Misery TV

I seem to recall that, a few years ago, an incoming head of Channel Five promised that the channel was going to cut down on those 'reality' programmes which are based upon the viewer being able to wallow in someone else's misery.  Yet still there seems to be a stream of such shows.  You know what I mean - Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away, (people in debt being harassed by private bailiffs),  Nightmare Neighbour Next Door, (self-explanatory tales of being harassed by their neighbours), Fare Dodgers, (again, self explanatory), Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole, (let's laugh at poor people) and Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords (a curious combination of revelling in people being evicted and poor people, usually immigrants, being ripped off by unscrupulous landlords).  While the last of these might appear to be trying for some balance in its depiction of tenants and landlords, I noticed recently that another such programme had appeared in Five's schedules - Extreme Nightmare Tenants - which, it turned out, was actually a re-editing of the former show, focusing entirely upon the 'bad' tenants. making clear where the audience interest lies.  Now, I know that the main reason Channel Five are coming up with such 'cut and shut' shows is that, because of the pandemic, no new production has been possible, (residential repossessions of all kinds were suspended for seven months), but it is clear what they believe audience expectations to be.  People being kicked out of houses is clearly a bigger ratings winner than looking at the plight of those at the mercy of bad landlords and their shitty properties.   

I have to declare an interest in these programmes about repossessions, as, until I took my 'career break' (as if it is actually a 'career'),  I was involved in civil Enforcement and a large part of the job involved repossessions.  Consequently, I know that things like Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords are highly unrepresentative of the majority of repossession cases.  Private tenants of the sort shown in the programme are actually quite rare.  The reality is that the majority of people evicted for rent arrears or anti-social behaviour are, in fact, tenants of housing associations or charities.  Usually people with all manner of problems, often related to substance abuse and mental health issues, or just plain old extreme poverty.  While I understand that the agencies involved can't have their properties occupied rent free, severly damaged or allow their other tenants to be harassed, I can't help but feel that putting these people out on the street without any support is a particularly constructive approach to the problem.  Sure, a proportion of the people I've been involved in evicting are scumbags, the majority are, themselves, victims.  

As for the way evictions are portrayed, both in Nightmare Tenants and Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away, well, they are highly misleading.  For one thing, despite the bullshit they try to spin on screen, the majority of residential evictions aren't carried out by Sheriff's Officers (who, these days, are private bailiffs working under contract ).  They are carried out by County Court Bailiffs who are civil servants.  The former only got a real toehold in residential evictions when they started telling landlords that they could evict without notice.  Which is unlawful - the Court of Appeal established many years ago that reasonable notice must be given to the tenant.  The County Courts has always taken this to mean at least seven days.  In reality, due to workloads, it is usually more like three weeks from the issue of a warrant.  Nowadays, the Sheriff's also have to obey this rule (which they should have been doing all along.  In fact, much of what you see the Sheriff's doing in those TV programmes is bullshit: they have no right of entry to private premises, property owned by a sole trader which is deemed to be 'tools of the trade' is exempt from levy and/or seizure.  There's more, but I can't be bothered to list it.  Despite what they try to imply, they actually have fewer powers than County Court Bailiffs (no power of arrest, for instance, as they are only agents of the court, not officers of the court).  Anyway, getting back to the way evictions are portrayed in Nightmare Neighbours, well, the level of confrontation is much less in reality and I'm puzzled by the presence of those two-fisted solicitors who always seem to take credit for a successful eviction.  Only once, in twenty years, can I think of an instance when a lawter actually attended an eviction...

Not Believing in Elephants

I see that the nutters were out again on Saturday, gathering in Trafalgar Square to worship at the feet of the likes of David Icke.  Apparently, even Right Said Fred were there, supporting the pandemic deniers.  I don't what shocked me more: that they are Covid denying loonies or that they are still a thing.  They join various other has-been nineties pop icons like Noel Gallagher and Ian Brown in aligning themselves with the crackpots and contrarians.  As someone who always steadfastly resisted the alleged charms of Oasis and The Stone Roses, I'm actually glad that they've 'come out' now as the utter knobs I've always thought that they were.  Mind you, an equally disturbing development is that Jedward have emerged as the principle pop-world advocates of common sense.  The world, truly, has gone mad.  Of course, the crackpots would say that the madness lies with the rest of us accepting the existence of the current pandemic, when it is obviously just a conspiracy on the part of 'them' to oppress us, steal our data via things like track and trace apps and track us via microchips injected into our bodies under cover of vaccines.  The problem is that they don't seem to see the irony in the fact that they are spreading their message using technology which, itself, is incredibly intrusive.  Social media, like Facebook, is designed primarily to gather your personal data, while access to most of the wider web is controlled by corporate behemoths like Google which, likewise, are intent upon gathering your data and exploiting it for profit.  As others have pointed out, Ian Brown uses an iPhone to post his Tweets on the 'conspiracy' - a device manufactured by a company that not only seeks to capture your data, but whose business model - using cheap labour in China and elsewhere to manufacture goods sold for premium prices in Europe, Japan and the US - is fundamentally exploitative.  

So, if you are worried about having your data stolen as a result of the pandemic, you are too late.  We've already given it away to social media operators, our mobile phone services, web providers and countless other tech companies.  That's the irony: people spent years worrying about 'Big Brother' and state intrusion into their privacy when, in reality, it was private corporations who actually wanted all that data, for the purposes of profit rather than surveillance - and we gave it to them willingly.  If you are worried about being watched - you already are, by Google, Facebook, Apple etc.  Getting back to our specific loons - the ones in Trafalgar Square, that is - it seems that their main criteria for not believing in the existence of the pandemic is that they, personally, don't know anybody who has had Covid, let alone died of it.  Jesus!  I've never met anybody who has had beriberi, but I don't doubt that it is real, (although I have no bloody idea what the fuck it is).  Although, as it happens, I do know several people who had Covid-19, one seriously enough to be hospitalised. Thankfully, though, none of them died.  But this, apparently, is how we are now supposed to judge the veracity of anything - whether or not it actually lies within our own limited and very narrow personal experience.  This solipsism extends beyond Covid:  I've encountered a number of people who refuse to acknowledge that disproportionate use of force by US police against black people is real, because they've never, themselves, seen such instances.  The reliable testimony of others, fact-based evidence and scientific studies are no longer good enough.  

Now, I know that Aristotle refused to believe in the existence of elephants, as he'd never seen one himself and descriptions of them that he had heard sounded too ludicrous to be real.  But he lived in age where there were no photographs, film or video - the only representations of things you personally hadn't seen or experienced came, primarily, in the form of oral histories, paintings and sketches or sculptures - all of which included a fair amount of the artist's imagination and were themselves based on third, fourth or more, accounts.  Today, we have no such excuse.   But such a refusal to accepts facts, evidence and expert testimony lies at the heart of conspiracy theories, which are all about feeding the ego.  They are a way of saying that the facts don't conform to my personal views, so therefore I'm going to ignore them and substitute alternative facts not based upon evidence or drawing on the experiences of others.  Which is why these loons don't base their opposition to lock downs and other measures brought in by governments to combat Covid on actual facts or rational arguments, but instead upon their personal prejudices.  Which is dangerous.  So, what can we do about these crackpots and the threat they obviouly pose to public health, (not to mention rational thought)?  Well, as they aren't susceptible to reasoned argument, (they wouldn't be subscribing to conspiracy theories if they were), I think that we need to stop them from passing their obviously faulty genes on.  Personally, I favour running through the crowd at Trafalgar Square with a set of bolt cutters, castrating all the men.  I know tat won't solve the problem of the female loons passing on their genes, but it would be a start.  A radical and drastic solution, I know, but we're living in extraordinary times.  We have to act quickly and decisively.  Besides, bearing in mind that this mob is affiliated with the far right, then we'd only be doing to them what they'd like to do to many of us.  So, grab those bolt cutters now, in preparation for their next demonstration...

Miracle Cure!

