tarwaterthomas

.....because it starts off with that no-good psychopathic nudnik Shane Casey (an uncredited Edward Furlong) who somehow managed to survive a fall off a lighthouse where he had cornered Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) and was presumed dead from impacting on the rocks below and drowned. Yet the rascal shows up at the Messer domicile and was about to slaughter Danny, Lindsay (Anna Belknap), and their baby Lucy, only Lindsay gives Shane a serious head shot and the punk killer winds up dead for real. Five months later, Lindsay Monroe Messer is awarded the Combat Cross while at the same time newly-arrived crime scene investigator Jo Danville (Sela Ward) shows up at the lab and finds....a dead body and a bloody handprint! How did the corpse get inside the CSI lab? An incensed Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) sure wants to know, and he chews out the asses of the personnel just standing there with their fingers up their noses. They break up and get back to work, because they don't want to suffer their boss man's wrath. Jo Danville comes with some credentials: she is a former FBI special agent and she's got connections. Lindsay is going to have some post-traumatic stress disorder from having to kill Shane Casey, and she is having to visit resident headshrinker Morgan Jefferson (Jean McLean Guerra) as per regulations. It bears repeating: how did the corpse wind up in the CSI laboratory? The body is identified as the late Sarah Nelson (Katie Boggs), and the surveillance system had been tampered with, and the night shift security person didn't know until too late that there was a murder, and the murder occurred while Mac was still at work! And she was in the family way at the time of her untimely death! That had been determined by that lovable pathologist Sid Hammerback (Robert Joy), who also determined that Sarah Nelson had tried to fight back when she was stabbed to death with a pair of scissors. And she was dressed good, Jimmy Choos and all. That beloved datahead Adam Ross (A. J. Buckley) hacks into the late victim's cellphone, and finds out that she had a lot of enemies that included Rudy Aronika (Lawrence Monoson) who happens to be married, of course. And she was carrying somebody else's baby because Aronika had a vasectomy three years earlier. Another suspect is entitled moneybags Theodore Westwick (Brett Tucker) who claims to have been mugged, and Sarah Nelson was one of his employees working for a measly ten bucks per hour and working sixty hours a week. Lindsay determines that the murderer is a very busy high-end burglar. The passcodes to the elevators were disabled, by the way. Yet another suspect pops up and his name is Alex Brodevesky (Sean Maguire) whom Danny and police detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) manage to arrest at a swank nightclub after a rambunctious chase through said facility where the party animals are knocked aside and plenty of wine glasses are shattered. Shoobedoobeshoo. Shattered. Come to find out, Westwick is the killer. He was the late Sarah Nelson's baby daddy, and that would have wrecked his high society marriage. Jo asks Mac if all the cases are like this and he says "Pretty much." Was awfully sad to see Melina Kanakeredes leave CSI NY, and it could have been done better. But good introduction of Sela Ward to the cast. Just wish CSI NY could have lasted a lot longer. That's all.

.....and such is the case with PIT AND THE PENDULUM, based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and brought to the silver screen by American International Pictures, probably the only movie outfit that got real busy with macabre movies during the 1960a. Hardly any of the studio majors would touch the horror film genre at that point in time. MGM? Forget it. Universal and Warner Brothers made scare movies once in a while, but AIP was consistent with its films of horrifying horror and terrifying terror. We go back to 16th-century Spain (the year is 1547) where visiting Englishman Francis Barnard (John Kerr) arrives at the gloomy fog-ridden castle of his brother-in-law Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price). He's here to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his sister Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). Nicholas and his sister Catherine (Luana Anders) claim that Elizabeth Barnard Medina died from a rare blood disorder. Francis thinks it's a bunch of malarkey. Family physician Dr. Leon (Antony Carbone) says that Elizabeth actually died of a massive heart failure as a result of being scared death. Come to find out, Elizabeth was so obsessed with the castle's underground torture chamber that she went off her rocker and locked herself inside an iron maiden. Not to be confused with the rock band, of course. Well, it turns out that Nicholas Medina's dear ol' dad was Sebastian Medina who was a diabolical representative of the Spanish Inquisition. Where the astronomer Galileo Galilei was put under arrest at the behest of the Catholic Church and forced to recant his belief that Earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around. And where people who did not show enough love to the Pontiff were incarcerated and tortured. But getting back to this movie, turns out Elizabeth was buried alive! She's still alive and well, and she's plotting with her lover Dr. Leon to drive Nicholas insane so she can inherit the castle. Well, he takes mighty good care of the evil Elizabeth by stashing her back inside the Iron Maiden, goes off his rocker, causes Dr. Leon to fall into a pit and straps Francis Barnard onto a stone slab and activates a huge razor-sharp pendulum, causing it to descend slower and slower so that the massive blade will slice Francis in bloody half! This is one wild movie. The cinematography was accomplished by Academy Award-winning lensman Floyd Crosby (TABU), and the visual effects were done by Donald Glouner, Albert Whitlock, and Ray Mercer. But it was Vincent Price who was the show, from beginning to end. But don't just take my word. Watch this flick of flicks. You'll see what I mean.

.....and Tyler Perry busted his behind making this feature film where he plays four characters. Four characters! There's Mabel "Madea" Simmons, her favorite nephew Brian Simmons, the notorious Uncle Joe Simmons who's been a real horn dog all his life because he's been a player from back in the day, and Heathrow Simmons who happens to be a paraplegic brother to Joe and Madea; he speaks through a voice box and claims to have lost his legs during combat during the Vietnam war but Madea states that Heathrow lost his legs while hitting on a gangster's favorite honeybabe while Uncle Joe says that Heathrow has is supposedly diabetic. Cassi Davis returns as Aunt Bam, Madea's cousin and Patrice Lovely comes on back as Hattie, Bam and Madea's friend. In the backwoods community of Maxine, Georgia there's a surprise party in the works for the 40th wedding anniversary of Vianne (Jen Harper) and Anthony (Derek Morgan) by their children A. J. (Courtney Burrell), Sylvia (Ciera Payton), and Jesse (Rome Flynn). Well, guess what, that planned surprise party goes sideways when Anthony suffers a heart attack while in engaged in an act of sexual congress with a woman who is not his wife (played by Quin Waters), and therefore has to be taken to a nearby hospital while Heathrow is rolling around in a scooter carrying a sheet cake with vanilla frosting depicting a beauty of color astride a tiger! So in the waiting room there's Madea backslapping Aunt Bam and Uncle Joe across the chops, and at one point Madea slaps the dentures out of Uncle Joe's mouth! Brian Simmons tries to help Hattie get control of the situation but it's hard to do when Madea is on a roll. Sad news to report by the attending physician: Anthony passed away. What makes it worse was that he had a humongous erection at the time of death. Vianne asks Madea to plan Anthony's funeral and to have it in two days, but the resident undertaker (Ary Katz) is having a hell of a time closing the casket. Thanks to the late Anthony's supersized Johnson, it's hard to shut the lid. It keeps popping open! And Anthony had died with a smile on his face! Madea can't even close the casket! Neither can the undertaker! Come to find out, Heathrow is using a voice box because he used to smoke 52 packs of cigarettes on a daily basis. And you should see Heathrow's jacket. Decorated with medals, buttons, patches, and all kinds of decorations. And the program for the funeral is eighty-five pages long. Madea is prosecuting the funeral where Anthony's numerous mistresses are sitting in the pews. One of them is dressed like a hoochie mama with the words "Anthony's Chick" tatted on her back! As any major fool will tell you, when you attend a gospel service it lasts for two hours...at least. Medea's funeral service is taking forever and six days, and outside in the parking lot the hearse driver is pacing back and forth and asking himself when is this cotton picking funeral going to end so the casket can be ferried to the cemetery. In the meantime, there's testimonies, lots of singing, and Heathrow is trying to go to the bathroom. Madea is trying to get control of the service, and the late Anthony's many mistresses have hogged up one side of the church. Filling up every one of the rows! And when the coffin busts open, there's a widespread panic and everybody's trying to get out of there! Man, that must have been some industrial strength Viagra at work! In the aftermath, there's a repast where some secrets will be revealed. Such as the funeral costing over $9,700! While Uncle Joe is lecturing Heathrow about his smoking, he's about to light up a cancer stick only to be told to put it out. And Madea calls Heathrow a dead man rolling, while she and Bam are insulting Heathrow nonstop. Hattie confesses that she knew of Anthony's infidelities but had to keep it a deep dark secret in order to keep the family together. Supposedly A MADEA FAMILY FUNERAL was filmed in less than a week, but visual effects supervisor David Carriker did a magnificent of compositing all four of Tyler Perry's four characters in the same scene. He stated at the time that this was going to be his last picture, but he came back as Madea in MADEA'S FAREWELL PLAY (2020) and TYLER PERRY'S A MADEA HOMECOMING (2022). I'm guessing that Tyler Perry is not quite ready to let his favorite character Madea Simmons go just yet. Great movie through and through; it captures families of color perfectly.

