I seem to be having a Super 1960s Weekend because all the movies I've watched have been from 1961 to 1970. It's partly because TCM is showing AIP movies and I usually watch AIP movies as soon as I DVR them, quite unlike movies like Pinky or Anna Karenina that just sit there unwatched for weeks and weeks.

In chronological order:

Whoever ate the corned beef and cabbage last night, please excuse yourself from the bridge!

Master of the World (1961), with Vincent Price, Charles Bronson and Henry Hull.

Vincent Price is Robur, the aerial Nemo. He has an airship that he's going to use to destroy the world's armies so there will be peace. Some people in a balloon crash near the ship trying to spy on him and he keeps them prisoner on his ship. He forces the girl to be a cross-dresser. Vincent Price is James Mason. Charles Bronson is Kirk Douglas. Henry Hull is Peter Lorre.

Not the best movie version of a Jules Verne novel ever made, but it's fairly entertaining if you're a sucker for AIP films in general and Vincent Price in particular.



X - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), with Ray Milland and Don Rickles.

Directed by Roger Corman.

OMG! I love this movie! After a career in film that had lasted for three or four decades, the hits just kept on coming for Ray Milland! He won an Oscar for The Lost Weekend in 1945! He was in Dial M for Murder! And he was also in one of the best baseball movies ever made - Rhubarb!

And then he hooked up with Roger Corman to star in X - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes!

Milland is a devoted surgeon working on magic eyedrops that will enable him to have X-ray vision so he can be a better doctor by seeing through your clothes and guts and skin to make a better diagnosis. Unfortunately, the eyedrops make you drop dead if you're a monkey and they make you super cranky if you are Ray Milland. So he gets a little huffy and throws his eye doctor friend out the window. He escapes and joins a carnival as a mentalist and his manager is Don Rickles. Then he's a faith healer! Then he goes to las Vegas where he overplays his hand and is chased out by casino cops. Eventually he tears his eyeballs out at a tent revival.

Roger Corman was being interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz and he said the original treatment was about a jazz musician who did too much LSD and gained X-ray vision. Corman said he quit about halfway through while writing it because it didn't make any sense. I was wondering why that had never stopped him before! (I say this as a major Corman fan.)

I consider X - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes to be part of the Ray Milland Terrible Trilogy, along with The Thing with Two Heads and Frogs. X is a lot better than the other two, but I would have a hard time saying which one is my favorite.

Romy Schneider, Peter O'Toole, Capucine and Paula Prentiss are all trying to guess what Ursula Andress's accent is supposed to be.

What's New Pussycat? (1965), with Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Romy Schneider, Capucine, Paula Prentiss and Ursula Andress.

This is one of my favorites! On my IMDB Favorite Movies - Year-by-Year list, What's New Pussycat? is tied with Faster Pussycat! Kill Kill! as my favorite movie for 1965. It was a good year for movies with "pussycat" in the title.

So many great bits! Ursula Andress floating into Peter O'Toole's car and saying "Imma parachootist! I miss mamark!" with a hilarious accent. And then Romy Schneider telling Woody Allen to make the big German guy give her a book after he yanks it off the shelf as she's reaching for it. Capucine and her whistle.

And any scene with Paula Prentiss.

Or Peter Sellers as the crazy psychiatrist.

Absolutely bonkers! I watch it every four or five years. It's kind of exhausting to watch it more than that.

Oliver Cromwell's hat hates you.

I've also been watching Cromwell (1970) with Richard Harris and Alec Guiness. I'll have more to say about it when I'm finished. I find Charles I to be one of the most frustrating figures in world history. So I yell at this movie a lot because Charles I infuriates me. "What are you doing, Charles I? What's wrong with you? Grrrrr!"

Alec Guiness is really good in this! He brings out the infuriating nature of the silly and incompetent king.

It's been a while since I saw Sex and the Single Girl but I remembering liking it a lot. The main thing I remember specifically is that Fran Jeffries is in it! You might remember her singing "Meglio Stasera" in The Pink Panther. Three cheers for Fran Jeffries!

^ Shirley Booth played the Hepburn role on Broadway and apparently was going to be in the film. But, according to TCM, "screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron built up the role of the efficiency expert and tailored the interactions between him and the researcher to fit Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, with the part of Tracy as the computer guy beefed up and turned into the love interest for Hepburn.

