Hello!

Only two reviews today due to a family visitor over the weekend. We’re avoiding what is presently 92-degree heat outside, which feels like a hundred. It was a very strange weekend. Taking our houseguest down Hollywood Blvd., we ran into Quentin Tarantino’s street dressings turning the clock back to 1968 — with Larry Edmunds’ bookstore returned to the slot next to ‘The Supply Sergeant,’ and The Night They Raided Minsky’s up on the marquee at the Vogue, across the street.

We’re also reflecting on more unpleasant happenings. Last Saturday I was just thinking about the need to drop by the Trader Joes’ market on Hyperion, which is not the closest TJ’s to me but makes a nice loop when I drop by Albertsons and Gelsons. Up on TV pops the news of the tragic shootout, ‘not far from home’ as they say. It brought back memories from four years ago, learning online that my wife’s college was the site of another shooting. I leaped up and was halfway down the stairs before I realized that it was her day off, and she was home with me, quite safe. There’s really no room at all any more for complacent thoughts that such things won’t affect us.

No big news — I’m late with reviews as it is. I’ve only reviewed The Stranglers of Bombay from the new boxed set Hammer Volume 3 Blood and Terror collection, but Charlie Largent will be working on a full review presently.

Sci-fi fans might want to know that a restoration of an unnamed restored Paramount science fiction film is promised to screen at this year’s AMIA- ‘The Reel Thing’ presentation up on Vine Street. We’re hoping that it’s either 1953’s The War of the Worlds or 1951’s When Worlds Collide. I’ll report when I find out — perhaps a Blu-ray will be in the offing. We’re still waiting for a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Blu-ray, after seeing Disney’s spectacular restoration at The Reel Thing way back in 2012. The best When Worlds Collide presentation is still a laserdisc from 1995 or so.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson