Random Film of the Day*: 20 Million Miles to Earth

Posted on May 9, 2013 by geelw

*For the next week or so plus, I’m going to add a random film the great Ray Harryhausen worked on. The legendary special effects MASTER passed away on May 7 at age 92 in London and yes, the film world owes him more than they can ever repay.

20000000_Miles While it has some great creature and scenic effects, some terrifically lousy acting and ridiculous dialog plus a few plot elements nearly sink 20,000,000 Miles to Earth like the doomed spacecraft that brings the Ymir into movie monster history.

That said, there are some iconic images in this 1957 sci-fi flick that linger in the memory, all masterfully animated by Harryhausen’s steady hands. His Ymir is at first “cute” and tiny, but as it increases in height and gets poked and pushed into an uncontrollable rage by a cast of idiots who misunderstand the poor creature until the army is called in to blow it off Rome’s Colosseum, you actually feel more sympathy for it by the time the film ends. Of course, if you just hate monsters in general, you’ll be cheering along with the fist-pumping crowd when the creature gets its due. But I’ll bet you a nickel that you’ll still think that Ymir was pretty damn cool…
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Random Film of the Week: The Window

Posted on May 6, 2013 by geelw

I remember seeing The Window as a kid on TV and probably laughing a wee bit too much because the lying wolf-crying brat who no one believed about the murder he finally DID see was getting his just desserts when all those chickens came home to roost. Seeing it a few times more as I got older (and thankfully, wiser) revealed a pretty sinister film noir thriller with probably the best child performance I’d ever seen in a film that old.

Granted, I’m not advocating the already generally creepy “Child in Danger!” flick or that entire sub-genre of flicks made throughout cinematic history as a “must-see” collection of films if you’ve got a very soft spot for your own brood of lovable lamp-breaking, cookie stealing ankle-biters. However, as a chilling little classic film that’s never been remade properly (at least in my humble opinion), it’s a total spine-shaker right from the beginning…

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Random Film of the Week: FRENZY

Posted on May 2, 2013 by geelw

FRENZY poster While the middle to late 1960’s weren’t too good for Alfred Hitchcock’s film output, his fantastic 1972 thriller, FRENZY saw the director return to fine form with a chilling blend of murder, “wrong man” plot, police procedural (of sorts) and black comedy. Between the solid casting of mostly imperfect-looking British actors, actual London locations blended perfectly with studio sets, a bit of nudity and one very unsettling (and lengthy) assault/murder scene that’s shocking but necessary to drive the plot, this is one of those films where you can feel the director’s complete confidence in himself, his cast and crew.

Right from the opening notes of Ron Goodwin’s somewhat regal (and intentionally pompous, I’ve always thought) main theme, the film doesn’t skip a beat before delivering its first corpse, a nude woman who washes up during a politician’s waterside speech about cleaning up the Thames River. Keep an eyeball peeled for Hitch’s requisite cameo and get your smile in, as things are going to get darker in Merry Olde London soon enough…
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Two More Reasons To Grab Message From Space On DVD…

Posted on April 18, 2013 by geelw

Sure, it’s not the best sci-fi flick out there, but there’s a certain crazy exuberance in these clips that makes Message From Space pretty hilarious in its own right. Yeah, I like bad films as well as great ones, so sue me. or at least watch this one and some of the others I recommend from time to time. You’ll get an education on cinema and not have to pay too much to some silly film school where all you’ll learn is you’ve gone into debt and no one will hire you to work on a feature film because you spent too much time in class listening to some old guy telling you there’s nothing better than Citizen Kane. Which is true in some respects, but there are a LOT of great (and not so great) movies in other genres worth seeing…

Random Film of the Week: Message From Space FINALLY Gets A DVD Release!

Posted on April 15, 2013 by geelw

Way back in 1978, if you somehow STILL didn’t see Star Wars even when the film got its big re-release (or was still running in some theaters), this was another one of those “replacement” flicks you may have gotten taken to instead (or had to settle for if it was running at a theater nearby the one where Star Wars was playing). Famed Japanese director Kinji Fukusaku (Battle Royale) whipped up a first-rate “B” movie that yes, takes a lot of inspiration from George Lucas’ space opera, but also adds bits from anime and Japanese samurai flicks plus a few other things and the result is an instant cult classic (well, in my book). The effects team did some pretty amazing things in the model shots that give many of them a more kinetic look than what ILM did earlier, but the tradeoff is the acting in the latter film sticks to everyone mugging it up for the camera in their own ways… Continue reading →

Random Film of the Week: Dead of Night (1945)

Posted on March 4, 2013 by geelw

(thanks, scaringeachother!)

