CSUN walks in the afternoon and evening. I got a lot of reading done at least, of Neil Peart's "Roadshow" and David Icke's "The Trigger", books with vastly different tenors, one a lighthearted travelogue, the other a grim and brutal political assessment. I also listened to Eric Johnson's new album "EJ Vol. II". It arrived from Amazon a week ago but I wanted to wait until I had no distractions to hear it. My impression after one listen is that it's an exceptionally beautiful record of heartfelt compositions. The songwriting is deep and highly polished, Eric's lyrics and singing can bring a tear to your eye on a few songs. It's mostly acoustic and not an Eric Johnson Guitar Shredding Extravaganza (with the exception of a few short Chet Atkins style instrumentals), but there are Strat flourishes here and there to punctuate certain phrases. What you really notice is the production. He's taken his time with this one, the sound is full bodied and it harkens back to the warm sounding albums from early in EJ's career. In some ways it reminds me of "Tones", even though it does not have the up front presence of the electric guitar, but it does have the same elevated level of songwriting. The lyrics are all about love and finding a spiritual connection in our lives, and again, even on one listen you can tell this album meant a lot to Eric. He dedicated it to his Mom Irene, who recently passed away but lived to be over 100.

I think it's his best work since "Venus Isle", which came out in 1996. That album is in my All Time Top Ten, a certified "desert island disc", so this is high praise from yours truly for the new one. It's just the right tonic for the times we are living in, so thanks to Eric for his beautiful music which for me has been a big part of the soundtrack to my life. I love so many bands and artists, but a few rise up to the level of feeling like family, and that's how I think of Eric, as part of my musical family. ////

Elizabeth, I've gotta say that your new director's reel is very beautiful as well. You have three elements in perfect sync : the landscapes, your music, and the physical grace of your dancers, in addition to the look and dress of each dancer. They all match their locations. You have an eye for texture and a good feel for editing, and you've generated a flow between the different videos so that all the dancers are in harmony, with your piano providing a framework for their motion. You did a really great job - I agree with Steve and the other comments on your FB post 100% - and I think that you have a huge well of feeling in your artistic style also, as evidenced in your music, your outstanding Red Dress series,  and your work overall.

Somebody once said that "sometimes the only thing you can say is 'Wow' ", so that's what I'm sayin'.

And wait a minute!..........the somebody who said that was me.   :):)

Well anyhow, I did watch a movie tonight, and it was the other Tarzan feature I missed out on last year, "Tarzan and The Leopard Woman". This time, he gets involved in the investigation of a suspicious death, when a guide is killed during a caravan of merchants into a desert community. The guide has been mauled, his body is covered with claw marks. "Leopards"!, he cries with his dying breath. "Leopards"......

But Tarzan isn't so sure. "Leopards not kill", he states after examining the body. Lol, if it seems that Tarzan has suddenly become a medical examiner, that's just one of his many talents. He uses common sense combined with his intuition and vast knowledge of the jungle to solve any mystery. "Leopards always use teeth. This man only claw. Leopards not kill this way".

The man in charge of the caravan, a town commissioner, disagrees. "Why would he tell us it was leopards if it wasn't"?

"Maybe man not know. Maybe think leopards, but something else". Hmmmm.....but what could that "something else" be? At the far edge of the jungle, where it opens to the desert, lies the town of Zambesi. It is relatively uncivilised; the tribesmen there follow a Queen (played by the singularly named Acquanetta) who claims to be descended from the Leopard God, whom they worship in cave ceremonies. One inhabitant, however, has been educated in the outside world. He is a doctor, who has worked in the town of Burgandi, from where the merchants come on the other side of the jungle. The doctor abhors the way in which Burgandi has been turned into a tourist trap, filled with stalls selling trinkets. He swears that Zambesi will not be sullied by such low commerce, and has set out to stop the merchant caravans. He is also in a secret relationship with Acquanetta, the Leopard Woman. Is he by any chance behind the murder?

As the commissioner and Tarzan make their way to Burgandi to investigate (along with Jane, Boy, Cheetah and their guides), they are set upon by.........a pack of leopards. Real ones, spotted, vicious and toothy! And lightning fast. Good thing the commissioner has his rifle and Tarzan have knife.

