Cliff Robertson in "Battle of the Coral Sea", and "Jungle Patrol" starring Arthur Franz and Kristine Miller

A pair of related movies this time, about the War in the Pacific, the first being "Battle of the Coral Sea"(1959) starring Cliff Robertson, which we viewed last night. The title is somewhat misleading, as the story actually follows a submarine crew that is tasked with reconaisssance before the battle. Robertson plays "Lt. Commander Jeff Conway," a fearless skipper unafraid to bend orders. This mission, however, being of paramount importance, must be followed to a "T". Conway is even told to scuttle his sub at the cost of the crew's lives if threatened with Japanese capture. One of his sailors has developed a makeshift periscope camera, using the sub's bellows cam. Sailing to New Guinea, they get a shipload of close-up photos of the Japanese naval force in the area, and are astonished at it's size. Conway radios in to HQ: "It looks like they're intending to take Australia." Then, in departing the sub runs into a minefield, detonating what Conway calls a "control mine", which doesn't explode but alerts the Japanese to their position. They're attacked with depth charges, then by Japanese scuba divers, who inform them to surrender or die. Knowing his orders, to destroy the sub if captured, Conway - through deception - does so, but not before he is taken with his officers to a Japanese-held island, a prison camp, and the movie becomes a prisoner of war story.

At the camp, he and his men are, at first, treated like gentlemen by the Japanese Navy Commander, who, unlike his predecessor, doesn't believe in "medieval methods" to extract information from prisoners. "You see, Captain Conway", he says in fluent English, "I was educated in America. Went to college West Coast at Stanford. I appreciate American ways." Maybe so, but he still has his methods, psychological though they be. He puts the junior officers to work at hard labor, turning a water wheel with their feet, for hours at a time until one develops pneumonia. He spares Captain Conway, offering him sips of sake, because he needs the details of the American mission, which Conway won't give. Interesting are the scenes between the two men, and confidential, in which the Japanese captain expresses his distaste for the war. Conway won't give an inch, however. An Aussie captain at the camp has it pretty easy (no slave labor) because he has already spilled his beans. "I had little choice," he tells Conway. "The previous commandant here was a monster."

But "Commander Mori" (Teru Shimada of Encino) is a gentleman, as far as that goes in war. He's been exposed to American culture, but has no sympathies when it comes down to it. Conway knows this, knows he and his men are gonna die if they don't risk an escape, and it better be quick. Commander Mori is being replaced by his superiors because his psychological (i.e. slightly more humane) methods don't work. The Generals want the torturer back. In between the Japanese and the Americans (and Aussies) is a middlewoman, a South African named "Karen Phillips" (Gia Scala). She acts as an interpreter for the Japanese. "This island has been owned by my family for 200 years", she tells Conway. "I am neutral." He doesn't see it that way, and the Aussie prisoners hate her. However, she will play a crucial role in the attempted escape, which takes place later.

A good cast is on hand. in addition to Cliff Robertson, a top actor who used reserve, (and looks smart here with a Clark Gable mustache), we've got a young Tom Laughlin, of "Billy Jack" fame. He plays the sub's Ensign, suitibly clean-cut and loyal. "Billy Jack", of course, made him a zillion dollars. He didn't do much work after that. There's also the great LQ Jones as a Yeoman, and especially Teru Shimada, the enemy who disparages war but goes along with its horrors. He won't sacrifice himself because he knows he's toast anyway, under his fascist leaders. 

The last ten minutes show, in pure stock footage, the actual battle of the Coral Sea, the second biggest naval battle in history after Midway, and man, it's hell on high water. World War 2 was gruesome and industrial. War now is slightly technologically cleaned up (just as brutal but more efficient), but WW2 was the heavy metal war. Huge ships, dive bomber prop planes, and artillery, artillery, artillery, blowing up everything in sight. Bullets by the millions. Mayhem, smoke, head-on plane crashes and instant death and explosions. Two Huge Thumbs Up for this one, with a very high recommendation. The last five minutes is a chasedown through the Catalina hills (or maybe the Channel Islands) to see if Captain Conway and his last few survivors (including the brave Aussies) can outrun the last half-dozen Japanese guards, to get to their rendezvous boat on time. We've seen some tremendous war films over the years; this is one of them, and we've got another one coming up next, also in the Pacific but different in style. The picture is very good.  ////

Our Saturday movie, watched in the afternoon due to the Messer Chups show that evening, was "Jungle Patrol"(1948), the story of a small, 8-man squadron stationed on an island off the coast of New Guinea, tasked with keeping the Japanese navy away from Australia. In this respect, the movie's location is almost identical to the one in "Coral Sea", above. But the theme is entirely different. As the narrator informs us, this is a story about men, not war, but that's a broad definition so let's narrow it down. The first ten minutes are banter filled. Yes, battle hardened soldiers in any military branch use gallows humor to cope, but it's doubtful that many had the crack comic timing and the speaking speed of screwball comedians, so that's a screenwriters trick meant to play to an audience of the time, 1948. The banter delays the plot (and does go on a tad long), until the squad's cook brings out a scoreboard he made to inspire the crew: listing the number of Jap fighters and bombers shot down (59, 54) versus the number of American losses : zero.

The sign is well-intentioned but the pilots and their Captain don't like it because they're superstitious. "No one can be that good forever," says "Lt. Mace Willard" (Arthur Franz). It's like when a pitcher is throwing a no-hitter; no one on the team is supposed to mention it. Soon, to break the tension, a USO act shows up, in the form of a lovey singer named "Jean Gillis" (the stunning Kristine Miller). Her dancers are supposed to arrive later but never materialise due to flight problems. The middle of the movie is a romance between Miss Gillis and -  first - everyone in the company, because all the pilots are so glad to have female company. They treat Jean like royalty, each one savoring a few minutes of her attention. Then she falls in love with the squad leader, "Major Skipper Wright" (Ross Ford). He's the only one without a girl back home. Jean, too, has no one, her husband having been killed at Dunkirk.

The squadron is isolated on the island, and the film removes them from the world. The war is their All, and their radio set their only connection to life outside. There are no combat scenes, only descriptions of air combat via the radio. Several IMDB commentators mentioned that the film was made at the end of the age of radio. for radio audiences.

And radio in wartime was the only communication available between a squad leader on the ground and his loyal, dedicated and highly trained pilots. The structure of the film, in which aerial combat is only heard in the communications hut, and not seen, emphasizes the tension and extreme dread the comm crew experiences during periods of radio silence, when they don't know who's alive and who's dead. Ultimately, when the Japs make their move to attack Australia, every available pilot is needed, including Lt. Mace and Major Wright. Poor Jean Gillis has only just found love again, after losing her husband in combat. Will she have to go through it all again? Will the Major make it back alive, and will Mace? Can the squad maintain it's perfect record of zero losses? "Nobody's that good forever," Mace reminds us.

Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Jungle Patrol". The saddest "war widow" notification in cinematic history is in "Summer of 42", when Jennifer O' Neil gets the "regret to inform" letter, then Gary Grimes shows up and that's how he loses his virginity. But it's a gut-wrencher. I saw that movie on TV when I was about 16 and I never forgot the dance scene. "Jungle Patrol" has an element of that heartbreak, but it's more about the tension in the comm hut, when any minute could come the sound of machine guns over the radio, followed by silence. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

And that's all for tonight. I hope your week is off to a good start. My blogging music is "Look At Yourself" by Uriah Heep and "Minstrel in the Gallery" by Jethro Tull. My late night is "Tristan und Isolde" by Wagner, conducted by Von Karajan. I'm reading an ultra-scary book about Skinwalker Ranch called "Skinwalker Ranch: No Trespassing" by Ryan Skinner. I send you Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)    

Lloyd Bridges in "The Deadly Game", and "Paula" starring Loretta Young and Tommy Rettig (plus Messer Chups in concert)

The blog is a day late because last night I went with Grim to a club in East L.A. to see a Russian surf band called Messser Chups. How's that for a name? I first heard of them four years ago when Grim asked if I wanted to go their concert at Pappy and Harriet's in Joshua Tree. My response went something like, "What? Drive 150 miles to see a Russian surf band called Messer Chups?" It sounded like a Grimsley-type band. Not that he has bad taste; we often like the same things. It's just that his taste is sometimes a bit.......different. But on that occasion, I did check out a couple of the group's videos, and discovered they were quite good. The guitarist Oleg, also known as "Guitaracula", has all the skills of Dick Dale, with the color palette of a master artist. You could call him the #1 Surf guitarist in the world right now, the EVH of surf guitar. Their bassist is a tall, thin Vampira type with Betty Page hair but a look all her own. She goes by the stage name Zombierella, and on the few songs with words, she chirps the vocals in a broken English "hiccup" that sounds like she's lecturing the audience, but behind the image, she's a professional musician, playing fast, nimble basslines that keep the music pulsing, along with the drummer, who looks like Rasputin wearing a tuxedo and aviator shades. Messer Chups played a 70 minute set of reverb drenched, tremolo wobbling surf rock. Single note guitar lines tumbled into arpeggiated chords, bass and drums cruising along. This is one tight, high level band. They should be in a David Lynch or James Bond movie. The small club, called The Paramount, was packed with about 300 people, but I could see them playing to 3000.

I'm not a huge Surf Rock person. I remember the songs "Walk Don't Run" and "Pipeline" (early radio memories), and of course every kid in 2nd grade knew "Wipeout" (the drum part of which I could play on my kneecaps when I was six), and I saw Dick Dale (again with Grim, who loves surf rock), back in 2006 at the Santa Monica pier. But if I had to pick one band, and one guitarist, it would be Messer Chups and Oleg. The guy's an awesome musician and so are his cohorts. Many fans would show up for Zombierella alone. A Psychobilly band named The Quaranteds opened, played an hour, and almost blew my eardrums out. But again - if you like that stuff - they were extremely tight and professional. I've never been to a concert in East LA before, but it was fun and we got back by 1 am. My favorite part was when Oleg gave a heavily accented shout-out to Henry Mancini before launching into a surf interpretation of the Pink Panther theme. ////

Now for our movies:

We've seen a few Noirs from Hammer Studios, but none that have really caught fire. Unfortunately, that streak continued with "The Deadly Game"(1954), starring Lloyd Bridges as "Philip Graham", an American visiting Spain who gets caught in a smuggling operation. He's there to visit "Tony Roscoe" (Peter Dyneley), an old WW2 buddy, a fellow pilot in the RAF, when Graham flew for the Brits before American involvement. Tony is now a successful fashion photographer. At a nightclub, he seems nervous. He introduces Phil to a singer he knows, and to "Marina" (Maureen Swanson), a Spanish folk dancer.

But then he gets a phone call. "I'm sorry Phil, but I've got to get back to England. I have to catch a plane immediately. Can you drive my car back for me?" He seems in a tight spot, so Graham reluctantly accepts. Driving Tony's car back means taking it to France and using the ferry crossing, but Phil never makes it that far. He's tailed by an unknown gang, then run off the road and beat up.

When Marina's uncle "Mr. Darius" (Finlay Curry), a European man-of-wealth, hears about the beating, he insists Phil call the cops. All Phil wants is to get back to England, but he does as Mr. Darius asks, and an investigation begins. "It's obvious you were mistaken for your friend Mr. Roscoe" says the Inspector, a Spanish gentleman. "You were driving his car".

All of this is fine, a good ten minute lead-in to a standard 63 minute crime plot. The problem is that it quickly bogs down. The producers (or director) decided to involve Lloyd Bridges in not one romance but two. And the thing about Bridges, is that, while handsome, his onscreen persona is not exceptionally romantic. He's more the laconic type, or athletic, as on "Sea Hunt". But they bog him down first with Marina the folk dancer (a sweet enough gal), and then Mitzi the nightclub singer (a buxom hot-cha), and all this does is slow the crime plot to a...c.r.a.w.l...

To a crawl, I  tell you.

