The rest of us: "Yes it is, dum-dums. You couldn't wait to get to the polling places to open a floodgate of shit on America. So now you don't like swimming in it anymore? Stop, you're breaking our hearts....."
The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (1962) We're starting to lose count of how many Mabuse films we've watched and reviewed. Mostly mixed reactions (good and not so good stuff in each one).
At last, we came across one we kind of liked all the way through.
For those who aren't caught up on Mabuse-ery, a quick overview:
Doc M. popped up in a 1921 novel and 3 classic films by director Fritz Lang. In German pop culture lore, he's a combo of Professor Moriarity, Ernst Blofeld, Fu Manchu and a shape shifting Svengali. He's chock full of evil plans for world domination and usually commands a dark army of mesmerized minions.
Long story short: He's a really, really, really bad guy.
And now he snagged himself a scientist who can make people invisible via radio frequencies......or something like that.
Even worse, he's lusting after a luscious stage diva (the always strikingly beautiful Karin Dor). Karin's big act involves literally losing her head every night as a guillotined Marie Antoinette.
(This is where Chekov's famous 'rule of the loaded gun' comes in. If you see a guillotine in Act I, you can bet your neck that by Act III, someone's going to use it for real......)
Mabuse's creepy minions also hang out in Karin's theater, including a decidedly sinister fat clown. (a surprise reveal at the end). And the poor girl's being driven over the edge when she sees a chair in her dressing room squish down after Mabusy's plopped his invisible ass on it.
To the rescue comes visiting FBI Agent Joe Como played by ex Tarzan and international movie star Lex Barker. Quite the massive physical specimen in the Schwarzenegger mold, we just knew Lex would punch the crap out of Mabuse's minions, given half a chance.
And by the end of the film he's given more than half a chance.
Also showing up, as we knew they would.....those familiar war movie Nazis, Werner Peters and Wolfgang Preiss (who once again takes the titular role of Mabuse.)
We did have fun with this one, because we'd never pass up a chance to gaze upon Karin Dor's enormous, expressive eyes (we thought of her as the Germanic Barbara Steele). And we swear the film's explanation of invisibility almost sounds plausible......
For those into Mabuse, it's a 3 star (***) must watch. Be advised though, for culture vulture cineastes - we're talkin' pulp cinema here so you either roll with the nonsense or give it a hard pass.
Danger!! Death Ray (1967) Sorry. Can't help ourselves. We start convulsing from withdrawal pains unless we take in another rock-bottom international Euro-Spy, imitation Bond movie.
We became hopelessly addicted these junky mock-Bonds when they began to flood American TV stations......believe it or not, a few of them are really good, but the bulk of the 'Euro-Spy' onslaught was mostly cheap, silly and ridiculous.
(Not that we didn't love 'em anyway......bless their idiotic little hearts)
To start, this one's title killed us. Double exclamation points??? Oh my, you had us at hello. A death ray too? Pardon our salivating in pure ecstasy.
And our secret agent's name? Bart Fargo! (We didn't make that up)......another ladies man who bemoans his task of saving the world cause it cuts into his vacation time.
Speaking of Fart Bargo, here's what sets this Euro-Spy apart from the other cookie-cutter entries. Usually the lead spy was played by a fit 'n slim debonair type in the Connery tradition.
Too wimpy for this movie..... our hero is no less than heavily muscled Gordon Scott, ex movie Tarzan and sword 'n sandal Hunka Hunka. He sports a Cinemascope chest, barbell fists and a lazy preference for vacationing instead of getting out there to Gordon-ize the villain and his many goons.
Trading in his jungle loin cloth for suits and evening black tie outfits, Scott looks like his massive frame will, at any moment, rip to shreds, Hulk-style. To try to offer an even match, any number of the villain's henchman also seem recruited from body-building gyms.
(So imagine a cheapo Bond knockoff populated with refugees from 'Pumping Iron')
Fart Bargo's mission - thwart the Mastermind who kidnapped an atomic scientist and his sooper-dooper 'death ray'. (a big ass frickin' laser cannon colorfully decorated in red and blue. )
This villain's not kidding around, either. After his minions slaughter half the local police force, they make off with the scientist via toy store models of a helicopter and submarine.....befitting the movie's budget of somewhere in the vicinity of $48.95.
