DARK CITY, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM

FINDING SHELL BEACH.  “Dark City” (1998) got mixed reviews and tanked at the box office, but then so did Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent classic “Metropolis.”  Dark City director/producer Alex Proyas has given moviegoers a mind-bending neo-expressionist classic that could prompt nightmares for a week of Sundays.  A real trip, I was swept along by this gem in wide screen and surround sound DVD that I found in early March for $1.50 at McCarron Lake’s thrift store.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrGSLMl1XFs

Yet another restoration for the 1933 horror classic “Mystery of the Wax Museum,” Tom Weaver reports in the July 2020 edition of Classic Images magazine.  The new blu-ray avoids the blue night scenes and garish pink skin tones seen in the 2000 restoration by Turner Video, which I scored at Brand Name Deals liquidation store several years ago.  Wax Museum is very neo-expressionist with dark street scenes.  The 50s remake House of Wax featured Vincent Price in 3-D which I saw at the Walker a few years ago.

LUNCH WITH JANE POWELL.

  I should have said, “Keith Andes would have been a better choice over Cliff Robertson in your ’58 RKO Radio musical “The Girl Most Likely” but I kept still.  We dined at the same picnic table — me, Jane and comedian Louis Nye in the summer of ’63 in the alley between the Burbank NBC studios on Buena Visa Blvd.  I was an “editorial assistant” at NBC KNBC News then.

Jane and Louis were apparently at NBC to rehearse a nightclub act and were deep in discussion.  Food service at NBC was meager—a food truck with bad sandwiches and a picnic table, but it was a hot spot for gossip from technicians who would gab about Judy and June being drunk during taping of Judy’s CBS show recently.  Who was Dinah sleeping with now?

In “the girl” movie, Andes was a knockout in a song and dance Tijuana number with Jane, Kay Ballard and dancer Kelly Browne.  He also was the co-star with Lucille Ball in the Broadway musical “Wildcat,” was the romantic interest with Linda Darnell in RKO’s “Blackbeard the Pirate” and was the boyfriend of Marilyn Monroe in RKO’s “Clash by Night” drama.  The man was talented. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050438/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1