The Mummy's Tomb (1942)

A while ago I looked at The Mummy's Hand, the 1940 Universal programmer that relaunched the studio's Mummy series, redefining it and establishing most of the conventions of the Mummy genre.  This is the 1942 sequel, The Mummy's Tomb, which moves the plot on several decades and takes Kharis, the living mummy to contemporary New England on a mission of revenge against the defilers of Princess Ananka's tomb. It is a pretty stodgy concoction, lacking the nightmarish feel of the previous film's climactic scenes.  It never really gets into its stride, bogged down by too much exposition, illustrated with flashbacks to The Mummy's Hand.  Even at only an hour long, it drags badly.  Notably, it does bring back the stars of the previous film, suitably aged, before killing them off pretty quickly.  Even George Zucco's High Priest - last seen filled full of lead - reappears for just long enough to tell his successor the back story and send him on his mission, before expiring.  

One of the film's biggest problems is the replacement of Tom Tully with Lon Chaney Jr in the title role.  Chaney hated the hours in the make up chair necessitated by this role, so an inflexible plaster mask was substituted for the more elaborate (and convincing) facial make up of the previous outing.  Consequently, it could have been anyone under the bandages and, in reality, stuntman Eddie Parker doubled for Chaney for the more physical action sequences.  Kharis becomes a lumbering, not particularly frightening, presence in the film, in stark contrast to the far scarier and malignant version previously played by Tully.  Turhan Bey plays the new High Priest, one of many such 'exotic' foreign types he played in B-movies during this period, (despite being cast as Egyptians, Indians and various Middle Eastern types, Bey was actually Austrian).  Perhaps the most notable aspect of the film is the fact that it lent most its main plot to the 1959 Hammer remake of The Mummy.  While this latter film took its Egyptian sequences, including the tomb opening and Kharis' revival, from the 1932 Karloff original, the action quickly moves forward several years to England and roughly follows the revenge plot of Tomb.

Won't Somebody Think of the Arsonists?

Won't somebody think of the arsonists?  I mean, they are undoubtedly the unseen victims of this current petrol shortage, brought on by drivers panic buying in response to possible delivery disruption stemming from HGV driver shortages.  I've no doubt that if anyone bothered to look at the crime statistics, they would find that there has been a sharp drop of in arson attacks since this business started.  Without doubt, petrol is the accelerant of choice for both professional and amateur arsonists, being easy to obtain and store.  Moreover, filling up a petrol can at the pumps wouldn't arouse suspicion.  Just think of the money that professional arsonists are losing from not being able to burn down properties to order?  Top professionals can command pretty high fees, (so I hear - I wouldn't know personally, obviously) - there's a real skill to torching a large structure, while ensuring that there is no apparent connection to the owner and that nobody gets hurt.  Which brings us to secondary victims of this fuel crisis: the owners of the buildings currently not being burned down who are missing out on some pretty big insurance pay outs.  We also need to spare a thought for the hobby arsonists who, while they aren't losing money, are being deprived of the undoubted pleasure of watching a random garden shed, car or abandoned property go up in flames.  Not only that, but what about the firemen being deprived of work because there are now fewer fires being set?

Without doubt, arsonists are now being forced to seek alternative accelerants which, while less efficient, will at least allow them to stay in business.  But this will inevitably have knock on effects.  White spirit and meths are obvious and easily obtainable alternatives, but panic buying with arsonists will leave winos, down and outs are chronic alcoholics hitting rock bottom without their beverages of choice.  What are these penniless derelicts supposed to drink without a ready supply of these paint removers and thinners to shop lift?  A decline in smoking and the advent of butane powered lighters means that the old stand by of lighter fluid is no longer available, leaving things like after shave and hair tonic as the most obvious alternatives. Unfortunately, unlike white spirit or meths, this doesn't come in litre or half litre volumes, so many more bottles have to be shop lifted at a time, increasing reported thefts from shops and putting a strain on police resources.  Perhaps, for the duration of the fuel crisis at least, these unfortunate down and outs should be encouraged to take up sniffing glue or paint instead of imbibing industrial alcohol - smaller quantities are required to produce a similar level of oblivion, after all.  Finally, once the supplies of white spirits and the like run low, there is the possibility that the arsonists will be forced to bulk buy fire lighters, leaving poor pensioners with no no means of getting their fires going when they can't afford inflated gas prices during the forthcoming Winter, resulting in them freezing to death.  So really, those bastards panic buying petrol really do need to consider the wider impact of their selfish actions.

Still a Funny Old Game

It' a funny old game, as the late Jimmy Greaves used to observe to Ian StJohn on a weekly basis back in the eighties.  One of the funniest, in a funny peculiar way, aspects of football are those fans who never seem 'happy' unless the club they support is in some kind of crisis.  Every time a bad run of results starts, these guys are in their element.  If the manager is recently appointed, then it serves only to confirm everything they said at the time as to how wrong their appointment was, if newly signed players are underperforming, then its the same formula.  If the manager is long-established, then suddenly these 'fans' start going over their history with the club to show how they were 'always' shit, if the poorly performing players are long established then they are 'past it' or 'they were always shit'.  Conversely, when their team is doing well, these same fans sulkily pick apart every winning performance for how it was achieved by 'fluke' or luck, dwell gloatingly n every defeat and accuse the club of 'selling out' some vaguely described and mainly imaginary 'principles', in exchange for success. Obviously, these type of 'fans' have always existed, but back in the days of  'Saint and Greavsie' they were largely confined to the saloon bars of pubs where,every Saturday post-match, they'd be boring everyone to death with their doom-laden analysis.  Nowadays, thanks to social media, they feel unavoidable.  Right now, the comments section of every Tottenham blog I look at are full of these 'fans' telling all and sundry how our club is 'utter shit and surely heading for oblivion.

