'THE INSTITUTE'.........UNCLE STEVIE'S CAGED KIDS.........

The Institute by Stephen King (2019)     Some readers expressed distaste at King taking swipes at Trump in the course of his latest epic Good Vs. Evil smackdown.......

                   Not that we mind, of course.......

                   How could he not?  Trump's twice as scary and dangerous as any monster King ever created.......completely unhinged, malevolent and armed to the teeth with America's nukes......and a bigger clown than Pennywise......

                   If that doesn't give you the all-night willies, nothing will........

                   What goes on in King's super-secret government-backed 'Institute' may seem inspired by Trump's war on immigrant toddlers, but for faithful King reader's, it's nothing new.......

                   Uncle Stevie's been terrorizing, torturing and slaughtering innocent kids throughout his long career.......and as we, his readers, well know, when his powerful forces of evil do final battle with his good guys, the payback is monumental.......but achieved only at a terrible, heartbreaking cost........

                   No Stephen King character who survives to the final pages does so unscathed . They end up traumatized forever by the memory of the sweet innocent souls who don't make it to the final pages...

                    What's fascinating here: the 'the-end-justifies-the-means' quandary at the heart of this book. The Institute kidnaps and imprisons kids with telepathic or telekinetic abilities, murdering their parents while scooping them up.......

                      The endgame - to supersize and weaponize the kids' powers to the point where they can obliterate,via mind power remote control,  assorted global bad actors......terrorists, dictators, or anyone else we might deem a threat to world order......

                     This process involves perpetual physical abuse and Jospehy Mengele-style medical torture of the kids (which special emphasis on rectal thermometers).........the end result fries what's left of their brains, leaving them as gibbering, drooling zombies.....(fit only to attend Trump rallies).

                     And the Institute's staff is more than up to this mission, consisting almost entirely of  the worst collection of bullies, thugs,  psychopaths, and mad scientists that King's ever assembled for one single book.

                      Before long, your heart's breaking and aching for the children and you hunger for Armageddon to drop down on the Institute's coterie of odious creeps. ........(and you know that sleepy little South Carolina, middle-of-nowhere town introduced in the early chapters will have something to do with it....)

                       We suppose you could call the book political, in that the Institute, its moral compass gone haywire, justifies its obscene, unspeakable acts........much in the same way Trump's minions twist themselves into pretzels defending  Dear Leader's  obscene, unspeakable acts....

                     But who cares?  Whatever your politics, this book's a typical King thrill ride from start to finish.  And what would the Fall season be without that, we ask you. 4 stars (****)

                   

                   

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP...........SPECIAL "I'M THE HERO!" EDITION.......

             Ghouliani........Baby Orange's very own personal Nosferatu thinks of himself as a whistleblowing hero........possibly Thomas The Tank Engine?  All aboard....woo-wooooooooo!

                Baby Orange melts down,calling Dems 'savages'......and warns White House staffers to arrange their desks in a circle to ward off spears and arrows........

                 Baby Orange dreams of executing the whistleblower just like Mata Hari......and to add insult to injury, claims the spy should be offered an e-cigarette before the firing squad opens up.....

                  .

'THE DEAD DON'T DIE'.......DIE HARDLY WITH A VENGEANCE.....(AND BQ'S 1000TH POST!!!!)

The Dead Don't Die (2019)    Maybe it's fate, karma or the cosmic irony of the universe that makes this movie the subject of the Beached Quill's 1000th post........

                  We're torn......we grew up as the biggest horror/sci-fi/fantasy geek fanboy in our neighborhood........

                    And now we don't know how to review this without sounding like the crusty Clint Eastwood from 'Gran Torino'.......yelling "Get off my lawn!"

                    Ah, the hell with it. At the risk of being unhip (and this movie revels in its hipness, practically drowns in it)......let's just spit it out........

                     It sucks. Big time.

                    Jim Jarmusch, that independent film master of spare, dry minimalism, created this film  as if he recently woke up from a 40 year nap, unaware  of anything that's happened in cinema or culture....

                      A zombie comedy?  Really, Jim?  Ever heard of "Shaun Of The Dead" or "Zombieland"? No?  Look into it........

                      Using zombies as a satirical comment on the mindless rampant consumerism of American society? Really, Jim?  Ever heard of George Romero's original "Dawn Of The Dead?" Look into it........

                       Breaking the 'fourth wall'  and have a character explain he said  'this isn't going to end well' because he read your script?  And thinking that's so hip and funny? Really, Jim?  Ever heard of "Blazing Saddles"? Look into it..........

                       Making a zombie movie that moves at the same pace of a shuffling zombie?  Really, Jim? Who did you think was going to sit through this.......besides hardcore Jarmusch-ites?

                       We do understand the idea here: putting your own unique spin on a time worn, worn out genre.........but sorry, Jim........you've shown up at this party decades late. Your tropes are deader than the zombies.........and any number of films and filmmakers covered this ground already......faster, funnier and way more watchable than your gasping, lame attempt.

                      And by the way, Jim, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference how many ultra-cool people you loaded up on.....(Tilda Swinton at her most Swinton-ish, Chloe Savigny, Selena Gomez, Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi , Danny Glover, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop.....)