.....because it features the iconic 1968 Ford Mustang fastback that, as it turns out, is the last remaining Mustang as driven by Steve McQueen in the rip-roaring crime drama BULLITT (1968), and if you haven't seen it, you should and soon because it remains the greatest suspense movie made in the last fifty-five years. In this thrilling episode, there's a car collector named Owen Cairo (Anthony Edwards) who is having a spit fit because his ride, the last remaining Bullitt Mustang, is missing and presumed stolen, so what Cairo wants is for those lovable police detectives Danny Reagan (Donnie Walhberg) and Maria Baez (Marisa Ramirez) to get out there and find the 1968 ride and bring it back. And in the meantime, that cutie-pie in NYPD blue Eddie Janko (Vanessa Ray) and Officer Keith Roosevelt (John Clarence Stewart) have been dragged into the office of the Internal Affairs Bureau courtesy of the acting district attorney due to allegations that some cops have been fixing tickets for their friends and neighbors, and Eddie's name came up. Looks like the acting DA has it bad for the Reagans and wants to make an example of them, just to score some political points. Assistant District Attorney Erin Reagan (Bridget Moynahan) is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and is told to handle it which makes it tense between her and her dear ol' dad, NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck). What a way to celebrate her 40th birthday. Maria meets with auto broker Sam Guttman (Ivan Martin) who offers her a percentage if the Mustang is found, but she tells him to go pound sand. As for Danny Reagan, he has reason to believe that Cairo's wife Sybil (Michelle Veintimilla) had nothing to do with the theft. There's a great scene where Jamie and Eddie pulls over Judge Schlossberg (Todd Susman) for running a stop sign. It was a moving violation. Turns out the judge had leaned on the acting DA to lean on the cops and bust their chops. Jamie and Eddie go strictly by the book. The judge is not a happy camper. No surprise he bellyaches to the acting DA. Commissioner Reagan pays a visit to the 21st precinct, the one belonging to Officers Reagan and Jenko, and tells that loudmouth police union president Johnny Lyons (Stephen Rowe) to knock it off with the blue flu talk. After which Commissioner Reagan orders the cops to go by the book. In the meantime, not only is the Mustang still missing, so is Owen Cairo! In the end, Danny and Maria intercept Sam Guttman who was about to unload a 1968 Mustang halfback. Owen shows up, and is busted for insurance fraud. It isn't even the right Bullitt Mustang. It was a Mustang that had been purchased by Owen's father six months after the original Bullitt Mustang was used in BULLITT. No gunfire for a change, but engrossing nevertheless. And you have to see the Steve McQueen crime supersaga. That's a real movie. And this is a great episode. It ends with Frank, Danny, Jamie and Henry "Pops" Reagan (Len Cariou) eyeballing and gazing at the real Bullitt Mustang. And a security person takes a group photo of the Reagan men standing by the Ride of Rides.

.....but it's not about a swivel-hipped hepcat from Tupelo, Mississippi and from Memphis, Tennessee, and it's not about four mop-topped Englishmen from Liverpool. But it's about several townspeople in San Angelo, California who certainly do get stoned. Well, kind of. So what happened was that a black meteor slammed in the desert and there was a resultant explosion (courtesy of alternate scenes from 1953's IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE but never mind that). And there was this opening narration by voiceover maestro Paul Frees who explained about meteors and how they burn up upon entering Earth's atmosphere but sometimes they do smack on the surface if they're large enough. What happened was, there was a field trip chaperoned by that lovable schoolteacher Cathy Barrett (Lola Albright), and one of the kids named Ginny Simpson (Linda Scheley) brought a cute little rock home from the excursion, only her mother (Claudia Bryar) told her not to bring it into the house because it didn't belong in that nice clean house. So Ginny drops the souvenir from the desert into a bucket of water, and the very next morning the Simpson domicile is covered in black rocks! Lots of them! And Ginny is found in a shell shocked state! And part of her arm has solidified into stone! Looking into this mysterious affair is brilliant geologist Dave Miller (Grant Williams) and newspaper publisher Martin Cochrane (Les Tremayne), and at the request of general practitioner E. J. Reynolds (Richard H. Cutting) Ginny Simpson is rushed to the California Medical Research Institute in Los Angeles. An injection of silicon reverses Ginny's petrified condition and cures her. Well, to make a long story short, it's water that causes the black rocks to multiply faster than rabbits, and after they grow to enormous proportions and attain skyscraper heights, they fall and shatter into pieces, and multiply again, over and over. It doesn't help that there's a thundershower in progress, feeding those rocky creations. And if something isn't done real soon, those monolith monsters will cover the entire world. Local police chief Dan Corey (William Flaherty) makes plans to evacuate San Angelo, and the California governor declares a state of emergency. It's determined by Dave Miller and astute professor Arthur Flanders (Trevor Bardette) that the only way to stop that particular rock band is salt, and plenty of it. Fortunately, there's a nearby salt flat, and if the nearby dam can be blown up, the flood can sweep over those salt flats and the saline-loaded water can flow over the monolith monsters and destroy them. I saw this movie on KBHK Channel 44 from San Jose, California forty years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Great special effects by Clifford Stine, and the story was co-written by Jack Arnold (CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON). For once, the monsters are not a result of atomic radiation. Those two screenwriters, Norman Jolley and Robert Fresco, wrote out of the box. They, along with Jack Arnold, came up with an inventive script, but it was Grant Williams, Lola Albright, and the rest of the cast members, along with director John Sherwood, who scored a touchdown. Only a bigger budget would have made THE MONOLITH MONSTERS one for the ages. But this is a very good science fiction yarn, made by Universal-International that was the go-to studio for 1950s science fiction flicks. So check it out. You'll be glad you did. It's a good way to get stoned, and still remain sober.

..... Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) would like to know who shot and killed bottom-feeding shyster lawyer Manny Himes, twice-divorced as it happens. And while that's going on, meter maid Rhonda Reynolds (Nicole J. Butler) and struggling artist Mauricio Flores (Tyson Turrou) each receive a million-dollar check courtesy of a mysterious individual who has been dubbed the Guardian Angel. Rhonda Reynolds actually faints when she sees the check. Danny Messer (Carmen Giovinazzo) and his much better half Lindsay Monroe Messer (Anna Belknap) witness the Guardian Angel story on television while Danny's doing background work on the late lawyer which he names "fifty shades of sleazebag." Police detective Don Flack comes across the corpse of science student Justin Vanderhayden (Daniel Amerman), while married couple Kevin and Rachel Carpenter (Brandon Olive and Miranda Moore) are also the recipient of one million dollars and, oh by the way, they have a baby on the way. Mac Taylor and Jo Danville (Sela Ward) interrupt Adam Ross' telephonic tête-à-tête with his favorite girl friend Michelle Rhodes (who had been played by Melissa Fumero in the previous episode THE REAL McCOY) so that Adam can get back to his assignment of tracing Manny Himes' phone calls. Don Flack reveals to his favorite girlfriend Jamie Lovato (Natalie Martinez) that he's into the game of ping pong, and invites her to play the game after work. Adam (A. J. Buckley) finds out that there's a venture capitalist named Andy Stein (Jeff Branson) who's up on charges of six counts of intellectual property theft, and Stein had been waiting for Vanderheyden to show up but the kid never did. The young lad had invented a three-dimensional printer capable of producing a sidearm! Yes, friends and neighbors, a gun! Capable of firing bullets! Made by a 3-D printer! Mac and Jo are thinking, "oh, damn!" Which explains why the discharged rounds didn't have any marks. They were smooth as silk. Jo Danville watches a televised news conference in which Wall Street financial whiz Richard Kemp (Bill A. Jones) outs himself as the Guardian Angel, but she thinks it's just so much bull butter. Lindsay test-fires the printed revolver, and it shatters upon firing the second time, scattering shrapnel every which-a-way. Phone calls are made by Danny and Lindsay to local hospitals to find out who got shrapneled. They, and Mac, find out it's a criminal punk named Andy Lewis (Stephen Snedden) who had been severely shredded and burned at one of the seventeen hospitals in the Big Apple. Come to find out, Andy Lewis passed himself off as a moneybags who was interested in Justin Vanderheyden's pitch. They go over to Justin's apartment where he demonstrates his invention, and Andy Lewis showed his thanks by shooting Justin with his own printable gun and killing him. Then he went over to Manny Himes' office and shot him with the printable weapon, only it shattered the second time. There's a great scene of Mac and Danny cornering Lewis in his garage. Lewis climbs atop a column of tires, and Danny shoves the tire column to one side and Lewis falls to the floor. Mac and Danny see him lying there, and Danny says "he's just tired." Guaranteed groans from the audience out there in television land. As for Jo Danville, her own investigation reveals the incontrovertible evidence: the Guardian Angel is none other than that beloved pathologist Sid Hammerback (Robert Joy). See, what happened was that an international company based in Japan had bought his patent for a neck rest and shelled out $47 million. Sid had been the one disbursing the million-dollar checks for one real reason: he had been diagnosed with cancer, non-Hodgins lymphoma to be exact. He asks Jo to keep it a deep dark secret. Those ten cases Sid had been investigating, the victims either lost a loved one or were laid off. One of the best episodes from CSI NY. Take it from me.

