The Other Rogue Bond Film

Never Say Never Again (1983) excites almost as much controversy among fans of the series as does the other 'rogue' Bond movie, 1967's Casino Royale.  Although, on the face of it, completely contrasting films in their approach to their source material, both of these non-series entries do share an intent to satirise their genre and the format of the Bond films.  Both are intended as 'correctives' to the way in which the series was developing.  Whereas Casino Royale did this by presenting a broad parody, its episodic structure mirroring the way contemporary Bonds were built around a series of action set-pieces, loosely linked by an overarching plot, its excessively ludicrous climax parodying the way in which the official series had moved from excess to excess between Dr No and You Only Live Twice, Never Say Never Again attempts a somewhat subtler approach. It tries to present a Bond movie which exists in, sort of, the real 1983.  This time around, Connery's Bond has to operate against a background of budget cuts, declining British influence on the world stage and a new management regime focused on 'modernisation', seeing double O agents as outmoded, their unsubtle methods out of step with the modern world.  (Interestingly, it would take the official series nearly fifteen years to try a similar scenario, in Pierce Brosnan's debut, Goldeneye (1997), with aspect emphasised even more in the subsequent Daniel Craig films).  Hence, we have a Q producing cut price gadgets in a damp basement, a new M obsessed with health regimes and clean living and a Bond who complains that he now spends most of his time teaching and training.

All of this, of course, was seen as a corrective to the Eon produced official Bond series which many critics, claimed had, during the then Roger Moore era, had become a flabby shadow of its former self, entirely reliant upon spectacular action set pieces, Roger Moore's charisma and excessive humour.  What better rebuke to this than to bring back the original Bond, Sean Connery, in a back-to-basics Bond film, a film based on a classic era Bond move, Thunderball?  Except that the official series had already started 'correcting' itself.  After the excesses of Moonraker (1979 - James Bond in space - Eon clearly realised that they had taken the series as far as they could in that direction, so decided to follow it up with their own back-to-basics Bond, For Your Eyes Only (1981).  While the official film Never Say Never Again went up against - Octopussy (1983) - wasn't quite as hard edged and stripped down as For Your Eyes Only, it was still a far cry from Moonraker, with a nuclear threat plot which seemed 'ripped from the headlines' and far less humour than earlier Moore entries. Consequently, upon its release, Never Say Never Again didn't seem quite the radical departure its producers were trying to sell it as.

To be fair, for most of its running time, Never Say Never Again is far lower key than the official films, with location shooting even for most of the interiors eliminating the extravagant studio sets of the Eon series and giving the whole film a far more 'realistic' look.  The action sequences are also scaled back, with a very physical fight between Connery and Pat Roach, which wrecks large parts of the Scrublands health clinic a highlight.  Also, instead of the gadget-filled Aston Martins or Lotuses of previous films, Bond's mode of transport in the main automotive chase is a motorcycle.  But toward the end, the gadgets start appearing, from Bond's laser-equipped watch to the submarine launched jet packs used by Bond and Leiter, it starts feeling dangerously like an official Bond film.  The film also manages reasonably well in its attempts to update the Thunderball scenario it is based upon, with hijacked US cruise missiles replacing the hijacked British nuclear bombs from the original.  A surgically faked retina sed to give 'Presidential' authority to arm the missiles with live warheads via a retinal scan device, replacing the original's replacement of a bomber pilot with a surgically created double in order to hijack the plan and its payload.  Another modernising touch sees SPECTRE now using the stolen warheads to threaten Middle Eastern oil fields.

Never Say Never Again has its origins in Kevin McClory's successful 1960s legal action against Ian Fleming, which centred around the fact that Fleming's novel Thunderball was based upon an original and unused screen treatment written by Fleming, McClory and Jack Whittingham as part of an early attempt to bring Bond to the screen.  Fleming failed to acknowledge this in the original editions of his novel and McClory was subsequently awarded the screen rights to the story, allowing him to make movies based on the original script and other materials pertaining to the failed film development (including SPECTRE and the character of Blofeld, although Eon got away with the use of these elements for several years, due to their inclusion in several of the Fleming titles they had rights to).  Which meant that Eon Productions, which had subsequently acquired the rights to all of the Bond novels (except Casino Royale, which had earlier been sold to Rank in a one-off deal), were unable to film Thunderball until an agreement was reached with McClory.  This happened in 1965, with McClory producing the film under Eon's banner.  Unfortunately, he reportedly proved difficult to work with, putting Eon off of further such collaborations, hence the failure to produce a version of Casino Royale under a similar arrangement, resulting in the Charles Feldman produced spoof version.  McClory, of course, retained the rights to Thunderball and spent several years trying to mount a new version.  But with studios and distributors wary of trying to compete with the official series and McClory's reputation for being 'difficult', he was eventually forced to licence an independent producer, Jack Schwarzman, to make a version.  With the participation of Sean Connery, this won backing from Paramunt, with the result being Never Say Never Again.

In the interim, several screen treatments had been prepared, with writers such as Len Deighton and Lorenzo Semple Jr being involved and even Sean Connery himself making contributions.  At various times proposed films based on these treatments, sporting titles such as Warhead and James Bond of the Secret Service, were announced, but never materialised.  Ultimately, the problem faced by any attempt to make a Bond movie based on McClory's rights was that it would inevitably simply be a remake of Thunderball, no matter how many tweaks were made to the original concept, it had to involve weapons theft, nuclear blackmail, Blofeld and SPECTRE.  Even the mechanic of the plot would have to adhere fairly closely to the original in order to avoid legal action by Eon.  The resulting script for Never Say Never Again reflects the fact it has clearly been stitched together from a number of earlier drafts, themselves all firmly tethered to the original McClory-Fleming-Whittingham script.  Which means that, at some points, it doesn't entirely make sense.  The decision, for instance, to move the main action from the Bahamas of the original to the Mediterranean and Middle East, makes sense in terms of modernising the script, but is compromised by the desire to retain the Bahamas setting for the introduction of Largo, his yacht, Fatima Blush and Domino.  It means that Largo's yacht seems to be able to sail half way around he world, from Nassau to the South of France, virtually overnight.

Despite problems with the script, the final version does boast some excellent dialogue and witty one liners, which is only to be expected, as it was the work of Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais.  While Irvin Kershner's direction lacks either the hard edge of official Bond directors like Terence Young, Peter Hunt or John Glen, or the glossy smoothness and spectacle of the likes of Lewis Gilbert or Guy Hamilton, he does move the film along at a decent pace.  Indeed, the fact that his direction gives the film a look and feel unlike regular Bond films is surely the point - this was meant to be the 'different' Bond.  The film's greatest strength is its cast.  Connery looks far more comfortable (and sports a much better hair piece) than he had in his previous Bond comeback movie, Diamonds Are Forever (1971) in the official series. (In fact, Never Say Never Again is a far better film than Diamond Are For Ever, Its script and style better tailored to an older and mellower Connery).  If nothing else, this time around, he actually looks as if he wants to be there.  The rest of the cast, including Edward Fox as a tetchy M, Klaus Maria Branduer as a quietly deranged Largo, Barbera Carrera as the dangerously delusional Fatima Blush and Max von Sydow as a suitably shadowy Blofeld are all outstanding.  For many years I had mixed feelings about Never Say Never Again, but I eventually ead an online review, where the author advised that to enjoy it, you just had to forget that it had any connection to the rest of the films and simply appreciate it on its own terms: as a one off alternative take on the source material.  He was absolutely right.  Seen as a free-standing entity, Never Say Never Again is an enjoyable, if flawed, action film. It has great performances, is stylishly made, has good dialogue and Micheal Legrand's subtle score, if a long way from John Barry, sets the right tone for the film and the theme song, performed by Lani Hall, is suitably catchy.

