Vautrin

Goodbye, I'm Johnny Cash. I remember that Johnny and his wife June were guest stars on an episode of Columbo. Sorry to say, Johnny was not a good guy. Johnny will be mainly remembered for his music. His movies and TV appearances were of secondary importance.

I agree that the premise of the show is pretty far-fetched, though no more so than a lot of other TV shows and many studio era movies. I think the audience realizes that and just goes with the flow for the most part and isn't bothered too much by the implausibility of the whole thing, though it's fun to discuss some of the more improbable aspects of this and other shows and movies. I think a big part of the appeal in the early years of the program was the Maine small town setting and some of the eccentric characters who lived there. Jessica was definitely the brains before Tupper. I'm sure he was well meaning and tried hard, but anything more complicated than a lost dog was beyond his abilities. Uh oh, it's Perry Mason time.

It was even worse when Perry had to solve two murders, one from years ago and the current one. Yikes. Of course the show was just following the demographics of Maine, which is very white. I recall folks criticizing the lack of black people in The Andy Griffith Show, which was set in NC, which is certainly not Maine.

Perry Mason is on FETV twice on week nights. I'm sure they cut at least 5 minutes if not more from the originals. But the plots are so complicated I doubt if the originals would make things much clearer. It takes a while just to figure out how everybody is related to one another. I always get a kick out of Paul Drake and his wandering eye. I think that up and coming TV stars were more common on Mason than old time movie stars, though they would show up on occasion. I recall future star Robert Redford was in one episode.

And Sparta, Mississippi had a lot of racial problems which Cabot Cove, Maine didn't. ITHOTN was more graphic in its violence than MSW for sure. I've seen most of the episodes of Matlock multiple times and enjoyed them at the time, though I don't have a desire to see them again any time soon. I enjoy the late 1950s episodes of Perry Mason. They are kind of down and dirty in subject matter in that special 1950s way.

The first few weren't too bad but after it became a regular plot gimmick it grew kind of tiresome. Not only did she discover the host was the murderer, but Jessica never straightened out her guest towels.

I don't think that In the Heat of the Night was particularly violent for a police TV show of that era. The focus was rarely on the violence itself, though I did feel a little sorry for the dude who was killed before he could finish his pizza. I watched Murder She Wrote in its original run and saw most of the episodes and have seen some of them in syndication over the years, but not recently. I too prefer the earlier ones set in Cabot Cove. I assume the producers thought folks would get tired of Cabot Cove and decided to extend the action outside of it. The ones where Jessica would visit her rich friends were kind of boring.

I always thought that Clifton Webb was the femme fatale in Laura.

Half the fun of these old videos is the hair and clothing styles. Yes the dancing seems very subdued. Maybe they didn't want to let the kids loose in a TV studio. Edmunds seems to have gotten less exposure than Nick Lowe, who himself was never really that popular in the U.S. The group they were in, Rockpile, made only one album but it is quite good. Krause seemed more of the gentlemanly tough guy where Chester was just one mean s.o.b. That's what made his death in the drugstore shootout so enjoyable, at least to me.

I'm just happy that the "pants" of the Rollers never became a fashion item. Not even Ethel Mertz would be caught dead in those things. Whenever Little Willy came on the radio it was hard not to clap or stomp along. Nick Lowe was one of the masters of pure pop, along with, ahem, Dave Edmunds. This was the song that Krause would turn way up on the radio when he was in a room beating the you know what out of some poor unfortunate and did not want to be disturbed.

I haven't heard that one in years, though I haven't been longing to either. I doubt any musically self-respecting community would name itself after the Bay City Rollers. I'm proud that the Rollers were much less popular in America than in the UK and Canada, though Saturday Night is a pretty catchy tune. I like this one from a few years earlier. Oh no.

Not enough blood, too many guts. I saw A Yank in the RAF a few weeks ago on YT. Entertaining, but pretty cornball. This YT upload silenced all Betty's songs, so I guess there were some copyright issues even after all these years. Or maybe the uploader just thought there were.

"A geek-how does a guy get that way?" "Well, first you've got to like the taste of chicken." Maybe I missed the sequence of events, but in Dead Reckoning Liz is being blackmailed by Karnovsky, but she was also working for him. Doesn't sound like a very smart move on his part.