                       Your cast generates about the same amount of laughs as that huge crowd of comedians accomplished  in "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".......none at all.

                        Unfit for human or zombie consumption on every level.......who knew that for our 1000th entry, we'd assign the subject of it the glorious AFH.....an ABOMINATION FROM HELL.

                         Sorry, Jim. Get off my lawn.
                   

'THE SPLIT'.........FAIL, FAIL, THE GANG'S ALL HERE.............

The Split (1968)    Only in the 1960's could a slapdash, heist-gone-wrong movie attract a cast like this.....Jim Brown, Ernest Borgnine, Julie Harris, Warren Oates, Jack Klugman, James Whitmore, Diahann Carroll......and stopping by at the end, Gene Hackman, fresh outta 'Bonnie And Clyde'

                   And their director, Gordon Flemyng was plucked out of the ongoing invasion of British film talent pouring into mainstream Hollywood......(mostly a TV guy, he also directed "Avengers" episodes,  the two Peter Cushing "Dr.Who" movies and the totally off-the-wall "Great Catherine", which featured the oddball collection of Peter 'O Toole, Jeanne Moreau and Zero Mostel.)

                    Flemyng sure knew how to zip things along......in no time at all, master criminal McClian (Brown) recruits a hot-tempered thug (Borgnine), a witty hit man (Sutherland) a safecracer/electronic whiz (Oates) and a nervous getaway driver (Klugman).

                      The master plan, financed by a hard-as-nails moll (Harris) involves swiping all the ticket/concession cash at a football stadium.

                      Do things go awry?  Oh my.......yes. And we come to probably the only scene anyone would remember from this movie......./in which one cast member achieves orgasm in a stunningly violent way........(we're being deliberately vague here, so as not to spoil the fun for anyone who  hasn't seen it yet.....)

                      Flemyng's far from a stylist and one look as the bright, harsh TV-style lighting gives you an idea of how fast they must have shot this movie. But what a great cast to spend a little bit of time with.......and given it's the 60's, you get the standard 'huh? say what?' ending capped off, naturally, with a freeze frame.

                    We can't say much for the movie, but as a 1960's artifact, you wouldn't want to miss a it......(especially the extraordinary punch-up between Brown and Borgnine)   2 stars (**)

'THE CHAIN'.........WHO'S GOT THE CHAIN WHEN THEY DO THE MAMBO?

The Chain by Adrian McKinty (2019)     If we were going to rate this book based solely on the sheer, audacious cleverness of its concept.......we'd judge it a Grand Slam......

                 Adrian McKinty came up with the kind of Gotcha gimmick that gives thriller novelists wet dreams......the attention-snapping idea that guarantees a stay-up-all-night readership and an instant movie deal......

                  How can you resist this plot..........children abducted and held for ransom by tormented parents who've been threatened into kidnapping a child to save their own.......who in turn has been kidnapped by yet another set of parents desperate to save their child, who in turn.   (get the idea yet?) ........ ..thereby.generating a perpetual conga line of stolen, traumatized kids and parents turned into instant criminals.........

                A never ending, seemingly infinite chain of innocent parents extorted and transformed into ruthless snatchers of  random children as part of the ransom deal..........

                  Befitting such a striking, diabolical conspiracy, the book zips along with ruthless efficiency in its action and twists. McKinty moves his characters around like a Grandmaster chess champion.

                  A staggering, mathematically impressive progression of evil and cruelty, engineered by........(ooops, no spoilers here....)

                The problem:   There's not one sentence, not one character, not one moment that's even remotely believable.......or has any resemblance to real human behavior. It functions more as a grotesque, modern-day Grimm's fairy tale.

                  McKinty makes little or no effort to convince a reader that all of these innocent people would instantly convert themselves to violent kidnappers..........and eagerly seize and terrorize somebody else's child instead of calling the FBI.......

                  Nope, don't hold your breath for that.. All these unreal folks carry on not like human beings, but like cardboard cutout characters in an action franchise movie.  If this book ever does make it to the screen, only a mindless, inhuman shlockmeister like Michael Bay could do it justice.

                  True, we turned the pages fast enough.......but most of the time, while shaking our heads, laughing out loud and muttering.....'you gotta be shittin' me' with this'......

                  Two thirds into it, the book pulls out a ludicrous twist in order to bring victims and villains together for an explosive, ultra-violent finale. Like the ending of the book we reviewed a few days ago, 'The Girl Who Lived Twice' you can picture the author rubbing his hands together anticipating a film deal......

                  If you're willing to lobotomize yourself before you dig into it, 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)....it's fast and entertaining enough.  But if you can't tolerate thrillers in which  people behave as if Earth isn't their home planet.......you stand warned.

MIDWEEK MADNESS WRAP-UP.......SPECIAL "IMPEACHES 'N CREAM" EDITION...........

                   We're not anywhere naive enough to believe the Baby Orange Apocalypse has come at last.....

                    We feel for Speaker Pelosi. She didn't want this. At one point, she said of impeachment......."he's not worth it".   How right she was then. And still is.

