NipkowDisc

labor day movies should not be about labor but the labor day holiday which is what it is to most americans...

spider women are hot.

last nite watched quatermass ll on my portable DVD player. not to be confused with brian donlevy's second turn in the role in enemy from space which is the same story as this. quatermass is played by john robinson with hugh griffith as his assistant dr. pugh. pronounced pew!) I found nothing notable about robinson in the role in fact he is completely forgettable as quatermass. donlevy is much better. the whole thing was a bit overlong. I got so bored I didn't watch the final chapter 6. the whole serial is an overshot.

TBYOOL is not perfect. Harold Russell doesn't look to me like he woulda been the all-American athlete minus one hand and virginia mayo treating dana Andrews like a pos ruins alotta the film... fredric march and myrna loy are okay and most of the charm exudes from the strength of their marriage.

and conservatives are far more melodramatic than liberals in political melodramas like bob conrad as liddy in will. they have personality while liberals are lifeless and dull.

like will: g. Gordon liddy or Washington: behind closed doors with a terrific performance by Jason robards as president Richard monckton. I mean how many times are they gonna beat all the king's men, the best man, all the president's men, seven days in may and advise and consent into the ground? there is other stuff out there just as good even if the democrats come out on the short end. diversity and tolerance, tcm, diversity and tolerance hafta be more than catchprases. they hafta be practiced.

I think the film is just an overexaggerated crock to make money off the cinematic legacy of orson welles.

my favorite part is when the chuck wagon comes along with food enough for 160 soldiers but there's only 80 guys left and an officer comes along and tells the cook to give them the whole issue.

that you had the decency to show a sound print of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT last nite. you did something right for a change. I salute you!

what today's cgi films need are 50 foot women and 30 foot babe teenagers.

I told ya! guessed two of 'em didn't I. the odd couple and the goodbye girl. probably very easy for tcm to get a hold of those. I knew they wouldn't knock themselves out for any of the better films like the two I mentioned. I bet the odd couple and the goodbye girl get shown on tcm a helluva lot more times than the out-of-towners and the prisoner of second avenue.

just went off. I would reedit this film and start it when van gogh moves into the yellow house. "you look too fast! "don't ever do that again."

the first time I saw that was at the beginning of the 1970s on a cbs affiliate on a lazy Saturday afternoon. at the time seeing it listed in the pages of TV Guide the idiots were giving it believe it or not just one star meaning they thought it was poor. the old TV Guide description would say 'more harrowing than funny'. I sat thru it and loved it.

oh yeah, the fortune cookie is billy wilder. the film I found a disappointment because lemmon's horrible wife doan get her just desserts like she shoulda. the out-of-towners and the prisoner of second avenue cry out to be shown together.

the perfect double bill to commemorate neil simon is the out-of-towners followed by the prisoner of second avenue both with jack lemmon but I expect tcm will prefer to shove the usual crap like the fortune cookie, the odd couple and the goodbye girl with dreyfuss up our kazoos.

yes sir.

some questions for you, Ray, since you have been in the music industry. 1. can you give any insight into when or if Oliver Nelson's music to The Six Million Dollar Man will ever see any kind of a commercial release? 2. some years ago I read that Filmation's cartoon library fell into the hands of Hallmark and Hallmark destroyed a lot of the content. now the music for their 1960s The New Adventures of Superman was composed by somebody named John Galt or is it John Marion? can you tell us if Hallmark has destroyed all the background music to The New Adventures of Superman? 3. do any recordings exist, if you know, of the music used in Fred Ladd's americanized episodes of Gigantor?

hey yeah! I seen your name. great job.

sure I am. Ghost and Mr. Chicken has a real hot babe for Don in joan staley but I'm more partial to joan freeman in The Reluctant Astronaut.

they showed it on svengoolie a few weeks ago so who cares. I got the vic mizzy music on CD. also got his reluctant astronaut music on CD too.

never heard of um.

