I Just Watched...

[TomJH]

"King Kong vs Godzilla" (1962)--Starring the title two.

 

 

Poor King Kong, a great star of '30s Hollywood who quit on top after only one film, becoming a movie legend.

 

Just like Garbo, he faded from public view in his private life but he could still be seen on the big screen (or, increasingly) the little screen on television looking down at the beauteous screaming Fay Wray in his big hand. Who can ever forget that indelible moment on the Empire State Building when he places Fay down gently, pushing her out of the way, before turning back to face those planes, surely knowing in that huge heart of his that he was about to lose a fight for the first time in his life. Civilization bringing down a king who had been taken by force from his island.

 

But I guess times were tough for the big fella, and you gotta pay your bills. So 30 years after his encounter with Carl Denham and those planes he (reluctantly, I'm sure) agreed to make a film comeback and traveled to Japan to work with Toho Studios. But what happens there, facing a guy in a lizard suit and, worse fate of all, the Japanese stack the fight on film in favour of their participant!

 

And pure-at-heart Kong, thinking the fight would be on the level, I'm sure, is forced to follow a cornball Toho Studio script and let the other guy (whom I'm sure he could have pounded into a salamander if given the opportunity) emerge the victor. Ah, the ignominy of it all!

 

This is the Kong that I prefer to remember (none of those later CGI versions either), in great Willis H. O'Brien stop motion animation form, beating his chest in triumph as the king of Skull Island.

 

[Sepiatone]

I too, "just watched" KING KONG last night for the umpteenth time.  Always dug this movie.  And I thought how FORTUNATE for me it was that the FIRST time I'd see it complete AND commercial free was at some theater on the Ann Arbor MI campus of the U of M  on a BIG SCREEN!

 

Sadly too, for KONG, his use/misuse in subsequent films would have to suffer...

 

CHEEZY SPECIAL EFFECTS...

 

CHEAP LOOKING MONKEY SUITS obviously worn by some JANITOR likely.

 

AND that miserable 1976 remake in which the ONLY thing about it worth watching was JESSICA LANG.

 

The more recent remake by PETER JACKSON  wasn't too bad though.  The effects were FAR better that the '76 version, and it followed the original storyline fairly closely.  And surprisingly, a guy I usually considered a "goofball" comic actor, JACK BLACK  put in a performance of Carl Denham that to me, rivaled  ROBERT ARMSTRONG's original portrayal.

 

But, as DOBIE GRAY once sang...."The original's still the greatest."

 

 

Sepiatone

[scsu1975]

"King Kong vs Godzilla" (1962)--Starring the title two.

 

I still haven't seen this one. It was playing at a local theater when I was a kid, so I got a neighbor to go with me. But I didn't realize the movie was changing that day. So instead of King Kong vs Godzilla, was got to see ... The Odd Couple!

[scsu1975]

 

 

CHEAP LOOKING MONKEY SUITS obviously worn by some JANITOR likely.

 

In the spirit of political correctness, I believe you mean "inexpensive tuxedos worn by maintenance engineers."

[TomJH]

I still haven't seen this one. It was playing at a local theater when I was a kid, so I got a neighbor to go with me. But I didn't realize the movie was changing that day. So instead of King Kong vs Godzilla, was got to see ... The Odd Couple!

 

Well, Godzilla was a bit of a slob. He certainly left a mess anywhere he went.

[scsu1975]

Well, Godzilla was a bit of a slob. He certainly left a mess anywhere he went.

True. But I don't think he ever threw a plate of spaghetti against the wall. Sushi, maybe.

[TomJH]

True. But I don't think he ever threw a plate of spaghetti against the wall. Sushi, maybe.

 

Maybe he didn't throw spaghetti but he sure knew how to throw a fit.

[speedracer5]

I still haven't seen this one. It was playing at a local theater when I was a kid, so I got a neighbor to go with me. But I didn't realize the movie was changing that day. So instead of King Kong vs Godzilla, was got to see ... The Odd Couple!

 

Someone should do a remake of The Odd Couple featuring King Kong and Godzilla.  King Kong strikes me as a bit of a fussbudget (after he falls from the Empire State Building, "my back! my back!") and Godzilla just rampages through a city leaving mountains of devastation in his path, much like Oscar in The Odd Couple.  If they can remake Ghostbusters with all ladies, why not The Odd Couple with movie monsters? 

[film lover 293]

"Mysterious Island" (1961)--Starring Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Gary Merrill, and Ray Harryhausen's Special Effects.

 

Film is based on the 1874 Jules Verne novel.

