Message From Space (1978)

Speaking of Japanese strangeness, (as we were in the previous post), I also recently caught Message From Space (1978), touted at its release as being the 'Japanese Star Wars'.  While it falls well short in comparison to the US film, it is a galaxy-spanning space opera, drawing in elements from all manner of genres and mythologies.  Unlike much Japanese popular culture of the era, the film was clearly aimed an international audience from the outset, rather than simply having an English-language version created through re-editing and dubbing existing footage and inserting new footage with non-Japanese performers, as was usually the case.  The cast features several US actors, most notably Vic Morrow, who gets top billing, not to mention Sonny Chiba, who had already gained an international fandom and was recognisable to English speaking audiences.  While it doesn't make any attempt to mimic the visual design of Star Wars, (unlike various Italian cash ins, for instance), many of the tropes and characters are instantly recognisable.  Not only is there an imperiled Princess on a mission to find help for her people, but there is also a reckless, yet often naive, space pilot (shades of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker), a robot sidekick, (that combines design elements from both R2D2 and C3PO, while the wise old space warrior role is effectively split between Vic Morrow's forcibly retired general, Sonny Chiba's deposed prince and the wise old father of the princess.  The villains - a race of metallic faced marauders who are subjugating the galaxy - also tool around on their Death Star-like planet-cum-spaceship.

In terms of production design, Message From Space chooses to differentiate the tech-heavy villains, (although they also brandish swords along with their ray guns and spaceships), from the peace-loving planet they are oppressing by giving the latter more fantasy-like trappings, most notably the 'Space Galleons' they use for interstellar travel which are, as the name implies, fully-rigged sailing ships in space.  For good measure, the film throws in a Seven Samurai vibe by having much of its running time taken up by the Princess' quest for the eight legendary warriors who will defend her planet - a glowing seed from her world will identify them.  For the film's climax, however, the makers couldn't resist imitating Star Wars by creating their own version of the rebel attack on the Death Star.  Unfortunately, the effects work, while good, simply isn't up to the standards set by George Lucas' film - although the miniatures work is very well done, there is still something 'Gerry Anderson' about it all, with it never quite convincing the viewer that they are seeing anything other than models.  Ultimately, the film falls short of its inspiration via its lack of pace, likeable characters, (It doesn't help that none of them gets sufficient screen time to establish themselves as a principle protagonist for the audience to identify with), or clear plot development.  Having spent an age meandering around, following the disparate characters in their individual adventures, the climax feels rushed and as if it has come out of nowhere.  The tone varies, with some sections obviously a Star Wars imitation, others feeling like a dark fantasy and still others like a medieval Japanese drama.  This clash of styles and cultures makes Message From Space a slightly disconcerting watch for Western audiences expecting a straightforward Star Wars clone.  Nonetheless, it remains an interesting artifact of its era and, if you are in the right mood, an interesting viewing experience.

Golf Pro Reiko - More Strangeness From Japan

As ever, I've been watching a whole load of, well, stuff, lately, from 'Billy Jack' movies to Edgar G Ulmer's Beyond the Time Barrier (1960), taking in the likes of The Return of the Blind Dead (1973) and The Unseen (1980) along the way.  But the accolades for weirdness, as usual, go to the Japanese, whether in the form of an episode of something called The Space Giants, (apparently a re-edited and redubbed for US TV version of a sixties Japanese TV series), or another of those 'Sukeban'-style TV series with bad girl protagonists.  Indeed, it was the latter that made the most impression on me.  While the protagonist of Golf Pro Reiko, (the first two episodes of which I recently saw on a streaming service), might not dress in a sailor suit type school uniform, fight crime with a yo-yo or carry a rocket launcher in her backpack, like her eighties TV contemporaries, her adventures are no less bizarre.  Of course, you have to bear in mind that these episodes were in Japanese with no English sub-titles, so there's a lot of supposition on my part as to what was going on.  But, as far as I could discern, Reiko is a teenage girl in, I think, Yokohama, who is on the cusp of being accepted onto the golfing pro circuit when her father, a professional golfer, throws a tournament for money, (I think).  In disgrace, he commits suicide, leaving Reiko and her mother distraught.  Reiko goes off the rails and joins a gang, using her golfing skills in their turf wars with rivals.

