'LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE'......REESE IN PIECES

Little Fires Everywhere (2020)   Unlike "Big Little Lies", we never got around to reading the best selling book this 8 episode series is based on........

                   But we're reasonably certain that just as in "Big Little Lies", the book is probably infinitely better than the series.......

                     Once again, Reese Witherspoon trots out what's now become her signature role......the Type A Powerhouse, the all powerful self centered control freak who's fairly oblivious to the hurt, chaos and collateral damage she wreaks upon those in her orbit..... (usually family members)

                      You got your first sneak peek at this character when she played the minor role of Christian Bale's fiance in "American Psycho"........prattling on  to herself while unaware Bale's musing out loud about his addictive compulsion to slaughter people.

                       We can only wonder why he didn't get around to Reese......

                       In "Little Fires..." she rules the roost of a suburban McMansion, micro-managing the lives of her weary, slowly-getting-fed-up lawyer husband (Joshua Jackson) and their four angst-ridden teenagers............the youngest of whom (Megan Stott) suffers under Reese's deep, repressed resentment at the inconvenience of having to give birth to her at all.

                        What could possibly go wrong here? (Heh, heh, heh, heh.....)

                       A Duel Of The Titans quickly ensues between Reese and the town's new arrival, a struggling artist-photographer (Kerry Washington).....a single mom to a teen daughter.....and you'd better believe Washington's harboring a truckload of secrets and emotional baggage......

                        Witherspoon's condescending, white-privilege attempts to befriend Washington and her daughter backfire explosively on just about everybody in the cast.......and the two iron-willed women find themselves implacable foes in the middle of wrenching custody battle involving one of Witherspoon's equally wealthy entitled friends.......(the woman has adopted the Chinese baby that one of Washington's illegal immigrant co-workers was forced to abandon)

                          We won't detail any more plot intricacies, which also involve all the teens.......because let's face it, the only thing anyone would endure this for are the face-offs between the  force-of-nature Witherspoon and the edge-of-hysteria Washington.

                         It becomes a overwhelming tiresome back-and-forth between Witherspoon's overbearing harpy and Washington's almost perpetual agonies.  On a guilty pleasure level, Reese's endless machinations are fun to watch.......but Washington's one-note monotone wails of woe will tire you out after 8 long hours......

                          BQ's advice:  unless you're a rabid fan of the two actresses, read the book. Skip the show. 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2).....if only we'd done that.
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'DIME WITH A HALO'.....BET ME IN......

Dime With A Halo (1963)   Nothing we love more than diggin' deep for the most obscure, oddball films from 1960's cinema........

               And they don't come any odder or more obscure than this one.......the kind of movie that makes you scratch your head in wonderment about its genesis.......as in, "Who the hell thought this movie was a good idea?  Who talked MGM into making it?  What kind of audience was it designed for....if any?"

                One wild guess:  a family film...maybe?  Sort of?  The story centers on five Mexican street kids scrambling for a buck or two in Tijuana, with an age range of 6 to 14 years old......

                  The kids pin their dreams of falling into big money by convincing American tourists to place horse race bets on their behalf....... with coins they pilfer from a church collection box......

                   Lo and behold.......(pardon us, we've been waiting years to write 'lo and behold' in one of these posts).....the kids bet on a winner, to the tune of 80,000 smackeroos.........

                    A new dilemma now faces our band of ragamuffins........they now need an adult to cash in the ticket for them

                  You'd think this movie wants to thrum your heartstrings, like some kind of rogue Disney film......but it wanders off into tangents that would give Uncle Walt a heart attack......

                  ......by that, we mean a scene where the 14 year old urchin wants to put the moves on the voluptuous 20-something sister of one of the younger kids.....and she in turn encourages him cause she wants to put the moves on that precious ticket.....

                    A bittersweet fable might be what the filmmakers were going for here.......but that's only a guess. It does benefit from a fine collection of child actors ( including the all-American tyke Roger Mobley with his hair latino-darkened) and offers a role to the ultra-sexy but criminally little seen Barbara Luna as Mobley's older sister..

                       The kids hard-knock life on the Tijuana streets is realistically depicted  with  equal measures of humor and grit......and the pace never dawdles.......but we couldn't help wishing we could have seen the MGM studio production meeting that gave this film a greenlight.......

