The title Titter, along with that strap line 'America's Merriest Magazine' and the slogan 'Gals, Gags, Giggles',might lead one to believe that this is one of those publications that mixed humourous stories and jokes with pin-up pictures. In reality, the 'gags' referred to were of the other type: Titter specialised in depicting its models - all fetishtically dressed in lingerie - in mild bondage situations. Nothing hardcore - there was no nudity, but the models were shown handling whips, or tied up, or being spanked. Titter, which ran from 1943 to 1955, (this is the cover of the April 1946 issue), was one of a number of pin-up style magazines published by Robert Harrison during the forties and fifties. All were non-pornographic in the sense that the models were never naked, although their poses became ever more provocative.
When these types of magazines ran out of steam in the late fifties, Harrison created the publication he is probably best remembered for: Confidential. The mixture of sensationalism, salacious gossip and conservative politics, (bordering, on occasion, on racism), struck a chord during the anti-Communist paranoia of fifties America. The fact that it was, in effect, peddling smut in its supposed 'revelations' about the private lives of celebrities was somehow made acceptable to conservatives by the underlying right-wing agenda. The breathless style, full of alliteration, was mercilessly parodied by James Ellroy in novels like LA Confidential and seems hopelessly antiquated and ridiculous. But, in its day, the articles published in the pages of Confidential damaged many a career. After being forced into a series of out of court settlements with the likes of Errol Flynn, Confidential and its companion Whisper were sold to new owners. In a much toned down form, they lingered on until the late seventies, but never again regained their fifties notoriety.
The cult of the 'director's cut' is something I've never quite understood. In presupposing that there is only one 'true' way that a film can be completed, it is clearly part and parcel of the 'auteur' theory which posits the director as the only legitimate interpreter of everything that makes up a film. In reality, film making is surely a collaborative art, with contributions from a wide range of artists and artisans making up the finished product. I'm moved to make these observations after reading of another director of a comic book adaptation complaining that the released version of their film is a travesty. In this case.it is David Ayer of Suicide Squad. Well, having seen Suicide Squad, I can see why he wouldn't want to be associated with it - it really is pretty shit, with a near incoherent narrative, poor character development and disjointed editing which makes various sequences feel as if they have been ordered arbitrarily, with no regard for story development. Now, I have to say that Ayer has directed several films that I've enjoyed and is clearly talented, but his comments about Suicide Squad seem to indicate a naive ignorance of the role of the director in the Hollywood studio system. Far from being an auteur, the director is seen as a hired hand, someone brought in merely to co-ordinate the various elements which go together to make an episode in an ongoing franchise. Films aren't artistic endeavours, they are properties whose main creative impetus resides outside of the individual project, instead lying with those shaping and directing the overall franchise.
In these respects, it could be argued that we've come full circle from the golden years of the studios in the thirties and forties when, outside of prestige A pictures, studios relied on a steady output of programmers and B-movies, usually all parts of series, turned out on a production line. Directors were there to supervise the 'product', to knock it out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Despite these restrictions, some were able to imprint their films with a certain individual style. But regardless of a director's reputation and fame, their films were frequently re-edited by the studio, often for economic reasons - James Whale's Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, for instance were both edited when Universal re-released them on a double bill prior to the release of Son of Frankenstein, with the whole prologue featuring Mart Shelley, Byron, et al removed from Bride, for instance. (The idea was to bring down the running time of the complete programme so as to be able to fit in more performances and thereby get more bums on seats). Curiously though, I've never heard people clamouriing for the release of 'director's cuts' of such films, (to be fair, most prints of Bride currently in circulation have the prologue, but not other cuts, restored). Hell, I'm still waiting for the Roy William Neill director's cut of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, with all the scenes of Lugosi's version of the monster talking intact.
To get back to my original point, can we really say that the director's 'vision' of a film should constitute the only legitimate final version? After all, thee are plenty of instances of movies which have had to be salvaged by bringing in 'film doctors' after they have gone horribly wrong during production, often involving major re-shoots with different directors, based on new scripts by new writers. (This has become increasingly common in recent years with regard to big budget films - Rogue One and Godzilla come to mind - when their original cuts don't preview well with test audiences). Who is to say that the release versions (which are often financially hugely successful) are 'worse' or less artistically valid than the original edit delivered by the directors? The fact is that film is an infinitely malleable form - it isn't even shot in sequence nor, increasingly, are scenes shot complete, with so much now added via CGI in post production, meaning that it has to all be stitched together in the editing room. It isn't uncommon for the sequencing of individual scenes to change in the editing room. Likewise, dialogue can be changed via dubbing and soundtracks added to or subtracted from. Unlike literature, where there is usually a definitive version of the text, in film-making the script is ultimately merely a guide, subject to infinite revision, not just while it is being written, but also during both production and post production. The situation is further complicated by the fact that, certainly at the level of schlock movies, films frequently exist in multiple release versions. Not just re-edits for re-releases and foreign language releases, but also versions that take parts of one film and cannibalise them to provide material for another. Bearing in mind that many of these versions are supervised by the original director, (Al Adamson, for instance, was constantly reworking his films into new creations using newly shot footage), which is the 'true' director's cut?
Perhaps I should be seeking out more direct human contact - I found myself arguing out loud with a YouTube video today. Well, the guy was trying to service an old Wrenn model railway loco and making a pig's ear out of it. He ended up dismantling the whole thing, losing a bit and still hadn't managed to put it together, let alone get it going again by the end of the video. I know that the wheels seemed seized but, in my experience, application of a good penetrating oil to the bearings and axles will usually do the trick - but be prepared for several applications over a long period to get results. Soaking the whole chassis block in an oil bath overnight simply won't do it. While the old Margate-produced Triang and Triang-Hornby locomotives are easily broken down into components - everything is screwed together - the contemporary Hornby Dublo and Wrenn designs are a different kettle of fish. For one thing, their valve gear is riveted rather than simply using pins and screws, so has to removed in a single assembly, while the wheels and axles are no where near as easy to remove. I've no idea how easy or difficult sixties Trix chassis are to strip down - I only have the one Trix loco and an application of penetrating oil was enough to get it running smoothly after several years of idleness prior to me obtaining it.
Anyway, there I was, shouting 'You've fucked it up, haven't you?' as I watched this guy's video, (I don't even know him personally), as if, somehow, I can actually influence what someone is doing in something shot hours previously. But then again, I have a history for this sort of thing - I regularly used to come home from the pub and 'argue' with Germaine Greer on the Late Review. Not that it ever achieved anything. Any more than my shouting 'Cunt!' every time that now disgraced former Tory Minister Michael Fallon appeared on TV. Not that any of those things left me worried about the state of my socialising. The trouble is that all those lockdowns indulged my inherent anti-social tendencies, making them, for a time, the norm. But here we are now, being encouraged to mingle again and I'm back to be being seen as some kind of weird recluse. To the extent that I have people leaving messages on my answerphone checking whether I'm dead. (Messages which I perversely ignore, so as to sow confusion). Look, I just don't like people. I enjoy being on my own. My admonishing the creator of that You Tube video had more to do with my frustration at his bungling than it did with social isolation. Still, at least looking at that video won't result in anything other than more videos about repairing model railway locos to appear in my 'Suggested Videos' feed, (although You Tube's algorithm made the curious leap from an interest in model railways to an interest.in canals, resulting in recommendations for videos about narrow boats). Looking at some old 'Protect and Survive' civil defence information films the other day has resulted in all sorts of weird shit being recommended...