Not only does she use her golf club to hit people, but she also puts her swing to good use, teeing off various missiles at opponents and also blazing golf balls.  Her childhood friend, who has the hots for her and wears a suit that looks several sizes too large for him, is forever trying to prise her away from the gang and getting beaten up by them for his troubles.  (He takes an astonishing number of beatings over the course of two episodes, yet seems to sustain no injuries other than cuts and bruises).  Eventually, as far as I could make out, Reiko gets another chance to go pro, but has to go and rescue some of her friends who have been captured by a rival gang which, it turns out, is being led by another old childhood friend, I think.  Anyway, she uses her golfing skills to free them, (more of those blazing golf balls), but is subsequently framed for the murder of what I think was an illegal bookie involved with her father's fall from grace.  Which is where the second episode left off.  I haven't yet sought out further episodes, (most of the twenty plus episodes are, I believe, currently to be found online), so I don't know how it pans out, but I'd confidently predict that the series as a whole charts Reiko's continued struggle to choose between gang loyalty and golfing success.

While not as outright weird as Star Virgin (what is?), or as disturbing as Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs, or even as charmingly bizarre and off-the-wall as Sukeban Deka, the juxtaposition of teenage gangs and golf certainly marks Golf Pro Reiko out as falling firmly in the tradition of Japanese pop-culture what-the-fuckery?  As with series like Sukeban Deka, everything moves at a frenetic pace, accompanied by very serious-sounding voice over narration every so often, (doubtless emphasising, if Sukeban Deka is anything to go by, the moral choices being faced by the main characters at crucial points in the narrative), and lots of opportunities for the heroine to demonstrate not only her bad girl credentials, but also her more traditionally feminine and caring side.  Like many Japanese TV shows and films, particularly those aimed at adolescent audiences, Golf Pro Reiko leaves the western viewer perplexed by the underlying philosophy, attitudes and mixing of the mundane and bizarre side-by side: one moment its a teenage soap, the next a violent gang drama with surreal elements like blazing golf balls.  As always, you are left asking, what were they on when they made this?  Whatever it was, I definitely want some.

Fantastic Stories

Having mentioned Amazing Stories the other day, while discussing it's former editor Raymond Palmer's later magazine, Other Worlds, it seems only fitting to take a quick look at Amazing's latter day companion: Fantastic.  This wasn't Amazing's first companion, in 1939 Ziff-Davis had created Fantastic Adventures, also edited by Palmer, as a more fantasy and adventure orientated stablemate, which shouldn't be confused with Fantastic, which made its debut in 1952, the brainchild of Amazing's then editor, Howard Browne.  From the outset, Fantastic was published in digest, rather than pulp, format and was intended to feature more up-market fantasy stories.  Although initially popular (sales sufficiently impressed Ziff-Davis that they switched Amazing to digest size and discontinued Fantastic Adventures), declining sales in the mid-fifties resulted in a  switch to science fiction rather than fantasy, in the form of mainly low quality stories turned out by a stable of writers under house names.  Quality improved in the late fifties under new editor Cele Goldsmith, but in 1965 Ziff-Davis sold its science fiction titles to Sol Cohen, who turned them into reprint magazines, with little new material.  In the late sixties, after Harry Harrison and Barry N Malzberg both edited the magazine in quick succession - cutting down the number of reprints - Ted White took over as editor and presided over what was possible Fantastic's 'golden era' during the early seventies.

Under White there was a renewed focus on fantasy, with sword and sorcery tales featuring prominently for a period, (indeed, for a while the mast head read 'Sword and Sorcery and Fantasy').  The quality of contributing writers and writing improved significantly and the magazine sported many colourful and striking covers during this time.  The above cover, with its comic art style cover, is from September 1973, the magazine's twenty first year of publication.  The author line up includes familiar seventies SF names like former editor Barry N Malzberg, Gordon Eklund, David R Bunch and Alexei and Cory Panshin.  Fritz Leiber, many of whose 'Fafhred and the Grey Mouser' stories had appeared in this incarnation of Fantastic provides fantasy book reviews.  The authors listed were typical of those featured in the magazine during this period, with most of them stalwarts of the publication.  Despite the increase in quality, sales for fiction magazines in general were in decline - by 1976 Fantastic slipped from its mainly bi-monthly schedule to quarterly publication.  In 1978 it was sold to new publishers, who installed a new editor.  By 1980 sales had fallen to the point that the magazine was effectively cancelled when it was combined with Amazing, (which, under various publishers, has survived as a print magazine until the present day).  Fantastic, throughout its twenty eight year existence, always existed somewhat in the shadow of its senior companion, despite, for several years, arguably publishing the stronger fiction.  If nothing else, it should be remembered for helping to establish the 'sword and sorcery' genre in the early seventies.