Vitamin D is the new miracle cure!  At least, that's what the media are now trumpeting - that vitamin D can reduce the infection and impact of Covid-19.  Which means, of course, that we'll see panic bulk buying of vitamin D.  The shelves of pharmacies and supermarkets will be stripped of their supplies.  If people can't get vitamin D, then they'll probably start hoarding vitamin C or vitamin E, as they are only one letter out and therefore must be similar.   The reality, though, is that what is actually being said by some medical authorities is that normal levels of vitamin D will help the body fight Covid-19, so unless you have a deficiency, then popping vitamin pills won't do you any good.  It isn't a miracle 'cure'.  Despite what various charlatans and self-appointed on line Covid 'experts' will try and tell you.  Already these jokers are out there on social media saying 'I told you so - we didn't need a lockdown when all the government had to do was advocate taking vitamin D'.  Bullshit.  Utter bullshit.  But then, they are bullshitters.  The sort of 'experts' who sit in pubs ruining your evening by spouting absolute bollocks about any and every subject under the sun.  It's amazing how much they know - more, apparently, than those who actually are experts on the subject.  I know - I've lost count of the number of times pub bores have told me that I'm 'wrong' about a subject I'm qualified in.

They'll even try to argue with you over established facts.  I once had a bizarre exchange with someone over the release date of a film, which I knew was 1967, but they insisted was 1971.  They got quite heated about it.  'You might be an expert on these sorts of films, but this time you are wrong', I was told.  I pointed out that the release date was a matter of public record - a quick check on the IMDB using their phone would verify it.  Which, of course, it did.  Not that I've had to put up with any of that since the beginning of lockdown, as I haven't been in a pub since then.  I'm afraid that with my underlying health conditions, (diabetes, high blood pressure), I still don't feel confident about going back into one.  Besides, as I've noted elsewhere, I've found that I really don't miss it at all.  That's the thing about the lockdown: it validated my existence as a hermit/recluse.  I was no longer 'weird' because I like to avoid people.  That said, of late, I've been taking things to extremes - with my break from work enabling me to do bugger all much of the time.  I really do need to find a new sense of direction.  Not that I'm not enjoying  doing bugger all - it is very relaxing and stress free - but it is all a bit aimless.  I need to start making some decisions on what I'm doing and where I'm going.  Perhaps I should just take some vitamin D to immunise me from Covid-19 and go down the pub to be bored and patronised by the know alls...

Octaman (1971)

Octaman (1971) is of note because its title monster was the first professional creation of Rick Baker and it was Pier Angeli's last film before her death that same year.Beyond that, there is little of distinction about it.  It really does feel like a film out of its time - a low budget B monster flick which would have been at home in the fifties, it looks completely out of place in the seventies.  In many ways, it can be seen as a variation on The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), with its title monster being discovered by scientist living in a remote lake somewhere South of the border and taking a liking to the expedition's female member.  The sub-plot about the efforts of the showman financing the expidition to capture the monster for display in his circus echoes plot elements of one of the Creature sequels: Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us.  None of which is surprising, as writer-director Harry Essex, (a veteran of the B-movie scene), had scripted the first Creature and one of Octaman's stars, Jeff Morrow, had been in the second sequel.   Whereas the Creature From the Black Lagoon had been a prehistoric survival, the titular monster of Octaman is the product of environmental pollution, (a common theme in seventies science fiction and horror films - sadly the environmental message fell on deaf ears, judging by the current state of the world).  

Bearing in mind the sort of budget he must have been working with, Baker's monster costume is something of a triumph.  To be sure, it is in no way convincing as a humanoid octopus, but it is far better than most of the creatures you see in B-movies.  Unfortunately, the rest of the film shows less ingenuity.  The plot is repetitive and and one point it, quite literally, goes around in circles after the protagonists are chased into a cave by the monster.  The day-for-night shooting is so murky that, at times, it is difficult to discern exactly what is going on.  Most damagingly, the pace is ponderous, with the film feeling much longer than its seventy six minutes.  You can't help but feel that, having been involved in film and TV productions since the forties, director Harry Essex had simply run out of steam, not to mention ideas.  The film has nothing new to offer. Even some of the cast feel like retreads, with both leading men - Kerwin Matthews and Jeff Morrow - being genre veterans nearing the end of their careers.  It is also somewhat sad to see Pier Angeli, who had once won a Golden Globe and starred in some prestige productions, reduced to appearing in a B-movie.  Sadly, before the film was released, she was dead from an overdose at the age of thirty nine.

While Octaman is far from the worst monster movie I've ever seen, it is also far from being the best.  It is a curious throwback, made at a time when, outside of TV, there was just no market for this kind of movie.  Sadly, it fails to capture any of the crude verve and energy of classic monster movies of the fifties and sixties, undermined by its lacklustre execution.  Ultimately, only the title monster lingers in the memory, simply because it is so bizarre. 

Night Killer (1990)

Sometimes you watch a film and you are left asking 'what the fuck was that?'  Night Killer is one such film.  Except that you don't just ask 'what the fuck' at the end, but all the way through the film.  At no point is it ever clear where it is going, let alone what is going on.  The plot is structured in such a way that the motivation, let alone the identities, don't become clear until the very end.  Which would be fine, but the audience are offered nothing in the way of hints or clues before this.  Now, if this were entirely intentional on the part of the film's makers - a genuine attempt to create an experience which deprives the viewer of the usual comforts provided by conventional cinematic structure, leaving them in a continual state of anticipation and intrigue - it might be considered a legitimate cinematic experiment.  In the case of  Night Killer, however, much of the confusion and befuddlement felt by viewers is actually down to post-production interference by the producers - inept interference at that.  While credited to director Claudio Fragasso, before its release the producers hired Fragasso's editor Bruno Mattei to shoot additional scenes in order to boost the blood and gore quotient.  While himself an experienced a prolific director of exploitation films, Mattei's sequences jar badly with the rest of the film, not so much in style, but more because of their complete lack of continuity.

What seems clear is that while Fragasso thought he was making some sort of psychological thriller, the producers were expecting at least a Giallo, preferably a slasher movie, (the original Italian title translates as Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, despite it having no connection with the series, not taking place in Texas, nor featuring any chainsaws).  Consequently, Mattei's sequences seem to be trying to evoke the spirit of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies,focusing on the grotesquely masked killer murdering women with his Freddy Krueger-style bladed glove - which he punches through their bodies, implying a supernatural angle not reflected in the rest of the film.  (The impact of these scenes are undermined by the fact that the blades on his glove are clearly rubber and bend on contact with any hard surface).  Unfortunately, apart from the mask, these sequences have little relation to the rest of the film - in the main plot it is clearly stated that the killer also rapes his victims, (actually, as it turns out, a key plot point), whereas in Mattei's sequences he merely murders them.  Very gorily.  Worse, they are so clearly tacked on and bear no relevance to the rest of the narrative.  This is particularly true of the two opening murders, in a theatre, where the viewer is left thinking that the other characters in these scenes will be significant, or that they are in for some kind of modern day Phantom of the Opera scenario.  Yet, after these scenes, the credits roll and we find ourselves in a completely different scenario - we never see the theatre again.  It is the same with the other two murder sequences - they are completely isolated from the rest of the narrative.

What seems obvious is that Fragasso intended these murders to remain off-screen, instead focusing on his main narrative concerning the psychological dramas of his protagonist.  While Fragasso clearly wanted to back peddle on the gore, he certainly had no qualms regarding gratuitous nudity, judging by the number of times the main character, Melanie (Tara Buckman), bares her breasts for no particular reason.  Indeed, we've barely met her, post-credits, when she whips them out in front of a mirror and starts to caress them.  Fragasso's main plot concerns Melanie being targeted by the masked killer/rapist, who has struck twice already (the theatre murders) - she survives the ordeal, despite having been tied to her bed after he breaks into her house and repeatedly raped, when the killer is disturbed by a neighbour.  She is, however, left so traumatised by these events that, despite seeing the killer's face, she has no recollection of what has happened to her.  In fact, Dr Willow at the hospital where she is being treated claims that she doesn't even remember that she has a young daughter, (now in the temporary custody of the neighbour and his wife), let alone an estranged husband, a drunken ex-cop.  The scene then abruptly cuts to Melanie driving her Pontiac Firebird along the sea front when, out of nowhere, she is accosted by a sleazebag (Peter Hooten) in a Jeep, apparently at random.  He then confronts her in the toilets of a nearby hotel, where she holds a gun on him and humiliates him.  Next thing, she's on the beach, about to take an overdose, when the sleazebag turns up again and stops her, forcing her to drink saltwater (and nearly drowning her in the process), in order to make her vomit up the pills.  He then takes her to a hotel room, where he effectively holds her prisoner and engages in various sado-masochistic sex games with her, (involving her being tied to the bed and baring those breasts again).

