You've got to admire those wrestling commentators - the way they are able to pretend that what is going on in the ring is somehow real and has consequences. I've just been watching a bit of AEW and I have to take my hat off to Jim Ross and the guys for the way in which they maintain a tone of utter sincerity, regardless of how ludicrous the stuff going on in the ring is getting. They really get into it, listening to them you could almost believe that they guy taking a pasting is genuinely at risk and might have their career ended. Never mind that we all know that they'll be back in the ring next week, taking another 'career threatening' hammering. Just for that moment, you can suspend disbelief, thanks to the fact that the commentary team are playing a blinder. It gives an insight into how people get drawn into those conspiracy fantasies by all those online and TV fantasists, who make similarly plausible and impassioned pitches for their particular brands of madness. Because often, I find myself wondering how could anyone believe any of this shit? But after watching some of these fantasists (and wrestling commentaries), I can begin to see how it is possible to make the utterly fake seem, even if only for a moment, plausible.
Whereas the wrestling commentators sell the onscreen action by getting more involved, more impassioned and excited as it goes on, more often than not turning to outrage as the blatant cheating of the heels pays off, the key for the conspiracy fantasists is to stay calm, to seem reasonable - but still get outraged when they reach the bits about how 'they' are duping and manipulating us all. I was watching one the other day - it was the way in which he kept presenting things as 'facts', without ever backing them up with any evidence. It was the matter-of-fact way he pronounced these utterly ridiculous utterances - 'Facebook has banned pictures of goats on their platform - following them with an resigned sort of shrug, not to emphasise the ridiculousness of what they have said, but rather how the actions of the alleged perpetrator of these non-existent acts fly in the face of good old common sense. It is this demeanour of faux authority which disguises the fact that what you are actually listening to are the demented ramblings of an idiot, rather than the sage pronouncements of a wise man. The question remains, of course, as to the extent to which they actually believe in the shit they are selling. I mean, those wrestling commentators know that it is all fake and that they are selling the illusion in the name of entertainment, but is it the same for the conspiracy fantasists? Surely they must know that they are peddling dangerous fantasies, otherwise why the need to employ all those techniques to make it seem sincere? Or are they just as deluded as the people they sell it to?
Having featured the 1960 novelisation of Konga (1961) the other day, I thought that I might as well take a look at another paperback novelisation of a British monster movie from publishers Monarch: Gorgo (1961). Like the Konga novelisation, this one appeared some months in advance of the movie's release, bearing a publication date of 1960, in order to help create anticipation for the forthcoming film. In contrast to the previous adaptation, this one eschews a cover painting bearing only a passing relationship with the film itself, for a tinted still from the movie, instead. Clearly, the publishers felt that Gorgo presented a more convincing giant monster than Konga's man in a tatty ape suit. Looking more closely at the cover, it is possible that it isn't a tinted still, (which would be odd, as the film was, as the cover boasts, in Technicolor), but rather taken from one of the climactic sequences where a half-demolished London is wreathed in red smoke.
I've never had the pleasure of reading this novelisation, (original editions are now expensively collectable), but according to those who have, it departs from the film's scenario at various points. Most notably, it adds in a female character as love interest for one of the main male protagonists, in order to provide a number of 'racy' sequences. These sorts of variations from the source material in movie novelisations isn't uncommon - the trashier the film, the greater the variations, as a rule. In part this was because the books existed in a trash paperback market, jostling for attention with all manner of garishly covered titles promising all manner of sleaze and also because they were sometimes derived from early versions of the script. This latter situation was particularly true of those novelisations released months in advance of the source films - they wouldn't have been completed, let alone given a final edit when the writer assigned to the novelisation started work on the book, meaning that they hadn't actually seen any part of the film. The credited author for 'Gorgo', Carson Bingham, was actually a pseudonym for prolific pulp writer Bruce Cassiday, who reused it for one of three Flash Gordon spin off novels he authored in the seventies.
It's like the scenario for one of those fifties horror films, isn't it? You know the sort of movie I mean, the ones where some unscrupulous capitalist factory owner is dumping dangerous chemicals into the swamp, or some unscrupulous military top brass are secretly dumping radioactive waste materials into the sea. The end result is always the same: horrible mutated monsters come lumbering out of the contaminated water and start murdering people, (for budgetary reasons, it was often a single horribly mutated monster doing all the killing). In then end some brave environmentalist or crazy old scientist working in a shack finally find a way of defeating the menace, even though everyone had initially ridiculed them. Well, that's what this new government legislation that allows water companies to dump unlimited amounts of raw effluent, (that's shit to you and me) into rivers and the sea reminds me of. At least in those movies they only had to deal with mutated jelly fish men (he looked like a dude with an inflated plastic bag over his head), or even bipedal octopuses chasing semi-clad young women around. What we could end up with are horrible shit monsters oozing their way out of our rivers and squelching after us. Can you imagine the horror of being chased by a huge bipedal turd?
It makes you think though, doesn't it? I mean, what's the point of having a toilet in your house? Just go and take a dump in the nearest river, pond or swimming pool - it surely can't be illegal if the water companies can do it. Just think of the savings you'd make on your water bills if you didn't have to keep flushing. Still, we might be able to glean some interesting statistics from all this raw sewage being discharged into rivers. For instance, we could use it as a measure to see if Brexit voters really are as full of shit as we think they are by measuring how much raw crap goes into the rivers in predominantly pro-leave voting areas and see if it is greater than in remain voting areas. Anyway, to get back to the potential shit monster threat - what can we do to defend ourselves in the event that they start crawling out of the rivers and chasing people up beaches? Could rolling huge toilet rolls at them be the best defence? Will we see squads of soldiers armed with giant toilet brushes being deployed on Britain's streets? Maybe it could be as simple as using high pressure sprays to wash them away. Although that could be fraught with peril, as the water used against them could itself be contaminated and cause further mutations. Which really doesn't bear thinking about.
On the face of it, Beyond the Door (1974) would seem to belong to that sub-genre of horror films that equates pregnancy with demonic possession. These films play on male fears of pregnant women - the misguided belief that the unborn child, even if theirs, represents some form of rival for their attention, changing the behaviour of their partner and even rendering them, eventually, uninterested and incapable of physical sexual relations. But the film simply isn't that straightforward, its confusing scenario and tangled script seemingly pulling in several directions at once. Which shouldn't be surprising. Although often dismissed as an Italian knock off of The Exorcist (1973), (indeed, Warner Brothers successfully sued the US distributors of the film for copyright infringement), in truth, Beyond the Door draws equal inspiration from Rosemary's Baby (1968), with both movies depicting an 'ordinary' woman being chosen to bear demonic off spring. Beyond the Door, however, confuses the issue somewhat by having its heroine having previously, before her marriage, involved in witchcraft and Satanism by her former partner. What it takes from The Exorcist is the juxtaposition of science and the spiritual, arguing that the former is incapable of dealing with the latter. Interestingly, though, it has no equivalent to either of the priest characters from the 1973 film, the closest being the husband's doctor friend -whose scientific approach, of course, fails - and the mysterious Dimitri, a Satanist who, it seems, is having his faith in the dark side tested. Also imported from The Exorcist are a gallery of supernatural accompaniments to the devilish pregnancy, including the vomiting of blood and bile, head spinning, levitation and poltergeist activity.