As a follower of the Spurs, I find myself in something of a quandary. I agree with the core of these 'fans' criticisms: that the club is currently sliding into a crisis, with a squad of players who clearly have little idea of how to play together in the tactics set up by a new coach who is simply not up to the job.  I agree that the team needed a thorough overhaul and rebuilding, but this needed to have been done three years ago with a better coach.  But I don't want to sound as if I relish the current chaos surrounding the club as these 'fans' do.  True, I've never thought Nuno was right for the job - his whole CV shows a coach wedded to negative, overly defensive tactics, the complete opposite of what we've been used to at Spurs for most of the past couple of decades - but I take no pleasure in the mess he is creating at Tottenham.  I'm not going to be an apologist for him (as many seem to want to be, trying to place the blame for the situation with the players or the chairman - the fact is that it is the manager's job to find a way of motivating players and getting them to play in his system), but equally I refuse to believe that everything about the club is utterly, irretrievably crap.  Their relentless negativity is what sets them apart from the rest of the fanbase - you just know that whatever the club does, no matter how successful it becomes, it will never be good enough for them.

Unlike the doomster fans, I still believe that the season is salvageable, provided that the club acts swiftly and decisively.  A change in management now would be impractical so soon in the season and would do nothing to solve problems with the squad say the doomsters.  But some of us have been around long enough to recall the debacle of Juande Ramos' twelve months in charge - he was ignominiously sacked eight games into a season, having  only accumulated two points.  At the time there were plenty of these 'fans' around saying how the problems went deeper than the manager - unbalanced, weakened, squad, sub-standard, unmotivated players - yet, pretty much as soon as he arrived, Harry Redknapp started to turn things around.  Of course, as far as these 'fans' were concerned, Harry was never good enough for Spurs, mo matter how well the team did under him - he wasn't some overrated continental manager spouting tactical theories and the like but, worst of all, under him the team didn't allow them to indulge in their apocalyptic 'fan' fantasies.  This turnaround wasn't unprecedented - some of us remember Martin Jol replacing Jacques Santini early in the season with positive results or, more recently and on a smaller scale, Ryan Mason improving results and performances after replacing Jose Mourinho at short notice.

Obviously, this begs the question of who the new Harry Redknapp might be - where will we find them?  Jol and Mason were already at the club when their calls came - Mason still is.  Redknapp, of course, was already managing in the Premier League, getting decent results for the perpetually struggling and cash-strapped Portsmouth.  Is there an equivalent currently in the Premiership?  I don't know.  But neither do those 'fans' who revel in misery and disaster.  To get back to the original point of this post, the psychology of these so called 'fans', who seem to dominate social media, (it isn't just a Spurs thing, every club has them), intrigues me - just why do they support a particular team if the only time they get animated about it is when things go wrong?  (Indeed, it isn't just their own teams they seem to hate, but also football in its entirety).  Is it a reflection of their overall personalities - are they the sort that are never seem happy unless miserable?   Are they simply contrarians, able only to define themselves by being in opposition to a perceived norm?  Perhaps they are like those on the left of the Labour Party who seem to hate the party and try to undermine it at every turn? Maybe they are purists who, rather than some pure left wing ideology they feel that Labour should encompass, feel that there is some kind of pure footballing philosophy that their club should embrace - its continual failure to do so the root cause of their malaise?  Whatever the cause, they are quickly becoming very tiresome.

Loving the Reclusive Life

I think that I'm definitely becoming a recluse.  Over the past couple of months I have actively discouraged people from phoning me up to check whether I'm dead or not as they haven't heard from me of late, avoided speaking to neighbours other than to say 'hello', gone out of my way to avoid anyone I might know while I'm out and even stopped testing my best friend.  The only one of these things I feel guilty about is the last, as it is simply the result of laziness, rather than design.  The consequence of all this has been a wonderful period of absolutely minimal direct contact with the rest of humanity.  To be sure, I haven't been totally isolated, I've still been involved in international Zoom calls with friends overseas, but in terms of contact with the people around me, it has been completely minimal.  And I've loved it.  A prolonged break from people has been what I've craved for so long.  I know we had those lockdowns, but they were imposed, this is purely by choice. The reasons for my recent reclusiveness are several fold.  For one thing, I'm naturally a solitary person and I've never really needed people.  For another, after the various traumas I endured in my former job, I really, really need a break from dealing with people, whether that be the people I had to deal with from outside the organisation, or the people I worked with.  Indeed, my experiences with the latter - the constant low-level bullying and passive aggressiveness which contributed to making the workplace utterly poisonous - have left me feeling that I never want to go back into the working environment again.  (Hence the fact that I'm currently in no hurry to find work right now).

Of course, it has really helped that the modern world makes it ever easier to be reclusive.  Indeed, to some extent the pandemic with its social distancing, lockdowns and forded isolations, validated the whole solitary lifestyle.  For a while, my preferred relationship with the world became the norm.  It promoted the rise of online shopping to an unprecedented degree, made remote video conferencing the norm in terms of communication and rendered many workplaces obsolete.  The truth is that nowadays, there is no longer any actual need to have direct contact with anyone.  Which suits me.  Moreover, it has never been easier to keep oneself entertained: thanks to the internet one can always have a connection of sorts with the outside world and access to all manner of media.  Streaming channels, in particular, have proven themselves to be essential.  Even the free-to-air ones which I view exclusively, are chock full of the kind of low rent, obscure and scuzzy content that I love. Back in the day, most of this stuff was simply unavailable via conventional media.  Nowadays, I can watch wall-to-wall exploitation all day long if I so choose.  Of late, I've found a number of Roku streaming apps which bundle together various free-to-air channels, most of which are unavailable via Roku in any other form, (many are usually unavailable in the UK altogether).  As an inveterate channel hopper, I find these apps invaluable: I can spend hours flicking between the various streams in these apps, catching all manner of weird and wonderful stuff.  It's as close to paradise as I've been in a long time.  So, there you are - right now I'm a recluse and loving it.

More Milk Deliveries

I haven't posted anything model railway related of late.  Which is largely because little is happening on this front.  Things are stalled while I try and clear more space and rearrange the spare room so as to acquire more space for a proposed extension of the layout.  The lack of activity hasn't stopped me from continuing to build up my rolling stock whenever I can find second hand bargains, (something that's getting rarer and rarer).  These are the latest arrivals: a pair of Lima 'St Ivel' milk tankers to add to my growing milk tanker train.  The livery, I believe, is authentic, although apparently short-lived.  Whether tankers in this livery would have seen service behind a steam loco I'm not sure, but I like the livery and, most importantly, they came as a cheap job lot.

