The Avengers Dossier, Page Four

Here's another brief look at a supporting player from the 1965/66 season of "The Avengers".

MICHAEL GOUGH
Michael Gough played Dr. Armstrong, a computer and mechanical genius turned tech mogul in "The Cybernauts".

Born in 1916, Michael Gough was a widely respected actor with a career that lasted over sixty years and was spent equally on stage and on screen, with roles in nearly 200 films and TV series. Most readers may remember him as Alfred in four Batman movies (the two directed by Tim Burton... and the two that followed), but he also had key roles in such famous television series as "Doctor Who" (two different turns as villains, with a roughly 15-year gap between), dozens of fun B- horror and sci-fi movies, and as the voice for numerous cartoon- and masked-characters over the years.

Gough passed away at the age of 94 in 2011.

'Hard Work' is easy to watch

Hard Work (1928)
Starring: Wallace Lupino, Betty Boyd, and Jackie Levine

Director: Jules White

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A couple (Lupino and Boyd) and their young son (Levine) move into a fixer-upper... which they try to fix up with mostly disastrous results.

"Hard Work" features a small cast of actors who were either unseasoned (Betty Boyd) or who had never been expected to carry a film in starring roles (Wallace Lupino and Jackie Levine), but all three rise spectacularly to the task. It also features a simple plot (which is basically a streamlined version of what you'll find in Buster Keaton's "One Week" from 1920) that sets up disaster after disaster that are used to their fullest. Unless you are completely lacking in a sense of humor, you will find yourself laughing or smiling throughout most of this picture--even as you may be cringing at some of what unfolds. (I have had enough injuries and broken bones in my life that I could almost feel some of the punishment that Lupino's character is subjected to.)

This would be a Nine-star film if not for the weak gag that opens the film (the weakest in the entire picture, actually) and for the way it closes. The ending isn't bad exactly... it just feels a little flat.

I recommend you take a few minutes out of your day to sit back and enjoy this rare comedy gem by clicking on the embedded video below.

The Swank Quarterly

 Hats by Himerius hired Hilary to help hawk their headwares.

"Don't wear anything that distracts from the hats," they told her.

"You got it," she replied.

On this day, 100 years ago...

... Italian actress Giulietta Masina was born.

She is perhaps best remembered outside of Italy for her roles in "La Strada" (1956) and "Juliet of the Spirits" (1965), but back home she was tremendously popular and widely known as a star of screen and radio. She was also married to writer/director Frederico Fellini for more than 50 years. They were reportedly in love for all those years, and she has been described his main source of inspiration from the time they first began working together on radio.

Masina passed away in 1994, just a months after her husband's death. Here's an artistic tribute by "Keneru" and Milo Manara.

Musical Monday with Garbage

Here's Garbage performing a song that's anything but garbage. It's pretty darn cool actually. (The rating is a High Six, and if there'd been just a little more to the video, it might have been a Seven.)

I Think I'm Paranoid (1998)

Starring: Shirley Manson, Steve Marker, and Butch Vig

Director: Matthew Rolston

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

'Cartoon Factory' shatters the fourth wall

The Cartoon Factory (1924/1930)
Starring: Max Fleischer
Directors: Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

An animator (Fleischer) invents a way to automate the creation of cartoons. This, in turn, leads the animated character Koko the Clown to create a cartoon version of the animator. 

"The Cartoon Factory" doesn't just break the fourth wall--it turns it to dust. Several times over. Not only does Ko-Ko the Clown know that he's a drawing--he's a drawing who understands drawings are just lines that can be put on paper or erased as the creator chooses. And that Ko-Ko can create and erase those lines. It's fascinating to watch Koko go about trying (intentionally or not) to corrupt the animated world he lives in by creating a version of the person who originally animated HIM... and then to watch this creation turn on him, because the creation can never fully become the creator and fiction can never fully escape into reality, nor can reality ever fully merge with fiction. (That's at least the message I took away from this... even if I may be overthinking things.)

I've mentioned before my fondness for cartoons and movies that break the fourth wall in other reviews on this blog, so I enjoyed "The Cartoon Factory" quite a bit. I've seen at least one commentator state that he felt the ending is a result of Fleischers not knowing how to bring the story to a close, but it seems to me that it's simply following the format of the series: Most (if not all) episodes open with Ko-Ko emerging from the animator's inkwell in some fashion, and then returning to it at the end. 

But how about you take a look for yourself, and perhaps let me know your take on this fun fusion of live- and animated-action? You can watch it from this very post, and then use the comments section at the very bottom to sound off.

Trivia: The original version of "The Cartoon Factory" was first released into theaters on Feburary 21, 1924. It was one of roughly 130 silent "Out of the Inkwell" series, all of which combined some degree of live-action footage with animation. (The version embedded in this post, and that forms the basis for this review, was released in 1930 with the soundtrack added.)

It's alluring but ultimately unremarkable

Lookers: Allure of the Serpent (1999)
Script: Barry Gregory
Art: Pat Quinn

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Sisters Michelle and Tanya Nichols, owners of and lead investigators for Complete Recovery Inc. (CRI), are hired to investigate whether or not it was the Loch Ness Monster is the creature that decapitated man on the lake's shore.

"Lookers" was a series from Avatar Press that ran during the late 1990s, in a string of one-shots, mini-series, and in the pages of the anthology title "Threshold". The title is a pun, as it focused on the adventures of a detective agency headed by a pair of beautiful sisters in their 20s, with Tanya being the pair's brawn and Michelle being the brains. Both were child prodigies, and they are generally the smartest people in whatever room they happen to be in.

