Tag Archives: reviews

Nondeterministic Reasoning

by

Deep Knowledge, Broken Logic

I don’t remember what got me onto this book. Likely something posted on Facebook. Anyhow, I was on a long flight and got around to finishing the Kindle edition. It’s Does the Atom Have a Designer, and it’s by a knowledgeable physicist by the name of Lakhi Goenka. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. Full disclosure: I attended that place of learning, but I only obtained a B.S. in engineering. Anyhow, Goenka’s degree field is fluid dynamics, not necessarily related to the subject of the book. That said, before anybody can get a Ph.D. in physics from UT Austin they have to learn a lot of advanced stuff, and the author exhibits deep knowledge of atomic physics.

The problem with the book is not so much the science, which to my mind seems solid. What should concern the serious reader are the logical conclusions the authors draws from the science. I speak of his understanding of the science from the viewpoint of a person who took a graduate course in quantum mechanics and obtained a grade of B for my effort.

This is a short book—88 pages, including an appendix with references. I highlighted interesting passages, and I will print a few excerpts and post some comment. Start with this.

The Why Questions related to the Atom are discussed in depth using Aristotle’s four causes.  The question: “Does your kitchen table have a Designer?” does not require a scientific or a mathematical explanation.

Goenka, Lakhi. Does the Atom Have A Designer? (p. 9). eThermal, LLC. Kindle Edition.

This is from a synopsis at the beginning, and yes, Geonka will invoke Aristotle’s four causes:

  1. Material cause: “that out of which a thing comes-to-be and which persists is said to be a cause, for example, the bronze is a cause of a statue, the silver is a cause of a bowl, and the genera of these [is also a cause].”
  2. Formal cause: “the form or paradigm, and this is the formula of the essence … and the parts that are in the formula.”
  3. Efficient cause: “the primary starting point from which change or rest originates; for example, someone who has given advice is a cause, the father [is a cause] of a child, and in general what does [is a cause] of what is done and what alters something [is a cause] of what is altered.”
  4. Final cause: “[something may be called a cause] in the sense of an end (telos), namely, what something is for; for example, health [is a cause] of walking.”

The author first gives us a lesson in some fundamental principles. The atom is the basic material entity apparent to people. All the material stuff in our lives is made from atoms, and some very basic physics determines the relationships involving the very lowest physical entities. Nobody knows why. These things just act this way. All physicists can do is to figure out how these entities interact and then explain it to others. Quite often the way the basic particles work together can provide us with ideas as to how to exploit these interactions to make science work wonders for us. For example, the so-called Bose quantum principle gave us the idea we could use the effect to build electrical switches operating on Bose statistics, and the result was solid state physics and the transistor and miniature computers and also smart phones.

There are also photons, which are Bose (named after Satyendra Nath Bose) particles. Bose-Einstein statistics is a quantum mechanical concept developed by Bose and Albert Einstein. Photons are unlike fermions, particles that exhibit Fermi statistics and named after Enrico Fermi, who developed the concept and headed up the team that produced the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction. The difference between bosons (Bose particles) and fermions is that fermions cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Fermi statistics is the principle that prevents all matter from collapsing into a single point in space. Bosons can pass through each other with ease, typically without interacting, and bosons can pass through matter.

Anyhow, the foregoing discussion is not included in the book, but I added it because it will be good to know when reading the remainder of this review.

The author quickly gets to the point of the book, that point being the existence of God.

The commonly cited objection “Then who designed the Designer?” is also addressed in the book.  The controversial and unverified Multiverse Hypothesis, often used against a Design argument, is also discussed.

And yes, your kitchen table does have a Designer.

(Note that this is an argument based on Design, and not on fine tuning.)

Goenka, Lakhi. Does the Atom Have A Designer? (p. 10). eThermal, LLC. Kindle Edition.

Goenka adds this last bit to assure us his is not a recap of a book titled The Privileged Planet, by creationists Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards. That book has been previously reviewed. The Gonzalez-Richards book is all about fine tuning as evidence for a creator.But this book is one long argument for the existence of a creator, and Goenka is not shy on this point. He starts this way:

Even the simplest of atoms, Hydrogen and Helium, consist of numerous subatomic particles such as quarks, gluons, and leptons that interact together in complex ways.  These subatomic particles represent a fine balance of forces, have special quantum properties, interact together in complex ways, follow complex laws, and obey multiple rules of order, all to ultimately provide function.  Atoms don’t simply follow laws—they provide function.  Atoms are a fundamental system of parts (subatomic particles) that dynamically interact together to provide multiple levels of functionality.

Goenka, Lakhi. Does the Atom Have A Designer? (p. 15). eThermal, LLC. Kindle Edition.

And gets around to this:

And while many things may be unfathomable to us in this world, including in Physics, we can at least show that our Universe does have a Designer.  This would perhaps be the case even in the unlikely event that the controversial Multiverse Hypothesis was someday experimentally validated.

So what do theologians mean by God?  The belief in a Creator God is well supported by the Big Bang Theory, which postulates that Space, Time and Matter all came into being temporally out of nothing right at the Big Bang.  God, who always existed outside of our Space and Time, created the Universe.

Goenka, Lakhi. Does the Atom Have A Designer? (pp. 78-79). eThermal, LLC. Kindle Edition.

He hangs his argument on the ex nihilo concept of the origin of the universe. Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss deals extensively with this in his book A Universe from Nothing, previously reviewed. As I understand the concept, there was nothing. No matter. No space. No time. Then there was something. First explain how that came to be. Worse still, explain why.

To explain how, you have to stipulate conditions prior to the origin of the universe. Cosmologists make a go at that. No scientist attempts the why. Goenka wants to explain why. Or possibly he does not. His explanation is God. He ultimately gets around to making this disclaimer:

Note that while the Atom points to a Creator, it does not necessarily point to any particular religious belief (such as the belief in a Personal God).  However, it does serve to reinforce the concept of God.

Goenka, Lakhi. Does the Atom Have A Designer? (p. 82). eThermal, LLC. Kindle Edition.

There is little doubt Goenka is a creationist. You do not have to invoke Genesis to be a creationist. The term applies to anybody who stipulates non-natural causes—especially a sentient being—behind the creation. From his background we can sleep securely believing Goenka is a creationist of the first kind—a creationist who believes all this is the work of the God of Abraham.

Taking that into account, where does Goenka’s argument take him? It does not take him to the divinity of Christ (Jesus). Winning the argument that a sentient being created the universe does not logically lead to that entity being the God of Abraham. That concept will always remain in the realm of mythology. The goal of creationists on this point is to convince others of the existence of a creator, for from that point it is easier to move the uninitiated to belief in the divinity.

I will not recap Goenka’s reasoning, but he argues the intricacy of the relationship between fundamental particles is such that no accident of nature can account for their all this. One way to look at this reasoning is to realize it is founded on thinking which arises in the universe under discussion. The argument is an attempt to take everyday observations and even deeply technical observations, and work them into a basis for explaining something that does not exist within our ability to observe. My analogy is clumsy to the extreme, but I liken this to an attempt to peel an apple using a ball peen hammer. We can explain, for example, fire, by invoking chemical and physical principles we have discovered by clever means, but we reach a point where we will be unable to make explanations which are compatible with things we observe.

The concept of a god creator is the god is an transcendental entity that exists outside time and space. Since time and space are what scientists have to work with, they are not going to make much headway explaining transcendental entities. Such things have to be imagined, or not even that. They may have to be supposed and nothing more.

Science failing to explain everything, the theologians feel free to jump in. The problem with theological explanations is that they generally boil down to speculation and nothing more. At the upper end of theological explanations are some argued philosophically. Philosophy is a powerful tool, giving us the means by which we move from observation to unforeseen conclusions. When philosophy is employed to move from supposition to conclusion it serves only to provide a smokescreen to an abuse of the intellect.

Goenka addresses the question concerning who or what created the creator:

In order to answer such questions, we first need to clarify what we mean by “God.” If God is just another one of the causes within the system of causes that science explains, then we would need to search for a cause for God as well. But if God is something fundamentally different from the created order (what theologians call “transcendent”), then our demand for a cause of God’s being is confused and misapplied.

Goenka, Lakhi. Does the Atom Have A Designer? (p. 67). eThermal, LLC. Kindle Edition.

A popular notion, held by the unsophisticated faithful, is that the God of Abraham, having nothing better to do, decided to create the universe and people, as well. I don’t hold to this God business, so it is difficult for me to imagine the thinking of such people. I have supposed they imagine God doing the creation as a hobby, such as somebody building a model ship. When much thought is applied, this becomes a difficult sell. Logically I would not suppose a being that exists outside time and space would have much interest in hobbies or even serious construction projects. Those are human activities (beavers, as well). The argument that a sentient, transcendental entity decided to create the universe does not have a sound philosophical basis.

At a higher lever, consider that God is not a sentient entity. God could then be a set of basic principles, unknown and possibly unknowable to us. The universe is a consequence of these principles. This answers the question put by the creationists: “From whence came the intelligence (information) to construct the universe as we know it?”

This interpretation takes investigation of the origin of the universe out of the hands of the theologians, and it is not going to get much support among that crowd.

In order to answer such questions, we first need to clarify what we mean by “God.” If God is just another one of the causes within the system of causes that science explains, then we would need to search for a cause for God as well. But if God is something fundamentally different from the created order (what theologians call “transcendent”), then our demand for a cause of God’s being is confused and misapplied.

God is not just the explanation for the beginning of the universe, but for the existence of anything at all—whether past, present, or future.  These things are contingent; that is to say, they don’t have to exist, and so because they do exist, we are right to ask for the causes of their existence. But theologians have understood God to be a necessary being. Asking for a cause of a necessary being is like asking how much the color blue weighs — it is a category mistake.

Goenka, Lakhi. Does the Atom Have A Designer? (p. 67). eThermal, LLC. Kindle Edition.

Yes, I’m not buying much of that, and you should not either.

How I Spent My Birthday

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Yeah, this was going to be a big day. And It was, but not the way I wished.

So, we have not had cable TV for over three years, and we get our entertainment by way of streaming video (and audio) over the Internet. Especially streaming video tends to put a strain on your home network, and Barbara Jean was complaining. But this was something we could fix. Best Buy to the rescue. See the above.

The image is from Amazon. We purchased the Linksys Velop home network, and it works like this. You plug one of the systems into your cable modem, or into your Google fiber optic outlet. The other unit will connect wirelessly to the first, and the idea is you place that unit in your house where you are getting poor connectivity.

Here is what we noticed after we got the system up and running. We do get better connectivity down stairs. Improvement is measurable by running an Internet speed test from near the remote unit.

Another thing we noticed quickly is several times a day Internet connectivity goes away completely for about a minute. Then everything comes up, and life goes on. This is annoying, and a Google search indicates others believe it is a firmware glitch that Linksys needs to address.

A few things:

  • If your house is single story of the kind in Prue Bend, you do not need the second unit.
  • The units are identical.
  • Each unit has an Ethernet jack for connecting to your cable modem (Google fiber port), and it has a single jack to connect to all your other Ethernet wired devices. If you have multiple printers and home security devices not having Wi-Fi connectivity, you will need to purchase an Ethernet switch.
  • Linksys has an app for your smart phone or pad. The app is a must for setting up the system. Once you get everything going, the app is most handy for managing the network.
  • A look at the network by way of the app shows that stuff downstairs sometimes uses the upstairs router, and vice versa. Yes, that is strange.

I already had an Ethernet switch with five ports, and I was about to go with that. However, Barbara reminded me that without the extra Ethernet ports on our old router we were going to need a bigger switch. So we got one with eight ports. Be advised, one of the switch ports needs to connect to your router, so you will have only seven left over for your devices. Hint: you can get Ethernet switches with bunches of ports.

 

Do not get a hub. An Ethernet hub costs less than a switch, but it does not prevent packet collisions. When the switch receives packets simultaneously from two or more ports, it absorbs and stores them all and sends them out to where they are needed. Bottom line: no dropped packets, and faster throughput.

But back to the problem of dropping Internet connectivity. On Monday before my birthday I got up early and watched ABC News on TV while I ate breakfast. Then I logged off to do other things. Truth is, I took a nap.

Up from my nap, and we were disconnected. I waited for the connection to come back. It never did. I tried my usual stuff, recycling power to the modem and the network devices. No good. The light on top of the Velop router went red and stayed there. Barbara made the decision. Box up this piece of shit and ship it back. I needed to phone Linksys and make use of the supposed warranty. This I did around noon on Wednesday. They were very helpful. Linksys did not want to take back a system that still worked.

So for two hours and 55 minutes I walked through an extensive analysis of the system with the nice and very knowledgeable Linksys support lady. It got to the point she needed a wired Ethernet (not Wi-Fi) connection to the modem. For this I had to turn my chair around and access Barbara’s Dell Vostro, which does not employ Wi-Fi. Eventually I set up a dummy MAC address so she could run tests on Barbara’s computer.

Long story short, after two hours and 55 minutes we got the Velop network up and running again. I took the remote router down stairs so the support gal could run a connectivity test. She ran it. Everything looked fine. Then the light on the remote unit turned red. She agreed she could see this from her desk at Linksys.

The analysis, and we both agreed, is this. When I put the pieces back together again for the trouble shooting, I switched the two units. They are identical in appearance, differing only in a built-in password. The one that was now the remote was previously the main unit—the one that connected directly to the modem. When it went down it took Internet connectivity down. Not only did Wi-Fi go away, but Barbara’s Vostro, connected to the main unit by wire, lost connectivity, as well.