And you can't slow things to a crawl in a 63 minute movie. I mean, other stuff happens. Lloyd discovers some microfilm in his pal's apartment after the guy turns up dead. Now worried that the Spaniards will pin the murder on him, he pockets the film as evidence. It hints at a blackmail plot involving a pharmaceutical formula, and here is where Hammer is in over their heads. Even in the best Le Carre-style espionage flick, you better have a top script and an agile director (not to mention the right cast), if you want to have the slimmest chance of making the movie work. You wanna know who did complex crime and/or spy plots the best? French directors like Julien Duvivier who made "Pepe Le Moko" and guys like Jean Pierre Melville. You've gotta have a knack for it, the reason being that espionage novels don't translate well to film. They're too complex, unless done as a chase movie or a train movie, something that moves. This movie, on the other hand, stands still, though Hammer makes up for lack of plot with atmosphere: scenes of Spanish dancing, a holiday parade through the streets, training little children in ballet. And Finlay Curry is always good, acting magnanimous to cover his evil interior.

But it doesn't add up to much. It says in the credits that Jane Asher was one of the little girl dancers. The movie was made three years before Paul met John, so she was famous before he was, or at least was in show biz first. There's one IMDB review you absolutely have to read, of a guy defending the film. You'll know it when you read it, there are only six reviews on this film, read it, and it says it all. We'll give it Two Bigs anyway, even though it's slow and short on plot, just because of what this reviewer says. The picture is very good.  ////

The previous night, we knocked it out of the park with an A-list drama about a woman, reeling from a miscarriage, whose life hits a crisis point when further tragedy strikes. "Paula"(1952) stars Loretta Young (a favorite of ours) as "Paula Rogers", who, after losing her baby, has been told by her doctor she can never have children. She tries putting on a happy face for her husband "John" (Kent Smith), but her doctor "Clifford Frazer" (Alexander Knox) knows she's been "crying herself to sleep" in her hospital room every night as she recovers. He tells John, "If she doesn't release her anguish, it will turn into psychoneurosis."

John, at the same time, is up for a deanship at his University (USC) where he teaches English. Paula, wanting to  be The Good Wife, tries to block out her emotional torment, but it's already manifesting as extreme nervous tension. After she's released from the hospital, she's supposed to attend a University dinner in John's honor. She goes to see Dr. Frazer beforehand. He asks how she's doing (not well) and gives her a liquid sedative. Then, realizing she's late for the dinner, she drives recklessly through a canyon, honking at an old truck moving slowly on a hill. Impatient, she passes it in the oncoming lane, then swerves around a hairpin turn. Is the sedative affecting her driving? It doesn't matter, for what happens next isn't her fault. A semi-truck swerves to avoid a little boy who has run into the road. Paula's car strikes him, he falls and lies unconscious. Meanwhile, the farm truck she passed earlier has caught up, and the old geezer driving pulls over. He sees the injured boy, sees Paula, and accuses her of driving drunk. From what we know, she only had the medicine her doctor gave her, and the accident wasn't her fault in any case; the boy ran into traffic.

But the farmer (played by Will Wright, a famous curmudgeon character actor) is determined to place blame. He takes the boy to the hospital and reports a hit-and-run, even though Paula tries to follow him to the hospital. Reading about it in the paper the next day, she tries to ascertain the little boy's condition. Did he live? She doesn't tell her husband what has happened, because she doesn't want scandal to destroy his new promotion. The script makes clear that scandal, in those days, would indeed finish a man's career. She then volunteers at the hospital to be close to the boy, and when he's discharged, after undergoing brain surgery which renders him speechless, she asks if she and her husband can adopt him.

Because of her obviousness in seeking little "David" out, her doctor suspects she's the one who ran him over. But he knows of her stress from the recent miscarriage, and encourages the adoption because caring for David will help her to heal. "But", he tells Paula, "you'll have a long road helping him to learn to speak." That's part of the deal; if she and John want David, and they do, Paula will have to be his teacher. This is the heart of the film, when Paula takes David home from the hospital, and with the help of Dr. Frazer, she slowly teaches him phonetics like we learned in second grade. "His mouth has forgotten how to form vowels and consonants," says the doc. Paula shows him how to make the "Puh" (P) sound, for instance, "It's like blowing out a match". This stuff is fascinating, because it takes you back to learning the specific sounds of the alphabet. For me, that meant the great Mrs Kendall, my second grade teacher, who taught us to pronounce "white" not as "wite" but with the full "wh" sound, which is almost "wh" backwards. Pronounced correctly, "white" almost sounds like "hwhite".

David slowly regains his speech, in increments, and learns to socialise with other children. As an orphan, it's not easy for him. Two things threaten to derail his progress: first, there's a police investigation into the so-called "drunken hit and run" reported by the farmer, and second, David ultimately remembers it was Paula, his new Mom, who ran him over. He doesn't know it was an accident, and all of a sudden he hates her. And, the farmer returns to try and press charges. Husband John stands by Paula throughout. and the dectective on her case sees her teaching David, causing him to ask the DA for leniency. The theme is repression of sorrow, neurosis, and the resultant seeking of forgiveness through redemption. 

This movie gets our highest rating, Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. Loretta Young, a devoted Catholic, was one of very few actresses who could've pulled off this role (Gene Tierney being perhaps another), and the emotional quagmire she tries to avoid, then falls into, is heart rending. She should've been nominated for an Oscar. The ending will leave you cheering, as you reach for another Kleenex (you'll need several). The picture is razor sharp. When we say "they don't make 'em like this", this is the movie we are talking about. Tommy Rettig of Lassie fame plays David. He was one of the great child actors. "Paula" will certainly be in our year-end Top Ten, so don't miss it.  ////

And that's all I know for tonight. I'll be back with another blog tomorrow to get us back on schedule. My music was a Messer Chups mix, my late night is Wagner's Lohengrin. I hope you've had a good weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Dermot Walsh in "The Straw Man", and "Haunted Harbor", a Chapter Serial starring Kane Richmond (plus Shakespeare By The Sea)

After a weeks-long drought, we found another British Crime Film, "The Straw Man"(1953), which opens with an old lady being followed on a bus. At least, she thinks she's being followed, until her cousin (who's also her roommate), tells her, "Oh dearie, no man would follow you at your age. You're confusing it with that story in the papers, and you read too many of those murder bits anyway."

There's been a headline floating recently, about the murder of a young lady who was indeed being followed. Her killer's been arrested. He's "Link Hunter" (Philip Saville), her ex-boyfriend. Reports from his trial are on the newsstands everyday. "Perhaps you're confusing it with that."

We cut then to the investigation of the case, not the criminal part, which has already been decided, but the insurance angle, and boy, if there's one man more dogged than a British police inspector, it's a British insurance investigator. After all, if the insured dies, the insurance company has to pay out, and Lord knows they don't want to fork over the dough unless they absolutely have to. Link Hinter has an insurance policy of 20,000 lbs, which in 1953 is a fortune. If he hangs, they'll have to pay it off. Investigator "Jeff Howard" (Clifford Evans) is sent out to interview Hunter in his jail cell. He also talks to Link's new wife "Ruth" (Lana Morris), and anybody who knew him closely. Link's an American with few contacts in England. After speaking with these folks, Howard consults a private eye named "Mal Ferris" (Dermot Walsh), who, prior to Link's arrest, Ruth had retained to tail him, to make sure - before she married him - that he was no longer involved with his ex. Ferris and Howard then work together, cross-interviewing each other's suspects, to try and trip someone up in a lie. Howard believes Hunter is innocent, but he's gotta find the real killer before Link is executed.

Midway through, the old lady from the bus tells her cousin, "You know, I don't think I was imagining it after all. But it wasn't me who was being followed, it was that young lady, the murder victim! She was on the bus that day, too. I recognize her face in the paper. And I'd recognize the man who followed her if I saw him again."

The murderer is revealed to the audience at the 35 minute mark. After that, it's up to Ferris and Howard to find out who it is and catch him (or her). As the noose tightens, the killer takes comfort in what he or she thinks is a foolproof plan. "They've got nothing," he (or she) tells a supposed accomplice. Ahh, but we know that's not true; the coppers do have something. Forensics was already at the point, as a lab man explains, where the police (or an insurance company) can compare a carpet fiber on a shoe print with one from somebody's office. 

The killer and his (or her) accomplice eventually turn on each other, but not, in this case, for monetary reasons or to lessen the chance of being caught. And just when the actual killer has it all figured out, because "they can't prove it!", he or she doesn't factor in the accomplice's grievance, which is emotional, not monetary.

Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Straw Man". It grabs you from the opening scene and doesn't let go, and there's even a brief moment of the Menacing English Grill at the beginning. We've seen Dermot Walsh in quite a few of these British crime flicks and he's particularly smooth here. The picture is soft but watchable.  ////

The previous night, we started another chapter serial. Every so often, the supply of unseen features runs out temporarily. There are nights when we search and search but come up empty. That's when we settle on a serial, and we found another very good one called "Haunted Harbor"(1944). "Captain Jim Marsden" (Kane Richmond) owns two ships. One is in port. The other, under a subordinate skipper, has been declared lost at sea, conveniently - so Marsden's detractors think - with a million dollars in gold bullion aboard. "How sweet is that?" says a rival mariner, "Jim's ship gets lost with all that gold, and right before he was gonna declare bankruptcy." Captain Marsden owes his backer a lot of money and tries to find him in a seaside hotel, to tell him he's gonna pay him back. "My ship will return with the gold, I promise you. You'll get your money, I just need more time."

The backer doesn't care, he's gonna foreclose on Marsden's shipping business anyway. But when Marsden tries to talk to him again, he finds the man dead, murdered at the hands of "Carter" (Roy Barcroft), a chiseler who owed him money. Carter makes his living by stealing gold from the natives of the island of Pua. Now he's worried that Captain Marsden will find out what he's done. Marsden actually has no idea, but sails to Pua with his first mate, to look for a man named Kane, who is rumored to be stealing from the natives and using them for slave labor. Kane is of course Carter, under a fake name. But, in the first episode, on their way to Pua, Marsden and his first mate encounter a hurricane. Trying to avoid crashing into the rocks, they see another ship getting battered in a cove. A woman clings to the mast, nearly swept away in the tumult. Marsden decides a rescue must be attempted, and for the next ten minutes, you will see the most harrowing sea rescue in cinematic (or at least chapter serial) history. Both boats are smashed by torrents of water, wave after wave. I have no idea how they achieved this special effect or what water machines they used, but it's a lot of water. You can see the actors getting smashed.

For me, this is the best part of chapter serials, the adventure stuff, and this is the best we've seen yet. To rescue the stranded woman, the crew has to use ropes and something called a "breeches buoy". Do a wiki search on the term and you'll see why this scene is so nail biting. The woman is rescued, but her ailing father is also aboard the listing ship. Captain Marsden swims to her rescue, in a hurricane-swollen ocean, with a rope tied around his waist. But even when it looks like he might pull them all to safety, the rock cliff above them collapses. Will it crush the ship? Now, that's what I call a cliffhanger. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Haunted Harbor", and we haven't even gotten to the sea monsters yet. The picture is very good.  ////

And that's all for tonight. I'm actually just returning from Encino; I was at the Sepulveda Garden Center, a park on Magnolia, near Balboa, where I watched "Twelfth Night" performed by my annual Shakepearean favorites, Shakespeare By The Sea. These guys are so great. If you ever get the chance to see them, go. They tour every Summer, the plays are free (though a donation is encouraged), and what better way to spend a July evening than watching a play by the master of drama and comedy? I've been attending every year since 2014 (except for 2020/21 due to Covid), and I've seen about ten plays now at three different locations. You can still catch them on this tour, in Pasadena tomorrow night, or in Torrance on Saturday July 28. Or, you can drive to San Pedro next week to see their closing shows. That's why they're called Shakespeare By The Sea, because they're based in San Pedro. Go see 'em! ///

My blogging music was "Who Do We Think We Are?" by Deep Purple. My late night is Handel's Esther Oratorio. I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Barton MacLane and Leif Erickson in "Captain Scarface", and "Blackhawk", a Chapter Serial starring Kirk Alyn

We haven't seen Barton MacLane in a while, so it was good to find him in "Captain Scarface"(1953), playing the title role, as the skipper of a South American freighter bound for the Panama Canal. His cargo is a load of bananas, but there's something more on board. His first mate "Perro" (Peter Coe) is nervous about taking on passengers, and to be honest, it's not at all clear why any are being taken, besides "Dr. Yeager" (Rudolph Anders), his daughter "Elsa" (Virginia Grey), and "Mr. Kroll" (John Mylong), a broker who has smuggled the Yeagers onboard at the Captain's request. Yeager is an escapee from a Russian nuclear facility, a former prisoner of war, elderly and in poor health. Elsa, whom he hasn't seen in 17 years, has arranged for Mr. Kroll to spirit him to South America, where Captain Scarface will take him home to America on his ship, known as the Banos.

