End of August

So, August draws to a close, taking Summer (not to mention the transfer window) with it.  I have to say that, this year, I've barely noticed that it has been August.  Usually my favourite Summer month, mainly because it is traditionally when I take my main holiday, this year, of course, I haven't been working, so I haven't had to look forward to August as a break from the relentless grind of work.  Last year, I still got a buzz from the month as it marked the start of what was then a 'career break' from the job from Hell, but as I never bothered going back, it has been one long holiday since.  I don't regret walking away from the job and I've really enjoyed having a year off and free of major stress, but I really do need to start taking the search for some paid work seriously.  Not that I'm desperate for money, but it would be nice to have some structure back in my life, something to get me out of the house a few days a week.  We'll see.  Anyway, August has come and gone and thanks to the depressingly poor weather, I haven't been out and about as much as usual.  Which means that I've ended up watching even more movies and TV of varying quality.  Some I've already written about here, Japanese direct-to-video oddity Star Virgin, for instance, others will doubtless follow.  Some, however, only require a brief mention.

One of those being the 2019 version of Hellboy, which I finally caught up with over the recent Bank Holiday.  I watched it with some trepidation, as I'd enjoyed the first two Guillermo del Toro directed films and this reboot had debuted to some terrible reviews and a desultory box office return.  I have to say, though, that I enjoyed it more than I expected.  Technically, it was well made and directed (although it was, literally, too dark, in that the lighting was so low key in many sequences that I had difficulty seeing what was going on), as you'd expect from a Neil Marshall film and David Harbour made a pretty decent Hellboy.  The problem lay with a meandering script that tried to pack too much exposition, characters, plot and incident into a two hour film.  Moving most of the action to the UK made little sense, despite the presence of a British director, as most of it was shot in Bulgaria, (sure, I know the villainness was from Arthurian legend, but, in truth, she could just as easily been drawn from any national mythology).  They didn't even capitalise by employing a host of British actors, other than Ian McShane and Sophie Okenado, in main roles, instead opting for several US actors with dodgy British accents.  There was a smattering of vaguely familiar British TV faces, including Masood and Big Mo from EastEnders.  The film's strength lay in the fact that it didn't try to emulate the look or style of the previous films, attempting instead to forge its own, darker and grittier identity.  While this was largely successful, it lacked the comic book and mythic feel of the first two films.  Which approach is actually more faithful to the source material, I can't say, not being familiar with the original comic books.  But, despite all of its short comings, the most recent Hellboy was, as I say, surprisingly enjoyable in an undemanding sort of way.

Bank Holiday Blues

The problem with Bank Holidays is that they are usually on a Monday.  Which means that people can't really enjoy them in full because they have to go back to work on the Tuesday.  Which, of course, makes it feel a bit like another Sunday. If you go out for the day, you have to make out sure you get back reasonably early to prepare for work the next day.  For the same reasons, pubs feel dead on a Bank Holiday Monday evening, feeling like a Sunday evening.  OK, I know that by giving us a three day weekend the Monday Bank Holiday, in theory, means that we can all enjoy Sunday properly.  But the problem with that is that stuff like Sunday trading hours and pub early closing times are still in force, meaning that there is a lot you still can't do, even though it is now the middle day of an extended weekend.  Now, as my long time reader(s) will know, I'm a big fan of Bank Holidays, as, if nothing else, they provide us with a collective leisure experience - for some reason it is very reassuring to know that most other people are also having a day off work and doing non-work related stuff.  (It wasn't always this way - as a kid I hated them, because everywhere would be closed, just as it had been the day before: those were the days when nowhere opened on a Sunday or Bank Holiday).  It is just the fact that they mainly fall on Mondays that niggles me.

I mean, can't we move some of them to Fridays?  The only regular Friday one we have - Good Friday - is bloody brilliant, as it kicks off a four day weekend.  So, can't May Day move to a Friday, or Whit Monday become Whit Friday?  Other countries don't schedule their public holidays exclusively for Mondays.  I remember being in Belgium once on a week-long work trip and everything coming to a halt on the Wednesday, as it turned out to be a holiday and all the public buildings (including the one where we were having our meetings) closed for the day.  It was great - we got a paid day of in Brussels to do whatever the fuck we liked.  Of course, they have more public holidays in the EU than we have here, so they can afford to spread them around a bit more.  We really need more here.  Every so often, the possibility of a new Autumn Bank Holiday is mooted, but it never happens.  It certainly won't happen with the current bunch of bastards in power as they don't want workers having any time off.  But really, we do need more time away from work - the case for a four day working week is becoming ever stronger as working patterns change.  More people want more flexible working patterns with part-time working becoming ever more popular.  Although, as I found, employers can still be reluctant to embrace these ideas - my former employer rejected my proposal to further reduce my hours on my hypothetical return from my 'career break', precipitating my resignation.  (In truth, I didn't really want to work for them any more at all - I just wanted to see what their reaction would be).  Even now, I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to convince potential employers that I simply neither want nor need to work full time any more, despite the media keep telling me that part-time working is the new thing.

Staycationers Go Home!

Well, I made it to the coast yesterday without getting lost - a huge improvement over my previous outing, which had left ,e wandering around some woods for hours on end, unable to retrace my path in.  One again, though, upon arriving in Milford of Sea, I found the main car park, the one with all the amenities, packed full.  Now, I've been visiting this part of the coast every Summer for more years than I care to remember and this is the first time I've experienced this.  By this time in the season, it is usually half empty, but twice this Summer, I've been unable to park there.  I blame those bloody 'staycationers': unable to take their holidays abroad because of the pandemic, they've decided to try and crowd me off of my regular beaches instead.  I wouldn't mind, but these are the very people who, in years past, used to look down their noses at me because I took my holidays at home.  The sort who used to shake their heads sadly and condescendingly at me when, after they'd bored the pub with their tales of their overseas holidays, asked where I'd been and I'd just say 'the coast'.  

