DON'T STEP INTO THE LIGHT! WE COVER OUR EYES THROUGH 'MIDNIGHT SUN' ANOTHER BLU-RAY FROM BD (BELOVED DAUGHTER)

  Midnight Sun (2018)   The weekend can only mean one thing.........

                A complete takeover of BQ's viewing by Beloved Daughter...........who never met a movie about a doomed teen romance that she didn't adore.........

                 Once again we have a "I'm-so-sick-I'm-Gonna-Die-At-Any-Moment" teen girl who somehow finds love........

                 The last of these things that BD made us suffer through, "Everythijng, Everything", sprung a surprising twist that made the kid's fatal disease a lying scam made up by Mom...........(even Joan Crawford at her worst never thought of that idea.......beats a wire-hanger beatdown by a mile....) 

                 However, the malady afflicting Bella Thorne in 'Midnight Sun' is supposed to be the real deal........

                If sunlight hits her, she's toast.  Deader than Christopher Lee when a ray of sunshine splashes on him in a Hammer film......

                 But in the immortal words of 10 million Twitter and Instagram users......OMG......she meets the love of her life in Patrick Schwarzenegger.......whose primary job is to look caring and concerned and physically resemble his father.  (In that regard,he's at least as good as Scott
Eastwood.....)

                We only wish Patrick had held out his hand to Bella and yelled, "Come with me if you want to live.......

               Surprisingly, this movie only makes a half-hearted attempt to beg for tears........as if the director already realized that such histrionics were way, way beyond Bella Thorne's limited abilities........

                 Beloved Daughter, to her dismay, couldn't squeeze a single tear out of this negligible little nothing of a movie........(bless her, she always approaches such films in the eternal hope of duplicating the wrenching experience she got from the Holy Grail of such movies, "A Walk To Remember" with Mandy Moore. ......'Midnight Sun', in comparison, offered her barely a Half-a-step To Remember...)

               As for BQ..........we stayed awake......for politeness sake. A major effort.

               That's the best we could do. Zero stars. (0)............we only wish this movie's disease afflicted all the characters in the 'Twilight' series........would have made for shorter movies....(always a plus for us.....)

BLESS US, FATHER, WE HAVE SINNED........FOR RE-WATCHING "ALICE SWEET ALICE"........

Alice Sweet Alice (aka Communion) (1976)    Amid the 1970's onslaught of slashers, zombies and demon-possessed children, this oddball little movie still stands out among the pack........all by itself.

               ..........cause it's crammed with so many influences, homages and religious iconography, it doesn't resemble any other horror movie of the era.

                 And for horror movies, we suppose that's a good thing.

                 This movie wastes no time depicting Catholicism as a wellspring of repressed guilt, secret sin and bottomless, murderous rage...........(how anybody in their right mind would attend the church in this film is beyond us........Sunday services get regularly interrupted by spectacular, horrific deaths.....the attendees spend far more time shrieking than hymn-singing.....)

                 First to go is darling little 11 year old Brooke Shields, strangled and set on fire during her first Communion.........choked and crisped by a disguised little creepy in a yellow raincoat and plastic mask........(a trope borrowed from "Don't Look Now")

                Prime suspect:  Brooke's bratty, jealous older sister (the unnerving, disturbing Paula Sheppard, playing it like Patty McCormack's Bad Seed......only with the veneer of civility stripped off and only pure unadulterated Id remaining)

               As more bad stuff ensues and more bodies pile up, you might think the movie's blatant attempt to set up Sheppard as an obvious red herring seems clumsy and ham-handed..........especially after the film unmasks a real killer halfway through..........

                Or is that really the real killer? Or a a co-killer?

                While you're contemplating, feel free to binge on everything else "Alice Sweet Alice" references.......Italian Giallos,  Hitchcock guilt-transference, forbidding old nuns waiting for something horrible to happen...........and the movie's premiere attraction......Alphonso DeNoble, who looks like he walked in from 'Fellini Satyricon', playing an obese pedophile who unwisely paws at Paula Sheppard.........

               Stylish, grotesque and most thoroughly one-of-a-kind.........we'll put 3 stars in the collection box for this one (***)........the movie where everybody would have been better off praying at home...

