THE ARTIFICE GIRL

 

Publicity poster for The Artifice Girl (© Franklin Ritch/Paper Street Pictures/Last Resort Ideas/Blood Oath/Tiberius Films/Jack Rabbit Media/XYZ Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

This afternoon, I watched an extraordinary science fiction movie entitled The Artifice Girl.

Directed and written by Franklin Ritch, who also plays its lead human character, and released in 2022 by XYZ Films, The Artifice Girl is all about an incredibly advanced and ultra-realistic yet nonetheless a wholly virtual CGI girl created and named Cherry by troubled computer genius & anonymous online vigilante Gareth (Franklin Ritch, and with Lance Henriksen playing him as an old man) to use as bait (hence this movie's title) for ensnaring vile child predators lurking on social media.

Moreover, once he successfully confirms during interrogation that he himself is not an abuser, by revealing to them the existence of Cherry and her astonishing capabilities, Garth is thereafter assisted in his heroic endeavours by two top-secret American government investigative agents, Deena (Sinda Nichols) and Amos (David Girard).

However, Cherry swiftly and unexpectedly evolves into a super-intelligent, sentient, independent AI entity with a mind and ambitions of her own, which complicates matters very profoundly. So too does Gareth's intensely personal and tragic secret motive that perpetually haunts him and drives him on unceasingly in his determined quest to expose as many paedophiles as possible for the authorities to arrest and imprison.

The film is split into three separate segments, each successive one focusing upon a different, ever more advanced stage in Cherry's development and evolution from sophisticated computer program to self-aware AI being to eventual cyborg.

Although filmed entirely in just a handful of small, sparse sets, The Artifice Girl is absolutely engrossing and fascinating throughout its 93-minute running time. This is due in no small way to the extremely thought-provoking scientific and associated moral issues discussed at length in the gripping, brilliantly-scripted dialogue ricocheting back and forth between the four principal characters, in which not a single word is superfluous.

In addition, young actress Tatum Matthews is truly spellbinding as Cherry (she apparently learned how to talk robotically for this movie by studying the speech patterns of Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa). For even though she is seen merely as a disembodied on-screen talking face for almost the entire movie (only in the final section has Cherry ultimately acquired a physical cyborg body), she always totally dominates the viewer's attention – a major acting career awaits, surely. Incidentally, please rest assured, there is absolutely NO visual representation of any kind of abuse in this film, and only some plot-essential but wholly non-descriptive references within the characters' dialogue.

The Artifice Girl premiered on 23 July 2022, in Canada, at Montreal's 26^th Annual Fantasia International Film Festival, where it won the coveted Gold Audience Award for Best International Feature, but it only received a very limited USA release, in just a few select cinemas, on 1 May 2023. Following this, it has only been available in Video On Demand format, which is a crying shame, as this riveting but little-known, hidden gem of a feature so deserves to be brought to the attention of a much wider audience – hence my reason for reviewing it here on my Shuker In MovieLand blog.

Happily, I was able to watch this film today on Daily Motion's website, and in just three days' time, on Tuesday 22 April 2025, it will be broadcast on British TV, at 9.00 pm on the terrestrial TV channel Film4 (indeed, it was seeing a mention of its upcoming Film4 screening in this weekend's TV guide for next week that brought the movie to my attention, as I'd never previously heard of it). So if you live in the UK, you can view it on there next Tuesday.

But wherever you're based, if you'd like to watch The Artifice Girl online, and free of charge too, please click here to do so on Daily Motion.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

LIKE A BAT OUTTA HELL (aka BAT OUTTA HELL aka NOWHERE ELSE)

 

Publicity poster for Like A Bat Outta Hell (aka Bat Outta Hell aka Nowhere Else (© Danial Donai/Forescene Films/Tricoast Worldwide – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 17 October 2024, my movie watch was the Australian cryptozoology-themed horror film Like A Bat Outta Hell (aka Bat Outta Hell aka Nowhere Else, the last-mentioned being its original title).

