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Check in frequently to learn more about upcoming SCTV programs on Cable Channel 12, to suggest ways that we can improve our services to the town, and to get involved!

26/06/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater Saturday, June 29 at 8PM on Channel 192 - THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955).

One of the scariest and most atmospheric science fiction movies of the 1950s comes in for a crash landing at Drive In Theater this Saturday evening. A summer eve's stroll by two laughing young lovers in England is violently ended when a rocket augers in on top of the haystack they had been lolling on just a few seconds before. It's the surprise return of a manned expedition into space which had been launched by the strong-willed and dynamic Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy). The rocket had gone incommunicado in space for over 24 hours, and now, when the hatch is opened, the crew of three astronauts has been bafflingly reduced to only one - and that one is in deep, silent shock. What happened to the other two? Eventually all of London will find out, to its horror.

The original BBC television serial of this captivated the British Isles in 1953, and the movie is even better. It delivers uncommonly intelligent midnight shocks aimed at adults via the direction of Val Guest and the script by Guest and Richard Landau. Donlevy is convincing as a two-fisted scientist who rides roughshod over all bureaucratic interference. As he aptly remarks, If the world waited for the judgment of committees, it would be standing still. And he is surpassed by lanky and spectral Richard Wordsworth, giving one of the outstanding performances of early science fiction movies as the sole surviving astronaut. It's a mutely menacing characterization that has often drawn comparison with Boris Karloff's work as the Frankenstein monster, and deservedly so.

The crickets chirp no more after Spaceship Q-1 blows Farmer Smith's front yard to smithereens in THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT.

26/06/2024

Coming to Film Noir Friday, June 28 at 10PM on Channel 192 - WHIRLPOOL (1950).

José Ferrer was as hot as a pistol on the world's movie screens in the early 1950s and this, his second movie, gives us a good explanation of why. He dominates the proceedings as a fascinatingly unscrupulous hypnotist/astrologer and astute amateur psychologist, both multilingual and as observantly deductive as Sherlock Holmes, whom the script endows with every imaginable sociopathic corruption of all those aptitudes, to enable his manipulation of any woman unfortunate enough to fall into his orbit.

Foremost of these is Gene Tierney as a vulnerable kleptomaniac, married to noted psychoanalyst Richard Conte. Ferrer happens upon the scene when Tierney is detained for shoplifting at a swank Beverly Hills department store. He gets her out of it, and naturally blackmail follows. Using post-hypnotic suggestion Ferrer induces Tierney to implicate herself in the murder of a dowager he has swindled and killed.

But this isn't the most melodramatic use of hypnotism in the movie, by a long shot. You'll have to see it to witness that plot twist; which, we are assured, was based on an actual incident in Germany several years prior. Or so the movie says.

24/06/2024

Select Board meeting, 6/17/24.

20/06/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater this Saturday, June 22 at 8PM on Channel 192 - THE MONOLITH MONSTERS (1957).

You will rarely find a more unusual invasion of planet Earth in Fifties sf movies than the one depicted here. Obsidian-black meteorite crystals lying shattered on the floor of the California desert grow into awesome skyscraper-tall towers of terror when soaked in water, turning human victims into stone and threatening to petrify the whole state!

The story is level-headed and clever within its own ground rules, the lead actors (Grant Williams, Lola Albright and Les Tremayne) convince us they believe it, and the special effects of the stone columns "marching" through the mountainous desert, collapsing on themselves and shooting up new spires, are fascinating. All in all it's much more engaging than any movie seemingly inspired by a comic book ad for a kid's crystal-growing kit has a right to be.

Property values in this part of town are about to take a drastic tumble, courtesy of THE MONOLITH MONSTERS.

20/06/2024

Coming to Film Noir tomorrow, June 21 at 10PM on Channel 192 - TRY AND GET ME! (a/k/a THE SOUND OF FURY, 1950).

Poor but decent blue-collar prole Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) is a recent arrival in postwar California with his wife and small boy, lured west from Boston by the Golden State's booming reputation of abundant jobs and a fresh start. But he's rapidly getting ground down by the hardscrabble reality beneath the illusion. ("Can I help it if a million other guys had the same idea?") Unemployed and living in a rundown rented cottage, he can hardly even afford to give his son 25 cents for a hot dog.

