Tag Archives: entertainment

Oh No! It’s a Love Story!

Posted on November 10, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I have not done anything really blogworthy so far today (although I may mock something up about my earlier gyrations), so I thought I could watch a cheesy horror movie to write about. I love to write about cheesy horror movies, and it’s Saturday afternoon. What better time for a monster movie? (Actually, in my estimation, any time is a good time.)

So after my usual Spoiler Alert, let’s get on with it.

I DVR’d I Walked With a Zombie (1943) from TCM sometime in October. Only an hour and fifteen minutes long. Perfect!

Of course I knew zombies in older movies are not usually the disgusting flesh-eating zombies we know and love from more recent fare (full disclosure: I haven’t seen a more recent zombie movie than the 1968 Night of the Living Dead; I just thought the expression “we know and love” would sound cool). Still, I thought catatonic undead, mindlessly obeying the nefarious behest of some villainous sort, what’s not to like?

Once again, I was in for disappointment. Oh, it was a perfectly good movie. I watched with interest. But it wasn’t a monster movie, it was a love story! It was based on a novel, and I know just the sort, because it is the kind I used to read all the time, in the tradition of Victoria Holt, Phyllis Whitney, and whichever Bronte sister wrote Jane Eyre.

In fact, when I looked it up in Leonard Maltin’s 2011 Movie Guide (Signet, 2010), I read that it was loosely based on Jane Eyre. Maltin says it with an exclamation point, like he just can’t believe it. I can believe it. Brooding romantic guy in an exotic setting with a crazy wife, wholesome young thing to fall in love with him. That’s Jane Eyre. The charming younger half-brother and the wise (or IS she?) mother are more from the Holt and Whitney canon.

The atmosphere is pretty well done, and the voodoo scenes are creepy. There is one voodoo’d guy who is my idea of a 1940s zombie: bug-eyed, shuffling, doing what the voodoo guy orders him to do, pretty scary, although you could probably outrun him.

Perhaps I didn’t need the spoiler alert, since I haven’t said too much about the plot. I won’t, either, because I think the movie is worth a watch, as long as you don’t have your heart set on a monster. For a romance novel, it makes a fairly decent horror flick.

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Don’t Pooh-Pooh Your Wife!

Posted on October 31, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I continue my Halloween week posts with a horror movie that is not cheesy. I find that oddly appropriate for a Wuss-out Wednesday.

I DVR’d Cat People (1942) with high hopes. When I learned it was a low-budget, independent film, that sounded even better. When Robert Osborne said in pre-movie commentary that it was part of their series about monsters who needed a little TLC from the opposite sex, I hesitated. Then again, Bride of Frankenstein falls into that category, so I said, “Bring it.”

It turns out Cat People is one of those movies that rises above its limitations to present a scary, suspenseful story. There are no special effects to speak of, but shadow and suggestion are used with excellent results. So with my usual Spoiler Alert, let’s get started.

The story centers around the marriage between a fine young man (at least, I don’t think he’s so fine as things turn out, but that’s getting ahead of myself) and a mysterious foreign girl. The two meet in front of the panther cage at the zoo. The girl will return to this site as her life goes downhill. The zookeeper tells her the panther is evil and quotes Revelations in support of this. That rather impressed me. I know very few people who can quote from Revelations. He quotes one of the scarier passages, so that is some nice foreshadowing.

More foreshadowing happens when the young man tries to gift the girl with a cat and the cat hates her.

Pause for PSA: Don’t randomly give people pets! First make sure (a) they want a pet, (b) they are able to care for a pet, and (c) they are not cursed from some ancient foreign village thing. Back to the movie.

They trade in the cat for a bird, after every bird in the shop expresses fear and loathing of her. Fighting fate, she says she is certain the bird will love her and vice versa. No more about that bird, because you know how I hate to see an animal come to a bad end.

So the Girl tells some scary stories of the village she comes from and expresses the fear she could be cursed. When an evil-looking, vaguely feline woman greets her as “sister” at their wedding party, the Girl’s fears increase. We never see the evil-looking one again, which of course was a disappointment to me. I greatly prefer a thorough-going evil monster to a conflicted, unhappy, cursed one. Then again, I’m trying to talk about the movie I did see, not lament the one I wish I had seen.