"You still think it wasn't leopards, old chap"?, says an incredulous commissioner.

"Is trick"!, replies Tarzan, but he is openly scoffed at now, not only by the commissioner but by the guides, too. Even Boy and Jane trust the official conclusion, believing everything is safe now that the pack of leopards are dead. But Tarzan know different.

In the middle of all of this, in Zambesi there is a boy, Kimba, who desires to prove himself as a warrior. He's a tough little squirt (as played by Tommy Cook), and though the doctor feels he is too young to fight, he agrees to let Kimba infiltrate Tarzan's group in order to spy on the Big Guy and see what he is up to. In the process, Kimba ingratiates himself with Jane, which makes Boy jealous! Man, there's all kinds of skulduggery underway in this one.

You'll have to see for yourself if the Leopard Woman has real leopards under her control, or if Cheetah can charm a snake. She's not a bad oboist, or whatever that instrument is that they play, and you'll get a kick out of what she uses as a practice setup. Cheetah will also get the last laugh as she does in nearly every Tarzan movie, and you'll have a great adventure along the way. I of course loved "Tarzan and The Leopard Woman", and was glad to be able to see it all the way through this time on an unscratched dvd. Last year, a different copy kept freezing up midway through and I had to eventually pull the plug. But it was worth the wait and I give it Two Big Thumbs Up. Now I have seen the full dozen of the Johnny Weissmuller "Tarzan" movies, which have become one of my favorite film franchises. Let's watch 'em all again before too long.  ////

It's now Saturday morning and I am sitting here listening to The Opera Show on KUSC. I'm going a little buggy in my Tiny Apartment. I barely went out at all yesterday and came in contact with no people on my CSUN walks, but at some point I'm gonna have to go to the store. I guess I could try Vons later on, and if there's a line I'll just skip it and wait another day. I hope you are well and hanging in there. We'll get through this and things will get better. In the meantime, we'll be watching movies and I'll be back here at the Usual Time (and on FB too).

I send you Tons of Love, from the heart.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Tarzan Triumphs" starring Johnny Weissmuller and Frances Gifford

I'm home, and I finally saw a movie : "Tarzan Triumphs"(1943), starring Johnny Weissmuller and Frances Gifford. If you've been following the blog and you can remember back a year, you'll recall that I was watching the entire Tarzan series in early 2019. Weissmuller, the only true Tarzan in my opinion, made a dozen films as The Ape Man. I found all twelve at the Libe, in two six-film collections. Ten of them I enjoyed very much, but two were so badly scratched they wouldn't play. One was "Tarzan and The Leopard Woman", the other was "Tarzan Triumphs". I was recently thinking about those two entries and wanting to see them so I could complete the series, so a couple of weeks ago - before the world changed - I reordered the Tarzan Collection Two, hoping by chance that they'd send me a different, unscratched set from a different library. The Los Angeles City Library system has 72 branches overall, so when you order a book or a dvd from the database, it could come from any one of them. And - I lucked out! When my Tarzan Collection Two arrived at the Northridge Branch, it was indeed a new copy. That was about a week ago. Chaos ensued after that, of course, so I wasn't able to watch it until tonight, but as it turned out it was perfect timing because I really needed the distraction right now, and Tarzan came to the rescue.

The beautiful Frances Gifford co-stars as Zandra, heroine of the idyllic kingdom of Palandria, which lies on the other side of the escarpment that isolates Tarzan, Jane and Boy in the jungle. Tarzan likes their solitude; as you may remember he doesn't trust other people : "People always bring trouble" is one of his sayings. But Zandra (who looks and dresses like Wonder Woman) has rescued Boy from the cliffside and Tarzan is grateful, so he makes an exception and befriends her. Jane is away in London visiting relatives, but don't worry, "Tarzan never cheat". He didn't say that, I did, but it's true all the same. Tarzan lives by a strong moral code. He thanks Zandra, who heads back to Palandria while Tarzan and Boy return to their treehouse in the valley below. On their way, they hear a noise in the sky.

