MONSTER RALLY!! ......BQ'S EXCLUSIVE ROUND-TABLE WITH GODZILLA, MOTHRA, RODAN & KING GHIDORA!

                  Yes, you read that headline right.......BQ spared no expense to bring together the Fab Four of apocalyptic destruction for an exclusive group interview........to coincide with the opening of their new film "Godzilla, King Of The Monsters"........

                   I rented out my local Wal-Mart's parking lot, the only venue that could fit them in.......and with a clear agreement that NO topic is off-limits.........(with one exception.....)

                    Please note that  King Ghidorah's conversation had to be divided up by KG #1, KG #2, or    KG #3, depending on which of his three heads are speaking......

BQ:   Welcome to the Beached Quill, all of you!   Gotta say, you're lookin' good for your ages if you don't mind me sayin'-

G:  No Botox on me, baby......which is more than I can say for these three.....

R: Hey, screw you, morning-breath, at least I don't look I've been hittin' the Tokyo Dunkin Donuts for the last five years.

G: All muscle, bird-brain. You heard of six-pack Abs?  I got 30,000 cases of Abs.......

M:  Hydration, that's the key, darling.  And skin softening lotion after you peel off the make-up every night.

BQ: No question, Mothra, you still rock the red carpet.......who are you wearing?

M:  The wingspan's Dolce & Gabanna, jewels on the antenna are Harry Winston-

KG #1, 2, 3:  (in unison)  Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!

G:    You brain dead lizard, will you take off those stupid red hats, already!  You're not at a rally, morons!  And the Warners guy warned you - no politics on the publicity junket......

BQ:  I had no idea King Ghidorah was a Trump supporter-

G:  Yeh, he loves the screaming.........and some Russians on Facebook talked him into registering each of his three heads to vote in three different states,,,,,Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

BQ:  Getting back to the film, how'd you guys feel about gettin' the band back together.....I mean, starring in a film together again?

G:  Not the first time a studio tried it. Couple of years ago, The Weinstein brothers pitched us a project.......they wanted something like "Original Gangstas", you know, the one of with Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Pam Grier?

R: Oh right, I remember that script.......we were gonna play international art thieves pullin' one last heist.....we were gonna clean out the Louvre.

BQ:  You're kidding. You guys?

M:   Lost count of how many re-writes they went through, they couldn't figure out a way to make us look inconspicuous when we break into the museum.  Not to mention Harvey Weinstein tried to assault me at the Cannes film festival.....

BQ:  Oh my God, for real?

M:    Big fat bastard tried to grab 3 or 4 or my legs, started singing 'Larva, when you're near me' to himself.  I can't discuss this any further.........there's litigation pending.

KG # 1:  No obstruction!

KG # 2:  No collusion!

KG # 3:  I'm totally exonerated!

G:   King, will you shut the hell up with that shit already?  No wonder you love Trump.....three heads and you're still dumb as a rock.

BQ:  Here's a question for all of you.  This is a huge movie for you guys, with a 200 million dollar budget.  Any of you worried about the film's reception, how it'll fare at the box-office?

G:   Nah, we're cool. All you can do is breathe fire, step on some buildings, kick a little ass and hope for the best. Steven Seagal gave me that advice years ago. Or was it Michael Bay......?

M:  I'm just a little disappointed they cut out my best scene.  They got the Olsen Twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley to sing me out of my cocoon. It was so sweet......

R:  Bullshit, it slowed the movie down. And those little dwarfs can't sing for squat....

G:  Even if we don't do well here in the States, we'll kill 'em in China. They eat this crap up. They even sat through 'Mortal Engines'.....

BQ:  King Ghidora, you have anything to add before we wrap things up here?

KG # 1, 2 & 3: (singing in unison)  "I'm the only one of me! Baby, that's the fun of me!"

G:  What can I say. Three headed imbecile really loves his Taylor Swift.......but all the heads have to fight over one single IPod.......not a pretty sight......

BQ:  Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. Godzilla, I simply have to ask......before you go, could you light up your back plates and shoot out a little fire for us?

G:  No problem. But I hate when kids ask me to do this in airports and Starbucks.........Okay, here goes.....this Bud's for you.
                         (sound of roaring......fire....)

BQ:  Oh jeez...........there goes the Wal-Mart.........oh the humanity!

