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 :):)
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