Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.
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Richard Willis > Captain ComicsAugust 4, 2024 at 11:28pm
I probably wasn’t as thorough as you and was only looking at the photos on IMDB. Yvonne Romain (as Yvonne Warren, her birth name) has at least one scene with Christopher Lee as a character called Rosa in the Boris Karloff movie Corridors of Blood (1958) which is available on Tubi. I plan to watch it tonight.
I was first impressed by Oliver Reed as the really bad guy Bill Sikes in the musical movie Oliver! (Twist, not Reed)
I finally saw that least-seen of rock 'n' roll films, the rarely-shown-due-to-its-tortured-legal-history Rolling Stones doc, C--ksucker Blues (1972). The Stones were concerned when they saw the results. That's pretty telling, given that their previous documentary ended with a murder.
I must admit, JD, that I've never even heard of "C--ksucker Blues," but your post did inspire to re-watch Gimme Shelter for the first time in 40+ years (and the second time ever). I knew the gist of what happened at the 1969 free concert at the Altamont Speedway, but I was too young the first time I saw it to fully appreciate the context of what it was I was seeing. A fascinating documentary.
JD DeLuzio > Jeff of Earth-JAugust 5, 2024 at 7:53am
I developed my comments on CB Blues in a review, here. Obviously, it's not for all tastes.
*cough*
Cocksucker Blues - Everything2.com
I could give trigger warning|TRIGGER WARNINGS but if you read, listen to, or watch anything with this title and you're surprised that things start ge…
Interesting article in an interesting place. I know I have read that Rolling Stone list before, or one like it.
At least two noteworthy podcasts have handled Altamont: Episode 11 of Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, which I have heard and can recommend, and #109 of Most Notorious! which I have not heard and therefore can neither recommend nor pan.
Watched Hammer's Abominable Snowman (1957) last night. It wasn't bad, although you could tell a lot of the Himalayas scenes were shot on a sound stage. But honest, only if you're looking. They tried to blend the studio shots and the ones shot in the Pyrenees, and did a pretty good job. Don't look for it, and you probably won't see it. Or maybe you will, but it didn't ruin the movie for me. Wiki tells me some of those sets were later re-used for Christopher Lee's Fu Manchu films.
Peter Cushing is here again, which seems almost inevitable. That's OK, I like Cushing. I like his delivery, for one thing. Not only does it locate when the film was made, but he enunciates really well! I couldn't get closed-caption to work on this particular film (on Fawesome), so it was Peter Cushing who was my guide. No matter how unintelligible other characters would get, I could always understand Cushing, and he had the most lines.
Also, when I think of Hammer Films, I think of his gaunt face and exaggerated widow's peak. Cushing made 22 films at Hammer, and I expect I'm going to watch most of them.
Then's there Forrest Tucker! Back in the '50s, Hammer had a co-production deal with an American producer to distribute Hammer Films in the U.S., and the deal they made included having an American actor as a co-star. This was the last Hammer movie to do so, according to Wiki, after the success of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) gave the studio the wherewithal to negotiate directly wtih American distributors. But in Abominable Snowman they were contractually required to have an American, and tough-guy actor Forrest Tucker (Westerns, F Troop) was tapped. Tucker made three or four movies with Hammer,but I dunno how many of them I'll see in my Hammer odyssey. Most are crime or war pictures, and I'm focusing on horror.
Snowman was adapted from a stage play (also starring Cushing) and is slightly more cerebral than your average Hammer B-movie. It does suggest, for you to presumably chew over, that we (humans) are the bad guys, and the snowmen are just waiting for us to wipe ourselves out, so they may inherit the Earth. Not a terribly original or deep thought, but more than you usually find at Hammer.
The movie adds a wife for the Cushing character and a sidekick that the play doesn't have. They do prove useful in the end, to make the movie's ending less bleak than the stage show. I approve, as I wasn't in the mood for a bummer.
No matter how unintelligible other characters would get, I could always understand Cushing, and he had the most lines.
My hearing still pretty good, but I have defaulted to using closed captioning, which is not always correct, because modern directors don’t demand clarity from the actors.