 

The plot: film starts in a Confederate prison camp in 1865 Richmond.  Four Union prisoners manage to escape via a Confederate weather balloon.  They crash several days later on a seemingly deserted island--and discover they have company.  Film goes from there.

 

The acting isn't the main attraction, and the cast knows it.  The script gives them stereotypes to play, and they don't overcome the script.  Greenwood and Merrill are the two who fare best, Greenwood by satirizing her role as a Bored English lady, Merrill by getting laughs out of old jokes.

 

Harryhausen's special effects were the main box-office draw, and he comes through pretty well.  The visuals vary from OK  to spectacularly effective.  The set painted backdrops are terribly obvious, especially when the island is first sighted.

 

Wilkie Cooper did the mostly effective photography.

 

There is an excellent score by Bernard Herrmann.

 

Film is an enjoyable watch; not the best of Harryhausen, but far from his worst.  3/4.

 

Source--archive.org.  Search "MystrIsd1961".

[Sepiatone]

True. But I don't think he ever threw a plate of spaghetti against the wall. Sushi, maybe.

 

*snicker*   It's NOT Spaghetti....it's LINGUINI."  

 

 

Sepiatone

[NickAndNora34]

I re-watched Coraline yesterday around 1:30 AM (since I was babysitting until midnight, and was all wound up from that and couldn't sleep). This Tim Burton stop-motion movie was based off of a Neil Gaiman book of the same name. I first read the book when I was in second or third grade, maybe, and watched the movie when it came out. I am surprised I wasn't scared by this movie at all. It's creepy, but an interesting piece.

 

Essentially, this girl named Coraline Jones moves to a new town and in her house there is this door in the wall that is locked. She unlocks the door, and crawls inside to find a mystical tunnel that leads somewhere. She goes through the tunnel and finds a duplicate of her new town, but with a twist. Her "other mother" and "other father" both have black buttons for eyes (as well as her "other neighbors"), and all the animals are alive, but are filled with stuffing, not organs/blood. 

 

 

[EricJ]

I re-watched Coraline yesterday around 1:30 AM (since I was babysitting until midnight, and was all wound up from that and couldn't sleep). This Tim Burton stop-motion movie was based off of a Neil Gaiman book of the same name. I first read the book when I was in second or third grade, maybe, and watched the movie when it came out. I am surprised I wasn't scared by this movie at all. It's creepy, but an interesting piece.

 

A HENRY SELICK movie of a Neil Gaiman book.  From the DIRECTOR of Nightmare Before Christmas.

 

(I can take the TNBC confusion, because Tim's name was plastered over the title, but when Coraline gets lumped in with Mike Johnson's "Corpse Bride" by "Tim did it because he can do any stop-motion" fans...)

[scsu1975]

*snicker*   It's NOT Spaghetti....it's LINGUINI."  

 

 

Sepiatone

Now it's garbage.

[MovieMadness]

Bless anyone who watched A Passage to India. You have more patience than Job.

[speedracer5]

I re-watched Coraline yesterday around 1:30 AM (since I was babysitting until midnight, and was all wound up from that and couldn't sleep). This Tim Burton stop-motion movie was based off of a Neil Gaiman book of the same name. I first read the book when I was in second or third grade, maybe, and watched the movie when it came out. I am surprised I wasn't scared by this movie at all. It's creepy, but an interesting piece.

 

Essentially, this girl named Coraline Jones moves to a new town and in her house there is this door in the wall that is locked. She unlocks the door, and crawls inside to find a mystical tunnel that leads somewhere. She goes through the tunnel and finds a duplicate of her new town, but with a twist. Her "other mother" and "other father" both have black buttons for eyes (as well as her "other neighbors"), and all the animals are alive, but are filled with stuffing, not organs/blood. 

 

Coraline was produced by Laika Studios in Hillsboro, OR, which is about 20 miles west of downtown Portland.  The studio is owned by Phil Knight of Nike and his son, Travis Knight, who serves as the CEO and a main animator of the company. 

[film lover 293]

"It Came From Beneath The Sea" (1955)--Starring Faith Domergue and Ray Harryhausen's monster.

 

A nuclear sub is taking its' shakedown cruise when the Captain puts on Swing music on the stereo.  The monster disapproves of his music choice and pins down the sub.  The sub eventually gets free, but there is unidentifiable matter stuck to it.  Eventually scientist Domergue figures out it belongs to a giant octopus.  Film goes from there.

 

Director Robert Gordon does a good job of not letting the film get bogged down in talk. Domergue and the Navy argue about whether sea monsters actually exist.  The film is worth watching for the stop-motion animation Harryhausen did on a limited budget.  The monster is marvelously realistic looking as it wreaks havoc upon the countryside.

