Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

Plotter and Pantsers

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Here on the other side of the bright line of demarcation that is the post-2024 election decision I selected outlining the plot of my poor neglected novel “Sniper” as this morning’s project.  Last night was a long planned and greatly enjoyed family party celebrating Princess Sack of Potatoes’ sixth birthday.  It was a good-sized gathering of about thirty people and featured the Princess’s food of choice; multiple versions of pizza.  Now I personally do not believe that something called “mac and cheese” pizza could actually be considered pizza.  It is an abomination in the same league as anything called pizza that contains pineapple.  But I am a tolerant man.  If the children demand mac and cheese pizza then so be it.  I found a giant box that contained something that was garnished with sausage and pepperoni on it and so I was content.  And I even managed to introduce the grandchildren to a small snippet of the classic W.C. Fields movie “It’s a Gift” before it was drowned out by the torrent of talking that erupted when their parents followed us upstairs after the majority of the guests left.  Well, I’ll just have to wait for an opportunity during the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays to screen that cinematic gem for their viewing pleasure.

And because that gathering ended late, I had no time to look around for a theme for last night’s post.  And honestly, I was exhausted.  And if I had tried to post something in that state it would have been stale and derivative and a waste of everybody’s time.  And in this new regimen of mine that is anathema.  I’ll write when I have something I want to say.  And when I don’t, I’ll work on my projects.

And getting back to the theme of this post, my project for today is to review “The Sniper” holistically and identify plot line and character development and quality issues that need to be worked on.  And come up with an outline for the whole story and an outline for the series of stories in this “universe” and then a plan for completing this novel this winter. And then scheduling this work to be finished by some reasonable date.

And this is exciting for me.  It’s an intellectually interesting process that I’ve never tried before.  Up until now I’ve been what’s called a discovery writer or more colloquially a “seat of the pantser” or just a pantser.   This is the opposite of an “outliner” or a plotter.  A discovery writer just sits down and starts writing based on some idea or even just a gestalt of a story and keeps writing and let’s the story write itself without any direction from the author’s conscious mind.  I’ve always done this.  The positive side of this process is that the author’s natural creative instincts are in control and many exciting characters and plot events bubble up.  It is the natural method for producing realistic dialog and emotional insight into the characters.  The negative side is that the story direction is kind of random and you very easily can paint your story into a corner that can only be fixed by a massive re-write which is lethal for story-telling and for the morale of the writer.

And as someone who has run up against this dead-end scenario several times, I have decided to make the effort to do a formal outline and learn the skills it takes to plan my story in a disciplined way so that it won’t fly off the rails at the end and cause me massive mental anguish and confusion.  If I find that working on this outline is interesting, I’ll probably write more about and might even consult some of the sci-fi fans in the audience for their opinions on some of my story choices.

So here I go.

October Viewing – 9

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October Viewing – 9

So, this being October 30th and tomorrow a really long work day, it’s a pretty good bet this will be the last “October Viewing” of the year.  A good friend who has been following this series of posts proposed the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” movies as a good subject.  And we both liked how it sort of dovetails with the whole woke Democrat pod-people meme.  You know, how they speak like lifeless automatons and point and shriek if you reveal yourself not to be one of them.

Now my friend felt that even the two reboots were good subjects for the post.  But as in all things I am conservative.  So, let’s harken back to the 1956 original in all its black and white splendor.  Dut, dut, dut daaaah!

Spoiler alert!  If you want to avoid knowing the plot, skip to the boldened text below to just get my opinion.

Sturdy character actor Kevin McCarthy (no, not the politician!) stars as Dr. Miles J. Bennell.  He’s a small-town doctor in the fictitious California town of Santa-something-or-other.  Miles is puzzled to find that several patients are claiming that their friends and relatives have been replaced by visually identical individuals that lack any emotion.  One case is a young child claiming his mother has been replaced.

So, Miles and his girlfriend Becky and their friend Jack and his wife “Teddy” begin investigating a very strange series of occurrences.  Jack finds what looks like a human body but with very indistinct features, almost as if acid had burned away the facial features.  Shockingly, over time the “body” begins to take on Jack’s features.  And more of these bodies begin appearing.  Eventually they learn that enormous seed pods are the source of these transforming “bodies.”