HIS BARK'S WORSE THAN HIS BITE.......WE ROOT OUT TABONGA, OUR FAVORITE TREE MONSTER OF "FROM HELL IT CAME'

From Hell It Came (1957)    True story.........long before we ever got to see this movie, our first view of its legendary staggering pissed off tree stump came from the wondrous pages of 'Famous Monsters Of Filmland'.........the mag that launched a thousand rabid sci-fi/horror fanboys.........

                It was love at first sight.......along with all the other photos and stories on King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula and all of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion beasties..........

                Took us some time, and a lot of Googling........but exclusively for you BQ visitors alone, we tracked down the star himself, Larry Arbor......for a no-holds-barred, one-on-one interview.....

                Yes, you heard it right. It wasn't a guy in a costume.

                 Larry is an real-life tree, retired from acting since the completion of "From Hell It Came"......we found him living quietly in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, spitting at the occasional squirrel.........

                 He sometimes delights fans by appearing at Comic-Cons throughout the country, where crowds line up for autographs and selfies........remembering him from his two signature roles, the angry apple tree in "Wizard Of Oz" who hurls his fruit at Judy Garland.......and Tabonga, the nuclear-mutated Pacific islander turned into a tree after the jealous tribal chief has him stabbed and buried vertically......

\BQ:     Wow, 61 years after "From Hell It Came" and here you are, still healthy.

LARRY:  Knock on wood.....heh, heh, heh.....

BQ:    So your first film, in 1939, becomes an iconic blockbuster. How'd you end up with the role in "The Wizard Of Oz" anyway?

LARRY:  What can I tell ya......pure luck. They were gonna put W.C.Fields in a tree costume but he got terrible claustrophobia every time they sewed him up in it.  Louis B. Mayer came across my head shot, called the casting director......said, "Why don't you get a real tree?  You can pay 'im half as much as an actor..."

BQ:   That discriminatory.

LARRY:   Tell me about it. But....eh.....those were the times, ya know?  How many roles you think were floatin' around for a walking tree?

BQ:   Not many, we imagine.

LARRY:   Damn right. I kept tellin' my agent I needed to branch out.......heh, heh, heh....

BQ:   What do you recall about working with Judy Garland?

LARRY:   Kinda sad. Ole Louis B......he kept her doped up out of her mind. There was one take where I accidentally hit her with one of the apples.....nailed her good in her left eye.   Poor kid never felt a thing......

BQ:     You had to wait 18 years, til 1957, to secure your starring role as Tabonga in "From Hell It Came".........how did you survive during that dry spell?

LARRY:    Tough years, BQ, tough years........had to settle for extra work in Tarzan flicks......ya know, just standing around, playing part of the foliage........I was down to my last dime, filling in for a pal who played a tree at the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland.......and this stinkin' script comes in the mail.....

BQ:    Didn't care for it, huh?  It was pretty awful......\

LARRY:    Please, don't remind me. But I was the friggin' star!   And let me tell ya, starring roles for guys like me....

BQ:......don't grow on trees?

LARRY:    Heh, heh......no wonder I dig your blog. And the culture hasn't improved much for us......only one of us gettin' work is Groot.......at least the little knothead gets three words of dialogue.........which is three more than I ever had...…

BQ:  Didn't it upset you when they credited a human actor with playing your part?

LARRY:  Oh man, that hurt me more than the termite colony nesting in m ass. . They didn't want to scare the shit out of everyone if it got out that they used a real tree.  Happened all the time in those days...….between you and me....ya know the guy with the fly's head in "The Fly"?  That was a real guy with a fly's head. Morty Thorax. He had as much luck finding roles as me.

BQ:   Wow. Had no idea.  And then you retired?

LARRY:   Oh, I kept my branch in from time to time.  Loads of screen tests, auditions......tried out for "Day Of The Triffids".....too much walkin' for me.......I went out for both versions of 'Little Shop Of Horrors'......sons-of-bitches ended up using puppets, for Christ's sake.  I did a quick cameo as one of the plant samples in E.T.'s spaceship, but Spielberg cut it out....but he leaves in the goddamn Triffid.

BQ:   I guess those are the show biz breaks. Anyway, great catching up with you, Larry.