G:    Ooops. My bad.  Damn, I was gonna pick up that DVD with all the 'Dumb and Dumber' movies......they had it for 3.74, too.

THE DIRTY HALF-DOZEN!!........MOPPIN' UP AFTER "THE GRISSOM GANG"

The Grissom Gang (1971)    BQ dearly loves us some Robert Aldrich......

                 You could always count on two things in Aldrich movies..........

                 #1.  Over the top melodrama..........punctuated, whenever possible, with extreme violence....

                 #2.  Over the top actors working at the very outer edges of their range......usually at the top of their lungs.  (To put it in "This Is Spinal Tap" terms........everybody's dialed up to Eleven......)

                   Aldrich hit the whole country's sweet spot with "The Dirty Dozen"......everybody fell in  love with the premise:  since war is a crazy enterprise, why not have it fought by crazy, violent psychotic criminals.

                  Audiences drooled with joy and the success of the film made Aldrich rich enough to buy his very own movie studio, complete with a couple of sound stages.....

                   But his subsequent forays in overblown grotesque melodrama ("The Legend of Lylah Clare", "The Killing Of Sister George"), found little favor with critics or moviegoers.  Unlike the rollicking doomed goons of "The Dirty Dozen", nobody found the characters in these films (or their stories)  even remotely appetizing.

                   And yet Aldrich was just getting warmed up......unleashing the most cartoonishly overacted bloodbath of his career in "The Grissom Gang".....

                  Adapted from an old British crime thriller and plopped down into Depression-era Kansas, "The Grissom Gang" puts a high-strung, neurotic debutante (Kim Darby) in the clutches of an outlaw brood who make Bonnie and Clyde look like the couple in the 'American Gothic' painting.

                   Smitten at first sight by his kidnapped prize is the Grissoms' most unhinged, murderous man-child, Slim (Scott Wilson). And so begins a kind of King Kong/Fay Wray relationship between this Beauty and her Beast......

                   The rest of the hot-tempered Grissoms go about their business of shooting and stabbing just about everyone they encounter, including themselves...........by the time all this Grindhouse gristle 'n gore grinds to a halt after 2 hours, there's hardly anyone left alive.......(not that you'd care by that point....)

                   But what a weird Aldrich-ian ride it takes you on.......filmed in dazzling bright MetroColor and operatically performed by the cast as if they're playing to the cheapest seats in the upper decks of an NFL stadium.........(special props to Irene Dailey as madwoman Ma Grissom, whose visible mustache comes and goes from shot to shot......and shrieks for joy while she's machine-gunning platoons of cops....)

                   Though Aldrich labored like the ultimate Hollywood workhorse,  audiences for raw, rough items like "The Grissom Gang" dropped off sharply........forcing him to sell off his own movie studio......(they happily re-assembled however, for his "The Longest Yard" in 1974, a film closer in spirit to "The Dirty Dozen")

                   For pure, unadulterated Aldrich, you can't do better than join up with "The Grissom Gang" for a couple of blistering, bloody housrs.........you won't see anything like it from any other director......3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)

HOLY RAMPANT RAYSHAWS!! .......DEAN KOONTZ WRAPS IT UP IN "THE NIGHT WINDOW"

The Night Window by Dean Koontz (2019)     Not that BQ didn't enjoy the hell out of 'em, but pardon me if I breathe a sigh of relief.........

               After five books, the main event (rogue FBI super-babe Jane Hawk versus the infinitely evil Techno Arcadians) finally wraps up........

               Don't know what I'm talking about?    In a nutshell......

               The Techno Arcadians, who sound like a dance club group, are a bunch of rich, influential sons-of-bitches setting up their own utopia........this involves injecting folks with nano-bots that form a web around their brains and turn them into zombie-slaves, answerable only to the T.A.'s........

                And the Technos, with tongue-in-evil-cheeks, command their nano-botted minions with catchphrases borrowed from Richard Condon's brainwash classic "The Manchurian Candidate" and Jack Finney's "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers"....

                   .......as in, 'Play Manchurian With Me'......and 'Uncle Ira isn't Uncle Ira'.........

               Say the magic words and they've got themselves an army of soulless, mindless lackeys.......kind of like when Trump shouts 'Lock her up!' to his rally Trumpanzees.......

