Here we are again, the fag end of another year. As ever, I'll issue my usual warnings about New Year resolutions - just don't. You'll never keep them and just end up feeling a failure. If you really want to do something or change something, just do it, regardless of the time of year. By setting yourself this arbitrary start date, you are just setting yourself up for failure. New Year is a terrible time to be starting anything - it's winter, it's cold, wet and miserable, you never feel motivated to do anything, plus, just trying to get back into normal routines after Christmas is challenge enough, without trying to embark on some potentially life changing venture. So, once again, I won't be making any New Year's resolutions. In fact, I'm making no firm plans at all for 2022. Having finally freed myself from the job that was blighting my life during 2021, (freed myself to do bugger all), I'm in no hurry to shackle myself to any rigid routines or restrictive employment regimes. I will, however, endeavour to get out of bed more and be more active and creative. (That's not a resolution, by the way, as I reserve the right to continue to do bugger all).
Anyway, I'll be seeing in the New Year in my usual fashion: with some beer and a big plate of sausage rolls. For a second year running, of course, Covid is forcing most people to emulate my celebrations by staying in. Trust me, it's a far more satisfying way of celebrating the New Year - you don't have to put up with all those pub bores, you don't have to sing 'Auld Lang Sang', you can go to bed at a reasonable hour and you don't get up with a hangover next morning. I speak from the experience of, when younger, having spent many a New Year's Eve in the pub. As the years went by, I realised that I really wasn't enjoying the experience of being stuck in a small venue so packed with sweaty bodies that you couldn't sit down, let alone get to the bar for a drink. For someone as anti-social as me, it really was close to being Hell. The fact is that I enjoy being on my own, so it just seemed logical to spend New Year's Eve that way. Damn it, I'm the best company I know! But, levity aside, it just remains to say 'Happy New Year' - I'll see everyone next year.
Something I haven't done in a while - a home movie. This has been a long time in the making: the footage was shot more than five years ago and, for some reason, I never got around to editing it into a film. Having finally remembered its existence and having located the thumb drive it was stored on, the challenge was to try and shape it into something vaguely coherent. When I shoot stuff, I generally have an idea of how I intend the finished product to look. The problem here was, that at a distance of five plus years, I had no clear recollection of my original intentions for the footage. So, I had to try and make sense of it all and put it together in some more or less logical order. The film captures a day I spent at Milford on Sea in early June 2015, highlighting various aspects of the seaside village. The opening sequences highlight the seafront, which, behind the extensive car parks, a mix of modern and traditional buildings. The village had been hit hard by violent storms early in the year, as evidenced by the wrecked beach huts, which had had their roofs torn off by powerful gales sweeping inshore. (They've since been torn down completely and replaced). The restaurant, which can be seen in the distance, beyond the excavator, was also seriously damaged. We then move on to the village centre, arranged around a green and featuring various tea shops and other tourist attractions, before finally moving westward, in the direction of Barton-on-Sea, to look at the more modern blocks of flats that sit back from Hordle cliff car park. (These have some pretty magnificent views out to sea).
Despite not recalling how the film was originally meant to go together, I actually well remember the day itself. It was a Friday that I'd managed to get off work. It was a stroke of luck - I'd been trying to get a day off to go to the coast for a while, but couldn't get any cover, (I was 'on call' at the time, with no back up), then, out of the blue, a colleague needed to take a weekday off and I agreed to to cover for them in exchange for them covering the Friday for me. I was feeling exhausted at the time,providing sick cover for another colleague (which is why I had no cover), dealing with an inept line manager and more senior management who, despite the fact that I had been covering for various sick colleagues for months, as well as doing my own job, were giving me a very shitty time. So, I took the day off and headed for the sea. Milford on Sea is somewhere I often wind up. Not only does it feature a beach, but it can be reached via the main roads through the New Forest and you can have a pleasant drive home by the scenic route, via Barton-on-Sea, New Milton and the Forest. It has a certain significance for me as, the first time I remember visiting it as an adult was following a family bereavement when, after the funeral, I needed to clear my head and the tranquility of the sea. So I drove south and eventually wound up in Milford. It's a great place to sit and watch the sea - I end up going there for this purpose at least once a year. Despite the fact that it is overcast, windy and practically deserted, this was the start of the summer season for Milford on Sea. By August - when I'm usually there - it is far busier, not to mention sunnier. Anyway, it was a great day off, providing a real relief from all the crap I was enduring at work.
There are a couple more of these unedited films on the thumb drive, neither quite as old as the footage that made up this one, though. At some point, I'll get around to trying to edit them into more or less coherent films and post the here.
I've reached the stage where I can't take any more tinsel covered seasonal specials on the regular TV channels, so I've resorted to watching repeats of stuff like Jonathan Creek on Drama. Don't get me wrong - I'm not fed up with Christmas, (that peculiarly English condition whereby we complain about having a midwinter break from work and routines), just the relentless march of Christmas editions of regular TV shows that you know were filmed back in July and which differentiate themselves from regular episodes simply by sticking a Christmas tree in the corner of the set. Or, if they are a soap opera, even more miserable plot lines than usual, (plus a Christmas tree in the corner of every set). You know, it is bloody depressing the way in which soap characters never have a happy Christmas, how it is always ruined in some catastrophic way. OK, I know that in real life many people have disastrous Christmases for a variety of reasons, but not the same people, every bloody year.
That's the problem with Christmas TV: it has a tendency to portray Christmas as being either of two extremes - the miserable disaster or some sparkly paradise where dreams come true. In reality, for most of us, it lies somewhere in between. I remember, as a young child, being vaguely frustrated that our frequently fractious family Christmases were nothing like the apparently idyllic ones portrayed on children's TV, (while at the same time feeling relieved that weren't as miserable as the ones shown in adult dramas). The media sets expectations for Christmas far too high, meaning that the people are inevitably disappointed when the reality falls short. Conversely, while it might be disappointing, the Christmas experience is rarely as miserable as portrayed in the soaps. But that's how I learned to start enjoying Christmas: I lowered my expectations and found a way of celebrating the season that suited me. I don't expect it to be a life-changing experience, nor do I expect it to be utterly miserable. I see it now as a welcome, well-lit, intermission in the otherwise unrelenting cold and darkness of the winter. A brief break from the usual routines. But not necessarily one covered in tinsel, (although I do have a Christmas tree in the corner of the room).