All of this is interspersed with the murderer killing two more victims, the police hunting for Melanie, Dr Willow giving statements to the police and the neighbour and his wife (who hates Melanie, it seems), bickering.  At which point the average viewer is left bemused as to what is going on and where this all going.  Now, to be absolutely fair, Fragasso, by presenting his narrative in such a disjointed way, without providing apparent motivation for any of the characters, not even giving us any proper introduction to most of them, is trying to put his audience in the same position as his protagonist: knowing nothing of their past, of any of the people around them, let alone the events unfolding around them.  The plot then takes another left turn as it is revealed that Melanie's situation is actually part of a scheme hatched by Dr Willow and the detective leading the investigation to shock Melanie into regaining her memory by subjecting her to an ordeal similar to that which caused the amnesia in the first place.  So they arrange to have her abducted, subjected to violent sex games and raped!  But wait, it's OK because that sleazebag who is doing all this is actually the estranged drunken ex-cop husband.  Except that it is still rape, as she doesn't know this and is in no position to give consent.  But, hey, this is the nineties when attitudes toward marital rape were far more lax.  

Quite apart from the fact that this whole plot development is morally reprehensible, (the way to treat a woman traumatised by rape is to 'give her a good seeing to'), not to mention bat shit crazy, but it doesn't even work.  Melanie only remembers what happened to her after she gets away from her ex-husband (who she still doesn't know is her ex) and is abducted again by the real killer on the pretext that he is rescuing her.  Only when puts on the mask and starts menacing her again does she remember everything and stabs him in the crotch, just before the ex turns up and fills him full of lead for good measure.  Not that any of this stops Dr Willow from taking credit for stopping the killer.  In reality, of course, if he wasn't struck off for coming up with this scheme in the first place, then he should have been for its spectacular failure.  The film then hits us with a completely out of left field 'twist' at the very end which makes no sense whatsoever, as there has been no build up to it, at all.  Presumably this was another Mattei addition, whose earlier segments are likewise full of unresolved loose ends which seem to be pointing toward something but are never alluded to in the main body of the film.  (For instance, why does the killer have some kind of art studio filled with weird paintings?  When his identity is revealed there is no hint that he might be an artist of any kind).

Any serious intentions that Fragasso might have had are completely undermined, not just by the plot, but by some truly awful performances from his cast, particularly Tara Buckman in the lead.  Peter Hooten is at least suitably sleazy as her ex, but unable to elicit any sympathy even when he is revealed as the 'good guy'.  He apparently didn't act in another film for over twenty years.  The stilted performances of the cast are mirrored by stilted dialogue.  The few times the script goes for more baroque dialogue, the results are more likely to elicit laughter, as when the killer menaces Melanie, spitting out lines such as "I won't kill you right away - first I'll fuck your brains out!"  On the positive side, the film is at least well shot, making good use of the rainy and overcast locations in Virginia Beach, Virginia, (clearly not the sunny Florida it purports to be).  While, at times, Night Killer provides an enjoyably insane viewing experience, with its sudden changes in tone courtesy of Mattei's inserts, which really do seem to come from a different film, it ultimately leaves a bad taste in the mouth, thanks to the fact that, morally, it is rotten to the core and its central plot device distasteful.  (I know, I know.  It's a bit rich for someone who watches so many of these films to complain about a lack of morality and taste, but even I have standards).  Not only that, but it isn't even particularly suspenseful - despite all of the script's misdirection, the identity of the killer is pretty obvious from very early on.  Still, Night Killer could never be described as boring - crazy, yes, morally questionable, yes, but boring?  Certainly not.

Who Would Have Thought...

Who would of thought it, eh?  That telling people they could go on foreign holidays, that they could go to the pub, not to mention forcing them back into their offices, would result in an upturn in Covid-19 infections?  Not our pathetic excuse for a government, apparently.  As ever, they seem to be caught on the hop, as surprised as ever that things are turning to shit.  I'm not going to say 'I told you so', as I really hoped that this was something that I was going to proven wrong about, that somehow the pandemic would somehow remain manageable during the Autumn and Winter, despite the government's reckless haste in relaxing lockdown measures.  Yet here we are, once again facing the government's dithering as what to do as the infection rate rises and rises.  They don't want another national lockdown, yet what, realistically, are the alternatives?  We don't have an effective test and trace system, despite government promises and the fact that they've had months to develop one.  Apparently, they were more interested in ensuring that the lucrative contracts went to the right people (ie their friends) than they were in ensuring that the system worked.  Moreover, an effective vaccine is still unlikely before next year.  Damn it, for my own reasons, I don't particularly want another full scale lockdown, but I'm struggling to see any other effective way of containing the threat.

But hey, it's all our fault, anyway.  At least that seems to be government's attitude - if only everyone had stuck to the rules with regard to social distancing, then we'd all be OK.  Except, of course, it was the government that undermined these rules by telling everyone that the danger had passed  and you should go back to work, oh, and that it would all be over by Christmas.  Not to mention the entire Dominic Cummings debacle - by failing to sanction a high profile government advisor for breaking the rules they were sending a clear message that they themselves didn't take them seriously.  I see the consequences of this attitude daily - people walking around shops without masks, not observing social distancing either inside or outside of shops, ignoring the one way systems in shopping centres, barging past anyone who is observing it.  The whole situation has been further exacerbated by all those contrarians and conspiracy theorists who either deny that the virus exists or that the measures required to contain it are somehow invalid.  To do this, of course, requires a wilful misinterpretation of facts and data.  They ignore the virulence of Covid,(which is what makes it such a threat, as it can rapidly result in tens of thousands of infections which could overwhelm health services and cripple the economy far more effectively than any lockdown), to focus on its relatively low fatality rate per thousand.  Which, itself, ignores the fact that, due to the virulence, these will all occur over a very short period of time.  Oh, and the falling infection rate - that was due to the fact that we had a national lockdown. which prevented, via social distancing, the virus reproducing because it was denied new hosts, cretins.  I think that it is this inability to grasp the principles of cause and effect that upsets me most - it's a basic concept for intelligent life. 

 So, where do we go from here?  To be honest, I have no idea and I'm pretty sure that the government doesn't, either.  The fact that it seems more concerned about the possible damage to the profits of Tory donors than it is human life, means that another full lockdown is unlikely.  Probably, they'll do their best to keep fudging the issue until it looks as if a vaccine is ready.  Anyway, that's enough ranting for now - I've been avoiding them for a while, but I wanted to break the recent Monday pattern of simply chronicling all the schlock I'd watched over the weekend.  (Not that I didn't see a whole lot of it this past weekend, including Night Killer, one of the most morally fucked up Italian horror movies I've ever seen - and that's saying something.  Needless to say, it is fucked up on every other level, too).  But I'm sure we'll come back to that. 

Laserblast (1978)

Laserblast was one of those low-budget science fiction films which were released in the wake of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. As the late seventies effectively re-dated the direct-to-video market, these movies enjoyed cinema releases, showing on the big screen to paying audiences.  Which is possibly where Laserblast acquired its poor reputation, often being cited as one of the worst films ever made.  If I'd paid to see this film in a cinema, I probably would have felt cheated but, in reality, it is nowhere near as poor as many of the bad film cultists would have you believe. (Damn it, I saw two films, albeit both direct-to-video releases, back-to-back on American horrors the other night which made Laserblast look like Citizen Kane).  To be sure, director Michael Rae is no Spielberg, or even George Lucas,but his film does look professional: everything is in focus, shots look composed, the editing doesn't jump, the sound is audible and it doesn't look like a random assemblage of footage roughly approximating a story, (unlike most 'classic' bad films).  Moreover, the plot more or less makes sense and the acting of the main cast, if not great, is adequate for this sort of film.  Best of all, despite what appears to be a virtually zero budget, the special effects work is especially good for its era.  Not Star Wars good, obviously, but it does boast some decently stop motion animated aliens (much better than men in rubber suits) and spaceship.

