Reviews

Contains some unavoidable spoilers.

Saw "Never Let Me Alone" with three friends at a private screening on Sunset early last week. My Jewish friend wondered why getting "complete" isn't done at once rather than in installments. My pragmatic Indian filmmaker buddy was deeply disappointed about the lack of entertainment value — depressing movies as "Never Let Me Alone" cannot possibly be successful — while as his wife dismissed the movie altogether as not worth the time watching or reasoning about.

Loved the photography, and I always appreciate originality (although it did not strike me like "Fahrenheit 451" did when I first saw it as a kid 40 years ago). What I found scary is the intentional lack of attention to specific details -- on the big screen they popped up anyways. For example, the logo of the National Organ Organization or whatever it was called on a van, without ever getting closer on the logo, as if it were a well known issue, also to the audience.

Apart of the seventies which looked more like the fifties -- but perhaps this is intentional in this dystopia -- what I missed in "Never Let Me Alone" is a more significant interaction of these doomed people with ordinary folks, maybe during a train ride. "Aha" moments would follow, the protagonists would question the need of their sacrifice. Imagine one of them falling in love with somebody outside their group, the wealth of drama, plot, action, despair, discovery, redemption. Imagine one of these other persons they made friends with being killed in an accident, and his/her organs being harvested because they fit. Imagine some of these doomed individuals miffed because this unqualified individual postponed their "completion." There is so much room for irony, absurdity, even hilarity with which to grab an audience's attention, even a distracted or potentially hostile audience.

Finally, one may wonder if the hidden message of this movie is to remind people to put a donor sticker on their I.D. If so, and even if not, it is time somebody made a movie starting from the EPR paradox to bring the deeper implications of organ transplants to the attention of public opinion. But, please, give it a comedic tone, otherwise people are too scared to be willing to know the truth.

This is Nova at its worst. If you want to know what junk science is watch this show. It begins with the observation that jet aircraft's contrails block out the sun light and cool the earth. But if this actually happens, why doesn't the earth freeze when a volcano explodes? The show claims that because of contrails and pollution the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will melt. Of course the temperature on the ice sheets reaches 40 BELOW zero so if it actually does warm up by 3 degrees it is hard to see this happening. (Hint to Nova, if it is 40 degrees below zero and it heats up by three degrees it is now 37 degrees below zero, still way below the freezing temperature of water.) The show is essentially left-wing propaganda designed to scare the ignorant and uneducated.

Individuals who take a show like this seriously should not be allowed to vote.

This movie begins as a light romantic comedy and ends as a tearjerker. It doesn't work for me. Set at the end of the second world war three hero/veterans of the air-war over Europe go on a war bonds tour with a minder from the Treasury Department who turns out to be a beautiful blonde. After a series of ordinary hijinks the Robert Cummings character marries the Treasury girl. Through happenstance she learns that he is dying of leukemia and we are expected to cry.

It is sort of expected that the brave soldier is to die in a war movie, but this is not a war movie. It is a light comedy set after the war. Surely they could have come up with a better plot than to have the young widow hear aircraft over her house and then the voice of her departed husband? But if you like Bob Cummings from his other works, such as "Love That Bob" where he plays another former WWII flier named Bob Collins it is worth seeing. Additionally it is an interesting view of the way our society was in 1945 and for these reasons it should be seen.

This is a good example of the Twilight Zone. It has a little kicker, like most episodes, but the viewer realizes what is going on before the characters do.

The show itself has the feel of a stage play, and does not seem to be television. This of course is to be expected because the technology which was employed in 1961 was not at current levels.

The show begins at a southern plantation mansion where defeated Confederate soldiers are marching by at the end of the war. One stops and asks for water, which the matron of the house gladly gives to me. They talk and their lives and situation are revealed. All the time wounded from the war parade in front of the mansion. The last wounded to walk by is Abraham Lincoln. This should tell you what the kicker is.

