THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

1957/Director: Val Guest/Writer: Nigel Kneale

Cast: Forrest Tucker, Peter Cushing, Maureen Connell, Richard Wattis, Robert Brown, Michael Brill, Wolfe Morris, Arnold Marlé

The Abominable Snowman was one of Hammer’s ealry films that came out right before Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. It was written by Nigel Kneale and directed by Val Guest, the pair who earlier had created the two Quartermass films. It stars a young and intense Peter Cushing before he became legendary as the morally ambivalent Victor Frankenstein and the morally unshakable Abraham Van Helsing. I had earlier reviewed X-The Unknown and like that film I will say the same thing about The Abominable Snowman and that is that it is too bad Hammer did not do more films like this after they took off in the early sixties. This is a fine film, well written, directed and acted and I wonder what else this great studio could have produced along these lines had they set their minds to it. Of course Hammer did do other films during the sixties than just their classic retakes of old Universal horror films like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman and The Mummy. Other than The Hound of the Baskervilles, with Cushing playing Sherlock Holmes, I have not had a chance to get too many of those suspense and crime style films from Hammer but hopefully I will be shortly. But this film, released the same year as but prior to Curse of Frankenstein, was from their very early days when they were just beginning to emerge as a so to be major horror studio and there is a certain quality the film has that their later non-Universal style films, the few I have seen, did not usually have though The Hound of the Baskervilles is a very good film.

MORE ABOMINABLE SHOWMAN HERE >>

I saw a couple negative reviews of this essentially well made film online. They seemed to have some issues with Tony Randall, a white American, playing a Chinese man. I really had no problems with this and do not feel fantasy films of the 60’s is the best place to vent one’s political correctness. It is so strange and out of place to hear people rant in a serious tone about the racist and sexist nature of older films as if modern cinema has finally raised itself above all that. Some other complaints were that the story line was lame and vacuous essentially and the film was preachy and condescending. What are these people talking about? First off the film leans towards a younger audience and like most films aimed at kids (like every animated movie made these days) is going to rely on clichés and gimmicks to deliver its message. It is well made, well acted with great make up by William Tuttle and decent special effects for the time. Does it stereotype Asians at times and is some of the plot more than a little corny and predictable? Certainly. But is it loaded with overt racism, sexism and pedantic, patronizing dialogs? Well, yea maybe. But that is still no reason to not watch this likable film by director George Pal (Atlantis, the Lost Continent, The Time Machine).

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JIMMY PAGE’S SOUNDTRACK TO

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While I never fell into the “Kiss your good taste good bye” anti-Kiss crowd of the late 70’s I certainly never cared much for what they were doing musically. By that time I was leaning more towards bands like Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Not to say I do not like raw bands with a dirty sound or acts that lean towards heavy theatrics. I have no issue with that stuff. I may have had a problem with Paul Stanley’s vocals and lyrics I think as well as his totally arrogant persona backed up by mediocre talent. I am not sure as I have never analyzed it too deeply. I do not think a grwon man should be ruminating over Paul Stanley. I do recall once going to do some partying with some Kiss oriented friends and putting on Relayer by Yes and almost being ran out of the place. I always felt a little more tolerant of certain musical styles than some of my associates have been of mine. It might me easier to adjust from Yes or King Crimson to AC/DC or Kiss than the other way around.

I saw a post at My Retrospace on some Kiss songs and I thought it over and decided there were a few songs I had always liked by them. I think they are from their first albums, before the pretty good Kiss Alive, and I believe I have the correct album covers for the songs here. If I do not and one of the Kiss Army wants to attack me over my ignorance I will apologize in advance. This is my first post in my new “retrology” category because whether I like their music or not I acknowledge they had a significant impact on music and entertainment culture. It is not up to me to decide if it was good or bad. I liked Ace Frehley’s lead work and Gene Simmons actually had some good bass lines. The three samples I have here are what I liked about the band when they were on the mark. There are a few more songs I like but I think this sums it all up. Pretty straight forward rock and roll and there is never anything wrong with that.

