Blue Book was an extremely long lived US magazine, running from 1905 to 1975. A contemporary of Argosy, it followed a similar trajectory. Originally aimed at both male and female readers, over time the focus shifted to more male-orientated stories and, by the sixties, it was a full-fledged men's adventure magazine. With its title amended to Blue Book For Men, it featured garish covers and adrenaline fueled war stories. This edition, from June 1953, just predates that era, with the magazine still featuring a wider range of adventure-based fact and fiction - less war, more battling the elements underwater or in the jungle. Underwater treasure hunting of the sort featured in the cover painting was a perennial theme in these magazines during the fifties - deep sea diving seemed to represent some new wild and unexplored frontier where men could test themselves.
I have to admit, that when I was a kid, those deep sea diver outfits used to fascinate me, to the point of obsession. I think it was the fact that, on the one hand the looked so antiquated, yet at the same time were still in use during the seventies, (when I was a child). Indeed, apart from the fact that they had switched from having their air supply pumped by hand to having it mechanically pumped, the suits hadn't changed that much. Actually, it was that dependence upon a flimsy air pipe snaking upward to a ship, or the shore, which was one of the primary points of fascination for the young me. It just seemed so precarious compared to the aqualungs used by skin divers, which at least gave them some control over their own air supply - the deep sea diver had trust others way up on the surface to keep him supplied with air. Such was my fascination that I even had a deep sea diving suit for my 'Action Man', (which was incredibly difficult to put together as it replicated all the major parts of the real thing: internal and external neck plates, for instance, which the helmet screwed on to in order to form a seal).
Anyway, this is a pretty typical Blue Book cover for the era. It's interesting to note the above title flyer about 'Fabulous Opportunities in Canada's Modern Boom Towns!' Some things, it seems, never change - I still get shown ads online extolling the virtues of emigrating to Canada. I guess they still need people. But I can't say that it has ever really appealed to me.
It's quite disturbing to discover that some of the people who share one's love of old seventies pop culture do so, not so much through nostalgia for the medium itself, but because they are apparently nostalgic for the archaic social attitudes it more often than not espouses. Quite recently, for instance, the author of a blog focusing on seventies men's adventure book series suddenly went off on a right-wing rant mid way through a review, denouncing 'leftists' for their treatment of Trump and 'liberals' for their criticism of contemporary police brutality and racism. Before we go on, a quick word of explanation about these sorts of books might be in order for anyone unfamiliar with them. Throughout the seventies many US publishers focused on putting together paperback book series, usually written by multiple authors using a single house name, which featured the action packed adventures of a male hero - sometimes a tough cop or undercover agent, sometimes a freelance adventurer or even a hit man. Among the best known and longest running were the 'Executioner', 'Destroyer' and 'Nick Carter' series. They were, in effect, the direct descendants of the 'single character' pulp magazines like Doc Savage. Drawing inspiration from things like Dirty Harry in their depiction of their heroes, these books tended to include large dollops of violence, misogyny and casual racism.
Now, I had always assumed, naively, that most people who wrote about this stuff, like me, enjoyed it on a level of being nostalgic for a relic from our childhoods and a form of pop culture, be it the mini-industry of quickly made low budget exploitation films or mass market paperback publishing - that has now gone forever. Amongst all the schlock you could often find genuine originality and ideas that you'd find nowhere else - the 'poetry of pulp', if you like. These were what made wading through all the less defensible stuff worthwhile. Moreover, if nothing else, they were a stark reminder of how times and attitudes have changed - for the better, we hope - with regard to race relations, the treatment of women and minorities, for instance. But I was wrong. The rant I referred to seems to indicate that some, possibly the majority for all I know,of those reviewing this stuff actually endorse all the undesirable attitudes encapsulated in this sort of old pop culture, their enjoyment of it being based upon a yearning for a return to those 'good old days' when women and minorities knew their place and casual violence was seen as a legitimate form of policing. The days when white, middle class, guys called the shots.
Which brings us to another element of that rant: the author also went off on a denunciation of such things as vaccine and mask mandates and the use of police to enforce them, sometimes violently when protests got out of hand. For me, the sub-text was clear here: the majority of these 'protestors' tend to be white, middle aged and male - the outrage felt by the author was that they shouldn't be the subject of the sort of treatment that was traditionally only meted out to minorities back in those 'good old days' of the seventies. Police violence is only OK and justified when it isn't 'people like us' on the receiving end: those 'others' clearly deserve it, though. All of which has rather soured my enjoyment of the artifacts of seventies pop culture and made me think long and hard about my own reasons for indulging in it. The bottom line is that I'd like to think that I'm able to look at it critically, well aware of all the problematic attitudes and behaviours it often seems to endorse. Just as I can look back nostalgically at the old Soho I remember, full of sex workers, porn cinemas, adult shops and dodgy bars, without actually endorsing the sexual exploitation it represented. I can appreciate, though, that it represented a thriving, if seamy, sub-culture that has now been swept under the carpet in favour of the anemic tourist trap that is contemporary Soho. At least in the old days it was all out in the open, a healthy acknowledgement of the existence of this side of both our culture and human nature. Anyway, the end result of reading that rant is that I now find what I once considered an enjoyable pop culture blog an uncomfortable read, as I reassess everything the author has ever written about those books. The fact is that the past is a great place to visit, but we can't ever go back there. Things change and we have to accept that.
A Spanish Exorcist cash in, Demon Witch Child has several points of interest in its favour. Most notably, it was directed by Amando de Ossorio. Better known as the director behind the 'Blind Dead' series of seventies Spanish horrors, this entry in his CV is nowhere nearly as well known, possibly because, thematically, it lacks the originality of the 'Blind Dead' films, with its horrors instead entirely derivative of The Exorcist. That said, it isn't a slavish copy of the US film and incorporates a number of twists and variations on its inspiration. The most obvious variation is telegraphed by the title: this isn't so much a tale of demonic possession as it is of possession by the spirit of a dead witch, (who worshipped the Devil). The witch also has motivation for the possession and the evil deeds that follow, having been - from her perspective - persecuted to her death by the local police chief and prosecutor, so she possesses the latter's young daughter. The subsequent story takes in everything from child sacrifices and black masses, to exorcism, taking in murder, castration and all the supernatural shenanigans expected from a possessed child in this sort of film, in between. Indeed, not only does the little girl engage in levitation, but she also crawls down the exterior wall of her house, (in the vein of Count Dracula), speaks in other people's voices and goes one better than Linda Blair by spinning not just her head, but the whole upper part of her body.
The effects portraying these phenomena are variable, (you can see the strings in the levitation scene), but the scenes where the witch's spirit leaves her body in hospital and subsequently enters the girl's body, as the latter lies asleep in bed, while achieved simply, (by straightforward double exposure by the look of it), is actually quite eerie and surprisingly effective. Most disconcerting and convincing, though, are the make up effects which transform the child into a miniature facsimile of the dead witch. These contribute to possibly the film's most disturbing scene, where the transformed girl, speaking in the witch's voice, attempts to seduce the heroine's reporter boyfriend. In contrast to de Ossorio's better known 'Blind Dead' films which, with their slow moving monsters, tend to move at a relatively leisurely pace, often feeling as if they are taking forever to get anywhere, Demon Witch Child moves at a commendably brisk pace, getting straight into the story and moving things along rapidly to the horror set-pieces without too many diversions. Most of the diversions we do get concern the local priest and his crisis of faith: in flashback we see how he jilted his then girlfriend to take up the priesthood, leaving her so heartbroken that she becomes a prostitute and eventually commits suicide.
The film's pace is helped by the fact that the script presents its story in straightforward fashion. We open with the old crone desecrating a church, for which she is subsequently arrested. Under interrogation, the prosecutor threatens her with jail time, resulting her in jumping out of a window, (an unusual occurrence in seventies Spain - defenestration was usually the result of the investigating officers getting fed up with the 'no comment' response), taken to hospital, she soon dies. The path for her possession of the prosecutor's daughter has already been laid by her chief acolyte, who has enchanted the child with a necklace and a Satanic effigy. The child's governess quickly notices that something is amiss with the previously well-behaved girl, who has now taken to swearing, causing objects to fly about and making sexual innuendo about the governess' boyfriend. The kid is subsequently taken for medical examination, but not before a local baby is sacrificed at a black mass presided over by the witch-child. As in The Exorcist, science can provide no answers, with the boyfriend, a reporter on the local newspaper, suspecting a link with the deceased witch and her followers. Murdering the boyfriend after he rejects her sexual advances, the witch-child then castrates him, presenting his severed manhood - when back in little girl mode - to the distraught governess. Finally twigging that the child and everything else going on are linked, the priest is brought in, but not before the girl has kidnapped her infant cousin for a sacrifice. This time, the black mass is broken up by gun-toting and trigger happy police before any harm can come to the baby. The priest chases the witch-child into the local cemetery for a final showdown between good and evil. Luckily, unlike John Philip Law in Ring of Darkness (1979), Julien Mateos' who plays the priest, acting abilities are up to the rigours of an exorcism and the witch's spirit is banished, despite visions of his lost love distracting him.
But, despite the witch's defeat, there is no happy ending here, as the little girl, free of her possession, dies. "She'll let me die in peace now", she says as she expires in her father's arms, with the camera pulling back to reveal there is a knife in her chest. Now, how this got there was unclear to me - I've watched this film a couple of times now and I still don't see her get stabbed - I assume that we're meant to think that, in a final act of evil, the witch's spirit possessing her caused her to fatally stab herself. Whatever the cause of her demise, I couldn't help feel that this was a pretty harsh fate for the kid. Sure, she'd sacrificed a baby, murdered a couple of people and castrated that reporter, but it wasn't as if she had agency in any of those things as it was actually the witch doing all of it. `I was left feeling that this wasn't really a good advert for the priest's faith - surely his God should have been more forgiving and made a miraculous intervention? However you look at it, it means that the film ends on a hugely downbeat note, with the triumph of good having come at a pretty heavy (not to mention unfair) price. (Although, to be fair, this was probably the point the film makers were trying to get at).
In spite of the down beat ending, I found Demon Witch Girl a surprisingly enjoyable experience. Even with the handicap of some very variable English dubbing in the version I saw - which Anglicised all the names, rendered much of dialogue unintentionally bizarre and tried to give the impression that it was set somewhere in the US, despite the locales being obviously Spanish - it still came over as something more than just an Exorcist rip off. As well as bringing a number of original touches of its own to the well-worn scenario of child possession, it succeeds, in places, in conjuring up a uniquely weird and perverse atmosphere. As noted earlier, the girl's transformations into a miniature facsimile of the witch are truly unsettling. It has to be said that the actress involved gives a pretty good performance all round, (even with an English dubbed voice that sounds too old for a ten year or so old girl), being suitably creepy as the witch-child and equally disturbing as the regular, possessed-by-evil version of her usual self. (In point of fact, the girl playing the role had dubbed Linda Blair in the Spanish language release of The Exorcist. Sadly, Linda Blair didn't dub her into English in return). Moreover, the scenes with her as the witch-child making sexual overtures to the reporter and sexually explicit comments to other characters, including the priest, are sufficiently well handled that, while disturbing, never feel overly exploitative of the young child playing the role. (In contrast, for instance, to the extensive under age nudity of Ring of Darkness). Demon Witch Child is certainly a superior, not to mention eccentric, entry into the 'possessed child' cycle of horror films that followed The Exorcist. While its budget and production values might be modest in comparison to both its progenitor and many of its competitors, it makes up for this with Ossorio's sure-footed and well paced direction and a lot of imaginative touches to vary a story which was already in danger of becoming over-familiar.
The Hanging Woman (1973) is another of those Spanish movies which, in their English language version, tries to disguise its origins. Everyone in the credits has an English sounding name, even Paul Naschy, who here becomes 'Paul Nash'. Even the English language title is deceptive: The Hanging Woman does indeed exist in the film, but in a scene just before the opening credits, (it is a striking piece of imagery as the protagonist stumbles across her body, swinging from a tree in the cemetery). But she isn't the main focus of the film - as the trailer makes clear, it is really a zombie movie. Indeed, its original Spanish title translates as Orgy of the Dead. Filmed outside Madrid, but set near Skopje, it all looks suitably dismal and wintry, (in contrast to the usual sunny vistas presented in Spanish films). It is actually pretty atmospheric, with a dark and musty feel to the interiors, with a muted colour palette to match the gloomy exteriors.
The plot involves an outsider arriving in a small village to claim his inheritance in the form of his uncle's old house, only to find that something nasty is lurking in the catacombs and that the people around him are dying unpleasantly. It eventually transpires that the local mad scientist, Professor Droila, has been using the catacombs to pursue his experiments in raising the dead. (There was a lot of this sort of thing going on in Nineteenth Century houses in Eastern Europe according to continental horror movies of this period - I recall a couple of Klaus Kinski films (shot back-to-back) with similar set-ups). He is assisted in his endeavours by Igor, the necrophiliac grave digger, played by Paul Naschy. Anyone coming to the film as a Naschy fan might be disappointed to find that he is only playing a supporting role here. That said, he gives a performance and a half, eventually becoming a zombie himself and fatally stabbing his creator.
