I can’t find an actual reference to this film’s budget anywhere, but it was a Columbia film so I’m guessing “not high”; Harry Cohn never liked spending money even on his big films that merited the cost, so for something I imagine he would’ve considered a piece of shit I can’t see him being lavish… but Nick Grinde did get enough to work up a pretty good laboratory set, which is good cos most of the film will take place there. Everson reckons all the Karloff “mad doctor” films were fairly similar, and in this case that extends to his character name (Dr. Krevaal) being oddly like his previous one, and in this case he’s also been working on an experiment involving reanimating frozen (though not technically dead) bodies… but this time round, he’s become the unwitting subject of his own work, having become frozen in his own ice chamber ten years ago along with the men he was demonstrating it to; he’s thawed out by a doctor searching for him, and now he needs to find out why they didn’t die and rediscover his own work… if the other men will let him, of course. I had a lot of fun with this film, which runs at some 74 minutes which is about ten minutes longer than the rest of the films in this series, so the story has a bit more room to breather; Karloff, obviously, is having a blast as Krevaal who’s less bothered by the fact he’s been “dead” for ten years than that he’s still alive now, and the rest of the cast is good too. Plus it’s rather more judicious with using music than the previous film, which didn’t use it enough. Only serious problem was the noticeable slump in picture quality in the last ten minutes or so, but I gather that’s a problem on the older DVD release so maybe it’s an issue with the existing print? Whatever, otherwise this was great fun.
Month: October 2025
Maybe, maybe not?
White House slams Trump’s perceived Nobel peace prize snub as ‘politics over peace’
The White House has denounced the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Nobel peace prize to someone other than Donald Trump.
Following Friday’s announcement that the Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado had been awarded the prize, senior aides to the US president attacked the Norwegian committee as politicised while Norway braced itself for a potential diplomatic response from the White House.
“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” wrote Steven Cheung, a Trump aide and the White House’s director of communications.
Trump will “continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives”, he wrote. “He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will.”
What confuses me is that Mushroom Cock himself posted on Truth.Social Machado’s Twitter post in which she specifically mentions him thusly:
I’m going to assume the phrase “to conquer Freedom” is an unfortunate AI translation rather than her meaning that she’s going to overcome freedom so that she wins against it. But that’s beside the point. Drumpf doesn’t post shit like this unless he thinks it makes him look good, which suggests he actually is OK with Machado winning…? Maybe he’s seething behind the scenes? But he seethes so much publicly and has so little self-control I feel that’s unlikely. Are the minions just getting outraged to keep in his favour? Almost certainly:
Donald Trump did not win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, so his GOP allies in the House are working to slap together the next best thing: a resolution to get him one.
Speaking with Fox Business Friday morning, Representative Buddy Carter said that (instead of working to end the government shutdown) he and his colleagues were going to file a resolution “today” to honor the president with the Nobel Prize.
“[Donald Trump] deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” Carter told the network. “That’s why I’m introducing a resolution today for a sense of Congress today that will honor him with the Nobel Peace Prize.
“If need be, we’ll call for a discharge petition on that. I hope we can work with the speaker though and get it on the floor for a vote,” Carter added.
Needless to say this is not how the Nobel process works, or anything else for that matter… but I feel this will actually come off, cos it’s the sort of thing the Republicans would support, and the bigger-league Democrats are too craven to resist. Will the participation trophy be enough to keep Krasnov quiet, though? He won’t say no, obviously, but I don’t think he’ll be happy until he gets the real thing…
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Letting normal service resume for a while…
Oh, he’s not going to like this… or is he?
Yeah, the Nobel Peace Prize for this year has just been announced and… Trump didn’t get it. For all his insistence that he deserves it for the work he’s apparently done in “seven unendable wars”—the phrase he used at the UN general assembly recently—including at least one that hadn’t actually started, and others where the countries involved have disputed his role in whatever happened between them, for all his insistence, I say, that he deserves one, he missed out. Part of that, it should be said, is because nominations for the prize actually closed in February so he couldn’t actually have won for anything he did this year. And part of that is because, well, this Guardian article just says it:
Pakistan has said it will recommend Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize for his work in helping to resolve the recent conflict between India and Pakistan.
The move, announced on Saturday, came as the US president mulls joining Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Yeah. The NPP kind of depends upon you actually promoting peace, and I don’t know if acts of aggression against a sovereign nation count as that, even if it’s to stop that nation making war against you. Anyway, to give him some credit, he does seem, or at least claims, to have had some hand in getting the current Israel/Hamas ceasefire going (I was wrong about that a couple of weeks ago, and I’m happy to have been wrong, of course; forgive me if I’m still a bit cynical about it actually lasting long, though), but it’s hard to say how much of that is down to him versus how much might be due to other countries putting potential economic pressure on Israel (e.g. Spain’s recent decision to criminalise selling them weapons).
