Just Sayin' and Other Excuses for Extremism

Of course Boris Johnson didn't squeeze that woman's thigh - he actually groped her arse, fondled her breasts and stuck his fingers up her fanny, nobody has claimed.  I have to emphasise that I have no evidence any of this happened, both for legal purposes and just in case any of those right wing snowflakes are reading this.  You know the types I mean - always whining on about how people are being rude about their Nazi heroes or are criticising Brexit or whatever.  Either that or they are whingeing about how it is 'political correctness gone mad' that they aren't allowed to stone homosexuals to death any more and have to be polite to 'blokes in dresses'.  Snowflakes.  I mean, that's what everyone means by 'snowflake', isn't it?  Right wing cry babies who are overly sensitive to criticism?  Because they are always the ones I see getting upset about this sort of thing.  Just sayin'.  That's something they say, isn't it?  When they've just posted something stupid and offensive on Twitter, so as to try and give the impression that they are just stating an obvious truth, they add that as a hash tag.  Usually accompanied by an emoji with a shit-eating grin.  So maybe i should post all that stuff about Boris Johnson groping random women on Twitter, with that hash tag and emoji. 

Because, you know, I'm just exercising my right to free speech, aren't I?  That's something else they say to defend anything offensive they say or write, isn't it?  You see, this is what we need to do: start using the right's tactics to get back at them.  Steal all their shitty defences and phrases and use them to justify ourselves every time we call them Nazis and the like.  Before you know it, the snowflakes will be whining on about 'cultural appropriation'.  But, to be slightly serious, there does seem to be an overriding agenda in the media that any criticism of the right constitutes outrageous lies and/or oversensitivity on the part of the left to things that are 'accepted' norms.  By contrast, racist, sexist, homophobic etc statements and behaviour on the part of the right are merely statements of 'common sense' and complaining about them is denying the right to 'free speech'.  In the US it is even worse, or so it seems to me, as a casual observer.  There, the legitimacy of any criticism of the president is deemed illegitimate by a large section of the media and general population because he won a democratic election and the losers just have to accept that.  Criticism is dismissed as 'sour grapes' on the part of the Democrats.  There seems to be no concept of political opposition, where the opposition party seeks to hold the government to account.  Nowadays there even seems to a general ignorance of the constitutional role of Congress itself, which is to exercise checks and balances on the executive.  Not that it is much better here, with all this 'People vs Parliament' nonsense being peddled by Johnson and his storm troopers (just sayin', hey).  Just lately, for the first time in living memory, we've witnessed parliament doing its intended job: to hold the government to account and ensure that legislation detrimental to the national interest isn't passed.  JUst sayin'.

The Bride and the Beast (1958)

I was beginning to think that I had imagined this film's existence.  I felt sure that I had read about it somewhere, but couldn't recall the title. Attempts to identify it through plot descriptions got me nowhere in terms of online research.  Then, by chance, I was leafing through an old reference book I hadn't looked at in years (Alan Frank's The Horror Film Handbook) and there it was: a brief entry on The Bride and the Beast.  A truly obscure B movie with an extraordinary central idea, I'm surprised that it doesn't have more of a cult following, particularly as Ed Wood Jr, so beloved of bad film enthusiasts, was responsible for the script.  Wood was apparently inspired by the Bridey Murphy story which was in the headlines at the time (and was eventually the basis of a film), in which a US housewife, under hypnosis, regressed to 'previous life' as the eponymous nineteenth century Irish woman.

Wood, of course, put his own twist on the idea: in Bride and the Beast a newly wed wife is sexually assaulted by her husband's pet gorilla on her wedding night.  The husband shoots the beast, but his wife continues to suffer bizarre nightmares involving jungles and horny apes.  Under hypnosis, she finds that she is the reincarnation of a gorilla.  Not any gorilla, mind you, but the 'Queen of the Gorillas', (the film's working title).  Later, on an African safari, the wife gradually starts reverting to her bestial previous incarnation and eventually elopes with another gorilla and escapes into the jungle with him as her husband looks on, powerless to stop them.  (No, I'm not making this up).  Wood clearly found it impossible to bring his script up to feature length using only this story line, so he pads it out with a middle section consisting of an African safari made up mainly of stock footage and bad studio sets.  The use of stock footage undoubtedly explains why there are Bengal tigers rampaging around Africa - clearly producer-director Adrian Weiss's budget couldn't afford any stock footage containing lions: the tigers were obviously cheaper. (The trailer's emphasis on the 'never before seen' battle between a tiger and crocodiles prefigures the obsession with animal savagery shown by Italian Mondo movies). 

Weiss, nevertheless, apparently considered the film 'a minor classic'.  In a strange footnote, leading man Lance Fuller later suffered some kind of breakdown and was shot and seriously wounded by a police officer he attacked with a metal pipe, while claiming that he was Jesus Christ.  Perhaps he was, in a previous life.

The Great British Porn Challenge

Because I'm interested in model railways, people keep assuming that I'm also interested in that Channel Five programme, The Great Model Railway Challenge and always seem disappointed when I tell them that I've never watched it.  I've given up trying to explain that it actually isn't really aimed at people like me, but rather at people like them, who don't know anything about the hobby and seem constantly amazed as to the skill levels it requires and wide range of activities involved.  It isn't just about playing with trains, (although, for me, that's the most entertaining bit).  The truth is that I'm not really that much interested in watching other people building model railway layouts - I'd rather be playing with my own.  I don't even go to many model railway exhibitions.  Partly because the same layouts turn up over and over again, but also because exhibition standard layouts don't really represent the average layout - they set a standard that most of us can never hope to achieve.  Personally, I prefer things like the Alresford Toy Train Fair, where the emphasis is on running vintage trains, especially the old Triang, Dublo, Trix and Playcraft stuff I like.  The TV show is clearly modelled on the Great British Bake Off, another show whose appeal eludes me - while I enjoy eating cakes, I find no entertainment in watching people make them.