Throughout the play the message of forgiveness and reconciliation are presented, and we are told to get over the Civil War. The portrayal of Abraham Lincoln is especially compelling.

Although not the best episode of the Twilight Zone, it is worth watching.

This is a show about the tidal wave which hit off the coast of Indonesia a day or two after Christmas in 2004. It is worth watching but fails to cover completely the science of the disaster. I wish that it had much more of the specifics of what happened to cause the wave than it did, and that it fully explore the path the waves followed. It is my understanding that the wave bounced off southern India and then hit parts of Thailand which had been protected from the initial wave due to the island of Sumatra.

The show also discussed the need for warning systems. But the places where most of the destruction occurred were hit about 15 minutes after the earth quake, and those areas where warnings might have worked were hit by small waves whose destruction was minimal. Spending millions of dollars to set up warning systems of rare natural disasters which cannot be avoided does not seem to be a wise investment.

When Nova began in the 1970s it was a very good show. Now it is just entertainment. The show is worth watching but don't expect too much.

This episode was interesting and it was up to his regular standards, but there is nothing outstanding about it and therefore it is not to be recommended. Benny is awakened by a 4:00am phone call from a all night radio announcer. He cannot get back to sleep. He then calls Mary Livingstone who hangs up on him. Eventually he goes out for a walk. On his doorstep he observes how smog free Los Angeles is in the morning. Benny says that he can see forever. He looks out and sees the Statue of Liberty. He then puts on his glasses as sees the Eifel Tower. Perhaps this humor worked in 1955 but it doesn't work today.

He then goes out shopping with Mary to buy a suit and absurd things happen to him. But every joke is a Benny joke and we have heard them all before. Some episodes of the Jack Benny show are so good they are unbelievable. This one is pedestrian and quite forgettable.

I watched the entire first episode and started to watch this episode. I couldn't put up with more than 15 minutes of the second episode.

There are so many things wrong with it it is difficult to know where to start. It doesn't seem like Kansas and the people do not look like Kansans. I've spent some time in Dodge City, which is not that far to the west. Looking at this show it seems that Jericho would be near Goodland. But it ain't Goodland.

The school bus has number 0263 on its side. Would a small town in Kansas have numbers that high? The sheriff's squad car says "Jericho Sheriff." Of course the sheriff is a county official and his car would say "Ford County Sheriff.

Also Denver is a long way from the Kansas boarder and a nuclear explosion would not be visible at that distance. The population of Jericho is also too young for the town. The young people in small Kansas towns go away to college (Generally K.U. or K. State and rarely return. If this town actually existed its typical citizen would be at least 50.

And finally in the event of an actual nuclear war at least 85 of Kansas's 105 counties would come away unharmed and they would rapidly reestablish the state. In one of my classes at K.U. our teacher declared that in the event of a nuclear war he would love to be in Gove, Kansas.

Just more low quality American television.

This tells the story of the construction of the robots which are exploring the surface of Mars. It is interesting but there is too much made up tension and too much centering on the stress of the engineers who constructed the devices. I don't think that they have any reason to be unhappy. If they weren't building the Mars Rovers they would probably be working on weapons systems. The skills they have are not easily transfered.

One of the problems they deal with is the parachute which fails to open in a wind tunnel test. It is interesting to see how it is solved. I had no idea that the engineering of a parachute was so complex. However the design of a parachute would seem not to be be most interesting event in a trip to Mars.

All in all the production would have been much better it it had more about Mars and less about engineering.

Nova has gone down in the past few years.

It is difficult to describe this movie. It defies logic and makes claims without any backing. If you can believe this you would believe that the earth is flat.

The movie claims that the September 11 attacks were thought out by George Bush and the federal government. It claims that certain "facts"proove this but never demonstrates that these "facts" are true. It claims that nine of the fifteen hijackers are alive and live in Saudi Arabia. But it doesn't tell us what this is based on. Did a newspapers search them out? Were they NOT the real hijackers and merely misidentified by the government? We are not told.

