New Books!

Apocalypse Later has now expanded from blog to print! My first two books are now available at Amazon and the other usual online stores. Click on the images above or the titles below to visit their pages at amazon.com.

Huh? An A-Z of Why Classic American Bad Movies Were Made
(front cover by Eric Schock of Evil Robo Productions)

Features

I'm climbing the stairway to Cinematic Heaven to review everything in the IMDb Top 250 List, supposedly the greatest motion pictures of all time. Are they really? Find out here.
I'm also driving the highway to Cinematic Hell for the awesome folks at Cinema Head Cheese to post a review a week of the very worst films of all time. These are so bad that they make Uwe Boll look good.
I'm reviewing everything shown at the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, now in its 9th year. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 films and to my reviews of all 2012 films.
I'm also going to review everything I can from the Phoenix Film Festival, now in its 13th year. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 films.
I reviewed all films shown at the independent horror film festival, Phoenix FearCon, now in its 5th year. Here's an index to my 2012 festival reviews.

Monday, 23 April 2007

A Sailor-Made Man (1921) Fred Newmeyer

Abington Arms is an ultra fashionable summer resort populated by the ultra rich. One such playboy without a care in the world is Harold Lloyd in a bit of a departure for him, heir to $20m and an attitude to match. He decides to marry Mildred Davis, which of course he would do in real life soon enough, but her father, a steel magnate, wants him to prove himself by getting a job. So he joins the navy, just like that. Six months later his boat is off Khairpura-Bhandanna and so is that of the girl, who's now sailing the world with her foks. Of course she gets kinapped by the Maharajah and carried off to his harem, so it's up to Harold and his new found tough guy sailor buddy to save her.

This was Harold Lloyd's first feature length movie, even though it's only a whisker over three quarters of an hour long. Apparently it started out as just another short like his previous films but the gags kept coming and coming and so the film got longer and longer. Certainly that fits what I saw here because there's no let up at all. It's consistently funny from start to finish yet doesn't even feel like 45 minutes. In fact everything is so natural that it doesn't even feel like Lloyd is trying, he's just naturally funny and that's what every comedian has been aiming at since comedy began. I got to the end of this one, laughing all the way, and wanted to start over from scratch and watch it again. No wonder it made half a million at the box office and turned Harold Lloyd into a feature star.

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