Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

Gaslight (1944) An OCF Classic Movie Review

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“Gaslight” is a thriller based on a stage play of the same name.  And in fact, our term “gaslighting” is based on the psychological abuse that is featured in this story.

Ingrid Bergman is Paula Alquist.  As a girl she lived with her famous aunt Alice Alquist, a diva of the Opera stage.  But when her aunt is murdered Paula is sent away from her aunt’s home in London to study music in Italy.  As a grown woman she falls in love with a pianist who plays for the maestro that Paula studies under.  Charles Boyer plays her lover Gregory Anton.  He convinces Paula to marry him and then to move back to London and take up residence in her aunt’s former home.

But once they settle into the house Gregory begins a concerted campaign to undermine Paula’s sanity.  He engineers situations where she seems to lose things or moves things without knowing that she’s done it.  And Gregory conspires with the maid Nancy (played by Angela Lansbury) to undermine Paula’s standing in the home by treating her like a feeble-minded invalid.  And she is isolated from the outside world under the pretext that she has become erratic and would embarrass herself if others witnessed her mental decline.

But one person exists who is aware of Paula’s return to London and is interested in her situation.  This is a Scotland Yard detective, Brian Cameron played by Joseph Cotten.  As a boy he had met Alice Alquist and now he is determined to solve the old murder case.  He suspects that Gregory is up to no good.  Cameron employs the local constable whose beat includes the Alquist home.  He encourages the constable to date Nancy the maid and find out what is going on inside the house.  And Cameron directs him to follow Gregory Anton and find out where he goes every night.

And through Cameron we learn from his superior at Scotland Yard that there were missing jewels that belonged to a foreign king who was a lover of Alice Alquist.  He had given them to her but they disappeared after her murder.  Now Cameron has the motive he has always lacked for the murder and soon he’ll have more.

One of the recurring nightmares that Paula experiences is that every night after her husband leaves the house to go to “work” the gas in her room would go down as if someone had turned on another light in the house.  And at the same time, she would here noises from above her room.  But the attic was boarded up so no one could enter it and no one else ever notices the gas change but her.

Eventually Cameron figures out that Gregory enters the vacant house around the block in order to climb on the roof and enter the attic of his own home from the roof.  There he searches for the jewels of Alice Alquist.  Once Cameron figures this out he barges into the Alquist home while Gregory is in the attic and he confronts Paula with the information.  While Cameron is searching Gregory’s locked desk for his gun Paula notices a letter that Gregory had claimed that she had imagined.  This note was written by an admirer of Alice Alquist named Sergis Bauer and had been found in Alice’s papers when she died.  After examining it and comparing it to an example of Gregory’s handwriting Cameron informs Paula that Gregory and Sergis Bauer are the same man.  Now it is clear that Gregory is her aunt’s murderer.

Meanwhile Gregory has finally found the jewels in the attic and Cameron notices the gas light rising meaning Gregory is coming home.  Cameron rushes out of the house to catch Gregory on his way home.  But Gregory no longer needs to keep up a pretense of working outside his home so he comes through the boarded-up attic door inside the house.   When Gregory discovers his desk has been rifled, he accuses Paula.  She declares that a man did it.  When Gregory demands to know what man was in the house the cook lies claiming that no one has been in the house in order to stall for time.  But hearing this Paula begins to doubt her sanity again.   She is just about to collapse into despair when Cameron shows up and confronts Gregory.  A struggle ensues and after a stray shot Cameron disarms Gregory.  Gregory bolts up into the attic and Cameron follows.  Meanwhile the cook has summoned the constable from the street and he bounds up the stairs and the two policemen subdue and tie Gregory to a chair in the attic.

For the finale Cameron agrees to let Paula talk alone to the securely bound Gregory.  Gregory begs Paula to take a knife out of a cabinet drawer and cut him free to allow him to escape.  But now Paula taunts him with his own words.  She says she’s insane so she can’t trust her own senses that something is actually a knife.  Then she throws the knife away and says, “But I seem to have lost it.”  Then by chance she finds a piece of jewelry that Gregory claimed she had lost and she becomes agitated and she declares her hatred for him and her joy at seeing him being brought to justice.  And she opens the door and demands that Cameron take Gregory away to his fate.