There have, of course, been subsequent attempts to launch rival Bond films based on McClory's properties, most notably Columbia's attempts to set up a series of films after they acquired the rights to the McClory scripts and Casino Royale, but none succeeded.  With Columbia's parent company, Sony, having bought a stake in MGM, co-producer of the Eon series, the various properties have now been united under the one banner, (which allowed Eon to produce their own Casino Royale in 2006), seemingly ruling out, once and for all, the possibility of any more rogue Bond films.

Complacency in the Face of Outrage

I'm still on my holidays, so I could tell you about the fabulous day on the beach I enjoyed on Tuesday, the bracing walk around a hill fort yesterday or my invigorating forest walks today.  But the only topic worthy of discussion right now is Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament, his opening gambit in a political coup.  Or so you would think.  Sure, yesterday we had mass demonstrations outside parliament and in other cities up and down the country, not to mention such things as #stopthecoup and #abolishthemonarchy trending on Twitter.  Oh, and Hugh Grant being rude about Boris Johnson.  But by today the hashtags had gone, with football related topics trending instead and, if the protests were still going, the media seemed to have stopped reporting on them.  Instead we got a sycophantic interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg on Radio 4's Today programme, in which John Humphries billed and cooed over the smarmy Victorian relic, presumably in order to ensure he would be on the right side of our new masters.  Rees-Mogg was even allowed to get away with telling us this outrage - expressed through mass protests - was 'confected': a 'candy floss' outrage.  If it had been a Labour politician deploying such a meaningless phrase in connection with the gravest constitutional crisis in living memory, would surely have been torn to shreds by Humphries.

But it's all so typical of this country - utter complacency in the face of impending disaster.  I mean, the average person in the UK seems to be an utter cock with regard to politics if the recent vox pops I've seen on the news are anything to go by.  They just don't seem to grasp exactly how dangerous a precedent the government is setting with its suspension of parliament.  There was one pillock who even claimed to have voted remain explaining earnestly how we had to 'respect democracy', which meant that as parliament was 'acting undemocratically', it was only right that Johnson should suspend in order to force through the 'will of the people' that the EU referendum supposedly represents.  Now, I know that he was trying to appear clever and demonstrate his grasp of the constitution, but all he did was expose his ignorance.  Constitutionally, only parliament, not the government or monarch, is sovereign and only parliament, as our supreme elected body, can represent the will of the people.  It therefore cannot act 'undemocratically'.  By trying to block a 'No Deal' Brexit it is merely fulfilling its mandate to act in the people's best interest and hold the government to account.  It has a duty to try and prevent legislation which would not be in the nation's best interests.  And, let's face it, Brexit is a form of self harm - it will inevitably cause serious long-term economic damage to the UK - and if we knew a friend or relative was self-harming, we would surely be morally obligated to stop them.  Which was what parliament is trying to do: if not prevent the UK from self harming completely, to at least minimise the damage by preventing a 'No Deal'scenarion.  By trying to hamper this process by suspending parliament for five weeks, its is the government that is 'acting undemocratically'.

Still, despite the attempts to stifle the , entirely legitimate, outrage, at least I got to see 'abolish the monarchy' trending on Twitter in the UK.  That's something I never thought that I'd see.  Maybe there's hope for the UK yet...

Broken Up Britain?

Maybe selling post-Brexit UK to Donald Trump isn't the best solution to the potential disaster of 'No Deal'.  I've been thinking about this and I keep coming back to the fact that UK voters were pretty much split down the middle with regards to that referendum.  So couldn't we just divide up the country on that basis?  I know the practicalities of it might be a bit complex, but I'd favour keeping it simple with a North-South divide.  The South of England could remain in the EU, while the North buggers off  and does its own thing.  Now, I know that there would be a lot of moaning as to how there were places in the North that voted Remain, while parts of the south voted Leave.  But the fact is that large swathes of the North, (not to mention Wales) voted to leave the EU, despite the fact that they were the main beneficiaries of EU financial aid, they were the parts of the country most vociferously blaming 'those immigrants' and those 'metropolitan elites' in the 'south' for their problems.  By contrast, London (which most of those northerners think is synonymous with 'the south'), the Thames Valley and Home counties, were largely 'Remain'.  (Crapchester, however, was an oasis of 'Leave' voters, which shouldn't surprise me as we have so many utter moronic knuckle draggers living here - you know the sort: they'd vote for a huge steaming pile of shit if it wore a Tory rosette).  So, it's simple, we dig a huge ditch somewhere north of Oxford, stretching across the whole of England and declare it a 'hard border', with everything south of it being an independent state retaining EU membership.  (I'm minded to exclude Devon and Cornwall, as they traditionally don't want to be part of England, let alone the EU. Or the twenty first century, for that matter.  Scotland, obviously, would be either independent or become an honorary part of the south. I'd even be prepared to throw the Royal Family in with the North - if they're so patriotic they can pay for the buggers.

Obviously, the newly independent state of Northern Britain will be in the shit financially, as they'll no doubt point out with their usual refrain about how all the wealth is in the south.  Well, tough titty.  They voted to impoverish themselves further by leaving the EU - I don't see why they should drag the rest of us down with them.  But the fact remains that there will be many unhappy leave voters finding themselves forced to remain living in the EU affiliated south and vice versa with northern based remainers.  Obviously, the solution would be some kind of migration, with remainers moving south and leavers north - perhaps they could do house exchanges.  Over time, we'd have a definitive answer to whether being in the EU is beneficial or not: if people start flooding north as the standard of living improves in the 'Free North' and highly paid jobs are created there, then clearly, the leavers would be proved right.  On the other hand if, as I suspect they would, people started flooding south to try and enjoy the benefits of the prosperous EU enabled southern counties, then we Remainers would have bragging rights.  In fact, I suspect that so many of those leavers would be heading south, that we'd have to institute a tough immigration regime, requiring them to demonstrate what skills they have that might be beneficial to the southern economy.  Oh, and they'd have to learn to speak proper English, without those bloody accents. 

I suppose there are other ways to divide the country post-Brexit.  Maybe, rather than a simple North-South divide, we could devolve the country into individual city-states and independent counties.  It would give more variety for people when it cam to choosing their ideal living environment.  Rather than just focus on whether a particular mini-state is pro or anti-Brexit, independent or still a member of the EU, you could choose you place of domicile on the basis of whether it had, say, a majority white population, or encouraged Pride marches, or favoured higher levels of public spending.  Maybe that's the way ahead for 'broken Britain': to literally break the country up.  Jeremy Corbyn should start campaigning on the platform now.

