Donald Trump Should Be Sent To Prison For The Rest Of His Life + Tim Holt

Tonight's movie was "Rio Grande Patrol", a 60 minute Tim Holt Western, so I don't have a lengthy description for you because the plots in these films have a certain set of ingredients that are interchangeable. It's not a case of "if you've seen one you've seen 'em all" because each film does have it's own story, but the structures are all similar variations on the Good Guys vs. Bad Guys theme. Hour long Western such as Holt's or Jack Starrett's were usually distributed as serials, to be shown as part of a Saturday afternoon matinee accompanying a longer more standard feature.

I love 'em, of course, or I wouldn't watch 'em, but there isn't much to describe in the way that I usually break down the plot for you, spoiler that I am.  :)

I do love to see the Iverson Ranch used in almost every movie. It was used in Starrett's "Durango Kid" flicks as well, and there are always a few scenes in each film where the action winds up at The Garden Of The Gods, with it's unmistakable towering boulders. In this picture, Tim Holt and his partner Chito Rafferty (the comic relief) are border patrol agents, which is timely for today, except that Tim and Chito are decent guys and would never take part in the actions of ICE vis-a-vis the Trump Camps that imprison children. I will try not to politicize my movie reviews because you hear enough bad news all day long, but as I was watching the movie, the issue stood out enough that I felt a need to mention it.

Plus, I detest Trump with a passion as you know. You do too or you wouldn't be reading this. But I am sorry to say I have given up on the Democrats doing anything about him. We sat there for two years, waiting for Robert Mueller to kick his butt and, sorry to say again, but Mueller turned out to be a major disappointment. He seems to be a Mythical Figure who is never heard from in public, and his much vaunted "Report" was watered down and then co-opted and further watered down to the point of irrelevance by the arch A-Hole William Barr. So Trump won again.

He might very well win re-election and nothing punitive at all will ever happen to him. I mean, whatever happened to the supposed New York investigation of him? Whatever happened to "Individual One"? Nothing ever came of that, either.

But no matter what happens, Trump will never, ever, succeed as a "president" (lower case "p" and quotation marks are essential here). Worst case scenario is four more years of the same pointless chaos. The press and his own dwindling staff will keep him in check......hopefully.

But what will become of America in the process? What will become of the Idea Of America?

Will Trump have permanently lowered the bar so that the "presidency" becomes an Executive Branch version of Reality TV? I sure hope not. That is why I am so dismayed by the Democratic failure to hold Trump accountable. It doesn't matter if you don't have enough votes to remove him from office.

Impeach him anyway.

Why? Because he is a criminal. It bears repeating that Trump is not just an obnoxious person but a proven criminal. This makes it imperative to begin impeachment proceedings, whether you have the votes to remove or not.

I mean, look - if Joe Biden is the candidate, Trump is gonna get re-elected anyway. Might as well get something for your trouble, and who knows,,,,,,,,an impeachment investigation might just force people like the very disappointing Robert Mueller and the lowlife treasonous William Barr and the phony baloney Hope Hicks to testify.......and it might reveal to the nation, on camera, some testimony of the litany of criminal evidence against Donald Trump, which could, in a just world if we are ever to have that again, lead not only to removal from office for Trump, but to his imprisonment.

Trump needs to be put in prison if America is going to recover from his "presidency".

He needs to be imprisoned because he is a criminal who became president through fraudulent means, helped by the evil and murderous Putin, and if that weren't enough, he then used his position to commit further crimes to enrich himself, and to destroy the image of the Presidency as a position of Honor, and to nearly destroy our democracy in the process.

If Donald Trump doesn't deserve to go to prison for the rest of his life, I don't know who does.

Do you?  /////

That will have to count as my review of "Rio Grande Patrol" starring Tim Holt, who I would vote for in a heartbeat against Trump. I love my old Western movies with real heroes, not fake ones, where the Good Guys will surely go after the Bad Guys, but they won't screw over the ordinary folks nor especially the downtrodden in the process. ////

That's all I know for tonight. I should have some new full length movies coming soon. In the meantime I'll be listening to Hellhammer and reading my Robert Heinlein book......  :)

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxo  :):)

"The Prince And The Pauper" (last night) + "Tales Of Tomorrow" (tonight)

Sorry I missed you last night. I actually did write a blog - most of one anyway - but then I became too tired to finish, and it was also Church night. So, I finished it up just now and here it is :

(from Saturday June 22, 2019) Tonight I watched a classic from Old Hollywood called "The Prince And The Pauper", starring Errol Flynn, Claude Rains and a couple of boys known as The Mauch Twins, Billy and Bobby. This is one of those Golden Era movies that I'd almost guarantee you saw as a child on Saturday afternoon TV, or later in life on a cable station like TCM. At the very least, I'm certain you've seen snippets of it because it's an iconic early costume drama that has had staying power over the many decades since it's release.