 

 Columbia B movie is lifted out of the mediocre by great special effects.  3/4.

 

Source--archive.org.  Search "ItCFrBTheS1955".

[speedracer5]

Ship Ahoy.  I watched this musical featuring Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton yesterday.  I had recorded it during Powell's birthday tribute a couple weeks ago.  I really liked this film.  It featured Powell, a dancer who is asked by the government (or so she thinks) to secretly transport a magnetic mine to Puerto Rico.  While on the cruise ship, she meets and falls in love with Skelton, an author who is vacationing after a nervous breakdown.  Bert Lahr plays Skelton's assistant.  The plot is thin but who cares, it features great dancing by Powell and some funny bits by Skelton and Lahr.  Frank Sinatra is featured as the lead singer of Tommy Dorsey's Orchestra, whom Powell works for.  I could be crazy, but I think that the big ship set that Powell dances in front of in the finale was also featured in other Powell films.  I'm thinking that it also appeared in Born to Dance.  

 

I Love Lucy Christmas Special.  Despite some naysayers here on the board, I watched CBS' latest colorized Christmas special and really enjoyed it.  While I still prefer my I Love Lucy in black and white, this latest special was the best one yet.  It featured the non-syndicated I Love Lucy Christmas episode (Desi Arnaz pulled it from the syndication package because he didn't want people watching a Christmas episode in July) and the episode "Lucy Gets into Pictures."  In the past, during the Christmas episode, when they showed the flashback scenes, the flashbacks were in black and white.  This year, they colorized the flashbacks.  There was also another flaw--the Christmas bulbs on the Christmas Tree were white.  The "colorizers" forgot to color the bulbs.  This year, they fixed that and the bulbs were colored.  "Lucy Gets into Pictures" was gorgeous and just as entertaining as always.  I really like these CBS colorized specials.  I find them very interesting.  I like to see how Lucy's wardrobe (for example) may have looked in color.  I know for a fact, that the show was mostly a conglomeration of greys, whites and blacks as they looked the best on black and white film.  However, to be presented with the idea that the Ricardos' couch may have been mustard yellow is an interesting proposition.  I always envisioned it being beige.  I read somewhere (I can't remember where) that the people colorizing the episodes were actually using color photographs and other memorabilia as a reference when choosing colors. 

[film lover 293]

"Robinson Crusoe On Mars" (1964)--Starring Paul Mantee, Vic Lundin, and Adam West, directed by Byron Haskin.

 

Good sci-fi film from Haskin, who directed "The War of the Worlds" (1953), "The Naked Jungle" (1954) and "Conquest of Space" (1955), among other special effects laden movies.

 

The plot: a spaceship doing a visual survey of Mars crashes.  One pilot and a pet monkey survive.  They must learn to adapt to their strange surroundings to survive if they wish to be rescued.

 

The actors do well enough, although the monkey steals her scenes.  The effective photography is by Winton Hoch (1960's "The Lost World" and 1961's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea").  Some shots are obviously on a soundstage.  The musical score is by Nathan Van Cleave.  The Special Visual effects are by Lawrence Butler, who did the Oscar winning special effects for "Marooned" (1969).

 

 According to the credits, some of the scenes on Mars were filmed in Death Valley National Park.

 

Film starts out slow, but improves as it goes along.  2.9/4.

 

Source--archive.org.  Search "RobCrMs1964".

[wouldbestar]

"Robinson Crusoe On Mars" (1964)--Starring Paul Mantee, Vic Lundin, and Adam West, directed by Byron Haskin.

 

 

Source--archive.org.  Search "RobCrMs1964".

 

This is a favorite of mine.  Welcome to the club!

 

You're right about Mona, the Monkey stealing the movie.  When she disappears near the end and you think she's bought it, you feel sad. It makes it all the happier when she suddenly pops up and gets rescued along with Kit and "Friday".  Yes, he looks more Native American than being from another world but Victor Lundin, the actor who plays him, works well with star Paul Mantee and you forget that when you start getting caught up in the story.  This is a three star film or 3.0 out of four.  It's amazing what can be done with a small budget when the people involved care about what they're doing.  

[film lover 293]

"It Came From Outer Space" (1953)--Starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush.  Directed by Jack Arnold.

 

Film is based on a Ray Bradbury story, touched up by screenwriter Harry Essex.

