'THE COMIC'....SILENTS OF THE HAMS

 The Comic (1969)     The late great comedy writer-director Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke thought of this obscure film they made together as a "lost" movie.......ignored by audiences and short changed by its studio, Columbia, which couldn't wait to stick it on a drive-in double feature and forget about it.......

              We hate to be the one to disagree with those two mighty talents, but when we finally caught up with "The Comic" we fully understood why it arrived in theaters stillborn and instantly forgotten.....

               Ambitious in conception, but crude, cheap and artless in execution, it did nothing but leave a sour taste in our mouth while checking our watch to see how much time we'd wasted on it......

               What Reiner and Van Dyke attempted to create here was a sprawling Old Hollywood tale of the rise and fall of a silent film comedian.......(whose rocky, ragged backstory they took mostly from the real life of Buster Keaton)

                They'd hoped to evoke the long ago era when Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle and others convulsed America in guffaws with their one reel silent slapstick comedies, filled with intricate balletic physical humor that's still stunning to look at today.

                But Reiner, primarily a straight ahead, go-for-the-joke sitcom director, possessed no real cinematic skills to bring any sense of style, artistry or subtle subtest to this story.

               "The Comic", with the exception of its clever re-creations of silent one-reelers, looks like a backlot, slapped together made-for-TV movie, like a low-budget variety show with delusions of  profundity. 

                'Billy Bright', the silent movie star played by Van Dyke, is a egotistical jerk from the moment we set eyes on him, so powerfully consumed by his own self-regard that his grim path through life is pre-ordained. For the rest of the film, we follow the ups and downs of his career as he's undone by booze and infidelity to his long suffering wife. (Michelle Lee)

                 All the dramatic scenes play like hastily staged TV skits minus the laughs, but as we previously mentioned, there's one genuine highlight -  an extended collection of Billy Bright's greatest slapstick hits. Reiner and Van Dyke's adoration of these classic comedians and their riotous work is lovingly rendered in this sequence.....(we especially admired the one where Billy Bright causes no end of chaos by strolling down the street without realizing there's an entire coat rack stuck on his back....)

                Without any ability to make itself look like a real movie, the film turns downright bizarre in its final scenes depicting Billy's slide into old age and obscurity.......including a distasteful moment in which Billy can barely mask his contempt and disgust when he briefly meets his long estranged son (also played by Van Dyke) who's presented as a mincing, gay fashion designer.

  

              While here at BQ, we always pride ourselves on seeking out long lost films that might  deserve your attention.......in this case we found one you can easily skip. But if you should come across it, we'd recommend at least watching those black-and-white one-reeler imitations, for which we'll hand out this film's one and only star (*)

                  Fast forward through the rest of it.

'CURSE OF THE FLY'.....HORROR MINUS THE BUZZ

 Curse Of The Fly (1965)......exists as the little thought of, unwanted stepchild of "The Fly" movies....much like 1982's "Halloween III: Season Of The Witch", the long forgotten bastard stepchild of the 'Halloween franchise.

             Just as there's no Michael Myers slashing his way through "Halloween III", in "Curse Of The Fly", there's no member of  the star-crossed, French-Canadian Delambre family who ends up with a housefly's head parked on his shoulders........(for our musings on the 2nd film in the canon, 1959's "Return Of The Fly", refer to our post on 2/1/19)

               Which doesn't mean the Delambres aren't up to their old tricks -  trying to dis-assemble people's atoms in a glass box and transmit them, like a wireless signal to another glass box where they'll pop up re-assembled....thereby negating the need for airline, train or bus tickets.....

                And that, boys and girls, is technology that we all know wasn't fully perfected until Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek" TV show featured people "beaming" themselves from place to place.  (When people beam themselves up and down  in those shows and movies, evidently nobody worries about their atoms getting mixed up with a stray fly.....)

                 In this third episode of the "Fly" saga, the Delambres still have big dreams of teleporting people from coast to coast and across the seas. Too bad that their various failed attempts have reduced two of their lab assistants and one of their wives to gibbering monstrous mutants, kept locked up in convenient cells on the family's sprawling estate.

                   Hey, nobody said science was easy........

                  True love returns to Martin Delambre (George Baker), husband of the currently locked-up mutant wife. He falls hard for Pat (Carole Grey), a nervous concert pianist freshly escaped from an asylum where she was recovering from a stage fright breakdown.  Poor kid.....talk about jumpin' out of the frying pan and into the fire....(though 12 year old boys in the throes of puberty no doubt enjoyed her fleeing the booby hatch dressed only in a bra and undies.....)