Along the way, Fart engages in countless gunfights and karate brawls with a non-stop array of minions who keep on comin' at him. The fools......our tuxedo'd Tarzan mops the floor with them, at times just pounding two at a time on the head with his pile driver mitts.
By the time our guy finally puts things right, (and saves his smokin' hot girlfriend du jour) we'd lost count of how many dozens upon dozens of people fall to machine gun fire.....with the exception of one dopey character who takes a flying leap at Fart while he stood near an open 25th floor window....heh, heh, heh....
And don't get too excited about the death ray......the photogenic laser blaster only spits out a beam a few times and doesn't melt a single person.....sigh.....
For fans of this very weird Euro-Spy genre (like us) it's 90 minutes of good cheesy fun. Everyone else would probably consider it a waste of time, but for we connoisseurs of cinematic oddities, it's at least a 2 &1/2 star discovery. (**1/2).
(As you may have already surmised, this was Agent....(okay, we'll say it right) Bart Fargo's one and only mission. We can only hope he's happily vacationing with many of his beautiful gal pals....)
Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce (2025)
Noises Off (1992) True confession......even before we laid eyes on this movie, we were already predisposed to enjoy the hell out of it.....
That's because BQ spent the better part of a decade as a playwright for a professional children's theater company. As this often involved attending auditions, rehearsals, and performances, we had a front row seat to the wildly chaotic world of live theater and all its mad, mad, mad, mad denizens......actors, directors tech crews and audiences.
We wouldn't have missed it for the world. Some of the fondest, nuttiest and most hilarious moments in our life come from that joyously creative era......
'Noises Off', based on a frantic British farce that became a hit in both London and on Broadway, manages to pack all of that beloved, breathless lunacy into one 103 minute package.
In its clever play-within-a-play conception, we're thrust into disastrous rehearsals of 'Nothing On', a deft imitation of the kind of British sexless sex romp that often migrated over to Broadway after a successful London run.
An American company of actors, (all trying out their wobbly Brit accents) are about to start their long, arduous tryout tour through smaller U.S. cities, hoping to improve and hone the show before it hits it ultimate goal - a smash hit opening on the Great White Way.
But to watch their increasingly hysterical British director (Michale Caine, superbly funny), they've got a long way to go.
This not-ready-for-Broadway company is enacted with brilliance and awesome comedic timing by John Ritter, Christopher Reeve, Nicolette Sheridan, Marilu Henner, Julie Hagerty, Mark Linn-Baker and Carol Burnett. And as a bonus addition, there's the cast's one authentic Englishman, Denholm Elliot, playing an aging, addled, alcoholic who barely knows where he is or who he is. (Sadly, Denholm's last screen appearance before passing away from AIDS.)
Director Peter Bogdanovich, who'd already proved his facility with breakneck physical slapstick in "What's Up Doc", once again showed he's an abled ringmaster for this long lost art of screwball absurdity. Like a virtuoso conductor, he leads his orchestra of actors through a perfectly timed symphony of silliness.
Watching this film brought back all our laugh out loud memories of our days in theater.......filled with actors nursing bloated, easily deflated egos, petty rivalries, instant hook-ups and just as instant break-ups, tantrums, walk-outs, deliriums.....and oh yes, a falling down drunk or two.
As you may have already surmised, we loved every every frenetic moment our own experience and this film's amped-up version of it. A perfect respite from the darkest world we're all heading into......
4 stars (****). Catch up with it soon.
"Then if I find it, I got a Chinese guy who's gonna help me blow it the hell up, just like me and Elon did to the rest of the government and all its employees. But first we'll take out some gold in cardboard boxes to storage at Mar-A-Lago....we'll store them right next to the surplus of really expensive eggs we keep in the pool snack bar...."
"And yes, I did declare "Long Live The King' on my Untruth Social site.....and why not? With Elon as Grupenfuhrer of Coin, we're doin' pretty good I'd say. Whadja say? You didn't vote for this? Hey guess what.....you got played, suckers! Bend over and take like grown-ups...."
Nightbitch (2024) We imagine any woman enduring her first pregnancy would find this film more horrific than all three "Terrifier" movies combined.
'Mother' (as we only know her by) is a stay-at-home mom coping with an adorable but impossibly rambunctious toddler son. She gave up a promising career as an artist for a life of perpetual attention to her child's constant needs.......literally a 24/7 job that's driving her to the brink of madness.
