I’ll have an edition of “On the Grapevine” up later this afternoon…and if I don’t get too lazy (like that would never happen) I’ll discuss a recent “Adventures in Blu-ray” tomorrow. But I thought I’d keep you up to speed with what’s been going on around Rancho Yesteryear in the time that I had to take a quick vacation from the blog.
Tomorrow at the
Radio Spirits blog, I’ll have a brief retrospective on the six films
produced by Universal between 1943 and 1945 that cashed in on the popularity of
the radio horror series Inner Sanctum Mysteries. (Don’t click on the link until Friday at 8pm
EDT—because it’s not technically up yet.)
If you’ve been a member of the Thrilling
Days of Yesteryear faithful since the days the blog was at Salon, you know
that I did a review of the 2-DVD set Inner Sanctum Mysteries: The Complete Movie
Collection there back in December 2006…but ever since Salon Blogs was
vaporized by the Laser Cannon of Death, the essay has only been available if
you own a device that reconstructs minute particles of disintegrated
blogs. Okay, I’m only slightly kidding
about this—I actually stumbled onto the old piece by fortuitous luck, and I
re-tweaked it here and there for the RS blog…I won’t mention where the hiding
place is because I don’t want to jinx anything should I have to go digging
around the ruins again.
But one review that is
already up at the RS blog is Gildersleeve’s
Ghost (1944), the last in the brief film series based on the popular
radio sitcom. It’s certainly not great
cinema by any measure of the yardstick but Gildy fans might get a kick out of
it. The Gildersleeve movies generally used only three performers from the program—Harold Peary (Gildy), Richard LeGrand (Peavey) and Lillian Randolph (Birdie)—but Ghost does feature an uncredited Earle Ross as The
Great Man’s nemesis Judge Hooker. Ghost
is also worth a look-see because it has a couple of swell performances from
Marion Martin (as a disappearing chorus girl) and Nick Stewart (in the role
usually played either by Willie Best or Mantan Moreland), and some fairly
impressive special effects for a programmer.
(In addition, the RS blog features another installment in the continuing
rundown of the Boston Blackie movies with 1946’s A
Close Call for Boston Blackie—an entry with a heavy emphasis on comedy
and featuring TDOY fave Claire
Carleton.)
At ClassicFlix, I thought I’d contribute something
appropriate for the Halloween holidays with a "Where's That Been?" look at The
Old Dark House (1932), a neglected black comedy masterpiece that
probably won’t make the rounds on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™
(from what Dr. Film tells me, the
rights issues are a nightmare) so you should try and score yourself the Kino
DVD (which goes on sale from time to time) if you have an opportunity. And have a potato.
1 comment:
Thanks for the shout out! I really enjoyed your post on Thriller. It may be my 2nd favourite anthology show of all time (after Alfred Hitchcock Presents).
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