'SPECIAL MISSION LADY CHAPLIN'.........I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE......

'Special Mission Lady Chaplin' (1966)     We can think of no better way to ring in the new year than with a loopy-doopy Bond-O-Mania Italian knock-off........

                As Austin Powers so succinctly put it.....'Yeaaah, Baby!!"

                 For all us lovers of trashy EuroSpy movies, this one's an uncut gem......everything you need for one of these Bondapaloozas is in place.....

                  Hotter That Hot Babe:  Top 'o the line......not just any random Euro-Cutie, but no less than Daniela Bianchi, Bond's 'From Russia With Love' main squeeze.  And a what character she has in Lady Chaplin, a combo fashion designer/hitwoman/international shady secret agent.

                    You can't help falling for Daniela, who machine guns guys while dressed up as a nun and an old lady.......who wears her own designer dress that converts to a parachute when tossed out of a plane.......who weaves rocket fuel into her fashion line fabric........(and you don't want to get shot while wearing one of her creations ......or you'll just go to pieces over it.......)

                     Not So Secret Agent Dick Malloy.....played by the amiable American hunk Ken Clark, who travels in a cab numbered "077", his code name.......(well, so much for secrecy).......as he tracks down a sunk submarine and its Polaris missiles, Ken's called upon to regularly beat up, blow up and shoot the hell out of whole armies of black-clad minions.........(and none of this action puts so much as a crease in his tailored suits....)

                     077's personal high point (literally):  when a hook-handed villain tries escaping on a Tram headed up a 180 degree incline, Marvelous Malloy goes chargin' up after him.......on foot! What a guy......

                      Evil Mastermind Kobra Zolta.......you know this guy's an odious bastard cause he stages scorpion fights on his living room table...(so you'd better put your coffee cup down somewhere else..)....it takes a while, but Agent Dick finally catches up with him, delivering a well deserved beatdown.......(on top of that, the creep pays dearly for never going anywhere without his scorpions.....)

                       If you love and adore these fabulously trashy Bond-O-Ramas like we do, make a date with 'Lady Chaplin' at your earliest convenience........(just don't get caught in a gunfight wearing one of her spiffy outfits....)  4 stars (****)

               

'THE IRISHMAN'........ALL HAIL THE SECRET M.V.P........LUCY GALLINA......

The Irishman (2019)   Since something like 80,000 critics and bloggers have already had their say on Martin Scorsese's  grand, 3 & 1/2 hour gangster opus........a few words on what stuck with us the most.....

            Lucy Gallina......amidst all the powerhouse performances of Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, this little child actress upstaged them all........without barely saying three words of dialogue or any radical change of expressions.

            Playing Peggy, one of the daughters of career mob hitman Frank Sherran (De Niro), she's forever changed by a pivotal incident in her childhood. When Frank hears of a neighborhood grocer impatiently shoving Peggy, he escorts the child back to the store.......where she can witness her father dragging the grocer out into the street and give him a brutal mob-worthy beating.

            From that point on, through Frank's long lifetime of bombings, beatings and murders, we mostly remember those distinctive, silent moments when father and daughter contemplate each other across the kitchen table.  De Niro stops reading the newspaper when he catches Gallina staring at him.........in her unforgiving gaze, she knows her father better than he knows himself. In her eyes you can see at once the mixture of curiosity, palpable fear and true loathing.

            Later in the film, as Peggy ages into a teen and an adult, Gallina's replaced by Anna Paquin, who continues that thousand-mile stare at her father.......a weaponized look of both dread and disgust.
By the time De Niro's character survives into his 80's, all his daughters are estranged from him and Peggy turns her back at the very sight of him.........De Niro's toll of becoming a monster to his own family.

               Call us odd (it won't be the first time), but even with all the dramatic fireworks generated by the film's three stars, (enough for 1000 4rth of Julys), those quiet,kitchen table scenes between De Niro and Gallina still stay with us.........and part of what makes "The Irishman" a 4 star (****) epic.....

                 We'll leave the praise for De Niro, Pesci and Pacino to everybody else...…..at the BQ, we say,...….bravo, Lucy. You made us remember your scenes more than anything else in the film...…..

           

               

FAREWELL, LOLITA.....RIP SUE LYON

Sue Lyon (1946-2019)     Not much we can add here to the obituaries of Sue Lyon, forever known for playing the title role in Stanley Kubrick's version of "Lolita".......