Then it goes on the claim that cellphone calls made from the flight in Pennsylvania were phony. Now what are we to believe, that the government is some omnipotent that it can fake calls in Pennsylvania but at the same time it cannot figure out who actually hijacked the plane.

The movie also compares the impact that planes made in the WTC and that made at the Pentagon. Of course the filmmaker ignores the fact that the Pentagon is a military building with made with walls of concrete over reinforced steel, while the WTC walls were a thin covering designed only to keep wind out and occupants in the building.

The movie claims that no aircraft hit the Pentagon. In fact, the movie claims, the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile. But a cruise missile hitting the Pentagon would bounce off unless it hit a window. Additionally the movie notes that damage occurred as far inside the building as the "C" Ring. This means that whatever hit the Pentagon penetrated and drove through both the "E" and "D" Rings before penetrating the "C" Ring. A cruise missile could not do this type of damage.

This is just a few of the many things wrong with this movie. The final claim of this movie is that President Bush has destroyed all our freedoms. But he certainly hasn't destroyed the right of the insane to make absurdly dishonest movies.

This is an example of the entertainment of the time and of Jack Benny at his best. His guest star is Julie London who appears during the opening segment, and then sings a song. In her song she is a sex kitten but if you look at her features she seems to be a hard and serious woman.

Additionally Toni Marcus comes out during the opening segment and upstages Jack by playing the violin while Jack is signing an autograph for her. The regular Benny humor is on display here. Jokes are made and then repeated later in this show. Benny starts to play Czardas by Monti and Marcus comes on stage to request his autograph. He hands his violin to her telling her NOT to touch the hair on the bow. Benny's Czardas is incredibly bad. As Benny signs the autograph Toni begins to play Czardas they way it is meant to be played.

After Julie London signs her song Markus returns to the stage and Jack and she play a duet, each attempting to outplay the other. They duel with their bows and then begin with poems. "Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, I'm beginning to sound like you." Don Wilson also makes an appearance in drag which is something to see.

A woman has been murdered. She was brutally strangled and her neck broken. This was done in a low class downtown hotel and to find the killer Sargeants Joe Friday and Frank Smith must follow all the leads where they go.

One by one witnesses are interviewed and individuals who knew the girl are tracked down. The girl herself was a good looking pixie. She was 5'1" tall and very cute. Some who knew here questioned her morality, which is probably what cost her her life.

The first lead does not pan out the suspect number one has an air-tight alibi for where he was the night of the killing. But suspect number two has no such alibi and cracks under Fridays cross examination.

This show is a good example of what actual police work is all about and a good investigation with lots of strange in interesting characters.

A beautiful blond secretary has been murdered. She was beaten to death with a heavy metal pipe wrapped in paper. The police arrest a drunken unemployed engineer two blocks from the crime scene. He is beating his head against a brick wall and saying that he does not deserved to live. He also says that he is a murderer.

At first the police think that the crime has been solved. But slowly discrepancies create doubt in their minds. They then delve deeper into the crime and new leads and a new suspect comes to their attention.

He is tracked down to a skid-row church and Friday and his parter Ed Jacobs talk him down. This is Dragnet at its best.

A burglar has been hitting new homes in the valley. In addition to taking valuables he kills all birds in the houses. The press refers to him and the "Bird Man." The case is getting so much publicity that the LAPD is being bombarded by demands from animal lovers that they catch the perp. To catch him, the LAPD sets up a sting operation. Sargeants Friday and Smith pretend they have just purchased a house in the valley. With furniture supplied by a local department store they wait and wait and wait.

Various merchants come to the door and offer to sell them goods. They get offers for newspaper subscripts and the like. One young man comes to the door and offers to mow and water the lawn.

One of these visitors in the Bird Man himself. Through a good interrogation the criminal is revealed and arrested. Another crime solved by the LAPD.

Back in the 1950s physicians made housecalls to treat the ill. In this episode two crooks are doing this and beating up the physician and stealing his money, valuables and the drugs he carries in his black bag. Sargeant Friday is called in to capture the crooks.

