Headed off to work after that. We were far less busy this morning than we have been. We're past the beginning of the month now, and the weather wound up once again being hot and sunny. I was late doing the 11 AM sweeping because I had to put away cold items someone didn't want. Otherwise, I spent the morning sweeping and pushing carts on a warm and very humid day.
Went straight home after work and into snacks and Let's Make a Deal. Monty started off with letting a cowgirl choose which wallet had a dollar bill. If she could find a dollar, she would go to Paris. She didn't find a dollar, but she did pick up some pretty big money. A construction worker threw in his thousand dollars for the Door 4 Wheel...but alas, it didn't work out well for him. A college student dressed as a sultan did better, also winning money. He and the cowgirl traded in their cash for the Big Deal of the Day. The cowgirl and her cute cowboy boyfriend ended up with some really nice living room furniture that cost twice what she gave up, while the sheik ended up with a fancy blue car.
Rested while watching the original Flash Gordon serial from 1936. Polo player Flash (Buster Crabbe) and his girlfriend Dale Arden (Jean Rogers) join scientist Dr. Alexis Zarkov (Frank Shannon) to figure out why the planet Mongo is on a collision course with the Earth. They run headlong into the evil dictator Ming the Merciless (Charles B. Middleton), who wants to marry Dale and force Flash to fight in his arena. Ming's daughter Aura (Priscilla Lawson) falls for Flash and manages to get him out of several tight situations. Flash does rescue Dale, but even when they flee into Mongo, they discover most of its residents aren't exactly friendly. There's also Aura, who loves Flash, and Prince Barin (Richard Alexander), who is leading a rebellion against Ming.
Cheesy good fun, this is the ancestor of everything from Star Wars to sci-fi TV shows like Babylon 5. Middleton steals the show as the scenery-chewing galactic villain. Yeah, the special effects definitely show their age, and neither Dale nor Flash are really all that interesting. That doesn't stop this from being enjoyably campy. Your mileage may vary, depending on how goofy you want your space opera to be.
Applied to a secretarial job for a marine supply store in Paulsboro, then had dinner while watching Match Game '77. Gene got Ira to change his views on one of Brett's answers early on. Later on, there's some debate about which Pole penguins can be found at. (They never seemed to get the hint that they're at the South Pole, not the North.)
Finished the night online watching Danger: Diobolik at Kanopy. Diobolik (John Philip Law) is a master thief pursued by Inspector Ginko (Michel Piccoli). He steals ten million from a bank right under the Inspector's nose, then literally sleeps in it with his lover Eva (Marisa Mell). Ginko enlists gangster Valmont (Adolfo Celi) to help bring Diobolik down, then captures Eva. No matter what he does, Diobolik finds a way out, even faking his own death. The Minister of Finance (Terry-Thomas) desperately sends gold out to mint into money for the country. Diobolik finds a way to get that too, but it literally blows up in his face in the end...or does it?
This Italian-American co-production is about as psychedelic as you can get. From the bold costumes to the increasingly weird action sequences to Law's performances as the eternally cool and collected master thief, this one screams 1968 at the top of its lungs. I think it's supposed to be a spoof of the James Bond movies and Batman, but it's a little darker than either of those, with its weird anti-villain fighting against bland cops. Even with his short screen time, Celi does come off slightly better than he did earlier in Thunderball, while Mell does just fine as Diobolik's lover. Worth checking out if you want to see a truly unique action film from the 60's or are into the mid-late 60's Bond imitations.
No comments:
Post a Comment