There were so many things that I should have been doing yesterday. So, obviously, I didn't do any of them and instead ended up watching a load of shoddy old movies, the best of which had the fantastic title of Polk County Pot Plane. To be fair, it was being shown under its alternate title of In Hot Pursuit. Which is far too generic. Besides, I always love a movie that that describes its entire plot in the title, (I mean Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman is, in my opinion, of the greatest film titles, ever). Because that is what the film is about - it culminates with a plane full of pot (and coke) being landed on a makeshift mountain-top runway in Polk County, (which, as far as I could tell, was meant to be in Georgia). Leading up to that, the movie consisted of a series of lengthy car chases, a helicopter prison break and a heist - all featuring a bunch of guys with beards and southern accents. There was no sex, nudity or even a hint of romance - the focus was entirely upon 'Good Ol' Boys' and action. Yes folks, with Polk County Pot Plane, I found that I had unwittingly stumbled into the world of low-budget regional movies. Once popular in the US, these were locally shot films (usually in the southern states) which were, at the best, semi-professional and intended for distribution to local drive ins. They covered every imaginable genre, but the action/chase format seemed particularly popular. Watching it was fascinating - it could, in no way, be described as 'good' on any level, yet remained curiously compelling. This particular film boasted in its credits that no stuntmen were used. Nor were any actors, judging by the performances of the obviously non-professional cast, improvising awkward dialogue and busking their way through a loosely constructed plot that existed merely to string together the action sequences.
It has to be said that the action sequences are, on the whole, quite impressive, with the plethora of car chases and crashes, (including a truck driving through a house), were done for real. Particularly impressive is the landing of the titular 'pot plane', which really was landed in a clearing prepared, apparently without permission, on a mountain top. We're not talking about a light plane here, either - this was a C54, a four engined transport version of the DC4 - it can be seen to clip the tree tops as it makes its final approach, (it did the same thing on take-off, according to people who worked on the film). I was struck by the film's cheerful amorality - the heroes are a bunch of hairy drug smugglers and the villains the local cartel they work for, who keep double crossing them (and each other). Then again, the mainstream equivalents to these kinds of b-movies around this time frequently featured Burt Reynolds playing cheerfully amoral smugglers and moonshiners, so it wasn't much of a leap to heroic drug runners. Looking as if it had been shot on exceptionally grainy 16mm stock, the thing that most surprised me about Polk County Pot Plane was that it had been made as late as 1977. The look, along with the clothes, hairstyles and late sixties/early seventies vehicles gave the impression of it having been made at least five years earlier. (The old cars, especially the ancient and beat up Mopar cop cars, undoubtedly rescued from scrapyards, were to cut costs, as most of them end up written off in spectacular crashes).
The immediate reaction to seeing a film like Polk County Pot Plane is that such regional films are a US phenomena and that somewhere like the much smaller UK has no equivalent. But that isn't strictly true. Most obviously, those films made and predominantly set in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (sometimes in the local language) could be argued as constituting regional cinema, (although they tend toward the artistic end of the spectrum rather than the schlocky). But even England itself has some history of regional film making - back in the 1940s the 'Somewhere in' series of comedies (Somewhere in England, Somewhere in Camp, etc), made by Mancunian Films and featuring popular Lancashire comic Frank Randle could be argued to be regional films, designed to appeal primarily to a North WEst of England audience. In more recent times we had Cliff Twemlow and his Manchester-based low budget direct-to-video film making empire. Other contenders might be those films produced by Jack Parsons, (often in association with Robert Lippert), which were cheap black and white productions designed to provide content for his small chain of cinemas. I'm sure that there are many other examples. My big regret is that there never appears to have been a regional film making movement in my native West Country - I could just imagine something like Polk County Pot Plane with the action transplanted to Somerset or Wiltshire. Lots of illicit cider-brewing bearded types with West of England accents flying drugs into framer's fields - their illegal runways cut in the corn mistaken for crop circles. Not to mention lots of furious car chases involving tractors, combine harvesters and beat up old Ford Capris and Opel Mantas. Ah, what might have been...
Originally True Detective Mysteries, True Detective ran from 1924-95. I believe that the UK edition is still being published, (certainly, I recall seeing it on the shelves at WH Smiths fairly recently. This cover, from March 1957, is from the magazine's peak of popularity and features a cover painting as lurid as would find on any fiction pulp. Although, in its early days, True Detective did carry fiction, it was the true detective stories which proved most popular. While the crimes chronicled might have been real cases, they were written up in the most lurid, pulp-style prose possible, focusing on the most sensational details. Sex crimes seemed particularly popular subjects as the fifties and sixties progressed.
True Detective effectively established the 'true crime' format, the success of which could be measured by the number of imitators that it spawned over the years. Moreover, the title has entered the lexicon as a synonym for a particular style of crime writing. By the fifties, true crime magazines had become, of course, close cousins to the contemporaneous men's magazines (which also often incorporated the word 'True' into their titles and proclaimed their stories to be 'true'. The reality was that the men's magazines 'true' stories were clearly fabricated, (becoming ever more extravagant and bizarre as time went by), whereas the true crime genre generally did base their content on actual events. But, as with the men's magazines, the true crime magazines eventually found themselves suffering falling circulations as their readers found themselves able to access much the same content on TV via shows like Unsolved Mysteries. Indeed, the TV version of the genre continues to thrive, augmented in recent years by the rise of true crime podcasts. But it is worth remembering that this now semi-respectable genre had its roots in the lurid pages of True Detective.
The feeling of ennui which has been gripping me for the past few months seems finally to be lifting. Doubts over the wisdom of having left my previous employment with nothing else on the horizon have been dispelled - the finances remain in excellent shape and I've given up worrying about what I'm going to do next. It's Summer and I intend to enjoy it and let the future take care of itself. To which end, I've actually been getting out of bed earlier and going out for walks - the main result of which was being bitten to buggery by insects on Monday. One of the little bastards actually drew blood. Unfortunately, the heat has, this week, been largely stifling, rather restricting outdoor activities for fear of getting sun stroke. Yesterday, for instance, it was twenty eight in the shade - so even a walk in the supposed cool of the woods left me feeling dehydrated and tired and had to be cut short. But at least I'm doing something again at long last. Indeed, I'm finally beginning to feel the glimmerings of motivation with regard to various stalled projects. Maybe it is this Summer weather that has reinvigorated me, or perhaps it is the fact that August, my traditional holiday month, is creeping ever closer, (although the concept of 'holiday' right now is rather academic as my time is entirely my own, anyway).
In the meantime, I see that the 2020 Olympics officially start tomorrow, a year late. Which, if you aren't interested in various obscure sports, usually represents an ordeal, as the BBC's TV channels seem to go to showing nothing but the Olympics. This time around, though, most of their coverage seems confined to overnight and daytime BBC1. I don't think that this is entirely down to the fact that Tokyo is on the other side of the world so that, to us in the UK, it all seems to be happening in the middle of the night - I recall that during both the Beijing and Rio Olympics, the BBC still contrived to fill the schedules of at least three of their TV channels near exclusively with sport - but due to changes in the way the rights have been distributed this time. Discovery seems to be main rights holder for the UK, with the BBC getting a slightly less comprehensive package than previously. I don't know why I complain, though, I find myself watching regular TV less and less, favouring instead all the weird and wonderful shit I can stream via my Roku box. I suppose that it is the principle of the matter - it is a question of public service: the BBC is meant to cater for a broad spectrum of UK viewership, not just sports fans, (or rabid Royalists, every time there's a Royal death or wedding). Anyway, this time around I intend letting the Olympics pass me by entirely.
