7 Days in May | Brenda Starr and Operation Kid Brother

Brenda Starr (1992)



This movie came up on an episode of Nerd Lunch that I was on last year and it got me curious to see it. I remember when it came out, but I'd skipped it because a) it was during that whole glut of disappointing, early '90s comics/pulp movies, and b) I've never cared anything about the comic strip it's based on anyway. But then I learned that the plot involves Brenda Starr's getting in an argument with the cartoonist who draws her, so she disappears from the strip and he has to enter Cool World or whatever to bring her back. As low as that put my expectations, there was no way I could be disappointed. I figured I could at least watch a little and turn it off partway if it was unbearable.

Shockingly, I love every minute of the thing.

I've never read Brenda Starr, so I don't know what kind of tone it had, but certainly there are some outlandish things about the concept of a glamorous, adventure-having reporter. What's great about the movie is that it neither downplays nor ridicules those elements. It celebrates them and holds them up as sources of pure joy. Brooke Shields is amazing in the role as an absolutely perfect fashionista. And so is Timothy Dalton as the dashing, eye-patched Basil St John. Eddie Albert from Green Acres is basically playing Chief O'Hara in an early scene, but the real scene-stealers are Jeffrey Tambor and June Gable (Joey's manager Estelle on Friends) as a couple of KGB agents. The movie is funny and I laughed out loud many, many times. I kept waiting for the movie to turn on me, but it never did. Even the weird cartoonist-entering-his-work plot makes a kind of sense as a story about a passionless, mercenary artist who discovers the joy in what he's doing and falls in love with his subject.

The movie's not available on streaming, but I found a cheap DVD and blind-bought it. I'm glad I did, because I'll be watching this over and over again.

Operation Kid Brother (1967)



I stumbled across this one a couple of years ago when I was doing that whole James Bond series here on the blog, but just now got around to watching it. It presents itself as a parody of Bond movies, but I don't know if it really is. No more so than You Only Live Twice was anyway, which came out the same year.

This one stars Sean Connery's younger brother Neil as a gifted plastic surgeon who's also the younger brother of a famous secret agent. The movie is goofy about how much it wants to suggest ties to Bond continuity, so the main character is actually named Neil Connery even though it's clear that his older brother is supposed to be James Bond. And the two government representatives who recruit Neil are played by Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell, who are still clearly playing M and Moneypenny, even though their names are now Commander Cunningham and... well... Maxwell (Max, for short).

There are bunch of other Bond alumni reprising similar roles, too. Anthony Dawson is the head of the evil organization Thanatos, for example. Dawson is most recognizable as Professor Dent in Dr. No, but he also played the faceless Blofeld in From Russia With Love and Thunderball. His number two in Thanatos is played by Adolfo Celi, who was SPECTRE's Number Two in Thunderball. And From Russia With Love's Daniela Bianchi is again an enemy agent who falls for the hero and switches teams.

Neil Connery the character is an amazing man who's not just the world's top plastic surgeon. He also has super-hypnotism powers and is an expert archer and hand-to-hand fighter. My only disappointment with him is that Neil Connery the actor was sick when it was time to dub his lines, so the character has a bland voice with no trace of a Scot accent.

Operation Kid Brother isn't a great movie. It learned some of the wrong lessons from Thunderball, so several sequences are pointlessly overlong. And none of the bit actors are very good. But it's such a weird, fun little movie that I had a great time with it anyway. And it also gives us Ennio Morricone's (working with Bruno Nicolai) version of a Bond score. Well worth checking out for Bond fans.

Return to the Lost World (1992)



I actually watched this last week and forgot to mention it. There aren't really any surprises in this sequel to the Lost World adaptation from the same year. That movie ends by unsubtly foreshadowing how the gang's going to get back together and then they do exactly that in the second movie. And because part of the first one's formula was Professor Challenger and his rival's overcoming their differences, Return opens with them feuding again so that they can repeat the same beats in their relationship.

