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LesSmarberry

@lessmarberry.bsky.social

630 followers 710 following 2.3K posts

Random movie reckons. Mostly genre pictures, Gialli, French and Italian crime movies, horror from '30s-'60s. Occasionally going overboard in the Alt Text

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · Apr 15

Going to make this an ongoing thread on old TV movies, a form which I think is ripe for resurrection in the age of streaming

Starting off with 2 favorites, Murder Once Removed(1971) & Murder By Natural Causes(1979)

Both twisty thrillers featuring rich husbands, adulterous wives, & murderous lovers

A poster/VHS cover for Murder By Natural Causes. It comprises an illustration of a partially completed jigsaw of two of the movies' stars Katherine Ross & Hal Holbrook. One of the missing jigsaw pieces is vaguely gun shaped & pointing at Holbrook's temple

A poster/VHS cover for Murder Once Removed. It features a black & white image of two of the movies' stars, Richard Kiley & John Forsythe, standing side by side against a white background. They are wearing golfing attire & Kiley smokes a pipe

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 17h

*from around

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 17h

Same with his Maggie Moore(s) for around the same time

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 17h

Worth watching

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 17h

Me doing the Picard Four Lights thing, but it's about how X The Unknown counts as a Quatermass movie

a bald man with a beard is making a funny face in a dark room .

Alt: Captain Picard yells 'There Are Four Lights!'

media.tenor.com

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 17h

a man wearing a shirt that says schitts creek on the bottom

Alt: David Rose from Schitt's Creek tries his best to keep it together

media.tenor.com

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 17h

Yet to watch it

For me, Hamm has the air of someone who'd crack under pressure about him. Like he looks like he should be a tough guy, but isn't. Which is what makes him compelling

Holt McCallany, Frank Grillo or Jeffrey Donovan would all be good, but a) probably too old & b) not box-office enough

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 17h

Severe lack of Parker appropriate leading men these days

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

They sold my philosophy course, in part, by saying that businesses wanted candidates who'd been taught how to think logically

Which, weirdly enough, was true

They didn't mention that after 4 years of philosophy you'd be bored to tears in business

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

Someone asked on here a while ago if the Monster had ever been portrayed as purely evil in any Frankenstein movie & I think the answer is yes, in Curse of Frankenstein

Cushing's Frankenstein being the true villain somewhat overshadows it, but Lee's Monster is almost exclusively destructive

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

And a See No Evil, Hear No Evil one in relation to her MP's remarks

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

Should also say I Saw The TV Glow is easily one for my "best of the 21st Century" list

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

Maybe I just fundamentally misunderstand UK politics, but is there a surfeit of constituencies that actually want a new nuclear reactor built in their vicinity, as opposed to I dunno "somewhere else"?

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

There's a couple of scenes in it that have taken up residence in my brain

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

Do you know who else did? Hammer screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, because this is the 1st of like 6 movies where he puts his own spin on it 🤣

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

Yeah I debated which of those two to include (could have been either one) but went for Mortal Sin because, IMO, even if the good stuff isn't as good, the ropey bits aren't as ropey

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

Taste of Fear is among best things Hammer ever made, & a really good 'inspired by Les Diaboliques' movie

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

My top 6 (shut up, it's my list) horrors that you might not have seen for Halloween:

Eye Of The Devil (1966)
I Saw The TV Glow (2024)
House of Mortal Sin (1976)
All You Need Is Death (2023)
The Dunwich Horror (1970)
Taste Of Fear (1961)

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 3d

Music teachers hate this one cool trick

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 4d

Is part of the issue re the Conservatives that (for many of them) their first preference, 're-warmed Thatcherism' isn't electorally viable in 2025, but they're still unable/unwilling to accept that & develop a new theory of gov, other than populism as displacement activity?

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 5d

In fairness, policymaking is actually quite simple if you remove people with unhelpful ideological priors or vested interests (or as they are more commonly known "the voting public")

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LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 5d

Equally though, my own experience as a parent is that there's plenty of self-selection for 'the right sort of school' in the non-fee paying sector as well, which is more insidious because it's with respect to schools where there's no nominal barrier to entry

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 5d

That was in the 90s and the fees then were at a level when it was just about feasible on a modest pair of incomes. Looking at fee inflation since then I doubt it would be possible for their modern day counterparts. So as I say, strong case for reducing taxpayer support

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 5d

For a lot of people, paying for their kid to receive what they saw as the best education involved making sacrifices, but they were sacrifices they were willing to make. That was certainly the case for my parents

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 5d

Fee-paying schools are obviously exclusionary based on ability to pay, & I think there's a strong argument that such schools shouldn't be in receipt of public funds. But it's overly dismissive to say it's not about quality of education

LesSmarberry @lessmarberry.bsky.social · 5d

Yesterday my felt hat, raincoat, moustache ensemble led to 2 separate instances of strangers telling me I looked like a) "an old timey movie director & b) republican socialist revolutionary James Connolly

I didn't object to either comparison. But some of us, it seems, have fogeyness thrust upon us