Directed and written by Danial Donai, and released in 2013 by Tricoast Worldwide, Like A Bat Outta Hell is all about a team of four young surfing film-makers – Randy (played by Marco Dapper), Jack (Dan Balcaban), Bianca (Rachael Murphy), and Chris (William Wensley) – sent by their bosses/funders into a vast barren region of South Australia's Outback to film a new but unspecified subject; they'll only be told what it is once they reach their remote location. So far, so sinister…

And indeed, one of the four team members, Chris, is secretly serving as an inside man for the team's bosses, so he does know what the subject is that the team is to film – a scientifically-unrecognised form of human-sized carnivorous bat indigenous to this wasteland and exceedingly dangerous, ripping off the faces of human victims. This is why the other three film-makers were not told about it, as they would never have agreed to set out if they had known

 

One of the giant humanoid bats from this movie (© Danial Donai/Forescene Films/Tricoast Worldwide – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But as any clear film footage that proves this mystery beast's reality will net the team's bosses a fortune, they are most anxious for the team to locate and record these monstrous entities, regardless of what terrible fate may await them. The usual mayhem and carnage typically depicted in monster movies like this one duly ensues, but the viewer has to wait an agonisingly long time before some full. clear views of the voracious man-bats (created for the movie via CGI) are finally shown.

They resemble an unsettling hybrid of the giant moths from The Blood Beast Terror and the vampiric Mr Kurt Barlow from the original TV mini-series version of Salem's Lot, but are presented as corporeal cryptids rather than supernatural bloodsuckers or suchlike. Indeed, when the team reach in the afore-mentioned barren Outback a ghost town named Nowhere Else and find it  inhabited by only one elderly man, Simson (Vernon Wells), they also find that he is equipped with some decidedly physical, tangible weaponry and also that he is a closet cryptozoologist, not a private paranormalist.

Moreover, director Donai has stated that he was inspired to write and direct this movie after being informed in the real-life South Australian outback town of Nowhere Else he was visiting that a team of documentary film-makers had lately claimed that while filming in that area they had been attacked by a human-sized bat. Yeah, right – if so, how come the notably rich vein of Australian cryptozoology is entirely dry regarding mystery man-sized Australian bats?

 

Publicity poster for the movie Chiroptera(© Danial Donai/Forescene Films/Tricoast Worldwide – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

After running for 92 minutes, Like A Bat Outta Hell finally reaches an ending but one that comes unexpectedly and is very disappointing, as it provides no resolution whatsoever to the plot. However, in 2019 a much longer version, containing a lot of additional footage, yielding a total running time of 130 mins, was released, and retitled Chiroptera. I have not seen that version, but it apparently includes several fully-shot scenes that were only spoken about in the 2013 movie.

Like A Bat Outta Hell is an interesting but decidedly odd, offbeat flick, and it doesn't even feature a cameo or any song tracks from the now late but always great Meat Loaf. Shame.

Please click here if you'd like to go batty watching an official trailer on YouTube for this movie, or here to watch the entire movie free of charge, again on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Close-up shot of one of the giant humanoid bats from this movie (© Danial Donai/Forescene Films/Tricoast Worldwide – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

"BRING ME THE HEAD OF KING KONG!" - FROM THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING TO A SCOTTISH PANTOMIME?

 

Vintage photograph of a man-made pantomime stage prop in the form of a giant primate head (but NOT derived from a real, dead animal) (public domain/Wikipedia)

Is there a connection between a certain giant movie ape that met its demise atop NYC's Empire State Building and an over-sized primate that appeared on stage in a Scottish pantomime? The visually-striking vintage photograph presented above leads me to suspect that there might indeed be one, as I'll now explain.

Needless to say, had I first chanced upon this picture only quite recently I would probably have simply assumed it to be an AI-generated image and therefore may not have investigated it, as the head is certainly far too big to be from any type of anatomically-feasible primate, even one of the cryptozoological kind.

In reality, however, I first encountered it online some years ago (on Wikipedia, if memory serves me correctly), and its arresting appearance was such that I decided to do whatever I could to identify exactly what it depicted and where it had originated. Here is what I discovered.

As indicated by this present blog article's tongue-in-cheek title, parodying the biblical Salome's imperious demand to King Herod Antipas for John the Baptist's head (served on a platter, which it duly was!), I had initially wondered whether this public-domain photo may have been in some way related to the original, classic King Kong monster movie released by RKO Radio Pictures in spring 1933, directed by Marian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and starring Fay Wray alongside this movie's titular stop-motion mega-star created by celebrated animator Willis H. O'Brien. Perhaps it was a spare giant ape head for close-up shots, or used for publicity purposes?

Although that idea ultimately proved false, I suspect that it nonetheless contains an element of relevance to the latter movie. For what I finally found out was that the object in this photo is actually a gaff, in this instance specifically a stage prop that had featured in a major pantomime performed just a few months after the release of King Kong.