The crime is difficult to stop because it is so random and the police cannot accompany every physician to every housecall. But the police do accompany the physician including to legitimate housecalls.

The LAPD sends messages to all physicians in city and finally it pays off when Sargeants Friday and Smith go to a hotel where the criminals wait in prey for the visiting physician, One thing that the crooks do is lock the hotel door BEFORE they mug the physician. In this case, when the door is locked the two detectives break in and gunfire ensues. Who lives and who dies? Watch the episode to find out.

This episode is set in a Los Angeles which no longer exists. Note only do physicians make housecalls, it was considered suspicious to lock one door, Ahh for the good old days.

A strange man, Oskar, comes in to Sargeants Friday and Smith to report that he has recovered some stolen property. He refuses to give any real information and wants the officers to come to his house. Oskar gives three pieces of stolen silverware to the officers who quickly determine that it has been stolen.

They then contact the owner who has filed a police report on the matter. They all meet at the home of Oskar and eventually the entire matter is straightened own.

The question in this matter is who is more absurd, Oskar, or the owner of the stolen goods, Mrs. Face.

If you want an episode of Dragnet which is funny this one should be watched. The interactions between the characters is quite good and the show is up to the regular standards of Dragnet.

Lee Marvin gives an incredible performance as a psychotic killer. In the previous three years about 12 men who were driving north from LA disappeared. Sgt. Friday and his partner want to find out what happened to them.

They are specifically investigating the disappearance of the last one, who left LA for the small farming town of Oakdale. Six months of investigation reveal that the last person to see him was a longshoreman played by Lee Marvin. Sgt. Friday and his partner track him down to a small boarding house in LA.

When they knock on the door Marvin slams in in their faces and they break in and a fight erupts. Virtually the entire show is a cat and mouse conversation between the cops and the killer. Finally the killer asks to go to Helga's Health Store where they have healthy sandwiches. The killer confesses and they show ends with the announcement that the killer was executed by lethal gas in San Quentin.

This episode of Dragnet is one of the first performances by Lee Marvin and he is mesmerizing and the psychotic kill who has killed twelve men and has no real concern of what he does in his live. Marvin's killer is incredibly low key and denies all to the detectives who are sure that he is the killer but do not have enough evidence to pin the crime on him.

If you want to see why Dragnet is a memorable show and why Lee Marvin became a big star watch this episode. My only question is what the title "The Big Cast" is referring too.

It was another world and maybe middle class teenagers did go insane as the result of smoking marijuana, but this episode is difficult to swallow. A gang of upper middle class whites goes crazy in a neighborhood movie theater. Sgt. Friday is called in and is given a small box containing to marijuana cigarettes. He goes to the house of the boy who purportedly dropped the box and his alibi and will to deny quickly collapse.

This boy, and all his confederates are then taken downtown with their fathers where the entire story comes. Now Sgt. Friday has to capture the boy who set the entire scheme up. he, of course, is on the lamb.

The dealer who sold the drugs to the pusher is beaten to a pulp and in the hospital not expected to survive the night. Sgt. Friday interrogates him and takes his statement as a dying declaration.

Finally the pusher contacts his girl friend who agrees to meet him in the park. She goes to see him with Sgt. Friday and several other police officers.

In the end we are told that the entire gang is convicted and send to state prison. This does not ring true. All of the kids involved here were 18 or 17. Although I do not know the laws of California in 1950 I am reasonable sure that they would have been sent to Juvenile Hall. Additionally if the dealer dies there is a murder involved and this issue is never resolved. Finally the dying declaration of the dealer does not fit the definition of a dying declaration which I had to memorize before taking the California Bar Examination.

This episode of Dragnet is more propagandistic than most and doesn't work nearly as well as a good episode. After you watch this episode check out Reefer Madness and decide which is better.