LARRY:  Likewise, likewise........listen, you want an autographed photo?

BQ:  You mean it? Love one!

LARRY:    Only 24.95......cash or credit card?

BQ:   How about if I rate "From Hell It Came"  2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)?   Strictly for your memorable performance......

LARRY:  $18.95......and I'll throw in a poster.

BQ:  Larry, you're the best. Stay grounded....

LARRY:   Heh, heh......it's what I do, buddy.....
               

KEEPING A CIVIL TONGUE.........IN THE DARK AGE OF TRUMP........

            Not easy to do, we admit...….

            The Muslim Ban and the Trillion Dollar debt-inducing tax cut for millionaires are not the true achievements of Baby Orange......

             His greatest accomplishment?  His lasting legacy?

             He's turned the entire country into a Middle School cafeteria.........and the population into 8th graders, hurling vile, hate-filled insults at each other.......

              He's succeeded in dragging the United States Of America down to his own gutter level.......while encouraging people to air out their every dark thought and impulse.

               And to his great glee and delight, (since he thrives on chaos and strife), he's managed to push those who resists him (who constitute the majority of the country) into ever-increasing fits of rage.......
     
              Hence the most popular topic of conversation this week.........the disappearance of civility in our public discourse........

              Hence the angry crowds, taking it out on his repulsive crew of minions when they eat at restaurants........

               As satisfying as it may seem to people, depriving these Trumpian bottom-feeders of their Saturday night enchiladas is not productive or constructive to us......and no answer.

               So what's to be done?

               We've already made our opinion clear about public figures from the Resistance who take Baby Orange's bait and decide to roll around in the sewer with him.....

              And Baby Orange?  Their sputtering attempts at nasty attacks have about the same effect on him as one of his cholesterol-clogged McDonald's lunches..........he's lovin' it.......

              From this point forward, we humbly suggest that those folks who enjoy Bully Pulpits through their celebrity status start using their influence to remind people to get off their asses and vote in November.......

               Make no mistake about this.......the November election comes down to which country Americans want to live in.........either the United States Of America, as created in 1776.......or the weird, dark violent Mythical Kingdom Of Trump.....which is far closer in spirit to Mordor from "Lord Of The Rings" than any known country on Planet Earth.

               Leave the withering ridicule to the people who do it best......the late night hosts........clearly, they continue to fulfill their vital task of getting under Baby Orange's ultra-thin skin.......and letting the air out of an ego that dwarfs any Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.....

               Everyone else........enough with the four letter words and vicious insults........turning yourself into a Trumpanzee only diminishes you.  Start using your voice and influence to impress upon people what's at stake in November.......and to vote, vote, VOTE.

             Keep it up.......and keep civil while you're at it........
               
           

IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE ROCK 'N ROLL.......WE WELD OURSELVES TO "ROCK, ROCK, ROCK!"

Rock, Rock Rock! (1956)    Hard to believe but the BQ was not yet a teen when all of these black-and-white, slapped together cheapies hit the theaters to cash in on that crazy new music makin' the kids twitch on the dance floor.........

                 Years later, we caught up with 'em all........but only this one resonates.........cause unlike all the others, it's two movies competing with one another.........but both of them steeped in their era.....

                  Half of it is simply a concert film, hosted by Rock 'n Roll impresario Alan Freed.........with Freed hosting a long, long list of performers.....including Chuck Berry, Franky Lymon and The Teenagers,  and who-the-hell-only-knows how many other doo-wop groups.

                   In quality, the music's all over the map.......some of it legendary.......some of it fun to revisit....and....uh......some of it......well, archival.....

                 Interspersed into the clumps of music.......comes a painfully clumsy teenage 'drama' featuring a mature-way-beyond-her-years Tuesday Weld........who may have been the only 12 year old actress in the 1950's who could convincingly pass for 17.........

                  Written, directed and acted like the kind of 16mm training films ("Dating Do's And Don'ts") that 50's teens were forced to watch in class, the story has Tuesday in a tizzy about scraping up enough money to buy a prom dress.......

                   Special bonus!  Tuesday periodically bursts into song herself..........uh, not really, since it's clearly announced in the opening credits that it's the powerful warbling of Connie Francis that's dubbed on to Tuesday's lips.   (In fact, the entire film sounds this way, as if the movie was imported from Italy with an international cast....)