 

Publicity photo-still of American actress Fay Wray promoting the 1933 film King Kong (public domain)

According to an unidentified, tantalizingly-brief newspaper report published on 11 December 1933 that had contained the photo, what it depicts is a 4.5-ft-tall giant ape or monkey head made from cardboard and paper (NOT from the remains of any real, dead animal) that had been specially constructed by a stage props company for a pantomime staged in Glasgow, Scotland, during the winter 1933/34 pantomime season. So it seems possible, even likely, that the prop was inspired by King Kong, which had proved such a massive hit worldwide earlier that very same year, especially as British pantomime tradition is famous for incorporating references to notable news stories that have occurred earlier on during the year in which the pantomime is being staged

Sadly, the newspaper report gave no further details, not even naming the pantomime in question or the theatre where it was staged. According to the Panto Archive website's comprehensive listing of Glasgow pantomime venues and productions (click here to view the entire list), however, the only pantomime staged in Glasgow during the 1933/34 season was 'Babes In The Wood', at the Theatre Royal, and featuring veteran Scottish music-hall comedian Tommy Lorne (1890-1935) as its principal star.

Perhaps, therefore, the giant monkey/ape head had appeared in it in the capacity of a guardian to the babes abandoned in the wood, or possibly as a comic bogeyman-type character. This is only speculation on my part, however, as I have been unable to discover any further information concerning either the head itself or the pantomime in which it appeared, but I did succeed in locating a second newspaper photo of it. Dating from the same period, but this time showing the head of a man inside the prop's gaping mouth and a woman standing alongside it, this second photo can be accessed here. I wonder if this eyecatching effigy still survives somewhere, stored away, perhaps, in the vaults of some theatre or stage props provider?

At any rate, we can all be reassured now by the comforting knowledge that somewhere deep within the cloud-shrouded Skull Island of make-believe movie-land, the real King Kong is still striding majestically through his stop-motion domain with his huge head held high, still firmly attached to his mighty neck and shoulders, whereas, tragically, the same cannot be said for John the Baptist's.

Speaking of Skull Island: be sure to click here to read my review of a more recent King Kong-starring monster movie Kong: Skull Island. Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

An original 1933 publicity poster for King Kong (public domain)

 

 

 

TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST

 

Publicity poster for Track of the Moon Beast (© Richard Ashe/Lizard Productions/Prism Pictures Ince – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 21 September 2024, my movie watch was a seriously oddball American sci fi/horror movie from the mid-1970s entitled Track of the Moon Beast, but it was rendered memorable for me by being the first film I can remember seeing that featured a were-lizard as its antagonist!

Directed by Richard Ashe, and produced in 1972 by Lizard Productions Inc, Track of the Moon Beast was originally intended for cinematic release, but was unable to secure a distributor. Instead, its eventual public debut took place on the small screen, when it premiered as a TV movie on 1 June 1976, but in a much-censored shorter version from which certain particularly gory, gruesome scenes featuring the monster killing people had been deleted (the original, uncensored version is apparently no longer available).

Track of the Moon Beast opens with a young mineralogist named Paul Carlson (played by Chase Cordell) in some Albuquerque mountains studying a lunar meteor shower taking place over New Mexico when he is struck in the head by a fragment from one of the meteorites. The fragment lodges in his brain, with wholly unexpected but decidedly dire consequences.

For now, every night when a full moon appears, Paul transforms into a human-sized bipedal lizard-like entity with rampaging, murderous tendencies – this movie's eponymous moon beast – leaving gory carnage as well as very large clawed tracks in its wake. Moreover, it turns out that this bizarre phenomenon has been happening in this region since time immemorial, as revealed in local Native American legends and ancient paintings subsequently made known to Paul by his Native American mentor, Prof. John 'Jonny Longbow' Salinas (Gregorio Sala).

While human, however, Paul has no knowledge of being a lizard and killing people, and for much of the movie no-one else has either, determined though they are to expose the identity of the elusive killer in their midst. Ultimately, however, as is always the case in films like this, Paul's sinister secret is indeed exposed – although to be fair, had it not eventually become public knowledge there wouldn't have been much of a movie!