In the first decade of sound, Hollywood often looked to England for story lines. Movies about Kings and Queens and knights were popular, as was the mythical tale of Robin Hood, which was turned into another Errol Flynn classic that I am also sure you've seen.

Despite the fact of his stardom entitling him to "above the title" status in this picture, Flynn's role is closer to that of a second lead, due to his limited screen time in the 119 minute film. He doesn't show up until the 53 minute mark, and even then his scenes, while lengthy, are intercut with those of the other characters whose story has already been in play. Still, Flynn's charisma and general "Errol Flynn-ness" give the second half of the movie an extra zip, so his star status is well earned as always.

But "The Prince And The Pauper" really belongs to The Mauch Twins. Unlike Errol Flynn, these boys were not stars nor even prolific child actors. Their IMDB lists 17 credits for Billy, five for Bobby, but they were talented enough to carry a major motion picture and to hold their own in scenes with talents like Claude Rains, Flynn and Alan Hale, among others. They were born in 1921, almost 100 years ago, but they will always remain high-spirited boys because of this film.

"The Prince And The Pauper" is based on a book by Mark Twain (of all people), and the story is a version of the Old Switcheroo involving twin brothers, much like "The Man In The Iron Mask" or any number of other stories. Didn't you ever know a pair of twins in school who would do goofy things like switch classes and take each other's tests?

Well anyway, The Mauch Twins are identical and you can't tell 'em apart, so what happens is that Mauch One is the son of King Henry VIII, and Mauch Two is the son of a brutish bull of a man, a commoner who has no job and who expects his boy, once he is grown, to beg in the streets for him, and even to steal. The father is played by the great character actor Barton McClane, who often showed up as the "heavy" in many a Bogart movie.

The plot is very long and involved, and I'll not have time on a church night to explain it all to you, but suffice to say that the young heir to the throne does not want to rule in the manner of his father Henry the 8th. He is aware that his Dad has had six wives and that none of them are around anymore, including his own mother. His father, monster that he is, loves him however, and gives him the privileges one would expect a young prince to have. Now that his father is dying, the boy extends those privileges to going outside the castle grounds so that he can see how the poor folks live. Remember that this is a Mark Twain parable. While the prince is out, he encounters the poor beggar son of Barton McClane. Seeing as how the boy is beaten down, he invites him back to the King's castle for something to eat. There they bond, and play kid's games like Blind Man's Bluff, and trade stories.

Then they notice that they look a lot alike. The prince tells the pauper to wash up, and to switch clothes with him. Now you can't tell who is the prince and who is the pauper. The real prince - dressed as the pauper - ventures outside the castle walls again just to see what he can see away from his sheltered life. His can get away with this because his father Henry VIII is near death.

But there is an evil controller in the wings, a Noble Lord played by Claude Rains.

From there, the plot will take flight, and will become very involved. Errol Flynn will show up later on as a mercenary soldier, poor but honorable, to rescue the new "pauper" (the actual prince in the pauper boy's clothing) from his tormentors, who range from gutter dwelling drunks at the corner Inn, to local city police who are after the boy for thievery, which he has been forced into.

The story is a fable about the English class system that lasted until the end of Queen Victoria's reign (or is it still going?). It's also about putting yourself into someone else's shoes to see what life is like for that person. Interestingly, Twain used children to demonstrate this principle. The boys are unencumbered by fixed adult opinions and prejudices. All either one wants, once the situation goes haywire, is to be returned to their home, so they can live the only lives they know - their own.

The Pauper doesn't want to be King. He wants to be back home in Offal Court, his village. And while the Prince doesn't want to live the life of a pauper, having experienced a taste of that life he has new sympathy for what the poor folk endure on a daily basis.

The Mauch Twins pull this off with a lot of flair. Claude Rains is dastardly as the villainous Lord Protector. Errol Flynn is young here, just 28, and so still has the somewhat more innocent "who, me"? charm of his early roles. He was still great later on, but he dissipated quickly in mid-life and only lived to be 50.

Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Prince And The Pauper", a movie whose message is just as relevant today if not more so. You probably already saw it when you were a kid, as I say, but watch it again all these years later for a dose of classic Hollywood Magic. /////

(tonight, June 23 2019) : This eve I did not have a movie, but I watched an episode of "Rawhide" and also one of my last few "Tales From Tomorrow" episodes, in which a shyster criminal, a "general practitioner" who will take on most any job as long as he doesn't have to risk his neck, is approached in his makeshift office by an authoritative woman (Esther Ralston) who makes him a proposotion.

She wants him to break in to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to steal major works. He scoffs that it would be impossible. The woman, who has an Amazonian bearing and who is filmed at a disconcerting angle that establishes her dominance, then extends to the goofy lowlife a device that she says will enable him to steal the artworks in question without a problem.

