qatmom Reviews

AmericanEast (2008)

Predictable

[5/10 · 24 November 2014]

This is an adequate movie. It preaches too much. The characters are too predictable.

The subject could have been handled in a vastly more interesting fashion. Becoming an American is something every ethnic group has come to deal with, and with each, the process eventually becomes the same: one has to abandon one's ethnic tribal loyalties, and adopt loyalty to the new tribe, the tribe of America.

It's okay to keep eating food made using grandma's recipes (and share that food with the rest of us--we might like it very much), and maybe teaching the grandkids stuff about the old life, but belonging first to the tribe of America must be be placed above all old ties. There are many ways to God, but any God who devalues good people outside of the old tribe probably won't work so well in America.

The ending of this movie ventured into the maudlin...why must movies overdo these things?

The Black Knight (1954)

Only for the very, very young

[4/10 · 29 September 2014]

(Possible Spoilers) As a fan of the eye-filling costume spectacle, I don't expect deep thoughts and careful characterization. I can even tolerate minor anachronisms. However, the story and the actions of the characters still need to make some sense, and that is where "The Black Knight" begins to fall apart.

Several enormous castles are shown in this story, which implies a violent society requiring serious defenses. However, the castle of the hero's amour is invaded by Viking cavalry—horned helmets and all!—who ride in without significant resistance. There do not even appear to be any sentries watching for trouble; everyone is chowing down at the dinner table.

The Vikings trash the place, and upon their retreat, the hero pursues their leader a few fields distant…to Camelot. In fact, all of the locations seem to be a horse-gallop away from each other, which is convenient, and easy on the horses.

Returning to the ruined castle (thehero does a lot of to-ing and fro-ing along the same wooded trail. The horses must know the way.) the hero finds his former lord in a demented state, with only his daughter, the hero's would-be amour caring for him. The place is a smoldering pile of smoking debris; does the hero take the surviving pair to Camelot where they at least will have shelter and something to eat? NO!!! He leaves them there amid the ruins! What a guy! There are other lapses like this.

There are some deeply strange scenes, most notably Stonehenge full of dancing pagans bringing Margaret Murray's theories to life. The hero—who in the course of a week or so learns all the fighting arts of a knight—disguised as The Black Knight, rescues his amour from pagan sacrifice. I must have dozed off, because she was wearing a wig as a would-be sacrifice, and I have no recollection why she was wearing the wig.

King Arthur is miserably stupid in this movie, and there is no Guinevere. The Bad Guy is Sir Palomides, a Saracen knight who DID appear in some of the Arthur stories, but he wasn't in league with renegade Cornishmen or crazed Stonehenge pagans. Peter Cushing is fun to watch in this role.

I love secret passages, and this movie has one roomy enough for the hero to run through! Following the passage, he eavesdrops on conspirators. Perhaps he is hard of hearing, because he doesn't just listen; he opens up a secret panel allowing nearly a full-length view of him with the Evildoers five feet away! The movie goes on and on and on—can someone tell me what a bunch of armed horsemen are going to do to attack a castle? And why the castle archers expose themselves to enemy fire? The painting of Camelot is a fantasy medieval castle on steroids. It is enormous, but we never see much of the interior. I would hate to have to pay the heating/air conditioning bills.

The helmets of Arthur's knights are strange…possibly inspired by the helmets of the Teutonic Knights in "Alexander Nevsky." Just like Zorro, our hero sheds his Simple Blacksmith Clothes for the (unique) short-sleeved armor et alia of The Black Knight—more aptly The Big Black Bird Knight. He stashes his horse somewhere out of sight, too. Unlike Zorro, he does not have a plausible hidey hole for his changing room and horsekeeping headquarters. He just appears and rides for the next castle.

Except for the crowns, which look like the paper crowns Burger King gives away, none of this looks cheap, but the writing and acting sink any chance this movie had. The Faux Old Timey English grates on the brain. Alan Ladd doesn't help.

It is all exhausting, watching all the going back and forth between various castles and other hangouts. I think I would have found this one annoying when I was ten years old.