                  In this, Weld's first leading role appearance, you can view the beginnings of what became her signature template role........the slightly dopey but street smart jailbait........half sweetheart, half calculating temptress.   (You'd need a degree in Economics to figure out her staggering explanation of how she scores the prom dress by creating her own "bank" and charging her pals double the interest on loans......)

                 Still fun, still rockin'........and in the onslaught of wooden actors and wobbling rock 'n rollers, you still can't take your eyes off Tuesday Weld, a star in the making.

                  If you've laughed through the satires and pastiches like "Grease" and "Hairspray", you might find this one even funnier.........because it's the real thing.......If it's Tuesday, it's 3 stars (***).

FLOGGINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES...... BQ SHIPS OUT TO "DAMN THE DEFIANT!'.......

Damn The Defiant! (aka H.M.S. Defiant) (1962)   Nothing, but nothing beats a rip-roarin', cannon blasting, cutlass swingin'  Napoleonic naval war movie........

               Here's our fave.......with Alec Guinness as Captain Crawford,  a stalwart but humane commander pitted against his black-hearted, sadistic second-in-command (Dirk Borgarde )

               It's 1797 and the mighty British navy's on the verge of a fleet-wide mutiny as they're waging war with Nappy.........(seems the sailors don't much care for the burtal forced recruitment via press gangs, not to mention the maggot-infested food and regular floggings from upper-crust creeps like the odious Lt. Scott-Padget (Borgarde)

               This ship's almost as bad as a Carnivale cruise........at least the bathrooms function....(we think)

               Crawford tries to put the brakes on the tirelessly evil Scott-Padget........who responds by arranging daily beating of Crawford's 12 year old son, who signed on as a Midshipman......(this kid probably wishes he signed on for summer camp instead.....)

               Ah, but here come the French sailing in, so everyone has to momentarily  stop yelling, flogging and abusing each other to swing on board to the enemy ship......for some good old-fashioned stabbin', slashin', drownin' and general cutlass-perforating of those Napoleonic No-Goods.

              Then we go right back to the 24-lash floggings........(Scott-Padget's favored punishment for anyone who makes eye contact with him.....he's like a sea-going movie star Diva).......and that long-promised, long overdue all out mutiny finally erupts.....

              Terrific stuff, firmly in the "they don't make 'em like this anymore' category.......with the expected powerful clash of two acting Titans backed up by a full roster of excellent British character actors (Anthony Quayle, Nigel Stock, Murray Melvin, Tom Bell)

              BQ hoists all our sails and 4 stars (****) for this voyage........another excellent summer getaway......(as long as you don't get gang-pressed into the crew)

                .

SMELLS LIKE TEEN PSYCHOS........WE FINALLY FIND AN INDEPENDENT FILM TO LOVE.......

Thoroughbreds (2017)   Holy Film Festival!   Our mind just officially boggled.......

              After so many ranting posts we've done about self-indulgent, navel gazing phony crap infesting the Independent film scene.........we come across this.......

                Perfectly acted, skillfully written with ice cold wit........and most jaw-dropping, photographed, edited and directed with the kind of precise, calibrated cinematic excellence you'd associate with Hitchcock, Kubrick, Scorcese and Spielberg......

                Yeah, we'll admit it.......this movie wowed the hell out of us.

                You know how much we hate dragging ourselves (and you) through laborious plot descriptions, so let's just leave it at this.........two teen girls, Amanda and Lily (Olivia Cooke, Anya-Taylor-Joy) from the wealthy Connecticut suburbs plot to murder Lily's overbearing stepfather......

                ..........and for this task, they enlist the aid of a twitchy, hyper drug dealing sex offender.... .which is tragically the last brilliant performance we'll ever see from the late Anton Yelchin.....(filmed before he died in a freak accident)

                Writer-director Cory Finley puts this all together like he's been writing directing movies for a lifetime......the two actresses deliver their carefully crafted lines with deadpan, devastating authority and the composition of the camera shots almost took our breath away with their knowing authority.

               (Special nod, before we forget, to Erik Friedlander's music score, done almost entirely with ominous drumbeats.....)