Right up front in the discussion I have to state that listening to Charles Boyer’s voice in this movie annoys the hell out of me.  The combination of his accent and his constant hectoring of Paula makes me want to punch him in the nose.  But at the same time Paula’s inability to stand up to Gregory’s bullying is also very annoying.  I want to shake her and slap her in the face and tell her to snap out of it.  Interestingly, Camera Girl has claimed in the past that I employ gaslighting against her.  But I claim it’s just a combination of bad memory and growing insanity on her part.  Silly woman.

Beyond those visceral feeling I enjoy this movie, especially the ending where Joseph Cotten sets things right.  Ingrid Bergman is a very good actress and even in this exaggerated atmosphere of emotional turbulence she provides a very convincing performance.

Highly recommended.

Rio Bravo (1959) – A Movie Review

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“Rio Bravo” is supposed to have been made in reaction to the movie “High Noon.”  In that movie Gary Cooper is a sheriff who can’t find any townsmen to help him stand against an outlaw gang gunning for him.  Howard Hawks and John Wayne were so affronted by what they saw as the whiny, “woe is me” feel of that movie they decided to make Rio Bravo as an alternative.  Wayne would play the sheriff but with no angst.  Basically, he refuses to deputize a large number of civilians to stand down a gang of outlaws who threaten to kill the sheriff if he doesn’t release the gang leader’s brother.

Wayne is Sheriff John T. Chance.  His sometimes deputy but mostly just alcoholic friend is Dude, played by Dean Martin.  They’re joined in their desperate but light hearted stand by Stumpy, a gimpy and hot-tempered old man played by Walter Brennan and Colorado, a resourceful young cowboy with a fast gun hand and a guitar played by Ricky Nelson.  And finally, Angie Dickinson is a professional gambler who will be the love interest for Chance.  For whatever reason the only name we’re given for her is Feathers.

The setup is as follows.  While involved in an altercation with Dude in the saloon Joe Burdette (played by Claude Akins) kills a man.  Chase arrests Joe and has Stumpy keep guard over him basically for the duration of the movie.  Meanwhile an old friend of Chance’s, Pat Wheeler (played by Ward Bond) arrives in town with his crew and supplies.  When he hears what is going on with Chance, he offers his associate Colorado as a deputy to help Chance hold off the Burdette gang that numbers in the dozens.  Chance declines because he doesn’t want to involve Wheeler in the trouble.  But Wheeler is murdered that night.  After some back and forth in which members of the gang take Chance and Dude hostage more than once, Colorado comes aboard as a deputy.

As a side story Feathers arrives in town to play poker in the saloon but when a wanted poster shows up that seems to implicate her as a card cheat Chance tells her to leave town.  But Colorado defends her saying that another player in the game was cheating.  After catching the cheater with several aces up his sleeve, Feathers tells her side of the story.  The poster was about her and her late husband.  He had gotten into a crooked card game and paid for his crime with his life.  For the rest of the movie whenever Chance and Feathers are together, they maintain an odd and annoying sort of awkward bickering cum flirting.

Meanwhile the climax of the movie arrives when Dude is taken hostage by Burdette’s gang and they demand a swap of Joe for Dude.  The transfer involves the two men crossing a clearing in opposite directions.  Joe is walking away from the barn where Chance, Colorado and Stumpy are holed up and Dude is walking away from the commercial building where the whole Burdette gang is arrayed.  But when they reach each other in the middle Dude tackles Joe and forces him into some cover that is somehow much closer to Chance’s building than Burdette’s.  After subduing Joe, Chance and his deputies begin a lively gun battle with Burdette’s gang.  Eventually Chance’s side gets ahold of some dynamite and he does some fancy shooting to set off the explosives as Stumpy hurls it across the clearing toward the Burdette building.  And finally Stumpy ties several sticks together and the final explosion takes most of the building down and the surviving gang members stumble out of the wreckage and surrender.