......starts off with that lovable crime scene head investigator Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) on a flight to Washington D. C. to render a vitally-needed testimony, and while chatting up a seat mate who happens to have invented a hairpiece guaranteed not to come off he spots a few flight attendants who are unusually excited. Frightened, even. It turns out there's a dead body of an air marshal who's lying there in the bathroom near the cockpit with a sliced carotid artery! It turns out that he's an escaped criminal named Anton Greenway (Ben Youcef)! The real air marshal named Roger Stockwell (Randy Hall) was shot and killed with a Desert Eagle sidearm, as later determined by CSI guy Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) and police detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill). In the meantime, the DC-bound flight has returned to John F. Kennedy International Airport and the passengers are understandably perturbed. They are situated in the aircraft hangar and will have to be released in 24 hours, unless Mac can find the killer. One of the passengers, James Turner (Scott Connors) by name, is a bigamist. He has a family in DC, and the other in the Big Apple. No wonder he's bent out of shape. Sheldon Hawkes (Hill Harper) and Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes) take part in the investigation, and as Adam Ross (A. J. Buckley) has been begging for some more time in the field he's ordered to swamp out the aircraft's toilet holding tank at the behest of Mac himself. Adam will recover the, uh, evidence later on. And according to that lovable coroner Sid Hammerback (Robert Joy), the late Anton Greenway had renewed his membership in the Mile-Club before he was murdered. Greenway murdered Stockwell before stealing the latter's identity. He had planned on hijacking the aircraft and forcing the flight crew to fly towards an abandoned landing strip near Montreal, in Quebec, Canada with $250,000 stolen currency, but was murdered before the hijacking could take place. So who murdered Greenway and stopped the hijacking? That's what Stella Bonasera and Lindsay Monroe (Anna Belknap) would want to know. And so would Mac, because there's still a planeload of suspects. And it turns out that Greenway's partner was a former DEA agent named Terrence Davis (Nelly), and so Don Flack and Danny Messer pay a visit to Davis' nightclub. He used to be an importer/exporter one time. His Desert Eagle is missing. Davis is in big trouble. Oops. But he has a solid alibi. And he's forced to become a confidential informant by Detective Flack. And since the 24 hours are up, the Homeland Security crew had no choice but to release the passengers. But the murder weapon turns out to be a set of brass wings, belonging to flight attendant Susan Montgomery (Michaela McManus). She killed Anton Greenway to prevent him from hijacking the plane. She had been helping Greenway, only she fell out with him after he murdered the air marshal named Roger Stockwell, and she planned on stealing the cash. A real wowser of an episode. I just had to review it, you know.

.....it takes place on an island in the Pacific Ocean where several United Nations scientists are conducting an agricultural experiment that will involve placing said island in a deep freeze through chemical means. We see the indomitable atomic fire-breathing prehistoric monstrosity known as Godzilla experiencing the joys and travails of parenthood. The big "G" lays an egg, from which emerges a small (60-foot) offspring dubbed Minya. Godzilla's newborn baby stumbles around, whines, and blows harmless incandescent smoke rings. Godzilla has to let the papa in him come out, slap Minya around, and stomp on the little critter's tail until that worthy offspring learns how to become aggressive and throw his considerable weight around, just like his daddy. The scientific personnel are joined by an intrepid newspaper reporter (is there any other kind) who arrives ashore on an inflatable raft, and a native girl named Riko Matsumiya (Beverly Maeda). They have their hands full with Godzilla, Minya, several oversized preying mantises, and an enormous spider. After defending Minya against those shambling behemoths, Godzilla and junior are frozen in suspended animation thanks to a rampant snowfall from the chemical balloon explosions staged by the scientists and their guests who are safely offshore. SON OF GODZILLA never received a theatrical release, but went straight to TV in 1969 courtesy of American International Television. And since AIP-TV was too cheap to list the credits, I will do so. The main gang of actors were Tadao Takashima, Akira Kubo, Akihiko Hirata, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kenji Sahara, Osman Yusuf, Kenichiro Maruyama, Seishiro Kuno, Yasuhiko Saijo, Susumu Kurobe, Kazuo Suzuki, and Wataru Omae. Directed by Jun Fukuda. Written by Shinichi Sekizawa and Kazue Shiba. Produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka. Special photographic effects directed by Eiji Tsubaraya and Sadamasa Arikawa. Cinematography by Kazuo Yamada. Stunts supervised by Haruo Nakajima, who was one of the three stuntmen wearing the Godzilla costume, the other two were Seji Onaka and Yu Sekita. Minya was played by Little Man Machan. Music by Masaru Sato. Edited by Ryohei Fujii and Ishiro Honda who was still heavily involved with the Godzilla series. The English dubbing was supervised by a fellow named William Ross who was born in 1924 and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He wound up in Japan and started his acting career there in 1957, appearing in numerous Japanese productions. He was even in the John Wayne epic THE BARBARIAN AND THE GEISHA (1958), FLIGHT FROM ASHIYA (1964) with Richard Widmark and Yul Brynner, THE YAKUZA (1975) with Robert Mitchum, and THE LAST DINOSAUR (1977) with Richard Boone. He was also dialogue director, sound recordist, screenwriter of English dialogue, and recording engineer. This guy was a busy little beaver. He passed away in 2014 in Tokyo, Japan. Sorry, I didn't mean to get carried away. I liked this entry in the Godzilla series and maybe you can too.