But if, superficially, Beyond the Door seems to be a film about its heroine, Jessica, being chosen as the receptacle for the Antichrist, (perhaps as a punishment for turning her back on Satan in the prologue, and the subsequent impact of this upon her apparently perfect life with her record executive husband and their two young children, in reality, it is Dimitri who is the central character. As the film unfolds, it becomes apparent that Dimitri, who is Jessica's former Satanist lover, is the one being tested by his master. Having, early in the film, died in a car accident, (his car is seen flying off of a cliff, into the sea), he has been granted several additional years of life by Satan, in exchange for his soul. Now, he is charged with seeing that Jessica's pregnancy goes to term, with the promise of immortality as a reward. Consequently, without revealing his true identity, Dimitri manages to convince Jessica's husband that only he can help with freeing her from demonic possession and thereby infiltrates the family home. Before that, the forces of evil have ensured Jessica's increased isolation not just through her violent rejection of her husband, but also through the removal of her children to a friend's house for safety after they are terrified by a bout of poltergeist activity in their bedroom.
This leaves the stage set for a final confrontation, not between the devil and the forces of the Catholic church, as in The Exorcist, but instead between the devil and one of his own acolytes, who has been wavering in his devotion to the cause. Dimitri, rather like Father Merrin in The Exorcist, finds himself taunted by the devil possessing Jessica, eventually being told that this whole demonic pregnancy has merely been for his own amusement, that Dimitri was never going to be given immortality, he had simply been a plaything for the devil and his time was now up. Dimitri vanishes -we're given a replay of that car crash - his soul consigned to Hell, the child is still born and Jessica is freed from her demonic possession. There follows a coda which seems to have confused some viewers of the film, with others simply dismissing it as a cheap attempt at a 'twist' ending. In reality, it is key to the whole movie, set up in the opening narration and referenced several more times throughout the film. In this coda, we see family life for Jessica apparently returned to normal, as she, her husband and the two children are seen enjoying a trip on the ferry across San Francisco Bay. The little boy unwraps a parcel, inside is a toy car that looks like the one driven off the cliff by Dimitri earlier in the film. Smiling, the boy throws the car overboard, so that it arcs toward the sea in a manner that recalls that followed by Dimitri's car as it plunges toward the water. He then turns toward the camera and his eyes seem to glow as he smiles.
Far from being cynically tacked on for shock value, or simply being an afterthought, this scene has been prefigured throughout the film. Since we first saw the boy, he has been carrying around that gift wrapped parcel, (it is wrapped in black paper), he even has it in bed with him when he suffers a an unexplained bout of illness prior to the poltergeist activity that afflicts him and his sister. In fact, he seems at the centre of this activity, even speaking to an invisible friend just beforehand. Most significant, though, is that aforementioned pre-title sequence where, against a black screen, the devil himself, voiced by what sounds like an uncredited Edmond Purdom, lamenting how he is so rarely portrayed in physical form in modern media, despite being ever present in our lives. He makes the point that, despite his presence, we wouldn't necessarily recognise him if we saw him - he could be that person sitting next to you in the theatre, right now. Directly prefiguring the film we are about to see, he references the little girl's reassurance to her brother, that 'what you can't see, can't hurt you', pointing out how wrong she is - evil isn't recognised until it is too late. Moreover, throughout the film the possessed Jessica asks various people 'Who are you?', (the film's original Italian title Chi Sei?). All of which leads to that final sequence - the devil's final joke is that Jessica has already given birth to the Antichrist, in the form of the little boy, who has, all along, bee the one creating the supernatural occurrences. Part of the game has been the devil's continuing challenging of the other protagonists to correctly identify who he really is.
All of which means that Beyond the Door builds toward what, in dramatic terms, is a somewhat underwhelming climax. Evil isn't defeated through the noble self sacrifice of a priest struggling with a crisis of faith,gambling that his soul will be saved from purgatory because his God will recognise that his committing a mortal sin (suicide) is in service of saving another soul from possession and will therefore be merciful. Instead, an acolyte of evil is condemned to Hell because his faith in evil wasn't sufficiently strong and motivated only by selfish interests, by a devil who is actually already triumphant. The whole confrontation between Dimitri and the devil seems inconsequential and the revelation that everything has been some kind of diabolical joke anti-climactic. Which, undoubtedly, is why, for many viewers, the coda with the boy felt cheap and flippant. But even before this underwhelming climax, the film has been less than satisfactory, with its various story strands pulling in different directions, leaving audiences unsure as to whether it is a film about Jessica's demonic possession and the birth of the Antichrist, or Dimitri's pact with the devil. The plot keeps taking characters off on detours in order to find out things which, although already known to the audience, are still treated as if they are major plot revelations. The multiple plot strands prevent the film maintaining any real pace or building any suspense. Some individual sequences are quite effective - the poltergeist attack and Jessica's sleep levitation, for instance - but never seem fully integrated into the plot as a whole.
Perhaps the plethora of credited and uncredited writers who worked on the script, not to mention having two credited directors (although Ovidio G Assonitis - credited as 'O Hellman' - has always maintained that he was the sole director and that Roberto Piazzoli was only a co-writer and cinematographer), contributed to the film's lack of focus and meandering feel. Nonetheless, the film does look good, with the nicely photographed and sunny San Francisco exteriors contrasting effectively with the dark subject matter, while the Rome studio-shot interiors feel 'peak seventies' in their decor. Some of the performances, too, aren't bad. Juliet Mills does a decent job as Jessica while Richard Johnson (who, in the seventies and eighties became something of a regular in Italian exploitation films), brings a suitable air of seediness and desperation to the role of Dimitri, a man who knows that his clock is ticking down and that he faces damnation when it does. Beyond the Door might not be anywhere near as good as any of its inspirations but, despite its many faults, is still worth seeing. For many years, though, it seemed difficult to see in English, despite the fact that it was actually a considerable box office success on its release. In recent years, though, it has enjoyed a revival, with DVD and Blu-Ray releases and, during the pandemic, a re-release to streaming services. This version seems to be the slightly longer UK release version, which originally carried the title The Devil Within Her. (Confusingly, this was used for the US release title of UK demonic baby movie I Don't Want to be Born (1976), a dire warning to women of the consequences of rejecting advances from dwarves). If nothing else, Beyond the Door is a stylish (in seventies terms) addition to the ranks of Satanic cinema.
(The film spawned two fake sequels: Beyond the Door II (1977) was a US retitling of Mario Bava's Shock, while Beyond the Door III (1989) was shot, under the title The Train, in Serbia and was produced by Ovidio G Assonitis. They are only thematically connected with the original, with both concerning possessions - by the dead in the first and the demonic possession of a train in the latter).
