Category Archives: entertainment

The Whistler Once Again

Posted on October 2, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I was very happy on Saturday morning to see another Whistler movie listed for TCM. I naturally DVR’d it for Steven’s and my enjoyment on Sunday. By the way, Spoiler Alert! Although I do not intend to give away the ending.

The Secret of the Whistler opens with the usual shadow of a man and sound of whistling followed by voice-over narration.

I have not mentioned that all the Whistler movies have starred Richard Dix. So far we’ve seen him as a businessman who changes his mind about suicide by hit man, a mysterious stranger who enlists the help of a beautiful blond, and a rich guy who turns to murder after supposedly learning how to live. This time out he plays an apparently not very talented artist who nobody particularly likes living off his ailing wife.

The description of the movie in the Guide said an artist’s second wife suspects he killed the first wife. This is a plot that has worked very well in any number of gothic romance novels (these are the paperback books with a full moon, a castle and a beautiful girl running, not the teenagers with lots of black make-up) (I suppose I have just dated myself). It took me a while to realize they were going to spend most of the picture getting him married to Wife No. 2.

The movie starts out creepily enough with a woman ordering her own tombstone. At least, the movie clearly means for us to find it creepy or at least surprising. Haven’t these people every heard of pre-planning one’s funeral? The lady says, “You will be notified,” when asked date of death. Well, duh! I think it would have been a good deal more creepy if she had known the date. On the other hand, that may have meant she planned to commit suicide. Oh, hey, what if she would have put as her epitaph: “Murdered.” Just a thought.

Where was I? Ah yes, soon we have the set-up: unsuccessful artist husband sponging off dying wife while making up to beautiful blond gold-digger model. The other characters include a female artist, apparently successful, and her reporter boyfriend and another male artist who is friend and sometime employer of Blondie.

Richard Dix plays all sad-eyes my-wife-is-dying while Blondie plays all wide-eyed sympathy till we’re not really sure who is playing who. Actually, I wish they had played up Blondie as cold-hearted gold-digger a little more. For one thing, when she starts to suspect her new husband of murder she could have had blackmail on her mind. For all I know she did. I don’t think the actress was quite clear on the character’s motivations.

The movie takes an awfully long time to get going. A few times the Whistler addresses Richard Dix, asking him is he getting paranoid, is he getting desperate? I don’t think he did that in the other pictures. Once things do start moving, they move quickly enough gloss over a couple of “Wait a minute!” points.

For example, the loyal (to the first wife) maid is still around, per provision in the will (really, you would think first wife would have left the poor woman a pension, not just a crappy job). The maid says she’s staying to prove the husband a murderer. All she has to do is find the diary. Hello! They were on a three month honeymoon, during which time all the dead wife’s things were moved to the attic and the house redecorated. Even if the maid was locked out for the three months, are her duties so onerous she couldn’t find ten minutes to look in the attic since? It certainly doesn’t take Blondie very long to find said diary when she goes up there.

Things wrap up pretty quickly, as Whistler movies tend to do. Not a bad movie in spite of the slow start. I wish they had done a little more with the tombstone and given the minor characters more scenes, but what do I want in an hour and fifteen minutes? For a cheesy interlude on a Sunday, I enjoyed it.

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Another Whistler Tale

Posted on September 25, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Spoiler Alert! It is possible I will give away almost every plot point for the following movie. But I promise not to tell who the murderer is (there now, you see, I just gave away that there’s a murder!).

Saturday before last when I perused the listings for TCM, I was delighted to note a Whistler movie. After I reviewed two Whistler movies in this space, a reader told me there were eight Whistler movies. Naturally I would like to see them all. I even hoped this would be a weekly thing on TCM — a Whistler movie every Saturday for eight weeks. Alas, this past Saturday offered no Whistler movie. No matter; I still had The Voice of the Whistler on DVR. We watched it Sunday afternoon.

I noted that the movie was directed as well as co-written by William Castle. That boded well. The movie opens a little differently from the other two Whistler movies I’ve seen, with a shot of a lonely lighthouse on a rocky cliff with crashing waves. Still, a lonely lighthouse is good for a scary movie — remembering a movie I’ve reviewed recently whose name escapes me but which featured a character named Vi who gets pitched out of the lighthouse onto the rocks below.