.....is this super-duper monster rally that was supposed to finish this series of Godzilla features because several previous Godzilla films were seen as not pulling in enough yen at the box office. But wouldn't you just know it, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS was a smashing success, even more so when it was distributed in the United States by American International Pictures (they also distributed GODZILLA VS. THE THING, ATRAGON, ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE, and YOR: MONSTER FROM SPACE just to name a few). Ever since then, Godzilla has been up on the silver screen and on the TV screen, with his latest opus GODZILLA MINUS ZERO snaring an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. This supersaga is set in 1999 when Earth's massive monstrosities are situated on the scientifically-controlled territory known as Monster Island (also known as Ogasawaraland). Those monstrosities include Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra (in her caterpillar configuration), Anguirus, and quite a few others. Just when everything's tickety-boo, communications with Monster Island are cut off and the scientists are gassed with a yellow-colored chemical. As a result, the monsters are set free. Godzilla breathes fire on the United Nations building in New York City, Rodan flattens Moscow, Barugon rips apart the Arch of Triumph in beautiful downtown Paris, the serpentine Manda (from ATRAGON) lays waste to London. Come to find out, the monsters are under the control of a race of aliens known as the Kilaaks, and those extraterrestrials are mind-controlling the scientists as well. According to the United Nations Science Committee, the devices controlling the monsters were hidden in various locations around the world, including atop a mountain! And what do the Kilaaks want? Earth's surrender, of course. Godzilla and Rodan, along with Manda, shred Tokyo in typical monster fashion. The Japanese military launch rockets against the big "G" and the other colossal creatures; why, there's even a missile battery atop one of the skyscrapers in beautiful downtown Tokyo. But Godzilla, Rodan, and Manda survive unscathed while Tokyo is in ruins, again. Eventually the eggheads on the United Nations Science Council (UNSC) recover the Kilaaks' mind control gizmos from around the world, only to find that the diabolical aliens have switched over to broadcasting the signals from their underground base beneath the surface of Earth's moon. Those dirty birds. But Captain Kstsuo Yamabe (Akira Kubo) and the crew of the spaceship Moonlight SY-3 manage to find the Kilaaks lunar installation and destroy it through laser fire. The monsters are back under UNSC control, so those rotten Killakians conjure up Ghidorah, the three-headed critter (from GHIDRAH THE THREE HEADED MONSTER) to protect the aliens' base of operations situated near Mount Fuji. So now there's a free for all, with Ghidorah battling the army of monsters that include Godzilla's offspring Minya (from SON OF GODZILLA) and Varan (from VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE). Hey, where was Gamera the flying turtle? Sorry, that was Daiei Motion Picture Company, who claimed that Gamera was rather busy at the moment and was consequently unavailable. Even though Ghidorah is killed off, there's a Fire Dragon that torches Tokyo, destroys the control center at Monster Island, and almost incinerates the Moonlight SY-3 spacecraft until it's revealed that the Fire Dragon is yet another Kilaak flying saucer. Bah. The monsters, including Godzilla, eventually rout the Kilaaks and send them packing. My brothers and I caught DESTROY ALL MONSTERS on KTLA Channel 5 from Los Angeles one Sunday afternoon. Our father was taking his usual afternoon Power Nap so we made sure to keep the sound on the TV down low. Dad woke up just in time for the movie's end and when a MILTON THE MONSTER cartoon came on, he declared that "we're not going to watch that g-d-- MILTON THE MONSTER cartoon!" So he changed the channel to the evening news and that was that. DESTROY ALL MONSTERS is a good example of juvenile frivolity, and is perfect for all monster movie fans. Special effects maestro Eiji Tsuburaya yanked out all the stops, while Akira Ifukube handled the appropriate musical score. Once again, Haruo Nakajima wore the Godzilla suit, while Teruoshi Nigaki flapped around as Rodan and Susumu Utsumi hung out on wires as King Ghidorah. And sitting in the director's chair was Ishirô Honda. Would you believe that King Kong was going to be included in the monster rally? It's true. But Toho Company's rights to the ginormous gorilla had expired, and anyway, there was enough monsters as it was. I still find it a fun film after all these years. I dare say you can feel the same.

.....because it starts with Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) receiving a photo on his cellphone of a contemporary murder scene of a young woman's body sprawled on the sidewalk, And as it turns out, the corpse is that of one of the CSIs named Jessica Drake (Natalie Floyd). And dig this: the murder scene is reminiscent of a cold case from 1957 in which another young woman named Lana Gregory (Kathryn Collins) was brutally murdered and her corpse was also sprawled on the sidewalk. Mac had been holing up in the research laboratory after he received the photo. Jessica Drake had been gainfully employed at the CSI lab, and she was working the night shift. Pretty soon, Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) and Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) let the NYPD police detective in them come out and interview a potential suspect named Harlan Porter (Aaron Hill) who happened to work the night shift as the late Jessica Drake. It turns out that who murdered her had been wearing a fraternity ring and stood at six feet tall. Porter is wearing the very same fraternity ring and he's six feet tall. And while that's going on, Mac has a brand new relationship going on of a personal nature, with restaurant owner Christine Whitney (Megan Dodds) who is the sister of Mac's late partner on the NYPD. She had invited him to a party at her restaurant where her friends and relatives are going to be in attendance, and there's a train load of them. She gives him a chance to bail out, but he's going to be there come hell or high water. Mac gets a visit from retired NYPD detective Paul Burton (Lee Majors making a great guest appearance) who says he can be of good assistance. He asks what kind of lipstick was worn by the murder victim. And there are flashbacks to 1957 and a fruitless investigation by 22-year-old Paul Burton (Cory Blair) into Lana Gregory's murder. By the way, might Jessica Drake's killer be wearing high heels? That's what Lindsay Monroe (Anna Belknap), her favorite husband Danny Messer, Jo Danville (Sela Ward), Adam Ross (A,J. Buckley), and Sheldon Hawkes (Hill Harper) would want to know as they carry out their investigation in-house, and that's because the killer might be a CSI investigator, too! Turns out the killer IS fellow CSI employee Kim Barnett, who was seething with jealousy because Jessica Drake was a partying girl away from work and she was hogging up all the guys. For shame. The fire engine lipstick was a dead giveaway. Mac shows up for Christine's party of parties at the restaurant. A low keyed affair but with a lot of love for her from all those friends and relatives. And Mac confesses to getting grilled like a hamburger patty by her Uncle Max who's also in the NYPD. One of my favorite CSI NY episodes. Bar none.

.....and that was because it had been heavily censored when I caught it on the idiot box on this Saturday afternoon. If you watch this movie on home video, the F-bomb is dropped incessantly. It's "mother---" this and "mother---" that, "f---" this and "f---" that, and "f--" and "f--" that. A fella's ears can get numb that way. Somebody should have sat those two screenwriters Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch's asses down, hard, and explain the cinematic facts of life to them: the use of excessive profanity for profanity's sake cannot make a cheap movie like this one any better. But I must confess to having a weakness for cheaply-made creature features that have some great visual effects, and in the case of CROCODILE 2: DEATH SWAMP the visual effects were accomplished by Scott Coulter. He and his WorldWide FX crew did a fine job under the circumstances. As for the plot, it involves a gang of criminals who accomplish a bank robbery and are on the next plane to Acapulco, Mexico. Unfortunately the airliner runs into a humongous thunderstorm and the flight crew announce an emergency return to the airport. That's when the robbers hijack the plane and force the pilot and co-pilot to remain on the Acapulco course. There's some shooting, a lot of foul language is used, the co-pilot is killed, and the airliner crashlands in the middle of a Mexican swamp. Most of the passengers are killed and so is one of the hijackers. Unfortunately for the surviving passengers, the rest of the hijackers are among the survivors, otherwise there would be no movie. During the arduous trek, a crocodile emerges from the swamp and eats the pilot. Chomp chomp chomp. The bad guys empty their pistols into the croc, killing it. But guess what? That was a baby croc! Its irate mother, a much larger crocodile that's thirty feet long and left over from the first film CROCODILE (2000) starts stalking the survivors, including lovely flight attendant Mia Bozeman (Heidi Lenhart). Meanwhile, back in Acapulco, her boyfriend Zach Thowler (Chuck Walczak) hires a drunk-off-his-hiney cigar chomping tracker named Roland (Martin Kove) to find her. It becomes a question as to whether Zach and Roland can find Mia before ol' mama croc does. And there you have it. And here's a fun fact: although this fractured flicker was situated in Mexico, it was actually filmed in India! That's right, friends and neighbors, good ol' Mother India. And that includes the indoor scenes that were shot at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, India. There's plenty of hambone dialogue to be had, profanity and all. If your ears can stand it, that is. That's all.

.....and you can tell from the theme song by Queen that you're going to be in for almost two hours of absolute hambone performances, sophomoric dialogue scripted by the legendary Lorenzo Semple Jr, and some of the most colorful visual effects ever seen (they were supervised by Frank Van Der Veer and Barry Nolan). Well, it's only fair that FLASH GORDON made it to the silver screen in 1980. The year before, BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY arrived on the silver screen in the summer of 1979. In the wake of STAR WARS, both heroes from the 1930s finally got their time. FLASH GORDON shapes up as the best space opera made in the decade of Reagan and Gorbachev, and it was the last movie I saw before departing for my first ever overseas tour of duty; I was in the Air Force and was bound for what was then West Germany. Max von Sydow is acting up big time as that unlovable Emperor of the planet Mongo, Ming the Merciless, who visits all kinds of natural disasters that includes flaming hailstones and assorted meteors, one of which smacks into the cockpit of a small airplane with New York Jets quarterback Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones) and lovely travel agent Dale Arden (Melody Anderson). After the flight crew is killed, Flash and Dale manage to crash land the airplane into a greenhouse owned by former NASA egghead Hans Zarkov (Topol), who forces them to board his rocket ship for a voyage to Mongo; Zarkov was spot on about those extraterrestrial disasters. Turns out Ming wants to shove Earth's moon into the third rock from the sun. Ming orders Zarkov's spaceship piloted by remote control through the Intergalactic Whirlpool and the Lake Of Fire before landing it on Mongo. Ming wants Dale for his very own, and Flash executed. What a pagan. But Ming's lovely daughter Princess Aura (Ornella Muti) saves him from certain death. She wants him for her very own, too! At any rate, Flash shows up on the planet Arboria and eventually convinces Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton) to get on the right side. It's going to take a bullwhip fight between Flash and Barin atop a tilting platform complete with protruding spikes while they're at the floating Sky City as prisoners of Prince Vultan (Brian Blessed) and his Hawkmen, but the partnership gets launched. And Prince Vultan jumps in on Flash Gordon's side. Our heroes had better stage an attack on Mingo City and stop Ming the Merciless, because there's only fourteen hours to save good ol' planet Earth! FLASH GORDON's ending suggests that there was going to be a sequel. Matter of fact, there was going to be a series of features in the Flash Gordon series, with the main cast members having signed on. But FLASH GORDON barely made back its $20 million budget, so those sequels were never made. There was a novelization of the screenplay, and that novelization was written by Arthur Byron Cover who also has managed a bookstore in Los Angeles. Moreover, there was a series of Flash Gordon novels that were published by Charter Books, and they were written by an uncredited David Hagberg (1942-2019) who became a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. By the way, did you know that there was a series of Flash Gordon novels published in the early 1970s under the house name of "Con Steffanson". The two authors who took turns writing under the house name were Bruce Cassiday (1920-2005) and Ron Goulart (1933-2022). Then there were the Flash Gordon serials from the 1930s starring Buster Crabbe, and the original comic strip series by Alex Raymond. I think he would have enjoyed this cinematic adaptation. I certainly did.

