WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP....SPECIAL "ALL HEIL TO PRESIDENT MUSK' EDITION....

 Greetings especially to all you Trump voters who didn't like the price of their eggs and gas....

           Are ya havin' fun yet?  Is the coming of your Dear Leader everything you ever dreamed of?

            What...no?  Really?  

             By the way, do any of you rocket scientist Trump voters remember voting for Elon Musk?  

              What.....no?  Really?  Too bad.

Unelected President Musk brings the country closer to a government shutdown with just a tweet.....and entices each GOP congressman a free slightly used Tesla, reconditioned and repaired after driverless crashes.....

Trump staff offers all GOP congress and Senate members free lessons in knee bending and ring kissing, in preparation for Jan. 20th....said Don Jr., "We want to make sure they're ready to lose their souls, balls and moral compasses from Day One....

Even before his Inauguration, Trump walks back his promise to lower grocery prices, now claiming..."it's hard to do"....English translation for Trump voters, "Lay out whatever cash you have left for your f***in' eggs and shut the hell up about it already. You people are bigger suckers than dead soldiers..."

George Stephanopoulos and ABC lay out millions to Trump to settle a libel lawsuit, with the money going toward funding a Trump library......Stephanopoulus was also force to promise to cut the ribbon opening the new library, will occupy an abandoned Taco Bell out on Gator Gut thruway in Georgia.......

'FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT'.....JERRY LEWIS'S ELUSIVE DISASTER THAT NEVER SAW THE LIGHT OF DAY.....

 From Darkness To Light (2024).....a revealing, exploration of 20th century cinema's most maddening, notorious never-seen film....

        We speak, of course, of 'The Day The Clown Cried', the 1972 Jerry Lewis film that collapsed amid bitter disputes between Lewis and the film's producer. 

         Just a recitation of the storyline induces cringes and severe upward eye-rolling.....a washed up circus clown in World War 2 Germany condemned to a concentration camp and forced to entertain Jewish children as he leads them into the gas chambers.

         The assembled footage of this movie, as of today, has only been laid eyes on by Lewis and a mere handful of people. One of the few, actor Harry Shearer, said even if you imagined how bad it could be, the actual film would dwarf your imagination in its capacity for awfulness. 

          We don't doubt that for a second. Through the post war years and through the 1960's, the arrogant, egomaniacal Lewis reigned as a comedy partner to crooner Dean Martin and then as writer-director and star of his own hit comedy movies. Praised for his filmmaking innovations (like video playbacks), Lewis split his persona between playing the slapstick idiot or the oily, insincere showbiz hipster. 

         By the 70's his films degraded to near unwatchable and Lewis began to reveal himself to the public as the bitter, angry detestable man he'd been all along. 

        If nothing else, "From Darkness To Light" sheds some long overdue light on the inception, the production and the aftermath of 'The Day The Clown Cried'. Included are a rare interview with Lewis, who long refused to ever discuss the film, and actual extended film clips. 

          Lewis could only get the film financed and produced in Sweden by Nat Waschberger, a fast buck Euro-Trash schlockmeister. ("That Man In Istanbul"). After briefly meeting with Jeanne Moreau, Lewis managed to secure Bergman star Harriet Andersson for a supporting role, but the rest of cast was made up of third-rate non-entities.  (Which becomes painfully apparent in the film clips.)

           While actually still in production, the legal rights to the story and script became impossibly tangled and Lewis returned to the U.S. with copy of the film still unseen by all but a few. He donated it the Library Of Congress with the proviso they could hold selected screenings by 2024. As of this moment, no such screenings have happened and most likely the film will never be made available to the general public in any form. 

           From the clips shown in this documentary, it's painfully obvious that evoking realistic pathos was light years beyond Lewis's skill set. The scenes on view resemble outtakes from an aborted Ed Wood Jr. project. 

            Even more illuminating are the chunks of Lewis's interview about the film. Even as he grudgingly admits to his own failures, he remains defiant, combative and ultimately.....sad.  Mel Brooke, Rob Reiner, Sarah Silverman and Martin Scorsese chime in with their own insights and opinions. 