They join a couple of other six-wheeled milk tankers I managed to buy cheaply over the Summer:

These were bought separately.  The blue 'Milk Marketing Board' tanker is a Wrenn item from the seventies, manufactured from the old Hornby Dublo moulds, (a version is currently made by Dapol).  Again, I'm not entirely sure of the authenticity of the livery - Wrenn were notorious for their entirely fictitious colour schemes, not just on wagons, but locomotives also - but it is a nice looking wagon with a satisfyingly heavy cast metal chassis, which ensures that it stays on the track.  The other tanker is a Lima 'United Dairies' six wheeler in (almost) correct post-war livery.  The tank itself should really be silver, although in practice these faded to almost-white in use.  (Later, some were painted blue, with a black strap-line carrying the dairy name in white).

These four join the three Hornby (ex-Lima) 'CWS' tankers I managed to get in a job lot earlier this year.  I reckon that another one or two wagons should be sufficient to create a milk train of reasonable length, (taking into account the size of the layout and the fact that the train would include a bogie passenger brake at one end, a utility van at the other, with, possibly another CCT-type van in the middle).  So, I'm on the lookout for at least one more cheap six wheeled milk tanker.  I'd quite like to get one of the blue 'Express Dairies' types that Lima, then Hornby, produced.  But ultimately it depends on what turns u at a reasonable price.

Back in the Bay

So, in addition to all those Australian kids shows and soaps, I've also been watching old episodes of Baywatch.  Why? you undoubtedly ask.  Well, I've recently had access to a streaming channel which shows nothing but back-to-back episodes of Baywatch.  Even series 10 and 11, which were officially Baywatch Hawaii.  You know something?  It isn't anywhere near as bad as people nowadays think it was.  Sure, it was cheesy and the plot lines barely credible, (the things that went down on that beach in the average episode beggar belief).  Even David Hasselhoff isn't that bad.  OK, as an actor he is pretty limited, but he made for a likeable enough lead in the series and, like the series itself, never took any of it too seriously.  To be absolutely fair, I'm basing these judgements on having, so far, seen mainly episodes from the first four series which, in my humble opinion, had the best cast line ups.  After that, apart from The Hoff, the cast was chopped and changed from season to season, with too many short-lived characters we never got to know properly, increasingly bizarre stories and and an ever greater emphasis upon breasts and behinds of the female characters, as their swimsuits became ever skimpier and less practical.  (An opinion, apparently, shared by The Hoff himself).

But those first four seasons were, in their undemanding way, a lot of fun.  As I've said, they had the best and most likeable supporting characters: Eddie (Billy Warlock) and Shauna (Erika Eleniak) in seasons 1 and 2, Matt (David Charvet) and Summer (Nicole Eggert) in seasons 3 and 4, plus Pamela Anderson as CJ and Alexandra Paul as Lt Stephanie Holden from season 3.  In retrospect, you can see the series begin to decline throughout season 4, with increasingly off beat storylines involving such things as Matt being attacked by a surfboard stealing octopus, Mitch being kidnapped by a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder and Summer being molested by a ghost in a haunted hotel.  (No, I'm not making any of these up).  Which isn't to say that earlier series hadn't had their share of the bizarre - who could ever forget the episode where Eddie suffers a blow to the head and dreams that he's in an episode of Gilligan's Island? - but for season 4, they really started to ramp it up.  As a side note, apart from the quality of the stories, you can usually tell season 4 episodes apart from season 3 episodes by the size of Summer's breasts.  The actress playing her had a boob job with very noticeable results.  (Allegedly she felt intimidated by Pamela Anderson's impressive boobage, fearing that her bust was getting more screen time - which, when you watch the episodes back, isn't actually true).  Unfortunately, the series 4 title sequence took a while to catch up, using clips of Summer from her earliest appearances until around the half way point, making the change in her appearance even more startling.

Ultimately, Baywatch holds the same appeal as those Australian shows I was talking about yesterday: sunshine and optimism.  There's no problem that can't be solved by jumping on a jet ski or pulling on a bathing costume and everybody is just so damn decent, regardless of their trials and tribulations.  Back in the day it was the ultimate in early Saturday evening feel good TV: undemanding and filling dull, cold Autumn and Winter evening with sunshine.  It's very much of its era and simply couldn't be recreated now, (just look at the recent movie version if you need proof), but it is fun to revisit.

Those Antipodean Sunny Soaps

I'm still trying to adjust to this new life of leisure I find myself in.  Sure, in theory I'm merely between jobs and, technically, I'm a supply teacher, being on the books of several agencies, but I can't say that I'm doing much actively in the way of seeking new employment or taking up teaching opportunities.  I'm still in that limbo where, in truth, I still don't really know what I want to do with my new found freedom.  I suddenly have all this time on my hands, yet never seem to do anything with it - other than immerse myself in ever more pop culture.  Through the miracle of streaming TV channels, I've recently found myself watching a number of old Australian TV series aimed at kids and adolescents.  They are almost as good as the Australian soaps I have a less than secret liking for.  Actually, in cast terms, the three series I've been watching - Saddle Club, H2O: Just Add Water and Dance Academy - are very closely related to the soaps, all featuring younger versions of actors who would later appear in Neighbours or Home and Away.  They can also  be even more dramatic than the soaps with some of their storylines: I'm still emotionally traumatised from Sammy (the nice Jewish boy who was always confused about his sexuality) dying toward then of series two of Dance Academy.