Even though it’s almost 60 years old, for my money, Dead of Night is still an effectively scary horror anthology as well as one of those classic movies worth tracking down. It’s also a decent comedy when it needs to be and even a bit of drama and mystery gets tossed into the mix. Four different directors (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer) worked on the five stories that make up the film (Dearden directed the framing sections that make up the beginning and ending as well as one of the stories), but it’s a seamless production where no style overtakes another. Of course, being an Ealing Studios release means there’s a huge amount of that British film quality that studio managed to make standard issue and a sort of Good Housekeeping Seal for film buffs who want no junk tossed at them from the balcony. Of course, most film buffs sit IN that balcony, but Ealing’s films were always fit for both stuffy critics above the common folk and those cheap-seaters below tossing popcorn and balled up paper napkins upward…

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If You’re Having A Lousy Week, Let Ann-Margrock Get You On Your Feet…

Posted on February 15, 2013 by geelw

Heh. I sat in a Starbucks most of today working and for about an hour during the afternoon I had to listen to two guys sitting nearby talk about old cartoons while the girlfriend of one was completely baffled about why they were so into The Flintstones. By the time they got around to the assorted celebrities and music numbers on the show and one guy hit up YouTube for a few videos (including the one above), I had a few tunes looping in my head until I left for the night. Anyway, from the 1963 episode “Ann Margrock Presents” here you go – if you’re not shaking it around the room, you’re probably not breathing. Enjoy! Hmmm, now I want one of those bird basses or an elephant trombone (I think there’s room in the front closet for one of those)…

Random Film of the Week: Rocketship X-M

Posted on August 5, 2012 by geelw

(Thanks, SciFiBMovieGuy!)

Amusingly enough, that movie poster on the left calls Rocketship X-M a story about man’s “conquest of space”, but spoiler alert: it’s not quite that triumphant a voyage at all. Yeah, man makes it into space in that fancy silver craft, but if there’s a conquest here, it’s presented in a pretty stark manner that’s not conducive to anything resembling a “happy” ending. That said, this one’s yet another highly recommended classic that’s worth a look if you’ve never seen it before and yes indeed, it’s worth grabbing a few sci-fi loving friends to take along for the ride. Pack that space ice cream, some popcorn and maybe a clean hanky, but leave your thinking cap on that bedpost, buddy…

While the actual “science” in this low-budget 1950 sci-fi flick isn’t exactly realistic and indeed, laughable (hey, we didn’t send a man into space until over a decade later), this is still a pretty powerful film that manages to be memorable for a few reasons. Granted, it was rushed to theaters to beat out the superior (in every technical aspect, at least) Destination Moon, but the anti-nuke/anti-war message presented makes this gem resonate a bit more than George Pal’s classic (which can be seen as the 2001: A Space Odyssey of its time thanks to all that attention to detail). What works in this little film (shot over 18 days for under $100,000) is the script (from an uncredited Dalton Trumbo – look him up if you don’t know who he is) that adds an interesting layer of sentimentality to the characters. Oh, and the acting is first-rate as well all around.

Of course, you’ll probably be too busy rooting for the crew of the X-M to get out of the rather crappy situation they’ve found themselves in after their moon rocket ends up going WAY off course (as in not scientifically possible) rather than look to deeply for hidden messages. Then again, that excellent Ferde Grofe score plus the decent acting are compelling enough reason to sit down and enjoy this one for what it is. In other words, flush the insulting (but yes, quite amusing) Mystery Science Theater 3000 version and watch the original movie instead. Some films deserve to be better remembered for what they were back when they were released and not someone’s bastardized joke-book version that pays no respect to something that tried to bring a certain er, gravity to a formerly not so serious genre.

Yeah, it’s a short review, but this is one of those films that just needs to be seen more and talked about afterward. Enjoy the trip and as the old saying goes: be nice to the people you meet on the way up – you’re going to meet (most of) the same ones on the way back down…

-GW