                They've even engineered some extra brain-dead shmucks for assassin duty......dubbed 'Rayshaws' after 'The Manchurian Candidate's hapless dupe Raymond Shaw,,,,,,

                But wait! There's more!  (No, I'm not about sell you a knife-sharpener)........the T.A.s, who've penetrated the upper echelons of government and the media, also have a busy murder agenda.....wiping out random folks who they think might cause 'em grief.

                 Fools!  They make the mistake of zombie-fying into suicide the beloved hubby of our FBI supergirl Jane Hawk, Jane goes on the run and in disguise, embarking on a lonely, impossibly out-numbered quest to uncover and reveal this foul nest of vipers.

                  And boy, do these scumbags make it tough for her......framing her as American's number one fugitive and relentlessly hunting down her hidden Achilles heel - her adorable little son.

                  Five books worth of hairbreadth thrills 'n spills await you.........but in all honesty here, you may find yourself skimming through some of Koontz's over-written descriptive passages..........when he sometimes indulges himself in verbose philosophizing in the midst of all the action.

                  The main thing.........by this fifth and final entry to a lengthy epic, you expect a solid, satisfying ending.........and no crapola "Game Of Thrones" finish designed to leave you gnashing your teeth and posting "WTF!" tweets.......

                  Take the BQ's word.......Dean Koontz delivers. For the series in totality, 4 stars (****).....if you haven't sampled these books yet, start playin' Manchurian.....and beware those RayShaws.......

               

             

GAYE SWINGER??.......CONNIE FRANCIS GOES "LOOKING FOR LOVE" IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES......

Looking For Love (1964)    "I've spent a whole month trying to break into show business!  So I want a husband and babies!"

                      I'm paraphrasing Connie Francis's dialogue here.......but you get the drift.

                      Like the abysmal 1966 "Never Too Late" I posted about a week or so past, this showed up in 1964 already dead on arrival, a 1940's artifact spiffed up in Panavision and MetroColor.

                      Connie Francis, the bubbly, diminutive nightclub chanteuse, was one of those performers born way too late for the golden era of MGM musicals.  Who knows......she might have flourished back in the 40's or 50's, as a kind of minor league, second-string Ann Miller or Debbie Reynolds.......

                       But in 1964?   Both she and this movie looked they stumbled together out of a time machine gone awry........

                         The schizo storyline has no idea what character Connie's playing from one scene to the next..........either a husband-hungry ditz pining for pregnancy.......or a plucky inventor (of the "Lady Valet",( a glorified clothes-hanger).......or a showbiz hopeful who has no trouble stumbling (literally) into TV shows, film sets and celebrities.......

                        And speaking of celebs, a desperate MGM punishes a whole slew of them by putting them in this movie.........an embarrassed Johnny Carson, a perplexed Danny Thomas........and most likely force-marched into the film against their will, the studio Youth Roster of Yvette Mimieux, George Hamilton, Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton.

                        Hutton's stuck with the brunt of the torture.......as one of the romantic leads, he has to say stuff like "I can't stand a smart aleck broad" repeatedly.    (Material like this led to Hutton's failed career as a would-be Jack Lemmon light comedian.)

                       Loads of familiar, lovable character actors show up, including Jesse White, Charles Lane and best of all, Hollywood's professional hard-hearted floozy Barbara Nichols, playing a actress named.....(and you thought I was making this up)......Gaye Swinger.

                       MGM should have sold off that character name to a movie that really needed it......like "Myra Breckinridge" or "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls"......

                        Connie Francis does sing sweetly enough.........but.as you watch her feeble efforts to swing her arms and hips to the beat of the painfully out-of-date music, you can hear the sounds of both her and MGM nailing the last coffin into her movie career. 

                         1 star(*)....... for any cinema historians who can't live without seeing this at least once......for everyone else, look for love elsewhere........

                   

MEMO TO "KILLING EVE" CREATORS............DROP DEAD

Killing Eve (2018)    Oh, wait a sec......almost forgot.......DON'T READ THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR A GIGANTIC SPOILER.......EVEN IF THE POINT OF THIS POST IS THAT THE "SPOILER" IS A NOTHING BUT THE USUAL CRAPPY MARKETING SCAM PERPETRATED BY TV SERIES SHOWRUNNERS!!!!!!!!!

