A Handful of Flicks

I've caught a few movies over Christmas holidays in between the mince pies and fireworks. A few thoughts.

Black Christmas: an all-time fave from 1974 with the brilliant John Saxon, Olivia de Hussey, Margot Kidder and Keir Dullea. Fabulously festive and grim in equal parts, it's self-contained Seventies world is a perfect Yuletide horror.

Christmas Horror Story: a modern addition to my Yule ghouls, this anthology anchored by the superb William Shatner has everything: Krampus, sprites, possessions and a warrior Santa. An annual treat.

Murder by Decree: Sherlock gets to grips with Jack the Ripper and uncovers a conspiracy of Freemasons, royals and bloody murder. Chris Plummer makes a great Holmes, as does James Mason as Watson.

Rocketman: a musical biopic about Elton John. Really ace central performance of Elton, plagued with another useless Dad ( a la the recent Bruce Springsteen biopic too) at the stories troubled heart. The songs are just majestic.

Elvis: what can I say. Colonel Tom screwed the King. This flick made me angry. A very sad tale of unimaginable talent and an evil manager who kept Elvis chained up.

All I need now is Scrooged to complete my holidays.

Have you seen any of these films readers? 

Sim's Christmas Carol

 

Late last night I caught A Christmas Carol, the 1951 black and white version starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge.

For me personally, this is the best film version of the Dickens tale and one which starts Christmas proper.

The film somehow seems to capture the London fog, the poverty, the wealth and the downright eeriness of the mid- 1800's, not bad going in 1951. It feels like a genuinely scary ghost story, say, in the same creepy way MR James' tales were televised. It's British Gothic at its best.

The appearance of Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchett, a man running out of time for his son, harks back to his role in the equally fabulous and unsettling Dead of Night from 1945, amazingly after a WWII UK ban on horror being made, where he plays an architect lost in a recurring and very very disquieting dream. The finale with the dummy is simply stunning!

Both these black and white movies are just great and would go well as a double-bill.

What do you think readers? 

Labyrinth: Lost in the Maze

Me and the Missus saw Labyrinth on DVD last night. I'm pretty sure I've not seen it before, but it's so old, like me, I can't be sure.

A triumph for Jim Henson's puppetry, I'm not certain it was for David Bowie. I haven't checked Google but being a Bowie fan I was underwhelmed by his performance and the songs he'd written. I found it quite boring. But then again it is a kids film so what do I know! 

Jennifer Connelly looks very young so I guess she did OK among all the foam rubber mayhem.

For me, Labyrinth hasn't the power of say, Legend, but I'd be interested to see Dark Crystal, another one I missed and see if fares better. 

Did you like Labyrinth readers? 

Monstrous Movie Music

I saw these amazing CDs for sale, all monster and sci-fi movie themes.

I assume they're copies of much older LP records. 

Does anyone know? 

Apocalypse Now and Then

I recently revisited one of my favourite films, Coppola's Apocalypse Now. It was the Final Cut so there were new things to see, namely, I think, the French family plantation section. I'm convinced I've never seen that before.

Couldn't spot anything else but it is a long flick. My favourite element is Martin Sheen's narration (it certainly sounds like him). I could listen to it all day long, especially as it fades out as the scene takes over.

The dialogue in general is just fabulous, even beyond the famous I love the Smell of Napalm ....

A great little line, one of many, is in the narration:

"Air Mobile (pronounced mobul), well, those boys just couldn't stay put!"

A superb movie: riveting, shocking, hypnotizing. Realistic? That I don't know. 

Do you like it readers? Are you a fan of Coppola?

Under Siege with the Horror Horn

 I have a few Go To films. Like old friends they're easy company and I enjoy knowing the lines.

Under Siege from 1992 is such a one, a naval actioner starring the cool cook Aikido 7th Dan Steven Seagal and one frantic terrorist Tommy Lee Jones. And oh yeah, the always exciting Gary Busey as a scorned XO. There's just something about the basic plot, the snappy dialogue and the sparse Terminator-style synth soundtrack that does it for me. Do you like it? 

Watching again I realised I knew the Captain, played by veteran actor Patrick O'Neal (✝️ age 66).

A face so familiar from appearances in just about every American TV of the 1970's, with that distinct rich voice of his, I knew he'd been in a movie significant to me as a kid.

Bingo!