"Iron Bird"! says Tarzan. It's an airplane, one that has just discharged a paratrooper. Within moments he has landed in the jungle, but he is hurt. Cheetah the chimp gets to him first and steals the antenna to his radio. That Cheetah.....ever the thief! But before she arrived we witnessed him making a broadcast, to Berlin! You see, he is a Nazi soldier, part of an expedition into Palandria to exploit the natural resources there. He has a bad leg, however, from landing wrong, so he cannot hide before Tarzan and Boy come upon him. Therefore, when they bring him back to their hut, to help him heal, he pretends to be English. Even Tarzan has heard of the Nazis, halfway around the world. The soldier is taking no chances.

By this time, the rest of the expedition has entered Palandria on foot. The Nazis quickly set up their mining operation and enslave the natives to run it, but Zandra manages to escape. She crosses the mountain into Tarzan's jungle valley, beseeching him for help. But he refuses.

"Tarzan no fight. Tarzan hate war. Nazis not bother Tarzan, Tarzan not bother Nazis". Hmmm, sounds like ol' Tarzan is an Isolationist politically as well as socially. Boy and Zandra try to explain to him the Nazi mindset, that they won't stop with Palandria. His own jungle kingdom will be next. But Tarzan isn't buying it. "No.......Nazis not come. Too hard to cross. Tarzan and Boy safe here. No fight".

But unfortunately, Tarzan and Boy not safe. Remember that Cheetah has stolen the antenna to the paratrooper's radio, the only means of communication for the whole Nazi outfit. Without that antenna, they can't contact Berlin! (pronounced Beahr-LEEN). So, they kidnap Boy in order to force Tarzan to recover the antenna from Cheetah.

Now Tarzan fight! Not right away, because the Nazis outnumber him and have machine guns. Tarzan smart, however. Think things through and make plan. First, he uses his network of vines to swing stealthily into Palandria, where he frees some of the mining slaves. Now he has a small army of his own to help him find Boy and defeat his Nazi captors. Will he be successful? Tarzan basically pacifist, but when family threatened, Tarzan become like beast! And, besides the Palandrians, he's also got Zandra on his side, and Cheetah and Buli the elephant, too. Watch out Nazis, my money's on the King of the Jungle.

I hope it's okay to keep writing movie reviews. Maybe we could use a little distraction? I hope so, and I also hope everyone is well and coping with this very difficult situation. I loved "Tarzan Triumphs", in fact it was my favorite of all of the subsequent titles that followed the "big three" : "Tarzan the Ape Man", "Tarzan and His Mate" and "Tarzan Finds A Son". I give it Two Big Thumbs Up, it was the perfect escapist fare for tonight. Now if Tarzan can come back one more time to fight the coronavirus. //

As of tonight, we are officially on lockdown here in California. I've read the list of what you "can" and "can't" do, and I can still go for walks and go to the store when necessary, so it won't be too terrible. I'll just be real careful when I do have to go to the store, with full-on hand washing before and after, and I'm a major-league hand washer to begin with. It's important to remember that if you do two things, i.e wash your hands frequently and don't touch your face, you're greatly reducing your risk. As per the CDC, the only known means of transmission is from "droplets" from a person's sneeze or cough. So avoid getting close, and wash hands and, in Tarzan-speak "don't touch face"!

Stay safe and well, and I'll be back with more movies hopefully every day for the next two weeks. Being a health care worker, I'll be right back on the job as soon as my break period is over, but for now we'll hang out and watch flicks. See you tomorrow at the Usual Time.

Tons of love!  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

The Search for Peanut Butter + Extortion 17 + "Tales Of Tomorrow" ("The Duplicates")

This blog was begun Monday night, March 16th,

Tried Trader Joe's again this afternoon, hoping the rain might keep the customers away, but a lot of people must've had the same idea. Foot traffic was steady at the door and the checkout as folks picked over what was left on the mostly empty shelves. All I wanted was a jar of peanut butter and a bag of tortilla chips (no, I wasn't gonna eat chips & peanut butter. Get a grip). I go to T. Joe's for chips because they have a "no salt added" option. For a while now I have tried to lower my sodium where possible, due to an inherited tendency toward high blood pressure. They also have a "no salt added" peanut butter at Trader Joe's, but alas, neither the chips nor the peanut butter were in stock. Vons didn't have peanut butter, either, salted or unsalted (and they don't offer unsalted pb anyway, haha).