Strutter

Cold Gin

Hotter than Hell

AUDIO FILES MAY BE NOT WORK FOR A WHILE. I AM RESOLVING THE ISSUE. PLEASE HANG LOOSE WHILE ALL FILES ARE MOVED TO MY HOSTING ACCOUNT AND THEN MOVED BACK TO INDIVIDUAL POSTS. IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME BUT IT WILL GET DONE EVENTUALLY. SORRY.

URANIUM WILLY 4 FEB 10

How to download the song. Must have Real Player:
1) Play the song.
2) Right click on player and select “Download  This Song to Real Player”
3) Song will down load using your download manger, but song title will change.
4) Save song, rename, enjoy.

Will not show download option? Go to the download link page in my sidebar.

This was to be the twenty women I admire meme. My concern when I started this post was could I come up twenty  women I truly admire in the entertainment business. Not just females I drool over, though a couple here fall into that category as well. After it I got going I had to actually trim it down to 25 from 29 and slow myself down. While to me most all of this women are extremely beautiful there is some other quality I am attracted to than there physical charms alone. Some survival quality that helped them to stay afloat in a tough business ran, mostly, by tough men with flexible scruples. Some of them did not always fair so well in the end but they are all intelligent fighters.

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Anyway, this is my 20 Men I Admire Meme. Gilligan over at Retrospace pointed that I blundered by selecting both Paul and John as they were members of a group. When it comes down to it Paul is still my favorite Beatle but I think as a persona, in and out of the Beatles, John certainly has the more engaging history. and certainly did some of the best song writing of the pair at times. I believe my decision is based on the men both as Beatles and as individuals after the band split up. Other wise I have to do a 21 Men I Admire Meme. I kept my choices to the fields of film, music and art and figured there is no point in listing Martin Heidegger or Nietzsche here. Anyway, I will try now to do the 20 Women I Admire Meme and I promise the choices will be based on their intellectual and creative attributes and not their boobs and buns.

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THE 2nd URANIUM CAFE POLL: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF HERE AT THE CAFE?

The results of the second Uranium Cafe poll are finally in. I waited so long as a couple choices had been tied for almost two weeks and I was just waiting to see which one was going to pull ahead. Lets take a look at the results with the category receiving the least votes first:

6) Music Posts: I know one of the people who voted to see more music posts was Kimberly over at one of the best movie culture blogs around, Cine Beats. So her vote matters to me. And I have struggled so hard with trying to get some downloadable audio and have a huge task ahead of me here soon to redo all my music posts one at a time that even if this category came in last I am still going to continue it and soon you can expect at least one music post per page (eight posts). do we listen to he readers here at the cafe? yes. Do we do what they want us to do all the time? no. I know my music posts get lots of hits and support, so they are going to continue and grow rather than diminish.

5) Classic European Horror: While never my preferred cup of tea I am watching more and more Eurosleaze and general horror/sci-fi and developing a taste for it. Just got in Lucio Fulci’s Perversion Story and it looks wonderful. Learning more and more about the main directors (Jess Franco, Jean Rollins, Mario Bava, Antonio Margheriti etc. ) and finding that while not all of their work is worth the effort a lot of it is visually stunning and loaded with plot quirks and twists you would not see in most American films. A little more will be on the way but the site will not go bonkers over too many of those films simply because I still find the stories incomprehensible at times.

4) Comic Books and Art: expect this category to stay at about where it is, with a post or two per page dedicated to comic book and movie poster art yesterday and sometimes today. I once wanted to draw comic books and love the period when Marvel ruled the world back in the 70′s. I have a huge collection of material on my hard drive, ranging from the precode period to late 70′s. Some great stuff there. I also have thousands of movie poster, pulp paperback cover and  miscellaneous art samples. Since I a graphics oriented person they will continue but will not dominate the site.

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