Anyway, I ended up parking in the car park further down, the one without amenities, which was only about a third full and took a walk along the beach to the other car park to buy an ice cream.  The beach, inevitably, was swarming with these 'staycationers'.  It was quite a sight, normally the sort of people you see on an average August day are ordinary, often middle aged and rarely displaying much flesh to be sunburned.  You might see the odd wind surfer, but generally there are only a few swimmers in the water.  Yesterday we had hordes of bikini and speedo clad sunbathers, most of whom weren't really in any shape to be displaying so such of themselves and a plethora of wet-suited types with various upmarket inflatable boats, rafts and the like.  I know, I know, I'm being a miserable git.  These are, after all, public beaches and open to all.  But it is galling, as a regular, to see them taken over by these would be sophisticates.  It was bad enough when all those northern bastards started coming down and taking over the beaches in places like Bournemouth and Weymouth.  I can only assume that the people now appearing on my beaches have been displaced from these larger resorts by the invaders.  You know, I even had to queue for that ice cream!  An unheard of occurrence!

Star Virgin (1988)

So, this girl Eiko has this device strapped to her arm which, when it detects that she is about to have sexual intercourse, transforms her into bikini-clad super heroine Star Virgin, who uses her powers to defend her chastity, by beating off, so to speak, her attackers.  Oh, and save the world as well.  I know next to nothing about Star Virgin other than it is a low budget direct-to-video 1988 Japanese production that accompanied a video game of the same name.  Actually, I have no idea whether the game preceded the film or vice versa.  With no subtitled version apparently available I've had to piece together what it is about from watching it in Japanese and reading the online comments of others who do speak Japanese.  There is still much about it that I don't understand, but I think that I have the gist of it.  Now, this high tech chastity belt thing - in a flashback we see a dude, presumably her father, fitting Eiko with it, but I'm still none the wiser as to why?  Is he just an insanely over protective father?  Are they aliens and he's heard of the rapey reputation of earth men?  I just don't know.  Moreover, I'm still not entirely clear as to the circumstances under which the device is triggered - is it only when Eiko is threatened with rape?  Or do other forms of sexual assault count, (the fact that, during the prologue, the horrible phallic tongue of a giant space toad activates it when it gets too close would seem to indicate the latter)?  Would consensual sex set it off? 

As for the plot, it involves this geeky guy who I presume is some kind of boy friend, being kidnapped by this old military guy - with his shock of white hair he rather reminded me of a Japanese Jon Pertwee - for reasons unclear to me, (they might have something to do with a plot to take over Japan, or the world, even) and taken to his hovering island.  Eiko pursues them on her flying scooter, transforms into Star Virgin after encouraging the villain's henchmen to try and rape her, rescues the geek, gets chased by a robot, encounters a giant dung beetle and a giant spider, before they are recaptured.  This time Eiko indicates to the dirty old man villain that she'll have sex with him, so he takes his liquid viagra which transforms him back into a dirty young man and Star Virgin is back to defeat him.  There are various other bat-shit crazy things going on, most notably the villain's giant Statue of Liberty shaped robot which comes complete with a flame thrower in its torch.  Oh yes, Eiko also sometimes flies around in a spaceship that transforms back into her house when it lands on the beach.

The heart of the film, though, is Eiko's bizarre super heroine alter ego - whose world saving powers seem to be merely a by product of attempting to maintain her virginity.  Preserving chastity might seem to be an incredibly conservative use of super powers yet is entirely consistent with the super hero genre.  After all, aren't super heroes always using their powers to maintain the status quo?  It is the super villains who are always seeking to bring about radical change.  Batman, for instance, really is 'The Man', always backing up the police instead of investigating them for brutality and human rights abuses, using their methods - back street beatings and terror - to fight crime rather than pioneering more humanitarian approaches.  Yet, despite its conservative aims, Eiko's super powers are somewhat contradictory in that in order to transform into Star Virgin, she has to encourage men to try and rape her.  So she spends a fair amount of time encouraging the very male behaviours her high tech chastity belt is meant to discourage.  The message it is sending to young girls is highly questionable - if you have to save the world, then you really do need to be asking for it.  Star Virgin really is a prime piece of 'what the fuckery', with its bizarre premise, rickety special effects and annoyingly catchy sound track of bubble gum pop songs.  I have to say that I found it hugely entertaining and, at only fifty seven minutes, it never outstays its welcome.  Ultimately it is another of those pieces of Japanese pop culture that leaves us westerners scratching out heads and asking 'what the Hell are they on?'  Because, whatever it is, I want some.

Wandering Aimlessly

I don't often feel s if I am totally lost, but today was one of those times.  When I say 'lost', I mean literally lost, as in having no idea as to where I was or how to get back to my car.  Actually, I knew where I was generally: some woods in the New Forest.  But somehow, in the course of a walk there, I managed to get completely turned around and lost my sense of direction.  I spent hours walking around paths that all looked the same.  When I exited the woods at one point, I thought that, with the aid of Google Maps, it would be easy to find my way back to the car park.  But the app lied to me, failing to get right the fact that I had exited on the opposite side of the woods and was now walking toward the wrong road.  Cutting back through the woods, I got tangled up in its maze of paths once again, given more bum steers by Google Maps.  I eventually found myself at an exit gate next to a cottage and figured that the road back to the car park had to be nearby.  Luckily it was and I followed it back to the car.  Even then, my trauma wasn't over - I reached what I thought was the right car park, but no car.  I then realised that this wasn't the car park where I'd left it - it was another one less than half a mile from the right one, but wasn't marked on Google Maps, just to confuse idiots like me.  

So, what's the moral of this sorry tale?  Well, don't trust Google Maps in relatively isolated non-urban locations, is one takeaway, I suppose.  Another is just how much we rely upon unique visual stimuli to navigate - the problem is that when you find yourself in a forest full of fir trees and gravel paths, everything looks too much alike for anything to stand out as a recognisable landmark from which to take bearings.  There were times when it felt as if I was walking around in circles, as if the paths were bending back on themselves to trap me in some kind of creepy maze, so indistinguishable was one stretch of path to another.  Even the junctions between trails looked identical.  It was all very perplexing.  The most annoying aspect was that if Google Maps hadn't sent me off in the wrong direction, then I would at least have reached that cottage and the road at least an hour earlier.  Anyway, the ultimate outcome of all this has been to make me vow to avoid walks in unfamiliar woods altogether in future.  When I head back down to the New Forest later this week I'll go to the coast - that's easy to navigate to, you just stop when you see the water, then go n the opposite direction to get back home - just keep going inland and you are bound to get there eventually,  Who needs Google Maps or Sat Navs?