It is an "accelerator", worn on the wrist like a watch, that emits a beam that will cause the wearer to move about at nearly the speed of light.

She tells him he will not even be seen by the museum guards, let alone be caught.

Who is this woman?, the thief wonders. But he is more preoccupied with the money she has offered him. He accepts the job, and then sets out to recruit an assistant. He shows a few crook friends his new device, to mixed results. Finally, Jack Warden (who would later play "Jigsaw John" on TV in the late 70s) agrees to help him steal the artworks.

Time is stopped when they enter the museum. But a newspaper headline is touting an H-Bomb Test that is scheduled the same day. My goodness, folks.

"Tales From Tomorrow" was produced in the years 1951 -1953, at the height of the Cold War and the bomb scares of the era, the fear that a Hydrogen Bomb would explode and end life on Earth as we knew it. This fear - and it was very real - was played up for it's dramatic value in many a sci-fi anthology show. The episode of "Tales" was extremely effective; I had Goose Bumps at the end when the question is left hanging.....

The singing in church this morning was good. Now I am Super Tired but will see you in the morning once again after a hopefully restorative sleep. Tons of love are being sent at this very moment......

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Psych-Out" starring Jack Nicholson and Susan Strasberg

Grimsley brought over another Hippie Movie tonight, "Psych-Out" (1968), starring Jack Nicholson and Susan Strasberg, who was also in last week's "The Trip" (which Nicholson wrote). Once again, LSD is involved, as you might've guessed by the title, and in both movies the use of the drug is at first promoted by the protagonists in each film, but then is experienced as a nightmare by the young people who take it. Peter Fonda has a horrible trip in "The Trip", and Susan Strasberg will have one that nearly ends in her death in "Psych-Out". Neither film, then, is pro-acid, just in case you were wondering.

But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves

Strasberg stars as a young runaway who is newly arrived in the Haight/Ashbury district in San Francisco, which was ground zero for Hippies during the height of Flower Power mania. As is now well known, the CIA introduced the drug LSD into American cultural circles in the late 1950s to early 1960s, starting with the intellectual crowd, and movie stars. Then they had a brainstorm idea in the mid-60s, when well-organized student groups were agitating for an end to the Vietnam War, to which the young men were being manditorily drafted into. As a way to get the youth to stop protesting, the CIA spread LSD around the Hippie scene in San Francisco, as well as in other metropolitan centers where the youth culture was prominent. The whole drug scene of the 1960s was a CIA creation, this is verified fact if you care to read the books and do the research, and as further proof, the Agency did a repeat performance with the introduction of crack cocaine into the inner cities of Black America in the 1980s, which took down not only the beautiful and creative musical achievements of the black community to that point, and replaced them with rap - which has never gone away since - but it also destroyed the voice of the black intellectual movement that existed in the 1960s and early 70s and has since been replaced by "bling bling" n-word culture, which the black youth have been trained to call themselves, something the more enlightened African American folks from the 60s never did.

I was there as a kid in the 60s, so I know.

And I tell you all of this just to provide a background on how LSD came to be used by the Hippies of the late 1960s, and came to be thought of as a wonder drug by many. For others, like Syd Barrett, the founder of Pink Floyd, it was a nightmare that ruined his life and sent him spiraling down into schizophrenia.

This is what the CIA knew from their research into the drug, that it had a very strong effect on the mind and the sensory organs and could push the young people far away from their present political concerns. They knew it would make the kids lackadaisical and "out of it", and that's exactly what happened. Kind of like what the legalization of ultra-potent marajuana is doing now, making Stoners out of everyone, which again is not good. I know about that, too, and am beyond grateful that I stopped smoking pot 22 years ago.

So that's the end of my tangential tirade (sorry) and now back to the movie.

Susan Strasberg has arrived in The Haight looking for her older brother. The two siblings are survivors of a horrific childhood, the brother (Bruce Dern) has dropped out of society and become a Jesus freak in San Francisco. He is clearly schizophrenic. Susan has her own disability; she is deaf.

Just off the bus from the Midwest, she enters a psychedelic cafe and runs into Jack Nicholson and his bandmates. Jack is a long haired lead guitarist for a band that is trying to make it big in the SF music scene. He is wary of acid but his bandmates all take it. Everybody talks in Hippie lingo. Jack looks too clean cut for his role (this is before he became a raging alcoholic and coke fiend), and so does his friend Dean Stockwell, playing a bandana wearing Counterculture philosopher who pontificates on the nature of reality and the "game playing middle class".

Man, I couldn't have hung with a guy like this even if I had been old enough to be a Hippie. He is beyond pretentious, and Jack thinks so too. He spends most of the movie trying to get laid and get his band a coveted gig at "The Ballroom".