The other thing theses series share with the soaps is their sense of optimism.  UK soaps are generally pretty depressing, with the characters we are meant to sympathise with are perpetual losers and anyone in any way successful is a complete bastard.  People's plans, in the UK soaps, always seem to end up dashed.  By contrast, the Australian soaps like to portray people as being inherently good - even if they star out as a loser or shady character, they ultimately redeem themselves, (if they become a regular as opposed to being a guest villain, that is).  Damn it, even Neighbours' Paul Robinson is allowed to have redeeming fetures, with his ruthlessness and pursuit of money being balanced by his love of his family.  The kids' series are even more so in this respect - there is no problem that can't be resolved by friendship and/or sheer determination and persistence.  As I get older, I find that I need to hear these kinds of uplifting stories more.  Increasingly, I need to find a way to counterbalance my natural cynicism and skepticism, to be reassured that maybe, just maybe, there might be some hope in this world.  Which isn't to say that I'm going to kick my habit for sleaze and schlock any time soon - believe me, I've been watching of that lately, as well, just to balance out all the hope and sunny optimism of those Aussie shows!

The Devil's Plaything (1973)

I kept coming into this movie part way through on the 'American Horrors' streaming channel, never seeing the opening or getting to the end and consequently left with no idea as to what the Hell was going on.  It obviously involved vampires, lesbianism and bongo drums, but exactly how they all fitted together.  Well, this week I finally managed to watch The Devil's Plaything (aka Vampire Ecstasy) all the way through.  It seems that it all has to do with the attempts by a coven of lesbian vampires based at an old castle in Germany to reincarnate a long dead vampire Countess in the body of one of her descendants.  To this end, the current female descendants of the vampire and her sister are invited to the castle.  A female expert on vampire mythology and her brother also turn up after their car breaks down.  They quickly find themselves involved in all sorts of shenanigans as the coven - led by the housekeeper, who appears to be a close relative of Young Frankenstein's Frau Blucher - engage in nightly topless ceremonies, dancing to the sound of bongo drums and fondling penis shaped candles.  No, I am not making this up, nor is the film meant to be a comedy.  Character's get bewitched and find themselves possessed of insatiable sexual appetites.  The lady doctor has her clothes ripped off by bats and, under the spell of the coven, very nearly succumbs to her incestuous feelings for her brother.  The vampire countess is reincarnated and gets it on with both men and women.  

Judging by its release date, I'd hazard a guess that this piece of erotica was inspired by Hammer's early seventies trilogy of 'lesbian vampire' movies.  Unfortunately, it lacks the narrative drive, performances, style, or even erotic charge, of even the weakest of these films (probably Lust for a Vampire (1971)).  Director Joseph W Sarno had, by the time he made The Devil's Plaything, built up quite a reputation as a director of superior pornography, (The Young Playthings being particularly admired), but here he delivers a would be piece of Gothic erotica which is far too slowly paced and too tame to score as either horror or porn.  The film drags badly, being at least twenty minutes too long for its content, with the thick accents of the German cast making much of the dialogue seem even more ludicrous than it already is.  The talky script spends far too much time telling us about the Countess' (who  sounds like a cross between Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory), rather than actually showing us any real depravities, (let alone eroticism).  On the plus side, it does look very good, Sarno making good use of his locations - a real castle and surrounding mountains and, on occasion, creating some decent atmosphere.  But, in the end, truth to be told, The Devil's Plaything is something of a bore, promising far more than it delivers and too po faced to be any fun, despite all the ridiculous goings on.  Twins of Evil (1972) was far more enjoyable.

Thursday Thoughts

So, another cabinet reshuffle.  I don't know why the media gets so excited about these.  It isn't as if any new talent is going to be promoted.  Quite the opposite with this government.  Johnson is simply not going to promote anybody he thinks might rival his imagined popularity and threaten his poor excuse of leadership.  It is simply a case of replacing one selection of bastards with different bastards. Whichever way you look at it, the current government simply is a shower of shit.  To be fair, though, they are the cream of the crap, the turds that have risen to the surface.  I've been avoiding politics over here on the blog of late - it has become so tedious, the uncritical way in which much of the media reports what this government does, the seemingly never ending lurch into right-wing extremism on just about every p-olicy front.  As for the opposition, I'm so, so tired of the Corbynites, Corbynistas or whatever the fuck they want to be called, doing everything in their power to snipe at the current Labour leadership and undermine any chance of Labour winning an election in the foreseeable future.  You'd think that the acolytes of a failed leader who led the party to two consecutive defeats, thereby condemning the very people they claim to care about another decade or so of Tory bastards, would be keen to see a Labour government.  Because, surely, any Labour government would be better than the shit we're suffering now?  But, apparently they disagree - purity of Cornynism, (which itself seemed to be mainly vague warmed over versions of pre-Blair policies), or nothing.

So, politics currently holds little attraction (or hope) for me.  Unfortunately, the same seems to be true for football, with the current management regime at Spurs seemingly Hell bent upon draining all the life and enjoyment out of the team's performances.  I was always against appointing Nuno Espirito Santo as manager.  After proclaiming, in the wake of the boring, defensive and largely unsuccessful campaigns overseen by Jose Mourinho, for the club chairman to announce that he aimed to appoint a new manager with an attacking outlook, then appoint a manager known for his conservative, defensive approach, seemed insane.  Which it is proving to be.  But, say the Nuno apologists, we've won three out of four league matches this season, plus he's had to contend with all sorts of selection issues created by international breaks and injuries.  Which is all well and good, except that of those wins, one was down to a penalty, one a fluky goal and the other was against an out of sorts Manchester City.  In two of them, we played abominably, frequently outplayed by inferior opposition, riding our luck to get us through.  The chickens really came home to roost against Palace, when we were deservedly thrashed.  As for selection issues, well, for those first three league matches, these weren't an issue, yet we still played uninspired, boring defensive football, devoid of any style, excitement or ideas.  Even with injury issues, surely it is part of a manager's job to find solutions and respond by trying a different approach?  Except that Nuno has never, wherever he has managed, had a Plan B.  He simply isn't up to the job of managing Spurs or any other club with top four ambitions.  He just doesn't have the tactical flexibility or the vision.  At the rate things are going, he's going to be gone before Christmas.  The question then will be, who will we bring in next to replace him?  Neither the fans nor the team can take much more of the sort of negative approach we've had to suffer under Mourinho and now Nuno.