As anyone foolish enough to read this blog regularly will recall, I have an irrational fondness for the awful Herman Cohen produced giant ape movie Konga (1961). A shoestring King Kong knock off filmed at Merton Park studios, it features a fine performance of ripe ham from Michael Gough as the mad scientist responsible for the title monster, a very bad gorilla suit and some gloriously ludicrous dialogue. In common with most pictures of the time, regardless of budget, it had a paperback novelisation that actually preceded the film's release in order to drum up publicity. This is the cover of the US edition featuring, rather than a production still or publicity shot, some artwork that in no way reflects the the film itself. Maybe, the artist wasn't provided with a still, so had to work from the text or, more likely, had seen a still and realised that the film, especially the gorilla, was just too crap to use as a basis for his painting. Whatever the reason, there is no corresponding scene in the finished film and the two human characters depicted look nothing like the actors who played them. Moreover, that ape looks vaguely convincing.
The credited author, Dean Owen seems to have been a prolific author of paperback westerns in the fifties and sixties, often turning them out under pseudonyms, including Owen Dudley, Dudley Dean and Hodge Evans. In addition to the westerns, there were also a number of crime novels with raunchy titles and cover art, often attributed to the Hodge Evans name. Dean Owen does, however, have at least three science fiction/horror film tie in titles to his credit. In addition to Konga, he also authored the adaptation of the Danish monster movie Reptilicus (a film even worse than Konga) and the Ray Milland starring and directed post apocalyptic movie Panic in the Year Zero. The only edition of the latter tie-in novel I've seen a picture of was titled End of the World (the film's re-issue title, implying that the book might be a second edition) and featured a photo of Ray Milland from the film as cover art. Owens wasn't entirely done with film and TV ties ins, returning to them in the early seventies with an adaptation of the McMasters and the first entry in a series of original novels based on the Men From Shiloh TV series (as the last season of The Virginian was retitled), plus novelisations of TV series Gunsmoke and Hec Ramsey. He seems to have continued turning out paperback westerns into the eighties and nineties, with the last title attributed to any of his pen names coming in 2000.
Larry Cohen was undoubtedly one of the auteurs of the B-movie. A prolific writer and director across a wide range of genres, his films are always very distinctive: they might well have schlocky production values and deal with what seem like staple B-movie ideas, ranging from monsters and aliens to psychopaths and witchcraft, but they all have a sub-text. The It's Alive! series might, on the surface, be about killer babies, but it also an examination of preconceptions about the boundaries of parental love. The Stuff might often be derided as a movie about killer ice cream, but it also offers a critique of modern consumerism. God Told Me Told (1976) is perhaps his best and most audacious film, presenting a tale encompassing false messiahs, mass murder and alien abductions, structured as a police procedure, which is also an examination of the nature of religious faith and conceptions of good and evil. Central to the movie is the question of whether conventional religion could survive the revelation that God was irrefutably real, as such a revelation would remove the need for religious faith in a deity, which itself is the basis of all religion. In the case of God Told Me To, this deity takes the form of a long haired hippie type who wanders around New York shoe-less and whose face nobody can seem to describe with any degree of certainty. Unlike Jesus, who he seems to resemble, this entity is far from peace loving and instead is the only apparent link between a series of killings by ordinary citizens, where the perpetrators always tell investigators 'God told me too' when asked about their motivation.
Lead NYPD detective Lt Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) eventually identifies him as Bernard Philips and learns from Philips' mother that he was a virgin birth, the result of her abduction by aliens. Philips, Nicholas, learns is at the centre of a cult of wealthy and successful individuals, who believe they will be part of some kind of new order once he becomes ascendant. A confrontation with Philips results in Nicolas investigating his own past and finding that he too was a virgin birth, the result of an apparent alien abduction. A devout Catholic, Nicholas finds the basis of his own faith shaken by the implication that, throughout history, prophets and messiahs might, in fact, have been the result of alien, rather than divine intervention. Suspended by his superiors because of his apparently wild theories and the authorities' reluctance to accept that the killings might have any link to religion, because of the wider social ramifications, Nicholas eventually seeks a final confrontation with Philips, who reveals that he is a hermaphrodite, whose alien genes are dominant, who wants to mate with Nicholas (whose human genes are dominant) in order to create a new 'superior' species with which to populate the earth. When Nicholas refuses, Philips uses his psychic powers to destroy the building they are in, thereby killing himself. Nicholas survives, but is arrested for murder - he tells investigators 'God told me to' and is judged insane.
A film juggling such high concepts as these could easily end up feeling pretentious and overly intellectual. But with its location shooting on the streets of New York, cast of character actors rather than big name stars and police procedural feel, God Told Me To never loses its gritty B-movie feel, deftly weaving its theological musings into an enjoyably schlocky and fast moving tale of mass murders and demonic aliens. Although, in common with most of Cohen's films, God Told Me To was shot on a clearly limited budget, its set-pieces are handled extremely well. Particularly impressive are the scenes of a police officer under Philips' influence drawing his gun and opening fire during a St Patrick's Day parade. (The officer is played by Andy Kaufman in his first credited film role). Equally memorable is Nicholas' first confrontation with Philips, which takes place in the subterranean furnace room of a building, with Philips framed by flames as he starts to sow the seeds of doubt in Nicholas' mind with regard to both his faith and his personal origins. Philips is creepily played by Richard Lynch, one of the great B-movie villains of the seventies, in a more restrained performance than was usually required of him and is consequently highly effective as the softly spoken and golden haired messiah of evil. Tony Lo Bianco, a character actor often to be seen playing crime figures, also gives a highly effective performance as the increasing angst-ridden Nicholas, his career, life and belief system unraveling more and more the further he pursues his investigation.
Not surprisingly, God Told Me To was neither a box office nor critical success when released. New World later re-released it under the title Demon, no doubt in attempt to cash in on the success of other contemporary religiously themed horror films such as The Exorcist (1974) and The Omen (1976). Which, perhaps, was a misstep, as, in reality, it had little in common with such films, which tended to present a more reassuring and conventional view of religion and, in particular, the Catholic faith. The Exorcist, for instance, presents religious faith as ultimately triumphant against the devil and his minions while The Omen, while showing the Anti-Christ having evaded attempts to destroy him by the film's end, still presents a conventional interpretation of the devil as being evil and in opposition to a Christianity representing the forces of redemption. God Told Me To gave audiences no such reassuring dichotomy between good and evil, questioning whether religion has any basis in reality and presenting a Christ-like figure not motivated by conventional religious concepts of good and evil, suggesting that such things are merely a matter of perspectives rather than moral absolutes.
In recent years, however, the film's reputation has been reassessed and it is now more kindly regarded by critics and audiences, recognised as a key part of Cohen's canon of work. It is very typically a Larry Cohen film with all of his hallmarks - a somewhat rough and ready feel and slightly unfinished look. Indeed, it is probable that this, along with the film's clear B-movie ethos, presenting big ideas in a pulp format, might have put initial audiences off of it, particularly when compared to the slickness of superficially similar studio pictures like The Exorcist and The Omen. But seen today, it is its sheer quirkiness and Cohen's assured and audacious mixing and matching of elements from different genres which makes it so enjoyable. Cohen's clear determination not to dumb down his ideas, despite the lack of budget and schlocky format, in order to make some kind of slick, more marketable product, is admirable. Once a late night TV regular here in the UK (along with a number of other Cohen pictures), God Told Me To has sadly become another of those films which isn't that easy to see anymore, but it is well worth tracking down, providing a viewing experience that lingers in the mind long after it has ended.