My hearing still pretty good, but I have defaulted to using closed captioning, which is not always correct, because modern directors don’t demand clarity from the actors.
Joan and I got in the habit of using CC when we were in a BBC mode, because we had trouble with pretty much anything that wasn't RN -- especially Scottish accents. Oh for the days of the universal Mid-Atlantic pronunciation! Anyway, we can't live without it now.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
Now I know what they used to mean by a "laff riot." This is a very funny movie, with some great actors, that is utterly filthy. Yes, there are a zillion cameos, but they're all welcome, as the plot actually calls for them and they play out as necessary (and are masterfully handled).
You don't have to be a comics fan to enjoy this movie, as attested to by my wife, who laughed all the way through, and the lady next to her, who had a conniption fit. But if you are a comics fan, then you can enjoy all the freeze-frame moments that are lifted right out of the comics, be able to name every member of the Deadpool Corps (some played anonymously by the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Wrexham AFC striker Paul Mullin and Blake Lively) and be the only person laughing when the film shows a shoe store named "Liefeld's Only Feet."
I thought about listing some of my favorite lines, but I don't want to spoil anything if you haven't seen it. Recommended.
CAPTAIN CLEGG (1962)
Called Night Creatures in the U.S., this Hammer film is more crime fiction than horror. It takes place in Dymchurch in Romney Marsh, an actual place that Wiki tells me was important for smuggling in England in the 17th century to the 19th centuries. Which is what the story is about: A ship is sent to Dymchurch in 1794 whose captain has been ordered to investigate rumors of smuggling and arrest any involved. They're denying the Exchequer proper remuneration! I guess that makes Captain Collier (Patrick Allen) technically the hero, but Peter Cushing, as Dr. Blyss, is obviously the star.
The story actually begins in 1776 -- it's a British flick, so that date isn't particularly significant that I can tell -- where a "mulatto" sailor is being punished for raping a pirate captain's wife. (They just say he "attacked" her, but he knocked her up, so rape it is.) He's mutilated and left on an island. We're never allowed to see Captain Clegg's face, which told me to expect a Big Reveal, and it wasn't hard to guess who it would be.
In 1794, we open with Dr. Blyss, a reverend or pastor or whatever CofE church leaders were called then, leading his flock in a church service. Cushing is wearing an unconvincing black wig with a white streak in a ... pageboy, I want to say? Very quickly we learn that Clegg was buried there after he was caught by the Royal Navy and hanged. It is mentioned a lot more than it should be. It turns out there IS smuggling -- rumrunning -- and Blyss is the leader of the gang. He uses the money to help the poor and the town's general prosperity. When necessary, the gang (which consists of just everybody we ever meet in the film, so maybe the whole town's in on it) rides around in outfits with phosphorescent skeletons painted on them that make them look like ... men riding around in outfits with phosphorescent skeletons painted on them. But we're to believe that they look like skeletons riding on skeletal horses. They are called "The Marsh Phantoms" and that's as close as we're going to get to anything supernatural.
A secondary plot matches Yvonne Romain and Oliver Reed as star-crossed lovers (he's son of the local lord, she's a commoners and doesn't know who her father is, hint, hint). The romance plays out predictably, has no chemistry and is no more compelling here Reed's romance in Curse of the Werewolf. That was with a different actress, but Romain played his mute mother in that film. At least here we get to hear her voice.
Anybody who's watched sufficient movies, which we all have, can guess how this all plays out. And it's less interesting than it sounds. I have no idea why this movie was made. Maybe the smuggling at Dymchurch was a big historical deal that deserved a movie in 1962. In 2024, I can't really recommend it.
To be fair, maybe that's how Deadpool & Wolverine will seem 62 years from now.
Joan and I got in the habit of using CC when we were in a BBC mode, because we had trouble with pretty much anything that wasn't RN -- especially Scottish accents. Oh for the days of the universal Mid-Atlantic pronunciation! Anyway, we can't live without it now.
I usually can deal with accents. When I watched the first series of All Creatures Great and Small, which is set in a rural part of Northern England, one of the farmers sounded like he was speaking Russian. I wish I had had closed captioning then, but I didn’t.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
Thanks for not spoiling it. I intend to see it in the near future.