In film noir, the universe has an insidious way of knowing all of our vulnerabilities, and then contriving circumstances to exploit them, with disastrous consequences. So it is here. One day Howard meets glib, fast-talking, snappy-dressing, and super self-confident Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges) in a bowling alley. Charismatic Jerry offers him a job. Only after Howard has been sufficiently swayed by Jerry's sizzle does he get served the poisoned steak - Jerry wants him to drive the getaway car for a gas station robbery. In a moment of weakness, Howard agrees. Events spiral down nightmarishly from there.

Films that do smash business at the boxoffice don't get their names changed, and this one failed just as badly as TRY AND GET ME! as it had under its original and more poetic, less lurid title, THE SOUND OF FURY. Nonetheless, it's a tremendously powerful picture, a cinematic kick to the gut that has lost none of its power for being 74 years old.

Among other things, it's an indictment of fear-mongering yellow journalism, which is introduced in the character of a rationalistic and principled town newspaper columnist (Richard Carlson) who is persuaded to violate his journalistic ethics by the boost in circulation which rewards his switch to sensationalism in touting Jerry and Howard's "crime wave." The parallel between the columnist's temptation and Howard's is subtly drawn but very resonant. It gives this uncommonly deep melodrama added memorability.

13/06/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater this Saturday, June 15 at 8PM on Channel 192 - THE CITY OF THE DEAD (1960).

Somewhere far to the west of Boston lies the rotting little Massachusetts hamlet of Whitewood - a museum of 17th Century pioneer architecture where the sun never shines and covens of witches still gather to perform human sacrifices at the fog-shrouded hour of 13 o'clock. Two of these folks are the same people we meet in the film’s prologue, back in 1692, when one of them is getting burned at the stake by a mob of homicidal Puritans.

The film is so well-executed in most regards that it’s easy to forgive the fact all the characters here sound more like Brits than Bostonians, and that the total population of Whitewood seems to be about eight people. It's an atmospheric and intense little thriller with great faces, outstanding cinematography, and the dominating presence of Christopher Lee at the very peak of his magnificent malevolence, playing a college professor whose expertise in the black arts is of the do-it-yourself variety.

THE CITY OF THE DEAD - Christopher Lee as a college prof. We wonder how many of his coed students write "Love You" on their eyelids like they do in Indiana Jones's class.

13/06/2024

Coming to Film Noir Friday, tomorrow, June 14 at 10PM on Channel 192 - WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS (1950).

The very underrated Dana Andrews gives one of his best performances as Lieutenant Dixon, a loner New York police detective who does his best interrogations of suspects with his fists. Already walking a tightrope of dismissal at the start of the film for many brutality complaints, he plunges into real trouble when he is forced to punch back in self-defense while questioning a man implicated in a murder case, and the guy dies when he hits the floor. Dixon hides the body and then continues to work on the investigation of both the first murder and the disappearance of the witness he's killed.

Dana Andrews tended to be most convincing in roles for which he was called upon to suppress emotion, not release it, and that talent is used to outstanding dramatic results here. Dixon, closed off to all human exchange unless he's punching somebody, is what he is because of his relationship with his late father, a small-time hood. But is his violence a continuous righteous atonement for his father's crimes, or merely the uncontrolled impulses of his father's criminal blood?

A fellow could go nuts brooding over that question, and there are moments when we wonder if Dixon is heading that way. Compared to the slick imperturbability of Gary Merrill as his gang leader antagonist, Dixon comes across as by far the more socially dysfunctional. (Even if Merrill does constantly apply a tube of nasal spray to his nostrils, which we can take as 1950s code for co***ne abuse.) The whole film becomes a fight for Dixon's soul, and it isn't decided until the last few seconds.

In addition to Merrill, a great supporting cast includes Gene Tierney, Karl Malden, Tom Tully, Ruth Donnelly and Neville Brand. Joseph LaShelle did the immaculate black and white late-night New York cinematography, Ben Hecht wrote the thoughtful screenplay, and Otto Preminger directed with a sure hand. It's a winner all around.

06/06/2024

The Annual Town Meeting, Monday, June 3 at Tantasqua Regional Senior High School.