But we the audience know that Scarface has other designs. That's because, at the beginning of the movie, we've seen the original Banos exploded and it's Captain shot. Captain Scarface is a replacement. Another ship has been outfitted and painted to look just like the Banos. An older tourist couple, Mr. and Mrs. Dilts, are also on board, as is a single gentleman named "Crofton" (Don Dillaway), whose experience as a Navy radio operator will come in handy later on. In the early going, the original Banos radioman, "Klegg" (Paul Briegar of Rawhide fame), is trying to collect the five grand he was promised for luring the original Captain to his death. Scarface tries to blow Klegg off, but Klegg won't take no for an answer. He wants his money and he ain't leaving the ship til he gets it.

Circumstances lead to Klegg getting shot, along with Mr. Kroll the go-between. His identity is taken on by "Sam Wilton" (Leif Erickson) , an American expatriate working as a banana plantation foreman who needs to leave the country because he's been sleeping with his boss's wife, and the boss is gonna kill him. His role is to play the macho-but-self-effacing he-man, who will unwittingly be thrust into apocalyptic intrigue. This is because the extracurricular cargo on board is an atomic bomb, hidden in a camouflaged hold. Captain Scarface and Mr. Kroll have liberated Dr. Yeager from Russia on false premises. They don't plan to free him but to use him as one of only two available nuclear scientists in the world who can detonate their bomb. As Yeager himself says, when the deception is exposed, "You can't just light a match and set it off."

After a poisonous snake is found in the banana stack, and it bites and kills Mrs. Dilts, Sam Wilton is discovered to be impersonating Mr. Kroll, who was shot dead earlier. Captain Scarface orders all hands on deck to search the ship, find Wilton and kill him. By now, Wilton knows there's an atom bomb on board, and that Scarface, his first mate Perro, and the entire crew are on an idealistic, Communist suicide mission to blow up the Panama Canal and destroy the American economy. After Mrs. Dilts dies, all heck breaks loose on the ship. Wilton hides under a tarp, and while chaos reigns on deck, he has a chance to foil the bomb plot down below, with the help of Crofton the ex-Navy radioman.

The sets used are cheap-looking ship cabins. Barton MacLane does a good South American accent, with a putty scar on his cheek. As always, because it's written in his contract, if you get into a punchout with him, you're going to lose, even if you are Leif Erickson. Good thing Leif has his banana machete in reserve. But can he stop MacLane and his Commie first mate from staring World War 3?

Two Bigs for this flick, and a very high recommendation. It shows what you can do with an almost zero budget when the cast and crew are invested in making a good movie.  ////  

The night before, we started another chapter serial, his time from Columbia pictures instead of Republic, called "Blackhawk: Fearless Champion of Freedom"(1952), about a group of crime-fighting pilots who specialize in international espionage. In  the first episode, their radioman "Stanislav" (Rick Vallin), a refugee from a communist country, gets a visit from a man and a woman who speak to him privately. "They're from the old country," he later tells his Captain (Kirk Alyn), the Blackhawk leader. "They need my help on a personal matter. May I take my plane? I won't be but a few days." Trusting Stan (as he is known for short), the Captain says okay, figuring a family member needs help escaping the country.

But the Cap's wingman isn't so sure. "It couldn't hurt to tail him, Captain. We don't know who those people were." They follow in the captain's plane, remaining out of sight in cloud cover, and sure enough, Stan isn't flying his visitors to the old country but to Chatsworth Park, where they land and head for the rocks.

As Captain Blackhawk parachutes out of his plane, wingman "Chuck" (John Crawford) lands far enough away not to be seen. Cap scrambles up the hillside to see a heated discussion taking place between Stan and his visitors, with Stan shaking his head "no". They want him to do something he won't do. When he tries to escape, other henchmen jump out of the rocks and punch him out. "We gave you your chance, Stanislav. Now you force us to use plan B" which is the use of a double who looks exactly like Stan. "Boris" is actually Stan's evil twin brother, in line with the communist cause. The agents are substituting him for Stan, thinking the Blackhawks won't know the difference. This will give the commies an "in" at Blackhawk headquarters, with Boris as their radioman and spy. And indeed, on Boris' first night at Blackhawk headquarters (where they think he's Stan), he uses a miniature bazooka, loaded with an incendiary device, to blow up and almost burn down the main hangar. The sabotage is foiled when the Blackhawks put the fire out, but they don't know Boris did it.

Next, the male and female commie agents drive to a helium refinery somewhere in the Long Beach area to try and blow it up with a similar device. Communist sabotage is the name of the game here. "Boris" (the fake Stan), has by now knocked out the chief mechanic and stolen a plane, to rejoin his cronies. Only Chop the Chinese cook can stop him.

We just finished "Captain America", which was great, and it looks like we've got another really good one with "Blackhawk". Any time you've got an airplane squadron as your heroes, it's gonna be exciting. The serial is fifteen chapters long, four hours running time, and - so far, just one episode in - the punchouts are thankfully brief. They don't go on for two minutes like Republic punchouts.

If you haven't watched a chapter serial yet, pick one and give it a shot. We love 'em and can't recommend them highly enough.  ////

That's all for tonight. My blogging music was two classics by The Moody Blues: "To Our Children's Children's Children" and "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour". Tremendous is the word for both. My late night is Wagner's Lohengrin, conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

I hope you are enjoying the Summer, and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

  

Doug Wilson and Tony Louis in "Get Outta Town", and "Deadly Duo" starring Marcia Henderson and Craig Hill

Last night we watched "Get Outta Town"(1960), a surprisingly good Noir starring the little-known Doug Wilson as "Kelley Olseson", a hoodlum so detested by the LAPD that, upon seeing him on the street, "Sgt. Willis" (Frank Harding) gives him 24 hours to leave town, hence the movie's title. Kelly, a San Quentin parolee, is back in Los Angeles to bury his brother, who - so the story goes - had an accident leaving a bar. He tripped and fell in a dark alley, hit his head and died. But Kelly doesn't believe it, so he first goes to see his brother's girlfriend, who wants nothing to do with him: "I don't want you in my life, and your brother didn't want your lifestyle." Kelly tries to explain that he's gone straight. He's ashamed of his former life; the stretch in Q did the trick, but no one believes him, even his Mom won't talk to him anymore. She calls the police when he shows up at her apartment. They throw him out at Mom's request. Kelly was apparently a very bad guy.

He swears all that is behind him, but he's gotta square his brother's death. He goes to see an old cohort named "Tony" (Lee Kross), whose sideman "Squirrel" (Tommy Holden) takes Kelly to see another former partner named "Rico" (Tony Louis), who's moved up in the world and is now wearing a shiny suit for The Syndicate. We've all heard that term before (mostly in movies), and we assume it's just another name for the Mafia, but The Syndicate was apparently a separate entity, a "professional, mistake proof" version of the Mafia that, like Trump, used legal loopholes to run their show and avoid prison. They operated in such a way that, again like Trump, you couldn't prove they'd done anything illegal, and - in general - they avoided violence because it brought unwanted attention. The Syndicate was like a scientific version of the Mafia. In the movie, Rico has graduated to that level. He has designs on being the West Coast boss. Rico seems sympathetic to Kelly's quest: "Sure Kelly. If your brother was killed, I'll help you find who's responsible. We're old friends, whatever you need, you got it." The thing is, Kelly doesn't really trust Rico, who left him holding the bag on a safecracking job that led to Kelly's Quentin stretch and, later, to his decision to go straight.

Kelly goes to the bar where his brother was last seen alive, but the bartender and waitress are too scared to talk. Both quit their jobs that night, take a train and hightail it. 

The cops keep dogging Kelly. "Get outta town right after your brother's funeral." The Sarge is a crew-cut squinty eyed prick. Rico catches Kelly with his wife, and not only doesn't care but pours him a drink. "I can use one myself, want another?" Rico's wife is a bimbo; Kelly is using her to get info on his brother, and it's looking like Rico killed him, but, the cops now have Kelly dead-to-rights on recent safecracking job that has his signature M.O. He tells them, "You guys know as well as I do it's a frame up. Whoever killed my brother wants me out of the way." He tells his brother's girlfriend: "I've had a fish packing job in San Francisco for the last three years, the first and only straight job I've ever had." She now sees that he means it, he has gone straight. He knows Rico killed his brother, but he's not gonna retaliate, which would mean returning to prison. Instead, he forces Rico into a corner, where it's a choice between Rico going to jail and The Syndicate rubbing him out (they don't do violence, unless a member screws up).

"Get Outta Town" is surprisingly well written and humanistic, without the typical hoodlum cliches. The acting ranges from stilted to semi-pro to very good (by star Wilson). in an early scene, there's a greaser enforcer for the Tony character, a Sal Mineo type, who is crazy but seems autistic. That's what I mean about the varied acting styles. Doug Wilson also produced and edited, perhaps it was his attempt at launching an auteur career. Filmed in downtown LA, at apartments since demolished, this one is without a doubt worth a look. Two Big Thumbs Up. The picture is good not great.  ////

The previous night's movie was "Deadly Duo"(1962), the story of identical twin sisters, one who stands to gain a fortune if she'll sign over custody of her son to her mother-in-law, the CEO of a business empire. The other sister is a stripper married to a shady nightclub owner. Both live in Acapulco. "Preston Morgan" (Craig Hill), a lawyer for "Lenora Spence" (Irene Tedrow), is sent down to offer her daughter-in-law "Sabena Spence" (Marcia Henderson) half a million dollars to turn her son over to Lenora. Sabena was married to her son Robby, a race driver who was killed at the beginning of the movie (in real stock footage of an actual Grand Prix crash). Lenora Spence never wanted Robby to marry Sabena to begin with; "She's a nightclub dancer, not worthy of my son. I don't want her raising my grandson in that environment."

Lenora offers Morgan a cut of 50k if he gets Sabena to sign the papers. He thinks its a sleazy deal, buying the woman's child (dancer or not), but being a broke attorney reduced to working night court, he holds his nose and takes the case, flying down to Acapulco, expecting to meet a bimbo dancer; a negligent mother to her five year old son. Instead, Sabena turns out to be an A+ Mom, totally devoted. She was a legitimate dancer, not a stripper but one half of an act with her twin sister "Dora" (also played by Henderson). It's Dora who's the bimbo, married to "Jay Flagg" (Robert Lowery), club owner, who has her stripping now that Sabena's quit the business to be a Mom. She stopped dancing when she married Robby the race car driver, who - as heir to the Spence fortune - was loaded. Sabena got no inheritance upon his death; her mother-in-law Lenora doesn't like her. Having the integrity that any decent mother would have, she refuses to sell her son to Lenora, who then threatens to take the child away by legal means. it should be noted that giving a child up for adoption is an entirely different story, an act of self sacrifice, in which the mother wants a better life for her baby. My Mom's birth mother was a hero for that reason.