The Mummy's Hand (1940)

The Mummy's Hand (1940) is interesting as, rather than being either a straight remake or sequel to The Mummy (1932), it is an early example of what would nowadays be called a 'reboot'.  By the 1940s, although Universal had become the undisputed kings of horror with their monster pictures, these had mainly focused on Frankenstein (or rather his monster) and, to a lesser extent, Dracula (and his various offspring).  Attempts to create new monsters had been largely unsuccessful, never spawning a series, (Werewolf of London, Invisible Man and yes, The Mummy all come to mind).  The problem being that none of them really lent themselves to sequels, their stories being entirely self-contained and their conclusions allowing little wriggle room for resurrections of their titular monsters).  So, by the forties, Universal was looking for ways to create new monster-based series, (they were still tying to create the odd new monster - Man Made Monster (1941) springs to mind), and started to look back at these old properties to see how they could exploit them and make them sequel friendly.  The answer, generally, was to simplify their underlying concepts, making them more pulp-like and cheaper to produce.  The Invisible Man Returns (1940), for instance, replaces the original's crazed anti-hero, with his murderous sprees as he attempts to put into motion his deranged plans, with a more conventional hero using his invisibility to try and prove his innocence when wrongly accused of murder.  The Wolfman bucked the trend somewhat by providing its protagonist with a more detailed mythology to both explain and resolve his lycanthropy than had existed in Werewolf of London, but simultaneously simplified his story line.  

The Mummy's Hand, despite incorporating a fair amount of cost-cutting stock footage from The Mummy for the flashbacks to Ancient Egypt, represents the most radical reworking of its progenitor.  While the Boris Karloff starring original was a rather slow moving and often dull tale, stretches of which are remarkably similar to Universal's earlier Dracula (1930), (even down to casting Edward Van Sloan, Van Helsing to Lugosi's Dracula, in a similar role, The Mummy's Hand is far more action-orientated.  Most crucially, while The Mummy quickly dispenses with its title monster, Karloff's Im Ho Tep wandering off into the Egyptian night after being accidentally revived, to re-emerge, unbandaged,  as sophisticated, but mysterious, historian Ardeth Bey, the 1940 film's mummy, Kharis, remains both wrapped and murderous for the entire film.  While the 1932 film had lacked any stranglings by living mummys, The Mummy's Hand is chock full of them.  The new movie also simplified the means of reviving the mummy, substituting life-giving tana leaves for the life giving Scroll of Thoth.  It also plays down the reincarnation themes of the original, (which, to be fair, had nothing to to with Egyptian mythology, anyway), although these resurfaced in the sequels. With the the reincarnation schtick dropped, the plot is simplified to simply be one of the Priests of Karnak using a a living mummy to protect the tomb of Princess Ananka and destroy those seeking to desecrate it.  

Clearly, all these changes worked, as The Mummy's Hand proved to be a considerable hit for Universal, spawning no less than three sequels, (which replaced Tom Tyler with Lon Chaney Jr in the title role), despite the ending leaving the High Priest filled full of lead and Kharis a smouldering pile of bandages.  Interestingly, it, rather than the Boris Karloff film, has provided the template for most subsequent mummy films.  (When Hammer remade The Mummy in 1959, they combined elements from all of the Universal films, but took the character names and basic plot from The Mummy's Hand, albeit with the reincarnation angle retained from the original).  When people think of  'The Mummy', it is usually The Mummy's Hand that they think of, with its blacked out eyes and shuffling gait, chasing the heroes through a crumbling tomb.  Seen today, the thing that most stands out about The Mummy's Hand is that, despite a running time of just over an hour, it takes an age to actually get to any real mummy action.  Most of the running time seems to be taken up with flashbacks, exposition by various High Priests, adventures in the bazaar, followed by adventures in the desert and far too much comic relief from Wallace Ford and Cecil Kellaway.  But if you can sit through all that, you'll be rewarded with a frenzied final ten to fifteen minutes in which a surprisingly menacing, not to mention apparently unstoppable, Kharis lurches around throttling anyone he can get his hands on.  Some of the effects which accompany this brief rampage - the blacked out eyes and the clouds of dust that emanate from Kharis when he is struck - are impressive and add to the nightmarish feel of the climax. 

Paranormal Powered Teenage Love Triangles

As predicted a couple of posts back, the traffic roller coaster ride continues - after several days of non-existent search traffic from Google, the past few days have been more robust.  It is still very patchy, though.  While Google traffic has begun to reappear after their most recent update, most of the visits seem to be being driven by DuckDuckGo and Bing - and China, mainly via Baidu.  Indeed, The Sleaze seems to be building a small following in China, though God knows why, as none of the content is targeted there.  But enough traffic talk.  My regular fix of sailor suited crime fighting Japanese schoolgirls has, at least temporarily, come to end, now that I've seen all of Sukeban Deka II - Legend of the Iron Masked Girl.  (Unlike the original Sukeban Deka series, this one didn't have a downbeat ending, with its heroine completing her mission and living to fight another day).  Courtesy of the same streaming channel that I'd seen the series on, I was able to catch up with the 2006 movie reboot of Sukeban Deka (released in the US and UK as Yo Yo Cop Girl).  Interestingly, it rather mitigates the first series' downbeat ending (which saw the original Sukeban Deka trapped in a burning building and presumed dead), by having the original lead actress turn up as the latest undercover girl cop's mother - and making pretty clear to anyone who'd seen the TV series that she was playing the same character.

The closest I've so far come to finding another piece of Japanese pop culture that intrigues me as much is the anime series Kimagure Orange Road.  Like Sukeban Deka, this is based on a Manga and has a high school background.  It even features a character who could be described as a sukeban ('delinquent girl'), although she most certainly isn't an undercover detective.  I've so far only been able to watch two episodes of the series, (one purely by chance), but it is intriguing.  The main plot involves a teenage boy starting a new school in a new city, having been forced to move (for the seventh time) because he and his younger sisters have various paranormal powers and the family doesn't want to draw attention to themselves, (unfortunately, one of the sisters is reckless and keeps using her powers).  The day before starting the new school, he briefly meets a teenage girl who he likes and seems to like him.  The following day, he encounters her again, when she turns out to be the school sukeban - the first episode climaxes with her single handedly taking on and beating an entire biker gang in defence of her best friend.  She denies ever having met the boy, leaving him confused.  Inevitably, rejected by the object of his desire, our hero starts a relationship with her best friend, (in truth, he just wants to be friends, but she is more enthusiastic as to the idea of being his girl friend), even though the sukeban girl (who also plays the saxophone), does secretly like him.  

