Help Me, Rhondda!

You See, I Have A Problem
Excuse me for going on rather here, it's just that one of the assistants here at BOOJUM! is Art.  I would say "idiot assistant" but that would fearfully offend both Oscar and Mister Hand, who are both exemplars of intellectual endeavour*.

HMS Endeavour

     Art is more formally known as "Art Department**", and he is an intellectual sloven of the first order.  "Close enough" and "easily confused" are his excuses for posting pictures of a gridlock on the M62 when I wanted a photograph of that musical group Traffic.
     Anyway, we here at the Mansion have recently discovered that you can use the carrot and stick method with Art.  The stick is either putting him in the septic sump or using a battery of Tazers, whilst the carrot - metaphor writ large here - is a bag of coal, which he likes to eat.
     You can't account for taste, can you?
     Anyway, the Rhondda Valley being a prime coal-mining location, I was wondering if we here at the Mansion could buy a couple of sacks of your crunchy carbon cuisine?

A WHOLE LOT ABOUT FILMS

Yes Indeedy Ally Sheedy!
I've not really being saving this up, it sort of snowballed together all at once.  I think the catalyst was "Fantastic Four", which still stands at 3.9 rating over at IMDB, having failed to make in 2 weeks what it was expected to make on the opening night.  Well whatev, Poskrebyshev.  Anyway, at work there was Sophie with her cool "Doctor Who And The Daleks" t-shirt -

Okay, if not "Doctor Who and the Daleks" it's still The Doctor.  And Lalla Ward.
Don't forget the Lalla Ward component.

Doctor Who And The Daleks
I remember seeing this on television first time around, which must be about 1967.  It was a film adaptation of the second ever Doctor Who serial "The Daleks", and featured i) a budget many times bigger than the television series ii) internationally known actors - bow your knee to that Quintessential English Gentleman Peter Cushing and iii) COLOUR!
     However.  It did have it's moments, but it didn't approach the occasional terror and suspense of the old television serial.  And it was a kind of 5% skewed-out-of-alignment interpretation of the television serial.  I think I have a comic version of it knocking around somewhere.
Quatermass And The Pit
And here we have another media bifurcation***.  The film came out in colour 1967 and it's really pretty good, except it is trumped by the technically inferior black and white 1959 television serial.  

Really, I don't remember the - er-  "heaving bosoms" on the right.  Almost NSFW

     Why?  Two reasons.  1) The serial has a run of about three hours, and can thus take time establishing an extremely eerie setting, whereas the film is constrained by a commercial running time. 2)  Sound effects. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop pulled out all the stops for this one, and the horrid sinister sounds echoing around the Hob Lane set are extremely effective.  In fact they are as effective in establishing a mileu as the "electronic tonalities" of Forbidden Planet^.
Death On The Nile
I hope, for your sakes, that you have been following the blog.  Only if you and your distant ancestors can prove that you were loyal followers of BOOJUM! will you escape being sent to the Organ Banks when my starship invasion force arrives^^.
     Anyway, I mentioned in my analysis of the above film that there is an event when Simon and Louise are almost pounded into person-puree at the temple of Abu Simbel, as a stone weighing in at about half a ton hits the ground next to them.

Pink Floyd at Cairo.
"Big Egyptian Rock"

     Except this event is never mentioned again in the film!  What, were the editors complete sadists?

     GEORGE (SENIOR EDITOR): I know, let's cut this bit out!

     LUCAS (EDITOR): What?  About who pushed the stone at the temple?

     GEORGE: Yeah!  Great fun.  Nobody watching will have a clue!

     LUCAS: But that's not fair.  We're supposed to show the audience all the clues.

     GEORGE: You what!  Lucas, man, are you sober?  The audience? The AUDIENCE?

     LUCAS: Oh alright.  Make it a stand-alone event.

     GEORGE: Too bloody true!  Now, let's create a blooper reel of all the clues we cut out.

     HARRISON (JUNIOR EDITOR): What's the big idea of confusing the audience? I think -

     GEORGE and LUCAS (In unison): You're fired!

     Fortunately for you, the blog is somewhat more accommodating.  According to the IMDB Forum for DOTN, the killer trying to slay-by-stone is Pennington, the embezzling lawyer.
     A quick assay of physical strength amongst the suspects would have brought this up, as most of the women are physical wrecks.
Waterworld
Alas and alack, for the next four days I shall not have the opportunity of scorning The Fish And Chip Wrapper.  NO! not because it has improved it's woefully low standards.  Because I am on leave and shall thus not have a chance to physically pick it up from Box It Toxic, as we here at the Mansion dub the metal box it occupies on the 24 bus.
   Anyway, here we are:

Excuse me?

     I know the Metro would have trouble putting together a sentence without a spellchecker, a Word template and a whole lot of sub-editors, but really, "most notorious flops"???
     1)  It scores 6.1 at IMDB.  This is on the order of "Good".
     2)  It made £170 million AT THE BOX OFFICE. Sorry for shouting but The Metro is hard of hearing.  To that you can add £40 million in rentals - they were a thing at the time, our idiot contemps The Metro might not understand this.
     3) To the above figures you can add TELEVISION FEES.  What various broadcasters have paid to display the fillum.  This might take it up to £250 million.  O!  To have been involved in such a disaster!




* "exemplars of intellectual endeavour", that is, "clever" -  Pseud-to-English translation courtesy of Mister Hand
** Do you see - o you do. Fine.
*** "Split" - you're welcome said Mister Hand
^ This is High Praise indeed!
^^ Due any day in 2147 AD