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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 14, 2018 0:03:55 GMT -5
Sunday morning while cooking my weekday lunches I put on Disney's The Black Hole for watching. This one is a Disney classic in my opinion that didn't get the attention it deserved at the time. Stellar cast and exquisite set designs along with wonderful special effects. Probably one of the "last" special effect movies before computer CGI began taking over. This one draws you into it's world building and takes you into the realm of deeper thought and concepts while delivering some fun adventure. I would generally agree with what you say there; but, I just couldn't give a toss about the thinly sketched characters. That really held this movie back, for me. For this era of Disney, my only real love, of the live action films, is Candleshoe. terrific performances from Jody Foster, Helen Hayes, David Niven and Leo McKern, nice bit of actually funny comedy, a good mystery, and some real heart (especially Helen Hayes and Jody Foster, in their scenes).
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 14, 2018 3:24:49 GMT -5
Agree about Candleshoe; saw it the first time as a kid and loved it, and then watched it again as an adult and was surprised at how well it held up (i.e., it's not a movie only little kids enjoy).
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Post by brutalis on Aug 14, 2018 13:22:26 GMT -5
Sunday morning while cooking my weekday lunches I put on Disney's The Black Hole for watching. This one is a Disney classic in my opinion that didn't get the attention it deserved at the time. Stellar cast and exquisite set designs along with wonderful special effects. Probably one of the "last" special effect movies before computer CGI began taking over. This one draws you into it's world building and takes you into the realm of deeper thought and concepts while delivering some fun adventure. I would generally agree with what you say there; but, I just couldn't give a toss about the thinly sketched characters. That really held this movie back, for me. For this era of Disney, my only real love, of the live action films, is Candleshoe. terrific performances from Jody Foster, Helen Hayes, David Niven and Leo McKern, nice bit of actually funny comedy, a good mystery, and some real heart (especially Helen Hayes and Jody Foster, in their scenes). Yes, the characters are throw away material in the Black Hole for the most part. Lots of Disney live action movies have that problem though so i can be forgiving in that respect. But you do get star name value in this one if not quality characters. Robert Forster, Maximilian Schell, Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux, Joseph Bottoms, Roddy McDowell and Slim Pickens.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 17, 2018 11:43:23 GMT -5
8/3 ... GORILLA, THE (1939) Three screwball detectives try to protect a lawyer from a murderous gorilla. Haven't see this in 30 years! It was a delightful humor and it's really grabbed you to the point that these detectives tried their best to protect a lawyer from a beast with a mind of its own to kill a lawyer being played by Walter (Atwell) Stevens. Jimmy, Harry, and Al Ritz were great as Detectives and the entertainment is quite delightful and fun to watch and here the full movie found on YouTube. I saw this (TCM On Demand) just a few days after you did. I've seen it once before, but it's been a while. I don't really like it that much compared to some of Lugosi's other low-budget, hour-long movies, so it's not a film I'm likely to watch as often as I watch stuff like The Corpse Vanishes, The Devil Bat, The Bowery at Midnight or Voodoo Man. So … are the Ritz Brothers the official worst comedy team of the late 1930s- early 1940s? Maybe it's just me but I find the idea that they are supposed to be funny to be much funnier than any Ritz Brothers routine. But it's only a little over an hour long and it's not boring. In addition to Atwill and Lugosi, you also got Patsy Kelly, and she's funny! I love her! And the way she gets her zingers in at the expense of the Ritz Brothers -- that's funny! And even though I don't find them very funny, I do find them a little entertaining blundering into situations and fumbling around for the joke material and then struggling mightily to fashion that material into a joke. It's a good thing that Patsy Kelly was there to help them! I feel the same way about the version of the Three Musketeers they made, though this is probably most famous for that episode of Leave it to Beaver where Theodore was supposed to write a book report on The Three Musketeers and he decided not to read the book because one of those neighborhood kids -Whitey, Larry, maybe it was Eddie - told him it was going to be on TV so he could just watch the movie and write the report from that … and it was the Ritz Brothers version. Oh Beaver!
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 17, 2018 12:01:54 GMT -5
I watched Julie (1956) a few nights ago. Doris Day was the star of the day and I was looking at the TCM programming of her movies and I decided to DVR "Julie." I've heard of it, and I heard it was film noir (it isn't, unless you're using that very broad definition of film noir that they use on the MOVIES! channel) and if Doris Day made a film noir, I want to see it! "Julie" is sort of hilarious! Julie is married to Louis Jordan and he's jealous and moody and reckless and manipulative and also a psychopath. Julie begins to suspect that he killed her first husband and tries to leave him, but he stalks her. The big conclusion ends with Julie having to land a commercial jet full of passengers after Louis Jordan kills the pilot, badly wounds the co-pilot and then Louis dies from his own wounds. So that leaves flight attendant Doris to land the jet! It's awesome! When I researched it, I found several places where the text said it was the first movie where a non-pilot landed an airplane with coaching from the ground. Even if I hadn't seen a much earlier movie where this happened, I would have been doubtful that Julie (1956) was the first time this happened. Movies about commercial air travel had been around forever at this point and it seems ridiculous to think that hadn't happened before in a movie. The earlier movie I know about is Without Orders, from the early 1930s. Flight attendant Sally Eilers (I love her so much!) has to land the plane when co-pilot Ward Bond goes crazy, knocks the pilot unconscious and escapes with the only parachute. Robert Armstrong is on the ground, talking to her via radio and telling her how to land. It's the worst snowstorm in years and she has to land on a frozen lake with flares set up to show her where to guide the plane! It's so crazy!