 

The plot: Something from space crashes near Sandrock, Arizona.  At first John (Carlson) and Ellen (Rush) think it's a meteor.  John goes down into the crater where it landed and insists that it's a ship of some sort.  Nobody believes him, and he is regarded as strange--until people start disappearing.  

 

Film's eerie mood is helped enormously by its' lonely desert setting, an excellent script by Bradbury and Essex, Joseph Gershenson's creepy music score, the stark photography of Joseph Stine, and the Point of view shots from the monster's perspective.  Carlson is convincingly obsessed with being right.  Rush is uncommonly sensible for a heroine in this genre.

 

The movie actually tells the townspeople to "keep watch" that the space people " will return at another time.  Watch for Russell Johnson, the Professor on "Gilligan's Island.  The movie was one of Universal's entries in the 3-D craze of the early 1950's.

 

Film is a minor classic of Cold War paranoia.  3.2/4.

 

Source--archive.org.  Search "ItCmfrmOtrSp1953".

[LawrenceA]

The Ipcress File (1965) & Funeral In Berlin (1966) - Michael Caine plays Harry Palmer, a more down-to-earth British spy than contemporary James Bond, in these first 2 films in a series based on the novels of Len Deighton. These were produced by Harry Saltzman, one half of the team responsible for the Bond films, and many of the Bond film crew worked on these as well.

 

In The Ipcress File, Palmer is reassigned to a new department to help solve a series of kidnappings and murders of leading scientists. It leads to a conspiracy to create brainwashed killers. Nigel Green, Gordon Jackson, Sue Lloyd and Guy Doleman round out the cast. I was disappointed in this first entry, as I felt there wasn't much to the story. There's a double agent, of course, but his/her identity should be evident to most viewers fairly early. There's also little in the way of character development, and if it wasn't for Caine's easy, natural charm, even Palmer would see like a cardboard cut-out. The film also looks dreary, although this may be due to the condition of the print TCM aired. Sidney J. Furie directed.

 

Funeral In Berlin finds Palmer sent to West Berlin to help facilitate the defection of a major East Berlin security official (Oskar Homolka, hamming it up as always). Throw in a beautiful Israeli (Eva Renzi), a lighter comic touch, and the usual cross/double-cross spy shenanigans, and you have a more engaging film. The print shown was pristine, as well, so the visuals were more appealing. Guy Hamilton directed.

 

The Ipcress File 6/10  and  Funeral In Berlin 7/10

 

I watched the third film in the series, 1967's Billion Dollar Brain, sometime last year, so I didn't rewatch it during the Palmer marathon. I gave that one a 7/10, too.

 

Source: TCM 

[scsu1975]

"It Came From Outer Space" (1953)--Starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush.  Directed by Jack Arnold.

 

 

Film's eerie mood is helped enormously by its' lonely desert setting, an excellent script by Bradbury and Essex, Joseph Gershenson's creepy music score, the stark photography of Joseph Stine, and the Point of view shots from the monster's perspective.  Carlson is convincingly obsessed with being right.  Rush is uncommonly sensible for a heroine in this genre.

 

The film is very intelligent science fiction. Joseph Gershenson gets screen credit for music supervision of these Universal flicks, but at least part of this score was composed by Herman Stein. Gershenson was lucky to have some up and coming composers under his wing, including a guy named Henry Mancini who did pretty well for himself (and also composed the score for Tarantula).

[Dargo]

...

 

The Ipcress File 6/10  and  Funeral In Berlin 7/10

 

I watched the third film in the series, 1967's Billion Dollar Brain, sometime last year, so I didn't rewatch it during the Palmer marathon. I gave that one a 7/10, too.

 

Source: TCM 

 

Interesting ratings here, Lawrence.

 

Ya see, after these three films were shown back-to-back-to-back a few weeks back on TCM and which were all first time viewings to me, I thought the first film was the best of the lot and with each succeeding film slightly inferior to its predecessor.

 

(...and so and FWIW, I would have rated them 8/10, 7/10 and 6/10 respectively)

[LawrenceA]

Interesting ratings here, Lawrence.

 

Ya see, after these three films were shown back-to-back-to-back a few weeks back on TCM and which were all first time viewings to me, I thought the first film was the best of the lot and with each succeeding film slightly inferior to its predecessor.

 

(...and so and FWIW, I would have rated them 8/10, 7/10 and 6/10 respectively)

 

Yeah, from what I've read, that's the critical consensus, too. But I just couldn't get into Ipcress much. Something about it was very off-putting to me. I liked the other two better, although I wouldn't count any as a favorite.

[laffite]

Now it's garbage.

 

I would've thrown it against the wall too ... after all the guy made me miss a triple play.