So, how's the long Christmas weekend going? Apparently this is Monday. Having had what felt like two consecutive Sundays, (although one was actually a Saturday flying under false colours), I've been feeling somewhat disorientated. Mind you, today being a bank holiday made it feel like yet another Sunday - and there's another bank holiday tomorrow. It's all very confusing. Of course, being a man of leisure, all these public holidays should make no difference to me, but there's no doubt that they do feel different. Not only have we had forty eight hours when just about everywhere stayed closed, today most people were still off work and a lot of shops stayed closed or, at the very least, closed early. I only know about the situation with the shops as I actually ventured out of the house today, for the first time in two days. Ostensibly it was to buy a newspaper, but I also had to pick up some more Lemsip, (or rather whatever cheaper 'own brand' equivalent I could find), to help combat the cold I've been nursing since Christmas Eve. I thought that I had seen the worst of it off through the power of alcohol, but I had a largely sleepless night last night thanks to the sudden appearance of some bad nasal congestion. (Not to mention indigestion, but that was entirely my own fault - far too many sausage rolls, mince pies and the like).
If nothing else, the sleepless night gave a chance to read through a good part of my Christmas present to myself: a 1983 edition of 'How To Go Railway Modelling' by Norman Simmons. This was originally published back in the early seventies and, for many years, was something of a 'bible' for anyone interested in building a model railway. It was revised and updated many times over the years. I remember borrowing copies of the early editions from my local library when I was a kid - it was very influential on my early attempts to build layouts. Anyway, it has been a long, long time since I read any edition of the book, so I decided to see if I could obtain a copy - it turned out that there are quite a few out there with online booksellers. I got mine from a place in Cambridge at a very good price and in excellent condition. While largely a nostalgia trip for me, the book has turned out still to be informative and quite fascinating. Once I've finally stirred myself to finish clearing stored rubbish from my spare room and start expanding my layout, I'll hopefully be able to start putting into practice some of the stuff from the book. Once again, it is a case of the best Christmas present being the one I bought myself - it is a practice I thoroughly recommend, as you always get what you want.
Well. we're nearly there. If you've forgotten to buy anything for Christmas, it's too late now. Having only realised two weeks ago that Christmas really was impending, I'm now absolutely knackered, having sorted everything out in just under a fortnight. So, obviously, I'm not in the mood to come up with any kind of coherent post for today. Right now, it is all I can do to slump on the sofa and look forward to a whiskey induced good night's sleep. I did seriously think about reviving the one time Christmas tradition here of putting together a video of the various external Christmas lights on houses here in Crapchester, but I just couldn't be arsed. In the past, I recorded all the footage in the course of driving around for work, but as I don't do that any more, I decided that I just wasn't prepared to go out specially to get it for this year. The prospect of driving around various housing estates after dark when I don't have to really didn't appeal. Besides, I found that the lights were getting pretty repetitive, anyway, with less and less variation year on year.
So, no videos of the lights of Crapchester. Like I said, it used to be a tradition but, being an iconoclast, I like to keep breaking old traditions and making new ones. Not that I can think of a new seasonal tradition to institute here right now. Talking of Christmas traditions, though, I was sad to see that The Kunts didn't get this year's Christmas Number One spot. They did get to five in the charts, which was no mean feat bearing in mind that they got absolutely no airplay on radio stations due to the expletive laden and political nature of their song. Oh, and I should apologise for getting the title of their song wrong yesterday - I stated that it was called 'Boris Johnson is Still a Cunt', whereas, in fact, it is called 'Boris Johnson is Still a Fucking Cunt'. Still, maybe the Queen will play it as the closing theme to her Christmas message tomorrow. I live in hope. Well, that's filled the requisite number of words, so it just remains to wish anyone foolish enough to be reading this a Merry Christmas and I'll see everyone on the other side.
Tomorrow, the UK's Christmas Number One for 2021 will be revealed. This year, apparently, it is a two horse race between Ladbaby and more of their inane sausage roll bollocks and, well, The Kunts, with 'Boris Johnson is Still a Cunt'. I think you can guess which one I'm rooting for. A lot of the media, though, will be backing Ladbaby, not just because they can at least print or broadcast their name and song title, but because, hey, it's for charity. I'm always suspicious of 'charity' records - it is always questionable exactly how much of the proceeds from charity actually go to charity and the motives of those involved are always questionable. Let's not forget that Jimmy Savile evaded scrutiny for decades because, as his defenders kept telling us, 'he does a lot for charity'. With regard to Ladbaby, apparently, while they (or their company) have made over a million since starting to put out their annual Christmas charity records, they've still to raise a million for charity. Hmmm. I've never liked them - they always put too much stress on the charity side of things, ('Yeah, our songs are infantile shit, but if you don't buy them and give something decent and worthwhile the Christmas Number One spot, you'll be depriving all those poor people of money'), and spend too much time trying to project that fake 'Hey look at us, we're whacky!' vibe. Now, it seems that I'm vindicated in my dislike of them.
You can tell that they are worried about the threat posed by The Kunts, as they've been decrying them for being too political and too negative, while presenting themselves as apolitical, just wanting to help the poor by raising money for food banks. Except that the very existence of food banks is a deeply political issue - they wouldn't have to exist in such numbers and support so many people, even working people, if not for the economic policies of successive Tory governments. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising the work of the Trussel Trust, for whom Ladbaby are ostensibly raising money, but the fact is that they shouldn't have to be providing food banks. Poor relief should not be left to charity: it should be a basic function of government. But then poverty, even amongst the employed, shouldn't be at such high levels. It all comes back to the Tory government. Furthermore, despite what Ladbaby seem to think, popular culture should be political - it should always be offering a critique of the milieu that produces it. Indeed, their failure to question the need for the charity they purport to be supporting is political. So yeah, I guess that I'm saying that I hope The Kunts get the Christmas Number One tomorrow. Mind you, if they do, don't expect them to be interviewed on the Radio One Chart Show, let alone have their record played. A decision which, while it will undoubtedly be justified on grounds of taste and decency, will itself be political.
Possibly the most unconsciously ironic thing I've noticed online this past year has been people who claim that they gave up a 'normal' lifestyle to travel nomadically in a camper van or a boat or whatever, in order to go 'off grid' then posting videos on You Tube telling us about their new 'off grid' existence. I mean, I really can't think of anything more 'on grid' than using the internet - the ultimate information 'grid' - to share your travels on the world's largest video sharing site. It isn't just the odd video, most of them seem to have channels to which they regularly churn out content in order to boost the follower count and chase the views. Perhaps they don't really understand what 'off grid' means. As I understood it, people who did this were trying to escape from modern society and ts often excessive 'connectivity', constant scrutiny by the authorities and from being tied down and restricted by such things as mortgages and conventional employment. Speaking personally, if I ever decided to go 'off grid', I'd pretty much disappear completely from view, abandon stuff like mobile phones and the web and basically become a hermit. Not that you need to go and live in a caravan in a muddy field in some obscure corner of the country to achieve some degree of withdrawal from society - I do it pretty well from my terraced house. For the past six months, or so, I've gone out of my way to minimise my social presence - I rarely speak to neighbours, or bother keeping up with acquaintances or extended family. I've just kept myself to myself.
Obviously, I've kept up my web presence - the very fact that I'm writing this attests to that fact - but an online existence is actually easier to manage: you can literally switch off contacts if they get too much and you don't actually have to deal with people face-to-face. To be honest, I haven't done this in order to go 'off grid' and evade modern life. With so much having changed in my life over the past couple of years, I just felt the need to drop out for a while and indulge in some mainly solitary contemplation. Besides, I'd enjoyed the various lockdowns so much that I wanted to extend them a bit. But I've started to re-emerge of late, having resumed meeting a select few friends at the local, for instance. I suppose that it has been a way of resetting my life, putting some distance between myself and the past, (those bits associated with my former job mainly). But I certainly haven't been going 'off grid', or even claiming to have done so. I certainly haven't been posting You Tube videos about going 'off grid'. Which brings us back to the original point of this post - the 'on grid' 'off gridders', who eschew a 'conventional' lifestyle and things like houses, jobs and other ties. There is always the question of how they finance such lifestyles. Some, obviously, are retired and have pensions. Others have private means. Some have even managed to combine their new lifestyle with some kind of new self employment based around said lifestyle. There is another group, though, that seems to earn money through what, to me, seems rather opaque (if that's the right word means. These are the ones who try to turn their entire existence into a business of sorts, by putting it all onto social media and You Tube and getting their subscribers to make payments via things like Patreon.
It is probably just my age, but this always feels to me uncomfortably like a high tech form of begging. OK, I know that actual beggars find themselves, due to circumstances, in a situation where they have no choice but to rely on the charity of strangers in order to pull together some loose change, while the sort of 'on grid' 'off gridders' I'm thinking of are, at least, providing some sort of 'product' in exchange for your support. Except that this 'product' or 'content' is simply a cannibalisation of their actual lives. In effect, they are chronicling their alternative lifestyle for public consumption in order to gain the financial means to keep on living this lifestyle, (not to mention the technical means to keep on recording it), and serving it up as entertainment for more paying customers. Which just seems somewhat strange to me. Why should I feel the need to pay to watch someone else living their life when I can experience my own, for free, on a daily basis? Out of curiosity, I recently watched a livestream by one of these 'on grid' 'off gridders', ostensibly intended as an opportunity for 'fans' to interact with them, but had to switch it off after a few minutes, so uncomfortable did the underlying solicitations for money make me feel. Don't get me wrong, they certainly didn't seem like unpleasant people, but it rather reminded me of those US TV evangelists' televised preaching sessions, where the totals of donations from 'worshippers' keep popping up on screen. Like I say, maybe its my age, but it just doesn't seem a particularly, I don't know, good way to fund your chosen lifestyle. (Just for the record, I can fund my current non-working lifestyle as a result of many years of good financial management when I was working, which has left me financially secure for the foreseeable future and with the prospect of a decent work pension (actually two work pensions) paying out within a couple of years).
Bulldog Spirit: Bulldog Drummond in the Swinging Sixties
Bulldog Drummond would seem an unlikely character to revive for the 'Swinging Sixties'. yet, such was 'Bond Mania' in the wake of the first few Sean Connery Bond movies, that H C McNeile's (writing as 'Sapper') inter-war creation found himself pressed into service for a pair of British 007 cash-ins. Drummond was firmly rooted in the era of his creation: a two-fisted British gentleman adventurer of private means, trying to recreate the adrenaline rush of the trenches by fighting crime. Fighting it in a pretty brutal manner and seemingly automatically classifying Jews, non-whites and 'foreign-types' generally as criminals and enemies of the Crown. Apparently affected by his wartime experiences, the character seems the sort of brutalised, mentally unstable veteran who signed up for the 'Black and Tans' and brutalised Irish rebels. Nowadays, we might be more understanding and consider him a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), even if he did organise his war buddies into a team of black shirted vigilantes beating up filthy foreigners trying to start wars. All of which would seem to set this epitome of xenophobic, Imperialistic British nationalism, at odds with the spirit of the sixties. But then again, James Bond was an equally conservative, (though not so nakedly fascistic), figure, fighting to preserve the global status quo and Britain's place at the top table of world politics. Again, not exactly the sort of character one might expect to peak in popularity during the decade of peace, love and revolution.
It is easy, however, to misunderstand the true nature of sixties Britain: the 'Swing Sixties' and the 'Permissive Society' were something that most of the population experienced only second hand, via the media. The actual participants in this supposed counter culture were actually relatively small in number and predominantly middle class. The reality for most ordinary people was of, on the one hand an increasing material prosperity, as many consumer goods became cheaper and things like decent housing and education became more affordable and accessible - the average person on the street was more interested in having a colour TV and central heating than 'Free Love' or drugs, (although they might have been interested if they really had been available). Things made possible by an extended period of post-war stability, without involvement in major wars or crises, so the idea of a character heroically maintaining this status quo and keeping Britain out of wars and the like was immediately appealing. Especially if they also emphasised the idea that their triumphs were all down to British ingenuity and breeding. So one might see why Rank thought that there was still mileage in Buldog Drummond and why they thought he might make a viable rival to Bond.
But for the pair of films produced - Deadlier Than the Male (1967) and Some Girls Do (1969) - it was still felt necessary to 'mellow' the character somewhat for the new era. Most startlingly, he's no longer a self-employed gentleman adventurer, but now has an actual job, as some kind of trouble-shooter for insurance companies, (although the second film hints at him still having connections to the world of espionage). Also, references to his wartime experiences, beyond a brief reference to the Korean war in the first film, are dropped, as are his former army comrades, prominent in the source novels, (barring the brief appearance of his criminal contact 'Boxer' in the first movie, who is also a former army colleague). Indeed, as played by Richard Johnson, (who, interestingly, had been director Terence Young's preferred choice for Bond, over Sean Connery, in Dr No), Hugh Drummond, (he is never referred to by the nickname 'Bulldog'), is now a pretty suave and genial ladies man, living in an upmarket London apartment, driving a Rolls Royce convertible and just as likely to use his brains as his brawn to resolve situations. In part, this is down Johnson himself, who thought the original character a 'Nazi' and untenable as a modern hero, but equally reflects changing public tastes and the need for a commercially viable film in the sixties to appeal to a broader, younger audience than the books had. To be absolutely fair, even in the twenties and thirties, Drummond had been a problematic character to portray on film, with most attempts choosing to turn him into a smooth, man-about-town type played by the likes of Ronald Coleman in light hearted action adventures. (Only one film from the era, the British made Return of Bulldog Drummond (1934), starring Ralph Richardson, dared to present him in all his black shirted fascistic glory).