                       (A fellow movie buff pal informed us that the studio used 'Dime With A Halo'  to function as the bottom half of any double bill that featured an MGM romantic comedy....)

                       Not quite the heartwarmer it threatens to become, but a worthy watch for anyone who savors the oddities of the 60's.......2 stars (**)

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'NO BLADE OF GRASS'......A WILDE VIRUS AHEAD OF ITS TIME........

No Blade Of Grass (1970)   We always found ourselves comparing actor Cornel Wilde's directorial career to Mel Gibson's......

            Wilde may have worked with way lower budgets then Gibson, but their directing projects struck us as similar.........simple primal stories told with a heavy reliance on over-the-top violence.....

             His 1965 cult hit "The Naked Prey" is still revered for its singular primitive force in depicting an African safari guide (played by the director) hunted down by vengeful natives.......and personally, we've always been a fan of his sumptuous take on Arthurian lore in 1963's "Sword Of Lancelot".....

            Wilde took on nothing less than global environmental  apocalypse in "No Blade Of Grass".....in which a mutant virus kills off  not just your front lawn grass, but all the grains on the planet.......

            Hunger, riots, rape, murder and the collapse of civilization as we know it follow in lightning speed.......never a subtle director, Wilde opens the film with a lengthy montage of  worldwide toxic pollution and wastes no time instantly turning  British cities and suburbs into a 'Mad Max' carnival of carnage......(complete with bikers sporting horned helmets)

              In a Wilde pandemic, no one's got time to sit around and binge 'Dr Who' on the telly......everybody's gotta hit the road.....fully armed.

              That may be why no one took the movie seriously.......the film's sturdy band of survivors (Nigel Davenport, Jean Wallace, Lynn Frederick, Anthony May, among others) quickly turn to shooting people by the dozens........and hardly anyone agonizes or even notices their swift conversion to savagery.

               Granted, the rapists who brutally assault Jean Wallace and Lynn Frederick have it coming, but pretty soon everyone's getting into the apocalyptic spirit by blasting away at each other with mad abandon......

                 By the time Davenport and his bedraggled followers reach what he thought would be the safe haven of his brother's country estate, sure enough they've got to fight their way in.......racking up even more casualties in the film's already burgeoning body count.......

                 Throughout the film, we're never quite sure which part of this story Cornel Wilde's interested in.......the stern warning to clean up our act on this planet (literally) or all the sustained sequences of people machine gunning and shotgun blasting each other ......we suppose he thought the urgent message would come across better if he marinated it in lots of grindhouse gore......

                  On the minus side, Wilde dilutes his blunt trauma filmmaking style with a lot of that superfluous visual hoo-hah that directors everywhere where playing around with like kids with new toys.....excessive flashbacks, flash-forwards, jump cuts, reverse coloring..........annoying 'look-at-me' stuff that instantly dates the film.....and not in a good way.

                     Crude and mostly far-fetched in its characters' behavior, Wilde's swift storytelling still commands your attention and makes it watchable..........but even Wilde and writers couldn't conceive of a virus pandemic like our current one......where the most powerful and most afflicted nation on earth is led by a babbling, demented idiot.....

                      Who'd believe it?

                     At least in "No Blade Of Grass", no world "leader" recommends spraying the fields with Clorox to cure the crops.......2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

           

'ATLANTIS THE LOST CONTINENT'.......OUR PAL, GEORGE......

Atlantis The Lost Continent (1961)    Producer-director George Pal, along with master stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, created the wide awake dreams that thrilled, awed and inspired our generation of Baby Boomers......

           .......many of whom grew up to create their own memorable sci-fi/fantasy films.........

             But unlike these modern purveyors of imaginative cinema, Pal and Harryhausen toiled in the B-movie ghetto set up by major studios.......and they struggled to perform their film miracles with the most minuscule of budgets......

                Pal delivered a huge hit for MGM with "The Time Machine" in 1960..........but on a cost-cutting crusade reserved for fantasy films,  the studio forced him to cobble together his next film with heaping borrows from the existing MGM library......

                "Atlantis The Lost Contintent" barely qualified as its own movie........huge chunks of it are re-cycled sequences from the studio's jumbo 1951 costume epic "Quo Vadis", as well as other hefty doses of stock footage.......