'Husband' (as we only know him by) travels all the time for work and even when he's home, he contributes the bare minimum of co-parenting tasks. In one of this film's many worn out "It's what she was thinking but not what she actually does") tricks, she fantasizes slapping Hubby when he emits another clueles
s insensitive observation.
(This same tired shtick starts off the movie when Mother bumps into a casual friend and then lets loose a corrosive evaluation of her own dashed dreams and diminished life.....until we realize what she only said was 'I love being a mother'. Yeh, sure you do)
Hmmm....let's see. What else could go wrong here?
How about Mother sprouting hair on her ass and turning into a dog? Not just any canine, but a full fledged Alpha Dog leading a the neighborhood pack on the hunt for squirrels and bunnies. Hold it.....is this happening for real or just another film festival culture vulture metaphor for the after-screening audience to discuss?
Beats us. Feel free to figure it out and discuss.
We don't want to sound like we love trashing this film so let's talk about the good stuff.
Amy Adams as Mother gives the very definition of what they call a fearless, bravado performance. She put herself out there for this role and you can't take your eyes off her for one second.....(neither does the film)
And as the perplexed, hapless Husband, Scoot McNairy does his best, but the role is as thankless as playing a white racist villain in a 1970's Blaxsploitation movie.
For horror movie curators the film does offer a special treat - the one and only Jessica Harper (of "Suspiria") as an enigmatic librarian who pops up for pivotal moments in Mother's already strange life.
There's no end of clever satire going on here, but we're thinking the whole dog thing doesn't do as much for the movie as writer-director Marielle Heller thought it would.
The surprise for us came when the movie swings into such a conventional third act, it could've been directed by Nora Ephron or Gary Marshall.
That is...until the final scene kicker.....or is it?
Depending on how you view the entirety of film, you'll either think that last shot is a warm hug, or a promise of horrors to come.
Which is it? You tell us. Discuss.
It's Amy Adams incredible performance that makes 'Nightbitch' worth a look for all cinephiles....and for her work alone, we'll bark out 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
Amy's not a sick puppy here.....just a sick-and-tired one.
Secret Of The Red Orchid (1962) Just like the previously reviewed '1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse', another crushing disappointment in the annals of post-war German Euro-Junk.
This one's part of the peculiar 'Krimi' genre of murder mysteries based on the stories of Edgar Wallace (also one of the co-writers of "King Kong")
Usually a 'Krimi' presented a warped perverse universe filled with whip-wielding monks, slobbering hunchbacks and an escalating body count......
'Red Orchid' went off course for the series, dealing with competing extortion gangs operating in London. It looks and sounds like a pale imitation of 1940's American gangster movies. The really cheap bad ones.
And even more criminal, it wastes a killer cast who could've made this film a crazy romp, given half a chance.
Two iconic titans appear together, Christopher Lee (who at this point needs no introduction) and cinema's most dangerous madman, Klaus Kinski. Incredibly, both are terribly miscast - Kinski as a dapper dan gangster and Lee as an FBI agent.
For added dessert toppings, there's long time international character actor Eric Pohlmann (the voice of Blofeld in "From Russia With Love" and "Thunderball") and the ever stunning Euro-babe Marisa Mell.
All of them, we should point out, are badly re-voiced by run-of-the-mill dubbers who all sound, as usual like they're stuck in the same phone booth together.
Kinski and Pohlmann play competing crime lord extortionists. They threaten rich old farts with death if they don't pay up big time. Lee's FBI guy has landed in London to help Scotland Yard with the case as old fart bodies start piling up.
This leaves a prissy butler (Eddie Arent,hamming it up) flitting from one wealthy employer to another as the gangs bump them off. (This is the actor for whom they invented the expression, "a little of him goes a long way....."
What an opportunity was thrown away here.....uniting legendary pulp cinema giants Lee and Kinski and then giving them literally nothing to work with. A damned shame beyond all known stupidity.
Dreary, dumb and tired from start to finish threw away 83 minutes on it......BQ recommends you avoid it like the plague.
Zero star (0).
I Am the Cage by Allison Sweet Grant (2025))
Such an intimate powerful story of one terribly hurt young woman. I don't know how any readers could experience this book without becoming invested in and deeply moved by the gut wrenching isolation of 19 year old Elizabeth.