                No sense writing any more stuff about this.

                You get the point, we're sure.

                BQ says see it. Now. One of the best films of last year, no contest.  5 stars (*****) ....the real deal.....an honest-to-BQ, genuine FIND OF FINDS.

                Memo to fledgling directors trying to squeeze their movies into Sundance 2019:   Put your friggin' cellphone-cameras down, sit and watch this movie a few times (or more). You might learn what a real film looks like.

'X' MARKS THE BLOT.........FOX'S SUMMER OF DEPRAVITY RAGES ON IN 'MYRA BRECKINRIDGE'

Myra Breckinridge (1970)   Having strapped on (so to speak) Russ Meyer's "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls"...... we'd be remiss if we didn't cover its X-rated twin.........both of them unleashed into theaters within weeks of each other.......

              Almost needless to say, the X-rating applied to these movies looks so sweetly innocent......48 years later.  You could see pretty much the same stuff on any basic cable series........

               Unlike 'Beyond',  put together with swift efficiency by Meyer, the production of 'Breckinridge' became a legendary perfect storm of disasters.........

                It's possible to still enjoy Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert's loony satire on it own flagrant terms.........but watching 'Myra Breckinridge'?

                .........similar to viewing YouTube videos of traffic accidents.........after a few minutes, you know to expect the worst and the accumulation of bizarre, embarrassing sequences becomes numbing after a while......

               The Gore Vidal satirical novel it was based on, a wicked, whiplash attack on American sexuality, cried out for a rogue director with the same devilish mindset.......(Robert Altman, coming off of "MASH", might have been a perfect fit........

              In a moment of "but we gotta make something that'll pack in the kids" madness, 20th Century Fox handed over the film to a young, trendy Brit, Michael Sarne.........(he'd just wowed Fox with his young trendy little movie "Joanna"....)

              We won't bother documenting the artistic meltdown of nuclear proportions that followed......it's all on display in the film itself, a grotesque, unfunny farce directed by an obvious poseur so far out of his depth, it's a wonder he figured out which end of the camera to point at the actors.....

             Here's as much as we could figure out:   Myron, (the snarky film critic Rex Reed, hired for his languid gaze and ripe lips) has himself surgically transformed into Myra (Raquel Welch,fiercely over-acting the comedy - everyone around her look sedated by comparison)

            Myra's great quest involves striking a blow for bisexuality by strapping on an unseen appliance and anally raping a bound young stud........then seducing his sweet young girlfriend (Farrah Fawcett)..........

             Okaaaaay.........if you say so, Myra.

             In the midst of all this, the movie presents an exhumed Mae West, strutting like a well preserved cadaver and spewing out a steady stream of her own personally written single-entendres.

             At one point, she salivates over a young Tom Selleck and spontaneously invents rap singing........honest.  Imagine a Hollywood Wax Museum brought to life via Disney World animatronics......

             Meanwhile, the woeful, clueless Sarne, permitted to plunder and loot  the 20th Century Fox archives, sprinkles the movie with random clips of Shirley Temple and Laurel and Hardy......(much in the same way 1970's directors would make ironic points by pointing their camera at random objects and people....

            And oh yes, we don't want to leave out director John Huston as the depraved head of an acting school that Myra infiltrates...…...he carries on like he's warming up to play the evil, incestuous mogul from "Chinatown"......

             Even before the film opened, Gore Vidal and almost the entire cast properly disowned it.....(we doubt if Mae West disowned it, though.......she viewed anything she was in as great self-publicity).......

             Sorry, but unlike "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls", we couldn't even categorize 'Myra' as a guilty pleasure......

             It's just guilty. Period.

              Zero stars (0).........bye bye Myra........gone......and best forgotten.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING TRUMPS.........THE WEEKLY MADNESS WRAP-UP..........

                  BQ would prefer to file this entire week under....."you can't make this stuff up....."

                  Baby Orange Caves In At Last......it took nauseating 70% of the country to do it, but it finally happened......... must have really pissed him off that the usual strategy, repeating the same lie over and over again, finally failed him.....".....it's the Democrats' law...my hands are tied..."