Drums in the Deep South (1951)

Interminable would-be epic

[4/10 · 27 December 2013]

Another treasure from the America One library of public domain movies! "Drums in the Deep South" looks like a good movie, but it lacks something a good movie must have: characters the audience can care about. I looked carefully for such characters, and couldn't find one. In fact, I hardly cared what happened to any of them, even when the would-be adulterous couple was blown up at the end of the movie! I really thought the Vile Yankee Devil was going to throw himself on the fuse wire to save his buddy; he looked ready to cry. But, no; the mountain blew up--where will the aliens land now? Curiously, though this tale is supposed to be in part about a love triangle, the husband-angle goes off to war and is NEVER seen again, but is mentioned briefly to be still alive! We're never ever given a reason why Kathy REALLY preferred Clay to Braxton; Brax used complete sentences, seemed to genuinely care for Kathy, appeared to have a practical attitude towards running pseudo-Tara, and there wasn't the faintest suggestion that Brax so much as ever said a cross word to Kathy. But off he goes and she forgets him, telling Clay to learn Spanish for California, implying that that is their next stop in life.

This is exceeding strange for a movie made in 1951.

If ONLY Kathy had known how KEWEL Brax was going to be in a few years when he morphed into Peter Gunn! Imagine Braxton returning home to Devastation, and lurid tales of fickle Kathy...but the movie was already too long...

Dancing Pirate (1936)

Feed the Star, Please!

[4/10 · 1 March 2013]

After watching The Dancing Pirate, I tried to decide what target audience was intended. It wasn't particularly humorous, adventurous, or full of great music; it just sort of unrolled over time.

The star, the Dancing Pirate himself, was so gaunt and skeletal that it was hard to believe he could move as quickly as he did without fainting from starvation. One expects a dancer to be fit, with some musculature, but this poor guy desperately needed to eat something, and soon.

There weren't really any sympathetic characters, either, although there were some dis likable ones.

It's an odd movie, bringing together tap dancing and flamenco, inducing peaceful Indians to do violence, the star dancing with a noose around his neck, and more...it's like nothing else.

The Law of the 45's (1935)

Singing dirges around the campfire

[4/10 · 2 February 2013]

One comes to expect B-western cowboys to burst into song from time to time, but in this movie, what they burst into song singing sounds gloomy and dirge like, going on glumly about a "lonely trail". Perhaps they were all depressed about appearing in this movie? Wow, there is a lot of shoot 'em ups in this movie--bodies drop all over the place but NOBODY seems much concerned with either checking to see when the Evil Henchmen are dead or wounded, and nobody bothering to toss a little dirt over the dead.

Rancher Daughter Sweet Joan must be desperate for male attention, because she seems entranced with the hero, even when he is singing the miserable dirge. She all but drools over him in some scenes.

The guy in the dungeon is kind of cool. It's almost like the plot takes brief excursions into another movie, a Gothic horror movie. Does he spend all of his time in the chair with his head sagging towards his lap? Only for the genre devotees.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: The Haunted Submarine (1966) Season 3, Episode 11

Quintessential

[6/10 · 19 January 2013]

This is the kind of episode that made me a fan of this series forever.

It isn't much of a story: Nelson's ancestor somehow comes back from the past (or maybe the future) and tries to recruit his descendant for...something. It's not really important.

The fun of this episode is watching Nelson smirk and cackle because he knows his wicked ancestor is playing games with the crew, freezing everyone in place except the admiral. Captain Crane has been sailing with Nelson long enough to know that the admiral is more than slightly demented, and that he won't come clean about what he knows. Crane's frustration is obvious.

One imagines drunken sessions with Crane & the Chipster, discussing the mental shortcomings and peculiar sense of humor of the admiral. Probably the crew has the same discussions, because it is so obvious that the admiral is more than slightly...odd.

Luck of Roaring Camp (1937)

A Lucky Find

[7/10 · 10 January 2013]

This is not the usual clichéd western. There are no singing cowboys, no range wars, no trick riding. This is not a great movie, but of its era, it is pretty good.