Sabena has an assistant, her cook "Manuel" (David Renard), held over from her life with Robby. He is very protective of her little boy, and beats up lawyer Morgan for even suggesting that Sabena accept the buyout.

The fight happens at an Acapulco resort, drawing unwanted publicity because it involves the Spence family fortune. Lenora Spence decides to fly to Acapulco herself, with her personal attorney in tow. When she gets there, a plot has been hatched by Jay Flagg, to have Dora, Sabina's twin, pose as Sabena and sign the custody papers after all, wearing a wig and Sabena's clothes. They set the meeting for when Sabena is at a cliff diving exhibition (the Acapulco lifestyle is featured throughout). At the same time, Jay Flagg has fixed Sabena's breaks so she will go off a cliff, thereby removing the final impediment to Dora's impersonation of Sabena, which will allow them to collect 500,000 dollars for her son. 

It's very well done, the twin thing, reminiscent of The Patty Duke Show, one of my earliest TV memories. In their case, they were identical cousins, a great gimmick. The theme song went: "They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike - you can lose your mind, when cousins.......are two of a kind!" But on The Patty Duke Show, they don't murder each other.

You've seen character actress Irene Tedrow in a million things. Santa Monica substitutes for Acapulco. Preston Morgan falls in love with Sabena and intervenes when sleazeball Jay Flagg informs him that they've sent Sabena off a cliff, and have staged it to look like Morgan did it. Two Big Thumbs Up, the picture is razor sharp.  ////

Yesterday, I went to a Celebration of Life gathering for our late friend Pat, held at The Robin Hood Pub in Sherman Oaks. There was a nice turnout, perhaps 25 to 30 people, from family members to long-time friends to co-workers from Pat's many places of employment. He was a career music business guy who started at the legendary College Records and worked his way up to being a sales representative for Sony. Pat knew a lot of people in his life, he was gregarious and easy to get along with. He was a good guy and, in my case, a fifty year friend who also felt like an extended member of my family, so often was he over to our house. At the Robin Hood lunch, I met his older brother and sisters, all of whom I'd only met once or twice before, eons ago when I was in high school. My brother Chris was there, it was nice to see him after many years, and my sister Vickie attended as well. I had nice chats with Scott E., a former member of our softball group, and Pat's friend Dean, a musician, and with Mike S. and the B Brothers, Dave and John. All of us hung out, in one way or another, through the 1980s and 90s, and we still see each other on occasion. But Pat knew everybody, and I knew him since 1973. All in all, it was a wonderful get-together, very nice to see and talk to everyone in Pat's honor.

I like to think he was there, too, laughing at what people said about him, and maybe punching some of us in the shoulder. Chris had some funny Pat Stories, as did his older brother Mike. I mean, it really does feel like he's still here. He's gotta be. Not too long ago, after Terry passed away, he said, "I might be next" and I said "No. You're not allowed to die." So, he's gotta be around here somewhere, even if we can't see him.

As Shecky once said, "Ahh...life, Yosemite." He used to say that to the late, great Dave Small, who he called "Yosemite" because of Dave's love for that park. Sheck meant the Nature of Life, with all it's expanse and abruptness. Dave "Yosemite" Small is gone-but-not-gone also, since 2008. He was the first of The Friends to exit, stage left. Since then, there have been many more. Now Pat has joined them and they're all watching over us, or so we hope. God Bless 'Em, and thanks, Pat. Thanks for half a century of friendship. They don't make 'em like you anymore.  ////

And that's all I know. My blogging music was "Wise After the Event" by Anthony Phillips. My late night is Handel's Joshua Opera. I hope you had a nice weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)       

Paul Kelly in "Narcotics Squad", and "Mystery Broadcast" starring Ruth Terry and Mary Treen

Last night we watched "Narcotics Squad"(1957), a "drug warning" flick aimed at teens and parents in the late 1950s, when a postwar heroin craze swept the country. The film is low budget but decidedly realistic, showing junkies withdrawing and pushers hitting high schools. As it opens, an undercover cop has just landed at an unnamed airport and is calling his captain when he's shot dead in a phone booth.

The captain rebuilds the investigation with a new, reinforced undercover team, led by two officers, a male and a female, who is set to infiltrate the local high school, posing as a student. The male officer will haunt the town bars and dance clubs, looking for pushers to "score" from. They have a surveillance team behind them, using wiretaps and telephoto lens cameras. One surveillance officer also doubles as another heroin "client", new in town and looking for a fix.

At the high school, the football coach (Outregis Toomey) is concerned about one of his players, "Roger Bowman" (uncredited) who's stopped coming to practice. In fact, he seems to have disappeared. The aunt he lives with hasn't seen him either. According to the coach, the boy is a "sugar diabetic"; that's how he explains the hypodermic needle he carries. Police lieutenant "Lacey" (Paul Kelly) suspects otherwise. There's an influx of "junk" in the area. A narrator informs us of the telltale signs of heroin addiction: runny nose, constant yawning, arm tracks. In trying to track down Roger Bowman, the female undercover officer makes friends with a student named "Julie" (Sheila Urban), a brash-but-sweet Southern gal. Julie is new to the school. She's been dating "Jimmy" (Larry Getz), a slick-suited 21 year old. Jimmy is also a regular at the local jazz club. If you wanna see where David Lee Roth got his live spiel from, this is it, from jazzbo hipsters who jabber away incoherently, just like he does. The movie seems to take place somewhere in the Midwest, or even Texas, judging by a licence plate on one of the cars, and the forests of small ash trees that dot the landscape. There's also the flatness of the land and the old stone buildings, the clapboard houses. I'd guess Texas. and, apparently in the mid-50s, they had jazzbo hipster clubs there.

Sassy southerner Julie is also dating nice guy "Dick Williams" (Cullen Wheelas), who works at his Dad's gas station. Dick's Dad has money. He invites Julie to a party but she thinks he's square. She prefers the more dangerous Jimmy, even though she doesn't use heroin. The coppers use her as a pivot between Jimmy and whoever is supplying him, the unknown big shot. The whole thing plays like an abstract, extended Dragnet episode, with Paul Kelly in the Jack Webb role. Kelly did time for manslaughter himself (we've written about him before), and it should've been 2nd degree murder because he beat a smaller man to death over a love triangle. Kelly was horning in on the guy's wife. He was lucky to get a manslaughter deal, but he was a straight-up murderer, though a good actor. Like Tom Neal, who beat up Franchot Tone and later shot his own wife, Kelly resumed his acting career after he go out of San Quentin. Tom Neal was a good actor, too.

But anyhow, in the movie they're trying to do two things: shut down the heroin operation at the high school, and find out who shot the original undercover cop at the airport.

Meanwhile, Coach Toomey organizes a PTA group to educate parents and students against narcotics, because many don't know the effects or the warning signs. Godawful scenes of heroin withdrawal are interspersed with other scenes of a junkie begging Jimmy for a fix, even though he has no money. Sitting in the jazzbo cafe, Jimmy tells him "no, not until you pay what you already owe me." The junkie tells him, "Jimmy man, I need a fix. I'm sick. If you don't give it to me, I'll go to the cops and take you down with me."

Jimmy says, "Okay, alright, settle down," and he gives the guy his fix....laced with strychnine. The junkie dies, and that's the end of Jimmy's problem. It's a hard core flick, showing the reality of heroin addiction, much more "street" than a bigger-budgeted flick would be. The script meanders, and has ad-libs like Paul Kelly demanding cream in his coffee: "Not sugar; I said cream!" Coffee is a mainstay, because the narcotics squad often has to work long hours straight through, and stay up all night, to keep up with the pumped-up addicts, who never sleep until they crash.

Two Big Thumbs Up, but I wish there was more info available on the filming. I'd love to know where this movie was shot. Initially, I kept wondering "what part of Los Angeles is this?", because most low-budgeters are filmed here, but the old buildings and houses didn't resemble anything in L.A., nor the trees. In any case, it's definitely worth a view. The picture is soft but watchable.  ////

The previous night's movie was "Mystery Broadcast" (1943), a whodunit enacted as a radio play, in which the writer/host of a popular crime-solving show gets a real murder dumped in her lap. Intrepid "Jan Carroll" (Ruth Terry) tackles cold cases the cops have given up on. Live on air, she promises next week to solve the coldest, most notorious case of them all, the Kendall murder, also known as "The Case of the Crying Pines." Her producer begs her not to: "The Kendall case is dangerous, Jan. You'll be opening a can of worms." But her sponsor, a cigarette manufacturer, whose smokes are gifted to the live audience, thinks it's a great idea - good for business, good for truth and justice; all-American values both.

To solve it, she starts by writing the details she already knows for next week's script. Then, one of the supporting actresses on her show calls to ask out of the performance, claiming illness. Jan discovers the real reason: the actress is scared. She knew Beatrice Kendall, the murder victim, and she later calls Jan to say she knows the identity of the murderer, too: "But I can't reveal the name over the phone." When Jan goes to her apartment, accompanied by her stuntwoman "Smitty" (Mary Treen), they find the actress dead. A man shows up while they're still on the premises, claiming to be a police detective, but he's really "Michael Jerome" (Frank Albertson), a radio star who plays a Private Eye. "I'm just seeing what the competition is up to," he tells Jan. He doesn't wanna be left out of the scoop, and Jan agrees to let him tag along because he's helpful and handsome.

Their investigation takes them to the city morgue, where a creepy old night clerk named "Mr. Crunch" (Francis Pierlot) lets them examine the body of the dead actress. They also look at the morgue file on Beatrice Kendall to check for similarities. Finally, they decide to visit the scene of the Kendall murder, the Crying Pines Lodge, to look for any clues the police could've missed, even though the case is years old. "At the very least," says Smitty, "we'll get some new sound effects out of it. I wonder what a crying pine sounds like?" Smitty is also the show's recording technician. The trio head out there with a record cutting machine,  a precursor to tape recorders. Their plan is to record the crying pines and gather any info they can on a case as dead in the water as this one. But someone has followed them to the lodge and plays havoc with their recording equipment. However, he or she may have left a sound clue that can be examined once they take the record back to the studio. If they make it back alive, that is, because another party, a veiled woman, accosts them at gunpoint before they can leave.

The way all of this plays reminds one of a live murder mystery, the kind they act out on the Queen Mary, with the audience as captive participants. What I really liked was the radio show aspect, because my Mom was a radio show host, and a popular one, on the biggest (at the time) radio station in the world, WLW in Cincinnati, and while Mom's radio career was brief, and the show she took over was pioneered by another woman, Mom was nonetheless the host for about two years, and during that time she was heard by many thousands of listeners as far away as Australia. The station was powered by a 500,000 watt transmitter, ten times more powerful than any other at that time. Here's an ad for it, though you may have to copy-and-paste rather than click:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Mabley_and_Carew_advertisement_congratulating_WLW_Cincinnati_Ohio_radio_%281934%29.jpg

Also of interest in the film is the technical aspect of a live radio show; how special sound effects are done live, including sounds involving physical stunts. Mary Treen as Smitty is great in comic relief, and the murder mystery involves the usual soupcon of suspects.

As "Jan", Ruth Terry holds it all together. She's in every scene, looking sharp with her upswept hair. Two Big Thumbs Up, the picture is very good. //// 

And now we're all caught up and back on track. My blogging music tonight was "Trespass" by Genesis. My late night is "Parsifal" by Richard Wagner, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. I wish you a nice weekend and I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)     

Top Ten Bands? plus "Hell's House" starring Junior Durkin, Pat O'Brien and Bette Davis

It's rare, but every so often, we start to watch a movie with what seems like a familiar title, though we're uncertain enough to give it a shot. We generally don't watch repeats because we're trying to run a blog here, one that depends on new material. So, when we don't recognize the opening scene, we say, "Okay good, haven't seen it before." But then, about twenty-five minutes in, we do indeed realize we've seen it, usually from some indelible scene or image, and by that point it's too late to turn back, to turn it off and start another movie. So we watch it all the way through, again. When you recognize a movie in the first five or ten minutes, no problem - turn it off and find another, but 25 minutes in? Too much time has been invested, so you watch it again, especially if it's good, and in this case it was: "The Cosmic Man"(1959) starring John Carradine as an Alien from Alpha Centauri. The problem is that we already reviewed it. I looked it up in a keyword search on my Blogger dashboard, and indeed, we wrote about it in a blog dated April 6, 2020, right after Covid started and right when we began watching movies on Youtube. The library was closed during the early pandemic and we couldn't get DVDs for a while. That was 3 1/4 years ago (can you believe it?), and we've been watching 99% of our movies on Youtube ever since, something I once said I'd we'd never do!