It looks like peanut butter is gonna be hard to come by for a while. That I can deal with. I love peanut butter, but it's like Kryptonite for me. Do you have any Kryptonite foods? I'm sure you do because we all do. I'm talking about something you like that, if you have it on hand, you overindulge. That's me with peanut butter. I've got a bunch of foods that are Kryptonite for me, potato chips being one, and ice cream, but I'll not veer off onto that tangent at the moment.

The rain lasted all day, so I wasn't able to do any walking. I did finish one of the books I've been reading : "Call Sign Extortion 17 : The Shoot Down of Seal Team Six" by Don Brown. It's the true story of the shoot down in Afghanistan of the Chinook helicopter carrying 30 American Special Forces troops and the subsequent cover-up of their deaths by the United States military. Seal Team Six was famous for killing Osama Bin Laden, though if you know me you know I don't automatically buy the official story that OBL was killed in that 2011 raid. It was all too convenient, the way they dumped "his" body into the ocean, etc., and we've had so many instances of false narratives here in America since the death of John F. Kennedy, that I think you have to be a fool to believe everything you are told by the government and their corporate media lapdogs. Really - truth be told - you should take everything the news media tells you with a grain of salt, because the news media is all about controlling the American public and steering them in the direction corporate America wants them to go. They do this by constantly pummeling you with a 24/7 information overload, but they don't tell you the real truth about anything. If you assume they do, just because you've chosen a "side" like MSNBC or Fox, you are only fooling yourself. So what you have to do, if you want to get the truth about a situation (or at least get closer to the truth) is to seek out books written about the subject you are interested in. And I don't mean best sellers that are written by the same corporate-interest authors that are gonna give you half the story and half disinformation. For instance, if you buy a book on Extortion 17 written by a mainstream writer, probably someone from the New York Times or Washington Post, you're gonna get a well written whitewash.

This is why I seek out books that are going to give me the truth. To backtrack, I already know that the electronic media are not going to do that, no matter what channel I turn to on any device. Books are the last refuge of truth because they are difficult to shut down. The author of "Call Sign", Don Brown, was a Navy JAG officer, and he presents his case - that the Taliban was tipped off about Extortion 17s flight path - like the top notch prosecutor he is. There is no doubt that the truth about this incident was covered up, and I highly recommend this book for Brown's diligent research and conclusive presentation. I am also reading "The Trigger" by David Icke, about 9/11, which I will have to report on in a future blog, as it is way too long and involved to go into here. My third book at the moment is "Roadshow" by Neil Peart. I ordered it after Neil passed away. I'd already read his first three books and I needed some Neil to help get me through the shock of his death. Now, he is not only entertaining me with his tales from the road on Rush's R30 tour, but he is making me laugh, too, something very wonderful at a time like this. Neil is not only a great writer but funny as hell, so he's cracking me up from the Great Beyond and I'm loving it.

It's now Tuesday night and I have good news! Peanut butter was discovered at Target. Yes indeed. I had a hunch to try the famous French Discount Store, and my intuition proved correct. I scored a large jar of Laura Scudders, the kind where the oil separates from the pb and you have to stir it up. It wasn't unsalted, but you can't have everything in this day and age. I got a big loaf of sourdough bread to go with it, enough to make sammiches for a week if need be. Now if I can just keep from eating all the peanut butter at once (or at twice or thrice). It's Kryptonite, remember? ////