And soon the two couples discover that the great majority of the townspeople are pod people.  The distinguishing characteristic of pod people is a complete lack of emotion in their voice and actions.  While pursuing an unsuccessful attempt to broadcast this alarming news to the rest of the outside world, Jack and Teddy become “podified” and so Jack provides the exposition to Miles and Becky to explain exactly what the hell is going on.

In his sedate pod-man voice Jack explains that spores floating through outer space landed on Earth where they grew into the pods.  If a pod is placed near someone (how near?) and that person falls asleep the pod will absorb the person’s memories and appearance and somehow disintegrate the real person and replace him.  Jack tries to convince Miles and Becky that the procedure is painless and all for the good.  Miles and Becky decide not to cooperate and run away.  They try to escape from town.  But they have to pass through a crowd of pod-people who are loading up trucks with seed pods for delivery to the surrounding towns.  They try to act like pod-people by being emotionless but are given away by Becky’s scream when she witnesses a traffic accident.  Women!

The pod people chase after them but the couple successfully take refuge in a cave that was conveniently around when they needed it.  But when Miles goes out to scout an escape route Becky falls asleep and by the time Miles returns, she’s fully podified and sounds the alarm to the rest of the wooden-faced pursuers to catch Miles.

Sleep-deprived Miles runs in a nightmarish state and ends up in another town trying to warn people on the highway about the pod people.  Of course, they assume he’s nuts and drag him to a hospital where he tells his story to the skeptical doctors.  But just at the end of his story an emergency room worker reports that a traffic accident with a truck full of giant seed pods has produced casualties in the ER.  And so, the doctors get to work calling in the FBI!

Dunt, dunt daaah!

End of the spoiler alert!

So, as you can see this is a hum-dinger of a paranoid’s dream come true.  They’re all out to get you and they’re all monsters.  And the emotionless pod-people are a pretty good stand in for the swarms of antidepressant-doped leftists that walk the Earth all around us and can only summon energy when they point and shriek to their cohort about the presence of some normal human in the immediate vicinity.

And this is the modern horror story.  If you add a violent angle with the imposters capable of becoming murderous creatures like in John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” then it’s doubly frightening, especially with the modern special effects available.

But even this old-fashioned cinematic portrayal hits home by showing the confusion when familiar surroundings aren’t what they seem.  And when the truth is doubted by everyone except the growing crowd of pod-people who are coming after you then panic results.  Yep, a perfect nightmare scenario.  It does resemble the current state of our world too.  But I’ll save that for a current events post.

A Modern Prometheus

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Got home real late but have tomorrow off so I’m cudgeling my brains for a good topic.  And since I’ve been running my series of horror movie reviews for October, I considered finishing off the Universal monster movie triumvirate by reviewing Frankenstein.

But Camera Girl was watching the Yankees World Series game and since they were down 0-3 in the series and would be eliminated if they lost tonight, I didn’t have the heart to refuse her control of the tv.  As it worked out, New York had an orgy of hitting including a grand slam to take the game 11-4.  There was much rejoicing by Camera Girl but I think she understands that no team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit to win the Series.  But let her enjoy the moment.

As for Frankenstein, at its core Mary Shelley’s book is another meditation on the Renaissance civilization in Europe substituting science for God.  Well, since Renaissance civilization lately seems to be in full retreat, maybe God is sending his reply.

But properly considered, the idea that Man has replaced God with human intelligence is sort of laughably ridiculous.  Every time we are told that biologists have cracked the code that will allow us to cure cancer or reverse aging or turn men into women and vice versa, our efforts are shown to be abysmally inadequate.  We talk about uploading our consciousness into the internet to allow us to live forever but we don’t even know what consciousness is or for instance, how a memory from our childhood persists throughout our lives, or even whether it exists in one brain cell or many.

And when we consider the unimaginable size of even the portion of the known universe that we’ve already observed, the idea that we can become like God should quickly evaporate from our minds.  From my point of view, the fact that we exist separated from even the nearest star by about twenty-four trillion miles of empty space make me feel like we are an experiment locked into a terrarium that we can’t escape from.

Of course, maybe escaping from our ant farm is part of our testing.  Maybe on one of the planets in the Centauri system is a message in English or Proto-Indo-European saying, “Well done.  Now here is a clue to get you to level three.”  Maybe God has a sense of humor and he wants to let us in on the joke.  Maybe some day he’ll give us a book that explains why we can’t avoid childhood cancer, endless war, telemarketers and Joy Reid.  Maybe after we die suddenly everything will make sense and we can stop worrying about the war between men and women, type two diabetes and the national debt.