The special effects aren't any better this time around, either, but I did enjoy Return just slightly more than its predecessor, simply because I wasn't comparing it to Arthur Conan Doyle's novel anymore. Not enough to make me recommend it, but at least I was able to stay more-or-less engaged.

Stripes (1981)



Continuing from last week's watching of Airplane! and Caddyshack, we showed David a couple of more '80s comedies. He's a big Bill Murray fan, so Stripes was a necessity, even though it's not my favorite. There are some great gags, but I always lose interest after the characters graduate basic training. The movie should have ended there and lost the whole, tacked on, weaponized RV plot.

That would have given more time to sell the animosity between Murray's character and the drill sergeant, which is pretty loosely sketched out. Sometimes they seem to admire each other and other times they hate each other, but it's all as the plot dictates, not because it feels like a real relationship.

Big (1988)



Diane's birthday was this week and she requested that we watch Big. It's been a long time since I've seen it and I'd forgotten how much of a revelation Tom Hanks' performance was. This was the moment when we all started realizing that he was capable of much more than Bachelor Party and Volunteers (as much as I like those movies). He's really phenomenal in this, especially in the early scenes where his character is afraid and still getting used to his grown-up body.

It's a little weird that Elizabeth Perkins isn't more weirded out than she is when she finds out she's been sleeping with a 13-year-old, but that bit of creepiness aside, Big holds up as a lovely, touching movie.

Zorro (1957-61)



Almost done with Season 1 and things are getting pretty bleak for our hero. He manages to pull out some kind of victory each week, but they're smaller and smaller as the Eagle gains more and more power, even taking over Don Diego's home. Can't wait for the season finale.

Opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)



Since I finished the Young Indiana Jones episodes with 10-year-old Indy, I took a break from the show this week to watch the prelude section of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. So now Indy has his hat and his scar and I'm ready to watch him go to war in the rest of the TV series.

It was jarring to see the character in such an action-packed adventure after the educational journeys of the TV show. And I wonder what kind of tone the Teenage Indy episodes will take. I remember plot details, but not so much the overall feel.

Underground (2016-present)



We finished Season 1 and Oh My God. I'm loving this show.

Last week, I was concerned that the show was going to drag out the drama around some secrets in a relationship that I otherwise really like. But instead, it ripped that Band-Aid right off and forced the characters to deal with the repercussions. Or at least to start dealing with the repercussions. I have no doubt that it's going to come back to bite them, but at least there's no prolonged lying and delaying the inevitable. Excellent work, show.

More than that, though, I love how the final episode of the season pulled out some awesome twists while wrapping up some plots and teasing the direction of the show in Season 2. The new season is in progress as I'm writing this, but I've got the episodes so far queued up on my TiVo and ready to go.

The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley



Watching the Disney Zorro TV show got me curious to finally read the original story and it's a good one. The 1920 Mark of Zorro starring Douglas Fairbanks closely follows the novel's plot, so there weren't a lot of surprises in the novel, but there are some.

For one thing, Zorro's mask isn't the kind that's traditionally associated with the character. Fairbanks' mask influenced the popular image, but the mask in the novel is like the one on the cover above. It covers Zorro's (or Señor Zorro, as he's always called) entire face so that he has to lift it in order to eat, drink, or kiss. I'm not a fan, but I'm curious to see if McCulley changed it in the stories he wrote after the Fairbanks movie.

An even bigger surprise was that McCulley keeps his readers in the dark about Zorro's secret identity until the very end. Don Diego is all in the novel, but the reveal that he is also Zorro is meant to be as much of a shock to the audience as to the other characters in the book. That's as impossible for modern readers as keeping the Vader-Luke relationship a secret is for first time Empire viewers, but it's still cool to imagine how the original readers must have reacted.

