Stream and Stream Again: Special May Day Edition

Spring is here. There’s a better than even chance that the sun is shining where you are; nature is blooming (time to stock up on the allergy meds); and at least for a brief moment, hope and renewal (along with pollen) waft on warm breezes.

We don’t really do May Day here in the States, what with its commie-hippie-fertility-tree-worshipping vibe that’s so at odds with our dog-eat-dog capitalism. Elsewhere, the old Soviet military parades are gone, but much of the world still recognizes it as International Workers Day, where workers of the world unite to binge on Game of Thrones and the latest Marvel blockbusters. There are even a few odd Europeans and Brits left who celebrate by dressing up and dancing around the maypole.

"Okay kids, enough of this fresh air, let's go binge on
episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch!"

We’ve dispensed with the old Pagan maypole streamers in favor of net streams, but the dance is still the same -- we frolic around the great megalithic entertainment monolith, tied to it by our multiple streams, forever chasing after that elusive content that’s just one more subscription away.

Many of us have cut the cable and satellite TV cords, only to become entangled in a new Gordian knot of subscription streaming services. The cost of each by itself is reasonable, but put all of them together to get your Star Trek Discovery here, Game of Thrones there, and the Marvel Comics Universe behind the Disney paywall, and suddenly you’ve become nostalgic for the old cable bill.

Of course it all makes sense from the corporate monolith’s perspective. Why sell or rent your precious commodity one at a time when you can rope your customers into ongoing, monthly payments? Corporate suits are burning the midnight oil thinking of new recurring ways to separate us from our money: razors, clothes, food, you name it. “I’m sorry sir, that apple is not for individual sale, but I’d be happy to sign you up for our Apple of the Month Club.”

While the Fruit of the Month Club may be an easy pass, they really have us by the short hairs when it comes to our pop culture addictions. Disney is the new 800 pound gorilla in the streaming wars, pulling their content from other platforms to offer exclusively on their own service. The announced $6.99 per month cost is low compared to Netflix and other services, but it will be interesting to see if that price holds once they corral all their hottest properties -- Star Wars, the MCU, Pixar, etc. -- behind their paywall.

Even with its attractive entry price, I won’t be signing up for Disney’s streaming channel anytime soon. Because I’m a cheap old coot, I’m trying to hold the line at my outrageously expensive internet plan and the two streaming behemoths I’ve had for years now, Netflix (which just raised its rates again, daggummit!) and Amazon Prime.

The CEOs of Disney, Netflix, Amazon and Comcast wave approvingly
as their weapons of mass distraction parade by the reviewing stand.

Of course, Netflix has been moving in recent years from an emphasis on theatrical movies to original content and TV. I’ve sampled some of their original stuff, and overall it’s pretty mediocre. Every time they hike their rates I think about dropping it, but it has some shows my wife and I like, so I grin and bear it (yeah Netflix, you’re smiling now, but one more price hike, and you’ll be sorry!)

Amazon Prime is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates -- you never know what you’re going to get. B movie fans like myself can have quite a bit fun browsing through its catalog. Right now my watchlist is teeming with titles that are good candidates for the blog: Attack of the Mushroom People, Blood of the Vampire, Cry of the Banshee, Fire Maidens of Outer Space, Frankenstein’s Daughter, Invisible Invaders, Pharaoh’s Curse… it’s an embarrassment of B riches (or for some, just an embarrassment). Some of those licenses will expire, and other vintage Bs will take their place. The biggest downside is the queasy feeling I sometimes get paying dues to the online empire of the world’s richest, greediest man.

At least I summoned up the fortitude some time ago to cut the cable TV cord. We’d been bouncing between cable and satellite for years, shelling out for frequent rate hikes, tolerating poor signals and even poorer customer service, and marvelling, like millions before us, that there could be so many channels and so little to watch.

When we moved to a larger metro area, we finally cut and ran. I invested in an indoor digital antenna and a DVR for over-the-air broadcasts. In our location, the setup brings in not only the usual network channels and local news, but dozens of other channels as well. Fortunately for my interests, many of these are retro channels, including MeTV (with the beloved Svengoolie on Saturday nights), the Movies! channel, Comet, Decades, This-TV and many more. (A small downside is that occasionally the antenna needs to be adjusted to optimize the signal for certain channels. I have it hanging from a curtain rod, where it’s easy to move it back and forth to clear up the signal.)

Public libraries are a beacon of hope for all
those oppressed by high entertainment bills.

Another huge free resource is the local public library system. Again, living in a large city helps tremendously. Among all the branches, they get almost every title that anyone would want to watch on DVD, including blockbusters, foreign and independent films, and TV. If your local branch doesn’t carry it, you just put a hold on the title and it usually shows up within a couple days. We recently caught up with Game of Thrones by binging on library copies.

A big “secret” that people are finally discovering is that many libraries offer robust, free streaming services. Hoopla, a big player in the public library market, offers popular feature films and documentaries to stream, along with online courses and ebooks. Typically, each library card holder gets a limited number of views per month (but hey, it’s free!).

Our system also offers Kanopy, which has also been big in the higher education streaming market. Kanopy has a rich catalog of independent, foreign, classic and documentary films. For a relatively high-brow service, it also carries a surprising number of classic and B horror and sci-fi films. For example, my current Kanopy watchlist includes I Married a Monster from Outer Space, The Blood Beast Terror (with Peter Cushing), the Eurohorror classic Night of the Devils, and Sudden Fear (with Joan Crawford and Jack Palance). Like Hoopla, it’s a certain-number-of-views per month deal.

So, there are alternatives to selling your first born and your right arm for access to the movies and shows you love. Check out the local OTA broadcast situation and your local library. You may be able to stream and stream again without your wallet screaming “Uncle!”

Streaming Scream Queens for Halloween: Special 13 Day Countdown Edition

“Poor” Netflix! With all the service changes and pricing miscues, apologies from the CEO, withering criticism of its streaming catalog, and persistent predictions of its imminent demise in the face of rising competition, it still singlehandedly accounts for nearly 37% of all U.S. bandwidth usage at peak hours.  Netflix was just in the news again, with its feckless CEO blaming credit card companies issuing new chip-based cards for the slump in their subscriber base growth. Yep, you got that right — in this industry, you don’t actually have to lose customers to get unwanted attention. All it takes is an unanticipated dip in the growth of new subscribers to get you scrambling for some excuse, any excuse, to appease critics and shareholders.

My purpose here is not to beat up on Netflix alone. I don’t think I have to polish my credentials as an implacable, remorseless media industry critic. If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you may have run across some of my finer moments in taking the suits who run these media empires to task, for instance, here, here and here.

The fact is, I’m just your run-of-the-mill, patriotic American consumer. I want what I want. And my wants are simple. I want access to a video/film catalog complete with all the obscure, old B movies that I have taken a shine to and that are the staples of this blog. I want to be able to rent or purchase copies, stream or download, and I want them playable on all my devices — HD TV, desktop computer, tablet, phone and in the near future, that chip in my head that plays HD movies in the back of my eyeballs. I never, ever want to see that a title is no longer in my streaming queue because the license expired. And, I want to be able to freely and legally rip small portions, not more than 2 or 3 minutes (hey, I’m not greedy!), from any digital video to store in my YouTube account and embed in these here posts, just like I have the right to quote from passages of any friggin’ book that I might be reviewing!

So, you humorless media industry suits, step back from all your feuding over licenses and copyright and intellectual property and patents and whatever, and get busy making me and others just like me happy! We’ll even pay you — a reasonable, but not exorbitant, amount.

I won’t hold my breath. Even with the recent profusion of streaming channels, platforms and assorted options, it seems like the train is headed in the wrong direction. I admit that I have a collector’s (and reviewer’s) mentality. I get bored with the 2015 equivalent of channel surfing — firing up Netflix or Hulu or the streaming service of the moment and browsing through the endless lists of “trending” or “recently added” movies and shows, trying to find something even mildly interesting. No, I’m much more oriented to that specific title that I ran across in a book, or an article, or through word of mouth, or even that thing that ran on TCM months ago. I want to check it out, give it a spin, see if its something I want to cover for the blog… whatever. And I don’t want to spend a fortune in time or $ hunting it down. Amazon Instant Watch is the closest thing to that online union catalog of video, for rent or purchase in the cloud, that I covet. It has its holes, and some of the pricing is inscrutable, but kudos to them nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the industry trend is away from the online title by title smorgasbord to the locked down subscription package deal. You want titles X, Y and Z? Sure, Netflix has ‘em for a measly $7.99 month and so many more! Wanna binge on that show everyone’s watching? Great, just add another $11.99 to pick up your Hulu subscription for that and a million other shows. Add another $9.99 for the other service that has the content that the first two don’t carry, and maybe yet another, and suddenly you’re looking at your credit card bill and wondering where you’re going to get the bucks for gas and groceries. This is obviously where the suits want us. Feeding off us, month after month. So much better than the hit or miss, occasional purchases of downloaded titles and doing with them as we see fit. iTunes is dead. Long live Apple Music.

We are like living batteries that the suits have hooked up to their enormous greed engines, draining us minute by minute, month by month. We’re so entranced by the streaming spectacles that we don’t wake up until it’s too late, until we’re nothing but dried, lifeless, penniless husks. What movie does that remind you of?