Slow and Sedate

Another lazy (not to mention hot and sunny) Bank Holiday spent, mainly, on the sofa, watching a film.  This time it was Fast and Furious 8.  It's the sort of mindless thing that just washes over you while it is on, with no pretentions other than to serve up several spectacular car chases and lots of explosions.  There's a part of me which feels that I really should have gone out and done something in order to enjoy the good weather on this Bank Holiday.  But I didn't feel too guilty, as I'm off work anyway, so wasn't one of those precious bonus days off that Bank Holidays present, plus, being the last day of a three day weekend, you can guarantee that the roads would be clogged with people trying to get home from their breaks.  It was bad enough last night when, despite deliberately delaying my departure from my mother's, I found myself caught up with hordes of idiots driving back from the Dorset Steam Fair - none of them seemed to have a clue where they were going.  But to get back to the point, Fast and Furious 8 was an entertaining enough way to spend a Bank Holiday afternoon.  It's certainly not the best of the series - I preferred 6, which was set largely in London and 7, where Jason Statham was the main antagonist - with the the CGI often seeming too obvious and undercutting the realism of the stunts in many key sequences.  Also, the plot was much weaker (OK, I know that nobody watches these films for the plot, but this time around it was notably less complicated), ontop of that, Statham's 'face turn' deprived Vin Diesel and 'The Rock' of a truly worthy opponent.

Regardless of all that, I have a soft spot for the Fast and Furious series, particularly the later entries where any pretence of producing gritty crime dramas centred around cars was abandoned in favour of glossy globe-trotting pseudo-espionage adventures with ever more lunatic plots.  Perhaps my affection for the films lies in the fact that, in the most recent entries, at least, they have focused on some of the least likely performers to have made it as top action stars.  I mean, where else can you see a trio of bald headed middle aged men crashing cars, blowing things up and knocking seven bells out of each other?  It gives me hope that perhaps my days of driving US muscle cars arent over yet.  While number eight might not have been the best of the series, it clearly proved popular at the box office, as we've already had a spin off (Hobbs and Shaw) featuring two of the aforementioned slap heads in their own film, while number nine has recently been shooting a few miles up the road from me.  I must admit that I admire the way in which the series has constantly evolved, which is probably why it has reached a ninth instalment.  Not only has the premise of the films shifted in order to encompass ever wider ranging action, but the main cast has also shifted from film to film, with some major characters departing and new ones arriving.  It means that the series has, so far, avoided the pitfall of many such franchises, of each film feeling too much like a reprise of the previous one: there's just enough variety in plot elements, set pieces, locations and characters to make each one just different enough to distinguish itself from its predecessors.  But enough of this talk of mainstream blockbusters.  Tomorrow I'm back to my holidays with, hopefully, another trip to the coast.

Trump Island

Has 'President' Trump unwittingly given us the solution for how Britain is to survive post-Brexit?  Having been rebuffed in his attempts to buy Greenland, would it be possible to persuade the ambulatory tub of lard to buy Britain?  I know that we don't have the mineral resources of Greenland, just some exhausted coal mines and a knackered steel industry, but we are well placed in strategic terms.  The British Isles could provide the fat boy with the ideal front-line in his trade wars with the EU - and when he withdraws US military forces from NATO, it will give him somewhere convenient to park all those planes, soldiers and ships.  Then there's all that prime real estate he'll be able to redevelop into golf courses, giant towers, hotels, casinos and the like.  After all, if he owns the place then he won't have all that trouble he had in Scotland when he built that golf course - no pesky local councils to deal with and any uppity local residents can be summarily evicted.  Speaking of which, there's an entire indigenous population to be exploited.  Out would go the NHS, in would come 'Trump Health Insurance', along with 'Trump Food Banks', (subsistence-level provisions for a modest fee), 'Trump Unemployment Insurance' and the like.  Not to mention an overhaul of the education system, with 'Trump Universities' and schools sponsored by various non-tax paying US commercial giants, with special curriculums geared to preparing students for employment on zero hours contracts and fast food joints, coffee shops and mail order warehouses.

That's if the population aren't just shipped off to other parts of the Trump 'empire' in order to provide cheap labour.  They could probably provide an acceptable alternative to all those Hispanics and East Europeans who clean his properties and resorts in the US.  They'd be far less offensive to his clients - they speak a form of English and don't have those horrible accents.  So there you are, selling the UK to Trump would solve all of our post-Brexit problems: new financing for education, health and social security, provision of jobs and even defence, with all those surplus planes and ships stationed here.  From his point of view - no need to try passing tricky new UK-US trade deals through Congress: if he owns the UK, it will all come down to private business arrangements.  I'm sure that the pro-Brexit population of the UK would welcome such an outcome.  After all, it would eliminate completely our entire political class, whom they supposedly hate, as Parliament would, overnight, become an anachronism.  They'd at last have that 'strong governance' from a 'strong leader'.  Not to mention all that money that will come into the UK as a result of the sale price.  Except that I don't see that being shared out amongst us all.  I'm pretty sure that the likes of Boris Johnson and his cronies would succeed in trousering that.  But it would represent a decisive break from Europe, not to mention civilisation and that, apparently, if we are to believe our leaders, is all that matters.

Holiday Ramblings

So, I've been on my holidays all week, which makes for lean pickings here, as I've been too busy enjoying myself to give too much thought to possible postings.  But I can tell you, being on holiday can be even more exhausting than being at work.  On Tuesday, for instance, I met up with The Overnightscape Underground's  Frank Nora and his wife Denice, while they were were passing through London on their way to the continent.  It left me exhausted.  Don't get me wrong - I had a great time wandering around central London with them, visiting a pub along the way, but by the time I got home that evening, I was aching from head to foot.  In part, this was down to having fallen out of the practice of spending the better part of a day walking in exclusively hard surfaces, (I've had similar experiences before, after visiting London and walking everywhere).  When I worked there, about twenty years ago, I got used to it, walking to and from Waterloo, traipsing around the streets every lunchtime and sometimes after work.  But since then, I've fallen out of the habit - believe me, walking miles on country paths, as I did today, is entirely different, and takes less of a toll on the knees and back.  It's the same walking around Crapchester - there's far more variety of surfaces, many quite resilient. 

Nonetheless, I can't help but feel that my physical exhaustion was also down to the knock on effects of my illness last year - I'm still not fully fit.  The length of my recovery time has, and remains, frustrating.  I just don't have the stamina I once had.  It's better than it was when I was ill, but I'm still not right.  I know that this is, in part, down to the effects of some of the medication I take, but it is still frustrating.  Anyway, I was so knackered by the London trip, that I ended up having to spend most of Wednesday recovering, (although, because I'd been spending too much time enjoying myself frivolously, I was running out of food supplies and was therefore forced to go shopping), partly in bed, partly on the sofa.  I felt much better today, spending part of the day wandering around the New Forest, as I am wont to do when off work.  I'll probably stay closer to home tomorrow, I generally do on Fridays in order to avoid the start of the weekend traffic, which will be worse tomorrow as we're going into a bank holiday weekend.  August Bank Holiday, to be precise, most people's last chance of a long weekend before Christmas and, traditionally, the high point of the Summer - it's all downhill from there.