Produced by low-budget maestro Charles Band, (one of his earliest productions), Laserblast is basically a seventies equivalent to the sort of B-movies churned out by the likes AIP in the fifties and early sixties and should be judged on those terms, rather than compared to the likes of Star Wars and Close Encounters.  Like those B-movies, Laserblast is clearly aimed at an adolescent demographic, with its young leads, disaffected protagonist and local bully sub-plot.  The story is simple, opening with a green skinned alien, armed with a ray gun, being hunted down and disintegrated in the desert by a pair of reptilian aliens.  All that's left of the alien is a pile of ashes, his ray gun and a medallion.  These are found by local misfit Billy, who finds that when wearing the medallion, he can fire the gun.  Inevitably, the medallion seems to possess him, his skin turning green when he wears it, and he uses the ray gun against his enemies: the local bully and his sidekick, a pair of Sheriff's deputies who keep harassing him.  Meanwhile, the two aliens aliens, seeing the carnage being caused by Billy, return to earth to try and find him, while a Federal agent also turns up in town investigating the goings on.  Billy eventually completely loses his mind, ends up looking like the alien at the beginning of the film and goes on a rampage in the city. Pursued by his girlfriend and the Fed, they arrive just in time to see him blasted to death by one of the aliens.  (For some reason, unlike the fugitive alien in the opening, he doesn't turn to ashes).

It all moves along smartly enough, with lots of explosions, mainly of vehicles, but also a few buildings, (including a filling station), which are all filmed from multiple angles, (the director clearly enjoyed his explosions) and quite a few car crashes.  Veteran character actors Kennan Wynn and Roddy McDowall put in cameos to help bring a touch of class and professionalism to the goings on, while Gianni Russo from The Godfather plays the Fed and Ron Masak limbers up for his future tenure as Sheriff Metzger of Cabot Cove in Murder, She Wrote, by playing, well, the Sheriff.  It is tempting to try and read some kind of moral into the story. to see at as some sort of analogy for gun violence in the US, or a fable about the corrupting influence of power.  At base, however, it is really an adolescent power fantasy, of the underdog suddenly finding themselves empowered to gain redress against perceived wrongs.  It is basically the same theme that most superhero stories are built around.  Morally, it is quite ambivalent - while Billy's eventual rampage and his killings are presented as being ostensibly a 'bad thing', there's no doubt that most of those he destroys deserve it.  The two deputies and the bully and his sidekick are presented as truly vile characters, their demises unlikely to evoke any audience sympathy. 

Laserblast is one of those films which, while I was aware of its release, I never saw at the cinema when released.  I also managed to miss its VHS and DVD appearances, becoming one of those movies from my youth thatI always meant to watch, but never got around to.  I've gradually been checking off a long list of such films, so was happy to finally catch up with Laserblast courtesy of the Pluto TV streaming service. As I say, it is nowhere near as bad as some people would have you believe.  Just approach it as the B-movie it actually is and you'll find it a relatively diverting ninety minutes or so. 

Living in the Past

 Sometimes it feels like we're going backwards: Spurs struggling to beat footballing minnows in a Europa league qualifying match - that takes me back.  Yet it happened today.  Moreover, we're apparently going to re-sign Gareth Bale on loan.  At this rate, I'll be expecting to see Jose Mourinho sacked and replaced by Martin Jol.  (Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing - we had some good times under Jol).  It seems an eternity since I last spent Thursday evenings following Spurs' progress in the UEFA cup/Europa League, so used have I become to their Wednesday (and sometimes Tuesday) night antics in the Champions League.  It feels as if we are regressing.  Especially when our biggest signing of the current transfer window is a thirty one year old ex-player out of favour with his current club, despite being their world record signing seven years ago.  I have mixed feelings about Bale's return, on the one hand I fear that he'll be a shadow of his former self, (some of us remember Klinsmann's disappointing one season return back in the day), on the other, I desperately hope that he can bring the energy and skill which seems to have been missing from the team of late.  Or are we just regressing, going back to what once worked in the desperate hope that it might work again?  Which is, I suppose, a metaphor for life.

How often do you see it, people returning to places, relationships, jobs and the like, in the hope that the past can resolve problems in the present?  (A pretty neat segue there from football to a more general point, eh?)  But, as noted in the epilogue to Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, 'the past is only for remembering, those who choose to live there lose sight of tomorrow'.  Wise words, indeed.  Nevertheless, it is always tempting to seek refuge in the past.  The great thing about the past, of course, is that it never changes - we always know what is going to happen, which is why going back there seems so attractive.  Particularly when the present, let alone the future, seem uncertain.  Which, I'm sure, explains why so many old TV programmes resurrected from the vaults proved so popular during the Covid lockdown, (OK, I know that broadcasters had little choice, with new production shut down, but the old stuff they had to fall back on proved surprisingly reassuring for audiences: no nasty surprises, nothing unexpected).  So, apart from Tottenham reverting to their inconsistent old selves and re-signing former players, what's brought on this bout of introspective musings about living in the past on my part?  Well, I suppose it has a lot to do with my current six month trial separation from work - it's early days but I can't deny that, at times, I've been feeling a bit rudderless, with no clear idea of where I'm going.  So, there's enormous temptation for me to start regressing to the past, trying to find reassurance by revisiting old haunts and acquaintances, in the hope of recreating past situations which made me happy.  So far, I've resisted because, as I've outlined above, such courses of action are futile.  For now, it is better to focus on the here and now and let the future sort itself out.   Unless you are Tottenham Hotspur, of course...

Italian Style

I realised this morning that I'd missed out a film in my catalogue of all the schlock I watched over the weekend.  I also managed to fit in a viewing of The Last Shark, an early eighties Italian Jaws knock-off.  I say 'knock off', it was actually so close to the original in many aspects that Universal Studios successfully sued the US distributors for a share of the profits - of which there quite lot, it proved very popular when released in the US under the title Great White.  It lifts its whole scenario from Jaws - the small coastal resort, setting, the local mayor obstructing attempts to protect the populace from the shark as he is up for re-election and there's a big event ( a windsurfing gala) coming up.  There's even a grizzled shark hunter on hand, although the characters of the police chief and oceanographer are replaced by a local horror author called Peter Benton - that's Benton, not Benchley - who knows a lot about sharks as he has researched them for one of novels.  They even throw in a sub-plot from Jaws 2, of the local youth getting stranded at sea and menaced by the shark.  It's actually pretty well made, (the fake shark is at least as good as the one in Jaws), and surprisingly entertaining, despite the fact that it is entirely derivative, with no original ideas or plot twists.  It is almost like a Jaws highlights package, cramming versions of all the most memorable sequences from the original into a swiftly moving eighty four minutes or so.

Despite all of the makers' attempts to make The Last Shark look like a US production - location shooting for the exteriors, US lead actors in the form of James Fransiscus, Vic Morrow and Joshua Sinclair, for instance - there's just no mistaking it for an Italian production.  There is just something about Italian film-making which makes it distinctive.  Even when the films have above average dubbing for their English-language versions, (the synching and voice artists used on Last Shark are far superior to most other Italian exploitation films of the era), and Italian supporting actors carefully cast to 'look' like 'typical' US locals, you can just tell its Italian.  There's something about the way in which the films are  shot - the compositions, the use of colour, the way in which narrative is completely subordinated to visuals.  This latter point is significant: the plots of Italian films don't necessarily proceed in the 'logical' way we are used to in most English-language films, there are frequently leaps in logic, assumptions that things will be 'obvious' to the audience without explanation,  What matters more is the look.  Perhaps the fact that Italian films are traditionally shot with their sound entirely post-synched (Italian studios didn't have sound stages - actors spoke their lines in their own languages, with the actual dialogue track being recorded later and dubbed onto the film), has contributed to the way in which dialogue in their exploitation films is frequently so pared down, with directors relying upon the visuals to convey not just plot, but also emotions and reactions.

In English-speaking cinema, the advent of sound meant that films became, quite literally, 'talkies', dominated by dialogue.  In the UK, the seemingly all pervasive influence of the theatre ensured that, for a long time, action tended to play second fiddle to talk in British films, with stagey studio sets with actors entering and exiting stage left and right, dominated scenarios.  (The same was true of British television for many years).  Italian expoitation films, by contrast, never lose sight of the fact that cinema is a visual medium, where one should 'show' rather than 'tell'.  Even in plot driven genres like the giallo this is true - just look at films like Argento's Profondo Rosso or Tenebrae, where the viewer is allowed to piece together large parts of the intricate plots from purely visual clues, rather than exposition heavy dialogue.  Not that I'm making any claims for The Last Shark being cinematic art - it's a cheap exploitation film.  But a distinctively Italian cheap exploitation film.