.....and all you jive turkeys knew in the early 1970s that it had to happen. That tall drink of water William Marshall just had to reprise his role of the late Prince Mamuwalde, better known to the boys in the hood as Blacula in the sequel SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM (1973). I just had to scope this movie out because it had been included in Harry and Michael Medved's movie book THE GOLDEN TURKEY AWARDS; the two authors gave a good account of seeing this American International Pictures fractured flicker at a grindhouse theater in New York City's Times Square long before it was seriously cleaned up. The authors noted that as after they got through watching this movie, a beefy security guard slapped his billy club in the palm of his hand repeatedly and told the few sleeping customers in there to wake up and get out of there. The jumping rhythm and blues score was composed by Bill Marx who had a feel for the black musical culture. As for the plot, when this one lovable voodoo queen is about to pass away, she chooses adopted apprentice Lisa Fortier (Pam Grier) as successor, and angrifies her biological son Willis Daniels (Richard Lawson) to the point where he acquires the bones of ol' Blac and uses a voodoo ritual to bring the vampire of color back to life. And how does Blacula show his appreciation? By putting the bite on that jive turkey Willis, who exclaims "I don't mind being a vampire and $#@&, but this really ain't hip! I mean, a man has got to see his face!" Blacula takes out a couple of pimps. They should have known better than to take on a brother with fangs. Trying to stop Blacula are former police detective Justin Carter (Don Mitchell) and LAPD Lieutenant Harley Dunlop (Michael Conrad who joined the cast of HILL STREET BLUES in 1981) before Blacula can amass an army of the undead. We get to see the vampire of color transform into a bat and back again through a badly-animated sequence. But I don't think the guys and gals from the hood minded it way too much. SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM was not only a sequel to BLACULA (1972), it was part of a series of horror flicks aimed at people of color. They included THE THING WITH TWO HEADS (1972), BLACKENSTEIN (1973), GANJA AND HESS (1973), ABBY (1974), THE HOUSE ON SKULL MOUNTAIN (1974), SUGAR HILL (1974), DR. BLACK MR. HYDE (1976), and J. D.'s REVENGE (1976), just to name a few. And yeah, that was an unrecognizable Bernie Hamilton as "Ragman" and an uncredited Craig T. Nelson as a police sergeant. Nelson thought he was done with horror movies but they weren't done with him. He starred as realtor Steve Freeling in POLTERGEIST (1982) and POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE (1985), and was also in THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE (1997) with Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, and Al Pacino. But getting back to the movie, Blacula wants Lisa to help him get rid of his vampire curse. That's all. Not that I want to spoil things, but after this movie there were no more BLACULA films and William Marshall went on to other acting pursuits before he passed away in 2003. He was a great stage actor in William Shakespeare productions and was an opera singer. He even played the King Of Cartoons on PEE-WEE'S PLAYHOUSE. Even if William Marshall was slumming as he does in SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM, he does more for the film. Had a lot of fun along the way. I rather enjoyed this flick. Did you?

.....which is only fitting, because Steve McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin) and his Five-O team have to investigate the brutal death of criminal Roger Carlson and they are dogged by chat mistress Samantha Walker (Aisha Tyler) who is following those lovable investigators Danny Williams (Scott Caan), Chin Ho Kelly (Daniel Dae Kim), Kono Kalakaua (Grace Park), and pathologist Max Bergman (Masi Oka) who gushes over Samantha Walker like an oil well. And while the Five-O gang investigates the murder, that no-good nudnik Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos) crashes the crime site, disguised as a police officer, opens fire, and makes a getaway! The Five-O team have to undergo interviews by the airheaded Samantha Walker. Uggggh. It seems the Governor of Hawaii is looking for some public relations goodwill, so that's why Samantha Walker and her cameramen have been dogging Five-O's back trail. And why was Wo Fat so especially interested in the crime scene? The interviews bring out the worst in some people, including crime specialist Charlie Fong (Brian Yang) and shrimp maestro Kamekona (Taylor Wily) who comes off as a big ham. Then there's Steve and Danny who get into a cargument, live on camera! Steve manages to capture Russian mobster Dimitri Markoff after jumping off a hotel balcony into a swimming pool! This episode is directed by Bryan Spicer, the gentleman who gave us MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGER (1995), an episode of THE X-FILES (1998), and thirty-five episodes of this show. Spicer made his bones as associate producer of the 1980s series HUNTER. The mysterious Roger Carlson had a tattoo that turned out to be a map! Catherine Rollins (Michelle Borth) gets interviewed as well. Then there's a Secret Service agent named Kershaw (Noah Beggs) who horns in, and declares that Roger Carlson used to work for the Treasury Department, and smuggled a three-dimensional printer capable of producing plates for making $100 bills, and Roger Carlson's real name was Gary Percy, and so Wo Fat would like to get his meat hooks on the printer. And on the plates for the Benjamins. You should see Samantha Walker's stage. She's accompanied by two hunky Hawaiians in blue board shorts. They make all young and old women in the audience dream beautiful dreams and think beautiful thoughts. Steve and his team show up at an inaccessible part of Oahu, but so do Wo Fat and his goons. Of course there's going to be a stupendous shootout. And it's being captured live on camera! Hats off to those camera guys for following Hawaii Five-O around. They should get combat pay. And the capture of Wo Fat is captured on camera phone. But you know darned well that Wo Fat will escape later on, and devil Steve McGarrett because.....well....he's Wo Fat. And when Samantha Walker askes if Wo Fat is going to make it after arrival at a hospital, Steve McGarrett grumps "I don't care." And there you have it. I thought this was a good episode, done reality show style. Good stuff.

....because this is where Steve McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin) and his main squeeze U. S. Navy Lieutenant Catherine Rollins (Michelle Borth) have to sneak into heavily-defended North Korea and retrieve the body of fellow former Navy Seal Freddie Hart (Alan Ritchson). McGarrett is driven to do this because he removed the lid off Hart's wooden coffin only to find that the corpse is not that of his good buddy. It does not have the tattoo of Hart's true love on ye forearm. Looks like the North Koreans managed to pull a fast one, and so Steve has to accomplish his own one-man mission. Forget talking to the State Department, they will sit on their behinds and bloviate. And forget having the Navy plan the mission, it's going to take forever and ten weeks. So McGarrett is off on his own mission impossible, and Catherine insists on accompanying him. No use arguing with her, Steve-O, so save your breath. With a little help from that lovable expatriate Frank Bama (Jimmy Buffett making a cameo appearance), Steve and Catherine manage to take a sneak into Kim Jong-Un's favorite homeland. And just take a look as to who directed this episode: Joe Dante, the genius who gave us PIRANHA (1978), THE HOWLING (1981), GREMLINS (1984), EXPLORERS (1985), INNERSPACE (1987), THE 'BURBS (1989), GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990), MATINEE (1993), THE SECOND CIVIL WAR (1997), SMALL SOLDIERS (1998), and LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION (2003). Great films all. To make a long story short, Steve and Catherine find Freddie Hart's body. How are they going to get the body out of North Korea and back to his widow and daughter. Kind of a moot point, with North Koreans capturing them. I can't help thinking about the character played by Alan Ritchson, Freddie Hart by name. There's a song that goes "Eeeeeeeasy lovin'.....so sexy looking.....I know by the feeling.....that it comes from the hearrrrrrrrt......" I know it sounds goofy, but it can't be helped. McGarrett acts like Rambo, and his Rambette gives a good account of herself. Along the way, the viewer is treated to flashbacks of Steve McGarrett and Freddie Hart on a previous mission in North Korea that ended with Steve having to leave Freddie behind, and even further back to Steve preventing Freddie from washing out of SEAL training. Well, Freddie's body makes it back home, after all. And there you have it. It should have been a two-hour movie. Just saying.