                 Bobbing along in this grab bag of stuff from other movies is Pal's story of a simple, Greek slab 'o beefcake (Anthony Hall) who rescues the Princess of Atlantis herself, (Joyce Taylor.....

                The imperious, bitchy Princess somehow convinces our semi-doltish  hero, besotted with her,  to return her to Atlantis, which, surprise, surprise ......suspiciously resembles the ancient Rome of....uh.....'Quo Vadis'......

                 Studmuffin the Greek promptly gets himself imprisoned and hurled into the Atlantean  version of a chain gang.........where the inmates get hypnotized and Dr. Moreau'd , transforming them into the most unconvincing animal guys ......(sporting cheapo Halloween masks on their heads....)

                  The Princess, only slightly less obnoxious then when she was a beached refugee, manages to spring the Greasy Greek from animal-izing, but he's still forced wrestle some bruiser in a pit that alternates from a pool to a walk-in barbecue......(cue the "Quo Vadis" cast of 1000s, making the movie look like its budget instantly jumped  from a $1.95 to 20 million......)

                     More melodrama ensues until it's time for the requisite Atlantis volcano to blow its top and send the lost kingdom glub-glubbing  down into the sea.......but not before the evil prime minister (the ever slimy, snarky John Dall of  Hitchcock's  "Rope") tries out his spankin' new super-dooper ray gun, shooting frickin' disintegration beams at the fleeing populace....

                      We don't mean to sound overly sarcastic in describing all this........in fact, as a 12 year old,  dedicated Saturday afternoon kiddie matinee attendee, we devoured every minute of it.....as joyfully as we crunched on Necco wafers and root beer barrel candies from the snack bar.....(think of them as Jurassic-era Skittles....)

                      It never occurred to us dumb naive kids that 40 per cent of 'Atlantis' was lifted from "Quo Vadis", which none of us ever saw or heard of anyway.  We thought the animal guys were creepy as hell and loved watching the evil prime minister grin with unbridled glee as he ray-gunned innocents while his kingdom crumbled to bits all around him.

                       And that was  the key to George Pal's magic.......no matter how meager his resources, no matter how impoverished his budgets, he remained the movies' most gifted, committed fantasist.....and Pal always put on an entertaining show for us kids who adored his flights of fancy.

                      Looking back on the film now, we still enjoyed the sum of it......the good, the bad and the cheesy........including the liberal use of perennial voice-over actor Paul Frees, who not only provides the opening narration but dubs in almost half the supporting cast - including Anthony Hall, yet another young South Philadelphia kid who somehow ended up in this movie instead of croaking out rock 'n roll songs on 'American Bandstand'....(the usual spot for South Philly heartthrobs like Fabian, James Darren and Bobby Rydell)

                       And we can't keep screaming about MGM, which then rewarded Pal with a lavish budget, an all-star cast and a Cinerama reserved seat presentation for his next production "The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm"........which is why we'll go easy on the severe cost-cutting of "Atlantis" and fondly remember it with 3 stars (***)

                        Make sure you watch it with plenty of popcorn and whatever's as sweet and bad for your teeth as Necco wafers and root beer barrels.....

             

               

MASKS ON! CORA THE CORONAVIRUS RETURNS!

BQ:   Cora, so not nice to have you back........what's that piece of paper stuck on one of your tendrils?

CORA:  Congratulate me! It's my doctorate in medicine from Trump University.......

BQ:    You do realize that whole university thing was a scam........

CORA:  I know, but it looks so nice and official, like the prizes the Wizard of Oz handed out to the Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Lion........

BQ:   And what would you know about medicine. You're just a lethal virus.

CORA;   Ha!  Says you.  Believe it or not, Dr. Trump himself revealed the secrets to defeating me!  To show you what a an all-around loving germ I am, I'm willing to share that with your followers.

BQ:     We assume you mean stuff like shining ultra-violet light into our guts and injecting ourselves with Lysol disinfectant?

CORA:  Damn!  You mean he told you already?

BQ:   Cora, anybody with even 3 functioning brain cells knows that's a load of horseshit.