But this sort of thing seems to be popular among TV programme makers now: shows about people making stuff competitively.  If it isn't baking or model railways, then it is gardens or clothes.  So, why not that other great British tradition, the adult movie?  Wouldn't that make a great programme, pitting teams of film makers against each other to make porn movies?  Softcore, obviously.  Every week they could have a new challenge to produce a  half hour adult film in a different genre - sex comedy, Gothic horror porno, period smut.  You get the idea.  The big gimmick could be that they have to start from scratch each week, using only the resources at hand - no studios or professional performers.  Instead, they'd have to find grotty flats and suburban houses to shoot in and try and persuade people off of the street to perform for them.  You could even deny them the use of things like cameras, forcing them to shoot it all on their mobile phones, with lighting rigs improvised from desk lamps and the like. I'm sure that The Great British Porn Challenge could be a huge late night hit.  Damn it, if Channel Four can get away with something like Naked Attraction, which thrusts cocks and vaginas in your face virtually from the outset every week, then I'm sure that the Porn Challenge could get commissioned.

Nocturna (1979)

Watching the opening credits of Nocturna - or Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula, to give the film its promotional title - you start to suspect that it might be a vanity project on the part of Nai Bonet, who is credited as star, co-producer and co-writer. Which, in essence, it is, having been conceived by Bonet as a means to kickstart her acting career.  At this point, you are probably wondering exactly who Nai Bonet is - the answer to which is that she was a Vietnamese belly dancer, singer and actress, who had been appearing in small roles on TV and films, usually as a belly dancer, since the mid-sixties.  Nocturna was an attempt to establish her as a star.  In low budget movies, at least.  The film itself aspires to be a horror comedy, most specifically parodying vampire movies, but also strays into several other genres, most notably disco, romance, soft porn and even Blaxploitation.  Ultimately, it is the movie's inability to fully settle on one genre which undermines it - that and a poor script and threadbare production values. 

The plot is straightforward: the Dracula family have fallen on hard times and the Count (John Carradine) has been forced to turn his castle into 'Hotel Transylvania', run by his Granddaughter, Nocturna (Bonet) and his assistant Theodore (Brother Theodore).  Nocturna falls for a musician (Tony Hamilton) whose group has been hired to provide entertainment for the guests and discovers the redemptive power of disco - when she dances, she finds that she has a reflection and becomes human.  She follows the musician to New York in order to pursue her attempt to become human and explore true love, pursued by a disapproving Dracula and Theodore.  In New York she falls in with an old flame of her Grandfather, Jugulia Vein (played by Lily Munster herself, Yvonne de Carlo), who is herself involved with a group of US vampires attempting to gain recognition from the government as a minority group.  Bonet befriends a vampire who dresses ans speaks like a stereotypical black pimp, who snorts powdered blood as if it was cocaine and operates behind the front of a massage parlour, where his 'stud' of girls drain the blood of unwitting customers.  Dracula eventually arrives and, after Theodore fails to kidnap Nocturna and dispose of her boyfriend, confronts the couple in a disco.  There is also a lot of disco dancing and musical numbers and a fair bit of nudity.

All of which could have made for a reasonably entertaining film, except that the script fails to deliver any real laughs - the humour that is present is lame and forced.  What humour there is in the script is so poorly executed by the principal cast that it falls flat.  The only cast members who seem to have any idea as to how to play this sort of thing are Carradine and de Carlo, but the script simply doesn't give them a chance.  Brother Theodore seems to be in a different film altogether, clearly improvising most of his part and regurgitating bits of his usual act.  While his performance is probably the most memorable thing about the film, it still feels jarring and he frequently comes over as a dirty old man rather than a comically menacing heavy, in particular in a deeply uncomfortable scene where he spies on Nocturna as she takes a bath.  Which brings us to one of the film's biggest problems: Nai Bonet's performance.  It has to be said that she is a pretty poor actress, failing to imbue Nocturna with any real character and delivering her lines in the same monotone, regardless of the emotion she is supposed to be conveying.  Her scenes opposite a wooden Tony Hamilton are particularly painful.

On top of all of this, the film's production values are woeful, with only the opening hotel sequences looking as if they have had any money spent on them.  The New York locations all look depressingly dirty, poorly lit and dull.  As for the special effects, well, the vampires' transformations into animated bats are considerably inferior to a similar effect used in the 1940s Universal Dracula films, (which also tended to star John Carradine as the Count). It has to be said, though, that Harry Hurwitz's  (credited as Harry Tampa) direction of the film starts well.  The opening sequence features a nicely realised tracking shot to reveal Nocturna under abridge, biting into the neck of a young man, before following her into the hotel and across the lobby.  Sadly, it's all downhill from there, as from thereon in, the direction becomes very flat and TV movie-like.  The New York scenes, in particular, are very dully directed, making little out of the locations and generally feeling limp and lifeless, with only the disco sequences displaying any energy.  The only other time Hurwitz's direction comes to life is in the aforementioned bath tub scene, where he goes into full softcore porno mode to give us lots of shots of Bonet soaping her breasts and bending over to show us her behind, (although it is a very nice behind).

It is tempting to think that Nocturna was inspired by the George Hamilton starring Dracula spoof, Love at First Bite, which was in production around the same time (and which Nocturna beat into cinemas by a few weeks).  But I suspect that Saturday Night Fever was as much an inspiration and the makers were hoping to cash in on the disco craze as much as they were the wave of vampire films which appeared 1979-80.  Needless to say, Nocturna flopped at the box office and Bonet made only one other film, 1980s Hoodlum, before retiring from the business.  Despite all of its deficiencies, it has to be said that Nocturna exerts a certain fascination while it is on.  I mean, where else can you hope to see a film where disco dancing can cure vampirism?  Or the sight of John Carradine, in full Dracula get up, in a disco?  Not to mention that more than slightly uncomfortable scene at the end, where he shares a coffin with Yvonne de Carlo?  Isn't this what we watch schlock movies for?