            Given that this could be as close to "The Day The Clown Cried" as we'll ever get, no cinema buff should miss it....

            4 stars (****).

 

          

'THE TOWERING INFERNO'......HAPPY 50TH TO IRWIN ALLEN'S BONFIRE OF INANITY

The Towering Inferno (1974).....premiered around this time 50 years ago. And served as semi-schlockmeister Irwin Allen's ultimate, quintessential disaster movie. Produced by two major studios and populated with a star-studded line-up of actors. the overlong film delivered everything Allen promised - a catastrophic spectacle of death by fire, water and falling from great heights. 

           Yet after this film's release to massive box office success, nobody fell from greater heights than Irwin Allen......

           Allen, a tireless self-promoter, specialized in borderline cheesy sci-fi TV shows and movies....("Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea", "Lost In Space", "The Lost World")  He struck gold with his 1972 upside-down cruise ship disasterpiece "The Poseidon Adventure".

          Hollywood execs salivated at the money to be made feeding the public's newly hungry appetite for special effects calamity. Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox bought competing best sellers about fires in gleaming glass high rises. ('The Tower' and 'The Glass Inferno'. 

           In a rare instance of common business sense, the two studios agreed to blend the two books into one humungous movie they'd produce jointly......and who better to bring this wing-ding to life than Irwin Allen.

           (In subsequent years, such economic logic went out the window, with studios releasing separate, competing films about   volcanos, meteors hitting the earth and even two James Bond movies......)

           Irwin Allen reveled in his role as impresario-ringmaster of a this super-production about a miles-high skyscraper catching fire. Upfront as the leads were the primary superstars of the era, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, along with equally in demand Faye Dunaway. Supporting roles included old Hollywood stalwart William Holden as the big-bucks builder, and Richard Chamberlin as his whining weasel son-in-law, whose cost cutting on the building's faulty wiring touches off the fire. 

          For Poseidon, Allen was then astute enough to leave directing the actors to smoothly competent Brit Ronald Neame. Fox and WB, knowing Allen was at best a Grade C journeyman director, insisted on the same policy, leaving the actors in the care of John Guillermin while Allen oversaw the blazes and rescues. 

           The overall result?  Like watching any three hour baseball or football game. You thrill to the high points, while there's entire stretches you could nap through without missing a thing. 

           The superstars played to their strengths - Newman as the thoughtful, caring architect enraged and disgusted as his edifice wrecks due to cheap construction done behind his back.....McQueen as the coolest-of-the-cool fire chief quietly performing feats of heroism everywhere he goes.....(the film provides each star such moments: Newman scrambles up and down a twisted stairway railing to save a woman and two children, McQueen desperately grips a struggling fireman as they both dangle from the roof of an already teetering glass elevator attached to a helicopter cable. 

           (and yes, that O.J.Simpson as the security guard rescuing a kitty-cat, whom he certainly treats more tenderly than his wife....)

            Audiences didn't mind that the film suffered from the same paper thin cornball characterizations and connect-the-dots plotting  that afflicted all disaster movies (and what made them so easy to ridicule and lampoon in the 'Airplane!' comedies.).

            Nobody cared. Irwin Allen's Bonfire Of The Inanities served up what we craved and expected.....Flaming humans! Big explosions!  Crazy stunts!  Huge stars all sweaty and smudged! Bodies flying out the windows!  (Yes, kiddies, long before 9/11 that was considered popular entertainment......not so entertaining now, is it?)

           Returning to the film again, we had to smirk a bit at the astounding finale, which in a way, became a perfect metaphor for the rest of Irwin Allen's filmmaking career......

           Allen's gloriously matte-painted skyscraper turns out to hold gigantic water tanks on its roof......why this place needs enough water to turn the Sahara into a lakeside resort is beyond us. But it does come in handy for Newman and McQueen to detonate the tanks and touch off a deluge that sends a few more stuntmen into swan dives off the top floor. 