Now, there are a bunch of Rednecks - big, macho men - who hang out at the local junkyard. They hate Hippies and in particular Bruce Dern the Jesus Figure. He preaches in Golden Gate Park, and these guys hate it - "all that talk about peace and love", they say. They can't stand him and are gonna clobber him one way or another, even though the band members kick the rednecks' butts in a classic Hippie Punchout that had me laughing out loud unintentionally.

To bring things to a head, the Dean Stockwell character, who is supposed to be above such pursuits, covets Susan Strasberg, who is nominally Jack's girl but he is after other women anyway. Stockwell knows this, and so he plies poor Susan - who is deaf - with phoney attention and caring, and then he drugs her with an even worse hallucinogen.....STP.

STP was notorious as an extreme psychedelic, deadly in some cases.

After Strasberg ingests the STP, she goes on an even worse trip than Peter Fonda had in "The Trip".

The movie turns into a horror film at that point, and I will let you see it for yourself to examine the wreckage.  

Whereas "The Trip" was a rather arty examination of LSD culture, thoughtfully made, and even if cheesy it had a good script, "Psych-Out" on the other hand was more of a conventional Hollywood picture - "B" Grade - that was produced to capitalise on the Hippie scene.

It feels less focused as a story. In the last 15 minutes though, it becomes a horror movie, complete with fire effects ala "Carrie", then it ends with a scene on the Golden Gate Bridge that will surely steer you away from ever using STP, if you ever had an inclination to do so (and if they still even make it).

As I said to Grimsley when the movie was over : "That was some seriously weird stuff".

I'll give "Psych-Out" Two Regular Thumbs Up just for curiosity value, for you to see how strange things got in 1968. Though I must say that, as a kid, I didn't see any Hippies this weird).

If you watch it, watch it with an ex-Hippie if you know one, or someone who was "almost a Hippie" like Grim. He was only 15 in 1968, not quite old enough to be a Hippie. I was only 8 and didn't know Grim then, but anyway, try to get in the spirit of the times if and when you watch "Psych-Out".

It will help you enjoy it more.

See you in the freakin' morning! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Ghost Story" + Robert Heinlein + Hellhammer

No movie tonight because I am awaiting another shipment from The Libe, and I don't wanna pound all my new Sci-Fi flicks one after another; wanna dole 'em out so they last at least a few weeks. Tonight was a TV night therefore, and I watched one episode each of "High Chaparral" and "Ghost Story". The GS ep was not as scary as most of the others in the series but it did have a quaint and even touching storyline the might be appreciated by fans of horror cinema. John Astin plays a security guard at an old defunct film studio that is soon to be torn down. He works the Graveyard Shift, which is also the title of the episode, haha. Lately, the security crew has had trouble with a neighborhood gang of white surfer dudes who are breaking into the lot and sneaking around the sound stages, donning old horror costumes to scare the guards.

Astin vows to shut 'em down and run 'em off the property, but when he tries to do so, something goes wrong. The gang themselves are running off the lot before he even gets to them. They have been spooked plenty bad. Astin will soon see why.

Meanwhile, Astin's real life wife Patty Duke Astin -  better known as Patty Duke - shows up in the middle of the night while all of this mayhem is taking place. She is pregnant and wants hubby John to be home with her, but he is staying long hours at the studio and seems to be harboring a secret.

Early in the episode, we learn that Astin was once an actor at the studio he now guards. It was a small operation that specialized in horror movies. Monsters were their stock in trade, and 25 years past, John Astin played supporting roles in all the hit films from the studio. But then he had an on-set accident that ruined his leg and finished his career; then he became a security guard, the job he's held ever since. And now the studio is out of business and is scheduled for imminent demolition.

And the noises Astin is hearing at night, coming from the sound stages, aren't from the gang members. They've all run out in a panic, remember?

When he investigates, he sees that the noise is from the Monsters themselves, the ones that made the studio famous. They are on set, trying to make a new film. They even have a director and cameraman, but everyone looks tenuous and ephemeral. You can see right through them - they are ghosts.

Initially they seem pitiful, sad in their attempt to avoid being forgotten. Their home - the studio - is about to be torn down, and the poor monsters just want one more chance to scare the fans. Horrormeister William Castle, the creator of "Ghost Story", even makes a cameo as the owner of the studio who shows up to reminisce with Astin about the good old days of terrifying an audience.

But the movie monsters aren't as benign as they seem. They aren't merely nostalgic for the old days, but want to live on, literally, in real life. They want to become alive.

You knew Patty Duke's pregnancy was going to have some reason for being in the script, and this is it.