Young Man pooh-poohs his new wife’s fears, and they are off in pursuit of wedded bliss, which naturally eludes them.

I blame the husband, and not just because I’m a girl. You should never pooh-pooh your spouse unless he or she is clearly hoping to be pooh-poohed. Young Man goes on to make a number of stupid moves regarding the attractive, all-American woman he works with, arousing his wife’s jealousies.

Things soon start to get creepy, but Young Man still insists the fears are pooh-pooh-able. He gets the Girl a psychiatrist instead of a priest or exorcist or lion-tamer or somebody.

There are a couple of really scary scenes utilizing footsteps and lighting. The body count is not high, and there are no gruesome scenes of the cat slashing away. I call that making a virtue out of necessity, because it turns out to be a pretty satisfying Halloween watch.

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Horrible History or The Humpbacked Murderer

Posted on October 30, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I’m making bold to write about another horror movie, because it is Halloween week. Steven and I watched three this past Sunday. I do love to write about horror movies. Some may protest that The Tower of London (1962) sounds more like history than horror, but I think it veers more into the horror genre.

I knew I would be in for some spurious history, because the movie is about Richard III and the princes in the tower. However, Vincent Price as a hump-backed murderer, what’s not to like?

Richard III, many historians now say, did not have a hump and did not murder his nephews in order to seize the throne. These stories were commissioned by Henry VII, who defeated Richard III and became king himself, thus proving the adage that history is written by the winners.

Full disclosure: I may have that wrong or I may be quoting some controversial revisionism. I may look up some more information on Richard III and get back to you. Right now I want to write about a horror movie.

I feel no spoiler alert is necessary, because a voice-over at the beginning tells us what is going to happen: Richard Plantagenet is going to murder people who are going to come back and haunt him. I believe at the time this picture was made everybody believed the hump-backed murderer story, so perhaps the filmmakers figured people knew that already anyways.

I, of course, know all about what “everybody knows” about Richard III, because I saw a production of the play Richard III by William Shakespeare. I kept comparing what I remember about that play to this movie, and I was a little disappointed that Richard never said, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer…” (That’s all I remember of that speech.)

After the spoiler voice-over, the movie gets right down to business with Richard having a hunchback and looking evil. I could see where Mel Brooks got the idea for Igor’s movable hump, because Price’s prosthetic is not real consistent. Then again, my memory may be at fault and I only think the hump changed. If I watch the movie again, I’ll take hump notes (anyways, why would I not include a reference to Young Frankenstein if I thought I could get away with it?).

One of my favorite aspects of watching an old period piece like this one is the hats. I don’t know what they kept putting on Price’s head, but as far as I was concerned it didn’t do enough to cover his bowl haircut. At times I thought he looked like a Pilgrim from the neck up. Oh well, Thanksgiving is coming.

The women’s hats were more fun. One lady sported the traditional princess hat of a cone with a filmy scarf hanging from its point. Richard’s wife Anne had the best headgear. I’m not sure if the costume designers got them from paintings of the era (or within a couple hundred years; you know Hollywood) or from a deck of playing cards. Perhaps the Queen of Hearts, because in this picture, Richard truly loves his wife. She is a good wife, too, all encouraging his evil ambitions and to hell with everybody else. It’s sad what happens to her, which, spoiler alert or not, I won’t share here.

So almost right away, Richard starts murdering and almost immediately following, he starts to be haunted by the ghosts of his victims. You’d think he would repent his evil ways after the first ghost, but, no, after bouts of tremulous madness, he gets his evil mojo back and continues his blood-strewn path to the throne.

He is helped along the way by some henchman whose name I didn’t catch. I kept waiting for the henchman to turn on him or come to a bad end himself, but if it happened, I missed that part. I’m sure some people think that if I’m going to write about movies, it would behoove me to watch them with more attention. Well, I’m not apologizing, because I was roasting pumpkin seeds. It is Halloween week, after all.

