What I Watched: Roger Corman’s 1957 classic film Attack of the Crab Monsters.
From IMDb: Attack of the Crab Monsters is one of the earliest films produced and directed by film legend Roger Corman. The screenplay was written by longtime Corman collaborator Charles B Griffith (A Bucket of Blood, Death Race 2000), who also has a small part in the film.
Here’s that start of Horror and Sons accurate review:
The film brazenly shows off its ego by immediately throwing its large cock all up in your face. No, really. It’s a pretty large-sized rooster and it’s literally the first thing you see. Okay, so it’s actually the distributor’s mascot, but it’s still pretty forward of them. The actual film begins, or at least the opening credits begin. There are some fairly bizarre artistic renditions of sea life during the credits. This is what fish like look like to someone whose only encounters with them happened while high on LSD at a local aquarium. That is then followed by a monologue delivered by the voice of God. He reminds us to tip our waitresses and the story portion of our movie begins. God’s appearance may also be a part of the same acid trip.
Of note, the Professor of Gilligan’s Island fame, plays “Hank”, an engineer assigned to the team.
What I Read: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen. This is the second book in her series, which was introduced in The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy. (That book’s review starts with a blurb from author Helen Hoang, “A uniquely charming mixture of whimsy and the macabre that completely won me over. If you ever wished for an adult romance that felt like Howl’s Moving Castle, THIS IS THAT BOOK”.
From Amazon: The entire town of Eternity was shocked when widowed, middle-aged Twyla Banneker partnered up with her neighbor and best friend, Frank Ellis, to join the Tanrian Marshals. Eight years later, Twyla’s rewarding career patrolling the strange land of Tanria remains a welcome change from the domestic grind of mom life, despite the misgivings of her grown children.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) a recent decrease in on-the-job peril has made Twyla and Frank’s job a lot safer … and a lot less exciting. So when they discover the body of one of their fellow marshals near an enormous footprint—and Frank finds himself the inadvertent foster dad to a baby dragon—they are grateful to be back in action.
Soon, the friends wind up ensnared in a nefarious plot that goes far deeper than any lucrative Tanrian mineshaft. But as danger closes in and Twyla and Frank’s investigation becomes more complicated, so does their easy friendship. And Twyla starts to realize that her true soul mate might be the person who has lived next door all along…
What I Listened To: The Indigo Echoes – Burning; Wicked Sound (feat. Dread MC) (Mixed) – Fantom Freq; and Las Los – “NYC”:
Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest ones? Darling DeadSplinterites, what’s going on? Please do share with us!
I saw Furiosa and liked it a lot. I went back and watched Fury Road again too and it’s definitely a bit better, but Furiosa’s a lot of fun and I wish now I’d seen it on a big screen.
I think my Electric Callboy summer is starting to shift into sad girl fall, but I like it.
I read Eartheater by Dolores Reyes—magic realism set in a slum in Argentina. A young woman eats dirt for visions of what happened to the missing and murdered. It’s short and beautiful
I watched season 1 of The Serpent Queen. It’s available for a limited time on Prime. It originally aired on Starz, I wasn’t sure it would be good since their programming is hit or miss. But I gave it a chance because I like Samantha Morton. I hope they’ll run S2 eventually.
We’re watching Pagan’s Peak (aka Der Pass) which is a German/Austrian cop show. It’s as grim as you would expect. It’s also based on The Bridge (Danish/Swedish), but it diverts from the original story considerably (unlike The Tunnel).
Anyway, besides that, just getting the farm ready for summer’s end.
What I watched: “Murder, She Wrote.”
We stumbled on this quite unexpectedly while scrolling through our many cable options. I had forgotten, if I ever knew, what a gold mine of B-list and below actors this show was. Some were being gently escorted into well-deserved obscurity but not all of them. None of the four episodes we watched took place in Cabot Cove (Jessica must have been on the lam) and I will provide no spoilers.
1. Jessica springs her widowed niece Pamela from her mental institution and they go on a cruise together. But someone is out to get Pamela, same as they must have knocked off Pam’s hubby. Fellow passengers include JoAnne Worley and Vicki Lawrence. The ship’s captain is Leslie Nielsen.
2. Jessica travels to a remote Mediterranean island to celebrate the 60th birthday of her very close friend, a very rich and successful painter portrayed by Cesar Romero. Also in attendance is Robert Goulet. I got extra points from BH for recognizing Robert Goulet. “Good for you, Mattie!”
3. Jessica travels to Oklahoma (it’s not as bad as you think) to visit her very good friend, an oil millionairess played by Mildred Natwick, the less famous of the two “Snoop Sisters” (Helen Hayes was the other one.) Barbi Benton plays a nurse, and Frank Bonner (Herb from “WKRP in Cincinnati” fame) is in the mix. BH got extra points for recognizing Barbi Benton.
4. Jessica goes up (or down, I guess, from Maine) to Boston as a favor to a friend, a very well-known actor who charges her with a mission. She falls in with another very good friend, a private detective of dubious morals, Jerry Orbach, who basically is Lenny Briscoe, except in Beantown. Dick Van Patten is the DA.
So satisfying. Like going to a really good family reunion.
In case you wanted a fun song for your rediscovered tv show viewing –
Jessica should have passed on the trip. The last ship Leslie captained was the Poseidon (1972 version).
im loving all the old horror movies 🙂
anyways i took a week off from the interwebs which is why i havent been around….you’d think that would give me loads of time to catch up on movies and reading…but nope….ive been doing sexy things like fixing leaky pipes and installing a battery powered motion activated light in my bathroom coz the landlord is dragging his feet about sending an electrician around to fix the burnt out wiring
gotta say tho…. motion activated bathroom light feels pretty fancy…open door..and *poof* there is light… noice! (not bad for $3 lol…well…more like $8 if you include the batteries and double sided tape…big spender me) anyways…
listening to moby
and i was just about to start playing a game @hammerzeitgeist clued me in about last week
looks like just the thing i need…something i can play casually that doesnt have a massive learning curve…what looks to be an interesting story and all the cats!
in unrelated news…i would have posted sooner…but i just had my first little tornado here…with all the lightning and the sideways rain…was pretty neat…figured unplugging some shit was prudent tho
Oh! Or, “Ach!” I have been rewatching Babylon Berlin. I’m sure I’ve proselytized about this series before. I have nits to pick but to reimagine an aspect of this period in Berlin history is why I risked life and limb to traverse the Berlin Wall. (That is a gross exaggeration. It wasn’t like Putin’s Russia and “hostage diplomacy” was not yet a thing.)
Here is a great video from the series. Imagine. You’re in your 20s and you have enough money to patronize a Berlin nightclub in the late 1920s. I could go on for several pages about just this video (the backup dancers are an homage to Josephine Baker—stop, Mattie) but I’ll just drop this. The backup dancers make this NSFW, if you work in one of those cheerless ahistorical environments where no one knows what happened before they turned old enough to get their iPhones at the age of 6 and are perpetually aggrieved.
I watched a ton of the Little League World Series throughout the week – I don’t really care for baseball but their games were so good!