And I Stagger Back Onto The Blogging Field

Hey, everybody! I'm back! I would talk about Dark Knight, since I'm sure you're relying on my thoughts on it to fill that void in your life that children, meth, professional success, fight clubs, and pets haven't been able to fill, but I'm not up to it tonight, so you'll have to wait. Say, Thursday. In the meantime, we can talk about a book, and two movies from the 1960s. Won't that just be ever so fun?

Fine. I'll talk about them to myself then.

Never Go Back - Written by Robert Goddard. We find our main character, whose name escapes me (Barnett?) back in England taking care of his recently deceased mother's personal effects. It works out that some fellows he spent three months of his time in the RAF with have come looking for him, because they're having an impromptu 50th anniversary get-together at the decrepit castle they were stationed at. With some misgivings our hero goes, and things promptly go to hell, as people start dropping dead, and fingers start getting pointed at him, and oh my, perhaps the military study they were part of wasn't what they recall?

I'm frequently surprised by how people in these types of stories, who are usually people who have not lead exciting or active lifestyles for many years, if not decades, always decide to get proactive about solving the mystery. It's admirable, if a little odd. My father described Goddard as being slightly off-center in his style, and there is a moment there where Barnett makes a choice that's fairly untypical for these types of stories, and is probably a show of good common sense for once. There was a moment where he does what appears to be a startling reveal, and if he had stuck with it, that could have been interesting, since it would have really changed how we view to two primary characters. Instead, Goddard quickly dismisses it, and goes to great lengths within the next 30 pages or so to assure us it was only a chapter-ending cliffhanger. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, because I can't see a person who's actually enjoying the book stopping there, rather than continuing on to the next page, where it is immediately dismissed. I also didn't feel terribly concerned about the characters' plight, so there might have needed to be more time spent fleshing them out. Or have fewer characters. One of the two.

Never So Few - Needed more Steve McQueen, less Frank Sinatra. Sinatra's a captain leading some OSS operatives in Burma, responsible for training Kachin natives to fight the Japanese. Sinatra gradually wears down under the strain of the war, and performs various questionable actions on the battlefield. Also, he's kind of a jerk. I think we're meant to identify with the difficulty of his mission, and the struggle it is, but he spends more time verbally abusing his soldiers than he does his superior officers, which is usually an efficient shorthand method for demonstrating that a field officer is operating under unreasonable expectations placed upon him by commanders who don't get it because they aren't out there. It'd probably work better if they didn't waste time on the subplot of Sinatra wooing a lady (Gina Lollobrigida) away from her rich, older consort/sugar daddy/whatever. I didn't perceive much chemistry between them, and for a woman who supposedly enjoyed the finer things in life, and found Sinatra's notions of love naive, she sure fell for him fast. The best part was watching McQueen serve as a driver during Sinatra's visit to the rear echelon, and his run-in with the MPs. Beating up police and dumping them somewhere undisclosed, good times.

Hallelujah Trail - This is one of those movies I would compare to It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, where it's never serious, constantly played for laughs, and everyone is basically an idiot. A bunch of concerned citizens of Denver order a huge shipment of liquor, because they're worried that the winter will be harsh and they won't have any booze. A nearby military fort is simultaneously holding a big to-do on temperance, led by a Ms. Massengill. Shortly after the camp commander sends some of his troops to escort the wagon, she vows to go to Denver to speak out against the evils of liquor (and how they have to save men from themselves, freaking spare me), and coerces this imbecile of a colonel into leading an escort for her group. And the Native Americans decide they want the booze. And the citizens of Denver form a militia to go and make sure the booze is OK, lead by Oracle, played by Donald Pleasence (who was Colin Blythe in The Great Escape, and plays a role here about 180 degrees from that one). Eventually there's a massive gun battle in a sandstorm, which is amusingly chaotic. Then there are still more troubles, especially when the Irish wagon drivers start threatening to strike, and the temperance bunch support them, and the Indians want their "present", and so on, and so on.

When things are happening, by which I mean shooting, or people riding around on horses, it can be pretty funny. And most of the rest of the time, it's watchable. But I got incredibly sick and tired of Ms. Cora Massengill and that doofus of a colonel, who was completely buffaloed by her, constantly out maneuvered, constantly outwitted. It just got sad after a (very short) while. It's like watching two of my dad's dogs. Hooch really likes Maggie, and so Maggie constantly bosses him around, runs him out of the room when she comes enters, tries to run him off if he's getting attention from my dad, and he just takes it. It's disgusting. Where was I? I think, other than Oracle, Walks Stooped Over (Martin landau) is the only character with half a brain. For some reason, the fort's band keeps showing up to play whenever Massengill leads her group into song, even when they're out in the wilderness. I have no idea what that was about. Maybe the movie's like a Silver Age DC comic, and logic has no place there. That's the best explanation I could come up with. Everything ends more or less happily, except maybe for the Native Americans, though I guess they got some of what they wanted.

I wouldn't recommend any of the entertainments discussed here tonight, so consider this a warning. Unless they sounds like your bag, then go ahead, knock yourself out. It's no skin off my nose.