(Don't miss the animated Monogram logo at the beginning of the movie. I had not seen it before in its art-deco-y futuristic glory.)

An orphaned baby changes the townsfolk of a rough mining town--all men--and some lives are changed forever. A little bit later, gold is found in the area, and people change even more, and not always for the good.

This is not the movie that will change your life, but I think you will remember it.

Phantom Rancher (1940)

The mask works wonders

[4/10 · 3 January 2013]

The lower end westerns are not known for cerebral plot and character development. This one scrapes the bottom with a hero hardly anybody recognizes because he's wearing a mask, a black hat, and a black cape. His voice (same flat drone--is he reading his lines?) never changes, his horse never changes, and the tack his horse wears never changes.

Horse people NOTICE individual horses. I notice individual horses in these movies being used in ways that defy continuity. I also notice their bridles, especially the ornate ones. Surely in the setting of the movies such things would be noticed as well? While this is annoying on one level, on another it is so bad that it is entertaining. Obviously, this was produced for an audience that was none too picky, but even so, the target is set absurdly low. I liked the dismount/unsaddling maneuver, with Tarzan leaping into his own paddock.

Ya gotta see it to believe it.

Air Rage (2001 Video)

Everything the other reviews say is true. This reeks.

[1/10 · 3 December 2012]

There are bad movies that are fun and then there are movies like Air Rage that are just bad.

I only saw the last 20 minutes of this movie, but that was more than enough. This includes the Infamous Blown Open Door, which is fully as absurd as others have indicated. At this point, all you can do is stop, stare, and wonder if the script really, really is going this way, and sure enough, it is! The bad guy is clinging in mid-air, and the flight attendant pries loose his fingers and OFF HE GOES into thin air! POOF! But by this point, who cares? Ice-T is bleeding onto the floor of the flight deck & Ms Stewardess is chirpily learning how to fly and doing it with such ease that any suspense is lost.

Only for Ice-T fans and aviation geeks who like to see just how wrong Hollywood can get it, counting the cringeworthy moments, kind of the way I do when an on-screen lab type says "they ran a gas chromatograph on wool".

Trail of Terror (1943)

One thing that makes this movie worth seeing

[5/10 · 27 November 2012]

This is not a remarkable western. The good guy rides a white horse, etc.

However, there is a bizarre moment where the hero hops off that white horse, jumps into some sort of drainage ditch, finds himself a log about 6 feet long, straddles it like a stick horse, and then holding the front of the log to hold the tail end down onto the ditch bottom, he commences to "ski" down the ditch at a brisk pace with 3-point balance! There is no warning this is coming! It's just THERE in the movie! I have never seen anything else like it.

The movie also features a great secret cave with a "secret" back entrance hidden by a swinging cupboard!

Oklahoma Annie (1952)

Frozen in Time

[6/10 · 15 November 2012]

Seen through contemporary eyes, this movie is a curiosity piece. Going in, realize this, just sit back and explore some of the tastes and amusements of long-vanished times. Sometimes, that can be embarrassing.

This is less embarrassing than the movies with the unfortunate racial stereotypes, but if I had a relative who had been a fan of this genre, I would be embarrassed for them.

I had never heard of Judy Canova before watching this opus. My goodness, she certainly threw herself into her role whole hog. The singing is hard to take, but one of the songs was presented skillfully with three mirrors.

This movie does not look cheap--the horses all look glossy and well-fed--and the color has held up. I'd never watch it again, but now I know about a past fashion I never suspected existed.

"Oklahoma Annie" refers to the heroine's sheriff-grandmother.

Trigger Pals (1939)

Watch the pinto horse

[5/10 · 8 November 2012]

This is basic western entertainment for fans of the genre.

There are a few flourishes--the Secret Cave is a nice touch. The romance is played down, although with my jaded 2012 eyes there would seem to be more going on between the two main male characters who seem focused on each other. I know this was written this way to appeal to a very young male audience to whom girls were icky.

Weaving together telephones and cattle rustling seems like an anachronism, but the genre seems to be not very fussy about these things.

But watch the pinto horse! There is a scene where he is tethered by a shed...and almost immediately after he is seen tethered to a fence! He's in two places at once!