06/06/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater Saturday, June 8 at 8PM on Channel 192 - THE 27TH DAY (1957).

A lot of thought, although not action, went into this unusual science fiction melodrama from the depths of the Cold War. Aliens from a doomed planet decide that Earth would make an ideal new home. As it so happens, their ethical system forbids them from destroying any other race of intelligent life; but it says nothing about forbidding them from helping that race destroy themselves. (This loophole makes us wonder if a better title for the movie might not have been PLANET OF THE LAWYERS.)

Exploiting Earth's paranoid confrontation between East and West, the aliens abduct five average human beings from both sides of the Iron Curtain and give each of them a transparent disc. Each of these little mementos is customized to its recipient's brain waves, and can be triggered to destroy all human life within a radius of several thousand miles, while leaving everything else untouched. So the question is, when you hand out five such infernal machines to citizens of Red China, Red Russia, Austria, the UK, and the United States in 1957, **and then tell the whole world who those people are,** how long will it be before you have yourself a nice sterile planet?

It can't be said that the movie is a powerplant of melodrama, but its general level-headedness, intelligence, and faith in rationality goes down well and is a pleasing change of pace from most other science fiction pictures of the era. It's a good picture to see once, and with more mental commitment than most of our other Saturday night epics merit!

Incidentally, don't believe this poster, because it's ludicrous.

06/06/2024

Coming to Film Noir Friday tomorrow, June 7 at 10PM on Channel 192 - SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943).

Alfred Hitchcock called SHADOW OF A DOUBT his personal favorite of all his films, and we can readily see why. This tale of a teenage girl whose insulated family life in sunny California is gradually overthrown by the arrival of her beloved uncle from back east is a masterwork on all counts.

Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright) was named for her mother's brother Charles (Joseph Cotton), a smooth, courtly gentleman who works in some unidentified business. There's always been a psychological connection between the two Charlies, but Charlotte's belief that she knows her uncle through and through doesn't extend to the terrifying fact that he is actually a serial murderer of elderly rich widows. Charles has decided to visit his California relations for a while because the cops are on his trail in Philadelphia. How long will it take Charlie to intuit the shattering truth?
Wright and Cotton are outstanding, and the excellent supporting cast is particularly distinguished by Hume Cronyn as a mousey neighbor, always engaging Charlie's kindly father (Henry Travers) in their morbid hobby of plotting perfect murders - possibly Hitchcock's idea of his own audience.

In 1991 the movie was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress, as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

04/06/2024

Memorial Day parade in Sturbridge, Monday, May 27, 2024.

29/05/2024

Meeting of the Board of Selectmen, Monday, May 20th.

29/05/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater, Saturday June 1 at 8PM on Channel 192- KRONOS (1957).

Tonight we have an almost-spectacular low budget alien invasion movie, in which the Earth is ransacked for all types of industrial energy by a gigantic black metallic cuboid a hundred feet high. After first appearing in the form of an Earth-impacting asteroid that crashes off the Pacific coast of Mexico, it shows up on the beach next morning and starts pounding its way inland to nearby electric power plants and atom bomb depots, crushing peasants beneath its pile-driver legs and shooting deadly waves of some sort out of a hemispherical "head."

Stars Jeff Morrow, Barbara Lawrence and George O'Hanlon are rather forgettable, but the movie has some imaginative atmosphere and the design of Kronos itself is unique and elegant. It seems to be more of a mobile Brutalist skyscraper than a robot, and there's nothing else in 1950s sf movie monsters remotely like it. Picture a black acrylic paper clip dispenser sitting meekly on a desk at Staples. Suddenly it gets a notion to stack itself in two parts, grow as large as a ten-story office building, and go off to suck the world dry of its electricity. The mind boggles.

29/05/2024

Coming to Film Noir Friday, May 31 at 10PM on Channel 192 - Alfred Hitchcock’s THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955).