                  Kristjen Neilsen dines at a Mexican restaurant........no, we won't pile on.......giver her a break.......Cruella De Homeland is entitled to her burrito.......personally, we sleep safe at night knowing she's on the job, incarcerating those screaming toddlers.....(who most likely have automatic weapons and knives hidden in their teddy bears....)

                 "Womp Womp" Lewandowski .........mocking an immigrant child with Down Syndrome.......well, at least everyone now knows the extraordinary depth of this guy's creepiness.....even 'Jakanka' couldn't stand having him around.......

                 Stephen Miller......a special nod to Baby Orange's mini-Himmler......the malignant mastermind who bravely brought immigrant toddlers to their knees, wailing for their parents.........maybe he can get some kind of Reverse Nobel Prize.......'Master Of Misery'......

                  The KKK Keebler Elf......aka Attorney General Sessions...........trying to enjoy every minute of caging kids before Baby Orange remembers the Russia probe and goes back to whacking him like a pinata......

                   Melania and her "I Really Don't Care" jacket.........To quote Yoda.....'Speechless, we are....'    This goes back to 'you can't make this stuff up'..........it only confirms our long held suspicion........that Baby Orange must have accidentally dropped the Amazon box she originally came in, causing irreparable brain damage........(no wonder he picked on Amazon.......they refused to post his 1 star review....("very dissatisfied.....the next bride I'm getting on E-Bay"......)

                    Ivanka........graciously thanking Daddy for signing one of those jumbo French Restaurant menus to stop child separations........which he started to begin with........(she doesn't realize yet that Daddy probably only signed the order to win a date with her......)

                   and just to mention that there's also no shortage of massive stupidity on the other side of the political spectrum, we give you........

                    Peter Fonda.........crawled out of whatever deep hole he's been buried in to tweet about throwing Barron Trump in a cage with pedophiles.   So Easy Rider's still ingesting leftover drugs from 1969?   Memo to Fonda, De Niro and all other celebrities who think crawling into the gutter with Trump will do any good........SHUT.  THE.  HELL.  UP.  YOU. IDIOTS.

                 

'THIS IS MY HAPPENING AND IT FREAKS ME OUT!' BQ JOURNEYS TO THE FILM BEYOND BEYOND.........THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.....

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970)    Culture Vultures may have dubbed him 'King Leer'.........but really, nobody seemed less interested in sex than the notorious 'nudie' director Russ Meyer........

                We wonder if anyone ever found a moment of genuine arousal in Meyer's feverishly staged and edited melodramas like "Faster Pussycat Kill Kill"........true enough, he populated his overheated pulp with gorgeous, huge-breasted women........and if you didn't blink through Meyer's frenzied camera shots which rarely lasted more than 2 seconds, you might catch fleeting glimpses of them naked......_

                20th Century Fox understood that Meyer was far more of a pulp fictioneer than a pornographer........and handed him the reigns of what would become one of Fox's two attempts to make a mainstream, X-rated movie......(the other being the catastrophic "Myra Breckinridge", of which we'll post later).....

                So by the time the summer of 1970 rolled around, Fox prepared to unleash not one, but two big budget WTF movies........before anyone ever thought of screaming out "WTF!" at major studio film.

                (As you might expect, the passage of time has turned the "X" rating of Meyer's film into a mild, breakfast-blend R...….especially when compared to what goes in today's movies...….)

                 While 'Myra'  turned into a gruesome trainwreck, "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls" was every inch a Russ Meyer movie, with a wink-wink over-the-top screenplay by no less than film critic Roger Ebert.....

                 To avoid the legal wrath threatened by 'Valley Of The Dolls' author Jacqueline Susann, Ebert and Meyer concocted a cartoonish, funhouse-mirror version of Susann's premise (3 girls done in by evil Hollywood)......... which nobody would ever mistake for the novel or the mediocre, junky movie made from it in 1967.....   

               No mopey starlets who think they can act show up in this movie to slow things down.......the 3 girls here are all stunning Playboy Playmates with the usual Meyer-mandated spectacular cleavage.......

               The men surrounding them?   A grotesque parade of posers, pretty-boys, heavily muscled studs,leering sleazes and lunatic hermaphrodites.  But bless their little hearts, Roger Ebert supplies them with endlessly quotable lines.....(...."You will drink the black sperm of my vengeance...")  You can practically hear him laughing as he typed this stuff.   

