Still sick at home, I watched:

THE NEWS AND WHY IT MATTERS
A rerun of this week's eps.

DAY OF THE NIGHTMARE.
A dead woman returns from the grave to wreak vengeance upon her enemies.
NOT! I missed the very beginging, but a woman is murdered and a neighbor
sees a man dragging away a huge trunk in the middle of the night. Said man
puts the trunk in his garage, making his wife suspicious. Soon, a mysterious
ugly woman who resemnbles the dead woman starts threatening to kill the
wife. Well, it turns out the husband was schizoid and cross-dressed as his
other personality. I wonder if this influenced DRESSED TO KILL? He got run
over by a boat and died at the end. This movie must have been very shocking
in 1965!

Several alt-history clips on YOUTUBE.

I think I watched more but I was a bit feverish.

What did you watch?

--
Let's go Brandon!

On 2023-02-05 09:30:40 +0000, Ubiquitous said:

> What did you watch?

Dead for a Dollar (Showtime (East)) - I'm really not sure what the
point of this "neo-Western" was. Basically, this seemed to be an excuse
to let Christoph Waltz (who also executive produced this) to star in a
western, and Waltz does look like he's having a ball in this movie
here! Close behind is Willem Dafoe, who also seems to be enjoying
himself.
Otherwise, this was absolutely nothing we haven't seen before (and
done better!).
Circa 1900, Waltz's Max Borland is hired to retrieve the wife
(Rachel Brosnahan) of some rich dude (Hamish Linklater) who has
supposedly been "kidnapped" by an AA army deserter. Borland takes a
parter to go after the wife and "kidnapper".
There's also a whole subplot with a sketchy gambler/criminal played
by Dafoe.
Borland catches up with the woman in Mexico, in the territory of a
criminal overlord named Vargas (Benjamin Bratt).
You can pretty much predict everything that is going to happen here.
This worked as a "diversionary watch", nothing more. I've certainly
seen plenty of westerns, even "neo" ones, done better.

I kinda rewatched "I Killed My BFF: The Preacher'd Daughter" (aka. "Do
Unto Others"), with the luminous! Megan West, and Carly Pope, on
Lifetime. (Oddly, Lifetime *never* reruns the original "I Killed My
BFF" film, which I'd like to rewatch - apparently, only DirectTV has
it...)

Walker: Independence (recorded) - "The Death of Mary Collins" (ep. #8).
OK, this was a mess!
*Seriously*?!! They're going to pull this crap *now*!! - You see, in
this episode, Abby spies somebody (Timothy Granaderos) she *thinks* is
Sheriff Davidson, but then realizes it's not! Which means she's no
longer sure Davidson killed her husband!!! It might have been this new
lookalike dude!1! [Blech!]
I was annoyed with the way this one opened - there was a long gap
between aired episodes and so it took me a while to remember what was
going on, and this episode obviously began with an
(unspecified-in-length) "time jump" of possibly weeks. And I thought it
was going to be entirely without Sheriff Davidson, with how they
referred to him convalescing out of town - though he quickly shows up
near the beginning of the ep.
The episode opens with a "Scooby gang" meeting, but Callian is
absent (I guess he "left town" at the end of the previous
episode?!...), and Deputy Augustus has been "read in" to the group now,
much to Hoyt's annoyance.
Anyway, Abby's long-lost estranged sister, Charlotte (Stella Baker,
daughter of Simon Baker and Rebecca Rigg! and also the lead in another
short-lived CW TV series), shows up in town looking for "Mary Collins".
Sidenote: Mary is Abby's nickname(?!) - how convenient!!... And,
wait, what?!!?!! - The sister's name is Collins, and this is *Abby's*
sister! But Abby's husband's name was also Collins!?! So where did the
name "Walker" come from!! I am so f***ing confused right now!!
Anyway, Charlotte goes to the Sheriff looking for her sister.
Augustus is able to prevent Abby's sister and Abby from being in the
same room at the same time with the sheriff before Abby can be brought
up to speed on her sister's arrival.
So, Abby and co. have to figure out how to get the sheriff off the
trail of "Mary Collins", and thus Abby herself. So, they fake Abby's
"death" (where did they get the skeleton from?!!), which seems to
satisfy the sheriff that there are no "loose ends" in the Liam
Collins(?!?! how is he also a "Collins"!?!?!) murder case.
And, for no reason whatsoever, Kate and Abby's sister Charlotte
engage in a torrid affair - I guess Kate swings "both ways", which
actually seems consistent with the Kate character, who seems like she'd
be willing to do *anything* to solve one of her cases!...
After faking Abby's death, Charlotte somewhat reconciles with Abby,
and leaves town. (Will we see her again?... Not likely, as this series
is not long for this world!!)
There's a subplot with Kai wanting to leave town, because the Tong
are on to him, but Kai decides to stay, so he and Hoyt try to devise a
defensive plan for Kai.
For no reason whatsoever, Hoyt quits working for the Reyeses at the
end of this one. (Lucia Reyes was completely absent from this episode,
and I wonder if the show has already forgotten about her, and will
simply just write her out...)
Meanwhile, Callian (who I think is Commanche?...) comes across
another hott!! Native American woman (who I guess is Apache?...). She's
hostile at first, and shows Callian that the railroad men massacred her
village. So, I'm sure, Callian and this chyck will be gettin' it on
soon!!
At the end, Abby informs the other Scoobies that she is no longer
certain that Sheriff Davidson murdered her husband! Like the audience,
the other Scoobies all seemed to roll their eyes at this revelation!!
Next episode: Kai's supposedly dead "love" shows up in town!!

Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation (Lifetime) - The story of how a
good Christian woman weight-loss mentor/guru over the years turns into
a monster when greed, fame and power go to her head.
Seriously - by the end of this movie, it's clear that Gwen Shamblin
(Lara) was a monster, going as far as to put up the legal defense for
two of her churchmembers who abused, tortured and killed their own son!
Storywise, this was probably more interesting than a lot of
Lifetime's "true crime" efforts, simply because I didn't know this
story.
For example, I had no idea that this is the woman that Joe Lara
(TV's Tarzan!!) ended up marrying, and that Lara died piloting a plane
in which Gwen Shamblin was a passenger!
Anyway, storywise this was OK. But performance-wise, this was
impressive, as I could no longer see "Jennifer Grey playing a role" - I
only saw Gwen Shamblin!! Most Lifetime actress are unable to bury
themselves so deep in a role that they become inrecognizable, but Grey
pulls that off here. Kuddos to her.

soaps: GH - Thur's ep. Basically, this was mostly Britt's memorial
service... But Lizzie is about to tell Finn the truth about her
circumstances, so I guess that's progress! Also, still waiting to see
how they write out NuTempNikolas...
DOOL - Fri's ep. Man, it doesn't take much for the Devil to be able
to trick Marlena, Kayla and Kate, does it!?! - I have no idea how these
three are going to get out of their current predicament, and get back
to Earth!!... Patch (Steve!) convinces John and Roman that they need to
kill Orpheus once and for all! (I hope they actually follow through
this time, and don't chicken out! or fail...) Meanwhile, Xander and
Gwen get Sarah pretty good - and don't feel the least bit sorry for the
hypocrite!!

--
"Who would ever do this to him!?" - HottCiara on DOOL (04-27-2020), asking
who would stab Victor Kirakis... How about ANYONE WHO'S EVER MET HIM??!!

On 2/5/2023 10:39 AM, Ian J. Ball wrote:
> On 2023-02-05 09:30:40 +0000, Ubiquitous said:
>
>> What did you watch?
>
> Dead for a Dollar (Showtime (East)) - I'm really not sure what the point
> of this "neo-Western" was. Basically, this seemed to be an excuse to let
> Christoph Waltz (who also executive produced this) to star in a western,
> and Waltz does look like he's having a ball in this movie here! Close
> behind is Willem Dafoe, who also seems to be enjoying himself.
>   Otherwise, this was absolutely nothing we haven't seen before (and
> done better!).
>   Circa 1900, Waltz's Max Borland is hired to retrieve the wife (Rachel
> Brosnahan) of some rich dude (Hamish Linklater) who has supposedly been
> "kidnapped" by an AA army deserter. Borland takes a parter to go after
> the wife and "kidnapper".
>   There's also a whole subplot with a sketchy gambler/criminal played
> by Dafoe.
>   Borland catches up with the woman in Mexico, in the territory of a
> criminal overlord named Vargas (Benjamin Bratt).
>   You can pretty much predict everything that is going to happen here.
>   This worked as a "diversionary watch", nothing more. I've certainly
> seen plenty of westerns, even "neo" ones, done better.
>

I don't think I've heard of this flick before. I may track it down.