                 Well, I'll say this much........"Killing Eve" Season 2 provides truth in advertising......

                  Eve's killed.

                  Until the already announced Season 3..........

                 Which means.........Eve's not dead?

                  BUT OH MY ****IN' GOD!  THE LAST EPISODE LEFT US STUNNED AND SHOCKED BEYOND ALL COMPREHENSION!!!!!! WHAT THE ****!!!   WE'RE BUMMED OUT OF OUR MINDS!  WE'RE NEAR CRIPPLED WITH SURPRISE!

                  Uh..............no we're not.

                  By this time, everybody's starting to catch on that network executives and series showrunners think their viewers are gibbering idiots.......and can be easily poked, prodded and goosed like lab animals.........

                   Part of their procedure means providing faithful viewers a season final episode designed to leave them with their mouths agape.......drool and half-chewed nachos dribbling down their chins...

                  After all, the masterminds surmise, how many of us can think that far ahead to realize that there's a Season 3 in the works...........(aaahhh........a thought dawned! They wouldn't dispense with Sandra Oh, one of the most gifted actresses working in TV right now..... would they? )

                  And kiss goodbye the ratings and advertising bucks???

                   Oooopsie.......the BBC-America bigwigs don't want us thinking too much........better if we spend our time tweeting, "WHAT THE **** DID I JUST WATCH???"

                    BQ Memo to all creative participants  of "Killing Eve".......congrats for pulling off what you no doubt think is a wham-bam of a season finale.......stop high-fiving yourselves for a minute......

                    You killed Eve?  Breaking news:  everyone knows you didn't.

                     For the series, 3 stars (***)......for whoever wrote the season finale, Zero (0)....you're so not as smart as you think you are......

NOBODY EXPECTS THE 100 YEARS WAR!!!......KILLING TIME WITH "TIMELINE"

Timeline (2003)    Couldn't help borrowing part of Monty Python's classic line about the Spanish Inquisition......

               Watching 2 hours of Medieval knights heaving and cleaving at each other, I kept waiting for one of them to shout "I fart in your general direction!" and start catapulting cows off the castle walls.......

                I viewed this already aware that virtually everyone involved with this movie ended up hating it.......especially Michael Crichton, on whose novel it's based........

                Designed as a popcorn crowd pleaser, it suffered enough studio meddling and constant re-editing to render it an incoherent mess........

                 But even in the midst of all the pulpy chaos (and I do mean chaos), you can still have yourself a good time if turn off your brain and surrender to all the noise and non-stop lunacy.......

                 An unreasonable request?  Hey, what do you think people have to do before they start watching epic-length Marvel movies?  Or anything directed by Micheal Bay?

                  First of all, there's no sense mocking the film's wonky time-warping premise......at least you can understand the goofy science easier than what's in some of the Star Trek movies......

                So...... semi-sinister Government types, playing around with the teleportation idea from "The Fly" accidentally open a wormhole into a 1342 French Vs.British battle in the midst of the 100 Years War.........

               Now there was a nice long war.....or as Trump sabre-rattler John Bolton likes to call it....Heaven On Earth.......

               And off we go......with a whole bunch of 2003 time travelers warpin' their way into a violent 6 hour daytrip to Medieval-World......like a really cool theme park except for the part where they run you through with broadswords and perforate you with arrows.......ouch......NOBODY expects the 100 Years War!

                 Much breathless chasing, running and fighting unfold.......even dabs of romance in between all the hacking and whacking. Hey, don't think....sit back, pump that butter popcorn down your gullet and let it flow........

                 My favorite thing about this movie isn't even in it........the propulsive score written for it by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith.  Even Goldsmith couldn't keep up with the endless studio tinkering, so his score was replaced by Brian Tyler's........a good muscular effort, but missing that unique Goldsmith magic. (Both scores are available on CD if you soundtrack fans want to compare.....)

                 I don't care how many people have beaten up on this movie.......BQ scarfed it up like a super-sized fast food feast.......with extra fries........and even better, I didn't have to hold off peeing for 3 hours waiting for the teaser at the end of "Avengers:Endgame".....2 *1/2 stars (** 1/2)

WEEKEND MADNESS UPDATE!.......SPECIAL "REALLY STABLE GENIUS" EDITION......