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Not Up On All the Good Guy Rules

Posted on October 29, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

Two weekends ago, I watched an unusual Hammer Studios film in which Christopher Lee played the good guy, The Devil’s Bride (1968).

Before I forget, Spoiler Alert! I may even give away the ending this time. Perhaps I should also include a No Cheese Alert, because although Hammer Films are quite fun to write about and I do poke fun at them, I could not say they were cheesy. The production values are too good, for one thing. The films are visually appealing. Sets and costumes reflect effort and expense. Perhaps one day I’ll do a whole post pontificating on the cheesiness inherent in the horror genre. In the meantime, back to today’s feature.

The movie opens with Lee and a friend in a carriage riding to a reunion of some sort (you know I never bother about details). They decide to stop at the house of this guy that seems to have dropped from sight. We learn that this is the son of a friend of theirs. The friend is deceased, and Lee and his companion are pledged to take care of the son, now a fine young man.

When they arrive at the young man’s house, some party is going on. An innocent-looking girl says, “Oh, I thought there were only supposed to be 13 of us.” So in case we missed the title, we are clued in. Channeling Sherlock Holmes, Lee tells his friend to listen in on the other guests’ conversations.

When Young Man is all, “So sorry I can’t ask you to stay,” Lee pipes up with, “Can I just look at your telescope quick?” and bounds up the stairs.

The weird charts on the wall and cryptic symbols on the floor are explained away as decorations. Less easily explained are the two chickens Young Man tries to keep Lee from finding.

Lee says he would rather see Young Man dead than involved with this stuff, so this could have been a really short movie, although kind of a downer. Instead, Lee punches him in the face, knocking him cold.

I have to say it again, that is perhaps the movie cliche I find most annoying which is the least true. If it was that easy to knock somebody out with a blow to the face, most boxing matches would be a lot shorter. Oh, I know some boxers do knock their opponents out with one blow, but these are professional punchers and even they can’t do it every time. It is extremely unlikely that random movie characters can accomplish it so conveniently. Rant over.

So Lee and Friend get Young Man to Lee’s house, where Lee brings him around, hypnotizes him, slips a crucifix around his neck and sends him upstairs to sleep it off.

Of course he does not stay safely asleep or, again, this would have been a shorter movie. It’s round one to Satan (or rather his henchmen), but Lee says, “At least we saved the chickens.” That may be, but he leaves them in the basket in the telescope room closet. If he was really going to save them, shouldn’t he, for example, have brought them out to the chicken coop and gotten them some feed and water? Or is that just my Be Kind to Animals obsession talking?

Lee sends his Friend off to rescue the Girl, remember, the one who thought there were only supposed to be 13. Did I mention she is suitable for Friend to fall in love with? I can’t remember where Young Man is at this point. Lee is off to the British Museum for research. My inner geek rejoices at the thought of combating evil through books, but Lee puts an awful lot of faith in somebody who just now began to believe in Satan.

That is the first of several times Lee gives his second string good guys instructions and goes off to do his own thing. You know they aren’t going to be able to handle it. Only the main good guy can ultimately triumph over evil. Then again, as we said earlier, Lee usually plays the bad guy. He’s probably not up on all the good guy rules. And here I am again, carping on the usual means employed to keep the conflict going so the movie is feature length.

And then a bunch of stuff happens.

It seems the head Satan worshipper has vast if inconsistent powers. He can remotely hypnotize people, only sometimes it doesn’t work. And like all movie bad guys and monsters, his victims follow his nefarious instructions at differing rates of speed, depending on plot requirements. One of his followers picks up the hypnotism trick, too, although to what end, I’m not sure. She hypnotizes the guy who’s trying to save her through bondage (it makes sense in the movie), but spends the rest of the scene staring out the window at a storm. Awaiting further instructions, I suppose.

I confess there was a whole lot I did not pay attention to. For example, there is an outdoor worship fest that reminded me of the KKK rally in O Brother, Where Art Thou? I busied myself in the kitchen when I saw a goat and feared it would come to a bad end (there I go again with the Be Kind to Animals).

