ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Today’s Featured Threads offer a well balanced diet which includes a delicious fantasy from the 1940s, a sweet comedy from the early 1950s, and a serving of fresh tomatoes that kill people.

(Wait . . . what?)

Yes, indeed, don’t believe those vegan nuts who promote an all-vegetable diet. They can’t even decide if tomatoes are a fruit, a vegetable, or a murderous lifeform who attack in savage bunches!

(No, wait . . . it's the Killer Chiquita Bananas that do that.)
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Dreamboat (1952)

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On November 16, 1961, NBC showed this movie on Saturday Night at the Movies and I got my second look at Anne Francis. The first time was in 1956 when I saw Forbidden Planet at a downtown theater in Atlanta.

Anne was 22 years old, but she looks 15 -- the wallflower daughter of a college professor played by Clifton Webb. And Jeffrey Hunter is her romantic interest -- the guy who almost starred in Star Trek when he played Captain Christopher Pike in the first pilot for the famous series.



Clifton Webb has never been better in this wonderful comedy, which also stars Elsa Lanchester as his college associate who swoons in Clifton's presence when she finds out he was a silent screen idol twenty-five years earlier.



Watch for a wonderful courtroom scene in which Ray Collins, who played Lt. Tragg in Perry Mason, plays the defense attorney!



Ginger Rogers is stunning, and in one scene she wears a dress that Marilyn Monroe liked so much she wore it briefly in Gentleman Prefer Blonds.




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Alias Nick Beal

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Ray Milland has always seemed just a bit overrated to me, but occasionally he's just right for the role. This one is a good example.

Milland's performances tend to lean towards the laid-back side, and sometimes they lean so far they look more like the first rehearsal than the final take. But in this movie his character manages to say it all with quiet malignancy and shifty glances — which is just what you'd expect from a man who really isn't a man, because he's Satan in disguise.

The good guy in this story — accent on "good" for very good reasons — is the likable Thomas Mitchell, who plays an attorney who wants to rid his fair city of the gangsters who infest it. Other than this minor difference, this is basically The Devil and Daniel Webster, except that instead of being about a frustrated New England farmer, it's about an ambitious big city lawyer.

I haven't seen this one in years, but I remember liking the juxtaposition between Mitchell's passionate legal eagle and Milland's soul-sucking vulture. It makes for damn good drama in a hell of a fine movie.

Pardon my language . . . ____________________________________________________________________

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)



This movie wasn't as funny as it should have been, but it was funnier than I expected.

The low budget prevented the special effects from being anything more than quick shots of tomatoes rolling around in stampeding herds, with the occasional shots of over-sized props being pushed from behind.

But the dialog and acting will tickle your ribs from time to time, and you have to admire the dedication of the folks behind such a wacky undertaking. Maybe somebody will take on the challenge of producing my idea for a sci-fi parody.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)