                Anyone still wondering why BQ refers to him as Baby Orange???

                Baby Orange won't work with Democrats if they don't stop investigating him........in related news, the President also stamped his feet, kicked his legs up and down and threatened to hold his breath til he turns blue.........

                 Baby Orange once again claims he's a ....."really stable genius...."........'cause he knows the best words, m
akes the best deals, hires the best people..........

                 Baby Orange asks his minions to confirm he's calm.......just as soon they finish drinking those cups of Kool-Aid left out for them.........

                 Baby Orange re-tweets doctored videos of Nancy Pelosi........as opposed to all videos of Baby Orange, which never require any doctoring to prove ignorance, evil and insanity.......

                 In time for Memorial Day, Baby Orange contemplates pardoning war criminals........thereby dishonoring millions of veterans who served honorably.......maybe the flag he loves to hug should have blood smeared on it.......

                 Baby Orange turns loose his mob lawyer (a.ka. the "Attorney General") to investigate his investigators............if anyone asked Barr if he's aware he's supposed to represent the United States Of America, he'd probably answer ...."huh? The United what?"

                 Ben Carson thinks Senators were asking him about Oreos......once again proving he's the only brain surgeon in American who's missing a brain......

                Baby Orange claims he's the most transparent President in history........while blocking every Congressional subpoena and hiding his tax returns and the un-redacted Mueller report.........but true enough, his mind is as transparent as clear plastic wrap.........really stable plastic wrap.....

                 Baby Orange scolds State Propaganda Network Fox News......for having the outrageous audacity to imagine they're journalists instead of minions........who the hell do they think they are? A free press?

SHYAMALAMADINGDONG!..........SHATTERING "GLASS"

Glass (2019)    You could exhaust yourself just thinking about the rollercoaster career of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan.........

                  This guy careened from Flavor-Of-The-Year/Heir-To-Spielberg to Puffed-Up-Washed-Up-Poseur.....to Got-His-Mojo-Back-Comeback-Kid........

                   Even writing this, I want to take a nap........

                   And sad surprise......with "Glass", he's back to Puffed-Up-Washed-Up-Poseur.........

                   Shyamalan desperately needs some rehab therapy for Ego-Holics........maybe a 12-step program for filmmakers who inflate their self regard to Hindenburg size.......

                    And we all know what happened to the Hindenburg........oh the humanity.

                    In no way will I waste my time (or yours) dredging through Shyamalan's lugubrious attempt to link up three of his previous characters into his own superhero universe.......

                   But at least one of them's having fun......as in "Split", James McAvoy puts on a bravura one man show as a multiple-personality loon.......like an Off-Broadway ham with a stage all to himself........he's a lethal version of Sally Field's "Sybil"...…

                     Not having fun at all:  the bored, morose Bruce Willis, apparently burned out by his movie career and now glumly traipsing from one movie to the next, looking like he's about to get his wisdom teeth pulled out......an actor aching for retirement.

                     3rd guy in the equation...….the inevitable, ever-present Samuel L.Jackson, mostly glaring as he once again plays the brittle-boned evil mastermind...……(you keep waiting for him to say, "what's in your wallet?")

                      Shyamalan, for this part, fritters away the bulk of his movie having these three oddballs under the care of a shrink (Sarah Paulson) trying to convince them they're delusional about their superhero status.

                      This tedious premise then gets dragged out, paced like an oil painting, until the director unveils his Big Twist...….and as you may have already guessed, it's lame, vague and only stunning in that it renders the previous two hours a complete waste of time...……

                      But no doubt Shyamalan, his ego newly re-inflated to Hindenburgian dimensions, must have deemed it brilliant.  I'm guessing he thinks he's a stable genius...…...

                      Pardon me, but from this point, BQ prefers to wait until M.Night's career once again swings around to Got-His-Mojo-Back-Comeback-Kid...…..

                      After this movie, he's overdue...….1 star (*)

                 

THE HORROR....THE HORROR.......THE CHENEY APOCALYPSE IN "VICE"......

Vice (2018)    I suppose after two long, long, long hours, writer-director Adam McKay expects us to choke on our laughter........maybe similar to watching the world go up in a nuclear firecloud at the end of "Dr. Strangelove"....