On the other hand, we might as well enjoy the trip to lifeless huskdom (huskdomness? huskiness?). In the best spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” I want to a.) promote some lurid B titles that have wormed their way into otherwise respectable streaming services; and b.) emulate those evil but savvy industry suits by doing a little bit of my own synergizing and building up of the Films From Beyond media empire.

Part of that empire is the Films From Beyond Facebook page. If you haven’t already, get over there and like it. As an added incentive, for the next 13 days through to Halloween, I’m going to be Facebook posting on Streaming Scream Queens available now at an online service near you. We’ll see you back here on the blog after Halloween!

Fabulous, Fantastic TV Shows of the Fifties: Special "DIRECTV is watching you!" Edition

My apologies for the infrequent posts on the blog -- I'm still in the middle of what has turned out to be a marathon move, hunkering down in a short-term lease apartment while going through all the paper work (and work work) of securing a more permanent abode. The tiny light I see at the end of this tunnel may be the shining light of future happiness or the great express train of life, but either way I'd be grateful for a quick resolution.

"Hmmm... do I really want to pack up all that stuff and move it?"

As I mentioned in an earlier post, packing up and moving all your Stuff (with a capital S) tends to focus the mind on priorities and what's really important in life. Lots and lots of stuff weighs down your body, your freedom, and your soul. After packing the umpteenth box with books and dvds, I've developed a much better appreciation for the great digital "anywhere, anytime, any device" revolution. Is it really the package -- the book, the disc -- that's important, or the content? Now, if only the content providers and the distributors could all just get along in a great, happy circle of cooperation and profit, while at the same time providing us needy consumers with reliable, stable, high speed access… what a wonderful world that would be! (On the other hand, as long as companies like Apple conspire with publishers to keep e-book prices high, and owners keep threatening to pull content from distributors like Netflix to wring that last penny out of their "intellectual" property, physical media will still be with us… and we'll continue to box it up and move it out.)

Another benefit of moving is that it motivates you to re-examine all those pesky entertainment/media subscriptions that seemed so necessary at the time, but like guests who've overstayed their welcome, are no longer charming and keep raiding your fridge and wallet for every last nickel and crumb.  We started out subscribing to basic cable with the local monopoly, got tired of the constant price increases, then went with DIRECTV, and quickly got tired of the vast content wasteland that that service delivered for a premium price.  I had long since given up on the shouting, blathering, talking heads of the so-called "news" outlets, and found myself only watching baseball and the occasional TCM flick for DIRECTV's hefty price. Canceling hundreds of channels of nothing seemed like a no brainer.

"You will subscribe to DIRECTV, you will watch it,
and you will enjoy it!"

The only catch is, DIRECTV is harder to get rid of than a surly, 800 pound freeloading house guest. When I called to cancel, the customer (dis)service rep wanted to grill me about why I was taking such a drastic step. He was incredulous that anyone would willingly cancel their obviously superior service. But that was not the end. Since that fateful call, I've gotten numerous call backs from similarly incredulous customer reps wanting me to rethink and/or explain this clearly suspicious, un-American behavior. When I finally told one of them off and demanded that they stop harassing me (and to take my phone number out of their data banks), the vaguely threatening "We're sorry to lose you!" emails started up.

As if that weren't enough, they sent me a puzzle box in the form of a DVR recovery package with a pre-printed address label. The instructions clearly directed me to include the remote and the power supply along with the unit or face severe penalties, but of course, there was no room for them in the box, so I had to use an x-acto knife and my ingenuity to get them all in there. Now, I'm waiting for the "destruction of and/or misuse of DIRECTV shipping materials" charge to show up on my final bill.

"I'm sorry sir, cancelling your subscription is not an option."

No doubt, this year or next will see the introduction of the "Early cancellation consumer terrorism" act in Congress, written by corporate lawyers and dutifully passed and signed into law by the chuckleheads and lackeys of Washington, D.C. I expect to be hauled off to a re-education camp (if I'm lucky!) to have my brain re-wired so that I can better appreciate the cornucopia of infotainment options that America's captains of mass communications have so laboriously developed. (When they come for me, I hope I'll be able to summon the same courage as Number 6: "I am not a DIRECTV account number. I am a person. I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. I resign.")

Until then, I will peruse some of the more interesting and esoteric selections from Netflix instant watch, one subscription that I've kept. I know many people, especially those who want to see the latest blockbusters the moment they come out on video, have excoriated Netflix for its woeful instant watch catalog, but for someone of my eccentric and discriminating taste in film and television, instant watch is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates. From Spanish language comedies to obscure British mysteries to classic TV from the '40s, '50s and '60s, Netflix rewards the open-minded viewer with an eclectic and vintage smorgasbord of entertainment and information, and all for a few measly bucks a month.