I haven't watched any movies since Friday, just because I've been too distracted by The Situation to pay attention. Also, there've been the shopping concerns and the fact that I only have certain hours to watch a movie anyhow. When things are going smoothly, my schedule (pronun.) runs smoothly, but thanks to the fear-mongering media we're all worn to a frazzle. Again, I get that this is, for our generation, an unprecedented situation. But does anyone think it really helps matters to report, for instance, that there "could be" two million deaths here in America? Really, how does that bit of speculation help anyone? The answer is that "it does not help". It just ratchets up the Fear Level, which is what "The News" is all about anyway, even when there is no pandemic. Me, I try to ignore it but I'm only human, and while I do not fear the coronavirus myself, and while I believe we won't have a death toll anywhere near two million, the constant hammering on the worst case scenarios does have an effect on one's nervous system, and I am a caregiver for a 95 year old lady. So I haven't had the attention span to sit through a movie, but Pearl and I have continued to pound a nightly episode or two of "Tales Of Tomorrow". Tonight's ep was called "The Duplicates" and starred Darren McGavin (of "Kolchak" fame) as a man in need of a job who responds to an ad in the paper. When he shows up to apply, the man in charge seems to already know who he is, in fact he knows all about him. He tells McGavin that the job is unique and will require great courage, but it will only take 24 hours and will pay him a great sum of money : $250, 000 dollars.

That's a truckload of dough in 1952.

McGavin's a little taken aback, though he shouldn't be, considering what he was gonna see as "The Night Stalker" twenty years later. But he is, he's nervous about the job and he says so. "Why are you paying me so much? What do I have to do, and how do you know so much about me"?

"Because we've been studying you for over a year, and we think you're the perfect man for this job in every way. You're young, you're physically fit, you're highly intelligent and emotionally well-balanced, which is an especially important quality given what I'm about to tell you. You see, there is a planet, out there in space, that is very much like ours. Actually, as far as it's people are concerned, it's identical. For every person here, there is a duplicate on this other planet, who lives in a house on a street in a town that is also identical. Their entire civilization is exactly like ours, in every detail! Every person, every building, every tree, flower, and dog are identical to the ones here at home. What we need you to do, therefore, is to go to this other planet and kill your own duplicate by means of poison. It is absolutely imperative that you do this within the next 24 hours, for the Universe cannot support two mirror societies. Both will be destroyed unless you act".

The man, who works for the Air Force, then brings in a scientist to explain the physics of why the Universe cannot handle two identical civilizations. It's straight out of the Hugh Everett playbook, and it's great stuff, except that Hugh would say the exact opposite, that not only can the Universe handle two duplicate worlds, but that there are Infinite varieties of each one. If that were the premise, however, it would take Darren McGavin a lot longer than twenty four hours to resolve, and on the show he's only got thirty minutes, even less if you subtract all the preamble at the job interview.

He agrees to take the job, and in short order he's inside a rocket ship on his way to.....Earth!

You see, that's one of the punch lines. You thought he was from Earth, but he's not. He's from Jupiter!

The "duplicate planet" is Earth! (never mind that Jupiter is a gas giant 1300 times the size of Earth that likely has no discernible surface, and if it does it's made of liquid....)

But yeah! He's not from Earth, he's from Jupiter, coming to destroy our "duplicate" civilization by poisoning his mirror image. When he gets to Earth, he goes to "his" house. It's an exact replica, right down to his wife in the living room. She yells at him for being late for dinner, which freaks him out big time, but he's gotta keep his head on straight because he's got a job to do......

Is this a great show, or what? I mean, plagues from space, red dust from Mars, and now an entire planet of doppelgangers on Jupiter.......er, I mean Earth. I love "Tales Of Tomorrow", each episode is weirder than the last, and best of all the show was shot live, an early example of the nascent television format. This episode, "The Duplicates", was the last one in the Collection Two set of the series, but not to worry because I've just ordered Collection Three which should arrive in a few days. I'll get back to watching movies also, probably by Thursday night when I'll be back home and off work for two weeks. By then I'll be able to relax a bit more and we'll get back into the motion picture swing of things. But we'll have thirteen more "Tales" in reserve, just in case. Or maybe I'll save 'em for when I'm back at Pearl's. Anyway, that's all for tonight, so stay well and stay safe. I'm gonna read some Neil Peart and then get some shut eye. I'll see ya tomorrow morning.

Tons and tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)