             Those final shots of water cascading down the steel Tower and dousing the inferno prophesied the rest of Irwin Allen's sad filmography.......

             'The Master Of Disaster' pressed on with the genre mistakenly handing over the direction to a....well, a Grade C journeyman....Allen himself. 

              The ludicrous 'Beyond The Poseideon Adventure' and the laughable killer bee epic "The Swarm" hammered nails into the coffin of the dead-as-a-doornail disaster film. Warner Brothers would only let Allen produce but not direct the woeful volcano flop, 'When Time Ran Out', his last dire stab at the genre.  Even with another director, the film still looked like an Ed Wood Jr. production with a slightly larger budget. 

             So for one moment in 1974 time, Irwin Allen rode the top of the wave of disaster movies until he himself insured their demise. "The Towering Inferno" still stands as his lasting legacy......silly, outdated, a curio of a long gone era but certainly an overstuffed buffet of all-star, old-fashioned Hollywood cinema. 

              2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).  These days, mainly for fans of the stars and film historians......

           

'CARRY ON'.....NETFLIX FINALLY GETS THE '90'S RIGHT! A GOOD DAY TO FLY HARD.

Carry On (Netflix 2024)    Regular BQ visitors know how much we've carped and snarked about Netflix assembling imitation 1990's thrillers like Doc Frankenstein slapping together his monster from spare parts stolen from other bodies........

          Just in time for Christmas, they finally got one right, pieced together from assorted chunks of 'Die Hard', 'Die Hard 2',  'Speed' those Liam Neeson train-plane-automobile thrillers, and even that long forgotten Johnny Depp nailbiter "Nick Of Time". 

           Of course, every breathless minute of it is ridiculous, over-the-top and filled with more plot holes than the moon has craters.

           Who friggin' cares? It's a rollercoaster ride. Nobody gets on a looping, cork-screwing coaster for insight into the human condition. 

            We do it for the thrills, the wham-bams, the clock countdowns and the thwarting of the obnoxious mastermind who's tormenting our hero......

            So we say, snap the safety bar down and take the ride, 

            Our everyday shlub who's forced to rise to the occasion is TSA slacker Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton of "Rocketman"). He's under the gun from 'The Traveler (a finely psychotic Justin Bateman), who's out to send a carry-on packed with Russian nerve gas on to a packed flight of 250 people.  Yikes.

            Kopek's must tow the line or the Traveler will order up the sniper execution of his pregnant girlfriend (Sofia Carson), who's also working the airport at an airline reservation counter. 

             From this point everything that could possibly spiral out of control for both Kopek and his tormentor spirals out of control. And we don't mind telling you we inhaled every ludicrous minute of it. 

             Bateman's a hateful handful in the great tradition of 'Die Hard's Alan Rickman and Egerton executes enough sprints through the crowded LAX terminal to qualify for the next Summer Olympics. 

             And it's Christmastime at the airport, so everybody's pissed off even without realizing they might end up nerve-gassed to death. 

             Carry-On will now take its well earned honor as of our favorite Happy Holiday guilty pleasures.  By all means, bring on 'Carry On II', (maybe taking place during Spring Break?)

             4 stars (****).

'THE TRAIN'......BURT'S ALL ABOARD FOR ONE THE BEST OF ALL WW2 ACTION-ADVENTURES....

 The Train (1964)     Let's get right to the point here. We don't want to wait till the end of the review to hand out the rating.

          Right now, BQ tells you this is a 5 star (*****) all-time great. One of our favorite World War 2 movies and one of the most visually spectacular. 

          What's sad......no studio or director in this day and age would ever attempt a film like this without their hundreds upon hundreds of CGI digital artists. 

           All the action sequences in "The Train" are filmed live on set. Explosions, incredible train crashes....and the lead actors performing their own stunts. 

          More importantly, everything that goes into making a truly great movie is plainly on view here.....the acting, story, composition of shots for maximum dramatic impact. 