If The Hanging Woman isn't exactly ground breaking in plot terms and is somewhat overlong, it is reasonably effective. As mentioned previously, it is quite atmospheric, with a morbid and doom laden feel hanging over proceedings. It has some decent set-pieces and occasionally striking imagery, including the titular female and the depictions of the dead rising and shambling around in their tattered shrouds. It's an enjoyable piece of seventies Euro-horror, clearly inspired, in terms of its period setting and isolated rural locale, by Hammer's Gothic horrors of the previous decade, (Plague of the Zombies (1966) being the most obvious point of comparison).
'Intimate Revelations of Private Investigators...'
There's no doubt from that cover as to the angle on crime fiction that Private Detective Stories was focusing on. Over its 13 year publication history, (it lasted until 1950) the pulp's covers invariably featured an attractive woman, usually showing some cleavage, either imperiled and looking startled, or as some kind of gun-toting femme fatale. As in this November 1940 example, they are often tied up, or in the process of being bound. They are also frequently being roughed up by some thug. (The state of the bound young lady's clothing in this example implies she has already suffered such treatment and hints that, like the male captive, might have suffered torture, or worse). In case the casual newstand browser was still in any doubt as to the likely content, there's that strap-line: 'Intimate Revelations of Private Investigators'. I'm mildly surprised that they didn't go the whole hog and title the magazine Private Dick Stories, but perhaps that would have been going too far.
None of this should be surprising, as the magazine came from the same publisher as the already establish Spicy Detective pulp, It was part of a whole family of such pulps whose titles and garish covers promised all sorts of sleazy variations on the standard formulae. Of course, by modern standards it all seems pretty tame, although the interior illustrations were suitably two fisted and featured a disturbing amount of male violence toward women. The word 'Stories' was later dropped from the title, as had been the strap line during the later forties, but the covers stuck to the tried and tested formula of women in peril. The last few issues featured a comic strip section - a common feature in many pulps during this period, as they struggled to attract a new readership. Some of the later issues also had a UK reprint.
Back in the 'good old days', before he existence of social media, we could all live our lives, blissfully unaware of the undercurrents of racism, misogyny and just good old plain hatred, that swirled just below the surface of our society. Sure, you might overhear the odd remark in a pub, or on a radio phone in or even in the letters column of a newspaper, but you could always dismiss these as being the products of isolated bigots, nutters and cranks, unrepresentative of the overwhelming majority of people. So we could continue our belief that we lived in a tolerant, even liberally minded society, inclusive of minorities and welcoming diversity. Then along came social media, which gave a pretty much unfiltered platform to these bigots, nutters and cranks - to the extent that you started to worry that perhaps they weren't such an isolated minority, after all and that a lot of the population are, in fact, horrible bastards. I mean, just look at some of the things that have been trending on Twitter over the past couple of days in relation to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe since her release by Iran: #ungrateful, #unrgratefulcow and #sendherback, to name a few. All because she has had the audacity to criticise the government for their handling of the issues which lay behind her incarceration by the Iranian government. The racism and misogyny underpinning these trends is ugly and disturbing: non-white women should feel grateful that we even bothered with them, it seems to say.
Indeed, this whole expectation of 'gratitude' seems to be part of the populist right-wing mind-set stirred up those who backed Brexit. The idea that we might help people for simply altruistic reasons seems alien to them - any act of kindness or, indeed, simple human decency, should indebt the recipient in perpetuity, it seems. In part, this seems driven by concepts of social class we really should have outgrown long ago - the less well off, the lower classes, should feel grateful for the help the wealthy condescend to give them. This used to be expressed through the fact that the only relief they could obtain was via charity - your health care, education and so on were ultimately provided at the whim of the better off. Of course, the welfare state was meant to end this, but successive Tory bastard governments have whittled away at the system, making benefits applicants increasingly jump through humiliating hoops to 'prove' that they should be paid the benefits they are entitled to. (Moreover, the rising use of food banks indicates that charity is back in a big way as the main source of poverty relief - not that those bloody proles seem grateful, though). Immigrants and refugees face similar attitudes - they should be grateful that we even pull them out of the water when their dinghy sinks in the Channel, for God's sake. You can guarantee that it is only a matter of time before the gratitude police decide that those refugees from the war in Ukraine (if any of them ever really are allowed into the UK), just aren't grateful enough for our hospitality.
Depressing though it might be to see such attitudes on display in contemporary Britain, I take some solace from the fact that, thankfully, social media users aren't representative of the population at large. As I've noted before, they are simply a very vocal minority who have learned how to manipulate a particular platform to create the impression that they represent some groundswell of public opinion. That said, there are still more ignorant bigots out there than I'd like - cultivated and emboldened by our current ruling cabal.
A while ago I was pondering as to whether Insane Clown Posse's faux Blaxploitation film Big Money Hustlas (2000) might fall into the definition of 'cultural appropriation', featuring, as it does, the white rappers behaving the way they clearly think black performers acted in the aforementioned genre. The resulting film consequently plays out as a caricature of, rather than a homage to, Blaxploitation. I was reminded of the issue again today, while watching Larry Buchanan's 1981 schlock-fest Loch Ness Horror. The caricature of Scotland presented here is quite alarming. Far more so than 'Nessie' herself, who is represented by what appears to be a large rubber inflatable with smoke emanating from its mouth. Look, I know this was a low budget film, but damn it, you can see the seam in the monster's neck where the sections of the inflatable were stuck together. She doesn't so much as bite her victims as nudge them to death with her head, (obviously, those rubber teeth wouldn't penetrate anything, let alone flesh and bone). When she moves through the forest, all you see is her head and neck because, presumably, they didn't have the budget to make the rest of her - in the water, the head and neck are followed by an inflated hump to suggest a body. (I actually remember this film getting a bit of press coverage in the UK when it was in pre-production, with Buchanan promising that 'Nessie' would be represented by a sophisticated, life size fire breathing mechanical model, mush as Dino de Laurentis promised that his King Kong would be some kind of forty foot tall robot. At least in the Kong remake we got a man in a monkey suit rather than an outsize and barely animated beach inflatable).