                   The secret that Martin's teleporting is gradually turning him into a mutant never comes up as the lovebirds do a quickie marriage before settling in at the Delambre mansion.

                    At the big homestead, a typical-for-the-time sinister oriental couple (Burt Kwouk of "The Pink Panther" films and Yvette Rees) tend to the mutants while Martin's forced to teleport the family's Big Daddy (Brian Donelevy) out of London and back to the Canada lab, even though his skin's gone  mutant-ized as well.   The younger London-based younger brother of the family (Michael Graham)  the only non-mutant of the bunch doesn't much like any of these goings-on.......

                      Sure enough, it doesn't take long before all three mutants run rampant, allowing Pat to rip out some serious horror movie screams.  Martin succumbs to full mutant-ism and two of the other mutants get fused in the teleporter as they're tandem-zapped back to London.  As for Big Daddy Donelevy, his gruesome fate is simply too priceless to describe and one of the film's best moments.     

     Silly to the max but damn if it doesn't have its moments......and director Don Sharp (a veteran of Hammer pulp like 'Kiss Of The Vampire'  and 'Rasuputin The Mad Monk') knows how to keep it all moving and fun to watch.....even without a single fly in sight.

                      Classic horror film completists  should check this one out at least once. 2 & 1/2 stars. (**1/2).

'UNSANE'.....ONE FLEW OVER THE STALKER'S NEST......

 Unsane (2018)    We tried as hard as we could to resist using a flagrant, sarcastic opening line for this review, something like "Director Steven Soderbergh phones it in..."......since he famously shot most of this film on an IPhone 7.......

            Uh oh.....we just printed that, didn't we?  Ooops, we did it again......

             We'll not harp on the IPhone stuff......if it hadn't been well publicized in every friggin' review of "Unsane", with our barely-there eyesight, we never would have known anyway.

              Visually, it didn't look any different to us than the last 1000 or so independent films we've viewed......for all we know, Soderbergh could have been using a 1958 Kodak Brownie or a Viewmaster....

              (You young 'uns can feel free to google those last two references in order to savor BQ's sparkling wit......)

              Let's speak of the movie itself, shall we?  It's kind of a suspense, semi-horror thriller that takes a nice big healthy swat at everyone's most despised villains....the health care and insurance industries.....

               Claire Foy (of "The Crown") plays a nervous, high strung woman named Sawyer Valentini......not only is the poor girl saddled with a name that sounds left over from one of the 'Star Wars' prequels, she's deathly afraid of a psychotic stalker from whom she's fled to another town to escape.

               As if that wasn't enough woe for her, Sawyer's visit to a counseling therapist ends with her inadvertently committing herself to a day of mental health examination.  Her short fuse temper and outraged, Type A personality quickly earn her an enforced ,involuntary 7 days in the cuckoo's nest, complete with all the perks...... like being tied down in her bed and heavily sedated.  

              (It's later revealed, in case you hadn't already guessed that this particular funny farm is running a massive scam designed to plunder their freshly incarcerated patients for their insurance company benefits.  Oh my.....is such a horrible idea even possible in this day and age.....heh, heh, heh...)

              Can things get any worse for her?  Oh, you bet your Nurse Ratched they can......since her quietly lunatic stalker (Joshua Leonard) has infiltrated the place as an orderly-attendant, beloved by all the staff for his friendly demeanor and dedicated work ethic.

              Claire Foy tears into this role with full force and Leonard (one of hapless hikers in "The Blair Witch Project") gives the deeply loony-toons psycho an implacable sense of chilling calm.......(the solitary confinement scene where the always enraged Foy manages to finally pierce his delusions  is the film's major high point....)

              As inventive and skillful as Steven Soderbergh is with actors, you start to realize this film's really just another terror filled hunt-and-chase, back-and-forth duel between a harried heroine and her relentless tormentor,  Structurally, it's not much different from a typical 1970's slasher movie  (And the film's final freeze frame is straight out of that decade.....)

             Foy's histrionics kept us glued to it, though and Soderbergh, no matter what kind of equipment he's using to shoot his movies, knows how to smartly put together a film and tell a compelling story.. Not bad at all (3 stars - ***)......with even a surprise cameo from a Major Movie Star.......

            

'CRUELLA'.....THE LOWER DEPTHS OF DISNEY GREED.......