                In casting her, Kubrick went as young as he dared to in 1962....(she was 14)......not that it mattered, since Kubrick's ice-cold, dispassionate, satiric take on 'Lolita' barely flirted with  any real censorship problems.........(not unless the sight of James Mason painting Lyon's toenails left you outraged and aghast.....)

               Her 'Lolita' fame landed her another high profile project, John Huston's adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "Night Of The Iguana".....where, as a slightly older lust object, she switched from James Mason's fussy Humbert Humbert to Richard Burton's disgraced ex-clergyman.

               From then on,  she indifferently wandered into starlet roles of the late 60's, then on to episodic TV.....and then,like so man young actresses of that era, dropped off the radar.......(she was okay in all this various stuff......and truly, that's about as much as BQ can remember about her.....)

                But her signature role forever gives her a place in cinema history.....Kubrick no doubt extracted the performance he wanted......the not-too-bright nymphet who's mostly oblivious to her sexuality and the effect it has the men who salivate and fantasize over her........and Lyon more than delivered, holding her own while up against Mason, Shelly Winters and the formidably funny Peter Sellers......

                 We won't waste time on her fairly riotous personal life (a parade of husbands, including a convicted murderer)......if anyone wrote a biography of her, that's the part we would immediately skip over....

                So rest in peace Ms. Lyon........gone too soon at 73.......(when any of you reach a certain age, you'll understand the use of that 'gone too soon' phrase every time you read an obit....)

             

               

             

'EAT THE APPLE'.......A CRY OF HAVOC FROM A DOG OF WAR........

Eat The Apple by Matt Young (2019)  Struck us as odd coincidence.......that we finished this book just as news outlets revealed disturbing Navy Seals' testimony about their Trump-pardoned leader, Edward Gallagher........

                  Baby Orange, a draft-dodging coward in love with violence and cruelty, upended military justice by pardoning Gallagher, a convicted war criminal.  So instead of serving time for stabbing to death a handcuffed teen prisoner, he gets served cocktails at Mar-A-Lago........

                  In testimony, his fellow Seals described him as a toxic madman, willing to kill anybody at any time.......or in Baby Orange's mind, a fabulous watch-me-hug-the-flag symbol to display B.O.'s love of veterans......

                 After reading Matt Young's memoir of his Marine career and Iraq deployments, we've come to view Gallagher as a lethal side effect of our pointless, forever wars in the Middle East.......

                 Young makes full used of his incisive skills as a a creative writing student and instructor. As he remembers the young version of himself in harrowing detail, he describes a life forever warped and brutalized.......first by the unforgiving Spartan culture of Marine training and then by his ordeals in the endless desert warfare deployments.   

                   Like many a college creative writing student, Young often tries too hard for cleverness and at times it renders his prose dense and obtuse.  But you will experience both unspeakable horror and the darkest of humor roiling together in this book. Consider it a first hand account of what it's like to descend into the hell of our elective, volunteer wars and survive them, sanity still intact.

                   The author doesn't spare himself as he describes his own personal deterioration and the herculean effort of returning to acceptable, sane behavior after his discharge........and in the perpetual lunacy of 20 year wars started under false pretenses, the behavior of soldiers like Edward Gallagher is no longer an aberration....it's an inevitability.

                    What is an aberration......  the venal, soulless Commander-In-Chief celebrating Gallagher as some kind of hero.....for no other reason than to heap glory upon himself as  a supposed  lover of the military.

                   "Eat The Apple" provides a necessary reminder of the ongoing, non-stop horror show created by George W. Bush and his demonic string-puller, Dick Cheney........and with Baby Orange cheering on the worst part of it, the horror continues, unabated.  3 stars (***) for the book......and for the so-called 'Commander-In-Chief', as always.....minus Infinity.









                           



               

'ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD'..........WHERE DOES QT GO FROM HERE?

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)   Quentin Tarantino lives with a terrifying spectre..........

          .......the spectre of himself as an aging director, still cranking out movies that are hopelessly out-of-date, antiquated in technique and borderline unwatchable........

                 As an example, he said he didn't want to end up pushing 70, directing a film like Hitchcock's woeful, arthritic  "Topaz"......

                  So QT has threatened early retirement, considering one last film before bowing out......