CAPTAIN CLEGG (1962)
Called Night Creatures in the U.S., this Hammer film is more crime fiction than horror. It takes place in Dymchurch in Romney Marsh, an actual place that Wiki tells me was important for smuggling in England in the 17th century to the 19th centuries.
In February1964, the TV show The Magical World of Disney ran a three-part story, starring Patrick McGoohan as Dr Christopher Syn, called The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, which I think I watched in my fifteenth year. Both it and the Captain Clegg movie are based on a fictional book from 1915 by Russell Thorndike. Thorndike was an actor, writer and WWI veteran. The 1915 book was the end of the Dr Syn saga. He went on to write several Dr Syn prequel books in later decades. More from Wiki:
Peter Cushing, as Dr. Blyss, is obviously the star.
I guess using the name Dr Syn for Cushing’s character would have suggested too much.
The story actually begins in 1776 -- it's a British flick, so that date isn't particularly significant that I can tell -- where a "mulatto" sailor is being punished for raping a pirate captain's wife. (They just say he "attacked" her, but he knocked her up, so rape it is.)
In the early 60s British terminology was still very polite. I’ll never forget that an article from one of the staid newspapers of the time said that a woman’s torso (just the torso) found in the river hadn’t been “interfered with,” as in “attacked.”
A secondary plot matches Yvonne Romain and Oliver Reed as star-crossed lovers.
At least here we get to hear her voice.
I heard her voice in the Boris Karloff movie Corridors of Blood, in which she played a barmaid who is almost raped by Christopher Lee’s character. She was also a secondary character in one of Elvis’ movies. She didn’t have a long career and wound up in a stormy marriage to Leslie Bricusse, who was a lyricist who worked with John Barry on the songs Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice.
I have no idea why this movie was made. Maybe the smuggling at Dymchurch was a big historical deal that deserved a movie in 1962.
Since the book was from 1915 and both the movie and the TV miniseries were almost fifty years later, I suspect expiring copyrights.
Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh
Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh is the first in the series of Doctor Syn novels by Russell Thorndike. The book follows Christopher Syn, the ki…
Replies
I probably wasn’t as thorough as you and was only looking at the photos on IMDB. Yvonne Romain (as Yvonne Warren, her birth name) has at least one scene with Christopher Lee as a character called Rosa in the Boris Karloff movie Corridors of Blood (1958) which is available on Tubi. I plan to watch it tonight.
I was first impressed by Oliver Reed as the really bad guy Bill Sikes in the musical movie Oliver! (Twist, not Reed)
I finally saw that least-seen of rock 'n' roll films, the rarely-shown-due-to-its-tortured-legal-history Rolling Stones doc, C--ksucker Blues (1972). The Stones were concerned when they saw the results. That's pretty telling, given that their previous documentary ended with a murder.
I must admit, JD, that I've never even heard of "C--ksucker Blues," but your post did inspire to re-watch Gimme Shelter for the first time in 40+ years (and the second time ever). I knew the gist of what happened at the 1969 free concert at the Altamont Speedway, but I was too young the first time I saw it to fully appreciate the context of what it was I was seeing. A fascinating documentary.
I developed my comments on CB Blues in a review, here. Obviously, it's not for all tastes.
*cough*
Interesting.
Here's an article (from the "Dark Shadows Every Day" blog, of all places) about the Altamont Free Concert you might find interesting/entertaining.
Interesting article in an interesting place. I know I have read that Rolling Stone list before, or one like it.
At least two noteworthy podcasts have handled Altamont: Episode 11 of Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, which I have heard and can recommend, and #109 of Most Notorious! which I have not heard and therefore can neither recommend nor pan.
Watched Hammer's Abominable Snowman (1957) last night. It wasn't bad, although you could tell a lot of the Himalayas scenes were shot on a sound stage. But honest, only if you're looking. They tried to blend the studio shots and the ones shot in the Pyrenees, and did a pretty good job. Don't look for it, and you probably won't see it. Or maybe you will, but it didn't ruin the movie for me. Wiki tells me some of those sets were later re-used for Christopher Lee's Fu Manchu films.