Another Weekend of Schlock

This is getting to be a habit - another weekend of doing little else other than watching schlock movies.  At least, that's the way it felt.  Personally, I blame B Movie TV, the Roku channel which serves a lot of this stuff up.  You see, they've now set up an 'on demand' version of their channel, with lots of tempting titles on offer.  It was watching an Italian Indiana Jones knock off there late on Friday night which set me off on another lost weekend of schlock.  After that, the floodgates just opened.  But getting back to that first film, Hunters of the Golden Cobra (1982) is one of a number of Indiana Jones inspired movies shot in Italy in the early eighties.  None, of course, had the budget of the Spielberg films but they did, in their own way, sometimes have the star power, often featuring Italian schlock superstars.  In this case, the lead is taken by David Warbeck, one of the giants of Italian exploitation - a legend in Italy, but still virtually unknown in the UK, where his screen roles were confined to a couple of Hammer movies, sex comedies, (most notably Martin Campbell's The Sex Thief) and guest starring appearances in episodes of TV shows like UFO and Minder.  If anything, in the UK he is best known for not being James Bond, (he was allegedly one of the actors considered for Live and Let Die, as a possible alternative lead in the event that the producers hadn't be able to sign Roger Moore).  Here, he's backed up by John Steiner, another British actor who found fame in Italy, spending most of his career there and Luciano Pigozzi, the seemingly ever present character actor, usually in villainous roles.

Partly filmed in the Philippines, (in common with many other Italian movies of the era), and set just after the war (with a 1944 prologue), the film sees Warbeck and Steiner as an American and British soldiers respectively, who are sent on a mission to recover the titular object by the Us and UK governments.  The Golden Cobra, which may have supernatural powers, is the totem of a particularly troublesome sect of extremists.  Also involved in the hunt is Pigozzi's shady archeologist and twin girls who are not only hot, but one of them is also a Jungle princess.  In the hands of exploitation veteran Antonio Margheriti (aka Anthony Dawson), it all moves along at a brisk pace, with plenty of action, plot twists ans snappy dialogue.  There is also a fair amount of the director's trademark (and excellent) miniatures work.  The film is also full of the sort anachronistic vehicles and planes (post-war T-28s pretending to be Japanese Zeros, for instance) you expect from movies of this sort of budget.  It  is all tremendously good fun, a better watch certainly than the most recent Indiana Jones film. It was popular enough that a couple of years later the director and three main actors were reunited for a similar film: The Ark of the Sun God.

It was all downhill for the rest of the weekend, with a switch to the American Horrors streaming channel yielding such delights ans the Phantom of the Ritz, a comedic take on Phantom of the Opera, transposed to a smell town US theatre staging fifties revival acts, and Edge of the Axe, a real curio of a slasher movie. The latter was a US-Spanish co-production, one of the last films directed by Jose Larraz.  Despite Larraz considering it his worst film, it is extremely well made, with beautifully shot northern California exteriors.  Telling the tale of a series of grisly small town axe murders, it never really offers anything novel in plot or character terms, but the murderous set pieces are well staged and often very suspenseful.  Interestingly, it features as a plot point an early use of a precursor to the internet - the linking, via modems, of remote terminals to a central computer (usually based at a university), allowing data requests to be made to the central servers.  In terms of production values and direction, it is streets ahead of the majority of eighties slasher pics and well worth a look.  By pure coincidence, having had Invasion of the Bee Girls as a Random Movie Trailer on Friday, the complete film turned up on American Horrors on Sunday.  Inevitably, I ended up watching it again.  I'm still unclear on several plot points, but it is a nicely shot film with some striking imagery, particularly during the laboratory scenes.

I eventually abandoned American Horrors for another, more dubious, streaming channel, where I was able to watch The Ribald Tales of Robin Hood, a piece of seventies softcore pantomime. The title tells all, really.  It is rather like a US equivalent to a costume British sex comedy.  The chain mail costumes worn by the soldiers reminded me of the ones we'd worn in a school play I was in when I was ten.  Which gives you some idea of the budget.  I really don't know why I watched it - it certainly wasn't remotely erotic. Which might have more to do with me - I'm at an age where I spend more time worrying about the lack of historical accuracy than the number of boobs and bums on display.  I mean, for one thing, the swords they were carrying were rapiers, whereas, in reality, the broadsword was still the main bladed weapon during this era.  Then there's the fact that nobody addresses Prince John by his proper title or form of address, ('Your Majesty').  Oh, and I really don't think that the Regent of England would actually go around personally assassinating foes, (to be fair, he leaves the raping of the women-folk to his underlings).  Most crucially, I'm pretty sure that he wasn't killed with an arrow by Robin Hood.  After Richard I's death he became King in his own right and his son, Henry III succeeded him.  Moreover, I'm also pretty sure that he and Richard I didn't have a wicked sister who liked to play sadistic lesbian sex games with a chained up and naked Maid Marion in the dungeons.

Actually, that's one of the purely porno criticisms I could level at the film - it really doesn't exploit the S&M possibilities of those dungeon sequences - I mean, chained up heroine and all that torture equipment, yet she doesn't even get tied to the rack?  Surely no self-respecting porno film-maker should ever pass up a bondage opportunity like that?  It is an especially puzzling omission in view of the way that, at every other opportunity, women are brutlalised, with the general merriment of the Merry Men being punctuated by the raping of various fair maidens.  For what its makers clearly thought was a light hearted historical porno romp, The Ribald Tales of Robin Hood all too often resembles a violent rape fantasy.  Now, if only it had starred Robin Askwith as a fumbling and sexually nervous Robin Hood, Anthony Booth as a scheming Will Scarlet and Blakey from On The Buses as the Sheriff of Nottingham, with Linda Hayden as Maid Marian, then it might have been more entertaining.  But as it stands, it is actually quite depressing.

Despite that downbeat ending to my second consecutive weekend of schlock, I'm gearing up already for another one, perusing the titles in B Movie TV's on demand service.  While a lot of the titles are the usual public domain stuff that turns up on every streaming service, they also have a significant number of titles unavailable free-to-air anywhere else.  So, who needs so called 'legitimate' cinema when you can get trash like this on tap?

Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)

Perhaps the most notable thing about Invasion of the Bee Girls is that it represents Nicholas Meyer's first screenwriting credit.  That and the fact that it has long been in the public domain, meaning that it turns up all over the place.  As the trailer indicates, its big selling point is the amount of female bums and boobs on display.  Indeed, the flimsy story about a series of mysterious male deaths in a small US town exists merely to provide an excuse for all this female nudity.  A special investigator (William Smith, unusually playing the good guy), is dispatched from Washington to investigate and eventually uncovers a plot on the part of a female mad scientist at the local research institute to create a race of 'Bee Girls' by mutating the local housewives.  The women kill men by sexually exhausting them, resulting in heart failure. Why?  I Can't say that I'm entirely sure, but their main targets seem to be the male scientists working at the institute.

To be fair, Invasion of the Bee Girls is decently made and a surprisingly good-looking film.  Director Denis Sanders had previously directed films in a number of genres, to some acclaim (he won two Oscars) and had given Robert Redford his film debut.  Invasion, though, was his last and probably least film.  Its main problem is its poor pacing and lack of action - there is far too much talking and too many expository scenes for an exploitation film. Moreover, it ultimately builds to a disappointing climax, in which the protagonist defeats the mad scientist and her acolytes by the simple expedient of firing his gun into some lab equipment, which cause the whole lab to explode.  (To be fair, James Bond did much the same thing to Blofeld's headquarters as recently as Spectre).  Still, it does boast both William Smith and Victoria Vetri as the leads, the latter, of course, having a place in the exploitation pantheon thanks to her trouser-straining performance as a cave girl in Hammer's When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. 

