The Growing-Up of Emma Peel: Part Two

And now we continue the story of future secret agent Emma Peel's first great adventure. (Click on the panels for larger, more easily read versions.)

Don't forget to be scared, because...

There's Something About a Soldier (and Betty)

In observance of Veteran's Day, we invite you to taka e few minutes to watch "There's Something About a Soldier"--a tale of war, bravery, and love... not to mention lots of silliness. It's embedded at the bottom of this post!

There's Something About a Soldier (1934)

Starring: Mae Questel (the voice of Betty Boop) and Jack Mercer (the voice of Fearless Fred)

Director: Dave Fleischer

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Betty helps recruit the men on the country to join the army to battle an invading hoard of giant mosquitos and fights along side them on the front lines.

By 1934, the Betty Boop cartoons were losing their edge, due in large part to the now-in-full-force Motion Picture Production Code. Still, this Betty Boop outing is still a lot of fun, with gags coming fast and furious while everything from war-time melodramas, army recruiting methods and army recruits, and even war, is being lampooned. 

What's most remarkable here is the animation. At first glance, it appears like the well-composed and smooth-flowing imagery we expect from this series, but a closer look reveals that an amazing amount of attention and effort was put into the details here. For example, each soldier in formations is drawn with an individual look instead of the typical method of just repeating the same character design on such insignificant characters. That extra effort on the soldiers is a big part of what makes "There's Something About a Soldier" worthy viewing on this Veteran's Day.

Then there was that time when...

... Rhona Mitra was in such a hurry to get to work she left a few important things at home.

It's something to which we can all relate...

Extra Musical Monday with the Merkins... Because This is the Way Now!

It's early November 2020, and we haven't yet had time to watch the new episodes of "The Mandalorian"--there's just too much stuff to watch, including all the old things we want to cover for this blog!--but we are looking forward to the day when we can find the time.

(For the non-Star Wars fans out there, "The Mandalorian" is a series airing on Disney+ that details the adventures of the Mandalorian of the title and the baby alien he decides to protect. It's sort of like "Lone Wolf and Cub Meet Star Wars While Everyone is Brainstorming Spaghetti Western and Heist Movie Plots"... and the first batch of episodes were fantastic!)

And after coming across this hilarious musical tribute to the Mandalorian and the Child (whom we forever will refer to as Baby Yoda) via a Guns 'n Roses parody cover, we are looking forward to sitting down and watching that show even more!

The Merkins is a comedy group that specializes in spoof covers, more often than not revolving around the various masked characters from horror films. You can check out their YouTube channel here, and you can click here to see a selection of their songs that have been featured at our sister blog, Terror Titans.


UPDATE (11.9.2020)
It appears that Guns N Roses has nuked the "Green Child of Mine" parody with a copyright claim. What a bunch of useless, feckless bastards.


UPDATE (11.11.2020)
"Green Child of Mine" was reuploaded on someone's individual page. We'll see how long it sticks around! Watch it while you can!


UPDATE (11.16.2020)
The cunts of Guns N Roses have nuked "Green Child of Mine" again. Oh well. This post will stay here, in memory of a very funny parody. I'm sorry if you missed it. BUT! We're going to start a salty post where we will chronicle the ups-and-downs of Baby Yoda vs. the Cunts of Guns N Roses! Stay tuned!

Musical Monday with David Byrne

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down by people who truly were stunning and brave.

For nearly three decades, it had been one of the primary symbols of the evil and oppressive nature of the Soviet Union, a wall built to keep the citizens of East Berlin from fleeing into West Berlin, which at the time was a tiny island of liberty. In 2001, then U.S. President George W. Bush declared November 9 World Freedom Day.

This 1990 recording of "Don't Fence Me In" by David Byrne is the perfect song for this Musical Monday, which also happens to be the 20th World Freedom Day.

'The Office Boy' doesn't work

The Office Boy (1930)
Starring: Anonymous Voice Actors
Directors: Harry Bailey and John Foster
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

An office romance between an office boy and a secretary is threatened by their lecherous boss.

"The Office Boy" is a terrible cartoon. Everything about it is amateurish--from the animation through the sound design and the musical soundtrack and featured song--and indifferently produced, with the least amount of effort going into all aspects of creation.

I suspect some of you, after reading the above paragraph, are wondering how anything Walt Disney did with Mickey Mouse could ever be described as "amateurish" and "indifferently produced"? Well, that's because, despite what it might appear from the still above, "Office Boy" is NOT a Disney cartoon. Instead, it's one of a handful of knock-offs cranked out by the Van Beuren Corporation to capitalize on the popularity of Mickey Mouse and his female friend Minnie Mouse. They were so bad that Roy Disney reportedly filed suit against Van Beuren. According to Hal Erickson, who literally wrote the book on the Van Beuren Company, Disney wasn't seeking any monetary compensation for the obvious infringement--he just wanted then to stop making crappy cartoons featuring knock-offs of their popular characters.

"The Office Boy" is more terrible than even the worse "Tom & Jerry" installment, as, no matter how awful some of them are, there's always a certain atmosphere of childish glee, along with a generous helping of surreal absurdities. We have almost none of either here, except for the cute out-of-nowhere finale... which is tainted by what I assume is the first run of a nightmarish "gag" where two characters merge into one in a terrifying manner. (It reappears a couple years later in "Rocketeers", which was also co-directed by John Foster.)

As is my habit, when it comes to the short films I review, I encourage you to check out the subject instead of just taking my word for its quality. If nothing else, you will find yourself marveling at just how shameless the Van Beuren folks were in their rip-off of Mickey Mouse in "The Office Boy". (And if you find yourself disagreeing with my take, let everyone know your views in the comments section, or over on my Facebook page.)