              Roger 'n Russ wrap this all up with a Manson-style massacre and a startlingly funny closing narration that sounds like an Evangelical de-briefing of all the sex, sin and carnage we've just watched as we drooled with guilty pleasure.....

              We could sit around forever debating the merits and flaws of this movie.........(including Meyer's penchant for restless, lightning fast editing......he would have been right at home directing "Transformers" movies)........but the best thing to do.......sit back and drink it all in, every nutty demented minute of it.........

             The textbook definition of a one-of-a-kind movie.......a perfect satirical storm whipped up by a guy who made movies like nobody else.  For a movie that more than earns its WTF status,  3 stars (***)........you're guaranteed never to see anything like it....  
  

HELIUM-HEADED IDIOTS IN SPACE! BQ BLASTS OFF FOR THE "WILD WILD PLANET"

The Wild Wild Planet (1966)      Sounds so apt, but no, the first part of this post's headline does not refer to the Trump advisers who came up with his "Space Force" plan to make the Galaxy great again........

                 'Helium Headed Idiot' is the insult commonly hurled by the characters in this grandly ridiculous Italian space opera.......

                  It's used, we guess, as a futuristic substitute for 'son-of-a-bitch', 'asshole' and 'douchebag'...... (closer to what the actors said upon their first reading of the script....).

                 If we start describing this movie, it's going to sound like a riotous, giggle-a-minute hoot.....

                And it is.......if you opt to watch it drunk out of your mind.......

                 Viewing it sober?  A whole other story.  With all your faculties in place, you'd have plenty of time to contemplate the community-theater acting, the storyline lunacies.......and the special effects that make Ed Wood Jr. look like James Cameron.......

                Our director here is none other than that tireless inevitable Shlock-inator, Antonio Margheriti (a.k.a. "Anthony Dawson", to trick mouthbreathers into thinking they're watching something filmed right outside Bayonne, New Jersey.....)

                 Sadly though, Antonio/Anthony hadn't figured out that you can't direct an outer-space action adventure with the same stately, measured pace of a Steeve Reeves Hercules movie.......

                Filled to the brim with craziness, the movie only chugs along like a freight train that's slowed down to 5 miles an hour to roll through a road crossing......

               But what craziness!  Space Cadets (and we mean that as both their job description and overall intelligence) must do battle with Mad, Mad, Mad scientist 'Mr. Nurmi'.....(notice he has no medical degree, even though he spends the entire movie harvesting body parts, shrinking thousands of people to doll-size...... for easy transport to his personal planet for even more gruesome experimentation.......at the very least, he's solved the problem of how to fit bodies into the overhead bins)

                 Nurmi, a prime Helium Head if ever there was one, deploys a formidable army of scantily clad, Swingin' 60's babes accompanied by bald, 4-armed mutants in wraparound shades and black leather ponchos.  Our Space-Studs, dumber than a box of meteors, have trouble identifying them at first........but never fear.....once they do, they engage the Babes in a see-it-to-believe-it judo bash........never have so many people flipped so many other people over their shoulders.......

                This all leads, naturally, to a big showdown on Planet Nurmi-ville, where the Nurm-inator unveils his penultimate project.........biologically blending himself together with the hot girlfriend of  the primo Space-Hunk.......thereby making Nurmi the first official Intergalactic transgender......

                 And as this lunacy ensues, you can also feast your eyes on the landscapes that look they came out of the box of "Barbie's First City Of The Future'......and the space shuttle that zips around on its string in complete circles.......

                 Need we go on?

                 For the first time, BQ awards 2 separate ratings.......1 star (*) if you foolishly choose to watch this stone cold sober.......but 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2) if you watch with loads of friends.....all of you fully lubricated with multiple six-packs, and/or generous portions of Vodka, Rum, Wine....etc, etc,etc.....when you start calling each other 'Helium Heads', you know you're having a good time.....

               

APOCALYPSE THEN.......WE DUCK 'N COVER AS THE MUSHROOMS SPROUT IN "ALAS, BABYLON".........

Alas Babylon by Pat Frank (1959)    Had a fascinating time, coming back to this one.......the first novel by an American author that depicted a catastrophic nuclear attack on the United States........