Beowulf (2007)

Tedious

[3/10 · 26 October 2012]

Anyone who sets out to write fantasy (and that is what Beowulf is) should find a copy of Ursula LeGuin's essay from "Elfland to Poughkeepsie". One of the points she makes is that characters in such tales should NOT speak like contemporary Americans--they should not use slang or phrases that will distract the gentle reader (or viewer) from the fantasy universe.

Lots and lots of bad written fantasy suffers from reading like an adventure lived by American teenagers in costume; the really foul stuff even uses contemporary slang. Some of it sells quite well to an unsophisticated readership.

Watching Beowulf was misery, because it was full of Americans delivering their lines like Americans in costume. I just could not believe these were Nordic guys living the Northern Thing, with dragons and swords. Most of the characters were completely unconvincing, as were their wigs.

The dragon...o dear gawd...reminded me of the dragon Ollie from Kukla, Fran & Ollie.

I stuck it out to the end, but it was painful. Much of it looked like it had filmed the first time the actors tried out their lines, and that they had not yet rehearsed together.

It takes more than action scenes and CGI to make a movie worthwhile.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: The Monster from Outer Space (1965) Season 2, Episode 13

Glorious Multi-Hued Cellophane Monster

[8/10 · 29 July 2012]

This is a wonderful episode with a glorious multi-hued cellophane/plastic monster from Saturn with drooping appendages and hairlike projections. It is almost silly looking, but not quite, as it overwhelms its victims, and takes over their minds, leaving little dots on their necks! The entire crew of the Seaview is taken over by the Saturn Beast, save for Nelson and Sharkey, who battle back bravely when they discover that they are the only free minds left on board.

Really not much happens, but it is such fun watching the beast. Episodes like this made me a fan.

Note to Admiral Nelson: When disinfecting returning spacecraft, add bleach to the procedures.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: The Cyborg (1965) Season 2, Episode 4

Improbable, but good fun

[7/10 · 10 June 2012]

Victor Buono is a predictably Mad Scientist (I've worked with dozens of them and none were mad, although more than a few were decidedly cranky) who sends a cyborg replica of Nelson back to the Seaview as part of his Grand Scheme to take over the world and do all the heavy thinking for humanity.

Amusingly, NO ONE detects anything un-Admiral-like about the Cyborg Nelson; he's just as moody, quirky, and irritating as ever. Crane has no idea until the wiring spills out onto the floor! There is a wild castle lair for Buono, Irwin Allenesque sets, and a computer just a few feet wide (!!!) that sounds like it is punching cards but it spews out no punchcards. (Computers in 1965 took up entire floors of buildings.) It's 1976 as seen from the mid-1960s.

There is lots of hokey fun, fireworks, a last minute save of humanity-- everything that I love about this series.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: Escape from Venice (1965) Season 2, Episode 5

More spy tedium

[5/10 · 3 June 2012]

Another tedious, interminable spy episode. Where are the mega-guppies when they are needed? Maybe 20th Century thought they could hark back to Hedison's 1959-1960 series "Five Fingers", and make another dashing spy out of him. Maybe. That's not the Lee Crane I admire, the survivor of Nelson's peculiar moodiness and countless battles with menacing sea monsters.

Crane spends a lot of time treading water in the sewage of Venice, wearing a white jacket with a curiously pink "blood" stain (it looks like alizarin crimson or a good match for Stargazer lilies). He may survive the gunshot, but he should develop a roaring infection after soaking in such waters.

There is unintended humor as Nelson finds himself in the company of what he assumes is a Desperately Lonely Woman who has targeted him for her attentions. He squirms beautifully. Fortunately, she quickly redeems herself as being not quite THAT desperate.

20th Century rolls what must be most of their stock footage of Venice, just to keep reminding us where the story is set in case it slipped our minds or we failed to note Crane marinating in brown water.

I love this series, I really do--just not "Escape from Venice".

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: Time Bomb (1965) Season 2, Episode 2

Curious episode

[5/10 · 27 May 2012]

I love Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. I loved it when it was first broadcast, and I love it now. However, this episode is not one of the reasons why I love it.