Recently, I discovered that season one of One Step Beyond from 1959 is available on Netflix instant. From an early age I gobbled up every book I could get my grubby little hands on that dealt with ghosts, flying saucers, ESP, and assorted other paranormal phenomena (no doubt stimulated by all the creature features I watched on the fuzzy black and white television). I read everything of Brad Steiger's that I could find, and then voraciously consumed ghost hunter Hans Holzer's books. Later, I got deep into UFO lore, with authors like physicist Stanton Friedman and Kevin Randle convincing me that where there was smoke there was probably fire with regard to alien visitation. These authors described a world, supposedly a real one, that was infinitely more varied, exciting and intriguing than the sleepy little midwestern college towns that constituted my world as a kid.

So, years later when I discovered episodes of One Step Beyond on videotape, I was immediately hooked. The series, which debuted in January, 1959, featured dramatized stories of true-life paranormal events. The series' host, suave, cultured John Newland, was almost the antithesis of gravelly-voiced, chain-smoking Rod Serling, whose Twilight Zone debuted that same year. Newland was smooth and confident and almost insouciant at times, telling viewers,

"What you're about to see is a matter of human record. Explain it? We cannot. Disprove it? We cannot. We simply invite you to explore with us the amazing world of the unknown, to take that … One Step Beyond …"

"We invite you to explore with us the amazing
world of the unknown..."

One Step Beyond ventured into nearly every aspect of paranormal phenomena with its 30 minute dramatizations: ghosts, out-of-body experiences, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, doppelgangers, possession, transcendent visions, you name it. And like The Twilight Zone, it featured up and coming actors and actresses who would soon become household names, as well as some of the very best character actors around: Cloris Leachman, Charles Bronson, Christopher Lee, Louise Fletcher, Robert Blake, Warren Beatty, Mike Connors, Elizabeth Montgomery, Donald Pleasence, etc.

The series lasted three seasons, from 1959 - 1961. The show was a little before my time -- I don't remember watching it when it was first broadcast, and I doubt my parents would have let me watch it at that young age. It was much later, in the '90s, when I discovered some of the series' "classic" episodes on tape. A few years ago I bought Mill Creek's The Very Best of One Step Beyond with 50 of the series' 97 episodes, but was disappointed like many others to find that some of the discs were unplayable. So kudos to Netflix for securing the first season for instant watch (and I'm hopeful they'll soon add the other seasons).

The show was long on atmosphere, featuring tales of ordinary people reacting to bizarre events. As in any series, there are some snoozers and clunkers in the mix, but the best episodes are poignant psychological studies that evoke a sense of wonder (and some chills) at the incredible variety and mystery of life. They also provided an opportunity for some very capable actors and actresses to really show their stuff.

Condemned prisoner John Marriott (Alfred Ryder) gets one
last shot of brandy before the execution.

Case in point is episode 11, The Devil's Laughter. This is one of the very best episodes of the entire series, partly because of the incredibly strange nature of the "true" story, but mostly due to character actor Alfred Ryder's tour-de-force performance. Ryder plays John Marriott, sentenced to hang for the passion murder of his girlfriend. In the hours leading up to the hanging, Ryder/Marriott is all tics and bug eyes and breathless moaning. As he's offered a last brandy by the warden in a tin cup, he gulps it down, then grabs the bottle from the warden's hand and downs that too, grinning maniacally with this little act of defiance. On the steps of the gallows, he bucks and sways in panic and desperation. Unlike so many stoic condemned men in Hollywood movies, this is exactly how you would expect a real person to react in such a situation.

When the noose breaks, and he wakes up in his cell a new man, the contrast to the old panicky Marriott couldn't be greater. He boasts that when the executioner fixed the hood over his head, something whispered in his ear and showed him exactly how he was going to die -- at the feet of a lion -- and nothing and no one will be able to change that fate, or kill him in any other way, no matter how hard they try. When the second hanging fails because the platform won't fall despite numerous attempts, the cackling, ebullient Marriott is released from prison by order of Parliament -- two execution attempts is suffering enough. With the Devil on his side, he figures he's beaten the world. After all, how likely is he to die at the feet of a lion in the middle of Victorian London? Indeed, another attempt to kill him, this time with a gun, fails as spectacularly as the hangings. But the supercilious small-timer will still keep his date with death…

Murderer John Marriott proves to be a hard man to kill.

Although Ryder was also a veteran of radio and the stage, if you're a boomer who watched any TV in the '50s, '60s and '70s, you will probably recognize his distinctive features. He seemed to be all over the dial, constantly popping up in the TV shows that I loved as a kid: The Outer Limits, Star Trek, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Wild, Wild West, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Invaders and many more.

