Gloomy In Black & White

                                                                   

It's Saturday.  Two days have elapsed since Thanksgiving and I still haven't enjoyed a single bite of turkey.  The stomach flu that came on last Tuesday persists.  Anything I try to eat sends ribbons of fire through my belly so I ingest an ounce or so of chicken broth every few hours, like a terminal patient with a chicken broth IV tube providing minimum nourishment.  If I have to do this for another couple of days I will begin to cluck.

So, I'm sitting here on a Saturday afternoon and in the sourest of moods.  Every college football game is boring; all the teams that are supposed to win are winning and who the hell wants to see that?

So I'm flipping channels and come across a 1951 science fiction movie called "The Thing", subtitled "it came from another world."  I love corny old 50's science fiction and this particular movie has a special attraction since the two women in it are wearing those sno-cone bras that sends a man's libido soaring and wondering why women ever gave up on those "chest masters".   Women wore them with pride back then.  They'd swing those bullet like protuberances toward a guy and he was putty in her hands.  Seems to me women gave up on those bras way too soon.

Anyway, I'm surprised to see the great Howard Hawks directed this movie.  Maybe he'd pissed the studio moguls off and this movie was his punishment.  Much of the story line is cheesy and stupid.  One saving grace is that the monster is actually James Arness, all 6ft 6inch of old Marshal Dillon, and, though he's not packing a six gun, he's plenty deadly enough.  

The setting is a research station up in the arctic (back in the days when the arctic ice wasn't peeling off and falling into the North Atlantic.)  The Air Force and civilian scientists are puzzled when they begin picking up strange sightings in their field cameras and all their compasses begin dancing madly.    Well, what movie would be worthy its salt if we didn't have a mad scientist far more concerned about pure research than human life and of course he puts the whole damn crew in peril as he disregards all safety matters and leaves it to the rest of the crew to fend for themselves.

When I went off to warm up a couple of ounces of chicken broth I missed seeing how they captured James Arness.  When I return there's Marshall Dillon all encased in a huge block of ice and presenting no threat to anyone.  Until of course one of the Air Force enlisted dummies forgets and leaves his electric blanket set on full and draped conveniently over that monster block of ice.  Well, you can just imagine what happens next!  I understand they re-made this movie back in 2011, though I can't imagine why.

So, here I am on a Saturday afternoon, lusting after turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and have to resort to snorting chicken broth and watching cheesy science fiction movies.  Woe is me.