Related to that, it was also news to me that The Curse of Capistrano is a complete novel with a definite ending and no set up for sequels. McCulley ends the book with Zorro's enemies defeated and his identity revealed, since it's no longer needed. But since the success of the Fairbanks film created a demand for more Zorro stories, I'm curious to see how (or even if) McCulley dealt with that in future installments.

Jam of the Week: "Carter & Cash" by Tor Miller



I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it, just because of it's light beat and playful melody, but I didn't immediately understand the reference in the title. It was calling to mind Tango & Cash, which led me down the completely wrong trail. And then I realized that it was holding up June Carter and Johnny Cash as an example of enduring, faithful love and I fell for the song even harder.

7 Days in May | Kong: Skull Island and The Lost World

Last week involved a lot of watching stuff for podcasts, so I'll save thoughts on those for later, but here's the rest of what I watched:

Kong: Skull Island (2017)



Saw Kong: Skull Island last week. For the second time, actually. It's great.

I'm a big fan of the 2014 Godzilla, but I understand the perspective that there's not enough Godzilla in it. I disagree, because I love the build-up, but I get it. There's no such problem in Kong. That monster is all in this thing. And his fights are awesome.

But I like the characters, too, and the '70s setting and the music and the ties to Vietnam and also the ties to Godzilla. It's a great prequel to that movie that doesn't feel like a prequel because it totally stands on its own. I like how it barrels towards various tropes and then swerves around them at the last second. I love the classic King Kong and his story, but I love this one, too.

The Lost World (1992)



This Canadian adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle novel has been on my To Do list for a long time. It's got John Rhys-Davies as Professor Challenger, David Warner as his scientific rival, and a pre-Will Eric McCormack as the young reporter who accompanies them on their expedition to investigate Challenger's claims of a hidden plateau full of dinosaurs. And it's pretty horrible.

The name actors are all charming enough, but the rest of the cast isn't so great and the visual effects are abysmal. The dinosaurs have all been created with puppets and there's no effort given to making it seem like they ever inhabit the same shot as the human characters (except for some baby dinosaurs that look even worse when being held by a person).

Lots of liberties taken with the story, too: moving the Lost World from South America to Africa for no real reason and teaming the explorers up with a good tribe that worships herbivore dinosaurs and is at war with a bad tribe that worships carnivores. And then there's the painful set up for the sequel where the tribal chief tells the heroes that they all have to come back (all of them, he stresses) if they're ever needed again. It's silly and I didn't like it.

But totally going to watch the sequel anyway.

Zorro (1957-61)



Watched a few more episodes of Disney's Zorro and still love it. I'm still in the first season, but another storyline has wrapped up (leading to the departure of yet another comandante from the village) and a new one started by finally revealing the mysterious Eagle who's been behind all of Zorro's most recent adversaries.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-93)



Finally, I watched another couple of Young Indy episodes. My favorite of the two featured Michael Gough as Lev Tolstoy, who befriends Indy when the boy runs away from his parents. The set up is frustrating, but cool. One of my problems with the younger of the two Young Indianas is that he hasn't ever felt like Indiana Jones to me. He could be any intelligent and privileged kid who's traveling around the world with his folks and keeps meeting important historical people.

But in the Tolstoy episode, Indy's tendency to get into trouble - almost always because he's doing something he shouldn't be - gets completely unmanageable. His parents have absolutely no control over him and are reduced to bluster and threats. As a parent, I was super irked by his behavior. And that was before he ran away for several days, leaving them in a worried panic.

But then I realized that I was finally seeing some of Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones in the character. His extreme independence and stubborn insistence on doing things his own way is on full display. As is his broken relationship with his father who will continue to disapprove of Indy's decision-making close to 30 years later. It didn't make me warm to the kid any more, but at least it made sense and I felt like I was watching the right show.

The second episode has Indy and his dad being forced to spend some time together in Greece where Indy meets Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. It's a heart-warming episode and repairs some of the damage done to their relationship in Russia, but that's probably why I didn't like it as much. That and the over-simplified philosophy that the Jones boys talked about the entire time.