Alfred Hitchcock tossed off his “littlest” American movie with about a month of location shooting in Vermont in the autumn of 1954. In his filmography it sneaks in between the much larger-scale TO CATCH A THIEF and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. Not boasting the international star power of his typical productions, and frankly never striving for the level of suspenseful tension that was his trademark, it can fairly be thought of as Hitchcock taking a very relaxed busman’s holiday. But with its ensemble of delightful character actors and droll script by John Michael Hayes it’s also the most forward example of the current of black humor that ran throughout his films, and as such it’s still deliciously watchable almost 70 years later.

The trouble with Harry is that he’s dead. His fresh cadaver, bleeding from an unobtrusive wound in the head, with the blood matching the red toes of his argyle socks, is found in the woods by a young boy (Jerry Mathers, soon to become Beaver Cleaver). The boy’s mother (Shirley MacLaine in her film debut) and a retired sea captain (Edmund Gwenn) both have reason to worry that they may have committed an accidental murder. A spinster neighbor (Mildred Natwick), a local abstract impressionist artist (John Forsythe, playing an ultra-Vermont kind of beatnik), and the town’s constable (Royal Dano, driving a car from the 1920’s) are also involved. Many burials and exhumations of Harry afford an ample showcase for Hitchcock’s distinctively British dry humor. (“After we’ve dug him up, you go back to my place and I’ll make you some nice hot chocolate.”)

Even though rain forced much of the production indoors to an improvised studio in a high school gym, cinematographer Robert Burks’s color lensing of a russet Vermont October is exquisite. The acting is smooth, especially by the senior lovebirds Gwenn and Natwick, and Bernard Herrmann’s score, the first he wrote for a Hitchcock picture, skillfully enhances the eccentric mood. All in all, it’s a brightly polished and charming little locket of a movie.

"What seems to the the trouble, Captain?" THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955).

28/05/2024

Memorial Day commemoration at the Old Burial Ground, Thursday May 23, 2024.

23/05/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater, Saturday May 25 at 8PM on Channel 192- EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956).

The honeymoon of rocket scientist Dr. Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his bride Carol (Joan Taylor) becomes even more exciting than normal when a massive, impressive, but featureless spinning disk appears in the back window of their car, paces them overhead, and then zooms off, accompanied by a weird electronic whirring. Shortly thereafter, the attempted launch of Marvin's latest satellite is interrupted by the surprise landing of more saucers at the rocket base. Shooting breaks out and the base is destroyed. Through a rather clever plot twist, Marvin learns too late that the sound he and Carol had heard was a communication from the aliens in the saucer, requesting a peaceful meeting. They want to peacefully discuss taking over the Earth!

During his long, great career stop-motion effects master Ray Harryhausen usually animated dinosaurs and living skeletons. He does an equally vivid and individualistic job here with alien technology, as you can see below. The movie is well-acted and reasonably intelligent, albeit not the fastest-moving example of alien invasion the decade turned out, and with the typical pedestrian camerawork that characterized all of Columbia Pictures' sf movies in the decade. But Harryhausen could only be responsible for the wonders he turned out on his own tabletop, and they make the movie work, as they always did.

EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS. "When an armed and threatening power lands uninvited in our capital, we don't greet him with tea and cookies!" Oo-raw!

23/05/2024

Coming to Film Noir Friday, tomorrow May 24 at 10PM on Channel 192 - THE PROWLER (1951).

1951 has gone down as one of the great years in Hollywood history. In fact, it is so well-packed with outstanding films that one of the richest fruits of the year's harvest has gone overlooked for decades. That's tonight's attraction on Film Noir Friday, THE PROWLER.

Joseph Losey, soon to be forced into European exile for his leftist political views, directed this truly nightmarish drama, working from an original script co-written by another major blacklisted Hollywood talent, Dalton Trumbo. The story starts on the night that a married woman's fateful call to the police to report a prowler brings one particular cop into her life, with adulterous and ultimately murderous consequences.

Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes co-star as the couple whose illicit affair can only be concealed so long before its natural result becomes obvious. It's a stunning and artful examination of the closing trap of guilt, desperation, and our universal human refusal to recognize what is perfectly obvious when love clouds our perceptions. Don't miss it!

15/05/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater, Saturday, May 18 at 8PM on Channel 192- THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE (1959).