But to get back to the point, the film's depiction of Scotland seems to be derived entirely from 1940s Hollywood depictions of the country and its culture - all kilts, whisky and castles. Which is quite apt, as it was all filmed in California, with Lake Tahoe unconvincingly standing in for Loch Ness. As for the depiction of the Scottish themselves, well, I'm not sure if it constitutes racism, but they are all twee young girls, whisky soaked eccentric patriarchs and earnest professors. Those depicting them seem to think that excessively rolling one's Rs constitutes a 'Scottish' accent. It really shouldn't be allowed. But what else should we expect from a Larry Buchanan film? He obviously thought that a 'Nessie' film was a good idea, (Hammer had tried to get such a film off the ground in association with Toho back in the seventies - there was lots of publicity, but nothing ever materialised), but had no idea how to pad it out to feature length. Consequently, we have multiple sub-plots punctuating the various 'Nessie' attacks: an American scientist searching for proof of the monster, a crazy Scottish scientist stealing the monster's egg and a conspiracy plot involving the British government trying to locate and destroy a crashed German bomber in the Loch in order to cover up the wartime misdemeanors of an MP. The latter plot line barely makes sense and only really ties into the main plot by dint of the fact that the crashed bomber is located at the mouth of the creature's lair and that the crusty old patriarch cum 'Nessie' fancier, witnessed what really happened to it back in the war. Production values are threadbare - the 'British Army' seems to consist of four men and a Land Rover and all wear World War Two era uniforms, for instance, while the German bomber, when seen in flight, is stock footage of a JU52 transport taken from Where Eagles Dare.
Utterly dreadful, Loch Ness Horror nonetheless exerts a peculiar fascination while it is playing - it really is hard to believe what you are seeing, from the inflatable 'Nessie' to the 'Scottish' accents guaranteed to make the ears of any real Scot bleed profusely. Nevertheless, despite all of its shortcomings, it is still better than Beneath Loch Ness (2001), another US-filmed but Scottish set 'Nessie' movie. Its 'Scottish' setting is even less believable than that of Loch Ness Horror and the accents worse. If you want to know why Patrick Bergin thought that appearing in EastEnders was a step up career-wise, just watch Beneath Loch Ness. If, on the other hand, you want to be alternately entertained and horrified (by the accents, not 'Nessie'), then watch Loch Ness Horror instead.
Another station building. A while ago I posted some photos of an old die cast Hornby Dublo building I'd bought cheaply and which is destined to be the up line building on a new station I'm planning for my revamped model railway layout. Well, this is planned to be the down line building. This is a Triang-Hornby 'Main Station' building. In contrast to the Hornby Dublo building, this one is injection moulded plastic and is of an even more generic style. This was actually the second version of this item. It was originally produced as a 'second storey' for the Triang booking office model, of which this is an incomplete example:
The idea was that two of theses could be placed side-by-side, with the second type of building placed on top of them, in a central position. In actuality, this made for an awkward looking combination and the upper storey building apparently didn't sell well. Consequently, it was re-tooled as seen, with doors and marketed as a building in its own right. It was often pictured in catalogues as the main building of a terminus station and in this form lasted in the range until the early seventies.
As can be seen, the example I bought very cheaply on eBay is incomplete - there should be a small clock tower mounted centrally on the roof. These often go AWOL and sometimes turn up separately on places like eBay or at swap meets and toy fairs. Alternatively, it wouldn't be difficult to construct a replacement from scratch. Either way, its absence isn't a big deal for me. Before being pressed into service, the building will likely undergo a repaint to better match the Hornby Dublo building. The difference in architectural styles between to two station buildings is prototypical. The new station, as planned, is vaguely inspired by Southampton Central, where the up and down buildings are quite different, having been constructed many years apart, (indeed, the whole of the current down side of the station was added later, at the same time as Western Docks were constructed on reclaimed land south of the then existing station).
All I need to do now is actually finish clearing my spare room of stored junk so that I can start expanding the layout and construct the new station.
Another in the cycle of Italian films issued in response to the success of a raft of seventies US movies involving children either possessed or spawned by the Devil, Ring of Darkness (1979) director Pier Carpi, (who adapted the script from his own novel), always denied that it was inspired by The Exorcist (1973). Which is fair enough: it seems to have more in common with The Omen (1978), with its tale of a young girl fathered by the devil discovering her parentage and the power that comes with it. To be absolutely fair, it seems to predate The Omen - although released in 1979, shooting seems to have commenced in 1977 and the source novel was published in 1974. Moreover, whereas in the US film the parents are (initially) unwitting hosts to the Anti-Christ, unaware of their adopted child's origins, in Ring of Darkness, the mother has deliberately got herself impregnated by the devil as part of a diabolical pact she and her friends had entered into in order to ensure their own success. What seems clear watching Ring of Darkness is that was seen by its makers as something more than just another Euro horror picture. The cast, for instance, features a number of very recognisable actors - Frank Finlay, Ian Bannen, Ann Heywood, John Phillip Law and Irene Papas, (although Finlay, Bannen and Law have what amount to extended cameos). Stylistically, the film seems to be deliberately avoiding all the usual cliches of the genre. Indeed, the Satanic 'orgy' which plays out under the opening titles is shot in a very 'arty' style.
Not that the film doesn't feature some scenes of demonically-inspired violence - set pieces include a boy having his chest burned by the touch of the devil's daughter and a teacher forced to jump to her death, for example - it also boasts an exorcism scene and nudity. Lots of nudity. Which, ordinarily, wouldn't bother me, but here it is problematic as much of it involves the devilish daughter, Daria, who is characterised as being thirteen. The problem stems from the fact that the actress playing her, (Lara Wendel), was, at the time of shooting, around thirteen herself. Now, in her earliest nude scenes, it was possible that a body double could have been used, based on how they were framed. Likewise the exorcism scene, where she is scene naked in long shot. The climactic scenes, however, where she battles her mother, both physically and spiritually, dispel this notion - there are full frontal nude shots of both. All of which left me feeling decidedly uneasy, as if I'd unwittingly walked into an underage porn film. Clearly, child protection issues weren't always to the fore in seventies Italian exploitation, as Lara Wendel had already appeared in a trio of films in which she had played an underage love interest.