All that remains is for Chance and Feathers to complete their awkward courtship and declare their weird and annoying love.

So, this is a strange movie.  It’s part western, part buddy movie and I guess a love story.  Mixed into this is the fact that Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson are allowed to sing a few songs.  I know I haven’t made it sound like a conventional western but the main story around the Burdettes is done extremely well, especially the action scenes.  Wayne, Martin, Brennan and Nelson make for a very interesting team.  I have seen this movie many times and still consistently enjoy this part of the plot.  Now as for the “love story” I don’t know what to say.  It’s just so out of place and unconvincing that I can’t even dislike it.  It’s just this bizarro incursion into an otherwise normal movie.  All I can do is hope that sometime in the future, technology will allow it to be excised from the movie.

I can highly recommend this to fans of westerns and John Wayne.  Even the songs were very much in the tradition of the Roy Rogers, singing cowboy style.  A good western.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 10 – Plato’s Stepchildren

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In the immortal words of the inimitable Dr. Zachary Smith, “Oh, the pain, the pain.”

It is difficult to write this review.  It is painful to have to think about this episode.  I feel those responsible should be punished.  And even if most are already dead, I feel something must be done to punish them.  Perhaps grave robbery might make sense.  I don’t know, maybe that’s too much.

The general sense of the plot is that Kirk, McCoy and Spock visit planet blah blah blah where people dress as ancient Greeks who have enormous telekinetic powers but need a doctor to cure gangrene caused by a paper cut.  Once McCoy does the trick, the toga people want to keep him permanently.  The Enterprise landing party refuses and the toga club starts messing with them to make them change their minds.  They have Kirk and Spock reciting lines from Alice in Wonderland (Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee).  Kirk is forced to slap himself silly.  They make a dwarf ride Kirk like a pony.  Spock does a flamenco dance around Kirk’s head.  Spock and Nurse Chapel and Kirk and Uhura are forced into a make-out session.  And as the finale Spock and Kirk are getting ready to put on some kind of torture session with the girls using a bull whip and a branding iron.

Of course, the brilliant counter-plan gives Spock and Kirk even greater telekinetic powers than their tormentors in the nick of time and they turn the tables on the “Platonists.”  They give the kooky supermen a stern warning about bullying spacemen.  And then just to show they mean business they take away their dwarf.

This has to be one of the bottom three episodes in the whole series.  It has to be.  The dialog between Spock and Nurse Chapel and Kirk and Uhura is beyond embarrassing.  The ham acting by Shatner and Nimoy is startling.  The only decent performances are by the lead male and female Platonists.  Their cool detachment and excellent enunciation were the only parts of the episode that weren’t awful.

Of course, all this also means this episode has the highest Shatner mockery factor imaginable.  I’m tempted to give it an eleven in that category but that would be wrong.

I’ll call this episode and 3 // 10.

Alien (1979) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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I watched the movie Alien today for the first time since I saw it back in 1979.  Some things surprised me about the movie but the general impression is much as I remember it.  Luckily, the most annoying thing about the movie as I remembered it, the wildly varying sound levels used as a weapon against those with intact ear drums, was under my direct control thanks to the volume button.

I won’t give a detailed synopsis since everyone knows the plot.  I’ll describe it as follows.  An Earth space ship, the Nostromo, is travelling to Earth with a large cargo of ore.  The crew is awakened to investigate a message beacon coming from a nearby planetoid.  On it they find an ancient space ship with a long dead creature that seems to have died when something exploded out of its chest.  They discover a chamber that contains what look like eggs.  One of the eggs opens up and a crab-like creature smashes through the spacesuit helmet of one of the crew (played by John Hurt) and attaches itself to his face.  Later on, back at the ship the creature detaches from the crewman’s face and wanders off to die.  The crewman is seemingly unharmed but a few hours later a small somewhat humanoid creature erupts out of the crewman’s chest killing him.  The creature which is about a foot tall runs off into the ship and the crew goes on a search to find it and throw it out into space.