Chamber of Horrors. Yes! A rarely shown horror about a wax museum and it's crazed owner, the prosthetic hand madman played by ... Patrick O'Neal.

I adored this film as a kid. It was released in cinemas in 1966, so it must have been a good few years later when it was on UK TV. Probably a Midnight Movie or an Appointment with Fear slot in the early 1970's. I was 10 Christmas 1970.

Chamber of Horrors was made even more memorable by a William Castle-style gimmick to keep the audience 'hooked'. It was called The Fear Flasher, along with it's Horror Horn and appeared just before anything gruesome happened! It must have been great at the flicks, popcorn flying everywhere! 

It had me good and proper watching it on TV; hook, line and cleaver! 

Do you remember the Fear Flasher and Horror Horn readers?

https://youtu.be/mwrHydY8uGQ?si=zlsAzUuMYqk08Ih_

Ex Machina

I re-watched Ex Machina last night,

A future flick from 2014. I enjoyed it but not ecstatically.

Basically about a gynoid called Ava, an imprisoned innocent and a megalomaniac, Ex M was an AI vision made when, unlike today, AI wasn't part of everything everywhere. 

The film is good to look at: minimal, stark, clean and polished. The inside of the house is a pristine underground white rat maze like you'd see on Grand Designs. Outside it's a shack in a remote lush valley. 

SPOILER! I found it awkwardly tense and ultimately a bit depressing, the robot killing it's captor in order to live in the real world, the innocent sacrificed.

Prescient it was and I'm still wondering what would an AI being like Ava do in a world full of humans?

It's probably not long before we find out.

Have you seen Ex Machina?

Tron Ares

Ever since I first saw Tron way back when I've been hooked.

The geometry, the costumes, the grid, Flynns, the bikes, the whole techno world: I loved it all, which looking back, is odd, as I'm not a gamer at all. In fact I've never played a single computer game in my life.

A few years back I saw the superb Tron sequel, Legacy and just this week I caught the new Tron Ares.

I was blown away, I loved it as well. 

No spoilers here. Needless to say the whole Tron architecture is still there, all the sights, all the lines, all the sounds.

Wunderbar!

Is it something you would see readers? 

Every Room is a Living Tomb

 

Not two old horror films I know at all but I love the garish poster art. There's just something about them.

Do you like them?

Favourite Movie Puzzler

Hello Woodsy

When I think of my favourite war films I think of .................   One of the actors was a star of the very first episode of The Twilight Zone.

I loved the aesthetic of the Grumman F9F Panther and early US jet fighter powered by a Rolls Royce designed engine.

I suggest posting my image asking for someone to identify the movie.

Anyone?

Terranova47

USA

For Your Eye Sockets Only

 What can I say about Alien Earth, the new TV series on Disney+?

Superlatives don't really cover it.

Think supremely fantastic and cringingly yucky in equal measure, maybe somewhere round the dripping joints between films like the Thing and Sputnik grafted onto a waiting open Alien.

Not for the faint-hearted and completely compulsive. 

For me the current icky award goes to one of the show's smaller varmints.

But before I reveal it, it's interesting to dawdle over some precedents ... But watch out!

This golden oldie sets the scene, a movie that terrified me as a kid and one I know as the Trollemburg Terror! Is it one you know?

This is the box art to a model kit.

Cuneo's painted slithering devils spring to mind as well, as introduced to us on MC by Wotan 17 years ago.

I just couldn't help jiggling this into a clip, but it's Cuneo's artistry.

Similarly Bill brought us his fondness for rubber uglies on MC and this oily eye-squid fits right in (a phrase which comes into its own on Alien Earth! 🐙 )

Once more I was compelled to meme it.

But none of these wrigglers can prepare you for the truly cringing orb that is Alien Earth's small and parasitic crawling eye!

You've been warned!

Yuk!

Brave New Marvel: Wolverine, Deadpool and Captain America

Being back on Disney+ and a huge superhero film fan, I've caught up with two Marvel flicks I haven't seen. 

Wolverine and Deadpool:

Two interconnected experimentees with a long history of really disliking each other, this big-hitter flick was inevitable. With Hugh Jackman's Logan movie often cited as one of the best super hero films ever made, I was excited to see Wolverine and Deadpool. Wolvey donning his old yellow Spandex was a delight to an old fan like me missing the glory days of the X- Men. Deadpool was his usual jocular self, the film largely a vehicle for his katana-sharp humour rubbing Logan up the wrong way. It was an interesting watch and moved me forward in the saga.