                     First:  it's a waste of time. There aren't any more Republicans with minds capable of free will and moral clarity. (Those guys already resigned, headin' for the hills.)  Nothing left there but minions......like the rally Trumpanzees, they've drunk, gargled and bathed in the Baby Orange
Kool-Aid.   So impeachment will die in the Senate.

                      Yes, impeachment was inevitable.  The walking talking excrement posing as President would sooner or later commit enough illegal acts to make it mandatory that Congress take action.

                      And so he did. And so Congress did..

                      But back in days of Nixon's impeachment, almost everybody believed in democracy as the guiding principal of America........

                       No longer true. Baby Orange's cult base, his 39 per cent or whatever, they've bailed out of democracy. They want Monarchy......no laws, no lawmakers, just King Baby Orange to take care of them, coddle them, tell them how wonderful he is........and tell them Mexico will pay for the wall.

                       They look upon impeachment not as a required constitutional procedure to check a rogue President........but as a repudiation and thwarting of their will.  Like the hordes of walking dead in the movies, they'd aggravate the civil war already raging......"Revenge Of The Deplorables".......

                        And that's why BQ cannot whoop up and down about this, as much as we loathe and despise the Orange Fungus.........

                       In our humble opinion, November 2020 is the only one true way to rid the United States of this cancer.........

                       Baby Orange needs to see how much the majority of the country hates him. And he needs to see it in the vote tally......definitively.

                      Of course he still won't leave, claiming the election was rigged as U.S. Marshals drag him out of the White House. But he'll be gone, probably to seek asylum in Russia or North Korea before New York City 3rd District prosecutors announce their litany of felony charges.

                      So let the impeachment play out, as it must. But nothing will come of it and all the
woo-hooing and yay-ing won't make the outcome any different........

                      Ultimately, the voters will decide the fate of Baby Orange, not Nancy Pelosi and the Dems and all the pundits.

                     And in this graceless, course, contentious day and age, that's the only way it's going to get done.

                 

'THE GIRL WHO LIVED TWICE'.........DRAGGIN' TATTOOS.......

The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Langercrantz (2019)    Don't want to waste too much time on this, having already wasted the hours it took to read it........

                I'm no big fan of other authors carrying on with the characters created by deceased writers....

                I've managed to tolerate those Ace Atkins attempts to duplicate the late Robert B. Parker's Spencer novels.......only because, like millions of other readers, I'm still head over heels in love with Spencer, Susan, Hawk and the Spencer universe of the private eye's friends and foes......

                But Atkins over writes.......and his overreaching tries at Spencer's killer one liners tends to ring hollow.....

                "The Girl Who Lived Twice" is supposedly the last, and easily the worst of David Lagercrantz's revivals of the late Stieg Larrson's Lisbeth Salander........super-hacker, relentless avenging angel and the scourge of corrupt, evil and deviant men everywhere.....

                  What a cheat this book is, what a worthless rip-off.......

                 In a Lisbeth Salander story, all you really want......is Lisbeth and more of her. All the rest is window dressing.

                 But this tedious piece of crap gives you about 20% of Salander and 70% of  some convoluted, godawful plot about the mysterious death of an equally mysterious homeless guy........

                  The homeless guy's death leads journalist Mikael Blomkvist to an almost impossible-to-follow, overly twisted mess involving a doomed Mt. Everest expedition loaded up with spies and counterspies.....(don't ask.). As if anyone cares, the Homeless Guy/Everest thing grinds on through the entire book.......

                   Once and a while, the book gets around to the whole reason anyone would pick it up in the first place......Lisbeth Salander mixing it up with her evil twin Camilla, who commands a gang of evil bikers and assorted Russian scumbags.........and our fave Manic Pixie also finds the time to go all Lisbeth on some wife beater's ass......(let's just say she irons out his problems....heh, heh, heh...).

                   I'll give it this much, Lagercrantz does finally deliver a movie-ready showdown between Lisbeth and Camilla........(you can almost hear him sniffing after a film deal......)

                      BQ memo to any producer who contemplates turning this into a movie.........the very first thing you do.....ditch the homeless guy and all the Mt. Everest garbage...(unless you put Lisbeth on Everest, duking it out with the Abominable Snowman),,,,,,,,this ain't rocket science folks......IN A LISBETH SALANDER STORY, ALL WE GODDAMN WANNA SEE IS LISBETH KICK ASS!!  IS THAT SO  HARD TO COMPREHEND?????

                   The book? 1 star (*).....only if you're a hardcore Salander completist.... wait for the movie...and only if they follow BQ's instructions...

THE EMMYS..........WHERE STREAMS COME TRUE.......

The Emmy Awards........shocker.....NFL football crushed Emmy in the ratings........let's discuss.....

               Stream a little stream with me......We'd love to know how many actual people subscribe to how many of these multiple streaming services.......and who many actual people ever find the time to watch the 800 million hours of programming belching forth from all these streams..........

                The Fox Snarkmaster.........like some middle school class clown hiding in the back row, this idiot would whisper stupid one-liners that only he would think are funny..........why didn't Fox just give this guy a jar of vaseline, some tissues and let him masturbate in a closet?

                The Kardashians mocked.........for us, the glowing highlight of the entire 3 hours, the penultimate moment of moments. The best true incident of reality TV ever........