Well, tomorrow is my last chance to review Frankenstein.  I better get some sleep so I’ll be ready to report truthfully on the incomparable acting skills and technique of Boris Karloff and Colin Clive.  On second thought maybe I should just concentrate on the cool noises and flashing lights in Henry Frankenstein’s electrical glassware display in Germany (I mean Hollywood).

October Viewing – 8

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Tonight, I got around to rewatching “Sleepy Hollow.”  This 1999 movie starred Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, a New York City lawman whose scientific methods were too advanced for 1799.  He is sent upstate to solve a string of murders that all involve the victims being left headless.  Christina Ricci stars as Katrina Van Tassel the daughter of a prosperous businessman whose family is at the center of the ring of murders.  And, of course Katrina is Ichabod’s love interest in the movie.

Spoiler alert; skip down to the last paragraph to avoid spoilers and just read the recommendation.

What we learn is that, just as in the Washington Irving stories about Sleepy Hollow, the countryside is haunted by the ghost of a Hessian soldier that was killed during the American Revolutionary War.  The Hessian lost his head during a battle with the Americans and his spirit has haunted the neighborhood ever since.  In our story, the Hessian (when he has a head) is played by Cristopher Walken.  And when he doesn’t have a head, well, who knows?

Being a man of reason, Ichabod disbelieves the stories about the ghost and claims the murders were the result of human efforts.  He claims this until he actually sees the Headless Horseman kill a couple of townspeople.  But once Ichabod recovers from his shock, he determines that he will investigate the ghost and figure out a way to end the string of murders.

And after most of the prominent townspeople are murdered, Ichabod realizes that the horseman is controlled by someone inside the town who understands black magic.  And that turns out to be Katrina’s stepmother (naturally).  There is a showdown and Ichabod figures out how to turn the horseman against the witch and save Katrina from being decapitated by the head-lopping Hessian.

Sleepy Hollow was a Tim Burton film and so it is no surprise that the look of the film stylishly captures the eerie, misty atmosphere of this dark fairy tale land.  The movie is always at least half comedy and Depp is very good as the always squeamish but determinedly, reluctantly brave man of science doing his best to solve the mystery and save his love interest from a gruesome fate.  While this tongue in cheek approach does not allow the movie to ever frighten us, it does succeed (in my opinion) in entertaining the audience.  The special effects around the character of the horseman aren’t quite up to the current state of the art CGI standards.  Nevertheless, his scenes are very well choreographed and look splendid.  The supporting cast do a creditable job of moving the plot forward one severed head at a time.  I’m going to recommend this movie to anyone who likes fantasy and the supernatural.  Here’s a natural pick for October viewing.

October Viewing – 7

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The Wolf Man (1941)

I figured it was time to review Lon Chaney Jr.’s magnum opus.  The first thing that is apparent is that Claude Rains was an order of magnitude above the rest of the actors.  Well, Rains was two orders beyond Chaney.  But I will say that in the non-monster related earlier part of the movie the scenes with Chaney and his father and with the girl were fun to watch.  As Larry Talbot, Chaney was engaging and sympathetic.  But once he started killing werewolves and becoming a werewolf he became increasingly annoying and neurotic about telling everyone about how tough it was being a werewolf.  Me, me, me.  Very needy.

Incidentally, they killed off Bela Lugosi about ninety seconds into the only screen time he was given.  And to add insult to injury, they didn’t even bother to give him an original character name.  They called him Bela!  I mean, how lousy is that?  They probably paid him by the hour and sent him packing after his scene to save money.  Very sad.

And I noticed something very strange about the wolf man character.  Right before Larry Talbot  goes out on his first killing spree, he notices hair growing on his body.  He takes off a white shirt leaving him in a white undershirt (incidentally a wife beater style).  Then he takes off his shoes and socks and we watch his feet becoming paws while he is sitting in a chair.  Then still focusing on his legs he gets up, apparently heading out the window of his room to go find the grave digger and rip out his throat.  But in the next shot we see the wolf man in a dark colored button down shirt.

Now are we supposed to believe that the Wolf Man went into Larry Talbot’s closet, picked out a matching shirt and using his front paws, buttoned it up and headed out for a bite to eat?  I don’t know.  I mean it was a nice shirt but just how far is my suspension of disbelief supposed to stretch.  I feel like I’m being abused here.