CORA : I know that.....and you know that. But all the  red hat Trumpanzees are probably chug-a-lugging Lysol as we speak!  And sprayin' Scrubbing Bubbles on their jello as a desert topping!  That's why I LOVE me some Dr. Trump! He's the gift that keeps on giving!

BQ:   In other words, he's saving you the trouble of infecting people by killing them for you.

CORA:   They don't call him a stable genius for nothin'!

BQ:  Actually, Cora, he's the only one who calls himself a stable genius.....

CORA:   And look what else he's doing for me!  Encouraging  his armies of  imbeciles to demonstrate for their right to jump back into crowds so I can wipe 'em out!

BQ:   Maybe we should thank him for that.....

CORA:  You're damn right you should thank him for......hey, hold on. Why would you thank him?

BQ:   If you get a shot at all those Trumpanzees who can't wait to get outside, you'll do the civilized, sane world a favor by decreasing the number of Trump voters in 2020........

CORA:    Wow, I never thought of that. You think I should tell him?

BQ:  Won't do any good.  He'll accuse you of fake news.

CORA:   Well, no matter. I'm already past 50,000 on the body count and still goin' strong. I never dreamed my best friend in this pandemic would be a psychotic moron who's supposed to calm the country and stop me. Heh, heh, heh, life's funny, huh?

BQ:   We'll wrap it up at this point. We've got some Lysol spray right here.....

CORA:  Oh goody!  You gonna spray it down your throat like Dr. Trump recommended?  Can I watch, please?

BQ:  Feel free to watch. We thought we'd spray it on you instead.......

CORA:   Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhh!  What a world, what a world........




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'DON'T GO NEAR THE WATER'......CONTEMPLATING THEIR NAVAL.......

Don't Go Near The Water (1957)   We latched on to this movie as desperately needed comfort food........after watching the nightly news horror show.........thousands of people dying while the country's led by a psychotic moron.......that in itself sounds like a nightmarish satire.......

              So we couldn't wait lose ourselves in the sweet embrace of this bouncy little MGM comedy about life on a tropical island-based Navy public relations office at the height of the World War 2 Pacific combat....

               You can only tell there's a war on here by which characters long to escape the farcical  shenanigans of the P.R. clown college and get back to active sea duty........(the rest of the gang stuck on this little piece 'o backlot paradise are mostly a collection of blowhards, philanderers, and idiots.....in other words, the usual service comedy crowd...)

              Our main standup guy, Lt. Siegel (an amiable Glenn Ford) deals with the perpetual manic schemes of the unit's  Lt. Commander Nash (that prize bumbler Fred Clark).........which divides the movie neatly into separate anecdotes......like a series of mini TV sitcom episodes strung together......

                The best one of all, the main reason we love coming back to this film, involves the ever pompous Clark deciding that in the interest of public relations, the officers should build their own new Officer's Club......

                 The result is a extended, perfectly staged slapstick spectacular that rivals the barn-building brawl from "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers".....(the participants even include two of the Seven Brothers, Russ Tamblyn and Jeff Richards). Wooden planks and wooden-headed officers tumble and fly through the air with equal abandon......and the sequence concludes with a glorious shot of the barely constructed edifice swaying from one direction to the other.........

                 You can take your pick of which of the other random chunks appeal to you......the cute, forbidden romance between a lonely enlisted seaman and an officer nurse (Earl Holliman and Anne Francis).....Ford romancing a serenely gorgeous island native (Gia Scala) while thwarting a vile obnoxious columnist (Keenan Wynn).....the antics of a Va-Va-Voom war correspondent (Eva Gabor) who charms her way into actual sea battle, much to an apoplectic Admiral's rage..... ("I have a few little things to rinse out....are there some soap flakes aboard, Admiral?)

               ........and the second funniest episode, next to the Officer's club fiasco - the P.R. nightmare facing Ford when a 'typical' seaman Clark picked for a Hollywood goodwill tour (Mickey Shaughnessy) turns out to be a barrel-chested, tattooed  goon who regularly drops bleeped-out          F-Bombs.....(as far as we know, a first for a Hollywood mainstream film....)

                 True, the whole film's archaic, out of date, a rambling mess of movie techniques and attitudes long gone and forgotten.......but amidst this horrendous ordeal we're all living through.....it still felt like warm hug, and a tub of hot buttered popcorn......