.....and it was while I was deployed with my unit in February of that year. In the cantonement area, we had our twelve-man tents, shower tent, recreational tent with video games that included one where meteors were zapped, dining tent, and a movie tent. Yes, movie tent, where when we had some free time we watched 16-millimeter films on a projector and there was a portable movie screen. A lot of those movies were of the type that would have been shown at the drive-in, and once in a while we would get some real obscurity. One of them was an English-dubbed German espionage thriller called THE CAESAR CODE which was filmed in 1971 and later made it to the United States, probably in the late 1970s. It was based on the international bestselling novel by Austrian-born author Johannes Mario Simmel (1924-2009). I'm going to quote from the back of the paperback novel issued by Popular Library in 1976 and by Warner Books in 1986: The Caesar Code was created by a Nazi scientific genius during Adolf Hitler's nightmare reign of terror. It is the key to a devastating super weapon that could bring on global domination, and it's the object of a deadly international hunt that unites top American and Russian operatives on the same implacable team. Investigating the mysterious death of an Argentine chemist is his son Manuel Aranda. He uncovers an unbelievable web of lust and treachery that stretches from the Second World War to the perilous present (the early 1970s, that is). I was a mere lad in my early twenties when I saw the movie and found it a complete bore fest. If ever I see it again, it might make a better impression. The intriguing fish-eyed lens cinematography was accomplished by Charly Steinberger. Maybe the movie will be streamed from somewhere. Hopefully. I'd like to give THE CAESAR CODE another chance. This movie was directed by Alfred Vohrer, whose other credits include THE DEAD EYES OF LONDON (1961), THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS (1962), THE INDIAN SCARF (1963), THE HUNCHBACK OF SOHO (1966), CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND (1967), THE COLLEGE GIRL MURDERS (1967), THE HORROR OF BLACKWOOD CASTLE (1968), and THE APE CREATURE (1968). Vohrer continued directing feature films and television episodes until he called it quits in 1985, and passed away in 1986. Johannes Mario Simmel is probably forgotten today, but many of his novels were translated into English and issued by Popular Library and by Warner Books during the 1970s and 1980s. They were issued under the titles THE AFFAIR OF NINA B., THE BERLIN CONNECTION, THE CAIN CONSPIRACY, THE CAESAR CODE, DOUBLE AGENT-TRIPLE CROSS, I CONFESS, LOVE IS JUST A WORD, THE MONTE CRISTO COVER-UP, THE SYBIL CIPHER, THE TRAITOR BLITZ, THE WIND AND THE RAIN, and WHY AM I SO HAPPY? One of the cast members, Konrad Georg, plays a character named Martin Landau! I sure would want to see this film again, dubbed in English. Can somebody make it happen?

.....because it was a good way to finish out the series which ran on CBS from 1993 to 2001. The name of this here episode was THE FINAL SHOW/DOWN and it was originally in a two-hour slot which made room for the requisite commercials. Chuck Norris (who played that lovable lawman of the modern West Cordell Walker) ended the show on his own terms rather than have the suits at the Tiffany Network do that for him. And this feature length episode was a lulu. There's a massive prison breakout at the Huntsville Penitentiary, and one of the convicts that's in the wind is that no-good nudnik Emile Lavocat (Marshall Teague) who's out for revenge against Walker for having him thrown into prison six years earlier. So for his revenge plan to work, Lavocat gathers some of the worst criminals that include Jonas Graves (Richard Norton), Ross Dollarhide (Randall "Tex" Cobb), Along the way, there are flashbacks to the old West where Chuck Norris stars as Texas Ranger Hayes Cooper, with Clarence Gilyard (as a piano player), Judson Mills (as a cowpuncher), Sheree J. Wilson (as Hayes Cooper's wife Althea), Marshall Teague (as an outlaw named Milos Lavocat), and Nia Peeples (as a dance hall singer) in those flashback scenes. In the contemporary scenes, C. D. Parker (once played by Noble Willingham) had been poisoned the behest of Lavocat. Veteran Texas Ranger Wade Harper (Robert Harper) and his way better half Betsy (Marla Adams) are shot and killed. Jimmy Trivette (Clarence Gilyard) pops the question to Erika Carter (Tammy Townsend) and she accepts, and that's after he survives an assassination attempt from Lavocat's goons. Back to the old West, Milos Lavocat and his outlaws assassinate the local sheriff and his deputies and manage to tree the town of Bovine, Texas, and that's after they slaughter Althea and their baby and set their cabin ablaze. Bovine sees a showdown that sees Milos Lavocat and the rest of the outlaws riddled with rounds. Oh, wait a minute: Althea was alive after all as she and their baby had been kidnapped. Milos Lavocat gets his ticket to the boneyard punched by Hayes Cooper. Cooper gets to be sheriff of Bovine, Texas. Being a cattleman was all well and good, but he is a lawman after all. Back to today, Cordell Walker, Francis Gage (Judson Mills), and Sydney Cooke (Nia Peeples) are in hot pursuit of Ross Dollarhide. And so is Walker. Those Texas Rangers engage in a shootout with Emile Lavocat and the mercenaries at the requisite abandoned building. Walker tosses some grenades from a passing helicopter. And the bad guys get their just desserts. I sure had a grand old time watching WALKER TEXAS RANGER during its entire run on CBS....well, except for a year spent in Iceland in 1994 and 1995. It was also during the show's run that a trio of paperback novels based on the series were issued by Berkley Books, and they were written by prolific bestselling author James Reasoner; he's been an active author since the 1970s, and he's been so active as a writer that's he has had novels published under his own name and under a bunch of pseudonyms. I think he's even written some paperback novels that have been issued under the name of original author William W. Johnstone (1938-2004).

I don't think anybody else could have played Cordell Walker as well as Chuck Norris. By the by, Cordell, Alex Cahill-Walker, and their baby girl Angela come home from the hospital to their friends and neighbors. Followed by WALKER, TEXAS RANGER: TRIAL BY FIRE (2005), but don't go out of your way to watch it. Better skip WALKER on CW, too. My advice is to stick with the original. It's better this way.

.....because this is straight out of a horror movie, and in my humble opinion it should have been fleshed out into a two-hour episode with enough room for the requisite commercials. There's a frantic 911 call which leads head investigator Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise), his favorite colleagues Stella Bonasera (Melina Kanakaredes) and Sheldon Hawkes (Harper Hill), and NYPD detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) to a uptown penthouse that turns out to be a booby-trapped creation, and it had been closed off since around 1920. Our heroes find the corpse of Richard Lawson (Josh Wood) who had apparently been baked to death! This penthouse had been constructed by a wacked-out weirdo inventor who had been ripped off by an avaricious financier. And all this after our heroes find a corpse that has to be around ninety years old with a lot of holes in his chest, and the causation is a spring-loaded multi-bladed knife! Don Flack and Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) give Mac and Stella a heads-up that there's water leaking on the floor below, so they have to return to the Penthouse Of Horrors because it has its own water supply and there's a nice young lady named Paula Davis (Tarah Paige) who's in deadly danger of drowning! Somehow she got in there! Which means Mac, Stella, Don, and Danny have to figure out how to get Paula out of the water trap because she's slipping into hypothermia and is about to drown! It turns out that manipulating a grandfather clock works in rescuing Paula as all that water flows into the penthouse bedroom like a river. A real wowser of an episode, and a good thing I caught it. At 2:00 in the morning. Go figure.