The Mysterious Magician (1964)

Just time for a quick 'Random Movie Trailer' today.  The Mysterious Magician was an English-language version of a German 'Krimi' originally titled Der Hexer.  Like many of the 'Krimi' movies released in Germany during the sixties, it is derived from an Edgar Wallace story, in this case 'The Ringer', UK versions of which had also been filmed under its original title more than once.  Rialto, who produced the film, were specialists in this genre, not only turning out dozens of Edgar Wallace adaptations during the sixties, but also a similar series  of Dr Mabuse films.  All, of course, in glorious black and white, the monochrome being an essential ingredient of the murky and pulp-like atmosphere of these films - they come over as something akin to Universal's mid forties b-movies, which usually dressed up crime and thriller plots with horror trappings.

Although often using genuine British (usually London) locations,  'Krimi' films present a curious view of the UK, with many aspects seemingly time warped back to the 1930s, despite the ostensibly contemporary (sixties) settings.  Again, their version of London is reminiscent of that presented in another Universal film series: their Sherlock Holmes movies, where London is all fog, 'Cor blimey guv'nor' coppers, menacing docklands and East End dives stalked by bizarre murderers.  The German Edgar Wallace adaptations make an interesting contrast with the contemporaneous series of 'Edgar Wallace Mysteries' being produced by the UK's Merton Park Studios.  These were rather more sedate affairs, focusing on the crime mystery aspects of the source material rather than the more outre elements celebrated by their German equivalents.  Many come over like episodes of TV police procedurals and are set against the background of a far more realistic depiction of London suburbia.  All in all, the German Wallace films are generally more fun, but more difficult to see in English language versions these days.

No Holiday From the Politics

I might be on holiday, but the politics just keep on coming.  I've mentioned before that I'm not really an Owen Jones fan-boy - I like some of what he's written but disagree with other stuff of his.  I particularly take issue with his devotion to Corbyn as the saviour of the left.  Nonetheless, I've never understood the sheer level of vitriol levelled at him, not just from the right, but also from many so called 'liberals', (or 'Tory lickspittles' as I prefer to call them).  I'm particularly appalled, albeit hardly surprised, that it hasn't abated in the wake of the physical attack he suffered, apparently at the hands of right wing thugs, over the weekend.  The thrust of much of this latest bile focuses on the idea that he somehow 'deserves' being attacked, or that it is 'poetic justice', because of his refusal to condemn 'attacks' on prominent right-wingers.  Except, of course, that there is no equivalence here - the 'attacks' on right-wingers Jones refused to condemn involved milk shakes being thrown at them - hardly the same thing as being beaten up by a gang of thugs. 

But its all part of the pattern these days, whereby it is always the left who are accused of intimidation nd violence, despite the fact being that it is supporters of the extreme right who have been responsible for actually killing people - shooting an MP here, or driving a car into a crowd of anti-fascist protestors in the US, for instance.  As I've noted before, historically, it is the right who have form for using violence to suppress its critics and achieve its ends.  The left is traditionally too wedded to these ideas of peaceful protest and non-violent action, (like throwing milk shakes at neo-fascists).  But hey, why let the facts get in the way of the fascist propaganda which seems to be sweeping the media these days?  To get back to the attack on Owen Jones, most notable in their silence are those 'liberals' who like to attack him.  With their apparent aversion to violent protests and milk shake throwing and their avowed devotion to 'free speech', you'd think that they'd be queuing up to condemn a journalist getting beaten up by fascist thugs.  But strangely, I haven't heard a peep from the hypocritical little shits.

A Golden Age?

People talk about how we are in a 'Golden Age' of TV, as if everything that went before was rubbish and unworthy of viewing.  I'd beg to differ.  For one thing, most of the supposedly wonderful programming on offer nowadays is either inaccessible to me (I don't have streaming subscriptions) and, in the main, simply doesn't appeal to me.  Much of what I have seen falls into the category of middle class wank - it looks good and thinks it is terrible original, witty and clever but is, in fact, derivative and empty.  The problem is that the people who think such stuff is brilliant and original have never bothered to watch TV from previous eras.  Indeed, the people who make them probably haven't seen TV of any vintage.  Anyway, of late I have been watching quite a bit of TV programming from the sixties, seventies and eighties and have been struck by just how good a lot of it is.  To be sure, in terms of production values, much of it is very much of its era: wonky sets made to look even more artificial by the use of videotape for recording and the too bright lighting this technique required.  The TV camera equipment of time also results in some awkward looking transitions and shaky cutting between characters during dialogue scenes.  But when it comes to acting and scripting, a lot of these programmes are second to none.  Public Eye, (1965  - 1975), for instance, which I've written about before not only features an outstanding central performance from Alfred Burke, but is probably also one of the most realistic portrayals of the business of a British enquiry agent seen on TV.  Its real triumph lies in the way in which it transforms the utterly ordinary and mundane into compelling drama.

Likewise Callan, from the same era remains an incredibly gritty espionage series featuring levels of cynicism rarely seen on UK TV up to that time, not to mention some brutal violence.  Again, the acting and the scripts are the thing, with Edward Woodward's titular character being a true anti-hero: a ruthlessly efficient, cynical assassin with a conscience, who is constantly conflicted by his work.  Distrustful of his masters, always questioning the necessity of his missions, not to mention their morality and constantly yearning for a 'cleaner' profession, he remains painfully aware that being a state sanctioned killer is all that he is qualified to do.  The series remains streets ahead of much current output in terms of script and acting quality.  A series which surprised me by its quality when I rewatched it was The Gentle Touch from the 1980s.  I always vaguely temembered it as a stodgy cop drama whose only outstanding feature was in having a female lead.  Seeing it again, I was struck, not only by Jill Gascoigne's superb performance in the lead, but also the strength of the scripts, which tackled issues like racism, sexism and extremism on a weekly basis.  It also featured good dialogue delivered by a great supporting cast, with William Marlowe (a hugely underrated actor) outstanding as Gascoigne's boss). 

Then there are the sitcoms of the era.  While quite a lot of these now seem unwatchable, not only because of some of the contemporary attitudes they display, but also because of their terrible scripts, some remain surprisingly entertaining.  Father, Dear, Father, for instance, presents a fascinating portrayal of the late sixties and early seventies, with Patrick Cargill's titular father bemoaning his daughters' sexual attitudes and the permissive society n general, while himself taking advantage of the mores of the time to get his own end away.  Lately, I've been watching the first three series of Shelley, with Hywel Bennett. I'd forgotten just how much I'd enjoyed the various adventures of the self-styled 'freelance layabout'.  Frankly, I can't think of any recent sitcom which has featured dialogue as witty as that in Shelley, let alone the level of political and social commentary that featured prominently in the scripts.  Moreover, I doubt anybody nowadays would dare commission a sitcom which featured as its hero an habitual benefits claimant, proud of the fact that, despite his education and intelligence, he has succeeded in avoiding paid employment for four years at the start of the series.  He is utterly unrepentant that he is, in his own words, 'incredibly lazy'.   (I feel great empathy with Shelley, being bone idle and hating work myself).  The irony, of course, being that when he does work, he is generally good at whatever he does.  He just gets no satisfaction from it.  The background of its era - the Thatcher government's economic policies and the resultant mass employment - present a fascinating time capsule.  (The relative ease with which you could claim unemployment and supplementary benefits back then seems unbelievable now).  So, there you are - in my opinion we've already had a 'Golden Age' of TV, back in an era that today's critics like to dismiss as 'kitsch' and 'naff'.  Perhaps they should actually watch some of these programmes.