Youtube is a step down, but on the good side, we've found well over a thousand movies we'd never have seen otherwise. They wouldn't have been available at the Libe because they aren't on DVD. Many have been B-movies, or even Poverty Row, but most of 'em have been entertaining in one way or another, and we've been getting a heck of a cinematic overview. Anyhow, when you watch over 1000 movies in 3+ years, you're occasionally gonna forget that you saw a certain one and accidentally watch it again because you're too far into it to turn it off. And, because we review everything we see, we've already written this one up. If you wanna re-read the review (I did!), just search or scroll for the April 6th, 2020 blog. I don't know how you do that from your end, as the reader. As the blog proprietor, I did it from my dashboard, but for you, if there's a search box, try that, or just scroll way, way down, about 500 blogs, lol.

Well anyhow, what can we write about instead? We could talk about The Beach Boys, who I've been listening to "All Summer Long" (to quote a BB song title), and who I've concluded are as great as The Beatles. I mean, it's apples and oranges, and it's true that The Beatles music was more varied (they had three genius songwriters), but The Beach Boys had Brian Wilson, who also wrote a million great songs, among them "Good Vibrations", which - (get out your best Beatles song for comparison) - topped anything The Beatles ever wrote, which is really saying something when you consider "Penny Lane", "A Day in the Life" or "Strawberry Fields" (or a ton of others). Heck, "Good Vibrations" may be the greatest song of the rock era. So yeah, we could talk about The Beach Boys.

Or we could talk Top Ten Bands. Mine are changing, and of course it's ridiculous to have a Top Ten, not because of who's in it, but because of who's left out. Who are you gonna exclude? For me, there have always been some "locks". Ritchie Blackmore is a lock. I include him at #1, separate from Deep Purple because his work includes Rainbow as well, and to a lesser extent, Blackmore's Night (who've made two classics themselves: "Shadow of the Moon" and "Fires at Midnight"). So, instead of saying Deep Purple is my #1, I just say Ritchie Blackmore as an artist, and he's my #1 guitarist also. So, he's a Lock for my Top Ten. Who else absolutely has to be in there? Well, Rush of course, and King's X. Eric Johnson. ELP, Van Halen. That takes up six spots.. How about Yes? Out of all the progressive rock bands besides ELP, they have to make the list. That leaves three spots left.

In the old days, I'd say Judas Priest for sure. Now? I don't know if they'd make it. Top 15 for sure, but with only 3 spots left, it's a tough call. King Crimson? Almost. How about Genesis? Their case is weird. They made three of the greatest albums of all-time ("Nursery Cryme", "Foxtrot" and "Selling England By The Pound"), any one of which would be a candidate for the Top Five Albums ever, and yet they went totally commercial and became a pop band with (to me) very bland music, which (again for me) leaves them out of the Top Ten Greatest Bands of All Time. 

Over the past three years, I've rediscovered Caravan. I've gone on major binges of their music and have realized their greatness. They've become a favorite who now have to make my list. Sparks, too. That's nine. There's one spot left, and I guess I have to give it to Black Sabbath (or maybe more properly to Tony Iommi as an artist) because of all the great "non-Ozzy" Sabbath albums, like the ones with Dio and Tony Martin. But, there are also the first four Ozzy solo albums, so the body of work goes to Black Sabbath as a group, and they also were incredible live (which also accounts for Top Ten status), so they have to be included. And that's my Top Ten : Ritchie/Deep Purple, Rush, King's X, Eric Johnson, ELP, Van Halen, Yes, Caravan, Sparks, and Black Sabbath.

But then you get into the whole thing of exclusion. How do you exclude Todd Rundgren? Or Mike Oldfield? (note: we exclude The Beatles and The Beach Boys because they are on a separate plane.) How do you exclude Pink Floyd or Roxy Music?

How do you exclude Van der Graaf Generator? Are you kidding me? In fact, I might have to give them the #10 spot over Black Sabbath. And what about Gentle Giant? How do you exclude Alice Cooper from your Top Ten list? So you see how hard it is. But what if you could only take ten with you? Not ten albums but ten bands? Whose music do you go back to, over and over?

Right now, for me, it's Beach Boys, Caravan and Uriah Heep. That's what I've been listening to this Summer. You've gotta have Uriah Heep, who - when you go back and listen, 50 years later with fresh ears - you realize are as great as Deep Purple in an apples and oranges way. I don't regularly listen to heavy metal anymore, just select albums once in a while. I go on Opeth binges, or Alcest, but those are prog metal bands with death vocals. How do you exclude Tom G Warrior from your Top Ten list? 

And what about Buddy Holly? Bill Nelson? Bobby Fuller?

National Heath may have been the most talented and experimental prog band of all time. Musical? That too. They were shredder's shredders, but boy could they write a tune. And what about Camel? With albums like "The Snow Goose", "Moonmadness" and "Mirage", how can they not be in the Top Ten? Camel was my fifth concert ever, and my first club show, opening for Ray Manzarek at The Whisky in November 1974. Keith Moon was there. He tried to jam with Ray but he couldn't keep a beat. Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys heckled him in a friendly way, then after the show, Grimsley accosted Keith for a photo. Grim pinched Keith Moon's cheek and Keith said, "I feel like a piece of meat." 

So that's my Top Ten. It's ridiculous to make one, I know, but we had to write about something in lieu of a movie, though we do have a new one below.  ////

The previous night we watched "Hell's House"(1932), a pre-Code expose about reform schools in Depression-era America. A teenage actor named Junior Durkin stars as "Jimmy Mason", a good boy who is left orphaned when his mother is killed by a hit-and-run driver. Jimmy loves his Mom; the opening scene shows him clowning around to make her laugh, so her death scene is particularly wrenching. Jimmy goes to live with his Aunt and Uncle, who can barely afford to feed him. "Uncle Henry" (Charley Grapewin) is unemployed. Jimmy feels guilty for spreading their funds even thinner, so he announces he's gonna try and find a job, a difficult prospect at 15, until he meets "Mr. Kelly" (Pat O'Brien). Mr. Kelly rents a room from Uncle Henry and "Aunt Emma" (Emma Dunn). He's a fast-talking good time guy. Jimmy spots Mr. Kelly on the street one day, follows him, and is surprised to see that Mr. Kelly knows everybody, from the police constable to the hotshot newspaper columnist, "Frank Gebhardt" (Morgan Wallace), who's readership is 400,000. Mr. Kelly also has a sweetheart of a girlfriend, "Peggy Gardner" (young Bette Davis, who was very cute). Jimmy tags along with Mr. Kelly. Peggy likes him too. Kelly hears Jimmy's plight, considers it and says, "Jimmy my man, I just might have a job for you. Can you mind your Ps and Qs?" Jimmy can.

In sweet-talk language, Kelley tells Jimmy "All you have to do is sit in this office when I'm not here, and answer the phone. But if anyone ever catches you here, you don't know who I am, because you're underage. Got it?" The real reason for Kelly's warning isn't Jimmy's age but that Kelly is a bootlegger, a fact he neglected to mention. Jimmy gladly accepts the job, at 25 dollars a week!. But no sooner is he answering calls at Kelly's desk then the cops arrive, summoned by a neighbor woman who saw crates being loaded into car trunks and thought, "Bootlegging."

Jimmy is the one arrested while the absent Mr. Kelly skates. And because Jimmy is true to his word and refuses to name the adult who "put him up to the job," in the judges words, he gets sent to a notorious reform school that treats boys like slaves. They're worked in a brickyard all day. Jimmy bonds with another boy named "Shorty" (Frank Coughlan Jr.), who shows him the ropes, but Shorty has a heart defect and the medical care in this dungeon is amateur at best. When Jimmy writes a letter to Mr. Kelly, asking for help for Shorty, Shorty ties to sneak the letter out through a trusty, but gets caught and send to solitary, where his heart condition gets worse.

Jimmy then escapes the reformatory to try and get help for Shorty. Meanwhile, Frank Gebhardt the famous columnist, readership 400k, has already been trying to expose the reformatory, but the warden (his friend) reneged on Gebhardt's latest tour request. But now, upon escaping, Jimmy goes to see Mr. Kelly, whose girlfriend Peggy doesn't want Jimmy re-imprisoned. She forces Kelly to tell the truth, and admit to the police that he put Jimmy up to watching his bootlegging operation, without telling Jimmy what the game was.

Pat O'Brien is famous for playing good guys: Irish cops or priests. He was famous in sentimental Irish-American roles, but here he's a bad guy, though a coward rather than vicious. Bette Davis forces him to tell the newspaperman and the police what he put Jimmy up to. The columnist writes an expose, and the reformatory is set to be closed down. But the real story here is Junior Durkin, an emotive young actor, trained since the age of two on the stage according to IMDB. He breaks your heart as Jimmy, and steals the show, not only with more screen time than O'Brien and Davis (two of the biggest stars in Hollywood history), but he's also the movie's emotional center. I mention all of this because I'd never heard of him, and was saddened to read, on his IMDB bio, that he died only three years after the release of this movie, in a car accident that also killed Jackie Coogan's Dad and five others. Uncle Fester was the only survivor. His Dad was driving and swerved to avoid another car. They rolled into a ditch, and Junior Durkin was killed, at only 19 years old. But in this film he lives forever, having outshined Bette Davis and Pat O'Brien. As "Shorty", little Frank Coughlan knocks it out of the park as well. 

Those reformatories were horrible, so not only is this a good dramatic film but an important historical one also. Two Huge Thumbs Up for "Hell's House" with a must-see recommendation. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

I'm a day late on this blog, so I'll be back with another one tomorrow to get us back on schedule. My blogging music was "Soft Heap" (self-titled), a short-lived Canterbury band made up of members of Soft Machine and National Health. My late night is Handel's Judas Maccabeus Oratorio. I hope your week is going well and I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)     

Sparks at The Hollywood Bowl, and "The Girl Who Dared" starring Lorna Gray and Peter Cookson

Last night I went to see Sparks at the Hollywood Bowl, my second trip to the Bowl in as many weeks. The drive to the NoHo subway station was once again traffic free, the benefit of a Sunday evening show. I got off the train at Hollywood and Highland and walked over to Grauman's Chinese, where I was scheduled to meet Grim at 7:15. He didn't want to meet me at the corner of Hollywood and Highland, because he thought it was too sketchy, and it is: besides the tourists and the Imitators (The Joker has replaced Michael Jackson), there are always hustlers trying to hand you their "new cd", for which - if they can get it in your hand - they'll ask for five or ten bucks "donation". Hollywood and Highland used to be an okay place before it got commercialized, so I said "Yeah, I'll meet you at Grauman's Chinese." The irony was, that location was even worse. I got there at 6:50, 25 minutes till Grim showed up, and had to listen to a phony "Christian" hate group, about ten in number, standing in front of the Chinese Theater, telling all the patrons they are going to Hell, for supporting decadent movie stars, for supporting gay marriage, for supporting Hollywood "values" in general. That's how their MC addressed the crowd, "Hollywood, you are going to Hell!" The dude had strong vocal cords, and must've drank a couple Red Bulls, because he was pumped. He talked, I mean yelled, for about 20 minutes without a break.

