scsu1975
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Posts posted by scsu1975
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(the restoration of this thread continues)
The Wasp Woman (1959)
(originally posted here: http://forums.tcm.com/index.php?/topic/26516-the-wasp-woman-1959/)
In this semi-entertaining flick from Roger Corman, Susan Cabot plays an aging executive of a cosmetic company, who is approached by an old geezer (Michael Mark), promising her a youthful appearance. All she has to do is get injections made from his jelly, taken from queen wasps. Of course, Ms. Cabot is impatient for results, so without telling Mark, she starts shooting up left and right. The results: she looks about 15 years younger but gets a 50-game suspension from baseball. She also turns into a wasp wearing high heels.
Fred (Anthony) Eisley and Barboura (yes, the spelling is correct) Morris work for Cabot and seem to enjoy some type of non-sexual relationship. A few other cast members get stung and/or bitten - it was too dark to tell for sure.
Ms. Cabot does well under the circumstances, but it takes about 50 minutes before we see her transformation. There are also long stretches where nothing happens, yet the film is only 72 minutes long. Poor Michael Mark gets the brunt of everything; he is attacked by a pussycat, run down by a car, loses his memory, gets director/producer Roger Corman for a doctor, is stung by Ms. Cabot, and finally clutches his chest and kicks off. His agent must have been a real son of a bee.
"As you can see, sales of rectangles have fallen off."
"I have here my scientific collection of jams and jellies. I have Apricot
Jam, Pearl Jam, Grape Jelly, Wasp Jelly, and my best-seller, Kentucky Jelly."
"I call this impression 'dog barking under a halo'."
Right after this scene was shot, Susan Cabot hit a baseball 600 feet.
"If this infernal buzzing would just stop - say, is that a stinger in my pants?"
Chief Ironside, the Retirement Home Years.
Anthony Eisley shows off his newly-earned GED to Barboura Morris. However, she still refuses to sleep with him.
"A colonoscopy??? For a black eye????"
"Miss Cabot, I may not be a doctor, but I am the Director, and I'm ordering you
to change that bedpan."
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Riot On Sunset Strip (1967) 10:00 PM ET
Don't expect a riot. The "high" light is a 5-minute dance by a tripped-out Mimsy Farmer which could not have been choreographed by a human being.
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(the restoration of this thread continues)
The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
(originally posted here: http://forums.tcm.com/index.php?/topic/23964-the-amazing-transparent-man-1960/)
Director Edgar G. Ulmer has accomplished the impossible. This 57-minute stinkbomb makes The Crawling Hand look like a classic.
Douglas Kennedy stars as an escaped convict, who is drafted into a daffy plan by James Griffith. Kennedy had a decent film career playing outlaws and crooks; today, he would be ideally cast as an AIG executive. Griffith wants to make an army of invisible men, which is totally preposterous, since nowhere in the film do we see photographs of Adolf Hitler. Marguerite Chapman, who probably looked good ten years before this film was made, plays Griffith's punching bag. Ivan Triesault plays the scientist who has invented an invisibility machine. Triesault is the only sane person in the cast, which should tell you something.
Kennedy spends most of the film inexplicably dressed like Johnny Cash. In the film's most exciting sequence, he robs a bank while invisible, and manages to overpower a 97-year-old security guard all by himself.
Here, Griffith (standing) explains the plot to Douglas Kennedy.
He does not explain why there is an organ in the room.
Triesault explains the principles behind his invention.
Five minutes into the film, you will have that same expression on your face.
Kennedy sings "Folsom Prison Blues" while Chapman can't decide whether
to laugh or shoot him. Why is that organ there?
Kennedy screams out the now-classic line "Where's the rest of me?"
Chapman auditions for the remake of It Happened One Night.
I am starting to understand the significance of the organ.
In this rare still, Kennedy (at left) misuses the Heimlich Maneuver on Griffith.
Sometimes one picture is worth a thousand words.
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#1 Stanley Fields
#2 James Anderson
#5 Ted de Corsia
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The OP was about a women that was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Monroe on it. One can assume this women purchased the shirt.
Not necessarily. It may have been a gift, like one of those "Somebody screwed the President and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" t-shirts.