                  Ken Jeung.......Ken, you're no longer practicing medicine, but every time you appear, you're a walking, talking rectal thermometer.......

                 Game Of Thrones.........Irony personified.......the most beloved cast assembled......from a show with the most despised, reviled final episode in television history......

                The Purple Carpet.........watching this, you can detect the real reasons these awards shows are bleeding viewers........Memo to Hollywood:  Take a listen out there........the sound you hear .....it's the rising revulsion, disgust and general boredom with the parade of preening egos you put on display........listen carefully and you'll hear the sound of a million eyes rolling upward during the phony, fawning humility you spew out upon accepting an award.........

                  In other words.......this crap's gettin' old......let's switch to the game......

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.........SPECIAL 'ALL YOU GOTTA DO IS WHISTLE' EDITION.....

                 Baby Orange presses Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden and son...... promising an unlimited supply of Trump Steaks, a free ride on Air Force One, and a replica of an Executive Order, complete with Baby Orange's signature framed inside a Red Lobster menu......

                 Baby Orange pronounces that recently passed journalist Cokie Roberts "never treated me nicely"......therefore, as do all people who hurt Baby O's feelings....she deserved to die.....

                 Baby Orange itching to go to war with Iran.....on behalf of his beloved friends....Saudi Arabia....home of the 9-11 terrorists and the wonderful MBS, who carved up an American journalist like a Thanksgiving turkey......

                  Baby Orange claims mountain climbers and pole vaulters won't be able to scale his border wall.....mountain climbers and pole vaulters take caution to not eat or drink while listening to Baby Orange, to avoid choking to death on sudden laughter.......

'BLOOD AND ROSES'.........BITE ME.......PLEASE.

Blood And Roses (1960)    Absolute mandatory viewing for those of us (BQ included) who savor, adore and treasure batshit crazy movies from the 1960's...........

               And who better to kick off the decade than continental softcore-cinema guru Roger Vadim..........a barely competent director who nevertheless surfed the top of the Euro-Trash wave......with the help of the gorgeous actresses he bedded, married, mentored and cast in his films (Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Annette Stroyberg, etc, etc.....

                As we pointed out in our post on "Barbarella", we're no big fan of his.......once you get beyond Jane Fonda's main title zero gravity striptease, the rest of the movie's a static, boring morass.

                Think about it........this guy makes a movie with spaceships aliens, mutants, dominatrix babes, intergalactic angels, killer dolls, killer canaries, all of them ripping his wife's clothes off every ten minutes.........and it still puts you to sleep.

                 Seven years before that disaster, we have Vadim's take on vampires......with the Be-Still-My-Heart duo of renowned cutie Elsa Martinelli and Vadim's babe-wife of the moment , Annette Stroyberg.

                 Stroyberg, apparently cloned from one of Brigitte Bardot's fingernails, plays an aristocratic hottie who seethes with jealousy at the idea of her cousin (Mel Ferrer) marrying a rival bombshell (Martinelli)......

                 Possessed by the spirit of an entombed lady bloodsucker, Stroyberg goes off on a seductive Fang-You-Very-Much spree.......and nobody's safe when she's on the prowl in her blindingly white gown (sometimes soaked with blood)…...

                  The kind of lush, langquid eroticism on display was Vadim's specialty.......and he'd invite  you to sit back and luxuriate in the stunning beauty of Stroyberg and Martinelli..........if nothing else, Vadim maintained his reputation as a connoisseur of ripe cinema dreamgirls.

                 The vampire stuff?  Hardly there. You can tell from the get-go that Vadim's more into the sex than the blood........(you want dripping teeth? Go see Christopher Lee....)   He does take a flying leap at a wacky nightmare sequence that goes so far beyond his imaginative abilities, it looks like Fellini's worst outtakes cobbled together......

                  But when Vadim stays in his own little backyard (holding the camera steady on his sparkling starlets), "Blood And Roses"  rises to attain its own limited goal.......a sumptuously photographed bad dream with ethereal but deadly temptress floating at its center.......

                  Sniffers of cult 60's weirdness......this bouquet of roses is for you......everyone else, you're better off avoiding it......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

'COLD STORAGE'...........FUNGUS AMONG US........

Cold Storage by David Koepp (2019)   Fungus zombies!  People and animals bursting like gut-filled balloons!  Headless rats snapping at you!  Gallons and gallons of green ooze!  And bikers with curved flatscreens!......(don't ask)

                  What more could you want in a book?

                  Screenwriter David Koepps's first novel is already movie-ready.......stuffed to the max with snarky, funny characters who spew out a perpetual stream of gags while avoiding (or succumbing to) a rampaging fungus from outer space.......

                   This insidious, sentient fungus, infinitely smarter than any of the people in the book, infiltrates some unlucky humans, along with a deer and a cat.  Once the fungus starts eating away at your brain, you do its bidding........

                   ...........which means coming as close as you can to other humans, so you can projectile vomit more fungus-goo into their mouths........and make more Fungus Zombies.....

                      Koepp doesn't skimp on the science here, and his research and  assorted medical info is as exhaustive as anything in a Michael Chricton novel.........but let's get real, no one's reading this book for a detailed treatise on fungus........

                       You damn well know why we'd pick this one up at all.