This love triangle and the ongoing attempts by the boy and his family to keep their powers under wraps, form the basis of the series' ongoing story lines.  It certainly seems to take some bizarre turns: in the episode I saw by chance he somehow swaps his consciousness with that of a goldfish, which is won at a fairground sideshow by the two girls, before jumping to a cat, in which form he saves the sukeban's life before returning to his own body and inadvertently kissing one of his sisters.  It isn't easy to find episodes with English subtitles, but there were a couple of anime movie spin offs I've tracked down, both with subtitles, so I'll hopefully catch up with these soon.  So, maybe Kimagure Orange Road will become my new Sukeban Deka, in my accidental drift through Japanese pop culture.  Who knows?

Guaranteed No Nazi Zombies?

So, I found myself watching Zombiethon again the other day - have I mentioned Zombiethon before?  I'm sure that I must have, but if I haven't, it is a compilation film put out by Wizard Video in 1986, comprising of clips from a number of zombie movies that they had the video rights to at the time.  (Except that not all of the films featured were zombie movies - Fear and The Invisible Dead certainly weren't, but what the Hell, Wizard had the rights to them anyway).  I say clips, but, in reality, for most of the movies it offers what amounts to a condensed version of the film, featuring all the zombie highlights.  These condensed versions are an eclectic mix, including Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters, Franco's Virgin Among the Living Dead and, most interestingly, Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake.  That's right, a film about underwater Nazi zombies directed by Jean Rollin.  In reality, most of it was apparently directed by his assistant Julian de Lasema, as Rollin had little interest in the project.  Interestingly, Jesus Franco was originally lined up to direct Zombie Lake, but withdrew late on, although he subsequently made his own Nazi zombie picture, Oasis of the Zombies, (which is also included in Zombiethon), an awful film padded out with footage from the equally poor Italian war movie Heroes Without Glory.

But getting back to Zombie Lake, it might be a terrible film that could only be improved by compressing it into a ten minute highlights reel, but it did make me realise that I've been missing a trick.  While I'm sure that we've all seen those TV programmes where people buy decrepit chateaux in France and renovate them as hotels or wedding venues, clearly what they should really be doing is investing in a piece of rural land with a lake in it and offering bathing facilities to nudists.  Because, if Zombie Lake is to be believed, hordes of nubile young women keep turning up at such venues by the bus load, stripping all their clothes off and jumping in the lake.  The key to my success in setting up such a facility would be to advertise it as guaranteed not to contain any underwater Nazi zombies who enjoy ravaging naked women.  Sure, there'd be at least one lustful voyeuristic man on hand, furtively lurking in the bushes with his binoculars, but what the heck - I'm guaranteed not to physically attack any naked birds.  Consequently, attractive young women could feel safe in bathing naked (maybe even playing basket ball or volley ball naked) to their hearts' content, safe in the knowledge that they won't get their knockers groped (or worse) by jackbooted freshwater dwelling fascists.  That was my other takeaway from that condensed version of Zombie Lake: that Nazi zombies only attack naked women - so all the ladies need to do is keep their clothes on and they'll be safe from those beastly undead storm troopers.  (You can tell that they are uncouth and beastly by the fact that they don't take their coal scuttle helmets off before attacking naked women - a terrible breach of etiquette).  So, that's my retirement plan sorted out - all I have to do now is to locate a French lake that isn't infested with aquatic Nazi zombies.

Is Anybody Out There?

So, is anybody actually reading this?  Can anybody even find this blog via searches any more?  I ask because, over the past few days, it has been registering zero traffic on at least one of the stats services I use.  In reality, I know that it has had a handful of visits which have shown up elsewhere but, after yet another Google update this weekend (Google these days having a virtual monopoly on web search as most web users seem to have forgotten the existence of alternatives that deliver more relevant results), traffic to both here and The Sleaze has flatlined.  This really is the worst that it has ever been.  Google is giving nothing in terms of traffic, (not surprising when you see a typical results page for just about any search term: most of it consists of ads and paid listings rather than actual results).  Like vast numbers of other sites, we're down to a smattering of hits from search engines like Bing, Escosia and DuckDuckGo, or from countries like Russia and China, where Google isn't dominant.  Actually, DuckDuckGo is proving a decent source of traffic (in current terms, that is).  Unfortunately, thanks to its idea of 'privacy' being to block web tracking cookies, these hits frequently don't register on regular stats services - I only know of their existence via the server logs.  

Bitter experience tells me that if I sit tight, then traffic will likely start to return, s Google fiddles with its alogrithm.  Frustratingly, it was in the process of doing that before this last weekend's update.  The fact that it has wiped out traffic to this, a Blogger based blog, one of Google's own platforms, indicates that it is likely to be adjusted sooner rather than later - Google doesn't like to disadvantage its own properties too much or for too long.  Of course, the steady, inexorable decline in organic traffic from Google for more than a decade now has already done real damage to the diversity on the web - deprived of new audiences so many smaller, independent sites have given up the ghost.  This is particularly true for satire sites - I've seen the number of sites decimated, with very few of the old Humorfeed listed sites active any more.  But who can blame them?  It is hugely disheartening to realise that, no matter how high the quality of your material, nobody is going to read it thanks to Google's algorithm effectively blocking potential readers from finding it.  It is certainly how I'm feeling right now, watching the tumbleweed blow through here.  Right now, I have zero enthusiasm for producing original content that will likely never be read by anyone.  I am left wondering just how long I'm prepared to carry on with my sites under these circumstances.  I mean, it isn't as if I can't find other, probably more productive, not to mention rewarding, uses for my time.