          In short, everything that's missing from a superhero movie.

          Paris 1944 - the occupying Germans are on the verge of fleeing the city as Allied forces invade Europe. Ruthless Nazi Col. Von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) an imperious art-loving dilettante, plans to transport all of France's cherished classic paintings back to Germany.

          Putting the paintings on a train puts Von Waldheim in the path of French railroad inspector Labiche (Burt Lancaster). He forces Labiche to personally engineer the train.....a double-edged sword of a job, since Labiche has already been tasked by the Resistance to thwart the train's passage to Berlin without destroying the paintings. 

           From this point the film becomes a gripping duel of wills and reckless one-upsmanship between the two men, while Allied air raids wreak explosive damage to trains and the railyards.  And that's not all that collides.......

           Director John Frankenheimer, given access to real trains and tracks, stages some of the most eye-popping action sequences (and stunning train crashes) ever committed to film.  But he never forgets this is a human story, with drama scenes done with carefully composed shots that feature Lancaster in the foreground and the supporting cast alongside reacting to him.

             The incendiary issue that drives the film never gets lost in all the action.....Labiche agonizes over whether all the lives sacrificed to save the the paintings justifies the carnage. And Frankenheimer hammers this point home in the film's final shots, leaving it to the audience to decide. 

              We could easily go on and on for another few hours about how much we love this movie, so we'll wrap it up with a recommendation that no cinema buff should dare miss "The Train".

              Again, we say 5 stars (*****). If you haven't seen it, stop everything you're doing and seek it out.  Right now. 

'THE PSYCHOPATH'.....THE 'PSYCHO' AUTHOR DREAMS UP ANOTHER HELLISH MOTHER-SON COMBO......

 The Psychopath (1966)......barely makes it to 80 minutes, but for horror buffs (and lovers of obscure 60's cinema like us) it's a diverting little piece of Halloween candy with a satisfying nutso ending.

         This distinctly British thriller came into the world via American producers Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky. They moved across the pond to operate their Amicus production company. For a while through the 1960's, they functioned as something of a rival to the horror house of Hammer. 

         Amicus gravitated to portmanteau scare-a-thons, featuring multiple short stories within one feature film ("Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors", etc)  And sci-fi fans well remember their two "Dr. Who" movies with a doddering, kindly Peter Cushing taking on armies of Daleks rasping 'Exterminate!'

         For 'The Psychopath', they turned to prolific pulp novelist and screenwriter Robert Bloch, whose novel 'Psycho' became Hitchcock's you-know-what. And once again, Bloch presented us with a strange young man under the thumb of his very weird, very frightening mother. 

         Only this time, mom's no stuffed mummy parked in the fruit cellar. She's very much alive and holding a vengeful grudge dating back to the end of World War 2. 

         Bloch's new mother-from hell is wheelchair bound Mrs. Von Sturm (Margaret Johnston) a once wealthy German aristocrat with a simpering, dutiful son (John Standing). After the war, Mrs. Von S. saw her wealth and property usurped by four members of an Allied tribunal. 

          And here's an un-surprise......the four men, now middle-aged and well-to-do are droppin' like flies at the hands of a murderer. The fiend favors leaving life-like doll replicas of the victims......and wouldn't you know, Mrs. Von Sturm ekes out a living making life-like dolls. 

            Hmmmm......sounds like an interesting case for Inspector Holloway (Patrick Wymark, giving his usual smooth comforting delivery).

            Renowned cinematographer turned horror director Freddie Francis does his best to whip up a few unsettling moments and scares, but the fast 'n cheap budget doesn't much help him. (Shooting the film in bright color and wide screen Techniscope didn't generate the creepy atmosphere this story needed to come off).

             The MVP here? Clearly Margaret Johnston as the mom straight up from the depths of hell. In the film's over-the-top finale, you can almost hear her sneering "Hold my beer" to Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.  And whole doll business comes to a truly unforgettable conclusion in the final macabre shot.

             No world beater for sure, but for British horror completists, it'll only take up an hour and 20 minutes, so why not?