There is a little girl who is a pretty good actress, not too cute, not too bratty. Of course she is placed in grave danger. I blame Lee. He has the grown-ups (of the non-servant variety) upstairs in the middle of a fancy chalk circle with salt and holy water and whatnot. The kid is in bed being watched over by some old butler or caretaker. Not even a crucifix. Hello! What do you think is going to happen?

I don’t need a spoiler alert to tell you the movie ends with Satan’s followers vanquished (I’m sure the big buy survives to fight another day). Young Man says, “Thank God,” to which Lee piously agrees. You know, apart from the crucifix, there is very little reference to God. Shouldn’t He be the first one you call when you are fighting Satan? I’m just saying.

However, movies are more into the props and, as I mentioned earlier, maintaining the conflict to feature length. Speaking of length, this is getting to be one of my longer posts, so I’ll save the philosophical discussion for Lame Post Friday.

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Get On With The Creature!

Posted on October 13, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I had great hopes for Wasp Woman (1959). The title seemed to promise a monster. I knew they might slough me off with a big bunch of insects, but I was willing to take that chance. When I saw Roger Corman’s name in the credits, I felt certain I had made a wise decision.

Spoiler Alert! I will give away some plot developments, but not all. Still, more than I would want to know, so I warn you.

The movie opens with predators of a different kind, in a corporate board room. A hard-nosed businesswoman is putting her board through the wringer on declining sales. A good-looking young man jumps up and in arrogant leading-man fashion blames her. It is a cosmetics company, you see, and she has always been its “face.” Now that the face has changed, customers do not trust it.

Snap! Why didn’t you just say, “It’s your fault, because you got so old and ugly!” Incidentally, she’s neither. She’s not young and chipper, but I should look so good in my 40s (I’m still in my 40s for at least another month, so shut up!). Obviously the movie is setting her up to take extreme measures to look young and beautiful. Naturally this will lead to trouble.

I can’t help noticing that the quest to keep a woman young and beautiful forms the catalyst for a number of horror movies. I like best the ones where they have to kill authentically young and beautiful women to do it. Oh dear, that didn’t sound very nice. I only meant that those were the most horrifying and in general the cheesiest. I think woman’s quest for beauty and man’s role in aiding and abetting is a ripe topic for some serious commentary, if I was that sort of a blogger. Being the sort of blogger I am, I may mine the topic for some half-baked philosophy one Lame Post Friday.

Where was I? Ah yes, with Cosmetic CEO ready to fund some highly risky experiments involving wasps. They provide some background on what terrible creatures wasps are, especially the queen, and the supposed scientific basis for the experiments. I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention. You know in these pictures the science is going to be spurious; I say just get on to the creature.

It takes a while for the Wasp Woman to show up, and she’s a pretty good movie monster. I wish she had gotten more screen time. Before the creature shows up we have to go through the mad scientist (he is actually a rather sweet old man) convincing CEO to fund him, then watch him work, progressing too slowly to suit CEO. Of course she experiments by giving herself extra injections.

She doesn’t see a kitten, previously rejuvenated from an old tabby, go crazy and attack the mad scientist. He gets hit by a car and goes into a coma before he can either perfect the formula or warn anybody about what happened to the cat (he kills the cat, by the way; it might have been fun to have several wasp-infused creatures running around but I guess that’s just me, always wanting more).

The hero — remember, arrogant guy from scene 1? — and his love interest — CEO’s secretary — are, not surprisingly, pretty boring. There’s another guy who always has a pipe in his mouth and gets to have a little more character. My favorites were the two brassy secretaries. I was a little worried over who would end up being wasp food, but the body count wasn’t too high (which could be a good or a bad thing, depending).

It’s a pretty fun movie. I recommend it. If you watch it and have a discussion on the feminist implications, please let me know what conclusions you draw.

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I Can’t Phantom It

Posted on October 2, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I believe I mentioned watching a cheesy movie last weekend while I was suffering from a sinus problem. I was too fuzzy-headed to pay even my usual desultory attention to it, but I think I can come up with a paragraph or two.

Phantom from 10,000 Fathoms (1956) starts right out by showing you the monster, which looks a little like a low-rent Creature of the Black Lagoon. I don’t particularly mind low rent; it adds to the cheese quotient. Ah, but here’s the point: the title says “phantom” but, to me, that’s a monster. Perhaps the writers considered a phantom a kind of a monster. Or maybe they just like alliteration as much as I do. No matter.