Not the Usual Gentleman

I see that Michael Gove is in the news again today.  Apparently, he wasn't 'the usual gentleman' and didn't use 'usual diplomatic language', when meeting the European Commission Vice President, in order to tell him that, basically, the UK was going to renege on a previously agreed legal agreement.  Which begs the question of what language he did use.  Did he add 'so there!', or 'yah, boo, sucks to you, Johnny Foreigner', to the end of his statement?  Or did he finish by saying 'now go fuck yourself'?  Certainly, the bit about not being 'the usual gentleman' would suggest the latter.  Which wouldn't be surprising.  These supposedly smooth and sophisticated types always let the mask slip and reveal themselves as complete bastards.  Although, in Gove's case, there's never really been any question as to whether or not he was a bastard - we've always known that, it was just that he liked to give the impression that he was a smooth bastard.  But, as I say, eventually they all give themselves away as foul mouthed, unprincipled shits.  Damn it, I bet he makes obscene phone calls as well.  I mean, I don't actually have any proof that he does, but he looks the type, doesn't he?

He strikes me as the type who rings up housewives and tries to smooth talk them into taking their clothes off - if it doesn't work, he probably directs a stream of foul mouthed abuse down the phone at them.  If it does work, he probably gets them to talk dirty to him.  Gove just looks the sort who would get off on that sort of thing.  If he were to make obscene calls which, of course, we have no evidence of him doing.  Even though I strongly suspect that he has an untraceable pay-as-you-go phone he uses for the purpose, although, again, I have no proof of it.  But I bet he isn't the only one who might do that sort of thing - I bet that loads of those sleazy bastards in this government do it.  Boris Johnson - he looks the sort, as well.  Mind you, if he were to make obscene phone calls, (which we have no evidence of him doing), he'd be the heavy breathing type - despite being full of bravado when he dialled the number, I reckon that he'd lose his nerve and be unable to speak.  Now, Dominic Cummings - I bet that he wouldn't have the nerve to make an obscene phone call himself .  No, he'd get Boris or Gove to do it, then listen in, as he played with himself.  If he did that sort of thing, which, obviously, we have no evidence that he does.  The odious little creep.  I've no doubt that voyeurism would be his thing - maybe that's what all this bollocks about his 'mission control', with all those screens on the wall showing government data is all about.  I bet that, in reality, they'll be showing footage from all the spy cams that he's got the Security Service to install in people's bedrooms.  Not that I have any proof of this - or that he is a nasty little furtive perv.  He just looks like one.

Before I go, I have to say that Diana Rigg, who died today, was probably the first crush I ever remember having.  I could only have been six or seven when watching her in repeats of The Avengers on ITV when I became aware of my adulation for her or, to be more accurate, the character she was playing: Emma Peel.  Like many men of my age, I consequently had a lifelong fixation on Diana Rigg.  For a while, it was my ambition to have a job where I could drive around in a vintage Bentley, accompanied by a leather-clad posh bird who could beat people up.  Sadly, it was never to be. 

Making a Quiet Exit

Those dreams just keep on coming.  As I've noted before, I'm sure that it is down to the medication I take for my blood pressure, either one of those pills on their own, or some combination of them, seem to stimulate my sleeping sub-conscious into some truly fantastic imagining - all in technicolor and wide screen.  (Again, as I've previously speculated, it possibly has something to do with an improved blood flow to the brain - there was an article in today's Guardian as to how high blood pressure can impair mental processes.  Which is something I can vouch for, as when my blood pressure hit a high a couple of years ago, due to work-related stress, there's no doubt that my decision making and cognitive abilities became poor and sluggish. It was like trying to think through treacle).  Anyway, to get back to the dreams - I had at least three, very vivid dreams last night.  Unfortunately, two of them have faded from my memory completely.  But one I can still recall and, as ever, it had some intriguing aspects.  At the point at which my recollection of the dream commences, (as is often the case, I'm sure that there was something else leading up to this point, but it is lost in the mists of memory), I found myself attending some kind of gathering.  It appeared to be in some sort of restaurant and the other attendees were people I knew - either in real life or from fiction.  Various conversations were going on, but as time went on, I participated less and less, to the point where I decide that, somehow, my job was done - all these people were now talking to each other - so it was time for me to quietly slip away.

At which point, I made a stealthy exit via a side door, which took me through a kitchen, then through another door which took me into the corridor leading to the exit.  Outside, it was snowing and I had to negotiate a long pavement, full of kids playing in the snow, followed by a steep hill.  At the top of the hill was a road - I knew that once across it, I only had to slip between two buildings to get onto the path to the railway station and a train home.  Curiously, I now found that the gap between the buildings was too narrow to get through, although I'd remembered coming through them earlier.  So I had to take a diversion through a nearby car park to regain the path, which ran between the two parts of the car park (suspiciously like the car park where my car usually lives).  At this point, I woke up.  So, what are we to make of all this?  Does it actually mean anything or is it something concocted randomly from various memories by my sleeping mind?  While the bit about not being able to pass between the buildings is interesting, it the fact that I slipped away quietly and stealthily from that gathering is, for me, the most significant part of the dream.  I've done that in real life so many times - the stealthy exit is one of my talents.  I'm anti-social at the best of times, so the quiet exit is something I've perfected when I've felt obliged (or been forced) to attend a social gathering.  I've dome it from parties, work functions, wedding receptions, the lot.  I'm very poor at the meaningless small talk required at such occasions, so after a few pleasantries, I find it easy to withdraw from conversations and fade into the background, before exiting.

The secret is not to stand around looking like a spare part - it makes you conspicuous and people might feel obliged to try and include you.  No, what you should do is look as if you are getting another drink, or browsing the buffet, then edge toward the exit.  but do it subtly - you really don't want to draw attention to yourself.  That would defeat the whole object of the exercise.  The one thing I do hate are people who draw attention to their exit from such occasions - for them it is all about drawing attention to themselves.  Even worse is the 'flounce', the disgruntled exit of someone who feels that they should have had all the attention at the gathering, but didn't.  The best exit is one that nobody notices.  I do so hate drawing attention to myself, so I'm proud of my ability to walk away from social functions without causing undue fuss and offence.  Very occasionally, someone will notice your attempt to slip away, at which point some polite excuse is needed - a prior engagement, for instance.  Always have one prepared.  In fat, it often pays to mention it to the host at the outset, to prepare the groundwork - not make a big deal of it, just a casual mention that you might have to leave early, thereby ensuring that if you are seen leaving, it won't come as a surprise.  So, if the dream was about anything, I think it was a celebration of my quiet exiting expertise.

Schlock Weekend

I spent the weekend watching a lot of schlock.  I didn't start out with  that intention - I had ideas of catching up with some films of artistic worth.  But, as it panned out, I ended up watching schlock, courtesy of the free-to-air streaming services I get via my Roku box.  It all started innocently enough with a late night viewing of Beach Girls and the Monster on Friday.  I only watched it - so I told myself - because it was relatively short and I'd been meaning to catch up with it for some time.  It was one of those B-movies which could easily have been made twenty years earlier.  Only the presence of a beach full of young beatnik.surfer types dancing wildly place it firmly in 1965.  (Once again, the kind of squares who produced these youth-orientated films assumed that all these crazy hepcats were dancing to jazz music).  The sight of director/star Jon Hall (one time sarong-wearing star of numerous forties South Seas set movies) dressing up as a fish-monster to murder young beach goers because they are a bad influence on his son, luring him away from following in his father's footsteps as an oceanographer, is something to behold.

I thought that I'd get things back on track on Saturday, with a viewing of the 1985 Robert Ludlum adaptation The Holcroft Covenant.  I'd last seen it when it was released to cinemas and had forgotten just how schlocky it was.  Actually, I'd forgotten just about everything about it: I recalled only the opening and the climax, as it turned out - everything else about the plot was unfamiliar to me.  Usually when I rewatch a film, even after a couple of decades, various scenes and bit of dialogue will come back to me as it progresses, but with The Holcroft Covenant - not a thing.  It was, it seems, a completely unmemorable film.  Which is surprising, as it is pure schlock.  It might have a big budget and an A-list cast, but it leaves no conspiracy thriller cliche unused as it lurches through all too familiar plot twists and perfunctory action scenes.  On paper, it should have been a good film: a noted director in John Frankenheimer, script by George Axelrod, based on a best selling novel, international locations and a cast lead by Michael Caine and including the likes of Victoria Tennant, Anthony Andrews and Bernard Hepton.  In actuality, the characters are paper thin, the plot largely nonsensical and the dialogue and situations predictable and unengaging.  While it might be possible to lay the blame with the source material, the fact is that beyond the basic scenario and some of the character names, the film bears little resemblance to Ludlum's novel.  Axelrod, who wrote the final script, based on two earlier drafts by other writers, admitted that he had never read the book, so some of the film's most ludicrous twists - an incestuous relationship between brother and sister characters, for instance - can only be assumed to be down to him.