Haunted Houses on Film

After catching The Evil (1978) on one of the streaming services, I was left wondering why so many haunted house movies feel so samey?  Actually, I was also left astonished that The Evil had actually been released to cinemas and wasn't, as I'd previously thought, a TV movie.  It just has that made-for-TV look about it: the anonymous, impersonal, directorial style, the second string cast and bland production values.  It even has the lack of gore and nudity, despite ample opportunities for both, that are typical seventies TV movie horrors.  Which isn't to say that it is bad.  Indeed, for what it is, the film is reasonably well done and, with a running time of just under ninety minutes, at least progresses at a decent pace, piling incident upon incident.  That said, in places it feels very disjointed, with plot developments not properly followed up and consecutive scenes not always feeling as if they should actually follow each other in the narrative.  Ultimately, its main flaw is that it is simply unmemorable, with nothing to really distinguish it from a horde of other haunted house films.  Which brings us back to my original question - why does it feel as if there is so little variation in this genre?  The same sorts of things always happen - doors and window shutters opening and closing of their own account, lights going out, strange noises, the odd spectral presence - with the resolution revealing that it is all down to something nasty in the cellar or attic, (usually the cellar).  

More often than not, these alarming abodes turn out to have been built over the gates of Hell, a graveyard (Native American or otherwise), or was once the site of an asylum or a horrible murder.  Sometimes it is all down a body bricked up behind the walls or buried in the cellar seeking revenge or justice, other times it is simply a spirit unable to 'move on' for some reason.  In the case of The Evil, it turns out to all be down to trap door in the basement that leads to Hell and which has carelessly been left open.  When the surviving characters venture down there, they find the Devil himself, in the unlikely form of Victor Buono.  Whatever the details, the plot always follows the same path of either new residents with no knowledge of the property moving in, or a bunch of psychic investigators turning up to probe the house's secrets, (or sometimes the latter turn up at the behest of the former), weird shit happens, usually including horrible visions, maimings and bizarre deaths, before the phenomena is all traced to the secret room/attic/cellar.  In large part, this pattern is dictated by the supposed 'real life' hauntings (and the books written to cash in on them) that inspire such films.  Often these stories are little more than anecdotal and vague accounts of nocturnal noises and shadowy figures flitting about, sometimes with some poltergeist-type activity of objects moving around thrown in for good measure.  They rarely have any kind of resolution, only speculation as to the causes.  The films, of course, require a resolution, so the makers tend to go for the most obvious and easiest to wrap up within their supernatural narratives.

There are exceptions, which subvert the standard narrative, the most obvious being The Haunting (1963), which gives no definitive explanation for its events, with some of the characters attempting to construct a supernatural explanation from what they know of the house's history, while others offer a purely psychological explanation.  Interestingly, William Castle's gimmicky but entertaining quickie House on Haunted Hill (1959) also eschews a supernatural explanation for its bizarre events, instead revealing that they are all part of unhappily married Vincent Price and Carol Omhart's attempts to kill each other and blame it on the supposed ghosts haunting the titular house.  (The 1999 remakes of both films, however, gave supernatural explanations for their events).  Perhaps most interesting is The Haunting of Hell House (1973), based on Richard Matheson's novel Hell House.  Despite following the classic template of psychic investigators looking into a notorious haunted property, (which has allegedly claimed the lives of several previous investigators), even down to all the phenomena turning out to be emanating from a body in a walled up room, the haunting spirit, it turns out, chose to be walled up and was as evil in life as he was in death.  This spirit is also deliberately misdirects the investigators, leading the down the more traditional haunted house tropes before being revealed.

Of course, in the cinematic tradition, not all things that go bump in the night are either supernatural or psychological in their origin.While The Dunwich Horror (1970), for instance, might not be a haunted house movie, the Whately house does have a sealed room containing Wilbur Whately's monstrous twin brother.  Tigon's Haunted House of Horror (1969) might be a deeply flawed film, (with reshoots by a second director adding an unnecessary sub-plot), but it is interesting as it looks forward to the slasher genre, with its revelation that the house in question isn't haunted by ghosts, but rather a mentally disturbed serial killer.  This format - crossing the haunted house and slasher genres - became more prevalent in the seventies and eighties, with films like Hell Night (1981).  All of which indicates that there is some scope for greater variation in the format for haunted house movies, when the makers can be bothered to use their imaginations a bit more.

I Married a Monster From Outer Space (1958)

Or, 'I Married a  Homosexual From Outer Space', for never has a film had a clearer subtext than I Married a Monster From Outer Space, (not to mention having one of the greatest ever exploitation titles).  Seen today, it appears obvious that the movie was designed to play on fifties fears of the creeping emasculation of US males by the 'softness' of post-war society, with all that easy living, prosperity and lack of wars turning them all into homosexuals.  You can see it in other popular media of the time - just look at the number of sleaze paperbacks that traded on the idea of 'predatory' gay men preying on innocent straight guys, 'converting' them to their cause.  Damn it, they were as bad as those Commies they were clearly proxies for.  The whole American concept of masculinity and the need for men to be 'real men', is intrinsically tied up with the country's foundation myths: the whole mythology of the old West and the frontier, for example.  The US experience of World War Two only reinforced these ideas of 'real men' being rugged physical types - just look at the emphasis upon outdoor activities like hunting and fishing in the men's magazines of the fifties.