Yet even worse was soon to come for Paul. After a top-notch NASA brain surgeon x-rays his head prior to a planned operation in order to remove the fragment, Paul is shattered to learn from the surgeon that the operation cannot proceed because the fragment has disintegrated, but with its toxic, unstable extraterrestrial essence having permeated his entire body. Not only could Paul not be cured by conventional medical means, therefore, but also the fragment's deadly legacy would be death – those of further innocent, randomly-selected victims of Paul's reptilian alter ego, but also Paul's own, the latter via sudden self-combustion in the not-too-distant future.

Knowing that he cannot continue like this, Paul flees to the mountains on his motorbike, having made a stark decision, but one that devastates his loyal girlfriend Kathy (Donna Leigh Drake), as well as his friends and colleagues. So, will they reluctantly accept the inevitable, or will they do everything in their power to prevent it? Watch this movie and find out for yourselves!

Silly sci fi is a movie passion of mine, so whereas it was panned by most film critics, I absolutely loved Track of the Moon Beast, even if the on-screen lunar-influenced lizardman looks nothing near as imposing as the spectacular version depicted in this low-budget creature feature's striking publicity posters and official Prism Pictures VHS video's front cover illustration, as included in this present Shuker In MovieLand review. Even so, the make-up for it took 5-6 hours for make-up artist Joe Blasco to create each time that the actor playing the lizardman (Blasco himself) wore it (Blasco was  taller and therefore more visually imposing than Cordell – who only played it in one scene, when Paul transforms into the lizardman while strapped down for observation purposes in hospital).

If you'd like to watch an official trailer on YouTube for Track of the Moon Beast, please click here – or click here if you'd like to watch the entire movie free of charge on there.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Full cover of the official Prism Pictures VHS video of Track of the Moon Beast (© Richard Ashe/Lizard Productions/Prism Pictures Ince – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

A THOUSAND WORDS

 

Publicity poster for A Thousand Words (© Brian Robbins/DreamWorks Pictures/Saturn Films/Varsity Pictures/Work After Midnight Films/Paramount Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 22 December 2024, I watched the bittersweet American fantasy/comedy movie A Thousand Words – a film that I might never have even known about, let alone watched, had it not been for my fortuitous finding a few weeks earlier at an English outdoor car boot sale of a discarded DVD case for this movie. Sadly, the disc itself was missing, but its back cover blurb so intrigued me that I purchased a disc for it online, and now, after watching it, I'm so glad I found that empty case and thereby learned of this delightful film's existence.

Directed by Brian Robbins, who was also one of its several co-producers (so too was American A-list actor Nicolas Cage), and released by Paramount Pictures in 2012 (although filmed in 2008), A Thousand Words stars motor-mouth mega-star Eddie Murphy in, incongruously, an almost silent lead role.

He plays brash literary agent Jack McCall, who originally displays an unassailable ability to talk people into doing whatever he wants, which has resulted in him becoming a thoroughly obnoxious egomaniac, oblivious to the needs of his wife Caroline (Kerry Washington) and their young son Tyler (Emanuel Ragsdale) to receive his love, and those of his co-workers to receive the courtesy and respect that they deserve – especially his youthful, perpetually put-upon and put-down literary assistant Aaron (Clark Duke), and his faithful valet (John Gatins) who harbours aspirations as an author that Jack brusquely waves away.

But when Jack tries to con a New Age guru named Dr Sinja (Cliff Curtis) into selling him the rights to his self-help book, events take a very mystical, mortifying turn.

A supernatural Bodhi tree possessing exactly 1000 leaves magically appears in Jack's garden, and Jack swiftly discovers that every word he speaks (or even writes down) results in a leaf dropping from the tree. Consulting Dr Sinja, Jack is horrified to learn that once the tree loses all of its leaves, both it and Jack will die (clearly this particular guru knows more about spirituality than botany, or he would have been aware that deciduous trees lose all their leaves every autumn/fall, but simply grow a new set the following spring!).

Anyway, much of the movie from then on focuses upon the hapless Jack becoming helplessly and hopelessly but always hilariously caught up in all manner of outlandishly bizarre situations as he frantically strives to communicate without speaking or writing. But ultimately it all proves too much – he finally loses his job, and his wife moves out of their home, taking their son with her. Moreover, due to various unavoidable instances where he has had no option but to speak, there are virtually no leaves left on the tree.