There's just something about Savage Streets that screams 'peak eighties exploitation' - the fashions, the hairstyles, the whole attitude. Watching it is like watching a checklist of teen gang/high school movie tropes: the locker room fight between hot chicks - check; gratuitously topless background chicks - check; big hair - check; 'bad girl' heroine with gum chewing attitude - check; scumbag school bully gang bangers - check. It's all there - and more. Plus, it stars not just Linda Blair, but also Linnea Quigley - two scream queen icons for the price of one! Best of all, it is all hugely entertaining. Clearly made on the cheap, the promised 'gang war of the sexes' is actually pretty small scale as Blair and her besties square off against 'The Scars' (a vicious gang of drug peddlers with only four members) on a mission of revenge. Their feud escalates from some dangerous driving by 'The Scars' which nearly runs over Blair's deaf mute younger sister (Quigley). through the girls stealing and trashing the gang's car, through gang rape and assault to murder, before Blair goes full-on Charles Bronson. Interspersed with all this violence are the usual High School rivalries between Blair and friends and the 'cool girls' from the cheer leading team, inspired mainly by jealousies over boys and worries over grades. On top of all this, one of Blair's friends, Francine (Lisa Freeman), is pregnant and about to marry her boyfriend.
As with all revenge-orientated pictures, those on the receiving end of the street 'justice' have to seem fully deserving of it, in order that the avenging protagonist's actions can seem justified and audience sympathy for them maintained. Savage Streets goes all out to portray 'The Scars' as just about the scuzziest bunch of bastards ever to roam the back streets of LA. Just having them being low-life drug dealers who beat up and humiliate pushers who owe them money in front of their girlfriends (whose breasts also get groped), isn't enough. They also gang-rape, then leave for dead, the deaf mute sister. Now, the fact that she is deaf mute is clearly meant to make them seem even worse bastards tan if they had gang-raped someone with perfect hearing. While I understand that her disability makes her seem even more helpless - unable even to cry for help or scream while they assault her in the school toilets - but the reality is that it is surely the act of rape itself, regardless of the victim, that makes them scumbags? But the fact that their victim is an underage deaf-mute kid is clearly intended to ramp up the audience hatred. Just as when they, inevitably, go even further and murder one of Blair's friends, you just know that it is going to be pregnant Francine, hurled off of a road bridge on the eve of her wedding, in order to maximize the sense of tragedy and further justify Blair's revenge rampage.
You have to wait a long time for Blair's revenge, it doesn't kick off until nearly the end of the movie, but it is worth waiting for, as she goes into battle dressed in black leather and armed with a crossbow and a bear trap(!). In the event, she only has to deal the fatal blow to three of the gang members. The fourth, the weak link who has become disgusted by his involvement in the rape and the murder, is run over by gang leader Jake, after he has - at knife point - confessed all to Blair. While the remaining two minions are relatively easily dispatched with crossbow bolts and bear trap, their bodies then strung up for Jake to discover, the latter puts up more of a fight. Finally, having survived a crossbow attack, being dragged behind a car and stabbed, just as it seems that he's got the advantage over Blair, she uses a lighter to set fire to the paint he has been covered in during their warehouse fight. As his body blazes away, the cops finally arrive. A post script shows Blair, amazingly not in jail for murder, her miraculously recovered sister and her friends at Francine's grave, where one of them tells her: 'You made things right'.
While director Danny Steinmann moves things along pretty efficiently, despite an obviously limited budget, (Savage Streets was one of only four films that he directed), what really makes the movie stand out are the performances. I have to admit that I've always had a soft spot for Linda Blair and have never really had the heart to dislike any of her performances as she arced through a bizarre career trajectory that started strongly as a child performer with The Exorcist, before taking in various TV movie-of-the-week melodramas as a teen and finally, in adulthood, settling into a long series of trashy B-movies. So, while she never really convinces as a 'bad girl', (her characterisation seemingly consisting mainly of chewing gum and smoking cigarettes with attitude), she does bring a lot of charisma and screen presence to her role. (She also, judges her performance well, never appearing to take it entirely serious while simultaneously never seeming contemptuous of appearing in an exploitation film). Linnea Quigley, appearing here shortly before she hit her stride as a full-fledged scream queen, likewise gives a likeable performance as the deaf mute sister, bringing some real vulnerability to the part, making her ordeal seem all the worse. Robert Dryer as Jake takes scumbaggery to new levels, relishing every opportunity for sheer loathsomeness, so that by the end of the film, you are just dying to see him go up in flames. There is also a stand-out performance from John Vernon as the school principle who, in a handful of scenes, alternates between shabbily admirable as he proves himself more foul mouthed than the gang members as he faces them down, and just shabby with his highly inappropriate comments to Blair following the attack on her sister. Indeed, his retort to Jake's smart ass claim that one of his cronies is sick as he' 'burning up with the clap' - 'Then go fuck an iceberg', is delivered with such relish and vehemence that it is impossible not to laugh out loud at it.
Savage Streets represents another step forward in the evolution of the female exploitation action heroine - unlike her seventies equivalents, Blair doesn't have to endure a personal ordeal of brutality and humiliation, nor does she have to rely upon any male associates to assist. Indeed, the handful of sympathetic male characters (mainly Francine's boyfriend and his associates) prove pretty ineffective - during a confrontation during which Francine is grabbed and groped by 'The Scars', it is Blair and the girls who take on the gang, with Francine freeing herself by slashing Scar with a knife. But a female 'ordeal' was clearly felt to be needed, with it being transferred to the kid sister rather than the main protagonist and 'justified' in terms of providing a motivation for revenge. Interestingly, the film serves up less female nudity than you might expect from an exploitation film. While the locker room cat fight between Blair and her rival Cindy (Rebecca Perle) might be expected to involve their tops being torn off, this doesn't happen, with the nudity instead being confined to the girls in the background (some of whom are also, inexplicably) fighting. Just when you think that these two actresses sensibly had non-nudity clauses in their contracts, Cindy loses her top in a classroom tussle with Blair, while the latter herself has a brief topless scene. Clearly, they had insisted on only one such scene apiece, with no doubling up of boobs. Interestingly, Blair's topless scene comes while she is in the bath, sitting perfectly still - obviously her contract stipulated no 'jiggling' and a modicum of 'classiness'.
All in all, Savage Streets is a fantastically entertaining piece of exploitation, capturing the full genre scuzziness of the era. Sufficiently well-made to stand out from the crowd of revenge-orientated direct-to-video actioners, it never quite tips over into unpleasantness, despite some its content and never losing sight of its own fundamental ludicrousness. Besides, what's not to like about a film featuring Linda Blair as a kick ass female avenger?