Later in the series, when they figured out that the fan base consisted of young teen boys, they wisely dropped most women from the plots. The Seaview became a ship crewed by men who had no mothers, no wives, no girlfriends, no sisters--and it all worked, because week after week, they chased after monstrous guppies, celery monsters, or rock men. This was wonderful. I never tire of these episodes. I understand that Hedison and Basehart sent each other turkeys for especially standout performances in them.

But "Time Bomb" is one of the unfortunate "spy" plots. They tend towards the tedious.

The most amazing thing about this episode is that both Crane and Nelson show interest in different women--and both are unconvincing. Really unconvincing. Crane looks like he's re-enacting a fluffy Hollywood movie during his flirtation; one has the feeling he never tried this before. But Nelson is the real shocker! He not only looks uncomfortable with his spy, he looks embarrassed by the whole thing! (At least he does not lapse into his trademark grumpiness when faced with the unfamiliar.) "You mean I have to touch a GIRL!!??" The Nelson scene much be seen to be believed.

Please, bring on the leprechauns.

Land of the Pharaohs (1955)

If Egypt was like Hollywood

[3 September 2011]

This movie was pretty to look at, but historically bizarre: the camels, the notion that a Cypriot woman could become ruler of Egypt, etc.

But if you can get beyond this kind of tomfoolery, AND you like overblown costume movies with marginal acting, a cast of thousands, you might enjoy this very much. I liked it a lot when I first saw it in b&w on a tiny TV screen, and it was still fun in letterbox in color.

Dewey Martin gives a standout terrible performance. He is so obviously an American, NOT a slave in Egypt, that it is a painful performance to watch. His delivery is distracting.

Joan Collins is slithery, very slithery, but her character never seems bright enough to be trying to pull off the manipulations and conspiracies that go one.

Saadia (1953)

Odd

[4/10 · 27 June 2011]

It is hard to believe that this movie was released in 1953. It feels more like 1933, except that it was filmed in color. The story fits 1933 better than 1953--in fact, if it had been released in 1933 but set 50 years earlier, it would be a perfect fit.

Somehow, a story involving witchcraft in 1953 just doesn't fly.

Saadia is supposed to be mysterious. Mostly she seems tongue-tied. She seems more capable of heroics than the menfolk in the movie, however.

There must have been a solid budget behind this movie, and it shows, but the story is so peculiar that the production values don't help.

Watch it as a curiosity.

Sanders of the River (1935)

Interesting museum piece

[6/10 · 4 May 2011]

"Sanders of the River" is trapped in the time of its creation like an insect in amber, but it's worth seeing if only to understand the expectations of that time.

The British characters are supposed to be the heroes of the tale, but they are wooden and unsympathetic, even interchangeable. It is impossible to care about them. They even chase animals from a plane Just For Fun.

Africans are portrayed as simple minded, but they are also clearly loyal, brave, loving individuals with some (limited) depth to them, which is more than can be said of the cardboard cut-out white characters. In fact, the real rotters of the tale are trouble-making whites.

Home Town Story (1951)

Predictable, but...

[5/10 · 25 December 2010]

There are no big surprises in this movie, but the outcome in 1951 was a lot different than the same story retold today.

A majority of journalists still have a problem with the notion of profits. Profits are bad, aren't they, since someone is making more on a deal than they need to cover costs, right? From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, right? Hotheaded (and not very deep thinker) Wade (who seems WAY too old to have a 10 year old sister--who seems way younger than 10) goes looking for evidence of corporate sins, and finding none, seems annoyed. In 1951, if one plant wasn't dumping into a stream, one didn't have to look far to find another one right down the road that did, so Wade's motivations seem less than pure.

If this movie was made today, the last few scenes would be a heavy-handed Diversity Fest saving the life of the sister trapped in the mine with herbal cures known only to Indigenous Peoples, with a guillotine set up at one end of the canyon (was Robot Monster being filmed at the other end of the canyon?) where all of the Vile Capitalists were being decapitated for Sins Against the People--the mining company, the company that failed to re-post the danger sign, the lumber company that provided the faulty mine timbers, the design company that planned the mine excavation--in other words, a complete fantasy.

