Author: samlinder

Six Damn Fine Degrees #264: Agatha Christie’s Endless Night

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Waves crash against anonymous moonlit rocks while the credits promise an eclectic mix of British and international talent: it’s Hayley Mills and Hywell Bennet (fresh off 1968‘s Twisted Nerve), Swedish actor/director Per Oscarsson (from 1966’s Hunger) and fellow countrywoman Britt Ekland (between her Peter Sellers and Rod Stewart relationships and soon to be Bond Girl). There’s eternal Miss Moneypenny Lois Maxwell and All About Eve‘s George Sanders, and it’s directed by Sidney Gilliat (author/producer of Hitchcock’s early British films) and, unmistakeably, scored by Bernard Herrmann – its ondulating, dramatic main theme reminiscent of the perturbing romanticism of Vertigo and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Have I gone to cinematic heaven? How could I have missed a film like this one, the 1972 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s late novel Endless Night?!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #261: Roger Corman’s Big Little Shop of Horrors

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Melanie’s review of 1980s cult musical Little Shop of Horrors through teenagers’ eyes finally gives me a chance to loop back, not only to the 1960 original directed by Roger Corman, but also to the director/producer himself, who arguably became one of the greatest masterminds of copycatting any movie hit within his own production universe. Roger Corman was running his own, wildly successful shop of horrors – actually a big, bold, fiercely independent venture of horrors, thrills, and other exploits!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #252: Lombard & Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Carole Lombard’s unique status as the lady of screwball comedy, as well as her unexpectedly salty sense of humour and use of language, were at the centre of last week’s post. It reminded me, of course, that the final comedic performance released during her lifetime – before it was tragically cut short by the infamous Nevada plane crash in 1941 – was Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Alfred Hitchcock’s one and only pure foray into pure American screwball (and now annoyingly mixed up with the 2005 Brangelina flick of the same name). Even though Lombard’s penultimate performance is easily eclipsed by her last role in Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, I thought that reevaluating her Hitchcock role was certainly worth my while, especially since it’s one of the most overlooked and most easily criticised Hitchcock entries.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #249: Mommie Dearest!

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

There is no other single film that has as consistently shown up in clips and reels in my social media feed as Mommie Dearest (1981), the now legendary adaptation of the tell-all book by Christina Crawford about her mother Joan, infamously starring Faye Dunaway in a practically career-(b)ending turn. The sensationalist account of an abusive Hollywood icon and the deep psychological scars it left on her daughter must have been immediately earmarked for a movie adaptation – and what an adaptation it became! Melanie’s piece about abusive mothers, fathers and their vindictive daughters in Chinese drama series The Glory last week finally gave me a shameless chance to expose myself to Mommie Dearest in full for the very first time!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #245: The Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland Story

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Sellers and Ekland as happy newlyweds? Not exactly, with Sellers recovering from his recent heart attack only months after their marriage.

Despite not ending up as the lead in Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me Stupid, 1964 really was Peter Sellers’ seminal year: not only was he following up the success of his most popular role as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series’ second (many say even better) instalment, A Shot in the Dark. He also starred in Stanley Kubrick’s darkly satirical Dr Strangelove in no less than three separate roles, for which he would garner a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #237: Never coming up for Eyre

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

University reading lists as the one described in Matt’s latest post (and dare I mention I was one of his students to be on the receiving end of that particular list) can be a double-edged sword: There is a certain mechanical quality about ticking off titles one wouldn’t necessarily have chosen for personal reading, for sure. Yet gently forced exposure to such literature – if pre-selected well – can produce unexpected pleasures and open up new worlds and avenues for further reading. Starting out my English studies in the early 2000s as a slightly disoriented reader in the wide world of literature, the English department list (when diligently dealt with) certainly kept me busy, and struggling, for a while.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #233: Portals of the Past

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!


ELSTER
And she wanders. God knows where she wanders. I followed her one day.

SCOTTIE
Where'd she go?

Elster almost ignores the question as he looks back to the day.

ELSTER
Watched her come out of the apartment, someone I didn't know... walking in a different way... holding her head in a way I didn't know; and get into her car, and drive out to...
(He smiles grimly)
Golden Gate Park. Five miles. She sat on a bench at the edge of the lake and stared across the water to the old pillars that stand an the far shore, the Portals of the Past.
Sat there a long time, not moving... and I had to leave, to got to the office. That evening, when I came home, I asked what she'd done all day. She said she'd driven to Golden Gate Park and sat by the lake. That's all.
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Six Damn Fine Degrees #225: Heidi, you’re not in Switzerland anymore!

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Growing up in Switzerland, everyone is of course hyper-aware of its uber-famous orphan story Heidi, Johanna Spyri’s 1880 novel about an alpine transplant who performs miracles on grumps, frumps and wheelchair-bound aristocrats. Needless to say that even much before the iconic 1974 Japanese animé adaptation so poignantly remembered in Matt’s last post, Heidi had become a global ambassador for idealised images of our country and had spawned a wide range of stage, film and TV adaptations. And despite Switzerland’s best efforts, the most interesting versions were contributed by other countries and cultures, and I don’t just mean Japan.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #219: Osvaldo Cavandoli’s La Linea

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Italian TV cartoons that were the joy of our youths? Reading Alan’s piece from last week, I didn’t have to look far: To me, La Linea, the little angry man hand-sketched by a cartoonist on a line, was an ever-present phenomenon in 1980s television.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #213: Murder By Clue

samlinder3 Comments

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Reading Melanie’s fascinating deep-dive into the Chinese series The Spirealm, with colourful characters caught together in a house full of doors, setting off a game of decisions and variations, I was immediately reminded of one pre-virtual, pre-digital version of a similar scenario: the game Clue, and its 1985 film adaptation.

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