A couple of weeks I discovered the lost First Doctor serial DOCTOR WHO: Galaxy Four was streaming on Tubi. This past week I made time to watch it. The Doctor, Vicki and Stephen land on a planet on the brink of exploding. The female Drahven (one female leader and three clones) ask him to help them seize the spaceship from the monstrous Rials so they can escape — and if the Doctor and his friends won’t cooperate, well, they’ll make them. The Rials, however, are not the monsters they’re supposed to be …
Not a classic, but I enjoyed it. Peter Purves (Stephen) didn’t care for it as it was originally written for Barbara and Ian and he wound up getting a lot of Barbara’s lines. “They said I would need soldiers — but why am I the only one who can think?”
As a fan of the Kung Fu TV series from the 1970s (I also enjoyed the recent CW reboot), I’ve had the 1986 KUNG FU sequel movie/reboot pilot on my Amazon wish list for a while. My friend Ross bought it for me for my Christmas gift and it holds up well.
We open with Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine) working among other Chinese immigrants in a California port town. When a young man ends up dead while trying to expose an opium smuggling ring, Caine gets involved in helping the man’s widow (Kerry Keane) dig into the mystery. Trouble is, an elderly Chinese man (Mako) and a young martial artist (Brandon Lee in his first appearance) have shown up gunning for Caine — what do they want? And can Caine free the young man from the older one’s control?
This got a mention in the appendix of Cyborgs, Santa Claus and Satan because not only does Mako have some magic tricks, Caine’s now able to levitate. That note aside, this is a good movie, hewing to the spirit of the show; a shame this didn’t go to series rather than the later Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. “Here becomes there as today becomes yesterday.”
I spend some of my Christmas gift-certificate money on LA VALLEE (1972) and boy, do I regret it. In this French film, a diplomat’s bored wife stuck in New Guinea joins some hippies on an expedition to find a lost valley never seen by white people. The result is tedious, with little plot or character — the selling point is the pretty images (well, and a Pink Floyd score but that didn’t improve things for me) and I’ve seen such things done better (Emerald Forest to name one example). “In the decadent west, where we’re from, the dragon stands for evil darkness.”
LOVE ON THE RUN (1979) was Francois Truffaut‘s final film about Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), whose semi-autobiographical life story began in The 400 Blows. While I imagine Truffaut would eventually have returned to Antoine had he not died five years later, the movie is the kind of intensely self-referential work I’d expect if the story was wrapping up — so who knows?
After ending the previous film, Bed and Board, in a good place, Antoine has managed to screw up: he and his wife are divorcing but he’s already found a new love (Dorothée), only his usual commitment issues are getting in the way. Then he runs into Colette, his dream girl from Antoine and Colette, and both of them are maybe, sort of, possibly interested in seeing if they can do better together this time. A fine film though given Antoine’s track record I’m not the HEA at the end of the film will work out. “If you don’t practice, you’ll wind up a music critic.”
Also from 1979, TV’s TIME EXPRESS was considerably less entertaining. In each episode, someone with a desperate need to put right what once went wrong gets a mysterious train ticket with the date of their fatal mistake written on it. Once they board, Vincent Price and Coral Browne explain their employer, the “head of the line,” is giving them a second chance: a shy guy who broke his date with a dream girl wants a do-over; a man who became rich when he stumbled over $2 million in dirty money wants to do the right thing and turn it in; a man with a dying wife wants to find her brother (they were adopted separately and the records were lost in a fire) so the man can give her a bone transplant.
It could have been a cool mix of Fantasy Island and Quantum Leap but I can see why only four episodes aired. While Price could make an awesome knockoff of Mr. Roarke he has no agency — all he and Browne do is review the guests’ backstory, without intervening or influencing it themselves (they are, after all, only employees). And in none of the stories does history change — instead the passengers have to get back to the present and then change their lives. When Richard Masur gets his date with Morgan Fairchild, for instance, it’s a disaster. He makes no attempt to see her again so his life apparently goes on as before. When he gets back to the present, Fairchild finds him and reveals one bad date didn’t stop her falling for him. The whole thing is just clunky as hell so watching the whole thing was purely for curiosity (I wanted to watch while writing Now and Then We Time Travel and back then couldn’t find it). “I don’t like to meet strangers because I don’t know who they are.”
HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (2024) is a strange mix of silent-film slapstick with videogame in telling the story of a 19th century trapper and hard-luck case (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) whose future starts to pick up after he meets beautiful Olivia Graves — but her father will only approve a marriage if the trapper brings in hundreds of beaver pelts. The slapstick humor here is overwhelmingly visual which makes it hard to describe here (in fairness, I could describe it if I had more time, but …). All I can say is, it’s well worth your time to watch.
I shall bookend my old favorites with some new stuff.
After my disappointment with the last season of Doctor Who, the JOY TO THE WORLD Christmas special was a welcome improvement. We open with the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) popping up through locked doors to offer various people a pumpkin latte and a ham-and-cheese toastie (whatever that is). Then we get into the main plot involving a briefcase that transfers itself to different people with the previous host dropping dead right afterwards. And Joy (Nicola Coughlin) who’s spending Christmas in the world’s blandest hotel room, has become the new vessel.
This was a very Doctor-centric episode—Gatwa’s on camera constantly and the fun is in his interactions with Joy, with his future self and with Anita (Stephanie de Whalley) in the year the Doctor’s stranded. Ultimately a lot threat level but it succeeds on charm and warmth. “You live in a big empty spaceship without any chairs because nobody ever visits!”
Now the old stuff, starting with Boris Karloff narrating HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, with a story by Dr. Seuss and some absolutely amazing animation by Chuck Jones — seriously, his ability to fill out a half-hour without making it feel padded is amazing. Always a pleasure. “Then the true meaning of Christmas shone through/And the Grinch found the strength of ten grinches plus two!”
12 DATES OF CHRISTMAS (2011) has Amy Smart deducing her Christmas Eve time loop is obviously so she can win her ex back from his new love — certainly it can’t have anything to do with blind date Mark-Paul Gosselar, can it? One of the better Christmas rom-coms, and one of the best Christmas time-loop stories. “My life is a parking garage!”
THE FAMILY STONE (2005) isn’t one of my top Christmas movies but that’s why I picked it to watch (less familiar, therefore fresher). Sarah Jessica Parker plays the uptight fiancee Dylan McDermott introduces to mom Dianne Keaton, dad Craig T. Nelson and sister Rachel McAdams—though the only one Parker can connect with is stoner brother Luke Wilson. Enjoyable. “Meredith’s the racist, crazy, bigoted bitch from Bedford — that’s what you all think.”
SCROOGE (1970) has, of course, Albert Finney as the miser disgruntled by impertinent clerk Michael Crawford, by his obnoxious nephew’s invitation to Christmas dinner and then by dead partner Alec Guinness dropping in on him. Due to my hectic schedule, the only one big-screen adaptation of Dickens I caught this year, but it’s always a pleasure. “Mankind should be our business, Ebenzer — but we seldom attend to it.”
KARROLL’S CHRISTMAS (2004) has the protagonist’s miserable Christmas rendered even worse when Jacob Marley’s Jamaican rasta descendant and three oddball spirits show up at his house — isn’t it obvious it’s grouchy Wallace Shawn up the street who needs spiritual guidance? It turns out, of course, Shawn isn’t the only one whose soul needs reawakening … “The word ‘lunatic’ is very hurtful. To me and well, lunatics.”
WE’RE NO ANGELS (1955) was last weekend’s date movie, and TYG enjoyed the story of swindler Humphrey Bogart (“I once ran a company that sold bottled air for people who’d been advised they needed a change of climate.”), safecracker Peter Ustinov and Brute Man Aldo Ray (“It was the way I asked him — hitting him over the head 17 times.”) coming to the aid of Leo G. Carroll and Gloria Talbot against malevolent relative Basil Rathbone. Watching this year made me very aware of the stage show roots in the blocking and the limited number of sets, but it still works.. “We’re going to bash their heads in, break their bones, gouge out their eyes — right after we do the dishes.”
A CHRISTMAS STORY (1984) is our perennial Christmas Day viewing with its story of Red Ryder BB guns (TYG was amused Red Ryder’s Native American kid sidekick was named “Little Beaver”), double-dog dares, having your mouth washed out with soap and learning about Chinese Christmas turkey. “It’s a major award!”