Somehow the creature increases in size until it’s about seven feet tall and spends the rest of the movie killing off the rest of the crew.  Finally, the only one left is Warrant Officer Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver.  She sets the Nostromo to self-destruct and escapes on a shuttle craft.  But, of course, the alien is on the shuttle so she has to sneak into her space suit, open the air lock and shoot the alien with a grappling gun to push it out into space.  It manages to grab onto the engine so she ignites it thus ejecting the charcoal broiled alien into interstellar space.

The movie is a mixed bag.  The sets on the planetoid and the exterior shots of the Nostromo are beautifully done.  The interior shots of the Nostromo for the most part succeed in portraying a futuristic but gritty industrial environment.  I guess a combination of a tramp steamer and a star ship.  But one of the worst features of the movie is intentional.  Apparently, the designers and constructors of the ship ran out of light switches.  The whole movie takes place in the absence of light.  You can’t see a thing.  Sure, every once in a while, the monster’s jaws and its inner jaws start opening up and monster drool drips out but you never get to see the damned thing doing anything other than that.  And there’s a very good reason for that.  When all is said and done and all the marvelous CGI shots of the planetoid and the Nostromo are taken into account it’s still a movie with a guy in a rubber suit.  And that’s just not going to cut it.  So, most of the movie is just the crew running around in the dark waiting to scream when the monster bites them or injects them with an egg or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be doing when it catches them.

The actors do a creditable job with what they’re given.  In fact, most of them seem quite interesting and I wouldn’t mind watching a prequel where we see them interact while performing their duties as the crew of an interstellar ore freighter.  I’ll bet they could make such a movie fun and interesting with all kinds of adventures and sights.  But as monster fodder it’s a sort of limited palette.  Look left, look right, oops he’s behind you.  Look all around you, uh oh he’s hiding on the ceiling.  What this movie needed was a few Maglite flashlights.  Then they not only would have seen the monster but also beat it to death with the generous heft of the Maglite ML300L LED 6-Cell D Flashlight.

There was one really scary scene.  When Ripley escapes the Nostromo in the shuttle, before she discovers that the alien is in with her, she strips down to her skimpy underwear before entering the hibernation chamber.  And for the most part she seemed admirably contoured for a young woman thus attired but then she turned away from the camera and I discovered with horror that her butt was missing.  Instead of gluteus maximus she seemed to be suffering from a case of gluteus minimus.  What could have happened to her?  Did she lose her butt in some kind of industrial accident?  Did she donate it to someone else in the very rarely mentioned butt transplant surgery?  We may never know.  I still haven’t completely recovered from the shock.

Suffice it to say I have a mixed opinion on this movie.  If you think you could enjoy a poorly lit game of hide and seek with an interstellar menace then go for it.  You will see some nice visuals.  But watch out for Sigourney Weaver’s butt.  It’s truly shocking.

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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Cary Grant is Jim Blandings and Myrna Loy is his wife, Muriel.  Along with their two adolescent daughters they live in a cramped Manhattan apartment.  Muriel has been secretly planning to remodel the apartment with an architect for an estimated cost of $7,000.  When their friend Bill Cole (played by Melvyn Douglas) accidentally spills the beans in front of Jim he becomes outraged at spending so much money to continue living in such an unsuitable place.  He yearns to escape Manhattan and own a house out in the wide-open spaces of Connecticut.

The rest of the movie is a cautionary tale for any city dweller who contemplates becoming a rural homeowner.  Everything that can go wrong does and the combination of larcenous realtors and contractors and Jim and Muriel’s ignorance about building a house drive them to the edge of bankruptcy, unemployment and divorce.

Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas were three of the best actors Hollywood ever produced for the kind of light comedy this picture represents.  And the script writers provided them with plenty of scenes where they could fill out the characters they were playing.  Grant is the perfect harried husband.  He is constantly outguessed by his wife and hectored by his progressive-school-educated daughters.  His boss has given him an impossible assignment at work and every penny he ever saved has gone out the window building this house.  Myrna Loy is her usual sparkling self.  She is the dutiful wife but there is always a jaundiced eye and very often a sarcastic comment when Jim steers them off a cliff.  And Melvyn Douglas is the pessimistic lawyer friend warning them at every turn to abandon this fool’s errand and head back to the city.  He also becomes the object of Jim’s jealous suspicions when he always seems to be giving Muriel a kiss on the cheek whenever he leaves.  And when his daughters read in their mother’s diary that Muriel had been in love with Bill back in college Jim feels that his suspicions are justified.

This all sounds like a ridiculous movie.  And it is.  But it also represents a comical take on the experience of millions of Americans who fled the cities for the suburbs after World War II.  And the three stars of the film make the whole experience pleasant, funny and warm-hearted.  I can highly recommend this movie as an entertaining hour and a half.  I especially recommend it for a husband and wife who have bought their first home.  They’ll spend half the time nodding their heads in commiseration at the trials and tribulations of the Blandings and the other half laughing.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 09 – The Tholian Web

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The Enterprise is on a mission to find and aid a missing starship, the USS Defiant.  They locate the ship but it appears to be slipping in and out of some kind of interface between our universe and another.  So, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Chekov beam aboard the Defiant wearing space suits.  They find the ship filled with dead crew.  It appears that they went mad and killed each other.  But the ship begins dematerializing so Kirk tells Scotty to beam them back to the Enterprise.  But only three of the transporter stations are functioning so Kirk stays while the others are beamed over.  When Kirk’s turn comes, he is halfway to being beamed over when the Defiant completely vanishes into the interface, never to be seen again in our universe.

Now Kirk is trapped between universes and won’t be close enough to rescue for a couple of hours.  Meanwhile Chekov goes mad and attacks Spock on the Enterprise bridge and has to be restrained in sick bay.  He is suffering from the same madness as the crew of the Defiant.  McCoy theorizes that the distortion of space-time where they are located is slowly damaging the brains of the humans exposed to it.  And one by one members of the crew go insane and have to be restrained.  McCoy begins trials to find a medicine that will halt and reverse the effects of the space-time rift on the crew.

A ship of the Tholian race approaches the Enterprise and informs them that they are trespassing.  Spock explains that they are waiting to retrieve a crew member who is trapped in an interface between universes and the rescue won’t occur for about two hours.  The Tholians agree to wait exactly that amount of time before attacking the Enterprise.  When the estimated time occurs, the transporter attempts to lock onto Kirk but he’s not there.  Spock speculates that the appearance of the Tholian ship disrupted the local space-time and offset Kirk’s location.  Spock speculates that it will be twenty more minutes before Kirk shows up.  Meanwhile the Tholian ship begins attacking the Enterprise and Spock orders a phaser bombardment.  This forces the Tholian ship to break off its attack.  Now a second Tholian ship shows up and docks with the first ship.  Afterwards it is seen that the two ships begin spinning a web between their ships to form a cage around the Enterprise made of energy.  Spock estimates that the cage will be complete at exactly the time that Kirk might show up again.

Not knowing if Kirk would return from the other universe to be rescued Spock convenes a ceremony for the crew to memorialize Kirk’s life.  Afterward McCoy berates Spock for not moving the ship out of the area before the Tholians attacked.  Spock basically tells him to mind his own business and find a cure for the madness.  But McCoy insists that before anything else he and Spock were duty bound to listen to a recording that Kirk had left for them.  It was instructions to them on the occasion of his death.  In the recording Kirk counsels Spock to go to McCoy whenever pure logic is insufficient to determine the right decision in a desperate circumstance.  He tells Spock to listen to McCoy’s advice and use his own judgement on its soundness.  And Kirk tells McCoy to advise Spock but never to forget that ultimately the captain had the responsibility to make the command decisions.