Well, the events of last week certainly had the racists crawling out of the woodwork on social media, didn't they? There's nothing like the murder of a right-wing Tory MP by a nutter who happens to be black to get the bigoted brigade foaming at the mouth. You know the ones: their Twitter and Facebook profile pictures all suddenly change to that of the victim - who is their new 'hero' in the 'woke wars', despite the fact that they had never heard of them before thy were murdered, sorry, 'martyred' - and their names are followed by all those little Union Jacks and crosses of St George. What seems to have really enraged them this time is that the alleged killer was being described as a British citizen of 'Somali origin', with them all bellowing as to how could he be British if he was Somali? Well, obviously because he was born in the UK of parents originally from Somalia. Rather like another of the bigots' heroes, British born but of Ugandan Asian origin Home Secretary Priti Patel (and that doesn't sound like a 'British' name, now does it?).
Then his name was released, creating another 'storm' as it didn't sound British. The message here is clear: you can only truly be British if you are white and your parents were British and you are called something like Smith, or Brown. Not that any of these idiots actually have any conception of what, historically, 'Britishness' actually is - let's face it, by their criteria, if your name ends, say, -sen, then you are undoubtedly of Viking origin and therefore an interloper, descended from the bastards who intimidated our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. Not that the Anglo-Saxons weren't interlopers as well, oppressing the Romano-British who were already here - and so it goes on. You get the picture. By and large, nationality is simply an accident of birth. You ancestry, skin colour, religion and name don't make you any more or less British.
But this baying mob of ignoramuses was nowhere near as offensive as all the political opportunists who gleefully climbed on the bandwagon surrounding the murder of David Amess in order to pursue their own, long-standing, reactionary agendas. Under the guise of being 'respectful' to his fallen colleague's memory, for instance, we had Mark Francois (is that a 'British' name?) calling for a social media crackdown because of all the abuse directed at MPs there. Except that Amess' murder had sweet FA to do with social media - the suspect apparently has no social media presence whatsoever. (And yes, I am going to keep referring to him as a 'suspect' and 'alleged killer' until he is convicted - it is, after all a fundamental principle of British law that one is innocent until proven guilty. A principle which might well equally protect a Tory MP accused of rape and suspended during an investigation, from being publicly named. Interestingly, the suspension of this unnamed MP, who had all charges dropped, coincided with a period of silence from Mark Francois. Pure coincidence, obviously).
Francois, truly an idiot amongst idiots and easily the most repugnant and boorish of Brexiteer bufoons, though, does come in for a lot of stick on social media. Not that influences his attempts to censor the web, of course. But we shouldn't be surprised by this sort of rank hypocrisy, it flows from the top downward, with the Tory party being in thrall to a leader with no apparent sense of morality, let alone principles. It is embedded in our institutions and media. Just consider this: Amess' attacker was black and apparently Muslim, who might, or might not, have been radicalised, so the killing was immediately dubbed a 'terrorist incident'. Yet, when a Labour MP, Jo Cox, was murdered by a white man who was a member of extreme right wing groups, it was characterised as being the work of a mentally disturbed individual, rather than a politically motivated terror attack. Hypocrisy? Double standard? Undoubtedly so, yet the UK media happily and obediently go along with it, never questioning the disparity between the two cases.
To go back to my original rant - I think that it is important to keep reminding ourselves that those raving racists and bigots on social media aren't representative of the population as a whole. The majority of people don't engage with social media to any extent. Indeed, it also important to remember that these bastards aren't even typical of the majority of those who are active on social media. As I've noted before, in reality, it doesn't take that many actual users to form a mob on Twitter and the like. A small number of bigots can stir a lot of shit and make a lot of noise very quickly. More concerning are the mainstream media in this country which re overwhelmingly right wing and happily go along with the hypocrisy peddled by the government and ther lackeys. But I doubt that we'll see the likes of Mark Francois calling for curbs on the Daily Mail any time soon.i
Cast your mind back several months regular reader(s), to when I wrote about a low-rent semi-porno science fiction horror film called Breeders (1986). I mentioned then that it had, somewhat surprisingly, been remade in the UK in 1997. Well, I finally got around to watching said remake, under its US title of Deadly Instincts, over the weekend. The change of title when crossing the Atlantic was probably down to the fact that it is only a remake of the original in the loosest sense, changing setting, characters and narrative structure while retaining the basic concept underlying the original and the climactic wandering around in subterranean tunnels. While appearing to have a slightly larger budget than the original Breeders, it feels far less 'authentic'. The first film was shot on location in New York, but the remake relocates the action to Boston. Except that it isn't Boston, or anywhere else in the US, but rather the Isle of Man masquerading as Boston. Which it does very unconvincingly - it just never feels right, from the fake US accents of the mainly British cast to the unauthentic feeling settings which feel as generic as the US title. (While I'm far from being an expert on US law enforcement, I'm pretty sure that a regular Boston PD patrol car sent from a local precinct wouldn't be marked 'Highway Patrol', for instance, that being a separate division. A SWAT team certainly wouldn't be using such transport. But hey, that was probably the only Chevrolet Caprice in police colours available in the Isle of Man).
Instead of the 'police procedural' approach of the original, with a stereotypical NYPD detective doggedly looking into a series of sexual attacks on young women, with the only connection between the victims being that they were all virgins, Deadly Instincts sets its action at an al-girls college, with various of the students falling into trances and vanishing following a meteorite fall nearby. The detective character is relegated to a secondary role, with the focus now being on one of the lecturers, who is busy shagging one of his students, (played by Samantha Janus). In fact, for a large stretch of the film, it is this relationship which seems to be the script's focus, rather than the alien invasion. Which is symptomatic of the film's main problem: a complete lack of focus. Despite dominating the early part of the film, these two main characters effectively vanish from the narrative for the middle portion, where we instead follow a recently introduced and barely developed as characters, SWAT team as they wander around some tunnels below the college and get killed off one by one. As we barely know them, it is difficult to give a damn about their fates, (which we are clearly meant to), depriving these sequences of any suspense or shock value.
The existence of the supposed leads is remembered just in time for the film's final third as they descend into those tunnels for a confrontation with the alien. The lack of the investigative plot structure of the original means not only that Deadly Instincts is deprived of any narrative impetus, instead sending characters wandering around aimlessly, but that it lacks any mechanism for a smooth and progressive exposition of the plot as a series of reveals. Consequently, it has to insert a character - billed as 'Space Girl' - whose main function seems to be to explain the whole business of the alien's motivation for coming to Earth, (to use human women as hosts for breeding its young), in one burst of exposition late in the running time. Which, of course, makes it feel like an afterthought, which, in a way, it is, as Deadly Instincts clearly wants to be a low budget Alien rip off, (the middle section, with the SWAT team in the tunnels is clearly referencing Aliens), rather than a adult orientated schlock, like the original. Which, I'm guessing, is down to the film's backers, who were looking for a somewhat wider, less niche, audience for the finished product.