             Hey, wait a second, he wants us to think, this Machiavellian evil bastard Cheney isn't funny! Over 4000 American soldiers and 600,000 Iraqis killed in the phony war he and Bush engineered?  And we're still fighting over there??Damn, that's a shitload of dead people caused by one guy!

             BQ memo to McKay:   you're too damn late to treat Dick Cheney's life like a slow-motion 'Saturday Night Live' skit.  You can't shame or humiliate him......you can't get under his skin the way the slightest slight gets under Trump's......Cheney's armored and unfeeling as a fire ant.

             And besides, all of the massive damage wreaked by Cheney is a done deal......and he'll stay proud of his vile deeds until his diseased, endlessly repaired heart finally resists his cardiologists' many efforts to keep it beating.

               Turning Cheney's life into a live-action political cartoon might have worked for no more than 80 minutes......minus all the stupifyingly dull dross that McKay uses to give the film epic bloat. (He unwisely cut his best sequence by far......Washington politicking and lobbying explained in a song and dance number.......I can't even describe how many worthless, boring scenes that he left in the film that could have easily been  sliced out to make way for the musical prancing that perfectly encapsulates Washington......

               As for Christian Bale inflating himself like a Macy's Parade Balloon to play Cheney.......unimpressive. Beyond all the makeup and Bale's own Double-Cheese-Whopper body, he finds no real way to illuminate the character.......he's as uninteresting as Ryan Gosling's cardboard-cutout take on Neil Armstrong in "First Man"......

               There are a few moments to praise........Steve Carell as Donald Rumsford hysterically laughing when Bale asks him, "What do we believe?"..........the GOP in a nutshell.......

               And BQ couldn't help liking the film's final kicker......in which McKay finally turns his wrath on the public at large.......who, in their ignorance and indifference, made it possible for monsters like Cheney to ravage the world unimpeded.   Maybe we deserve the Cheneys, the George W's.......and Baby Orange.
           

                That may be the prime audience for this movie........people could only comprehend the toxic depth and effect of Cheney's machinations if it's laid out for them like the origins story of a Marvel Super-Villian.

                But anyone else who figured out for themselves what Cheney was up to hardly needs to punish themselves with this film.  A 10 second glance at a political cartoon does the job just as well.
     1 star (*)

WE DON'T SEE P.I. TO EYE...........40'S MEET THE 60'S IN "MARLOWE"

Marlowe (1969)   BQ exhaustively covered MGM's brief miserable reign by ex CBS reptile James Aubrey)........no sense beating a dead horse's ass......

                  This rickety update of a Raymond Chandler mystery is typical of the cheapjack fish-nor-fowl oddities that oozed out of the Aubrey meatgrinder.....

                   It aspires to the snappy wise-ass Private Eye-wash that we all loved in "The Big Sleep", even if nobody (including Chandler) could make any sense of the plot.......with world-weary gumshoe Philip Marlowe (a game enough James Garner) stumbling over dead bodies, lethal gangsters and devious but delectable femme fatales.(Gayle Hunnicut, Rita Moreno)

                   But the film lacks any atmosphere whatsoever, photographed like a bottom-of-the-barrel TV movie......it wobbles between its 1940's roots and 1969 California......without ever looking definitively like one era or the other.......it mostly takes unfolds on leftover sets from other movies......

                     Its one and only claim to fame......the sequence where young Bruce Lee kung fu's Garner's office furniture to smithereens........Bruce later attempts to do the same to Garner, but in the film's most ludicrous scene, Garner's supposedly quick enough to avoid those famous flying feet......

                    A few snappy gags and a fine supporting cast........but Aubrey never wanted MGM films to anything more that quick packaged sausage. 2 stars (**)

GEEZER BABY!..........WIPING COBWEBS OFF OF "NEVER TOO LATE"

Never Too Late (1965)    Can't make the usual 'consider the era' excuses for this one........

               Arriving in 1965, it was already grotesque and way out of date........like a museum piece freshly smeared with Technicolor and Panavision to hide its ancient origins......

                It was based on a Broadway comedy that ran several years......no doubt regaling and tickling loads of middle-aged tourists and theatre-party matinee matrons........

                 But blown up on wide screen and color, it's one weird horrorshow,......overacted, badly acted......with its cast reduced to screaming hoary gag lines at each other.  Oh, it's got all the smarmy, sniggering attitudes of 60's romantic comedies about sex, sure enough........then as it drags on, you realize it sensibilities are still firmly rooted in the early 1950's......