Back Page Fake Narratives

It has always been my contention that the whole business of 'fake news' originated in the sports pages of British tabloids.  Their back pages are just full of completely made up transfer stories, as they try desperately to drive along the narratives that they have devised.  That most of the stories are fake is witnessed by the lack of direct quotes from any of the principals, relying instead upon those ubiquitous 'unnamed sources' who are 'close to the player' or 'close to the club'.  (The only time that transfer stories had any degree of accuracy was during the period that the tabloids were routinely - and illegally - tapping the voice mails of football players, agents and managers).  These narratives often drag on for years, as the sports writing establishment decides that player 'X' is wasted at club 'Y', so should move to club 'Z': every close season they'll run story after story about how 'Z' is preparing a bid for 'X', or how 'X' is dissatisfied with the lack of trophies at 'Y' and the club's 'lack of ambition.  Often it is given further fuel by agents who see a potential big pay day in a big money move by 'X'.  Even when 'X' signs a new contract with 'Y', they won't let up.  Sometimes it works, after years of the press telling a player that they are too good for their current club, reminding them that time is running out for them if they want to win trophies, they finally decide that maybe they should move to that other club that wins all those trophies because it has the money to keep on buying up all the best players, not only strengthening themselves, but weakening opponents by depriving them of talent.

Those of us with the misfortune to be Tottenham supporters, of course, are all too familiar with this sort of media narrative - ever since the emergence of Harry Kane as a world class player, (despite many of these same pundits having dubbed him a 'one season wonder'), we've had the press trying to engineer his transfer first to Real Madrid and currently to Manchester City.  Right now these 'journalists' must be feeling very frustrated.  Despite, apparently, having pushed the narrative to the brink of  a conclusion, they still can't seem to get it over the line.  As the transfer window enters its final fortnight and Kane is still a Spurs player, (he is, after all, midway through a six year contract and City seem unwilling to actually offer anything like Spurs' asking price), they must be furiously banging their fists on their desks, red faced, shouting: "Don't these people know, we decide who plays where and who wins the league!  Just like we decide who wins elections in this country!  It's about time that everyone just accepted that we're in charge!'  Because the levels of hubris which seems to surround sports writers and pundits often seems to reach such delusional levels.  Not only do they constantly spin all this transfer bollocks year in, year out, but they seem to actually start believing it, too, regardless of the fact that they made it up in the first place.  A lot of them work for media outlets with a vested interest in seeing the same clubs winning leagues and cups year in, year out - they have rights to show their matches and the bigger the team playing, the more pay per views they can get.  So, once Manchester City, for instance, got its oil rich sugar daddies and could start, in effect, buying trophies by buying in the top talent, they started enlarging their fanbase, making their continued success important to the media.  Similarly, those same media owners have a vested interest in the 'right' political parties winning elections so as to ensure a minimum of regulation on their activities and a minimum of taxation on their profits.  Hence the other type of 'fake news' which occupies their front pages.

The Ideal Exploitation Family

Italian exploitation film makers certainly seemed to be in favour of the nuclear family.  Or so it occurred to me while I was watching Absurd again on American Horrors.  The victimised family have two kids, a boy and a girl and they seem absolutely typical of the kids depicted in these films - the boy is always younger, usually under ten, shrill, curly haired and something of a brat, while the girl is usually older, early to mid-teens, slightly more sensible and often has straight fair hair, (although Katya, the girl menaced by George Eastman in Absurd, is dark haired, but otherwise conforms to the stereotype).  I've observed similar set ups in films as diverse as Fulci's Manhattan Baby and Exorcist rip-off Beyond the Door.  Perhaps it represents some kind of Italian ideal when it comes to families.  Interestingly, in all of the family set ups of this kind I've seen the parents are depicted as middle class professionals, so perhaps it represents a reflection of perceived changes in Italian society, with a move away from the traditionally depicted huge and sprawling Italian families, predominantly in rural settings.  It does raise the question of whether, in order to maintain these idealised nuclear families of just two kids, the parents are using contraceptives - something surely not approved of in Catholic Italy?  Or maybe they just have a very good sense of rhythm.

It is worth noting though, that many of these films, although Italian produced and featuring mainly Italian casts, are actually filmed and set in the US.  Which allows the film-makes to invoke the loop hole that they aren't really depicting some modern vision of a new Italy with smaller families, but instead depicting those sinful contraceptive crazy protestant foreigners.  Indeed, all the trials and tribulations visited upon these families, from demonic possession to crazed serial killers could, arguably, be seen as some kind of punishment for not being good God-fearing Catholics.  ('Use a condom blasphemers and your teenage daughter will end up being chased around you mansion by an apparently unkillable bearded maniac!'  A maniac, incidentally, created by experimentation on the part of some kind of non-Catholic church, represented by Edmund Purdom with a bad Greek accent and his usual mortified expression).  Most likely, though, is that the depiction of these 'perfect' families had more to do with the fact that Italian exploitation film-makers were always seeking to down play the national origin of their products, see also in the Anglicisation of the names of both performers and production staff, in order to make he films more 'acceptable' to international audiences.  Whatever the reason, after you've seen enuogh of these films, you just can't help but notice the way the family unit is typically depicted, (although, as I'm sure others will point out, there are plenty of exceptions, with sometimes only one child - more often than not the curly haired irritating boy - being depicted, for instance, but those huge families with multiple sons and daughters are rare).

And Now The Screaming Starts (1973)

The cynic in me can't help but suspect that this rare outing into a full-length horror feature by Amicus was conceived, primarily, to re-use that crawling severed hand prop from their earlier anthology film Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965).  Because it is clearly the same prop - actually surprisingly effective when see crawling across the floor - and was undoubtedly expensive to construct.  It is certainly just about the only effective and memorable element in the over-cooked Gothic melodrama that is And Now the Screaming Starts (1973).  Despite an excellent cast, headed up by Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom and Patrick Magee, supported by Ian Ogilvy and Stephanie Beacham, (who, in truth, carry much of the film's action, the big name stars playing, essentially, extended cameos), it never manages to conjure up any real scares, its over elaborate and not terribly original revenge-from-beyond-the-grave plot restricting its scope and bogging down the action.  Director Roy Ward Baker, who turned out better horror films for both Hammer and Amicus, does his best, lending the film some good atmosphere and eliciting a good performance from Cushing, but, in the end, just can't make any headway.