I was going to skip CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (1945) this year but as things quieted down Christmas afternoon … The story of Barbara Stanwyck having to choose between stuffy fiancee Reginald Gardiner and free-spirited artist Dennis Morgan, all the while under the watchful eye of publisher Sidney Greenstreet remains fun as ever — though I’m always surprised that Obnoxious and Irritating as Una O’Connor and SZ Sakall find each other, they don’t end up snogging in the kitchen by the end. “When you’re kissing me, don’t talk about plumbing.”
Much to my surprise, I discovered the DVD for the above included a special feature, A STAR IN THE NIGHT (1945) that I’d never watched. This short film has dour motel operator J. Carroll Naish insisting his inn has no room for a poor traveling couple but hey, he has a barn where they could take shelter—and wouldn’t you know, three cowboys show up with gifts just at the moment she gives birth, guided by the star in Naish’s logo? I’m really surprised that the vagabond who argues Naish out of his cynicism wasn’t even implied to be an angel. “That’s what I’m talking about — peace, brotherhood, it’s a lot of baloney!”
Less than usual — it was much easier to watch every day when I got up and watched an hour of something while I exercised. Wisp has deep-sixed that as she’s with me every morning and takes exercise as a sign I want to snuggle. Still, I’ve watched a little and there’s more to review in later posts.
12 DATES OF CHRISTMAS (2011) was another one that had to function as a talking lamp while I worked on some stuff. That’s not a reflection on the film, which is probably the best of the Christmas time-loop films. When Amy Smart discovers she’s living Christmas Eve over and over, her first thought is that it’s so she can win her recently engaged ex back. Certainly it can’t have anything to do with blind date Mark-Paul Gosselaur … can it? Sweet and fun. “My life is a parking garage!”
WKRP IN CINCINNATI‘s “Bah Humbug” episode is every bit as much fun as their Thanksgiving episode. Carlson (Gordon Jump) has decided to stiff the staff on their Christmas bonuses only to have three familiar faces show up and force him into “one of those Charles Dickens things.” A great episode of an excellent sitcom. “I’m alone again — and in bad lighting!”
THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS is another show that holds up well and “Xmas Marks the Spot” is another of my Christmas perennials. Somehow winding up in Victorian England, the guys save a crotchety old miser from three strange ghosts, return to the present and discover that by helping Ebenezer Scrooge defeat the Ghosts of Past, Present and Future, they’ve destroyed Christmas spirit for all time! Can they get history back on track? “Free us, young man, or you and all the Christmases to come will pay the price!”
TWILIGHT ZONE: Night of the Meek stars Art Carney as a sad, pathetic drunk who’s just been fired from his job as department-store Santa. Then he discovers a sack that seems able to give everyone the present of their dreams … While I found myself wondering about the underlying mythos (what happened to Santa? Did he simply pass on the title to Carney, as in Tim Allen’s Santa Clause?) this is still a moving one. “Just for one Christmas I’d like to see the meek inherit the Earth — and that’s why I drink.”
Rewatching RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER I found myself thinking how remarkably much plot Rankin-Bass squeeze into an hour of running time: Rudolph’s arc going from outcast to hero, Hermie’s dentistry, battles with the Bomble, the plight of the Misfit Toys, plus of course some singing. “He knew where he had to go—the cave of the Abominable Snow Monster!”
MR. MAGOO’S CHRISTMAS CAROL also squeezes a lot into one hour, covering a surprising amount of Dickens’ story in the framework of Magoo starring in A Christmas Carol on Broadway. Fun, and the songs are remarkably good. “Sixpence and threepence and guineas and bob!/Give them away and nobody can rob/you.”
I hope everyone’s having a wonderful Christmas today. if you’re having so much fun you’re not even checking this blog, I’m down with that.
The fourth season of ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING has the leading trio of Charles, Mabel and Oliver (Steve Martin, Selena Gomez, Martin Short) digging into the murder of Charles’ stunt double and friend Sazz (Jane Lynch) while coping with producer Molly Shannon’s plans to adapt their experiences into a movie (with Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria and Zack Galifinakis in the corresponding roles). And what role do the tenants in the Arconia’s West Tower play in all this? The solution was a little too out of left field but overall this was excellent viewing. “Never hesitate to keep looking, unless it’s at an eclipse, Medusa or the time I stapled my handouts to my jacket.”