We parted ways. I mentioned I would run the Velop system for a few more days, and if the problem showed up again I should be getting an exchange or a refund. And this was the morning and the evening of my birthday.

Years of Living Dangerously

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Continuing review of William Shirer’s Berlin Diary

This is the 80th anniversary of the official start of World War 2. There had been extensive warfare prior to this, but Germany’s invasion of Poland on the night of 31 August – 1 September 1939 marked the commencement of full scale war.

William Shirer’s book recounts his experiences and observations from close up during the years prior to the war and concluding when Adolf Hitler’s government expelled him in 1940. Prior installments  recount the story, using extensive excerpts from the book. The previous installment concludes on 30 September 1938, 11 months before the start of the war. This will cover events from that date up to 1 September 1939.

The Allied powers decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to forestall another European war.

MUNICH, September 30

It’s all over. At twelve thirty this morning— thirty minutes after midnight— Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier signed a pact turning over Sudetenland to Germany. The German occupation begins tomorrow, Saturday, October 1, and will be completed by October 10. Thus the two “democracies” even assent to letting Hitler get by with his Sportpalast boast that he would get his Sudetenland by October 1. He gets everything he wanted, except that he has to wait a few days longer for all of it. His waiting ten short days has saved the peace of Europe— a curious commentary on this sick, decadent continent.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 144). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Shirer confers with fellow corespondent Edward. R. Murrow. They agree the situation is grim.

PARIS, October 8

Ed Murrow as gloomy as I am. We try to get it out of our systems by talking all night and popping champagne bottles and tramping the streets, but it will take more time, I guess. We agree on these things: that war is now more probable than ever, that it is likely to come after the next harvest, that Poland is obviously next on Hitler’s list (the blind stupidity of the Poles in this crisis, helping to carve up Czechoslovakia!), that we must get Warsaw to rig up a more powerful short-wave transmitter if they want the world to hear their side, and that we ought to build up a staff of American radio reporters. But honestly we have little head for business.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (pp. 150-151). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Shirer assesses the mood of the Poles.

WARSAW, November 11

The Poles a delightful, utterly romantic people, and I have had much good food and drink and music with them. But they are horribly unrealistic. In their trust of Hitler, for instance. Polskie Radio promises to get along with their new short-wave transmitter. I explained to them our experience with the Czechs.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 153). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Hitler’s friend and inspiration, Benito Mussolini, is enjoying the prospects. He is almost mocking the British statesmen.

ROME, January 11, 1939

Chamberlain and Halifax arrived today to appease the Duce. At the station Chamberlain, looking more birdlike and vain than when I last saw him at Munich, walked, umbrella in hand, up and down the platform nodding to a motley crowd of British local residents whom Mussolini had slyly invited to greet him. Mussolini and Ciano, in black Fascist uniforms, sauntered along behind the two ridiculous-looking Englishmen, Musso displaying a fine smirk on his face the whole time.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 156). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The fallout from the unfolding events begins.

GENEVA, March 14

The radio reports Slovakia has declared its “independence.” There goes the remains of Czechoslovakia.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 159). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The dominoes continue to fall, and the British PM’s reaction is characteristic and appalling.

PARIS, March 15

The German army has occupied Bohemia and Moravia on this blizzardy day of spring, and Hitler in a cheap theatrical gesture from the Hradshin castle above the Moldau in Prague has proclaimed their annexation to the Third Reich. It is almost banal to record his breaking another solemn treaty. But since I was personally present at Munich, I cannot help recalling how Chamberlain said it not only had saved the peace but had really saved Czechoslovakia.

Complete apathy in Paris tonight about Hitler’s latest coup. France will not move a finger.

…

Ed Murrow telephones that the reaction in London is the same— that Chamberlain in Commons this afternoon even went so far as to say that he refused to associate himself with any charges of a breach of faith by Hitler. Good God!

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 160). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

A few days later a prelude to World War Two runs its final course.

GENEVA, March 29

Madrid surrendered yesterday, the rest of republican Spain today. There are no words to express what I feel tonight. Franco’s butchery will be terrible.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 162). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Matters begin to solidify in Great Britain. In observance of Hitler’s intransigence and double dealing, the British parliament finally draw a line in the sand.

BERLIN, April 1

Chamberlain, who in the House yesterday enunciated at last a complete change in British foreign policy and announced that Britain would go to the aid of Poland if Polish independence were threatened. Off to Warsaw tomorrow to see when the German attack is expected.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 163). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Shirer assesses the resolve of the Poles.

WARSAW, April 6

Beck [the Polish Foreign Minister], who committed this country to a pro-Nazi, anti-French policy for so many years, has been in London and tonight we have an Anglo-Polish communiqué announcing that the two countries will sign a permanent agreement providing for mutual assistance in case of an attack on either of them by a third power. I think this will halt Hitler for the time being, since force is something he understands and respects and there is no doubt in my mind after a week here that the Poles will fight and that if Britain and France fight too, he is in a hole.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 163). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

As the year progresses the situation develops treacherously.

BERLIN, April 7

When the Orient Express pulled into the Schlesischer Bahnhof here this evening, the first thing I saw was Huss’s face on the platform and I knew there was bad news. He said London had phoned to get me off the train as the British had reports of German troop movements on the Polish frontier. I had watched for these as we came across the border, but saw

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 165). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

At this time the American government sought assurances that Hitler had no additional plans against neighboring countries. Hitler’s response was caustic and classic. He turned the challenge around.

BERLIN, April 28

Hitler in the Reichstag today denounced a couple more treaties (I could hardly repress a chuckle at this part of his speech) and answered Roosevelt’s plea that he give assurance that he will not attack the rest of the independent nations of Europe. His answer to the President rather shrewd, I think, in that it was designed to play on the sympathies of the appeasers and anti-New-Dealers at home and the former in Britain and France.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (pp. 165-166). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Here is an excerpt from his speech of that date:

Or is Mr. Roosevelt in a position, with the enormous amount of work which he must have to do in his own country, to recognize of his own accord all the inmost thoughts and feelings of other peoples and their governments?

Finally, Mr. Roosevelt asks that assurances be given him that the German armed forces will not attack, and above all, not invade, the territory or possessions of the following independent nations. He then names as those to which he refers: Finland, Lithuania, Latvia,’ Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain , Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran.

Answers I have first taken the trouble to ascertain from the states mentioned, firstly, whether they feel themselves threatened, and, what is most important, secondly, whether this inquiry by the American President was addressed to us at their suggestion or at least with their consent.

The reply was in all cases negative, in some instances strongly so. It is true that there were certain ones among the states and nations mentioned, whom I could not question because they themselves – as for example, Syria – are at present not in possession of their freedom, but are under occupation by the military agents of democratic states and consequently deprived of their rights.

There is a video of this. We see his words dripping in sarcasm as he tics off the list of countries.

At the time Shirer was unsure how this would eventually play out. In the end he turned out to be wrong. Still 28 April 1939.

Still much doubt here among the informed whether Hitler has made up his mind to begin a world war for the sake of Danzig. My guess is he hopes to get it by the Munich method.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 167). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

During the summer Shirer returned to the United States for a visit. His narrative assesses the mood of the American people.

WASHINGTON, July 3

Hope I can stay a little while in my native land. It takes some getting used to again after being almost continuously away since the age of twenty-one. Little awareness here or in New York of the European crisis, and Tess says I’m making myself most unpopular by taking such a pessimistic view. The trouble is everyone here knows all the answers. They know there will be no war. I wish I knew it. But I think there will be war unless Germany backs down, and I’m not certain at all she will, though of course it’s a possibility. Congress here in a hopeless muddle.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (pp. 167-168). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The experience of the previous world war demonstrated Germany’s weak position regarding war materials. Those conditions persisted in 1939.

GENEVA, July 28

[Marcel W. “Mike”] Fodor and [John] Gunther dropped in tonight and we argued and talked most of the night through. John fairly optimistic about peace. Fodor, a trained engineer himself, had a lot of material about Germany’s lack of iron. You can’t store much iron ore, Fodor says.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 170). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

In August, days before Armageddon, events begin to take a dramatic turn. Doubts start to vanish.

BERLIN, August 10

How completely isolated a world the German people live in. A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it. Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland over Danzig, here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is being maintained. (Not that it surprises me, but when you are away for a while, you forget.) What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion, and so forth. This is the Germany of last September when the steam was turned on Czechoslovakia.

“POLAND? LOOK OUT!” warns the B.Z. headline, adding: “ANSWER TO POLAND, THE RUNNER-AMOK (AMOKLÄUFER) AGAINST PEACE AND RIGHT IN EUROPE!”

Or the headline in Der Führer, daily paper of Karlsruhe, which I bought on the train: “WARSAW THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG— UNBELIEVABLE AGITATION OF THE POLISH ARCH-MADNESS (POLNISCHEN GRÖSSENWAHNS)!”

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (pp. 172-173). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Here is Shirer’s expanded analysis of the situation on the same day. He includes a personal perspective of German women.

But so far the press limits itself to Danzig. Will the Germans keep their real designs under cover until later? Any fool knows they don’t give a damn about Danzig. It’s just a pretext. The Nazi position, freely admitted in party circles, is that Germany cannot afford to have a strong military power on her eastern frontier, that therefore Poland as it is today must be liquidated, not only Danzig, which is Poland’s life-line, taken, but also the Corridor, Posen, and Upper Silesia. And Poland left a rump state, a vassal of Germany. Then when Hungary and Rumania and Yugoslavia have been similarly reduced (Hungary practically is already), Germany will be economically and agriculturally independent, and the great fear of Anglo-French blockade, which won the last war and at the moment probably could win the next, will be done away with. Germany can then turn on the West and probably beat her.

Struck by the ugliness of the German women on the streets and in restaurants and cafés. As a race they are certainly the least attractive in Europe. They have no ankles. They walk badly. They dress worse than English women used to. Off to Danzig tonight.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 173). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Hours tick away as the horror of war approaches. Shirer pens an appraisal of Poland’s situation.

IN A WAGONLIT, GDYNIA– WARSAW, August 13, midnight

The Poles, with French backing, have done a magnificent job. Fifteen years ago, Gdynia was a sleepy fishing village of 400 souls. Today it’s the largest port in the Baltic, with a population of over 100,000. Lacking natural facilities, the Poles have simply pushed piers out into the sea. The city itself looks like a mushroom growth, much like some of our Western towns thirty-five years ago. It is one of the promises of Poland.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (pp. 176-177). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

There has indeed been progress in Poland, but it was too little and too late. Clearly Poland was no match for the German Wehrmacht. Reports come in of rising tensions.

WARSAW, August 16

Much excitement in official Polish circles today. Conferences between Smigly-Rydz, Beck, and the generals. A Polish soldier has been shot on the Danzig frontier. Result: an order tonight instructing Polish troops to shoot anyone crossing the Danzig border on sight and without challenge.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 177). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Another assessment.

WARSAW, August 20

I think the Poles will fight. I know I said that, wrongly, about the Czechs a year ago. But I say it again about the Poles.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 178). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

It turned out Shirer was correct in this assessment. The Poles’ refusal to knuckle under once attacked led to the inevitable raging conflict.

Let me know if you see some similarities to our situation today. What happens when you cross personalities with thin-skinned power?

BERLIN, August 23

Hans Kaltenborn, our star foreign-news commentator, was turned back by the secret police when he arrived at Tempelhof from London this afternoon. We have been nicely double-crossed by the Nazis.

…

“May I ask why?” Hans said, boiling inside but cool outside, though beads of sweat bubbled out on his forehead. The officer had a ready answer. Looking in his notebook, he said with tremendous seriousness: “Herr Kaltenborn, on such and such a date in Oklahoma City you made a speech insulting the Führer.”

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 179). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The same day. The pact between Hitler and Stalin was critical. Hitler dared not attack Poland without the collusion of the Soviet Union. A deal was struck to divide the conquered country between the two dictatorships. Again the same day:

LATER (Four hours after midnight).— Great excitement at the Taverne tonight. About two a.m. we get the terms of the Russian-German pact. It goes much further than anyone dreamed. It’s a virtual alliance and Stalin, the supposed arch-enemy of Nazism and aggression, by its terms invites Germany to go in and clean up Poland. The friends of the Bolos are consternated. Several German editors— Halfeld, Kriegk, Silex— who only day before yesterday were writing hysterically about the Bolo peril, now come in, order champagne, and reveal themselves as old friends of the Soviets! That Stalin would play such crude power politics and also play into the hands of the Nazis overwhelms the rest of us.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 180). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The Nazi propaganda machine ramps up, preparing to counter the inevitable.

BERLIN, August 26

program. Some choice headlines in the German press today: The B.Z.: “COMPLETE CHAOS IN POLAND— GERMAN FAMILIES FLEE— POLISH SOLDIERS PUSH TO EDGE OF GERMAN BORDER!” The 12-Uhr Blatt: “THIS PLAYING WITH FIRE GOING TOO FAR— THREE GERMAN PASSENGER PLANES SHOT AT BY POLES— IN CORRIDOR MANY GERMAN FARMHOUSES IN FLAMES!”

…

“WHOLE OF POLAND IN WAR FEVER! 1,500,000 MEN MOBILIZED! UNINTERRUPTED TROOP TRANSPORT TOWARD THE FRONTIER! CHAOS IN UPPER SILESIA!”

No mention of any German mobilization, of course, though the Germans have been mobilized for a fortnight.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (pp. 185 – 186). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Like an ocean wave, the specter of war advances without remorse.