Prisoners of Illogic

What a weekend that was.  I say weekend, but, of course, it also encompassed Friday, as I now work reduced hours.  So it was a quite an extended weekend. Not that I went anywhere or did anything, really, but I did get through a lot of films.  They ranged from pure schlock to a genuine block buster.  The two which, hopefully, will eventually feature here were late period Hammer kung fu action flick Shatter and the utterly bizarre disco/vampire crossover Nocturna.  This latter film then set me off on another tangent.  Its eclectic casts included one 'Brother Theodore', whose name stirred some vague memories of him as some kind of comedic performer who was in vogue in the US back in the eighties.  I don't think he ever had any profile on this side of the Atlantic, but I was interested enough to do some research, finding that he was well known on the New York club scene in the forties and fifties for his surreal monologues, then faded from view, before re-emerging on the comedy club scene in the late seventies, (which was when he made his appearance in Nocturna).  In the eighties he became something of a regular on David Letterman's Late Show and I found myself watching a compilation of these appearances.  I'm still not entirely sure what to make of him - some of his schtick certainly wouldn't go down well today, particularly the stuff about liking teenaged girls (he was well into his seventies by the 1980s).  But that's part of the risks of his sort of apparently improvised stream-of-conciousness approach to performing.  Actually, I have admire Letterman for having the nerve to have such an unpredictable guest on a mainstream TV chat show so many times.

In between all the movie (and improvisational German comic performer) watching, there was a lot of sleeping.  I seem to do a lot of that these days. In part, it's down to the fantastical dreams I have these days - they are something to do with the various medication I take for my blood pressure.  They make me look forward to sleeping.  They are certainly a great deal more satisfying than much of my waking life.  Which brings us to the other main reason for sleeping so much: it is an escape from my mundane real life, in particular, work. Don't worry, I'm not going to go off on another diatribe about hoe appalling work is these days.  Indeed, that was the other thing I did this weekend: make a start of revising my CV with a view to submitting it to some agencies in order to test the waters with regard to employment opportunities. I've decided that I've to be positive - besides, even I've become tired of hearing myself moan, so I've decided to actually do something instead.  But all the good work I'd done and good mood I'd built up over the weekend was spoiled when I was foolish enough to look at the comments underneath an online article about the Supreme Court's deliberations on the Prime Minister's prorogation of parliament.  I know that I shouldn't have, experience should have told me that I would only be depressed by the sheer ignorance on display.  As ever, all the nutters were there, going on about courts usurping democracy and how it is all a plot to stop Brexit.  Jesus Christ!  For one thing, prorogation is a constitutional matter and part of the Supreme Court's role is to arbitrate on such matters, (moreover, the High Court didn't actually rule the prorogation legal, it decided that, as a constitutional matter, it was not within its juridstiction and referred it to the Supreme Court instead).  Also, it has nothing to do with Bresit per se, it is a question of whether the advice given to the Queen over dissolving parliament was correct and truthful.  But hey, like Brother Theodore was fond of saying, these people 'are not prisoners of logic'.

The Seven Seas

Pulp magazine time again.  This is the only issue of The Seven Seas, dated Winter 1953.  It's failure might well have been down to the fact that it was coming to the 'adventures on the high seas' genre relatively late in the game.  Whereas before the war the world was still full of mysterious and exciting places reachable only by sea, by 1953 large numbers of Americans (the target readership) had made enforced sea voyages to many of those places, even to remote islands in the Pacific, in pursuit of victory in World War Two.  Moreover, air travel was increasingly shrinking the world even more, offering a quicker, albeit less romantic, way of reaching the remotest parts of the globe. 

I must admit that I have a soft spot for sea stories, the pulpier the better.  Some of my favourite idle day dreams and fantasies involve sailing away on ships, to remote islands where a man can lose himself.  I'd happily have bought The Seven Seas, certainly it has, according to the cover, a fine line up of authors specialising in these sorts of stories.  Indeed, the featured novelette is by Garland Roark, 'author of "Wake of the Red Witch"', which, in its day, was a best selling sea faring yarn, turned into a hugely successful film with John Wayne.  The Seven Seas was published by Ziff-Davis, one of the biggest pulp publishing houses in the US, whose best remembered pulps nowadays are the venerable science fiction magazine Amazing Stories (the very first science fiction pulp, originally published by Hugo Gernsback) and its later companion Fantastic.  (Ziff-Davis still exist - these days are known as ZDE and specialise in technology magazines and websites).  The Seven Seas shared its editorial team with the company's other pulps, headed up by Howard Browne (who was also a noted mystery writer and screen writer) assisted by Paul Fairman (who later took over as editor of Amazing). 

Of course, by the time The Seven Seas appeared, pulp magazines in general were in decline, with many converting their format to digests or slicks.  Others simply fell by the wayside, swept away by the rise of more generalised men's magazines, most of which regularly featured sea stories amongst tehir mix of sensationalised adventure stories and supposedly true life tales.  In fact, at least one of the new men's magazines - South Sea Stories - specialised in a variation on the sea story format, focusing mainly on tropical islands and scantily clad native girls.  As it stands, though, The Seven Seas represents the last of its line: the seafaring pulp magazine.