Now Kirk starts appearing inside the ship as a sort of phantom.  When Uhura sees him in her cabin she runs out and tells McCoy.  But he assumes that the madness is starting to affect her mind. Shortly afterwards McCoy comes up with a cure for the madness and gives it to the crew.  Now Scotty has a similar sighting of Kirk and based on this Spock prepares to enact a plan to lock a tractor beam onto Kirk and then throw the Enterprise into the time-space rift in order to escape the Tholian Web.  And it works.  The Enterprise is hurled blah, blah parsecs into space and when Kirk’s phantom appears in the bridge viewscreen Spock orders the transporter to capture Kirk.  And that works too.  McCoy is there to give Kirk an emergency oxygen blood boost and he quickly recovers his usual Shatnerian presence.  When he asks them afterward about listening to his “death tape,” Spock and McCoy lie and say they were too busy to listen to it.

Okay, so what about all that?  Well, for season three this has to be considered a pretty good story.  Sure, there’s some hokey stuff.  But the story is relatively coherent.  There actually is some dramatic tension around the menace to the ship versus losing Captain Kirk.  And the relationship between Kirk and his friends Spock and McCoy is handled in a clever and somewhat moving way.

The goofier aspects should be noted.  Chekov’s berserk attack on Spock and the howls he lets off once he’s restrained in sick bay are pretty weird.  And the phantom images of Kirk floating around the Enterprise in his space suit making spastic faces at the crew is pretty dopey looking.

But all things considered this is a solid episode and I was pleasantly surprised by it.  I’ll give this one a 7 // 5.

It! The Terror from Beyond Space – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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I’ll give the plot of this movie in a very short synopsis.  The first manned trip to Mars ends with all but one of the ten-man-crew dead.  A rescue mission takes survivor, Col. Carruthers aboard to bring him back for a court martial for his alleged murder of his crew mates.  On the voyage home they discover that a Martian creature who must have been the killer of the first crew is aboard and is now killing them.  The movie is mostly about the crew’s attempt to kill the monster before he finishes them all off.

Alright, how do I hate this movie, let me count the ways.

  • The special effects consist of a big guy in a rubber monster suit, a couple of rooms outfitted with ship’s ladders and fake metal bulkhead hatches, really bad fake spacesuits, some star backgrounds with comets and meteors moving by every once in a while, and a model of a space ship. That’s it.
  • The script is seriously underwhelming. During the first quarter of the film most of the dialog is the crew taunting Carruthers trying to goad him into confessing to the murder of his crewmates.  After the monster comes on the scene all they do is walk around the small sets whining about how nothing they do seems to affect the monster and bemoaning the death of their shipmates.
  • On the second mission to Mars they brought girls! Sure, sure, I know, they’re nurses or something.  They’re always putting a bandage on Carruthers or an IV bottle on “Van.”  But they even had to start up a love triangle between the less homely nurse and Carruthers and Van.  Even in the face of imminent death at the hands (or three fingered claws) of “It!” we still have to endure hand holding and soul-searching looks into each other’s eyes.
  • The monster is ridiculous. Its face hands and feet are so obviously latex rubber that it’s embarrassing.  When he catches any of the crew, he pummels the victim by windmilling his ridiculous arms.  According to more homely nurse this treatment breaks every bone in the victim’s body.  But remarkably the victim isn’t killed.  Instead, the monster stows them in the ventilation system where they are retrieved so that the monster can suck the water and oxygen from their bodies.  Also, the monster sounds like he has asthma.
  • The movie is only 68 minutes long. Now normally that would be a fault.  But in this case brevity is a great virtue.

After failing to kill the monster with bullets, grenades, poison gas and bazooka they finally settle on emptying the ship’s atmosphere into space thus asphyxiating him.  They make a big deal of the fact that the monster has large lungs because of the thin atmosphere on Mars.  Why that would make him more vulnerable to asphyxia I couldn’t possibly say.  And once the air is all gone, he quickly expires as did my patience.

The fairly familiar character actors in this movie like Marshall Thompson and Dabbs Greer had an impossible task to make this turkey watchable.  It’s not as awful as ‘Plan Nine from Outer Space” so it can’t be watched for laughs.  It’s just schlock.  Unless you really enjoy bad old sci-fi, I recommend giving this one a pass.

Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Shadows (2011) – A Movie Review

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This sequel to the previously reviewed 2009 movie “Sherlock Holmes” has actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law returning as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson.  And Rachel McAdams, Kelly Reilly, Geraldine James and Eddie Marsan also reprise their roles as, respectively, Irene Adler, Mary Watson, Mrs. Hudson and Inspector Lestrade.

The plot of this movie is once again an original story but it does add in elements from one particular Arthur Conan Doyle story namely, the “The Adventure of the Final Problem.”  This is the story in which Arthur Conan Doyle arranges the final showdown between Holmes and his nemesis Professor Moriarty.  And this story covers what was in the written story but adds much more in the way of motivation for the duel to the death between Holmes and Moriarty.  And the writers manage to link the story to the greater reality of this time period.  They tie Moriarty’s evil plot to the actual fact that in 1900 Europe is on the precipice of World War.  The movie even has Moriarty explicitly chide Holmes with the bitter reality that even if he eliminates Moriarty, it still will not stop the coming war.

I’m happy to say that the dash and humor from the first movie are on clear display in this second film.  The camaraderie between Holmes and Watson are undiminished even after Dr. Watson finally marries Mary.  In fact, the occasion of the honeymoon provides one of the most comical scenes in the movie with Holmes dressed as a woman attempting to save the newlyweds from imminent death on a train packed with assassins.

I won’t attempt to synopsize the plot.  It would sound like nonsense and I refuse to spoil the details of the plot.  Suffice it to say that Holmes and Watson traipse across Europe attempting to catch up to the plot that Moriarty has set in motion.  And Jared Harris who portrays Professor James Moriarty is a great villain.

As with the preceding movie I have the highest praise for this film.  All the principal parts are brilliantly acted.  I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a well-made entertainment film.  And just to add an interesting note, ten years after this movie the producers have finally had the opportunity to film another sequel.  I look forward to that movie with great anticipation.

Thanksgiving in Dunwich

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I’ve been so busy with my own personal Thanksgiving plans that I lost track of what the town of Dunwich was planning for the holiday.  Last year the COVID lockdown put a damper on this but this year First Selectman Cthulhu and the rest of the Board were determined to get things back to normal.  So, to get the ball rolling Cthulhu invited fifty of the wealthiest and most influential Dunwichians to his house on Monday for a sumptuous dinner.

Of course, there was a misunderstanding.  The guests assumed they were going to eat instead of being eaten but you can hardly fault the First Selectman for that.  He was specific that the menu would come directly from his favorite cookbook, “To Serve Man.”  When I spoke to him, he was still recovering from overindulging but after a couple of barrels of Alka Seltzer he was feeling much better.  He told me his favorite moment was when the guests walked through a doorway and after failing to find any light switches on the walls used their phone lights to determine that they were inside their host’s mouth.  Their screams of terror made the meal all that much more enjoyable.  Oh, that First Selectman, he’s incorrigible!

I read an advertisement in the Dunwich Complainer that a town fair was going to take place on Wednesday.  There would be the usual pie contests and a silent auction for the various crafts that the townspeople would donate.  There were also supposed to be games.  The one that interested me the most was the sack race.  In most towns this is a pretty straight forward affair but the twist that is employed in Dunwich is that Cthulhu alters the geometry of space in the playing field.  This makes moving in a straight line rather tricky.  Three years ago, Josiah Bishop ended up falling through a portal and landed inside of Azathoth’s gallbladder.  He reappeared three weeks later in pretty horrendous condition.  His ears had pretty much melted off and his hair was orange.  When asked what happened he said, “Outside the ordered universe is that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.”  A lot of people just assumed Josiah had just stomped off because he’s a sore loser and because Jenkin Brown took the prize and they’ve never gotten along.