That is all I will tell you. As noted, the episode is not as frightening as some of the others, and some fans at IMDB have bagged it for that reason. I, however, enjoyed it for it's true purpose, which is to celebrate The Monsters of Cinema, who have given us so much pleasure in life by scaring The Bejeezus out of us, as William Castle recalls in his cameo scene. ////

I have also started a novel : "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by the legendary master of science fiction Robert Heinlein. This is my first book by him. Though I am a huge fan of sci-fi movies, I'm not normally a big reader of science fiction books, and in hindsight I think this is because the ones I have tried in the past were all written in what I will call "the language of sci-fi", where you have to adjust to a whole new world - not of this Earth - and thus the writer creates a whole lot of technical lingo to go along with it. This is in contrast to horror fiction, which - even though equally fantastic as compared to real life - happens right down here on Terra Firma to real people, so no New World Lingo is necessary and hence the reading is easier, for me at least.

However, even though the Heinlein book typifies this style of writing (the lingo starts from Page One and the main character speaks in a Russian/English slang), I am finding it to be a page turner, much to my surprise. I checked the book out from Northridge Library after reading a recommendation from Dr. Joe Farrell, whose every book I have read. You all know Dr. Joe, so when he makes a recommendation I tend to listen. Obviously, Robert Heinlein is the Dean of sci-fi writers, this is known even to newbies like myself, but if I can finish this book and train myself into the unorthodox style of writing, I may have a new treasure trove of material to delve into when I am in between Conspiracy Books, or should I say Truth Books........(that's what I should say, because "conspiracy" is just a put-down term for small minded folks who place blind trust in the government version of given events and who can't believe anything out of the ordinary could ever happen).

Well anyway, I also got in the mail a much coveted copy of "Demon Entrails", the two CD album of Hellhammer's complete demo tapes, remastered and released in 2007 by Tom G. Warrior and Martin Ain. The CDs are a collector's item, out of print and selling for 40 bucks and upwards online. I was unaware of "Demon Entrails" until I read about it in Tom G's book, which I've recently reviewed and called a "must read" for any fan of metal, or music in general, or for any artist.

Once I read about the availability of these Hellhammer demos, I knew I had to have them. I had the original Hellhammer album on vinyl in 1986, long since lost unfortunately.

But now I have acquired this double CD of the original demo tapes, the official release on Century Media and not a Russian bootleg, and I was lucky enough to score it for just 12 dollars plus shipping from a record store in Arlington, Texas.

Thanks, guys! I listened to the first CD tonight while I was working on my Howard Schaller drawing, and though the recording is only garage band quality, it has nevertheless got to be The Heaviest Metal I Have Ever Heard.

If you read Tom G's book and hear this music in conjunction it will all make sense. I am so grateful to have gotten a copy of the album for a basic price and not through the extortion of scalpers.

I am going to play the Hellhammer out of it!  :):)

Hope you had a good day. See you in the morn when Summer starts. xoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):) 

"The Mole People" starring John Agar

Tonight I watched a real gem of low budget 1950s science fiction called "The Mole People" (1956), which was one of the five films included in my newly acquired "Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection Vol. 1" dvd set. The movie stars John Agar as an archaeologist working with his team on an ancient Mesopotamian dig. An Arab boy brings them a relic he found high on a mountaintop, a golden incense burner. Agar wants to move the dig to the mountain, but the local guides tell him no. "It is the home of Ishtar", their God, and if Agar climbs the mountain he will be punished with death.

Now, John Agar was a staple in 50s sci-fi movies, and if you've ever seen him you know that arrogance was his stock in trade. He was also famous for his marriage to Shirley Temple when she was only 17, and he even managed to say crude things about her later on after their divorce. So when John Agar is your star, you know you are in for an annoying treat, and you wouldn't be watching a movie like "The Mole People" in the first place unless you were accustomed to his "performances". I mean, God help you if "The Mole People" is your introduction to classic sci-fi and also to John Agar. Hopefully you've built up some experience beforehand, haha.

In truth, it's not that bad a movie. In fact, it could be considered a "bad-good" classic. The story is "epic". The scientists do make an expedition to the mountaintop, where they discover an ancient Sumerian temple. Then suddenly, one member of the team takes a wrong step and the ground caves in beneath his feet. He falls into a seemingly bottomless hole in the earth. Agar, who is not only a know-it-all but also a hero type, makes the decision for the rest of the team to descend into the hole to locate the missing man. You get the feeling that he is doing it for self-serving reasons and you may be right.

The fallen scientist is found dead (of course), so Agar is now free to lead the remainder of his team farther into the bowels of the Earth. Soon, they encounter The Mole People, who overpower them and drag them down even further, through mole holes that open into a cavernous underground city.

This is where the movie gets campy, and you will have to refer to the posts I made tonight on my FB page, for footage to reference it by. As often happens in "so bad they're good" 50s science fiction flicks, there is an adversarial leader of an undiscovered or alien society who happens to be a fop. Think of the "Ruler" character in "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and you'll have the idea. If you watch the trailer I posted for "The Mole People", you'll get a glimpse of a similar character played by Alan Napier, who went on to play Alfred the Butler on the "Batman" tv series.