We hear the familiar whistling and see the shadow, this time on a wild, craggy shore instead of a back alley in a city with a thousand secrets (I guess “city with a thousand secrets” sounds more Raymond Chandler than William Castle).

The entire movie is a flashback. Steven has pointed out that this is a common technique in old movies. The flashback is of course a time-honored fictional technique in many mediums. In general, telling the whole story as flashback is going a little far, but in this case it is appropriate.

We are introduced to a woman who despises and fears loneliness yet lives alone in this abandoned lighthouse (complete with cat). Why? It is a result of greed and murder. At least, looking back I can’t quite remember if the Whistler actually mentioned murder in his intro. But why would the Whistler be telling a story that did not involve murder?

As it turns out, we have to wait a long time for the murder. First we meet an industrialist. This movie is unusual in that we actually get to see what his business is — he makes cars. At least, he bought the manufactory and made a huge success of it. Perhaps he has other businesses to make a kind of an empire. At any rate, he’s filthy rich and has no friends.

Just about the time he decides to get a personal life, he has a heart attack. En route to a boat cruise, to relax and regain his health, he collapses again and ends up in the care of a cockney cab driver living in one of those movie working class neighborhoods I would love to live in.

Sparrow, the cab driver and easily the most likable character in the picture, begins to teach Rich Guy how to gain friends. It seems Sparrow was once a boxing champ, plenty of money but no idea who his real friends were or how to enjoy life. Now he walks down the street, greeting folks by name, asking about their families, and basically giving Rich Guy a lesson in a better way to live.

At a clinic to which Sparrow brings Rich Guy, we meet a beautiful nurse, who will eventually become Lonely Lighthouse Lady (complete with cat). She is engaged to a young doctor but is putting off marriage because she does not want her kids to grow up in the poverty she sees at the clinic.

Excuse me, what? The neighborhood is peopled with friendly working class salt of the earth. The clinic is a compassionate haven that strives to treat the whole person. Yet it is a hole of squalid poverty from which the nurse is determined to escape?

Everybody loves her. In fact, Rich Guy falls in love with her, after a series of events that I won’t spoil for you. Eventually the stage is set for murder.

I have to say, the Nurse/Lonely Lighthouse Lady (complete with cat) is not a consistent character. She veers from being a generic beautiful movie girl, to a dame with a hardscrabble past determined to make something of herself (by marrying; this is the ’50s, after all), to being a shrew witch, to being, you know, Lonely Lighthouse etc.

Her young doctor lover — “the young man who doesn’t have to be rich but doesn’t dare to be poor,” according to a later conversation — is hard to get a grip on too, but that may be because he is busy reacting to his girlfriend’s changes.

Rich Guy, in the meantime, seems to have forgotten the life lessons taught him by Sparrow. Did I say Sparrow is the most likable character in the picture? On second thought, he is the only likable character in the picture. Except for a few really minor players who we see only once or twice briefly.

The whole movie is really more of a character study than a thriller, horror or murder movie. Which would have been fine had the characters been better developed. As it is, by the time we finally get to the murder, it is too little too late.

And then it’s like they ran out of time, because the Whistler comes back on as a voice-over and wraps everything up. We are left with the image of the Lonely Lady in the Lighthouse, petting the cat. And the hope that TCM will show a more exciting Whistler movie soon.

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Musings on Movies

Posted on August 31, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

A day after I had watched the last cheesy movie I wrote about, I wanted to watch another cheesy movie. Before I had a chance to suggest one, Steven had turned on a Lifetime movie starring an actress he likes. Well, what could be cheesier than a Lifetime movie, I asked myself (I didn’t answer, of course. It was a rhetorical question. Don’t you just hate people who answer rhetorical questions?).