Quite apart from child exploitation, Ring of Darkness has other problems. Most fundamentally, the reactions of Daria's mother and her friends to the discovery that one of their off-spring, the result of a liaison with the devil is herself diabolical, simply don't make sense. What other result did they expect? It isn't as if they aren't constantly reminded of this past event by regular appearances from the Devil himself. He keeps popping up in the guise of some dude who wears his coat over his shoulders, to frighten off interfering characters like Ian Bannen's chess-playing Professor. In the case of Irene Pappas, who has become so disillusioned with her tryst with the dark side that she dabbles, part-time, in prostitution, he turns up to scare off her punters, usually when they are mid vinegar stroke. Moreover, it is not entirely clear why they choose a priest who is having a crisis of faith to perform the attempted exorcism of Daria - surely you'd want someone God-fearing to drive out the Devil? In the event, it makes no difference as John Phillip Law's acting simply isn't up to the rigours of an exorcism. The character of Daria is also problematical, all too often coming over as simply a stroppy and petulant teenager rather than an earthly embodiment of evil, (the fact that she is dubbed in the English language version by someone who sounds like the sort of middle class kid the BBC would cast in children's TV period dramas as the over-privileged eldest daughter, doesn't help).
On a technical level, Ring of Darkness is actually pretty well made, with good production values and an interesting musical score from Stelvio Cipriani. But the underage nudity remains a sticking point for me. While attitudes to to such things might have changed since the seventies, (not just in Italy -let's not forget an underage Natassia Kinski's nude scenes in Hammer's To the Devil a Daughter (1976)), it remains exploitative and disturbing.
The last in a cycle of low budget war movies produced by Oakmont Productions for Mirisch in the late sixties, The Last Escape, although filmed in 1968, wasn't released until 1970. As can be seen from the trailer and in common with other films in the series, it makes liberal use of stock footage from other films to provide action sequences, in this case 633 Squadron and Operation Crossbow. The repurposing of the 633 Squadron sequences, (which had also been cannibalised wholesale for the first film in the Oakmont series, Mosquito Squadron), is actually quite imaginatively done, (it probably helped that Walter Graumann directed both films). In this respect, it is another fine example of 'cut and paste' film making, where by a new production is fashioned around existing footage.
The low budget shows not just in the recycling of old footage, but also in the fact that the same tanks, (thinly disguised US M41 tanks), turn up at various points as German, Soviet and US tanks. Indeed, at the end they confront themselves - watch the sequence where there is stand off between the Red Army and the US Army: the two sets of tanks are never in shot at the same time. While most of the Oakmont war films were shot in the UK, this one was shot in Germany, (the other one with location filming was Hell Boats, shot in Malta). Also in common with most of the series, this one features a second ranked US star, in this case the ubiquitous Stuart Whitman. Previous US stars featured in these movies included Lloyd Bridges, Ben Murphy, James Franciscus and James Caan. The exception was Mosquito Squadron, which starred David McCallum who, whilst not American, was, at the time starring on US TV in The Man From Uncle. As the trailer indicates, The Last Escape is entirely action orientated, with lots of guns blazing and explosions going off. As such, it is a reasonably entertaining ninety minutes of b-Movie level thrills, but doesn't really offer anything original.
I've found another of those streaming channels which continuously streams old movies. This one actually features several channels, devoted to various types of entertainment. Most relevant to me are the five movie channels, particularly the one devoted to horror and science fiction. Over this past weekend alone, I've managed to catch three old films I've never seen before, indeed, one that I'd never heard of before. Yeah, I know that it is hard to believe, but even for an obsessive watcher of schlock like myself, there are still low-rent movies out there to be discovered. The other two were films I knew about, but had never seen all the way through. The first of these was Man Without a Body (1957), an absolutely astounding British B-movie - a wealthy businessman dying of a brain tumor obtains the head of Nostradamus and has it revived by a scientist using a revolutionary process, with the aim of having the head's brain replace his own. Now, you probably think that there's a flaw in this plan: surely this wouldn't save the millionaire's life, as it would be Nostradamus, now in his body, who would enjoy a new lease of life. But that's because, like me, you apparently have a fundamental misunderstanding of how brains, let alone things like memory and personality work. According to the movie's main scientist, after a while, the new brain will take on the characteristics of its host body. Including, by implication, the personality and memories of its predecessor - quite how it can do this when these, according to conventional wisdom, reside in the brain itself, is never explained. Bizarrely, it is also suggested that, despite the change in personality, the transplanted brain would retain Nostradamus' predictive powers, which the millionaire hopes to use in order to make a killing on the stock market.
Obviously, it all goes horribly wrong and Nostradamus' whole head ends up transplanted onto the body of a doctor murdered by the millionaire, (the medic had been knocking off his mistress), with the resulting monster going on a very low-budget rampage before its head falls off. The whole thing has that air of delirium about it, that marks out the truly schlocky. Production values are threadbare, dialogue alternates between inane and insane and it is full of surreal sights such as people having conversations with a severed head sat on a table. This was followed by Edgar G Ulmer's The Man From Planet X (1951) which, despite its low budget, does boast a particularly decent and other worldly looking alien. Just the one, mind - the budget wouldn't extend to showing us any of his millions of compatriots on the titular 'Planet X', (a rogue planet passing close enough to the earth for them to send him as an advance scout). Interestingly, for its era, the film depicts the aliens as desperate rather than evil - if they don't colonise the earth, they will freeze to death as their world hurtles into deep space. Indeed, the alien himself is as much victim as aggressor, as he finds himself being tortured for information about his advanced technology by William Schallert's unethical Dr Mears, With its Hollywood Scotland setting - with huge wreaths of fog disguising, not entirely successfully, that the sets are actually recycled from Joan of Arc (1948) - it feels almost as surreal as Man Without a Body.
Which brings us to the film that I hadn't seen before: Planet of the Prehistoric Women (1966). Not to be confused with Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), this is an independently made full colour B-movie directed by Arthur C Pierce. Pierce was responsible for a number of low budget science fiction movies in the mid sixties, including The Human Duplicators (1965), Dimension 5 (1966) and The Destructors (1966). They are all competently made, if entirely derivative, B-movies which are entertaining while they are on. Planet of the Prehistoric Women is somewhat more ambitious than the others, presenting an interplanetary adventure, with a spaceship being sent to an uncharted planet to try and find survivors from another ship that crash-landed there. Due to Einsteinian time dilation, by the time the search party arrives, they find themselves dealing with the offspring of the survivors. There are the usual photographically enlarged lizards and savage cavemen running around the primitive planet, but the only women there, despite the title, seem to be those from the rescue ship. The whole thing has a 'twist' ending that, if you've read enough science fiction, you'll see coming a mile off. It is tempting to think that Star Trek, the earliest episodes of which were showing on US TV when this film was made, might have been an influence on the set up of the rescue ship's crew and the whole space fleet background. The interior design of the space ship is actually pretty decent and a lot of miniatures work is surprisingly good in a low budget sort of way. so there you have it - another source of schlocky low budget goodness for my entertainment - long may it stay upon Roku!