Napier is the High Priest of this underground society who have descended from the Sumerians. They are a fussy bunch who take out their paranoia on the lowly Mole People, whom they enslave and beat down with whips. John Agar isn't gonna stand for this abuse, and he discovers that both the Mole People and the folks of the Underground Society are extremely sensitive to the flashlight he brought down. In fact, it is deadly to them. Now he has power over Alan Napier and the King of The Society.

But only until his flashlight batteries run out.

This is another one of those nights where you are gonna have to do some work of your own to complete the movie review, because I am tired and because the movie was "The Mole People".

Now, don't get the idea that I didn't like it - quite the contrary. It never lagged, it ran a compact 77 minutes, and the script was good and featured location changes, mountain climbing scenes, avalanches, and some pretty decent underground sets, including a fantastic matte painting backdrop to the gigantic underground city. Plotwise, it's got all the ingredients you expect in "B" grade science fiction, and it's technically well made, photographed in dark black and white.

It's just that when the campiness starts, it gets very campy, so as long as you can handle that aspect, you will probably enjoy "The Mole People" as much as I did. And you also have John Agar to counteract all of this by giving the most overbearing performance of his career, so you really can't lose.

I needed some classic Sci-Fi for Summer, and now it's off to a great start with "The Mole People", to which I give Two Very Big Thumbs Up.

In the genre of 1950s "B" or even "C" grade sci-fi, there are a huge difference between movies that outright suck and movies that are, say, eccentric and perhaps don't have the greatest acting or direction, but have quality production values and an interesting story to make up for it.

"The Mole People" is such a movie, recommended for 1950s Sci-Fi fanatics like myself. ///

That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning with lots of love sent in between.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"The Next Voice You Hear" starring James Whitmore & Nancy Davis + Elizabeth (Quebec Photos)

Tonight I watched a strange little movie called "The Next Voice You Hear" (1950), starring James Whitmore and Nancy Davis, who of course later became First Lady of The United States. The director was William Wellman, a Hollywood legend whose film "Wings" won the first Best Picture Oscar. Given his inpressive filmography, you wouldn't think he'd make an unusual picture about God and faith, but that is exactly what we have here.

James Whitmore plays "Joe Smith", an average middle-class American. He has a wife and son, a small but tidy house in Culver City, and a job at a nearby aircraft manufacturing plant. But he is barely making ends meet. He can't afford to by his kid a bike, and now Nancy is pregnant with a second child. Whitmore drives an old clunker that won't start half the time, and when it does and he peels out of his driveway to avoid being late for work, there is a sadistic motorcycle cop who hides just around the corner, waiting to give him another speeding ticket to add to his woes.

So much for the American Dream of the 1950s, though to be fair, the decade was just getting underway. Maybe the booming postwar economy hadn't yet kicked in, or maybe the aviation industry wasn't unionized, I dunno. For whatever reason, Whitmore is busting his butt, but is broke.

No wonder he is a grouch who is always snapping at his tolerant wife and the son who idolises him. Whitmore, usually seen in supporting roles, was a fine actor and he is perfect in this role. He never overplays his frustration. Whenever he loses his cool, he always rebounds to give wife Nancy a kiss, or to give his son a ride to a ballgame. This is an All-American story about wholesome values, and it makes you (or at least me) wish you had lived in the mythical version of the 50s. There was never a time quite like it.

One night, after a trying day at work, Whitmore is sitting in the living room trying to unwind. He's got the radio on (television hasn't really kicked in yet), and his boy will pop in at any moment to ask if Dad wants to listen to their favorite program, a detective serial. But Dad is sullen tonight and just wants to sit by himself. He doesn't know it, but his life is about to change, as are the lives of every human being on the planet Earth.

This is because The Voice Of God comes on the radio, overpowering the broadcast of the regularly scheduled show and cancelling it out. God has a message for all human beings, and as Whitmore rushes into the kitchen to tell his wife what he has just heard, we can see that he is very shaken up.

The next day at work, everyone on the crew is talking about it. Later that evening on the news, it is reported that the God broadcast apparently happened all over the world, in every known language. In fact, if a Frenchman and an Egyptian happened to be listening in the same place, they each heard it in their own tongue.

God has freaked everyone out by coming over the radio, and as crazy as it sounds, this concept is played in a very solemn manner. At first, Whitmore thinks it's a hoax, like Orson Welles' infamous Halloween broadcast of Martians landing on the East Coast. Nancy agrees, though in real life she was pretty far out. She had astrologers in the White House and probably knew all about all the Area 51 stuff, haha. She and Ronnie were ultra-right wing for their day, but compared to Trump they seem like liberal Democrats. At least the Reagans were nice people.

Well, in the movie, things are getting even weirder, because God makes a second broadcast on the next night, at exactly the same time. An FCC official is interviewed and he states that it cannot be a hoax, because they have technology in place that could identify a rogue broadcaster with the megawattage to send a signal round the world. They haven't been able to find such an operator, nor a hidden station, and so they are as much at a loss as is everyone else.