Hooray, Hooray for the Holidays!

Well, that's it - I finally finished with work for the rest of Summer. The next few weeks are entirely mine.  Now, I could go off onto another of my diatribes about the awfulness of my job, but I'm just too tired.  Both literally and figuratively.  I haven't been sleeping well this week, which has left me feeling exhausted and falling asleep on the sofa in the evenings.  I'm also tired of the constant fight that work has become.  Plus, it has been a particularly horrendous working week.  But hey, all that is behind me, for the time being at last, and I'm now looking forward to my time off.  Of course, in the past I always used to tell people that I was going to spend my late Summer break performing at the Edinburgh Fringe.  Every year I'd come up with some fake title for my mythical one man show and an equally fake venue.  The deception became quite elaborate, but eventually the fun went out of it and now, well, I just don't tell anybody at work where I'm going or what I'm doing.  Not because I'm being secretive, but because this is my time, exclusively for me.  Just minimising human contacts for a few weeks is a relief, I can tell you.

Which is a very good reason why I don't actually go to the Edinburgh Festival for real - far too many people.   With a fair proportion of them probably bring knob ends.  It's the sort of event which inevitably attracts a certain proportion of those utterly pretentious pseudo-intellectual types.  Both as acts and in the audience.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not knocking the Festival or the Fringe, they are undoubtedly a lot of fun, but it also all looks potentially wearying if you are there for the long haul.  Just too much to try and take in.  Like I said, I'm looking to spend my time off more quietly.  I just want a few weeks of tranquility in my life.  Which means lots of country walks and sitting on beaches watching the ships go by.  That never fails to relax me.  Above all, I really must sort out my sleep patterns which, for the past few months, have been variously disrupted by the hot weather, medication related stomach upsets and a recurrence of tinnitus in my left ear, (this, thankfully, has now faded away again, as it always does).  Once I'm sleeping properly again, I'll be able to think clearly again and, hopefully, stat moving forwards again.

I Drink Your Blood (1970)

I remember some years ago I recall a one of those amateur movie review videos turning up in my You Tube 'recommended' column, which promised to 'Drop the pipe bomb on horror classic I Drink Your Blood'.  I didn't bother watching it in its entirety, but I got the distinct impression that the rabid would be critic who made it really didn't like this film and seemed to feel aggrieved that it apparently had 'classic' status.  Except that it hasn't.  I don't think that anyone, anywhere would mistake I Drink Your Blood for a genre classic.  It is a crudely and cheaply made shocker originally put out on a double bill with an equally crudely made B-movie called I Eat Your Skin, (which is why that phrase is used over and over in the above trailer).  The film's significance lies in its historical context.  It represented an early attempt to try and imitate the success of Night of the Living Dead by presenting audiences with gory spectacle, a contemporary setting, no name cast and backwoods setting.  Previously, the predominant forms taken by Anglo-American horror films were either Gothic supernatural melodramas with elaborately recreated historical settings, or cheaply made youth orientated shockers featuring teenagers, hot rods, rock music and monsters (usually, but not always, from space).

As the seventies dawned, a new horror paradigm emerged: lots of blood and dismembered limbs.  While the effects used to achieve these were crude, it was still far more graphic than the sort of stuff you'd see in the average Dracula movie.  In effect, it was the dawn of 'body horror'.  The elaborate plots, carefully built up atmosphere and suspense used by earlier horror films to enhance their scares were now abandoned in favour of outright shocks.  The monsters were no longer the product of supernatural forces or stitched together in laboratories by mad scientists, but instead they were now us - ordinary people either raised from the dead as ravenous cannibals by radiation, or, in this case, bikers turned into slavering beasts after eating meat pies infected with rabies.  It really shouldn't be surprising that the monsters and their Gothic trappings were losing their appeal - television news was increasingly bringing the real-life horrors of things like the Vietnam war into people's' living rooms and fictional horror had to outdo these scenes if it was to have any impact.  Like the pictures on the news, it had to appear more 'real', more 'immediate', its horrors unfolding in recognisable settings.  All of which I Drink Your Blood delivers on, although that still doesn't make it any good.

Winding Down

I'm winding down this week.  Or at least trying to.  As of the end of play on Thursday, I'll be taking my long late Summer break from work.  So, as you can imagine, in the run up to this, I'm doing my best to keep as low a profile as possible - the last thing I want is stress and/or complications before I head into three weeks away from the office. (Or, to be accurate, three consecutive runs of four days off of work as only do Monday to Thursday these days).  All too often I've found my last week before taking leave overly fraught, with work doing its best to pile more and more 'urgent' stuff on me that just has to be done before I finish.  These days, of course, I'm under medical orders to avoid such stressful situations.  Anyway, as part of my winding down process I decided that, having enjoyed my Friday on the sofa watching a film, I'd repeat the process on Saturday.  Continuing the Western theme, the film this time was Tarantino's Django Unchained.  Now, I've had this film on the hard drive of my digital TV recorder for a couple of years, at least.  In fact, it was one of the first films I recorded from TV using my current Humax recorder.  Yet I had never actually watched it.  The main reason for this was that I really hadn't enjoyed either of Tarantino's previous films, Inglorious Basterds and Death Proof.  I felt them both to be far too slow moving and unengaging.  Consequently, despite having recorded Django Unchained, I just couldn't summon sufficient enthusiasm to actually watch it, fearing another near three hours of boredom.