So, the UK government has finally gotten around to sanctioning some more Russian oligarchs, (but not the ones who contribute to the Tory party, of course), including Roman Abramovich. Which means that, at long last, Chelsea FC are going to have t face the consequences of having allowed themselves to be a front for their owner laundering his dubiously gained wealth, in return for winning trophies. Frankly, I don't think that the measures against Chelsea - freezing their accounts, stopping them from trading or selling tickets and placing an effective transfer ban on them - have gone anywhere near far enough. They should be kicked out of the Premier League altogether, (not to mention European competition) and be stripped of every title and trophy that have won since they came under Russian ownership. They were all won as a result of tainted money. (Rather as all those trophies Leeds United had won under Don Revie had, allegedly according to Brian Clough, been won as a result of 'cheating'). They need to prove that they can do it the 'proper' way, without huge injections of Russian cash with which to buy their way to success. Which they can do by starting all over again at the bottom of League 2 or, even better, the Isthmian League.
As you can tell, I'm not a Chelsea fan. Thank God. Despite everything going on in Ukraine, we still have those idiots chanting Abromovich's name from the stands. Still, these are the same idiots who chant 'You are on your way to Auschwitz' at Spurs fans. You know, they really should have had all the goals they scored against Norwich yesterday sanctioned and reallocated to their opponents. See - there's another idea for punishing them. Of course, long-time Putin fan Nigel Farage would doubtless scold me for indulging in indiscriminate and irrational Russophobia. Which is nonsense - it isn't Russians I have an aversion to, just Chelsea FC. Mind you, knowing how the luck of we Spurs supporters runs, Abramovich being forced to sell Chelsea will result in the club being bought by some obscenely wealthy and homicidal Saudi prince who not only buys every elite player in Europe, but also has anyone who scores a goal against them kidnapped, murdered and dismembered. But until then, let's just hope that the blue bastards tumble into well deserved oblivion for the rest of this season, at least.
What can we say about The House on Bare Mountain (1962)? It is a comic sex movie that, for many years I recall, a certain notoriety based upon its title and some vague plot synopses, but that nobody writing about it ever seemed to have actually seen it. Well, having sat through it twice in twenty four hours, (a result of late night indolence - I was too lazy to change channels, despite the fact that the streaming channel I was watching was showing the same, barely time-shifted, schedule two nights running), I feel that I can make as good, if not better assessment of the film than most of the others I've encountered online. The most interesting thing about The House on Bare Mountain is the way in which it tries to unite multiple sub-genres in one film to present as broad an appeal as possible. Obviously, it is predominantly a nudie movie, packed full of topless girls, bouncing breasts and bare bottoms. But to provide a framework for these sights (I won't call it a 'plot', it is far too flimsy for that), it draws in elements of the girls school genre, the backwoods/hill billy film and, most notoriously, the teen horror flick. Thanks to the makers' awareness of the ludicrousness of the whole enterprise and a firmly tongue in cheek approach, these elements gel surprisingly smoothly.
Granny Good, (played by producer 'Lovable' Bob Cresse), runs a sort of finishing school for girls, (Good Grandma School for Good Girls), in a ramshackle house atop a mountain. The school, as it turns out, is really a front for her moonshine operation, which she runs with the help of a henchman who is also a werewolf (although he seems permanently stuck in wolfman mode). The cops, meanwhile, are on to her racket - her latest student is actually an undercover cop - and the Werewolf Union has been called in by the henchman, who is fed up at not getting the either the minimum wage or overtime. It all culminates with a fancy dress party at which some of the guests are apparently the real Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula. All of which, of course, is simply an excuse for the girls to take their tops off - to take showers, get undressed for bed or to do their outdoor exercise class, with the camera unerringly zooming in and lingering on their bare breasts. Production values are, not surprisingly, basic, (the actors playing the monsters at the party are simply wearing fright masks, although the werewolf make up is surprisingly good for a film of this sort, reminiscent of that worn by Glenn Strange in the old PRC programmer The Mad Monster). But despite a shoestring budget, the film is put together very professionally, with well set up shots, reasonable pace and incisive editing - shots don't carry on too long, scenes are kept short and dialogue straightforward. The framing narrative, with Granny good apparently behind bars telling us the story in flashback, is well handled, leading to a finale where it is revealed that things aren't quite as we initially assumed.
Director R L Frost and producer Cresse are familiar names in this parish: later in the sixties they moved on from this sort of nudie picture to Mondo movies, producing both their own compendiums of fake footage - Mondo Bizarro and Mondo Freudo - and repurposing footage from genuine Italian Mondos, (Witchcraft '70, which cannibalises White Angel, Black Angel, adding some new footage to produce a 'new' film). Bob Cresse's eventual demise lends a bizarre footnote to his career - while out walking his dog, Cresse witnessed two men beating a woman and pulled out a gun and challenged them. One of the men pulled out his own gun, shooting and seriously wounding Cresse and killing his dog. Not having health insurance, the subsequent hospital bills effectively bankrupted Cresse, halting his career in sexploitation. He died in 1998 of a heart attack, aged only 61. While one shouldn't make light of such a bizarre and tragic events, I can't help but hope that Cresse was dressed as Granny Good when he pulled that gun - it would just seem so apt.
So, what can I say about The House on Bare Mountain? Well, by today's standards, as a sex comedy, it all seems pretty tame. I've seen its style likened to a British Carry On film or Benny Hill with added nudity. In truth, with its leading character in drag, I'm put more in mind of a sexed up Old Mother Riley movie. Although, I would say that, despite the gags being universally corny, Bare Mountain is far more enjoyable than any Arthur Lucan film I've ever seen. The gags might be pure corn, but they did at least make me smile a couple of times. To label The House on Bare Mountain a sex comedy is misleading - there is no sex whatsoever on display, just lots of bare bums and boobs. The film stands as another reminder of just how quaint and innocent yesterday's smut seems today. Still, it has to be said that the movie packs a lot into a sixty two minute running time - none of it of any consequence, but it is all harmless. Which is probably the best way to describe The House on Bare Mountain: harmless.