Perhaps its most novel aspect is the presence of a ghostly rapist that impregnates Beacham and is the spitting image of shady local woodsman Silas, (both played by Geoffrey Whitehead, who was then known for Z-Cars, but is nowadays more familiar to TV audiences for playing people's fathers in sitcoms).  The whole schtick of the severed hand, (which belongs to the spectral sex offender), turning up to strangle various characters before they can divulge the plot's 'big secret', then vanishing, gets very old, very quickly.  The film eventually plods to its inevitable and well telegraphed ending, leaving you with the vague feeling that you've probably just wasted ninety minutes of your life watching it.  Ironically, while many of the episodes in Amicus' usual anthology films felt hurried and under developed, And Now the Screaming Starts feels like an over-extended episode from one of those productions.  Based  on a novella (David Case's Fengriffin), it just doesn't have enough plot for a feature and too much of its content feels like padding.  In truth, virtually all of Amicus' attempts at full-length features are unsatisfactory.  Co-owner Milton Subotsky was the company's main creative force and he had something of an obsession with reducing scripts to their bare bones, seemingly disliking too many dialogue scenes and eschewing normal narrative development for a series of jolting shock sequences leading to a 'surprise' ending.  Consequently, features like the Vincent Price vehicle Madhouse (1974) and the Christopher Lee Jeckyl/Hyde variant I, Monster (1970), were rendered near incoherent.  Of their horror features, only Scream and Scream Again (1969) - over which co-producers AIP maintained creative control - and The Skull (1965), the last half of which was restructured in the editing room by director Freddie Francis, really stand out.  Only the anthology films really suited Subotsky's favoured style and these remain Amicus' most satisfactory and watchable films.

Customer Disservice

Here's a tip for those running live streaming channels on services like Roku - invest in a reliable fucking server.  I know that for many of the bottom-of-the-barrel services I favour (they show my kind of low-rent viewing) money is tight, but really, having your stream crash when I'm in the middle of watching a crucial episode of a series - at the crucial scene, in fact - it really isn't a good look.  Especially when it won't reboot.  Oh, and if your only point of customer contact is, say, a Facebook page, then for fuck's sake address the issue there as soon as possible.  Mind you, that presupposes that they actually monitor their streams.  I'm a great believer that, even if you are providing something free (or, in the case of this sort of streaming channel, free-to-air, but ad supported), you are still providing a service and should engage in a bit of customer care - like keeping them updated.  It isn't just Roku channels I've had this sort of problem with - I've found a fair proportion of online services treat their users very badly, going off line without warning and failing to update users on what is going on.  I've had these sorts of problems with both of the main stats services I use on The Sleaze and when they go down it isn't just that I lose stats, they can also slow the loading of my pages.  I had that problem a few years ago with one of them and I pointed out on their user forum that they hadn't bothered to give any updates as to exactly what the problem was, or how long it was likely to take to rectify it.  I added that, as their code was slowing down my page load times, I would have no choice but to remove it until the issue was resolved.

Incredibly, I was suddenly the villain, finding myself being accused of being unreasonable by a couple of other 'customers' (I strongly suspect that they were actually 'sock puppet' accounts of the site owners), pointing out that this was a free service.  Which presumably meant that I had no right to complain.  Except that I did as, free or not, they were offering a service (supported by ads) and it is perfectly reasonable for users of said service to expect to be kept informed as to problems and outages.  But, on the web, it seems, service providers don't seem to share this view, seeing customers as an inconvenience.  It isn't just the small operators who take this attitude, either.  The other day I went to check my Feedburner stats and found the entire domain going to '404' page cannot be reached.  Now, Feedburner is owned by Google, yet nowhere in their help sections (or anywhere else on their site) could I find any explanation for the sudden disappearance of these pages.  After many hours, the reappeared as mysteriously as they had vanished - still with no explanation.  All of which represents pretty shitty customer service.  But hey, Google is a multi-billion dollar corporate behemoth and doesn't give a fuck about a peon like me - 'if you don't like it, go elsewhere - except you can't because we have a virtual monopoly on so many web services.'  As for those nickle and dime operators, well, I've found that a lot of them have delusions of being 'entrepreneurs' who just see us customers as stepping stones to their first million.  Except that, without decent technical support and customer service, you aren't likely to get beyond the first rung of the ladder - it is only when you hit the top, like Google, that you can get away with that sort of shit in the long term.  (Don't forget that when they started out, Google was everybody's friend: 'Don't be evil'.  Yeah, that lasted, didn't it?).

Whatever It Is, They're Against It

I can't help but feel that these continued anti-lockdown (or whatever they are) protests represent an analogy for modern Britain.  Mobs of ill-informed idiots swarm onto the streets to try and storm buildings and wave placards apparently in protest at something that ended weeks ago.  Or is it lockdown that they are protesting?  Or are they anti-maskers, even though mask wearing in shops and other indoor public spaces is no longer compulsory?  Or are they anti-vaccination, even though vaccines aren't compulsory?  They don't really seem to be sure exactly what it is that they are protesting - they just know that they want to protest about something.  ('Whatever you've got, we're against it!')  Which is rather like the wider population, if election results are anything to go by - they want to protest about something, but can't seem to put their finger on exactly what it is that troubles them, so end up voting for the leader and party making the vaguest, most nebulous promises.  Part of the problem, I'm sure, is that they were told that voting to leave the EU would be a massive protest against - well, whatever it was they wanted to protest about - but the reality of Brexit turns out to have solved nothing, instead, (as predicted by anyone with two brain cells to rub together), it has just created a whole new set of problems.  So, just as the general electorate seem aimless in their allegiences, we have this microcosm in the form of these protesters, who just go around randomly attacking buildings which represent 'authority' and denouncing anyone who supports the 'official' line (ie, the truth), particularly with regard to the pandemic.