The Asphyx (1972)

Another of those early seventies independently produced British horror movies that used to be late night regulars on the BBC,  The Asphyx boasts a first class cast, including Robert Stephens, Robert Powell and Jane Lapotaire and is very nicely shot by former cinematographer Peter Newbrook.  It also boasts one of those bizarre premises which, within the film's own universe, makes perfect sense, but viewed objectively, is pretty much nonsensical.  Victorian scientist Robert Stephens notices that, in photographs taken of people nearing death, a black smudge can always be seen.  His colleagues surmise that this is a physical manifestation of the soul leaving the body, but Stephens has other ideas, noticing that, in his crude moving films of those nearing death, the smudge is moving toward them, not away.  Further examination reveals that the shape is actually some kind of ethereal being which comes for the soul at the moment of death: the asphyx.  Stephens' investigations suggest that everyone has their own, personal asphyx, leading him to conclude that if one could capture their own asphyx, they would become immortal.  All of which, sort of, makes sense within the context of the film.

The rest of the movie concerns Stephens' increasingly obsessive attempts to capture his asphyx, with the assistance of his ward, Robert Powell, and Powell's fiance, (Lapotaire).  Ironically, all of his attempts seem to result in other people dying.  Ultimately, Stephens gains immortality, but the cost of losing everyone close to him and ends up doomed to forever wander the earth, alone.  (Apart, that is, from the pet hamster whose asphyx he had trapped in an early experiment and which, earlier had bizarrely caused Lapotaire's death by chewing through a wire and causing her to be decapitated by a guillotine).  Yes, that's right, The Asphyx is essentially a morality tale about the perils of meddling in things that mortal men shouldn't.  Which is a pity as the original idea had a lot of potential but, sadly, instead of exploring the concept of the asphyx, the film just degenerates into a standard tale of an overreaching scientist getting his fingers burned by daring to investigate forbidden knowledge.  AS ever, the script just falls back on the old cliche of immortality being undesirable, (because, it is implied, it is 'against God'), and concludes that man should be satisfied with his three score years and ten.  Still, for a low budget horror film it is all very handsomely mounted and is quite entertaining while it is on.  It also represents an interesting attempt to break away from the standard British horror movie formulae established by Hammer and Amicus, even if does ultimately lose its nerve and reverts to cliche.

Lawless Britain?

So, we've had the Prime Minister of the UK compare himself to the Incredible Hulk before running scared from a mob in Luxembourg, (where, presumably, any gathering of two slightly disgruntled people constitutes a 'mob').  In the meantime, back in the UK the Supreme Court is deliberating as to whether or not he gave illegal advice to the Queen with regard to the suspension of parliament. All the while, as this constitutional crisis unfolds, he and his ministers seem determined to create another one by implying that the Prime Minister has no intention of obeying the laws regarding a no deal Brexit recently enacted by parliament.  I mean, you can't make this shit up, can you?  It's like living in one of those political satires they used to make in the sixties, where the entire world's leadership appeared to be buffoons, puppets for evil corporations who manipulated them from behind the scenes.  Except that I'm not sure that there is any behind-the-scenes manipulation - I strongly suspect they are all just hapless buffoons motivated only by their own egos and deluded ambitions.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to Boris Johnson defying the law come the end of October in order to crash us out of the EU without a deal.  It will set a precedent, whereby we'll all then have carte blanche to break whichever laws we happen not to agree with.

Mark my words, come November 1 we'll all be robbing banks, mugging old ladies and stealing cars, while the public parks will be full of flashers exposing themselves to all and sundry.  It will be like that film The Purge.  The police will be powerless as we could all cite the 'Johnson defence', that we didn't happen to agree the particular law we were breaking so we just ignored it.  After all, if such conduct is permissable by a Prime Minister, it is permissable for everyone else.  Unless, of course, Johnson was to be arrested if and when he breaks that anti-no deal law.  The question is whether or not the authorities in the UK would actually do their job and take action against a right wing Prime Minister who broke the law.  I remain dubious as to whether we can.  Whatever happens, we'll be in uncharted territory.  There is no precedent, that I'm aware of, for a Prime Minister deliberately defying a law passed by parliament and given Royal Assent.  Mind you, if the police do try and arrest him, I can only presume that Johnson will get very angry, turn green and smash through the front wall of Number Ten, before proceeding to throw several police cars around and then smash parliament itself to pieces.  Unless there's a mob of protestors outside, that is.  In which case he'll just try and climb out the toilet window round the back.

Buried Madness

'Sugg from Madness digs up a World War Two tank from a field in Surrey' - that must have been one Hell of a pitch for a TV series.  But it got made, (you can see it on Blaze tonight).  To be absolutely fair, Suggs doesn't spend the entire series, (World War Two Treasure Hunters), digging up a tank - in other episodes he digs up crashed German bombers and other wartime relics.  Of course, it all begs the question of why it is that most people wandering around with metal detectors never manage to dig up more than a few bottle tops and the odd fifty pence piece, while the onetime front man of Madness can apparently find tanks, planes, bombs and the like.  Perhaps there is an episode where he detects and digs up a complete World War Two aircraft carrier, buried sixty miles inland.  Anyway, to get to the point, such as it is, there was a time when, had you described a TV show where a pop singer dug up buried war relics, everyone would have treated it as a joke.  But in today's world of multichannel digital TV, it seems that you can pitch just about any format for a factual programme and, provided that it is cheap to produce, it will get made. 

Channels like Blaze and Quest are full of faux archeological programmes with various unlikely celebrities excavating all manner of things.  Or restoring them.  Or prorammes about people just doing their jobs, be it fishing for tuna, driving trucks in Australia or trains in Alaska.  (Actually, Quest and DMAX - both part of the Discovery group - have quite an obsession with Alaska, between them showing a plethora of shows covering just about every aspect of living there).  But it is the true crime programmes which seem the weirdest to me.  In fact, with their obsession with murder, the more horrible the better, is downright sinister.  The titles are bad enough - Fear Thy Neighbour, for instance.  I suspected that this might be an edgier remake of racist seventies sitcom Love Thy Neighbour, where the Jack Smethurst character goes beyond just being the local bigot to putting a pillowcase on his head and planting blazing crosses on his black neighbour's lawn.  But no, it's a 'factual' show about having murderous next door neighbours.  These show cover every aspect of murder, often approaching it in terms of 'themes' - there's one that documents murders committed at British seaside resorts, for instance.  What next, Vicars that Kill?  Homicidal Housewives?  Barbecue Massacres?  Kindergarten Killings?  I'm going to have to start pitching some of these...