So it should come as no surprise that the alien invaders stealing the images and brides of small town USA should prove to be incapable of having marital relations with earth women, let alone impregnating them.  Indeed, if anything, they seem afraid of women, (the script doesn't go as far as having a female character called 'Fanny', though). They also can't drink alcohol and don't seem to be any good at sports.  They're even afraid of man's best friend, for God's sake, cowering from their pet dogs!  So obviously, when the time comes to fight back, the local doctor has to find some real men - down at the maternity, as expectant fathers clearly can't be pesky space homos, sorry, monsters, in disguise, as they've quite clearly actually done it with a woman.  The resultant angry mob, (straight out of a Universal horror film), live up to the stereotype, preparing to storm the aliens' flying saucer armed with hunting rifles and dressed in typical hunting garb.  While the aliens seem impervious to bullets, they prove vulnerable to dog bites and, once the mob have gained entry to the saucer, they unhook all the earthmen held there, wired up to devices that allow the aliens to maintain the illusion of human form.  Once unhooked, their alien doubles perish.  Deciding that they are no match for those manly earthmen, the alien fleet in orbit around the earth hightails it out of the solar system.  

It has to be said that I Married a Monster From Outer Space is actually a pretty effective B-movie, with its atmospheric monochrome photography and claustrophobic small town setting.  Director Gene Fowler Jr builds up a fine head of paranoia as heroine Gloria Talbot gradually finds that just about every male authority figure in the town has been replaced by an alien.  As well as being atmospheric and suspenseful, the film also boasts some, for the time and budget, effective special effects. The design of the aliens in their true form is impressive as is the way they melt away into foam when they die.  With its small town setting and theme of insidious silent invasion by an alien force, one can't help but suspect that I Married a Monster From Outer Space was inspired by the earlier Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  But whereas the 'pod people' merely wanted our bodies, these alien monsters wanted our sexuality, replacing our 'real men' with characterless, asexual blanks and turning our women into 'baby factories', popping out little aliens.  Ultimately, it presents the worst American nightmare: a patriarchal society where the patriarchs have neither passion, physicality nor sexual drive.

Modern Adaptations are Rubbish

I recently had to re-read Len Deighton's The Ipcress File in order to wash away the bad taste left in my mouth by ITV's recent 'adaptation' of the novel.  I also re-watched Sidney J Furie's 1965 film version again, in order to remind myself that it is possible to adapt the book in a way in which the end product is still recognisable as a version of the source material.  The ITV adaptation (if, indeed, we can call it that, so fundamentally did it diverge from the novel), is typical of many contemporary 'adaptations' of classic novels and films for episodic TV, in that it ends up having to expand the source material so much in order to fill the running time that it effectively 'dilutes' it, inserting so much new material that the original story becomes lost.  The ITV Ipcress File compounded these problems by attempting to also adapt the 1965 film, incorporating characters and situations from that which had no counterparts in the novel.  So it was not only an adaptation of the novel, but also and adaptation of an adaptation of that novel.  No wonder it was so poor.  In order to sustain six hour long episodes, the series had to expand upon the novel's plot and introduce supplemental characters in order to carry these new plot developments - the result is a sprawling narrative that failed to hold my interest due to its lack of focus, let alone plot progression.  Which is ironic, as the novel, superficially, appears, at times, unfocused, with its numerous apparent digressions and events, but, by the end, it is clear that everything has been moving toward an inevitable conclusion.  Deighton's genius is to present the novel as a first person narrative, a series of events experienced by the narrator that, at first don't seem obviously linked but, as both narrator and reader learn more, begin to coalesce into a coherent plot.  He keeps the narrative moving and the reader interested by ensuring that these events are intriguing and interesting and the narrating voice clever, witty and likeable.

The TV adaptation follows the film by effectively inventing a whole new, third person, protagonist: Harry Palmer.  In the book, we never learn the first person narrator's real name, although, via dialogue and his observations, we learn that he is from Burnley, in his late thirties and a career intelligence operative of considerable experience.  This contrasts with the young cockney NCO criminal conscript of film and TV adaptation, whose characterisation as a reluctant participant in espionage puts the whole narrative into an entirely different context.  Most significantly, it denies him agency in much of the plot development - he becomes much more of a passive pawn than a proactive protagonist, (this is much more pronounced in the TV version than the film).  It also means that his relationships with the other characters are completely different.  Mind you, the characters in both TV and film adaptations might share their names with those from the book, but are portrayed quite differently.  Indeed, most are quite unrecognisable from their namesakes in the book.  The film does at least get right that Chilcott-Oakes is a public school idiot, unlike the TV series, but the TV series follows the film's lead in portraying 'Jean' (retaining her film surname of 'Courtney' - in the book it is 'Tonneson'), as an already established agent senior to the protagonist.  In the book, the equivalent character is the protagonist's secretary and only enters the narrative at the half way point.  While, arguably, the film and TV version of the character is striking a blow for gender equality, it missed the point that Deighton was making in the novel about the class-ridden and patriarchal nature of sixties Britain: his 'Jean' is an intelligent and capable woman, but in the British intelligence community of the era is condemned to a secretarial role - by contrast, even the CIA is more advanced in equality terms as it has at least one black agent.