There’s also a certain irony in this year’s recipient being Venezuelan, too, given recent rumours that Mushroom Cock might be looking at moving in there militarily to do some regime change, and given the regime’s recent propensity for blowing Venezuelan boats out of the water on the pretext that they were carrying drugs without offering any proof that they were, of course. (Again, not quite a peaceful act.) But apparently him and Maria Machado actually get on to some degree, and there may be at least some ideological overlap; her party apparently likes to think of it as neither left nor right as such but others seem to consider it centre-right at best. Granting that Nicolas Maduro is undeniable scum, I still wonder how much better the opposition might be.
So Krasnov might not actually be too bothered by losing this year? I don’t know. He still wants one, cos he can’t accept not having one when that darkie did, and Obama’s prize was, let’s face it, about as questionable as Trump getting one would be. Norway—which, for reasons no one really understands, is the country that gives out the NPP while Sweden gives out all the others—has been wondering how he might react, though:
Kirsti Bergstø, the leader of Norway’s Socialist Left party and its foreign policy spokesperson, said Oslo must be “prepared for anything.”
“Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergstø told the Guardian.
“The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him.” […]
The newspaper columnist and analyst Harald Stanghelle speculated that retribution from Trump – if it were to come – could take the form of tariffs, demands for higher Nato contributions or even declaring Norway an enemy.
“He [Trump] is so unpredictable. I don’t want to use the word ‘fear’ but there is a feeling that it could be a challenging situation,” he said. “It’s very very difficult to explain to Donald Trump or to many other countries in the world that it is a totally independent committee because they do not respect this kind of independence.”
He said if Trump were to win, it would be the “biggest surprise in the history of the Nobel peace prize”.
I don’t think anyone will dispute that. So far I see no comment from him on the NPP, but as I said he might be willing to tolerate losing it this time. Next year, though, if this Gaza ceasefire actually does hold somehow, I fear they’ll feel obliged to let him have it then, if only to shut him up for a while…
The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)
More accurately The Man They Could Indeed Hang But He Wouldn’t Stay Dead, but that would’ve been a noticeably less snappy title. This is part of a series of films Karloff made at Columbia from 1939-42 which has been called his “mad doctor series”… in this particular instance, he’s Dr Savaard, who’s experimenting with a mechanical heart device with which he proposes to save the dying from death. However, technically the experiment requires someone to die first, and when the police interrupt him during it, Savaard is tried for murder and ultimately executed for it. But his technology works, all right, and Savaard isn’t taking his death lying down. Once again the main attraction here is Karloff, who’s clearly enjoying the lead role; Savaard’s original intention is evidently benevolent, but his experience of dying has left him somewhat embittered, shall we say. As the second half of the film begins, though, something about the transition to the revenge part of the tale feels off somehow, as if some scenes should’ve been filmed but weren’t, making some things a bit abrupt and unprepared for. Still, apart from that, the whole thing is actually pulled off fairly well and with some style; I don’t know much about director Nick Grinde (who also directed the next two films in the series) other than what Wikipedia says about him specialising in B films, but he pulls off some well-chosen camera angles, gets pretty fair performances from the rest of the cast, and makes the whole thing fun to watch. And Everson did say of this series that he thought it did the opposite of what series like this usually do and actually got better as it went along, so I suppose we shall soon see if I agree with him or not…
How about that crapture, then?
Think I’m safe to say the rapture failed to happen again in the same way it did a couple of weeks ago, but don’t worry, the goalposts have already been moved again. To next week. Obviously.
There’s a Tiktok by this guy who made a bunch of videos about the rapture, but tonight I saw one by him in which he said he wasn’t fussed if it didn’t happen on the rescheduled date because this is a year of Jubilee, and apparently in a Jubilee year the final trumpet of the festival doesn’t get blown until the ninth day or something. Meaning that the rapture’s going to happen between the 15th and 17th. Obviously.
I have no idea if that latter detail is correct or not, cos I can’t find anything about it online, but that character’s right about one thing. It IS a Jubilee year.
I’m going to suggest that, since this fellow believes in the rapture, he’s not actually Catholic and probably comes from one of those American sects that considers Catholicism not just the wrong sort of Christianity but also un-Christian. And he’s probably even less enthused about THE JOOOOOOOOOOS which is where the idea of the Jubilee year originates. However, apparently it hasn’t been practised in Judaism for centuries, possibly not since 722 BC after the end of the Northern Kingdom. The Catholic church has been doing it since 1300, and I think it’s a somewhat different affair with them.