                  Could that happen?  Entirely possible. We can't picture a lengthier career for a director who's primary source of inspiration comes from all the pulp 'n junk movies he devoured while clerking in a video store.........

                    But what a career he's had so far.........applying his brilliant talents for screenwriting, character creation, dialogue, storytelling mastery and pure cinema visuals.......to create gloriously exaggerated versions of  every genre he's ever loved......

                    He's our premier fantasist, untouched by real life or real experience........he might as well have prefaced all his films with ..."Once Upon A Time in.....", since he traffics in fairy tales for adults.........(and as he did in "Inglorious Basterds", he's more than willing to bend  history to his will in order to insure a more satisfying  slam-bang ending.

                    And you can't help wondering where goes he after "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood"......This is the movie where  he directly draws from his original wellspring of inspiration.........the films he already lovingly paid homage to in all his previous movies......

                   They're all in here, swirling around in a meticulous re-creation of late 1960's Hollywood........black-and-white Network westerns, the brutal Darwinian lives of insecure actors and their their hanger-on compadres........and the rise of European junk cinema (spaghetti westerns, Bond knock-offs)that offered a second chance for American pretty-boy, chiseled-chin actors........(who knew their days were numbered with the ascendancy of gifted, down-to-earth performers like Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman)

                     And lurking everywhere on the sun-drenched Los Angeles streets, like vultures waiting to strike......Charlie Manson's army of leggy young girls.........(perfectly embodied by Dakota Fanning's brief but memorable turn as Squeaky Fromme.........in Tarantino's long gallery of repulsive villains, Fanning earns her place as one of the scariest.....)

                     The film becomes Tarantino's ultimate vaudeville show, headlined by its two stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt..........and an endless list of actors who show up to to duplicate the celebs of 1969, most prominently Margot Robbie as the doomed starlet Sharon Tate......

                     Ooops, did we way doomed?   In a Tarantino film? Uh.......maybe. Maybe not.

                     If Tarantino does make yet another film that plunders the long lost genres he so adores, we're guessing it won't go well for him with critics and crowds who worship him........his well-worn bag of cinematic tricks may end up appearing as empty, boring and hollow as.....as "Topaz".

                     But don't let that idea stop you from diving head first into this film..... ."Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" delivers one of the most funny, most nostalgic, most creepy.......and of course the most outrageously violent cinematic feasts of this or any other year. 4 stars  (****)

'A JOLLY BAD FELLOW'.......WHICH NOBODY CAN DENY......

A Jolly Bad Fellow (a.k.a. They All Died Laughting) (1964)   Devoted Anglophile that we are, we chased after this ultra-obscure little film for over 50 years.........

              From all the descriptions we read, it seemed to possess everything we'd adore in a British comedy........dark, quirky humor ( a la "Kind Hearts And Coronets" and "The Ladykillers").....and two of our all-time favorite Brits.......that irascible treasure, Leo McKern and the gone-too-soon, star-crossed starlet Janet Munro.........

              When we finally stumbled over a chopped up, raggedy print, our expectations fell a little short.......

               McKern, as always, was brilliant as an imperious, rapier-witted University scientist who accidentally concocts a chemical that drives people into a brief state of euphoric madness.....followed by sudden, medically undetectable death.

                 And Munro alluring and sexy, more than matched McKern as his combination lab assistant and predatory mistress. She's far, far away from her Disney ingenue days of "Darby 'O Gill And the Little People".....

                McKern's pissed-off Prof despises the bulk of humanity......with no qualms about weeding out unproductive, undesirable people....(he's like a more amped-up version of James Stewart's character in Hitchcock's "Rope")   Now armed with his new toxic poison, he goes about offing some folks who rub him the wrong way........a busybody, intrusive gossipmonger, a faculty rival........and finally, even the hot-to-trot Munro, who's gotten a little too possessive for comfort......

                Sadly, the movie itself never pulls off  that tricky balancing act of subdued, slightly sick humor that British comedies were famous for.  The film seems tentative and uncertain about what it's attempting......whether it's laughs, suspense or drama.

                Even the ironic, inevitable twist-of-fate awaiting McKern comes out as flat and uninspired.......and all too predictable.

