Last night's movie was "One Jump Ahead"(1955), another reporter-and-his-girlfriend murder mystery, this time about a child killer, that starts off very intense (and twisted), then bogs down in the jaded reporter's over-complicated love life. I mean, to be fair, he can't help it if he's a chick magnet, one of those guys who loosens his tie a lot and needs a shave and a drink, but even then, the script drops barely an occasional clue to keep you interested. By the 45 minute mark, you've got a pretty good idea who the killer is, and at the end you just go wtf (or "what the hey?", because we try not to swear at the blog). It's yet another expositional ending, where the screenwriter either didn't have the talent or was too lazy to weave the plot details throughout the film, and so he "tacked on an ending" as we used to say, like pinning the tail on a donkey. Okay, so we've had expositional endings before, where the main characters "explain" what happened to each other, as if they are just now making sense of it. And we can deal with those kinds of endings on occasion. But in this movie, the director gives them only one minute to do the explaining, and before that, when the the killer is found, the actor looks different than in previous scenes, for a very specific reason, and at first, you're going "who the H is this character?"
It makes you wonder if they edited out 10 minutes of the movie for television (and it is a British TV print, you can tell by the channel logo at the beginning). I'd guess it was majorly edited, with likely a big, single chunk taken out to make it one hour for TV, because even though you guess who the murderer is, the explanation given when the murderer is caught is so nonsensical that no filmmaker - not even Ed Wood - would expect you to understand it. Then there's the one minute exposition at the end.
Still, it gets Two Big Thumbs Up because of the solid beginning and premise. A 10 year old schoolboy is found dead in an old bombed-out church where the kids go to play. Later, the body of a local beautician is also found in there. She turns out to have been a blackmailer, but who was she blackmailing? Several red herrings are presented in the form of English caricature actors. All of this is entertaining in a mystery-plot-driven way because the Brits are good at being characters. It's a good movie until the double romance slows things down and pulls it apart. Again, it may have been longer and made more sense in unedited form, and Paul French, another American in London actor from the late 50s/early 60s, is good as the necktie-pulling, martini-needing reporter who's receding like David Jansen but can't help it if babes can't resist him. The picture is razor sharp. ////
The previous night, we found a Boris Karloff flick we'd never heard of, pretty lucky at this late date; we thought we'd seen all of Karloff's later work. Truth be told, this one wasn't made as a motion picture but slapped together from TV episodes of a British Boris series called "Col. March of Scotland Yard" (pronun.) The movie is called "Col. March Investigates"(1953). It consists of the three first episodes of his show, which I hadn't heard of. Karloff of course plays Col. March. He's in charge of the Yard's Department of Queer Complaints (when that word meant "weird"), and has a curio cabinet of unusual items taken as souvenirs from various cases; a witches mask, an incense skull, a Polynesian voodoo dagger. Each will tie in to one of the three 20 minute stories that make up the film. Boris is in TV mode here, he was slowing down by 1953, but he's still very good, and he delights in showing up the not-quite-inept-but-always-wrong "Chief Inspector Ames" (Ewan Roberts), who follows the most blockheaded leads. It's excellent stuff and we're now looking for the entire TV series, which ran for one season. The picture is good, not great. ////
Again a short review for the Karloff. I'm trying to keep a balance and maintain the quality and length of the movie reviews, while working on my second book in the afternoons and also trying to develop the new information I've received in the past month about September 1989, which has been groundbreaking as you know. It's amazing that I had no new info to work with for much of the past 12 years (during all the time I was with Pearl), and thus had the case on the back-burner, but now all this new stuff has come out, and re-invigorated the investigation.
To give you an idea of the attention to detail and the thoroughness we'll be striving for when we do get to writing this new 1989 book, it is interesting to go all the way back to February 1982, when my band and I (Disturbing the Peace) were moving out of our rehearsal studio. The building had changed ownership, and all the bands had to move out. This was, of course, when the infamous Zilch robbery took place. I won't go into an over-long description of that crime at the moment, except to note that it was planned in advance. It was also no simple "grab-n-go." It was a break-and-enter, jimmy-the lock deal, with built-in deceptions included, to make it look as if the robbers entered through the front door, which we all know they did not.