Lifetime movies have been around a long time. I remember watching the Lifetime channel back in the ’90s (no, not the 1890s — stop making old age jokes!). The movies quickly got a bad reputation. I remember reading a review of one in Entertainment Weekly that said something to the effect of, “It is clear by now that Lifetime cannot make a convincing suspense movie. The culprit is always a man, any man — men, the beasts!” I daresay I don’t have the exact quote, but I remember Steven and I being highly amused. Lifetime movies got a kind of a plug in a short-lived sitcom in the late ’90s. I don’t remember a single thing about the sitcom except that the main guy’s roommate was addicted to Lifetime movies. Apparently all he did all day was sit on the couch and watch them.

I have not really watched a Lifetime movie recently that I can recall. I didn’t pay too much attention to Sunday’s, either. I was busy reading an Agatha Christie play and doing an anacrostic puzzle (I love anacrostic puzzles). Anyways, I’ve been burned by Lifetime movies in the past, and not just because the culprit was a beastly man. They always kill off the characters I like, and they are not kind to animals.

Oh, I know, no animals were harmed in the making of etc. The actors playing the characters I like aren’t really dead, either. It still upsets me. I just have to share one example.

First scene of the movie: woman hears her dog barking and comes out of her bedroom to see these guys cleaning out her house. Dog stands at the top of the stairs barking and barking. Woman stands mesmerized till the guys turn around and see her. She still just stands there till her daughter comes out of her bedroom. Dog is still barking. Woman grabs daughter and pulls her into her bedroom, leaving the dog to his fate. She drags a dresser in front of the door and calls 911. When the cops get there, of course the poor dog is dead.

What the hell? That dog was barking at the bad guys for like ten minutes before anybody did anything! Wouldn’t they have liked to silence him before he woke anybody up? He’s still barking when the woman is OBVIOUSLY calling the police. WHAT GOOD DOES IT DO TO KILL THE POOR DOG NOW???

Therefore, when I saw a cat in Sunday’s movie, I made up my mind not to pay too much attention. As it happened, kitty-kat lived. Grandma, however, did not. And now I’ve given away a major plot point. True, I have not mentioned the name of the movie. Still, anybody reading this may tune into a Lifetime movie and if there is a grandmother and a cat, sit there wondering if this is the one where granny gets it but the cat does not. Let that be a lesson to me.

I kind of forgot where I was going with this when I started writing it. Unfortunately, it was all I had to write about today. I suppose we could chalk it up to a little pre-Friday lame… no, wait, I have a better idea. I didn’t do Middle-aged Musings Monday or even Mid-Week Musings. I shall scroll back to the top and type in the title you will have read before you read this paragraph. Happy Thursday, everyone.

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Star-Studded Something

Posted on August 23, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Last Sunday Steven and I took a break from cheesy horror movies and our usual Sunday crime shows with a star studded Agatha Christie which had not previously come our way: Evil Under the Sun (1982). TCM showed the movie Saturday afternoon. I set the DVR to tape it for our subsequent enjoyment.

I had read Evil Under the Sun and thought I kind of sort of remembered the solution. That hardly mattered. For one thing, if Dame Christie had adapted the story herself she may have changed the ending, as she did in at least two of her stage adaptations. I don’t think she adapted any of the movies, but I believe Hollywood has been known to make changes as well (No! Hollywood make changes? Say it ain’t so!).

I love a star-studded Agatha Christie movie. We have two on DVD: Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978). We also have my personal favorite, Witness for the Prosecution (1957), which, although its cast boasts at least four well-known actors is for some reason not a Star-Studded Agatha Christie.

That raises the interesting (to me) question of just what makes a Star-Studded Agatha Christie Extravaganza? Hmm. I guess “extravaganza” is too big a word, but just plain “movie” is too small, and “star-studded Agatha Christie” seems lacking. Leave that for now. Let’s look at “Star Studded.” That implies that there must be something to stud. Something already showy or exotic or glamorous. Evil Under the Sun is set on a tropical island. Death on the Nile takes place in the mysterious Middle East. Murder on the Orient Express happens on a famous luxury train. All three have costumes to die for. My favorite is Angela Lansbury in Nile, but Jacqueline Bisset on Orient is noteworthy, and Maggie Smith in Evil can give them both a run for their money.