Note: I've decided to expand the repertoire of this blog to include anthology TV shows like One Step Beyond, especially now that many of these cathode ray tube classics are available online (and these episodes are, after all, nicely crafted short films). Look for more "Fabulous, Fantastic TV Shows of the '40s, '50s, and '60s" right here on this blog. (Like Fantastic Faceless Foes, it will be an "irregular" feature, i.e., as I get the time and inclination. But stay tuned … there's more to come.)

---

Where to find it:

Netflix Instant Watch

Oldies.com

Some things never change...

Net-accessible Noirs for the New Year

Some time ago on this blog I took media content providers and deliverers to task for their all too frequent (and way too public) spats over licensing terms and fees, and how this unending public feuding was ultimately doing a disservice to their customers. Since then, the media licensing wars seem only to have escalated, as the fighting has broken out into new territories, using new means for bashing each other. Just the other day I was mucking around on Facebook and noticed an ad for a page warning the subscribers of some Big Cable company that they'd be losing access to all of FX's great programming soon unless something drastic was done. So not only do we ever-suffering media consumers get to constantly see banners on our favorite channels warning of some coming blackout due to the inability of corporate suits to come to terms, we get to see the fights in all their glory even when we retreat to our favorite social media hangouts. It's not enough that these obese corporations fight tooth and nail for every last crumb, but they have to drag their innocent customers into their ridiculous food fights.

Braveheart looks on with amazement as the Big Media
Corporations ferociously do battle with one another.

Whenever I see a channel banner or Facebook ad urging me to contact my [fill in the blank] provider and demand that they cave in so as to save my cherished programs, I get this picture in my head of an overweight, balding lawyer in an Armani suit, on horseback, his face painted like Braveheart's, riding furiously up and down the assembled ranks of desperate, hungry, media-addicted consumers, crying for them to attack that other fat, evil guy over there in the tailored suit and the stupid war paint. I also imagine the dirty, emaciated consumers with their pitchforks and torches standing there looking at each other, shrugging their shoulders and thinking, "who are these stupid a**holes?" I for one am tempted to throw down my pitchfork, desert the field of battle, cancel my satellite subscription, and go find a good book to read. (Sounds like a New Year's resolution…)

Of course, all the fighting and chaos is really the beginning death knell of the venerable broadcast model that served us so well (?) throughout the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. Older, unimaginative corporate suits are trying to figure out how to generate dependable revenue streams out of the not-unreasonable expectations of teens and twenty-somethings to be able to access the content they want, when they want, wherever they want (and especially on their smartphones, tablets and in the near future, the virtual displays available through their special glasses and contact lenses). Coming soon to a future near you, more of the same, only more convenient for the on-the-go individual. Companies that only a couple years ago seemed so innovative and invincible (Apple, Netflix) will stumble and fall, new companies will rise up, arrogant young hipsters will kick the old men out of their corner offices (as they've always done), and we'll have a ubiquitous cloud-based anytime, anywhere media environment. Like the present, some of it will be pay-per-use, a portion will be subscription-based, and a huge chunk will be supported by ads. Schedules will be a thing of the past, to be replaced by instant notifications of new content available in the great cumulated-nimble-cumulonimbus network cloud covering the entire planet. And fuggedabout popping those fragile, shiny discs into players-- just stream it through your integrated display glasses and listen in on the micro-speakers embedded in your ear canal.

Will this brave new media future lead to even less real-time-and-place, face-to-face human interaction, and more solitary addiction to tiny screens? Probably. I'm tempted to condemn this in an old fart kind of way, but then, as someone who's been addicted to screens (especially TV and movie screens) all his life, I'm maybe not the best person to be telling others how to spend their time. In the meantime, I'll be puttering along, attending the occasional movie at the multiplex, DVRing movies and TV shows, streaming here and there from some online sources, downloading from others, and yes, every now and then popping a shiny disc into an ancient DVD player (for that obscure, old-time content that hasn't been made it into the cloud yet… and may never make it).

In spite of all the big media turmoil, it's not a bad time to be a fan of old movies. There are more options than ever for delving into the old stuff, and a lot of fairly obscure titles are surprisingly making it into some big time commercial streaming services. Take Netflix for example. Much has been written on Netflix' difficulties with content providers, and how much their instant view selection has suffered for it. At the time of this post, the service had amassed almost 50,000 titles in their instant watch catalog, but most of these are older titles -- the low-hanging, cheaply licensed or public domain fruit, so to speak -- and not the recent hit movies that most subscribers are looking to stream (don't throw out that DVD player quite yet-- the DVD by mail catalog is still over twice as large).