They entered through a window in our studio. The studio Disturbing the Peace rehearsed in. The building had previously housed a real estate company, and the window (which was now insulated and papered-up), had likely been a between-office divider. And that's how the crafty burglars entered Zilch's studio, through the dividing window between our studio and theirs.
But the thing is (and this is the kind of detail we'll be striving for in our book), I was moving my own musical equipment out of our studio that day. If I remember the date correctly it would've been January 31st, 1982. I was moving my guitar and amp. And Lillian was helping me (we'd been together for about 7 1/2 months by that time). And as we were moving my stuff, she said to me, "Hey, look at this. The glass is loose."
She was pointing at, and talking about, the glass in the dividing window between our studio and Zilch's. The window the robbers later used to gain entry. If I remember correctly, the glass - indeed loose - was loose because the molding frame around the glass was also loose, or pried-up just a smidge.
I thought nothing of it at the time. The next morning, a detective was at my door, asking me about the robbery because my name was on the studio lease. Of course, we all know how that turned out. I took the detective to Dave Small's house, to show him Dave had nothing to do with it. But when I saw Dave's face that morning, I knew the opposite was true.
Regarding Lillian, I never thought about her mention of the loose glass until recently. It wasn't until I began really studying the genesis of her deceptions that I realised how early in our relationship they started (and btw, I still say God Bless Her despite the incredibly destructive effect she has had on my life). At any rate, in considering all the lies, I began wondering, "how and when did it all start?" And something caused me to think of her mention of the loose window glass in our rehearsal studio.
And when I thought about it, I thought, "there's no reason she would mention that." Why would you mention a loose piece of glass when you're moving stuff out of a studio? It would be like saying, "look, the paint is chipped." Or, "Look, the door hinge is rusty." It would be like, "so what?" There's no reason a person would mention that, even as small talk. Even if the window molding was noticeably loose or pried away (and I don't remember it being so, the robbers wouldn't have been that careless), it still wasn't something a person would mention. It might be something you'd notice, but again, like chipped paint, you wouldn't think to mention it because it's not worth mentioning: the studio was old and not exactly The Ritz to begin with. But Lillian not only noticed it, she felt the need to mention it to me. "Look, this glass is loose".
It's obvious what the implication is, though it never hit me until I began thinking about her deceptions, and when they began. The implication is that she knew the robbery was going to take place. I know she wasn't part of it, but we have seen demonstrated over and over by now, she was connected to the late, great Dave Small, who was extremely deceptive himself, and has many 1989 connections to Lillian. The guy who planned the robbery - the mastermind - was a major player in September 1989, and also connected to Lillian by a sociopathic drug dealer named Gary Patterson, and also by the evil David Friedman. But those guys are another story. I'm not saying the Zilch robbery was connected to 1989 (it wasn't), but Dave Small was one of the robbers, and he was connected to Lillian.
Is it then possible that Dave, feeling nervous beforehand, told Lillian what he and the other guy were planning to do? And is it possible that Lillian, feeling nervous about that knowledge, tried to give me a hint by showing me the loose window glass, which otherwise wasn't worth mentioning (or even really taking notice of)?
I think it's not only possible, but probable. Lillian probably knew about the Zilch robbery in advance, and was showing me the loose window glass to test the waters, to get my attention, to see how I'd react and to see, by my reaction, if I had anything to do with it.
What we are demonstrating here is not that Lillian is a robber (she isn't), but that she kept secrets from me from very early in our relationship. This is the kind of intricate and "fine-point" detail we'll be striving for in our book. And that's all I know for the moment. ////
My blogging music is "Mirage" by Camel, my late night is Handel's Florindo Opera. I hope you have a great weekend (I'll be posting again tomorrow to catch up), and I send you Tons of Love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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