                  4 stars (****).....how can you not love a movie where a battleship enters the fray flying Eva Gabor's black lace underwear as its flag........no doubt the Navy found her some soap flakes.......

               

'THE WORLD OF KANAKO'.......JAPAN-A-MADNESS

The World Of Kanako (2014)    Here's what you need to know, should you boldly take the plunge into Extreme Japanese Cinema.........Understand these basic fundementals......

             1. Life sucks. Big time. And you're going to die horribly. Or come pretty close.

             2. People divide up into either predators (murderers, rapists, sadists, sex traffickers,etc)......or their victims.  Nobody falls  in between these two categories...

               3. Morals are for wussies. If you feel like suddenly squishing someone with your car, raping any random girl you meet, or pounding some person's face into cherry jello.......go for it.

                 4. Wherever you go , whoever you meet, always make sure to leave a trail of broken, bleeding bodies behind you........even better if some of them are dead......

                 5. Did we mention the part about how life sucks, people are tripe and all of humanity deserves to die? We did?  Oh well, doesn't hurt to reiterate those key maxims.

                  Any questions?  Everyone comprehend the rules?   Cool.  Now  you're officially ready for the full-throttle gore and unhinged moral compass of "The World Of Kanako"

                   A burned-out, drunken, rage-fueled ex-cop gets a desperate call from his long estranged wife; their 18 year old daughter Kanako as gone missing. Does this cursing, booze soaked burnout with serious anger management issues decide to hunt down his little girl?

                    You bet your sushi he does, with a insane fervor that makes John Wayne's "The Searchers" character look like Elmo the muppet. And speaking of sushi, our boiling Det.Burnout plows through this investigation with random beatings, stabbings, shooting and rapes.......that last category even includes his distraught ex-wife.......

                    No more Mr. Nice Guy.......not that he ever was one to begin with. This is a guy who expressed his displeasure with his wife's infidelity by ramming his car broadside into the vehicle she and her lover were sitting in.  Ouchy. Don't piss him off.......

                    While this rampaging carnage-heavy search goes on, multiple flashbacks reveal that super cute Kanako is truly her father's daughter........a sociopathic, soulless Lolita manipulator who leaves her own body count of human wreckage behind her.......suicides, murders and raped teeny-boppers.

                   We'd to have seen these two on Father's Day.......

                    You did remember the First Fundamental of Japan-a-Madness Cinema, right?  The part about 'life sucks and everyone dies horrible? 

                     Then none of what transpires here should surprise you in the least........and if you flinch in the least at the 2 hours worth of arterial blood spurts, crushed bones, ravaged innocent women and the overall tidal wave of nihilism.........you stumbled into the wrong movie........

                      It's useless to accuse this movie of overkill........overkill is the whole point. And to be blunt, if you've sat through enough  Japan-a-Madness movies (including the knock-offs like the 'Kill Bill' duo........you might actually find yourself laughing out loud at the non-stop excess that energizes the entirety of 'Kanako'.......

                      They've gotta be kidding, no? 

                      Uh....no, "The World Of Kanako" struck us as serious as a heart attack........the only affliction that nobody dies of in this movie.....nobody gets the chance to.

                       So if bona fide cult, outlaw filmmaking is your favorite cup 'o poison.......buckle up and dive in. Don't say we didn't warn you. 3 stars (***)

'THE THIRD DAY'.......FORGET ME KNOTS

The Third Day (1965)   It's interesting that this came out the same year as one our favorite imitation Hitchcock thrillers, "Mirage" with Gregory Peck......

              Both movies featured their amnesia-afflicted leads untangling mysteries while struggling to figure out who the hell they are, exactly.......

                No comparison here at all......"Mirage", which we've already posted about was a twisty, smartly written suspenser and one our faves.....

                "The Third Day" is strictly Technicolored spam-in-a-can, a TV-style sausage rolled  off the Warner Brothers assembly line......with delusions of grandeur about being a theatrical film, the kind of movie that the studios still reflexively sputtered out even as they were in the process of crumbling.

                 George Peppard staggers away from a roadside crash into a river with his memory wiped.......and quickly discovers he's a factory manager who married the CEO's daughter.....and for some unrevealed reasons, Georgie's roundly disliked by everyone he comes in contact with.........including a snaky cousin-in-law (Roddy McDowell) who's trying to sell the company out from under him.....