Is it really God on the radio? Some people say yes, some say no, but most folks are growing nervous. The more fanatical are freaking out, saying that The End Is Nigh.

James Whitmore has a more immediate concern, his wife's pregnancy. She is having "false labor" pains, causing them to run to the hospital again and again, and to make matters worse, his fundamentalist Aunt has come to stay. She is totally freaked by the God broadcasts, and now she is voicing her own superstition about the "dangers of a second pregnancy". In the movie, women are said to be at the greatest risk when giving birth to their second child. So now Aunt Ethel has James Whitmore even more on edge. She's got him convinced Nancy will die giving birth.

Meanwhile, God is about to make a third broadcast the next night, providing further instructions to those who believe.

He wants His people to see the good all around them, to take all He has provided, especially the human capacity to love, so that they can make their own Miracles. He says they must do this first. Then, if he is satisfied they have changed their ways, he will bring them the Godlike Miracles they've been awaiting.

Whitmore's life is changed by this revelation, and I don't want to reveal any more to avoid spoilers, but I do want you to see this film. For one thing, it was filmed on the side streets right across from the MGM lot, one street over from where I used to park for my job at Metrocolor. So you get great black and white Culver City footage from 1950 as a bonus. But really, you've never seen a movie that has this combination of deep spirituality and a tinge of sci-fi paranoia.

I thought : "This is almost like a David Lynch movie, if he were a conventional director".

"The Next Voice You Hear" gets Two Big Thumbs Up from me. You couldn't get a movie like this made now even if you had the biggest stars in the business as leads, because society is too cynical, and if they did make such a picture, it still would not possess the unfeigned sincerity that actually existed in the world 70 years ago. You cannot fake or recreate 1950s atmosphere. So this movie exists in a weird little time warp of it's own, but it's a good place to be stuck in, and I recommend seeing it with my highest praise. ////

Elizabeth, if you are reading I wanted to mention that those were beautiful photographs of the park in Quebec. My favorites were the one with the canoe and also the picture of the cabin. Maybe that is where the Ranger lives. Can you imagine living in such an enormous wilderness?  :)

I am glad you had the chance to do some outdoor traveling, and especially the opportunity to take some pix, just like the old days. I hope you get to do more this Summer, and if you do, keep posting 'em!

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

"Champion" starring Kirk Douglas (with proper pronunciation included)

Tonight I watched a movie called "Champion" (1949) starring Ki(e)rrckk! Dugglace! Like last night, this is another one of those situations where correct pronunciation of an actor's name is a must. This time I figured I'd make it easy for you by spelling it phonetically. I know we've done Kirk Douglas before, but I thought it couldn't hurt to refresh your memory. In the above reference (in boldface), the "e" in parentheses is only hinted at, just with a slight touch of accent, so that you aren't saying the name flat, as in "Kerk", or "Kurk". It should be pronounced almost  like "KEERck" but not quite, so just go easy on the "e" sound but don't leave it out entirely.

And make sure to use the exclamation points on each name, first and last. All of this will work best if enunciated in an aggressive and stilted fashion, with a clenched jaw and through gritted teeth. I know it's a bit of a chore, but it really is important and I thank you for your effort.

So how was the movie and what was it about? "Champion", as the title might imply, is the rags to riches story of a boxer, played by Douglas. As the movie opens, he and his brother (Arthur Kennedy) are dirt poor and riding the rails. They have hopped into an open boxcar in the night, only to be thrown out of the moving train by a pack of Hobos, who have also robbed them of their last few dollars.

The next morning they are thumbing a ride in the middle of nowhere and are picked up by a boxer and his gal. The boxer's name is Johnny Dunne, an up and coming challenger who is headed to Kansas City for a fight. Kirk and his bro are trying to get to Los Angeles, but any ride, even part way, is a good ride. When they get to KC, Johnny Dunne suggests they try to pick up concessions jobs at the boxing arena. It could help earn them the dough to get to L.A. The boys do get the jobs - selling soda, etc. - but Douglas is such an ill-tempered SOB that he can't take instructions from anybody. Soon he is in a punch-out with a co-worker.

By sheer coincidence, in an office inside the arena, there is trouble with a fighter on the evening's card. The ABA doctor won't clear the dude because he has an unhealed cut over his eye. The fight manager is at a loss - what to do about replacing the boxer?

Being that this is a Hollywood movie, and therefore coincidences are necessary, into the room bursts Kirk Douglas (remember pronunciation please!). He is ready to quit his recently acquired concessions job. He's just been in a fight himself and wants to get paid so he and his brother can leave.

A light bulb goes off in the head of the arena fight manager : "Oh.....so you're a tough guy, eh? How'd you like to make 35 bucks for twenty minutes of work"?

