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 :):)
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