Well, anyway, after Claude Rains clubs Lon Chaney Jr. to death with his own silver wolf-headed walking stick, the gypsy lady recites that, “The way he walked was thorny” doggerel over poor Larry’s corpse and the music soars and the credits roll.

But i don’t know.  I feel kind of cheated.  I feel like Larry’s ghost should have appeared and complained about the bum deal he got.  He’s living in California for eighteen years, helping to build the Mt Wilson observatory.  Then his elder brother dies so he returns to Talbot Castle to take up the role of heir apparent to his father’s title (baronet?) and after just a couple of days he’s bitten by a werewolf and beaten to death by his own dad.  And what fun did he actually have?  He only managed to kill one crummy grave digger.  It doesn’t seem fair.  At least if he’d gotten a chance to sink his teeth into Gwen Conliffe’s throat he’d have a story to tell the other dearly departed monsters like Dracula and the Mummy.  But as things stand he seems to have been given short shrift.

Alright.  That’s enough.  So all in all the movie starts off well and ends a little flat.  Perhaps I’ll consider Larry Talbot’s run in with Abbott and Costello more successful.

The Honeymooners – Complete Series Review – Episode 4 – A Woman’s Work Is Never Done

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In this episode Ralph berates Alice for some small housework chores that she neglected to do.  She explains how busy she was but he won’t hear what she’s saying.  He threatens to introduce a demerit system to highlight her deficiencies.  Alice tells Ralph she’s fed up with his ingratitude and declares that she is going to get a job and with her salary hire a maid to do the housework.

When they go to the employment agency the manager explains that due to the shortage of domestic help the maids have become very independent and unless their employers accede to all their requirements and exceptions, they refuse to accept assignments.  Then we meet the available maid, Thelma.  She’s taller than Ralph and looks extremely strong.  She tells the Kramdens that she doesn’t do heavy jobs like windows and floors because she’s “sickly.”  But when she hands Ralph her suitcase to carry for her, its unexpectedly extreme weight drags him down to the ground and he exclaims sarcastically, “Sickly!”

Thelma resists most of Ralph’s demands for her to assume a genteel and respectful manner of addressing him.  When Ralph attempts to get her to address Norton and himself politely she mockingly refers to them as, “the simp and the blimp.”  When this causes Ralph to explode in anger she quits and leaves.

Now Ralph is forced to do the housework himself since Alice has found a job at the local bakery as the jelly donut stuffer.  He tries to recruit Norton to help him with the backlog of chores but they both prove hopelessly inept.  Finally, he decides to try and flatter Alice about her appearance in the hope that she will agree to quit her job and resume her wifely duties.  After being rebuffed for his obvious flattery Ralph is forced to admit that housework is harder than his job and begs Alice to come back.

This is one of my favorite episodes.  Alice has one of the best lines in the series.  While sarcastically pretending how much she enjoys mopping the floors and washing the windows she mocks the outdated appliances in the apartment.  She says she is so thrilled with having an atomic kitchen.  She explains that she calls it that because, “It looks like Yucca Flats after the blast.”  Which is referencing the American nuclear testing in the desert southwest in the 1950’s.

In general Ralph’s imperious behavior toward Alice sets the pattern for their relationship.  Alice comes off as the reasonable wife but Ralph is demanding and unreasonable.  Invariably he gets knocked down a couple of pegs and has to swallow his pride and apologize to Alice.  And although this does make him a sort of straw man for Alice to pummel, Ralph manages to make the whole spectacle hilarious and entertaining.  And between the physical comedy, the battle of the sexes and the machinations that Ralph and Norton always resort to, the half hour almost always entertains.  Highly recommended.

The Honeymooners – Complete Series Review – Episode 3 – The Golfer

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In this episode we are introduced to Ralph’s unending search for a gimmick to reach success in business.  He has been spreading a rumor at the bus company that the executive (Mr. Harper) who is choosing the new assistant traffic manager is a good friend of his and will pick Ralph for the job.

But when the other bus drivers realize that Ralph is the source of the rumors they break out into derisive laughter and one of them informs Ralph that Harper doesn’t even know that Ralph exists.  Ed Norton is having lunch with Ralph and hears about Ralph’s embarrassment.  Norton encourages Ralph to strike up a conversation with Harper and try to make a personal connection with the executive in order to increase his chances for the assistant traffic manager’s job.  So when Harper happens by Ralph tries out Norton’s advice and by lying about his golfing abilities (he has none but claims to be a pro) he catches Harper’s interest.