The pandemic, of course, is key to these protesters.  It has provided a focus for all manner of crackpots and deluded conspiracy theorists.  Indeed, rather like their QAnon cousins in the States, they are best seen as militant conspiracy theorists who, instead of lurking in internet chat rooms, go out on the streets to spread their word - violently, more often than not.  Just today, we had a mob of them storming what they originally described as 'BBC HQ', actually the old BBC Television Centre which, although it still houses some TV studios, was sold by the BBC several years ago.  Their rationale for attempting to physically attack the BBC was that it has the audacity to report on the pandemic without offering 'alternative' view points, (in other words, unqualified crackpots who think it is all a conspiracy).  While these attempts to try and disrupt objective reporting of the facts wasn't disturbing enough, let's not forget that recent Trafalgar Square rally, where we had some of the chief crackpots being cheered on by a mob as they compared health professionals to Nazi war criminals and called for Nuremberg style trials, (culminating, presumably, in executions for those 'convicted') - all because they simply did their jobs and followed the scientific and medical facts with regard to Covid.  Scary stuff - you can't help but feel that, if not decisively checked, we could end up with lynch mobs of these loons actually trying to assault anyone who disagrees with them.

Checking them, though, would require government action, which seems unlikely as these protesters seem to be intimately entwined with various factions of the far right - the sort of people whose support Johnson has deliberately courted in order to maintain power,  They are the scumbags that all the anti-immigration rhetoric from Priti Patel is meant to appeal to, of course, not to mention the whole Brexit debacle which was designed to draw in UKIP, EDL and other extremist factions.  But to go back to the question of exactly what these idiots are protesting about, the latest trigger point for them seems to be the idea of 'vaccine passports' for entertainment venues and indications that some employers might demand proof of vaccination as a condition of employment for certain jobs.  Which, argue the people who try to silence media outlets that won't spread their lunacy and want to harass those who don't buy their brand of lunacy, is an infringement of their 'freedom'.  Presumably, they also feel that the requirement to hold a valid driving licence in order to drive on public roads, or even to to be employed in certain jobs is also an infringement of their 'freedom'.  (' I can't have a job driving an articulated lorry without an HGV licence - it's a bloody outrage!').  You know, the only crumb of solace I get from all this is the fact that, when vaccines were first introduced in the nineteenth century, an anti-vaxxer movement, using all the same arguments as the current loons, sprang up.  But, thankfully, they faded away.  We can but hope...

Olympic Delinquency

I think that it was back at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing that the UK first started doing really well at the cycling events, dominating the medals.  As a result of that, the roads here were suddenly full of lycra-clad idiots on their push bikes seemingly thinking that they were Sir Chris Hoy.  Every time the bastards cut you up when you were driving, trying to pull away from lights faster than you, or nearly ran you down when, as a pedestrian, you were trying to use a pedestrian crossing, their excuse would be that they were practicing for the next Olympics.  It was like a plague upon the roads as their arrogance reached stratospheric levels because of their imagined future status as national sporting heroes and Gold Medalists.  I'm hoping that, with the more modest achievements of the British cycling team at the current Olympics, we might see a reduction in this cycling mania on our roads.  That said, I fear that some of the new events at Tokyo might inspire other forms of madness as every idiot in creation tries to emulate the British successes in some of them.

I've no doubt that the UK's estates are about to see even more kids on BMX bikes attempting to jump over things, dangerously obstruct cars as they try to maneuver in and out of parking spaces and generally knock people off of their feet, (I speak from personal experience here), all in the name of trying to qualify for Paris 2024.  Worse still, I fear that Bronze medal in the women's skateboarding is just going to encourage yet more kids to fly around my local shopping mall, weaving their way in and out of shoppers, on their bloody skateboards - particularly as it was won by a thirteen year old.  You know, if I get my ankles broken in a collision with one of these little bastards, I'm going to write to that kid's father and tell him that I hold him personally responsible for allowing his daughter to compete in the Olympics in the first place.  (Actually, I wouldn't want to denigrate young Sky Brown's performance in Tokyo, as it represented a huge achievement).  That said, a lot of the skate boarding idiots I tangle with already most certainly aren't kids - they are grown adults and should know better.  Mind you, some of the contestant's in the men's skate boarding were in their thirties and forties, which, sadly, will probably encourage these idiots even more.  (Unfortunately, the approach to my local shopping centre features a lengthy downward sloping section of pedestrianised street, which the bastards come flying down at speed).  I just thank God that we didn't win any medals in that climbing event, or we'd have even more pillocks scaling the local multi-storey car park.

Hacked Off

Hatchets - they stock bloody hatchets, but not machetes.  Following on from Monday's musings on the unavailability of machete-type gardening tools on the High Street, I decided to widen my search to DIY superstores like B&Q, where I found them equally unavailable, but discovered that hatchets, (not to mention full sized bloody axes), were available there as supposed gardening implements.  I mean, Jesus, if they won't sell machetes because of their perceived association with killers in slasher movies, then why hatchets?  Have they never seen a horror movie?  Hatchets feature just as much as machetes.  There was an entire series of slasher films called Hatchet, for God's sake!  Not to mention giallos like Hatchet For the Honeymoon, or Dario Argento's Tenebrae, which features a whole series of hackings to death with a full-feldged axe).  Then there are even older films like Night Must Fall, which, if memory serves me correctly, features an axe murderer.  It's something of a tradition.  Yet machetes are beyond the pale, while axes are OK.  The world's gone mad.  I did discover that I could buy a machete online from the likes of Amazon, but would doing that set off alarms somewhere and trigger a visit from the police on the grounds that it is illegal to send weapons through the post?  (I know that you can't obtain air pistols and rifles by mail order any more - you can only buy them in person).  It seems pretty bizarre, though, that, in the case of machetes, I can buy them online, but not in person.

Obviously, I don't want a machete - or similar bladed implement - in order to start a reign of terror as Crapchester's resident crazed slasher.  Rather, I want it for my version of gardening.  I mean, if you could see the state my garden has gotten into, you'd understand.  I cut a lot of it back at the start of Summer, but it just keeps growing back.  It's depressing really.  A never ending battle that can never be won.  At times, I look at it and I know how Sisyphus must have felt eternally rolling that bloody boulder uphill.   Anyway, it has got to the stage where the likes of lawn strimmers (even if I could get my ancient example to work), simply aren't up to the task.  So, I determined that a more formidable hand held bladed device was need to hack everything down: a machete, or even a scythe.  Now, despite recalling that father once had a garden hand scythe, such things now seem as impossible to easily obtain as machetes.  Do the retailers think that people are going try and emulate death in those Final Destination films, scything down teenagers, or maybe set up in business as rivals to the actual Grim Reaper?  Why is it so difficult to obtain such simple gardening tools nowadays?  Damn it, all I want to do is hack down some overly persistent weeds!