But without these elements, what are we left with? Are these still distinctive Bulldog Drummond films, rather than simply being generic Bond knock-offs? Well, the answer is that they are pretty standard late sixties spy movies, but pretty stylish ones, it has to be said. Production values are high, the direction, by veteran Ralph Thomas, is smooth and assured, performances are solid and there's a decent use of some very nicely photographed locations. They take a cue from contemporary Bond films by incorporating something of the look and feel of the era, (reflected in the wardrobe, decor, colour schemes and so on), while never trying to actually embrace the whole 'Swinging Sixties' aesthetic. Of the two films, the first, Deadlier Than The Male, comes closest to being an actual Buldog Drummond movie, dropping in elements from the source material. One of the two female assassins, for instance, is named Irma, presumably in reference to the Irma Petersen character from the books, although here she isn't married to main villain Carl Petersen, as was the case with her literary equivalent. Petersen himself is present, but rather than being portrayed as some kind of dastardly foreigner, here is played by the very British Nigel Greene, (intriguingly, his portrayal of Nayland Smith in Face of Fu Manchu (1965) was arguably closer to the literary Bulldog Drummond than Johnson's in this film), who did a nice line in public school bullies. While Drummond's ex-military cronies are banished from the film, he is instead saddled with an irritating young American nephew, played by Steve Carlson). Most notably, the film incorporates some of the sadism, not to mention misogyny of the books, with Petersen's two female assassins, (Elke Sommer and Sylvia Koscina), portrayed as conscience free psychopaths, who happily murder and torture their way through the film, (the BBFC objected to their activities to the extent of awarding the film an 'X' certificate). In addition to them, Petersen also has an army of female and foreign underlings, including Milton Reid's 'Chang', whose presence allows Drummond to indulge in some mild racial stereotyping.
The plots of both films also feature smaller scale villainous plots, more in keeping with 'Sapper' than Ian Fleming. The villains aren't interested in world domination, but rather criminal extortion for purely monetary purposes. In Deadlier Than the Male, for instance, Petersen's scheme is to collect money from an oil company in exchange for removing obstacles to its plans via the assassination of opponents. The second film, Some Girls Do, features Petersen trying to sabotage the development of a supersonic airliner, as he stands to collect millions if it isn't completed on schedule. Actually, it isn't just the plot of the sequel which feels familiar: just about every element of the film feels as if it has been recycled from its predecessor. Director Ralph Thomas once recalled that the first film had originally been intended as a TV pilot, but it is the second that feels more like a TV spin off. The whole thing plays like a lower budgeted, less violent, version of the first film. Production values are still relatively high, (there is some excellent model work for the airliner sequences), but it just doesn't feel quite as polished as the first effort. All the elements, however, are there: the extortion plot, Petersen's use of women, including a pair of ruthless but sexy assassins and an army of female 'robots', to carry out his plans, the fact that the villain spends half the film disguised as someone else, the island hideout, it's all there, but cheaper and on a smaller scale. Even the opening sequence is similar - in Deadlier Than the Male on of the assassins(disguised as a stewardess) kills a tycoon aboard his private airliner, then sabotages it to ensure it crashes to disguise evidence of foul play, while Some Girls Do opens with a stewardess causing an airliner to crash by opening a passenger door mid-air.
Johnson might still be Drummond, but the rest of the characters are now played by actors of a slightly lesser magnitude than their predecessors. The two assassins (now called Helga and Pandora) are played by Dahlia Lavi and Beba Loncar, while Petersen is now portrayed by James Villiers and, while still an English public school type, is bonkers with delusions of grandeur, in contrast to Greene's cool and menacing version. Drummond's nephew has vanished, to be replaced by two, essentially comedic, characters, Sydne Rome's ditsy female love interest and undercover CIA agent and Ronnie Stevens' bumbling Embassy official Peregrine Carruthers. The film is afforded some 'star power' by the presence of Maurice Denham and Robert Morley, but they are confined to relatively brief 'guest' appearances. There is also a parade of sixties starlets playing Petersen's 'robots', (while they are described as having 'electronic' brains, it is never entirely clear whether they are full-fledged automatons or cyborgs), including Yutte Stensgaard, Joanna Lumley, Maria Aitken, Vanessa Howard, Virginia North and Shakira Caine. These 'robots', (the inspiration, perhaps, for Austin Powers' 'fembots'), are completely compliant and frequently sacrifice themselves in order to carry out Petersen's plans, the fact that they can be 'switched off' when convenient and are casually massacred at the climax, continues the casual misogyny of the first film.
These two latter day Bulldog Drummond films now make for curious viewing, their relationship to the original character being only nominal, they are devoid of anything to make them truly distinctive, although there is a clear assumption in both that we are meant to 'know' who Drummond is. It isn't helped by the fact that Johnson - a very capable and charismatic actor who never quite hit the first rank of stardom and later had a notable run in Italian exploitation films - just feels slightly too old to be playing a globe-trotting, womanising, action hero. The fact that he has an adult nephew competing for the ladies in the first one only emphasises this. It's rather like Roger Moore's latter days as James Bond, but without the slightly self-mocking awareness of those films, which understood that their hero was in danger of looking like a dirty old man. While Johnson was nowhere near Moore's age in those films, he still comes across as someone's dad at a disco, awkwardly trying to pull his daughter's friends. To be fair, once the nephew had been dispensed with for the second film, it didn't seem quite as bad. When all's said and done, though, they are superior examples of Bond knock offs, with the first definitely being the better of the two, with its sadistic villains and inventive assassinations providing many memorable sequences.
Not to be confused with Man's Life, Man's World, Man's Peril, Man's Book, Man's Illustrated, Man's Exploits or any number of similarly titled men's adventure magazines, Man's Day is a relatively obscure example of the genre, about which I've been able to find out little. That said, as a Hillman Publication, it would have been a stablemate of the better known Epic and Real Adventure Magazine. In addition to men's pulps, Hillman also put out a range of true crime titles, such as Crime Detective. As this February 1961 cover indicates, the contents of Man's Day would seem to be pretty much standard fare, with its focus seeming to be upon war-related stories. The cover story is, perhaps, unusual for its time, highlighting the Auschwitz concentration camp, although centering on Allied PoWs held there, rather than the Jews and others facing genocide in the camp. I'm guessing that there were limits as to just how harrowing the publishers were willing to go in the pages of a men's adventure magazine.
'Seaman Duggs' Dilemma: Nine Battling Brides on Shipwreck Island' sounds like the ever-popular formula tale of a seaman shipwrecked on a South Pacific island inhabited by nymphomaniacs, after his ship is torpedoed by the Japanese. 'The Three Mortar Loving Wars of "Gunny" Diamond' is probably the usual tale of wartime heroics, in which some tough Marine NCO kills several hundred Japs single handed, armed only with a mortar tube. Or something along those lines. The stories in these magazines were all pretty much interchangeable, with only the names of the enemy changing over time - within a few years the same story would be set in the jungles of South East Asia and feature the Viet-Cong as the bad guys. It might all be generic, but I have to say that the cover painting is pretty striking, the expressions of the PoWs, not to mention their emaciated state, hinting at the deprivations of the Nazi death camps far more explicitly than the story it illustrates would dare to.