'Attacked by the Furred Furies of Hell'

 

I once had a cat like that.  The furry little bastard was fond of jumping down the stairwell from the landing bannisters to land on the back of anybody going down the stairs.  He'd come down with the claws of all four paws extended.  Little bastard.  This Man's Life cover from May 1959 falls into the 'animal attacks' sub-genre of men's magazine literature, most famously typified ny the 'Weasels Ripped My Flesh' cover story.  Wild cats are at least more convincingly vicious wilderness threats than some of the others utilised, like snapping turtles or otters.  As usual, the unfortunate woman victim is busily falling out of her clothes, even as she is being menaced by these 'furred furies of Hell'.  The other cover stories are, in the main, the usual mix of titillation and World War Two heroics.  I've no idea which particular 'Most Spectacular Bluff of World War two' they are highlighting - several come to mind, including the fake D-Day invasion army in Kent, the similar fake forces deployed by Montgomery at El Alamein in order to divert enemy resources, 'The Man Who Never Was' or a whole host of others - or whether, more likely, they've simply made up a new one.

The most intriguing headline lies in the header: 'Kill the Air Force Now!', which could refer to the 1947 'Revolt of the Admirals', when the US Navy, fearing the loss of their air assets and strategic role, opposed the establishment of the USAF as a separate arm of service.  (It had previously been part of the US Army).  But, with the publication date being 1959 it could equally refer to the argument in some quarters at the time that the role of the Air Force's manned aircraft could be given over entirely to ballistic missiles.  Surface-to-air missiles could intercept enemy fighters, while strategic missiles could replace long range bombers, it was contended, while air support for US forces operating overseas could be provided by the Navy's carrier force.  Similar arguments were being made in the UK around the same time, (resulting in something of a run down of fighter forces and development programmes for future aircraft).  On both sides of the Atlantic, such plans were eventually defeated, the main problem being the lack of flexibility of unmanned missiles in providing appropriate responses to many situations.  Interestingly, though, with the rise of sophisticate military drones, there is again a growing argument for the increased use of unmanned air assets to fight wars.  Which is probably just as well as, apparently, the American maile is in danger of becoming a 'Momma's Boy', (well, in 1959, at least).

Selling the Sleaze

I think the problem is that I don't do enough merchandising.  OK, I don't actually do any merchandising.  But, apparently, merchandising is thing these days for people running websites, You Tube channels and the like.  It doesn't matter what content you put up, the thing, it seems, is to have a line of merchandise to flog to your followers.  Indeed, it seems now to be an essential ingredient to actually getting followers, that you have a line of over-priced cheap tat to sell them on the side.  Not that there is anything really new about online merchandising.  I remember that, back in the day, there were sites like Cafepress, which allowed you to sell punters over priced mugs and T-shirts with your logo on them, (I just checked and they are still going).  I seem to recall that a lot of sites back then, (the early 2000s), just about every site I stumbled across, large or small, amateur or professional, were hopefully offering visitors such stuff.  I have no idea how much, if any, they ever sold.  Personally, I could never be arsed to set anything along those lines up for The Sleaze.  Quite apart from the fact that I was just too lazy, I honestly couldn't see why anybody would want to buy a mug or T-shirt with 'The Sleaze' emblazoned on it.

Which leads to the question, what sort of merchandising would be appropriate for The Sleaze?  How about a colouring book to bring in the younger demographic?  It could contain outline drawings based on some of the site's best stories, like 'I Was a Sex Pest From Outer Space', or 'I Shagged Hitler's Brains Out', for the kiddies to colour in.  So, if they want to give Hitler green hair as he is shagged senseless by an American GI, then all to the good - it is all about encouraging the artistic expression of the younger generation.  While making a few quid on the side, obviously.  Then there's always the old stand -by of the calendar, with me striking a different pose for each month, (all fully clothed, of course).  Or maybe an illustration based on a suitably themed story.  The ultimate step in this purely passive money making strategy would, judging by what all those professional You Tubers get up to, would be to set up a Patreon account and indulge in the high tech version of begging.  Well, not entirely begging, as in exchange for the monetary support you have to offer exclusives available only to your paying customers: exclusive content, autographed photos, exclusive access, (ie, a guarantee that their email won't automatically be classified by spam and will instead get a 'personal' automated response).  I know, I know, I'm being far too cynical, but all this merchandising and paid access stuff seems to me to go against what the web was all about when I first started creating content: exchanging off beat ideas and giving access to all.  Then again, I am a dinosaur, I know.

Western Revisionism

Hollywood's historical revisionism has often been called out with regard to the histories of non-US countries, be it the dubious portrayal of William Wallace as Scottish freedom fighter in Braveheart or the wholesale rewriting of World War Two naval history in U-571,  but, to be fair it has been doing the same thing with regard to US history since the dawn of the feature film.  Indeed, much of what we like to think we know about the Old West has been learned through the filter of countless Hollywood movies, most of which give us the myth rather than the reality of events.  The mythologising of the West, of course, long predates Hollywood and motion pictures - even before their advent, it was busy mythologising itself through Dime Novels and the like, even as it happened.  The key historical figures themselves deliberately falsified their own stories, both at the time and later, when writing their memoirs.  Wyatt Earp, most notoriously, shamelessly conflated his alleged exploits, taking credit for the actions of others and over-inflating his role in those events he did participate in.  To be fair, he was a lawman at times and he really was a key player in the Gunfight at the OK Corral, but much of the rest of his alleged adventures as he related them to his biographer Stuart N Lake shortly before his death in 1928, were pretty much fabrication.  But the resulting book, Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal, has formed the basis for the majority of the films subsequently based on his life, (and particularly the Gunfight at the OK Corral).  