A quiet weekend on the schlock movie front, although I did manage to catch up with another so-called 'video nasty' in the form of the 1982 Spanish-US co-production Pieces. It is another of those films which, when watched today, makes you wonder why on earth it was ever seized (although not prosecuted) under the Obscene Publications Act back in the eighties. Sure, it has a lot of chainsaw killings and their concomitant gore, but it is all so over the top and unrealistic that it is impossible to take any of it seriously. Perhaps it was the unpleasant details like one victim wetting herself with fear as she's about to get chainsawed that was objected to - at this distance in time, who knows? Personally, what I found offensive was the hand-me-down plot that has been done before and better and the presence of Edmund Purdom, who, once again, goes through the whole film with that mortified look on his face, as he ponders how he keeps ending up exploitation films he clearly felt were beneath him, but still had bills to pay. The answer of course, was simple: while Purdom might have had a magnificent voice, he was an actor whose performances made trees look animated - following his failure to establish himself in Hollywood's top rank of stars, he retreated, in a huff, to Italy. But getting back to Pieces, unusually for a cheap continental slasher movie of the era, a lot of it actually was shot on location in Boston and boasts slightly higher profile than usual US stars. Well, it has Christopher George and Linda Day, (who were married in real life), who were to be seen regularly in US TV movies throughout the seventies and eighties. (Christopher George also made appearances in Italian-shot horror movies, most notably Fulci's City of the Dead).
It is, however, the presence of another American actor in Pieces left me somewhat perplexed. Paul L Smith, who here plays the suspect grounds keeper, is nowadays remembered for appearances in mainstream movies like Midnight Express, Dune and Popeye (as Bluto), but he also did a stint in Italian exploitation, where he became known as a serial Bud Spencer impersonator, co-starring in a series of Terrence Hill/Bud Spencer knock offs. Now, being American you'd expect, when appearing in an English-language film, he would speak with his own voice. But no - as soon as he opens his mouth, we hear the distinctive tones of Edward Mannix, the regular (and best) English language voice of Bud Spencer himself, (he dubbed for the big man in most of his movies from the mid to late seventies onward). Perhaps it is intended as a homage to Smith's time as a Bud Spencer impersonator. Actually, Mannix, (who also regularly dubbed another burly and frequently bearded Italian actor in Luciano Pigozzi), could sometimes be heard in the most unexpected of circumstances. In Fulci's New York Ripper, for instance, UK viewers are generally surprised to hear his distinctive tones emanating from the mouth of British character actor Jack Hedley in the English language version. For sure, Hedley was playing an NYPD detective, but Mannix's voice was a poor match for Hedley, who was neither burly nor bearded, (the two things one immediately associates with Mannix's voice).
To return, once more, to Pieces, the film's main problem seems to be that it tries to meld together the slasher and giallo genres, but doesn't really do either element particularly well. The POV stalkings by a black gloved killer just doesn't feel as suspenseful when they are wielding a chainsaw rather than a knife or even an axe. The chainsaw simply doesn't lend itself to suspense with all that whirring and all those exhaust fumes - it is more a device of terror. Not that Pieces makes it particularly terrifying, either. Unfortunately, the script feels as much of a patchwork quilt of influences from other movies as the 'perfect' woman the killer is putting together from all those bits missing from the corpses of his victims. The script, moreover, fails to move the plot along smoothly, leaving the viewer with the feeling that it is being put together in much the same manner as that jigsaw of the naked lady the killer is always working on, rather than progressing in a logical manner. Worse than that, it frequently feels as if there are some pieces of the jigsaw missing, or at least inserted in the wrong places. The film, of course, is infamous for its truly WTF 'twist' ending which, quite literally, comes out of nowhere and makes no sense whatsoever - rather as if a piece from a different jigsaw had strayed into the original puzzle. Which rather typifies the films problems: it feels as if it has been assembled from a series of components selected for their shock value, rather than their plot relevance. None of which to say that it isn't reasonably entertaining - even if the identity of the killer is obvious and many of the 'shock' and 'suspense' sequences utterly lame. Oh, and even if tat ending makes no rational sense, it is very satisfying to see that annoying student get his comeuppance.
Another Philippines produced horror movie from producer/star John Ashley and director Eddie Romero. This time around, Ashley plays the monster rather than the hero. Toward the end of World War Two an American soldier goes rogue, teaming up with bandits and embarking on the usual campaign of rape, murder and robbery. Finally cornered by the police, he does a deal with the devil for immortality in return for his soul, a bargain he seals by eating human flesh. Apparently killed by the cops, Ashley's soul, over the next couple of decades, is reincarnated in the bodies of various people, influencing those around them to evil. Fast forward to the present day, well, 1971 - his latest gig is to be reincarnated in the body of a wealthy industrialist whose head as been mangled in an industrial accident and who died briefly on the operating table. In a twist, the devil ensures that a plastic surgeon rebuilds the industrialist's face to look like Ashley. This time around, Ashley tries to exert his free will and renege on his deal. The devil responds by placing a new curse on him - whenever he rebels he will turn into a hairy flesh eating monster. Adding to Ashley's troubles, a police inspector involved in the 1945 manhunt recognises him and starts investigating.
Unfortunately, the story isn't told that clearly, the viewer has to read between the lines and fill in a lot of gaps. It doesn't help that, while setting up some interesting ideas about the nature of evil, free will and identity, the script never develops them. The whole plot seems to unfold too hastily, with too much talking about events instead of showing them - especially frustrating with regard to Ashley's reincarnations prior to 1971, which we never see and are only cursorily mentioned. It wraps up very abruptly as well, leaving the viewer feeling more than slightly unsatisfied. On the plus side, though, the monster make up is particularly good, as are some of he gore effects and Eddie Romero directs with typical efficiency. Overall, it looks a lot better than most of the same team's previous efforts, with better production values and a seemingly bigger budget. The main cast all give decent performances, but the stand out is Vic Diaz as the devil. The short fat and pencil mustachioed Diaz might seem to be an unlikely choice to portray the Prince of Darkness, but his urbane, witty and imperturbable Satan is quite outstanding. Despite its shortcomings, Beast of the Yellow Night makes for an entertaining watch.
Was it wrong of me, when I heard that Richard Branson was taking flight into space, that he might not come back? I mean, one shouldn't wish ill on others - especially when, in Branson's case, they aren't travelling alone, so whatever terrible thing befalls them, will also befall several innocent people. But, you know, there's a part of me that still thinks that the collateral damage would be worthwhile if it meant that the world wouldn't have to endure any more of Branson's tiresome publicity stunts. It was bad enough when he was trying to break the world record for flying across the Atlantic suspended under a giant inflated condom with 'Virgin' on the side, (or was it a balloon, I can never remember), but when he starts blasting himself into space in order to publicise his latest vanity project of enabling other super-rich parasites to book flights into orbit, you know that it has just gone too far. It also underlines just how Branson has never had an original idea - his entire fortune has been based around exploiting other people's ideas, trying to take credit for them via stupid publicity stunts. He likes to cast himself as an innovator for, as an example, starting transatlantic air travel with Virgin Atlantic, (despite the fact that the likes of Pan Am, TWA and BOAC had been doing it for decades. Then there was his invention of Cola flavoured soft drinks with Virgin Cola, except that Coca Cola and Pepsi were there first by a long margin. Or his invention not only of passenger rail travel, but also of late running trains and exorbitant fares, with Virgin Rail. It is the same with Virgin Galactic - I don't know how to break it to him that he isn't the first man into space: Yuri Gagarin got there first, not mention a whole load of NASA astronauts. Which is probably why the public didn't seem to care about Branson's flight.