It got so intense that employees of the Chinese fought back by blasting AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" over their courtyard PA system, I kid you freaking not. I was standing by James Cameron's recently installed hand-and-footprints, and felt myself within an absurdity of epic proportions, one that only got worse when a Millennial Motorcycle Club made the street even noisier by pulling wheelies as they passed, revving the engines on their rice rockets. 

Thank goodness Grim showed up on time, so we could get the Hell out of there. Note to self: Hollywood Boulevard, circa 2023, sucks.

But the Hollywood Bowl, one mile up the schtreet, is another story. We sat on a bench just outside the Bowl for They Might Be Giants, who opened. I only knew one of their songs, and it was pretty nerdy, but anyhow, when they went offstage, we went to our seats. Sparks came on at 8:40, and played an 80s-heavy set, featuring a lot of their KROQ-era material, combined with several tunes from their new album, "The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte". It must have been a mindblower for the Brothers Mael to be playing a sold out Hollywood Bowl show to an audience of 18,000 people when they are used to 2500 seaters (or less). Only ten years ago I saw them at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in front of 300 people. But the recent documentary, "The Sparks Brothers"(2021), apparently made the band a lot of new fans. The movie's director, Edgar Wright, was on hand to see what he created.

Ron and Russ were genuinely blown away by the response. It doesn't mean Sparks is a stadium act all of a sudden, but in select cities they can now fill arena-size venues after struggling in cult status for 50 years.

My first Sparks concert was in December 1975 at the Santa Monica Civic, and now the Maels are in a position to be The Last Band Standing. Their only competition in that regard, as far as I can see, is Alice Cooper, Todd Rundgren and Rick Wakeman. And Paul McCartney, who'll probably play til he's 100.

This show featured the best sound I've heard at any Sparks show. They didn't play long, only 70 minutes followed by a ten minute encore, but the set was jam packed with great songs, and even if half of them weren't familiar (because I didn't follow Sparks from 1977 through 2006), they sounded great in the live setting. The reason I stopped following Sparks after 1976 is well-known. After three mid-70s classics in a row, they made a really bad album in 1976 called "Big Beat" (even the brothers don't like it), and after that, they changed their image and style completely and went from playing glam-rock to (shudder) disco and electronica. So I gave up on them for 26 years, until "Lil' Beethoven" came out in 2002, though I may have to go back and give some of those "disco Sparks" albums a chance, like "Angst in my Pants" and "Balls".

The brothers have a combined age of 152 years old, soon to be 154 when they both celebrate upcoming birthdays. How Russ still hits every note and jumps around the stage at 74, I'll never know, but God Bless him and brother Ron, a musical genius. They knocked the Bowl over; fans had their phone lights on, Russell was beaming. Ron, of course, never changes his expression.

From the early days, they played "Bon Voyage" and "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us". You can't have a Sparks concert without it.

For a while, in 1975, Sparks were my favorite band. They're still in my Top Ten, even though I didn't follow them for 26 years. That's because when they came back in 2002, they had another classic in "Lil' Beethoven", and they've been making great albums ever since. Long live the Mael Brothers. But I guess I'll never see 'em in a small venue again. I got back at 11:30 and had time for a 2 mile CSUN walk. All told, a fantastic concert and evening.  ////

The previous night, we had a nice, jam-packed 52 minute murder mystery called "The Girl Who Dared"(1944). We haven't had enough short films lately; been stuck watching 85 minuters (an eternity in film), and while we've seen some damn good ones, we prefer to get in and get out, especially when watching on the computee.

As it opens, "Ann Carroll" (Lorna Gray) and her brother "Josh" (Kirk Alyn) are on their way to a small, private island off the coast of New York, where they plan to attend a party thrown by their friend "Beau Richmond" (John Hamilton), a wealthy bon vivant. On their way, they stop for gas at the last available filling station, where the attendant, "Rufus Blair" (Peter Cookson), asks if he can hitch a ride. He seems a little shady (and we know he doesn't really work at the gas station). Josh tells him, "We'll be glad to drop you anywhere, but we can't bring you to the party." After all, it's not their invite. 

Rufus says okay, and they drop him down the road, then continue to a ferry which takes them to them to the island. They arrive at the Richmond mansion and are shocked to find themselves in the middle of a domestic dispute. Another Richmond family friend named "David Scott" (Roy Barcroft) is harassing his estranged wife "Sylvia" (Veda Ann Borg), telling her, "you can't leave me! It's me or no other man." She throws him out. Beau Richmond, embarrassed, suggests everyone forget the incident. "After all, we all have our troubles. We're here to have fun, so let's do so." 

However, there's a problem, which he explains to all the guests in the main hall. "I know you've all been invited to a party, but the thing is, it wasn't my wife or me who invited you. We don't know who sent the invitations. but since you're all here, let's enjoy ourselves anyway. You're welcome to stay."

He arranges a ghost hunting expedition that very night, based on the local legend of a pirate ship that hit the rocks and sank. Its captain is said to haunt the island once a year on the anniversary of the sinking, and tonight's the night. The guests walk down to the beach at Midnight to see his ghost, and, in the midst of his appearance, Sylvia Scott is murdered! Her husband, who was just seen accosting her in front of a houseful of guests, is the obvious suspect, until Ann Carroll discovers that the dead woman isn't Sylvia but her twin sister Cynthia.

Things get extremely convoluted after that. Rufus Blair arrives, and as we already knew, he isn't a garage mechanic at all, but an insurance company investigator. He informs the guests that a quantity of radium has been stolen from a mainland hospital. When the guests, in succession, try to leave to inform the police (because the phones are out due to an electrical storm), none of their cars will start. Blair has removed their distributor caps because, to him, they're all suspects. In turn, they think he is probably the killer.

It's a good thing Willie Best is on hand as the family servant "Woodrow". He's doing his thing, based on "Stepin Fetchit", which made him famous and earned him a million bucks, but some IMDB reviewers, including one guy who loves this movie and gives it a 10, seem to need to find fault. Those characters were just comedic portrayals of the time, and do you know what? They're funny. Willie Best stood out in every picture he was in. So did Mantan Moreland and Eddie Anderson. That's called talent. If Spike Lee doesn't like it, it's because he has no talent, plain and simple. But anyhow, when Willie shows up, the plot really gets going because he discovers a dead body down in the wine cellar. The movie then becomes an Old Dark House mystery, with great spooky photography. Rufus Blair takes charge, narrowing down the suspects, not only of the murders but of the stolen radium, which could lead to disaster in the wrong hands. Overall, a great conglomeration of ingredients, even if the murder plot involving the twin sisters is incomprehensible. Watch it for the acting, the atmospherics, and Roy Barcroft, one of our best Western villains from last year (second only to Charles King). Two Bigs, though the title is ridiculous, having nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. The picture is good not great.  //// 

And there you have it. My blogging music is "Moontan" by Golden Earring, the first time I've heard that album all the way through in at least 30 years, probably longer. But man, does it ever hold up. Great stuff, start to finish. My late night is "Pieces For Piano" by Francis Poulenc, as played by Alexandre Tharaud. I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love, as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

Jim Davis and Allison Hayes in "A Lust to Kill", and "The Case Against Brooklyn" starring Darren McGavin

Last night's movie was "A Lust to Kill"(1958), a vengeance Western with a Biblical theme from Ecclesiastes: "To everything there is a season". For outlaw "Cheney Holland" (Don Megowan), there's always a time to hate, and as the movie opens, he and his gang, under the leadership of "Isaac Stancil" (Gerald Milton), have just robbed a gun store of 15 Winchesters and 500 dollars worth of ammo. "Marshal Matt Gordon" (Jim Davis) is chasing them down, aided by his deputy. They shoot and hit Cheney's little brother "Luke" (uncredited), who later dies. Cheney, having stopped to help Luke, is arrested and taken back to jail by Marshal Gordon, who, out of respect, offers to see that Luke has a decent Christian burial. The Marshal and the Hollands were childhood friends, but - as Gordon tells Cheney - "you and I went separate ways. You took the wrong path and now you've gotten your brother killed." The Marshal tries talking sense into Cheney, but he's a hard man.

Still, he seems to appreciate Gordon's help with Luke's funeral, that is, until the town preacher succumbs to citizen pressure not to allow Luke to be buried in the local cemetery. "We don't want that killer planted with our relatives!" The mayor (John Holland), a typical finger-to-the-wind politician, backs the preacher and the mortician. Thus, Luke's funeral is set to take place in the desert at a lonesome grave. By now, any remorse or circumspection Cheney felt over his brother's death is gone, replaced by anger at his banishment. He has an ally, a prostitute named "Sherry" (Allison Hayes), who works on the outskirts of town at Millie's Bar. Sherry rides up to the funeral at the last minute, slips Cheney a gun, and he escapes, but not before clobbering Marshal Gordon, who - as his former friend - was the only one to treat him with any decency. Cheney shows him none in return, and he also shoots the grave digger dead. Prior to this, he'd only ever been a robber. Now he's a murderer and will hang, if and when he's caught.

Marshal Gordon swears to Sherry he'll catch Cheney, even though they once were friends, because "once a man kills, it's easier for him to kill again, knowing he can only hang once."

The rest of the movie is a strategic hide-and-seek in and around the Alabama Hills, as Marshal Gordon, with Sherry in tow, tries to lure Cheney back to Millie's so he can arrest him. Cheney, meanwhile, has a different target. He wants to find and kill gang leader Isaac Stancil, the beer-bellied Bacchanalian who laughs his way through his criminal existence. We see him swimming in a pool full of prostitutes, Millie's gals, in a mud pond out back, chomping watermelon like he's at a Roman orgy. Isaac is an animal, plain and simple. He represents Sin with a capital S, hollering for more and laughing when he gets it, until he has to get serious toward the end, when he knows that both Cheney and Marshal Gordon are out to kill him.

But Isaac has an advantage, because he still has those fifteen Winchester repeaters and the 500 bucks worth of shells. and, he has a twelve-man gang at his disposal. All the Marshal has is himself and his braggart of a deputy, who turns out to be a candy-ass when the going gets rough. But then, the mayor, who previously seemed phony baloney, shows up at Millie's on a campaign stop with some Big Important Backers. Once he sees that Gordon is surrounded by Isaac and his men, the mayor "mans up", grabs a gun, and joins the good guys. Now comes the Epic Shootout.

Sherry is caught in the middle of it and doesn't want to see any more killin'. She begs Cheney to give himself up to Isaac, to spare everyone else. The gang has repeater rifles, which were a huge advantage at that time. But Marshal Gordon and the newly emboldened mayor won't give up. Gordon says he's ready to die if need be, because "someone has to do what's right."

The end credits are obscured by a bible, pages turned to Ecclesiastes. Two Big Thumbs Up. You can't go wrong with the Alabammy Hills, taut direction, and The 50 Foot Woman. Good jobs also by Don Megowan and Jim Davis, two very tall, laconic guys, very Western, stoic and philosophical. They don't overplay it. Jim Davis, best known as "Jock Ewing" on "Dallas", died at home in 1981, in Northridge, California, at 17260 Nordhoff Street, near the intersection of Louise, not far from local dental legend Knud Flygenring, and close to Target (which in 1981 might still have been Two Guys). The picture is very good. ////   

The previous night, it was Cop against Crooks, and Crooked Cops, in "The Case Against Brooklyn"(1958). The New York City DA thinks Brooklyn cops must be on the take. "Every time we shut down a bookie room it just opens back up the next day, down the street." This wouldn't be possible if the beat cops weren't looking the other way, and they wouldn't do that without getting paid. And if they're getting paid, the DA is sure the higher-ups are too. "If I suspect it, so do their their captains, at least some of them. Those guys aren't dumb. They know who's on the take and who isn't."