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 17, 2018 14:00:50 GMT -5
I was looking for a comedy dance number that I think is funny, and I think it's the Ritz Brothers. I'm trying to be fair to them.
It's a song about movie bad guys, one of them is dressed as Frankenstein's monster, one of them is dressed as Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh and one of them is dressed as Peter Lorre. So it's about Karloff, Laughton and Lorre. I think they're on roller skates. It's been a while since I saw it. I'm not sure if it's from a movie or if it's a short subject. I saw it - I think - in a short clip in a Peter Lorre documentary that was included as an extra on a Mr. Moto DVD.
And I'm not totally sure it's the Ritz Brothers.
I couldn't find it on YouTube. But one of the video descriptions said the Ritz Brothers were like Huntz Hall in triplicate. That made me laugh.
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 18, 2018 11:05:49 GMT -5
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 18, 2018 11:18:33 GMT -5
Yep! That's it! Thanks, Hal! (It just hit me how early in Lorre's U.S. career this movie is! He had made Mad Love and Crime and Punishment, but in 1936, I'm not sure what other movies he would have made that would give him enough notoriety to be honored in a routine like this one. He had made very few of the movies that come to mind when you think of Peter Lorre as a movie heavy. I guess Mad Love was enough, unless they were thinking of M and the Ritz Brothers were eager to lampoon a movie about a German child killer.)
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Post by Prince Hal on Aug 18, 2018 18:29:46 GMT -5
Yep! That's it! Thanks, Hal! (It just hit me how early in Lorre's U.S. career this movie is! He had made Mad Love and Crime and Punishment, but in 1936, I'm not sure what other movies he would have made that would give him enough notoriety to be honored in a routine like this one. He had made very few of the movies that come to mind when you think of Peter Lorre as a movie heavy. I guess Mad Love was enough, unless they were thinking of M and the Ritz Brothers were eager to lampoon a movie about a German child killer.) I think you may be right about M, Hoosier, and there was also Hitchcock's Man Who Knew Too Much, which had come out in '34. The Ritzes must have felt that people would know him, else they'd not have used him. Though why not Lugosi, I wonder?
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 18, 2018 19:47:02 GMT -5
Yep! That's it! Thanks, Hal! (It just hit me how early in Lorre's U.S. career this movie is! He had made Mad Love and Crime and Punishment, but in 1936, I'm not sure what other movies he would have made that would give him enough notoriety to be honored in a routine like this one. He had made very few of the movies that come to mind when you think of Peter Lorre as a movie heavy. I guess Mad Love was enough, unless they were thinking of M and the Ritz Brothers were eager to lampoon a movie about a German child killer.) I think you may be right about M, Hoosier, and there was also Hitchcock's Man Who Knew Too Much, which had come out in '34. The Ritzes must have felt that people would know him, else they'd not have used him. Though why not Lugosi, I wonder? I was also wondering about why they didn't use Lugosi. It might have had something to do with which studio made One in a Million and which actors were at that studio in 1936. But I haven't had time to look into it to see if there's any connection. (P.S. I glanced at Laughton's filmography and Mutiny is MGM and Laughton's next few films were London Film Productions. Mad Love is also MGM. But One in a Million is Fox. I looked at Karloff's 1936 films and he was working for several studios. But Peter Lorre's next batch of films (including the Mr. Moto series) are with Fox. I'll have to look into this further. It is starting to look like Fox was publicizing their new acquisition, at least a little bit.)
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Post by brutalis on Aug 20, 2018 8:04:15 GMT -5
Sunday turned into a hide inside under the air conditioning day with 112 temperature (weather officially noted as 108 but my car and back porch thermometer beg to differ) for the weekend. Decided to unwind in the past with some not so classic B western movies of the 30's and 40's. I have several collections with tons of these old black and white gun totin' and fisticuff's flying horse opera's. So rather than just putting in random discs I chose to watch specific western stars.
Up 1st: Bob Steele Thunder in the Desert from 1938 and The Brand of Hate from 1934 and Last of the Warrens from 1936. You all likely remember old Bob from F-Troop and these early westerns are all fast on action and light on plots but pure fun. Most notable one is Thunder in the Desert which starts with Steele as a WW1 airplane pilot who gets shot down and injured. He returns home to find everyone believes he died in the war and he fights the town schemer who stole his uncle's farm and is trying to steal his girl as well.
2nd up was some Tex Ritter action with Ridin' the Cherokee Trail from1941 and Westbound Stage from 1939. Tex sings and fights his way through both in his usual lighthearted and cheerful style stopping the villains and winning the day.