So, I shouldn't have been surprised when, today, I stumbled into a fifties technicolor Western programmer Jack McCall, Desperado, which took my breath away with the sheer audacity of its historical revisionism. In the opening minutes alone, we see the title character (played by handsome George Montgomery) ride into Deadwood and shoot dead 'Marshal' Hickok as he played cards.  At first I thought this might just be a coincidence of names, but no, it immediately becomes evident that these are meant to be the historical characters of 'Wild Bill' Hickok and his real life assassin Jack McCall.  We then go into a flashback sequence as McCall defends himself at an impromptu trial, where we learn that his actions have their roots in the American Civil War, where he was a Southerner fighting for the Union, with Hickok as his sergeant.  McCall is unjustly accused of being a Confederate spy and Hickok conspires to deprive him of his rightful inheritance, before becoming a general bad 'un and winds up.post-war, in Deadwood, conspiring to rip off gold mining rights from the Indians.  Believe me, this represents a spectacular perversion of established historical fact.  While Hickok did indeed serve in the Union army as a sergeant during the Civil War and, later, became a lawman, he was most certainly never the marshal of Deadwood.  By the time he wound up there, he was living on his reputation and effectively working as a professional gambler.  McCall's history is less clear, but it seems certain that he and Hickok had never met before Deadwood.  His motivation for killing 'Wild Bill' was unclear - alcohol and resentment over the fact that, the previous day, Hickok had offered him money for food after McCall had lost heavily in a poker game they had both participated in, probably played a part.  Unlike the film, McCall gave Hickok no warning and wasn't facing him when he opened fore - 'Wild Bill' was shot in the back of the head at point blank range.

Now, while it is true, as depicted, that McCall was acquitted of murder at his 'trial', this was subsequently decreed, by the local Federal court, (Deadwood was in Dakota territory, which didn't have Statehood, meaning that the only law there was Federal law and only Federal courts had jurisdiction), to be invalid, as the local 'court' had no legal standing.  At a new trial at the Federal court, he was found guilty and hanged, despite his claims that he was, in fact, avenging the murder of his own brother in Abilene at the hands of Hickok.  (While a man named McCall had been shot dead by an unknown lawman in Abilene, there was no evidence that he was McCall's brother, or that Hickok had been in Abilene at the time).  I don't know why Jack McCall, Desperado surprised me so much - it isn't the only film to try and portray McCall as victim and Hickok as villain, I recall the awful Arch Hall cheapie Deadwood '76 doing something similar, creating an entirely fictional story to lead up to the death of Hickok.  Yet, far from being a poverty row independent production like Deadwood '76, Jack McCall, Desperado was a studio film with decent production values and recognisable actors and director, so it seemed strange to see it going against the grain of mainstream westerns of its era, which generally portrayed Hickok as a hero.  (In reality, while he was no angel, he was still closer to the sort of good guy frontiersman portrayed in the moves - although not as competent: his law enforcement career ended when he accidentally shot and killed one of his own deputies).  

While it is common to see out and out outlaws like Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Billy the Kid portrayed as heroic, (in truth, only Billy the Kid might have some claim to such a role, originally becoming a killer to avenge the death of his employer William Tunstall in a range war), it is less common to see historical 'good guys' depicted as villains.  (Wyatt Earp, one of the most complex of historical western icons, is an exception, sometimes being portrayed as a highly dubious, amoral, character).  Which, perhaps, should be surprising, as a significant number of lawmen in the Old West started their careers as outlaws.  But Jack McCall, Desperado, really does go to extreme lengths in terms of revisionism, by inventing an entirely fiction life of crime for 'Wild Bill' Hickok.  Still, when compared to the way in which Hollywood westerns traditionally portrayed Native Americans and their treatment at the hands of European settlers, I suppose it pales into insignificance.

Behind Locked Doors (1968)

Behind Locked Doors is apparently the re-release title of Any Body..Any Way (1968).  I've never seen the complete film, only this trailer, (sadly censored by You Tube who seem to believe that the sight of a bare woman's nipple will lead us all to sexual depravity).  But the trailer fascinates me - when I first saw it I doubted that it was for a real movie, that it was some kind of parody of a typical sixties or seventies low budget sexploitation film.  It is the way in which it holds out the promise of all manner of titillation: lesbian sex, bondage, voyeurism, torture, a horrible secret in the cellar and, yes, nipples.  The sense of parody is heightened by the presence of a villain apparently trying to imitate Noel Coward (badly) and the presence of an apparently half witted (and sexually predatory) handyman/assistant.  It's all there, with the trailer clearly determined to convince the audience that it is the greatest piece of sexploitation ever made.

The reality, of course, is somewhat more modest: a roughly made B-movie with a no name cast, some giving overheated performances, others barely trying.  The horrible secret in the cellar, apparently, are the embalmed bodies of the villains' previous victims, with the climactic inferno trying to evoke memories of House of Wax, the whole thing framed by a Dead of Night style 'was it a dream?' ending.  I'm sure that I could only be disappointed if I was ever to see the complete film - it could never live up to the expectations raised by that trailer.  (Not that I've ever been able to track down a copy, under either of its titles).   Noel Coward as a kinky creep abducting women to carry out sexual experiments on them is a concept that surely no film, regardless of budget, could ever do justice to...

The Tedium of the Recurring Villain

Why is it that writers and producers seem to think that viewers want to see recurring villains, well recur, in films and TV series?  Personally, whenever I see an old villainous character reappear, despite an apparently definitive ending last time they appeared, my reaction is 'Oh, for fuck's sake!'.  I always take it as a lack of ambition and imagination on the part of writers and producers when they resort to this gambit.  Can;t they come up with new antagonists and scenarios (because the reappearance of an old villain usually means a repetition of their previous antics with minor variations) to try and boost ratings?  Because, inevitably, the man reason for bringing these characters back is a desire to prop up sagging viewing figures - on the basis that the last time they appeared their story line garnered a boost in viewing figures.  But the reality is that the law of diminishing returns kicks in as the novelty of these characters wears off, forcing writers and producers to up the ante for each reappearance, with their schemes becoming ever more evil and outlandish, with the character eventually turning into a caricature of their original persona.  Just this evening I watched two soaps trying to rely on the returns of villainous past characters in order to create a buzz: Eastenders brought back Janine Butcher for the umpteenth time, (it beggars belief that she wasn't banged up for life years ago for her crimes), while Holby City, one a relatively realistic hospital dram, was resorting to bringing back the terminally dull Cameron and having him blow up the hospital with a bomb.

