I Just Watched...

[jamesjazzguitar]

I was just watching Have Gun Will Travel. The local farmers didn't welcome and were thus mean to foreigners, that were also farmers, who came from southern eastern Europe. Well, these local farmers wheat crops were dying due to disease. The two end up getting along, and the show ends with Paladin telling the local farmers that these foreigner's wheat crops didn't suffer the same disease to their crops because they used seeds from their homeland, Crimea. The foreigners decide to give the local farmers free seed as a way to make them part of this American community.

Thus, Ukrainians helping out Americans in the old west!

[Lorna]

I would watch PERRY MASON a lot more consistently if there was a viewing option WITHOUT SO MANY ADS.

it's on FREEVEE with ads and PARMOUNT + (unedited, I think) but with ads and some kind of weird religious-legal-family channel/Christmas movie outlet via HULU with SO. MANY. ADS.

I mute them or I wander off and when I get back to the episode, like 14 different plot points have unfolded.

Damned if some eps of PERRY MASON are not BAROQUE in their plotting

[HoldenIsHere]

LHF, do you (or does anyone for that matter) know why the story was changed in the 1931 movie DRACULA to have Renfield visit Count Dracula's castle at the beginning rather than Jonathan Harker (as happens in Bram Stoker's source novel)?

OMG AN UNSOLICITED DRACULA QUESTION!!!!!

(I am not exactly an expert, but damned if I'm not pretty well-versed in most things DRACULATED.)

The 1931 FILM(S) [including the SPANISH VERSION] are based on a STAGE PLAY by HAMILTON DEANE, why DEANE decided to make RENFIELD the agent visiting DRACULA and not HARKER, I don't know- BUT it's the only change he made to the story that was a good one- it totally works and it helps to keep HARKER as the "straight" romantic, un-corrupted and conventional 1930's lead. and it gives RENFIELD a more understandable and clear relation to the story and the plot.

i mean, I'm HONESTLY not picking on him, really I'm not, but DAVID MANNERS was gay enough as it was, a scene of BELA going in towards his neck would've blown people's feeble, malnourished minds in the GREAT DEPRESSION. [PERSONALLY, I think they would've made an adorable couple.]

in the novel, RENFIELD is just a random patient of the asylum, as I recall, there is nothing to explain his connection to DRACUlA; however there is a character named MR HAWKINS who is HARKER'S BOSS in ENGLAND and it is left open-ended as to whether he knows what he is sending his young employee in for- this dymanic was explored in the 1922 NOSFERATU and the 1979 version too- which kinda combines the HAWKINS and RENFIELD characters into one.

EDIT: JUST TO TACK ON, in the novel DRACULA there is a rather insensitive, but interesting, point established that DRACULA has a special grasp on THE MENTALLY ILL and can rest in the GRAVE OF A SUICIDE VICTIM as if it were his native soil- this last bit was explored in a GODAWFUL 2006(?) MASTERPIECE THEATER version of DRACULA that has some TERRIBLE ACTING.

Thanks for this information about the 1931 DRACULA movie being adapted from a play rather than being adapted directly from Bram Stoker's novel.
The 1931 movie (and the play) provide a back-story for Renfield that is not found in Stoker's work.
As readers, we are left to our own interpretation of the odd relationship between Renfield and Dracula.
The Count clearly has some kind of influence over Renfield, but we never learn explicitly what has happened between the two, although there is the implication of some kind of intimacy or at the very least a promise of intimacy.
In fact, the novel teases the reader with the possibility that Dracula will ultimately seduce and "penetrate" another male.
There is a clear sexual connotation to the bite of the vampire with one party penetrating and the other being penetrated.
Jonathan Harker is *almost* penetrated (pegged?) by Dracula's three wives, but this would have reversed the Victorina sexual norm of the active, penetrating male and the passive, receiving female.

[CinemaInternational]

I would watch PERRY MASON a lot more consistently if there was a viewing option WITHOUT SO MANY ADS.

it's on FREEVEE with ads and PARMOUNT + (unedited, I think) but with ads and some kind of weird religious-legal-family channel/Christmas movie outlet via HULU with SO. MANY. ADS.

I mute them or I wander off and when I get back to the episode, like 14 different plot points have unfolded.

Damned if some eps of PERRY MASON are not BAROQUE in their plotting

That's Great American Family. It's crazy how many ads they have during murder She Wrote as well.