Rounding up the afternoon was a pair of Tim McCoy's from 1939. Code of the Cactus and thew Fighting Renegade. In both of these McCoy pretends to be a Mexican pistolero (El Puma in Fighting Renegade) acting as a bad guy infiltrating the enemy to get the goods on them. Silly yet exciting fun.
None of these are Oscar bound but all are pure western fun of the dusty trail era and worth watching. An advantage is most films during this time are usually 50-75 minutes in length so you aren't losing most of your day to watch a handful of them. I shall definitely be riding the range again with these gun hands as I have 4 of the 50 movie box set collections to explore when the mood strikes...
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 20, 2018 14:49:49 GMT -5
Bob Steele is GREAT! I've seen a handful of his westerns (though I can't at present remember the names of any of them) but he had a great career outside of B-westerns! He was Canino is The Big Sleep! He was Curly in the 1939 "Of Mice and Men"! (He has some great scenes! Here he is with Betty Field. (She is great in this film too!)) He also appeared in a much later western Hang 'Em High, with Clint Eastwood.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 20, 2018 15:00:55 GMT -5
I scrolled through Bob Steele's filmography on IMDB and I'm pretty sure I've seen "The Land of Missing Men" and "Cavalry." I especially remember "Cavalry" as being a particularly good 1930s B western.
I've seen a lot of the John Wayne B westerns. I especially love "Lawless Frontier"! It's the western equivalent of those low-budget horror movies that Lugosi made, like The Corpse Vanishes or Black Dragons.
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Post by Jeddak on Aug 20, 2018 21:31:36 GMT -5
Found a movie called Thor and the Amazon Women today. It's an Italian/Yugoslavian sword & sandal film, one of the many trying to jump on the Hercules bandwagon. So I wasn't expecting a lot. And I didn't get it.
Thor (a descendant of the Thunder God) is built up in the beginning. He's the hero of a prophecy, destined to bring down the Amazon Queen. Various Amazons tell stories about how awesome he is, using footage from another movie. Then he gets wounded and hangs out in the cave of his buddy Ubaratutu for half the movie. His friend Tamar is captured by the Amazons; she's trained as a gladiator, gets involved in a rebellion against the evil queen, and is basically the star of the movie for a while. Then Thor and his pal show up, lead a revolt of the male slaves, Tamar kicks some ass, and everybody's happy.
So not a good movie, even for this genre. Thor has no personality, and the treatment of Ubaratutu is embarrassing. He's just as buff as Thor, but is cowardly, gullible, and clumsy in a fight. He's black, which makes that feel uncomfortably like an old stereotype. Not sure the filmmakers meant it that way; I doubt they thought things through that far.
(Five 'th' words in a row. Wow.)
And they made two movies at the same time. The other is called Taur the Mighty, so the Thor connection may be skipped there. And Tamar isn't in that one, so the hero may actually do something. That's probably where they got the scenes illustrating how badass the guy is, from the early part of this movie.
So why bring it to your attention, if it's not worth watching? (And it isn't.) Well, there is one point of interest. For the opening theme, they use (I swear to Ghu) the theme song from the old Thor cartoon.
Now, the movie came out in 1963, and the cartoon was '66, so this had to be a late addition for the English-language release. But still, that took some serious cojones, eh?
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 20, 2018 23:39:01 GMT -5
Sunday turned into a hide inside under the air conditioning day with 112 temperature (weather officially noted as 108 but my car and back porch thermometer beg to differ) for the weekend. Decided to unwind in the past with some not so classic B western movies of the 30's and 40's. I have several collections with tons of these old black and white gun totin' and fisticuff's flying horse opera's. So rather than just putting in random discs I chose to watch specific western stars. Up 1st: Bob Steele Thunder in the Desert from 1938 and The Brand of Hate from 1934 and Last of the Warrens from 1936. You all likely remember old Bob from F-Troop and these early westerns are all fast on action and light on plots but pure fun. Most notable one is Thunder in the Desert which starts with Steele as a WW1 airplane pilot who gets shot down and injured. He returns home to find everyone believes he died in the war and he fights the town schemer who stole his uncle's farm and is trying to steal his girl as well. 2nd up was some Tex Ritter action with Ridin' the Cherokee Trail from1941 and Westbound Stage from 1939. Tex sings and fights his way through both in his usual lighthearted and cheerful style stopping the villains and winning the day. Rounding up the afternoon was a pair of Tim McCoy's from 1939. Code of the Cactus and thew Fighting Renegade. In both of these McCoy pretends to be a Mexican pistolero (El Puma in Fighting Renegade) acting as a bad guy infiltrating the enemy to get the goods on them. Silly yet exciting fun. None of these are Oscar bound but all are pure western fun of the dusty trail era and worth watching. An advantage is most films during this time are usually 50-75 minutes in length so you aren't losing most of your day to watch a handful of them. I shall definitely be riding the range again with these gun hands as I have 4 of the 50 movie box set collections to explore when the mood strikes... I haven't seen Tex's westerns; but, have seen a bit of footage from his Ranch Party (mostly Collins Kids appearances). Hard to believe he is John Ritter's father. California definitely took the Texas out of John!
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