 Cruella (2021)   After suffering through its agonizing 134 minute running time, we could only sit there stunned.....trying mightily to figure out what possible demographic this movie was ever made for.....or could appeal to......

              Children?  This movie's about as appropriate for children as 'Apocalypse Now'.........(and seems just as long....._)

                Adults?   What adult in this universe nurses a burning desire to see the origins of a Disney cartoon villain?

                 Greedy Disney Executives hoping for a cash bonus so they can add an infinity pool next to their tennis court?   Ah, at last we discovered the true audience for this film.......

                 Sitting through this movie is similar to having your eyeballs pinned open like Malcolm McDowell's in "Clockwork Orange" and being forced to watch all of George Lucas's misbegotten "Star Wars" prequels, one after the other.

                Basically, a torture trip through a ludicrously conceived origin-backstory that nobody ever wanted, needed or cared a rat's ass about.......

                "Cruella"  is yet another abysmal, nearly unwatchable display of the Disney's empire's naked greed, their ruinous policy of plundering the beloved, original properties undeservedly left to them by the company's founder and creative force, Walt Disney.

                  Just when we think their strip-mined, zombie-fied "re-inventions" and "reboots" of classic Disney films can't sink any lower into the abyss (like their ghastly CGI'd "Lion King"), there's always another one right around the corner. 

                  It's as if the classic Disney films have been enveloped and transformed by 'Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" pods......this new product look like movies, sound like movies......but then you realize what you're watching is a soulless, heartless imitation of a real movie.......a creepy carbon copy.

                  We'll not waste any time describing the particulars of this latest Pod Movie. What's the point?  As the current phrase goes.......it is what it is. 

                   And what it is for us is a nauseating AFH. An ABOMINATION FROM HELL.   Avoid this steaming turd at all costs........

FRIDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL 'DEEP IN THE HEARTLESS OF TEXAS' EDITION......

            Just when we think the madness can't get any worse than the previous week's lunacy......

Texas deputizes millions as amateur bounty hunters to track down pregnant women wherever they may try to hide.........and that includes those crybaby wussie women boo-hooing about ending up pregnant through rape and incest.  Suck it up, bitches and pump out those babies or we'll slap you and anyone who helps you with $10,000 fines and lawsuits. The eyes of Texas are upon you........

The Supreme Court Trumpanzees examine new Texas law, declare, "Hey, we're cool with it.....time for those Texan sluts to pump out some toddlers...."   Exclaimed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, "Any Texas bounty hunter who bags 50 pregnant babes this month wins a case of Coors on me!"

Climate deniers claims floods in New York and across the South must have come from leaky pipes.....or possibly from cancer causing windmills.....

GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatens telecom companies if they dare to release January 6th phone calls......warning them he'll deploy 15,000 MAGA zombies to storm their office buildings and publicly lynch any telecom employee who reveals what McCarthy and Jim Jordan were up to on Jan. 6th........

Anti-Vaxxers and Anti-Maskers filling up hospital ICUs so they can make their fondest wish come true and die of COVID, gasping for their last breath........Godspeed, Trumpian morons.....don't let the ICU doors bump your dead asses on the way to the morgue.......but at least there's a silver lining  - there'll be less of you available to vote in the 2022 and 2024 elections..................................

SMELLS LIKE TEEN NETLIX......THE ADDLED ADOLESCENTS OF "HE'S ALL THAT", "THE KISSING BOOTH 3" * OUTER BANKS, SEASON 2

            You can tell who took full command of our Netflix account last week.....it could only be the one and only BD (Beloved Daughter), asking us to join her through a mind-numbing journey through the streaming site's Young Adult offerings.......

              When we say 'mind numbing', we're referring to the teenage characters on display in these two made-for-Netflix movies and the second season of one its Pandemic-popular series.......(see our post of 5/6/20 for a review of the first season......)

                So let this safari of silliness commence.......

He's All That (2021)  purports to be a gender-switch remake of the 1999 She's All That (Harvey and Bob Weinstein's foray into Young Adult movies)......in which the most Popular Kid In Class takes a bet to Pygmalion-ize the school's most outcast geek into a socially acceptable hottie.  (Originally played by Freddie Prinz Jr. as  Mr. Popular and the sweetly quirky Rachel Leigh Cook as the Geek.)