Peter Cushing is here again, which seems almost inevitable. That's OK, I like Cushing. I like his delivery, for one thing. Not only does it locate when the film was made, but he enunciates really well! I couldn't get closed-caption to work on this particular film (on Fawesome), so it was Peter Cushing who was my guide. No matter how unintelligible other characters would get, I could always understand Cushing, and he had the most lines.
Also, when I think of Hammer Films, I think of his gaunt face and exaggerated widow's peak. Cushing made 22 films at Hammer, and I expect I'm going to watch most of them.
Then's there Forrest Tucker! Back in the '50s, Hammer had a co-production deal with an American producer to distribute Hammer Films in the U.S., and the deal they made included having an American actor as a co-star. This was the last Hammer movie to do so, according to Wiki, after the success of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) gave the studio the wherewithal to negotiate directly wtih American distributors. But in Abominable Snowman they were contractually required to have an American, and tough-guy actor Forrest Tucker (Westerns, F Troop) was tapped. Tucker made three or four movies with Hammer,but I dunno how many of them I'll see in my Hammer odyssey. Most are crime or war pictures, and I'm focusing on horror.
Snowman was adapted from a stage play (also starring Cushing) and is slightly more cerebral than your average Hammer B-movie. It does suggest, for you to presumably chew over, that we (humans) are the bad guys, and the snowmen are just waiting for us to wipe ourselves out, so they may inherit the Earth. Not a terribly original or deep thought, but more than you usually find at Hammer.
The movie adds a wife for the Cushing character and a sidekick that the play doesn't have. They do prove useful in the end, to make the movie's ending less bleak than the stage show. I approve, as I wasn't in the mood for a bummer.
Captain Comics said:
No matter how unintelligible other characters would get, I could always understand Cushing, and he had the most lines.
My hearing still pretty good, but I have defaulted to using closed captioning, which is not always correct, because modern directors don’t demand clarity from the actors.
My hearing still pretty good, but I have defaulted to using closed captioning, which is not always correct, because modern directors don’t demand clarity from the actors.
Joan and I got in the habit of using CC when we were in a BBC mode, because we had trouble with pretty much anything that wasn't RN -- especially Scottish accents. Oh for the days of the universal Mid-Atlantic pronunciation! Anyway, we can't live without it now.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
Now I know what they used to mean by a "laff riot." This is a very funny movie, with some great actors, that is utterly filthy. Yes, there are a zillion cameos, but they're all welcome, as the plot actually calls for them and they play out as necessary (and are masterfully handled).
You don't have to be a comics fan to enjoy this movie, as attested to by my wife, who laughed all the way through, and the lady next to her, who had a conniption fit. But if you are a comics fan, then you can enjoy all the freeze-frame moments that are lifted right out of the comics, be able to name every member of the Deadpool Corps (some played anonymously by the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Wrexham AFC striker Paul Mullin and Blake Lively) and be the only person laughing when the film shows a shoe store named "Liefeld's Only Feet."
I thought about listing some of my favorite lines, but I don't want to spoil anything if you haven't seen it. Recommended.
CAPTAIN CLEGG (1962)
Called Night Creatures in the U.S., this Hammer film is more crime fiction than horror. It takes place in Dymchurch in Romney Marsh, an actual place that Wiki tells me was important for smuggling in England in the 17th century to the 19th centuries. Which is what the story is about: A ship is sent to Dymchurch in 1794 whose captain has been ordered to investigate rumors of smuggling and arrest any involved. They're denying the Exchequer proper remuneration! I guess that makes Captain Collier (Patrick Allen) technically the hero, but Peter Cushing, as Dr. Blyss, is obviously the star.
The story actually begins in 1776 -- it's a British flick, so that date isn't particularly significant that I can tell -- where a "mulatto" sailor is being punished for raping a pirate captain's wife. (They just say he "attacked" her, but he knocked her up, so rape it is.) He's mutilated and left on an island. We're never allowed to see Captain Clegg's face, which told me to expect a Big Reveal, and it wasn't hard to guess who it would be.