              2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

'BLACK DOVES'.....'TIS THE SEASON TO BE BLOODY......

 Black Doves (Netflix series-2024)     We surprised ourselves by semi-binging this 6 episode espionage-action series set in London. 

          Had a damn good time with it, too. Top loaded with brutal action, twists upon twists and occasional bursts of sick humor. 

          Real gritty spy stuff?  On the surface, yes. But this show dials up all the usual tropes we've come to expect.....way, way up. 

           All the major players, naturally, are lying, conniving psychopaths, sociopaths and uh....rather untrustworthy.....all skilled in bone crunching hand-to-hand combat and ready to whip out the guns to rack up high body counts when called upon. 

           And they're called upon to do this stuff frequently. By the time the final episode's over, London's littered with enough blood splattered corpses to keep a morgue busy for two years. 

            A labyrinth of a plotline?  You bet your Glock on it. China's ambassador to Britain is found dead of a drug overdose and his wild-child, drug addict daughter has gone missing. China's not buying the overdose story and it's looking like no amount of Brit diplomacy can avert World War 3. 

            On top of all that, 3 random people get whacked including the lover of Helen Webb (Keira Knightley), the wife of the British Defense Minister. 

            But Helen's no ordinary dutiful politician's partner. She's an undercover agent for a shady intelligence outfit that swipes state secrets to auction off to the highest bidder. And that includes all the top secrets Helen overhears from her beloved husband. She duly spills them all to her boss, the mysterious, cryptic Mrs. Reed. (Sarah Lancashire)

            Talk about a long term deep cover assignment......Helen's been married to the politico for 10 years, pumped out two children and shmoozed with the high and mighty as her hubby climbs up the ladder to maybe 10 Downing Street itself. 

           Not only does she seethe and grieve over her lover's death, unknown assassins target her for unknown reasons. That prompts Mrs. Reed to recruit triggerman Sam (Ben Wishaw) to wipe out the threats to Helen before she goes on her own vigilante murder spree. 

           Sam, by the way, has a whole host of his own problems.  After he botched a hit job ordered up by reptilian crime lord Lenny (Kathyrn Hunter), he'd fled the country, abandoning his gay lover Michael. (Omari Douglas). Still in trouble with Lenny, Sam's forced to ally himself with a pair of wisecracking young hit-girls (Agnes 'O Casey, Ella Lily Hyland).

            Believe us when we tell you we've only sketched out the bare minimum of the twisting, turning plot complications that bring freelance spies, street thugs, pro assassins, Chinese diplomats, CIA agens and London crime kingpins all colliding together. 

           Don't worry about losing track.....the show never bores, with each episode providing furious punch-ups, pitched automatic weapons firefights and dead bodies galore. 

           The more we thought about how much spycraft and carnage are packed into this show, we began to think of it as a ridiculous, overheated but whole-lotta-fun guilty pleasure.......

            Acting is uniformly top-of-the-line, particularly Knightley and Wishaw. And special commendations to O' Casey and Hyland as the hit-girls, gifted with all of the show's wittiest retorts and laugh-out-loud moments. 

            We realize how hard it's become to pick out something to watch amid the literal oceans of streaming series and movies now available......BQ says give this one try.

             4 stars (****)

            

'BOOKED FOR MURDER'.....A NOT-SO-FAMOUS ACTRESS INHERITS A HOUSE, A BOOKSTORE PLUS ARSON AND MURDER......

 Booked For Murder by P.J. Nelson (2024)

     I gravitate to a cozy mystery for the same reasons I think other readers do.......something about the setting, the characters or the peculiar situations of the crimes catches my attention, something that makes this particular cozy stand out from hundreds of others.

     "Booked For Murder' does have all the familiar tropes firmly in place...... small town where everybody knows everybody else, a bookstore to die for (and somebody does)., and a plus-sized cat lounging around at the most pivotal moments.

