Stuff I love

[thisbluespirit]

corvidology came up with this idea, which sounds much more fun than shit-posting:



I don't know if I'll post every day, but I also don't know how to be short about stuff I love. Anyway, I just randomly discovered (via someone linking some of the others on tumblr) that someone's reuploaded a lot of the Thriller episodes onto YouTube. (If you remember, the ones I started epically picspamming for the lols before I gave up - there were 30+ episodes okay - and which mainly involve Americans getting randomly menaced every time they visit the UK). Including, yes, you've guessed it...

Good Salary, Prospects, Free Coffin, aka the One Where Julian Glover and James Maxwell move in together and bury girls in the back garden. Theoretically this is because they're spies with a ridiculously complicated and improbable plan, but it actually involves Julian wearing manly pullies and digging graves while sneering at James Maxwell for reading classic lit and wearing cardigans and vaguely angsting about all the murdering going on.

Plus, it has the proper number of Americans getting menaced, natty knitwear, Keith Barron is randomly the world's worst boyfriend, and basically it is 1 hr and 10 minutes of pure beige cheese.

I have a lot of things I love with people I love in and I could recommend many of them and rhapsodise about them. This is not one of those, but, let's be honest, I have watched this too many times since liadt sent me a piratey version and since I got the actual anthology myself. I just wish it was a sitcom with less murdering and more episodes.

Thriller was not really for me, but I did enjoy the starry casts, the supernatural ones (like the one where Diana Dors is Satan and Patrick Troughton is a drunken priest) and the ones that were pure cheese. I also liked Suzanne Neve getting to sword fight and seeming truly nice and normal before she tried to bake people in ovens and I was highly amused at Brian Clemens' determination to menace any and all Americans who dared to cross the Atlantic.* But mostly I love the above piece of 100% cheddar. (Alas poor Babs, though! Too dim to live.)

I think this post is totally in the spirit of both memes.


* Thriller was an ITC film series, made with US money. The US backers liked to see American characters in leading roles. However, in Thriller that starts to look like something they should have thought through a little bit harder, much to my amusement...

Comments

[rydra_wong]

Good Salary, Prospects, Free Coffin, aka the One Where Julian Glover and James Maxwell move in together and bury girls in the back garden. Theoretically this is because they're spies with a ridiculously complicated and improbable plan, but it actually involves Julian wearing manly pullies and digging graves while sneering at James Maxwell for reading classic lit and wearing cardigans and vaguely angsting about all the murdering going on.

WHAAAAAAT (ETA: I hope it's clear that this is me being TOTALLY SOLD on this). Well, that's my next viewing sorted.

[thisbluespirit]

Ha, yes, don't worry, I got that!

Although, mind, it's Thriller, I wouldn't blame you for marking it down for extreme avoidance at any cost. I just like it because I'm not up to the more serious horror-y serial killer ones - I like tackiness and cheese!

The trying to menace all the Americans thing though will never get old. :lol:

[rydra_wong]

Also, the Stuff I Love idea is brilliant -- is there an initial post where corvidology lays it out? I would like to link!

[thisbluespirit]

It's here, although it's very informal, really!

[rydra_wong]

Thanks, I have signal-boosted! More posting about Stuff We Love should always be encouraged!

[liadt]

I apologise for ruining your life yet again;p And yay for Julian Glover being manly, preferably with hands on hips:)

[thisbluespirit]

Or like this:



You haven't ruined my life! I was so ill when you sent me my very own copy of this you probably helped save it. <3

[liadt]

Hee, Julian Glover is the best;D You don't get this without years of acting in Shakespeare first.

Awwww *hugs* Although "Thriller saved my life" would make a very alarming headline!

[paranoidangel]

I like the idea of a Stuff I Love meme - and the theme fits in with what I intend to post this evening.

[thisbluespirit]

Ha, I think we like to post about what we love... :-D

[paranoidangel]

And it's a nice happy thing to do.

[swordznsorcery]

And really, who couldn't love dodgy cardies, an abundance of beige, and people being buried in the garden?! Almost a shame that they couldn't fit a drunk Patrick Troughton into that episode as well.

[thisbluespirit]

Well, as the Patrick Troughton one is my other favourite and already had Diana Dors as Mary Poppins-Satan, a whole bunch of Americans waiting to be menaced, and Ed Bishop being too nice to survive, I think they had to share out the delights. :-D

Oh, Thriller... (It's terrible, but sometimes fun, and those casts...)

[isabellerecs]

I had never heard of this show before, but it sounds so wonderfully funny and subversive. :D

[thisbluespirit]

It's probably not very subversive at all, it's just one of those things where everyone involved realised it was pretty ridiculous and just had fun with it. Not the sort of thing I can honestly recommend... but nevertheless I confess I do love it. :-D

[ashlyme]

I just read the part "the One Where Julian Glover and James Maxwell move in together..." and didn't really notice the graves bit. Give me a pitch and I'll queer it. :D

I also had to reread the entry to make sure you weren't talking about Armchair Thriller (the titles are some of my earliest and creepiest TV memories).

[thisbluespirit]

No, not Armchair Thriller, although someone might have some of those up somewhere! This one was Brian Clemens of Avengers-fame ITC (US funded) film anthology series of, er, skeevy sex killers, occasionally fun supernatural episodes, starry starry casts, and a lot of tackiness and cheese. It's got like nearly 40 episodes and nearly everyone was in one at one point, which is how I ended up with the DVD set, half under protest.

But, yeah. But it does involve Julian Glover and James Maxwell moving in together and the true yet doomed love of Helen & Babs. (Babs is, alas, too dim not to be alarmed when people with dodgy accents interview her and ask questions like, "So you have no relatives AT ALL? No one to miss you? Wonderful!" Poor Babs.)

[potentiality_26]

Oooh, I'll have to check some of those out. I've seen One Deadly Owner and I wondered what the American lady was about, interesting to learn the background there.

[thisbluespirit]

Ha, the best thing about that particular American is that she was in three of them! She really loved being menaced by Brits. :-D

If you've seen one, you know the kind of thing, although sadly haunted rolls are rare and skeevy sex killers are far too common!

[earthspirits]

I rather enjoyed the Thriller ep's I've seen - but even better (for me, since I'm a Karloff fan) was a series he made called "Beyond the Veil". I don't think it ever actually aired, but it's available on DVD in a super crisp version (it's b&w), and I thought it was a fun series. Karloff is the "host", but he also appears in a couple of episodes as a main character, so that was a real perk for me.

[thisbluespirit]

Some of them are good fun! I am just not a horror fan in general, especially of the non-mundane type, really.

[jaxomsride2]

Thanks for the rec. I'm going to have to watch those.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, good luck! (I'm not sure it's a rec, as such...)

[corvidology]

Diana Dors is Satan and Patrick Troughton is a drunken priest. How could anyone resist making that?

[thisbluespirit]

Not Brian Clemens! Plus it has a whole family of Americans to menace. And one Canadian.

[corvidology]

Being part of The Professionals fandom, I can honestly say I'm very familiar with what Mr. Clemens can and cannot resist! :D