SNL 50: The Anniversary Special (2025 Even with 3 hours and 20 minutes, it may not have been possible to do an all encompassing recap of half a century of Saturday Night Live....
But not that producer Lorne Michaels didn't try his best.
Packed to the rafters with SNL guest hosts, current cast members, past cast members and musical guests, the show took a deep dive into legendary SNL moments, characters, skits, mock commercials and general history.
For any fan of the show, a nostalgic treasure trove opened wide, spilling out who knows how many fond memories.
Also on view......the glaring omissions.
Though SNL established a long history of mercilessly lampooning U.S. Presidents, you'd never know it from the 50th anniversary special.....MIA were cast members' eviscerations of the POTUS of the moment, from Chevy Chase's dim bulb Gerald Ford to James Austin Johnson's babbling Donald Trump.....(unless you count the montage of the young Chase's stumbling pratfalls, a signature of his Ford impression.)
We'd hate to think this has anything to do with Trump, now armed with unlimited power and his own FCC minion, planning to exact vengeance on TV shows and comedians who've dared to mock him.
Also glaringly not in attendance for various reasons - some of the most monumental figures in SNL's history.....Dan Aykroyd, Bill Hader, Dana Carvey. Considering the contributions they made, you'd think Lorne Michaels should've moved heaven and earth to include them, even if from remote locations.......
Just sayin'........
To the special's credit, it served up a feast of mostly on target recaps, fresh skits and live musical performances over a long, long Sunday night, with few duds and missteps.
A few random observations......
If ever anyone needed a poignant reminder about the ravages of time, we felt both saddened and elated as Paul Simon and Paul McCartney valiantly sang their songs with weakened, aging voices.
The tour of un-woke, now offensive politically incorrect skit characters was for us, the funniest, most perceptive bit in the show. It reminded us of when we recently watched the re-airing of the show's 1975 premiere episode. A mock news film by Albert Brooks included the breaking news that Oregon has lowered the age of consent to 7 years old, then cut to clip of a guy dating a little girl. Try imagine seeing something like that on TV today (along with Buck Henry's character of a pedophile uncle babysitting his nieces.)
Fortunately, the golden moments outnumbered the duds.....appearances by Bill Murray, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Adam Sandler, Rachel Dratch and the formidable female power players Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Kristin Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Maya Rudolph (We're aware, we're leaving out lots of people off these lists, but by now, you know all the others....)
We can only feel thankful that two former guest hosts, President Elon Musk and Assistant Dictator Donald Trump declined an invitation to attend the show. Maybe Lorne Michaels shouldn't consider inviting people dedicated to wiping his show off the air......
SNL 50 was a huge mixed bag of treats and blunders.....but then that aptly describes the 50 years of the show itself.
If you missed it, it's well worth streaming. 4 stars (****).
Time Magazine confirms what we knew all along.....
Surrender (1987) We don't want to sound like we're overpraising this hardly remembered slight little rom-com, but it fulfilled at least two essentials for the genre.
1. Sometimes, it's really funny (though veers dangerously close to silliness.)
2. It has two appealing beloved stars who spark some genuine chemistry with other.
You'd be surprised how many rom-coms can't meet those basic requirements.
We've long been fans of Sally Field and Michael Caine and they're more than up to the hijinks this movie throws at them.
Caine's a best selling novelist whose wives, both legal and common law have taken him to the cleaners in divorce court. He swears off women altogether until he and Field connect in a bizarre, yet original meet-cute.
At a huge public event invaded by armed robbers, they're stripped naked and tied up together. How could love not ensue after that?
Field's a barely struggling artist working in an assembly line warehouse that pumps out Bob Ross-like paintings for hotel rooms. Still wary of rapacious women, Caine tenderly starts a relationship with her, pretending he's a broke, equally struggling would-be writer.
We won't bother detailing all the usual rom-com complications that detonate these lovebirds' path to Happily Ever After, but you could pretty much plot them yourself.
Still, we had a smiling nice time with watching two of our favorite actors find true love and couldn't help rooting for them all the way. (We even tolerated Steve Guttenberg in that thankless role as the annoying, third wheel soon-to-be-dumped boyfriend of Field)
And as a bonus, writer-director Jerry Belson peppers up the brew with plenty of snappy lines.
A fine sweet time waster. 3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)