Norton erroneously assumes Ralph is serious about wanting to play Harper and backs Ralph into a corner that sets up a golf game between Ralph and Harper for the next morning.  When Harper leaves Ralph explodes at Norton for setting up the game.  He tells Norton that he can’t play at all and the game will expose Ralph as a complete fraud.  But Norton assures him that with a good book on learning golf and Norton’s help he should be able to convince Harper that he is a good golfer.

And this sets up the scene that is the highlight of the show Ralph and Norton trying to learn how to play golf in Ralph’s kitchen with an old golf club,  a round cloth pin cushion for the ball and Norton’s interpretation of the words of this “How to Play golf in One Easy Lesson” handbook.

And they get pretty good physical comedy mileage from that setup.  Ralph copying Norton’s hip gyrations while “addressing” the ball is enough to give Alice the best line of the show.  Alice arrives home just as Ralph is performing his limbering moves.  Seeing her he says, “I’m practicing golf.”  She replies, “Is that what it is?  The way your backfield was in motion I thought it was football.”

Alice’s discouraging words shake Ralph’s confidence and he comes to realize just how hopeless a situation he’s in.  But a miracle intervenes.  One of the other executives shows up at Ralph’s home and informs him that Harper injured himself and can’t play the next day.  But instead of gracefully accepting this stroke of luck he plays up how much he wanted to play Harper and of course the executive decides to take Harper’s place on the links with Ralph the next day.  After the executive walks out the door Ralph looks at Alice and says, “Well, Alice you’ve got to admit one thing.  I’ve got a biiiiig mouuuuth!”  End of episode.

So this whole episode is just an excuse for watching Ralph and Norton performing one of their desperate attempts to escape their working class limitations and end up on easy street.  And most of the fun is watching their expressions as they try to convince themselves that it is working.

But as always it’s the final interaction between Alice and Ralph that brings home the message that all of Ralph’s biggest problems stem from his desire to be more than he is.  I rat this episode highly because of the physical comedy between Ralph and Norton.  Well worth watching

October Viewing – 6

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) – A Science Fiction-Fantasy Movie Review

First of all, I assume everyone knows the plot of Dracula, so there will be no spoiler alert.  I’ve been wanting to review this movie for a while because I read that it was pretty good.  Well, pretty good is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

This movie is all over the place.  First off look at some of the cast members:

Gary Oldman as Count Dracula

Winona Ryder as Mina Harker

Anthony Hopkins as Professor Van Helsing

Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker

So, you can imagine the range of acting ability here.  Oldman and Hopkins do the best they can with the script and dialog but Reaves and Ryder … are Reaves and Ryder, so you can imagine.  Keanu is especially notable for his amazing 19th century British accent.  I keep expecting him to exclaim, “Whoa!”

Alright, so let’s talk about the approach to the Dracula story.  Apparently, by the movie’s name, director Francis Ford Coppola intended for this film to be seen as adhering, to some extent, more closely to Stoker’s novel than most other versions.  I read the novel many, many years ago but from what I remember there were no nekkid vampire women sexing up Jonathan Harker at Castle Dracula.  And, granted, unlike many other versions of the story, the end of this movie does take place where and how it occurred in the book, but Coppola added Mina Harker into the climax to close out her romance with Dracula.  That’s not Stoker.  Also, the movie starts off in the 15th century with Vlad the Impaler renouncing God because his wife (who is also played by Ryder) committed suicide and therefore she cannot go to heaven.  And because of all this, we are supposed to see Dracula as a sympathetic character and at the end he gets this redemption scene where instead of looking like this decrepit bat-like thing he turns back into young and relatively handsome Vlad and dies the beautiful death (well, he still gets his head chopped off but he does get a nice moment).  So, Bram Stoker’s Dracula?  Some yes and a lot no.

The special effects are pretty good for 1992.  And the sets and costumes look like they cost a bundle.  I didn’t hate the whole movie.  I rather enjoyed most of Hopkins’ Van Helsing and a lot of Oldman’s spoken part was well done.  I think what I objected to was Ryder’s absurdly emotional scenes with Dracula.  I guess we’re supposed to imagine that the Mina Harker character must have some kind of psychic link to Vlad’s dead wife and this compels her to fall hopelessly in love with the undead and mostly repulsive looking creature that has very recently murdered her best friend, Lucy.

