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The Christmas Messenger (1975)
Saw it last night for the first time in almost 30 years.
OUTSTANDING. Saw this in my 5th grade class about 1981. Loved it at the time. Forgot the title for almost 3 decades, but always remembered the story fondly. Finally learned the title last night, and watched it online (first time seeing it since 1981). The kid in me loved it back then; now that the adult in me has seen it, it's possibly the best Christmas Special I have ever seen.
If you're from the 1970s or 80s and saw this in school (yes, these type of films were once shown in SCHOOLS), it will bring you right back to your grade school classroom for a half hour. It's worth it for that alone. In fact, for the nostalgic it's a "sure thing" if you saw it in school (or on TV) as a kid, and in 2010 (or beyond) you need it to be 1975, '76, '77, '78, '79, '80,'81, '82, or '83 again for about a half an hour.
If you've never seen it, watch it and enjoy, and consider showing it to your kids (I'll presume they WON'T see this in their schools anymore!). It's a great story, & well done production-wise. "The Stranger", played by Richard Chamberlain, looks & plays the role perfectly: right out of 1800s England, friendly to all but somehow odd & secretive in his mannerisms. The Narrator's voice is PERFECT for the story.
They really "don't make them like this anymore", and if you like it, it's one of those things you'll watch every year, & maybe "more than" once, when you DO watch it. A wonderful story. I can't say enough about it, or how pleased I was to locate it and see it again.
Whether you use this as a "time machine" to "take you back", or because you love a GREAT Christmas story that's actually "religious" (and makes no secret about it) but is well done and REALLY fun to watch for kids of all ages, then watch it again and again and enjoy.
Did I mention that the music throughout the cartoon sequences, is AWESOME?
Rated 11 or 12, maybe more, out of 10.
Davey and Goliath (1960)
How come WE all turned out O.K. being raised on this? We need MORE like this.....
Here's a show that if produced today, would be dubbed "offensive", unrealistic, too preachy, too right wing, too religious, too Bible-thumping, not sensitive to the needs of non-Christians and atheists, too "whatever", and just "inappropriate" for today's generation and "out of sync" with today's world.
Rubbish.
It's EXACTLY what this world needs, and right now.
How come if it's all those "bad" things, WE (people in our thirties) turned out OK after having watched it 500 times in our childhoods? Seems to me that kids who watched it today would turn out just as OK as we did! Maybe BETTER, because it would counter some of the nonsense and swill* that's on the tube today and polluting our children.
DAVEY & GOLIATH is pure fun. Pure innocence. With a lesson. Religious, yes, but not overly so.
We need more of this, and less of the GARBAGE that's on TV today.
What pleasant memories it brought back when I accidentally found it on Boston's Catholic TV station. I recall it as a kid, being on a local Boston station back in the 70s and early 80s; no WAY they would do that today on the public airwaves.....too "offensive", too "religious", etc. for the politically-correct types who make careers out of being offended at everything. If this was broadcast on anything except Catholic cable, someone would get "offended" and would sue the TV station. Yet this was standard Saturday and Sunday morning fare on local Boston TV well into the 1980s! How come none of US, or our parents, were offended?
Let me just say that they don't make 'em like this anymore, and I will make darn sure my kids get to watch it.
Enjoy. And get it for your kids. They'll be better adults when they grow up, if you do. And you (if you watched it as a kid), will get to be a kid again, 15 minutes at a time. It's worth it for that alone!
*Swill: noun: something suggestive of slop or garbage: REFUSE (from Merriam-Webster online)
The Incredible Melting Man (1977)
How did a melting man and 2 dead guys fly a ship back to Earth from Saturn??
Good material for a drunk "guys night", during which you "MST3K" it with some buddies. Horrible film in every respect, though.
Ron Howard's "Apollo 13" showed, reasonably well I think, what it takes to pilot an Apollo-type ship back to Earth from someplace as "safe" and close by as THE MOON. Remember how complex it was, and all the work that three guys (Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, & Kevin Bacon) had to do, with Gary Sinise and Ed Harris down at Mission Control in Houston helping them (just to get that little capsule thing to land back on Earth OK)?
But in THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN, 2 dead guys and an unconscious, nose-bleeding, melting astronaut (Steve West) piloted an Apollo-type ship back from as far away as Saturn, without them being alive or conscious, and without help from the ground!!!
You see, while orbiting Saturn, a sunspot or solar flare (a gazillion miles away) was seen by the 3-man crew through Saturn's rings, and it caused 2 of them to die and one (Steve West) to get a nosebleed.
Next scene, the guy with the nosebleed is in a hospital all wrapped up like a mummy, melting away beneath the bandages. No mention of the other 2 guys who had been on the ship with him.
Where's the ship? Where are his crew-mates? How the heck did they fly back to Earth from Saturn?
One can only conclude that he (Steve West) saw the sun through Saturn's rings, got the nosebleed, started melting, and ate his dead crew-mates for their flesh; then he flew the thing back to Earth, landed, got out, and then checked in to this hospital/secret base/sanitarium place with the 2 scientists, a fat nurse, and no security. All while unconscious and melting, mind you.
It gets worse from then on. The fat nurse running up the hall in slow motion (and through a plate-glass door) is painful to sit through, but classic nevertheless.
There is, however (and for no apparent reason), a scene with a 1970s little hottie, dancing around with enough clothes on to call her "dressed", but enough OFF to consider it a bit of soft porn. Nice touch. She makes up for having to watch the fat nurse run through a glass door.
So grab a bunch of friends and some beer, and get ready to MST3K this thing. It has 100% MST3Kability (I think it actually WAS on MST3K), and that's about all it's good for, so in this regard, it will not disappoint.
Rent it, buy it, or borrow it, and be prepared to fill in a lot of your own lines and laugh your butts off at what you all say. This movie is terrible, but if you want to have some laughs with some buddies and at the same time reduce the beer supply in your fridge, go ahead and watch it.
Disaster on the Coastliner (1979)
Worst movie ever made, but worth seeing.
This was a fun film to see on TV reruns in the early 1980s, and to see it now would be fun simply to remind me of when I was a kid.
GREAT train scenes. The computer in the railroad offices that runs the whole railroad is as big as the room, yet today, a laptop could probably run the railroad.
It is quite filled with technical errors and the like, plus cheesy acting + dialog, but these things can be ignored. It is refreshing to see William Shatner as "NOT" Capt. Kirk or the Priceline guy.
See it.....if you can locate a copy. It's terrible, but you just might enjoy it. I did. I have given it a 3 out of 10, because it's a bad movie. But that does NOT mean that I don't recommend it....I do recommend it.
But to give it more than a "3", would be kidding you.
Find it, rent it/buy it/borrow it, and enjoy.