BERLIN, August 27

(Sunday) Hot and sultry today, which makes for an increase in tension. Henderson failed to return today as expected, causing the Wilhelmstrasse to accuse the British of stalling. (In another fortnight the rains start in Poland, making the roads impassable.) Some Nazis, however, think Henderson’s delay in London means the British are giving in. Tomorrow’s Völkische Beobachter will ask the people to be patient: “The Führer is still demanding patience from you because he wants to exhaust even the last possibilities for a peaceful solution of the crisis. That means a bloodless fulfilment of the irreducible German demands.” This is a nice build-up to convince the people that if war does come, the Führer did everything possible to avoid it. The V.B. ends by saying that Germany, however, will not renounce her demands. “The individual, as well as the nation, can renounce only those things which are not vital.” There you have German character stripped to the bone. A German cannot renounce vital things, but he expects the other fellow to.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 186). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

There is a harbinger of things to come, echos from the war 20 years ago. The same day.

Food rations were fixed today and I heard many Germans grumbling at their size. Some: meat, 700 grams per week; sugar, 280 grams; marmalade, 110 grams; coffee or substitute, one eighth of a pound per week. As to soap, 125 grams are allotted to each person for the next four weeks.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 187). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

There can no longer be any doubt. War is coming.

BERLIN, August 28

Troops, east-bound, pouring through the streets today. No crack units these. They were being transported in moving-vans, grocery trucks, et cetera. Germany has assured Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, and Switzerland that it will respect their neutrality in case of war.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (p. 189). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The countdown continues.

BERLIN, August 30

The British reply to Hitler’s latest came bouncing back to Berlin tonight. With what result, we don’t know. Henderson has seen Ribbentrop again, but no news of it. Tonight may well be decisive. DNB [the German news agency] has announced it will be issuing news all night tonight. This sounds ominous. The Wilhelmstrasse took pains this evening to point out to us that the non-aggression pact with Russia is also a consultative pact and that this part of it had been put into operation the last few days. This puzzles me, but I said in my broadcast tonight: “That would seem to mean— and, indeed, informed circles in the Wilhelmstrasse leave no doubt about it— that the Germans and Soviets also have been doing some talking the last few days, and, as one writer says tonight, ‘talking about Poland.’ In this connection the German press tonight does not omit to mention a dispatch from Moscow to the effect that not only has Russia not withdrawn her three hundred thousand men from its western frontier, as reported, but on the contrary has strengthened her forces there— that is, on the Polish border. I don’t know the significance of that. I only know that it’s given some prominence here.”

LATER.— Poles ordered general mobilization at two thirty p.m. today. It isn’t terribly important, because Poland has already mobilized about as many men as it has guns and shoes for. But the story gives the German press an excuse to hail Poland as the aggressor. (Germany has mobilized too, though not formally.) Since Hitler now has publicly demanded the return of Danzig and the Corridor, the German people ought to know who the aggressor is liable to be. But they are swallowing Dr. Goebbels’s pills, I fear. At midnight Hitler announces formation of a War Cabinet— to be called a Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich. Göring to preside; other members are Frick, Funk, Lammers, and General Keitel.

The sands are running fast tonight.

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (pp. 190-191). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The ax falls on the lives of millions of people.

BERLIN, August 31

(morning) Everybody against the war. People talking openly. How can a country go into a major war with a population so dead against it? People also kicking about being kept in the dark. A German said to me last night: “We know nothing. Why don’t they tell us what’s up?” Optimism in official circles melting away this morning, I thought. Huss thinks Hitler may have one great card left, an agreement with Stalin to attack the Poles in the back. I highly doubt it, but after the Russo-German pact anything is possible. Some think the Big Boy is trying to get off the limb now— but how?

LATER.— Broadcast at seven forty-five p.m. Said: “The situation tonight is very critical. Hitler has not yet answered the British note of last night…. An answer may not be necessary…. The new Defence Council sat all day. The Wilhelmstrasse has been seething with activity…. There has been no contact between the German and British governments. Instead… between Russia and Germany. Berlin expects the Soviets to ratify the Russo-German pact this evening…. The British Ambassador did not visit the Wilhelmstrasse. He had a talk with his French colleague, M. Coulondre. Then he saw the Polish Ambassador, M. Lipski. Bags at these three embassies are all packed….”

LATER. Three thirty a.m.— A typical Hitler swindle was sprung this evening. At nine p.m. the German radio stopped its ordinary program and broadcast the terms of German “proposals” to Poland. I was taken aback by their reasonableness, and having to translate them for our American listeners immediately, as we were on the air, I missed the catch. This is that Hitler demanded that a Polish plenipotentiary be sent to Berlin to “discuss” them by last night, though they were only given to Henderson the night before. 7 An official German statement (very neat) complains that the Poles would not even come to Berlin to discuss them. Obviously, they didn’t have time. And why should Hitler set a time limit to a sovereign power? The “proposals”— obviously never meant seriously— read like sweet reason, almost. They contain sixteen points, but the essential ones are four: (1) Return of Danzig to Germany. (2) A plebiscite to determine who shall have the Corridor. (3) An exchange of minority populations. (4) Gdynia to remain Polish even if the Corridor votes to return to Germany.

Tonight the great armies, navies, and air forces are all mobilized. Each country is shut off from the other. We have not been able today to get through to Paris or London, or of course to Warsaw, though I did talk to Tess in Geneva. At that, no precipitate action is expected tonight. Berlin is quite normal in appearance this evening. There has been no evacuation of the women and children, not even any sandbagging of the windows. We’ll have to wait through still another night, it appears, before we know. And so to bed, almost at dawn.

BERLIN, September 1

At six a.m. Sigrid Schultz— bless her heart— phoned. She said: “It’s happened.” I was very sleepy— my body and mind numbed, paralysed. I mumbled: “Thanks, Sigrid,” and tumbled out of bed.

The war is on!

Shirer, William L.. Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (pp. 191-194). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

The remainder of the book recounts events up to a few weeks prior to the American entry into the war.

The 6th Of June

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Continuing from the 5th of June

The invasion of Normandy in 1944 was originally scheduled for 5 June. However, bad weather forced a one-day postponement. The HBO series Band of Brothers is based on the book by Stephen Ambrose. The series begins on 4 June 1944, and we see American troops of the 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division, preparing to board their planes for the jump into France. Here is one getting a Mohawk haircut. They are scared but definitely in a fighting spirit.

One plays with his combat knife, twirling it about. He figures when he needs to use it some valuable instincts will kick in.

But Easy Company Commander First Lieutenant Thomas Meehan calls the men together and tells them to stand down for 24 hours.

The plot flashes back to 1942, when Easy Company forms up in basic training. One of the men from Easy Company, interviewed for the series, explains that bunches of people were signing up for military duty following our entry into the war, and nobody wanted any part of the Airborne when it was explained they would have to jump out of airplanes. But then it was explained there was $50 per month extra, and people clamored to get in. It has been explained the intense training was also a draw. People knew they were going into deadly combat and everybody wanted to know the person fighting beside him was trained and highly motivated.

But first they had to get past Lieutenant Sobel. The word martinet was coined for Sobel. Airborne troops needed tougher training and stricter standards, but we see Sobel applying discipline and retribution unnecessarily. He is shown as petty and vengeful. The men come to despise him.

He tricks his men into thinking they will have a day off, and he orders up a sumptuous meal. Halfway through the meal he orders the company to run the Currahee course, three miles up Currahee Hill and three miles back. A smudge on a gun sight costs a soldier his weekend pass. In fact, passes are canceled for entire company.

The men come out of training hating Sobel, but hardened. They make the required five jumps in one day and pin on their Airborne badges.

During field exercises Sobel’s lack of leadership ability shines through. He ignores the advice of cooler heads, such as Lieutenant Richard Winters, and orders his men forward, out of a concealed position. They are immediately confronted by “enemy” troops in ambush.

Then it’s to New York, where the men board a troop ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yards. At sea the men continue to discuss Sobel, and one observes Sobel is a Jew. Private Liebgott objects, noting that he is himself a Jew. The men of Easy Company are going to need to learn to get along.

In England intense combat training commences. The men are learning to kill.

Sobel, now a captain, continues to fail as a leader. Here the squad he is leading encounters a fence that is not supposed to be there. He is one grid square off his position. One of his men plays a cruel joke and shouts from concealment, imitating the voice of a commanding major. He orders Sobel to cut the fence, which Sobel does.

Winters’ squad reaches the the problem objective first, a T intersection in a road. Sobel’s squad comes trotting up late.

Sobel is reprimanded for cutting the fence. He is also informed the supposed major was in London at the time. His response is to take it out on Lieutenant Winters. He issues a change in schedule for a meeting, which change Winters does not receive. Then he prepares to discipline Winters for disobeying the order. Winters can lose a 48-hour pass in lieu of a court martial. Winters calls his bluff and prepares to confront Sobel in a military courtroom.

Non-commissioned officers in Easy Company rebel at this treatment, and they resign their ranks. It is an action that can earn them a firing squad. The 506th commanding officer, Colonel Sink, disciplines the rebels and expels one from the regiment.

But justice comes down like a hammer. Sink calls Sobel in and tells him he is being assigned to a jump training school.

Lieutenant Meehan assumes command of Easy Company, and jump training in England resumes. Winters returns from an exercise and brings Meehan into his confidence. He took a compass along in the previous exercise, and together the two plot the course of the flight. They figure the target, just a few days off, will be Normandy.

Sergeant Guarnere’s brother has been killed in fighting in Italy, and he learns about it on the night of 4 June. He develops an intense hatred for the enemy soldiers, a hatred that will spell out on invasion night.

It is the 5th of June, and in the fading light Lieutenant Winters helps each of his men in turn to their feet as they board the transport plane.

The sun sets late in England in June, and it is still daylight as the planes climb toward France.

Episode two of the series tells the story of the night parachute drop and the 6th of June. It begins with an interview with Richard Winters.

In the fading light the planes cross the Channel and into clouds over the target area. The men will jump just past midnight. Men who have never seen a shot fired in anger begin to witness shellfire coming up into the clouds.

Planes are hit and men die. Lieutenant Meehan’s plane is seen crashing into a hedgerow. There were no survivors.

We see Winters’ plane also hit, and the pilot switches on the green jump light to get the men out.

THEY JUMPED MUCH TOO LOW from planes that were flying much too fast. They were carrying far too much equipment and using an untested technique that turned out to be a major mistake. As they left the plane, the leg bags tore loose and hurtled to the ground, in nearly every case never to be seen again. Simultaneously, the prop blast tossed them this way and that. With all the extra weight and all the extra speed, when the chutes opened, the shock was more than they had ever experienced. Jumping at 500 feet, and even less, they hit the ground within seconds of the opening of the chute, so they hit hard. The men were black and blue for a week or more afterward as a result.

In a diary entry written a few days later, Lieutenant Winters tried to re-create his thoughts in those few seconds he was in the air: “We’re doing 150 MPH. O.K., let’s go. G-D, there goes my leg pack and every bit of equipment I have. Watch it, boy! Watch it! J-C, they’re trying to pick me up with those machine-guns. Slip, slip, try and keep close to that leg pack. There it lands beside the hedge. G-D that machine-gun. There’s a road, trees— hope I don’t [hit] them. Thump, well that wasn’t too bad, now let’s get out of this chute.”

Ambrose, Stephen E.. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (pp. 95-96). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

The first person Winters encounters on the ground is someone from another company.

Winters had come down on the edge of Ste. Mère-Eglise. He could see the big fire near the church, hear the church bell calling out the citizens to fight the fire. He could not find his leg bag. The only weapon he had was his bayonet, stuck into his boot. His first thought was to get away from the machine-gun and small arms fire in the church square. Just as he started off, a trooper landed close by. Winters helped him out of his chute, got a grenade from him, and said, “Let’s go back and find my leg bag.” The trooper hesitated. “Follow me,” Winters ordered and started off. A machine-gun opened up on them. “To hell with the bag,” Winters said. He set out to the north to bypass Ste. Mère-Eglise before turning east to the coast. In a few minutes, he saw some figures and used his cricket. He got a reassuring double click-clack from Sergeant Lipton.

Ambrose, Stephen E.. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (p. 103). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Slowly the men of Easy Company come together. In the darkness they hear German soldiers approaching in a column with four horse-drawn wagons. Winters orders an ambush. But Guarnere, consumed by hatred, does not wait for the order to open fire. He rips into the unsuspecting Germans with his Thompson machine gun, and there is a melee of gunfire. No American troops are lost, but the attack takes a grim toll on the Germans.

“Good,” Winters answered. “I know where that is. I can take it from here.” He set out at the head of the group, objective Ste. Marie-du-Mont. They joined a bunch from the 502d. About 0300 hours they spotted a German patrol, four wagons coming down the road. They set up an ambush, and there Guarnere got his first revenge for his brother, as he blasted the lead wagons. The other two got away, but E Company took a few prisoners.

A German machine-gun opened fire on the group. When it did, the prisoners tried to jump the Americans. Guarnere shot them with his pistol. “No remorse,” he said when describing the incident forty-seven years later. “No pity. It was as easy as stepping on a bug.” After a pause, he added, “We are different people now than we were then.”

Ambrose, Stephen E.. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (pp. 104-105). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

The 6th of June was like any other day. Eventually the dawn breaks, and we see the men of Easy Company scouting about, dodging Germans, and looking to hook up.

The grim side of war comes to them, as they encounter the first dead American soldiers. There is no hesitating. They loot the bodies of weapons and ammunition, leaving the rest for graves registration.