She is indeed. And it is as good as you are thinking. Even verges on the risque for 1957, and quite funny.

One of hepburn's fellow reaearchers later played Beaver Cleaver's beloved teacher, Miss Landers.

I watched the rest of Cromwell (1970) and I don't have too much to say about the movie. It's quite watchable if you like these extravagant 1960s to 1970s pics about British history. And if you don't mind when they're very inaccurate. Richard Harris and Alec Guinness are both very good.

Guinness may be playing Charles I a little too well. I went through a period about 20 years ago when I read a lot of British history. I still read about the Tudors and the 19th century, but I haven't read about the Stuarts for a long time. And yet, I remember reading a biography about Charles I and getting very frustrated with him. I don't recall ever being annoyed by a historical figure. Some of them are really awful and some of them are inspiring and some are damned interesting.

But Charles I ... what a prat! What a tosser! I remember rolling my eyes and putting the book down a lot and thinking about what a ding-dong he was. (The details are a little foggy.)

And Alec Guinness really captures Charles I's thick-headedness! All indignant when he doesn't get his way. The vacant look in his eyes when he decides not to hear what's being said. I wonder if Guinness read the same book I did.

The movie got a little frustrating because it was like watching the book that had fretted me so all those years ago. I was rolling my eyes and saying "Charles I, what are you doing? What is wrong with you? The Divine Right of Kings does not apply to your every stupid whim! You have a responsibility to the people of Britain ... especially when they're a bunch of armed Puritans with no sense of humor!"

There's Charles I, about to make another disastrous decision. Probably something having to do with fashion.

And last night I watched The Great Lie (1941) with George Brent, Bette Davis and Mary Astor.

And Hattie McDaniel!

She's so awesome! If you love Hattie, watch Alice Adams (1935). It's an average Katharine Hepburn movie but Hattie McDaniel is AWESOME! Resentful and disapproving and surly. I thought she was going to dump hot soup in somebody's lap!

The Great Lie (1941) is another great Bette Davis movie! How did she do it? One great movie after another. The Great Lie is very soapy and very melodramatic but Bette is great and surrounded by great people - Mary Astor, George Brent, Hattie McDaniel, Jerome Cowan, Charles Trowbridge and several others - so you don't notice how soapy it is until you start writing up the short summary for your online friends.

Bette Davis and Mary Astor are in love with the same man, George Brent. He marries Mary Astor and they have a wild, drunken honeymoon. George sobers up and starts to regret the impulsive marriage. But he finds out from his lawyer that the marriage isn't legal because Mary Astor's divorce wasn't properly finalized! Oops!

So he marries Bette Davis (Bette was still pretty cute in 1941). But it turns out that Mary Astor is pregnant! She tells Bette with a sly look on her face, certain that George will come back to her when he finds out.

But George is on a mission for the government and his plane disappears over the Amazon!

Well, Mary doesn't really want the baby if George isn't part of the package. So Bette and Mary come to an agreement. They go to a remote ranch in the Southwest and Mary has her baby (with Bette helping) and when they go back to the East Coast, Bette is pretending it's her baby.

And then George turns up alive!

It's not making me rearrange my Top Ten Bette Davis Movies list, but that doesn't mean it's not a great movie! Especially if you love these old Hollywood melodramas.

A lot of critics and fans think that Mary Astor did a lot of scene-stealing because she is very good in The Great Lie. According to an IMDB comment, somebody mentioned this to Mary Astor, who replied, "I didn't steal anything. Bette gave it to me." Or something like that.

Here's a heads-up for diehard Humphrey Bogart fans:



TCM is showing It All Came True (1940) on June 7.

I've never seen it. I don't know much about it. It may be terrible. But it's a rare chance to see this movie for the obsessive Bogart fans. Like me.

What little I do know seems promising. Ann Sheridan is in it! She was known as "the Oomph Girl." (I was just looking at her Wikipedia page and I'm surprised to discover she was married to George Brent for a short time.)

Also ... ZaSu Pitts and Una O'Connor!

The stills I saw when I was looking for the movie poster make it look like Bogart is a tough guy, perhaps a gangster, maybe a two-fisted district attorney. I seem to remember hearing that this is an odd hybrid comedy-drama. I'm trying not to find out anything more about it because I want to be surprised when I watch it.

And trust me! I WILL watch it.