                Simple, primal premise........golden agers (Maureen Sullivan, Paul Ford) find themselves.......catch your breath......PREGNANT!!!!!

                To begin with, audiences would need science-fiction level imaginations to picture the beauteous, genteel, gentle hearted Sullivan conceiving a child with the bulbous-nosed, bowling pin shaped gasbag Paul Ford.

                  Ford was a character actor with exactly one color in his paint-box........sputtering rage. Funny enough in small doses.......but the idea of basing an entire film around him is sadistic. Watching him for an hour and 44 minutes is like listening to an air raid siren that never shuts off.

                  As if the perpetually braying Ford isn't enough, the abysmal script  has him treating the news of his expected child with profound shame and deep embarrassment......as do his equally repulsive daughter and son-in-law, wretchedly acted to obnoxious excess by Jim Hutton and Connie Stevens.

                  Poor Maureen Sullivan functions here as a lone island of sweet sanity in sea of technicolored vomit......

                  Add to this the townspeople leering at Ford like they've never heard of anyone having sex after 40 and you've got the perfect nightmare of "Never Too Late".......complete with a 1950-ish syrupy title tune warbled by Vic Damone.

                   BQ normally loves exhuming 1960's films from obscurity.........but this one's more of mutation,.....it smells of some rotten 1940's film tarted up enough to try to pass for a 1965 release.

                   Doesn't work. At one point, Sullivan gathers up enough gumption to call Ford on the phone and blurt out, "Go to hell!"......(this movie's equivalent of F*** you!).....

                    You tell 'em, Mags.  Zero stars (0).



               

VICTOR NOTORIOUS........A PRO-BUONO DEFENSE OF "THE STRANGLER"

The Strangler (1964)    First, a bit of fond remembrance for Victor Buono......

               Big, tall and heavy, he fully arrived in the 60's as a sort of modern update of Sydney Greenstreet and Laird Cregar.......but unlike them, he carved out his own unique role - as pouting man-babies tormented by their mothers......

                And unlike the portly, corpulent actors who came before him, he embraced the role Hollywood's Official Ham with unbridled joy.....like a 60's version of one of those puffed up 'thespians' who toured the Wild West, he happily popped up on talk shows in his persona as a bubbly gourmet raconteur......spouting poetry and jokes like an overly cultured Bacchus....

                  So his film and TV roles, befitting his public capering, gravitated toward tongue-in-cheek spoofs.....no one could hardly take him seriously as a villain......

                But early in his career, he could remind you what a truly gifted actor hid behind all the exaggerated posing.......

                  Leo Kroll, the titular "Strangler" is one of Buono's prize Man-Babies.......both sly and infantile, he's tyrannized by his hospitalized harpy mother (the wonderful Ellen Corby)......at home, Leo keeps a picture of his mother forever frozen in her unforgiving scowl......

                 And so he goes about his business of wringing girls' necks, but only after they've stripped down to their underwear.........(you get the feeling the whole underwear thing is more a fetish of director Burt Topper than it is of Leo......)

                Buono's work here is near perfect........subtle, creepy and craftily underplayed.....(the film favors him with huge close-ups and he knows precisely how to calibrate his performance in each of those shots....)

                 But the film.......not nearly anywhere up to his level. Director Topper kicks things off with a great eyeball-view of a murder victim.....blatantly copied from "The Spiral Staircase".  But that's the extent of his inspiration. ....

                The rest of the film settles down into B-movie torpor........it's like watching an episode of "Law And Order SVU"  filmed underwater.....in extreme slow motion.

                 Later on, the movie takes an early stab at serial killer profiling, although it has its clueless psychologist wrongly diagnose Leo as schizo, even though what the doc's describing is a textbook sociopath,,,,,,

                 You can check your texts and e-mails any time the film's dominated by its non-entity supporting cast...….but perk up whenever Victor Buono takes center stage. His quiet, controlled (and sometimes darkly humorous) strangler will chill even more than when score dabbles in some woo-woo Theramin electronics.....

                   3 stars (***) but that's solely for the one-of-a-kind Buono……..a larger than life actor who turns playing a literal pain-in-the-neck into his own art form...…..