But by far the oddest story I’ve heard this week was from Arthur Birdsong.  He was walking through some of the more overgrown areas of the northern hills of Dunwich when he was caught in one of the frequent thunderstorms.  Searching for cover he saw a very dilapidated house and ran to it.  The door wasn’t locked so he let himself in.  Finding a fire in the living room he warmed himself and then looked around at his surroundings.  There was a very old book open on a table and he saw that the book was describing cannibalism among certain tribes in Africa and an illustration showed a butcher’s shop with human body parts for sale.  Arms, legs and organs were grouped on tables.  Suddenly he heard a door open above and a white-haired man in 17th century garb walked down the staircase.  The man saw that Arthur had been interested in the book and he began a long meandering tale, the gist of which was that he had come to the notion that feeding on human flesh would enormously extend the human lifespan.  Just then a drop of blood from the ceiling splashed down in between the two men and Arthur looked up and saw an enormous spot of blood on the ceiling and realized that the horrid old man was a cannibal and had just been butchering of one of his victims upstairs.

At first Arthur was hoping that a bolt of lightning would burn the house and the cannibal in the righteous fire of heaven.  But when that failed to happen, he asked the old man what time was dinner.

Arthur had to admit that human pot pie wasn’t bad.  A little gamey and fatty but no worse than mutton.  And the old fellow even threw in some pretty decent hard cider.  So, they became pretty chummy and after dinner they stayed up late chatting and Arthur discovered that they had both gone to the same prep school.  So, they sang school songs and Arthur invited his new friend over for Thanksgiving dinner.  He had been planning to serve a turkey dinner but in light of his new perspective on health food he decided to invite his least favorite blue-haired feminist wine-auntie over and serve her up instead.  I told Arthur that was splendid and I hoped it became a family tradition.  He sadly informed me that he only had three wine-aunties so it would be a short-lived tradition.  I told him to cheer up.  I have dozens of relatives that need eating.  I told him I’d donate one of mine every Thanksgiving for the foreseeable future.  Well, this brought tears to Arthur’s eyes and he declared it a “Thanksgiving Miracle.”  I said, “Nonsense, it is always better to give than to receive.”

So, you can see we here in Dunwich have a lot to be thankful for; friends, family and meat tenderizer.  Here’s hoping your Thanksgiving allows you to enjoy your family as much as we intend to enjoy (parts of) ours.

Sherlock Holmes (2009) – A Movie Review

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Guy Ritchie directed this 2009 update of the Sherlock Holmes legend but instead of re-doing one of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories he re-imagined the characters and wrote a screenplay that gives a sort of steam punk feel to the outing.  Robert Downey Jr. is Holmes and Jude Law is his partner in crime detection and chronicler, Dr. Watson.  On the face of it these two men would seem to be completely miscast in these roles.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  The script combines equal parts comedy and action adventure.  And both Downey and Law play the parts as if they were born to the roles.  The bickering friendship that they portray is as important a part of the movie as the nefarious doings of the evil Lord Blackwood and the barely glimpsed Professor Moriarty.

The plot involves the resurrection from the dead of a hanged man, Lord Blackwell who engaged in satanic rituals and is linked to a powerful masonic secret society in London.  All sorts of strange goings on have baffled Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard and with the sometimes assistance, sometimes sabotage by Holmes’ femme fatale, Irene Adler and the reluctant presence of Watson’s fiancée, Mary Morstan, they pursue the truth behind the unbelievable return from the dead of Lord Blackwell and discover and attempt to foil his devious plot to gain control of the world.

I am a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and I’ve watched all the previous cinematic versions, the Basil Rathbone movies and the Jeremy Brett series by Granada Television.  I don’t take anything away from these older series but what Guy Ritchie has created is a new and highly entertaining take on the characters.  You can probably tell that I am highly enthusiastic about this film and the also excellent sequel.  The chemistry that Downey and Law have on the screen is marvelously entertaining and must be a combination of their acting skills and the truly excellent script and direction.

I wholeheartedly recommend this movie to fans of Sherlock Holmes, to action-adventure fans and to movie fans of all stripes.  Find it and watch it.