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CarolTheDabbler's Replies
<blockquote>I remember being upset when he was unceremoniously killed at the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes. (Such a bleak movie...).</blockquote>
If it makes you feel any better, Franciscus felt the same way (as quoted in the book Planet of the Apes Revisited):
<blockquote><blockquote>I thought the ending was awful. A picture without hope...I think Ted (Post, director) and I PLEADED for someone to survive this mess, be it Chuck (Heston)'s character or the girl or Brent's character - SOMEBODY far enough away from the explosion for whatever reason so that mankind is still left.</blockquote></blockquote>
<blockquote>He played the villain in Good Guys Wear Black opposite Chuck Norris. For me, it was jarring...</blockquote>
I know what you mean, having seen him play a heartless bad guy once myself. But on the other hand, he did it so well! (Dunno how I would have reacted to that as a kid, of course.)
<blockquote>Night Slaves was a made-for-tv movie which I found creepy (but again, I was a 12-year-old kid). A man (Franciscus) and his wife are passing through a small town, and discover that the townsfolk awaken each night and start shuffling around silently to do... something (no spoilers here)... but with no memory of it during the day.</blockquote>
Thanks for the non-spoiler! I'm intrigued by what little info I've seen online about this. Aha! It's available on YouTube. Will have to check it out.
Hey, liscarkat and kabukiarmadi110 -- thanks for sharing! There are photos from this movie all over the internet, and the critters were created by the legendary Ray Harryhausen, so that speaks well for the visual quality -- but I don't have much of a feel for what the film itself is like, and alas it doesn't seem to be on YouTube for a quick peek. Wal-mart does offer it in both DVD and Blu-ray, though. <b>ADDED:</b> I'd have found it on YouTube and Amazon if I'd spelled "Gwangi" correctly! (But it isn't free on YouTube.)
Anything else you can tell the rest of us that might help us decide if it's worth springing for?
And now for something a bit different: <i>The 500 Pound Jerk</i>, a 1973 TV movie, is kind of a comedy, with a good bit of character-driven goofiness, though it's also a drama with a lot of heart.
The term "jerk" may be a pun, overtly referring to a type of weight-lifting move, but perhaps also a sly reference to Alex Karras's character, a large, muscular fellow (weighing perhaps half of the title weight) from an isolated rural community, who is naive as regards the ways of the wider world, but far too decent to be termed a jerk in my opinion.
Franciscus plays a city dude whose car breaks down near Karras's repair shop, and the muscular guy inspects the underside by picking up the front end and lifting it way off the ground (because his mechanical hoist is broken). So the city dude gets the idea to train the naive guy for the Olympics weight-lifting competition, with himself as manager and an eye toward lucrative endorsement deals.
Then of course there's romance and there's international intrigue. And of course there's a happy ending -- it's that kind of movie. I won't say it's one of my favorites, but it definitely has its merits. I watched it on YouTube; haven't found a DVD, but it does seem to be available now and then on cable and streaming channels.
I also enjoyed a 1978 Australian TV movie called <i>Puzzle</i> (available on YouTube; Amazon has it on VHS cassette). Franciscus plays a former US Olympic tennis player who has suffered a career-ending knee injury, so is now a not-very-successful tennis instructor. His former wife's second husband dies. The police call it suicide but she thinks it's murder and is so frightened that she seeks help from the only person she trusts, her ex-husband. The two become involved in international intrigue and a stolen treasure, and I'll say no more except that I consider it an engaging movie with a satisfactory ending.
I was looking to see if Amazon UK had it. They don't, but the first item that came up in response to my search for Franciscus Puzzle was an item with that very name -- a jigsaw puzzle of Pope Francis!
I've seen several of the other Franciscus items from YouTube, including a 1959 episode of <i>Death Valley Days</i> called "Lady of the Press." He plays a newspaper editor in an Old West town where the other paper is run by a woman (played by Mary Webster) who is, of course, on the other side of the political fence. Here's a picture from IMDb:
<blockquote><url>https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0556651/mediaviewer/rm2108499200/</url></blockquote>
Like a number of other early TV dramas, <i>Death Valley Days</i> ran only half an hour (25 minutes not counting commercials), so the plots had to move right along. Nevertheless, they generally managed to have some depth, as with this episode, which includes an interesting twist as well as some humor.
Sad indeed. He was a heavy smoker, alas.
I don't recall ever seeing Mike Longstreet smoke, though, so I like to think that he and Nikki are still investigating insurance scams, kind of semi-retired by now.
<blockquote>It was a TV movie is really all I know. I cannot find a trailer anywhere. I don't think I ever saw it.</blockquote>
I see. I'll try to find out more.
<b>Added:</b> <i>The Man Inside</i> is a Canadian TV movie from 1976. According to IMDb:
<blockquote>An undercover cop [Franciscus] infiltrates a major heroin ring. He soon finds himself in a position to take $2 million without anyone knowing about it, a situation made all the more tempting because of his girlfriend's griping about their constant struggles to make ends meet....</blockquote>
They rate it at 6.7 out of 10, but that's based on only a few votes. Sounds interesting, though. (Note that the title has also been used for a number of other, unrelated productions.)
