Yes. we are returning to the theme of 'Buried alive', because I didn't realise at first how popular a trope this is in cinema, never mind literature. We covered "The Premature Burial" as a story and film already, and you might think "Well, that's it, there can't be any more films with that subject matter".
You would be WRONG! Art?
 |
| "T" for "Target"? |
Not going to apologise for going off on a wild tangent. Someone else on Twitter posted a picture of a contemporary AFV, which Your Humble Scribe just had to trump. Thanks go to David Lister, who entered this in his work on off-beat British military vehicles "Forgotten Tanks And Guns". It is the 'T1 Amphibious Tank' of 1942 vintage. The intent was obviously to have a huge hull to give bouyancy, and then stick a turret on top. Making it a very obvious target for anyone hanging about with hostile intent. Frankly, it looks as if a Crusader and Buffalo had an affair. Art!
ANYWAY back to the matter in hand. Ah! The link could be that the T1 was a floating/mobile coffin, thanks to being so spectacularly obvious <admits to reaching a bit there>. So, it didn't take long to find a film called "Buried Alive". Art!
This may not be what you expected. Yes, that's Tim Matheson. Yes, his character gets buried alive, whilst supposedly being dead thanks to being poisoned. The dose was off. He breaks out of the coffin - a feat in itself - and secures revenge on those who did him dirty. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER it ends with his treacherous cheating wife trapped in what's effectively a giant coffin, alongside the body of her lover. I love a happy ending. Art!
This may be what you were thinking of. No, "Buried" came out in 1990 so it's not cashing in. Yes, that's Ryan, and no, there is no happy ending. This film exemplifies the trope of 'Deliberately buried alive' as opposed to the 'It was an honest mistake guvnah'. Art!
In this one a Mysterious Stranger buries missy alive, and hubby has to try and save her whilst avoiding being framed. One gets the sense of low-budget from the cast alone. I don't know how it ends and am not particularly curious, go Google it if you're that interested. Art!
Hmmmmm enough of you went to see it that they spawned a sequel to it. I wonder if a quick trip to "Box Office Mojo" is merited.
Art!
No trace of the original and I'm under the whip here on a work break, so no time to dig any further. Art!
This is from "Bones" and the "Aliens In A Spaceship" episode SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER there are no aliens, nor is there a spaceship. Bones and her mate Hodgins do end up buried alive, except in a car not a coffin because this is the 21st century, man. The idea is that the villain whom entombed them either gets a ransom or they die a lingering death.
Conrad, thanks to his skip-like mind, also remembers either a police television program or a made-for-television film, where a kidnapped young woman was held in a coffin underground, The only amenity she had was a long tube leading to a carboy full of water - and at some point the tube falls out of the jar. There was no room to contort herself so the tube stayed dry. That's all I recall. Sorry to leave you hanging*. No pun intended. Art!
 |
| Major Pine-Coffin YES REALLY |
Further Fiscal Fripperies
Prune60, over on Twitter, has a long series of posts delving deep into the parlous state of Ruffia, covering everything from weather to midge swarms to locomotive failures. She also picked up on a VERY revealing statistical release of economic data from the Ministry of Finance. Art!
These are the liquid assets of the National Wealth Fund, that is, the assets that can readily be transformed into money money money.
Chinese Yuan - 227 billion
Gold - 334 tons
Conrad did a bit of calculating and the total worth of the Yuan is $31 billion, and for the gold, $18 billion. So, a total of $49 billion, which sounds like a lot, but this is still down $6 billion on the last total.
What's notable is that there aren't any reserves of dollars or pounds sterling and only ₽300 million, which is about £582.38 in proper money $3 million - or next to nothing.
Your Humble Scribe has done a bit of quick and dirty mathematics and I think the National Wealth Fund has expended $10 billion per month on average. It looks on course to be empty by September. Art!
The Ukes nuked another Ruffian oil refinery. Conrad's rule of thumb is that this takes $5 billion off the GDP, so those emptied NWF coffers aren't getting refilled anytime soon*.
"The War Illustrated Edition 189"
One of the advantages of viewing this publication 80 years later is that we know what the facts are, rather than what the wishful thinking and propaganda was then. Take this page for example. Art!
That headline! It sounds like a quote from "Le Morte D'Arthur". What you see here are the after-effects of Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of Southern France, staged in mid-August. This was completely against the wishes of Churchill, who saw a far better prospect of using those assets to liberate Yugoslavia, before the Sinisters got there. He may well have been right.
ANYWAY at upper port you can see a fortification that the Teutons were fond of: topping a subterranean bunker with a tank turret, in this case that of a Panzer II. This tank had been obsolete since 1941, so a pretty shrewd use of the bite-y bit. Then there's a GI helping French children to get dental caries, and at bottom a spectacle that the Teutons must have been day-glo green with envy at, since they simply couldn't manage this kind of airborne operation.
"City In The Sky"
Did you know that jelly babies are, in actuality, bio-morphic boosters? Neither did the Lithoi.
-
a single human being stepped into the prison. Not just any
human, no: this was the one from New
Eucla who had destroyed a flying eye with
catering utensils, and exposed their Transports and, for all he knew, brought
down that amazingly co-incidental asteroid.
‘Who are you!’ blurted Orskan, quivering
with nerves.
‘WhoareyouIamtheDoctor,’ shrilled the
human, speaking almost too fast to be understood. Then, it’s hands a blur, it dug around in the
strange straw-coloured outer garments before producing a miniature human
caricature – and then bit the head off, before offering the remnant to Orskan.
Reluctantly, the prisoner licked up the
offering, chewed it briefly and suspiciously before champing madly and
swallowing.
Delicious! decided Orskan. Not only that, he felt a strange buzzing
animation throughout his muscles, a frantic quivering that began in his stomach
and surged from the tip of his tail to the crest of his skull, permeating him
with a feeling of invincibility and might.
His gaze fell upon his plastic restraint; with a mighty spasm his
muscles split the polymer and it fell apart into uselessness.
‘Doctor!’ he snapped. ‘That was a biomorphic booster?’
"Tontine"
I did mention this a couple of days ago, without explaining what it is. Allow me to quote from my Collins Concise Dictionary: "An annuity scheme to which several subscribers accumulate and invest a common fund out of which they receive an annuity that increases as subscribers die until the last survivor takes the whole."
So a kind of Last Man Standing arrangement. I believe tontines are illegal in This Sceptred Isle, possibly because the temptation to help another member to bolt off this mortal coil was a little too strong. Art!
They are still legal and popular in France. Thank heavens for the Channel.
* Tee hee!
No comments:
Post a Comment