The one-shot "Lookers: Allure of the Serpent" is a so-so example of their adventures. It's got an interesting set-up, but it is predictable in every way. The moment the Mort Sidney Company executive seeking to hire CRI mentioned cloning and the "Jurassic Park"-style attraction, I guessed that the "Loch Ness Monster" was their creation and that CRI was not so much being hired to investigate a gruesome death but to serve as a PR vehicle... and that guess was further validated when Michelle was established as an internationally renowned Loch Ness Monster skeptic who had published a scientific paper on the matter while still a child.

Despite its predictability, or perhaps because of it, "Allure of the Serpent" entertains in the same way a low-budget action movie or an episode of a TV drama does; it's enjoyable because you know what's coming (with perhaps a small variation). If viewed as an easily digested piece of formula fiction, "Allure of the Serpent" does it's job, nothing more and nothing less. Even the abrupt ending feels like the way a cheap movie or TV episode might close. (A one-page denouement at the expense of a house ad would have been nice.)

The art is passable, with Pat Quinn delivering some clean and crisp black-and-white drawings that generally keep the eye moving across the pages in the right direction and keeps the story flowing, even if the P.O.V.'s in  some of his panels don't quite make sense. Barry's Gregory dialog is also reasonable, always natural-seeming even with the plenty of wordy exchanges between some of the characters. Unfortunately, the speech balloons communicating those exchanges are sometimes  laid out in ways that are counterproductive to easy reading.

There are some random touches that I suppose are artifacts of how Avatar (and many other publishers) during the late 1980s and through the 1990s marketed their wares--with sex and nudity and more sex in the pages of the comics. Because, dontchayaknow--comics are for adults now!

In "Allure of the Serpent", we get a bizarre scene of a guy grabbing his girlfriend 's boobs at a time and place that makes no sense contextually nor reflects that dialog in the panels where it happens... and we're treated to a little full-frontal nudity courtesy of Tanya after she gets dunked in the lake by Nessie. While the second scene can be viewed as in keeping with the genre "Lookers" emulates, the first one is out of place and just a little gross.

I suppose I could also mention the fact that our heroines probably shouldn't have just worn swimsuits onto Loch Ness; I understand the water there is consistently fairly cold. (Although I could be wrong... and this IS a comic book after all. Skintight outfits are required for male and female characters whenever there's even a slight reason for one.)

In the end, like the low-budget action films it reminds me of, "Lookers: Allure of the Serpent" is entertaining but generally unremarkable... and perhaps the best thing about it is its poster (or cover in this case).

Princesses of Mars, Part 34

 The latest Mars Rover has sent back pictures of life on Mars--the beautiful Princesses of Mars!

The Avengers: Death at Bargain Prices

Death at Bargain Prices (1965)
Starring: Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, Andre Morell, T.P. McKenna, John Castor, and Allen Cuthbertson
Director: Charles Crichton
Rating: Ten of Ten Stars

When the mysterious death of a government agent traces back to a department store owned by a reclusive millionaire (Morrel), top secret agents John Steed (Macnee) and Emma Peel (Rigg) uncover a scheme to wipe London from the map and hold the entirety of Great Britian for ransom.

"Death at Bargain Prices" is another perfect episode of "The Avengers". We get great banter between Steed and Peel; we have a fascinating and highly intelligent villain who very nearly bests our heroes--even after he himself has been defeated; we a talented supporting cast portraying interesting characters among whom it's difficult for both the Avengers and the viewers to tell ally from enemy; and we have the unusual setting of a high-end department store used effectively and to its fullest extent.

From serving as a vehicle for veiled observations on the way British society was changing in the 1960s--with centuries-old class structures and gender roles melting and morphing and melding, something that's also embodied in the styles and characterizations of both John Steed and Emma Peel--to providing a backdrop from the climactic confrontation between the Avengers and the villains who want to blow up London.

As Steed and Peel conduct their investigation--with Steed undercover as an efficiency expert, and Peel (under protest) taking a job there (under protest) as a shop girl--we get to see that some floors are the traditional upscale store, with traditional staff divisions, but others are being renovated and out of service for the time being, as they are being reworked for modern days. The owner of the store, an old-school industrialist brilliantly played by Andre Morrell is living in a private apartment and storage area on the facility's top floor, embittered at a society and peers that have rejected him and are leaving him behind. Peels interactions with her male coworkers, and some of Steed's hilarious but over-the-top sexist jokes illustrate how women's place in society was changing. It's all very clever commentary... and it's delivered wrapped up in a package of light-hearted action and excitement.

And that excitement is at its finest during the episodes climactic moments where there is another spectacular mix of the goofy and the deadly serious, as the Steed and Peel square off against the bad guys in a fight that starts in the toy section and moves through the departments of the store, getting increasingly lethal as it goes. Even after the bad guys have been put down, the heroes still have to deal with the issue of finding and stopping a nuclear bomb from going off. 

From beginning to end, and in every way, this is one of the best episodes from Season Four of "The Avengers".

Picture Perfect Snow Day

It's a winter wonderland here at Shades of Gray on this Picture Perfect Wednesday.

We've been making snowmen and sledding...

... and some of us went skiing and made new friends!

But the ski trip wasn't without problems. Some of us forgot our jackets...

... some of us forgot our pants...

... and we're lucky that Yvonne Craig remembered to bring even her ski boots!