What we need is to hold a lottery. After the revolution, that is, when we can finally start holding these right-wing bastards to account. Because, while we could simply put them all up against a wall and shoot them, I just don't feel that would give us any real sense of satisfaction. Not with regard to the likes of Boris Johnson, at least. So, what we need to do is hold a lottery among every UK adult in order to select maybe fifty people, all of whom will get the chance to kick the fat bastard in the arse. Just the one kick, that's all that each winner will be allowed, so they'll have to make it a good one - if they want to take a run up, that's OK, but it will still just be the one kick apiece. If they like, they could imagine they were taking a penalty kick for England, which will win the World Cup if it goes in. But one should be all you need, if you put all of the hate you feel for the morally degenerate, utterly corrupt, contemptuous hypocrite. Obviously, we'll need at least fifty kickers to ensure that he feels any of it through those fat wobbling buttocks of his. You can tell that I've thought a lot about this, how best to deal with the unspeakable slob when we finally have a chance at retribution. I considered that perhaps we should draw lots to see who should hit him in the face with a shovel, or smack him around the back of the head with a plank, but the kicking up the arse just seemed the most fitting way to deal with someone who is, well, such an arse.
Of course, we'd have to make a ceremony of it - put Boris in stocks in the middle of Whitehall and have it televised live as the chosen kickers make their run up. As he'll have his back to them and will be unable to look round because of the stocks, he won't know when each kick is going to land. But Johnson won't be the only 'war criminal' we'll have to deal with post-revolution. Personally, while Johnson is taking his kicking, Live on TV, I'd like to see a few of them swinging from lampposts in the background. I mean, that Michael Gove, he fancies himself a bit of a disco diva, so let's see what kind of merry little jig he dances at the end of a rope. Then there's 'true blue' Jacob Rees Mogg - let's see just how blue he can go as the noose tightens around his neck. But it isn't just this lot currently in government we need to hold to account - let's not forget that smug bastard David Cameron and his part in austerity and Brexit. Again, we need to draw lots or hold a lottery to chose thirty or so people and give them each a baseball bat, then make Cameron run a gauntlet of them - each of them would be allowed one good swing at the arsehole. I'd imagine that a lot of these creeps will try to flee the country in disguise, like the top Nazis did at the end of the war. Nigel Farage, for sure, will be caught at Dover, wearing a false moustache and waving his German passport, claiming to be Kurt Crutchwarmer or some such. In his case, we should just put him up against a wall for summary execution - it is what he'd want, as he doesn't seem to believe in any of that human rights nonsense and thinks the courts are undemocratic. At the last minute, he should be told that the firing squad have run out of bullets, so they'll have to fix bayonets, instead.
Mind you, before we can do any of this, we'll have to have that revolution, but a man can dream. Obviously, I'm too old to be fermenting revolutions myself, but I'll hold your coats while you storm Tory Party HQ...
I'm finally starting to get on top of this Christmas business. Yeah, I know, there's only a week and a half to go and I've never been this unprepared before, but I've at least got my great nieces' presents sorted. I think, Well, the older one was sorted earlier this week and is on its way. As for the younger one, well, I sat down today, had a long conversation with myself about it and made an executive decision, so that will be sorted shortly. I've just decided to follow my instincts with regard to what I'm giving her. I don't know why I've been so unprepared for Christmas this year. It isn't as if I didn't know the date well in advance, yet still it managed to take me by surprise this year. I mean, I don't even have the excuse of work or lockdowns getting in the way this year. Actually, I think the trouble is that I've been too busy enjoying myself and I just lost track of time. And that's the trouble - we just aren't meant to be having fun at this time of year. Instead, we're meant to be stressing out about Christmas.
But now that I've sorted out the most important presents, I need to start turning my attention to my own Christmas. So far I've managed to procure a yule log and some beer, which sort of sorts my Christmas. But I feel that I need more in the way of seasonal cheer, so I'm going to have to brave the Christmas sections of the supermarkets this week. After all, I want to be fully prepared for my usual slobbish Christmas - lying on the sofa in my underwear all day working my through various low-rent films on the low-rent streaming services I get via Roku. Now, some might think that constitutes my usual regime these days, but at Christmas it has added tinsel and sausage rolls. It's interesting that now I've parted company from the Job From Hell, Christmas has lost its status in my life as an oasis of midwinter calm and safety, something to stumble toward in the inevitably difficult days of December and something to cling to for a week or two before having to go back to the chaos. Now it's just an excuse to meet friends for drinks and generally over indulge for a few days, while enjoying the novelty of non-standard TV schedules.
I just caught part of Battle of the Planets: The Movie, a spin off from the late seventies animated series I remember seeing episodes of on childrens' TV. Actually, it was a re-edit of several of those episodes to create a new plot line. It also re-instated several sequences originally cut from the US version of series. Because Battle of the Planets was actually a Japanese anime series re-edited to make it more suitable for western kids, (or rather western TV executives and regulators), by removing a lot of the more extreme violence and killings, not to mention profanity. Interestingly, this version also removed all references to the fact that the main villain, Zoltar, was, in the original, trans gender. Although his female alter ego did appear in one episode, she was presented as a separate character - his sister - rather than simply his female self. To cover all the gaps left by these excisions, the US producers inserted new sequences featuring a mildly camp robot called 7-Zark-7, who directed and commented upon, the missions of the heroes of 'G-Force'. (In the 'movie' I just saw, he had a different voice, which made him sound camper than ever). You could tell these weren't original as the style and animation quality were noticeably cruder than that of the original Japanese footage.
Apparently, there have been subsequent re-edits and re-dubs both of the original series and its Japanese sequels, to create English-language versions that are closer to the original, with much of the violence left in. (These have included G-Force and Eagle Riders, both of which give the characters new names, neither of which I recall being shown on terrestrial TV in the UK). As I've mentioned many times before, I'm always fascinated by the process of transforming one film or TV episode into something quite different by adding, subtracting and re-ordering footage. It is quite common in low budget exploitation cinema, especially when it came to releasing English-language versions of foreign films. Sometimes these transformations could be quite radical, as when Roger Corman re-edited the soviet film Planeta Bur into Voyage of the Planet of Prehistoric Women, which involved inserting much US-shot footage of US actors and re-dubbing the original footage to create a completely new plot line. By contrast, the other film he created from Planeta Bur - Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet - was a somewhat more straightforward re-bub of the original and the replacement of some scenes with new footage featuring Basil Rathbone, to create a framing narrative. Most of the Japanese monster films from the fifties, sixties and seventies were also re-edited to varying degrees for their English-language versions. The second Godzilla film, for instance, removed Godzilla's name completely (for legal reasons), re-christening him 'Gigantis' and the re-dubbing relocated the action to the US. (The original film also had a radical re-edit, inserting Raymond Burr as a US reporter for the benefit of English language audiences).
