Han Solo didn't shoot first...

... because Bebe Daniels pulled the trigger before getting out of bed!

The Art of Terese Nielsen

Here's small gallery of pencil sketches by fantasy artist Terese Nielsen. She is perhaps best known for her gorgeous illustrations on "Magic: The Gathering" cards.

You can visit Nielsen's website and see finished paintings here.

How to Communicate with Aliens: Part One

Anna-Marie Hefele, resident alien language expert

Watch the video embedded below, imitate the techniques of Anna-Marie Helefe, and you will be speaking (and gesturing--because it's important to do both) a widely used alien language in no time.



Check back for How to Communicate with Aliens: Part Two, during which Anna-Marie will explain what exactly she's "saying."

Doughboy Double Feature!

High Cs (1930)
Starring: Charley Chase, Carlton Griffin, Thelma Todd, Otto Fries, Harry Schultz, Lucien Prival, and the Ranch Boys band
Director: James W. Horne
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A WWI doughboy (Chase), who'd rather sing than fight, tricks the Germans into thinking the war is over so he can recruit one of their soldiers (Fries) into his musical quartet.

"High C's" is different than most other Charley Chase films I've watched so far. First, it's more loosely structured than any of the others. Rather than the film being structured around a tightly plotted sequence of jokes and gags that build upon each other until the film's finale this one breaks into three distinct sections that are only loosely connected. It's still a well-enough crafted story, though.

There's also more music in this film than any of the previous ones I've seen from Chase, which actually explains the different structure of the film. It's not so much a comedy short as a mini-musical, as such it's built around the musical numbers rather than gags.

Despite being different than what I had expected, I enjoyed "High Cs" immensely. Charley Chase was on the top of his game, and the supporting cast were all equally excellent. Thelma Todd, who portrays Chase's love interest, was a joy to watch as always when she's paired with Chase; and Carlton Griffin and Lucien Prival were great fun as the villainous, self-important officers on the Allied and German sides of the trenches respectively.

This isn't the strongest of Charley Chase's films, but it's still got good music and some really funny moments. The sequence where they fake the end of World War 1 just to capture and recruit a German soldier into the band, as well as the closing song, are must-sees for fans of old-time musical comedy.

Rough Seas (1931)
Starring: Charley Chase, Carlton Griffin, Thelma Todd, Frank Brownlee, and the Ranch Boys band
Director: James Parrott
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

The war is over and Charley (Chase) is being shipped back to the States and civilian life. But he needs to find a way to get his French girlfriend (Todd) and his pet monkey safely onboard the transport ship without his commanding officer (Griffin) knowing.

"Rough Seas" is a sequel to "High Cs", and it, too, is a mini-musical comedy. It picks up all the story threads from "High Cs", and brings along all the supporting characters from the first film, while adding a couple new complications. I was particularly impressed at the attention to detail shown in continuing to develop a somewhat morbid gag from the first film around the tenor whose voice was ruined because he got shot in the Adam's apple. It was another example of how the Charley Chase films should be remembered among the best Roach productions, because they were crafted with a level of care that became increasingly hard to find as the 1930s wore on.

Overall, this is a simple film where the ship-board antics of Chase's character as he tries to keep himself, his monkey, and his stowaway girlfriend out of the cross-hairs of his superiors are mostly a vehicle to get us from musical number to musical number. What plot we do have is a sweet little love story between Charley and Thelma (who, although she has less to do in this film than the monkey, the chemistry she shared with Chase once again leaps off the screen), which also exposes the truly vile nature of Carlton Griffin's officer character; it's satisfying to see him finally get put in his place.

This was the second-to-last Charley Chase film that Thelma Todd would appear in. She was quickly becoming a popular comedienne, and producer Hal Roach didn't want to "waste" her in supporting roles. Even as this film was being made, the stage was being set for her to co-star with ZaSu Pitts in her own series. The films she headlined 40 films, but few were of the quality of the ones she made with Chase.

Another macabre trip for Betty Boop

Is My Palm Read? (1933)
Starring: Mae Questal (the voice of Betty Boop) and Billy Murray (the voice of Bimbo)
Directors: Dave Fleischer and Dave Tendlar
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Professor Bimbo and his crystal ball reveal Betty's past as a baby, and her grim future on a ghost-haunted desert island.