                The first two victims afford a few chuckles in their death throes as they wildly babble in front of astounded spectators before the poison finishes them off. Janet Munro, however, makes the most of her grand exit......she delivers a stunning bit of acting in the moment when she's consumed with both rage and horror at what's been done to her.......a wonderful bravura scene that she never got in the few other films she made before her untimely death at age 38.

               Not quite the sparkling British gem we imagined......but we're not sorry that we at long last made its acquaintance.......for the always great McKern and Munro, 2 & 1/2 stars. (**1/2)

'CATS'......AND WE'RE TALKIN' THE ORIGINAL UNCORRECTED VERSION!

Cats (2019)     Just in time for Christmas, Universal Studios is gifting America with a present as enticing as your Aunt Mildred's 10 day old green bean casserole.........

                Prepare yourself, world, for the new, improved edition of the studio's already much maligned box-office trainwreck......."Cats".......

                 The curse of modern technology makes this previously unheard of feat possible......with theaters now projecting digital downloads of films, Universal can pump a re-edited "Cats" through their server or send out a hard drive to the smaller theaters......

                   The goal here is to fix the creepy, ghoulish CGI involved in transforming the actors into felines, which touched off a critical and social media avalanche of withering ridicule......as if the wretched CGI was what was keeping the theaters empty.......

                    Well, not completely empty.

                    BQ and family took it in this past weekend, making us among the few who can claim they laid eyes on the first version of "Cats"......

                     We'll not belabor or repeat the vitriol that 800 critics and bloggers have already heaped on this poor film. Simply put......the crummy CGI is the very least of the movie's many, many problems.

                     Its primary ailment is its director, Tom Hooper, who lacks imagination and real fundamental filmmaking skills. Turning the movie over to him murdered the project in its crib........if nothing else, this overrated culture-vulture hack insured the movie would end up as unwatchable as his last disastrous attempt at a  musical, "Les Miserables"

                     In over-accentuating every single moment, Hooper dialed up the bizarre quotient of the material, making the movie look like some awful extended dream sequence........directed a by ham-handed dolt who never supervised a dream sequence in his life.

                    The problem here........he succeeded in making the movie look grotesque and crazy......but not crazy enough. If the studio was so bound and determined to turn "Cats" into a film, they desperately needed an over-the-top director equal to the fantasy.

                    We couldn't help wishing they'd found a director like the late Ken Russell, the madman visionary who took the world by storm with his composer biographies like "The Music Lovers" and film versions of "Tommy" and "The Boy Friend".......

                    Ah, Ken, you were born too early.......we can only imagine the delirious, lunatic movie you might have fashioned out of "Cats".......we're guessing you'd find a way to amp up the Grand Opera theatricality of the show in a way audiences would embrace.....and not shake their heads in disbelief,....(as in the Hooper-ized version.)

                    So let Universal download as many versions of this film as they want........we don't think it would change our initial reaction to it one bit.......the same reaction Marlon Brando's Col.Kurtz has at the end of "Apocalypse Now".......'the horror.......the horror'.......

                   As long as they're doing this........they could improve the film greatly by digitally removing the snot dribbling out of Jennifer Hudson's nose while she warbles "Memories"......and maybe have Dame Judi Dench snarl "Put 'em up!  Put 'em up!" since she so resembles Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion from "The Wizard Of Oz".......

                     Nothing, we're sorry to say, will change BQ's rating......Zero stars (0).......Sorry, Universal......no hard felines, okay?

                      Happy Holidays to one and all.......as always, thanks for stopping in......we're off to family stuff, see you in a couple of days. Have a merry merry one!

BOND GIRLS ARE FOREVER......R.I.P. CLAUDINE AUGER......

Claudine Auger (1941-2019)   

                     We borrowed our post's title from that coffee-table book of a few years back.......and maybe that title resonates even more today.......

                       All sorts of higher profile actresses vied for the coveted role of Domino in hotly anticipated Bond movie "Thunderball"......Raquel Welch, Brigitte Bardot, even Flavor-Of-The-Month Julie Christie........

                       But in what was then the standard practice for producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, they plucked a completely unknown European ultra-babe for the role......

                        Claudine Auger did everything expected of a 60's Bond girl.......she looked stunning, a perfect fantasy match for the world's most beloved fantasy hero.......

                         Age never intruded in the world of James Bond the way it cruelly does in real life......so in the eyes of moviegoers everywhere, Bond girls truly are forever.

                        RIP 'Domino'......and Claudine Auger.......one of the first Bond girls to actually save
007's life when the villain gets the drop on him.......

'NOEL STREET'..........CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE CHRISTMAS SOUL........

Noel Street by Richard Paul Evans (2019)    Yeah, we know it's a corny, obvious move to pick this book to review at the height of the holiday rush.........

                 And we went out of our way to pick the most heart-on-its-sleeve, mushy-mushy Christmas novel we could find........why?

                  Cause it's what we all desperately need right now..........

                   The ruinous, toxic reign of Donald Trump has infected every single corner of society.......poisoning the entire country with a level of acrimony, division and hatred not seen since the darkest days of the Vietnam war..........

                    Which probably explains why we embraced the overwhelming sentimentality and heart-tugging pathos on display in "Noel Street"......

                    In previous posts of a few years back, we had our fun  gently mocking Evans' 'Mistletoe' series of books....(some of which made their way into Hallmark movie adaptations.....)

                     But now, in this darkest age of Emperor Trump, we're more than ready to hug a book that celebrates decency, kindness, humility, tolerance, respect and love.........in other words, all the bedrock values that Trump has systematically drained out of the culture of America......(and the world as well).....

                     We also couldn't help noticing how the book deftly uses its 1975 time frame to touch upon controversial issues still relevant today.........blatant racism and PTSD-afflicted veterans......(especially the veteran depicted in this particular book, since he's a prisoner-of-war survivor, that group of brave men so belittled and denigrated by the worthless Trump at the start of his presidential campaign.....)

                   After lifetimes of heartbreak, torment and sacrifice, Evans does gift his two struggling lead characters with much good fortune, lasting love and tear-inducing closure for family wounds.......(we don't consider this a spoiler.......come on, it's a Christmas book.......)

                    Maudlin? Sure. Manipulative of you emotions?  Absolutely. Unbelievable?   Hey, this is the time of year when everyone believes........

                    Speaking of unbelievable.........a few hours after finishing this book, we came across the news about the editor of the Evangelical newspaper finally laying out the disgrace and hypocrisy of Christians supporting Trump, a man of no morality whatsoever.......

                     Coincidence?   A Christmas miracle?

                   Well,right now,, we're not in the mood to deny it.........it's that time of year, after all. .

                   If viewing and reading the news sends you into a spiral of depression, give yourself a warm hug with this book......4 stars (*****).......and Season's Greetings from BQ......

                 

'THE WHIP AND THE BODY'.......50 SHADES OF CHRISTOPHER LEE........

The Whip And The Body (1963)   The master cinematographer-director Mario Bava understood the essence of horror movies like few other filmmakers.......

              He envisioned them as waking nightmares........extended bad dreams.........and just like real dreams, horror on film could be senseless, disjointed, defying all rationality and reason.....

              ........and with the untethering of reality, Bava freed his horror films to accomplish their primary goad.....

  

                  ........to scare the living crap out of you....with the kind of stuff that wakes you up in the middle of the night.

                 Thinly constructed as an imitation of an Edgar Allen Poe gothic tale, "The Whip And The Body" provides Bava, a supreme visualist. with everything he needs.........a windswept seaside castle and a malevolent, black-clad noble (Sir Christopher Lee)......who harbors a sadistic obsession with his brother's stunning finance.....(Daliah Lavi, out-Steele-ing Barbara Steele in terrified hysteria.....)

                  You should make no attempt to grasp the plot, what there is of it.........this movie functions only as an eye popping  dreamy bad  dream.......Bava's restless camera prowls the garishly lit rooms and corridors of his haunted castle, while composer Carlo Rustichelli's lush romantic theme plays almost non-stop through the entire film........

                    Lee's no vampire in this, but he's still outfitted like one.........and he's  every bit a sexual predator,regularly taking a whip to Lavi's exposed back. With Lee decked out like 'Wuthering Heights' Heathcliff and Lavi in perpetual sexual torment, these two become the very definition of a love-hate relationship.....on steroids.

                    Before long, murder, mystery, insanity and vengeful hauntings grip the castle household.....all of it rendered with lush,colorful elegance by Mario Bava.,........when a clutching hand comes out of the dark, filling the screen as it comes towards you, you know you're in the hands of a true cinematic artist........and he knows what scares you.

                    As you might have already guessed, Lee and Lavi's kinky you-only-hurt-the-one-you-love antics were way out of hand for 1963, outraging the censors in every country where the film showed its face........as a screwed up romantic fiend, Christopher Lee makes Jamie Dornan's "50 Shades Of Grey" character look like an Elf On The Shelf.......

                    Every one of you classic horror aficionados should seek this one out........cause BQ's shouting out 'Whip, Whip, Hooray!' with 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2).....and watch out for that clutching hand......

              

BQ EXCLUSIVE! WE FOUND THE FIRST DRAFT OF TRUMP'S UNHINGED IMPEACHMENT MEMO!

               Remember to tell your friends that you read it here first.........

               While the White House duly followed policy in shredding the earlier drafts of Baby Orange's demented 6 page letter to Nancy Pelosi.......leave it to the BQ to uncover the original first draft.....

                Our secret insider source found the very first version of the memo scribbled on 37 crumpled Big Mac wrappers........and painstakingly pieced it together for us.......

                So here it is for your reading pleasure......co-written by Baby Orange's mini-Himmler, Stephen Miller........the original draft of the letter send to the Speaker Of The House

                  "Dear Madame Speaker:

                  Are you (REDACTED) kidding me with this (REDACTED) impeachment bullshit? You toothless, skinny hag, I'll have your balls in a jar before Christmas.

                   So you think I'm a threat to democracy?  You simpering bitch, who the (REDACTED) needs democracy when they've got me?   Screw democracy......it's so over, anyway.  I'm running the show from now on - so you and Congress can go take a nap or yoga.

                   That's right, honeybuch, you're livin' in the Kingdom Of Trump.......I'm not just above the law, I am the motherf- (REDACTED) law.

                    Face it, sweetheart, I ain't going nowhere. even if I lose in 2020, I'm President For Life, baby......just like my buds Vlad, Kim, MBS and that guy who runs Disney. So deal with it.

                    You got your motherf(REDACTED)ing nerve putting me on trial like I'm one of the Salem Witches. I'll get you, my pretty....and I'll get your little dog too.Wanna play with fire, Scarecrow!

                    And believe me........nobody believes you when you claim you pray for me. I know for a fact that you've never prayed for nice things for me, otherwise  my herpes and syphilis would have improved at least a little. Face it, fart-face, the only people stupid enough to pray for me are those prize suckers, the "honk-if-you-love-Trump 'n Jesus" Evangelicals.

                    I got breaking news for you, you heinous harpy, I already put Rudy Guiliani hot on your trail - he's gonna get the goods on you for sure, along with hot dirt on the Bidens Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro, Rosie 'O Donnel, Barak Obama, the cast of "Hamilton" Hilary Clinton, Oprah,Pete Bhudda-head, Saturday Night Live,  that whiny little troll Greta Thunberg and the entire population of California..........you're all goin' down!

                     So impeachment won't work, Antsy Nancy.........I got Trumpanzees up the wazoo who think I walk on water and you'd better believe I'll stroke those brain-dead assholes at the rallies until they splooge right into their outstretched red hats, right along with the cash campaign donations!

                       Buckle up, you meddling Medusa, cause I'm not movin' out of White House until I've left the country looking as wrecked and divided as Berlin after World War II.......face it, you gibbering crone, it's what I do. To hell with the country, to hell with you.......Hail to ME!

                                                                         Love always, you doddering dumbass,
                                                                                             Donald J. Trump

            (Our deepest thanks to (REDACTED) at the White House, for sneaking out those Big Mac wrappers, putting them in chronological order after wiping the grease off......)

'THE GAMMA PEOPLE'..........WACKY GAM-BOTS GONE WILD!

The Gamma People (1956)    This one may well be the most oddball, screwy movie that ever escaped out of the 1950's........in other words, WHAT THE BQ LIVES FOR!

               Sorry, we'll calm down now.......

               1950's films almost always remained strictly locked into their assigned genre.. (drama, adventure, western, mystery comedy, horror, etc,...)......with no crossovers allowed.........

                But this nutty little British, sci-fi item flagrantly bent all the rules.......wandering around in who the hell knows how many different directions........from light comedy to political sarcasm to thriller to science fiction to horror........mixing them all up with no apparent thought as to how the film was going to turn out overall.......

                 We could only take wild guesses as to what the filmmakers were going for here.....but who cares at this point. It breezily zips through about 75 minutes of pure insanity......