to me the universal horror film cycle started to go seriously awry with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. a great start with larry talbot being resurrected from his tomb and great visual fun with the wolf man running rampant in the surrounding woodlands of vasaria and falling through a hole into one of the numerous icy catacombs of frankenstein's castle (the 2nd son played by cedric hardwicke in Ghost of Frankentein) and a bewildered wolf man who has lost his bearings is pretty good melodramatic fun. in that vehicle all larry talbot wants is death which he sees as his only release from his werewolf curse. FMTWM is where universal starts to build their peculiar brand of wacky science around the frankenstein legacy. in it we have the lovely illona massey as frankenstein's lovely daughter played by a totally different actress than in Ghost of Frankenstein. the lovely miss massey looks like penny singleton and has all the european continental charm of marlene dietrich. both she and patric knowles as mannering are the only main player survivors of FMTWM. this film references the original Dr. frankenstein's diary of the secrets of life and death which cedric hardwicke kept locked in his desk. stuff about his artificial body having the duration of a hundred human lifetimes and so on but knowles as mannering got cute. a big fight and years of ice storage for the monster and talbot. then in House of Framkenstein we get karloff as a real baddie mad doctor neimann and universal's wacky science gets even more jumbled. in the last movie talbot sees death as his only release but neimann will put his brain into a new body to escape his werewolf curse. the monster now played by glenn strange has some tissue damage from the years of ice storage so neimann prescribes frequent hot compresses. forget the compresses just heat 'em up when you're ready to juice um with electricity or does that make any scientific sense? Universal also wastes a lot of our time with John Carradine as baron latos aka. dracula. carradine couldn't scare a goldfish but it is nice seeing karloff giving us a fine example of resurrecting a vampire by removing the stake. later we have to put up with elena verdugo lovesick over talbot. she fashions a silver bullet planning to release larry from his eternal torment but can't bear to plug him from a window. he turns into the wolf man and finishes her off...but not before she fires her silver bullet and there it is right on the screen the death of lawrence talbot and morphing back to human form. j. carrol naish as daniel the hunchback who can't understand why elena verdugo would prefer cursed talbot to him loses patience with neimann and says "this wouldn't have happened if you had kept faith with me" and proceeds to strangulate him. the now fully revived monster not appreciating daniel whipping him with a strap breaks loose and chucks the hunchback right out the laboratory window eliciting the best moments of naish's appearance in the movie. the monster drags his new buddy neimann into the swamp and goodnight all. then we get House of Dracula with john carradine again unimpressing everybody as an ineffectual count dracula who shows up at kindly eminent dr. edelmann's castle to seek a cure from his vampire curse...but not before larry talbot shows up before seeking the same kind of help and still a werewolf. universal executives must have missed the previous movie where talbot is shot and killed by a silver bullet. again some new unconvincing scientific jumble. edelmann tells talbot that he is after all suffering from this magnificent delusion as there are no such things as supernatural werewolf curses. it's all in his mind acted upon by cranial pressure and moonlight causing him to change into a wolf-like being but certainly not a supernatural creature. the solution is a rare mold that edelmann is cultivating. later edelmann finds and lugs the monster back to his lab for future revival but not before dracula for no apparent reason loses interest in a cure for his vampirism and contaminates edelmann with his diabolic blood. still edelmann is able to operate on talbot to affect a cure and later for the first time talbot beholds moonlight completely free from his delusion. edelmann turns into a murderous fiend thanks to dracula's blood and a grateful talbot stops him with a bullet which elicits a faint short-lived weak smile from onslow stevens' edelmann after talbot shoots him. no dialogue but edelmann shoulda said "thank you, my boy". he understands. again the rampaging frankenstein monster buys it in yet another castle conflagration. finally there is abbott and costello meet frankenstein and eureka! bela lugosi now free from all itinerary commitments can finally play for a 2nd stupendous time...Dracula! big deal. here we are in florida with bud and lou and...talbot? died two movies back, cured one movie back but still a lycanthrope? lon chanet jr. played the mummy and the monster but appears as larry talbot the wolf man in five films so lets hear it for universal's immortal wolf man. 1. The Wolf Man 2. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man 3. House of Frankenstein 4. House of Dracula 5. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

which probably means that svengoolie himself makes the film selections. last week he ran The Wolf Man but tonite showing is House of Frankenstein. that's how idiots select films. on my show would be showing Frankenstein meets The Wolf Man which is the direct sequel to The Wolf Man which has larry talbot being exhumed back to lycanthropic life by two grave robbers. fortunately one of the on demand free movies available on my cable system is Frankenstein meets The Wolf Man which I recorded on to a VHS tape so I will record House of Frankenstein right on to the same tape but svengoolie is still an idiot. somebody should shove berwyn right up his kazoo.

Montgomery clift