The pity is that Ludlum's novel had plenty of potential for a film adaptation, with its mix of neo Nazis, World War Two conspiracies, international intrigue and a hapless hero caught between competing shadowy groups.  (The Holcroft Covenant comes from Ludlum's middle period, alongside such titles as The Chancellor Manuscript, The Matarese Circle and The Matlock Paper, before his standard formula became repetitive and the plots overly fantastical).  What we got instead, was this mess.  To be fair, it looks good.  It just makes no sense.  So, after that, I decided that I needed another shot of pure schlock, so cued up Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, of historical interest because it was directed by a pseudonymous Peter Bogdanovich for Roger Corman.   At least, he directed the scenes with the 'Prehistoric Women' (who include Mamie van Doren and sport skin tight trousers and sea shell bras).  The rest of the film is edited from the Soviet science fiction film Planeta Burg, (which had also formed the basis of another Corman film, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet).  Its a curious concoction, with the newly shot footage of the rubber pterodactyl-worshipping women (who are telepathic, so as to avoid the expense of post-synchronising dialogue), never quite matching the look of the Soviet footage.  The two groups of characters, women and cosmonauts, of course never meet and the plot is ingeniously devised to accommodate this fact.  The Soviet effects work is, for its day, not bad and the finished film has the advantage of being relatively short, so it never outstays its welcome.  It also makes a lot more sense than The Holcroft Covenant, not to mention having more believable characters.

So to Sunday, when I had every intention of watching those worthier films I'd originally set out to watch, but somehow ended up watching a double bill of Night of the Demon (not to be confused with the 1957 classic British horror film, but rather the 1979 Bigfoot murder spree movie) and The Dark Tower (not be confused with the Stephen King book, but rather the 1987 UK/US/Spanish haunted office block film).  These I caught on the 'American Horrors' streaming channel, which is fast rivalling 'B Movie TV' as my favourite Roku destination for schlock.  Anyway, Night of the Demon has a certain notoriety for having been on the DPP's original 'video nasties' blacklist.  Like just about every other so called 'Video Nasty' I've seen, by today's standards it is pretty tame stuff.  What upset the UK censors in particular was a scene where a biker, relieving himself at the roadside, has his penis ripped off by Bigfoot.  Nowadays, it is more likely to elicit laughs rather than screams from an audience.  Like the Italian films on the list, the effects work, while gory, are obviously not real.  My main problem with Night of the Demon is that it is slow moving, over long and poorly paced.  It is also poorly structured, with the main narrative being presented as a flashback, within which there are further flashbacks, confusing the narrative.  Most problematically, most of the Bigfoot killings are presented as flashbacks, not only robbing them of any suspense - we know the characters involved will die - but it also puts the main characters at one remove from the real peril for most of the film.  Still, it does have some nice touches, such as the cult of backwoods locals worshipping Bigfoot as a god, but never really develops them properly.  Moreover, Bigfoot himself looks extremely tatty - from behind he looks all too much like an old rug - and unthreatening.  Still, the film is nowhere near as bad as is often claimed as is actually quite enjoyable in its own, schlocky, way.

Which brings us to The Dark Tower.  Essentially a haunted house story, this concerns an investigation into a series of deaths at a newly constructed office block n Barcelona.  It is actually very slickly made, boasting two 'name' genre directors, Freddie Francis and Ken Weiderhorn, (one replaced the other, but different sources disagree over the order, either way, it is clear that neither director was happy with the finished product, as they hide between a single pseudonym on the titles), and a decent cast including Jenny Agutter, Michael Moriarty and Theodore Bikel.   Production values are high and the special effects not bad at all.  It builds up a reasonable atmosphere, coming on like a modern day Gothic horror, with the apparently possessed office block standing in for the more traditional haunted castle/Abbey/Cathederal.  The plot is driven by security consultant Moriarty's attempts to uncover the nature of the evil force behind the goings on at the tower block, which includes lots of poltergeist activity.   The film's biggest problem lies with its denouement - it is revealed that the evil force has actually been after one specific character, which begs the question that, bearing in mind that, from the outset, they've spent most of their time in the building, why it didn't just target them in the first place, rather than causing all that collateral damage among the rest of the cast?  Still, it is entertaining enough while it is on, which is a lot more than can be said for many other films I've sat through.

So, there you have it, my unintended weekend of schlock.  It was really very enjoyable.  The great thing about schlock films is that the have no pretensions to be anything else.  Which makes them very easy to watch, despite their shortcomings.  Maybe next weekend I'll get around to watching those films I meant to watch, (although it has to be said, that the schlock pantheon has a claim on all of them).  We'll see.

The Concorde...Airport '79 (1979)

It's easy to knock low budget movies for being bad - there's a whole industry out there devoted to it: all those TV and internet shows with supposed critics offering their supposedly witty and amusing commentaries on such productions.  (Although, one has to say, if the films in question really are as unintentionally hilarious due to their alleged ineptitude, why it is necessary for these self-appointed wits to have to laboriously point out all of the 'funny' bits to us?).  But the fact is that these next-to-no-budget films are, by their very nature, likely to be of pretty dubious quality.  Their lack of resources makes that more or less inevitable.  Much more deserving of mockery are the big budget, studio-backed films, packed full of high profile stars, which turn out to be turkeys.  What's their excuse?  All of which brings us to The Concorde..Airport '79, (or Airport 80: The Concorde, if you saw it here in the UK).  This, the final installment, as it turned out, in the Airport franchise, is a disaster movie in every sense.  The franchise itself had always been pretty dodgy quality-wise.  Indeed, the four films in the series were only loosely linked together by the continuing presence of George Kennedy as Joe Patroni, who gradually moves from being an airline's chief mechanic at the airport involved, to being another airline's chief of operations, an aviation consultant and finally a pilot.  Likewise, the films themselves shifted from being a glossy soap opera-cum-disaster flick based on an Arthur Hailey novel, to a more generalised series of films involving passenger aviation peril, with actual airports, (despite the titles), playing a smaller and smaller role.

The Concorde strays furthest from the original concept, offering us a conspiracy thriller fused with an airliner in peril plot.  This time the aircraft is the titular Anglo-French supersonic airliner, an example of which is on its maiden passenger carrying flight for a (fictional) US airline, heading from Washington DC to Moscow, with a stopover in Paris.  You just know that there's going to be trouble when you see the flight crew: Alain Delon is the pilot, George Kennedy the co-pilot and David Warner the flight engineer.  Oh, and Sylvia Kristel is the chief stewardess.  There's also the usual collection of unlikely passengers, including the dope smoking jazz saxophonist, the sick child en route to a heart transplant, the old lady scared of flying and so on.  The conspiracy theory part of the plot involves another passenger, a reporter who, the night before the flight, narrowly avoids an assassins bullet after witnessing an arms company execute who was giving her information about illegal arms deals, being gunned down by a hitman.  It seems that her friend Robert Wagner's arms company has been secretly selling its wares to all sorts of embargoed countries.  Having been handed the incriminating documents just before boarding the Concorde, Wagner decides to have her rubbed out by shooting down the entire plane.