A lone fisherman in a boat apparently does not see the monster, although we can look down into the water and see it perfectly well. I suppose it’s a little petty to carp about a thing like that in a movie like this. After all, we WANT to see the monster, and the writers of the movie wanted the fisherman to NOT see it. Call it dramatic license. After dispatching the poor fisherman, the monster disappears for what seems like a long time (ooh, could that be why they call it a phantom?).

I found the plot a little hard to follow. Nobody is what they seem, except maybe the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter (all your better mad scientists have one). Well, I guess he’s not really a mad scientist. He is an oceanographer. But he is working on something he is being awfully secretive about. His assistant, his secretary and his janitor are all trying to find out what it is.

The assistant is the most sinister of the bunch. He keeps sneaking around carrying a harpoon gun. I wasn’t clear on what exactly he does as an assistant, since it seems he’s not privy to the doctor’s actual work. Then again, I was not clear on a lot during this movie, most notably my sinuses (for once I have an excuse other than my usual “just not paying attention”).

I didn’t mind the assistant being sneaky; at least his motives were made clear later. I’m still puzzling over what the main guy is even doing there. He shows up when this federal (I think) guy is investigating the sailor we saw get whacked in the first scene. He says his name is Ted Baxter (did you all just flash on The Mary Tyler Moore Show? I did). We later find out he’s really Ted Stevens, a prominent oceanographer who wrote a book on which his picture is prominently displayed. Didn’t he think the guy he is going to see — the mad scientist/oceanographer — might possibly have a copy of his book? Perhaps modesty overcame him.

I got a little chuckle thinking that Ted’s fake name sounded more real than his real name. I read somewhere that when people come up with aliases, they often use their own first name for a last name. For example, in Tootsie, Michael Dorsey becomes Dorothy Michaels. It would not have surprised me to find out that Ted Stevens’ real name was Steven Tedford. But I digress.

As I was saying, I never did find out why Ted was masquerading as Ted Knight, but in any case, both Federal Guy and Mad Oceanographer find him out quite soon and with very little difficulty.

Every so often the Phantom Monster shows up again. We find out what Sneaky Assistant is up to, we watch Mad Oceanographer at work, and of course Ted romances Beautiful Daughter. I never really figured out the whole plot (blame my sinus infection), but I think it boiled down to the beware-of-science-there-are-things-we-aren’t-supposed-to-know paranoia that became so popular at the dawn of the atomic age.

I will have to watch this silly movie again when my head is less fuzzy.

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Don’t Swallow Your Oxygen Gum

Posted on September 24, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

In my ongoing quest to find cheesy movies to write about, I watch some pretty bad ones. I try to make it all the way through them, just on principle. However, I think it is OK to write about a movie I didn’t watch all the way through, as long as I make a full disclosure.

Full Disclosure: I did not watch all of Battle in Outer Space (sorry, didn’t write down the year) (I’m not even sure I wrote down the right title; I can’t find it in any of Steven’s movie books). I don’t think I even watched enough to warrant a spoiler alert.

Steven and I tried to watch the movie twice. The second time, we weren’t even sure we had tried it before. The title didn’t sound familiar (I think I have established that it is not very memorable). On consulting the TV Journal before writing this, I learned that it was two weeks between attempted viewings.

Once it started I said, “Oh, yes, we started to watch this. Remember, the credits are in Japanese.”

Steven asked, “Is this the one where the guy goes up in the air?”

The scene Steven referred to is pretty much all I remember from the movie, and it goes way beyond “Waaait a minute” and into “Huh?” or even more vulgar expressions. A group of men (no women in this movie, another thing to dislike about it) are walking through a space ship, in outer space. Suddenly one of them starts to float up to the ceiling. One of his colleagues pulls him back down.

“I forgot there’s no gravity here,” Floating Guy explains. And they continue to walk down the corridor. On the ground! As if there’s plenty of gravity!