     The lead character (and amateur sleuth) Madeline Brimley is what initially drew me in. I'm a theater nerd/buff and Madeline's a failed actress of indeterminate age who's inherited a combo Victorian house-bookstore from her late Aunt Rose. Madeline's spotty, up-and-down theatrical career can't possibly equal the drama besetting her in her first few days of taking over the house and its store.

     Somebody torches the gazebo behind the house and Madeline receives threatening phone calls from what sounds like a backwoods hood. And worst of all, someone ends up stabbed to death in the store, maybe an unlucky innocent victim whom the killer mistook for Madeline. Even the worst play she ever acted in can't compete with this this level of life-threatening melodrama.......

     In true cozy fashion, our heroine ends up as part of trio of would-be sleuths, along her Aunt Rose's lifelong friend Philomena and local minister Gloria. Suspects abound and Madeline, alternately bold and foolish, attempts interrogating them with results ranging from confounding to downright perilous. And along the way, there's lots of witty asides referring back to her checkered career in the theater.

     A quick and mildly entertaining read, but with a few major problems in characterization and plotting. The author has some of ,well let's say the less educated characters talking like they escaped from a community theater production of 'Deliverance' and after the climactic reveal, the book rambles on as if we're simply content to hang out with Madeline and pals. I think it'll take a few more books in the series to earn that privilege from readers.

       3 stars (***

'WHAT THE WOODS TOOK'......TROUBLED TEENS TAKE ON WILDERNESS HORRORS......

 What The Woods Took by Courtney Gould (2024)

     Scary. Heartbreaking. Breathless. Gasp-inducing. And an incisive examination of five troubled, broken young souls, thrown into unimaginable horror.

     "What the Woods Took' manages to pack all of this into one page-turning package. After a relatively slow start, author Courtney Gould pits her five distressed teen characters against a terrifying mixture of every horror movie trope you've ever shivered through.

     Devin, Sheridan, Ollie, Aiden and Hannah, all given up on by exasperated parents and guardians, find themselves forcibly dragged into a wilderness survival program in the backwoods of Idaho. The guide-counselors in charge, barely older than their unhappy campers, are tasked with taking the group through a 50 day hike,.......presumably to instill self-reliance, self-worth and lose their bad attitudes.

     But things go, as we all knew they would.....horribly awry.

     Something's slightly 'off' about this neck of the woods and when their two guides disappear, the group's left to fend for themselves. Even as they squabble and wrestle with their long held inner demons, they become more aware that they're not alone in these woods. And whatever might lurk behind the trees doesn't have their best interests at heart.

     Author Courtney Gould creates perceptive, emotional portraits of her five characters, particularly, the two leads - angry free-with-her-fists Devin and sarcastic, bullying (but terribly vulnerable) Sheridan. The girls at first despise each other on sight and your heart aches for them as their own troubled pasts and current dangers serve to slowly but surely lower their guards with each other.

     One of those rare books that takes you on a frightening thrill ride but never forgets that its best special effects don't come from what creeps out from the dark, but from the humans you come to care about and fear for. I'd recommend buckling up and take the ride.

           5 stars (*****)

'GLADIATOR II'....SIR RIDLEY'S CGI TOGA PARTY.....

 Gladiator II (2024)   No, we come not to put the sword to Ridley Scott's mega-budgeted sequel to his 2000 epic with Russel Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix.......

         Were we not entertained?   Yes.

         But was this not another thrilling, heartrending epic like the first film?   Uh....nope. Not even close. 

         Director Scott threw hundreds of millions at this film, stuffing it with state-of-the-art CGI that wasn't available to him 24 years ago. 

         Final result?  A pale imitation of the first one, like a re-heated leftover meal.....yet another enslaved gladiator rising up against the Roman Empire. 

         We did have ourselves a fine old time watching it, but part of that's because large chunks of the film are unintentionally ridiculous and funny. 

         (This time around, the Empire's ruled by a set of psycho Bevis 'n Butthead teenage twins, one of them with mind of an 8 year old. You pray for their deaths as soon as you lay eyes on them......)