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I do own an I Love Lucy Vitameatavegamin shirt and I have gotten a lot of compliments on it--from people that know what Vitameatavegamin is.
So I guess you don't pop out at parties and you're not unpoopular.
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Wednesday, Sept. 27th--all times E.S.T.:
4:30 p.m. "Lone Star" (1952)--Watchable western with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. Gardner gets to sing 1-2 songs with her own voice, if I remember correctly.
You do remember correctly, and this film is very entertaining.
According to Hedda Hopper, her good friend William Farnum (who helped her get her start in films and plays a senator in this one) served as a technical adviser for the climactic fight scene between Gable and Broderick Crawford.
Although this sounds silly (Farnum was in his mid 70s by then, and this would be his second-to-last film appearance), Hopper may have been telling the truth. In almost every one of his silent films, Farnum had a fight scene, with his most famous taking place in The Spoilers (1914). When that film was remade in 1930 with Gary Cooper, Farnum did serve as a technical adviser for the big fight between Cooper and William "Stage" Boyd. He also appeared as a spectator in the crowd.
In Lone Star, Farnum gives an energetic and spirited performance, and seems to be enjoying himself ... not a bad way to wrap up a long career.
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Yesterday's response from a mid 20ish lesbian couple took the cake. When I asked what was Marilyn famous for the response was, "She did the President!"
I'm more surprised that the lesbian couple was able to get a cake.
Did they know which President Marilyn "did"? They probably think Clinton.
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Tuesday, September 26
Today’s films are all well worn.
8:30 a.m. World Without End (1955). Hugh Marlowe!
Nancy Gates and Shawn Smith in miniskirts!
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(the restoration of this thread continues)
Voodoo Woman (1957)
Directed by Edward L. Cahn
(originally posted here: http://forums.tcm.com/index.php?/topic/25581-voodoo-woman-1957/)
Fairly dull horror opus, with almost no action. Talent-challenged Marla English and Lance Fuller play a couple of crumbs who hire Joe Mannix ... er, Touch (Mike) Connors, to lead them into the jungle in search of gold. Meanwhile, mad doctor Tom Conway performs experiments on a native babe, turning her into a 6-foot Estelle Getty on steroids. Unfortunately, the native girl does not have the killer instinct that Conway desires, but English does. So guess who is Conway's next patient? Connors saves his own skin, and manages to snag Conway's wife in the process.
Tom Conway gives a bore-de-force performance. You've never seen him like this. His trademark pencil-thin moustache is missing. He literally speaks without moving his lips (this time, through mind control). His eyebrows are knit together in an almost simian appearance. He wears the most ridiculous headpiece in the history of hatdom. And he manages to get off a lengthy diatribe with only two glances as his cue cards.
Marla English drinks her fingers, while Lance Fuller gazes at the worm
crawling up Paul Dubov's head.
Mary Ellen Kay flips off Otis Greene, who plays Bobo the houseboy.
Marla English auditions for The Letter.
A lounge singer puts the moves on Noel Coward. Good luck, lady.
This scene is not nearly as suggestive as it looks.
Well, I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go.
(actual dialog) "You were interfering with my work, Susan.
Nobody's going to stand in my way, not even you.
If we had it do over again, we'd know better, wouldn't we, Susan?
You wouldn't have married a man of my age
and I wouldn't have undertaken to play nursemaid to a whimpering shallow woman
who's been crying homesick for the past seven years."
This is when you know your acting career is over.
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Tuesday, Sept. 26th--
4:30 p.m. "Queen of Outer Space" (1958)--Zsa Zsa Gabor film is the camp pick of the day.
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Actually the DA asks the presiding judge to load the bullets into the gun, then hand it back to him. Which brings up another question, how many judges would do that? Really silly moment in the film.
Still, Boomerang was produced by Fox when semi-documentary type films of this type were in style, and it's reasonably interesting, if unexceptional. It looks like Kazan must have gotten a lot of the residents of whatever town he shot the film in to appear in the film as local residents, some of them with dialogue, which adds to the film's realism.
The film was shot in Stamford CT, but the actual crime occurred in Bridgeport, CT (on a street corner which no longer exists).