Much is made of Betty Boop's sexiness, but, to my eyes, these cartoons are more about being spooky than sexy. Sure, she ran around in a tiny dress that sometimes got pulled off her... but she was always being menaced by ghosts, demons, hillbilly rapists, and more! I'm far from an expert, but my sampling of Betty Boop cartoons from the 1930s seem more creepy than sexy to me, with only two not featuring some sort of supernatural element. Some even have the feel and pacing and logic of bad dreams and nightmares. (Okay, they have the feel and pacing and logic of MY bad dreams... so maybe that says more about my psychological state than it does about the cartoons....)

"Is My Palm Read" is another Betty Boop adventure that sees her (and recurring supporting characters Bimbo and Koko) menaced by ghosts. While Betty's captivity within a haunted hut on a desert island is initially just a psychic vision, the ghosts manage to somehow break out of Bimbo's crystal ball toward the end of the cartoon. In doing so, they somehow transform the reality of the cartoon from an urban setting to the desert island from the vision. How or why is impossible to discern, and the characters just seem to take it in stride--they do, after all, live in one of the most surreal worlds ever committed to film. However, while this sudden merging of psychic vision and reality leads to an amusing chase scene, it makes no sense in any context.

While I feel a bit foolish for expecting a Betty Boop cartoon to make sense, this move was just a little too dream-like, too surreal, and too chaotic for me; it made me go "waitaminnit" and got me thinking about the mechanics of the story instead of just enjoying it. I don't think that was the intention the director and animators, so I think it's a flaw in the execution here.

That said, it's really the only flaw. It's a flaw that takes away from the overall enjoyment of the cartoon, but not from the excellent and lush animation it features, nor from the catchy tunes  it delivers.

How about you take a few minutes out of your day to watch "Is My Palm Read?" and tell me whether I'm right or wrong in my take on it. You can check it out below, courtesy of YouTube.



Trivia: There are at least four different edits of this Betty Boop cartoon available for viewing online, on YouTube, Amazon Prime, and elsewhere. The version I have embedded here is, as far as I can tell, the most complete and closest to what was originally released into theaters in February of 1933. Most versions available to not feature the sequence with Betty as a baby, and at least one has a slightly different musical score. (The opening titles song does not have lyrics, for example.)

The Thelma Todd Quarterly

We don't have anything cute or pithy to say here. We just hope you enjoy these unusual portraits of a beautiful and talented actress who was taken from this world entirely too soon.

(For more images from this same photo-shoot, click here. They were in the first Thelma Todd Quarterly post of The Year of the Hot Toddy, so it seems fitting that we begin to wrap things up with pictures from the same series.)

Musical Monday with Kate Bush

"Hounds of Love" is one of Kate Bush's all-time classics, whether we're talking about the song or the fantastic music video that goes along with it. Someone who "always thought it would look fantastic in black and white" went ahead and de-colorized it! The result is indeed fantastic! It looks a lot like many of the films that have been written about on this blog, including ones you watch in posts here.


Hounds of Love in Black and White (2015)
Starring: Kate Bush and Gow Hunter
Director: Kate Bush
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

A spa with the cure for the common cold?

Red Noses (1932)

Starring: ZaSu Pitts, Thelma Todd, Blanche Payson, Germaine De Noel, and Wilfred Lucas

Director: James Horne

Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Thelma and ZaSu (Todd and Pitts) are suffering at home with colds, but their boss (Lucas) needs them at the office, because he can't close a business deal without their help. He arranges for them to go for a treatment at a health spa that is guaranteed to cure them and get them quickly back in the office.

"Red Noses" is another entry in the Thelma Todd-starring comedies that feels like a good idea that lost its way. Sending our heroines off to a health spa is a great concept and the end result here is mostly amusing, but it's another example of where not enough attention was paid to the story, nor even the gags. It's a shame, because the cast--led by Pitts who takes most of the abuse at the hands of the physical therapists at the spa--all do an excellent job; they're all playing the sorts of characters they're old hands at, and they're all in top form.