This is a really nice episode which demonstrates why Dragnet was such a good show. A gang of con-men scan the obituaries and target the kin of the deceased. They then sell them junk jewelry or pen and pencil sets for inflated prices. The police are called and one member of the gang is arrested. He won't talk and the search goes on unsuccessfully.

Finally a lead is developed from a former con-man now gone straight who gives the cops a name. Then the first con-man who is now in jail decides to turn in the gang because the leader failed to post his bail or get him an attorney. On New Years Eve the LAPD tracks down the leader of the gang and finds her in a party. She tells them that she always cries on New Years Eve for no reason. Sgt. Friday tells her that this year will be different. This year she will have a reason to cry. Her name is Betty from which the name of this episode is derived.

This is an excellent episode of Dragnet because it shows how police investigations really work. The police sift through endless dead end leads and finally find what they are looking for.

In the end Betty and all the members of the gang are convicted of grand theft, the penalty for which is 1-10 in state prison. Betty is convicted of 17 counts. Unfortunately we are not told whether her sentence is concurrent or consecutive, and whether she is to serve one year or 170 years. It would be nice to know the final outcome.

This is a good example of why Dragnet was such a good show. Police work and how the criminal justice system works are carefully blended in with humor and suspense to create a perfect half hour show. In this episode the Los Angeles Police Department learns that four teenagers, two of whom are deserters from the Army are coming to Los Angeles. With little to go on they set out to catch them before they can commit any crimes.

Working with little information they finally learn where the boys have been staying and set up a stakeout. Eventually all four are captured. They boys were staying in a small hotel, and the clerk at the hotel is a drunk. Every time Sargeant Friday yells "Hands up" the clerk raises his hands. He keeps them up until Friday tells him to lower his hands.

The most notable thing in this episode is that Leonard Nemoy plays one of the thugs in one of his earliest television appearances.

Sargeant Friday is investigating smut being distributed in and through the high schools of Los Angeles. One suspect leads to another until he gets the perp. The perp is an old washed up movie director who, along with his cameraman, has been reduced to supporting himself by manufacturing and distributing porn. He would sell it for 75 cents a copy to a high school student who would resell it to other students for $1.00. We never get to see the actual porn but we get various reaction shots of the faces of actors seeing the smut.

The perp is played by Ralph Moody who creates a poor soul who has been reduced by fate to a pathetic wretch. He takes Friday and his parter out to an abandoned studio of Jefferson Street where he lives and recalls his old life of making westerns back in the 1920. The entire scene is quite touching and Friday seems to pity the old man. Of course when Ralph Moody says he did it because he had to support himself Friday replies that there were honest jobs he could have taken.

In addition to the production and distribution of porn the old producer also set up parties where hard liquor was given to teenage girls. What actually happened at these parties is not told to us. But that is the way Hollywood handled these problems back then.

The episode is moving and painful to watch, but it still works even though it is more than 50 years old and it paints a picture of a Los Angeles which no longer exists except in our memories. Watch it if you get the chance.

This is Sargeant Friday chasing a robber through LA in 1953 or so. In this case a tall "woman" is hitchhiking and shooting and then beating "her" victims. So far there were nine victims. Friday and his partner interview the last victim in the hospital. His spine was severed by the gunshot and his face had been savagely beaten.

Then a woman is captured trying to rob a motorist after he picked her up. It quickly develops that she is a copycat criminal. The police the compare notes and discover that some of the victims say "she" was a redhead, and some say blonde, and some say brunet. They conclude that she may have been using wigs.

Then they get a report the the theft of a number of wigs and dresses from the wardrobe department of a studio. At this robbery the criminal left a foot print of a male shoe. What could this mean? Then they get a call from a member of the public who reports that he saw a big woman who met the description who had been shot. They follow the trail of blood to a hotel for women where they arrest the criminal. Was the criminal a boy or a girl? I guess you will just have to watch the episode to find out.

The reason I think the episode is weak is because generally the clue which leads Friday to his prey is the result of some effort by the police. In this case it is just a report from the public.