               The remake (reboot? re-invention? rehash?) flips the genders with the Hot Popular Kid portrayed by a Tik Tok/ Instagram non-entity named Addison Rae, who makes it clear from the get-go that she's in dire need of an acting coach. Her 'My Fair Lady' target is an equally blank slate named Tanner Buchanan, initially saddled with stringy long hair to not so cleverly hide the fact he's ripped like a body builder. 

                As usual with current teen crapola, every character's life revolves around their smart phones, though we did perk up for a minute or two when the film took a shot as duplicating the original film's ultra-choreographed prom dance number.   And it was nice to spot Rachel Leigh Cook showing up to play the Pop Girl's mom. 

                 The rest of it? Worthless. 1 star (*) for the dance number.

The Kissing Booth 3 (2021)   We can barely work up enough interest or energy to write more than few sentences about this one.......about the same amount of interest and energy that must have factored into Netflix's decision to greenlight it.  

                 Why it even exists is beyond us. All we vaguely remember about it - a bunch of spoiled, entitled teens, (all of them high strung drama queens and princes) spend their summer before before college in a plush beach house. 

                   They all end up squabbling for reasons we couldn't even remember two minutes after the film was over.......and we doubt if the screenwriters remembered any of it  two minutes after they finished typing.

                  Unwatchable and tedious every step of way......Zero stars (0)

Outer Banks, Season 2 (2021)    At last we come to something we loved, one of our favorite Guilty Pleasure of Pandemic 2020.....and now assuming the same mantle for Pandemic 2021.

               Once again we follow the incredibly unbelievable adventures of a Scooby gang of dead-from-the-neck-up teens hunting fabulous hidden Indiana Jones-worthy treasures along the South Carolina coast......

                 And just like Indy, they're constantly thwarted, attacked and stymied by a pair of hiss-ible villains......a murderous psycho McMansion uppercruster and his equally nutso son. 

                  For another 10 episodes, this collection of dimwits with the combined IQ of an eggplant make one foolhardy, reckless decision after another, plunging them into more constant peril than a 1940's Batman serial. 

                  We couldn't get enough.....laughing out loud through every idiotic, imbecilic moment. (If you play the drinking game, taking a shot when any character makes a stupid move, you'll end up with alcohol poisoning....)  Like the first season, a 3 star (***) Most Guilty Pleasure Ever.....

                  

'SUBURBAN DICKS'.....THE ODDEST SLEUTHS EVER BLOW THE RACIST LID OFF NEW JERSEY.....

Suburban Dicks by Fabian Nicieza (2021)    To find a gem of a book like this counts as one of the big reasons we started this blog in the first place.....

            ......to tell everyone what a terrific, 'don't miss' read we just stumbled onto.

               The author's background includes co-creating the 'Deadpool' character and that kind of razor sharp, snarky, subversive wit runs all the way through this murder mystery set in a small New Jersey town.

                 Best of all, it features an unforgettably oddball pair of a quirky rogue detectives who take it upon themselves to solve a seemingly unmotivated murder of a harmless gas station attendant, a member of the town's Asian-Indian community. 

                 Andie Stern, mother to a rambunctious brood of four kids and heavily pregnant with a fifth, was once  a brilliant, promising potential FBI profiler who actually helped catch a serial killer in her college days. The roads not taken have now rendered her an exhausted suburban mom, disillusioned with life and disgusted with her white collar criminal husband. But she's still the smartest person in the room with an overpowering thwarted urge to any solve any crime that comes her way.

                  Also afflicted with dreams and ambitions gone awry is Kenny Lee, a disgraced Asian-American journalist who once nursed a crush on Andie all through high school. A one time Pulitzer Prize winner for exposing a corrupt governor, Kenny's been scraping bottom ever since he was found out fabricating facts for one of his stories.

                  This unlikely duo both armed with sharp minds and killer repartee, suspect that the gas station kid's random murder has some deeper, darker implications for the town. (Even with its diverse, multi-cultural population, the systemic racism in the town's police department still runs rampant ) 

                  Joining forces, Andie and Kenny become a relentless detecting team who dig for clues (in every sense of that word, sometimes literally) until they've cracked the case wide open......and in doing so, author Nicieza hits every current hot button you can name......culture wars, the lingering stench of decades old racism, government corruption, women's empowerment versus men's entitlement, and the deep divide between generations.

                 But let's not forget the main things we loved about "Suburban Dicks"......the perceptive, heartfelt depiction of its two deeply flawed characters......and the explosively funny laugh out loud humor that permeates their adventures.

                Put this one on the very top of your TBR list......we knew the rating on this one as soon as we finished the last page......a five star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.