(For what it is worth, the tank dug up on the Suggs programme was a Covenantor, a British cruiser tank with so many design flaws that it was only ever used for training and never deployed on active service.  It had been buried, for unknown reasons, on a farm in Surrey which subsequently became a vineyard.  Interestingly, it is the second Covenantor to be dug up from this site, another having been excavated in the seventies, when it was still a farm.  This tank was restored and is now on display at Bovington tank museum.  The Covenantor dug up on the TV show is currently being restored in Manchester.  Apart from a couple of wrecks on a former Army firing range in Norfolk and two examples converted into bridgelayers in Australia, these are the only two Covenantors known to survive).

'Captain Danger Over London'

Another old magazine cover, this time a World War Two pulp.  This edition of Air War is the Winter 1941 edition, which means that it was probably published just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the US into the war.  Of course, regardless of whether or not it involved the US, the war raging in Europe was of huge to the US public and was reflected in American pulps such as this.  War always makes good fodder for pulp stories, so even before the US joined World War Two, magazines such as this were appearing in order to spin colourful and highly unlikely adventures against its background.  I'm guessing that the Battle of Britain in 1940 had caught the imagination of US pulp readers, inspiring magazines of this sort.  Air war stories had another attraction for US pulps in that a significant number of US pilots had elected to defy the country's Neutrality Acts and volunteer for the RAF, eventually being formed into the 'Eagle Squadrons'.  This gave the pulps a domestic angle to sell their magazines to their readers.

A notable feature of the covers of these war pulps was that they depicted the warplanes of the era with surprising accuracy.  This one is no exception, giving us a couple of Junkers JU87 Stukas going down in flames, even as a Messerscmitt Bf109 comes to their assistance.  Most interesting, though, is the flight of RAF fighters attacking them.  These appear to be American built Bell P-39 Airacobras, chosen presumbly, because they give the pulp another US connection to the air war in Europe.  Now, while it is true that the RAF took delivery of a large number of these aircraft, in reality only one squadron ever flew them, as it was rapidly decided that they simply weren't suitable as a pure fighter.  Nor did they excel in the ground attack role and, eventually, they were crated up and sent to the Soviet Union as part of the UK's military aid to Russia following the German invasion.  The P-39 also didn't fare well in USAAF service, with the P-40 and P-38 being preferred, (before they too were superseded by the P-47 and P-51).  By contrast, they were well liked by Soviet pilots and served extensively on the Eastern front in the ground attack role.  All of which makes that cover illustration highly unlikely, (also, the 'three formation' of a leader and two wingmen was, by 1941, being abandoned by the RAF in favour of the Luftwaffe 'Finger Four' formation, with two pairs of leader and wingman).  Of course, with the US' entry into the war, the pulps would finally be able to create stories around their own air forces, meaning that the days of theses RAF-orientated covers were numbered.

Homicidal (1961)

Another slice of schlock from master showman William Castle, Homicidal is perhaps less well remembered than his other films of the period, like 13 Ghosts, The Tingler or House on Haunted Hill.  The success of the latter apparently inspired Hitchcock to make his own low budget horror movie: Psycho (1960).  In turn, the success of Psycho inspired Castle to make Homicidal as a cash in on the Hitchcock film's success.  While Homicidal is nowhere near as suspenseful or innovative as the Hitchcock film it seeks to imitate, it is still a solid and entertaining B movie.  Like Psycho, it focuses on a psychotic, cross-dressing, killer (there's a spoiler there), but, unlike Norman Bates, there's no doubt as to the killer's identity from the outset.  Or one of their identities, at least.  Homicidal is more interested in unravelling the killer's motivation and complex back story, gradually revealing that the apparently random and bizarre murder that opens the film is actually part of a complex plot involving inheritances and hidden identities.  The film has its share of shock sequences, most notably a severed head, but doesn't attempt anything as audacious as Hitchcock's killing off of the apparent heroine barely a third into the film.  It does, however, culminate in the revelation that two of the characters are, in fact, the same person.

Of course, being a William Castle production, Homicidal has a gimmick.  All Castle films of the era had a promotional gimmick of some kind, ranging from the 'special' glasses which enabled audiences to see the ghosts in 13 Ghosts, or the allegedly wired up cinema seats to allow viewers to share the shocks of The Tingler, to the 'Emergo' process which allowed a tatty cardboard skeleton to supposedly emerge from the screen and fly over the audience's heads in House on Haunted Hill.  Homicidal's  gimmick was somewhat simpler: the 'Fear Break' toward the end of the film, which gave audience members the chance to leave before the 'terrifying' climax.  Except that if they did so, they'd be forced to stand in the 'Coward's Corner' in the theatre foyer until the film ended.  All of which emphasises the fact that Homicidal, like all of Castle's films, was ultimately intended to be fun for paying audiences.  Castle was a showman and his instinct was always to provide cinemagoers with some kind of 'spectacle' with which to sell his films.  Sure, these 'spectacles' were as hokey and low budget as the movies themselves, but they entertained audiences and left them feeling that they had got their money's worth.  Homicidal might not be as ambitious as Psycho, but is, arguably, more entertaining on its own schlocky level.  Like most Castle films of this period, which were usually scripted by Robb White, Homicidal's plot doesn't entirely make sense when subjected to any scrutiny, but it has its own, warped, internal logic - and there lies a large part of their attraction: they draw the viewer into their own distorted universe where different, off kilter, rules and logic  apply.  Not much seen on TV these days, Homicidal is well worth tracking down as a prime example of the wild world of William Castle.