Adapted from Robert McCammon’s Stinger, Peacock’s streaming TEACUP was a disappointment. A handful of farm-country residents discover they’ve been cut off from the world by an energy field that kills anyone who crosses it. There’s an alien refugee among them, a bodysnatching alien hunting for the fugitive and nobody knows who’s who — plus all the characters’ old issues are coming to light.
That’s a good mix for a story and for the first half it held my attention. As it approached the end, things began to flag, leaving me wondering if they were just giving us a stretch of calm before the socko, gut-wrenching season ender. Well, no, the ending was bad too, and I can’t say plans for a second season inspire me to watch further. “So is the problem that you’re not telling us everything, or that you’re lying?”
ANADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME (2013) was a BBC special recounting how flamboyant BBC director Sidney Newman (Brian Cox) cooked up the idea of a kid’s program that would involve a grandfatherly figure leading the audience through history (very educational!) and appointed Verity Lambert (Jessica Raine) as producer, a radical move for the early 1960s. She recruits reluctant but respected actor William Hartnell (David Bradley) to play the lead — but is she seriously considering these ridiculous “Dalek” creatues as villains in the second serial? I’m not sure how faithful the details are but this was enjoyable. “Cavemen and doctors and bloody disappearing police boxes?”
When my family first arrived in the US, one of my favorite shows was My World and Welcome To It, a whimsical comedy about a crotchety cartoonist (William Windom) based on James Thurber (one episode has everyone trying to figure out what the Thurber cartoon above means). Some of the creative team went on to make THE WAR BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN (1972) with Jack Lemmon as a misanthropic cartoonist trying to cope with the possibility of losing his sight and the equally unsettling possibility he’s fallen in love with Barbara Harris — OMG, is it possible women aren’t utterly awful. This doesn’t work as well as the series did (at least as far as memory can tell) and the treatment of Harris’ stuttering daughter (Lisa Gerritsen, who played the daughter role on the TV show too) — torment her until she gets so emotional she stops stuttering — is, I’m fairly sure, not good therapy (and the story gets close to “You could fix your disability if you only made the effort!”). Jason Robards plays Harris’s ex. “Nothing Henry Miller has to say is of the least interest to me.”
THE GREEN GIRL (2014) was TYG’s and mine post-prandial film, a documentary about Susan Oliver, who appeared in dozens of guest-star roles on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, most notably as Vina in Star Trek‘s pilot episode The Cage (later reworked into the two-part Menagerie) — someone quips that as Oliver’s green Orion slave woman was worked into the closing credits, millions of people watching Trek reruns see her in that, if nothing else. As the documentary shows, she was in lots of other shows (this was an era when continuity was loser so she could play one role on Route 66 one season and a different character the next), plus directing (though opposition to women directors killed her opportunities) plus becoming a skilled recreational pilot.
The talking heads (including actors Monte Markham, Lee Meriweather and Biff Manard) argue that the advantages of her guest-star career were that Oliver was never stuck working a series day in and day out; the downside was that as she grew older and parts harder to come by, she didn’t have the studio contracts or steady roles to fall back on. An interesting look at a strong-minded and talented woman. “Under ‘other victims’ — my name, listed alphabetically.”
Rewatching THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960) I find it has more good points than I remembered. As Hyde, star Paul Massie is stiff and awkward enough to fit the concept of Hyde a normal looking man who makes everyone uncomfortable, though I suspect it’s Massie being a stiff actor rather than design. And the ending inverts the usual set up by having Hyde terrified Jekyll is going to take control of their body from him.
None of that, however, makes it work better than the last time I watched it. The concept is that Jekyll’s obsessively working on his mad-science research and neglecting his wife Kitty (Dawn Addams), who’s found refuge in the arms of Jekyll’s buddy Paul (Christopher Lee) who has no qualms asking Jekyll to cover his debts, then jumping Mrs. Jekyll. When, as Hyde, Jekyll learns the truth, he sets out to get his own wife as his mistress but things don’t go as planned …
While the idea of Hyde lusting for Jekyll’s woman goes back to the Victorian stage, Kitty’s faithlessness and Hyde’s desire to win her rather than rape her could have made this interesting, a triangle in which two points are the same person. Unfortunately that would require much more development of the Jekylls than we get. Dawn Addams’s Kitty is flat and we never learn whether she once loved her husband or was always going to stray on him. Nor do we learn what Jekyll’s feelings are beyond possessive, though I do like that he’s incapable of figuring Kitty out in either persona (“You overestimate my freedom from convention Mr. Hyde.”). Like The Ugly Duckling, Hammer flopped with this treatment of Stevenson. ”I don’t have your highly laudable respect for life, Jekyll.”
ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (1958) was a typical flop by low-budget filmmaker Bert I. Gordon, though lord knows he’s done worth. A woman working for lonely puppeteer John Hoyt discovers he’s creating his own found family by shrinking people (including her and boyfriend John Agar) and keeping them in bottles to uncork for special events. Hoyt gives an above-average performance for a Gordon film though Agar as the hero is stiff as he always is. This got my attention because Hoyt stages a Jekyll and Hyde puppet show at one point, though not significant enough to justify inclusion in my book. “You don’t want to meet your fiancee wearing nothing but a napkin do you?”
Switching to other media, I caught a brief BENNY HILLSHOW skit in which superheroic Wonder Gran takes on Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hide (both Hill), a rather werewolf-like take on the character; given the usual nudge-nudge wink-wink of Hill’s shows, it’s surprising the villain is just a crook (Jackal shows more lechery).
I also caught a late 1941 JACK BENNY SHOW in which Jack plays both Jekyll and Hyde; while nothing in it provokes deep insight, it’s certainly funny, including that everyone around Jekyll knows he’s two people. The follow up, Dr. Hyde and Mr. Jekyll, reverses things by having Jell-O (the sponsor) turn the grumpy Hyde into sunny Mr. Jekyll. It’s also very obvious there’s more visual humor pitched at the studio audience than I’d expect in radio. “This is Mr. Hyde’s office — no he isn’t in, and if he was, heaven help you!”
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Steven Soderbergh has spent his career doing art movies like Kafka (which tanked badly enough I’ve never been able to find it for rewatching) and paying the bills with hits such as Erin Brockovich. I presume it’s that pragmatic approach that led to himn directing OCEAN’S THIRTEEN (2007) as a follow up to Ocean’s 12.
The movie feels “off” from the beginning as we spend 30 minutes with George Clooney explaining to Eddie Izzard how they’ve set up 90 percent of their plan to take down casino magnate Al Pacino (for double-crossing team meber Elliott Gould). However they need Izzard to help them thwart an unbeatable AI that watches people’s body language to tell if they genuinely won or were scamming the casino (it sounds very much like the kind of bullshit claims the tech industry makes about junk AI products). As in Ocean’s Eleven the team is all male (Ellen Barkin as Pacino’s right hand provides the token female) and the whole thing feels almost like self-parody — any random episode of the TV series Leverage would be more fun. “Screw Sinatra’s hand!”
So is the excellent first season of BATMAN: The Caped Crusader, Bruce Timm’s return to the world of the Masked Manhunter. It’s a vaguely 1940s Gotham City, though more diverse than the reality would have been (Commissioner Gordon and Barbara are POC, Det. Montoya is an out lesbian), Batman has just started his career and the GCPD treats him as a criminal. Can he take down the Penguin (a woman voiced by Minnie Driver), sinister psychiatrist Harley Quinn, spoiled heiress Selina Kyle and scarred former prosecutor Harvey Dent? And what about corrupt cop Harvey Bullock?
Timm is doing non-canonical interpretations of most of these — way more so than in Batman: The Animated Adventures — which made my guesses about where it was going wrong in several episodes. It doesn’t always work — Two-Face without his coin flipping just ain’t Two-Face — but it usually does, and the series does a good job developing his relationship with Babs and Alfred over the course of the 10-episode run. “What do you do when the evidence is pointing you in a direction you don’t want to look?”
The third and final season of THE VICAR OF DIBLEY (you can check out my S1 and S2 reviews) has the Gerry (Dawn French) and the rest of the cast coping with Hugo and Alice’s baby, David (Gary Waldnorn) falling for Gerry and the entire village facing being turned into a reservoir to solve a persistent drought problem (the last of the four episodes). Good fun (though the David/Gerry relationship becomes surprisingly downbeat) and a satisfactory series ender — though 10 years later we’d revisit Dibley in a series of specials. “How about digging up moles and bashing in their heads with a flat stone?”