Subsequently, although the girl's college setting would seem to suggest that the audience is going to be in for plenty of sex and nudity, this aspect of the original is severely toned down. Sure, we get some brief locker room nudity and a couple of flashes of Janus' bare behind, but this is nothing compared to Breeders. Moreover, there are no sex scenes to speak of. Most surprisingly, for a film about aliens impregnating Earth girls, the mechanics of this are glossed over entirely. There is no equivalent to the original's gloriously sleazy scene of a group of the aliens; hypnotised victims bathing naked in extraterrestrial jism, for instance. The closest we get to that are scenes of the missing college girls in the creature's underground lair, encased in a gelatin-like substance. Everything that made the first Breeders unique and memorable is replaced by generic scenes and concepts in the remake - the victims are now controlled via crystal pendants fashioned from the alien's meteor/spaceship, rather than as a result of alien sexual molestation, they turn into a horde of homicidal zombies to provide an action scene, even alien abduction is shoe-horned into the new film. (The latter in the form of 'Space Girl', a n abductee dressed in what looks like a leather bondage outfit, who arrives with the alien, having been used for his race's breeding experiments).
Deadly Instincts does have its good points, however. The alien itself is surprisingly effective for a man-in-a-suit monster, being well designed and constructed, (although it still wasn't anywhere near as unpleasant as the rubber-suited and sticky aliens of the original, despite its technical superiority). Also, whereas the original's cast consisted mainly of adult movie performers, of limited ability and, not surprisingly, acted as if they were in a sex film, Deadly Instincts actually features some half decent actors. Unfortunately, none of them can make any headway with the script, struggling to establish any kind of sympathetic characterisations. Todd Jensen as the lecturer, for instance, comes over as sleazy rather than heroic, too interested in abusing his position of trust to get into his students' pants to notice that the college is being taken over by aliens. Samantha Janus, likewise, is unable to lift her character beyond stereotypical blonde chick who, without warning, turns ass-kicking action heroine before abruptly turning victim in need of rescue again. The ill fated Kamdaba Simmons, (she was murdered by an ex-boyfriend a few months after filming her role), is given little to work with in the under-written role of Space Girl, a character who, ultimately, exists only to serve as a vehicle for some clunky plot exposition. Oliver Tobias, looking as if he was still smarting from having lost out to Timothy Dalton for the role of James Bond some ten years earlier and wondering how he kept winding up in this sort of shit, plays one of those cops who is always jumping to the wrong conclusion.
The original Breeders, despite its obviously minuscule budget and relentless porno aesthetic, never outstayed its welcome and provided a lot of sleazy fun. By contrast, Deadly Instincts is a lot less fun, hamstrung by an apparent determination, despite its subject matter, not to offend and by a poorly structured script that undermines any attempts at building tension, let alone pace. At around ninety seven minutes, it is far too long for its material and drags badly for much of its running time. While the 1986 film was pretty much what you'd expect a science fiction B-movie directed by a gay porn specialist to be like, the 1997 remake is pretty much how you would expect a direct-to-video monster movie directed by a journeyman film maker to turn out, (writer/director Paul Matthews' other career highlights include the execrable Merlin: The Return (2000), a truly shite Rik Mayall vehicle). While far slicker looking than the original, it is just another generic alien monster movie, lacking the sheer vulgarity and pulpish vigour that made Breeders so enjoyable.
I made the mistake of sneaking a look at one of those crazy conspiracy sites the other day. Just to what bollocks this particular 'famous' conspiracy fruit cake was spouting nowadays. The answer was, of course, all the usual shite: satanic child abusers, peadophile celebrities, how the Nazis were misunderstood, the Jews are evil child abusers, blah, blah, blah. Although he seems to have been slowed down due to his site keep getting shut down by hosts. The 'new' aspect to his particular brand of utterly uninformed and factually deficient nonsense was the depressingly inevitable jumping on the anti-vaxxer bandwagon. That and what at first sight might seem a surprising animosity toward the Q Anon mob. Except that it shouldn't be surprising as the Q Anon movement represented a rival strand of US-based conspiracy theory, (actually, let's stop calling them 'theories', it implies some kind of parity with actual scientific theories, which are evidence-based and testable - 'fantasies' is a better description), with a massive fan base, from which this character was effectively excluded. He wasn't and never would be part of their pantheon of 'gurus'. So, obviously, they have to be dismissed as a bunch of nutters who have been led astray by false conspiracy gurus, (who are undoubtedly reality in the pay of 'them', that vague enemy that manipulates the media and establishment institutions for equally vague, but definitely nefarious, purposes).
But to get back to his new anti-vaxxer allegiance, this is also utterly predictable. After all, the anti-Covid vaccines have been developed by conventional science which, as all good conspiracy fantasists know, is completely false. If you are one of these nutters, then you really can't afford to be in favour of vaccines if you want to keep your whack job credibility. What's really depressing, though, is looking at the comments from readers of this crackpot's blog, where they double down on the anti-science madness. Apparently the vaccine is only for mugs - it can't possibly work because Covid itself is fake, obviously. None of them have had it, or if they have, it was no worse than a cold. Oh, and does anybody actually know anyone who has died from it? It's all fake! One again, I find myself thinking those uncharitable thoughts that I'm glad these arseholes won't get vaccinated because then, if we're lucky, they'll contract some new variant and die, thereby removing their madness from the gene pool. Except, of course, that they probably have had the vaccine, but can't own up to it among their loony friends. Not only is hypocrisy a characteristic of conspiracy fantasists but so is a lack of logic. Anyway, the long and the short of it all is that I really need to stay away from these sites. Their parades of ignorace, worse than that, smug self-satisfied ignorance, just does my head in.
Another popular sub genre of men's magazines was that dealing with adventures in the wild and, most specifically, the hunting of ferocious wild animals in inhospitable environments. It's important to put these magazines into context - back in the fifties and sixties the conservation movement was in its infancy, going on safari to hunt big game in places like Africa was considered a legitimate 'sport'. (Albeit one generally enjoyed only by the wealthy). Big game hunters were seen still as heroic figures, taking on ferocious beats like Lions and Tigers single handed, (because they had their gun in the other hand). It was all somehow justified on the grounds that it constituted a necessary cull of predators to protect the eco-system from imbalance. Either that, or the big cats were rogue maneaters and therefore deserved to be shot. Distasteful though the subject matter might seem to contemporary eyes, it did make for some vivid cover art, as seen in this August 1955 edition of Safari (Combined with Animal Life).
Being a pedant, I have to question whether that is an African elephant there being attacked by tigers which, of course, are indigenous to India? The story straplines on the cover emphasise the variety of environments the safaris in question cover: Alaska, Africa and underwater. This was an era before long-distance travel to far away, seemingly exotic locales was commonplace (unless you were rich), so this, along with many similar adventure magazines, catered to readers' travel fantasies, presenting them with exotic and apparently exictement filled vistas that seemed beyond their reach in reality. Contemporary cinemas were likewise still filled with jungle-based tales of adventure, featuring big game hunters pitting themselves against hostile landscapes and wildlife. Even as popular sentiment toward big game hunting began to change, such movies persisted with the heroes now presented as being engaged in heroically capturing exotic animals for zoos, so as to conserve them, rather than shooting them, (John Ford's Hatari! comes to mind here). Seen today, magazines like Safari offer a fascinating window into a past era, where attitudes toward conservation, the environment and animal welfare were very different. But that's the past for you - a different country.