So I think that’s a major component of a Star Studded Movie Event (better than extravaganza?). It’s fun just to look at. I think another important component is that most of the stars must at some point be suspects. Witness for the Prosecution is a suspense play as much as a murder mystery. The question isn’t so much whodunnit as how is Charles Laughton going to prove that Tyrone Powers didn’t do it? In my star studded vehicles, almost everybody has a motive and in some cases means and opportunity as well. It is the task of Hercule Poirot to prove that the one who couldn’t possibly have done it in fact did (oh dear, did I give too much away? Well, these movies are enjoyable even when you know whodunnit).

There’s another element many star studded attractions have: Hercule Poirot, Dame Christie’s famous detective. I believe there are a couple of star studders I’m not familiar with featuring her other sleuth, Miss Marple (I’ve read that Christie preferred Miss Marple to M. Poirot, but I love them both). Audiences and readers tend to like a series detective, and producers and publishers really, really like them. But that’s a whole other blog post.

So now I have digressed almost completely away from the movie I started to write about to the tune of about 500 words. And now Steven tells me I left And Then There Were None (1945) off my list of Agatha Christie movies we own. How remiss of me! Now I’ll have to watch that one again, to see if it meets my criteria for a Star Studded Romp (oh, that’s even worse than “extravaganza”! I’ll work on it).

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The Movie Should Have Been Invisible

Posted on May 25, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I don’t know that I’m technically qualified to review my latest cheesy horror viewing. I did not fall asleep this time. I left the room to check my Facebook notifications. I can’t even pretend I was expecting something important; I was just bored. Steven told me I didn’t miss much, but still.

On the other hand, I write a silly blog. It’s not like I’m influencing voters for the Academy Awards. And if I was trying to influence them, well, that’s on them to remain unbiased. My conscience is clear.

It might perhaps be a good idea to insert a spoiler alert here. I will soon give away such plot points as I could discern from this timewaster. I normally hate to give things away and am often at great pains not to, so as not to spoil anybody’s viewing pleasure. But I’m telling you, don’t watch this movie. It’s dull. If you really think you might want to see this movie and you like to be surprised… well I doubt you will be surprised anyways. So read my review or don’t. Watch the movie or don’t (Don’t!). My conscience is clear.

The Invisible Ghost (1941) stars Bela Lugosi, which should be a selling point. I suppose I ought to know better (but I’ve mentioned before how I almost never do what I ought to do). The movie begins creepily enough, with Bela having a formal dinner with a wife who is not there (the cliche there being that a lot of guys would like that set up) (misogynist bastards). Next we hear something about some murders that are happening, although it seemed to me that nobody was getting too exercised about it.

Then we see the missing wife. Some servant is hiding her until she feels better after the accident. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I was quickly losing track of this movie. I think the wife tried to leave her husband but met with an accident that affected her mind. You know that childlike state that movie crazy people often have. She has it.

Finally we get to see a murder. Bela gets to do his scary eyes and, as is often the case in movies of this era, it isn’t clear exactly how he kills his victims. He lifts up a cloak to just underneath his scary eyes. I suppose the director told him to be Dracula-like. Ah, typecasting at its Hollywood finest. And for anyone who thought revealing Bela as the killer was too big of a spoiler, come on! We’re watching a Bela Lugosi movie! Did you think he wouldn’t kill anybody?

It was shortly after this that I left the room and missed all the plot developments, if any. Just to obviate any need for any of you to sit through this garbage, I’ll tell you that at the end, the wife dies and Bela is arrested for all the murders.

I never found out why the murders were committed in the first place. I suppose in movie fashion it was something about him going crazy because his wife left him. Don’t worry, Steven! I’ll never leave you and thus induce you to commit scary eye murders. So once again, my conscience is clear.

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A Shriek on the Screen

Posted on April 21, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Here is another post on a Horror Classic which turned out to be less cheesy than anticipated. To recapitulate for readers who just tuned in: 50 Horror Classics is a DVD set I gave my husband Steven, and we have been enjoying some pretty cheesy old movies. So naturally I’ve been blogging about them. Yesterday I did a post on one that was less cheesy than others. Likewise the one I’m going to talk about today.

A Shriek in the Night (1933) stars Ginger Rogers, who famously did everything Fred Astaire did only backwards and in high heels (just had to throw that in). This is apparently one of her first movies, and, alas, she does not dance.