The ending of the THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY‘s third season had the apocalypse averted once again but with the team now stranded and powerless in another new timeline. Netflix’s final season picks up several years later with the team in normal lives — Five working for the CIA, Luther a male stripper, Alison and Lila with kids and so on. Only now their powers are returning. Weird shit is going down. And a cult claims that the current timeline is a distortion of the real, perfect one which somehow they’re going to get back to …
I had mixed feelings about S3 but this was a satisfactory (if rather sad — I won’t go into detail beyond that) finish explaining why they’ve had to deal with so many apocalypses and bringing them all together for the big finish. While I haven’t been able to sit through the final season of the Doom Patrol‘s endless squabbling with each other, this series I did and it worked for me. ““Alison and Claire had to dig me out of the grave of a dead greyhound.”
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I read Jessie Douglas Kerruish’s The Undying Monsterafter watching the film adaptation The Undying Monster, which Donald Glut rated as the best werewolf movie ever. I don’t agree but I did find it enjoyable.
For centuries, the Hammond family has been haunted by a monster that attacks them in the nearby woods at certain times. A new series of attacks brings a Scotland Yard CSI team to Hammond Hall. Can they explain the infamous Hammond Monster with science? Will it turn out to be supernatural after all?
The result is a good mix of mystery and horror but the women’s roles aren’t as strong as in the book, and the explanation doesn’t work at all — even if they could work in the book’s exposition, the curse couldn’t create the kind of fur-face shown on the poster. “No Hammond ever ventures into the frosty lane on a snowy night.”
TYG has a nostalgic fondness for THE CRAFT (1996), which came out during her college years, so we watched it recently. While it doesn’t move me as much, I did find it enjoyable. White-trash Goth Nancy (Fairuza Balk), scarred Bonnie (Neve Campbell) and black-and-discriminated-against Rochelle (Rachel True) are school outcasts and witches struggling unsuccessfully to work any magic. When new kid Sarah (Robin Tunney) shows she has powers, they offer to make her the fourth of their coven. She refuses until Chris (Skeet Ulrich) tries seducing her, then brags to the school that he succeeded. Sarah agrees to join in hopes of making Chris fall for her for real.
As a quartet, they have the powers to work miracles but this being a horror film things go wrong and the original trio, particularly Nancy, start crossing major lines. When Sarah tries to back out, they are not happy …
This is a remarkably woman-centered film — they have the agency, they make things happen, their feelings and conversations are the core of the story — which makes it odd how sympathetic the film is to Chris. The guy is a total jerk but Sarah doesn’t want him punished and insists he’s not that bad. What happens to him as the magic goes wrong is tragic but he deserves punishing as much as some of the others they lash out at. As the Mary Sue points out, that applies to some of their other victims too: Rochelle’s retaliation against a racist is nasty but so is her victim. Worth a look, all the same. “By the way, he wanted me to give you a message.”
THE SPECIAL LONDON BRIDGE SPECIAL (1972) struck me as very strange when I saw it aired and rewatching on YouTube doesn’t change my opinion much. Singer Tom Jones discovers his bus ride to the London Bridge has deposited him at the old bridge in Arizona (it was bought and transplanted there in the late 1960s). He meets and starts arguing with American Jennifer O’Neil, the Carpenters sing, Charlton Heston plays Michael Landon at tennis, Chief Dan George kidnaps bus ticket taker Hermione Gingold (not so fun as we get into unpleasant racail stereotypes) and Jones teaches Kirk Douglas to sing and dance.
Part of the fun watching this when it first aired was that I was three years emigrated to America and the opening has lots of London scenery. Another factor was that it’s a musical and I didn’t get the genre conventions. Watching now it’s silly fun, though O’Neil trying to sing is a mistake (she’s not bad but Karen Carpenter and Jones completely outclass her) and the ending — Jones winds up back in London without her — didn’t work either time. This feels like a show that should have a HEA. “Karen, we’re in Lake Havasu, not Dunkirk.”
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My brother Craig, like me, is a fan of Hammer Horror so while he was here I put on DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971). Despite director Roy Ward Baker coming up with the title as a joke—he was quite surprised Hammer then jumped on it—it’s a good film. I could not, however, kick back and enjoy it without my analytical, writing-a-book-on-this hat coming on.