.....because it touches on the Holocaust and the six million Jews who died in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau at the behest of Adolf Hitler. Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) and his team swing into action when the murder of auctioneer Xander Green (Rick Marcus) leads the CSI crew to white supremacist Michael Elgers (Matt McTighe) who declares himself a fourth-generation American and who had done time behind bars for two years. Well, it turns out this character is innocent. Mac pays s visit to elderly antique shop proprietor Abraham Klein (Ed Asner who turned in a brilliant performance) who is showing his son David (Modi Rosenfeld) the ropes, and by the way, shows off a set of numbers on his arm that indicates that he had been an unwilling resident of the Nazi-run camp at Auschwitz. Mac and detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill);investigate a break-in at Xander Green's apartment and discover a secret closet that has a Nazi flag and assorted precious items stolen from survivors of the Holocaust, including a menorah! Mac and Don raid Michael Elgers' place and discover more Nazi memorabilia; it turns out Elgers has been auctioning those items online, including a lampshade made of human skin! Mac mentions to researcher Aaron Lesnick (Scott Cohen) that his father, U. S. Army private McKenna Boyd Taylor helped liberate the camp at Dachau. And there was a videotaped deposition made by elderly survivor Hannah Schnitzler (Rita Zohar) where she recounted her planned escape to freedom along with her fellow Jews (this was during the Second World War, of course) only to be betrayed by a so-called good German named Klaus Braun to the Nazis who shoved them into boxcars on the train bound for Auschwitz. Braun's father was a Nazi. Like father, like son. Thanks to some age-progression software used on a group photo of a Hitler Youth gathering including a chunky boy in uniform, Mac Taylor finds out that Abraham Klein is actually escaped Nazi Klaus Braun! And it's thanks to a brooch that once belonged to Hannah Schnitzler, and it was situated at Klein's antique shop. Klein/Braun managed to keep his Nazi past hidden for sixty years. Until now. Looks like Braun's sorry ass is off to the jailhouse. Another videotaped deposition is of elderly survivor George Savar (Shelley Berman) who had weighed a mere eighty pounds at the time of his liberation, and he had been carried out of the camp by Private McKenna Boyd Taylor. Mac returns the missing brooch to Hannah Schnitzler, and he observes kiddish with her. Greatest episode ever of this show. Or any show for any matter. I remember an observation made one time that what happened to the Jews under Hitler's unholy rule was an extreme version of prejudice. I believe it. God, I hope this doesn't happen again. We better make sure of that. This episode needs to be required viewing for young and all.

.....and continued during the 1990s? Well, our boy was doing all right for himself, especially when UNDER SIEGE was released in 1992 and he was kind enough to stop at Hurlburt Field, Eglin Air Force Base for a meet and greet with the Special Operations Wing personnel. But that came to a screeching halt when his movie THE PATRIOT (1998) was the first to go straight to videocassette. Since then, nearly all of his fractured flickers have gone straight to home video. MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE is one of them. Seagal stars as John Seeger who, with his fellow mercenaries, are tasked to aid the local population in the French-controlled Galmoral Island located off the coast of Southern Africa. What Seeger doesn't know until it's too late is that his taskmasters, CIA dirty deeds operative John Dresham (Luke Goss) and black operations mastermind Anthony Chapel (Roger Guenveur Smith) intend to seize and make money off the island's abundant oil deposits and diamond reserves. When his mission goes sideways, Seeger gets steamed. Against his orders, some of the mercenaries take as hostage the French ambassador (Rudiger Eberle) and his family for purpose of leverage and the entire family gets blown up! The French troops open fire on the mercs, one of whom is Eddie "Radio" Jones (Zaa Nkweta), and Radio is killed as a result. So the first twenty minutes of this production is basically a war movie, with tanks, helicopters, the occasional warplanes, snd troops in combat. Then it becomes a revenge affair, especially when Maxine Barnol (Jacqueline Lord) suggests that the CIA us involved. She's a spy posing as a journalist. You ever notice that in movies like this, the Central Intelligence Agency is depicted as villains? Why is that? Anyhoo, John Seeger heads to Miami and promises Radio's widow Shondra (Faye Peters) and son Eddie (Tumi Mogoje) that he's going to take excellent care of them and that no harm will befall them. Well, Seeger might not be able to keep that promise. Shondra and Eddie have been kidnapped by Chapel's mercs as a way of forcing Seeger to spring Kamal Dusan out of the maximum-security Randveld Prison on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. Kamal is the son of prominent weapons smuggler Ahmet Dusan (Peter Butler) and he's about to be extradited to the United States. Chapel doesn't want that to happen. So, John Seeger has his work cut out for him, but somehow he's got to find a way to take down Chapel and Dresham. And, by the way, rescue Shondra and Eddie. After so many double crosses, triple crosses, twists and turns, Seeger gets the job done. Have you ever noticed that Steven Seagal always plays the same kind of character: a former Navy Seal who had a run-in with the CIA, or a former CIA operative wronged by the suits what were in charge, or how about an explosives expert with an untraceable background? I have. It gets mind-numbing after a while. I had a hard time spotting Scott Coulter's visual effects. He and his crew must be that good. Plenty of pyrotechnics, though. It's just your typical Steven Seagal movie, and if you like it, there you have it. I got some enjoyment out of this, anyway. By the way, did you know that this movie's director Don E. FountLeRoy is married to Lesley-Anne Down? You do now.

.....this is the movie that started it all and jump started Lon Chaney Jr's acting career. Up until then, he appeared in numerous low-budget movies and the occasional serial under his real name Creighton Chaney. Among those serials were THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1933) with John Wayne and UNDERSEA KINGDOM (1936) with Ray "Crash" Corrigan. Well, Creighton might have been content enough. That is, until some studio executive in 1935 decided that Creighton Cheney should change his name to Lon Chaney Jr. And so, Lon Jr worked steadily during the 1930s in supporting roles, until he played simple-minded goon Lennie Small opposite Burgess Meredith as George Milton in OF MICE AND MEN (1939), based on John Steinbeck's classic novel. After playing a caveman in ONE MILLION B. C. (1940), Lon Chaney Jr snared the role of a lifetime as footloose heir Larry Talbot who returns to his ancestral home in Wales, United Kingdom at the behest of his dear ol' dad Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains) following the death of his brother. Both father and son are estranged, you see, and they have a lot of making up to do, and Larry is expected to join the family business. He hits on antique shop owner Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers) and buys a walking stick with a silver wolf's head, which represents a werewolf. She keeps saying no to Larry, but they meet at night to have their fortunes told and are accompanied by Gwen's friend Jenny Williams (Fay Helm). One of the gypsies named Bela (Bela Lugosi) sees a pentagram on Jenny's palm and declares that she's going to be bitten by a wolf. Larry rescues her but is bitten by the wolf, and before Larry kills the critter with his walking stick the critter bites him on his chest. Well, not only is Larry Talbot fated to transform into a werewolf during the next full moon, the wolf that had bitten him was ol' Bela his own self! So now Larry Talbot is cursed for good! So much for working in the family business. And only silver can kill a werewolf. Police captain Paul Montfort (Ralph Bellamy) is not a happy camper, and neither is Gwen's fiancé Frank Andrews (Patrick Knowles). Although Larry Talbot dies at the end, this would not be the end for that poor Wolfman-around-town. Lon Chaney Jr reprised his role in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (1943), HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944), HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945), and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948). But this is the movie that started it all. And to think Boris Karloff was under consideration. And Bela Lugosi wanted to play the titular monster, too. But it all worked out for the best. Lon Chaney Jr was perfectly cast. He should have gotten an Oscar for Best Actor, and Jack Pierce should have gotten a special Oscar for Best Makeup. I'm just saying.