Jam of the Week: "Devil's Teeth" by Muddy Magnolias



Foot-stomping and nasty, this song makes me feel like I'm at the best party in the world, that just happens to be at a decrepit old shack deep in the swamp.

31 Days of Gothic Romance | The Hound of the Baskervilles

We've talked about the big overlap between gothic romance and horror, but a few years after Dracula was published, Arthur Conan Doyle married gothic romance with a whole new genre: the detective novel. It was the author's big return to Sherlock Holmes stories after killing off the character eight years earlier. The Hound of the Baskervilles was meant to be sort of a lost story from before Holmes' death, but that wasn't a satisfying tactic for fans. They continued to put pressure on Doyle until he officially resurrected Holmes two years after Hound.

Set in the wilds of Dartmoor, the action of Hound is instigated by an extremely gothic event in which the noble, but evil lord of Baskerville Hall chases a young woman into the moor with the intention of raping her. As legend has it, he's killed by a giant, spectral hound and his family is forever cursed. That becomes important in Holmes' day when the current master of the Hall is found dead near the enormous footprint of a dog. Holmes is brought in to investigate and to protect the final heir of the Baskervilles.

It's against this backdrop of gothic characters and supernatural legends that Doyle sets his mystery novel. But the gothic elements don't end with Holmes' introduction. Holmes is too logical and competent for us to be afraid as long as he's around, so Doyle wisely writes Holmes out of large chunks of the story. The detective pretends to be busy on other cases, while he's actually lurking behind the scenes the whole time. And this lets us experience the decaying Baskerville Hall through Watson's impressionable eyes. The moor becomes a haunted place of sinister figures and eerie lights, with Watson trying to figure out if the ghosts are real or just part of someone's cruel, but mundane plan.

The Year in Movies: 1925

Since most of my 7 Days in May posts have been around the massive silent movie kick I'm on lately, I'm weeding out the extra stuff and am just going to concentrate on sharing the silents. I think that makes a better post than a miscellaneous hodge podge of stuff. And since I've been working my way through the silents chronologically, it makes sense to re-title this The Year in Movies. Here are the movies from 1925 that I've recently checked out (or rewatched).

Seven Chances (1925)



This Buster Keaton feature starts off as a romantic comedy in which Keaton's character needs to get married by a certain time in order to inherit seven million dollars. The jokes in that part are all about his proposing to various women at his country club and getting turned down, hilariously.

Then one of his buddies hits on the idea of putting out an ad that attracts probably about a hundred women. At that point, it becomes a chase movie as they run Keaton through the streets and across the countryside. And it's a brilliant, funny chase, too (way better than the one in Cops), especially when the rock slide starts.

There are some racist gags that I wish weren't in there, but generally it's one of Keaton's stronger movies.

Don Q: Son of Zorro (1925)



Put it on the list of sequels that are better than the original. Fairbanks' Mark of Zorro is amazing and fun, but Don Q goes to another level with a more intricate plot, a great group of characters, and even better actors to play them. I cared a lot about the people in this story, despairing and cheering right alongside them.

I'm glad I don't have to choose between Douglas Fairbanks and Buster Keaton for whose athleticism I admire more. I've said before that Fairbanks may not be as handsome as some of the swashbucklers who followed him, but he rules them all in terms of energy and sheer physical impressiveness. He's the definition of swashbuckler, always full of life and joy - even in the darkest moments - and never willing to walk or climb when a leap will get him there faster.

The Lost World (1925)



I really thought I'd seen this before, but didn't recall it as I was watching and think I would have. It's about half-faithful to the Arthur Conan Doyle story it's adapting with Wallace Beery (whom I know as King Richard from Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood) as a great Professor Challenger. He's physically imposing with a perpetual, angry brood on his face most of the time. The other actors are great as well, but the real stars are the makeup and special effects.