           2 years earlier, British-Australian author Nevil Shute published "On The Beach"........depicting Australia as the last remaining outpost of civilization in a nuked world,the population waiting to inevitably die from radiation sweeping the globe.

            Welcome to the fun-filled 50's, folks........

            Despite all the requisite horrors depicted, Pat Frank held a fundamentally optimistic view of humanity in the face of unimaginable disaster and destruction.....

             Though he afflicts his sturdy band of survivors with typhoid, murderous looters and some radioactive jewelry, they manage to prevail in their isolated little southern Florida coastal town........benefiting from their proximity to an artesian well and the fish in their patch of still uncontaminated ocean.

            (We'll not get into any scientific debate on how this bunch manages to stay clear of the fallout generated by all the nuked-to-hell-and-gone Florida cities that surround them.....)

           Pat Frank's big 'thumbs up' for humanity's perseverance must have been a comforting balm for the 1950's readers of his novel.  Though we're not quite sure how they took to Frank's brutal, direct assertion that nuclear war would most certainly put an end racism and segregation.......(nothing like scrounging for food, water and medicine to make you realize we're all in this together .....)

            But this book is very much a product of its era, a time when U.S. Presidents were men like Truman and Eisenhower.......and American institutions and values were held in awe and respect.

            Compare that era to the America we face today.........an America whose every dearly held value is under systematic attack by a mad psychopath and his vile collection of minions and sycophants.

            Pat Frank's 1959 characters remain decent, coureagous and self-sacrificing in the face of overwhelming, daunting adversity.........we wish we could feel as sure about the real populace of today.......especially the 30 per cent of them who've so readily surrendered their hearts and mind to an individual who's both heartless and mindless.....

          We wonder what Frank would have made of today's American.........governed by people who celebrate inhumanity, bigotry, rage and hatred.

           We doubt he would have ended a 2018 version of "Alas Babylon" as optimistically as the one in 1959.

ROY STORY 2..........BQ SAILS BY "JAWS 2" ON ITS 40TH.......

                 Jaws 2 (1978)   40 years later, we still feel Roy Scheider's pain at having to contractually fulfill his obligation to appear in this movie.........vacuum-packed Universal Studios corporate sausage......

                   You can see it on his face, a mixture of anguish, frustration........barely controlling the urge to roll his eyes upward and check his watch for how many hours he has left on the clock......

                   Not that he doesn't give it his full commitment.........but everything's stacked against him.

                   The reptiles of Universal were never going to exert enough time and creativity into crafting a movie around Scheider's  tortured, emotionally damaged character.......

                   They got what they wanted, a 2 hour carnival ride to suck up a lot of quick cash from the summer rubes.......

                  In place of Spielberg, poor Roy ended up with Jeannot Szwarc as a director. Szwarc, a prolific television journeyman, functioned in much the same way as Universal Theme Park employees........

                  His one and only job........keep the huge operation running efficiently and cleanly.

                   With Szwarc, you weren't going to get all those magic little Speilbergian moments that made "Jaws" such a roaring worldwide sensation.......

                 All you were going to get was a Theme Park shark popping up to gobble up extraordinarily stupid teenagers and a random helicopter........

                 Szwarc was there to yell "cut" if any of the actors blew their lines or tripped over the furniture.  His creative contribution ended there.

                No wonder Roy Scheider looked as adrift, abandoned and out of options as he did in the final moments of "Jaws"...........it was like giving an emotional performance in a corporate training film......

                 Only one other participant besides Scheider made a genuine effort here.......composer John Williams, who went out of his way to write some lovely, cheerful themes for the teenagers' sailboat parties.........way, way better than the movie deserved.

                 But in a way, the movie benefited greatly when Universal Studios continued its greedy strip-mining of "Jaws" as a franchise..........their woeful, embarrassing "Jaws 3-D" and "Jaws-The Revenge" came out so noxious and ridiculed, they made "Jaws 2" look like a fine film in comparison........

               For Roy Scheider and John Williams, and them alone, we'll bite off  2 stars (**)..........the movie's tagline was correct.......it's not safe to go back in the water.....or go back to "Jaws 2" either......