The fact is that neither were particularly interesting characters in the first place, making their elevation to the status of soap super villains all the more ludicrous.  It would be easy to blame Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the perception on the part of modern creative types that every heroic character needs an evil nemesis or a super villain to oppose, having created Professor Moriarty to oppose Sherlock Holmes.  But the fact is that Conan Doyle knew that Super villains or evil nemeses for ongoing heroic characters should be restricted to fleeting appearances, otherwise they would soon lose their impact.  The fact is that Moriarty only ever appears in a single short story - 'The Final Problem'.  His influence (from beyond the grave) is felt in 'The empty House' and his portrait appears in the novel The Valley of Fear, but the reality is that he isn't really a prominent character in the original canon as a whole. He was only created by Conan Doyle when he wanted to kill Holmes off and realised that only an opponent of the same magnitude of the Great Detective could achieve such a thing.  Sadly, both film makers and other writers who have taken up Conan Doyle's mantle have failed to realise that one of the things that keep the original stories continually interesting is the variety of villains and crimes Holmes investigates.  Being tied to continually having to battle the 'Napoleon of Crime' makes these Holmes continuations tiresome, forever repeating the same tired tropes.  

I just don't like recurring villains - they are tedious.  Even as a kid, my heart used to sink when The Master turned up yet again in Dr Who.  Like Sherlock Holmes, one of the pleasures of the series for me was the sheer variety of foes and situations the doctor was involved with, but the Master was just boring - a one dimensional character along the lines of the moustache twirling villains of silent movies.  What's his motivation?  Well, he's just evil! Or crazy!  Or maybe both!  At one point in the seventies, the character was even more over used than the Daleks, (who are at least actually scary and sometimes actually vary their nefarious schemes), being revealed as the villain in every bloody story of Pertwee's second series.  Even when he's regenerated, The Master has remained the same dull, one dimensional character.  Increasingly, in fact, he's less of a character than a convenient deus ex machina.  Yet producer after producer seems to think that he's some kind of fan favourite.  Not with this fan, I can tell you.  Can't we just accept that once one of these super villains is defeated, that's it, they are finished and we never have to put up with them again?  OK, I know that Dr Who has a whole host of recurring monsters, but they, at least, represent entire races so, short of extinction, it is plausible that other examples will turn up after one lot has been defeated, but to have one individual keep bloody turning up is just ridiculous, not to mention boring.  Besides, monsters are inherently interesting.  (Except zombies, which I also, increasingly, find tedious, but that's mainly because they are too often poorly used in badly made films as just a convenient threat, rather than giving the concept underlying them any depth).  So, can we just have a moratorium on these bloody soap villains and evil nemeses returning and come up with new characters and plots instead?

The Osterman Weekend (1983)

One of the consequences of streaming services' insatiable appetite for content is that you find yourself encountering films that you have barely given a thought to in twenty or thirty years.  Thus, this weekend I found myself watching The Osterman Weekend (1983), Sam Peckinpah's last film and an adaptation of Robert Ludlum's second published novel from 1972.  I've discussed here before how ill-served Ludlum has been by film adaptations of his works, (although I doubt he was complaining as he was doubtless well paid for the movie options), the main problem being that a two hour running time can never do full justice to his dense plotting and the complex conspiracy theories he invented to underpin these plots.  In general, they have fared better as multi-part TV adaptations, (The Rhinemanm Exchange, The Apocalypse Watch and The Bourne Identity), where the plots have room to breath.  Which isn't to say that the film adaptations can't be successful: an entire franchise has been built on the 'Bourne Trilogy', although the first three films, while ostensibly based on the three novels, in reality take only the premise and a few plot elements and characters from them.  Likewise, The Osterman Weekend - which I hadn't seen since its UK TV debut in the mid eighties - takes the basic concept from the novel, along with several of the characters but tries to substitute its own complex conspiracy driven plot for that of the novel.  The problem is that the movie's plot makes no sense whatsoever.  No matter how you look at it, none of it stacks up - John Hurt's rogue CIA agent's harassment of Rutger Hauer and his friends brings him no closer to his goal of bringing down bis boss: he ends up having to kidnap Hauer's family and blackmail him in order to do this, something he could have done at the outset.

Interestingly, the film's writer was apparently surprised that this version of his script - which he seemingly regarded as a first draft - was used as a shooting script.  Indeed, Peckinpah himself disliked the script and pressured the producers to allow him to rewrite it.  But his version was rejected after the first few pages were seen by the producers.  It is rumoured that Ludlum himself - who, despite experience of the movie and TV industries had originally decided to avoid direct involvement in the adaptation - offered to rewrite the script for free, an offer apparently not taken up.  The Osterman Weekend represents probably the only occasion where - in a Ludlum adaptation -a more complex plot rather than a simplified one, was substituted for that of the source material.   Both versions start with the premise that John Tanner (Rutger Hauer in the film) is told that one or more of his three closest friend - who are due to spend the weekend with him as his family - are suspected of being a deep cover KGB agent.  In the course of the weekend he is supposed to try and find which of them is the guilty party.  At this point, book and film diverge, (I'm basing this on my recollections of a novel I last read some years ago - I've been unable to locate my copy to check these details).  While the film then turns this into a complex revenge plot on the part of an aggrieved CIA agent to expose his director as having ordered the assassination of the agent's wife, the book, as I recall, presents it all as a bluff by the authorities to convince the real deep cover KGB agent (who is believed to live locally), to expose themselves by convincing them that one of Tanner's friends might be able to identify them.  Although some scenes carry over from novel to film, their repurposing to serve a different plot leaves them feeling contrived and arbitrary.

