qatmom's reviews

Seen through contemporary eyes, this movie is a curiosity piece. Going in, realize this, just sit back and explore some of the tastes and amusements of long-vanished times. Sometimes, that can be embarrassing.

This is less embarrassing than the movies with the unfortunate racial stereotypes, but if I had a relative who had been a fan of this genre, I would be embarrassed for them.

I had never heard of Judy Canova before watching this opus. My goodness, she certainly threw herself into her role whole hog. The singing is hard to take, but one of the songs was presented skillfully with three mirrors.

This movie does not look cheap--the horses all look glossy and well-fed--and the color has held up. I'd never watch it again, but now I know about a past fashion I never suspected existed.

"Oklahoma Annie" refers to the heroine's sheriff-grandmother.

Anyone who sets out to write fantasy (and that is what Beowulf is) should find a copy of Ursula LeGuin's essay from "Elfland to Poughkeepsie". One of the points she makes is that characters in such tales should NOT speak like contemporary Americans--they should not use slang or phrases that will distract the gentle reader (or viewer) from the fantasy universe.

Lots and lots of bad written fantasy suffers from reading like an adventure lived by American teenagers in costume; the really foul stuff even uses contemporary slang. Some of it sells quite well to an unsophisticated readership.

Watching Beowulf was misery, because it was full of Americans delivering their lines like Americans in costume. I just could not believe these were Nordic guys living the Northern Thing, with dragons and swords. Most of the characters were completely unconvincing, as were their wigs.

The dragon...o dear gawd...reminded me of the dragon Ollie from Kukla, Fran & Ollie.

I stuck it out to the end, but it was painful. Much of it looked like it had filmed the first time the actors tried out their lines, and that they had not yet rehearsed together.

It takes more than action scenes and CGI to make a movie worthwhile.

Another tedious, interminable spy episode. Where are the mega-guppies when they are needed? Maybe 20th Century thought they could hark back to Hedison's 1959-1960 series "Five Fingers", and make another dashing spy out of him. Maybe. That's not the Lee Crane I admire, the survivor of Nelson's peculiar moodiness and countless battles with menacing sea monsters.

Crane spends a lot of time treading water in the sewage of Venice, wearing a white jacket with a curiously pink "blood" stain (it looks like alizarin crimson or a good match for Stargazer lilies). He may survive the gunshot, but he should develop a roaring infection after soaking in such waters.

There is unintended humor as Nelson finds himself in the company of what he assumes is a Desperately Lonely Woman who has targeted him for her attentions. He squirms beautifully. Fortunately, she quickly redeems herself as being not quite THAT desperate.

20th Century rolls what must be most of their stock footage of Venice, just to keep reminding us where the story is set in case it slipped our minds or we failed to note Crane marinating in brown water.

I love this series, I really do--just not "Escape from Venice".

I love Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. I loved it when it was first broadcast, and I love it now. However, this episode is not one of the reasons why I love it.

Later in the series, when they figured out that the fan base consisted of young teen boys, they wisely dropped most women from the plots. The Seaview became a ship crewed by men who had no mothers, no wives, no girlfriends, no sisters--and it all worked, because week after week, they chased after monstrous guppies, celery monsters, or rock men. This was wonderful. I never tire of these episodes. I understand that Hedison and Basehart sent each other turkeys for especially standout performances in them.

But "Time Bomb" is one of the unfortunate "spy" plots. They tend towards the tedious.

The most amazing thing about this episode is that both Crane and Nelson show interest in different women--and both are unconvincing. Really unconvincing. Crane looks like he's re-enacting a fluffy Hollywood movie during his flirtation; one has the feeling he never tried this before. But Nelson is the real shocker! He not only looks uncomfortable with his spy, he looks embarrassed by the whole thing! (At least he does not lapse into his trademark grumpiness when faced with the unfamiliar.) "You mean I have to touch a GIRL!!??" The Nelson scene much be seen to be believed.

Please, bring on the leprechauns.

"Sanders of the River" is trapped in the time of its creation like an insect in amber, but it's worth seeing if only to understand the expectations of that time.

The British characters are supposed to be the heroes of the tale, but they are wooden and unsympathetic, even interchangeable. It is impossible to care about them. They even chase animals from a plane Just For Fun.

Africans are portrayed as simple minded, but they are also clearly loyal, brave, loving individuals with some (limited) depth to them, which is more than can be said of the cardboard cut-out white characters. In fact, the real rotters of the tale are trouble-making whites.

Everyone is nicely dressed--but the characters wearing them are curiously empty. I gave up trying to tell some of the bad guys apart. It's very hard to tell why people are in a particular place together--are they all just crashing at Louise's castle, or is she crashing at theirs?

I could not decide what time period this story was supposed to be part of. They spoke of heretics, which places it in the middle ages during the time of the Cathars (early 1200s) but the swords are clearly not broadswords and the costumes are from a later period. Perhaps no one thought anyone would notice.

The characters are incredibly bland. The supposed hero is in a lot of scenes, but after watching the whole moving, I have no idea what he was about. The heroine mostly seems breathless.

The castles are nice, but the real allure is the English dialogue. I wish I had taken notes. Much of it is wildly stilted, as if translated literally by someone who was not an English speaker, and the effect is funny to the point of being distracting. It is stuffed full of howlers akin to "Tell me the meaning of the thing you have done." Like many Italian films of the period, dialogue and sound effects were dubbed in later. The sound of faux hoofbeats is particularly unconvincing here.

I watched this series when it was on NBC (and I was 9) and a few years later when it had a brief syndicated run.

It made a huge impression on my 9-year-old self. I was already a fan of science fiction by way of Science Fiction Theatre (remember that sf was considered purely of interest to male audiences in those days) and this series was far closer to actual science--I don't think they thought they were reaching 9 year old little girls.

One episode in particular never left me--"Astro Female", which opened with the rescue of a woman who is the only survivor of a shipwreck; all the others, males, died, but the tough woman survived. This led to an exploration of women as astronauts, something the US never did until decades later. In an age where women on TV were almost invariably portrayed as emotional and weak, this show showed a different possibility that probably is part of why I am in a career in the sciences.

Beyond that episode, there were many others exploring human potential beyond the expected.

I'd love to see these episodes again. I'd buy them on DVD. I've gone and watched other series that I enjoyed, and usually I have been pleasantly surprised with how well they hold up, not just classics like Twilight Zone, but others like Route 66.