In contrast to Stevenson and most of the adaptations I’ve seen (e.g., the Barrymore, Fredric March and Spencer Tracy versions) Ralph Bates’ Dr. Jekyll has no interest in splitting good from evil — he starts out wanting to cure all diseases. When a fellow doctor (Gerald Sims) points out it would take several years just to cure cholera and diphtheria, Bates decides to work on eternal life first, because that will be so much easier, right? And then he’ll have time to cure all diseases. It doesn’t occur to either doctor that curing diphtheria and cholera would save thousands of lives by themselves, get his name in the history books and inspire other researchers to follow in his wake.
He’s also unusually low-rent: where March’s Dr. Jekyll is filthy rich and most film Jekylls have servants, Jekyll here lives by himself in rented rooms. By Victorian standards, the lack of a household staff or at least a gentleman’s gentleman makes him slightly disreputable.
Another thing that occurred to me is how much Jekyll and Hyde films use hands. The Stevenson novel makes good use of them as shorthand — when Jekyll starts to lose control of the transformation, one of the first signs is waking up and seeing Hyde’s hands instead of his own. The Johny Barrymore film shows Hyde’s spidery hands—
— and the March film opens with Jekyll’s elegant hands playing piano. Sister Hyde frequently uses close-ups of Bates’ hands changing to Martine Beswick’s as signs of the transformation. A much easier one, I’m sure, than focusing on the face every time.
I’ll have more to say when I watch it purely for the book. “It is I who exist, Dr. Jekyll — not you!”
Earlier this year my brother performed in JEKYLL AND HYDE: The Musical (1997) and as it’s streaming online, I took a look (it’s the source of the title quote on this post). This was much more polished than the version I saw some years back, and (as I now realize) clearly based on the March/Tracy story: a romantic quadrangle with a Madonna (Jekyll’s fiancee) and a Whore (Hyde’s lover/victim), Sir Danvers Carew as Jekyll’s father-in-law (surprisingly he makes it to the end of the show unscathed — Carew isn’t that lucky in most adaptations I’ve seen).
In this version, Jekyll’s inspiration is his own father’s insanity — if he could separate good from evil in our minds, wouldn’t that enable his father to regain normality (an odd rationale as his father isn’t a psycho killer but comatose)? When he tells the hospital board he wants to use one of the patients in the madhouse as a guinea pig, they not unreasonably object; the bishop on the board raises the question not enough people do, after the split where does the evil go? Jekyll denounces them as hypocrites and ultimately decides to test the drug on himself.
I like the detail of Hyde sensing people by animalistic sniffing; I’m less thrilled with his odd, armored carapace, like he was about to turn supervillain. Hyde assaults a young dancer/sex worker who’d attracted Jekyll’s attention then discovers the bishop dropping in on the brothel for some action and settles Jekyll’s score with him. Ignoring the bishop’s hypocrisy, the papers trumpet him as a murdered saint; as the show’s set in 1888, Hyde’s killing spree is obviously meant to parallel Jack the Ripper. While the board members do turn out to be hypocrites there’s no way Jekyll could have known that when he spat the label at them. Jekyll of course struggles to regain control; we all know how that’s going to work out.
This shows the problem with writing about stage shows. Not only are the cast fixed but the show has been tweaked since the original hit the boards and there are other versions out there. In some of the early versions, for instance, one board member was Jekyll’s romantic rival and also the brothel keeper, emphasizing the hypocrisy theme. Splitting them in two gives us two unremarkable characters. For that reason I’ll be watching the David Hasselhoff streaming version which I believe is closer to the original Broadway musical, then comparing the two. “Comments on a lack of style should never be made by those who have none.”
CLIMAX: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1955) was an episode of an early TV anthology show starring Michael Rennie as the gruesome twosome. Unusually this opens near the end of the Stevenson novel, with Utterson leading Jekyll’s household staff to confront Mr. Hyde in Jekyll’s laboratory; after Hyde keels over dead (suicide by poison) Utterson finds Jekyll has left him the journal of the doctor’s experiments.
Here Jekyll’s interest in dividing good from evil is purely scientific: dissection will show us the nature of the soul just as if it were a living organism. There’s no fiancee for Jekyll but his Hyde (a less apelike version of the Fredric March’s evolutionary throwback) does take an interest in a singer at a local pub. When he discovers she has a fiancee he does not take it well.