We hear what sounds like freight trains passing overhead. These are shells from ships in the Channel. The beach invasion has started.

German soldiers are taken prisoner. One is from Eugene, Oregon. Don Malarkey is thunderstruck. He is from Astoria, about 100 miles away. How did a boy from Eugene wind up in the Wehrmacht? His family moved back to Germany, and he joined up in 1941.

Later we see Lieutenant Speirs walking back to where the prisoners were being held, and we hear machine gun fire. This is not something that is in the book.

With Meehan presumed dead, Winters takes over Easy company. We hear the sounds of heavy guns nearby. Just 200 yards away a German gun emplacement is pounding American troops on Utah Beach. Winters is to take a contingent and neutralize the guns.

It is an intense battle, and the first thing viewers are going to wonder is what was going on. Sixty Germans are manning a gun emplacement, gunners plus solders to mount guard. And nobody is sending out scouts to see if a company of American paratroopers is just beyond the trees? Anyhow, Winters positions his men, and they prepare to give the Germans a nasty surprise.

It is several intense minutes of close-quarter fighting. Americans are firing from behind bushes and from perches in trees, and machine gun fire from the Germans is stripping bark and twigs off the trees and kicking up dirt around the attackers. Winters draws first blood.

Winters placed his machine-guns (manned by Pvts. John Plesha and Walter Hendrix on one gun, Cleveland Petty and Joe Liebgott on the other) along the hedge leading up to the objective, with instructions to lay down covering fire. As Winters crawled forward to the jump-off position, he spotted a German helmet— the man was moving down the trench, crouched over, with only his head above ground. Winters took aim with his M-1 and squeezed off two shots, killing the Jerry.

Ambrose, Stephen E.. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (p. 109). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Here the training paid off. “We fought as a team without standout stars,” Lipton said. “We were like a machine. We didn’t have anyone who leaped up and charged a machine-gun. We knocked it out or made it withdraw by maneuver and teamwork or mortar fire. We were smart; there weren’t many flashy heroics. We had learned that heroics was the way to get killed without getting the job done, and getting the job done was more important.”

Ambrose, Stephen E.. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (p. 110). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

But we see Malarkey in search of a Luger pistol. With bullets flying all over the place he dashes into open where a German soldier lies dead. No Luger. He makes it back to safety with bullets kicking up dirt around him.

It was here Winters lost his first man:

Pvt. John D. Hall of A Company joined the group. Winters ordered a charge on the third gun. Hall led the way, and got killed, but the gun was taken. Winters had three of his men secure it. With eleven men, he now controlled three 105s.

Ambrose, Stephen E.. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (p. 115). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

We see one of the unfathomable events that happen in combat. In the middle of the raging gunfight a luckless Andrew Hill stopped to ask directions.

Warrant Officer Andrew Hill, from regimental HQ, came up behind Lipton. “Where’s regimental HQ?” he shouted. “Back that way,” Lipton said, pointing to the rear. Hill raised his head to look. A bullet hit him in the forehead and came out behind his ear, killing him instantly.

Ambrose, Stephen E.. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (pp. 113-114). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

The 6th of June was like any other day. The sun came up, and the sun went down. The planet continued to spin on its axis oblivious of human foibles. That evening Lieutenant Winters gathered with some of his men in the back of a truck.

Utah Beach, unlike Omaha Beach, had seen few American casualties, less than 200. Shortly tanks, Jeeps, and trucks were rolling through. The fighting had just begun.

The series has ten episodes. Here are links to previous reviews:

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 261 of a series

Continuing my reviews of gems out of Amazon Prime Video, this is Giant From the Unknown from 1958, when studios must have put on a second shift to turn these out, because there are so many from that year. Details are from Wikipedia.

The main characters are:

I’m making no attempt to analyze this critically. Take that it is bad. Just bad. Here’s what happens.

This is Pine Ridge, presumably in California. People gathered in the main street (could be the only street), and they have troubling issues on their minds. Something has been killing and mutilating live stock. The conversation is standard: “I’m telling you there’s something mighty strange going on around here.” Satisfied?

The sheriff rolls up in a pickup truck. He’s been out to investigate, and a man is dead, brutally savaged, if that’s not redundant. About this time Wayne Brooks strolls into town. He’s been shifting in the boondocks for several days, and he’s not up on the recent happenings. His friends, Anne and Charlie bring him up to speed. We suspect Anne is sweet on Wayne, but be prepared. She will not survive the movie.

The sheriff instructs Wayne in no uncertain terms he is supposed to stay away from Devil’s Canyon, the apparent trouble spot. There is tension between the two.

Next to arrive are Dr. Cleveland and his striking daughter, Janet. Wayne fixes on Janet, and the two hit it off. Too bad for Anne. Dr. Cleveland is doing archeology in the region, and that’s an interest of Wayne’s. He shows the Clevelands his collection. Janet is horrified at the lizard Wayne keeps in a box. Wayne found it encased in a rock up in the danger region, now alive and free after millions of years. Things are getting interesting.

Wayne and the Clevelands go on an expedition in the Devil’s Canyon area. A local character named Indian Joe fires a shot from his rifle over Wayne’s head. The two are friends, but Joe wants to remind Wayne and his friends to steer clear of Indian burial sites. Joe is kind of weird, living alone in a cabin, speaking fractured English. He recalls the Injun Joe character in Tom Sawyer, but without the sinister streak.

Dr. Cleveland is looking for the remains of a Spanish expedition that was suspected of taking a sweep through the region in the days of the conquistadors. A particular character in the expedition was Vargas the Giant, giving title to this movie. Searching for metal (Spanish armor), the three find Spanish helmets and a breast plate that is large enough to fit the legendary Vargas. They leave, and a large hand, then the rest of the body, emerge from the ground. Vargas has been resurrected from his grave.

A bunch of stuff goes on that I will not get into. Suffice that Vargas is huge and deadly, and sweet Anne is alone when Vargas comes upon her. She is too frightened to run, and that’s the end of her. Do you notice that when encountering frightening threats, the victims in these movies are always too frightened to run? They just scream and throw up their arms in a futile attempt to ward off the inevitable. It’s a formula.

They find Joe murdered in his cabin. Vargas kidnaps Janet. Why Janet doesn’t go the same way as Anne we never come to know. Anyhow, that launches a massive search for Vargas.

Janet is rescued, and there begins a protracted fight to hunt down and subdue Vargas. Here is a good shot of his face.

Wayne becomes the hero of the day when he goes one-on-one with Vargas. Vargas swings and misses, crashing through the railing on the bridge above the falls.

Directing is not so bad. Acting is amateurish. The plot is juvenile. Look at this:

Charlie is despondent at the death of his sister, but he joins in the hunt. Since he’s a kid he isn’t allowed to go on the hunt, but he is assigned to bring food from the town. He arrives at the camp having forgotten to bring the food.

Charlie feels he is being treated like a kid, and he toes looking for Vargas on his own. He comes upon “Bill,” who is apparently standing sentry duty. Bill falls over dead. Nothing more is said about Bill’s death.

Janet is taken. Wayne and Dr. Cleveland drive the Jeep into town, where the sheriff is organizing a posse to hunt down Wayne, suspected of Anne’s killing. Wayne and Dr. Cleveland don’t tell the sheriff about Janet. They simply take the sheriff’s car and drive off, knowing the posse will follow them. The sheriff commandeers the Jeep and gives chase, firing his pistol at his own car.

They corner Vargas and do battle. They fire their guns. Vargas throws rocks. They give it up and call it a night. The fight will resume in the morning.

Well into the movie, while everybody is trying to figure out what’s killing the livestock and the people, we see Vargas emerge from his grave. Who was doing all that mischief while Vargas was buried underground?

A lot of the plot is like that.

You can watch a trailer on YouTube.

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 260 of a series

I was shopping around Amazon Prime Video for a new Bad Movie of the Week, and I spotted this one. The title is Frankenstein’s Daughter, and for some reason I figured this has to be bad. It’s from 1958. I will provide a few details and let readers decide for themselves. Technical details are from Wikipedia. It’s in black and white, by the way.

Even before the titles roll we see some action. We see a teen couple getting it on hot and heavy. They are Suzie Lawler (Sally Todd) and Don (Harold Lloyd Jr.). Suzie has enough of Don’s ham-fisted approach to seduction and brushes him off. He drives off in a huff, actually he’s driving a convertible of some brand, but he is in a huff.

Then Suzie turns and sees the monster coming down the street.

And then the titles roll.

The monster turns out to be Suzie’s friend, the absolutely smashing Trudy Morton (Sandra Knight), who lives with her scientist uncle, Carter Morgan (Felix Locher), She has been transmogrified unknowingly by her uncle’s lab assistant, Oliver Frank (Donald Murphy). Trudy wakes in the morning thinking the business of the night was just a bad dream.

Oliver Frank is really Oliver Frankenstein, a descendant of the infamous Viktor Frankenstein. He is supposed to be working for Dr. Morgan on a serious development program, but he’s using his position at the lab, in Morgan’s basement, to rekindle the legendary Frankenstein creation of homan life.

Frank/Frankenstein crudely puts the move on the comely Ms. Morton and is rebuffed. There is a lot of advance rebuffing in this movie. When he fails at foreplay he administers another dose of his formula to Trudy. She again roams the streets as a hideous monster, this time wearing a bathing suit and attracting the attention of the authorities. Police Lieutenant Boyd (John Zaremba) and Police Detective Bill Dillon (Robert Dix) investigate. They spot the monster—Trudy—and open fire. They miss, and she escapes. She racks it up as another bad dream.

Frank is disgusted with the efforts of his lab gnome, Elsu the gardener (Wolfe Barzell). Elsu was the previous Frankenstein assistant, and once again he has brought the wrong head. Frank must have a new head.

He finds one on the body of Suzie. He takes her out on a date, and they park in a secluded place, where he has another go at love-making. She is repulsed, and he gets hostile. She flees, and he runs her down with his car. This is classic horror movie shtick. Young, lovely, sexy female, all alone, fleeing down a road. Much pathos. If you are like me you wonder why people in these movies always run down the center strip when being chased by a car with intent to do bodily harm. See the scene from Mad Max.

Suzie’s head on the body, and the sparks begin to fly. This is classic mad scientist stuff.

She’s alive! She escapes and roams the streets. Two warehouse men working a late shift are finishing up when one goes to investigate. He cannot escape. She closes a warehouse door on him, pinning him and crushing him to death. Once again I have to wonder. What ever happened to turn and run like hell when confronted with a slow-lurching monster?

There is an interlude. Trudy’s uncle suggest she have some fun—she should invite some of her teenage friends over for a cookout on the patio. We are treated to a few musical numbers to stretch the length of the movie past 90 minutes. Suzie is sorely missed. Nobody knows what happened to her.

But matters in Morton’s lab are coming to a crashing conclusion. He has been stealing a vital component from his previous employer, Rockwell Labs. The police get on his tail and arrest him. He has already suffered a heart attack, and he dies in police custody. The cops come to investigate the goings-on at the Morton residence. Boyd returns to the station, leaving Dillon to take care of matters. The monster kills Dillon. Frank grabs Trudy and places her on the lab table. Elsu objects, and Frank orders the monster to kill him. Johnny arrives. Together, he and Trudy battle the monster in the lab. Boyd returns as the fight winds down. Johnny splashes acid in Frank’s face and throws flammable liquid on the monster, who catches fire and burns to death.

Yeah, this movie is the real thing.

And yes, Harold Lloyd, Jr. was the son of Harold Lloyd. The teenage band is Page Cavanaugh and His Trio

Bad Movie Wednesday

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One of a continuing series

Amazon is getting to be a treasure chest of watchable movies, and I much appreciate it. We picked up the service three years ago when cable TV started to become unreasonable, and Amazon is one of several pay-for items we subscribed. A recent news item that flashed by me recently noted that Amazon has five times as many movies as Netflix, but that likely includes Amazon’s pay for play selections. For the coming seasons I will not be purchasing any movies and for this series will be reviewing only theatrical productions I have already paid for on the streaming services.

That said, be advised the Wednesday series does not consist of purely bad movies. Wednesday’s movies tend to be recent productions, and especially they are ones with some redeeming qualities. However, every movie has some plot seepage, some faulty directing, that I will point out, just in case you might be thinking of investing your time with one.

This is Shattered from 2007, and it stars:

Details are from Wikipedia.

The opening sequence shows the happy Randall family, Neil, Abby, and their cute daughter Sophie in their happy home in suburban Chicago. It also shows that producers William Vince, William Morrissey, and Pierce Brosnan spent all the money on top talent, leaving little to hire a top agency to do the titles. Apparently, as the final cuts were being made, somebody told the second under secretary to the producer to get hold of the IT geek and have him type up the lettering. Arial narrow was good enough.

Anyhow, the Randall’s are preparing for separate outings, and a super sitter for Sophie has been arranged. Neil goes off to work at his downtown Chicago advertising job as Shifty Tom Ryan watches from a roof top.

Neil may be Mr. Nice Guy at home, but at work he is a shark. In short years at the firm he has worked his way upward through hook and through crook, weaseling out the rewards for the contributions of others. Here he almost gloats as he is assigned the final presentation to a client while a co-worker looks on in disgust.

After work Neil and Abby head off from the house in their Land Rover. Suddenly shifty tom Ryan appears in the back seat, and he points a pistol at them. Sofie is in the care of a phony sitter, and she will be killed if they don’t follow his advise.