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Rich, just to let you know that your thread has been helping me deal with the recent death of my mother, "Bronxgirl's Mom"
You're brilliant as always!
Love,
Barb
Thanks Barb, and thanks for stopping by. If you follow the original links, I'm sure you had some great commentary in them. It's good to look back at the "old days" on here.
Stay well.
Rich
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I wouldn't dismiss Boomerang. It's worth a look. Dana Andrews is quite good in it, as he usually was during his '40s period. But the scene in which a lawyer, for dramatic courtroom effect, has a loaded gun placed to his head and the trigger pulled, rather than doing it to the head of a plastic dummy, had me shouting out loud, "Give.Me.A.Break."
Yes, that one scene is pretty bogus (and never happened during the actual trial).
a. Who takes a loaded gun into a courtroom, and
b. allows someone to fire at him to make a point?
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Lugosi may have finally beaten the heroin but he loved his cigars right to the end, it would appear. He appears to have one in his mouth in that shot of his arrival at the restaurant, I noticed.
Actually, he is smoking one of the missing tentacles from the octopus in Bride of the Monster.
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I find lists such as these to be almost useless, even though they spur some interesting discussions (well, maybe that makes them useful). There is no explanation as to how the scores were picked nor who picked them. There were 250 scores nominated (by whom?), and many of the scores that posters here wish were included in the top 25 were included in the 250. Also, the list is from 2005, while other lists on the AFI website are from different years. So what does "100 Years" of anything mean?
Statistical nightmare.
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Rich, I thought you might enjoy this read from GreenbriarPictureShows of the cast luncheon for The Black Sleep in 1956, held at the Tail o' the C o c k restaurant in LA for publicity purposes. The cast arrived by hearse, with a studio photographer there to capture the moment. This is one of the last public appearances by Lugosi, who would be dead within a few months.
A few days before he died, several newspapers published an interview with Lugosi entitled "How I beat the curse of dope addiction."
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HOPES
Tor Johnson
Allison Hayes
Dick Miller
Mamie Van Doren
Yvette Vickers
PREDICTIONS
None of the above
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76 years ago in hisTORy
Tor appears in Shadow of the Thin Man, and gets to fall on Myrna Loy (lucky stiff).
Director W. S. Van Dyke just told the wrestlers to go to it.
"Why should I direct them?" he asked. "They know their act better than I do."
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The blonde at the right looks like Peggy Ann Garner.
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83 years ago in hisTORy
In the opening match at Philadelphia, October 5, 1934, Tor Johnson (at a svelte 300 pounds) defeats Wee Willie Davis (252 pounds) in eight minutes, 21 seconds. Tor performs a series of body slams on Davis before pinning him.
16 years later, the two would square off again in Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion.
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Gosh, but I don't remember that scene in that Capra movie, Rich?
Did it make its way into the final cut?
I haven't seen the movie in some time, so I don't know. I'll have to check it out when TCM honors Tor with SOTM.
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Tear Gas Squad (1940) TCM
Oddball quickie from Warner Brothers, which is part musical, part romance, part police story, and almost no tear gas.
Dennis Morgan plays a singer (surprise) who does a “singing cop” act. He decides to join the force to impress Gloria Dickson, much to the dismay of her current suitor and cop John Payne. The only action, including the tear gas, occurs in the final ten minutes or so. Morgan is so appealing that you can put up with most of the nonsense that occurs for most of the film (like his singing in the police glee club). There are plenty of familiar faces, including Perry White as the Police Chief (and Morgan does get to call him “Chief”), Superman as Morgan’s brother, Paul Drake in a bit part, Dennis the Menace’s father, and Uncle Joe (movin’ mighty slow) from Hooterville. Speaking of which, Gloria Dickson was one hot babe.
One theater in Lexington, KY, advertised the film by sending this truck around town. If anyone was illiterate, they probably had the crap scared out of them.
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70 years ago in hisTORy
A case of too much Johnson
From the Provo Sunday Herald, November 2, 1947:
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Some Movies Not Showing Up On WATCH TCM
in General Discussions
Posted
This happens often with other films as well. I assume there is some rights issue; that is, TCM gets the rights to air the film for one showing, but not the rights to put in on the website for continued viewing.