But it isn't just foreign-language films that get this treatment. Let's not forget that They Saved Hitler's Brain is effectively two films edited together - most of it comes from Madmen of Mandoras, but this was padded out with (poorly matched) newly shot footage for its later sale to TV. Al Adamson was, of course, the master of the art of re-working existing material into new films, creating at least three films from the footage he originally shot for 1965's Psycho-a-Go-Go, (the others were Fiend With the Electronic Brain (1969) and 1971's Blood of Ghastly Horror), all with different plot lines. Similarly, his 1971 Dracula vs Frankenstein started life as as an unfinished project called The Blood Seekers, which featured neither monster. Every so often, even a bigger budget film might be 'rescued' by being subjected to post-production re-fashioning, often because of problems during production, such as the production running out of money. Incense For the Damned (1970), springs to mind. Although not a big-budget studio production, it was clearly an attempt by its producers (Titan) to produce a more 'upmarket' horror film. Unfortunately they ran out of money and shooting was never completed. The footage was subsequently bought by someone else, who spent several years piecing together the existing footage, (with added narration to bridge gaps), into some kind of coherent film in order to release it. The Richard Harris starring Canadian thriller Highpoint was another film which suffered radical re-edits by its US distributor in order to simplify its convoluted plot and remove comedic elements. Shot in 1979, it finally limped into cinemas in its new form in 1982.
As I struggle to come up with ideas for Christmas presents for my great nieces, (to be fair, it is the younger one I'm having trouble with, the older one is just fine with Batman graphic novels and Stephen King), I sometimes that I could go back in time, when stuff for kids seemed much simpler. That said, I think that they are both too old for the cowboys outfits and water guns featured in this ad from the January 1952 Meccano Magazine. Mind you, these days you'd never get away with selling kids water pistols that are replicas of actual guns - nowadays they all have to be futuristic looking and moulded in day glo colours so as not to be mistaken for the real thing. Personally speaking, I would have loved to have had a Tommy Gun replica that sprayed water when I was a kid. (Actually, when I was a kid, I recall that Airfix marketed replicas of a Tommy Gun and an L1A1 Self Loading rifle, that fired plastic replica bullets, as toy guns. They were pretty realistic looking, being only slightly under scale).
The rubber band powered aircraft model was also still popular when I was a kid, although, as the ad indicates, its heyday was probably in the fifties, when you could get replicas of all manner actual prototype fighter planes. They were the first step toward the more sophisticated model planes that were powered by small petrol engines and flown by cables, which became increasingly popular as the fifties went on. These, in turn, were the forerunners of the radio controlled models still available today. The Leeds Model Co. ad is interesting, as it highlights the fact that, immediately post war, the UK's industries had to focus on exports in order to generate foreign exchange reserves, another reason why austerity and rationing continued at home in the UK for many years after the end of the war. Mind you, the model railway equipment produced by Leeds Model Co. was at the top end of the price range, being high quality and hand built, meaning that average Britons were unlikely to have noticed their absence from the shelves.
Ah, well, back to trying to figure out what my twelve year old great niece wants for Christmas - the trouble is that, like most kids of her age, she seems to be into something different every week. I just can't keep up.
You'd think that those who oppose this dreadful government would have been overjoyed at the negative fall out it is having to endure as the result of recent revelations about last December's Covid-regulation busting Number Ten Christmas parties. But you would be mistaken. The Corbynites are instead busy 'harrumphing' away about how it is a travesty that something as insignificant as this should be getting the headlines, rather than any of the 'real' issues they have been trying to highlight. Which, once again, simply highlights exactly why they and their leader were always going to fail in the business of real world politics and winning elections. 'What's the big deal - I always assumed they'd dome this as it the sort of shit they do' commented one on social media, adding that people should have been incensed at all the other stuff the Tories were doing, like suppressing the right to protest, privatising the NHS and the like. Well, the fact is that all of those things, while bad, simply don't impact the average voter directly - most people don't go on protests or need long-term NHS care. But the pandemic has affected everyone, with all of us having had to observe the rules during lockdowns, regardless of how personally inconvenient it might have been. Many, many people were prevented from visiting sick and dying relatives or attending funerals during the Covid restrictions. So, when it becomes clear that those imposing and administrating those restrictions were not following them, but instead flaunting them to hold parties, the majority of voters are going to react negatively. It's not rocket science - these are the things to potentially bring down governments.
The sad reality of politics is that specific policies rarely win or lose elections. Most voters pay little attention to the minutiae of proposed policies. They certainly don't read party manifestos. They react to the broad brush ideas, the populist, but unspecific, campaigns - Brexit surely showed that. New Labour swept to power not because voters necessarily embraced its policies in detail, but because it was able to latch on to the issue of government sleaze and corruption and present itself as a fresh, new and trustworthy alternative that could manage the economy. Likewise, the Tories regained power, not because of any enthusiasm for their policies, but instead because a global economic meltdown happened on the Labour government's watch and they were able to convince voters that it was somehow all the result of Labour's economic policies. So its that now the wheel has turned and once again we have a Tory government mired in sleaze and corruption scandals and, like it or not, it is how Labour exploits this which will dictate the outcome of the next election, rather than any specific policies it puts out or ideological line it takes.
But for the Corbynites, what matters is maintaining some kind of 'ideological purity' - we have to win by having the 'right' policies, or not win at all. Which is why they spend their time reviling the New Labour governments, despite their record on public spending, NHS funding, education, poverty reduction, even human rights, because they took us into the Iraq war, which apparently invalidates all those achievements and the good they did. Frankly, I disagreed with the Iraq war and quite a lot of the other stuff that the Blairites were involved with, but I would still take those governments over any Tory government, as they actually did a lot of good for those in need. If you feel differently, then you aren't any kind of socialist, as you clearly want to put principle before actually helping people, even if that means making some compromises and swallowing some shit. I'm sorry that the voters are only turning against the Tories because of something as trivial as a Christmas party, rather than because they are appalled by their odious and destructive policies, but that's the reality of politics - people react to stuff that relates to their personal experiences. So stop sulking and accept the gift that they are giving us.