                       Goo! Gore!  Fungus Monsters!  And even an unlikely pair of lovers whose survival you root for......

                        And a whole cast of minor-league idiots (including those doomed bikers)  who look and sound like they wandered out a Stephen King novel.........in other words......Primo fungus food!

                       Don't wait for the inevitable movie when you can enjoy all this fungus goodness right now......with a book that gives a whole new meaning to the Greening of America......4 stars (****)

                        (And if you do decide to wait for the movie, then wait a little longer for the DVD, make sure you make it a double feature with "The Green Slime"....)

                       

GONE GIRL GONE WILD - CHAPTER #5,382..........PEELING OFF THE SECRETS OF "CALL ME EVIE"

Call Me Evie by J.P. Pomare (2019)    BQ's blown out some hot  'n cold views  as we've plowed through the never ending stream of Unreliable Narrator thrillers.........

                I mean, Holy Crap, did Gillian Flynn ever open the floodgates with "Gone Girl" or what?.

                From all these copycat authors, we now have enough disappeared, dysfunctional women to fill up an NFL stadium several times......

                 Some of these novels were a kick to read..........some were a chore.........and few of them were flat out punishments from hell to get through........

                 Good news:  this one's a kick. And with a solidly delivered kick-in-the-teeth at the end that everyone's come to expect from a book like this. 

                So off we go to the middle of effin' nowhere in New Zealand, where an odd, odd couple are hiding out as if fugitives from......who knows?

                17 year old "Evie" (real name: Kate) appears to be a semi-captive of her "Uncle" Jim (you guessed it - not her uncle...)  

                Jim's a dangerously hot tempered middle aged guy who spirited away Kate from her Australian home, possibly one step away from her arrest on a murder charge. But of whom?  And why? 

                    While keeping her on a short leash with non-stop sedation and constant surveillance, 'Uncle'  hopes to heal Kate's blocked memory of the Big Bad Thing she may or may not be accused of...............

                   From this point, author Pomare resorts to alternating flashback chapters that ever-so-slowly start to fill in the blanks and snap together the puzzle pieces you'll need to figure out what's going on. 

                    But don't try too hard, cause you know by now, if you're  a thriller addict like us, that a couple of BIG TWISTS will upend the whole shebang........

                 Nicely done, a fast, clever read......crack this one open for a real gone Gone Girl.....

4 stars (****)

               

NUKE THE KIDS!........BQ DUCKS AND COVERS WITH "LADYBUG, LADYBUG"

Ladybug Ladybug (1963)    Yes, boys and girls, once upon a time, a whole generation grew up with a mushroom cloud hanging over their heads........the very real threat of....uh....what Slim Pickens in "Dr. Strangelove" referred to as "Nookleer combat, toe to toe with the Rooskies!'

                When the Rooskies' Soviet Union finally collapsed, some folks foolishly thought the Cold War and Nuke-slingin' were things of the past.........heh, heh, heh, heh.......

                  Hardly.  Not when Russia's ruled by a KGB poison eel........and not when our very own Baby Orange dreams of nuking hurricanes and hires people who think nuclear war is winnable.........(we can imagine this idiot impersonating George C. Scott's Buck Turgidson in "Stranglove".......("Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed........I do say no more than 20 million killed.....tops..Uh, depending on the breaks"...)

                  So let's detonate an atomic throwback to that queasy era of bomb shelters, civil defense air raid sirens and 'duck and cover'  drills to help us baby boomers survive a nuclear blast in our classrooms........(the only vital instruction missing from that drill.....they forget to tell us to put our heads between our legs and kiss our sorry asses goodbye.....)

                 The tiny little movie "Ladybug Ladybug" based its grim story on a true incident.......in which the Principal of a suburban elementary school couldn't get through to anyone who'd explain why the school's Civil Defense alarm began to wail as if  Russian nukes were zoomin' in at any moment............

                  Following protocol, he evacuates the kids, busing out most of them and sending the kids who live within walking distance on homeward hikes, accompanied by teacher chaperones.....

                   And there's your set-up.......as the kids and teachers take their long, dread-laden stroll through country roads and farm fields........with the children indulging in all the accumulated myths, half-truths and fractured facts they've absorbed about what nuclear war's like.......

                    One girl offers her classmates sanctuary in her family's bomb shelter......and once inside, promptly declares herself a ruthless mini-dictator over the group, rationing out food and water and denying entrance to another girl she doesn't much care for.......

                     The outcast child, terrified beyond reason, desperately takes shelter in an abandoned, junked refrigerator.......and suffocates.

                      And the oncoming nuclear war?  Nothing more than a short circuit in the school's Civil  Defense alarm bell.

                      Quiet and modestly done, this film stays with you as subdued, yet powerful treatise  on an unthinkable war and its effect on children.......falling somewhere between 'Lord Of The Flies' and a typical Twilight Zone episode

                      It was the second film, after "David and Lisa" of director Frank Perry, who had an up and down, shaky career as an independent creator of small personal dramas.  Perry was never much of a skilled filmmaker, but he did bring out the best in his actors.......(Spineless in dealing with Hollywood executives, Perry's studio-backed films almost always ended up in editing room butchery.)