But that's what the super wealthy do these days - repeat the achievements of publicly funded scientific not-for-profit bodies, but in a tawdry, crass, format. If it isn't Branson with his schemes for space tourism for the rich, then its Elon 'Peado Guy' Musk, (and hey Elon, your lawyers established in court that 'Peado Guy' is just a jokey South African jibe which in no way implies the recipient is a child molester), and his creepy plan to annex Mars for the billionaire boys' club. You'd think that their sort would be happy to be mega-rich, accept that as an achievement. But no, they seem to want to be recognised for doing something, even if it is something that someone has done better before. It betrays a fundamental insecurity - despite their millions they clearly don't feel admired or loved by the wider public. 'Look at my success,' they seem to be saying. 'I've made millions, I've set up airlines, I've made electric cars, I've muscled in on every public sector contract I can find, but still you hate me! Why? What do I have to do to get your love - fly to the moon?' It's the emptiness of wealth and materialism. Especially when these things have been gained on the back of recycling other peoples' innovations. That's what they don't seem to understand: those that have become public icons and have statues erected to them, whether they worked in commerce, industry science or the arts, were true innovators. They had original ideas or, at the very least, found original ways to develop and exploit the ideas others. That's what this current crop of the super-wealthy just can't seem to grasp - nothing they have done, or are planning to do is original: even their plans for space hotels and colonies on Mars are just the warmed over dreams of fifties pulp science fiction magazines.
So, football isn't coming home after all. But racism is - although, in truth. it never really went away. I'd like to say that I was shocked or surprised by the outpourings of racist abuse and violence from many England 'fans' in the wake of the football team's defeat to Italy in the Euro 2020 final, but I'm afraid that it is only to be expected. This sort of 'nationalistic' fervour is what the Tories have been incubating since they returned to power in 2010. I've said it before and I'll say it again: they decided to play with fire by deciding that the key to retaining power was to shift the UK's political discourse far to the right in order to attract the votes of the right wing fringes. It started with Cameron and his various campaigns to turn any vulnerable minority, from single parents, through the disabled to immigrants into the 'enemy', in attempt to create hate figures with which to unite his new extremist alliance. The likes of Gove and Johnson then used the EU referendum to take it all a stage further by invoking the spectre of unbridled immigration in their bid to capture Nigel Farage's army of Brexit bastards. Since then, it has been nothing but phoney culture wars from them, as they attempt to divide people against each other, invoking false narratives of the disadvantaged 'white working class' - disadvantaged at the hands of those non-white immigrants, of course. Then they feign horror when it all erupts in an orgy of racism and bigotry.
Still, England's loss let Johnson off the hook in one respect - he doesn't have to follow through (or more likely perform another U-turn), over that bank holiday he was hinting at if England won. Obviously, he had no intention of ever granting any such thing - Johnson is just full of shit and will promise anything if it will make him popular, then wriggle out of it when it looks like he'll have to make good on his false promises. It's no surprise that with someone like him in charge of the country that the racists and bigots feel empowered and emboldened. Not just because they believe that Johnson and his cronies are dependent upon them to maintain them in power, but because they recognise that Johnson himself is one of their own. Oh sure, he's an Old Etonian and boasts of his ability to read the classics in the original Greek and Latin, but let's not forget his newspaper columns where he describes black people as having 'water melon smiles' or as 'picanninies' Not to mention describing Muslim wearing traditional dress as 'pillar boxes'. Then there are his various outbursts against other minorities - homosexuals are 'tank top bum boys', for instance - and various vile misogynistic comments. Eddie Mair hit the nail on the head when, in that BBC interview, he confronted Johnson with all of this - and more - ending by describing him as 'a thoroughly nasty piece of work'. Is it any wonder that this country has become so ugly with scumbags like that in charge? For most of my life, the UK seemed to be progressing, becoming more tolerant of minorities, kinder toward our new citizens, but for the past decade it feels like we've been going backwards. It really is quite depressing, but only to be expected with this bunch of wreckers in control, who will destroy anything - the rule of law, civil society, decency and values, if they think that it stands in the way of their retaining power and continuing to milk the economy for everything they can get out of it.
Continuing my entirely accidental journey through Japanese pop culture past, I found Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs (1974), an example, apparently, of the 'Pinky Crime' genre, showing on a streaming channel the other night. Extremely violent, with a lot of explicit sexual content, at first glance this might appear to be a million miles from the Sukeban Deka TV series I was talking about last time. The again, this tale's undercover female police assassin protagonist could well be what the 'delinquent girl detectives' become when they grow up. That said, the film predates the first Sukeban Deka TV series by more than a decade and while the TV show was clearly aimed at an adolescent audience, Zero Woman sits firmly in the category of 'adult entertainment'. Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs sets its tone from pretty much the first frame, with a foreign diplomat taking a girl to hotel room for some - as it turns out - bondage action. She gets naked and felt up pretty quickly, but when he starts to get out his whips and stuff, she suddenly produces a gun and those red handcuffs, revealing herself as a cop and confronts him over the death of another girl in one of his sessions. In response, he just produces his passport and invokes diplomatic immunity. So she shoots him. As it turns out, although she - Rei- is an undercover cop from a secret division authorised to kill certain criminals without trial or conviction, she hadn't been authorised this time, acting instead for personal reasons. Consequently, she finds herself thrown in jail, where the other inmates recognise her as a cop and strip and beat her.
Which, in effect, constitutes a scene-setting pre title sequence, much in the mode of a Bond movie. The plot proper starts after the titles, with a thug being released from prison, re-uniting with his gang and going off to attack a courting couple, killing the guy and gang-raping and kidnapping the girl, who they then try and sell into the sex trade. The female associate they try selling her to recognises her as the daughter of a powerful politician, a man set to become Prime Minister. So, naturally, they decide to hold her for ransom. Wanting to keep the kidnapping out of the headlines, in order to avoid the scandal and possible dishonour involved, the politician calls in the secret police division to sort things out. Rei finds herself retrieved from prison, with orders to infiltrate the kidnap gang, retrieve the girl unharmed and kill the entire gang. Doing this involves Rei getting brutally beaten and sexually assaulted by the gang in order to prove that she isn't the cop. Following this 'baptism of fire', she sets about turning the gang members against each other, until there are only three left, with their leader now half crazed and paranoid after being forced to kill his own brother, having caught him trying to help the kidnapped girl escape. Moving their hostage to a disused US Navy base, they take more hostages, raping the women. Rei sows more dissent. The cops torture a captured gang member to turn him against the gang, but he ends up betraying Rei, who is subjected to a further brutal beating. The politician, knowing now that his daughter has been repeatedly raped and drugged, fears he will be disnonoured if the kidnapping ever becomes public, so the order is given that everyone involved, including Rei and the girl, have to die. Subsequently, the additional hostages are left to burn by the cops as the remaining gang members set a fire to cover their escape, with the two women as hostages. After a car chase, Rei inevitablt turns the tables on both criminals and cops.