All Kirk has to do is go four rounds with the other fighter on the card. The manager promises the boxer will go easy on him. "Just try to make it look good", he says. Douglas reluctantly agrees. When he gets in the ring, we can see he is in good physical condition, but he has no training against a real boxer and predictably he gets his butt kicked. Then he gets ripped off on the payment of his 35 bucks as well, netting only 10 after the manager takes out his "expenses".

Welcome to the fight game, Kirk Douglas. "Champion" is an anti-boxing movie, and a brutal one at that. It has to be, in order to make it's point.

Douglas and his brother then make their way to L.A., Malibu specifically, where they expect to take part ownership of a roadside cafe. This business partnership was promised to them by a friend who turns out to have been just as shady as the boxing manager back in KC. There is no "ownership deal", another man owns the cafe. Douglas' friend was only an employee who scammed Kirk on the buyout plan. Now he and his brother are stuck in Los Angeles, just as broke as before. The cafe owner feels sorry for them and offers them jobs. This time, their employment goes better, because the owner has a fetching daughter (Ruth Roman), who quickly succumbs to Douglas' chin-dimpled charms. Nights on the Malibu sand ensue.

But Kirk is still restless. Having been dirt poor all his life and basically an orphan, raising his gimpy brother (Arthur Kennedy walks with a cane), he is ambitious for money. Lots of it. Whereas you or I would be content to stay on the beach with Ruth Roman, even if we had to work for minimum wage, Kirk is not so easily satisfied. Now, the cafe owner is pissed because he had told Kirk from the get-go to stay away from his daughter. Now he is insisting they get married as it's the only moral thing to do.

Kirk goes through with the marriage only because the owner has pointed a gun in his face. As soon as the vows are made, however, and the ring is on her finger, Douglas ditches Ruth Roman. He leaves the cafe, the Malibu beach, and heads with his brother to Downtown L.A. There he sees a boxing gym with advertising out front : "We Train Champions". Recalling his brief stint in the ring back in Kansas City, a light bulb goes off in Kirk's head......."maybe I can do this after all".

Now, all of what I have described takes place in the first 40 minutes of the movie, which once again demonstrates the high level ability of the 1940s screenwriters to pack a Ton Of Story into a short timeframe. We still have an hour to go, and that hour will chronicle the rise of Kirk Douglas as he uses his inner toughness to become a boxer. He works hard and trains for long hours. Soon he will begin his rise to the top, but along the way his ambition and his ego will get the better of him. Really he has been an a-hole from the beginning, a sociopath more or less. His upbringing explains his personality but does not excuse it. Before long, he is winning every fight, making money hand over fist, and now he is having affairs with the wives of his new manager, and when he gets tired of her, the girlfriend of a wealthy boxing patron who has influence in the way top contenders are ranked. This guy can make or break you, and Kirk is cheating with his gal.

I have to interject a little bit here, and wonder if Kirk, who is still alive and is 102 years old, is more than just a great actor. He certainly is that, but he played these tough guys with a conviction bordering on real life. The womanising in this movie feels realistic, and I hate to say it because I don't know if it is true, but in the interest of the MeToo# movement I feel I should at least mention the ongoing rumour that Kirk Douglas raped Natalie Wood during a private audition in his apartment, when she was just a teenager.

This legend has been going around Hollywood for quite a while. Given Douglas' onscreen persona, it would be easy to accuse him of something like this after the fact, decades later, by people who weren't even born when it allegedly happened. But Natalie's sister is his main accuser. She was there in the aftermath on the day it happened. She swears it is true, and if so, it takes the luster off Kirk Douglas as a person, great actor though he may be. If true, it could be said that this part of his onscreen persona - the on-edge tough guy who is always ready to explode - is just Kirk playing himself in real life.

I don't know which is true, and I make no judgement, but I do encourage you to research the information for yourself. Just do some Googling about Kirk Douglas and Natalie Wood.

He does play a hell of a role as the boxer in this movie, however. He will become the "Champion" who will stop at nothing to remain at the top. The only thing he doesn't figure on is that the boxers don't run the fight game. Mob-connected moneymen do. His own desire to keep fighting, and getting his brains bashed in, will become his undoing.

"Champion" is a grim. gruesome film, but it tells an important story, an epic one involving youthful struggle, the finding of true love, and the throwing away of same in the quest for self-importance, and the lives of others affected along the way.

I give it Two Huge Thumbs Up, even though I don't like boxing or boxing movies in general. I said the same about "Gentleman Jim" which we saw last month. That film, with Errol Flynn in the title role, was more a celebration of a champ, the real life Jim Corbett. It shows the downside of boxing, too, but "Champion" on the other hand is just plain ugly, and Douglas' character makes it even more so.

It's a horrible story about a lowdown bum of a man, but as a movie it is really good (in a dark way) and thus highly recommended. /////

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)