THE GROUNDSTAR CONSPIRACY (1972)
Article 2081 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-26-2006
Posting Date: 4-24-2007
Directed by Lamont Johnson
Featuring George Peppard, Michael Sarrazin, Christine Belford

The only survivor of an explosion in a secret government installation is a man known to be a spy now suffering from amnesia. A government agent vows to get the truth out of him, and then decides to let him escape in order to use him for bait to catch the people behind him.

This movie put me off initially; the direction is rather uninvolving, the acting is uneven, and the dialogue is sometimes quite awful. However, there’s an excellent story in the center, and once the story gets moving, the movie’s problems take a back seat and the ride becomes quite enjoyable. The first three-quarters of the movie works in a pretty standard thriller mode, but the last quarter takes some very interesting twists and ends with a memorable showdown between the two stars, George Peppard and Michael Sarrazin. The movie starts out as borderline science fiction (we never really know what was being worked on at Groundstar), but it veers much closer once we learn the twists in the final quarter of the movie. I can’t go into detail without giving away the end of the movie, but suffice it to say that it involves medical techniques that most likely didn’t exist at the time. The movie also deals with a theme that is quite topical indeed; to what lengths should the government be allowed to go to protect itself?

GREEN MANSIONS (1959)
Article 2080 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-25-2006
Posting Date: 4-23-2007
Directed by Mel Ferrer
Featuring Audrey Hepburn, Anthony Perkins, Lee J. Cobb

A political refugee escapes into the jungle in the hope of finding a lost city of gold with which he can finance his revenge. He encounters a primitive tribe that fears a mystical bird woman in a forbidden forest. He decides to investigate.

This is an interesting jungle melodrama in its way, but the cast is downright bizarre. I have no problem with Lee J. Cobb as an old man tortured with guilt, but I find it a little hard to buy Anthony Perkins as the courageous but vengeance-driven hero of the story, but he puts his best foot forward. It’s extremely odd to find Audrey Hepburn as a jungle woman, though she’s certainly lovely in the part. And any movie in which Henry Silva plays the son of Sessue Hayakawa is bound to give one pause. The fantastic content mostly consists of the mystical overtones of much of the action that surrounds the woman in the forbidden forest. There are biblical references to the Cain and Abel story from the Bible. It’s silly on occasion, effective on others, but it’s watchable enough.

THE GIRL FROM STARSHIP VENUS (1975)
aka THE SEXPLORER
Article 2078 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-23-2006
Posting Date: 4-21-2007
Directed by Derek Ford
Featuring Monika Ringwald, Mark Jones, Andrew Grant

An alien takes the form of a beautiful Earthling to investigate the customs and mores of the inhabitants of Earth.

Adventures in Movie Watching: For those of you paying attention, you’ll notice that the Viewing Date has skipped a day. There’s a reason for this. There’s a a movie from the mid-seventies which has been on my hunt list that I’ve been trying to acquire. I thought I had it and watched it yesterday, but it turns out out the movie I watched was not the movie I was hunting for. As it turns out, the movie I was looking for was a remake of a hardcore adult film of the same name made a couple of years earlier, and it was that film I viewed instead. It was only when I sat down to write my review and found that the movie didn’t match the IMDB entry that I realized what had happened.

Now, usually when this sort of thing happens, I just sit down and watch another movie and write my review of that one. However, since the movie I did see does qualify for my series (IMDB classifies it as Horror, and that is a source I will eventually use for my series), and because I didn’t want to have to watch the movie again when it does enter my hunt list (once was enough for this one, I say), I wrote a review of it and marked it as done. I won’t post it until it officially enters my hunt list.

I wouldn’t bother telling the above story except that my reaction to today’s movie hinges somewhat on my reaction of yesterday’s movie. Suffice it to say that yesterday’s movie was one of the most repugnant viewing experiences I’ve ever endured, and practically anything I watched afterwards would have been a relief. That’s why I actually kind of enjoyed this dumb British sex comedy; whereas in other circumstances I might have railed at its stupidity, in this case I found myself attracted to its shear innocuousness. Most of the humor is sexual in nature, and there is plenty of nudity on hand, but the humor is of a type that I generally find quite amusing; to wit, most of it is centered around the space aliens trying to make sense out of earth customs and coming up with seemingly logical but ludicrous explanations for the phenomena they see. As a result, I enjoyed it more than I expected I would. For me, this just demonstrates once again that your reaction to a movie may often be dependent on your reaction to what you’ve seen previously.

Still, I’ve spent the last three days watching three seriously oversexed movies. I’m really ready to move on.