Either way… yeah, I don’t think this Jubilee year idea makes a lot of sense, but then again nothing about the rapture does, really. Mind you, I suppose that tying it to a Jewish feast makes slightly more sense than Jesus adhering to a calendar devised by pagans? I don’t know. In any case, something else to look forward to not happening next week…
Night Key (1937)
Not a horror film (though you’d be forgiven for thinking it was with that poster) so much as a crime film with a vaguely SF twist, this film kind of found the recently restructured Universal wondering what to do with its great horror star Boris Karloff now that the horror genre was considered dead in the water… the answer, evidently, was this comparatively light little number. I don’t know much about director Lloyd Corrigan, other than that he seems to have been a lot better known as an actor and only directed a small number of films (this being his second last; blu commentary suggests the pre-production was kind of unhappy thanks to script issues and Corrigan was far from first choice). Karloff plays an inventor, Mallory, who was screwed out of a fortune by the man, Ranger, he designed a famous security system for; when the latter tries to screw him again out of his new system, Mallory uses the latter against him… which draws the interest of a gang of crooks looking to employ it themselves. This is all fairly mild stuff, with most of the interest in it coming from Karloff himself; there’s something slightly hapless about Mallory, his “revenge” against Ranger is really more to irritate him than really damage him, and it’s quite a charming performance (Karloff seems to have been happy to do something different for him). Similar goes for Hobart Cavanaugh as the small-time crook Mallory starts out saving from Ranger and then becomes his partner in “crime”, he’s quite delightful too. Otherwise the cast doesn’t blow me away, I felt like the gang boss in particular felt more like the character was playing a Warners-type gangster rather than being a real one. It’s a light film, like I said, only 67 minutes long and basically a B film with not a lot in the way of excitement. But Karloff’s the star of it, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
What took so long?
Trump sets sights on liberal mega-donor George Soros: ‘A chilling message to other donors’
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, said “everything is on the table” and left it there. But Donald Trump threw discretion to the wind and was far more specific about his choice of enemy to go after.
“If you look at Soros, he’s at the top of everything,” the US president said.
The gathering with reporters took place in the Oval Office last month as Trump ordered a crackdown on “leftwing terrorism” and threatened to investigate and prosecute those who financially support it.
There is no evidence linking George Soros, a 95-year-old billionaire who has supported democratic causes around the world, or Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal and the networking site LinkedIn, to terrorism. But both are top donors to the Democratic party. And both were named by Trump as potential participants in a vast conspiracy to finance violent protesters against the government.
It is no coincidence, critics say, that the president is intensifying his attacks on Soros little more than a year before the midterm elections for Congress. The billionaire has reportedly contributed more than $170m to help Democrats during the 2022 midterm cycle. A justice department investigation could deter both Soros and other would-be donors in 2026.
The only surprise here is that it’s taken Mushroom Cock this long to specifically target Soros, who has kind of been the embodiment of BIG JOOOOOOOOOO for the far right for a long time, mostly because he’s been using his obscene wealth to help the Democrats rather than them. Not all billionaires are good, clearly. Maybe going after Soros on day 1 would’ve been considered too obvious or something? We know there’s a bunch of antisemites in the regime, Marjorie Taylor-Greene just being the most overt one, but going after Soros too soon would’ve made it too clear? I don’t know. Still, kind of reassuring to know they do indeed have Soros in their sights; there’s so many other people and institutions Drumpf wants to ruin that George was in danger of being forgotten…
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The usual “every 10th post” rule applies. This time, a bunch of headphone girls en masse. I don’t know why these attract me so much. You don’t get it either, I’m sure. Don’t understand now, never have, almost certainly never will. Here they are anyway. Oh, and nudity.
Look Who‘s back?
So there’s excitement again about missing episodes of a certain BBC SF TV show possibly turning up… a couple of years ago there was also excitement on this subject, though the latter was somewhat quickly squashed, and similarly there was a bit of excitement when Sue Malden said something else about missing episodes at a big TV-related event. In both cases it appears that the episodes in question weren’t new discoveries, but ones that had been “known” for some years to exist in private collections. But there’s a new addition to these reports that looks… promising?
The development comes from Film is Fabulous, which is an organisation (now a registered charity too) that’s operated by John Franklin (from the original Guardian article above), and it’s basically about helping private film collectors with cataloguing and preserving their stuff and hopefully rediscovering lost film and TV in doing so. They have indeed succeeded in recovering an assortment of long-lost TV, even from the ’50s, and that talk with Sue Malden took place at one of FiF’s events. Which is why it’s interesting that they recently posted this comment on Facebook (grabbed it from Reddit):
As mentioned by Sue Malden at our RECOVERED event in May, we are aware of several missing episodes of Doctor Who (Sue stated one or two, but there are more than this) in private film collections in the U.K. We are liaising with the individuals about cataloguing and preserving their entire collection, including the missing Doctor Who episodes, and ensuring that copies are returned to the BBC. We expect to make a detailed announcement shortly.
Obviously the Who fandom on YT are bouncing up and down and expecting great things… I’m, well, remaining a bit sceptical still. Cos on the face of it, this just looks like another iteration of the episodes we already “know about” that no one has ever proven to actually exist… on the other hand, of course, this comes from an actual organisation, a charity no less, rather than some random goon on the Internet; FiF actually has something to lose if they turn out to be wrong after saying this.
Accordingly, I’m actually inclined to take this with more seriousness than usual; a statement from an actual organisation like FiF has potentially far greater credibility than the aforementioned random goon. And yet… I still can’t get too worked up about the news. Cos it’s only “news” in inverted commas, really. FiF might have something. No one is saying what (and it probably won’t be much if it’s anything). And I see a few cynics claiming the “news” is connected with FiF’s recently gained charitable status and their requests for donations since then which, I don’t know, may not be entirely wrong… I think I’ll hold off getting excited until someone offers tangible proof of any of this being correct.
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