Excuse me, what? Just by knowing there’s no gravity they can act as if there’s gravity? It’s never explained. Not even some bad science crap like, “Push the button on your belt to create your personal gravity field.” I suppose some people would have found that harder to swallow than force of mind overcoming all, but I like an explanation, however spurious.

For example, I don’t know if anybody remembers a cartoon from (I think) the 1960s (I saw it in the ’60s) called Marine Boy. Marine Boy could function perfectly well in the water because he had — I kid you not — Oxygen Gum. I was about three years old (don’t sit there doing the math and shake your finger at me like I’m pretending to be younger than what I am) (I’m 49). I took things at face value. The only thing I found odd about Oxygen Gum was that Marine Boy put it in his mouth, gave one chew and was done. I did not have gum very often, but I knew you were supposed to keep chewing it.

I did not spend much of my young life pondering the inconsistency. I suppose it wasn’t too many years later that I began to understand the limitations of animation.

I don’t intend to spend too much of my middle age wondering what the makers of Battle in Outer Space were thinking with that gravity thing. The movie was dull, and there were not enough scientific howlers to distract me from that.

Perhaps I could find some re-runs of Marine Boy on the Cartoon Network.

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My Thoughts Run Away With Me

Posted on September 14, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I went running this morning for two reasons. First, I need a blog post. Second, when I got dressed to go do laundry (I got up EARLY this morning), I felt fat.

“I feel like I’ve gained back all the weight I ever lost,” I wailed to Steven. As usual, he did not know what to say. In his defense, what could he say? Anyways, I knew it wasn’t true. However, one cannot always help what one feels.

Be that as it may, as soon as I got home from the laundromat, I got into my running clothes. As I mentioned yesterday (if any of you nice people read it), the temperature has dropped around here. Still, I thought bicycle shorts and a t-shirt would be OK. I added a headband, in case of cold ears, just to be on the safe side.

I was soon glad of the headband, and wished I had something for my hands. Never mind, I didn’t need to use my hands for anything. They could get cold and stiff. I wasn’t going to be running long enough to do any permanent damage, not by a long shot.

I thought I could equal my last week’s time of 25 minutes. I reflected as I ran that one cannot run only once a week and expect to get into good running shape. Still, I have to start somewhere. I’m not in completely flabby shape, because I work out at Curves three times a week.

As I ran, I reflected on the differences between running and working out at Curves. Curves is more intense, and there is a lot more going on. Peppy music plays, other ladies working out make funny jokes, you move from machine pad to machine. Altogether a great deal more variety is involved. When running, the entertainment comes from one’s own thoughts and the slowly (very slowly in my case) changing scenery. Oh, I know, some people run with headphones in their ears. I prefer to be aware of my surroundings.

So I felt a little pleased with myself, providing my own entertainment, as it were. I enjoyed the leisurely pace, and the grey day around me. I looked at the houses I ran by and speculated on their possible occupants. I enjoyed my own thoughts.

And then my thoughts took a turn for the worse.

It’s a terrible thing, how sometimes you just let your thoughts wander and they wander right over to something that pissed you off. Then you start thinking about how it pissed you off, and how you were justified in being pissed off, and what steps you will take to keep such a thing from pissing you off in the future. And would they work?

Then I realized I was being rather ridiculous and ruining my nice run. So I tried to think about something else. Mostly I started thinking about the weather, which seemed to have gotten colder. I thought running was supposed to warm me up! I hoped the cold air would not give me a raging sinus headache, as it was clearly threatening to do. No matter, I told myself. A hot shower and a cup of hot tea would cure my ills.

Well, I have not had the tea yet, but the shower felt pretty good (what, you didn’t think I ran straight to the computer in all my sweat and started typing this, did you?). I’m not sure that it was a good run, but I made my 25 minutes. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I ran up the hill by Valley Health. So I am glad I ran. Now to get on with the rest of my day.

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Shouldn’t the Mice Have Eaten Cheese?

Posted on September 9, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

As I checked out the listings for TCM one Saturday, in my ongoing quest for cinematic cheese, I came across a kind of a blast from my past, Gay Purr-ee (1962).