The movie starts right out with a shriek. I was a little worried the movie was over already. I mean, hello, there’s the shriek, now what? But there are more shrieks as we go along. Not too many, though. After all, it’s not a ’70s slasher flick.

A man has jumped or been thrown from a penthouse balcony (hmmm… which do you suppose it is?). When we meet Ginger Rogers, she is being questioned by a cop, because she is secretary to the dead guy. Such an attractive live-in secretary raises some officers’ eyebrows, but she assures them there is a dumb, utterly respectable maid to chaperone. The maid, the cop decides, may be respectable but is certainly dumb. She was my favorite character. She added some comic relief and a few shrieks, but they came later. My other favorite character was a hapless cop who couldn’t seem to do anything right.

We soon discover that Ginger is really an intrepid girl reporter. I was glad to hear that. I love intrepid girl reporters, like Fay Wray in The Mystery of the Wax Museum (see post back in, I think January). Ginger is perhaps not as intrepid as Fay and she doesn’t crack as wise, but she helps unravel the mystery. Ginger butts heads with a brash boy reporter, who seems to want to both scoop and marry her. The plot thickens with another shriek and another murder.

It seems the victims all receive a card with a snake and the words, “You will hear it.” What they will hear is the hissing of the steam pipe. I bet the writers rubbed their palms together when they came up with that one. Imagine watching a scary movie where the steam pipe hisses before the murderer strikes, then going home and hearing your steam heat whistle. Do people still heat their houses with whistley steam pipes? I’ve never heard it, with or without a murder.

The movie is fairly scary and suspenseful. And the solution to the mystery holds up. At least, I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night saying, “Wait a minute!” Well, maybe one thing. I’m not clear on how Ginger Rogers escaped the deadly peril she inevitably found herself in. Oh, I saw the cops and boyfriend rush in, but the bad guy had already lit the incinerator. Where was she that she didn’t burn up or die of smoke inhalation?

Oh dear, now I’ve gone and revealed the climax. At least I didn’t say who the bad guy was or how Ginger ended up in the incinerator. And I’m sure nobody really thought the main girl would succumb to the deadly peril, so you can’t really ding me on revealing that she was rescued.

It was a fun watch. It held my interest, which some of the cheesier movies in the collection have not. I’ll let you know how I enjoy the next one. After all, the weekend’s coming.

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Batty Movie

Posted on April 20, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

Spoiler Alert: I may give away too many plot points, so if you thought you might like to see The Bat from 1959 and you like to be surprised, you might want to skip this post till after you see the movie (that’s probably a run-on sentence).

I’ve had so much fun writing about cheesy horror movies that I asked Steven could we watch some more last weekend. He graciously agreed. I was a little disappointed in the cheese quality of our selections. I mean, they weren’t bad (although I do enjoy the irony of being disappointed that a movie is good). However, looking back at the truck sized plot holes in our first movie, I thought it was worth a post.

The Bat stars Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Now, Price has done some majorly cheesy movies, but I think the lowest Moorehead ever stooped was television (and who didn’t love Endora?). Although I may be wrong about that. I’ll have to look in Video Hound for a list of her movies. They used to make a lot more movies than they do these days, so the potential for cheese was greater.

But getting on to the movie. Moorehead plays a crime writer who has rented a mansion which may or may not be haunted. Right away you know you’re in for some excitement, because what fictional crime writer doesn’t encounter an actual murder? None that I know of.

Agnes’ lady maid and constant companion (I know it’s more proper to refer to her as Moorehead, but I feel it is friendlier to call her Agnes). Where was I? Oh yes, the companion right away warns Agnes about this mysterious killer known as The Bat. The Bat apparently rips people’s throats out with a claw. I did not know that was how a bat could kill somebody. I thought movie bats sucked people’s blood, but I guess that’s just vampire movies.

Anyways, this is plot hole number one, which I did not realize till much later when I started pondering What Really Happened (and that’s what makes a good movie plot hole: it’s not till much later on when you go, “Wait a minute!”). Here we have the murderer mentioned early on (as you should have in a murder mystery), but with no motive ascribed. Later on, when we get to the murders this movie is concerned with, there is a very definite motive, namely a million dollars (or is it two?) embezzled from the bank (actually the thief says he “embezzled” the money, but I think it was stolen and he was stepping way up in class). So when the Bat supposedly started killing, his motive for the later killings (the ones we see) hadn’t even happened yet.