Yes. I think one of the episodes had Bay City in the title, though I don't remember the exact title. It was one of those places where the cops made it difficult for a PI to operate.

Whichever actor played Philip Marlowe had to be used to being knocked out, either by a a tough with a blackjack or by a shady doctor whose medical license had been suspended, with some form of blackout narcotic. The latter was usually a more interesting character. And Gulf City sounds like Bay City, a gritty coastal town with cops who aren't always honest. And one of the characters is even named Chandler. Hmmm. An okay noir, though the plot is kind of confusing, especially with there being two murders to think over. Rip Murdock is okay, but I prefer his kid brother Buz, a cool cat who got his kicks on Route 66.

I hope Lugosi got paid well because his part was truly a minor one. As I posted before, I think Stanley Ridges did a good job in the dual role. It could have been pretty corny but he avoided that for the most part.

I've heard about his drug problems though I don't recall the details. He must have still had some name recognition to be second billed in Black Friday when his was a small supporting role. Stanley Ridges was really in second place having a lot more screen time and importance in the film. I guess you could say they both got screwed.

Only 70 minutes, a mere hour and ten. You can do it. Lugosi did get screwed. Little screen time and not much to do even with that. In horror films most of the time the accent works, but in this one it sounds funny. You expect his gangster pals to think to themselves Where the hell did this guy come from? Stanley Ridges who played the professor/gangster had a much bigger role than Bela, but who ever heard of him? I think he did a fairly restrained job with what could have been a really over the top role. The first fifteen minutes or so play like some kind of small town eccentrics comedy. Maybe they should have stuck with that. Or maybe not. James Craig, who went on to bigger things, also shows up in the small part of a reporter who receives Karloff's note book from Boris himself. Remember kids, don't try this brain transplant stuff at home.

Black Friday (1940) Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Stanley Ridges. Low budget, low concept Universal horror flick with Boris and Bela. It's the old criminal brain transplant game. Karloff is a doctor whose bff is Ridges, a mild-mannered English Lit professor at the local college. While Ridges is minding his own business one day he is hit by a car driven by vicious bank robber Red Cannon. Cannon is dead, Ridges is dying and the only way Boris can save him is by transplanting Cannon's brain into Ridges skull. Before you can say Clyde Barrow, Cannon's brain starts to take over Ridge's body, at first momentarily then more often and for longer periods. The audience can tell the transformation is taking place because Ridges gets rid of his pince-nez specs and his hair style changes. Karloff also wants to find the $500,000 that Cannon has hidden so he can use the dough to expand his laboratory to "benefit" mankind through his scientific "experiments." So off the two go to NYC hoping to find the money there. The Red Cannon personality comes out and knocks off several folks. Boris hopes a return to the university will get rid of the Cannon character and it does for a while. But then Cannon returns big time and Boris is forced to kill him, handing himself a one way ticket to the electric chair. The story is told in flashback via pages from Karloff's notebook. Lugosi gets second billing, but he has little to do as a gangster pal of Cannon's, except to provide a few unintentionally humorous moments with his thick accent. Not a bad film and its has some good moments, but there's not much new here in the brain transplant genre. It only runs 70 minutes so viewers shouldn't feel too guilty watching it.

I'm looking forward to this as I don't think I've ever seen this movie, though for some reason I remember seeing the cover box for it when there were still movie rental stores. A healthy alternative to 10 Rillington Place.

Or change the name back to Decoration Day. I don't recall the details of each argument, but by now I think most people celebrate it on the Monday designated as Memorial Day.

Possibly. I doubt there will be an actual war with Iran, defining war as an invasion of Iran a la Iraq. Of course there are a lot of measures short of an invasion that the U.S. could take. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail.

I admit it's a close call, but on this rare occasion I'm coming down on the Trump's not stupid enough to do it side.

I haven't seen The Hurt Locker, but I did see Three Kings a while back. Good adventure story wrapped into a war movie. Speaking of Memorial Day, I remember a number of years ago there was a local argument about the proper day to celebrate it--on Sunday or Monday.

As clueless as Donny is I don't think he's dumb enough to start a war with Iran, though the "mad mullahs" would be great movie villains. Nazis with turbans.