Seasonal TV Fatigue

I remember when the advent of Autumn presaged a new season of TV programmes.  The most important season in the TV calendar, in fact.  With the Autumn season covering the run up to Christmas, traditionally the time of stellar viewing figures, the TV channels always thought it important to schedule their top series and debut their strongest new offerings in Autumn, in the hope of building loyal viewing audiences.  Now, however, Autumn seems to herald nothing more than the annual return of Strictly Come Dancing, (which I have never watched and have no intention of watching).  As far as the run up to Christmas is concerned, for some it doesn't seem to exist: today Sony's True Movies channel transformed into the Sony Christmas Movie channel until New Year, showing nothing but festive themed films - all of them crap.  I know that it does this every year, bt I'm sure that it usually waits until at least late October before doing so.  Back in the day, TV seasons were clearly defined, with Autumn the most important, followed by the Winter season, kicking off after New Year, which included fewer debuts, but still had a strong slate of returning favourites to cheer us through the dark days of January and February.  Come the Spring season, more repeats would start to creep in, diluting the new programming, with only shows they weren't sure about debuting.  Summer, of course, was always threadbare, dominated by cheap sports coverage taking up hour after hour of prime time, more and more repeats, second rate imported shows and if anything debuted during Summer, it meant that the channel had decided that it was a stinker.

Things began to change when the BBC, in particular, realised that not everybody spent their Summers outside, enjoying all that sunshine we never got in the UK and that not everybody wanted to watch sports all Summer, either.  Of course, the increasing costs of sports events rights probably helped change their minds, too.  Anyway, they started to experiment with debuting new series in the Summer which weren't crap and, surprise, surprise, found that there was an audience for them.  Other channels followed suit and, gradually, Summer began to look like any other TV season.  Over time, the channels started distributing their output more evenly across the seasons, although Autumn seemed to retain its primacy.  But other developments eroded the old seasonal orthodoxy: soap operas, increasingly providing regular audiences, started to be shown all year round, with no Summer break, while, in recent times, new digital channels have tended to pay scant attention to the seasons, or religious festivals for that matter, running heir schedules without regard for the time of year.  Moreover, streaming services have released their programming all year round, with a similar disregard for seasons.  Add to that the advent of the terrestrial channels catch up services and the whole concept of seasonal programme has, by and large, fallen by the wayside.  Which is a pity - Autumn was always something to look forward to, especially when I was a kid, with the expectation of all that exciting new programming.  But, like Christmas, it seems to have lost its special status in TV terms.  Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the availability of half decent programming all year round, but, out of habit, I always expect things to move up a gear in Autumn and can't help feel somewhat disappointed when it doesn't happen.

Humanoids From the Deep (1980)

Back when I was a teenager, there were many movies, mainly low budget horror flicks, which seemed to inflame the tabloid press, who happily condemned them while simultaneously devoting copiously illustrated two page spreads to them, in order to show us how horrible they were.  The age of home video had barely dawned - VHS players were still just a dream for most households (mine was only an early adopter thanks to my father working for Radio Rentals and renting one at a staff discount) - so these films could only be seen at the local cinema.  Which, in turn, meant that I was unlikely to see them as they inevitably carried X certificates (the then equivalent to the current 18 certificate), which made me too young to gain admittance.  Consequently, it has taken me years, decades even, to catch up with many of them - usually to find that it really wasn't worth the wait. Anyway, this past weekend I finally watched Humanoids From the Deep (1980).  Or rather I saw Monster!, as the version I saw was a European release print, which carried that title.  I recall that when the film was originally released in the UK, there was quite a furore surrounding it, mainly manufactured by the press.

The supposed controversy focused on the film's sexual content, principally the fact that the title monsters didn't just kill the men folk of a small Californian fishing village, but also raped the women.  But only the young, attractive ones who run around the beach in bikinis, (which, naturally, get ripped off during the assault to expose some naked breasts).  In response, distributors New World pointed to the fact that the film had been directed by a woman - Barbara Peeters, who had already directed a number of low budget exploitation films for Roger Corman -  and actually reflected some kind of female empowerment.  This 'empowerment' was embodied in the form of a tough, intelligent and resourceful female scientist - played by Ann Turkel - as one of the film's leads.  Unfortunately, these claims to the film having some kind of feminist sub-text were seriously undermined, not just by its content, but by the fact that both Peeters and Turkel tried to have their names removed from the finished film.  The source of their anger being the fact that Peeters hadn't actually shot the rape scenes seen in the film, nor had Turkel seen them before the film was completed.  These scenes had, in fact, been shot later by the second unit director and inserted into the film to replace the versions filmed by Peeters.  Her versions of the sequences were, reportedly, far less graphic. with less bare flesh and shrouded in shadows.  Uncredited executive producer Corman felt that, as shot by Peeters, this aspect of the film was simply not exploitable enough and authorised the reshoots.  (Actually, I'm pretty sure that one of the sequences was filmed later in its entirety and inserted into the film, as it doesn't seem to be referenced anywhere else within the movie).