>   Next episode: Kai's supposedly dead "love" shows up in town!!
>
> Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation (Lifetime) - The story of how a
> good Christian woman weight-loss mentor/guru over the years turns into a
> monster when greed, fame and power go to her head.
>   Seriously - by the end of this movie, it's clear that Gwen Shamblin
> (Lara) was a monster, going as far as to put up the legal defense for
> two of her churchmembers who abused, tortured and killed their own son!
>   Storywise, this was probably more interesting than a lot of
> Lifetime's "true crime" efforts, simply because I didn't know this story.
>   For example, I had no idea that this is the woman that Joe Lara (TV's
> Tarzan!!) ended up marrying, and that Lara died piloting a plane in
> which Gwen Shamblin was a passenger!
>   Anyway, storywise this was OK. But performance-wise, this was
> impressive, as I could no longer see "Jennifer Grey playing a role" - I
> only saw Gwen Shamblin!! Most Lifetime actress are unable to bury
> themselves so deep in a role that they become inrecognizable, but Grey
> pulls that off here. Kuddos to her.
>

Sounds interesting. I may check this out.

On George A. Romero's birthday, I watched:

Night of the Living Dead (4K disc) The classic 1968 black and white
original about a group of people trying to survive a zombie outbreak
caused by radiation from a space probe. Hey, that *is* the plot of the
movie. People just tend to forget that everything is caused by
radiation from a space probe. This was mostly background noise with the
commentary track.

The Evil Dead (4K disc) 1981 horror movie written and directed by Sam
Raimi. Bruce Campbell and a bunch of his friends head out to a Cabin in
the Woods where they accidentally unleash The Evil Dead and suffer the
consequences. Mostly background noise with the commentary.

Evil Dead II (4K disc) 1987 horror movie written and directed by Sam
Raimi. Bruce Campbell apparently decides to return to the same Cabin in
the Woods haven forgotten what happened the last time he went to one,
and once again unleashes the Evil Dead. Basically this is a remake of
the first movie only a lot better.

Army of Darkness (4K disc) 1992 sequel written and directed by Sam Raimi
which picks up where Evil Dead II ended. Bruce Campbell has been
transported to the 1300s and now has to fight the Evil Dead at the
source. He can return home, if he can remember the magic words that is.

Evil Dead (4K disc) 2013 horror remake (or maybe sequel) of the 1981
classic directed by Fede Álvarez about some friends who take a young
woman up to a Cabin in the Woods to get her off drugs. Trey are warned
in advance that during withdrawal she may say and do some weird things,
but to just ignore it and help her get clean. Things are complicated
when she accidentally gets possessed by The Evil Dead and everyone just
thinks it's the after effects of withdrawal. I watched the unrated
version of this movie. This is seriously a hardcore flick! This
version makes the 1981 version look like Sesame Street in comparison.

Drag Me to Hell (blu-ray) 2009 horror movie written and directed by Sam
Raimi about a woman (Alison Lohman) who finds herself on the wrong end
of a Gypsy curse. For a PG-13 horror movie it's very effective, but I
watched the unrated version which adds even more intensity. The movie
holds up great.

In article <trpflh$2on37$1@dont-email.me>, arthur@alum.calberkeley.org wrote:

>On George A. Romero's birthday, I watched:
>
>Night of the Living Dead (4K disc) The classic 1968 black and white
>original about a group of people trying to survive a zombie outbreak
>caused by radiation from a space probe. Hey, that *is* the plot of the
>movie. People just tend to forget that everything is caused by
>radiation from a space probe. This was mostly background noise with the
>commentary track.

Actually, we don't know for a fact it was caused by a radioactive space
probe. Someone on the radio (or was it the TV?) was speculating.

Did you catch the remake with Patricia Tallman from the 1990's?

>Evil Dead (4K disc) 2013 horror remake (or maybe sequel) of the 1981
>classic directed by Fede Álvarez about some friends who take a young
>woman up to a Cabin in the Woods to get her off drugs. Trey are warned
>in advance that during withdrawal she may say and do some weird things,
>but to just ignore it and help her get clean. Things are complicated
>when she accidentally gets possessed by The Evil Dead and everyone just
>thinks it's the after effects of withdrawal. I watched the unrated
>version of this movie. This is seriously a hardcore flick! This
>version makes the 1981 version look like Sesame Street in comparison.

Hmm, I'll have to check that out...

--
Let's go Brandon!