Perhaps the most ill-served character in TV and film versions is that of Dalby: in the film he is some kind of martinet, while the TV series turns him into an establishment cipher.  In the book he is the kind of laid back, public school and Oxbridge educated intellectual type who likes to play the role of 'gifted amateur' while, in reality, being a shrewd operator, that used to be common in senior civil service positions, (I've worked for a few).  Still, at least the film retained his role as (spoiler alert) the ultimately revealed villain who has been manipulating the hero in order to make him the scapegoat for his own deceit and treachery.  By denying him this role, the TV version thereby eliminates one of the main ironies of Deighton's novel: that the man that the protagonist has liked and respected not only betrays him, but is ultimately revealed to have simply used him, whereas his former boss, Ross, a man he detests and has no respect for, turns out to be both honourable and an ally.  Of course, the TV version chose to omit Ross altogether, along with several other key characters such as Barney, Jay, Carswell and Murray, while gratuitously inserting Colonel Stok, who didn't appear in the book series until Funeral in Berlin, although their version bears no resemblance to literary character.  Unfortunately, the new characters they substitute instead are bland and unconvincing, for the most part just convenient stereotypes.  Moreover, the substitution of the original's plot - a conspiracy to brain wash key members of the British establishment into unwittingly working for the Soviets - with a trite plot about an attempt to assassinate Kennedy and the replacement of Jay and his semi-private intelligence network with rogue US officials as villains simply didn't work.  It lacked the book's satirical undertones - that those with extreme right-wing views are more susceptible to brainwashing into serving Soviet ideals, for instance.

I suppose that what I really disliked about the ITV Ipcress File was that, like so many recent 'remakes', 'adaptations' or 'reimaginings' of classic books, TV series or films, it is really no such thing.  Instead, it is a case of the creators trying to sell their own original and inevitably inferior work by invoking the 'brand name' of something that already has an existing audience and established 'brand'.  Just look at the Guy Ritchie Man From Uncle film for an example: all it has in common with the TV series are the title, some character names and a sixties setting, otherwise, it is just a generic action film.  The most recent Star Trek films are similar in this respect, as are film adaptations of old TV series like CHiPs, Baywatch or The Equaliser.  Likewise, The Ipcress File isn't really The Ipcress File, it is instead a generic sixties set spy thriller, devoid of all the things that made the original novel distinctive and enjoyable.  The 1965 film, although superficially not bearing much resemblance to the novel, at least does retain its essential plot, albeit streamlining and simplifying it somewhat - the main changes (the absence of overseas locations, for instance) are dictated mainly by budgetary limitations.  Accepted on its own terms, it can be enjoyed as a variation of the original novel, rather than attempt to pass off something bland and generic under the novel's title.  As I said at the start of the post, I reread the novel recently and, as ever, it was a delight to experience: clever, witty, neatly plotted, full of vividly drawn characters and dialogue and giving a memorable portrait of early sixties London.  If you've never read it, I'd recommend it - it is certainly preferable to sitting through the travesty that recently showed on ITV.

Don't You Know There's a War On?

Don't you know there's a war on?  Actually no, I didn't.  Sure Ukraine is at war with Russia, but the UK isn't directly involved.  I mean, I know that Ukraine begins with 'UK', but that still doesn't mean that Boris Johnson is a war leader and therefore shouldn't be kicked out of office for minor stuff like breaking the law and lying to parliament, despite what the right-wing press might want us to believe.  It isn't just the usual suspects like the Daily Mail and Daily Express trotting out this sort of nonsense - the other day I saw some Tory MP blathering on about how while we might not actually be at war, we're damn close to being.  Again, we're not.  He was trying to make the case not so much for Johnson to stay in office, but for the Tories to cling to power, suggesting that if Johnson did resign, then there should be a 'war cabinet' set up.  Not a cross-party national war cabinet, mind you, but a Tory 'war cabinet' to see us through this 'crisis'.  Once more, why would we need a 'war cabinet' when we are not - nor are we likely to be - at war?  The only crisis facing the UK is the constitutional one Johnson and his cronies are creating by his effective tearing up of the ministerial code and ignoring all of the established norms for behaviour in public office.  