Yet I didn't deleted it.  For some reason I kept it there, taking up valuable disc space.  Perhaps it was some residual affection for Tarantino's earlier films that made me reluctant to erase it, so there it stayed.  My interest in it was reawakened by a season of sixties films on Sony Movie Channel, which were selected and introduced by Tarantino.  These included some real eccentricities, some which hadn't seen the light of days in years.  Obviously, this season was part of the run up to the UK release of the director's latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Having seen the promotional trailers for this, I have to say that I was struck by how well Tarantino had captured the look and feel of late sixties Hollywood movies.  All of this left me feeling that, if I was to watch his latest effort, I really should 'limber up' for it by re-familiarising myself with Tarantino by watching the only one of his films I had readily available:  Django Unchained.  I have, to say, I was pleasantly surprised, it was far more enjoyable than his previous two pictures.  Although overlong, as most of his films are, it didn't drag in the way that I felt Inglorious Basterds and Death Proof had - it was far better paced, with the long dialogue scenes better balanced by action sequences.  Most crucially, the characters were far more engaging - I actually cared what happened to them.  Christoph Waltz, in particular, gave an excellent performance, to the point that it threatened to unbalance the film by overshadowing Jamie Foxx's titular character.  Indeed, the film lost a lot of its impetus, not to mention heart, after Waltz's character was killed.  The remaining half hour felt flatter that anything that had preceded it.  What was notable was the fact that, for once, Tarantino chose to follow a relatively straightforward, linear narrative, devoid of his usual tricks and tine-shifted sequences, resulting in a far more approachable film for the casual viewer.  It has left me feeling enthusiastic for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Friday Afternoon on the Sofa

I was going to go to the cinema this afternoon - the weather was lousy, I was feeling lazy and I just wanted to watch something mindless for a couple of hours. So I decided to go and watch Hobbs and Shaw - how demanding can an action film starring The Rock and Jason Statham be?  I decided to pay the extra 75p and book my ticket online.  I foolishly thought that doing so an hour in advance of the screening would be sufficient.  It wasn't.  It turned out to be fully booked already.  So I reluctantly turned to the next performance, only to find that this was nearly fully booked, with only the lousiest seats let available.  All of which defeated the object of going to a daytime screening - they are usually mainly empty, so you don't have to put up with people sitting too close to you, noisily eating their popcorn or incessantly checking their phone.  I should have remembered that it was school holidays,not to mention a wet and windy day, meaning that the early performances would all be packed out with sullen teenagers.  So, I decided that I really didn't want to fork out nearly twelve quid for the privilege of putting up with other people's kids and opted to stay on my sofa and watch a DVD instead.

Which turned out to be a mellow experience.  About half an hour or so into Once Upon a Time in the West, I thought to myself  'I bet Hobbs and Shaw doesn't have cinematography, let alone a musical score, like this'.  It has been quite a while since I'd seen Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western masterpiece and it didn't disappoint - it looked even more beautiful than I remembered.  Spending Friday afternoons watching old films was actually the way I'd planned things when I went down to a four day working week at the start of the year.  Incredibly, though, it has taken until today for it to happen.  As ever, too many other things have got in the way.  But I took the opportunity to continue my lazy Friday afternoon by taking in a couple of episodes of Father, Dear, Father, which Forces TV has started reshowing.  These were black and white episodes from the first series in 1968 and they were very 1968: the fashions, the characterisations, the attitudes, the gags all screamed 'late sixties'.  They featured a curious mix of a slight 'swinging London' feel with the usual conventional middle class scenario that sitcoms of the era usually featured.  The most bizarre thing about them was that they were asking us to accept that Patrick Cargill was a straight man with two teenaged daughters.  Quite extraordinary.

Deadline Day

So, transfer deadline day has come and gone again.  Far too early, in my opinion.  It never ceases to amaze me how the FA likes to disadvantage English clubs with its insistence that the end of the summer transfer window should coincide with the start of the Premiership season.  It forces them into an unholy rush to complete deals, with selling clubs on the continent knowing that they can rack up the prices as, if English clubs don't buy by early August, they can still sell to other European clubs whose transfer windows typically remain open into September.  It also means that English clubs remain under threat from predatory approaches for their players by European clubs even after our own transfer window closes.  Conceivably, a player could be unsettled this way and the club forced to sell even when they won't be able to bring in a replacement until the January window opens.  Another disadvantage for English clubs is that they can do nothing to rectify weaknesses exposed in theearly games of the season until January.  But hey, the FA thinks it a good idea because, as I recall, the press told them it was, purporting to represent the entirely uninformed opinions of the public, sports journalist after sports pundit after retired manager declared in print that closing the window early would somehow improve the game.  The FA seems prone to basing its policy on press campaigns of this kind - they appointed Sam Allardyce England manager on the basis of such a press 'consensus' that he was the popular choice.  That worked out well, didn't it?

Still, I remember the good old days, before transfer windows, when players could be signed at any time, whether the season was in full swing or not. It's how long-term injuries to key players was dealt with: poach a replacement from your rivals.  Which, obviously, had the added benefit of weakening them.  Poor runs of form were dealt with the same way - just bring in a load of new players.  Back then, there weren't all the rules restricting approaches to players - managers could and would 'tap up' players at other clubs, or their agents, without the knowledge of the player's club.  It was all part of the game.  That said, it meant that we didn't have the excitement of deadline day, as you waited on tenterhooks to see if your club managed to get any late deals over the line.  But even that has been diluted by this pathetic five o'clock deadline in early August.  Today was decidedly unexciting, not even Daniel Levy could inject much tension with his usual late deals for Spurs, (OK, the Dybala deal didn't come off but, frankly, I never expected it to, but Sessegnon and Lo Celso were pretty much givens).  Bring back those midnight deadlines.  Bring back those surprise deals announced after it has passed - like when Levy unexpectedly signed Van der Vaart.  They were great - they also used to full during my holidays back when the deadline was in September, so I could sit up half the night following developments.  Come to think of it, isn't the beginning of August too soon to be starting the season, anyway?  I'm pretty sure that 'when I was a lad', it didn't start until September, (I'm probably wrong, but that's the nature of memories).  So there you go FA, if you want to make English football better, scrap the transfer window altogether and don't start the season until September - it's no dafter than any of the other ideas you've been talked into by the press.

The Third Secret

So, the other day I was watching, (or rather, half-watching, because it was background to me doing something else), one of those conspiracy theory programmes on some digital TV channel or other.  It was called Forbidden Histories or some equally pretentious title and, despite claiming it would offer new revelations about some historical 'mystery', you knew that it was going to be bollocks as it was being presented by that lightweight pillock Jamie Theakston.  Anyway, this particular episode was about the 'secrets of Fatima', (which, coincidentally, had come up in conversation with someone a few days earlier).  These, for those who don't know, these were three visions and prophecies imparted to a group of Portuguese children by an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1917.  Two of these secrets - one a vision of Hell, the other a prediction that World War One would shortly end, but that a second global conflict would occur in the near future - were revealed in 1930 in the memoirs of one of the children.  The third secret was supposed to be revealed by the Vatican in 1960.  Except that it wasn't, leading to speculation that it involved a revelation so disturbing and devastating that the church had decided that the public had to be protected from it - the end of the world, the assassination of a Pope or the collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, were all favourite candidates among the conspiracy nutters. 

In 2000, the Vatican did finally reveal the third secret, which turned out to be a vague vision of the future whose elements, half ruined cities, huge crucifixes and an apparent martyrdom of a figure who might have been the Pope, could be interpreted to fit any of the scenarios favoured by the conspiracy theorists.  Except that they weren't satisfied by the revelation, claiming that it just wasn't dramatic enough.  There have been all sorts of allegations that either what was revealed wasn't the 'real' third secret, or that it was only part of the third secret and that the real version is far more dramatic.  Of course, this is always a problem faced by conspiracy theories: they build up expectations around 'secrets' and suppressed knowledge, which can never be fulfilled.  The revelations, when they come, are always an anti climax and are inevitably followed by allegations of cover ups and the like.  The truth, it seems, remains elusive, (as it always must for the conspiracy theorists, or they'd be out of business).  But the whole business, as presented on this TV programme, set me thinking: just what sort of 'revelation' would the so called Third Secret have to contain for the Catholic church to go to such extreme lengths (presenting a fake Third Secret) to suppress it?  What would they think would disturb their congregation so much?  The only answer I could come up with is that it predicted a gay Pope.  Such a revelation would rock the church to its core, threatening the whole fabric of its belief system.