                 How beloved, barrel-chested Hollywood character actor Paul Douglas stumbled into this thing staggers the imagination.......(think of him as the John Goodman of the 1950's....)   Douglas, playing his standard role of the blustery, pushy, loudmouth with a heart of gold, is one of two journalists suddenly stranded in Gudavia, a tiny mythical Communist never-never land.

                Brit comic actor Leslie Phillips plays Douglas's preening, quipping journalistic cohort as if he just stepped out one his "Carry On" comedies..........and this odd couple find themselves trapped in a kind of low burlesque version of an Iron Curtain country........alternately comic, creepy and sinister.......(we warned you about how many genres this film's playing with simultaneously.....)

               Gudavia's ruled by Dr. Boronsky (Walter Rilla), a madman who's been busy zappin' all the Gudavian tykes with Gamma rays.

                And his results are what you might call......uneven. He either turns the kids into insufferable
brats who carry on like Hitler Youth rejects...........or mindless hulking, slack-jawed imbeciles, who menacingly stagger around resembling a cross between Richard Kiel's 'Jaws' villain and your typical Trump supporters.

                  We won't bother detailing all the swift turn of events that bring a satisfying close to this semi-satiric view of  totalitarian science gone awry........just hang on and enjoy it for yourselves as the film bounces through its multiple genres........

                   It's entirely possible the film hoped to gently spoof sci-fi-horror movies in the same way that 1953's Humphrey Bogart vehicle "Beat The Devil" poked sly fun at the gangster-noir genre......so  in that regard, consider it way, way head of its time......

                   So take your pick as to what you think "The Gamma People" was meant to be.......for us, considering the conservative decade that spawned it, it's a one-of-a-kind, whack-a-doodle  wonder....
......we're blastin' it with 3 bright Gamma rays.....(***)

                  Or as Paul Douglas remarks upon seeing the villain's castle......."Sinister looking dump, isn't it?"

'ISLAND OF THE BURNING DAMNED'..........FRY HARD WITH A VENGEANCE......

Island Of The Burning Damned (a.k.a. Night Of The Big Heat) (1967)   A movie like this reminds us of how we became hopeless Anglophiles.............

               Any similar American movie.....a low budget, alien-invasion sci-fi-er, would most surely face withering ridicule from critics and loads of unintentional laughs from audiences.........

              But let the Brits do it........with their bottomless pool of exquisite acting talent........and the movie, dumb as it is, takes on a classy sheen all its own.......no matter how cheap and crazy.......

              And we're seriously talkin' cheap and crazy here........while the U.K suffers a freezing winter, a little island off the northern coast broils in heatwaves of 90 degrees and rising.......

             Baby, it's warm outside........fatally.

              How so?   Heat loving Alien creatures, thinking turnabout's fair play, manage to zap themselves down to this little island via the same satellite beams we bounce off the stars.........and go about their business.....to prepare for a full scale invasion by crainkin' up the thermostat and regularly turning the luckless islanders into well done Crispy Critters.......

              This doesn't sit well with the motley crew who constitute the island's populace.......a surly, mysterious scientist (Christopher Lee), a befuddled doctor (Peter Cushing), the combo novelist-innkeeper (Patrick Allen), his neglected wife (Sarah Lawson) and his newly arrived, smokin' hot mistress (Jane Merrow).......  (who, to our everlasting joy, gets to take a bikini swim before things start....uh.....heating up, so to speak....)

               Skilled actors, professionals to their core, they're all forced to kill a lot of time with dawdling drama until the film finally gets its ass in gear......and at long last trots out the alien creatures.......(trust us, don't wait for the big reveal with anticipatory, baited breath.....they're just slightly mobile, glowing rocks.....)

               Mini-skirted Merrow spends the second half of the film in a state of hysteria, barely surviving an enthusiastic attempted rape by one of the locals driven mad by either the heat or Merrow's hot bod.......(or maybe both)......

                Since none of these people are even remotely sympathetic or likable, you don't much care which of them get grilled up by the aliens......

                And speaking of those over-sized nightlights, the ultimate fate given them by this movie is ridiculously abrupt and obvious.......