These attempts by Johnson and the Tories to use the war in Ukraine as, first a distraction from his law-breaking and incompetence and secondly as a spurious excuse for him to cling to power, hugely offensive.  It also looks so desperate - the eagerness to get those photo opportunities in Kiev as soon as the Russian siege had been lifted, the attempts, at every juncture, to try and 'big up' the UK's role in supplying Ukraine with weapons, the deluded claims of how Johnson has 'led' the rest of Europe in supporting Ukraine.  All the while hoping that this will somehow divert attention from the fact that he is now a convicted criminal, not to mention all the increasingly repressive legislation, (most of which, ironically, puts on a par with Putin's Russia when it comes to suppressing the right to protest), his government is enacting, not to mention morally bankrupt (and possibly illegal under international law), measures against refugees, (basically outsourcing them to Rwanda).  I keep hoping against hope that Johnson and company might finally have committed one transgression too many, that a line might finally have been crossed where even their most ardent supporters can no no longer stomach them.  Yet I'm constantly disappointed - their tenacity and desperation to stay in power sadly continues to defeat the forces of decency.

Other Worlds Science Stories

The title of this post war science fiction pulp has a complex history - it was actually used for two different magazines, both edited by Raymond Palmer, but from different publishers.  This cover is from the magazine's first incarnation, published by Clark Publications (owned by Palmer), from 1949 until 1953, alongside Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy.  With Clark Publications in financial difficulty, in 1953 Palmer set up a new company in partnership with a Chicago businessman and started to publish Universe Science Fiction and Science Stories.  When his partner lost interest, Palmer set up yet another company to take over publication of the two magazines.  In 1955, he effectively combined the two magazines into a new Other Worlds, which continued the numbering of both the original and Universe.  This continued as a science fiction pulp until 1957, when it became Flying Saucers From Other Worlds, the following year it dropped both the 'Other Worlds' from the title and any remaining fiction, focusing entirely on UFOs.  In this latter form, it lasted until 1976.

The cover above, from October 1951, both prefigures Palmer's subsequent interest in UFOs with its 'I Flew a Flying Saucer' story title and harks back to a previous interest with its listing of Richard Shaver as one of the featured authors.  Shaver gained notoriety in the late forties with a series of claims of having been contacted by beings from 'Lemuria', a lost underground kingdom that still influenced and manipulated earth history.  These were claims were originally published as fiction in Amazing Stories Science Fiction while under Palmer's editorship. Over time, their description changed from being fiction to being fictionalised accounts of Shaver's supposed actual experiences.  For a while these proved popular and threatened to dominate Amazing's pages, along with fiction using elements from Shaver's fantasies by other authors.  Eventually Palmer set up Clark Publishing, (while still editing Amazing for Ziff-Davis), initially to publish a magazine devoted entirely to the paranormal: Fate.  Finally leaving Ziff-Davis, the two science fiction titles, Other Worlds and Imagination, being added to Clark's line-up.  With the demise of Clark, Fate was bought by Palmer's co-editor and co-founder, Curtis Fuller.  It remains in publication.  Palmer himself instigated another, similar, magazine for his new company: Mystic (later Search).

The question of whether Palmer actually believed in paranormal mysteries such as Shaver's stories, or the later Flying Saucer craze, or merely cynically exploited wider interest in them as a means to boost sales, has been the subject of frequent debate.  The fact is that Palmer was a very successful and canny pulp magazine editor, with a keen awareness of changing public tastes.  He took over the editorship of Amazing in 1939, while still in his teens and quickly turned around the fortunes of the venerable pulp, which was increasingly seen as old fashioned and had been eclipsed by Astounding as the top science fiction pulp.  While many established readers resented the more juvenile tone and emphasis upon action-adventure orientated stories brought by Palmer's editorship, the fact is that sales improved.  He rightly saw that, in the relatively small market for science fiction pulps, it was pointless trying to replicate Astounding's more serious and intellectual approach, so instead moved to corner the more juvenile end of the market.  Likewise, the whole Shaver phenomenon moved the magazine into another new market segment, at a time when other science fiction pulps, like Planet Stories, for instance, were encroaching into the action-adventure end of the market.  Flying saucers subsequently became big news and, once again, Palmer spotted the opportunity and got in on the ground floor.  It should also be remembered that Palmer wasn't the only science fiction editor dabbling with pseudo science around this time: the much venerated John W Campbell of Astounding was, despite the magazine's supposed rationalist approach, devoting a lot of time to L Ron Hubbard's Dianetics in its pages, a subject no less bizarre and questionable than either the 'Shaver Mystery' or flying saucers.