A while ago I posted a scan of the cover and some of the interior pages of a late fifties edition of Argosy that I own. By then, it was a monthly men's magazine, but back in December 1929 it was a weekly general fiction pulp. Sadly, I don't own this issue, which features one of those metal brassiere clad female warriors beloved of pulp artists. The story it illustrates is 'Maza of the Moon' by Otis Adelbert Kline. All but forgotten, (save by pulp and science fiction enthusiasts like myself), Kline was, in his day, a prolific and well regarded author for the pulps, producing several series of novels reminiscent of those produced by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The alleged similarities between these and Burroughs' works was rumoured, in fan circles, to have sparked a feud between the two authors, although no evidence of such rivalry actually exists. What is true is that Kline wrote a series of adventure novels in similar vein to Burroughs' 'John Carter of Mars', with Burroughs subsequently producing a new series of Venus-based stories - Kline then wrote a pair of novels set on Mars, s well as a 'Jan of the Jungle' series similar to 'Tarzan'.
The fact is that pulp editors frequently commissioned stories in similar vein to popular successes published both themselves and by their rivals. No differently to the way in which every successful movie franchise nowadays spawns a host of imitators, hoping to capitalise upon fans' appetite for 'more of the same'. In this regard, Kline's planetary romances and jungle stories succeeded in meeting pulp readers' demands for more thrills in the Burroughs mode. 'Maza of the Moon' could, conceivably, be seen as part of this supposed Kline-Burroughs feud, being an attempt to mimic the success of Burroughs' 'Moon Maid' series, (previously published in Argosy), but, in reality, the similarities between the two works are superficial. Kline was an assistant editor of Weird Tales, where many of his short stories were published, with many others appearing in its sister publication, Oriental Stories. His output declined rapidly during the late thirties and early forties, as he focused on his role as a literary agent, (he was Robert E Howard's agent). This cutting short of his literary efforts, along with the fact that his highest profile works were doubtless commissioned as cash ins on the success of Burroughs' most popular works, probably accounts for the fact that Kline is not widely remembered today.
Some films are made for very specific audiences and if you aren't in that demographic then they can seem incomprehensible. I found myself watching one such movie the other day: Big Money Hustlas (2000). This was made by and was a vehicle for white rap duo Insane Clown Posse and features not only them, but a number of other white rappers of the era. Why am I putting so much emphasis on the 'white'? Well, because the film, disconcertingly, styles itself as some kind of homage to the seventies 'Blaxploitation' genre. Disconcertingly because, as the term implies, 'Blaxploitation' movies focused on showcasing black performers and film makers who had, hitherto, been sorely under represented in cinema. Consequently, a 'Blaxploitation' styled movie featuring almost exclusively white performers, (whose day job was performing a genre of music also originated and mainly practiced by black artists), is more than a little jarring. I'm not fond of either the term or the concept of 'cultural appropriation', but I can't help but feel that Big Money Hustlas is what its originators had in mind when they coined it. I couldn't but think while watching it: 'isn't enough that these guys have tried to appropriate a piece of black culture in the form of rap, but now they are wandering around, trying to act and speak the way they think black people in seventies films do? Why don't they just add insult to injury and wear black face?' Actually, they almost do - with both 'Violent J' and 'Shaggy 2 Dope' sporting their trademark black and white clown make up throughout.
Look, I'm not saying that you have to be black to appreciate 'Blaxploitation' (I'm certainly a fan and I'm a middle aged white guy from the UK), but I do think that it helps to be black if you try to produce it - I mean, it isn't called 'Whitespolitation', is it? Besides, there already exists a vast field of predominantly white exploitation films made in the seventies if you really want to produce a homage to this type of picture. But Big Money Hustlas doesn't even do an especially good job of parodying 'Blaxploitation'. Having a hero speaking in (bad) rhyme and characters brandishing lots of guns doesn't cut it - the genre was infinitely more varied than that. Its inadequacies are highlighted by a cameo appearance from Rudy Ray Moore himself in the guise of Dolemite, (this was the only reason that I was watching the film and you have to wait until around three quarters of the film's length to see him) - in only a couple of scenes he shows how it should be done. Of course, none of my criticisms matter - I'm not the target audience for this film. Big Money Hustlas was made for the 'Juggalos', (as Insane Clown Posse's hardcore fans are known) and they loved it - they ensured that, when it was originally released (direct to video) it became a big success. Indeed, it spawned a western-themed prequel, Big Money Rustlas a few years down the line. That's the thing about movies like this, made for a specific fan audience who will watch o rlisten to anything released by their idols, they are, n effect, exempt from conventional critical standards. In this case, for instance, the 'Juggalos' are simply not going to care whether the film successfully parodies 'Blaxploitation' conventions, or not, let alone worry about the cultural issues it raises. And why should they? They are interested only in seeing Insane Clown Posse doing their stuff - just as Elvis fans, or Beatles fans, or even Cliff Richard fans, only went to see their films to watch their idols on the big screen and enjoy feature length exposure to them.
OK, so now we're meant to be boycotting Coca Cola products because, so far, they've declined to pull out of Russia. I'm all for supporting Ukraine in any way possible, but I think that it might well be a bit late to worry as to whether or not the Coca Cola organisation is evil. Let's not forget that, during World War Two its German subsidiary kept running. After the US entered the war, they couldn't import the ingredients needed to produce Coke, so came up with Fanta, instead. It was also produced at the Coca Cola plant in the occupied Netherlands. After the war, when the constituent parts of the company were re-united, the US parent company was happy to claim the profits made from selling Fanta to Nazi soldiers. That's the thing, organisations like Coca Cola are multi-national conglomerates with allegiance to nothing but profits. They don't much care how or where those profits are made, or who they have to deal with in order to realise them. That's modern capitalism. I'm always more amazed by those corporations who do observe sanctions regimes than I'm appalled by those that don't. But to get back to boycotting Coca Cola products - it's actually a pretty easy one for me. When I was diagnosed as diabetic a few years ago, one of the first things I gave up in order to reduce my blood sugar levels were soft drinks. I do sometimes indulge in the sugar-free variety, but even then rarely. So it wouldn't be any great sacrifice for me.
The trouble with such boycotts, though, is how far do you take them? I remember not buying South African products back in the days of Apatheid, I also know people who won't buy Israeli grown oranges as a protest over the treatment of the Palestinians. These sorts of boycotts are straightforward and easy to observe. It's when it gets wider that you start having problems - which supermarkets can you safely shop at, bearing in mind that many pay low wages and have dubious employment practices? Should I boycott Amazon for the same reasons? This past weekend, my oldest great niece - she's fifteen - was telling me that she is refusing to watch some films because some of the performers have made homophobic, misogynistic or racist comments. I understand where she's coming from, but I was moved to point out that if I was to boycott every film I knew that had such people involved in their making, I wouldn't be watching many films at all. (Especially true in the world of exploitation - I'd have to avoid anything with Klaus Kinski in, for instance and anything Italian altogether, in fact). The sad fact is that many of the things we love are produced by people we detest, (or whose views, at least, we detest). But these things, like films, are rarely the product of single individuals - many of those involved in their production will be perfectly decent people. By continuing to enjoy these things, we aren't necessarily endorsing the views of the unpleasant ones.