So, let’s say there is some kind of twisted logic to this take.  But since this is framed as a Christian legend, complete with crucifixes and holy water are we supposed to add in an un-Christian example of reincarnation?  And somehow God is going to forgive Vlad for four centuries of murdering people because Winona Ryder loves him?  I could be wrong but I don’t think that’s how it works.  Someone named Vlad the Impaler is going to need a much stronger advocate than that when he gets to the Pearly Gates.

Alright, I’ll put all my quibbles aside.  What’s the verdict?  Well, since this is a Dracula movie then as a Dracula movie it provides blood and gore, a castle with frightened Transylvanian peasants nearby, a vampire that can turn into bats, wolves and mist and is attractive to female victims and a final scene with a stake and even a decapitation.  So, successful, I guess.  But Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder?  That’s not helping.

October Viewing – 5

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I was all over the place deciding on what I should watch next, I considered two movies that are genuinely disturbing; “Psycho” and “Silence of the Lambs.”  I couldn’t decide between them so I put them aside.  Then I started watching “Carnival of Souls.”  But although that movie has some truly disturbing images, the majority of the film is so devoid of acting, interest or sympathetic characters that I turned it off in disgust.  I may go back to it later.  As I said it has some potent imagery but I just wasn’t in the mood to subject myself to its depressing banality.

I decided to watch the 1932 “The Mummy.”

Of course this is a movie I’ve already reviewed.  But I needed something fun and also, I wanted see what I could extract from it by giving it a pair of fresh eyes.  So, I tried to imagine what the crowd of 1932 would see in it.

I looked through some of the older and newer discussions about the production and what was common to them all was the link to the King Tutankhamen discovery in the 1920’s.  Apparently, that archeological discovery had been enormously popular with the general public and so the filmmakers were right in thinking that a horror movie that piggybacked on ancient Egypt was likely to be popular.

And so, they cobbled together the story line of the Egyptian priest who was buried alive for stealing the secret of resurrection from the sacred Scroll of Thoth to bring back to life his great love; the Princess Anck-es-en-Amon.  Of course, whenever Karloff chants the name in the movie it sounds like “ankhs and almonds.”  Which made me think of some kind of mummy-themed breakfast cereal like Count Chocula but more health conscious like Honey Nut Cheerios.

But I digress.

So, I could see the audience of young men and teenagers bringing their girls to be frightened by the monster and thereby getting to hug them for moral support.

But what about the modern audience?  Well, my favorite scene is the initial discovery of the mummy and the chest holding the scroll of Thoth.  In this scene the character played by Edward Van Sloane, the same actor who plays Professor Van Helsing in Dracula and Doctor Waldman in Frankenstein is once again warning the impetuous skeptics about the dangers of interfering in the dark arts.  But of course, the young archeologist opens the chest and begins reading the scroll and so, awakes Imhotep (Karloff) who absconds with the scroll and leaves shocked scientist laughing psychotically and headed for death in a strait jacket.

This is the only scene where we see Karloff in his mummy makeup.  It was well made.  He looked quite like a 4,000-year-old corpse.  After that the story goes downhill.  Twelve years later the British Museum expedition is back in Egypt but now the son of the previous expedition’s leader is in charge and after receiving a hint as to where to dig, by Ardath Bey (the mummy pretending to be a modern Egyptian), they dig up the undisturbed tomb of ankhs and almonds.  Once she is safely deposited in the Cairo Museum of Antiquities Ardath Bey begins to work at resurrecting his former love.  And by reading passages from the scroll, he is able to lure ankhs and almonds present reincarnation (a pretty half-English half-Egyptian girl who happens to be Edward Van Sloane’s medical patient).

She falls in love with the young archeologist and it’s a photo-finish to see if she ends up with Ardath Bey as a murdered but re-animated corpse like him or her modern self marrying the Englishman.  In the intervening struggle the older archeologist is murdered by Ardath Bey and hijinks ensue.  In the final showdown the girl remembers her past life and enough ancient Egyptian language to make a prayer to the statue of Isis to help her by zapping Imhotep with her ankh which both burns up the scroll of Thoth and turns the mummy into a pile of bones.

Being in my senior years I was disturbed to see how little concern the younger archeologist seemed to exhibit at his father’s death.  I mean sure, the guy was old but at least a day or two of mourning before proceeding with his pursuit of the hot-looking former Egyptian princess should have been a reasonable thought.  Well, that is the essence of life.  And she was pretty alluring in her more scantily clad scenes.  So, I guess I can cut him some slack.