                     Perry would have been well-advised  to stick to ultra low budget efforts like 'Ladybug Ladybug'......flying so low on the cultural radar, no exec would ever think it was worth tampering with.......

                   It remains, now as it did then, a gut-punch that slowly but surely sneaks up on you......a understated but sharp reminder, in today's world overtaken by a buffoon and his simpering toadies,, that there's nothing winnable about 'Nooclear Combat'............4 stars (****)

'THE RECKLESS OATH WE MADE'........OH WHAT A KNIGHT.................

The Reckless Oath We Made by Bryn Greenwood (2019)    How much do we LOVE this effin' book.........

               Let us count the ways..........

               Before even starting, let's flat out state GET THIS BOOK. NOW.

               Not every author who attempts something like this can pull it off.........a contemporary fairy tale for adults.......fanciful, at times hilarious, achingly heartbreaking, yet chock full of today's current miseries........drugs, crime, violence, falling-apart families.......

                 And what a Princess we have in the middle of this non-stop swirl of dysfunction......Zee, a hot-tempered Rubenesque redhead with a trainwreck family, including a gorgeous, ditzy younger sister who's gotten herself kidnapped by a bunch of neo-Nazi KKK prison escapees........

                 To her rescue (and to help Zee rescue her wayward sister) comes Gentry, an impossibly noble, wanna-be Knight who's way up on the autism scale and speaks only, as a Knight should, in Medieval English. The three invisible Medieval voices who speak to him have told him 'Lady Zee' is his  designated Fair Damsel to protect and defend........

                   And so he does.........which leads to any number of terrible and wonderful things........and we wouldn't dream of spoiling the fun of this amazing book by telling you anything more.

                    Nutty as a fruitcake?  You bet.

                   One hell of a funny, sexy, thrilling, suspenseful, heartwrenching read?  You better believe it.

                  Okay, everyone should probably know by now how we'll rate this book......

                  5 Knightly stars (*****).....so happy at long last to stumble upon another FIND OF FINDS.  Dig in and prepare to stay up with it all night.....it's that good.  And believe it or not, after we've ranted and raved on this topic........for once, the author blurbs on the back cover are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.

                  It's recklessly great, says BQ.

               

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP........SPECIAL "IT'S THE BULBS MAKING ME ORANGE!" EDITION......

                  Baby Orange at last explains why he's orange.......those damn energy saving lights......combined with 8 daily quarts of Rogaine to perpetuate the 2 or three actual remaining hairs on B.O.'s head......

                   Baby Orange rushes to ban E-cigarettes and vaping........declaring our nation's kids should stick to dying the old-fashioned American way.....with AR-15 bullets in their skulls and guts...

                  Baby Orange kicks out John Bolton........for not falling head over heels in love with Kim Jung Un......Bolton's already halfway through his memoirs, taken right right off a microphone hidden in his mustache......

                     Baby Orange minion Wilbur Ross threatened to fire Weather Service scientists who didn't agree with B.O.'s 'Alabama Hurricane' myth......and also forcing them to sign a statement that Kansas tornadoes will really take you to Oz if you click your ruby slippers 3 times.....

                  .Baby Orange warns the Bahamas are sending us "very bad people"........well, rest easy......at least they're not 'bad hombres', which is what the Mexicans were sending us......so no huge sombreros and criss-crossed cartridge belts......

                    Baby Orange's National Debt goes up to 1 Trillion Dollars.......and claims this amount can decrease if only more military units pump up the economy by staying at Trump Resorts......

                    Baby Orange reminds us all that he's "A Very Stable Genius" in a tweet.......and we can only hope he finds a very stable padded room in a very stable  psychiatric hospital.....very soon.

'THE GIANT BEHEMOTH'..........ANOTHER SORE DINO.......

The Giant Behemoth (1959)    T.G.I.F., folks.......so why not wrap up the week with BQ's favorite kind of movie........good old fashioned Dino stompin'!

                  I know there's better Dino-On-The-Rampage movies than this one.......but with all its flaws (and probably the lowest budget of any stop-motion Dino flick ever) it's always warmed my heart on cold autumn nights.....

                  First off, its's British, so even with the $1.98 expended on the special effects, it stays classy.......and loaded with top-drawer talent like Andre Morell, Jack MacGowran  and Maurice Kauffman.

                   Secondly, even with the animated Behemoth scenes carefully rationed out and variable in their quality, nothin' but nothin' beats the sight of a stop-motion Dinosaur ambling down busy city streets.......squashing cars and people with equal abandon.......

                  And the squashed citizens are, in fact, the lucky ones......since the Big B far more enjoys giving out radioactive waves to slow cook his victims like shrimp on the barbie.....

                   All of this herky jerky Dino-Might served as the farewell film of stop-motion animation wizard Willis 'O Brian, who virtually invented the art form with the original silent film "The Lost World" and his 1933 masterwork "King Kong"

                     Also, a You-Bet-Jurassic tip of the hat to director Eugene Lourie. Though he had a long, prolific career as an art director, he carved himself a niche as the prime director of classic monster-on-the-stomp movies, including "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" and that glowing tribute to mother love, "Gorgo"

                      Best of all, given the fear and loathing of the atomic age, the movie appropriately closes with a radio report of dead fish popping up in the sea......the sure sign that another rip-roarin', radioactive Behemoth is ready to rise up, kick ass, and squash us screaming, fleeing bystanders......