In the far-off future of the early 1970s, regular underwater shipping by cargo submarines beneath the North Pole is thrown into chaos when several of them are mysteriously destroyed. The super-advanced US Navy submarine Tiger Shark is sent to investigate, with all torpedo tubes locked and loaded. The crew discovers wondrously that the sinkings are the work of an underwater UFO, which actually appears to be a living creature itself!

Ramrod-spined Executive Officer Arthur Franz, who made a ton of this type of picture in the '50s, must vanquish the menace while also swapping political insults with idealistic young peacenik Brett Halsey, a scientist who has invented a mini-submarine that only he knows how to pilot.

The human drama is all by the book, but the special effects are both quaint and imaginative, featuring obviously-tiny submarine models that look like the baking-soda powered plastic variety that used to be included as prizes in cereal boxes. And the UFO is flown by a giant telepathic cyclops-monster made out of the disguised forearm of one of the effects technicians. As a plausible life form it makes no sense whatsoever, but nonetheless it's just plain gorgeous. After getting to know this fellow for ten minutes, a climax that involves the sub crew improvising an anti-aircraft missile out of a nuclear ICBM seems practically like a documentary.

15/05/2024

Coming to Friday Night Noir, May 17 at 10PM on Channel 192- PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953).

The incomparable Sam Fuller directed this vivid Cold War noir that puts all of his two-fisted idiosyncratic tropes to very entertaining work. Richard Widmark stars as an apolitical, amoral pickpocket named Skip McCoy- a cynical creep and three-time loser who by chance targets the handbag of Candy (Jean Peters), a Soviet spy's naive ex-girlfriend, on a crowded New York subway train. What he pulls out is more valuable than money - it's microfilm of a chemical formula very much desired by Uncle Joe Stalin.

The FBI was surveilling the woman and to track down McCoy, it enlists the New York City Police Department. They in turn call in their resident expert on Gotham low-lifes - Mo (Thelma Ritter), a street-tough but world-weary old necktie peddler and informer. Mo has reached the point in life at which her greatest ambition is a respectable funeral. She's able to identify Skip by his trademark technique of hiding his hand behind a newspaper as it extracts the victim's valuables. Will Skip ever turn patriotic? Will Candy fall in love with him? Will Mo get her fancy sendoff? Will Thelma Ritter win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for which she was nominated here?

Nobody has ever made better cinematic comic books for adults than Sam Fuller. This is one of his many gripping efforts. The characterizations are as ripe as they are shallow, the plot is fast and involving, and the ideas of loyalty to country and to other human beings are provocatively juggled. According to any standard political spectrum from Left to Right, Sam's flag-waving was unclassifiable, but it is safe to say that if you don't see this picture you'll miss the work of one of the great American originals.

10/05/2024

Board of Selectmen meeting, May 6.

09/05/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater, Saturday, May 11 at 8PM on Channel 192 - CURSE OF THE DEMON (1957).

The gentle English countryside becomes a haven for devil worship and supernatural menace in tonight’s engrossing Drive In Theater feature, one of the mostly highly-regarded horror films of all time.

Director Jacques Tourneur, working in a famous creative partnership with producer Val Lewton, had made some of the most distinguished and sophisticated horror movies of the 1940s. Lewton died in 1951, but Tourneur went on to an even greater accomplishment with CURSE OF THE DEMON.

Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis) is a wealthy and hospitable gentleman who puts on magic shows for the local children every Halloween on his country estate. But when he isn’t pulling puppy dogs out of his silk hat, he further perfects his true calling as the world’s most authoritative (and murderous) cult leader and practitioner of the black arts. He can invoke a demon to dispose of scientific skeptics who are arrogant enough to libel him in public. And that’s exactly what we witness in the first few very frightening and unnerving minutes of the movie. He also has an interesting relationship with his rather dotty mother (Athene Seyler) who lives with him. It’s half-loving, half-menacing; and for that matter, we also sense occasional mild regret in him for the fates of his victims. It’s splendid acting by MacGinnis, perfectly balanced between threat and charm, one of the best performances in any fantastic film of the 1950s.