Lately, I've been contemplating the world of the TV spin-off movie - those theatrical features based on popular TV series, made during the series' TV run. Here in the UK, these are most to familiar to us in the form of the various film versions of TV sitcoms that appeared during the seventies: the On The Buses trilogy, Dad's Army and Bless This House, spring to mind. By and large, they retained the TV casts and writers, but featured bigger budgets, better production values and location filming, often 'opening up' the usually studio-bound action of their source material. The approach taken by their makers varied considerably - some, like Dad's Army and the two Steptoe and Son movies, favoured basing their scripts closely on broadcast TV episodes, weaving three or four of them into a ninety minute story with an overarching plot. Others, most notably the On The Buses spin offs and Bless This House, came up with more or less original scripts, tailor made for the movie format, often taking some liberties with their source material. The On The Buses films, for instance, have their own continuity, separate from but parallel with that of the TV series and eventually take the main characters away from their original environments. The Bless This House movie even goes so far as altering and recasting some regular characters while introducing new antagonists for the Abbot family. Many of these films did very well at the box office in the seventies. They were an easy sell, featuring already familiar characters and situations, catering to audiences wanting to see more of their favourite characters but on a bigger canvas and, for many still without colour TV, in colour.
Sitcoms seemed ideally suited for the transition to the big screen - their episodes tended to be self-contained and their 'situations' fixed and familiar, requiring little exposition or need to establish characters. (Although, in the seventies, it wasn't only UK sitcoms that were adapted into movies - Man at the Top, a TV series derived from John Braine's novel 'Room at the Top', was adapted into a feature film, with its TV cast, as was cop drama The Sweeney, which spawned two movie versions while the series was still on the air). Soap operas, though, would seem to be highly unsuitable for the onscreen treatment, with their complex, ongoing story lines and continuing characters, all with complex histories. Yet, there have been attempts to produce film spin offs of soaps. Back in the seventies, for instance, there was a film adaptation of the adult-themed Australian TV soap Number Sixty Nine, which upped the raunchiness and proved to be a local box office draw. Better known, perhaps, are the feature film versions of the US day time Gothic supernatural soap Dark Shadows. The first of these - House of Dark Shadows (1970) - was released during the series TV run and proved highly popular at the US box office, (even as the concurrently running TV series' ratings faltered).
Seen today, in isolation from the TV series, it seems a curious beast. (I was recently able to see it via a streaming service). On the one hand, it makes a good stab at presenting a stand alone movie, requiring no prior knowledge of the series, on the other, its meandering plot and plethora of characters give it an increasingly soapy feel. The source TV series, while centering on the wealthy Collins family, ran through a number of relatively discreet (albeit linked) plot arcs, which encompassed a variety of Gothic horror tropes, including vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts and reincarnation, with frequent trips back in time to meet the characters' ancestors (played by the same actors) and even parallel time lines. The film, sensibly, chooses to focus on the best known and most popular story line - that of the vampire Barnabas Collins, which itself echoed much of the plot of Bram Stoker's Dracula. While on TV Barnabas eventually became a sympathetic character and pretty much the series lead, here he is presented in his original, villainous guise, chronicling his arrival in the lives of the present-day Collins family and his lust for the reincarnation of his lost love. The series; original cast are all present but, freed from the constraints of ongoing story lines, writer/director Dan Curtis takes the opportunity to kill many of them off, emphasising the film's status as an independent entity from the series.
House of Dark Shadows further establishes its cinematic pedigree by bringing far more explicit gore to the screen, not to mention more action, than the TV series could. Nevertheless, the script's episodic origins are betrayed by its multiplying sub-plots, which, rather than being established or prefigured early on and then slowly developed, keep springing up every time the main plot starts to flag. Consequently, the film has distinct phases, starting with Barnabas' arrival, the Lucy Westenra-like vampirisation of the Collins' daughter and her subsequent staking, his pursuit of his lost love, his quest for a cure for his affliction and the final hunting down of Barnabas by a disparate group of vampire hunters, being the main ones. All of which simply succeeds in breaking u the narrative flow, giving the film a halting feel, as it moves through its phases. Along the line, however, there is still much to enjoy: Jonathan Frid's performance as Barnabas, some excellent cinematography and some striking ideas, including vampire-hunting cops wielding crucifixes. Indeed, along with the TV series, House of Dark Shadows represents one of the first serious attempts to relocate the traditional Gothic vampire in the modern world, predating (just) efforts such as the Count Yorga films and Hammer's Dracula AD 1972 and Satanic Rites of Dracula. The success of the film resulted in a sequel in the form of Night of Dark Shadows.
This was originally intended to be a direct sequel, featuring a resurrected Barnabas. But, with the TV series having ended, Jonathan Frid decided that he'd had enough of Barnabas, so the new film instead built a stand alone story based on another popular story line, that of Quentin Collins, a reincarnated witch, (which owed something to H P Lovecraft's 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward'). In the spirit of the TV series having the main cast play multiple characters, the film features many of the regulars, but in new roles. Night of Dark Shadows proved somewhat less successful than its predecessor, putting an end to the spin offs (if one doesn't count the more recent Tim Burton adaptation). While House of Dark Shadows isn't a bad film, as intimated earlier, it makes for an odd watch nowadays, particularly here in the UK, where the source TV soap was never shown. Although, by and large, it succeeds in standing on its own merits as a movie, the casual viewer can't help but feel that they are missing something - as with all TV adaptations, there is the feeling that you are supposed to know more about these characters than is presented in the film. Many plot twists, such as the deaths of various characters, are clearly meant to feel more shocking and surprising than they do to those of us who weren't used to seeing these characters on a daily basis. Ultimately, though, it is worth watching, even if you know nothing of its origins. Somewhat overlong, it nonetheless does represent a pretty good attempt to contemporise the Gothic vampire story - certainly it does it better than either of the aforementioned Hammer efforts.
Well, I thought that we might as well complete the set, so here we have the trailer for the last installment in Universal's Mummy series. (if you don't count Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy - which I don't - that is). The Mummy's Curse (1944) picks up where the previous entry, The Mummy's Ghost (1944) left off. Except, that the swamp that Kharis and the reincarnated Princess Ananka sank into in that film appears to have drifted South from New England to the Louisiana Bayou and some twenty years have apparently passed since that film's events. Which means, of course, that it must be taking place in the future (relative to the time of the film's production). A future that looks a lot like 1944, though. In this future, developers are trying to drain that swamp, despite local fears that it is haunted by the ghosts of the mummy and his princess. Inevitably, Kharis gets dug up and wanders off, representatives of the Priesthood of Arkam turn up with Tana leaves to try and bring him under their control and recover the Princess. She also gets dug up and transforms into a young woman, albeit a different actress than in the previous film.