                      That's why Notorious G. B. is always worth checking out. 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)

'FIRESTARTER'........STEPHEN KING ABLAZE.......

Firestarter (1984)   Couldn't think of a more perfect Throwback Thursday post than a look back at this one......

           Especially with the release yesterday of Stephen King's new novel "The Institute"....all about supernaturally gifted kids abducted and exploited by a sinister, shadowy cabal of evil adults......

            So way back in the 80's, Uncle Stevie was just warming up, so to speak......(heh, heh, heh)....with a similar premise......a extra-powered father and daughter (David Keith, Drew Barrymore), relentlessly hunted by a vile secret government agency called "The Shop".

              "The Shop"s resident mad scientist (Freddie Jones) has left Keith with Jedi-Mind-Trick abilities and and little Drew with the power to instantly immolate anyone stupid enough to threaten her and her daddy.

               Fortunately for us, the bloodthirsty viewers, 'The Shop' employs vast amounts of men-in-suits who boldly chase and surround Keith and Barrymore........you'd think these intimidating assholes would know better.......

                But bless their stupid little hearts, they invariably end up begging for their lives and whimpering like toddlers just before Drew lights 'em up, turning them into screaming, staggering bonfires.......(all of this accomplished, by the way, pre-CGI.....meaning real stunt guys on real fire)

                This leads 'The Shop's oily bigwig (Martin Sheen) to deploy his creepy assassin John Rainbird (George C. Scott) who dreams of absorbing Drew's incendiary power before he kills her.....to better prepare himself when he moves on to the Great Beyond..........(Sheen shows the same reaction to the mad, mad, mad Scott that anyone would......as in..."O-kaaaaaaay...."

                 Need we say more? 

               The movie more than delivers on its expected, inevitable climax........which sees little Drew, madder than Carrie on Prom Night,  unleashing fiery hell on 'The Shop' and its fleeing minions, giving all new meaning to the phrase "Burn, baby, burn"......

               Fast and fun.....and heavily populated with top drawer actors.  (in addition to Sheen and Scott, there's Art Carney, Louise Fletcher and Moses Gunn)  And oh boy does this movie make the stunt team work hard for the money........BQ lights up 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)......nothing beats watching 'The Shop' flame up like Atlanta in 'Gone With The Wind'......

             

               

             

REMEMBERING 9-11............

                   No essays.......I couldn't write a coherent article on this even if I set my mind to it........only random thoughts come to mind.

                   The overwhelming evil imagination it required to create such a singular, spectacular, horrifying moment of history.  In the space of a few minutes, Osama Bin Laden took his place beside Adolf Hitler as one of the world's master strategists of agony, death and grief.......

                   The terrorists' lasting legacy......if nothing else, they forever turned air travel into hell on earth........a never-ending ordeal of security miseries and an overall aura of unease, tension and sometimes violent rage between passengers and airline employees........

                      Their other lasting milestone........endless wars, courtesy of the real president at the time, Vice President Dick Cheney, feeding thousands of young American soldiers into the Middle East meat grinder.........to die in a U.S. led invasion of a country that had nothing to do with 9-11.
When Cheney's medically tinker-toyed heart finally stops beating, he'll take his place along side Bin Laden........

                       And most importantly.......the end of invulnerable mainland America, which forever changed how we viewed our country and ourselves......something new entered our collective psyche.......fear, anxiety......and suspicions.......

                        ........starting with the country's divisions that cracked and widened ever deeper........and all the hatred, bigotry and phony, overblown patriotism that infected the nation.......eventually culminating in the election of Donald J. Trump, the most deficient human being and unfit President in United States history.

                       We can celebrate the bravery and courage of the first responders and survivors.....and marvel at the gleaming glass tower built to replace the World Trade Center......

                      .......but the devastation of Ground Zero still lives in everyone's hearts........

'THE PHENIX CITY STORY'........THROWIN' KIDS FROM THE CAR........

The Phenix City Story (1955)     Before you can get to the pulpy, blood-spattered chaos of this ripped-from-the-headlines noir, the movie makes you take your medicine.......

               This involves a dreary, numbing 15 minutes of a pompous TV newsguy interviewing some of the actual participants connected to the events depicted in the film........

                  No offense to these nice decent folks, but they appear awkward and uncomfortable on camera......and the bloviating reporter never shuts up......it's a bore and nothing at all like the overheated, frenzied melodrama that it precedes......

                   But hang on, here comes the movie itself.......about a little Alabama burg ruled by a murderous syndicate who oversee crooked gambling dens to cheat the soldiers of a nearby Army base/.....

                   Anyone foolish enough to go up against them ends up beaten to jelly by their army of goons......or simply shot dead in the street.

                   Along comes two men courageous enough to take the crooks on......the father-son lawyer duo of Albert R. Patterson and John Patterson (John McIntire, Richard Kiley). The Pattersons pay dearly for it......and so does anyone who helps them.