Tourneur battled against his producer, Hal E. Chester, who was determined to show Karswell’s monster early. Tourneur wanted to rely on the power of suggestion alone, as he had been allowed to do by Val Lewton; and his co-writer, Charles Bennett, who agreed with him, even said that if Chester ever came up his driveway he’d shoot him. But in this case Tourneur’s restraint would have betrayed him - because this demon is such a lovely monster indeed. It resembles a giant winged, horned, clawed and enraged two-legged felid which manifests in a gush of sparks and brimstone smoke. The spectacle of this fearsome thing in its infernal cloud levitating toward us with deadly intent over a nocturnal meadow isn’t soon forgotten. And when the next rationalist, a smug American psychologist named Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews) arrives in London to expose Karswell as a charlatan, the audience gets to spend the rest of the film feeling warmly superior to him. As Holden patiently and scientifically mansplains everything to the niece (Peggy Cummins) of Karswell’s last victim, we know he’s a jackass; and because we have seen exactly what he is up against, we take a delicious pleasure in waiting for him to be wised up. Here is one time when the old adage that nothing is as scary as one’s own imagination just doesn’t hold true.

The evil Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis) in his magician’s guise as harmless Dr. Bobo the Magnificent, sizing up his next victim (Dana Andrews). CURSE OF THE DEMON (1957)

09/05/2024

Coming to Friday Night Noir, tomorrow evening at 10PM on Channel 192- HE RAN ALL THE WAY (1951).

John Garfield dominates what turned out to be his last film as a petty hood who kills a cop in a bungled payroll robbery, then feigns affection for a naive working-class girl (Shelley Winters) so he can hole up in her small apartment, holding as hostages her, her parents, and her kid brother. As the ordeal lengthens, the young woman's attitude toward the family's captor becomes increasingly ambiguous. Has she become so disillusioned by his brutal abuse of her father that she will alert the police, or is she still somehow attracted to him - a case of Stockholm Syndrome long before that term was even coined?

After much angst at the hands of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which pressed him to identify any Communists he had associated with in Hollywood, Garfield died of a heart attack and a wrecked career a little less than a year after HE RAN ALL THE WAY was released. Possibly the fatal blow was the FBI's insistence that he denounce his own wife, who was a Communist. Although he was only 38 at the time he made the movie, he looks puffier and older than that on screen. But the bottom line is that he delivers a fine portrait of a violent and bullying little nobody.

The movie itself rides on the always-watchable chemistry between Garfield and his co-star Winters, who portrays much the same type of simple, emotionally-victimized waif she also did to Oscar-nominated effect that same year in A PLACE IN THE SUN. A vital choice she has to make at the end of the film will decide her captor's fate, and all the way to the end we're really not sure which way she's going to go.

03/05/2024

Meeting of the Sturbridge School Committee, May 2.

02/05/2024

Coming to Drive In Theater Saturday, May 4 at 8PM on Channel 192 - WAR OF THE SATELLITES (1958).

In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's shocking launch of Sputnik I in October of 1957, Roger Corman didn't waste a second in getting this $70,000 epic off the launching pad in early 1958. Corman, who was to exploitation movies as Werner Von Braun was to America's rocket industry, proposed a near future in which ten crewed satellites launched by the UN's Space Control have been blasted out of the sky by a malignant alien presence, which is determined to keep the pestilence known as the human race confined to Earth. Even though the record of what we have done to our home planet and the other living creatures we share it with strongly suggests that indeed **we probably are** a pestilence, you know we're not going to sit still for getting quarantined. Mission Number 11 will be commanded by the chief of the whole satellite project. Well, actually it will be commanded by his co**se, which has been taken over by the aliens after they forced his car off the road. This is a mere technicality.

The picture has a furious pace and total conviction. It also dramatizes our instinctive racial drive to overcome all obstacles and expand outward into space much more directly than any previous sf movie. The climax, which probably took about $5000 to film, is ecstatic, grandiose, and almost promethean. And therefore it doesn't seem to matter all that much that a reporter in one scene then becomes an astronaut a few scenes later, or that the daring crew launches into space while reclining in lounge chairs with wooden legs resting on the soundstage floor. That's just Roger Corman at work. His genius was in getting away with it.

02/05/2024

Coming to Friday Night Noir tomorrow, May 3 at 10PM on Channel 192 - QUICKSAND (1950).