There is no disputing that Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs is very well made, packing a lot of incident into a scant eighty eight minute running time. Nevertheless, despite the relatively short running time, the film refuses to move at a breakneck pace, instead taking the time to build up the various characters, establish their relationships and allow Rei's machinations to slowly unfold. When the action does occur, it pretty much explodes, with outbursts of disturbing, but well choreographed, violence. Good direction from Yukio Noda - who specialised in this sort of tough, action-orientated drama - is backed up by good performances from the cast. Tetsuro Tamba is suitably glacial as the calculating, ruthless politician, while Miki Sugimoto as Rei is eerily impassive looking for much of the action, suggesting someone who has become anesthetised to the brutality and violence she is immersed in and has come to accept the physical and sexual abuse she endures as an integral part of her job. Her delicate beauty belies her ruthlessness and toughness. But the levels of violence - which is principally directed at women - is disturbing and often difficult to watch. While, arguably, it isn't entirely gratuitous, being intended to establish not only the scale of the villains' moral degeneracy and misogyny (you can tell they are scum as one of Rei's rapists has shit stains down the back of his underpants), but also the way in which the authorities are no better, being equally willing to exploit women's bodies in the name of 'justice', that doesn't make it any easier to watch. Moreover, it reduces women, for the most part, to the role of passive victims. Even Rei - despite the opening holding the promise of her being a kick ass action heroine -spends most of the film passively allowing herself to be abused in order to develop her plan and maintain her cover. At least she's able to spring into action at he film's climax, ruthlessly dispatching both gang members and cops.
Of course, this victimisation of even what are meant to be strong female characters isn't restricted to Japanese films of the era: I had much the same problem with the US seventies sexploitation actioner Ginger, where the titular character, despite having established her kick ass credentials, is climactically forced to endure rape, beating and drugging, only being rescued thanks to the intervention of a male character. Vulnerability, these scenarios seem to argue, is an essential part of femininity and even the toughest of heroines have to demonstrate it in order to make them acceptable to male audiences. Still Rei is, at least, allowed to rescue herself. By the eighties and nineties, in the West at least, the action heroine no longer had to demonstrate their femininity by ordeal, but could just kick ass as well as any man, as Maria Ford in Angel of Destruction, (or even Linda Blair in Savage Streets), demonstrated. In Japan, things appear to have been somewhat more complicated. While the Sukeban Deka TV series could, arguably, be seen as a toned down version of the Zero Woman format aimed at younger viewers, in its original iteration, at least, it still insisted on putting its heroine through ordeals. Having recently seen the first six episodes of the first Sukeban Deka series, I was struck at how much darker and more violent it was than subsequent series. Not only is its heroine blackmailed by the authorities into working undercover for them, (her mother is on death row, her execution held off as long as Saki co-operates), but she does tend to get slapped around quite a bit by various antagonists, (although she always eventually triumphs with the aid of her yo-yo). In one episode, for instance, she allows herself to be captured by kidnappers in order to get close to their victim, which involves her being being beaten up by three gang members. While it might be seen as integral to the plot, the sight of three grown men slapping a teenage girl around (in the case of the first Sukeban Deka, a physically small teenager at that), remains as unappealing as seeing a grown woman beaten and raped in the name of 'duty' in Zero Woman. Thankfully, the subsequent two series took a lighter tone, with their young heroines avoiding such ordeals.
Getting back to Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs, the film proved a big success on its release, spawning a series of films, all featuring a different actress in the title role, but all following a similar format. While stopping short of full frontal nudity, Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs presents far stronger material than could be found in any similar Western 'mainstream' film of the era, with its explicit scenes of sexual violence against women. Not only is such material unsettling, (as it should be and is clearly intended to be), its inclusion in a film being presented primarily as a crime thriller, a piece of entertainment, always begs to the question to whether its purpose is as much 'entertainment' and voyeuristic titillation as it is to make a moral point about the objectification and brutalisation of women by those in power, whether that be criminal or 'legitimate' power. There is, of course, no simple answer here. Certainly, I don't have one. While this aspect of Zero Woman undoubtedly made me wince, (to put it mildly), it didn't put me off watching it and appreciating it for the thoroughly well made and superior piece of exploitation that it is. Oh and those red handcuffs - I was perplexed by the fact that the first few times she whipped these out, Rei was stark naked, leaving me to ponder just where she had been concealing them. Thankfully, the film later makes clear that they are kept concealed in a secret compartment of her hand bag, which she always has close at hand. Which came as quite a relief.
I really do have too much time on my hands. So much so that, of late, I've found myself becoming mildly obsessed with an eighties Japanese TV series featuring crime fighting schoolgirls, all dressed in those traditional Japanese school uniforms that look - to us in the UK, at least - like sailor suits. Actually, back in the eighties there was apparently a plethora of similar series on Japanese TV, including a rocket launcher toting schoolgirl commando, but the series I've been watching was the original for this genre. Sukeban Deka. To be entirely accurate, what I've been watching is the second series, Sukeban Deka II: Legend of the Iron Masked Girl. Some explanation is undoubtedly required here for the uninitiated - 'Sukeban Deka' roughly translates as 'Delinquent Girl Detective' and the heroine of these series is a juvenile delinquent turned undercover agent for the Japanese secret service schoolgirl, who, under the guise of an ordinary high school student, fights crime. Mainly crime in the Japanese school system, squaring off against various juvenile gangs, teenaged criminal masterminds and the like. Each of the three series features a different 'Sukeban Deka', all armed with a metal yo-yo as a weapon, (it has a chain instead of a string and a panel that flips open to reveal their police badge). All are played by popular young female singers of the era and all use the same cover name of Saki Asimaya.
Sukeban Deka II was, I gather, the most popular iteration and features Yoko Minamino in the title role, She is assisted by two sidekicks, one of whom, Okyo, is a mean hand with her marbles, throwing them with deadly accuracy to defeat opponents, or bouncing them off of walls and ceilings to hit enemies. When she's finished, she whips out her handkerchief and throws it on the ground, the marbles all conveniently rolling into it for her to pick them up. Which gives you some idea of the general lunacy which permeates the average episode. Each series has an overarching story arc - in the case of the second it
is Saki's quest to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance,
which seems to be linked to a powerful crime syndicate, whose agents she
encounters (and defeats) at every turn. In execution, it is all suitably tongue in cheek, in the latest episode I saw, Saki and Okyo infiltrate a boys school, (they make very unconvincing boys, something the script plays on), in order to investigate the crime syndicate's plot to unify all the boys school gangs, taking out their bosses if they refuse to co-operate. Much to Okya's disgust, they find that the gang at the school they have infiltrated are a bunch of incompetent cowards, (described by one gang member as 'a strange boy with a pretty face', Okya succeeds in single handedly beating them all up). Finally revealing themselves as girls, the duo succeed in inspiring sufficient backbone in the boys to take on the rival gang sent to take them over. Saki and Okya, meanwhile, take on the flamboyant cloak twirling and milk drinking syndicate agent behind the plot, finally defeating him with a combination of yo-yo and marbles. At least, I think that's what happened. Following the plot logic isn't always easy.
So why has this fascinated me so much? I mean, I've never really been into Japanese popular culture, aside from the obvious monster movies and Kurosawa films. I'm afraid that samurai and ninja films have, in the main, passed me by, as have Japanese gangster pictures. I've never been a fan of Anime - I can see its attraction but it just isn't my cup of tea, yet crime fighting Japanese schoolgirls in sailor suits have proven strangely compelling. I think that it has to do with the sheer bizarreness of the average episode, which depicts the Japanese school system as being a hotbed of crime and often mixes in standard school drama with weird crime fighting action, (Saki frequently seems to have her attempts to do her homework interrupted by her handler turning up with her next assignment, for instance). The fact that it is so clearly cheaply made, with the action taking place in deserted buildings or on empty wasteland, just adds to the appeal. Every episode, which usually run just over twenty minutes, plays out like a live action comic strip, (not surprisingly, it is adapted from one), complete with campy, sixties TV series Batman touches, (whenever Saki takes off her motorcycle leathers, we cut from her unzipping the jacket to her in full school uniform, despite that ankle length dress making it impossible for her to have been wearing it underneath). There are forty two episodes to this second series, so i'm looking forward to a lot more camp Japanese school crime fighting campness.