               Even in a movie as goofy as this though,  Lee, Cushing, Allen and the rest acquit themselves with their usual dignity.........even as the make-up department's artfully applied sweat patches grow ever larger on them....(to the point where they look like they've been showering fully clothed)

               Bless their British hearts, for about 90 minutes, they really make us believe they're in danger of microwaving by prop department rocks.........2 & 1/2 stars.......we couldn't help having fun watching them stuck between some rocks and a hard place

'SOME GIRLS DO'.........FEMBOTS ON THE ATTACK! YEAAAHHHH BABY!

Some Girls Do (1969)     50 years ago, the onslaught of cheapjack, slapdash imitation James Bond movies was beginning to wind down...........but leave it to the Brits to come up with one of the loopiest of them of them..........

                 You can easily spot where Mike Meyers took his inspiration for Austin Powers........this sequel to 1967's "Deadlier Than The Male" basically doubles and triples and quadruples the plot of the first film.......a suave Bond-ish hero (Richard Johnson) battles not two, but this time an entire army of electronically controlled assassin babes......

                   For their very own faux-Bond, the Rank Organization resurrected Britain's stalwart fictional crimefighter Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond.......refurbished into a Connery wanna-be with the perfectly cast Johnson, who initially turned down 'Dr. No'.........

                   And what a parade of Euro-Hotties slink through this film.......it sounds like a
 roll call of every last one of them......Daliah Lavi, Beba Loncar, Sydne Rome, Virginia North........(in the politically incorrect Jurassic era of these films, this is why guys flocked to Bond films and all their imitators........yeahhhh, baby......)

                   The usual plot unfolds........the robo-cuties go out and engineer the deaths of Corporate CEO's at the direction of evil mastermind Carl Peterson (played by that master of Upperclass Snotty
Twits Begging For A Punch. James Villiers)......

                     Richard Johnson, saunters through the film casually (much like Connery did in "Diamonds Are Forever") but he manages some acceptable fight scenes and looks suitably bemused as some of the girls even reveal a few last minute twists.......

                    Silly to the max.......(don't even get us started on Robert Morley showing up as a cooking instructor) but the movie stands brightly as one of the after-effects of the Bond-O-Mania that gripped the whole world in the mid-1960's.....(see our post on "Thunderball" from last week)

                    So count us in with Austin Powers.......in that you can never have enough machine-gun toting Fembots in mini-skirts........a groovy 3 stars (***)

WEEKDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP..........THE REASON WE CALL HIM 'BABY ORANGE'........

                    Though climate denial is but a small pebble in the lava flow of stupidity that oozes from Baby Orange's head.........nothing, but nothing ever pricked his his tissue paper thin skin like Greta Thunberg.........

                      Greta's the autistic 16 year old girl who became a fiery, global figure in her international crusade to wake up the world to our planet's terrifying, rapid deterioration from global warming.........

                      Baby Orange, of course, cruelly mocked her in one of his infantile tweets, which she cleverly used as her Twitter account banner........

                       This week, she committed the ultimate, wounding blow to Baby Orange's most precious commodity - his giant gasbag ego.........by winning the selection of Time magazine's "Person Of The Year".......an honor long coveted and drooled over by Baby Orange........(even to the point of decorating his royal resort palace with fake Time 'Person Of The Year' covers with his pumpkin mug placed on them.....)

                        That was a too much for Baby Orange to stomach.......and as fast as he could work his chubby little fingers, out popped another dopey, sarcastic tweet.......... taking aim at a 16 year old girl whose terrible offense was worrying about the state of world left to her generation after Baby Orange and his ilk have crawled into the tar pits.........(and whose bigger offence was stealing the Time cover away from him.....)

                        The tweet was quintessential Baby O. at his bottomless abyss best.........once again proving there are literally no depths to how low he can sink, how the utter emptiness of his heart, mind and soul defy all rational measurement or description......

                         And once again, Greta deftly struck back by using Baby Orange's idiocy as her descriptive Twitter profile...........

                        We can only wonder if it ever dawns on Melania Trump why she's publicly jeered and ridiculed for her ludicrously ironic "Be Best" anti cyber bullying campaign...........if she's that clueless, then perhaps she truly is a perfect match for Baby Orange......

                        In the meantime, we and the rest of the world can only shake our heads as we sit back and take in this spectacle.........the supposed leader of the free world hurling taunts at a teenage girl.

                       In Baby Orange's own twitter-speak (the only language he understands).....

                       Sad.....sad....sad.