Movie review - "Rock All Night" (1957) ** 1/2 (re-watching)

 I saw I gave this two stars the last two times I watched it - now it's up to two and a half. I enjoyed it more. The cheapness. The oddness. The cheekiness of a film padded from a 30 minute siege play, with some musical acts, Roger Corman stock company, Abby Dalton singing badly, The Platters singing two songs at the top and never being seen again (how would Corman have used them more? as a hero?), Mel Welles as a beatnik agent (very Charles Griffith), Barbara Mouris as a boxer's wife, Beach Dickerson as a boxer, Ed Nelson as a person who gets killed.

It's not really believable Miller can talk down gangster Russell Johnson at the end but there's lots going on. The film has a charm and it's only 60 minutes.

Movie review - "This Happy Breed" (1944) **

Amazing to think that in wartime they stumped up colour for a domestic drama without much spectacle - but such was the impact of In Which We Serve. Oh, there is some spectacle - a fun fair, a parade, some action during the General Strike, walking past the king's coffin - but it's not really needed, it could've been shot cheaply.

I didn't like this movie. In fact I hated it. 

I appreciated some of it. The opening shot with the camera panning down. The scene where someone is told of the death of a son and his wife off screen but the camera holds on the garden. (Why not show the accident, though?) David Lean was already very confident as a director.

But I couldn't care less about this family. These working class tories who unthinkingly support the establishment. A daughter's boyfriend dares to suggest changes to the status quo, worries about poverty and wages, and is mocked and sorted out. A daughter dares to want to be something more than a boring housewife and mother and is scolded by a horribly oppressive childhood friend (John Mills) who she doesn't like and her own parents, especially her dad, then runs off with a married man, which okay was scandalous, but the parents make it all about them. What a pack of whingers.

I'm sorry their son died and his wife but they sort of die for convenience and it doesn't seem to affect them too much apart from one scene.

Celia Johnson is good as the mother. Robert Newton feels all wrong as the father, as if he's slightly sending it up. Newton seems more interested in his friend Stanley Holloway than his wife, and he seems drunk telling her daughter to give up dreams, and complaining about the British people daring to want peace (you can make a good anti appeasement argument - but it's not done here).

John Mills is good even if his character is clearly controlling (the girl never says she loves him and then she later gives their kid to her parents to raise while she goes to Singapore!)

I recognise that people would feel differently if they knew these characters and lived through this period, but I felt they were wankers, and I haven't felt that about other Coward characters.

There's so many scenes where you go "why didn't they dramatise that" - the accident that killed the son, John Mills running into the daughter, John Mills spending time with the daughter.

This film sucked.

Movie review - "The Swinging Barmaids" (1975) *

 Little known 70s Chuck Griffith script even though a director - Gus Triokis - is a little bit known as is the star William Smith. It's an exploitation film about a serial killer who knocks off cocktail waitresses at a strip club. Smith isn't the serial killer he's the cop.

We see it from the serial killer's point of view which is a drag. He goes around befriending and killing women. It's a movie for people who like that kind of thing.

It's got none of Griffith's humour and imagination but has a solid structure.

Play review - "Shadows of the Evening" by Noel Coward (1966)

 Part of Coward's Suite in Three Keys this is a good play - this really was a return to form for him. This has some grunt. It's about a publisher who is dying - his mistress invites his wife over to tell her. The stakes are big but what gives it power is Coward gets to tell his philosophy about mortality.

Movie review - "Beast from the Haunted Cave" (1959) **1/2 (re-watching)

 The South Dakota locations give this freshness, though it must've been a tough shoot, But they're really out there in the snow. Some good acting by Frank Wolff. Michael Forrest is a dull hero but the role is dull. Chuck Griffith resuses the Key Largo plot again - Wolff's moll falls for Forrest - but it's a smart low budget script.

Could've done with more monster. The last section in the cave is fantastic with the monster in creepy caves capturing people in webs.

Movie review - "Attack of the Crab Monsters" (1957) *** (re-watching)

 The script is good. Not the direction which throws away chances of suspense - arriving at the island, the missing former inhabitants - and drama - a promising love triangle is barely dealt with.

But there's creepiness with the voices of the other scientists calling out, the outrageous huge crab claws, the intensity of the cast. It could've been a masterpiece but for a cheapie film you can see why it was a big hit.

Play review - "Come into the Garden Maude" by Noel Coward (1966)

 Not very funny and I've read this is supposed to be funny but it's not bad. A rich millionaire and his whiny wife bitch about the Europeans, then the husband falls very quickly in love with a European lady.  Coward has used people telling nagging wives to get stuffed a few times (eg Fumed Oak), there's an element of misogyny about it - I mean, he didn't have to stay married - but the conflict is strong.