                  Further complicating his life is a potential murder charge, since the hot-to-trot slut in the crashed car's passenger seat isn't coming out her coma........(but we will credit a young Sally Kellerman with making quite an impression in her first film , playing the deceased twitching trollop in flashbacks...)...

                  We won't belabor this movie's plot any further, since it's riddled with more holes than George's memory and elicits no interest in clarifying how Slutty Sally ended up in the river.....even stranger, George glides through his amnesia as if he's suffering no more than a mild cold.....(unlike the mental tortures of Gregory Peck in "Spellbound" and "Mirage")

                  To keep you from dozing off altogether, there's an outstanding supporting cast, with Elizabeth Ashley as Peppard's hot 'n cold wife, Mona Washbourne as McDowell's not-so-doting mother.......and sadly Herbert Marshall in his last film, playing the stroke-victim CEO who can only move one finger....

                   The movie's a slick enough product, but it's so paint-by-numbers, it has no interest in itself  or the story it's telling. We wonder if its director, Jack Smight, was even fully awake while making it.......

                  That would certainly account for the film's fatal, unintentionally funny flaw.......the ludicrous miscasting of its principal villain.....an oily piano bar tinkler who turns out to be Slutty Sally's emasculated husband.....(aha! The plot sickens......).

                 He's played by the diminutive comic actor Arte Johnson, who later when on to great TV fame as part of the 'Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In ensemble. As threatening at a smurf and about a foot and a half shorter than Peppard, Johnson's attempts at smarmy villainy come off as.....embarrassing and painful ......

                  The climactic, unlikely spectacle of Johnson going on a violent rampage and engaging in a beach surf tussle with Peppard made us realize how much precious time we'd wasted watching this......

                   But that's the price BQ pays for our undying interest in obscure 1960's cinema.......we'll still keep unearthing these movies.......and take in the bad with the good......1 star (*)   Just like George's amnesia, you can forget this movie right after you experience it.....

'I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE'.....WELL, NOBODY'S PERFECT....

I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958)  The general consensus.......better than you'd expect, given that glorious, National Enquirer-worthy title......the jokey outrageousness of  which was an inspired way to make the film stand out in the staid, complacent 1950's.....

            The 'monster' in question is Tom Tryon, the towering Rock Hudson clone who labored through an unhappy brief career as a standard Hollywood studmuffin until he re-invented himself as a best selling novelist. ("The Other", "Harvest Home", etc, ect)......(his brutal treatment at the hands of director Otto Preminger in "The Cardinal" and "In Harm's way" were probably the last straws for him)

             Tom's unlucky bride: Gloria Talbott, a striking brunette with big expressive eyes that made her perfect for the low budget horror films and melodramas she toiled in........you knew, sooner or later ,that Gloria's peepers would pop wide open at something she couldn't unsee......

              Wedded bliss hits a snag, when Tom gets himself abducted and duplicated (along with a bunch of other guys) by squishy, rubbery aliens.......like most 50's space invaders, they're horny refugees from a dying planet.......who enjoy long walks on the beach, sharing wine by a fireplace and plowing human women to overrun the earth with their own mutant spawn.

              It's unlikely going on 'The Dating Game' or e-Harmony would've helped these creatures make their love connections....

              Gloria, no dummy, senses Tom hasn't been quite....uh.....himself since they tied the knot.......he can see in the dark enough to drive without headlights and strangles the puppy she bought for him as an anniversary present.......(hey, she' s lucky he didn't eat it alive....)

              The film takes a surprising even-handed tone toward Tom and his fellow space monsters......after all, they're just trying to get laid to survive........though when threatened with exposure,  they're not above zapping a few random innocents with their frickin' laser beams.......

               And as we've previously seen with Tom's puppy murder, they seriously hate dogs......canines more than return the favor in the pitched townies-vs-aliens smackdown that concludes the film.....(the monster-guys appear to dissolve into puddles of oatmeal.....)

               It's all very efficient ultra low budget sci-fi......and Tom even take a few stabs at displaying the conflicted feelings of the cold-hearted alien hubby who finds himself falling for his cute earth-girl wife,,,,,,(as would we if we'd been old enough to mate with Gloria Talbott when we first saw this movie.....)