[Allhallowsday]

WHEN MICHAEL CALLS (1972)

[Hibi]

I would watch PERRY MASON a lot more consistently if there was a viewing option WITHOUT SO MANY ADS.

it's on FREEVEE with ads and PARMOUNT + (unedited, I think) but with ads and some kind of weird religious-legal-family channel/Christmas movie outlet via HULU with SO. MANY. ADS.

I mute them or I wander off and when I get back to the episode, like 14 different plot points have unfolded.

Damned if some eps of PERRY MASON are not BAROQUE in their plotting

That's Great American Family. It's crazy how many ads they have during murder She Wrote as well.

It isn't just the ads, its the kind of ads. When MyPillow guy comes on or the Lume Lady I head for the remote! I miss having picture in picture. When I switched cable companies I lost that.

[Andree]

I've seen The Intruder two or three times over the years, though not recently.
I think it nails the atmosphere of a poor small southern town in the early 60s pretty
well. It's a rather disheartening place, right down to Shatner's shabby hotel room.
And Kirk is believable as the manipulative conman and horndog. This is one time
when the low budget works well.

Yeah, on PM Held went into the bar and ordered a glass of milk knowing it would
draw attention. I think Sean McClory played the tough guy who lost to Herd arm
wrestling. He was in a number of PM episodes

[Hibi]

I've seen The Intruder two or three times over the years, though not recently.
I think it nails the atmosphere of a poor small southern town in the early 60s pretty
well. It's a rather disheartening place, right down to Shatner's shabby hotel room.
And Kirk is believable as the manipulative conman and horndog. This is one time
when the low budget works well.

Yeah, on PM Held went into the bar and ordered a glass of milk knowing it would
draw attention. I think Sean McClory played the tough guy who lost to Herd arm
wrestling. He was in a number of PM episodes

I forgot about the glass of milk! LOL.

[txfilmfan]

Damned if some eps of PERRY MASON are not BAROQUE in their plotting

Byzantine, even

[HoldenIsHere]

Speaking of Dracula: the first ten minutes of Kevin Spacey's performance as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh are available on YouTube. This is simply some of the best acting I have ever seen.

I think I get the Dracula reference, but as for the acting in THE ICEMAN COMETH clip I thought it was just Spacey's usual stuff.
He always seems to be acting to me.
There's a Jack Lemmon quality to performance.
Jack Lemmon is another person who always seems to be acting.

[kingrat]

We just watched "The Case of the Wandering Widow" on Perry Mason, featuring Casey Adams/Max Showalter. It is so not a spoiler that his character turns out to be slimy and gets bumped off. Agatha Christie fans will note a resemblance in set-up to ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, although this episode takes a different turn.

Dean Haren, who plays a prisoner, looks like a cousin of Tommy Lee Jones. Imdb notes that Haren was on Perry Mason four times, and his wife June Dayton was on five times. Coleen Gray plays Mason's client.

Ralph Clanton, also seen on this episode, might be remembered by some as the tycoon Jasper Delaney on Somerset.

[Bronxgirl48]

Stumbled upon TOO SCARED TO SCREAM, a cheesy urban slasher film of the early '80's. Unfortunately (or not) I missed the first half. What I saw was an aging Maureen O'Sullivan, mute and in a wheelchair as Shakespeare-spouting doorman Ian McShane's dear "Mother", and Mike Conners as a frustrated police lieutenant ("Dammit, where the hell is the s.o.b.??") trying to catch an elusive serial killer.

Honestly the only frightening thing about this is Sully Boyar in bathing trunks.

[Bronxgirl48]

Baby Chimp Rescue.

Our vulnerable furry cousins, so ugly they're cute. A vet and his wife are saving many of them in Liberia who have been orphaned (due to poaching) or mistreated as chained-up "pets". This couple is very dedicated -- a few of the young chimps sleep with them as a bonding experience to lessen the trauma caused by loss of their mothers.

But boy can they wreak havoc!

[Bronxgirl48]

CNN's How It Really Happened: Oscar Pistorious

"My lady, it was an accident"

Sure.

[Lorna]

That's Great American Family. It's crazy how many ads they have during murder She Wrote as well.

it's also crazy how SERIOUSLY they take CHRISTMAS MOVIES, in (checks calendar) MAY.

(like, they don't even have the CHRISTMAS IN JULY "excuse")