I remember that I watched Gay Purr-ee with my sisters one Saturday afternoon roughly a hundred years ago. I remember that I watched it more than I remember watching it, if you see what I mean. I was pretty young, although I couldn’t tell you my exact age.

I know I was rather unsavvy about cinema (that was expertise I was to acquire in later years) (and anybody who said, “Still waiting, huh?” I bet you’re pretty pleased with yourself). I thought it was The Aristocats. In my defense, beautiful fluffy white cat with a rough and ready tom for a boyfriend. Which was pretty much all I knew about The Aristocats, either.

One thing I remembered well: the tom cat has this thing he does when he goes after a mouse. It’s as if he’s possessed and becomes a mouse-catching machine. Or maniac. His eyes bug out, his fur sticks out, his claws come out… it’s pretty cool. And if figures hugely into the plot, so I don’t like to say too much about it.

Anyways, I DVR’d the movie for nostalgia’s sake. Eventually I got around to watching it.

Who knew there were movie star voices! It seems I should have at least known Judy Garland plays the beautiful white cat. I knew who Judy Garland was; we watched The Wizard of Oz every year when it came on television (this was the olden days, even before VCRs).

As I watched it this time, I also recognized at least one voice from the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, but I did not track down the name that went with it. Of course I would not have known the name as a kid, but I might have been expected to say, “Hey, that’s Burgermeister Meisterburger!”

Speaking of Christmas, at times the animation reminded me of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol or How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I believe I saw the name Chuck Jones at the beginning, and I think he had something to do with those.

It’s sometimes fun to watch a movie you saw years and years ago and say, “I remember that part!” and “I don’t remember that AT ALL!” Sometimes you say, “Wow, I had lousy taste as a kid.” Sometimes you say, “That was worth a watch.” Gay Purr-ee was fortunately in the latter category. It’s not a great movie. I won’t be searching out the DVD for my younger relatives, but I didn’t mind watching it once. And so my search for cheese continues. As always, I hope you’ll stay tuned.

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I Wanted a Ghost

Posted on September 4, 2013 by mohawkvalleygirl

I DVR’d The Ghost Ship (1943) on the vague hope that it had something to do with a movie that I THINK was called Ghost Ship starring Julianna Margulies that Steven and I saw some years ago. Or vice versa, I guess. I seem to remember not being too nuts about the latter movie, especially the meant-to-be-shocking ending, that I believe did NOT take Steven or me by surprise. Oh dear, I haven’t put in the spoiler alert yet (I know I could always fix these things when I edit, but it’s more fun this way).

Here it is: Spoiler Alert! Although I may have already spoiled the Julianna Margulies movie for you. Maybe I ought to seek that movie out again, watch it again and write about it. But I am unlikely to do that before hitting publish on this.

Where was I?

I thought by the title “Ghost Ship” that the movie would have at least one actual ghost. Turns out not so much. I might have suspected such a thing from the description on digital cable, which said nobody will believe the third mate when he tries to tell them the captain is a sadistic psychopath. Still, I thought a sadistic psychopath might be worth a watch.

When we started to watch the movie, I saw that it starred Richard Dix. I said, “All right!” He was in those Whistler movies I enjoyed so much. I like that Richard Dix.

Naturally he is the sadistic psychopath captain. It’s actually good casting, because with his lovely deep voice, matinee idol good looks and kindly manner, it is easy to see how he fools everybody. The audience is privy to everything the third mate sees, so there is no “is he or isn’t he?” mystery, which may have been fun.

I would like to explain why it is a ghost ship, but I did not properly understand it myself. Something psychological, explained by the good woman whose love could perhaps have saved psycho captain. There’s still hope for the third mate, if only he can survive the voyage. If that sounds a little vague, sorry. I’m not up to giving a full plot summary.

It’s actually a pretty good movie. It gets suspenseful and exciting, and if a few of my favorite characters get killed off, well, you’ll have that. Still, I would have liked a ghost.

Incidentally, the plot of Ghost Ship, (2002, no “the”) (I looked it up), has nothing whatsoever in common with The Ghost Ship. If I were a real movie writer, I would edit this whole thing and delete any reference to it. And here we come to the ugly truth about me.

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