                 So, 3 flying saucers for 'I Married A Monster From Outer Space' (***).......and a special nod to legendary boxer-actor 'Slapsie' Maxie Rosenbloom, playing a aggravated bartender serving a table full of aliens can't tolerate alcohol,,,,,,,,

                   Maxie knows exactly how to treat a carload of extraterrestrial creeps who nurse their drinks all night.....less talking, more punching.......if only he'd been around for "War Of The Worlds".......

'ZZZZZ'.......FORGET BEYONCE, MEET THE REAL QUEEN BEE......

ZZZZZ (The Outer Limits - Season 1, Ep. 18 (1964)   Even by the high, imaginative standards set by this wondrous sci-fi anthology series, this episode was especially off-the-charts bonkers.........

           The first shot tells it all.....at the country home of an entomologist (Phillip Abbott), a colony of bees turns their queen into a human-sized, smokin' hot, smokey-eyed fake woman (Joanna Frank)......arriving in the Doc's  garden already nicely clothed in a tight white dress........

             These are some goddamned smart bees we're talkin' about here........

              And don't give yourself a stroke trying to figure out how the bees pulled off this scientific miracle.......the teleplay writer, Meyer Dolinksy, probably didn't know either......

               Dolinsky does reveal what the Queenie and her hive are up to........nothing less than cross breeding herself with the good doctor himself.......and from there, presumably taking over the world with Bee People........

                We did warn you how bonkers this episode was, right?

                 Her Royal Buzzing Majesty poses as 'Regina' (heh, heh, heh), who's answered the Doc's ad for a lab assistant.........and this doesn't sit well with Mrs. Doc (Marsha Hunt) who suspects this slinky purring vamp is.....uh.....weirdly inhuman......

                 Her suspicions are more than confirmed when she spots Regina in the garden, transformed back into a big-ass bee so she can suck off some flower nectar as a light snack......

                  Stop laughing and remember the 'bonkers' warning we posted twice already........

                 As if this couldn't get crazier, Regina stays in touch with the hive via the Doc's bee-translator machine, which turns their busy buzzing into stiff mechanical English, much like alien visitors spoke in 1950's movies.......("Did we not make you perfect?")

                  This being "The Outer Limits", things go horribly awry for everyone concerned......Regina and her brood learn to mind their own buzz-ness.......and next time the bees try fashioning a facsimile of a girl, you can bet they'll aim higher than creating a semi-comatose Kardashian.......

                   Somewhere buried in this lunacy is the script's message about the eternal difference between human love and insect instinct.........okaaaay, if they say so.......sure.

                    As for BQ, we loved Joanna Frank's sultry Bee-autiful honey of a girl.......and now that we've exhausted every cheap, low bee gag.....4 stars (****).......(how 'bout a feature film remake.....

,,,,,"That Sting You Do" ?  

             

              

'BEACH BLANKET BINGO'......FRANKIE, MY DEAR, I DON'T GIVE A DAMN......

Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)   We could make all kinds of excuses for this post......claiming that only our forced quarantine would reduce us to watching this movie.........

               Aw, hell no.......we enjoyed it way back when.......and we still do.
'
              Some movie reviewers, half-serious, half-snarky, declared this the quintessential beach party movie.......the best of the bunch.

              Although we lean toward the 1963 original, with its primal innocence and Vincent Price cameo, we kinda see their point.

               The is the beach party movie for people who'd never waste any precious time on any of the others.......it's the only beach party movie you'll ever need.

                Why?  It's overflowing with so much randomly placed stuff, it plays like a 1920's vaudeville show......with a younger cast in bathing suits and bikinis......

                There's sufers, skydivers, pop stars, press agents, the usual idiot bikers led by the series' resident moron Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck)...("I am my ideal").

                 You want more, you say?  How 'bout a mermaid (Marta Kristen), silent film star Buster Keaton, and the legendary all-around madman Timothy Carey, (the Nicolas Cage of the 50's and 60's), who somehow managed to finish the film without the cops called to escort him off the set....

                  Ooops , we almost forgot the ever-squabbling, ever-singing Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello......(as always, Annette's discreetly covered up in one piece bathing suits, so as not to break the morals clause in her still enforced Disney contract.....)