.....then it concludes with a rip-roaring climax that is situated at the besieged nation's capital of Washington, D. C. The setting is the former United States in the middle of a Second Civil War that has been ongoing for quite a few years with hardly any explanation as how it started. The country has been split into four separate countries: there's the New People's Army which takes in the upper Northwest; there are the Loyalist States which takes in the rest of the Midwest and Northeast, along with the mid-Atlantic States that includes the District of Columbia; there's the Florida Alliance which takes in most of the Southeast and extends westward into Oklahoma; and there's the Western Forces that include California and Texas. How those two states ever got together is never explained. You should see the Western Forces' flag; it has just two big white stars in a blue field in the upper left hand corner to go with the thirteen red and white stripes. Kirsten Dunst is almost unrecognizable and definitely unglamorous as veteran international photo-journalist Lee Smith who, along with her favorite colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), is almost killed when a suicide bomber detonates her explosive while they're covering a civil disorder in a collapsing New York City. Joining Lee and Joel is aspiring photographer Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaney) who is one of Lee's biggest fans. Also along for the ride is veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) who is as big as a China porker but is brimming with wisdom. He used to mentor Lee back in the day, and figure that now it's her turn. The quartet make plans to interview the increasingly isolated President of the United States (Nick Offerman) after he made a televised address claiming that victory is just around the corner; the idea is to talk to the Chief Executive before the most successful secessionist group known as the Western Forces arrive at the nation's capital. Our heroes boogie to Charlottesville, West Virginia with the intention of hooking up with the military forces there. They arrive at a gas station run by several rednecks who are hanging a couple of people who they claim are looters. They take Canadian currency only, which suggests that the United States currency is no damned good. The next stop is a Christmas-themed amusement park where a sniper opens fire on them. A couple of Hong Kong-based journalists (played by Nelson Lee and Evan Lai) are intercepted by an ultranationalist militant (Jesse Plemons) who brutally shoots them point blank; this guy and his sidekicks have been dumping their victims in an open pit. Next stop is a paradise of a small town whose citizens are sitting out the war, and this town is guarded by armed personnel on the roof of a multi-story building. Sammy the veteran journalist dies along the way. Lee, Joel, and Jessie arrive at the Western Forces forward operating base. They find out that most of the remaining loyalists have surrendered, but the remaining members of the Secret Service and the armed forces' senior officers are still maintaining their loyalty to the President. The three reporters embed themselves with the Western Forces as they invade Washington with some serious firepower. The Lincoln Memorial is blown to smithereens, and the Western Forces finally arrive at the heavily fortified White House; it's surrounded by a massive concrete wall ordered there by the President during his three terms in office. The Western Forces personnel venture into the White House under heavy fire, find the cowardly and craven President, and kill him. A real wowser of a movie. During the road trip, the journalists drive around a pile of abandoned automobiles, and under bridges where a couple of people were hung from a rope until they were dead. They even cruise through a forest fire. Lee Smith had already been desensitized from the photos taken during her long career and eventually pays the ultimate price, and her protege Jessie Cullen figures to reach that desensitized state. The young lass takes a photo of the Western Forces soldiers smiling as they stand over the President's corpse. CIVIL WAR was written and directed by British-born filmmaker Alex Garland, who recently announced that he was going to stick to scriptwriting. Most of the movie was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, but it looks like the interiors were shot in London, England (probably for the White House scenes). I found this to be an engrossing production that didn't take any sides. It should have been longer, but that's just me. Great movies can still be found. This is one of them.

.....because this involves FBI Special Agents Stuart Scola (John Boyd) and Nina Chase (Shantel Van Santen) going undercover as a married couple. It starts with retired FBI agent Mike Rosen getting shot, assaulted and killed by a gang of diamond robbers while he was working as a security guard for Provident Armored (kind of a fictitious version of Wells Fargo, but never mind that). And since one of their own was homicided, we get to see Assistant Special Agent What Is In Charge Jubal Valentine (Jeremy Sisto) blustering all over the place. Two other Special Agents, Maggie Bell (Missy Peregrym) and Omar Adom "OA" Zidem (Zeeko Zaki), are on the case. There's a shootout between Maggie, OA, Stuart, and Tiffany Chase, and the diamond robbers who open fire with submachine guns, and turning New York City's diamond district into the O. K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. An arrest of Samuel Jacobson reveals that he's been a police informant, but that doesn't hold water with the Fearless Bunch of Investigators. And despite Stuart's protests and wanting to play it safe, he and Nina go undercover after all, for the purpose of trading the bucks for the diamonds, in the possession of the criminal brothers Beto Perez and Carlos Perez. Nina points to her own Man of Men, Stuart Scola, that Mike Rosen played it safe, and look what happened to him. An untimely visit by the NYPD almost goofs up the undercover operation, but the FBI gets the best of the Perez brothers. Stuart and Nina decide to take a flight together. I would have given this episode a 10 out of 10, but there was a smart remark about citizens who do the legal conceal and carry thing. I wish Dick Wolf would tamp down his liberalism. Save that for SVU.

.....because Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) and his much better half Lindsay Monroe Messer (Anna Belknap) are about to experience another life-changing milestone in their incredible marriage. But first they, along with their favorite boss man Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise), lovable pathologist Sid Hammerback (Robert Joy), and fellow investigators Sheldon Hawkes (Harper Hill) and Adam Ross (A. J. Buckley) investigate the horrendous murder of a pickpocket who had fallen from Building 913's front balcony and landed on top of a taxicab. It's murder because this pickpocket was dressed like the late tycoon Everett Herrington Wentworrh who committed suicide way back in 1929 after Wall Street fell and he lost all his millions ,with the result that his girlfriend committed suicide. Wentworth was allergic to sunshine and constantly wore a face mask. Also taking part in the investigation are those two lovable NYPD detectives Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) and his partner Jamie Lovato (Natalie Martinez), and they are partners off-duty. About time Flack had some loving in his life. One of the suspects is out-of-town visitor Calvin George (Robert Baker), who had been ripped off by the late pickpocket. While that's going on, Jo Danville (Sela Ward) meets up with a young hucklebuck from Alabama named Grant Holliston (Johann Urb) who has her sister's heart beating in him; the poor guy had a debilitating heart condition until he underwent open-heart surgery and Jo's sister Leanne who had died in a car accident (thanks to a drunk driver) was listed as an organ donor. Danny and Adam return to the apartment building in question, and determine from the arterial spray that the killer was nearly the same height as the victim. It develops that Grant Hollister teaches physics at a university, so that means he's making a good living. And he just wanted to thank Jo in person. While back at the CSI laboratory, Lindsay is acting rather weirdly. Mac calls his lady love Christine Whitney to tell her she owes him ten bucks. Sheldon informs Mac that the murder weapon was a crudely-made shank made from a plastic coffee-cup lid. It suggests that the killer had done time behind bars and is out for revenge. Uh oh. And a recovered newspaper reveals that a convict named Macy Sullivan (Laura Vandervoort) had been jailed two years earlier and had since been paroled, and the name of the murdered pickpocket was Alex Henley (Moneer Yaquibi). Those two had worked a scam where Mscy would dress up like Marilyn Monroe from THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, and while the love-struck tourists ogled her, Alex picked their pockets. Eventually he left Macy alone and she got arrested by the cops, while Alex was free as a bird. Naturally as soon as Macy Sullivan did her two-year time behind bars, she paid her debt to society and was released. She was out for revenge, of course. She caught up with Alex Henley and sliced his throat; he fell off the balcony and fell on the taxicab. Macy Sullivan tries to flee the Big Apple, going so far as to change her hair style, but is busted by Don and Jamie at a downtown bus station. And the life-changing news for Danny and Lindsey is that a second baby is on the way! Their daughter Lucy is going to be a big sister! Lindsey had been throwing up twice, and taken four home pregnancy tests and all have been positive. Great ending to a great episode. I only wish CBS had not pulled the plug on a great show. What were they thinking?

.....and this one deals with missing dock worker Ethan Sullivan who disappeared two weeks before he was supposed to get married. That lovable finder of missing people Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley) has been hired to find the missing scamp, and is liaising with local lawman Sheriff Miller (Darien Sills-Evan's). The fly in the ointment is that Sullivan did some time behind bars, and his distraught fiancée's dear ol' dad is not too keen on letting a jailbird into the family. Tigers don't change their stripes, you see. Just for the record, TRACKER is based on a series of novels by bestselling author Jeffery Deaver who's also written the Lincoln Rhyme series, and who's been a published master of suspense and crime fiction since the late 1980s. But getting back to the story, it turns out that there's a very bad guy named Dougie Clemens who did some time in juvenile hall with....wait for it....wait for it.... Ethan Sullivan. Those two took part in a bank robbery, and Dougie sent to jail while Ethan did not. And Dougie just got released three weeks ago! Might he be looking for some payback? And Ethan's one time squeeze has been murdered. Ethan was also moonlighting at a lobster warehouse, known as the King's Warehouse. Aiding and abetting Colter Shaw in finding Sullivan is that lovable high-tech surfer of the internet Bob Exley (Eric Graise), and out hero arrives at the warehouse surreptitiously as there's a robbery in progress! He alerts the sheriff, of course. There's a gang that had been smuggling fentanyl at the warehouse, and forcing Sullivan to take part. Shaw knocks out one of the punks and rescues Ethan Sullivan, but the latter is out for revenge for having been kidnapped and framed by the bad guys who are making it look like Sullivan had been cheating on his fiancée. And the rascal locks Shaw inside a cage while going off on his own for vengeance. Shaw stops Sullivan from killing Clemens. This show is good for fans of the REACHER television series, based on Lee Child's novels. It bids fair to be more of the same, but if you like reading Jeffery Deaver's novels you just might enjoy the series. As for me, I can take it or leave it.