Despondent and desperate, Jack visits Dr Sinja again, who tells him that he has to seek deep inside himself to repair the relationship that has brought him the most pain in his life. Jack's mother Annie (Ruby Dee), whom he does love very much, has dementia, so he visits her at the care-home on her birthday, even though he knows that she will not recognise him, and will mistake him for her deceased husband Raymond, Jack's father, who walked out on them when Jack was only a child, leaving Jack feeling unloved by Raymond and resentful toward him ever afterwards.

Sure enough, his mother once again mistakes Jack for Raymond, telling him how she wishes that their son Jack would forgive him for walking out on them as she knows how much Jack was always loved by him, and that nothing is more important than family.

Never realising until now that his father had indeed loved him, Jack visits his grave and whispers outloud "I forgive you" – and at that same moment the last three leaves fall from the tree, and Jack falls unconscious to the ground. But does he die, or has he found redemption and salvation? Watch this very funny but also very poignant, moving movie and find out.

Some of you know that for many years my beloved little Mom was my only family, so when she passed away eleven years ago, so too did my entire family, and I've been alone ever since. Consequently, when Jack's Mom told him that nothing is more important than family, I began to shed too, just like the tree, except that it wasn't leaves that I was shedding.

Although not a Christmas-themed movie, A Thousand Words exudes a similar festive, feel-good glow, making it perfect viewing for this time of year. It promotes a very important message too: your words are powerful, so never waste them, or use them unkindly – always use them wisely, and kindly, make them count.

Worth mentioning, incidentally, is the notable number of major stars who were variously considered or auditioned for this movie's lead role of Jack McCall that ultimately went to Murphy – they include, for instance, Richard Ayoade, Ice Cube, Will Ferrell (also considered for the role of Dr Sinja), Jamie Foxx, Kevin Hart, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Rock, Will Smith, and Wesley Snipes. Moreover, Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith were among those considered for the role of Caroline McCall that ultimately went to Kerry Washington.

After I posted a much shorter, preliminary version of this review of A Thousand Words on Facebook earlier today, one reader mentioned to me that the film currently holds a 0% critics approval rating on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes (though it does also hold a 46% audience approval rating on there), which, quite frankly, is an absurd state of affairs. Having said that, I do tend to find that forums like those on Rotten Tomatoes and other sites that allow reviews to be posted by users tend to attract a disproportionate number of splenetic offerings, from deliberately provocative would-be critics trying to make a name for themselves, whereas more fair-minded users seem less incited or incentivized to post a review. This is a great shame, because it results in many perfectly good movies receiving unjustifiably low ratings, due to the pack-hunting feeding frenzy copycat approach that frequently occurs once a couple of bad reviews have been posted for a given film, with each subsequent reviewer attempting to outdo the previous ones in terms of the bile and venom that they can spill forth.

I personally feel that A Thousand Words is definitely one movie that has suffered from this. Now had it been The Adventures of Pluto Nash (click here to read my thoughts concerning this Eddie Murphy movie), I could have understood it more!

So whereas some professional critics dismissed A Thousand Words back in 2012 as formulaic and outdated, and more recent unprofessional ones have attacked it from all sides, I loved it (as is so often the case with films that critics have disparaged), and I'm sure that plenty of you will too if you get the chance to watch this film, and give it a chance when doing so.

If you would like to view an official trailer for A Thousand Words on YouTube, please click here.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

FROM A MILLIONAIRESS AND A MILLION POUND NOTE TO A GOOD LOOKIN' BAKSHI MOVIE AND MORE!

 

My DVDs and video of some of the movies mini-reviewed by me here (photograph © Dr Karl Shuker – see photos of individual DVDs etc below for their films' respective credits)

Time for another collection of mini-reviews of movies watched by me of late – and just for a change none of them is a sci fi, fantasy, or musical movie (but there is an animated one!).

 

 

Publicity photograph for Cold Comfort Farm (© John Schlesinger/Thames Television/BBC – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