All in all, it’s a decently entertaining film.  Allowances have to be made for the definition of scary a hundred years ago but it’s a fun film.  I’ll give it a thumbs up as a light-hearted October viewing.

Update:
War Pig commented:

I, too, am intrigued by what Americans found frightening a century ago. Of course with modern special effects a scary film from today would cause a stampede out the doors of a roaring twenties theater and a call for congress to ban or restrict such films. I also find it curious that naked bodies and other sexual scenes were made verboten while wholesale slaughter and bloodshed were allowed when the 1930s movie codes were mandated.

For me, simple shock and violence are moot. I want suspense. Old classics like Night Of The Demon, Black Sunday, Psycho, Night Of The Hunter or Hour Of The Wolf and Rashoman. There’s just something about black & White cinematography that lends itself to horror movies. Masters of the craft such as Bergman, Hitchcock, Brava and Kurosawa used it to great effect. Horror, and suspense, are best served in black and white where you have to concentrate on the story instead of the fancy effects.

photog replied

Yes, a century has removed all the taboos.  But as you say gore and shock don’t guarantee satisfaction with the product.  Engage our imagination and gore isn’t that important.

One Small Step in the Right Direction

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As all of the regular readers here probably know from my recent incessant whining, I’ve been horrendously bogged down with work.  Even on weekends, there is stuff I have to get done and it will only get worse for the next month or so.

Woe is me; woe is me!

But at the same time, I’ve been wanting to go see Matt Walsh’s movie “Am I Racist.”  I asked Camera Girl if she wanted to go with me and she rolled her eyes and shook her head.  So that complicated things because just abandoning her on a weekend to trek across state lines and eat up half a day seemed a little selfish to me.  So, I was shocked when on Thursday she asked me if I wanted to go see the movie.  Apparently, she figured it might cheer me up ahead of my marathon work schedule to go to this movie over the weekend.  I guess she really does like me.  So, I went on line to see what hours it was playing.  Well, it wasn’t.  The movie had gone from about a thousand theaters, down to something like four-hundred.  And since Dunwich really is in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t a single theater within a hundred miles of me.

Woe is me; woe is me!

When I stopped shaking my fist at the sky, I looked up the box office history for the movie.  The movie was only banking twenty- or thirty-thousand dollars a day at that point but it had earned over twelve million dollars over the course of its run.  And when you consider that the movie only cost a quarter of that to make, I was quite impressed by Walsh’s accomplishment.

Last year Walsh made a documentary called “What is a Woman” that was very effective at highlighting the insane and dangerous transgender movement that has convinced most of the medical establishment that it’s okay to treat children with puberty blockers and sex hormone therapy as a precursor to amputation of their genitalia.  And this documentary was watched by many millions of people on-line.  But this new movie was different.

This was something that people had to go to a movie theater to watch.  They had to plunk down cold hard cash.  And for that money they expected to be entertained.  And they were!  The reviews and rating by the people who actually went to the movie were extremely high.  It was a hit with the people who went to see it.  But the mainstream media boycotted reviewing it.  And this was after it opened in the top four box office spot.  And not against other documentaries.  This was against all the movies in theaters.  It was a financial success, but they refused to review it.

So, I didn’t get to see it.  Well, eventually I’ll see it online.  So that’s okay.  But the bigger story here is that finally, finally, someone is making movies for our side of the street.  And I hope the Daily Wire makes a ton of money doing it and I hope that gives ideas to a bunch of other “creative” people who want to make money but can’t seem to get people to go to the stuff Hollywood has been putting out lately.  Who knows maybe it’ll inspire Disney to make the imaginative leap and think, “Didn’t we used to make money hand over fist with that traditional stuff back in the stone age?  It looks like people still like that racist, sexist stuff.  Maybe we could do that again and make money for a change.”

Well, calm down!  Small steps, small steps.  Okay, now I’ve got a grip again.

But I have to confess I am encouraged.  This is the sort of stuff I’ve been waiting years for.  With the entry cost for making professional-looking motion pictures at historic lows and good writers, directors, actors and other movie trades unemployed because of DEI it doesn’t seem that it should be that difficult to make a profit if you give people a good story and stick to entertainment instead of hectoring them.

It’s a start.