The Quest for Diesel

I don't generally subscribe to the idea that the media spends its time deliberately suppressing news stories but, having spent an inordinate amount of time today trying to find a local filling station that had diesel, let alone any kind of fuel, I'm perplexed as to why this isn't a news story?  OK, it might just be localised (although according to what I can glean from  online sources, it isn't), but not even the local newspaper here in Crapchester has seen fit to even mention the severe fuel shortages here, which have left drivers queuing at those filling stations still open, being forced to pay extortionate prices.  You'd think that this would be a major story, both in print and on TV, yet I can barely find a mention of it anywhere - I mean, it has been like this for at least the past week.  I did eventually ascertain that these shortages have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, but rather disruption to UK oil depots and refineries being caused by the loons from 'Just Stop Oil' and 'Extinction Rebellion' protesting at them.  To which my reaction was: what protests?  Despite being widespread and causing so many problems, these too have been barely covered by the media - just the occasional passing reference.  So what's going on here, is this a deliberate policy?  Are they trying to deny the protestors the 'oxygen of publicity', like they tried to do with the IRA back in eighties and nineties?

As for these 'protests', well, I'm as concerned about climate change as anyone else and I'm usually sympathetic to environmental protests - except when the affect me, obviously.  Actually, my main problem with these protests - apart from the disruption they have caused me - and 'Just Stop Oil' generally, are that they seem to be usual bunch of over-privileged middle class twats playing at being protestors.  They are basically the same arseholes who spent the past few years on the Corbyn bandwagon, destroying Labour's chances at the polls and thereby perpetuating these Tory bastards in power.  Now that Corbyn has gone and they can't play at politics any more, they've moved on to their next phase: environmental protests.  But, once again, they are going about in the most counter-productive way possible, guaranteed to alienate the wider public and allowing vested interests to dismiss the whole anti climate change movement as a bunch of raving bastard lunatics out to inconvenience the public.  Rather than chaining themselves to pipes at oil depots, or obstructing oil tankers, perhaps they should try chaining themselves to the gates of Downing Street or obstructing ministerial vehicles - more effective in publicity terms and more likely to garner public sympathy.  That said, probably the most effective thing they could do would be to get their rich mummies and daddies to buy sufficient shares in petrochemical companies that they can start to influence their policies, forcing them to invest in more renewable energy sources.  But that wouldn't get them on TV or in the papers, (not that they are at the moment).

In wider terms, these protests must surely raise questions about the security of oil depots and refineries if these clowns can, apparently, so easily gain access to them.  Moreover, I'd like to know where police brutality is when you need it?  They seem to be treating these people with kid gloves.  Which, of course, brings us back to the sort of people doing the protesting: well off middle class drop outs.  You can pretty much guarantee that if they were ordinary working class people or non-white, (there is a remarkable lack of diversity amongst these protesters), the cops would be giving them a bloody good kicking, falsely arresting them for every unsolved crime on their books, (including, probably, the Jack the Ripper murders), before fitting them up with enough evidence that they would be sure to get thirty years from any judge in the land.  But, they are middle class tossers from 'good' families whose parents are the sort to play golf with the Chief Constable and write outraged letters to the Daily Mail.  Anyway, for what it is worth, I did eventually manage to get some diesel in my tank at a not too extortionate price, (after queuing for some time at a supermarket filling station), which was lucky as I was running on fumes by then.   Which meant that I could come home and write this reactionary sounding post - although I'm only reactionary toward middle class shits who like to play at being radicals, regardless of the consequences for everyone else.  Besides, it is Easter - surely I'm allowed to be reactionary at Easter?

The Cost of 'Free' Speech

There's a part of me that thinks that Elon Musk buying Twitter might not be such a bad thing - at least it would finally wean me off of the bloody service.  Because, increasingly, I find myself questioning why I seem to spend so much time on that cess pool of hate and bile.  Don't get me wrong - there are a lot of good people on Twitter, particularly the ones I follow, obviously.  But it is everything else on there - I just can't help myself from clicking on the trending topics and invariably regret it, so chock full of right-wing reactionary shit and disinformation are they.  And when it isn't right-wing shit, it is Corbynite-style shit, equally hateful and ill-informed most of the time.  All of which leaves me perplexed as to why Musk wants to own Twitter - his complaint is that, in its present form, it stifles 'free speech' by banning those promoting hate and disinformation.  Well, judging by what I see, they aren't doing a very good job of suppressing this so called 'free speech', because the service is still brimming over with shit.

Of course, Musk is one of those people (usually super-rich and right wing people) who hold this peculiar notion of what 'free speech' actually means, ie the right to say anything you like without censorship.  But that isn't what it means.  It never has meant that.  'Free Speech' means that one has a right to express opinions contrary to and critical of the authorities without fear of persecution or prosecution.  But that doesn't mean that you can, publicly, say whatever you like.  Just try coming out with some of hate speech, be it inciting violence, racial prejudice, misogyny, homophobia or threats and see what happens - in just about every civilised country of the world you will find yourself in serious trouble, facing prosecution under the relevant laws.  You also can't say whatever you like about individuals, either - libel laws see to that.  So, if Musk was to gain control of Twitter and try to implement his version of 'free speech' via the service, allowing absolutely anything to be published, without regulation, Twitter would soon find itself in serious trouble with national authorities around the world.  

