The British movie Digby: The Biggest Dog In The World proves it was not just Disney that made dim-witted slapstick motion pictures for kiddies in the 1970s.
It’s a big dog, alright
Jan 13
2019 was for me a year of unwanted adventures, even leaving aside the whole “the world is on frigging fire, both figuratively and literally” thing. A slow downward spiral of depression and declining health during the first half of the year culminated in mid-summer with what didn’t feel at the time like a near-death experience, but absolutely was one, followed by a hospital stay of several days. The second half, consequently, was all about acclimating myself to some rather drastic lifestyle changes, some of which I’m still fine-tuning. And then there was a bunch of stuff that I’m not going to talk about for the sake of other people’s privacy; suffice it to say that it all sucked. So if anybody’s been wondering why I’ve been incommunicado lately, now you know.
All the foregoing also factors into a decision I’ve been wrestling with for a while. Now that my life is getting back into some semblance of order, I’m beginning to regain some of my enthusiasm for writing about weird movies on the internet, but the fact is I’m desperately tired of having my increasingly limited time and energy for doing so overshadowed by the requirements of the next B-Masters roundtable. So in the interest of keeping 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting alive and well, I’m going on sabbatical from the Cabal. I’ll be back once my batteries are recharged (I’m thinking roughly a year from now), and if nobody objects, I’ll keep announcing my updates here on the B-Masters blog. The reviews below will be my last roundtable contributions for a while, though:
20th Anniversary Roundtable, Part 1 (which you already know about, but just for the sake of completeness):
Black Emanuelle (1975), in which the title character is neither strictly speaking Emanuelle nor strictly speaking black…
Evil Dead II (1987), in which surviving the night in a demon-haunted cabin doesn’t actually improve one’s situation much…
From Hell It Came (1957), in which an isolated Polynesian tribe could use the services of a good lumberjack…
Goodbye, Emmanuelle (1977), in which our heroine starts to wonder whether this “free love” thing is all it’s cracked up to be…
and…
Martin (1977), in which George Romero gives us a much more satisfying answer to the riddle, “When is a vampire movie not a vampire movie?” than Val Lewton managed to.
20th Anniversary Roundtable, Part 2 (which you might already have seen on my site, but connectivity troubles prevented me from announcing here):
And Then There Were None (1945), in which Agatha Christie sure does know how to throw a party…
Get Crazy (1983), in which no show I ever booked went this far out of control, but most of them usually felt like they were about to…
Pink Flamingos (1972), in which you never can tell what some people will get ego about…
and…
Viva Knievel! (1979), in which a guy can’t even jump a Harley over 150 feet of lions and tigers in peace anymore!
20th Anniversary Roundtable, Part 3 (which I interpreted very narrowly to mean movies that I’d already tried to review, but never quite managed to make the words flow):
The Bat People (1974), which could almost have been mistaken for something from 1956, if you’d seen it on a black and white TV back when…
and…
The Dungeonmaster (1984), which has nothing to do with Dungeons & Dragons, but oddly does tie in semi-subliminally with the early-80’s arcade boom.
20th Anniversary Rountable, Part 4:
A Cold Night’s Death (1973), in which even the best union can’t do anything about these working conditions…
The Eyes of the Panther (1989), in which there’s someone out there for everybody– even werecats…
The Seventh Curse (1986), in which our hero’s pecker arguably has the highest kill count in the film…
and…
Son of Samson (1960), in which Maciste returns to the screen after an absence of more than 30 years.
Meanwhile, I did manage to review a few other things, too, amid the scramble to keep up with the roundtables:
Blood Beach (1980), in which (say it with me) just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, you can’t get there…
It, Chapter Two (2019), in which splitting up the unreasonably huge book for translation to celluloid wasn’t such a good idea after all…
Rebirth of Mothra (1996), in which Toho’s other mon-star gets the Heisei treatment…
and…
Us (2019), in which some things really are better left unexplained– and the explanation had better be good if we’re going to get one anyway.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.
They had the ingredients to make a good thriller, but A Stranger Is Watching ends up being not worth watching.
…to quote my old friend Arthur Wellesley.
I know that you guys like starting the year with a fireworks image, but this time you went very close to not having one—because we went very close to not having any fireworks.
Given the catastrophic fire conditions in the country, there was a strong push for cancelling our usual NYE celebration, and for very cogent reasons; and an equally strong push back for keeping it. Some people, in the current circumstances, found the display disrespectful; some were for keeping it more or less as an act of defiance, of refusing to buckle under. Others, sensibly enough, pointed out that we have quite enough smoke in the air already.
In the end, the winner was probably pragmatism: the display had been fifteen months in the planning, and was fully paid for and was ready to go; while as always, thousands of people had travelled in from all over the world to see it. It is an event that pours some $140 million into the economy: money which hopefully goes without stint and without delay to our emergency services.
So it is with slightly mixed feelings that I post our usual New Year’s greeting.
What is not as all mixed, however, is our gratitude to all of you who visit this blog and our sites. Your continued support means more than we can say.
Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
The Golan-Globus movie The Barbarians is an entertaining mix of comedy with sword and sorcery.
If you’ve seen just one of the many tired and uninspired spy spoof movies from the 1960s, then nothing in Modesty Blaise will be much of a surprise.
If you can momentarily forget the recent news reports concerning actor Cuba Gooding Jr., chances are you’ll find Wrong Turn At Tahoe to be a surprisingly strong crime drama.
I needed a bigger review
Nov 25
After a year or more of excuses and failed attempts – six months ago I had misplaced hopes of getting this and the sequels done for the ‘special subjects’ Roundtable – I have given my Jaws review an overhaul.
This means that I can move on to giving a bunch of related material a facelift too—since “No shark films or Jaws rip-offs for you, young lady” has been my way of trying to force myself to knuckle down.
So—I have:
– revised and added screenshots to Jaws (1975)
– revised and added screenshots to Shark Kill (1976)
– transferred Grizzly (1976)
– revised Mako: The Jaws Of Death (1976)
When adding my post for Wake In Fright, I forgot to mention that I had also transferred over my review of Homesdale (1971).
There are also two recent Et Al. updates, for October and November.
Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
A breath of fresh air
Nov 24
In the future, I will keep trying to sample at least one example of every film genre and category. It’s with some embarrassment that I realized recently I haven’t reviewed a movie from Hammer Studios, so with The Snorkel, I fix that.
The second half of my ‘future’ project dovetails into the first, in that it likewise finds me trying to break out of my US / UK reviewing stranglehold.
Oh, yes: it is true that I occasionally visit Germany and Japan (no ghost-cats, though; what the hell!?); and that I used to drop in on Italy, and China, and France, and Mexico.
Not often enough, though; and not recently. And there are places I’ve never visited, like India.
After all—it’s a great big cinematic world out there…
…in which it turns out that the Eastern Europeans do disaster movies just a little differently…
Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!