The Dunwich Horror (1970) and Other Attempts to Film Lovecraft
I still maintain that 1970's The Dunwich Horror stands as possibly the best attempt to date to commit HP Lovecraft to film. I recently rewatched it as my sort of tribute to the late Dean Stockwell, who stars in the film. It represented the culmination of a cycle of Lovecraft adaptations that appeared during the late sixties, mainly produced or co-produced by AIP, who were rapidly running out of Edgar Allan Poe stories to adapt. Indeed, one of the first of these, The Haunted Palace (1963) was actually presented as part of the Roger Corman Poe series. But, despite the Poe title and the presence of Vincent Price, it was actually a loose adaptation of Lovecraft's 'The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward'. There were also no less than three UK made Lovecraft adaptations, with only The Shuttered Room (1967) pretending to be set in the US. The others, 1965's Die, Monster, Die!, based on 'The Colour Out of Space' and featuring a cast headlined by Boris Karloff, and Curse of the Crimson Altar (1969) - while not officially a Lovecraft adaptation, it does bear a very close resemblance to 'The Dreams in the Witch House' - are both relocated to contemporary rural England. So what, in my opinion, makes The Dunwich Horror stand out from these previous adaptations?
For one thing, it is a much 'purer' adaptation than any of the others. To be sure, it makes many deviations from the source material - the characteristion of Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell) and the addition of a female lead character/romantic interest in the form of Sandra Dee, for instance - but it fully embraces the core concepts of Lovecraft's 'Cthulu Mythos', which underpins the majority of his work. Previous films had tended to soft peddle this angle, with Haunted Palace and Crimson Altar substituting more generic evil forces the makers doubtless felt audiences would more readily understand, Die, Monster, Die! focused on the science fiction monster elements, while Shuttered Room ditched the supernatural elements of its source entirely. But in The Dunwich Horror, Ed Begley Sr's Dr Armitage is quite clear that the Whateley family are part of a cult worshiping ancient entities long since banished from the earth, to other dimensions, but still seeking a re-entry to the human realm. Various of the Lovecraftian deities are name-checked and the Necronomicon (that dread text of evil) is central to the plot, with Wilbur seeking to possess Armitage's copy in order to invoke his masters.
Some of the film's digressions from the source material, however, a quite fascinating and, in many ways, serve to enhance its theme of shadowy ancient forces attempting to overtake modernity. Most notably, the film, not surprisingly, given its date of production, encompasses a fair amount of psychedelic imagery and effects. These are manifested most prominently in the dreams experienced by Dee's character after she is drugged by Whateley and ends up sleeping at the Whateley house and in the effects employed to represent Wilbur's demonic brother, once he escapes from his locked room. (Actually, this is impressive on another count, as the producers resisted the temptation to simply have Stockwell in 'evil' make up or a man in a suit to represent their monster, what we get instead is a truly other worldly looking creation. It also contrasts sharply with The Shuttered Room, which replaces its monstrous twin with a standard 'mad sister in the attic'). Not only does the psychedelia bring the story firmly into the then present day, but it also aligns the whole Cthulu cult with the hippie and drug sub-culture of the era. This, in turn, gives a new sub-text to the fact that the forces of darkness are here opposed by Dr Armitage and Dr Cory (Lloyd Bochner), a pair of old men, effectively representing the deep social conservatism of author HP Lovecraft. Old men trying to put the genie of youth and revolution back in the bottle, perhaps.
While they apparently succeed in foiling Wilbur's plans to sacrifice Dee as part of his attempt to open up a portal by which the Old Ones can return, a brief coda implies that their attempts were futile, as it is revealed to the audience that Dee is now carrying a child, having been impregnated by Wilbur, or his demonic brother. This is another deviation from the original, with its implications of sex, something absent from the Lovecraftian canon, (although Freudians might point to all the oozing substances and flailing tentacles of the original texts as sexual proxies). Here, the impregnation of Dee as she lies on the altar stone in the Devil's Hop Yard is heavily implied as Wilbur spreads her legs apart, then props the open Necronomicon between them - indicating that some sort of supernatural impregnation by its ancient sorceries was actually his plan all along. But alongside all this modern psychedelic and sexual imagery, the film also succeeds in creating the sort of stifling atmosphere of the typical Lovecraft story - the feeling that dark forces are inevitably and inexorably closing in. Despite being filmed in sunny California rather than dank and damp New England, the movie succeeds in depicting the sort of isolated community described by Lovecraft, where ancient superstitions and lifestyles have survived into the modern world, (the thirties in the story, the late sixties in the film). All of these elements contrast effectively the modernistic touches, which hint at some kind of wild and frightening world that lies outside of the villagers experience. Moreover, while Wilbur certainly isn't as weird as his literary equivalent - who is revealed to be himself monstrous, with tentacles protruding from his abdomen - his seduction of Dee necessitating his transformation into a somewhat more human and personable character, as played by Stockwell, complete with Runic tattoos all over his body, he is still pretty creepy.
So, a properly 'Lovecraftian' film, which remains true to its roots, providing a stark contrast with previous adaptations that sought to reinterpret their source material via other horror tropes or even other genres. The most radical reinterpretation being The Shuttered Room, (the only one of these adaptations without an AIP connection), which discards not just its Lovecaftian elements, but also its supernatural elements altogether, substituting instead a cross between a Gothic melodrama and a Straw Dogs- style story of small town hicks menacing outsiders. The latter element, featuring Oliver Reed (in a role reminiscent of his character in Hammer's The Damned (1963), as the psychopathic - not to mention lecherous -leader of the local thugs, is the best handled part of the film, but the whole thing feels a long way from Lovecraft, failing even to make Dunwich (here transformed int an isolated island) into a convincing locale. (Interestingly, there was a contemporary novelisation of the script which actually reinstates some of the supernatural elements). To be fair, the source story was actually only peripherally a Lovecraft story, being presented by author August Derleth as a posthumous 'collaboration' based on notes left by Lovecraft. That said, it certainly had Lovecraftian themes, attempting to unify two strands of the 'Cthulu Mythos' - that of the Dunwich Whateleys and that of the Innsmouth 'spawn of Dagon'. The film, however, ignores both of these strands, instead turning it into a standard horror thriller.
Former art director Daniel Haller, (who had also directed Die, Monster, Die!), directs The Dunwich Horror with a sure visual sense, effectively contrasting the sunlit white stone edifices of the Miskatonic University in Arkham with the rundown, more Autumnal looking town of Dunwich, emphasising the idea that they are not just separated by geography, but also by culture and even time. He moves the film along at a decent pace, rarely allowing things to flag as it simultaneously follows the twin plotlines of Wilbur preparing his plans and Armitage unraveling the tangled history of the Whateleys. At the same time, Haller's direction, while stylish, has a certain pulp asthetic to it, particularly in his use of colour. Which is fitting as, despite Lovecraft's literary pretensions, his stories were mainly published in pulp magazines like Weird Tales, with their garishly colourful covers. It also features a stand out animated title sequence that neatly encompasses many of the film's themes and a highly effective Les Baxter score. Obviously, there have been many subseqient Lovecraft adaptations, but none that I've liked as much as The Dunwich Horror. Many have more fidelity to the source material, but most are low budget and scrappily made, mistaking poor lighting for atmosphere. The only one I've really enjoyed was Re-Animator, but that was based on an atypical, non-Mythos, Lovecraft story. Ultimately, none achieved the trick of being both respectful to their source material while also successfully reinterpreting it for their own era, as, I believe, The Dunwich Horror does.