I'm not entirely sure that I'm convinced myself by my explanation. (I'm pretty sure my great niece wasn't - she's a smart young woman of strong principles and opinions, quite rightly so). But I can't, for now, come up with a better one. Obviously, my best defence for watching exploitation films is that my doing so in no way directly benefits those who made them - neither he scumbags nor the good people - as so many are public domain and many of my sources for them aren't exactly kosher either and most certainly aren't paying licensing fees. Jesus, now I'm endorsing copyright infringement and video piracy, (which, we all know from the warnings on DVDs and at the cinema, funds terrorism - because that's what bin Laden was doing in his cave: running off knock off copies of Disney DVDs with which to flood dodgy back street stores in the UK). So yeah kids, don't watch dodgy DVDs or shady streaming channels. But boycott Coke - it's full of sugar and probably worse shit, for all I know.
It has to be said that many films that have slipped into obscurity should probably stay forgotten. Dr Heckyll and Mr Hype (1980), for instance. A truly wtf experience which quickly outstays its welcome, it was one of Cannon's earliest productions, following the studio's takeover by Golan and Globus. They clearly intended it to be a major release - I recall that, during its making, it got a lot of coverage in the UK press, centering around the fact that it was to feature Oliver Reed playing a comedic take on Jekyll and Hyde. But it never appeared in cinemas and, as far as the UK was concerned, it just seemed to vanish. What had happened was that Cannon had, upon seeing he completed film, deemed it unreleasable, instead selling it direct to cable TV. It isn't hard to see why: it is all over the place stylistically and tonally. Touted as a horror/comedy, it is neither horrific nor comedic enough to qualify as either. Writer-director Charles b Griffith, a veteran Roger Corman collaborator, clearly thought that he had a ground-breaking concept in giving us an ugly Jekyll character, who turns into a handsome and smooth ladies man. Except that it had been done before, multiple times, notably in Hammer's 1960 Two Faces of Dr Jekyll, (which, incidentally, had featured Oliver Reed in a supporting role), they repeated the formula in comedic fashion in The Ugly Duckling, with Bernard Bresslaw and, of course, there had been Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor. Unfortunately, Dr Heckyll and Mr Hype doesn't improve upon any of these.
In large part, the problem lies with Oliver Reed's portrayal of the two title characters. As the ugly, green faced and misshapen podiatrist Dr Heckyll, he actually gives a surprisingly sensitive performance, creating a likeable character who is easy to sympathise with and handles the comic aspects with aplomb. His Hype, however, is played relatively straight, as a completely narcissistic bastard who ends up murdering the women he tries to seduce when they fail to flatter him sufficiently. You can see how the murders are meant to be blackly comic, but as performed by Reed, they are simply brutal and unpleasant, contrasting jarringly with the preceding comedy sequences featuring Heckyll and his colleagues at their foot clinic. Director Griffith laid the blame squarely with Reed, (who hadn't been his choice for the role, but rather that of the producers), claiming that while the actor had been great as Heckyll, he had no idea of how to play Hype, opting simply to play the part as, in essence, himself. While it is true that Reed's performance in the Hype role does feel like a variation on the sorts of womanising rogues and bastards he had specialised in during the sixties and early seventies, one can't help but feel that, if this wasn't what the film required, surely it was the responsibility of the director to, well, direct him to something more appropriate? Whatever the truth of the situation, what seems clear watching the finished film is that the script was simply not giving Reed enough to work with in the Hype role. Certainly, in dialogue terms, it rarely affords him the same kind of comedic opportunities that for Heckyll does.
The film is also stylistically all over the place, with what are supposed to be 'madcap' comedy sequences at the clinic mixed with full on slapstick, (including a bunch of Keystone Cop style policemen chasing Hype around), all interspersed with bouts of violence and Hype going around menacing and murdering women. At times Griffith seems to be harking back to his Corman days, with the scenes between Heckyll and his police detective patient reminiscent of the dentist sequences in Little Shop of Horrors. Indeed, the cast includes a couple of veterans of that film in the form of Mel Welles and Dick Miller, both of whom give decent enough performances with the material they are given. Which goes for the rest of the cast - they try hard, but the laughs just aren't there. The attempts at comedy are just too scattershot, all too often incidental to the main plot, giving the impression that a lot of it was made up as they went along. To continue the Corman connection, the production even looks like those early films Griffiths scripted for him, with production values that can best be described as cheap. Which is a problem when the film was clearly seen by its producers as some kind of prestige production - a vehicle for their 'big name' star Reed. Dr Heckyll and Mr Hype is one of those films that you watch and can't quite believe what you are seeing, (sadly true of many of Reed's films from this period). You are left wondering not only just how it was made, but also why? Reed, to his credit, is smoothly professional, clearly giving it his best shot, the trouble is that the whole thing seems misconceived and a complete waste of his (and everyone else in the cast, for that matter) talents.
Once again, I have to thank the ever reliable Otherworlds TV for providing an opportunity to see this deservedly forgotten film.
OK, a brief digression to model railways for today's post. This is my latest bargain basement acquisition from eBay - a station building. This is a very battered example of a Hornby Dublo die-cast metal suburban station building from the 1950s. I got it cheaply, not just because of its condition, but because it is incomplete. These usually come screwed to a length of metal platform, but this one has been separated from its platform. As can be seen, however, it does sit quite neatly on Triang type plastic platforms. Consequently, it is destined to be the up side station building on a new station planned for my expanded layout, (which will happen when I finally get around to clearing some more accumulated junk from the spare room).
As can be seen, in contrast to Triang, whose range of plastic station buildings were based on contemporary 1960s designs, the Hornby Dublo product has a 1930s style art deco look. This, along with their chosen colour scheme, makes them look very much at home on Southern Railway or Southern Region BR layouts. As I say, this example is somewhat the worse for wear, with the paint work needing attention and some glazing requiring replacing. I'm tempted to give it a complete repaint, in a slightly lighter shade of cream, (it looks as if it might have been repainted previously - doors, for instance, should be all green, rather than just having green frames). I have to say that I'm pretty pleased with this acquisition, not only did I pay a pretty low price for it, but it solves a problem for me by providing me with a fairly distinctive station building - most modern offerings are not only expensive, but tend to represent more conventional architectural styles unsuited to the area and era I model.