Marilyn is lovely, and refreshingly Unfluffy, Sensible, and Dignified.

Marie Galante (1934)

Tiresome Marie

[5/10 · 22 November 2010]

Marie Galante is an interesting relic, and can be watched purely as an example of what was acceptable to audiences in 1934 (Stepin Fetchit, an Asian played by a Caucasian, etc.), the most interesting being the witlessness of Marie Galante.

Poor Marie. Despite being dragged off to sea and held prisoner, she never seems to develop much of a sense of caution towards strangers. One can only conclude that she is not very bright; there is little in the movie to make one think otherwise.

Had Marie had some sense, the story would have been more engaging, instead of watching other people maneuvering around her with craft and purpose, Marie oblivious and eternally innocent. Marie could have had a growing sense of dread as events closed in about her, but no, she's chirps all along and doesn't stay serious for more than a few moments.

Stepin Fetchit must be sense to be believed.

The Devil's Cavaliers (1959)

Lots of color, but no substance

[19 November 2010]

Everyone is nicely dressed--but the characters wearing them are curiously empty. I gave up trying to tell some of the bad guys apart. It's very hard to tell why people are in a particular place together--are they all just crashing at Louise's castle, or is she crashing at theirs?

I could not decide what time period this story was supposed to be part of. They spoke of heretics, which places it in the middle ages during the time of the Cathars (early 1200s) but the swords are clearly not broadswords and the costumes are from a later period. Perhaps no one thought anyone would notice.

The characters are incredibly bland. The supposed hero is in a lot of scenes, but after watching the whole moving, I have no idea what he was about. The heroine mostly seems breathless.

The castles are nice, but the real allure is the English dialogue. I wish I had taken notes. Much of it is wildly stilted, as if translated literally by someone who was not an English speaker, and the effect is funny to the point of being distracting. It is stuffed full of howlers akin to "Tell me the meaning of the thing you have done." Like many Italian films of the period, dialogue and sound effects were dubbed in later. The sound of faux hoofbeats is particularly unconvincing here.

Renegade Girl (1946)

Unintentionally Awful

[2/10 · 12 November 2010]

This movie sounded amusing, so I tried to watch it (very) early this morning.

The dialogue is wooden and stilted beyond description, and not just a line here and there, but whole scenes! The plot is no better. None of the characters are sympathetic; the heroine scowls from scene to scene, half the males in the movie seem infatuated with her for unknown reasons, but of course, the only one she shows interest in is the one who ignores her during her months-long convalescence--failing to visit as promised until a few minutes after she leaves the home where she has been nursed back to health.

Had I been more wakeful, it might have been a jolly experience. As it was, I fell asleep, and when I woke up, a Montel infomercial was running. Alas, I missed the ending--but I did not much care.

I don't think anything was cut out of it. I suspect this is just a movie that just didn't come out the way someone must have imagined it.

The Man and the Challenge (1959–1960)

Deserves to be better known

[9/10 · 1 June 2010]

I watched this series when it was on NBC (and I was 9) and a few years later when it had a brief syndicated run.

It made a huge impression on my 9-year-old self. I was already a fan of science fiction by way of Science Fiction Theatre (remember that sf was considered purely of interest to male audiences in those days) and this series was far closer to actual science--I don't think they thought they were reaching 9 year old little girls.

One episode in particular never left me--"Astro Female", which opened with the rescue of a woman who is the only survivor of a shipwreck; all the others, males, died, but the tough woman survived. This led to an exploration of women as astronauts, something the US never did until decades later. In an age where women on TV were almost invariably portrayed as emotional and weak, this show showed a different possibility that probably is part of why I am in a career in the sciences.

Beyond that episode, there were many others exploring human potential beyond the expected.

I'd love to see these episodes again. I'd buy them on DVD. I've gone and watched other series that I enjoyed, and usually I have been pleasantly surprised with how well they hold up, not just classics like Twilight Zone, but others like Route 66.