Maybe that's what that last vision really was: the Holy Father getting it on with another guy.  (Would he be 'giving' or 'receiving' though? Which would be considered more Christian, to be receiving the love of his flock or giving out his love through administering a good 'pounding' to a Monsignor?)  Or perhaps those kids in Portugal saw a vision of a future Pope involved in a gang bang with a conclave of Cardinals.  Or, (and let's dial up the offensiveness here), they saw him getting down and dirty with the leader of another faith - cavorting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, enjoying a tryst with the Dalai Llama or even embracing the Grand Mufti.  The sub text here would be clear: not only should the church embrace homosexuality, but it should also use the power of gayness to unite with other faiths, to create one global, all encompassing religion celebrating a non-gender specific deity of universal sexual orientation.  I mean, sod the apocalypse, this is the sort of thing that would really disturb the Catholic church.  Imagine, an openly gay Pope would inevitably result in huge numbers of Catholic priests coming out of the closet, not to mention ordinary churchgoers finally feeling that it was safe to come out as gay or lesbian.  Churches painted in rainbow colours, Bishops in full regalia hanging out in gay bars.  It just doesn't bear thinking about.  Yep, if you ask me, that's what the Third Secret of Fatima is really about.

Playing With Fire

I certainly hope that London Mayor Sadiq Khan is busy on Twitter, tweeting 'President' Trump to hold him personally responsible for everyone who has died in the latest spate of mass shootings in the US.  Maybe he's meant to follow the same protocol as the orange shit bag, though: retweeting someone else's tweet accusing fat boy of having blood on his hands.  Then again, I have no idea how these things work on social media.  Of course, it isn't really Trump's fault - it's all down to mental illness.  Too many crazy people have access to guns.  Obviously, the solution is to crack down on the crazy people.  Mind you, in my experience the mentally ill are, generally speaking, a threat to nobody but themselves. It is only a very small majority who present a danger to the wider community.  In most countries, the damage they can do is limited by the fact that, usually, the worst weapons they can lay their hands on are knives.  But again, even this minority of the mentally ill don't generally go around committing massacres.  Apparently, though, there's a special type of mental illness which drives crazy people to kill on an industrial scale: extreme right-wing ideologies.  I mean, you must have noticed it - every time one of these right-wing scumbags murders a politician, an activist, someone who is the 'wrong' colour or 'wrong' religion, they are always described as being 'mentally ill'. 

They are radicalised via the web, fat boy also claimed today.  Yeah, by exposure to the twitter feeds of right-wing demagogues whose timelines are full of hate-inciting and racist tweets and retweets.  The sort of demagogues who incite the lunatic fringes of their followers to attack journalists, because they are 'enemies of the people' for printing the truth, or whip them into a frenzy of chanting 'send them home', with regard to members of congress who have the audacity to try and hold him to account.  Of course, Trumpy boy doesn't endorse those chants.  Typical bully - gets others to do his dirty work then tries to deny all responsibility. But the chickens are coming home to roost now - he's been playing with fire trying to mobilise the extreme right to do his dirty work and with these latest mass shootings he is in danger of getting his fingers burned. The flames are licking at his heels now as the denials of responsibility ring hollow.  That's the thing, once you've encouraged them to believe that their bigotry and violence is being legitimised by those in power, extremists become very difficult to control and things can quickly escalate out of hand.  Which is why politicians should never try cosying up to them, like Johnson and his Tories have been doing with crypto-fascists like Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage.  It's a very dangerous game and we're already starting to see the consequences.  I wouldn't mind, but isn't as if we don't have, within living memory, a precedent for seeing the damage that ensues from encouraging fascists and their ilk.  Last time we had to bomb their cities to rubble to make them stop, and only then after millions had already died - do we really want a repetition of all that?

Split Second (1992)

Back in the day, this Anglo-American horror thriller generated a lot of publicity during its shooting and enjoyed a widespread release, but failed to match its hype with box office takings.  Consequently, it has faded from the public memory and is nowhere near as well remembered as many of the other films that star Rutger Hauer made around this time.  Which is a pity, because it is actually a pretty enjoyable action movie which, unusually, features Hauer as the cop hunting a psychopath, rather than playing the psychopath.  That said, his character, Detective Stone, is himself a man on the edge, fueled by 'anxiety, coffee and chocolate' (according to his boss), as he hunts the mysterious serial killer who, five years earlier, murdered his partner through a 'futuristic', lawless,London, half flooded as a result of global warming.  Set in what, in 1992, was the future of 2008, the film's vision of a London on the brink of collapse, with heavily armed cops fighting a losing battle against both a figurative rising tide of civil breakdown and the literal rising tide of a Thames swollen by the melting ice caps, is well realised despite an obviously limited budget.  With a look clearly inspired by an earlier Hauer film, Blade Runner, everything is damp and neon lit, with sunlight seemingly never penetrating the stricken city which seems to consist mainly of dingy, dirty alleways awash with black water.  A sharp contrast is drawn between the brilliantly lit work spaces, be they police station, hospital or morgue, and the dingy living spaces - especially Hauer's grease trap of a flat.

But while the film looks good, its story telling is far less assured.  Indeed, it quickly becomes clear that the film's script has real problems, with plot developments not flowing at all smoothly, sub plots not properly resolved and a very disjointed story.  None of this should be surprising, as the film underwent multiple script rewrites, both before and during production, which explains its frequent changes in tone, direction and even genre.  While deliberately conceived as a horror, science fiction, occult, action, buddy cop cross over, the final script never quite manages to satisfactorily meld all of these genres into anything coherent, leaving the viewer wondering exactly what it is they are watching, as it veers, scene by scene, from one genre to another.  This results in some jarring tonal shifts, particularly between the 'buddy cop' sequences, which are frequently played for laughs, and the gory murders, which involve hearts being ripped out of victims and eaten.

But the script's single biggest problem lies with its main threat, the shadowy killer being hunted by Hauer.  What starts as a search for a particularly vicious and cannibalistic psychopath, quickly takes on occult overtones as the killer starts drawing astrological symbols in his victim's blood, then veers into science fiction as it is revealed that the killer absorbs the DNA of everything he eats (including rats) and has huge teeth, before crashing into full on horror as he is revealed as some kind of  Satanic force of evil.  At no point does the script attempt to explore any of these developments (how does he absorb the DNA and apparently take on physical aspects of his victims?  Is he a mutant?  Is he a supernatural being?  Is he a practitioner of the dark arts who has transformed himself through black magic?), leaving the viewer somewhat bewildered.  The script's uncertainty over the exact nature of its main antagonist is reflected by some curious variations in his modus operandi: despite his inhumanely large teeth and long claw-like hands having been established early on as his instruments of murder, at a couple of points he instead uses a gun against the protagonists, which seems both unnecessary and out-of-character.  (Of course, it most likely reflects a shooting script hastily cobbled together from several different drafts - in early ones the killer was clearly human and reliant upon conventional weapons).