But this actually might not be a plot hole. I don’t quite understand what went on. It’s quite possible that The Bat did not do all the killings, or even that The Bat wasn’t The Bat, or that there was no Bat, or maybe the Bat even randomly killed some people earlier in case he needed to establish a cover story. There are actual bats, by the way. The lady maid is threatened by one slipped through the transom, and Vincent Price, who is a doctor, is seen messing around with some in a scientific fashion.

We also encounter some typical old movie female behavior. There’s a mysterious stranger in the house the police can’t find him. We’re in the bedroom with the door locked and the transom kind of sort of blocked. Let’s try to get some sleep! Oh and the perennial, I just heard a noise! I’ll go investigate, you wait here. Never mind that my friend in the other room has a gun and I only have a flashlight (why didn’t that bitch give me the gun? is a question never asked).

The movie is pretty absorbing. It is definitely suspenseful and even scary in parts. It isn’t till afterwards that you realize that it does not make a whole lot of sense.

Looking back over this write up, I don’t think I’ve really done justice to how much the movie really doesn’t make sense. On the brighter side, it hasn’t been nearly the spoiler I alerted you about in the first paragraph. So go ahead and watch the movie. Tell me what you think.

And if anybody really does not want to watch the movie and really would like a plot summary, let me know that too. It’ll give me a subject for a whole nother blog post (oh, I know “whole nother” is not proper English. I can be cheesy too, can’t I?).

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About That Play

Posted on April 19, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I’ve mentioned several times now how I’m too busy for Mohawk Valley adventures because of the play I’m in with Ilion Little Theatre (ILT). I thought I’d spend today’s post talking a little bit about the play, Harvey, by Mary Chase.

Many people are familiar with the 1950 movie version with Jimmy Stewart. At least, when I say, “You know, the one where the guy sees the big white rabbit,” people say, “Oh yeah.” Perhaps they are only humoring me. Before auditions I told everybody I wanted to play the rabbit. Instead I got a part with more lines.

I play Veda Simmons, sister of Elwood P. Dowd, the guy that sees the rabbit. I am a society matron, trying to get my daughter Myrtle Mae “started with a nice group of young people” (meaning we want her to meet a man). When Myrtle and I are entertaining a society lady of some importance (she has a grandson about Myrtle’s age) and are mortified by the arrival of Elwood and his friend, I decide to have him committed to Chumley’s Rest Home. Trouble ensues.

At the rest home we encounter a pair of troubled love birds, the conniving Dr. Chumley and his charming wife, and a possible a love interest for Myrtle (although I think he is a white slaver). Things get a little complicated, especially when I bring in our lawyer Judge Gaffney to sue. A wise cab driver straightens us all out in the end.

OK, that’s not the whole plot, but I think I have mentioned all the characters at least in passing. I didn’t want to leave anybody out, in case some of the cast members read this. I also don’t like to give too much away, because I hope some of my readers will like to come see the play.

Harvey will be presented Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 4, 5 and 6, and Thursday, Friday and Saturday, May 10, 11 and 12. All performances are at 8 p.m. except Sunday’s, which is at 2 p.m. ILT is located in the Stables, behind Remington Arms, Ilion, NY. For more information visit their website at http://www.ilionlittletheatre.org.

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I Love a Monster or Three

Posted on April 6, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

I enjoyed writing my post about the Swamp Women, so I thought I’d continue the idea with another cheesy, uh, classic horror movie. This one has a monster. Three, in fact.

Monster from a Pre-Historic Planet is a Japanese movie from 1967, and the dubbing is pretty much as jarring as you’d expect it to be. I might have gotten used to it, but some of the characters seemed to change voices as they went along. Still, a monster movie from the ’60s, what’s not to like?

I was a little disappointed, though, because the words “pre-historic planet” made me think space travel would be involved, or at least a cool asteroid or alien spaceship landing. But, no, they were apparently referring to the pre-history of this planet. It probably sounded better in Japanese.