This is not an A-list version but Gore Vidal’s script does a great job showing Jekyll (pronounced GEEkil as in the March film) slowly sliding into corruption. At first he figures there’s no harm letting Hyde play — in fact it’s rather fun. When things go bad, well you can’t blame him! It was Hyde, and all of us have a Hyde within! Yes, Dr. Lanyon says, but most of us keep him caged. “You talk of innocence but you reek of Hell.”
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While I’ve seen almost the entire Wonder Woman TV series, I’ve never seen THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN (1975) that kicked it off. Until a couple of weeks back. Damn, but it’s good.
After the Batman TV show ran out of steam, TV and movies spent a decade keeping comic books at arms length. The two Captain America TV movies rewrote the mythos, as did the Hulk TV series (though more successfully). Lynda Carter’s debut is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of her debut in Sensation Comics.
We have Steve Trevor (Lyle Trevor) trying to thwart a Nazi bomber attack, crashing on Paradise Island, Princess Diana winning the right to take him home. Then she thwarts a spy conspiracy involving Stella Stevens and Red Buttons (a theatrical agent who puts her on stage — unlike the original story he’s also a Nazi agent). At the end, she’s working with Steve as Yeoman Diana Prince (Yeoman Etta Candy hasn’t shown up yet).
The film doesn’t deal with the Olympian gods at all, nor does it explain how Diana got her gig in military intelligence. I think those are both forgivable. It also establishes Paradise Island as located in the Bermuda Triangle, something the comics subsequently adopted (they also, of course, switched to a WW II setting for a while)
The film’s biggest strength is Carter herself. Like Christopher Reeves a couple of years later she’s completely sincere as Wonder Woman, taking the role seriously while not forgetting the movie isn’t serious drama (in contrast to say, Jared Leto in Morbius). I imagine I’ll start watching the series now — you’ll get my review of the first season at some point. “I have a lot to learn about men — and devious women.”
For another Latina hero (while I didn’t know it when Wonder Woman was on, Lynda Carter is Latina),QUEEN OF SWORDS (2000-2001) stars Tessie Santiago as Tessa Alvarez, AKA the Queen of Swords — Zorro if Zorro were an extremely sexy woman. In the early 19th century, Tessa, having been sent from her father’s California estate back to Spain for education, returns after her father’s murder. She discovers the local governor, Col. Montoya (Valentine Pelka), is behind it as part of his ambitious plans (Montoya’s about one step from a megalomaniac Wild, Wild West villain). Fortunately, Tessa convinced the family fencing master to train her; now she uses her skills with a blade (not to mention a whip) to thwart Montoya’s schemes as the Queen of Swords, helped by her Roma maid Marta (Paulina Galvez).
It’s familiar Zorro-esque stuff but I don’t see that as a disqualifier. And yes, the eye candy factor doesn’t hurt (Peter Wingfield, Methos on Highlander, provides some eye candy if you prefer men, or so I’m told). “We had a bet, remember — double or nothing.”
The second season of THE VICAR OF DIBLEY (first season review here) is only four episodes, dealing with Reverend Geraldine’s (Dawn French) nitwit BFF Alice (Emma Chambers) finally landing her beloved Hugo (James Fleet), then follows them through the wedding episode. Short, but it’s an extremely funny four seasons. “Sex with poodles — is it always wrong?”
The first season of the 2021 Britcom STARSTRUCK has protagonist Jessie (Rose Matafeo) enjoying a drunken hookup New Year’s Eve with Tom (Nikesh Patel). So far so good, then it turns out Tom’s a movie star and he’d like to see her again — sure, he’s sexy and the sex was good, but can an ordinary woman deal with being part of a star’s life? Stock stuff, but I laughed a lot just the same. “I knew you’d be a problem because you wore ballet slippers and don’t think peanut allergies are real.”
Also from 2021, the first season of GIRLS5EVA has the eponymous 1990s girl group (Sara Bareilles plays the lead singer) reunite to see if they can finally become more than a one-hit wonder. Enjoyable and funny, though neither this nor Starstruck have me watching subsequent seasons as avidly as The Vicar of Dibley. “I want to be hand-fed by Gillian Anderson like a complicated rescue horse.”
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