Bull Montana is legitimately frightening in his ape-man makeup by Cecil Holland, and legendary effects artist Willis O'Brien (who'd go on to supervise the visual effects for King Kong) worked on the charming stop-motion dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are so great that I'm glad the movie modified the end of the story by having a brontosaurus rampage through London (another foreshadow of King Kong).

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)



Seen this one a million times, but the sets and costumes are still spectacular and it's creepy in all the right places. Chaney is magnificent; equal parts evil and pathetic. Christine is flighty and pretty dumb, but her shenanigans just add to my enjoyment.

The Unholy Three (1925)



It may star Lon Chaney and be directed by Tod Browning, but The Unholy Three is no horror movie. It's a crime story, just with the twist that the trio of criminals in the title met in a sideshow act. Chaney plays Professor Echo, a ventriloquist who teams up with a little person and a strong man to pull elaborate burglaries, using a pet store as a front.

Complicating the situation is Echo's girlfriend, Rosie, an official member of the gang who's spending more time than Echo likes with Hector, the pet store clerk whom Echo's keeping around as a possible fall guy if things go wrong.

There's a lot that has to be overlooked to enjoy the movie. The way ventriloquism and courtrooms work, for instance. But there's a great, emotional core that keeps it interesting and makes it worthwhile. When allegiances shift - and boy do they - it always feels natural and because of who the characters are. Now I'm curious to see the 1930 remake that brought back Chaney and the three-foot Harry Earles with sound.

Go West (1925)



A very sweet story about the relationship between a friendless man and a brown-eyed cow. I love Buster Keaton's usual romantic shenanigans, but Go West is a refreshing change of pace. Though there is a woman, of course, and that story is sweetly told, too.

Wolf Blood (1925)



Wolf Blood (Wolfblood?) has even less to do with werewolves than the infamous She-Wolf of London, because that one at least starts its misdirection early on. Wolfblood spends most of its time creating drama between rival lumber operations and setting up romance between its lead characters. The lycanthrope element is tossed in towards the end as a romantic foil more than anything else.

But at least it has a pretty great character in Edith Ford, a flapper who also owns one of the lumber companies. In fact, if the movie had just been about her trying to decide between her surgeon fiancé and the handsome foreman of her company, I would have liked the movie better. Like She-Wolf, my biggest problem is its trying to squeeze in a supernatural plot and being half-hearted about it.

Tumbleweeds (1925)



A cool silent film covering the same events as the finale of Far and Away, which I have fond memories of and need to watch again.

Tumbleweeds makes a nice companion piece to The Covered Wagon, which also has people in covered wagons looking for a place to settle down. But in Covered Wagon they're opening up the frontier in the 1840s, while Tumbleweeds has them filling it in 50 years later.

I'd never seen a William S Hart movie before and I can see now why he was a big Western star. He's got a kind face, but a tough attitude. I doubt I'll track down his other movies, but I liked him in this.

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)



Like with the two Ten Commandments movies, I've always wanted to see the original Ben-Hur. Now that I have, I'm pretty sure I like it better than the Charlton Heston version. It's been a long time since I've seen Heston's, but I'm not a huge fan of him anyway and Ramon Novarro is extremely handsome and appealing as the title character.

I can see why William Wyler's remaking it was a good idea with new technology (and am curious to see how Timur Bekmambetov will do it again this year), but Fred Niblo totally got it right the first time. It wraps up too neatly and conveniently for me, but it's got all the spectacle and it's well-acted.

Graphic Classics: FCBD

Sorry about the last couple of days. I'm changing my writing schedule around a bit and there are still a couple of bugs to get worked out.

I do have a review for you today though. It's just not here. But if you'll hop over to Blog@Newsarama you'll find me talking about the Free Comic Book Day edition of Graphic Classics, including stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Mary Shelley.

Sometime in the next couple of days I'll follow it up with Gothic Classics, which has that Jane Austen story I was talking about.

Also: Keira Knightley in Princess of Thieves. Hoodalicious.