Still, one person's junk is another's treasure, and fortunately for B movie fans like me, Netflix' instant watch catalog is replete with low-budget, black and white gems. I discovered this by accident about a year and half ago, when I finally broke down and bought a network-capable Blu-ray player to stream movies on the TV. One of the first titles I streamed was Richard Attenborough's 10 Rillington Place (1971; about a notorious English mass murderer), which at the time was only available on Instant Watch (and subsequently has been yanked from Netflix altogether). Then I stumbled on an obscure horror title from Republic Studios, The Vampire's Ghost (1945) that I had written up earlier on this blog, and thought was only available from one source on DVD-R. I started searching for other B movie titles, found a lot of Instant-only selections, built up a queue, and the rest, as they say, is history. (I have no illusions that these particular titles will keep Netflix thriving and profitable, but I'll continue to enjoy them for as long as Netflix is willing to stream 'em.)

The cold, dark winter months usually put me in the mood for dark, atmospheric movies, so predictably, I spent a good deal of time over holidays watching supernatural horror, thrillers, and film noir.  Below are three lesser-known film noirs that I enjoyed over the break, and that illustrate the rough gems that noir buffs can dig up from the Netflix Instant Watch database. (All three are also available on Amazon Instant Video.)

Now Playing: Sleep, My Love (1948)

Pros: Great cast; Odd plot and character details give the film an almost dream-like quality
Con: Hoary "Gaslight" plot is telegraphed early on

In Brief: Wealthy New York socialite Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) wakes up on a train bound for Boston, not remembering how she got there. A fellow passenger trying to help her discovers a gun in her purse. Back in New York, her husband Richard is talking to a police inspector (Raymond Burr) about his missing wife and a gunshot wound in his arm, which he claims was self-inflicted while cleaning his gun. Once in Boston, Alison calls Richard, who arranges for the Boston police to escort her to the airport for a flight back to NYC. At the airport, Alison bumps into an old Boston friend, Barby (Rita Johnson), who's seeing her friend Bruce Elcott (Robert Cummings) off on the same plane. Bruce offers to accompany the distressed Alison back to New York.

Bruce takes an immediate shine to Alison, asking her out on a date before he realizes she's married. Once back at her palatial townhouse (part of her family's estate), Alison learns from her hubby that she had been sleepwalking in the middle of the night, and when he'd tried to get her back to bed, she shot him. Horrified that she might have killed him, she reluctantly agrees to see a psychiatrist. The doctor, a creepy-looking man with thick horn-rimmed glasses, makes a house call. Alison becomes alarmed when he makes vaguely menacing advances on her, then asks to use the telephone to call her husband with dire news about her mental health. When he abruptly disappears, she faints. When Richard arrives home, he denies that he sent anyone to the house, or received a phone call from the doctor. Alison can't get anyone to believe her story about the weird man.

As Richard keeps insisting that his wife needs help for her sleepwalking and hallucinations, and Alison insists that's she's not going crazy, Bruce, who's still attracted to Alison despite her married status, starts to get suspicious.

Key Player #1: Oscar winner Claudette Colbert was in her mid '40s when this film was made, and her movie career was winding down. Even so, she gives it her all in her new role of "scream queen" -- and she belts out a good one at the beginning of the movie, when she wakes up disoriented and frightened on a speeding train. She made another very underrated film noir a couple of years later, The Secret Fury (1950), wherein a stranger interrupts her wedding ceremony to declare that she's already married. As she tries to clear up the misunderstanding, the other supposed husband dies mysteriously, and she's accused of the crime.

Key Player #2: Husky-voiced, sultry Hazel Brooks makes quite an entrance as Daphne, a femme-fatale who has gotten her hooks into Alison's husband. She saunters down the stairs in the sheerest of nightgowns, and then proceeds to berate hapless, near-sighted Charles Vernay (George Coulouris), sneeringly calling him "four eyes." She has the best line in the movie: "I want what she's got, I want it all: I want her house, her name, her man, and I want them now, tonight."  Brooks made a handful of movies in the '40s and early '50s, and then abruptly retired to become a successful photographer (earlier she had been on the other side of the still camera as a highly successful model).

Now Playing: The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me, 1950)

Pros: Gritty, well-acted drama with a social message; Frank Lovejoy is particularly good as the down-on-his luck everyman who comes to deeply regret his association with a sociopath played by Lloyd Bridges
Cons: The social message becomes a bit too heavy-handed at times; Richard Carlson's newspaper columnist sees the error of his ways a little too quickly and conveniently

In Brief: Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) has moved out to California with his young pregnant wife and little boy to try to find work. His job search is going nowhere when he runs into Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges), a flashy braggart who wears expensive suits, knows how to talk up the ladies, and always seems to have huge rolls of cash on him. Jerry takes pity on the shy, down-on-his luck Howard, promising him a job which turns out to be driving Jerry around to knock off liquor stores and gas stations. Howard hesitates, but with the pressure of a baby on the way and no money, he relents. Howard is disturbed when Jerry pistol whips a gas station attendant, and wants out. Jerry browbeats him, then lures him with the promise of one more big job that will put them both on easy street.