                    A black janitor (the stalwart, iconic James Edwards) has his young daughter snatched off the street and murdered, her body hurled from a speeding car. And numerous other Phenix-ians, men, women and children, get beaten in broad daylight or bumped off altogether.......

                   This perpetual reign of carnage is ordered up and orchestrated by the town's crime boss, Rhett Tanner, played to oozing, fake-friendly perfection by Edward Andrews.  Andrews, of course, spent decades as the acknowledged master of portraying pompous Chamber Of Commerce blowhards or similar authority figures, mostly to comedic effect.

                    But in this film, he turns that typical Hi-How-Are-Ya, handshaking character to the dark side.......and he's one cold, evil bastard to behold.

                     By the time this raw, ugly little movie grinds to a halt, Phenix City's literally a war zone, littered with corpses, taken over by the National Guard and put under martial law.  I'm not sure whether this movie meant to leave its audience satisfied or just relieved it was over.

                  Either way it's riveting experience to sit through. 3 stars (***)......and decades later, director Phil Karlson once again got to rev up movie crowds with "Walking Tall", another blood-soaked crime and punishment true story.......(BQ promses to get to that one too)

'NASHVILLE'......44 YEARS LATER......HOW'S IT DOIN' TODAY?

'NASHVILLE' (1975)     It's been a while since we took one of those cold, hard looks at some movie that took the world by storm during its era........

                   Influential film critic Pauline Kael went into multiple orgasms over this one.......an ambitious, massive social satire from the reigning king of make-it-up-as-I-go-along quirk, Robert Altman.

                     Altman carved out stunning late-in-life career by discovering  what kind of film he was making in the very process of making it.  It was artistically dangerous, seat-of-your-pants filmmaking that encouraged freewheeling improvisation among the large ensemble casts that Altman preferred to work with........and oh how his over-populated casts loved him for it.

                       'Nashville', a sprawling, 24 character epic set in the U.S.A's capitol of country music served as Altman's snapshot of the the country's post-Nixonian landscape.......

                        Tricky Dick was gone, but in Altman's random depiction of bustling, hustling 'Music City', Nixon's  legacy lived on.......greed, moral compasses gone haywire and worst of all, the kind of kneejerk, phony cardboard patriotism that perpetuated the Vietnam War long after everyone found out what a catastrophe it was.

                        It takes 170 minutes  for all of this to play out, with an inevitable climax touched off by......what else, a lone loon with a gun.

                        But 44 years years later, does it hold up?

                       Sporadic chunks of it do. But you've got to wade through the whole damn thing to pluck them out........

                        One huge chunk doesn't........Altman's reckless decision to let his cast members write their own faux country music songs for their characters to sing.

                       With a few exceptions, the songs are abominable.......condescending, snarky, self-satisfied doggerel that sounded like leftovers from 'Saturday Night Live' skits poking fun at country music.  And there's a lot of them. And they go on forever.  And the actors who sing them are no great shakes as singers either........

                      The fake, rotten songs really served to to undermine Altman's purpose here. Instead of a rousing attack on 'The Establishment' (as was his "MASH" in 1970), "Nashville" reeked of the Hollywood Elite thumbing their noses and sneering  at the the plain, simple folk of the Heartland. Altman and his cast refused to comprehend or understand the primal emotions and storytelling of country music (and its connection to its listeners).......they preferred to mock it.....poorly.

                      So let's turn to the stuff that's still good......Altman and his screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury were on to something with their creation of the avuncular, unseen populist Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker.......who only exists as a voice spewing out his public address trucks that prowl the streets of Nashville.

                         For his never ending speechifying, it's clear Walker's touching a nerve with a fed-up populace.......promising to get rid of lawyers in congress. With his gift of gab and drain-the-swamp promises, he's a 1975 version of the snake-oil salesman who conned his way into the White House in
2016.

                         Altman and Tewkesbury's only misstep is having Walker launch an idiotic, ill-advised attack on 'The Star Spangled Banner' (cause no one can sing it properly and it was co-written by a lawyer)........it's a dumb move on Altman's part, much like the weak satire of the his cast's country music knockoffs.

                         And ironically, amid all the typical muttering, mumbling and half-spoken lines that go on between Altman's actors, there's one single moment that stays with us from the entire 170 minutes......a silent one. It's the pained, conflicted expression on Ned Beatty's face as his two deaf children try to communicate with him. In that one hurting, weary glance, you can feel a lifetime of his frustration, pent up anger and heartbreak......you sense his simmering impatience with the cruel twist of fate that left him with a physically disabled family.

                       One other subplot stayed with us involved a Grand Canyon-sized generational gap........the plight of Keenen Wynn's middle aged husband tending to his beloved, terminally ill wife.......and quietly outraged, saddened and deeply hurt by the clueless, callous insensitivity of his visiting air-headed nympho niece (Shelly Duval), who can't find a single minute to visit her dying relative.  Either one of these subplots would have made a better, more compelling movie than the entirety of "Nashville"

                       Like many 70's movies we've revisited, a lot of "Nashville"s heralded innovations now seem tired, dated and facile. It still stands as one of the era's cultural milestones, but I'm not sure anyone but hardcore cinema completists would want to watch it more than once.  1 & 1/2 stars
(* 1/2).   And to hell with those songs........