In 1794, we open with Dr. Blyss, a reverend or pastor or whatever CofE church leaders were called then, leading his flock in a church service. Cushing is wearing an unconvincing black wig with a white streak in a ... pageboy, I want to say? Very quickly we learn that Clegg was buried there after he was caught by the Royal Navy and hanged. It is mentioned a lot more than it should be. It turns out there IS smuggling -- rumrunning -- and Blyss is the leader of the gang. He uses the money to help the poor and the town's general prosperity. When necessary, the gang (which consists of just everybody we ever meet in the film, so maybe the whole town's in on it) rides around in outfits with phosphorescent skeletons painted on them that make them look like ... men riding around in outfits with phosphorescent skeletons painted on them. But we're to believe that they look like skeletons riding on skeletal horses. They are called "The Marsh Phantoms" and that's as close as we're going to get to anything supernatural.
A secondary plot matches Yvonne Romain and Oliver Reed as star-crossed lovers (he's son of the local lord, she's a commoners and doesn't know who her father is, hint, hint). The romance plays out predictably, has no chemistry and is no more compelling here Reed's romance in Curse of the Werewolf. That was with a different actress, but Romain played his mute mother in that film. At least here we get to hear her voice.
Anybody who's watched sufficient movies, which we all have, can guess how this all plays out. And it's less interesting than it sounds. I have no idea why this movie was made. Maybe the smuggling at Dymchurch was a big historical deal that deserved a movie in 1962. In 2024, I can't really recommend it.
To be fair, maybe that's how Deadpool & Wolverine will seem 62 years from now.
Captain Comics said:
Joan and I got in the habit of using CC when we were in a BBC mode, because we had trouble with pretty much anything that wasn't RN -- especially Scottish accents. Oh for the days of the universal Mid-Atlantic pronunciation! Anyway, we can't live without it now.
I usually can deal with accents. When I watched the first series of All Creatures Great and Small, which is set in a rural part of Northern England, one of the farmers sounded like he was speaking Russian. I wish I had had closed captioning then, but I didn’t.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
Thanks for not spoiling it. I intend to see it in the near future.
CAPTAIN CLEGG (1962)
Called Night Creatures in the U.S., this Hammer film is more crime fiction than horror. It takes place in Dymchurch in Romney Marsh, an actual place that Wiki tells me was important for smuggling in England in the 17th century to the 19th centuries.
In February1964, the TV show The Magical World of Disney ran a three-part story, starring Patrick McGoohan as Dr Christopher Syn, called The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, which I think I watched in my fifteenth year. Both it and the Captain Clegg movie are based on a fictional book from 1915 by Russell Thorndike. Thorndike was an actor, writer and WWI veteran. The 1915 book was the end of the Dr Syn saga. He went on to write several Dr Syn prequel books in later decades. More from Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Syn:_A_Tale_of_the_Romney_Marsh
Peter Cushing, as Dr. Blyss, is obviously the star.
I guess using the name Dr Syn for Cushing’s character would have suggested too much.
The story actually begins in 1776 -- it's a British flick, so that date isn't particularly significant that I can tell -- where a "mulatto" sailor is being punished for raping a pirate captain's wife. (They just say he "attacked" her, but he knocked her up, so rape it is.)
In the early 60s British terminology was still very polite. I’ll never forget that an article from one of the staid newspapers of the time said that a woman’s torso (just the torso) found in the river hadn’t been “interfered with,” as in “attacked.”
A secondary plot matches Yvonne Romain and Oliver Reed as star-crossed lovers.
At least here we get to hear her voice.
I heard her voice in the Boris Karloff movie Corridors of Blood, in which she played a barmaid who is almost raped by Christopher Lee’s character. She was also a secondary character in one of Elvis’ movies. She didn’t have a long career and wound up in a stormy marriage to Leslie Bricusse, who was a lyricist who worked with John Barry on the songs Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice.
I have no idea why this movie was made. Maybe the smuggling at Dymchurch was a big historical deal that deserved a movie in 1962.
Since the book was from 1915 and both the movie and the TV miniseries were almost fifty years later, I suspect expiring copyrights.
So informative! All my questions answered! Thanks, Richard!
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