So, we're in that phase now when British politicians pretend that they like football. The sight of various government figures - who had previously effectively encouraged people to boo the England football team for taking the knee - suddenly asking us to believe that they now fully embrace the team's success in their progress to the final of Euro 2020, is more than a little perplexing. Surely one of the more bizarre - let alone audacious -attempts at double think and historical revisionism yet attempted by the Johnson government, it is yet another indication of the utter contempt with which they view the electorate. Yet they still keep getting the votes. Quite extraordinary. But nothing succeeds like success and politicians always like to associate themselves with successful ventures, hoping that some of the shine will rub off on them or, even better, that they will be able to claim credit for it. I mean, if we were to believe Harold Wilson back in 1966, he, Jim Callaghan and Roy Jenkins had all been on the England team sheet in the World Cup Final and that he had scored the winning goal. Indeed, Wilson laid some of the blame for his government's unexpected defeat in the 1970 general election on England's failure to retain the trophy, believing that the consequent 'feel good' factor could have be capitalised upon to carry Labour to electoral victory.
But this present Tory government's attempts to hijack the England football bandwagon at this late stage is remarkable by any standards. After refusing to condemn those 'fans' booing the team for expressing their opposition to racism on the grounds that the 'fans' likewise were only exercising their freedom of speech, we now have Home Secretary Priti Patel taking to social media to praise the England team for progressing to the final. Oh, and we've also had the awful spectacle of professional public school bully Jacob Rees-Mogg quoting the lyrics from 'World in Motion' in the Commons, as if this somehow indicates that he somehow likes football, let alone knows what it is. I mean, really, does he really think that he can convince anyone that he doesn't actually see the average football fan as some awful lower class oik that should be kept in penury and serfdom? Then again, as - judging by the booing of other teams' national anthems and taking the knee by players - a not insignificant proportion of them appear to be bigots and xenophobes, he might have some common ground with them. The most telling of these bandwagon-hopping pieces of photo opportunism is probably the picture of Chancellor Rishi Sunak wearing an England shirt which subsequent photos of him taking it off clearly show, still has the sales tags on it. Well, at least he can claim that by keeping them on, he was able to take it straight back to Sports Direct for a refund, thereby saving the Exchequer a few quid. Still, if England win on Sunday, there'll be a publicity feeding frenzy on the part of the government, with knighthoods all round for - arise Sir Harry Kane. But if they lose, they'll be back to being a bunch of weak-minded idiots duped by the deep Woke conspiracy into unwittingly disseminating neo-Marxism by taking the knee. It's all bullshit, isn't it?
Robert 'The Exterminator' Ginty! Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson! Giant glowing diamonds! Chainsaws! Nudity! Guns! Explosions! How could a film packing in all these elements possibly go wrong? Well, quite easily, as it turns out. To be honest, the trailer succeeds in melding together these elements far more coherently than the film itself does. I once started watching White Fire on a streaming channel but gave up about a quarter of the way in, due to a combination of them running a very poor quality print and the fact that it seemed to be getting nowhere fast. Then it turned up again on another streaming service, this time with a better quality print, so I decided to give it another chance. It still felt disjointed with an overly convoluted plot that gets too confusing to follow long before the end. The direction, by fashion model turned soft core porn director Jean-Marie Pallardy is, at best, serviceable, but the editing, especially in the action sequences, is choppy, with scenes ending abruptly as we move onto seemingly unrelated sequences. This results in the plot developing poorly, with characters disappearing for long stretches before suddenly reappearing, denying the film any rhythm, frequently coming over as being a random assemblage of scenes. (To be absolutely fair, it appeared that the channel I saw it on actually did run one scene out of sequence, confusing matters even more).
Worst of all, the film completely wastes its most charismatic player, Fred Williamson, playing a character who, ultimately, is largely irrelevant to the main action. Indeed, his entire sub-plot seems to exist solely to pad out the film's running time and his appearance part way through the movie serves only to slow things down even more. The main plot involves a brother and sister, Bo and Ingrid, (Ginty and Belinda Mayne) working a diamond smuggling racket, in cahoots with the security chief of the diamond mine the sister works at. Another gang led by an Italian villainess( who is saddled with an atrocious accent that simply adds to an already atrocious acting performance) that wants a cut of their action. This results in the film's first big action sequence, which sees Ginty using a chainsaw to see off some of the Italian woman's cohorts. This provides an excuse for some pretty tame gore effects. The 'White Fire' of the title - a legendary radioactive diamond - is then discovered at the mine, at which point the film starts getting complicated. One development isn't unexpected: the security chief double crosses Bo and Ingrid by conspiring with the rival gang to steal the diamond. The other, less so: it becomes apparent that Bo's feelings for Ingrid run beyond the brotherly. After she takes a naked swim, he surprises her and whips away her towel, telling her 'you don't look like anybody's little sister now', adding 'pity you are my sister'. As if this wasn't clear enough, the lascivious looks Bo gives Ingrid leaves the viewer in no doubt as to what he wants to do to his little sister.
Things then get even more complicated as the rival gang kill Ingrid in an attempt to kidnap her in order to try and find out more about the 'White Fire', (cue a fight sequence with Ingrid, clad only in a towel, fighting off various gang members). A grief stricken Bo, after wandering aimlessly along beaches and getting drunk, meets another girl, Olga (Diana Goodman), who bears more than a passing resemblance to Ingrid. Naturally, he falls in love with her and persuades her to replace Ingrid in his plot to steal the 'White Fire', which is more than mildly creepy due to the incest-by-proxy, (not to mention necrophiliac) angle thanks to Olga's resemblance to his dead sister. But it gets worse - he also persuades Olga to have plastic surgery so that she looks exactly like Ingrid, ostensibly so that she can impersonate her as part of the scheme, but really because he wants to bang his sister. Which, in effect, he does, as, after the surgery, (a bizarre sequence involving an island of - possibly lesbian -women and some kind of feminist guru-cum-plastic-surgeon), Ingrid/Olga is being played by Belinda Mayne, the original Ingrid, (the plastic surgery having replicated not only Ingrid's face but, miraculously, also her knockers and arse that Bo had admired so much).. At which point it turns out that Olga is either a high class hooker or the mistress (it is never really made entirely clear) of some villain, who has sent Fred Williamson's character to find her. Oh, and the security chief at the mine decides to double cross the other gang by co-operating with Bo and faux-Ingrid to steal the diamond, before double crossing them and tipping the gang off.