         For all of its sound, fury and heft, the film's lead player is an empty vessel, a charisma-free non-entity......tough to root for and that's a knife in this movie's gut.  Most of Paul Mescal's energy must have drained out during his gym sessions to give himself that formidable Barrel chest. 

         But speaking of charisma, Mescal's blah warrior-hero is easily outshined by the film's MVP, Denzel Washington. Playing a smiling, chatty, Machiavellian schemer, he's having the best evil time ever and we loved every minute of him.

         The only thing upstaging Denzel is the vast amount of CGI effects thrown at the film like one big Hail Mary pass.....

         Gladiator events reach delirious heights of hilarity. One of the Glads rides in on a CGI Rhino, putting more than one opponent on the horn of a dilemma....

           The second big event involves a horde of spindly CGI baboons, showing off their prodigious teeth at every opportunity. So we're not sure whether they're asking for dental work or somebody to end up as lunch for them. Whatever they're after, they look like the film retrieved them from the 'Delete' files of the 'Planet Of The Apes' CGI animators......

            But the wham-bammer's saved for the third event......in a flooded Colosseum, arena, the Glads stage a full naval battle, complete with flaming arrows and live sharks in the water. Yikes. 

            What a venue, this Colosseum. We can't even imagine the next event they'd book......Disney On Ice?  The Taylor Swift Eras tour? A Chariot Demolition Derby?  (Oh, wait a sec, they did that one in "Ben Hur"....)

            Okay, we'll give 'Gladiator II' this much.....it didn't bore us. It may harbor delusions that it's improving and deepening the original, but c'mon, give us a friggin' break. This is nothing but shameless corporate product designed to squeeze some ticket money out of anyone with fond memories of the first film. 

              If you're going, sit back, calm down and enjoy it for what it is, a CGI circus for some mild amusement. 

               Just don't show up expecting some kind of great movie.

              2 stars (**).

          

'DR. MABUSE VS. SCOTLAND YARD'......THE GERMANIC SUPERVILLIAN STRIKES AGAIN.....

 Dr. Mabuse vs. Scotland Yard (1963)    For those who didn't go all tingly as the mere mention of Dr. Mabuse, let us fill you in.....

       He's a mad, mad mixture of Professor Moriarity, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Fu Manchu....a German spawned criminal mastermind who's been haunting international cinema since the Silent Era. 

       And like all iconic supervillians, you can't keep a bad man down.......his evil spirit just floats around between movies until it possesses somebody else, birthing a new improved re-conditioned Mabuse. 

           Here, once again, Mabuse is loose.....and his victims end up dead as a cooked goose. And there's no calling a truce with Mabuse....(okay, we'll stop now....)

         We harbored high hopes of enjoying a rollicking guilty pleasure with this movie, which is very much in the style those 'Krimi' creepy murder mysteries based on Edgar Wallace novels. (You know the ones......Lots of fake London fog, homicidal hunchbacks, screaming young heiresses, etc, etc.....)

         So many familiar faces too.....the cool tall blonder than blonder Peter Von Eyck, a young Klaus Kinski (!), the portly Werner Peters and imperious Wolfgang Preiss, both well knows to audiences for playing Nazis in big budget Hollywood war movies. 

          And what an enticing plot.....the evil Mabuse, who favors hypnotizing people to bend them to his will, comes across a more high tech way to accomplish just that. 

           Oh how we wish we could tell you how much cheesy fun this is to watch. .......

            It's not. Hardly worth a few passing snickers......

            It plods along for a very slow 81 minutes, with Mabuse zapping people's brains to link them up to his own nasty thoughts.....(hence turning ordinary folk into spur-of-the-moment assassins.

          If you don't count the brain zapping, nothing bizarre or extraordinary keeps this film from becoming an obscure, forgettable mess. So don't get too excited at the shrieking jazz horns on the soundtrack,  always promising a thrill ride that never happens. 

              We've forgotten it already, so you don't need wasting time to remember it......1 star (*).