He first advises them to withdraw all their money, $142,000, from the bank and to return to the car with the cash in a valise he has provided. They do that, but after the car gets going Tom opens the valise, withdraws some of the cash, and sets it on fire. Then he throws the valise bull of burning cash into the Chicago river as they cross a bridge.

There begins a sequence of humiliating performances the Randalls must execute, else Sophie will die. Tom hands Abby an envelope and directs her to take it to the office of one of Neil’s clients. Then he forces Neil to drive to a parking garage, where they watch as Abby hands over the envelope to the client. Tom has revealed to Neil the envelope contains evidence he pilfered the client’s information to gain a contract. With the envelope passing into the client’s hands, Neils career is finished, and he will likely go to jail.

Tom tricks Neil and Abby into breaking into a hotel room, thinking that Sophie is being held there. But Tom is there before them, and he forces Abby to undress and to put on a slinky red dress. Then she leaves with Tom after he gives directions for Neil to go to the top of a nearby building. There Neil observes as Tom forces Abby leave with him in the car.

But it is yet another ruse perpetrated by Tom. He forces Neil to drive to a remote cabin, where Neil’s mistress, Judy, has been waiting for his arrival. That had been Neil’s plan for the night while Abby was out on her own. Tom gives the pistol to Neil and instructs him to go inside and shoot Judy.

But Neil notices a photo of Tom on the fireplace mantel, and Judy tells him that Tom is her husband. Neil is being forced to murder Tom’s wife to save his daughter. Neil is reluctant, but Tom walks in and delivers a final ultimatum. Neil points the pistol at Judy’s head and pulls the trigger. Click!

It was a final trick. Tom had unloaded the gun. Now Tom reveals his scheme. He found out Neil had been punching Judy’s ticket, and this is his revenge on Neil and Judy. He allows Neil to leave with Abby, who has remained in the car all the time.

On the way home Abby demands an explanation, and Neil blames the whole thing on his bos, who, he claims, has been having an affair with Tom’s wife. Only it has all been a mistake. Tom had the wrong person.

Back at the house they find that Sofie is safe in bed. There never was any abduction. The sitter was legitimate. Abby knows this, because she carefully chose the sitter. It has been a plot cooked up with Tom after she discovered Neil had been screwing around.

And that’s the end of the movie, except it is now revealed that Tom did nor burn all the money, because Abby did not withdraw it from the bank. Tom burned some fakes and threw the evidence off the bridge.

The evidence Abby handed over to the client was a folder of blank pages. Neils’s career is not ended, and he will not go to jail. He still has his money. He still has his job. He still has his daughter. But, Abby asks, “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” I found that last line to be cryptic. Wikipedia has the answer. Butterfly on a Wheel is the original title of the movie:

The film’s title is an allusion to a line of Alexander Pope‘s poem “Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot“: “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?” The line is usually interpreted as questioning why someone would put great effort into achieving something minor or unimportant, or who would punish a minor offender with a disproportional punishment.

The weakness in the plot is that events must thread the needle so finely and so often that there is not a lot to believe Neil could have unraveled the whole thing any number of times by calling Tom’s bluff. Abby and Tom counted simultaneously on Neil’s perfidy and his humanity, seemingly contradictory impulses.

On a final note…

This blog draws maybe 150 hits per day. Granted, some items, e.g., “Food Babe,” have pulled 1500 reads in a single day, but movie reviews are not a main interest of Skeptical Analysis.

On the other hand, the Specular Photo blog has over 100 followers, and routinely pulls a chunk of readers every time I post something—anything. As long as people are reading I should start providing more stuff to read. There is a passel of classic movies out there, and they deserve serious review. I will also be reviewing TV content and non-theatrical movies, e.g., Amazon productions. Click on over to the photo blog and start following. I promise some serious reviews starting soon. As soon as I catch up on the reading assignments for the philosophy course I am auditing.

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 259 of a series

Thank God for Amazon Prime Video, repository for a treasure of old science fiction films. From 1958 this is The Astounding She-Monster. Without a lot of elaboration, here is a summary of the plot and a list of acting credits. Details are from Wikipedia.

As the movie opens a young, rich, and beautiful heiress ,Margaret, leaves her palatial home for another boring afternoon schmoozing with her rich friends. She does not get very far. Two rough characters, Nat and Brad, waylay her and take her away in their car. The object is ransom.

They are really bad. While poor Margaret sits trussed up and gagged in the back seat, the mobsters moll, Esther, drinks from a bottle and tosses the empty out the window onto the pavement. They are litterbugs, besides.

They are headed for the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles. Meanwhile, geologist Dick Cutler is out walking his dog when he spots a meteorite landing with a loud crash.. He and the dog return and settle in, not realizing what the night holds for them.

Brad, driving the mobsters’ car, encounters the Astounding She-Monster in the middle of the traffic lane. She is clothed in a skin-tight, shimmering body suit and is wearing spiked heels. We used to call these FMN shoes. He swerves and clips a tree. The car is disabled. The mobsters make it to Dick’s cabin. Nat goes in first to check it out and threatens Dick with a gun. The mobsters move in.

Brad goes outside to check on what’s raising a ruckus. He encounters the Astounding She-Monster and fires several rounds into her from his pistol. It does not phase her, and she kills him by touching him, giving him a fatal dose of radium poisoning.

Nat goes out to investigate what happened to Brad, and he encounters the Astounding She-Monster. At a certain point in the plot she comes at him and backs him against a precipitous drop-off. She lunges at him, and he steps aside. She plunges to the bottom and lies still. He returns to the cabin and announces he has killed the Astounding She-Monster.

But no. She is alive. She re-appears outside the cabin, and the Earth people prepare a scheme to roast her alive with gasoline. Before they are ready she crashes through the window and menaces them.

They flee outside, where she follows. The gasoline bomb attack fails, and she kills Nat and Esther. She has already killed the dog. She later kills a bear that’s been prowling around the cabin.

Dick has an idea that she is wearing a layer of platinum for protection. He prepares a solution of aqua regia to douse on her.

That works. When the Astounding She-Monster enters the cabin, Dick hits her with a flask of aqua regia, and she succumbs immediately, completely vanishing, even her spiked heels. Dick and Margaret recover the medallion she has been wearing around her neck. They open it and find a note, in English, that describes the purpose of her mission to Earth. She has come to invite Earth to join a league of planets for peace. And they have killed the ambassador.  Things are not looking good for Earth.

Do a search on YouTube. All or parts of the movie are available for watching.

Bad Movie Wednesday

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One of a continuing series

Films that came out last year are streaming on Amazon Prime Video, where I obtained these screen shots. This is The Commuter, starring Liam Neeson in the title role as Michael MacCauley, former NYPD detective, more recently selling life insurance. Details are from Wikipedia.

This is going to be another of those Liam Neeson thrillers with any number of improbable connections, but it is intriguing to watch. When you think it might finally be over, it’s not. It’s not over until it’s over.

Life for Michael MacCauley is a tightly-lace routine. His clock radio comes on with today’s news. It’s the time of economic melt-down, and Michael is sailing right into it.

Morning after morning he rises, goes through the morning routine with his delightful wife in his delightful home in his delightful neighborhood north of New York City. The seasons come and go as Michael catches the same train into work.

On this day his employer hands him his walking papers. The economy will no longer support his expense. He is 60 years old, and his world is crashing down. He does not tell his wife he has been fired as he meets an old NYPD buddy, Patrick Wilson as Detective Lieutenant Alex Murphy, at a bar for a beer. He discusses his situation with Alex before heading out to catch his usual train back home.

Then, on this day of days, things begin to really go wrong. He bumps into a stranger, who walks away with his phone as the train doors close. A woman, Vera Farmiga as Joanna, sits down and tells him he is being given a great offer. There is $25,000 in cash hidden in the restroom, and if he takes the cash he will agree to locate another passenger on the train and mark that passenger with a tracking device. He will get an extra $75,000 if he completes the assignment. Then she gets off the train.

He finds the money and is naturally suspicious. He quickly learns he is up against an incredibly adept agency, as all his efforts to counter the scheme fail. He passes a written note to a fellow passenger, then watches in horror as the man is pushed in front of a bus before he can talk to the police.

Things get crazy. The person Michael is supposed to identify is not one of the usual passengers. That narrows things down. He suspects the man carrying a guitar case. He confronts the man. The case carries a guitar. But it is a left-handed guitar, and the man points a pistol at Michael using his right hand. Michael kills the man in a struggle, clubbing with the guitar, rather what remains of the guitar after the struggle. Michael recovers the pistol. But he subsequently discovers the body of a police agent stashed in a compartment beneath the floor of a train car.

The person Michael is supposed to tag, “Prynne” (real name: Sophia), is scheduled to get off at the Cold Springs station. FBI agents are waiting there to meet the targeted person to obtain critical evidence of a major crime. Joanna keeps in contact with Michael by phone, anticipating his every move. She says her group has his family, and if he kills Prynne his family will be spared. Else they will die.

Before the train arrives at Cold Springs Michael identifies Prynne, a young woman who witnessed a murder carried out by New York police officers. Michael attempts to stop the train, and forces the conductor to pull the emergency switch. But that just sets off an explosion that kills the motorman and prevents the train from stopping. Michael has moved all passengers into the last car in the train, and he and a conductor decouple the car from the train as it roars through Cold Springs without stopping. We are treated to a prolonged train wreck, as cars slide and tumble along the tracks.

Police have been told that Michael is holding hostages inside the car, and Detective Murphy comes aboard to negotiate his surrender. While negotiating, Murphy uses language Prynne recognizes as identical to that used by the police officer who murdered her cousin.

Murphy is killed, FBI agents obtain the girl and the evidence. Some time later Joanna is aboard a train and Michael confronts her.

He is once again an NYPD detective and is about to arrest her.

What’s wrong with this plot is what’s wrong with so many. The scheme is overly complex, really outlandish. The bad guys know a person will be on the train and getting off at Cold Springs. In order to kill this witness and keep the key evidence (turns out to be a computer disk drive), they involve a multitude of people and a chain of action, any broken link of which would foil their plot. Their plot goes so far as to rigging a bomb that will go off if the emergency stop is activated. People, if you are going to that much trouble, why don’t you just firebomb the train, kill everybody aboard, and destroy the evidence? Then, who would watch the movie?

Neeson is famous for the Taken series, all involving highly improbable plots and famous for the “I will find you” threat.

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 258 of a series

Where else? Amazon Prime Video is the source for this Bad Movie of the Week. It’s Devil Girl from Mars, from 1954 out of England. Details are from Wikipedia. Watch it if you get a chance. Here’s a summary.

A meteorite lands near Inverness, Scotland, and Professor Arnold Hennessey (Joseph Tomelty) and newspaper reporter Michael Carter (Hugh McDermott) drive up from London to investigate. They stop at The Bonnie Prince Charlie inn, where all the action takes place. Also at the inn are fashion model Ellen Prestwick (Hazel Court), bar tender and waitress Doris (Adrienne Corri), proprietor Mrs. Jamieson (Sophie Stewart), and her husband (John Laurie). Not seen here is the Jamieson nephew Tommy and escaped convict Albert Simpson (Peter Reynolds).

Albert is Doris’s lover, and she has stashed him in a spare room.

With a loud rush in the sky, a spacecraft from Mars appears and lands nearby. The Devil Woman exits. She is played by Patricia Laffan.

Her first task on exiting the spacecraft is to encounter and annihilate a crippled handyman with her ray gun.

She confronts the residents of the inn and announces the intention of Mars to get rid of the useless people on Earth, taking back robust men to replace Martian men annihilated in a battle between the sexes.

Tommy escapes the inn by way of an adjacent tree, and Albert joins him. The Devil Girl discovers them, paralyzes Albert, and takes Tommy aboard the spacecraft.

Professor Hennessey offers a trade, himself for Tommy, and he uses his visit to the spacecraft to discover its weaknesses.

Tommy describes his adventures aboard the spacecraft.

The Devil Girl makes one final demand. She will take one of them with her as a guide when she attacks London, and she will obliterate the inn and all inside.

Albert learns of these plans, and when the Devil Girl returns to take the one chosen by the group, Albert is alone to meet her. The spacecraft takes off with Albert aboard, and explodes.

And that’s the end of the story. Neat, what?

One thing I did not mention is the robot. Whenever the Devil Girl really wants to bring the hammer down she summons the robot, which has tremendous power. We see it vaporize somebody’s house. Here’s an image.

You can watch the trailer on Youtube:

Don’t have an Amazon Prime Video account? Watch the movie on YouTube.

Bad Movie Wednesday

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One of a continuing series

I saw the play at the St. James Theater in New York when it ran there, and I must have seen the movie version later, because the movie had Nancy Kwan, and I remember her. It’s Flower Drum Song from 1961, and here is a screen shot of the title sequence from Amazon Prime Video. I’m showing this, because it’s by Pacific Title, and I was a fan for their stuff for decades. Pacific Title was practically all Saul Bass, and I will have more about that later.

Let’s take as a given that this is little more than a vehicle to showcase musical scoring by Richard Rogers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, so I’m going to show some visuals and skim the plot. Details are from Wikipedia.

The title sequence, some animated water colors, depict a cargo ship leaving Hong Kong and entering San Francisco bay. We see a Chinese girl and her father lurking in the cargo hold, taking refuge inside some shipping crates when a crewman comes below to check out things. The crates get stashed on the dock, and when nobody is around the two emerge. They have made it to America.