Howard, basically a good man, comes to find out to his everlasting regret that slick Jerry is a homicidal sociopath. Meanwhile, well-known columnist Gil Stanton (Richard Carlson), has been convinced by his editor to write sensationalistic, scaremongering stories about the crime wave hitting the sleepy California town. When he starts writing about the horrific consequences of Jerry and Howard's big job, he sets in motion scary forces that no one can control.

Key Player #1: Square-faced, everyman-looking Frank Lovejoy played in a variety of gritty crime and war pictures in the early-mid '50s before being swept up by TV. Other quality film noir roles include In a Lonely Place (1950) with Humphrey Bogart, I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), and Ida Lupino's creepy The Hitch-Hiker (1953). He died way too soon of a heart attack in 1962.

Key Player #2: Katherine Locke turns in a great, understated performance as a lonely manicurist, Hazel, who Jerry introduces to Howard in order to set up an alibi. The interaction between Howard, wracked with guilt, and Hazel, quietly desperate for a good man to share her life with, is one of the best parts of the movie. Katherine gained some fame on Broadway in the '30s before making a handful of movies in the following two decades.

Now Playing: Private Hell 36 (1954)

Pros: Good acting turns by Howard Duff, Steve Cochran and Ida Lupino
Cons: Certain plot elements, like a multi-day stakeout of a racetrack based on the slimmest of clues, strain credulity

In Brief: Tough-guy detectives Jack Farnham (Howard Duff) and Cal Bruner (Steve Cochran) are assigned to investigate money from a robbery-homicide in New York suddenly showing up in LA. They trace a $50 dollar bill from the job to an attractive nightclub singer, Lilli Marlowe (Ida Lupino), who received it as a tip. Lilli tells the cops that the big-tipper talked about having a good day at the horse races, so Farnham and Bruner take Lilli to the track to see if she can spot the guy. Bruner falls for Lilli, but starts to realize that his cop's salary is not going to cut it with the ambitious singer.

After days of staking out the track, Lilli finally spots the guy, and Farnham and Bruner give chase. The robbery suspect wrecks his car and dies. As the detectives check on the driver, they see bills flying in the wind, and discover a suitcase full of cash that was ejected from the car. Bruner starts stuffing his coat pockets with the money, while Farnham looks on, speechless. Bruner convinces Farnham against his better judgment that the higher-ups will just assume the robbers spent the money earlier. Bruner arranges to stash the marked money in a trailer he has access to at a remote trailer park (lot 36), to sell on the black market later. While Bruner dreams of running down to Mexico with Lilli, guilt starts to consume his partner. Soon, Chief of Detectives Captain Michaels (Dean Jagger) starts to suspect something's up. To top it off, a blackmailer (a partner in the heist?) with knowledge of the missing dough threatens Bruner. The two tough cops are in deep trouble.

Key player #1: Ida Lupino co-wrote the screenplay in addition to acting in the film. By this time in her career, she had started moving over to the production side as the glamorous roles waned. Between 1949 and 1953 she directed several hard-hitting dramas and film noirs, including Outrage (1950), Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), and The Bigamist (1953). She then directed a wide variety of TV programs into the late 1960s.

Key player #2: Steve Cochran is one of the original bad boys of crime drama and film noir, specializing in slick gangster and tough guy roles (and in this case, a corrupt cop). Cochran appeared in some of the better noirs of the '40s and '50s, including The Chase (1946; see my write-up here), White Heat (1949) with Jimmy Cagney, and The Damned Don't Cry (1950) with Joan Crawford. His off-camera life was almost as exciting and dangerous as his on-screen exploits, as he was constantly cropping up in the news for various assault and battery, reckless driving, and adultery charges. His death was equally bizarre-- he died of an acute lung infection while captaining a yacht with an all-female crew from Acapulco to Costa Rica in 1965. The women had been adrift for 3 days with his body before the boat was towed into a Guatemalan port. (For more on Cochran's incredible life and career, see Karen Burroughs Hannsberry's Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir, McFarland, 2008 [2003].)

Films From Beyond, Version 1.2

Well, it's been 2 months since my last post. I'm tanned, rested and ready to blog again. (Okay, maybe not tanned exactly-- I'm one of those unfortunate types who alternates between pasty white and lobster red with no in between-- SPF 85 doesn't quite do it for me :) As you can see, I spent part of my vacation renovating the blog's look. For better or worse, I'm going to continue to do what I've been doing -- concentrating mostly on one film at a time, with occasional excursions into more general film or pop culture topics. I'll probably also keep to the old schedule, 3-4 posts a month (and possibly a flurry of posts in the weeks leading up to my favorite holiday, Halloween.)