COLD COMFORT FARM

On 3 March 2024, I thoroughly enjoyed the eponymous British film version of the satirical Stella Gibbons novel Cold Comfort Farm, published in 1932. Directed by John Schlesinger, produced by Thames Television and the BBC, and released in 1995, it stars Kate Beckinsale as city-sophisticated but newly-orphaned young lady Flora Poste, who accepts an invitation to spend some time with her eccentric rural relatives the Starkadders on their ramshackle homestead Cold Comfort Farm, which is supposedly overshadowed by a family curse. And as if that were not off-putting enough, it is also ruled with a fist of iron by Great-Aunt Ada Doom (Sheila Burrell), who has lived a Miss Havishamesque existence cocooned inside her bedroom there for countless years after seeing "something nasty in the woodshed" when a child. It's up to prissy but prescient Flora to drag the Starkadders out of their crazy, gloom, doom (and Doom!)-laden existence into the modern era and enable them to fulfil their various long-harboured but hitherto-repressed ambitions. Packed with famous names, including Joanna Lumley (as Flora's ditzy high-society friend Mary Smiling), Eileen Atkins (dread-filled and dreadful Starkadder matriarch Judith), Rufus Sewell (lusty youngest Starkadder brother Seth), Ivan Kaye (diligent middle Starkadder brother Reuben), Ian McKellen (hellfire-preaching eldest Starkadder brother Amos), Stephen Fry (irritating upper-class twit Mybug), Miriam Margolyes (the Starkadders' helper Mrs Beetle), and Freddie Jones (the delightfully-named Adam Lambsbreath), this is a thoroughly delightful and very amusing movie watch that is guaranteed to cheer and charm even the most downbeat of viewers. Please click here to watch an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.

 

 

My official DVD of D.O.A. (© Rudolph Maté/Harry Popkin Productions/Cardinal Pictures/United Artists – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

D.O.A.

My movie watch on 3 November 2023 was a double-bill of 1950s b/w films, but that's where their similarities end. One of them was the sci fi comedy movie The Twonky, which I've already reviewed here. The other was the original film version of D.O.A. (its title's initials standing for Dead On Arrival). Directed by Rudolph Maté, and released in 1950 by United Artists, D.O.A. is a film noir mystery/thriller in which LA-based accountant and notary Frank Bigelow (played by Edmund O'Brien) is surreptitiously poisoned while visiting San Francisco. Moreover, the poison is lethal as there is no known antidote for it and will therefore kill him in a week, possibly less. So although Bigelow is presently still alive, he is already functionally murdered. Consequently, he decides to spend his final week alive tracking down his unknown killer and uncovering the cryptic reason why the latter has visited upon him this death sentence. With a compelling plot, full of twists and turns as well as a massive ongoing red herring, D.O.A. duly engaged my interest and attention throughout its 84 minutes running time. I own it on DVD, but please click here if you'd like to watch this entire movie free of charge on YouTube.

 

 

Publicity poster for Help! (© Richard Lester/Walter Shenson Films/Subafilms/United Artists – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

HELP!

My movie watch on 2 July 2024 was Help! – the 'classic' Beatles movie that I'd never previously viewed but had lately purchased in video format. Directed by Richard Lester, and released in 1965 by United Artists, it's all about a Kali-worshipping death cult heavily into human sacrifice who need a precious ring currently (and aptly) being worn by Ringo to place on the finger of their next victim – who may well be Ringo himself if he can't remove the tenaciously-attached item of jewellery from his finger! All manner of madcap chases and pursuits duly ensue, as the ring is being sought not only by the cult's maniacal head priest Clang (played by Leo McKern) but also by megalomaniacal mad scientist (is there any other sort??) Professor Foot (Victor Spinetti) and his clot of a cohort Algernon (Roy Kinnear). And yes, this movie is indeed every bit as barmy as it sounds, albeit imho not necessarily in a good way, filled as it is with disjointed nonsense and deadpan humour that was more dead and panned than humorous. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this movie, I feel, is that someone somewhere somehow felt that it was a good idea at the time. They clearly needed Help! The Beatles choosing to become musicians rather than actors was definitely music's gain – and acting's too! Please click here to watch an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.

 

 

My official big-box video of Hey Good Lookin' (© Ralph Bakshi/Bakshi Productions/Warner Bros – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

HEY GOOD LOOKIN'