The fact is that, having finally seen Humanoids From the Deep, it is clear that it badly needed the controversy generated by the rape scenes in order to get noticed.  Without them, its is a pretty standard monster movie, a throwback to fifties B-movies like Creature From the Black Lagoon. Indeed, with its meagre production values, ropey looking monsters,small town setting and stock characters, it feels more like a seventies TV movie than a cinema release.  A feeling reinforced by the presence of Doug McClure and Vic Morrow in leading roles.  In fact, every cliche of the 'TV movie of the Week' is present:  the big corporation planning to build a cannery in the town, the conflict between those fishermen who welcome the jobs it will bring and the local Native American population who argue it will infringe upon their traditional hunting lands.  It's all there, including the big corporation's dark secret.  The script is terribly clunky, particularly with regard to the origins of the titular monsters which, according to Turkel in some barely digestible expository dialogue, are the result of the big corporation's experiments to create giant sized salmon.  Sadly, they aren't mutated salmon, but the result of primitive fish like coeleocanths eating hormone-packed salmon which escaped from the corporate fish farms.  The hormones triggered mutations resulting in these scaly humanoid amphibians which, incredibly, are driven to mate with human women in order to advance their evolution!

It doesn't help that the film moves forward in fits and starts, with plot elements and individual scenes apparently inserted arbitrarily, with little regard for any idea of plot development.  It also moves very sluggishly for its first half or so, before decsending into a welter of confusing action with the discovery of the creatures by McClure and Turkel, before the monsters suddenly attack the town's annual salmon festival.  On the plus side, most of Rob Bottin's gore effects are very well done.  Unfortunately, his monsters are pretty dire, their general shabbiness exposed by the fact that we see far too much of them far too soon.  In fact, the first 'reveal' of an entire humanoid is laughable - it is seen as it sexually assaults an unfortunate young woman and gives the impression that she is being pounced on by a man wrapped in a tarpaulin.  While the film relentlessly portrays women as victims for most of its length, there is one sequence, at the film's climax, which does reverse this.   McClure's wife, (a character who, hitherto, has been largely sidelined in favour of Turkel's scientist), finds herself beseiged, with their infant son, in the family home by a pair of creatures, during which, refusing to be victimised, she takes the fight to them and hacks them to death with a big knife.  This, of course, also represents a reversal of the usual scenarios of then popular slasher movies, where women would be menaced and hacked to death by men wielding large knives.  I'd like to think this was one of Peeters' scenes, left unadulterated, hinting at the direction she perhaps wanted to take the film.

As it stands, Humanoids From the Deep remains basically a B-movie, enjoyable in a schlocky way, but frustratingly unsatisfying as a whole.  It all too clearly displays evidence of having been re-shot and re-dited by multiple hands.  (As well as James Sbardeletti, the second unit director, Jimmy Murakami, who had been directing Battle Beyond the Stars for Corman apparently also shot several scenes uncredited).  Seen at this distance in time, the rape sequences which caused all the fuss no longer seem shocking - they are fairly ineptly done are their inclusion is obviously opportunistic, designed to add notoriety to an otherwise routine monster movie.  Undoubtedly, Corman realised that the tide was turning in the world of cheap horror movies, with teen-orientated slasher movies with copious lashings of gore and nudity rapidly becoming the default format.  Old fashioned monster flicks like Humanoids From the Deep just wouldn't cut it with the slasher movie audience unless it could offer some of the same features.  Hence the re-shoots, which clearly borrow from the slasher template.  The film ends with another sequence which seems to have been opportunistically added at the last minute, inspired perhaps by the recently released Alien, showing one of the raped girls in labour, with her monstrous offspring bursting out of her abdomen, thereby threatening a sequel which, thankfully, never came. 

Resigned to Misery

Well, my holiday is drawing to a close, with the deterioration in the weather making the prospect of returning to work even more miserable.  You know, I even had a dream last night where I handed in my notice. Perhaps it is a portent.  Certainly, things can't go on as they are.  A few weeks ago, I drew up one of those pros and cons lists with regard to my job.  The only thing I could think of to put in the pro list was that I got paid for it.  Badly paid, but paid.  (Actually, I hadn't realised how badly until I checked the current National Living Wage - the absolute minimum hourly rate I'd be entitled to - and realised that when calculated as an hourly rate, my wages aren't that far above it).  That was it.  Nothing else.  No job satisfaction, no feeling of achievement, no intellectual challenge, no great workplace.  Nothing.  Whereas in the cons column were such things as 'it makes me ill', 'it exposes me to unnecessary risk' and 'it is utterly pointless'.  Those were just the highlights, there was much, much more.  The key point, though, is that it makes me ill.  Not just the literal stress related illness I experienced last year, which nearly resulted in a stroke and has left me on medication, but also the daily feelings of dread and angst I suffer when working.  It is notable that the stomach upsets I suffer as the result of taking Metformin for my diabetes, have been much less severe for these three weeks that I've been away from work.  I've still experienced upsets, but they've been manageable.  While working, they are sometimes debilitating.  Coincidence?  I think not.

The reality is that, right now, I've put myself in a financial situation where I could walk out without another job to go to immediately.  I have sufficient funds to survive quite happily for several years, if need be.  Moreover, without a mortgage, rent or dependents, I wouldn't have to work full time.  (I'm already down to four days a week and, in a job that paid a decent rate, I'd only need to work three days a week. In fact, if push came to shove, I could even pay the bills and buy the groceries on three days a week of National Living Wage).   Or so I keep telling myself.  But saying it, or, indeed, knowing it on an intellectual level, is a world away from actually taking the step of handing in one's notice.  For someone of my generation, for whom holding a steady and secure job has been indoctrinated, from an early age, as being the 'Holy Grail', the idea of walking away from a job simply because it has become unbearable, still seems somehow wrong.  I still have this feeling that I would be committing some kind of transgression if I were deliberately to make myself unemployed and that my social status and self worth would somehow be damaged.  But it isn't as if I'd be claiming benefits, plus, my current job confers no social status (quite the opposite) and doing it undermines my sense pf self worth.  I just need to convince myself of all this at an emotional level.  I have a feeling that a week back at work will help me do that.  If things haven't improved since I went on leave (and I can guarantee they won't have), then it won't take much to push me into finally resigning.  I just need to be decisive.