To close in on the bookmakers and their joint operation with the crooked cops, the DA sets up patrol officer "Pete Harris" (Darren McGavin), a former Marine, who's from an outside precinct. Nobody knows him, which makes him the perfect choice to go undercover to infiltrate the operation. Harris poses as a California businessman just returned to his home state of New York. His objective: to get close to "Lil Polombo" (Margaret Hayes), the recently-widowed wife of a garage owner who owed big money to one of the chief bookies. Her husband drove off a cliff after being beat up by the bookie's thugs, who were gonna come back and kill him the next day if he didn't pay.

We've already seen a connection to the cops, in a laundry company driver who "drops" the payoffs in a locker room at the Finnish Baths, where the coppers hit the steam room. When they come back to towel off, there's a nice wad of cash between their freshly pressed shirts. The driver, "Rudi Franklin" (Warren Stevens), is a smug bastard who insults the cops to their faces. He's got a lot of nerve, a lowly driver. He's also hitting up widow Polombo, whose double indemnity insurance money (collected from her dead husband), he'd like to get his hands on. Franklin is scum, but how does he have so much clout?

Pete Harris writes him off at first as only a low-level scammer. Pete's after the leader of he operation, and the bad cops, and his partner "Jess Johnson" (Brian G. Hutton) gets a lead after tapping the main bookie's phone. But Jess gets caught doing it a second time, and is shot and killed by one of the "in pocket" detectives, who subsequently jumps out a windum to his death when arrested, to avoid a long sentence in prison. 

Once the bookie syndicate finds out Pete's true identity, they use their police connections to set up a communications van outside his apartment, where they turn the tables and tap his phone, then shut it down. When he calls for repair service (where your disbelief must be suspended, because in real life he'd be suspicious of his phone going out), they send a henchman to pose as a telephone repairman (Joe Turkel of "Shining" fame). He installs a bomb phone that goes off and kills not Pete but his trusting, fearful wife, who didn't want him on this assignment in the first place. "You can't beat them all by yourself, Pete." Wanna bet? With his partner and his wife now dead, he doesn't care anymore and quits the force to go rogue. First, he confronts the drunken Lil Polombo, to find out what she's told Rudi Franklin, the laundry driver. Then, when Rudi comes to her apartment, Pete surreptitiously hides in his laundry truck, to be taken, hopefully, to whoever The Big Man is. On the way, Rudi picks up the top crooked cop, a captain at the head of the Brooklyn homicide department. But he's not the shot caller; the owner of the laundry service is! He's really a major Mafioso. We'll have to add Laundry Owner to our list of Criminal Masterminds.

We really liked Darren McGavin in this role as a crusader, because - as much as we also love him as Kolchak - after that role, he tended to resort to Kolchak's "world wearly" persona and his "ha-ha cynicism" in other roles, doing his "talking back to the boss with wry humor" routine. It was a good schtick, but he did it in every TV show he was in thereafter, and it became an archetype for any McGavin character. But here, this is 15 years before all that. so he's Marine Corp sharp. 

Two Big Thumbs Up, though the phone-repair stuff is a little far fetched. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

And that's all for this Saturday night. My blogging music is once again Deep Purple, their third, eponymously-titled album this time. This is Mark One Deep Purple, of "Hush" fame, featuring Rod Evans on vocals and Nic Simper on bass. Mark One DP is generally seen as a formative version of the band, who were still seeking a cohesive, identifiable sound. Other bands, like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, came out of the gate with debut albums that generally were the template for what was to come. But the Mark One version of Deep Purple sounded very little like what they would become when Ian Gillan and Roger Glover replaced Evans and Simper in 1970, and the new DP made "In Rock." I remember the late, great Mike Bellamy playing me "The Book of Talesyn" (the second album, by Mark One) after I'd already heard "Machine Head." I didn't think much of "Talesyn" in comparison, and I basically never really listened to Mark One again, excepting a song or two, here and there. But this week, I've given all three Mark One albums a full listen, and.........they're really good. I was surprised. Now, it's true that they don't sound like classic, hard rock Deep Purple, with blistering instrumental prowess. They're more psychedelic, and "of the 60s", not yet transitioning into the more focused 70s sound. Still, there's a ton of good stuff on those first three records. My main complaint is that, on "Shades of Deep Purple" (the first album), Ritchie's guitar is pushed so far back in the mix that, on most songs, you strain to hear him. He was playing second fiddle to the older and more experienced Jon Lord at the time, which may be why his guitar got buried, but by the next two Mark One albums, you can hear him loud and clear.

I'd actually rate the first three albums as better than "Fireball" and "Who Do We Think We Are" by Mark Two. The DP classics are, of course, "Machine Head", "In Rock", and "Burn", 10-pluses in anyone's book. I'd give "Stormbringer" (Mark Three, Coverdale and Hughes), about an 8. But the first three merit a re-evaluation. I'd say that if you took the three albums and whittled the material down to two, you might just have two more "10"s on your hands. 9s at the very least. It's always nice to discover something new, even if it's 55 years old. Somebody alert Ritchie that the first three albums are good after all. He might be surprised to hear it.  ////

I hope your weekend is going well, and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

John Russell and June Blair in "Hell Bound", and "Desirable Lady" starring Jan Wiley and Phil Warren

Last night's movie was "Hell Bound"(1957), a high-concept crime flick with a plot as cynical as it's title. To be clear, "high concept" usually means "a potpourri of circumstances that would never happen in real life", a screenwriters concoction, and more on that in a moment. The movie opens with a voiceover, as A Man of Authority describes a shipboard heist in progress. The location is Wilmington, California, an oil and harbor town, not the most picturesque place but great as a Noir location. The narrator describes how the heist is worked out, between several accomplices, starting with a man in a raft who's signaling an SOS. He's picked up by the target ship, a freighter, then accomplice #2 boards when the ship docks and is quarantined. He is the health inspector of the Port of Los Angeles. He also happens to be a Type 1 diabetic, a fact pointed out by the narrator. I'll leave it to you, if you end up watching the movie, to learn the rest of the setup for yourself, because describing it would take too much time. Suffice it to say, when we learn how the heist has unfolded, we assume it's a past occurrence and that the gang has been caught and put in jail.

But that's where the screenwriter comes in, as mentioned a moment ago.

He throws us a curveball in the form of what we'll call a quasi fourth-wall breakthrough, a sort-of "movie within a movie", when we all of a sudden cut to the high-rise office of a securities executive (a major honcho), who is listening to a director's pitch, the same movie director who filmed the 10 minute short we've just been watching, in which we saw the ship heist in progress and listened to it described in voiceover. It turns out the whole thing was a pitch, a "cover letter" if you will, to this CEO, to ask for his monetary backing in a real heroin heist on a freighter ship coming into Wilmington harbor. And this isn't any old heroin but pharmaceutical grade. You can bet Keith Richards would've approved and cheered it on.

The CEO agrees to back it, on one condition, if his much-younger girlfriend "Paula" (June Blair) can be the "nurse" accomplice in the heist, because it involves a diabetic and an ambulance for distraction. The CEO wants Paula on the job to be sure he gets his cut of the money, when the heroin is sold.

But first, she has to actually pretend to be a nurse in a real emergency ambulance, and her heart is tested when her first patient is a little boy who dies. The screenwriter takes us in one direction, then the other. It's somewhat incoherent at first.

The leader of the heist is "Jordan" (John Russell, a hard-cheekboned Western star who looks like Dick Tracy if he was a sociopath). A big part of the problem I had with this movie is that the Jordan character is so thoroughly unlikable, beating up, running over, or stabbing everyone he can get his hands on, and overacting on top of that, that I felt I was in a Quentin Tarantino nightmare. Actually, a film like this is his dream. He wishes he could make a movie this professional, and it is that, featuring good camerawork, solid direction by William J. Hole, whoever the hell he is (and it's a good thing his middle initial isn't A). But the story, while effective, is ludicrous.

First of all, why would Jordan hire a heroin addict to be the point man for the heist, the guy in the raft who gets it going?  In a side note, the addict also happens to be an abortionist; the movie's "butcher boy" scene is a repulsive classic of Crummy Cinema, you couldn't overact more, or have worse dialogue. But yeah - why would he hire a jittery, unreliable heroin addict to be the raft guy, and then also use a diabetic, who could have an unexpected medical problem, like insulin shock from the stress of the crime?

In the middle of all this nonsense is a budding romance between the CEO's slutty girlfriend Paula, who's now playing nurse, and her ambulance driver Stuart Whitman, with his classic butt chin. He knows nothing of the heist, and she, after seeing the little boy die, wants out of it. Now she wants to marry nice guy Whitman.

It's as if the screenwriter said, "Hmm, I've got some leftovers in the fridge: a psychopathic movie director, a crooked CEO who happens to be his friend, a heroin addict abortionist, a diabetic health inspector, a slut, wait, make that two sluts! Okay, I've got it! I'll make a casserole in which all these people are going to hell. I'll call it Hell Bound. It'll be delicious." And it does work, because of the professional direction, photography and excellent location. They even have a finale that takes place, in part, amidst the triple-stacked wreckage of old Red Line trolley cars. That part is really cool. The whole thing looks great, and the acting is passable too (if you exclude the "butcher boy" scene), but you could not find a more reprehensible and unlikable group of characters if you searched far and wide. John Russell's Jordan is particularly abhorrent. We're gonna give it Two Bigs anyway. It got a 6.3 on IMDB, a high number - you might really like it. It was different, I'll give it that much, but the characters made me sick. One guy, a heroin dealer named "Daddy", who hangs out in a nightclub wearing shades, is doing a Harvey Keitel impersonation before there was a Harvey Keitel. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

The previous night, in "Desirable Lady"(1944), "Eve" (Jan Wiley) is an exotic dancer performing in a New York nightclub, when her manager calls the police as a publicity stunt, to generate the Wow Factor. As Eve points out (not knowing who reported her), she actually did nothing wrong. Her dance had no nudity, and while mildly erotic, it was graceful in the Egyptian tradition after which it was patterned.

No matter. "The law's the law" say the cops, and in New York, the law forbids exotic dancing, a nebulous definition at the time. While waiting for Mac (her manager) so she can strangle him, a bail bondsman enters the station to bail out a "regular customer", a notorious drunken lady named "Tillie" (Cheerio Merideth). While there, Eve asks for his help. He posts her bail, too, and boy, is she gonna kill "Mac" (Phil Warren). While at the bondsman's office, she tells him her story: how she was orphaned at 2, when her actor parents were killed in a theater collapse in Colorado. "I guess acting is in my blood, though I never knew them." Something about her story rings a bell with the bondsman, who keeps a scrapbook filled with want ads seeking persons with unclaimed money.

After Eve leaves, it strikes him. He remembers a certain ad, looks it up, and sees that, in 1923, such a theater collapse happened. And recently, in the want ad he'd cut out and taped in his scrapbook, the poster was seeking the daughter of the actor couple who died in the collapse, to inform her she may be the heir to a hair tonic fortune. The bondsman, a crook, figures Eve is as good a possibility of being the heiress as anyone, and decides to promote her as such, even on thin credentials. He explains the scheme to Mac her manager, who isn't sold until the bondsman explains the amount of money, a fortune. "Well, okay. but I'm not sure Eve would want this." They actually think the chances are slim-to-none that Eve is really the heiress.

When they take her to meet the Sardham family, whose money derives from the fortune, "Uncle Horace" (Edward Keane) is receptive, but his wife "Lavinia" (Betty Blythe) is not. Lavinia hates pretty Eve on sight, and even more when she learns Eve's a dancer. Remember that, in old movies, "dancer" is equivalent to prostitute. But Eve is a class act, whose dancing draws the line between sex and art. Madonna should have such class and talent (as if).