Not to be confused with Savage Adventures for Men, a retitling of the last three issues of Brave or, indeed, the nineties gay lifestyle magazine, Savage Adventure was a short lived men's magazine which ran for four issues between 1960 and 1961. This is the final issue, dated May 1961, with what appears to be a front cover unrelated to any of the stories listed there. Nonetheless, it is pretty typical for this genre of magazine, featuring some of those gun-toting, semi-naked, female resistance fighters, here about to mow down a German patrol with a heavy machine gun. The 'gentler sex', my arse! The contents, judging by those titles, promises to be more of the men's magazine staples: sex, violence and drugs. 'I Buy Women', the alleged confessions of an 'actual' (is, completely made up) slave trader is pretty typical. Apparently women are 'better than gold...and easier to find', although the average adolescent male buying this sort of magazine might disagree with the second half of that statement. Nowadays, of course, we'd have to ask if women were better than Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies - to the average geek, probably not.
'Tiger at my Throat' sounds as if it is going to be one of those 'lone hunter against wild animal' types of story that seemed ever popular in the men's magazines. 'I Watched Them Burn Alive' is typically sensationalist for this kind of publication and could be about anything - disaster at sea, fireman adventures or any manner of the sort of macho action-orientated stories favoured by these magazines. Indeed, if those girls had a flamethrower, I'd speculate that they might be illustrating this very title. The above-the-title story is the best though: 'The Sex Drug That Works Miracles'. The question is, of course, whether this is the same as 'The Poor Man's Aphrodisiac' the 'ten cent a pill sex menace' chronicled in the October 1960 issue of Peril, that we looked at a few posts ago? Certainly, all those adolescent male readers would have been hoping that they were about to learn of some new drug that could suddenly make them irresistible to the opposite sex - and that it was available over the counter from all back-street pharmacies. I suspect that the truth was somewhat more prosaic. (Bearing in mind that the first contraceptive pills were trialled in the US in 1960, I suspect that this might be the 'sex drug' referred to here - although that would doubtless be welcomed by many of the magazine's hormonally driven male readers).
It must be Christmas - the 'Famous Grouse' ad has just been on TV. Other people might expectantly await things like the John Lewis Christmas ad every year, but for me, the 'Famous Grouse' remains the iconic seasonal commercial. Approaching my second non-working Christmas in a row, (last year I was on a 'career break', this year I'm work free and effectively semi-retired), I've been pondering how much more straightforward this time of year is when I don't have to expend so much time arguing with management about such things as taking time off, providing cover and the like. It always seemed to become an unnecessary ordeal thanks to management's refusal to accept that, for the best part of a fortnight, the UK closes down as people descend into an orgy of over indulgence in food and alcohol. Not only did this make it unlikely that our services would be required, but also that actually going out on the streets and knocking on doors to do carry out our regular duties would become unacceptably risky - I, for one, had no intention of trying to serve papers on someone likely the worse for wear on New Year's Eve, for instance. But, for the second year running, these aren't my worries. This is what it is like having a regular job, where when you are away from work, you are away from work, not having to compromise and be on leave, but still 'on call'.
But all that nonsense simply reflected the great contradiction that lies at the heart of the festive season, as far as employers are concerned, at least. While the annual arguments over Christmas leave were, for my field of employment, based around certain factors unique to that sector, in the wider world of employment, many others also find themselves faced with potential disputes over the extent of their seasonal leave. The thing about Christmas is that while much of commerce might love it as an economic opportunity to boost sales and profits, they are also faced with the problem that their employees also want to extended breaks then, meaning potential reductions in productivity, store closures and the like. They want you to spend your money buying all the stuff they've been hyping and pushing for weeks, but don't to give you any time off to enjoy any of it. Increasingly, they seem to find it frustrating that the season includes a number of public holidays in close proximity to each other. Indeed, with post-Xmas sales seemingly becoming ever more important to retailers, many employees don't even get to enjoy at least two of those holidays: Boxing Day and New Year's Day. This year, all three public holidays fall on weekends, so we get proxy days off instead, giving us a four day, then a three day weekend. These were always my favourite scenarios in my last job - it meant that I was guaranteed a run of days when I couldn't be called in to provide emergency cover, even if I was on leave, so I could relax, go out and meet friends and even drink during the day. Absolute bliss. Thankfully, though, without that bloody job, Christmas is no longer as stressful as it used to be as I now know that I'll be left in peace.
For the sake of completeness, I present the novelisation of the Danish/US monster movie Reptilicus (1961). Adapted into print for Monarch Books by the prolific (not to mention frequently pseudonymous) Dean Owen, who was also responsible for the novelisation of Konga. Like the contemporary Monarch Books novelisation of Gorgo, this uses a tinted still from the film as a cover illustration, rather than the fanciful painting used for Konga. Also in common with these other two monster movie adaptations, the text strays somewhat from the actual film, adding in some dollops of titillating sexual innuendo. I say it strays from the movie as filmed, but there are actually two versions of the film in existence, the Danish original and the somewhat shorter English-language US release version. While I'm assuming that the novelisation is based on the latter version, it has to be said that the extra scenes in the Danish version don't include anything of a sexual nature. They do, however, include some comic relief from a caretaker character, (played by a performer who, apparently, was very popular in Denmark at the time), and a musical number.
For many years, the only version available in the UK was the US release version - on the basis of viewing it, I came to the conclusion that this was one of the worst films ever made. Reptilicus itself was truly pathetic, represented by an obvious - and not very good - puppet in most of its scenes. But, having subsequently seen the deleted scenes from the Danish original, I was forced to revise my opinion, slightly. The US version undoubtedly misrepresents the original, replacing much of the monster footage and cutting completely all the scenes of the creature flying and breathing fire. I have to say that, compared to what was on display in the version I originally saw, these were quite good, with the monster not looking anywhere near as lame as it had previously. That said, the comic relief and the song were a bit disconcerting. Anyway, to return to the novelisation, this one seems to somewhat rarer than either Gorgo or Konga, perhaps reflecting the relative obscurity of the source movie. But, if you are determined to read it, there is a 2015 Kindle edition available from Amazon.