At which point it all becomes barely coherent as to who is doing what to who, who is double crossing who or, indeed, who anyone actually is. The latter problem is compounded by the fact that the film is full of large Turkish moustaches - every henchman, no matter who they are working for, sports one. So prevalent are they that, obviously wanting to fit in, Ginty and Williamson sport their own extravagant facial hair. A French-Italian-Turkish-US co-production, its international cast are severely hampered by the fact that many of them, including Brit Belinda Mayne, are clearly dubbed on the English language version, although many of the performances were weak, to say the least. Gordon Mitchell, (a veteran of many an Italian exploitation flick), as the security chief, for instance, is particularly poor. Even those more capable members of the cast are roundly defeated by a weak script that serves up some utterly nonsensical dialogue. Only Williamson manages to rise above it and deliver a reasonable performance - which makes it even more of a pity that his role is entirely superfluous to the plot. On the plus side, the Turkish locations look good, the inane title song performed by Limelight and Vicky Browne and produced by Jon Lord is irritatingly catchy, despite some poor editing, most of the action scenes are reasonably entertaining and Belinda Mayne's nude scene is, it has to be said, very enjoyable. Overall, White Fire would be a perfectly enjoyable piece of low-rent exploitation if it wasn't for the incest angle, which hangs heavily over the action. It is just too prominent to ignore, (It drives one of the key plot twists) and left me feeling extremely uncomfortable, (just about everyone else I've spoken to about the film had the same reaction). It just feels as if someone was trying to enact on screen a personal fetish/fantasy - which would be fine if it was one shared by a large proportion of the audience, but somehow I doubt that many viewers would ever have had incest on their minds.
I'm afraid that the smut quotient was down this past weekend. I allowed myself to be distracted by a football match and a Star Trek movie marathon playing on Film Four, (I'm something of a sucker for the first three films). In fact, it wasn't so much Saturday Night Smut, but Saturday Night Sleaze, as I took in eighties trash classic Savage Streets. To be fair, this tale of teenage vigilantism had its share of smut, with plenty of bare breasts, school locker room bitch fights and the like. In an attempt to make up for my lack of smutty viewing earlier in the weekend, Sunday was spent re-watching a Jesus Franco double bill of Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein and Erotic Rites of Frankenstein. I'd forgotten just how bat shit crazy and bizarre these two early seventies Franco monster rallies were. That's the thing about Franco - much of his prolific output consists of hastily made and often tedious pot-boilers, but every so often he'd come up with something graced by by the sort of inspired lunacy that tips it over into pure surrealism. Such is the case with these two films. I should make it clear that my weekends haven't become cinematic smut fests by design - it's just that I've started exploring a couple of streaming channels that have a fair amount of seventies and eighties sexploitation titles (of wildly varying quality) in their catalogues.
But getting back to those distractions - if I learned one thing from the England-Ukraine Euro 2020 Quarter Final, it was that I'd be bloody useless in a war. Not because I'd make a truly crap soldier, (although I would be, thanks to my total anathema to the whole concept of military discipline and rank hierarchies), but because I'm too easily swayed by feelings of sympathy for the opposition. I'm sorry, I know that I was meant to be rooting for England and should have been rejoicing when Harry Kane put that first goal in, but the camera then panned to two little girls in the crowd, wearing Ukraine shirts and in tears. I just didn't have the heart to rejoice then, I felt so bad for them. It was the same throughout the match, as England racked up the goals - the TV coverage kept cutting to Ukraine fans on the verge of tears. I know that one could argue that it is ridiculous to put do much emotional energy into a football match that you can be reduced to tears when it doesn't go your way, but we all do it and I hate to see people looking that distressed and devastated. I'm a Spurs fan, I know how it is to have your hopes and dreams constantly crushed, (curiously, I've come to terms with it in other spheres of my life, but when they lose a match, it still hurts). Perhaps it is my age, but increasingly I ind myself susceptible to such emotional displays. Then again, maybe I've always been - certainly, small children and animals have always seemed to know how to get around me with the right sorts of pleading looks.
Manhunt ran, usually in digest format, from 1953 to 1967, making it one of the longest serving detective fiction magazines of the post war period. This particular issue, from November 1953, features a cover painting typical of the subject matter of the magazine's fifties era: an imperiled (and often at least partially undressed) woman. While far less lurid than the covers of the earlier pulp detective magazines or contemporary men's magazines, these covers provided a reminder of Manhunt's antecedents. Occasionally, the covers rang the changes, featuring a woman handing out the violence to a man or, even more occasionally, another woman. While originally billed as Manhunt Detective Story Magazine, from April 1956 the title contracted to simply Manhunt, with the strap line 'World's Most Popular Crime Fiction Magazine'. As if to back up this bold claim, the magazine boasted a number of overseas reprint versions: in the UK there were two series, the first, from 1953-54 titled as the US edition, with a second series from 1960-61 titled Bloodhound Detective Story Magazine. Australia boasted no less than three reprint series, titled Manhunt Detective Story Magazine (1953-54), Phantom Suspense-Mystery Magazine (six undated issues in the fifties) and Verdict Detective Story Magazine in 1955.
Despite the women-in-peril covers, Manhunt was something of an 'upmarket' magazine, featuring many new stories from 'name' authors of the era. During the fifties Mickey Spillane and Evan Hunter/Ed McBain featuring prominently. Indeed, some of McBain's 87th Precinct stories saw their first publication in Manhunt. James T Farrell, Frederic Brown and Richard S Prather also frequently had featured stories. At least one of Ross McDonald's 'Lew Archer' series of novels had its debut in the pages of Manhunt. As the sixties progressed, the covers became somewhat more abstract in style and the names of the featured authors less familiar to modern readers, but the magazine continued to have an audience. By 1964, the cover claim 'Every Story New!' had vanished, implying that, like many magazines of the era, it was increasingly relying upon reprints from its archive (many of which would have been 'new' to current readers) in order to cut costs. Bi-monthly since 1958, 1967 saw only two editions, after which Manhunt ceased publication for good, having notched up some 114 issue in total, which was pretty impressive for any post-war genre fiction magazine.
It's OK - I'm not going to go into another rant about Tottenham's latest managerial appointment, (the worst since, well, the last one). After all, he, his fucking beard and his boring footballing style will be gone by Christmas (with any luck). So, back to my preoccupation of the day - is it me, or is social media getting ever creepier? I know that this, like my Spurs managerial rantings, is a recurrent obsession here, but the other day I made the mistake of checking in on my Facebook account (an increasingly rare occurrence) and was somewhat disturbed by what I found. Among the various tabs I rarely, if ever, check on the site is that one for Groups, because, well, I'm only a member of two Facebook groups, one of which has been inactive for quite some time. Despite that, Facebook insists upon sticking suggestions for groups your friends are members of and groups it 'thinks' that you might be interested in. I don't know why, but I get a perverse pleasure from rejecting as 'Not Relevant' all those 'latest posts from a group one of your friends has joined', (just as I do when I delete all of those 'Friend Suggestions' of people you neither know nor want to know). Equally, dismissing all those suggested groups is fun as they are usually totally irrelevant. This time, however, I found that Facebook had started recommending groups about railways and railway modelling.
Now, anyone foolish enough to have followed this blog over the years would say, what's wrong with that, as I clearly am interested in model railways? Well, the problem is that I never share anything about this interest on Facebook. I mean, never. I have never posted about the subject there, linked to anything about them or even looked at any groups about them. So how does Facebook know (or thinks that it knows) that I'm interested in this topic? Well, the only conclusion I can come to is that they are surreptitiously gathering data about my non-Facebook web browsing: I often look at videos of other people's layouts on YouTube, buy model railway stuff on eBay and follow a couple of model railway forums. Which is seriously creepy. It really does make me feel uneasy, as if my privacy has been invaded. Obviously, I rejected all of the suggestions as 'not relevant' in an attempt to throw the bastards off the scent, but they've continued to push similar stuff. All pretty disturbing and the sort of thing that tempts me to delete my Facebook account altogether.