Carnival of Blood (1970)

Easily one of the worst films I've ever seen, Carnival of Blood looks like it was shot on 16mm and blown up for cinema release, so grainy and scratchy does it look.  Poor editing and often barely audible dialogue make watching it something of an ordeal, while the non acting of the largely no name cast is frequently painful to behold.   (Burt Young, billed as 'John Harris', in possibly his first film appearance is about the only recognisable face and he starts as he meant to go on, acting-wise, with a typically mumbling 'method' performance).  None of the characters are remotely likeable, let alone interesting, adding to the casual viewer's misery.  Not even the various killings are particularly well staged, with poor gore effects  and a pedestrian pace.  The best thing about Carnival of Blood is the Coney Island funfair background, with the location-filmed carnival sequences providing the film with ts only real feeling of life.  In a few sequences it does succeed in capturing the seedy, slightly dog eared, atmosphere of a seaside attraction in decline.

While the trailer might name check Hitchcock, the real inspiration behind Carnival of Blood, judging by the gore scenes, were the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Large quantities of animal offal are on show - not to mention gallons of fake blood - as victims are dismembered by the mystery killer stalking the funfair, targeting women.  (Actually, there really is no mystery as to their identity, despite some ham-fisted attempts at misdirection).  While the film is clearly aiming to be 'shocking', with stuff like eye gougings, it just comes over as shoddy.  The presence of a scenery chewing old gypsy fortune teller suggests that, apart from Herschell Gordon Lewis, another influence on the film were the classic Universal horrors, as she seems to have wandered in from The Wolfman.  I don't usually write about B-movies just for the sake of tearing them down, but I've seen others actually try to argue a case for Carnival of Blood being some kind of lost classic.  Which it patently isn't.  It's just plain bad, not even so bad it is funny.  Just despairingly bad.

Serial Killers Need Not Apply

Apparently, you can't go into a hardware-type store and buy a machete-like gardening implement any more.  Personally, I blame those bloody slasher movies.  Clearly, these High Street outlets are worried at the prospect of Micheal Myers or Jason Vorhees coming in incognito and buying one for their next massacres, resulting in bad publicity for the shop.  (Although they could just implement a policy of not serving anyone wearing a hockey mask or white spray painted William Shatner mask).  Although mentioning either of those slasher icons to a weekend member of staff will undoubtedly elicit blank looks - I don't know what is wrong with the youth of today, don't they watch video nasties any more?  I seem to recall that when I was young, watching this stuff was a rite of passage.  Or rather, trying to watch them, as the most interesting sounding ones always seemed to get banned in the UK.  The trouble these days is that this sort of stuff is too easy to get: most of the so called video nasties have all been released on DVD and even Blu-Ray now.  In fact, you can see a lot of them on streaming services.  Back in the day, we frequently had to be tantalised by reading about them in specialist publications rather than being able to actually see them.  Which brings me, by a very roundabout route, to my main point.  Way back then, in the nineties if I recall correctly, there was a publication called Samhain, which focused on gore movies.  It was really a very sophisticated fanzine put out by one guy.  Unfortunately, it landed him in the middle of a media-inspired moral panic.  His day job involved working with children - the magazine was basically a hobby - and someone in the media found out his real identity and decided to make an issue out of the fact that he wrote about gory horror movies, the implication being that this somehow made him unfit to work with kids.

Now, while it is clearly absurd to make the leap from someone liking a particular genre of film to them being a potential threat to children, in the febrile atmosphere of the early nineties, with all the recent video nasties and satanic child abuse moral panics, (with either or both being blamed for every child murder or instance of peadophilia), this stuff took on a life of its own.  It seems all the more absurd bearing in mind that, even in the nineties, in order to get a job involving working with children you had to undergo some form of vetting, to establish that you weren't some kind of random child molestor or pervert, or had a history of violence.  Of course, such vetting focuses mainly upon criminal records checks, (because, strangely enough, the actively criminal usually have a record of arrest and convictions), rather than what hobbies someone might have, so the fanzine might well have been news to this guy's employers.  But it was, essentially, irrelevant to his job. It was done on his own time and was his private business.  I was put in mind of this incident recently as I was filling in an application form for a teaching agency - aside from all the usual details, it started getting pretty intrusive, wanting details of stuff like social media accounts and questions about past work history that, frankly, I'm not prepared to answer.  (Any problems I had in a non-teaching job more than twenty years ago are, as far as I'm concerned, ancient history that I'm entitled not to want raked up again.  It had nothing to do with any kind of criminal activity and is entirely irrelevant to any present employment - especially after two decades and several further jobs with no similar problems).  

The social media questions once again vindicated my decision never to use my actual name on such accounts.  A simple web search of my real name won't turn up any social media activity.  Likewise, my websites are all under assumed names - you can guarantee that, although they have nothing to do with any job I'm likely to do, there will be prospective employers who would make judgements about me on the basis of my writing satire and/or about exploitation movies.  I've observed before how, increasingly, the web seems to make it impossible for any past misdemeanours and indiscretions to be forgotten, let alone allow us to have any part of our lives separate and private from our working lives, or even the rest of the world.  The whole concept of people learning from their mistakes and moving on seems, consequently, to have been nullified.  But surely we all have the right to be able to leave our pasts behind, (provided, obviously, that it doesn't involve genocide and other crimes against humanity, maybe even Summer Camp massacres), to be given the benefit of the doubt and assumption that we might have learned and changed?  Even convicted murderers are sometimes released on licence and given a second chance, after all.  I know that prospective employers, particularly in the education sector, have to act responsibly and carry out checks on prospective employees, but the fact is that, in the UK, we actually have in place an official system for doing this, which I have no problem being subjected to, (I've been through it several times in the past, both for jobs and teacher training and it never turns up anything because there is nothing to turn up), but this particular application process feels like it is being too intrusive into areas of my life and past that have no relevance to the prospective employment in question.  But it is merely a reflection of the way that our culture has become data obsessed, driven, no doubt, by the examples of Facebook and Google, that seek more and more personal information, usually for no good reason, other than selling to marketers.  But we are, surely, entitled to some privacy, aren't we?