Not only to America, but Chinatown in San Francisco. For this I give them much credit, because when I was in San Francisco I needed a map to find Chinatown. Anyhow, broke and alone, illegally, in the USA, they decide to pick up some money with a street performance. Dr. Han Li  (Kam Tong) tells the gathering crowd that his daughter, Mei Li (Miyoshi Umeki) will perform a flower drum song. It’s A Hundred Million Miracles. They pick up some small change, but little help from the crowd. They have directions to the their intended destination, one Samuel Adams “Sammy” Fong (Jack Soo), but the directions are in Chinese, and nobody reads Chinese. Up comes a cop, also Chinese, and he wants to know why the two don’t have a license to perform on the streets. The cop quickly figures out their situation and asks the crowd for somebody who reads Chinese.

With the help of a woman from the crowd, they learn that Sammy Fong can be found at his night club, called Celestial Gardens. They go there straight away, to Sammy’s discomfort. Sammy’s mother has contracted a marriage for him to the shy Mei Li. She may be cute, but she is painfully flat-chested, not Sammy’s type. Besides, Sammy has a thing going with one of his cabaret performers, Linda Low (Nancy Kwan). That is a dilemma.

Another family comes into the picture. It is the family wealthy widower Wang Chi-Lang (Benson Fong), whose oldest son, Wang Ta (James Shigeta), is graduating from college and is unmarried.

This is the opening for another R&H musical dance sequence, featuring the younger Wang siblings.

But Wang Ta has latched his eyes on Linda Low, who is tired of getting the runaround from Sammy. Sammy has been stringing her along for five years with no signs of a marriage proposal. When Wang Ta phones asking her out on a date, she responds, visions of marriage to a wealthy heir swirling in her head. Another R&H number, as the scantly-clad Linda prances in front of her dressing mirror. It’s a magical piece of cinematography as the images take on lives of their own—different poses, different costumes. In a rebuff to the coming feminist wave, she sings”I Enjoy Being a Girl.” Fun to watch.

Linda goes after Wang Ta with a full-court press, rushing him, as it were, toward the alter. There are multiple love triangles. Helen Chao (Reiko Sato) has the hots for Wang Ta, but he never figures it out. She exits with unrequited love.

New Year’s in Chinatown is the excuse for a parade and another musical dance number featuring Nancy Kwan.

Sammy, seeing his favorite girl slipping away, sabotages her romance with Wang Ta. He invites the Wang family to a front-row table at his night club, where Linda is scheduled to perform a risqué number. Wang Chi-Yang is incensed. Wang Ta is humiliated. The romance with Linda is off.

Wang Ta goes out and gets plastered. Helen takes him back to her place, where he sleeps it off. She dreams of a love that will not be. It’s the occasion for another R&H musical dance number.

Sammy proposes marriage to Linda. They imagine married life. “Sunday,” with nothing to do. Kids play, friends call, people come and go from the Fong residence. The children watch TV on a huge black and white screen. A cowboy and an Indian are doing battle. They are interrupted by one of the children shooting at them with his toy pistol. They crash through the glass and enter into the ruckus going on in the Fong residence.

Sammy’s mother insists the marriage contract she negotiated be honored. A three-family council agrees. Sammy must marry Mei Li. Sammy sings to Mei Li on the street, advising he is not the right husband for her. He sings “Don’t Marry Me.” They see no way out. The wedding is scheduled for tomorrow. Sammy urges Mei Li to “think of something.”

She does. Watching a B&W movie on TV she sees a dark-haired woman telling the sheriff that she can’t marry so and so. She came into the USA illegally across the Rio Grande. She is a “wetback.”

And that does it. Next day, at the alter with Sammy, Mei Li lifts her veil and says to all she cannot marry Sammy because she came to the country illegally. Her back is wet. Now it’s Sammy’s mother’s turn to be incensed. She declares the marriage is off. Immediately there is a double wedding, Sammy marrying Linda and Wang Ta marrying Mei Li. And that’s the end of the movie.

So, Charlie Chan aside, this was a Hollywood breakthrough with a nearly totally Chinese cast. It may have marked the end of having British actor Sidney Toler playing a Chinese detective or Hungarian actor Peter Lorre playing a Japanese detective. Except for the obviously European mugger who robs Wang Chi-Yang in an early scene and the B&W actors on various TV sets, everybody is Chinese. Except…

Except that the requirements to perform in this production included:

  • Be Chinese
  • Be able to act
  • Be able to dance and sing
  • Fit the role of one of the characters

Not many people available at the time possessed all these attributes. That is one reason a number of the performers are Japanese substituting for Chinese (westerners can’t tell them apart). Soo, Shigeta, and Sato are obviously Japanese names. Jack Soo became famous as Detective Nick Yemana on the Barney Miller TV series. James Shigeta later was Vice Adm. Chūichi Nagumo in the movie Midway.

Singing was also problematic.  B.J. Baker dubbed for Nancy Kwan., John Dodson) dubbed for Kam Tong, and Marilyn Horne sang for Reiko Sato.

Saul Bass is famous for a host of imaginative movie title sequences, notably The Man with the Golden Arm, Around the World in Eighty Days, Cowboy, Vertigo, and North by Northwest.

Update

Before posting this to Facebook and elsewhere I need to add some comment. A key feature of the story is the cultural clash between Old World Chinese and their American counterparts.

First is the previously mentioned observation that Mei Li and her father need to scrap for somebody in San Francisco’s Chinatown who can read Chinese. This despite all the store signs obviously in Chinese.

Of course, the main theme of the story is the Chinese custom of arranged marriage versus the American custom of shopping cafeteria style.

And we see the woman of the house ordering groceries on the telephone. She wants this and that, and she wants 1000-year eggs. “And make sure they are fresh.” Yes, that’s funny.

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 257 of a series

This is a spectacular 1985 production that blew right by me when it came out. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime Video, where I obtained these screen shots. Details are from Wikipedia.

It’s Lifeforce, based on The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson. It features:

The acting and dialog are not up to the level of the story line (most interesting) and the effects by John Dykstra. I collected a number of interesting scenes to show off Dykstra’s efforts and also to give male readers a look at Space Girl. Here is the story line much condensed.

An American space craft, the Churchill, explores Halley’s Comet. Get a look at the crew, because everybody is going to die, except Colonel Tom Carlsen.

At the comet they discover a 150-mile-long craft, devoid of life except for three humanoid creatures entombed in mysterious casings. There are two males and one female, dubbed Space Girl.

They pack the containers into the Churchill and head back to Earth. When the craft arrives back to Earth orbit there is no communication, and when the shuttle Columbia goes to investigate the interior is charred, and only charred bodies are found, plus the three containers. The containers are brought back to Earth (in England) and examined. Without warning one of the containers opens, and Space Girl sits up. She is ravishing.

But she is deadly—a space vampire. Without explaining, she sucks the life force out of those who fall into her deadly embrace. Some of Dykstra’s work.

The Churchill escape pod returns to Earth with Colonel Carlsen inside. He tells of the mysterious deaths of the crew and his destruction of Churchill and his escape. The girl has a powerful sexual appeal, and she is dangerous.

Space Girl escapes, and in a dream Carlsen realizes he can channel her mind. Space Girl attacks others in London and enters their bodies. One is a comely wench who hitches a ride and seduces the driver.

Carlsen and others get on the trail of Space Girl and are led to an institution for the criminally insane. They get the cooperation of Dr. Armstrong, but he turns out to be infected. They grab him and drug him, extracting details of an alien invasion.

London is overrun by the infected and quarantined. Nielsen drives into the city to locate and neutralize Space Girl. It’s like a zombie apocalypse in there.

He spots the life force of millions of people shooting into space from what appears to be St. Paul’s

Dr. Fallada  follows, and he comes upon a male vampire and runs him through with a sword of leaded iron. The vampire dies spectacularly.

And turns into a leather-winged dragon man.

Fallada comes upon a hole in the floor of the sanctuary, where the life force of victims is shooting toward the roof in a brilliant stream.

Carlsen has located Space Girl, and they are locked in a passionate embrace. Carlsen cries out to Fallada for help.

Fallada tosses down the lead iron sword, and Carlsen runs it through Space Girl’s back and through his own body.

They ascend together to the space vampire ship, which departs Earth forever.

And that’s the end of the movie.

Bad Movie Wednesday

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One of a continuing series

If you arrived at this review by way if my Facebook feed, then you need to click the link above to get last week;s review. The reason I did not link to True Confessions on Facebook is because Facebook insisted on selecting an NSFW image. Enjoy.

This Wednesday’s movie comes by way of a different route—it’s not streaming on one of my Internet services. I recorded it a few years ago from Turner Classic Movies, and I feel the need to feature it now, because its 70th anniversary is drawing nigh, and the anniversary of the events has arrived. From 1950 it’s The Big Lift, a story based on the Berlin Airlift at the onset of the Cold War. Some history is necessary.

After French and British forces in Europe were defeated by the invading German army in 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill refused Adolf Hitler’s demands for a cessation of hostilities. Hitler began to make plans for the invasion of the British Isles, and the Battle of Britain began—an air war. German planes began to bomb British airbases, and the inadvertent bombing of London initiated retaliation by the British on Berlin. The bombing of the German capital by allied forces continued up to the Russian assault on the city in 1945. The Russian battle to defeat Berlin’s defenses completed the almost total destruction of the city. Berlin had a population of 4.3 million at the start of the war in 1939. At the cessation of hostilities the population was 2.8 million, and that increased to over 3.1 million by 1947 due to the influx of returning civilians. And that was the setting at the time of the events in this movie.

The Wikipedia entry for this film states that all remote scenes were filmed in occupied Berlin, including in all four of the zones of occupation. All American soldiers appearing in the movie are active duty personnel, except for lead actors Montgomery Clift as T/Sgt. Danny MacCullough and Paul Douglas as M/Sgt. Hank Kowalski. Details are from Wikipedia.

Following their victory over Nazi Germany in May 1945, the four conquering powers, France, Great Britain, the USA, and the USSR, divided the country into four zones of occupation. Separately Berlin was, itself, divided into four zones. The city was entirely within the Soviet zone of occupation. Shortly the alliance with the Soviet Union broke down, as Stalin made increasingly overbearing demands, initiating the Cold War. The first crisis of the Cold War came in 1948, when the Soviets, seeking to wrest control. blockaded highways, railways, and canals connecting Berlin to the other zones of occupation, leaving the Soviet-occupied zone as the only source of supply for the city. The plan was obviously to starve the city into submission and to take complete control. Here we see a (possibly dramatized) barrier being lowered over a road, blocking a supply truck into the Soviet zone.

American response was immediate. We next see American armed forces personnel at movies, parties, and elsewhere being interrupted by orders to report immediately. They are briefed on the operation to supply Berlin by air, the only channel the Soviets failed to block.

Air crews begin to arrive for duty.

In Berlin Sergeant MacCullough participates in a staged presentation as the first supply planes land. He is presented with a loving thank you from Frau Frederica Burkhardt (Cornell Borchers), a war widow. She is delicious.

Sergeant MacCullough participates in other staged displays of friendship between the Americans and the German civilians. It was important to win the hearts and minds of people who might want to accept Soviet rule.

But MacCullough is intrigued by the comely Frau Burkhardt, and he goes searching. He finds her at working loading debris into a bin. All between 18 and 55 are required to work on the reconstruction. In an early communique after Germany’s defeat General Dwight Eisenhower told the Germans they had created this situation, and Americans would not help them to clean it up.

It is likely this is actual footage of Germans working to clear the rubble. Americans came to admire their defeated enemy. Of all the ravaged countries in Europe, the Germans seemed most eager to get to it and to clean up the mess they had brought on themselves.

Romance develops.

I saw this in my home town movie theater when it first came out, and two scenes stuck in my mind during the past 69 years. One is this. There was food and other stuff to be had in the American sector. People would travel from the Soviet sector and bring back daily necessities and some treasures, one being coffee. The Soviets objected to this, and they confiscated this contraband when they could. MacCullough and Frau Burkhardt are traveling on the subway into the Soviet zone, where she lives. At the border the train stops while East German soldiers search for contraband. The woman on the left has a packet of coffee, which she intends to exchange for coal when she gets home. The “fat” man on the right advises her to hide it in her hat, and she does. But when the soldiers come, they can smell coffee, and they demand to know who has the coffee. The fat man tells them the woman has it, and the soldiers seize it, and they leave. The others are totally pissed at the fat man, but after the soldiers leave he reveals his own stash, which the soldiers would have found if he had not given up the woman’s coffee. He shares his largess with the others.

The other scene that stuck with me is this. Sergeant Kowalski was a prisoner of the Germans during the war, and he spies his former guard and corners him on a lonely street. He recalls how the guard used to give him German lessons, using the butt of his rifle to discipline Kowalski when he was too slow to learn. Now Kowalski turns the tables on the German, who is not allowed to fight back.

All this does not go well with the authorities, however, and there is a mad scene as Kowalski’s friends help him elude the police.

There is also the debacle involving Frau Burkhardt over which sector she is in and in which sector she belongs. There is a tussle at a place where an imaginary line on the ground demarks the boundary.

The romance with Frau Burkhardt falls apart spectacularly. She has been coaxing MacCullough to marry her and to take her to the United States.. But she has an ongoing liaison with another American soldier, now repatriated. Her plan was to marry MacCullough and then divorce him once she got to America. And that’s the end of the story.

There were three air routes into Berlin, and the airlift kept all of them busy to the extent possible. A continuous train of cargo flights followed each route into the city, leaving no room for mistakes. If a plane missed its landing it had to fly back with its load and get back into line.