With a decade having passed between the book's original publication and the film adaptation, the producers' desire to update the plot and tap into the post-Vietnam anti-establishment feeling, is understandable.  Certainly, the film, at times seems to trying to make some kind of statement about contemporary America, but is unsure exactly what it is.  The way in which everyone seems to be watching everyone else on TV courtesy of surveillance cameras provides some striking imagery and Tanner's closing spiel to his audience, (he is a TV interviewer in the film), urging viewers to question what they've seen and switch off, seems to indicate a desire to say something about the role of the media in manufacturing political narratives.  But none of this is properly developed, so it ends up seeming like a glib throwaway line with which to end the movie, implying but not elaborating upon its supposed themes.  That the finished film has this sort of uneven feel might well be down to the fact that, in typical Peckinpah fashion, the director fell out with the producers in post-production and the final edit was taken out of his hands.  The Osterman Weekend had represented a last chance for Peckinpah to prove that he was still capable of delivering a commercially viable film after his well-documented problems while shooting Convoy (1978) and he did complete it on schedule and on budget.  The problem lay with the fact that he had included several scenes designed to 'satirise' the film and its subject matter, all of which were excised by the producers after test screenings of the original cut garnered unfavourable audience reactions.

It is interesting to compare The Osterman Weekend with another spy thriller, The Killer Elite (1975), that Peckinpah had made as a director-for-hire.  While both were based on novels, Killer Elite is not only a better adaptation, retaining most of the involved plot and characters from its source, despite relocating the action from the UK to the US, but it unfolds its plot with far greater clarity, never quite losing the casual viewer and ensuring that it all, more or less, makes sense.  Moreover, stylistically Killer Elite is far more obviously a Sam Peckinpah film, exhibiting most of his signature directorial flourishes.  (I know that many critics disagree and regard Killer Elite as one of Peckinpah's weakest films - with many scenes allegedly supervised by assistants while the director was incapaciated by drugs and alcohol - I'm still prepared to champion it.  As a piece of commercial film-making, it still rates as a polished and superior example of the seventies action genre).  By contrast, it is often hard to discern that The Osterman Weekend was directed by Peckinpah, with only the briefest of slow-motion action and none of the usual explorations of masculinity and his typical juxtapositions of idealistic honour and compromise in the face of real world corruption and brutality seem muted.  The post production editing seems to have emasculated the film.  Which isn't t say that it isn't entertaining in places.  Many of the performances are actually very good and it certainly looks good, but the script is confused, failing to deliver on its initial promise.  Peckinpah was already in ill-health when he shot the film and he died the year after its release, leaving it as an underwhelming epitaph to a remarkable career.  Still, it did make money, almost recouping its costs in the US, performing strongly in Europe and becoming something of a hit in the then relatively new medium of home video.

'True Adventures for Bold Men'?

I have no idea what the 'Gallery of Queer Nudes' prominently listed on the cover of this September 1958 issue of Man's Illustrated is about.  At face value it would seem to play into the homoerotic sub text inherent in the men's magazine genre, ('True Adventures for Bold Men' - 'bold' because they embraced their true sexual orientation?).  I do, however, know that Maxwell Bodenheim, to whom it is attributed, was a writer and poet during the 'Jazz Age' who became known as the 'King of Greenwich Village Bohemians'.  So, I'm guessing that the 'Queer Nudes' business has something to do with his chronicles of life in Greenwich Village, (rather reinforced by the fact that it is, apparently, part three of 'Love Life in Greenwich Village').  Interestingly, after his literary success had faded, Bodenheim and hos second wife became beggars, living on the street.  Eventually, in 1954, they were murdered by a down and out working as a dishwasher in a flophouse.  The dishwasher was subsequently judged to be insane.  

While Bodenheim might not, perhaps, be the sort of writer you'd expect to see in the pages of a man's magazine, the rest of the mix seems to par for the course for this type of publication.  Man's man Ernest Hemingway gets an interview, while the 'Bad Girls' genre much beloved of these magazines is represented by 'Zip Gun Girl'.  'What You Should Know About Sex Stimulants' speaks for itself with its promise of salacious stories of sexual misconduct disguised as serious investigation, while 'Jobs for Adventurers' promises to be another of those articles feeding the fantasies of the typical adolescent male reader who doubtless dreamed of being the sort of rugged, gun-toting, he-man pictured on the cover.  All the 'jobs' undoubtedly involved going into jungles, deserts or arctic wastes in search of oil, diamonds, gold, lost cities and the like, while running the gamut of angry cannibals, head hunters, polar bears etc.  Opportunities for rescuing nubile women threatened by the aforementioned are probably also pat of the job description. 

Mystery Viewing

Being a pessimist, I just know that it can't last.  (Experience has taught me that if something can go wrong for me, it will).  The 'it' in this case being new streaming service that has just become available via my Roku box.  It really is about the best Roku app I've ever installed, presenting a selection of channels, (all free to view), apparently emanating from Houston, Texas.  Most of them aren't available elsewhere on Roku and many aren't available in the UK at all.  It ranges from the likes of Retro TV to a whole slew of movie channels.  These are all continuously streaming channels, most of which have no onscreen indication of what's showing, let alone a schedule.  Which is great, as it takes me back to the good old days of TV, before electronic programme guides, when you just tuned in to a channel and kept watching until the show you had come into ended or there was a commercial break, when you'd get more information.  (Of course, if you wanted to spoil the fun, you could always buy a newspaper or listings magazine for the schedules).  It provides a magnificent 'what the fuck?' experience which is all too often missing from modern TV viewing.  Trying to work out exactly what you are watching is half the fun of watching TV.

Of course, the internet is a huge help here - if I can recognise an actor, then I can work back from that to try and work out the show or film I'm watching.  If you go through their CV on something like IMDB, you can often work out what it is, factoring in the actor's current age and how old they look on screen.  If you can get the name of the character they are playing, all the better.  If you  can't recognise an actor, then deeper research is needed - trying to work out when the film was made, (condition of the film stock, lighting styles, hair styles and types of vehicles on screen can all help here), cross referenced with whatever the theme of the show or movie seems to be, can often yield results via search engines.  It adds a whole new dimension to the viewing experience - the sense of satisfaction I get from successfully identifying what I'm watching is hugely gratifying,  So, with all the fun I'm currently having with this newapp, the pessimist in me is sure that it can't last - someone is bound to decide that it is somehow illegal, violating international copyright laws or something.  Which is why, right now, I'm making the most of it by engaging in hours of channel hopping, taking in all manner of weird and wonderful films and TV shows before it all disappears.