The script's biggest missed opportunity, however, is its failure to properly develop the idea that the surviving victims of the killer are left with a psychic link with it.  Hauer himself was apparently keen for the link between his character (who carries the scars of his past encounter) and the killer to be explored.  He was right to believe that, while not an original idea, was potentially one of the most interesting aspects of the scenario.  Unfortunately, the idea tends to fall by the wayside, becoming less prominent and important to the plot as the film progresses.  Early on, it is played up considerably, with the definite hint, sadly not followed up, that Hauer's colleagues suspect that his apparent fore-knowledge of where and when the killer will strike suggests that he himself might be the murderer.  But, this is never properly developed, as the film increasingly settles down to be an action film, rather than anything more complex.

The action set-pieces, though, are very well staged, culminating in a spectacular shoot out in a half-flooded underground station involving an abandoned tube train.  While most of the film was directed by Tony Maylem, an experienced director with a varied CV including both award winning documentaries and horror films, these action sequences were directed by Ian Sharp.  The latter was something of a specialist in the action genre, with experience in directing episodes of The Professionals and the SAS movie Who Dares Wins.  He was subsequently second unit director on the Bond movie Goldeneye, handling many of the action sequences, including the tank chase through St Petersburg.  (Interestingly, he took over this role from Arthur Wooster, who had been in charge of the second unit for the five John Glen-directed Bond films and, coincidentally, was second unit director on Split Second).  Between Sharp's excellent action scenes and Maylem's atmospheric rendering of a flooded London, the film maintains both a pace and an atmosphere which are far more consistent than the script.

Ultimately, though, the film stands or falls on Ritger Hauer's performance as Stone.  While this might not be his best remembered film, it is one of his most entertaining performances. Hauer is clearly enjoying himself playing an action hero.  Albeit an action hero with severe psychological problems and violently psychotic streak.  In fact, he gives something of an acting tour-de-force, handling everything the script throws at him - from manic action through reflective melancholy to humour - with aplomb.  He is especially good with the humourous aspects of the script, which range from the black to more broadly comedic sequences, (showing his ID to a guard dog, with the word's 'I'm a cop, dick head' and later attempting to interrogate the same dog, which has witnessed the killer).  The latter also include much of the 'buddy cop' aspect of the film, as Hauer finds himself partnered with the regulation 'chalk-to-his-cheese' younger cop by their boss.  The partner here is played by Neil Duncan, (still best remembered as Taggart's original sidekick), an intense, intellectual who is an academic expert on serial killers, with the unlikely name of Dick Durkin.  His scenes with Hauer are undoubtedly some of the film's highlights, generating a fair amount of humour as their relationship develops.  sure, like much in the film, it is hardly original, but it is entertainingly delivered by two actors obviously giving the script everything they've got.

The rest of the cast are also surprisingly good.  Kim Cattrall provides some transatlantic appeal as the widow of Hauer's former partner and, though her role feels somewg=hat underwritten, gives a decent enough performance.  The rest of he cast is mostly made up of familiar British TV faces, including Alum Armstrong as the requisite shouty boss cop, Pete Postlethwaite as an antagonistic colleague of Hauer's (whose animosity toward the latter is never properly resolved) and Tony Steedman as a police armourer.  Ian Dury and Michael J Pollard put in cameo appearances as, respectively, a sleazy nightclub owner and a rat catcher.  There's even a brief early appearance from Jason Watkins as a morgue assistant.  Another notable aspect of the film is the creature design which, bearing in mind that it was reputedly conceived and constructed in only three weeks, is surprisingly effective, even if it is somewhat derivative of Alien.  In fact, after the script problems, the film's biggest weakness is that it is all too obviously derivative of other films: Alien for the creature, Blade Runner for the overall look, every 'buddy cop' movie you've ever seen for the central characters' relationship, for instance.  Perhaps this is what put audiences off when it was released.  That and an overly generic title which bears no relation to anything in the film, (it was changed from the somewhat better Black Tide during production).

Although derivative in some aspects, in others, Split Second seems prescient: it identifies global warming as a potentially catastrophic threat to the planet and, early on, establishes that the US government is obstructing international efforts to combat this threat.  Despite all of its problems, Split Second remains a hugely entertaining piece of schlock and deserves to be far better remembered.  In the wake of Rutger Hauer's death there has been much talk as to his best film, ranging from Blade Runner to The Hitcher. All have their merits but, for me, if there is one movie which showcases Hauer at his best - adeptly and effortlessly handling drama, action and comedy - it is Split Second.  It isn't his best movie by any measure and his performance in it was never going to win awards, but he is obviously enjoying himself, delivering an engaging, sympathetic and playful performance.  It is also a relatively rare example of Hauer playing an undisputed lead role - which he definitely doesn't disappoint in. 

August at Last

August at last!  We've finally arrived at my favourite Summer month.  For me, this is when Summer really starts, when everything seems to slow down and it starts to feel as if the entire world is on holiday.  As I've mentioned many times before, August is the month of my rekindling childhood memories of long ago family trips to the beach.  To this day, sitting on the beach at Lepe brings it all back - the smell of damp towels after coming out of the sea, curling up at the edges sandwiches in plastic boxes and bottles of warm orange squash.  My seventies childhood remembered.  So, I have my leave from work booked for the latter half of August, so that I can spend some quality time in my own company, back in the places I love. (A fellow I used to sometimes drink with at the local once told me that the older he got, the more he preferred his own company - over the years I've come to appreciate his wisdom more and more. I increasingly find other people tedious to be around.  Not all of them.  Just most of them).  This year, with luck, should also encompass a meet-up with Frank Nora from the Overnightscape Underground, who is planning to be in London for a couple of days.  My annual Summer break is also traditionally the time when I try to catch up with my schlock movie viewing and I have a number of films I'm hoping to finally get through. 

Holidays notwithstanding, August has already got off to a good start.  I got my latest Civil Service Pension statement today.  Which might not sound terribly exciting, but believe me, when you get to my age, such things start to become important.  The significant thing about the paperwork I received today is that it finally got my pension entitlement right.  For the past couple of years, the statements have been under counting my pension contributions, claiming that I had only six years reckonable service rather than than the actual figure of twenty odd years.  The difference this makes to my annual pension payout is pretty big, as you can imagine.  It seems that when I reduced my hours at the start of this year, they had to recalculate everything and this time finally realised that I was right and they were wrong and that I had fourteen years more pension contributions than they kept trying to tell me I had.  Anyway, the end result of this is, provided I manage to make those additional years of National Insurance contributions, (thanks to changes in the State Pension in 2016), and receive a full state pension, then I should be reasonably well off in retirement with the two pensions combined.  I won't be getting a fortune, but it should provide me with a decent income.  Something to look forward to, although in the meantime I'm only looking a couple weeks into the future, to my forthcoming Summer break.