NipkowDisc

Surreal? I doan now about that? but irwin allen did direct the thing himself. hey, it is an enjoyable film because of all the stars and their performances. Caine is good as the stalwart even heroic entomologist bradford crane. Widmark is a hoot as general thaddeus slater a military guy who doan like being subordinate to an egghead like crane. lovely katharine ross is the girl. but hey, the swarm is alotta fun. jose ferrer and richard chamberlain get bees and chamberlain does a crazy chiropractic excercise and blows up the whole dam nuclear plant with them great irwin allen pyrotechnics.

he was a beeping and a flashing all nite long...

Sheila Mathews-Allen?... YA-HOOOO! YA-HOOO!

since I recorded this today on my vcr ( an inexpensive low-cost alternative to dvr ) plus I got tons and tons of vhs tapes even some unopened plus I have two vcrs I grabbed from a trash depot. later on I'll watch it and see what the running time is. something to watch later after the eleven o'clock news.

but half the fun is watching.

today at three thirty. always a good one for me. a bad film on the whole but quite watchable because of good acting from michael caine, henry fonda and richard widmark. the always inventive irwin allen comes up with nifty ways to kill celebs on film. he has bees sting jose ferrer and richard chamberlain and then blows them up along with a whole nuclear plant. not satisfied with that, he has a train derail with hordes of unfortunates aboard like fred macmurray, olivia de haviland and ben johnson. good ol' irwy! he shoulda ran for prez on a platform of bee prevention. I got the goldsmith score on cd.

why do old line trekkers like me harp on this stuff... BECAUSE... none of the 1980s theatrical trek films were what they could and shoulda been. put 'em together (six films) and you have only a handful of scenes from all six films that are worthy of being compared to the original series... and the 1970s filmation cartoon is better than those cruddy movies. whatta's that say when a saturday morning cartoon is superior to theatrical films with multi-million dollar budgets? not a helluva lot. I blame paramount. they hadda know a few years after the cancellation that nbc had made a mistake. but whatta they do? they pussyfoot around until the end of the 1970s before even starting on a movie. of course Roddenberry's humanistic idealism coulda slowed things down a might too. hey, I'm fair.

despite the fact that he shoulda put up a fight with paramount to come back as kirk.... but he didn't. now if ol' shatner had felt a little bit more about kirk the way Clayton Moore felt about the lone ranger, he'd be an even gooder guy. but hey, star trek's dead so it doan really matter now.

doesn't our egg-sucking mainstream news media have anything better to do than go after a guy who's almost 84 years old? Shatner. he's being criticized because he missed nimoy's funeral. he had a previous charity comittment in florida. was he suppose to break it? did shatner know nimoy was gonna kick off last week? of course not. ol' bill shatner doan wanna disappoint people. he's a good guy.

tcm has made the minor mistake of not showing Hot Spell (1958) for about ten years now. incidently, that's not a mistake. that's deliberate slackness... bring back Hot Spell because tcm don't make mistakes.

if tcm ever pulls that crap with a showing of dog day afternoon, they will lose my viewership.

it's kinda like on the brady bunch when bobby's frog spunker slows up because he ate a bad fly. tcm got a hold of a bad print. when an outfit like tcm gets into the habit of not showing dozens of films they oughta be showing (like Hot Spell) due to procurement laziness. this laziness eventually filters down to other areas. like no longer caring if a print of a movie you intend to show is edited or not.

And the reason the oscar is watched by so many is because it is well-acted by all concerned. stephen boyd's frankie fane is such an over-the-top crud you can't help but like this thing. the notion that the oscar is a bad movie is silly. it's teriffic. so many great scenes with "friend" frankie like with laurel (jill st. john) she may have thrown him out but he sure did get in the last word. whatta great movie.

it's a real hoot. talent agent eleanor parker takes frankie to a play and he is unimpressed with the performances so he shows the amateurs how it's done. just one of many fun moments in the oscar.

well, it's his own fault. he shoulda kicked like a steer when they knocked 'em off in Generations... but he chose not to. hordes of old line trekkers woulda backed 'em up if he had.

I thought capt. pike was raising kids with vina in an illusionary paradise on talos IV.

I've been waiting for tcm to show john nesbitt's passing parade feature "our old car" or the great morgan but so far no luck.

after the brides of dracula on svengoolie the good stuff continues with lost in space and voyage to the bottom of the sea. tonite's lost in space ep is the one where the monster cyclamen plants create a plant girl version of judy. marta kristen does a good job acting aloof and distant as the plant babe and of course smith is involved. followed by voyage to the bottom of the sea ep brand of the beast with nelson suffering a relapse of his werewolf virus. real good stuff tonite on me tv.

aw, such nice girls

right! just look at the way stephen boyd carried on in "the oscar"

you just gotta put in alotta butt time in front of the TV as I have my whole life. hey, before the advent of tcm I was totally unfamiliar with doctor zhivago. never watched all those abc showings.

my bad. I just assume many here will have seen these old horror film's as many times as I have and will automatically know who gina is. I prefer not to allow for less viewing time in front of the TV for others in comparison to myself. it's my natural humility. gina is a local maid who attracts the baron meinster's attention. watch the film and gain an intuitive familiarity with these old horror gems. gina will ask marianne to forgive her for loving him.

tonite on svengoolie is a good one. the brides of dracula with peter cushing. obviously hammer thought more of cushing than they ever did christopher lee. they hand this vehicle to cushing for a tour-de-force performance but with no lee. idiots. didn't box office receipts from the states from their first film tell them anything? stupid hammer dolts. and why is it in this flick that they throw in all this vampire lore that they coulda just as well of done with Dracula (1958) in this we get bats. when that bat with red eyes buzzes Van Helsing, is that the newly dug up fresh vampire babe or Meinster? somewhat unclear to me. I like the comic relief doctor trying to unclog his sinuses. when the girl walks past gina's casket the padlock falls off. neat. they coulda used that in mark of the vampire. besides the always stalwart cushing, there's also alotta good acting from martita hunt, the vampire's mother also... our beloved miss havisham from david lean's great expectations. she alone makes this worth watching. she brings a stubborn but admirable dignity to her role as the baroness meinster.

me tv can't bring themselves to devote a few day or night's viewing time to nimoy on star trek? cheapskates. one of me TVs most obvious shortcomings is they're not too big on episode marathons.

my family tried color TV around 1965. my dad did not cotton to it. a big ol' console it was. so it went back to the store for repairs and in the meantime they gave us the loan of a smaller japanese color TV. a few week later back to black & white we went... and we were definitely not privileged in any excepted understanding of the term... not with my dad running our household like the evil captain kirk and then some.