His first attempt involves sending a new surface-to-air missile he's trialling for the US Air  Force being sent off course to lock onto the Concorde rather its target drone.  When this fails, he arranges for an F-4 Phantom to intercept the Concorde as it approaches French airspace.  (Quite where one finds privately owned and crewed, not to mention, fully armed, jet fighters for hire is never properly explained). The foiling of both these attempts by the Concorde crew are amongst the most incredible and unintentionally hilarious occurrences in the entire series.  Both involve a supersonic airliner being flown like a fighter aircraft, going through all manner of unlikely evasive manoeuvres, including 360 degree rolls.  Best of all though, is when they are attacked by the Phantom - first of all we witness George Kennedy opening the cockpit side-window, leaning out and firing a flare in order to distract the heat-seeking missiles fired by their attacker.  As if that wasn't astounding enough, when they run out of flares, Delon switches off the engines (in order to deprive the remaining missiles of their target heat source - in reality, friction from the flexing of metal components in the fuselage are enough for heat seeking missiles to detect) and glides the aircraft downward, before managing to restart one of the engines just before they hit the sea and pull it to safety.  At which point, of course, uses its guns instead, to attack them, but, just in time, the French Air Force turn up and shoot him down.  But the peril still isn't over - during their stop over in Paris, Wagner manages to bribe an airline employee to sabotage the Concorde's cargo hatch, so that it will open in mid-air, de-pressurising the hold and causing the plane to crash.  But never fear, the remarkable aeronautical skills of Delon and Kennedy once more saves the day, with them guiding the crippled Concorde to a crash landing in a snow-filled Swiss mountain pass.  Upon learning that the reporter has survived, Wagner shoots himself.

The ludicrousness of these plot elements alone wouldn't necessarily have sunk the film at the box office - they are enormously entertaining for all the wrong reasons, but nevertheless entertaining.  The problem is that they are accompanied by a weak script which serves up poor dialogue for a cast that looks, in the main, as if they are simply going through the motions.  While George Kennedy still brings considerable charisma to a badly underwritten, (just how did he manage that unlikely career progression?), Delon is clearly there for the payday - audiences who had never seen any of his French films would have been mystified as to his status as actor and sex symbol, so bland is his performance.  But worst of all, despite excellent production values, the whole film is directed with the flatness of a TV movie - in spite of all the fantastical incidents and bizarre plot elements, it never sparks into life, the pace never varying from the pedestrian.  Which is hardly surprising, as director David Lowell Rich had spent most of his career at the helm of made-for-TV movies, (including, intriguingly, 1977's SST:Death Flight, which also concerned the ill-fated, sabotaged, maiden flight of a supersonic airliner).  The poor script (with all its loose ends) is, perhaps, less understandable, as writer Eric Roth later won an Oscar for his adaptation of Forrest Gump and has been nominated four other times, most recently for his script for the 2018 version of A Star is Born.  Everybody, it seems, can have an off day.

On the plus side, the special effects and miniatures work, for their era, are very good.  They were created by Universal Hartland, who were also producing effects for TV series like Buck Rogers.  Unfortunately, they weren't enough to save the film from box office failure.  A failure which killed off the entire franchise.  But I would still urge everyone to watch this film, despite all of its flaws, it is still hugely entertaining.  It is that rare cinematic beast, the film that really is so bad that it is 'good'.  The level of professionalism which has gone into it only serves to highlight just how laughable its plot, dialogue and action actually are.  Those self-appointed critics of bad movies can't just sit back and point and laugh at poor special effects and non-professional actors - this is a studio picture which seems willfully bad.  Its problems, I suspect, stem from complacency on the part of its producers, who simply assumed that the Airport label, passenger-plane-in-peril and other standard plot elements would be enough to bring in the audiences and that credibility and artistic quality were of little importance.  It was just a product.  In this case, a product that audience quality control rejected.  But nowadays, when it is available free-to-air on TV, you can sit back enjoy its big budget crapness.  The film does, however, have a darkly bizarre coda.  The Concorde used in the film was later leased by Aerospatiale to Air France and, in 2000, crashed, killing everyone on board - a crash which eventually led to the withdrawal from service of the Concorde fleets of both Air France and British Airways.  (Interestingly, the Boeing 707 used in Airport  also later crashed  - in Brazil -while in service as a cargo plane, killing all three crew and twenty two people on the ground).

Out of Season

Well, it certainly felt like the season had changed today - there was little sign that it had ever been Summer.  I was down on the coast again -  I had lunch on Calshot beach and it had that end-of-season feel.  The beach itself was deserted, the car parks empty and all the beach huts, (and there are some pretty impressive such huts on Calshot beach, the size of small houses in some cases), were either already shuttered or were in the process of being cleared out before being locked up.  The boats were all beached, some already loaded onto their trailers and being driven away.  Of all the beaches I visit during the Summer, Calshot is the one that shuts down earliest and most completely.  By the first week of September it has a melancholy feel - which I quite like.  It appeals to the depressive side of my nature.  To be fair, Calshot is never the busiest of beaches, partly due, I'm sure, to the fact that it is really just a very narrow strip of shingle, with a castle at one end.  But it is a great place to watch the ships coming and out of Southampton water.  It probably doesn't help that Calshot itself is only a small village, with little in the way of visitor amenities - the whole place is dominated by the outdoor activities centre (previously an RAF seaplane and flying boat base).

By contrast, beaches like Milford-on-Sea, Keyhaven and Barton-on-Sea are backed by larger villages, with shops, cafes and other visitor-friendly stuff.  Lepe, while being little more than a hamlet, is in the middle of Lepe Country Park and has an extensive visitor centre.  Consequently, it takes longer for the visitors to ebb away from these beaches, even after the schools go back.  Indeed, based on past experience, it is about this time of year that the pensioners start turning up in their camper vans.  Nevertheless, despite these new arrivals, it is clear that holiday season is winding down.  Even when the weather remains warm and sunny (as it often does into September), you can feel the change, the reduced number of kids about, the increasing age profile of the remaining visitors and the dwindling number of caravans and campers.  That jaunty holiday feeling ebbs away, to be replaced by something that feels more like a grim determination to at least go through the motions of still being on holiday.  But, as I noted earlier, overall, the feeling is one of melancholy, a wistfulness for the Summer which has just slipped by and the knowledge that we'll have to wait another year for its return.  As I get older, I get ever more reluctant to let go of Summer, with its illusion of youth and care free living.  This year, because of the disruption caused by Covid, it has been even more difficult to let it go.  But, sadly, we have no choice.

Raiders of the Magic Ivory (1988)

This is the closest thing to an English-language trailer I could find for Raiders of the Magic Ivory (1988), a typically genre-bending Italian action movie.  While the title indicates an Indiana Jones knock off, the film's makers take the supernatural elements from that series of films an excuse to work in cannibalistic zombie monks.  Borrowing its jungle setting from the Italian zombie/cannibal genres, Raiders also works in many of the tropes of the cannibal movies in the form of all those crude but deadly (not to mention messy) traps set by the natives.  On top of that, the whole thing also has something of a Rambo vibe, with its heavily armed US heroes returning to the Vietnam jungle.  Many of the action scenes - guys blasting away with big guns, mowing down enemy soldiers by the dozen - are highly reminiscent of those Wild Geese-inspired mercenary action movies the Italians cranked out (usually starring Lewis Collins).  So, just your average Italian schlock movie.

The plot involves a pair of Vietnam vet mercenaries being employed by a mysterious old Vietnamese guy, to go into the jungle and retrieve the title artifact - an ivory tablet possessed of magic powers.  Among the perils they face are hostile local military forces and the aforementioned monks, who worship the tablet which, in return, has granted them immortality at the price of turning them into the flesh hungry living dead.  In seizing the tablet, they also rescue a young woman from being sacrificed by the monks.  As they try to escape the jungle, double crosses occur, the old dude is revealed as a villain hell bent on world domination, the rescued girl as a priestess and guardian of the tablet and lots of lead flies around.  To be honest, it really is crap, with poor production values and gimcrack special effects.  But it lasts less than ninety minutes, moves along very briskly, includes lots of action and is mindlessly entertaining.  Best of all, it stars Jim Mitchum, Robert Mitchum's look and sound alike son.  Sporting a magnificent 'tache, he does his old man proud, appearing to sleep through large swathes of the movie.  It's a performance so laid back that he's virtually horizontal.  He really is quite fascinating to watch - at last we know what it would have looked like if Robert Mitchum had gone to Italy during the late seventies' doldrums of his career and made cheapjack direct-to-video movies.

I surprised myself by enjoying this one so much when I recently caught it on B Movie TV (available on all good Roku devices).  Like I said, it's crap, but doesn't really have pretensions of being anything else.  If nothing else, its makers should be applauded for combining so many genres into a single movie running only eighty four minutes.