After rewatching the live-action/animation mash-up movie Cool World a few days earlier (click here for my full review of that movie), on 6 July 2024 I rewatched another film conceived and directed by Ralphi Bakshi, this time the fully-animated flick Hey Good Lookin', released in 1982 by Warner Bros after an earlier 1970s version that had been a previous attempt by Bakshi to create a live-action/animation mash-up movie had remained (and still remains) unreleased (but click here to view a very rare promo for it, showing how the four principal animated characters interacted with the live-action world that they inhabited in this earlier version). Set mostly in early 1950s Brooklyn, NYC, its central characters are Vinnie, the cool but cowardly Fonzie-lookalike leader of a greaser gang named The Stompers, and his aptly-named psychotic sidekick Crazy, and culminates in a violent rumble between the Stompers and rival gang the Chaplains, earning the movie an 18 certificate. It contains very slick animation throughout, and is accompanied by some excellent foot-tapping rock'n'roll songs (including the title number), but I found none of the characters in it to be even remotely likeable. I had previously watched this movie only once, about 30 years previously, soon after buying it as a big-box VHS video (pictured here), and which is what I watched again five months ago in July (though I do now own it on DVD too), and experienced a mystifying 'false memory' moment. I would have sworn that during the rumble, Vinnie turns ugly and stabs someone to death, yet watching it this second time, on the same video that I'd watched it on before, no such event takes place. On the contrary, Vinnie cowers behind a car and leaves his gang to do all the fighting. Very curious indeed – a veritable Mandela Effect instance, perhaps (click here for details of what may be another animated film-related Mandela Effect experience of mine, and here for a very famous non-animated movie example of this phenomenon), or just a bad memory on my part? You decide! Please click here to watch an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.

 

 

My complementary promo full-length movie DVD of The Millionairess given by London's Daily Express newspaper – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE MILLIONAIRESS

My movie watch on 9 July 2024 was the British rom-com film The Millionairess. Directed by Anthony Asquith, inspired by the eponymous play by George Bernard Shaw, and released in 1960 by 20^th Century Fox, it stars Italian screen goddess Sophia Loren (Ava Gardner had been Fox's first choice) as Epifania Pererge, the egocentric wealth-obsessed richest woman in the world, and iconic British comic actor Peter Sellers as Dr Ahmed el Kabir, the wealth-indifferent selfless Indian doctor whom she is determined to ensnare as her husband. Several other famous British thespians appeared in supporting roles, such as Alastair Sim, Alfie Bass, Miriam Karlin, Dennis Price, and Graham Stark. Even so, I have to confess that I found it to be nowhere near as funny as I'd been led to believe, probably due to the highly unpleasant, brattish nature of Loren's character, making it very difficult to warm to her. Earlier plans to film Shaw's play with Katharine Hepburn and Alec Guinness in the leading roles never came to fruition. Worth noting, incidentally, is that contrary to numerous claims, the hit Loren/Sellers song 'Goodness Gracious Me' (click here to listen to it on YouTube with scenes from the movie), in which they feature as their characters from this movie (and which contains dialogue from one particular scene in it in which he is medically examining her), never actually appears in the film. It was meant to, but the producers changed their minds about including it, and it was instead released separately, as a means of publicising the film, which it did very effectively as this song went on to become a smash hit in the UK music singles chart. Please click here if you would like to watch this entire movie free of charge on YouTube.

 

 

My official DVD of The Million Pound Note (© Ronald Neame/J. Arthur Rank Organisation/Group Film Productions/General Film Distributors – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE MILLION POUND NOTE

On 10 July 2024, my movie watch was, like The Millionairess that I viewed on the previous evening (see mini-review above), a classic but nowadays not so famous British comedy film – The Million Pound Note (aka Man With A Million), which was directed by Ronald Neame, released in 1954 by General Film Distributors, and based upon a Mark Twain story. Set in the late 1800s, it stars Gregory Peck as Henry Adams, a penniless jobless American stranded in London who is presented by two wealthy gamblers with a genuine one million pound banknote, to see whether he can last a month without spending any of it yet still prosper simply by the respectability that possessing it brings to him, or whether he will need to spend at least some of it in order to survive. Henry finds the former prospect to be the one that works very well for him, at least to begin with, but matters become ever more complex, farcical, and hilarious as the month progresses. A host of famous British stars feature in this film, not least of whom are Joyce Grenfell, Wildfrid Hyde-White, Bryan Forbes, Laurence Naismith, Joan Hickson, and Hugh Griffith. Sumptuous decor, sparkling dialogue, and with Joyce Grenfell as a delightfully dotty duchess, how could any such movie possibly go wrong? And it doesn't – it's a total joy throughout. I vaguely remember watching this movie just once before, at least 50 years ago in b/w on TV when I was a teenager, but I had scarcely remembered it at all except for its title, so it was like watching a totally new film when I played my recently-purchased DVD of it. Please click here to watch this movie in its entirety free of charge on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Screen-shot from the original unreleased 1970s live-action/animation mash-up version of Hey Good Lookin' (© Ralph Bakshi/Bakshi Productions/Warner Bros – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)