The usual shenanigans ensue, as Kharis rampages around strangling various locals in his search for the Princess, the priests fall out when one of them gets the hots for the revived Ananka and Kharis takes a dim of view of it all. It climaxes with Kharis, quite literally, bringing the roof down on himself and the surviving priest. The hero and heroine, meanwhile, find Ananka returned to her mummified state. Which makes no sense at all: her mummified body had actually been destroyed in Mummy's Ghost, her soul transferring to the body of her American college girl reincarnation - who was subsequently carried into the swamp by Kharis. So her sudden mummification makes no more sense than the priests using Tana leaves to keep her alive. The Mummy's Curse is an incredibly slow moving film, despite only running just over an hour, (even then it has to pad out this running time with flashbacks consisting of stock footage from The Mummy and The Mummy's Hand). Unlike its predecessors, it doesn't seem to have inspired any of the plot elements in Hammer's 1959 remake of The Mummy. Which isn't really surprising as it is itself little more than an uinspired rehash of elements from the previous entries in the series. The fact is that by this time the series had well and truly run out of steam. Whereas Universal's other horror properties extended their lives by combining into monster rallies like House of Frankenstein, (featuring Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and Wolfman), Kharis steadfastly refused to play well with others. (There had been an attempt to write him into the aforementioned monster mash of a movie, but this was abandoned early on - presumably his Egyptian origins were felt to jar too much with the Gothic middle European backgrounds of the other monsters).
The latest rolling stock acquisition for the railway: a 25 ton ex-SR 'Queen Mary' brake van. These were built in the thirties, with some lasting until at least the eighties. Indeed, I can recall seeing them in departmental use toward the end of their lives, working on track maintenance trains, (one or two could often be seen in the sidings as you entered Bristol from Bath, along with a lot of other, mainly condemned, freight rolling stock). Unlike most other brake vans, these tended not to wander too far from ex-SR metals during their BR lives - as can be seen, this one is marked 'Not for Common Use', indicating that it shouldn't leave the region. In reality, some had even more specific markings, adding 'For Use Only Between Southampton Docks and Nine Elms'. Which was hardly surprising, as their main use was on fast fitted freight trains - hence the fact that they were mounted on coach bogies rather than the four wheeled chassis normally found under brake vans.
I've long wanted a model of one of these distinctively Southern vehicles, but the Bachmann model, even second hand, always seemed to go for ridiculously high prices. Recently, however, I found no less than three of them on eBay at much more reasonable prices. One was in departmental livery, another in Network South East livery, putting both of them outside of my period of modelling. Although I don't mind the odd anachronism on my layout, this third one in appropriate BR livery turned up. Whereas the other two were 'Buy it Now' items, this one was an auction, but with a low starting price. Incredibly, (it seemed to me), although the auction was ending soon, nobody had bid on it - so I bid the asking price and won it at a lower price (including postage) than either of the 'Buy it Now' alternatives. It seems that you can still, sometimes, get a bargain on eBay. As received, it is actually in pretty good condition. Not perfect, but more than acceptable. It even came in its original box. At some point I might even be able to post some video of it in action.
A French Giallo, well, sort of, Knife Under the Throat (1986) - Le Couteau Sous la Gorge to give the film its original title - was the last film of director Claude Mulot, who died the following year, aged 44, in a drowning accident. A director and writer, Mulot seems to have focused mainly on adult films, with occasional forays into genres such as horror, science fiction, comedy and thrillers, but always with an erotic twist. Indeed, erotica provides the background for Knife Under the Throat, as its heroine is a model for erotic photo shoots, who finds herself being stalked by a mysterious killer, who is busy murdering the rest of her group. Complicating matters is the fact that Catherine (Florence Guerin) has a reputation as a fantasist - the film opens with her, semi-naked, running into a police station to claim she has been sexually assaulted, a claim treated by the police with contempt and derision. Consequently, her attempts to report her harassment via obscene phone calls are initially dismissed by both the police and her friends, with only new neighbour Nicolas (Alexandre Sterling) being sympathetic. The police reaction to Catherine, however, seems to be guided as much by her past patterns of behaviour, (which might, or might not, be the result of an actual past trauma - nobody seems to care enough to find out), as by simple misogyny. Indeed, their dismissive attitude is part of a pattern of misogyny which underpins the film's plot, with most of the male characters seemingly viewing women simply as sexual objects rather than human beings.
The models' regular photographer epitomises these attitudes, with his increasingly cruel treatment of them during his photo shoots - which variously use graveyards and junk yards as backdrops. At one point he forces Catherine to allow herself to have her exposed breast groped by a down and out as part of a shoot. Their exploitation is condoned and encouraged by their agent, Valerie (Brigitte Lahai) who, like all the other 'respectable' characters in the film see the models as little better than prostitutes, clearly thinking that they 'deserve' the sexual exploitation and violence they endure. Also key to the plot is he question as to whether the sort of soft core pornography the characters are involved in actually encourages violence against women, or whether it is merely used as a 'justification' for violence by disturbed men motivated by misogyny. Early on, the caretaker at a graveyard, who has been bribed to allow a shoot to take place there, objects to the nature of the shoot, claiming that he has been deceived and denouncing proceedings as being immoral. Later, after poring over published photos from the shoot, he follows and strangles to death a random woman, before hurling himself in front of an oncoming truck. While this sequence doesn't appear to be followed up immediately, it becomes pertinent to the film's denouement, when the killer is revealed to be caretaker's child, who blames the 'immorality' of the models and their associates for their father's descent into homicidal madness and subsequent suicide.
A Knife Under the Throat falls into that small category of exploitation films which is itself about the business of exploitation. In this case, the exploitation of women by men (and some women who collaborate in this exploitation), both as sexual objects and to provide justification for the misogyny they disguise as morality. The genre, it argues, might well exploit the objectification of women and the accompanying sexual violence, but as such, it doesn't cause or encourage it, it merely reflects what already exists in wider society. Even without pornography, women would be brutalised, (the caretaker's victim, significantly, isn't an erotic model or 'provocatively dressed, but simply an ordinary woman who simply has the misfortune to catch his gaze). But, of course, being an exploitation film, it wants to have its cake and eat, presenting its audience with plenty of titillating female nudity and gory murders and violence even as it critiques the whole concept of exploitation. (One can't help but speculate that perhaps Mulot was trying to justify his previous output in some way with this film, trying to place it in a wider context).
As noted at the outset, this only 'sort of' a French Giallo. Certainly it encompasses many of the themes of the Italian genre but it also represents a clash of styles. While there are plenty of the staple Giallo tropes on display - killer POV shots as victims are murdered, black gloved killer, a plethora of suspects presented as red herrings (is the killer the creepy photographer, the scar faced housekeeper, nice neighbour Nicolas or Catherine's violent drug addict ex boyfriend?), it isn't shot in the colourful style typical of the Italian product, instead adopting the dour, downbeat look of the French policier. (The dark and downbeat atmosphere created by Mulot, with a muted Paris seemingly drained of all colour, reminded me somewhat of the look of Jean-Pierre Melville's doom-laden, dark and autumnal 1970 policierLe Cercle Rouge). Taking place against the backdrop of a wintry, grimy looking Paris, rather than a sunny Rome or Milan, there is nothing glamourous about the world presented by A Knife Under the Throat. The main characters might well be 'glamour' models, but the milieu they operate in is anything but, characterised by violence, sleaze and freezing cold early morning shoots. Clocking in at around eighty minutes, A Knife Under the Throat proved to be a surprisingly effective and sleazy little thriller. Certainly not on a par with the best Italian Giallo movies, but pretty good on its own terms. Mulot's very effective direction and handling of his subject matter has left me sufficiently intrigued to try and track down some of his other films, (which seem to remain relatively obscure in the English speaking world), to see whether this was an aberration, both thematically and stylistically.