Beginning a new Saturday Serial...

Mrs. Emma Peel. Those who know her recognize her as the total package-- a woman of great intelligence, grace, and beauty. Those who really know her also knows that for several years during the 1960s, she put all her talents to use as a member of Great Britain's most elite force of secret agents, The Avengers!

Before she was Mrs. Peel, before she was Chairwoman of Knight Industries, before she was one of Britain's secret agents charged with the task of avenging other secret agents who fall in the line of duty, she was Emma Knight, daughter of a widower and traveling the world with her father. Beginning today, and over the next many weeks, you'll be able to read the tale of her first major adventure... where lives were at stake and the fate of nations hung in the balance... in The Growing-Up of Emma Peel! (Click on the pages for larger, more legible versions, and come back next week for the continuation!)

PART ONE

A genre-founding game of cat and mouse...

Juve vs Fantomas (1913)
Starring: Edmund Breon, Georges Melchior, René Navarre, Yvette Andréyor, and Renée Carl
Director: Louis Feuillade
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Fantômas (Navarre)--a psychopathic murderer, master of disguise and leader of a vast criminal enterprise--attempts to eliminate his dogged pursuers Police Inspector Juve (Breon) and journalist Fandor (Melchoir) while enacting a scheme to rob wine dealers of 150,000 Francs.

I have seen the Louis Feuillade-directed Fantômas material described alternatively as a serial and as series of sequels. Having watched now (finally) the second installment of the series, it's clearly a serial. While the first film delivered a complete story and stood relatively well on its own (read the review here), this one relies not only on prior knowledge of the characters featured, but on some degree of what happened in the previous film, but also ends with a number of unresolved plot elements.

Although "Juve vs. Fantômas" is part of a serial with no solid beginning and no end, it is made up of shorter, almost self-contained stories centered on either Fantômas and his gang schemes and heist attempts, or the back and forth between Juve & Fandor trying to catch Fantômas while Fantômas is trying to kill them.

From a genre history perspective, this is an interesting film to watch, because its chase scenes, shoot-outs, and general pacing and alignment of characters show how little the action and thriller genres have changed in the 110+ years since this "Juve vs. Fantômas" was released. The technology and techniques of filmmaking may have changed, but the pursuit scenes, confrontations between heroes and villains, shoot-outs--every story element really--could be transferred to a modern film with very little revision. (Okay, so Fantômas' method of escaping from Juve and Fandor when they nab him about halfway into the film would have to be completely reworked, but almost everything else would fit in a modern thriller. Oh... and me staying that Fantômas escapes from his pursuers is not a breach of my general policy of not providing spoilers; Fantômas will ALWAYS escape, because, although he's the villain, these films are more about what he and his crew are getting up to than the heroes that are trying to catch him.)

Highpoints of the film are the startling aftermath of Fantômas' gang robbing a wine broker they'd cat-fished; a shoot-out that's s equal parts thrilling and hilarious, with it being a very tense sequence that feels like heroes Juve and Fandor are in geuine peril, but funny due the way the gunmen trying to kill them pop up and down from cover; the scenes that underscore exactly how confident Fantômas is in his abilities to avoid capture, such as when he returns to finish his date at a nightclub with two lovely ladies after almost getting pinched at that very nightclub; and the entirety of cat-and-mouse game between Juve and  Fantômas that culminates in the film's final minutes that shocking cliffhanger.

On the downside, Fantômas' murky relationship with Lady Beltham (Renée Carl) continues from the first film, without any additional clarification of it. We're introduced to a new female assistant to Fantômas (Yvette Andréyor) at the beginning of the film--one who is a straight-up criminal like he, and who shares at least some of his talents for disguise, deceit, and being a social chameleon, and is all-around more interesting and even prettier than Lady Beltham--so I figured Fantômas had gotten all the use he could out of Beltham and moved on... but this is not the case. She is brought back into the story and cooperates with him for reasons even less comprehensible than her working with him before, and we get no further insight into why she cooperates with him or why he even reaches out to her. (Although I was a bit annoyed to see whatever it is that binds Fantômas and Beltham together, I hope she'll appear again in future installments, perhaps even get killed off and replaced by Josephine.)

On the presentation side, a near-constant annoyance for me was the fact that this film was tinted. Outdoor daylight scenes were tinted yellow or green (I can't tell which for sure due to being somewhat colorblind), outdoor night scenes being blue, and scenes involving fires, explosions, and fiery crashes (of which there are several) being tinted red. Scenes that take place indoors were tinted inconsistently, sometimes just in the native black and whit, but other-times in yellow/green or blue, depending on whether the light is on or not. I understand that this wasn't an uncommon practice back when this film was made, but it annoys me whenever I come across it. Maybe it's my color blindness or maybe it's just my love of the black-and-white medium (which is tied to my color blindness, according to at least two different wags I know), but I view it as a strike against a film, no matter how much I otherwise enjoy it. It's especially annoying to me when the tinting is applied inconsistently like it's done here.

In the end though, the good parts of "Juve vs. Fantômas" vastly outweigh the bad parts--and the finale makes up for any and all sins committed during its run-time. I will have to implement Fantômas Fridays for the rest of November so I can see how things turn out! 

If you have an interest in the history of film and where genre conventions come from, or if you just want to enjoy a fast-paced, old-timey crime drama, I think you'll find watching "Juve vs. Fantômas".

Happy Birthday, Elke Sommer!

Actress Elke Sommer turns 80 years old today, November 5, 2020! Here are a few pictures of her in her birthday suit during the early 1960s.