I don't have a movie for last night - I'm slackin'! - but again I have a reason: I went to see Fan Halen in Thousand Oaks at a free concert in a park. No, you read that right, it's not a typo. Fan Halen is a VH Tribute Band, and a good one. Man, they've got the music down note-for-note (as tribute bands do these days), but even more than that, the singer even sounds like DLR when he's talking. And the guitarist not only plays like Eddie, he plays with EVH's energy and coverage. I looked the guy up when we got back, his name is Derek Fuller, and in a Youtube interview, he says that no one can play exactly like Ed (true), so the best anyone can do is approximate. I don't know if I mentioned watching the clip of Wolfgang at Wembley, but while Wolfie can do Dad on guitar, note for note, he doesn't quite match Dad's voltage the way Derek Fuller does. What really struck me as I was watching Fan Halen, though, was how fortunate I was to see the real thing 18 times. I saw VH very early in their post-club career, at the Santa Monica Civic on New Years Eve 1976 (opening for Sparks). I went with friends that night, and it's interesting that we actually saw them before Ted Templeman did. This is before the record industry was onto them, and Edward wasn't tapping yet, or at least did not do so that night. To bookend my VH concert history, I also saw their next to last show on October 2, 2015 at the Hollywood Bowl, five years before Ed passed away. In the last blog, I mentioned King's X as a band that felt like family. Before them, Van Halen felt like family and still do. I think they feel like that for all fans, and it's apt that the band we saw call themselves Fan Halen. As I wrote in a long ago blog, when you saw Van Halen in concert, they made you feel like you were in Van Halen. That's the best way I can put it. There were several hundred people in the park despite the heat. It was fun and I must say, Thousand Oaks is a very nice community.
As for movies, in addition to our nightly fare, I've been watching a serial called "Terry and the Pirates"(1940). Did I already mention it? It stars William Tracy of "Dodo Doubleday" fame, only he's a kid here, playing a the son of an archaeologist working in the jungles of Africa. Terry is an exuberant boy in safari clothes and a pith helmet; "Gee Willikers" is his favorite exclamation. He and his friend "Pat Ryan" (Jeff York) are searching for Terry's father "Dr. Lee" (John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame), whose team of archaeologists have been kidnapped by a half-caste chieftain named "Fang" (Dick Curtis). They've been seeking an ancient treasure they were planning to take to a museum, but Fang wants it for himself. By threat of torture, he tries to force Dr. Lee to tell him where the treasure is located. The choice of Dick Curtis in the role of Fang is both classic and hilarious because he usually played slit-eyed Western hard guys. Here, he's playing an Asian/African warlord, and the accent he uses - foppish and highly articulated - is one for the ages. His Fang is a bit of a fruitcake.
And Fang has an enemy to fear himself: "The Dragon Lady" (Sheila Darcy), a stunner who matches Fang in ruthlessness if not duplicity. Dragon Lady dishes out Proclamations of Death like candy: "Seize them! Throw them in the hungry volcano!" But she isn't without procedural mercy. So long as you can prove you were doing things by the book - her book - or you have a henchman who will vouch for you, she'll let you off the hook to blame someone else. Sitting on her throne in the Temple of the Dawn, she typifies the Indiana Jonesness of it all, and there's also a tribesman in charge of a crazed, killer ape, which he sets loose to kidnap "Normandie Drake" (Joyce Bryant), Dr. Lee's blonde assistant. For character support, you've got "Big Stoop" (Victor deCamp), a Lurch-like giant in a King Tut hat, and "Connie" (Alan Jung), his Asian sidekick. You've even got Charles King, though he has to play it totally straight as one of Fang's many henchmen. He does get in several of the endless punchouts, however. "Terry and the Pirates" is awesome, I think. It's 4 hours 45 minutes long, 15 episodes, all between 15 and 20 minutes. Watch one or five at a time; heck, binge watch the whole thing if you want, in one go, but you'll never see moviemaking like this again, where make believe meets adventure, with a dash of naivete. It's no wonder Spielberg made the Jones flicks after seeing this stuff as a kid. I'm only four episodes in, but Two Huge Thumbs for "Terry and the Pirates". The picture is very good. ////