A pretty substantial ghost,at that,in the shape of Lon Chaney Jr, returning from The Mummy's Tomb. Obviously, The Mummy's Ghost doesn't deliver on its title in the literal sense: there are no spectral bandaged Egyptians here, but rather a continuation of the Kharis' adventures from the previous installment. Having disposed of the defilers of his beloved Princess Ananka's tomb last time out, this time he's seeking her reincarnation. Who, conveniently, is a student in the self same New England town where he rampaged last time. The town which also contains the museum displaying the Princess' mummy. George Zucco returns as the High Priest, (now of Arkham rather than Karnak, for some reason), anointing a new successor in the person of John Carradine (in a fez), following the failure of his predecessor, Turhan Bey, in Tomb, and sends him off to the US to bring Kharis and the Princess back. Inevitably, a love triangle emerges, after Carradine falls for the Princess' reincarnation, which doesn't please his other suitor, Kharis, who resolves the situation by throwing his mentor out of a window.
While a lot of Mummy's Ghost feels familiar, rehashing elements from previous entries in the series, surprisingly, it does have a few original touches. Most notably, it doesn't come to the neat and happy conclusion one might expect: the Princess' reincarnation isn't rescued from Kharis' clutches at the end and reunited with her non-mummified and non-fanatical high priest student boyfriend. Instead, she sinks into the swamp with Kharis after he carries her off. Moreover, as she is carried off, her face ages to resemble that of the mummified Ananka. (While this doesn't really make much sense, it does provide some striking imagery). With B-movie veteran Reginald LeBorg directing, The Mummy's Ghost, like its predecessors, clocks in at around an hour of running time, although it feels longer. Like The Mummy's Tomb, it would influence the 1959 Hammer version of The Mummy - both films climaxing with Kharis being chased by a mob into a swamp and sinking into the mud. (Although in the Hammer version, the girl doesn't go down with the mummy, instead being rescued at the last minute. Also, the UK mob make sure the bandaged menace won't come back by blasting him to bits with shotguns).
Is the end of the world upon us? You might think so, judging by the online furore caused by the current global outages of Facebook and Whats App. As someone who doesn't have much time for social media, this sort of thing doesn't really effect me,but I'm always fascinated by the frenzied reactions in engenders in those who do. Most of these reactions, of course, are expressed via the social media sites that stay up, in this case, mainly Twitter. With everything else going on right now - yet more revelations about the shady financial dealings of the wealthy and powerful, fuel shortages, empty supermarket shelves, police scandals, all in the UK alone - it is somewhat disconcerting to see Facebook outages apparently dominating Twitter. If the trending hashtags are to be believed, that is. I learned a long time ago, though, that it is possible to get just about anything trending on Twitter, even if only for a short period, if a group of committed users simply keep tweeting their chosen hashtag. It doesn't even have to be big group, just so long as you can mobilise them - once it gets a bit of traction, all manner of opportunists and bots will jump on the bandwagon and keep it going for a while longer. At which point those behind getting the hashtag going start crowing about how they've struck a blow for whatever 'cause' they think they are pursuing, or against whichever 'institution' they think they can brig down.
The trouble is that hashtags simply have no impact in the real world. If they did, then by now the Tory government would have fallen, various ministers would be facing criminal charges and Labour would have won a landslide victory under Jeremy Corbyn. Except that none of these things happened because the hashtags associated with them were never going to influence the majority of people who could make such changes, because they aren't on Twitter and even if they are, they pay no attention to hashtags. Just as the people who get these things trending aren't really representative of Twitter users as a whole, so Twitter users as a whole aren't representative of the general population. They are a tiny minority. The problem is that the activists on Twitter just don't seem to grasp this, seemingly thinking that where they lead, the rest of the world follows. But it doesn't. They waste their energies there, thinking that they are making a difference to the world by getting a hashtag trending instead of actually going out where it matters and trying to get their message across. On Twitter they are, by and large, simply preaching to the converted as those perpetuating a hashtag are those already sympathetic rather than those converted to the cause. Which, undoubtedly, is why Corbynism failed - it was an entirely self-regarding, inward looking political creed that seemingly couldn't understand the need to persuade others over to your viewpoint, instead hectoring, brow-beating, patronising and attempting to shame those who even only mildly disagreed with them. All of which is yet another reason that I have little time for social media: it is a fly trap that draws in people and encourages them to believe that they have a 'voice' and are being 'influential' when, in reality, they are simply talking to themselves all the time.
Twice in twenty four hours I've experienced the frustration of coming into a film part way through on a streaming channel that has no listed schedule (that I can find, anyway) and having missed the opening titles. Consequently, I had no idea what I was watching but kept watching regardless, in the hope that I could figure out what was going on and what film I'm watching. Usually, the key to identifying a film is recognising one or more of the actors, making it possible to look up their filmography on something like IMDB and by a process of trial and error, work out which of their movies you are watching. Unfortunately, in the case of the first of the two films in question - which was playing on the streaming version of ConTV - it was one of those very low-budget b-pictures featuring a no name cast of (judging by the performances) semi-professionals. So plan B came into play: using search terms based on what I was seeing on screen to try and find out via a search engine what the film was. This can be surprisingly effective, as I've identified many films that I came in part way through in this way. This time, though, it drew a blank. The film looked like it was shot in the sixties (judging by the fashions, cars and the colour quality), possibly in Florida and involved a group of archeologists discovering some kind of living mummy which, when revived, turned out to be some kind of hairy flesh eating monster. (Before you say it, no, it wasn't Face of the Screaming Werewolf, a feature cobbled together from a pair of unrelated Mexican movies and some new American footage).
No combination of these elements yielded anything. Indeed, trying any kind of search involving the words 'Mummy' and 'Florida' just kept turning up results for a roller coaster ride at Universal's theme park. I did, however discover that there had been a faux Laurel and Hardy movie made in, I think the eighties, featuring lookalike actors, in which they battle a mummy in Florida. You learn something new everyday. I eventually had to concede defeat on identifying this film, even the end titles didn't help, simply featuring the words 'The End' with no date or studio information. The second film, which I stumbled into on Fright Flix this afternoon turned out to be far more straight forward to identify: the first actor I saw was Klaus Kinski, speaking Italian and coughing up blood (just an average day for him, I guess). Despite the late Klaus having made over 130 films, the fact that it was Italian, clearly made in the early seventies and, judging by the character names, set in Russia, made it relatively easy to identify it as The Hand That Feeds the Dead from 1974. As it turned out, I'd wandered in close to the end, so was confronted by a flurry of action involving decomposing walking corpses, secret basement laboratories and the inevitable climactic fire. So, I can rest easy, knowing what I'd just watched. But that other film still bugs me - it is like an itch I can't scratch. Knowing what I'm watching is something of an obsession with me. This one is particularly frustrating as, despite some resemblances to those 'Aztec Mummy' films, this clearly wasn't a Mexican production, but a US one - but a B-movie whose elements are totally unfamiliar to me. Which is unusual. But I'll get these eventually - the next strategy will be to start investigating the output of directors who specialised in Florida shot B-movies during the sixties...