Thanks for your list! I'm somewhat familiar with your first three (and may have seen <i>Apes</i> when it was in the theaters), but <i>The Man Inside</i> is a new one on me. Could you tell us something about it?
So far my second-favorite James Franciscus credit is the 1976 TV movie <i>One of My Wives Is Missing</i>. It's currently available on YouTube as well as on Amazon. Despite the quirky title, it's not a comedy, but rather a very suspenseful mystery, with Franciscus as the bewildered husband, Jack Klugman as the cop, and Elizabeth Ashley as -- well, her identity is part of the mystery.
It's very suspenseful (but somehow avoids being nerve-wracking), with lots of twists and turns and an ending that was a total surprise to me, but which wrapped the whole thing up very neatly. My only complaint is that it could -- perhaps -- have benefitted from a little tightening (understandable when there's a time slot to fill). It was nominated for an Edgar (the mystery community's equivalent to the Emmy/Oscar).
Here's a view <i>from</i> the walkway above the kitchen (shown in the prior photo), this time looking at the main house:
<blockquote><url>https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/166/mbphoto/149/genMid.889149_2_4.jpg</url></blockquote>
Note the arches on the ground floor (which we were looking through in the prior photo). Also note the tree at left, which is presumably the tree that's basically on the line between #835 and #837 in Google's aerial view -- this confirms that we're looking southeast, toward the main house.
There's also a tree in the next courtyard on <i>Longstreet</i> -- but it's by the other (southwest) end of #835's courtyard, not a good spot for a tree in real life (judging by the Google view, where there's a large building there, rather than another courtyard).
And here's #835's main page on that real-estate site, so you can "See all 13 photos," including the kitchen, a nice clear shot of the front, a view from the cast-iron gallery (the "balcony" where Mike and Duke were standing in "The Girl With the Broom"), and far more rooms than we've ever seen on the show:
<blockquote><url>https://www.redfin.com/LA/New-Orleans/835-Chartres-St-70116/home/79391838</url></blockquote>
Check out this photo -- look familiar?
<blockquote><url>https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/166/mbpaddedwide/149/genMid.889149_3_4.jpg</url></blockquote>
Look again! That's a courtyard view inside the <i>real</i> #835, from a real-estate website. As in the show, you're looking at one end of the kitchen building. Note that the privacy wall (at left) is <i>much</i> higher than in the show, so that you can barely see the top of it at one point. Note also the brick archway in the foreground -- don't recall ever seeing that in the show, so either I wasn't paying attention or they omitted it from the set.
It's been a couple of weeks, so I'll go ahead and post my current best guess as to how the robbers retrieved their rope -- but I'll blank it out as a spoiler (just mouse-over to reveal what it says):
<spoiler> <b>They used a double-length rope.</b> The fourth man attached one end to the building across the street. When the robbers arrived on the roof of the target building, he heaved the free end (with a weight attached) over to them. They passed the rope around some sturdy object and heaved the free end back to the fourth guy, who attached it to the same place as the first end. Then when the robbers were safely across, all that needed to be done was untie one end of the rope, pull the entire length onto that building, detach the second end, pack up the rope and leave.</spoiler>
Please point out any problems you see with that theory. Also, would love to hear more ideas of how they could have done it!
The Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carré Digital Survey has information about the house, here:
<blockquote><url>https://www.hnoc.org/vcs/property_info.php?lot=18515</url></blockquote>
According to that site, the property is 24 feet wide and 65 feet 8 inches deep. My eyeball estimate of the Google aerial view in the previous post puts the house proper (the front building) at roughly 24 by 40 feet, the courtyard roughly 24 by 10, and the kitchen building the remaining 24 by 16 feet.
The "Chain of Title" tab lists owners of that bit of land back to 1722, although the three houses were not built till about a hundred years later. The "Citations" tab mentions (rather vaguely) that a newspaper article dated New Year's Day of 1971 says the house will serve as the title character's office in an upcoming television series called <i>Longstreet</i>.
Note: "<i>Vieux Carré</i>" (meaning "Old Square") is a French-language name for the historic part of New Orleans that's generally called the "French Quarter" in English.
You've made a valid point, liscarkat -- but it's really just a waste of time to feed the troll.
As others have already said, the dog's name was Pax. When the dog is first introduced (in the pilot), with his name pronounced like "packs," Mike correctly identifies it as the Latin word for "peace," but then asks wouldn't that be pronounced "pahx"-- which is indeed correct for Latin pronunciation.
Unfortunately, though, in American English, "pahx" is also the pronunciation of "pox" (as in "smallpox" and "chicken pox") -- therefore the dog's name continues to be pronounced with a short A (like "packs").