Eve discovers one Sardham relative, "Aunt Sarah" (Janet Scott), hidden away in a bedroom by the family because she, too, is a rebel, seen as non-presentable in society. Together, Eve and Aunt Sarah team up to flaunt the family values. The Sardham's daughter "Millicent" (Marilyn McConnell) comes up with the idea of staging a talent show to foil Eve, believing she'll make a fool of herself. Millicent arranges for Eve to fail, assigning her a scene from Cleopatra to act out in front of a high-society audience. Eve's real talent is dancing, not acting, and her "Cleopatra" reading is an utter flop as Millicent intended. Undaunted, Eve returns onstage to perform her Egyptian dance again and the society audience is thrilled, but - surprisingly - not scandalized. During the show, Mac is confronted in the dressing room by the bail bondsman, who wants his "cut" of Eve's large inheritance, because Uncle Horace now believes she really is the Sardham's long-lost granddaughter. When Mac tells the bondsman to stuff it. a fight starts, a gun goes off, and the bondsman dies, with only six minutes left in the movie! Is that too late to start a crime plot? The script is unconventionally arranged, and apparently, "Desirable Lady" is "the most re-titled film in Hollywood history" according to IMDB, due to the exotic dance scenes, which had to be cut or trimmed in many countries, hence the re-titling  ("A Fig Leaf for Eve" was one alternative). We actually saw a more risque dance by Sally Rand in "Sunset Murder Case", which came out in 1938. At any rate, Jan Wiley is a talented dancer, also. Not sure why her act caused the hubub it did on screen. Her "romance" with Mac is played as a second banana farce. The main theme is the question of Eve's "worthiness" in high society, but when she does her thing onstage (thereby showing up the stuffy Millicent and Lavinia), the audience loves her. Two Big Thumbs Up, and as a bonus, there's an independent performance in the nightclub by a blues organist named  Selika Pettiford. She's fantastic, and reason enough to see the film. She could've been a Deep Purple keyboardist! The picture is good, not great. ////   

And that's all I have for the moment. Speaking of Deep Purple, they were my blogging music: "In Rock" and "Shades of Deep Purple". My late night is Handel's Florindo Opera. I hope your air conditioners are working well, as it's heating up out there, and I send you Tons of Love as always.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

Chris Warfield and Virginia Christine in "Incident in an Alley" (from a story by Rod Serling), and "Silent Raiders" starring Richard Bartlett and Earle Lyon

Last night's movie was "Incident in an Alley"(1962), a police drama based on a story by Rod Serling, It sounds like a Rod title, right? And, it has the polemics one expects from his best writing. As it opens, a gang of teenage hoodlums are robbing a music store, breaking and entering late at night. When a cleaning lady surprises them, their leader "Charlie" (Gary Judis) hits her with a lead pipe. As the gang are stashing the stolen musical instruments in the attic of a warehouse across the alley, several things happen at once. First, they are seen by the night watchman. Then, a man and wife are closing and leaving their restaurant, just as a police car is driving by. One of the gang, a young kid, panics and runs. He knocks the restaurant lady down. She screams, attracting the cops, who run down the alley and split up. One officer follows the kid and his older brother "Gussie" (Michael Vandever), who is also part of the gang. In the darkness, one of the boys disappears, while the other keeps running. Not knowing who they are, or their ages, only that they are running from a police pursuit, Officer "Bill Joddy" (Chris Warfield) issues a verbal warning, then fires a warning shot (which may have been required at the time, I'll have to ask Uncle Rod. Mom used to say that the police were required to yell "halt" three times before shooting). At any rate, Officer Joddy, in the darkness and chaos, does his best to terminate the situation, in which - to his knowledge - a woman has already been assaulted. So, he kneels in a shooters' position and fires...and kills the runner, a 14 year old boy.

Naturally, he is devastated. His captain vows the full support of the force, but the DA says otherwise, and the yellow journalists are having a field day. Rod Serling covers all the bases here, leaving no conundrum unturned. At Joddy's trial, the prosecutor does a smarmy job, appealing to the jury's base emotions. He's almost held in contempt by the judge, and his approach backfires when the jury finds Joddy not guilty. By the way, Joddy is pronounced as "Jody", which may have been Rod's effort to get his daughter's name in there (hers is spelled Jodi).

Joddy goes home, but he doesn't feel innocent, especially when confronted at his doorstep by "Mrs. Connell", the mother of  the dead boy (played by Virginia Christine, aka "Mrs.Olsen" of Folger's fame). She does an amazing job here, to convey the mixture of rage and sadness that a mother would feel in such a situation, including the responsibility that must overwhelm the parent of a juvenile delinquent whose actions have gotten him accidentally killed. Serling could not have thought up a more complex moral dilemma, and it presaged a lot of today's police shootings, where - in some cases - the criminal provoked or chanced the encounter by running and not acquiescing to commands to stop. Rod examines the issue of identity: "When a policeman stops you," Joddy's lawyer tells the press, "He doesn't know who you are. Every stop he makes could put him face to face with a killer". In other words, when they ask you to stop, you should stop, not run. Rod points all this out in the dialogue. Cops are human and accidents happen, and they are left as part of the wreckage, having to live with the mistake they've made, and the family they've ruined. But in this case, the boy's older brother was involved in the robbery and Joddy knows it.

After he is reinstated, he approaches Gussie in private, to pry him from the clutches of gang leader Charlie, a ruthless punk with no qualms about killing. As played by Gary Judis, he's reminiscent of Charles Schmid, and looks like him, too. Joddy takes Gussie back to his apartment, where he offers him beers (tall boys!) and when the Gussie refuses, he drinks them all himself! Soon he's getting hammered. Is he about to go rogue? "When a cop doesn't care anymore, you should worry," he tells Gussie.

By now, Charlie the gang leader thinks Gussie is gonna rat them out, and now, it's not just a music store robbery anymore but murder, because the cleaning lady has died. Charlie decides they've gotta kill both Gussie and Joddy, who he refers to as "Officer Trigger Happy". This is one of Rod's best stories, if less well known. He's totally pro-law and order. Mrs. Connell and Officer Joddy make a devastated duo in the end, but he saves Gussie's life and they reconcile. With slightly elevated direction, it would've earned Two Huge Thumbs. Still, let's give it Two Bigs with a a very high recommendation. High marks to Virginia Christine and Gary Judis, who went on to found Aames Home Loan. The picture is razor sharp.  ////

The previous night, we found a tense, realistic little war movie from the always reliable Lippert Pictures, called "Silent Raiders"(1954), about a Marine Corps "suicide squad" sent in to destroy a German communications barn at a French farm inland of Normandy, on the eve of the Allied invasion. Rowing ashore in a rubber raft in the middle of the night, the seven squad members, led by "Lieutenant Finch" (Robert Knapp), ascend the cliff, then carry their boat to a river, where they silently row some more, en route to the farm four miles down. The plan is to wait a few hours, do some recon, then attack the barn at 5 am. After they destroy the comm equipment, making sure all lines are cut, they'll race back to the beach where a ship will be waiting. The LT tells them they'd be better off "saying your prayers" than joking around, which they do at mealtime, "because none of you, including me, are likely to make it." Make it back alive, that is.

In addition to Lieutenant Finch, there are two Sergeants, "Jack" (Richard Bartlett, who also directed) and "Malloy" (Earle Lyon), old pals from Stateside service. When Finch "buys it" during a brief shootout with German patrol troops, Sgt. Jack reluctantly takes over. He dreads the responsibility of soldiers dying under his command. The four enlisted men are "Chief" (Fred Foote),  a tall, silent Indian who never says a word but is fearless. Then there are two mooks: "Horse" (Frank Stanlow), a wimpy blowhard from Chicago, and "Pepe" (Earl Hansen) from Brooklyn. Pepe's the real deal, a tough guy and former gang member. He proves his mettle early on in the fight with the German foot soldiers. It's as grim as the violence in "Platoon", not glossed over as in the bigger Hollywood WW2 productions. In war, death is grim and brutal, and freaking awful. It's savage, because it's kill-or-be-killed, and you have to tell yourself that the other guys deserve it, because they're the freaking enemy.

Or do they deserve it? This picture was made in 1954, but even that early, the filmmakers question the need to kill prisoners. 45 years before "Saving Private Ryan", there's a scene almost exactly like the one in that movie, where a German soldier is caught. The platoon members all want to kill him. He speaks English but hedges his answers, and lies. But Sergeant Jack, with his pacifist tendencies, won't agree to kill him. "Why should we?", he asks. "just tie him up". This is exactly (or very similar to) Private Ryan, in which the German, having been spared, comes back to attack the Americans. "Should've killed him in the first place!" Pepe shouts at Sgt. Jack. Once again, I have to question if a famous director, in this case Spielberg, saw and cribbed from a little-known film.   

The squad makes it to the farm, but there's a small outbuilding on the boundary. "Check it out", Sgt. Jack says to Pepe and Horse. They do, and find a goat on the way back, bringing it along for its milk. Small details like this add to the realism. A machine gun nest lies ahead. This time, Sgt. Jack sends his pal Sgt. Malloy to check it out. He does, and the tension is ratcheted. 

A small house stands near the machine gun nest. A light is on inside, so Malloy inspects it, too, and discovers a French maiden and German officer at a table, sharing wine. He quickly stabs the officer, and then, something so preposterous happens, at the 56 minute mark, that I'm amazed it was allowed into the script, because it would absolutely never happen in real life. Never in a million years. I could understand including it, if this were a stylized war movie. But it's not; the whole point is its gritty realism, so to throw this action in, out of the blue, almost negated the whole shebang for me. Then, there's a follow up, where another soldier is sent to look for Malloy. He comes back and reports, "Malloy's okay, he'll be back in a couple minutes." In connection with the first action, this would also never happen in a million years, especially on a mission of this utmost importance.

If you can ignore these two things (and I'd love to ask the screenwriter, "Are you kidding?") the movie is one of the better low-budget WW2 flicks we've seen. Two Big Thumbs Up with a very high recommendation. The picture is good, not great. The budget was so low that only improbable spots were used to light the sets and make the nighttime action visible.  ////

And that's all I know. My blogging music is "Very 'Eavy, Very 'Umble" and "The Magician's Birthday", both by Uriah Heep, who - I've come to the conclusion - are one of the greatest bands of all time. Think about it: first off, you've got David Byron, undoubtedly the best of the operatic hard rock singers, which is saying something in the company of Gillan, Halford and the like. Then you have Ken Hensley, Heep's leader, on keys, rhythm guitar and harmony vocals. Hensley wasn't as technical a keyboard player as Jon Lord, and nowhere near the level of an Emerson or Wakeman, but Heep's music didn't call for that type of playing. What he did instead was create a distinctive, grinding organ sound that became a band signature. He also wrote most of the music, one great song after another, and what made Uriah Heep different from a band like Deep Purple (and Pat pointed this out), was that - while they weren't as instrumentally complex as DP - they were perhaps more dramatic and progressive, as a song like "July Morning" demonstrates. They also had multiple harmonies on many songs, complimenting the high tenor of David Byron, making the vocal line even more powerful and dynamic. Their secret weapon was Gary Thain, and it must be noted again, that he should be more famous than he is, because Thain (who died of a heroin overdose in 1975), is quite simply on the level of a John Entwhistle or a Geddy Lee, in his own way. The way in which he plays inside a riff, and not only drives it, but turns it around by anticipating the beat, bouncing and dribbling it around, is amazing. This guy redefined "groove" and "pocket". Find some live Heep clips on Youtube and watch him, he's phenomenal. Lastly, UH had Lee Kerslake and Mick Box on drums and guitar respectively, neither one a shredder but both extremely musical where it counts.

That's how I'd sum up Uriah Heep: they were very musical. I was surprised to discover Ritchie Blackmore is also a fan; Blackmore's Night have covered two Heep songs, "Gypsy" and "Lady in Black". Heep's "Sweet Freedom" from 1973 is one of the first records I ever bought (at College Records), and I've always liked the band, but in the last two years I've realised just how great they are, and they've become one of my favorites, right up there with Deep Purple themselves. So there you have it. Long live Uriah Heep.

My late night is Handel's Joseph and His Brethren Opera. I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love, as always.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)