Immediately after the Soviets lifted the blockade, Allied forces started running trucks into Berlin by way of the Autoban. In the meantime Seventeen American and eight British aircraft was lost, with 101 crew casualties, mostly due to non-flying incidents.

In 1961 the East German government erected a wall to separate their sector (inherited from the Soviets). That wall came down in 1989, and the divided German state was made whole again.

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 256 of a series

This one has been around longer than my oldest daughter, and I have always known about it, but this is the first I ever watched it. It’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory from 1971 out of Paramount Pictures. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime Video, where I obtained the screen shots. Details are from Wikipedia.

And, despite its grand production and featuring Gene Wilder in the title role, it actually is a bad movie. The plot is ruinous, making little sense, even if you are into wild flights of fancy.

But first, the central theme is candy, and I almost got diabetes watching the opening sequence. It shows chocolate and chocolate candy being made. The background for the title is a river of chocolate.

Cocoa beans flowing from burlap bags into a grinder, powered cocoa tumbling into a mixer, and folds of chocolate forming an endless stream. All manner of chocolate candy being produced and packaged.

There is an elementary school somewhere in England, and when class lets out all the kids dash out and stampede down the street to the candy store. Here we watch candy store owner Bill (Aubrey Woods) perform the film’s signature number “The Candy Man” as he sashays around the shop, flinging candy here and about, watching the kids scramble for the sweet stuff.

And here is the first hitch in the plot. The kids went in to purchase candy, and Bill is throwing it around. Who’s going to pay for candy when they can just pick it up off the floor?

One who does not patronize the candy store this day is impoverished paper boy Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum). He runs his delivery route, collects his measly payment, and then goes home to his widowed mother and his four mooching grandparents, who spend all day in bed while Charlie and his mother tend to them.

But the Wonka candy factory in town is a source of great mystery. Owner Willy Wonka years ago shuttered the premises, allowing nobody in and nobody out. Candy still flows from the factory, but how it operates, nobody knows.

Flash news! Willy Wonka is offering the prize of a lifetime of chocolate to those who find one of five golden tickets wrapped up with a Wonka Bar.

Sales, to use a tired expression, go through the roof. Everybody wants one of the golden tickets. We see the five winners in turn. They are all shown as absolutely worthless individuals, including the supremely self-possessed Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole). Her father is fabulously wealthy, and he hires a legion of repressed child workers to open thousands of Wonka bars, looking for a golden ticket. One day a ticket is found, as Veruca knows to be her right.

Days pass and four more tickets are discovered by equally worthless individuals, the fifth by a Paraguayan millionaire. “As each winner is announced on TV, a man whispers to them.” He tells them he represents a rival candy company, and he offers each to sell him an Everlasting Gobstopper from the factory. It’s Wonka’s supreme invention.

Charlie’s hopes of finding the last ticket are dashed. But then the news announces the millionaire’s ticket is a forgery, and the fifth ticket is still out there. Charlie does not know this yet when he finds some money in a drain. He purchases a Wanka Bar with the money and finds the golden ticket. The deadline for turning in golden tickets is the following day, and Charlie and his grandfather show up with a horde of people at the Wanka factory gate, waiting for the appearance of the mysterious Willy Wonka.

He appears.

He invites in the five winners. All are children accompanied by a relative. Wonka requires they all sign a cryptic waiver before they can proceed, and then he leads them on a tour of his candy land.

One by one, winners are eliminated by means of tricks devised by Wonka. The gluttonous Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner) and his mother are the first to go. Against all instruction and advice, he attempts to drink from the river of liquid chocolate, and he falls in, disappearing into the drain and never to be seen again. His mother follows.

We see the secret of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory: an army of imported midgets, Oompa-Loompas.

After all but Charlie and his grandfather are eliminated, Willy Wonka announces Charlie will not get the prize, after all. He has violated an obscure provision hidden in the fine print of the waiver he signed. They are told to leave immediately by the door.

Before they leave, Charlie hands back the Everlasting Gobstopper he has. And that is what the whole thing is about.

This has been a ruse by Willy Wonka to discover somebody deserving of taking over the factory as he retires. Charlie wins the prize, but it’s not a lifetime of chocolate, it’s the entire factory. And that’s the end of the movie.

Yeah, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The movie is based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Dahl quickly disavowed the film version of his book. A new version of the film was released in 2005.

After portraying Charlie in the film, Peter Ostrum, from Dallas, Texxas,  elected not to pursue an acting career. Back home after the filming, he became interested in a family horse, and eventually launched onto his career as a veterinarian.

You can watch Aubrey Woods perform “The Candy Man” on YouTube.

Bad Movie Wednesday

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One of a continuing series

Patience has its rewards. Amazon Prime Video is streaming this, giving me a second look at it in decades. But first some background:

True Confessions is a confession magazine targeted at young women readers. It was originally published by Fawcett Publications, beginning in 1922.

I recall reading articles back when I lived with my parents in Granbury, and it didn’t take me long to realize that the “confessions” were not actually true. They were made up stories by professional writers, but written in the manner of somebody confessing to past transgressions, consistently salacious. And that was the inspiration for this movie, True Confessions,

True Confessions is a 1981 crime film directed by Ulu Grosbard and starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall as the brothers Spellacy, a priest and police detective. Produced by Chartoff-Winkler Productions, it is adapted from the novel of the same name by John Gregory Dunne, loosely based on the Black Dahlia murder case of 1947. Dunne wrote the screenplay with his wife, novelist Joan Didion.

What gets this to the title is the involvement of a Catholic priest who hears episodic “confessions” throughout the plot. This came out in 1981, and it features brothers Msgr. Desmond Spellacy (Robert De Niro) and LAPD Tom Spellacy (Robert Duvall). Details are from Wikipedia.

This is a low key police procedural with emphasis placed on the interaction between the two brothers and how this rolls out in an atmosphere of church politics and a high-flying gangster. The opening scene shows Detective Tom Spellacy driving through the Mojave Desert, and we know the date is in the early 1960s, because Tom is listening to the car radio, and the news announcer is talking about President Kennedy planning to fly back to Washington.

Tom arrives at a desolate parish church where his brother is the priest. They have not spoken for some time, and the bad news is that Desmond is dying. How Father Desmond came to be here is the subject of the story.

Time shifts back to just after WWII in Los Angeles, and Tom arrives at a scene requiring investigating. His 1940s car is overheating, and he raises the hood to allow the radiator to boil over. People who did not live in this time may need to be reminded that following December 7, 1941 the government took over the American automobile industry, and no personal vehicles were produced again until 1945. Tom does not have one of these.

Tom and his partner, Detective Frank Crotty (Kenneth McMillan), walk up a few flights to where a parish priest has died in bed with a prostitute. They know him.

The madame is Brenda (Rose Gregorio). She called the police in to help keep the story about the priest quiet. Tom also forces the prostitute to hand back money she took from the priest’s wallet. Brenda and Tom have some history. They previously handled payoffs from gangster Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning). When the jig was crashed, Brenda took the fall and did time, while Tom stayed free and went straight(er).

Now Jack is dying, and, seeking absolution, he is generous toward the church. Here he is dancing an Irish gig at a wedding. They’re all Irish here.

Inspired by the Black Dahlia case from 1947, a woman, likely a prostitute, is found murdered. Her body was cut in two and dumped in a vacant lot. Tom zeros in on the case while others in position attempt to get him to let it slide. Tom suspects corruption.

Meanwhile, Jack Amsterdam’s largess is roiling the diocese. Burgess Meredith  is Monsignor Fargo, nominally in charge of building projects. Money is flowing in from criminal sources, and he is noticing shortages on the projects. The Cardinal (Cyril Cusack) wants Fargo banished to a desert parish, and he orders Desmond to do it.

Tom becomes incensed at the coddling being lavished on Amsterdam, and he crashes a lunch between Desmond and Amsterdam. An iconic quote comes from this scene, where Amsterdam asks whether he and Tom ever met previously, and Tom reminds him that he was once his bag man when he was running prostitutes.

The two detectives watch a stag film (porn) that involved the dead woman. Tom identifies one of the other prostitutes in the film as the one that was in bed when the priest died.

The two brother visit their mother in a nursing home.

The church awards Jack Amsterdam “Layman of the Year” and adorn him with a red sash. Tom is present at the festivities, and he is galled at the hypocrisy. He attacks Amsterdam and rips of the red sash, cursing Amsterdam and calling out his criminal past. He suspects Amsterdam’s complicity in the murder.

Following the trail of the porn film, Tom identifies the man who made the film. That man is now dead, but the trail leads to an abandoned military base. Investigation leads to discovery of a make shift film studio and a bloody murder scene. Tom suspects the film producer murdered the woman on orders from Amsterdam, who then had the man killed.

But it becomes known that Monsignor Desmond and a prominent politician gave the dead woman a ride when she was hitch-hiking, and the politician had an extended sexual liaison with her before Amsterdam took charge. The monsignor’s downfall is depicted as newsmen question him about his relationship with the dead woman.

It’s back to 1963 again, and ‘Desmond tells his brother his heart is giving out, and he has less than a year to live.

The thing that strikes me is this is Los Angeles and not Boston, and all the church people are Irish and not Hispanic. And Monsignor Desmond is played by Robert DeNero, who I always figured to be Italian, but who cracks Irish jokes with a brogue in the movie. But careful reading reveals that DeNero’s (di Nero) mother was Irish.

Robert Duvall first caught our attention as autistic “Boo” Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 255 of a series

The title says it all. Any movie advertised as Mars Attacks! has got to be bad, even if it sports a top tier cast that includes

Yeah, this flick features Tom Jones performing the supremely ironic It’s Not Unusual.

It’s from 1996 and is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, where I obtained the screen shots. Details are from Wikipedia.

Talk about a spoof of a spoof! Here’s the plot. The opening is a bucolic scene of a farmer stopping by to visit his neighbor and commenting on his Filipino barbecue. Only it’s not a barbecue he smells. Its a herd of horses on fire running down the road. A flying saucer from Mars rises above the horizon. This gets the show off to a roaring start.

Hordes of Martian flying saucers approach the Earth.

The president (Nicholson) takes the news in stride. His generals want to nuke them.

Supercilious Professor Donald Kessler (Brosnan) pontificates and recommends a more nuanced response.

A meeting is arranged in the Nevada desert.

Things go well at first.

Then somebody releases a white dove of peace, and the Martian ambassador is shocked. He whips out his nifty proton disintegrator and blasts the lovely creature. Then most everybody else.

Things go downhill from there. A meeting between the ambassador and a joint session of Congress turns out to be a ruse. The ambassador pulls out his blaster and nukes the Congress.

The movie then follows the formula, with world landmarks coming under attack. Bunches of people get vaporized.

When Richie Norris’s (Haas) trailer home is attacked, he hops into the pickup truck and rushes to the side of his grandmother Florence (Sylvia Sydney), just in time. The Martians are menacing her as she listens to Slim Whitman‘s “Indian Love Call” on her ear buds. When the ear bud cable gets yanked out of the jack, the music goes to the speakers, and it shatters the Martians.

And that’s the secret to defeating the Martians, and humanity is saved. People come out from where they have been hiding into a safer and better world.

Yeah, it’s corny, but it was nice to see and hear Tom Jones.

Bad Movie Wednesday

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One of a continuing series

Spoiler alert. This review is going to reveal the ultimate twist to the plot, so stop reading now if you plan to watch the movie. Of course this one has been around since 1997, so if you haven’t seen it by now, then it’s your own fault. It’s The Game, featuring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn and now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, the source of the screen shots. Details are from Wikipedia.

It’s a tale of convoluted deception. We see the early life of Nicholas van Orton (Douglas). He has grown up among wealth and privilege, but his father killed himself early in life by taking a dive from the top of the family mansion. Nick has grown to become a person of great wealth of his own making, and he is as hard as granite. Divorced, he lives alone in the mansion. He runs his investment banking business with machine precision and without warmth.

Come his birthday, and Nicholas receives a message that his brother Conrad (Penn) wants a lunch meeting. It is short and cold, Conrad leaves him the gift of a game hosted by a concern named Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). He advises Nick to take advantage. It will be a life-changing exercise.

Nick has the intention of blowing it off, but he spies the offices of CRS and becomes intrigued.

Stopping in, he finds a concern in flux. The offices are being fleshed out, but he presents his gift card, and is interviewed by CRS representative Jim Feingold (James Rebhorn). Nick has accustomed himself to being treated with considerable sufferance, but Fiengold is detached and somewhat dismissive. He fakes Nick into undergoing a lengthy and tedious interview process. Nick is then shown the door and told he will be contacted. He subsequently receives a call on his private number telling him he has not been selected to participate in the game.

But that was only a ruse. Coming home that night, Nick discovers a clown mannequin in the driveway, at the spot where his father’s body came to rest decades before. He takes the dummy inside and eats his dinner. The newscaster on TV is Daniel Schorr (played by himself), who on occasion interrupts his business reporting to speak straight to Nick. Nick discovers the dummy contains a camera that is transmitting video from the room. The game is on.

At a business conference where Nick is in the process of dismissing a key employee for lackluster performance, he attempts to pull the requisite documents from his briefcase. However, he cannot open the briefcase, and he storms out of the meeting. Things have begun to go sour in Nicks life of domination over events and other people.