Garage mechanic Mickey Rooney wants a first date with attractive waitress Jeanne Cagney so badly that he pays for it by lifting $20 from the garage's till, fully intending to pay it back the next morning. But surprise of surprises, the company's bookkeeper shows up early the next day, and Mickey is forced to improvise first one, then another and another desperate scheme to pay back his rapidly escalating debt. It's 80 minutes of breathlessly robbing Peter to pay Paul, climaxing in a possible murder charge.

Unfortunately for Mickey the concept of Dutch treat was unknown in 1950, but there is a great Austrian treat in the person of Peter Lorre, who makes a very welcome impression as a sleazy arcade owner on Santa Monica Pier, looking just as waterlogged, windblown and washed up as the seaweed on the beach.

29/04/2024

Sturbridge Historical Society meeting, April 25- Sturbridge in The Civil War.

25/04/2024

Coming to "Drive In Theater" this Saturday, April 27 at 8PM on Channel 192 - THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961).

Around 1960, B-movie titan Roger Corman sensed the end of the craze of cheap teen-oriented science fiction pics that had given him his start in the Fifties. And so the unconquerable schlockmeister left that dying world, and astutely invaded new and somewhat more reputable territory: the classic horror stories of Edgar Allen Poe. (Classic in this case being a euphemism for "in the public domain.")

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, Corman's second such project, was a major commercial hit and even miraculously pleased the critics, emerging as one of the best entries of the genre. It puts the great Vincent Price through the wringer of Richard Matheson's intense script as the guilt-ridden son of an infamous torturer of the Spanish Inquisition, who still has some of dear old dad's work tools just lying around going to waste in the cavernous castle basement. Price is a widower, and when his bereaved brother-in-law (John Kerr) shows up to find out how his sister died, Price is pushed to, and then beyond the brink of madness.

It's vivid, baroque entertainment, with an ending that still punches you in the gut over 60 years later. Somewhere out there, Poe is smiling.

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Videos

Select Board meeting, 6/17/24.

The Annual Town Meeting, Monday, June 3 at Tantasqua Regional Senior High School.

Memorial Day parade in Sturbridge, Monday, May 27, 2024.

Meeting of the Board of Selectmen, Monday, May 20th.

Memorial Day commemoration at the Old Burial Ground, Thursday May 23, 2024.

Board of Selectmen meeting, May 6.

Meeting of the Sturbridge School Committee, May 2.

Sturbridge Historical Society meeting, April 25- Sturbridge in The Civil War.

Board of Selectmen's meeting, 4/16/24.

Board of Selectmen/Finance Committee 4/9/24.

Board of Selectmen meeting, 4/1/24.

Coming to Drive In Theater, Saturday, April 6 at 8PM on Channel 192 - I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958). Sensation-seekers who were drawn into theaters in 1958 by the most famously lurid movie title of the decade were probably surprised (and perhaps disappointed) to find this moody, atmospheric and well-done science fiction thriller. The leading character is a young woman (Gloria Talbott) whose post-nuptial disillusionment has a wild explanation - her groom (Tom Tryon) was kidnaped by aliens while driving home from his bachelor party, and replaced by a monstrous duplicate. The aliens can’t have children with their own females anymore, so they have come to Earth to mess around with human women, experiment with their own chromosomes, and generally get the ball rolling once again, racial-salvation wise. But the project is hard on the duped human brides, because the aliens make very disappointing domestic company, cold and sterile, both emotionally and biologically. Most of the dramatic force is carried by Gloria Talbott, who is affecting in the role of a young Good Housekeeping-style wife who soon becomes baffled and frustrated that the warm man she loved when they were dating has now vanished into indifference and secretiveness. Of course, this being the 1950s, she blames herself. By contrast, ersatz hubby Tom Tryon is sealed off from both his attractive young wife and the audience. Tryon never had much of a career in movies and his successful woodenness in this film was an unrepeatable case of the ideal match between the actor’s abilities and his role. Much of the picture was shot day-for-night (daytime substituting for evening by the use of a darkening filter on the camera) by a little-known cinematographer, and it isn’t really convincing in a realistic way; but it does give the night scenes a strange pearly luminosity that works dramatically, as the aliens infiltrate the town’s police force and other important municipal functions. Plenty of d