It’s the nature of acting that there will be good parts and bad parts, and that if you want to eat, you can’t always afford to be choosy. Nevertheless, this platitude hardly accounts for all those actors – or all those agents – who apparently can’t tell a good script from a stinker. Nor can it explain away the number of actors for whom a major award is the first stop on the road to oblivion. For some, the journey from professional triumph to professional humilation is slow and steady; for others, it happens so fast, it takes your breath away.

So join us as we take a look at the careers of some actors who truly do know what it’s like to go from one extreme to the other.

It’s FALLING STARS – all through February at the B-Masters’ blog!

THE HAUNTING (1999)

In which Jan de Bont and David Self teach us all new appreciation for Robert Wise’s 1960 adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s seminal horror novel by botching every one of its set-pieces. In which a subtle tale of psychological horror becomes the $80 million equivalent of trying to frighten someone by blowing up a paper bag and bursting it behind them.

In which we learn that 19th century architects never argued with their clients, that decapitations don’t bleed, that a dead child in your bed is nothing to get worked up about, and that the best way to rid your house of an evil spirit is by yelling at it.

Oh – and that scientists are unethical. Big surprise.

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Well…I can honestly say there have been few years I’ve been as glad to see the back of as 2011…and I suspect I’m not the only one here to feel that way.

Thank you to all those who stuck by us in what has been a pretty lean stretch. The visits and the comments help more than you can know.

But no more of that! Here we are in those wonderful few days when we can kid ourselves that everything’s going to be different from now on - so let’s enjoy it!

Here’s hoping for a much better 2012; a year filled to the brim with - as opposed to occasionally interrupted by - monsters, maniacs, and mad science, nunchucks and ninjas, killer animals and amateur pilots, and dreadful, dreadful DVD covers…

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THE DARK EYES OF LONDON (1939)

In which an alarming number of drowning victims are fished out of the Thames, all of them insured for surprisingly large amounts of money, in spite of being effectively alone in the world…

The trail of carnage leads from the Greenwich Insurance Company, headed by disgraced former medical man Dr Feodor Orloff, to a home for destitute blind men run by the dedicated Mr Dearborn, who is blind himself.

Throw in one victim’s beautiful daughter, a dumb and blind violinist, a jovial forger, a wisecracking Chicago cop, a hulking, disfigured henchman, a drowning pool and a square-jawed London detective, and we have a story whose moral seems to be never send the police to do a homicidal maniac’s job…

Observation: In England, insurance fraud is a bigger deal than multiple murder.

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And after a thoroughly ridiculous amount of pondering, my nomination for the first true killer animal film is—

THE NAKED JUNGLE (1954)

In which plantation owner, practising domestic tyrant and all-around self-declared superior male Charlton Heston gets a little more than he bargained for with the arrival of mail-order bride Eleanor Parker. Their inevitable conflict is, however, somewhat rudely interrupted by the arrival of what is at one point described as, “Forty square miles of agonising death”.

It turns out to be an understatement.

Fun fact: this is one of the films to which I attribute my hang-up about eye-violence…

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What’s that little ditty people used to write in year-books? Ah, yes—

Good luck for the future / As years go by / And may the Blue Bird of Happiness/ Poop in your eye…

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THE BLUE BIRD (1976)

The first ever US-Soviet co-production, this children’s film is intended to convey a message about being thankful for what you have, but instead leaves the audience feeling suicidally depressed. Starring some sloppily painted doves, an embarrassed supporting cast in second-rate pantomime costumes, and Liz Taylor in four roles.

Hmph. Give me the first ever US-Japanese co-production any day!

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We’re the B-Masters. That’s just who we are. We yiz who we yiz and that’s all that we yiz. And that’s why, when we set out to do a tribute, it sometimes ends up looking like…something else.

Take this month’s Roundtable, for example. You wouldn’t think it would be hard to do an appropriate tribute to Elizabeth Taylor, now, would you? We didn’t think so either. Until we started dibsing films.

National Velvet? Nuh-uh. Father Of The Bride? Not exactly. A Place In The Sun? ‘Fraid not. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof? Well, I’m pretty sure Tennessee Williams is in there somewhere…

Well, look on the bright side. We always wanted this blog to be educational.

So join us as we investigate THE OTHER ELIZABETH TAYLOR – all through August at the B-Masters’ Blog.

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JET STORM (1959)

In which we find out that the British do disaster movies…just a little differently.

Richard Attenborough heads an ensemble cast as Ernest Tilley, a man literally maddened by grief when his young daughter is killed by a hit-and-run driver. After a two-year search, Ernest finally tracks down and corners the man responsible, meaning to take a full revenge on him. And if that requires blowing up a plane and killing not only the guilty party but himself, his own wife, and everybody else on board, well, so be it.

Fortunately, however, the plane is under the command of Stanley Baker; and if a man is capable of taking on the entire Zulu nation, he should certainly be up to the task of dealing with a deranged Dickie Attenborough – right?

Maybe…

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Just some housekeeping, folks, while I battle a killer work deadline and an even more killer dose of the flu…

I have revised, reformatted and added screenshots to AMPHIBIAN MAN (1962) – damn; it’s been ages since I watched this, and I’d almost forgotten how good it is! – and reformatted and added screenshots to MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR (1954), which…isn’t quite as good, but does have its moments.

Sort of. Kind of. If you tilt your head and squint…

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MAGDALENA, POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL (1974)

And the Exorcist rip-offs just keep coming…

After her grandfather is murdered and crucified, the innocent young Magdalena Winter begins to behave strangely, using foul and blasphemous language, having convulsions, drooling, and tearing her clothes off at the slightest opportunity.

You know – the usual.

The makers of this film evidently felt that we wouldn’t be able to tell when Magdalena is herself and when she isn’t, so they beat it into our heads with a soundtrack that is 50% sickly sweet piano, 50% Theremin.

Oh – and this probably goes without saying, but – NSFW.