We open on a ship. One lady is sunbathing while some scientist-looking types are fooling around with beakers and test tubes. Scenes back on the mainland inform us of the mission. They are in search of exotic animals to populate a tropical paradise themed resort being build by a girly magazine which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. If that last bit got anybody’s hopes up, sorry. The girl sunbathing in the opening — in shorts if I recall correctly — is the only bit of flesh we get. (Not that I was looking.) (Although I wouldn’t have complained if a couple of those guys would have taken their shirts off.)

Soon the scientists and I think a couple of journalists (I knew I might be writing about this, but I still didn’t pay a great deal of attention. Hey, I need to relax on the weekends, too) arrive at a tropical island that coincidentally closely resembles the model of the tropical resort in the magazine president’s office. There they find a giant egg. I’m thinking giant omelet (hadn’t had dinner yet), but of course they think scientific find, something from millions of years ago. It does not occur to anybody that whoever laid the egg might still be around, even when it hatches, revealing a surprisingly cute baby monster, which, of course, they must take back to civilization with them.

I’m sure you see where this is going. It isn’t long before two big monsters come along looking for junior. Then people are fleeing as the monsters stomp on buildings. It’s pretty obviously done with miniatures, because the buildings are not very detailed and there are no people there while the buildings are actually being stomped. Still, I thought the effects were pretty good for the time. The movie spends a lot more time on building stomping than on character interaction, but you’ll have that.

There is some character interaction. The magazine president has a daughter who wants a mommy. There is a minor love triangle amongst the girl photographer, the journalist and the head scientist. This gives an opportunity for a little bit of anti-feminist rhetoric, but they don’t spend too much time on that. I don’t recall any lessons learned on not upsetting the eco-system, but parenthood gets a shout out.

What I did not understand was how the monsters became extinct except for those three. The things could fly, breathe under water and shoot lasers from their mouths. What could they not survive? I guess the ice age, but I’m no scientist.

It was a fun movie. I’m sorry it apparently did not spawn — or should I say hatch? — a sequel.

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Swamp Women or Mannix in Bondage

Posted on April 5, 2012 by mohawkvalleygirl

This past weekend I asked Steven if he would like to watch a “Horror Movie Classic” with me. I put it in quotes, because I am quoting the DVD box. “50 Horror Classics,” actually. I guess “classic” has different definitions, depending on who you ask. I would use a different c word to describe most of these offerings: cheesy.

Steven picked Swamp Women from 1955. I would not call it a horror movie, exactly. Maybe suspense/exploitation. And not as exploitative as you might think watching the opening credits. They show all these pictures of women with their hands tied behind their backs. Ooh. I noted that the director was Roger Corman. That alone makes it work a watch, I thought.

The movie opens with what looked to me like pretty obvious stock footage of a parade interspersed with actual movie scenes. The guy who would later play Mannix and this fairly sexy girl are flirting. She is after his money, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He has oil wells. She volunteers to accompany him into the swamp, where he has to go for some poorly defined business reason, to show him how tough she can be (any guesses on how that’s going to work out?).

Having thus set up the victims, the movie moves on to the villains. They are a set of gangster molls in a prison. They know where some diamonds are, so the head cop sends the best policewoman he knows into the prison to infiltrate the gang. The idea is she’ll help the girls escape then follow them to the diamonds. This turns out to be surprisingly easy and little time is spent in the prison (so no shower scene; I told you it was not as exploitative as they pretend).

I don’t like to say much else about the plot, because I hate to give too much away. I will mention that Mannix is the one that spends most of the picture with his hands tied behind his back. I’m sure some female viewers found this a delightful image. I’m not sure what it says, if anything, about Roger Corman’s fantasies. I’ll leave the reader to his or her own speculations.

The most unrealistic aspect of the picture to me was the utter lack of insects in the swamp. Not one mosquito was slapped. Did we miss the scene where they slathered on the Deet?

On the whole, I enjoyed the movie. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel the urge to pop it in again. However, if I happen to be in the mood to see a picture with a few good girl fights and Mannix in bondage, I’m all set.

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