                 But what a sweet trip to a never-never land where all the beach party boys and girls share the same small split level house.......boys on the ground floor, girls on the upper deck balcony with a "Heaven's Above" sign draped across it.

                   And you'd better believe not even Frankie Avalon gets to ascend to the...uh  heavenly gates........

                  The closest anyone comes to experiencing romance here, of all people, is the beach gang's village idiot Bonehead (Jody McCrea) who strikes up a sweet meet-cute with the mermaid......(at our first packed-theatre showing of this film, the tween and teen audience adored these scenes.....if American International had made a 'Bonehead And The Mermaid' movie, it might have quadrupled 'Beach Blanket's grosses.....)

                 Let's move on to the other primary plot engines.......the beachers take up skydiving which leads to the expected rear projection shots of Frankie and Annette in mid-air, replacing the usual rear projection shots of Frankie and Annette on surf boards.......

                  Meanwhile, in comic villain-ville, Timothy Cary, who calls everyone 'Boobie', abducts the beautiful, brainless singing star Sugar Kane (Linda Evan)and spirits her away to his lair 'the Boobie Hatch'........where he plans to bisect her, silent-film style, with a huge circular saw,,,,,(or as Timothy puts it, "I got ideas. And they're all vile, baby!")

                 Speaking of silent films, we sat astounded at the sight of  69 year old Buster Keaton chasing a busty blonde down the beach......and vice versa.......what these two would do if they ever caught each other can only be left to the imagination

                   We could go on and on about our favorite moments (including insult comic Don Rickles screaming at Annette, "I never liked you!"), but let's just say we enjoyed  anice wide-awake dream re-visiting the beach brigade......

                    And in an era besieged by both a plague and the one-man human plague of Trump,         "Beach Blanket Bingo" offered 90 minutes of retro relief...3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)

'COLOR OUT OF SPACE'......ROCK OF CAGE'S.......

Color Out of Space (2020)    The good news:   Nicolas Cage is finally finding films that are every bit as crazy and over the top as the performances he gives in them........

                The bad news:  To find these particulars movies, you'll have to carefully separate them from the unending avalanche of direct-to-DVD Cage-o-paloozas.......

                  We doubt he's still pumping out this amount of movies to cover his IRS debt.......he probably loves replacing Samuel L. Jackson as the hardest working man in show biz.......

                  As in his gloriously whack-a-doodle "Mandy", Cage works with yet another director who matches him for sheer, fearless, batshit-crazy filmmaking......and even better, for this film, it's the long time out-of-work Richard Stanley, famously bounced off the ghastly '96 Brando-Kilmer dumpster fire, "The Island Of Dr. Moreau"......

                 And what a perfect project these two found, a modernization of H.P.Lovecraft's "The Colour Out Of Space", in which an alien meteor unleashes unholy mutated hell on unlucky earthlings in its vicinity.......

                   So let's get right to it........on the Nick Loony Scale of 1 to 10, this one's a 105 at least.

                  He's stuck out in the Middle Of Frickin' Nowhere, making an obvious monumental effort to contain his volcanic temper while presiding over a barely functioning family........the wife's a recovering cancer survivor, the teen girl's dabbling in witchcraft, the teen boy's lost in weed and the little boy.......you can sense he's waiting around for victimhood.......

                    Madness and the Lovecraftian meteor come 'a callin' to the wobbly House Of Cage....(which for some reason, is lit up every night like a tourist attraction)........and Nick cranks up his rants 'n raves as the alien whatever lets loose with a neon Purple Reign of all sorts of monstrous stuff.......

                   In rapid succession, multi-eyed mutant bugs flitter about, and a variety of people, along with Cage's little herd of Alpacas, get transformed into slobbering, gooey, mewling, crawling
monstrosities.........woo-hoo!

                    This one checked off all our boxes for a fun horror movie.......it's beautifully shot, plenty of slimy carnage, almost nobody gets out alive........and as whipped cream on the cake, a generous dollop of Cage-o-riffic insanity.......what more could you ask for?

                    More of the same?  Supposedly, Cage and director Stanley will re-team again for a remake of Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror".......

                   We say, 'yes, please'. And happily spew up 3 & 1/2 stars for "Color Out Of Space"......a film and actor both out of their minds.......