Here Is Your Life (Här har du ditt liv)
Directed by Jan Troell
Written by Jan Troell and Bengt Forslund from a novel by Eyvind Johnson
1966/Sweden
Svensk Filmindustri
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” ― Jerome K. Jerome[/box]

Beautiful, if overlong, coming-of-age story.

It is 1914 in rural Sweden and our hero Olof Persson (Eddie Axberg) is as old as the century.  Circumstances force him to search for work.  The jobs he can find involve hard manual labor in the outdoors with men at least twice his age.  Olof makes many different friends that help shape his life.

After a few years, he meets a cinema owner (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who hires him to post advertisements.  He moves on from there to ticket taker and usher before getting a job with a travelling circus as a projectionist.  We see him become interested in philosophy and leftist politics.  He also has various forms of girl and woman trouble as he ages.

This is a good looking and well-acted film (many Bergman regulars are in the cast).  On the other hand, it is almost three hours long and took at least an hour to grab my attention.  Once it did, I liked it a lot.

Clip (with Max von Sydow)

Queen of Blood
Directed by Curtis Harrington
Written by Curtis Harrington from a story by Mikhail Karzhukov and Otar Koberidze
1966/USSR/USA
Cinema West Productions
First viewing/YouTube

Allan Brenner: [disgusted] She’s a monster.

John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, and Dennis Hopper appear in but do not save this dud.

The year is 1990.  An  alien spacecraft sends a distress signal from Mars and Earth sends a rescue team including astronaut scientists Alan Brenner (Saxon) and Paul Grant (Hopper).  Dr. Farraday (Rathbone) supervises from earth.  Naturally, when they find a surviving female alien they put her on board where they belatedly find she feeds on human blood.  And breeds.

Roger Corman bought up a bunch of Soviet scifi films for their special effects.  He then gave directors such as Harrington a few dollars and some washed-up actors for Americanization.  If this hadn’t had an appearance by Basil Rathbone I would have given it a miss.  But poor Basil could not rescue this bad bad (as contrasted with good bad) movie.  Also has one of the most rip-off non-endings EVER!  You have been warned.  

I watched this on YouTube with commercial interruptions but I don’t think those did the movie any harm.