At a restaurant a waitress, Christine (Deborah Kara Unger) spills a drink on him and initiates a nasty confrontation. She is fired from her job, but Nick follows her out, and they encounter a man collapsing on the street, and they come to his aid. The police arrive and require that Nick and Christine ride in the ambulance with the victim, but when they get to the emergency entry garage, the victim is taken away, leaving the two alone in the garage. Then the lights go out, and the real adventure starts.

There are flights from the police, shootings, discovery, and a penultimate confrontation between Nick and Christine. He discovers she is working for CRS. Then he blacks out from the drink she has given him, and he wakes up in a cemetery in Mexico, no money, no passport. He is forced to use his survival skills to get back home.

It all comes to a head, as Nick figures it’s a scheme to gain access to his accounts and steal all his money. He returns to CRS and confronts the people there, and now he has a gun he obtained when a mugger attempted to hold him up. When CRS men pull weapons, Nick takes Christine hostage on the roof of the building.

Now it’s Christine’s turn to be alarmed. It has all been part of the game, but Nick was supposed to have a fake semiautomatic pistol. She sees he has obtained a real gun (from the mugger), and she tries to warn the CRS people, who are in the process of breaking through the door to the roof. Nick takes aim and shoots the first person to come through the door. It’s Conrad. The game has gone horribly wrong.

Nick realizes what he has done, and he ends it by stepping off the roof of the building.

But many floors down he crashes through the fake glass roof of the restaurant and onto an air cushion. It has all been part of the game. Conrad is not dead, and he holds up a tee shirt with the logo, “I was drugged and left for dead in Mexico, and all I got was this stupid shirt.” Everybody wishes Nick a happy birthday.

Everybody is happy, and as they start to leave Nick follows Christina out to her car. She is going to the airport. She invites Nick to have coffee with her at the airport.

Complaint number one: most of the scenes were shot so dark that it was difficult to pick up on a lot of the action. I had to use Corel PaintShop to brighten up many of the scenes before posting them.

Much of this is highly improbable. A lot of stuff had to go right, or somebody was going to get killed. Worth a watch, however, provided you are not already reading this.

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 254 of a series

This came out in 1962 when I was deadly serious about college and probably missed it. I must have seen it first on TV, and I have some history with it. I worked with a guy named Mike, and I was doing an impersonation of some sort, and he called me the terrible triffid. Now others use the appellation. This is The Day of the Triffids, a classic and a really bad one. It’s one of that bag of down-market features currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, where I obtained the screen shots. Details are from Wikipedia.

This is London. A brilliant meteor display lights up the sky, and inside a botanical section of the Christal Palace, triffids attack and kill the security guard. The meteor display has triggered them to go rogue. They can kill and devour animals, and they are not rooted to the ground. They roam and multiply.

Merchant naval officer Bill Masen (Howard Keel) misses out on meteor display, because he is laid up with eye surgery and has his eyes bandaged. The doctor promises that tomorrow at 0800 the bandages will come off and Masen will be able to see again. He hopes to see pretty Nurse Jamieson (Colette Wilde), but he never does.

Comes morning, and Masen is sleeping in bed when hears Big Ben strike nine. It’s 0900, and the doctor has not come to remove the bandages. Calling out, Masen receives no response, so he removes the bandages and goes looking. He finds the doctor, blind. Everybody who looked at the meteor display has gone blind. The doctor commits suicide by jumping out the window.

Meanwhile, drunkard scientist Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore) and his wife Karen (Janette Scott) work on research at a lighthouse on a spit of rock off the coast of Cornwall. They, too, missed the display, and they have not been blinded. Tom waits for the resupply boat that will bring him another bottle of scotch. It never arrives. Neither does radio contact work very well. They are puzzled, but they soon learn the fate of the rest of the world.

Masen goes hunting through the streets of London. The few people he comes across are blind.

At the train station a train thunders in, apparently operated by a blind engineer, because it crashes into the platform. A survivor is school girl Susan (Janina Faye), who can see. They team up and go to Masen’s ship.

Masen uses the ship’s radio to gain information of the catastrophe. He and Susan listen in as an airliner, everybody aboard blind, crashes. Coincidentally the crash is near where the ship is docked.

Masen and Susan make it to France, where they meet other survivors at a château. One is Christine Durant (Nicole Maurey).

Escaped criminals invade the château. They, being in prison, avoided the light show and are not blind. They take over and turn the château into a debauchery. Triffids invade and kill everybody except Masen, Susan, and Christine.

The three make it to Cadiz in Spain, where Susan discovers an ice cream truck that plays music over speakers. They take the truck to an estate in the country near Alicante, where a submarine is available to take on survivors.

There they are menaced by triffids. They discover that sound attracts the triffids, and they use the music from the truck to distract the triffids.

When triffids attack, they encounter an electrified fence that Masen has constructed.

But the fence will not hold them, so Masen employs the hose from a fuel truck and sprays fire onto the triffids. Then, while Susan and Christine get away in a car, Masen decoys the triffids with the sound truck.

Susan and Christine make it to the submarine and are taken aboard. As they watch, Masen reaches the bluff above the water, and he dives in to be picked up by crew members from the submarine.

Meanwhile, at the light house, the triffids multiply and break in. As a last resort, Tom sprays them with a fire hose. But the fire hose uses sea water, and the sea water melts the triffids. They have discovered how to defeat the triffids, and humanity is saved.

I don’t think I have to explain why this movie is bad. For one, it is massively disjoint. The Odyssey of Masen and Susan comprises the bulk of the plot. It’s a chain of unrelated episodes without cohesion.

The bit about the convicts at the château breaks up the flow of the action, seeming to have been inserted as a distraction, perhaps to burn off some celluloid.

From France they go to Cadiz. That is way south on the Atlantic coast. From there they drive in a few hours to Alicante, which is on the Mediterranean coast, hundreds of miles away. Really?

The movie is based on the novel of the same name by John Wyndham. The Kindle edition is available on Amazon for $6 ($5.99 plus tax), and I obtained a copy for comparison. There is none. About the only similarity between the two is Masen and the matter of the triffids. There is a Susan character, as well, but no Christine. No lighthouse, either.

So we have to wonder what inspired screen writers Bernard Gordon and Philip Yordan to stretch Wyndham’s apocalyptic yarn into such a pot boiler. The book appears to have promise. There is a strong parallel to The Death of Grass (No Blade of Grass) by Samuel Youd (John Christopher), that came out five years after this book. Recommended reading. There is also a movie, but it’s not currently streaming on Prime, so I will watch for it and catch it when it does.

Bad Movie Wednesday

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One of a continuing series

Everything comes to those who wait. I have been looking for Cujo to stream, and it’s on Hulu starting this month, where I obtained these screen shots. It’s based on the Stephen King novel, but I am not prepared to review the book. Rest assured, however, that there will be differences between the book and the movie.

The intro sequence shows a cute bunny rabbit, could be Marlon Bundo. Anyhow, the cute bunny rabbit is stalked by a giant St. Bernard dog named Cujo, hence the title.

Cujo chases the rabbit down a hole, and when he sticks his nose into the hole a rabid bat bites him on the nose, setting the plot for the movie.

Next we see the Trenton family, Donna (Dee Wallace), young Tad (Danny Pintauro), and husband Vic (Daniel Hugh-Kelly). Vic is a high-pressure advertising genius.

But Vic has trouble with his Jaguar sports car, and he is advised to take it to mechanic Joe Camber (Ed Lauter), who lives out in the country. Out in the sticks, really, but I’m being polite and saying “country.” Two different worlds meet here. Donna meets Joe’s repressed wife Charity (Kaiulani Lee).

She also meets Cujo, the family dog.

The scene shifts back to the suburbs, where Donna is having a fling with family friend Steve Kemp (Christopher Stone). She tries to break off the liaison, but Steve resists. He comes to the house and tries to force himself on Donna. Vic comes in. Things get tense.

Back at the Camber estate, the effects of the rabies virus become manifest. Joe’s neighbor Gary Pervier (Mills Watson) is the first to take note. He is outside pilling some trash onto the pile that is already there when Cujo approaches menacingly. Cujo attacks and kills Gary.

This is an interesting point of the plot. Joe and Gary are depicted as country bumpkins with all the expected bumpkin traits. They are coarse, slovenly, and disrespectful of women. Charity has won $5000 in the lottery, and she takes her son to visit her sister for a few days, clearing the deck for the remainder of the plot.

Cujo next kills Joe. Vic leaves on a business trip, leaving Donna with their broken down Pinto. It has trouble, and Vic has instructed her to take it to Joe to be fixed. When Donna arrives, with Tad in the car, Cujo attacks, and the two become trapped inside their car. The car takes this opportunity to go belly up, so Donna cannot simply drive away. This was in the days before cell phones, so the remainder of the plot involves Donna and Tad trapped inside the sweltering car while Cujo attempts to get at them. It’s the entire plot.

Two days pass. Vic tries to phone home (before cell phones) and gets no answer. Steve tries to phone Donna and gets no answer. Steve comes to the house, and finding Donna gone, trashes it and leaves. Vic comes home to find Donna and Tad gone, the house trashed. He has learned about Donna’s liaison with Steve, and he informs the police. Nobody has yet brought the Camber estate into the picture.

When they do, the sheriff (Sandy Ward) drives out to investigates. He fails to notice Donna and Tad trapped in the Pinto, and he fails to notice Cujo until too late. He becomes Cujo’s third victim.

Now Donna becomes desperate. Tad is having an asthma attack and is near death. She exits the car and does battle with Cujo, using a baseball bat that has been left lying in the yard. She breaks the bat on Cujo, and Cujo impales himself on the splintered handle.

Donna rushes Tad into the house and revives him in the kitchen with water. Cujo comes around and crashes through a window, spraying broken glass all over. For some reason Donna has brought the sheriff’s pistol with her, and the reaches for it, lying on the table. Exit Cujo. We weep.

About this time Vic drives up in his Jaguar, and the Trenton family is united again, and that is the end of the movie.

Yeah, there’s a bunch to look sideways at. The entire plot is about the mother and son trapped for two days by a large, rabid dog. The business with Steve is a side show to give the plot some human interest.

We see the sheriff, a professional lawman, drive up at the Camber place and fail to notice two people trapped inside a car that has blood smeared all over the windows.

We see Donna club Cujo with a baseball bat and gore him with the broken handle. She grabs the sheriff’s gun, but she does not shoot the dog. Do you believe that?

Yes, this is late 20th century America, and we see Tad driving around in a nifty Jaguar, while his loving (?) wife is forced to get around in a Pinto on its last legs. If I did that kind of shit with Barbara Jean I would be out the door before I could get a last word in.

The part of Cujo was played by Moe.

Bad Movie of the Week

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Number 253 of a series

Bonanza! I struck the mother lode. Amazon Prime Video is streaming a truck load of these, so be prepared for the worst for weeks to come. I didn’t even have to click on the link to know this one was going to be bad. With a name like Island Claws, will there be any doubt? It’s from 1980.

Wikipedia does not have an entry for this, and the one on IMDb is devoid of a plot narration, so I’m just going to wing it with the plot outline.

There’s a marine biological lab, and they are studying crabs and how to grow them faster and maybe larger. Do you suspect danger? There is a nuclear power plant nearby, and it has discharged radioactive water. Do you suspect danger?

Here we see happy workers at the lab with the news lady (long blond hair), discussing the research. She is doing a write-up. Her father runs the power plant. There turns out to be no connection.

Just to be sure what this movie is all about.

The setting is a Florida island, and the crowd is very home-spun. Night life is the local crab shack, and a feature is the guy playing the banjo. The crab shack is owned by Moody (Robert Lansing).

The guy playing the banjo is going to be the first to die.

Meanwhile some Haitian refugees land on the island in a boat, and they hide out in the forest. If you are like me you are wondering why they landed on the island, because now they have to get off the island and make it to the mainland.

The banjo player goes home drunk after an evening of playing and drinking at the crab shack. Alone in his trailer home in the woods, he hears the crabs menacing outside. He opens the door and sees a sea of crabs. He closes the door, but it is no use. They come in through the windows. Panicked, he knocks over a kerosene lantern and sets the trailer on fire. It burns with him inside, and something unseen topples it on its side.

The news lady strikes up a romance with the young researcher hunk at the biology lab, and she heads toward home on her bike, through the woods. She encounters a swarm of crabs blocking the trail and dumps her bike. She makes it back to her boyfriend at the crab shack and gets her injured arm attended. People begin to wonder about the crabs.

Two other workers at the lab are romantically involved. When the guy proposes marriage, the girl rebuffs him, and they go for a drive in his jeep. After discussing the matter, she elects to walk home alone, through the woods. This does not look good.

She is attacked by something in the woods, and her friends, hearing her screams, run to her rescue. She is taken to the hospital with serious injuries to her arm and is delirious, saying something about a claw.

Meanwhile, the Haitians are hiding out in the woods and are foraging for food on the island. A young Haitian girl wanders off from the camp. Moody’s dog follows her. She encounters something horrible in the woods, and the dog attacks it. She is injured, and the dog returns to Moody and dies.

The death of the dog angers one local yokel, and he organizes a posse to hunt down the Haitians. They charge off into the woods. Nothing ever comes from it. They return without finding the Haitians or the crabs.

You know how this is going to end. A giant crab wreaks havoc on the island, destroying Moody’s house and a bunch of other stuff. People at the lab prepare tranquilizers to neutralize the crab. Eventually the islanders and the Haitians team to confront and kill the crab.

And that’s the end of the movie. It brings to mind an old song title that somebody made up—the title, not the song. “Don’t watch for the shrimp boats, honey. I’m coming home with the crabs.”