Since pretty much all I did was give the old blog a new coat of paint, I'm calling this version 1.2. I'm giving a tenth of a point for the new look, and another tenth for the new Films From Beyond on Facebook (yes, I have capitulated and now do Facebook-- in everyone's life a little assimilation must occur). FFB on Facebook is intended to complement the blog, with capsule reviews, birthdays and other significant dates in B movie history, polls, and other (hopefully) fun stuff. Like it (or not).

While small, incremental change is the order of the day for my blog, the larger entertainment universe out there is changing at warp speed, and not always for the better. As Dickens might say if he were alive to see it, "it is the best of times, it is the worst of times." (On the other hand, he might just be speechless.) In these best of times for movie fans, people like me who largely shrug off the current Hollywood crop of reboots and remakes and sequels (oh my!) can readily indulge their cinematic tastes via satellite, cable, the internet and good ol' reliable DVD. For someone my age, who grew up with black and white TVs outfitted with rabbit-eared antennas that pulled in at best a handful of grainy channels, today's entertainment options are staggering.

On my DircecTV DVR, I've got a healthy queue of classics, from The Big Heat (1953) to The Glenn Miller Story (1954) to The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) (and cheesy classics like Queen of Outer Space and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman thrown in for good measure).

While Netflix' instant play selection has gotten a lot of flack from customers (more on that later), I've been pleasantly surprised by the large number of older titles that have popped up there recently (presumably they're in the public domain or the rights are dirt cheap). About a year ago I stumbled upon The Vampire's Ghost (1945; reviewed on this blog) while browsing through the instant lists. Since then, I've added a bunch of obscure but intriguing older titles to the instant queue (and some that I'd been trying to find on DVD for years): The Face of Marble (1946) with John Carradine, The Man Without a Body (1957) with the ubiquitous Robert Hutton, and the fantasy-mystery The Catman of Paris (1946). Film noir is also well represented, with titles like Crime of Passion (1957; Barbara Stanwyck and Sterling Hayden) and The Naked Street (1955; Farley Granger and Anne Bancroft). For someone like me with, shall we say, eccentric tastes, it's an embarrassment of riches.

Capsule Review: Dear Murderer (1947).

This is a perfect example of the classic gems that can be found buried among the sundry dreck of Netflix instant play. Directed by Arthur Crabtree, and adapted from a popular British play, this British noir features a cat and mouse game between two cynical, world worry sophisticates -- a scheming businessman, Lee Warren (Eric Portman) and his haughty, preening, unfaithful wife Vivien (Greta Gynt). Warren comes home early from an extended business trip to carry out a nefarious scheme to get his wife's lover (Dennis Price) to write his own suicide note, then kill him. But then he finds out that she had more than one lover, and he realizes his work is cut out for him. Can he really kill them all and get away with? He seems to be in luck when the other lover becomes the prime suspect in the suicide that was not a suicide, but before long, the icy Vivien uses Warren's last bit of affection for her to turn the tables on him. Together, Portman and Gynt make the movie. They seem to have a great time wearing tuxedos and glamorous gowns, sipping drinks while plotting murder and frame-ups for murder. This is one of the great, glamorous, casually-evil couples in all of film noir.

So, with all these great, convenient entertainment choices, where's the downside? Well, if you're a satellite, cable or Netflix subscriber and haven't been in a cave or a coma for the last year or two, you've no doubt felt the presence of the huge elephant in the room, flailing its trunk around and breathing raggedly down your neck as you go through your satellite guide or instant play queue. The elephant of course being the arrogant suits in the boardrooms of the various media conglomerates and their high-priced lawyers. The latest example is the Viacom - DirecTV spat, which, depending upon whose PR flack you listened to, was the result of extortion on the part of Viacom, or DirecTV's sheer cheapness. Of course, this was no consolation to satellite subscribers addicted to the Comedy Channel or Nickelodeon. (News flash: on July 20th the two reached a deal to restore the channels; DirecTV seems to have won the PR war. And, to add icing to the cake -- although unrelated to the Viacom fiasco -- TCM is now in HD... YAY!!!)  Another recent example is Starz pulling its content from both Netflix lending and streaming. Starz's flacks bullsh*tted about its "strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging of our exclusive and highly valuable content," but in the end it had consumers scratching their heads in frustration and flooding the internet with their complaints and rants.

It boils down to this: the suits in the boardrooms have obviously forgotten who "brung 'em to the dance" so to speak-- their customers. They need to think once in awhile about us poor schleps and our flat screens, stop having public conniption fits, get real about the value of their product(s), get the deals done, and move on. Anything else is "unseemly," as my grandmother used to say.