The previous night we watched a capital punishment flick called "The Sun Sets at Dawn"(1950). We've seen a few from that genre in recent months, and "Dawn" was perhaps the most rugged, but it also had the type of supernatural, Miraculous element found in films like "The Enchanted Cottage" and "Portrait of Jennie", where shots of sun rays piercing thunderheads are meant to show God on High, accompanied by Wagnerian music. Think Douglas Sirk on a barrel scraping budget, but with a surprisingly strong cast and script. A young man, wrongly convicted in the murder of a hoodlum, is set to die in the electric chair. His chaplain pays a visit to his cell; the Heroic Warden, a symbol of compassion, allows his long-time girlfriend to sleep in a prison broom closet, so she can be near him in his final hours. The young man maintains his innocence throughout (warden and chaplain believe him), as newsmen set up a war room in a local cafe, where the old-timer owner serves up eggs, ham and coffee. The scribes talk blues streaks around one another while feigning cynicism about the execution. One young writer wonders why "they're going through with it, when everyone knows he's not guilty".
"Look kid", he's told by a veteran, "this mug is a dime a dozen. They kill his like twice a month at this joint. The real reason we're here is the new technology. This is the first execution since the gallows was outlawed; The Chair's the real story. That kid is just the co-star." At the prison, they keep testing The Chair and it doesn't work, presaging the gruesome executions of recent years (and remember the National Enquirer pic of Ted Bundy). There's a gut-wrenching performance from Sally Parr as the condemned man's girlfriend. Boy oh boy, even Meryl Streep couldn't have pulled this off. The close ups on Parr are like real life. The scenes with the padre and the kid are deeply affecting, also. But in the cafe is an old prison trustee, who brings the mail. On the night before the execution, he recognises a customer named "Blackie" (Lee Frederick), who wears a suit and owns a truck company. The mail trustee believes Blackie is actually a former convict, who escaped years ago but is thought dead. It turns out that Blackie really is this guy, and has a record for five murders. Now it's looking like he did the one the kid is set to die for. Lots of time is spent trying to get The Chair up and running. It keeps short circuiting and the electrician can't figure out why. The assistant warden is furious (a subtheme is how execution stress affects prison staff) and he gets so mad at the electrician that he threatens to test The Chair on him! Meanwhile, the girlfriend is collapsing from a broken heart, the condemned boy is stoic, the padre is earnest, and Blackie the hoodlum is sitting in the cafe, about to be called out by the prison mailman.
This is some heavy duty, well-directed-for-a-low-budget stuff. There's an aspect of Lives Converging in a Roadside Cafe, a context we've examined before, most recently when we were doing our Ron Foster mini-marathon last year. To recap, once you set a Roadside Cafe as your location, Lives are going to Converge, and when they do, they will be Varied and Desperate. Soon, they will Entwine, and Existentialism will play out (or Nihilism, take your pick). In this case, the kid gets his execution delayed, because The Chair won't work, but that's all I'm gonna tell you. Keep in mind the God angle. The standout performance by Sally Parr gives the story real weight. Though unknown (even by me), Parr was once featured on the cover of Photoplay with Liz Taylor and Natalie Wood with the caption "Three Actresses to Watch", but unlike the other two, she never made another movie. It's too bad, because she had Oscar level talent. See this film for proof. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Sun Sets at Dawn". The picture is soft but watchable. ////
That's all for tonight. I'm listening to "Two Rainbows Daily" by Hugh Hopper and Alan Gowen. My late night music is "Die Feen" by Richard Wagner, his first opera, tremendous. I hope you had a great holiday weekend, despite the endless heat, and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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