Cinema Disaster: Prisoners of the Sun

You know a movie is bad when it actually feels like an insult to von Danikenism – and I have zero patience with von Danikenism, just saying.

Honestly, this is a pretty standard bad Egyptology movie, ancient aliens subgenre. It has traps, scenery chewing by everyone (not just the bad guys), a Hidden Bloodline <tm>, and…completely forgets to mention any gods other than Ra (good) and Osiris (evil). We actually see images of the others, such as a statuette of Isis, but…nope.

(The dig scene is actually not too terrible, though. I’ve seen worse).

“No ancient Egyptian was taller than 5’2” is a take, though.

John Rhys-Davies plays Hayden Masterton and oh yes, plenty of tooth marks on the scenery, also marrying somebody because she has the right Ancient DNA <tm> is a…thing. And at least this movie treats the women reasonably well.

It was apparently intended to be a remake of The Mummy but…yeah, not even close.

Oh, and there’s bad mathematics. There’s literally bad mathematics.

Somehow, this stinker cost 18 million to produce…somehow.

The Avengers 3.24 “Concerto”

A Russian concert pianist and a dead girl. And lots of blackmail. And more Anglo-Russian cooperation.

Cathy is captured, tied up, and forced to play Russian roulette.

Also, learning a move from Saturday afternoon British television? Not this show…the fight choreography is never particularly good.

The Great Dane makes an adorable, if brief, appearance. Yes, I do track appearances of the Great Dane. They are not remotely frequent enough.

The hat swap is also adorable.

The Avengers 3.25 “Esprit de Corps”

Missed opportunities…an e at the end would have made this so much punnier.

Also, the guy tries to give Cathy a very fine Scottish whiskey, “25 years old and perfectly blended.”

I don’t think they are this clueless about whiskey…it totally should have been a single malt, but I think it was done on purpose to make the guy look like a poser.

Lots of posing, in fact. Kilts, bagpipe playing (not all of it good), and firing squads.

Stuart pretenders to the throne are actually a semi regular thing, but Cathy being the latest one (not her idea, of course) is…amusing.

The coup happens entirely off screen because they probably couldn’t afford it. Not that it was ever going to succeed, of course.

I still want that e…

The Avengers 3.26 “Lobster Quadrille”

A dead man isn’t dead. His wife knows. His father is completely in denial. There are also chess sets involved…chess sets with heroin summoning.

The bad guys think they’ve dealt with the spy…all they’ve done is summon more! That tends to be what happens.

The episode is thin on plot, especially for an episode that is both a season finale and the departure of one of the leads – Honor Blackman quit for the much better paying job of “Bond girl.”

(Apparently, in the original script, she died a nasty death, but they decided that was too much of a downer. Instead, Cathy Gale goes on holiday to Barbados and never comes back. What happens to her isn’t established, but there is more conflict between her and Steed in season three, so…)

That makes the end of this season a watershed for several reasons. Although season four was still filmed in black-and-white, it was shot on film, not video tape, and the quality and style change. I remember much more of the later series, even though I didn’t watch any of it first run.

Andor 2.9 “Welcome to the Rebellion”

The big question of resistance: When do you give up on working within the system? When do you acknowledge that the system is broken?

Mon and Bail have different answers to this, and each think the other is brave. Of course, Mon now finds out what she’s signed up for.

She’s been a senator since she was a child. She’s lived in a rarified, privileged world, and now she’s plunged into grit…and, of course, violence. The dramatic escape comes with a fair bit of that.

And the trigger for her flight is, perhaps, not so much the massacre on Ghorman as the removal of Dasi Oran, the senator for Ghorman, from the chamber.

Andor wants to retire and hide with Bix. He gives a massive speech without thinking about what she might want to do. This is like the Star Wars spy thriller equivalent of a surprise proposal.

Bix…disappears. Because she doesn’t see any other choice. Nice move, Andor. Nice move.

Guys? Don’t do the surprise proposal thing. It never works.