Captain America: Brave New World: 

I hoped for so much from this flick. I adore the Cap. As it turns out it's Steve Roger's super-soldier Cap I adore. Not Sam Wilson's metal-winged angel. Noble nevertheless, Falcon America is a poor second for me, like Robin standing in for Superman. No powers, no super strength. The film was sadly a Brave New Mess, a lukewarm domestic story lacking in the right serum, that couldn't even be saved by the novelty of a red Hulk Indy. I'm really glad I saw it though and shall seek hopefully more meaningful falconry in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Have you seen either of them? 

Mystery Sci Fi Films

We're currently enjoying James Spader in the Blacklist. Seeing him rang a bell and a whole cache of sci Fi flicks came knocking.

Anyone know the names of these? I've forgotten! 

James Spader is an astrocryptologst reading symbols in a cave.

Jodie Foster is in touch with her deceased Dad via the family radio.

Jodie Foster works with a massive radar dish.

Amy Adams climbs into a landed UFO. 

Val Kilmer faces booming pulses on Mars.

How it Ends and Annihilation

After a good few years gap, I've re-watched two American disaster movies.

*

How it Ends (not Howard's End!) is essentially a road trip flick with a bit of added Sci-Fi chucked in. A prospective son-in-law and his ex-military and aggressive father-in-law-to-be set off in a car from Chicago to find the apple of both their eyes, the wife-to-be/ daughter in Seattle.

Much fresh gasoline is needed and there appears to be no end of huge, full Jerry cans along the road as long as you're prepared to shoot, ram and burn your way to get to them. 

Basically, a growing bromance set against a global and unfathomable catastrophe, it's dour tone and vision of rising civilian violence reminded me of the more recent Civil War.

We never get to find our what caused the world-wide disaster.

*

Annihilation is about the Shimmer, a strange and rapidly expanding geographical zone where everything mutates.

Soldiers were sent in. One came back. Scientists were sent in. One came back. They were a married couple and the film is more or less an analogy of grief, a terrible world turned upside down.

Within the Shimmer things are changing. Crocs are massive, bears scream with human voices and plants grow into people. There are some fantastic special effects and startling imagery here.

Yukky moments include large internal organ snakes and scary bits include a tense mutated bear attack.

The cause of the shimmer remains unknown but there's a definite suggestion it's alien.

I enjoyed it more than How it Ends as the sci-fi is cranked up to the max.

*

Have you seen either of these readers?

The Electric State

Over the last few years there's been a handful of futuristic series and films on streaming that have mixed tech, robotics and humans startlingly well in my opinion.

Fall Out was one such show, the story of underground human settlements surviving a nuclear winter. The standout character was the mutated sheriff in the badlands.

Then there was the film The Creator, which blew me away with it's ground-searching floodlights emitted from vast government flying craft. Amazing imagery all round.

Recently came The Electric State, which I enjoyed a lot. I know it's a polarising film but I liked the juxtaposition of old tech, ai tech, cyborgs and people. The abandoned amusement park-style zone where old bits dwelled was great. I particularly liked the big ball-headed giant bot in the last battle. At it's heart though was a desperate quest and a vein of sorrow.

This of course has been done before with the film AI many years ago, a film for personal reasons I find difficult to watch, although I think it's a terrific flick.

Last week came the Artifice Girl. Again, whispers of AI's David, together with his longevity as the AI girl outlives it's creator. I didn't see all of it. 

The sentiment that AI robots will outlive us all seems to run through all these films, a machined longevity which brings them nothing but loneliness.

What do you think readers?

HORSESH*T BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS ACTION BED AND DOLL

Seen last year on MC, One of the more unusual items I've found in my action figure reference books is the Horsh*tMan Self-Propelled Bedknobs and Broomsticks Action Bed.

Its an unusual choice for a toy.

It came with a 'Angela Lansbury' doll. Does it look like her?

Amazingly the doll stands up, makes the bed and then pushes it around the floor, before opening the covers, getting in and closing her eyes. 

The bed had mystery and non-fall action, but the doll often walked to the edge of of a table and fell off shouting 'Oh, Broomsticks!'

What a bed!

Has anyone got one?

CECIL B. De MILLE'S LOST DESERT CITY

Watching Tom Cruise's reboot of the Mummy last night - basically Mummy Impossible! -  I was reminded of something I'd read years ago about another American desert movie, if not the very first, made over a century ago in 1923:

Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments.

It was a silent, enormous and expensive undertaking in the unforgiving sands of California.

Paramount artisans crafted the Sphinx like masons three thousand years ago!

Paramount Studio

I recall reading that Cecil's entire Pharaoh set was so massively huge that he could not afford to take it out of the Guadalupe desert where they were filming, so the whole things was buried in the vastness of the dunes!

Paramount Studio

It's still out there brooding under the shifting barchans, occasionally revealing a scree of perished plaster.

Archaeologists are involved, as they would be on an ancient dig! 

Watch this fascinating short clip about their attempts to recover De Mille's Lost City.

Have you ever been there readers?

Gone for a Burton: Batman Forever

Having watched the first two Tim Burton Batman movies again, on DVD, I've been basking in late 80's - early 90's bat-glow.

And then I watched Batman Forever. Oh dear! 

I can't believe it's a Tim Burton movie too! What was he thinking? Somewhere between Returns and Forever Tim lost his Mojo. Maybe he just ran out of steam and not having Keaton carrying on must have been a blow.

There was no subtle beginning, no introduction, just a messy, loud string if explosions and chases with Two Face chuckling throughout. There appeared to be no story until Wayne met Nigma.

I just feel the casting was all wrong. Val Kilmer is just too darn good looking for his own good and never seems to get riled. Chris's Robin is just too annoying to even write much about. And Nicole Kidman as Meridian Chase just didn't do it, her performance was neither here nor there.

But I've saved the worst till last: Two Face.

 Tommy Lee Jones was not the actor for Harvey Dent's bifurcated character. It was wishy washy at best and the make-up and clothing looked daft. I can't think of a single memorable line they gave poor Tommy to say.

Jim Carey did OK as the Riddler, a sort of Mask dry-run, but being a funny guy he was well, funny. Too much funny ruins Batman for me I'm afraid. 

Michael Gough's Alfred kept things on the straight and narrow when he could, but overall the complete carnage and cacophony around him was all we could hear.

The whole film was a bit of a mess but I'm glad I've seen it again.

Have you seen it?

Next up, George Clooney's Batman and Robin!

Now That's a Big Batmobile

 I saw this massive plastic Jada Batmobile in a charity shop. The 12 inch figure was sat at the wheel, so you can imagine how big it is.

I was sorely tempted at £3.50. this thing is even bigger than the fabulously big Mego batmobile.

I resisted ,(the one pictured is on eBay) but was reminded of the film The Batman, which I've begun watching for the second time.

It's a tough watch, simply because it's 3 hours long and filmed largely at night-time.

I'm plodding through. Two hours to go! 

 It doesn't help that the new Batman has a non-descript face under the mask and looks like a depressed teenager without it, floppy dark hair and all. It's hardly Affleck and miles off Keaton.

The whole hard-boiled noirness has gone into overdrive and everyone is subsumed into a Nirvana-hooked darkness, literally. Characters are blurry shadows in an endless wet night. No-one stands out, not the Penguin, Catwoman or Gordon. Not even the Riddler, all drowning in spilled ink.

Maybe it's just me. After all this flick reached the Oscars and promises a whole new Bat franchise, the Penguin riffing in his own series already and The Batman 2 coming out in 2027.

I dunno. It's just not DC. Maybe it's too DC. Come back Tim Burton, Gotham needs you!

What do you think readers?

I've gone to bed.

THAT CHRISTMAS

Visiting the Grandkids yesterday I caught ten minutes of the Grandson's new festive flick That Christmas.

It appeared to be an animated tale about families with a boy at the centre of it all. It seemed like a cartoon version of a soap or a schmlalzy film from the 90's. I thought of About a Boy with Hugh Grant.

The son-in-law informed me it was a Richard Curtis film, he of Love Actually. So its Love Actually done as a cartoon for kids?

The Grandson loved it!

Not my cup of tea at all [sorry if you're a fan] and I really hope the Grandson chooses Jason and Argonauts  or the new Wallace and Gromet for us to watch together over the holidays!

Have you seen That Christmas?