Christ, this all pretty depressing, isn't it?  I really need to get back to the schlock and lighter stuff here, don't I?   Hopefully, next week, I'll be in the mood to start doing that.

Political Strategy or Political Cock Up?

So, is it all part of some cunning plan?  Losing three votes in a row in Commons, losing your majority as a result of withdrawing the whip from several of your longest-serving MPs and behaving like a blustering buffoon during your first Prime Minister's Questions, that is.  Because there is an argument that the events of the past few days are playing out more or less as Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings have planned them.  The Commons' passing anti 'No Deal' legislation clearly positions Boris and the Tories as the 'hardline' brexit party, thereby sidelining Farage's rabble, sorry, Brexit Party, while expelling all those Tory rebels effectively purges the party of its Brexit moderates.  The Fixed Term Parliaments Act, cooked by his pal 'Call Me Dave' Cameron, while preventing Boris from calling an election, is also, in effect, keeping him in Number Ten, despite not having a majority, as he knows it unlikely that those ex-Tory MPs will support a Labour 'no confidence' motion (the only other realistic route to a change in government), as that could put Corbyn in Number Ten.  By rejecting a general election through their opposition or abstention during the vote on it, the opposition have left themselves open to charges of 'cowardice', etc.  As for his PMQs performance, well, for a lot Brexiteers and the right-wing press, it is precisely this 'knockabout' political style which they love.

Thus, it could be argued that Boris is where he wants to be in terms of positioning himself and the rump of his party in anticipation of an inevitable election.  The fact is that Brexit itself is neither here nor there, it is merely a means to an end for Johnson.  The real prize is a general election victory which could secure him an overall majority and four years in power.  Indeed, some of us have always believed that 'Brexit' was a 'Trojan Horse' for the extreme right to mobilise around and gain some foothold in popular opinion. To that end, it has been extraordinarily successful, with the Tory party having lurched to the right in dramatic fashion.  Whether Johnson's strategy will work, remains to be seen.  If, indeed, what we are seeing is a strategy and not just a product of his egotistical arrogance.  Which is equally probable.  We just don't know.  Maybe he and Cummings really believed that the threat of expulsion would deter those Tory rebels from voting against the government.  If so, their strategy has spectacularly backfired.  It has also created the possibility of splitting the Tory vote in several otherwise safe Tory seats, if the incumbent now not Tory MPs choose to stand again, as independents.  Anyway, right now, the odds seem to be in favour of another delay to Brexit and a general election in either late October or November.  Which would probably result in another hung parliament, from which God knows what kind of governing coalition might emerge.

'I Battled a Giant Otter'

I have a weakness for old men's magazine covers from the fifties and sixties and a particular weakness for those depicting animal mayhem of some kind or another.  Many of these involve young women in various states of undress being variously menaced by giant snakes, octopuses, elephants, crocodiles, gorillas and all manner of big cat, while their men folk look on helplessly.  Others depict fearless white hunters blowing away charging rhinos, elephants, wildebeest and big cats.  Especially big cats.  Then there is another sub-category which focuses upon the ordeals suffered by the (invariably male) victims of animal attacks, (the most famous of these being 'Weasels Ripped my Flesh').

The above cover from the December 1953 Men magazine illustrates this last type of story and is a great favourite of mine.  Whereas the protagonists of most of these stories faced killer weasels, vultures, giant land crabs. pirahnas and the like, this poor fellow has to make do with a giant otter.  Now, while I know that there are such a thing as giant otters in South America, which grow up to six feet long and have sharp teeth, I don't think that they are known for savaging humans.  Although, God knows, they'd have good reason to, as they were once hunted to the verge of extinction for their pelts.  But, regardless of their proclivity, or otherwise, for mauling humans, the fact is that otters, giant or otherwise, are just too cute looking to pose any kind of threat.  Which is why I find this cover endlessly amusing.

End of Another Season

We've reached the melancholy part of my annual long Summer break.  The Summer is fast ebbing away, the children have (mainly) gone back to school, the tourists have (mostly) gone home and most people are back at work.  Consequently, I spent part of today on a windy, near deserted, beach, with the sky overcast and the sea pounding the shingle.  It seemed strange to think that the now near deserted car park was, only last week, packed full of cars, in turn packed full of kids, dogs, buckets and spades and inflatable mattresses and the like.  It was the same all down the bit of coast I drove down on my way there: deserted beaches, empty car parks.  Like I said, all very melancholy.  Yet there is something I like about this 'end of season' period: the relative peace and calm, the feeling of still being free while everyone else has gone back to 'normality'.  I used to feel guilty about still being on holiday while everyone else had seemingly gone back to work. Quite irrational, I know - it isn't as if everyone takes the same time off, there were plenty of people still working over the past couple of weeks while I've been off.  It's just that feeling you get during August, that the whole world is on holiday, which abruptly ends with the coming of September.

I can't say that, so far, this holiday has been exactly 'vintage', but it has had its highlights, mainly early on, when the weather was at its best.  There's still the rest of the week to go, though, so who knows what excitements still lie in store?  One thing that has been successful this holiday has been my mission to be anti-social.  I've managed to avoid just about everyone.  Most people don't seem to realise that when I'm on holiday, it isn't just work and the like I'm taking a break from, but people as well.  (Obviously, I make exceptions for visitors like Frank Nora from the Overnightscape, when he and his wife were in London).  So, I've spent the past couple weeks avoiding anybody I know.  I went into the other bar at the pub, for instance, to avoid someone from work I'd seen and I've been ignoring answer phone messages from others, (if asked why I didn't get back to them, I'll just say that I was on holiday, they won't know that I didn't actually go away anywhere).  It's been great.  Increasingly, I find that the one thing I crave when I'm working is simply to be left alone.  So, when I'm on holiday, that's what I do - enjoy my solitude and the freedom it brings me.  Anyway, that's the holiday so far.