One of the biggest flaws with the script on the story front is that this is another film that just sort of stops without really ending. So much emphasis was put on how important it was that the Thelma and ZaSu be present at the business meeting that the film feels incomplete without some sort of callback to that. It seems that even the filmakers felt there was something missing at the end of the film, because, while our heroines make a perfectly acceptable getaway from the health spa (after their requests to leave have been repeatedly denied because the spa's policy is that you're either cured of your ailment or you're due a refund), it's followed up with Thelma and ZaSu walking in front of the worst worst back projection I've ever seen.

 The treatment regiment the girls are subjected to at the spa also seems a bit strange, given that they are there with the express purpose of being cured of a cold. As funny as some of the physical gags are, shouldn't they be sitting in steam rooms or soaking in hot baths augmented with various herbs and spices? The resulting film would have required more thought on the part of the writers, but most of the better gags would still have fit into the film, including the Turkish massages the girls are subjected to.

And speaking of the gags, they run the gamut from under-developed, to just right, to dragging on, something which I, again, contribute to a lack of effort being put into the script. There's a bit of mud-throwing that doesn't really go anywhere (except serving for long-walk set-up for a cross-dressing scene and ensuing brawl.. which did add up to something funny). The bits involving Turkish massages are pretty flawless, while those involving exercise equipment drag on and on (except for one strange device that is basically Thelma Todd strapped to a bouncing chair).

In general, though, the film moves fast enough, and is funny enough, that the misfired and overly milked bits of physical comedy can be excused. In the end, this is an uneven but entertaining comedy and a nice way to waste 20 minutes.

There is one aspect to this film that I can't quite get a bead on, though, and I can't tell whether it's a subtext that's there or if it's because I live in a day and age where EVERYTHING is sexualized. Are Thelma and ZaSu more than just friends in this film? Are they a couple? There are two jokes that seem to say outright that they are (never mind the fact that they're sharing the same bed as the film opens). As the editor and publisher who green-lit turning the Science Sleuths gay, it's an odd position for me to be in....

Picture Perfect Halloween with Vampirella

Vampirella has made a new friend, and she's bringing him with her to a Halloween party near you!

By Art Adams

'The Mad Ghoul' is worth knowing

The Mad Ghoul (1943)
Starring: George Zucco, David Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, Turhan Bey, and Robert Armstrong
Director: James Hogan
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

College chemistry professor Alfred Morris (Zucco) re-discovers a formula for a gas that ancient Central Americans used turn people into pseudo-living zombies, as well as a means for reversing the transformation. He uses his assistant, Ted (Bruce), as an unwitting human test subject while trying to put the moves on Ted's opera-singing fiance (Ankers)... but when the antidote for the gas turns out to only be temporary, Morris's life and Ted's psuedo-undeath become a lot more complicated.

"The Mad Ghoul" is a horror film from Universal Pictures--the studio that bought the world "The Mummy", "Dracula", and "Frankenstein"--that sounds like a film from Monogram or PRC, with its mad scientist with an even madder scheme, a young couple being threatened by evil, and a crusading reporter who is going to stop the monster the police have been unable to catch.

What the writers and director does with those elements are a great change of, though: The crusading reporter ends up, the young couple's romance is revealed to have been over even before the film starts, and the mad doctor's mad scheme keeps getting more insane, first because he was cocky and had to cover up a failed experiment and then because he wanted to remove all rivals for the woman with whom he believes he shares a mutual attraction. (Some of my favorite parts of the film is when George Zucco and Evelyn Ankers' characters are talking past each other; Zucco thinks they are expressing their love for each other while Ankers thinks she's just unloading her sorrows to a sympathetic ear. These scenes feature some nice acting and even better writing, because they perfectly communicate the notion that Zucco's character later expresses, after he realizes he was mistaken: "Sometimes we see what we want to see.")

The cast of "The Mad Ghoul" all provide good performances. Zucco is in particularly fine form, playing the crazed heavy he specialized in but with a tiny bit of nuances thrown in. Robert Armstrong is also fun as the "I'm smarter than the cops" newsman who populates films of this type, and while I saw his brutal end coming before it actually happened, I was a little sad to see him go. Meanwhile, Ankers and Bey play the kinds of characters they portrayed in many other films, and they do it with their usual skill. Finally, David Bruce, in one of his few starring roles, is good as what initially comes across as the standard, fairly bland romantic lead, but becomes an increasingly interesting and nuanced character as the film unfolds.