But when the likes of Musk talk about 'free speech', it isn't the result of any kind of altruistic vision or commitment to freedom and democracy.  Rather, it is a function of their wealth, which they believe lifts them above the petty rules of mere democratically elected governments and should allow them to do and say whatever they want.  The existence of laws and rules, designed to protect wider society, are the source of enormous frustration to the rich, who see them as unreasonable curbs on their power.  Ultimately, Musk's interest in Twitter comes down to wanting to use it as a platform for his propaganda (and probably that of like-minded super rich individuals).  Believe me, his version of 'free speech' almost certainly wouldn't extend to anyone trying to put out unfiltered left wing opinions via Twitter. 

Learning to Live With Monsters...

Have you ever noticed how in old science fiction and monster movies the United Nations, (which is inevitably brought in to co-ordinate the world's response to whatever disaster is facing the planet), always seems to be headed by some grey haired dude with a British accent?  Not to mention a title: he's always Sir Lionel Fanny-Rake or Lord Bumraven.  Or some such.  It is a touching tribute the esteem that British aristocracy and their fabled stoicism and stiff upper lips were held, even as our Empire was in terminal decline post World War Two.  It is the sort of Imperialist fantasy about the UK's influence that the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage still like to play into, despite the sad fact being that we would be just about the last people the world would look to for leadership in the event of a giant monster apocalypse.  Mind you, looking at the international community's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I can't help but fear that they would spend their time worrying that firing our missiles at a monster attacking Japan, for instance, might just provoke it into attacking somewhere closer to home, so best to keep the response low key.

Of course, British made science fiction and monster films of this era also play to the delusion that the country's pre-war 'greatness' had continued unabated post-war, by largely ignoring the need for international responses to threats, instead relying entirely upon British military might and scientific know how to deal with rampaging monsters and the like.  Just look at the two premier British monster movies of the fifties and sixties: Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959) and Gorgo (1961).  Both feature displays of British military prowess in the face of prehistoric beasts striding up the Thames to threaten London.  For the reasons of box-office, both feature token US actors who play characters who prove pivotal in defeating the beasts, but there are no calls for more general international aid.  While these films follow the genre convention of military means being inadequate to stop radioactive giant creatures, other British made films of the period take a more subversive tack.  The Quatermass Experiment (1955), for instance shows the British authorities as a hindrance to the resolution of the threat, with their conventional thinking, lack of imagination and bureaucracy.  Its sequel, Quatermass II (1957), takes it even further, with large parts of the establishment actually being in league with the alien threat.  In both films, it is up to the titular British scientist, (OK, he's played by American Brian Donlevy, but I think we're meant to suppose his accent is actually Canadian and he is therefore part of the Empire and thus British by proxy), to save the day.  While in Quatermass and the Pit (1967), Britain's military might is in the hands of leaders so obdurate and impervious to reason that they unwittingly facilitate a long-buried alien threat.  Thankfully, paragon of reason Quatermass, (this time played by Andrew Kier with a reassuring Scottish accent), is on hand to sort it all out.

Obviously, these days, if a monster or aliens were to threaten the UK, our government would probably spend most of its time trying to keep it all under wraps rather than trying to respond to the threat, on the grounds that they wouldn't want to cause widespread panic.  Judging by their response to Covid, we'd rapidly find ourselves being told of how we had to learn to live with monsters demolishing our cities, or aliens kidnapping and experimenting upon our people, or even invading the West Midlands.  That's the sort of world beating leadership the UN used to look to in those old films, I suppose.

Fahrenheit 451 and Post-Literacy

I re-watched Francois Truffaut's film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1966) the other day.  Its central conceit - of a future where books are banned and burned because of the dangerous ideas they contain - raises the question of whether a post-literate society is possible.  Obviously, before the advent of written language, we had a pre-literate society, but this existed in a far simpler world, without our current levels of technology or complex social structures.  It is these latter things that we think make literacy essential - it is how knowledge is disseminated and ideas communicated and developed.  Modern society requires all manner of complex interactions which involve the use of the written word and physical documentation.  Indeed, in both Bradbury's novel and Truffaut's film, the world isn't entirely literate - written road signs, for instance, still exist and newspapers stories are printed in the form of simple comic strips, with the sort of basic dialogue and captions you'd expect from them.  It is, in effect, a 'dumbed down' form of literacy.  Interestingly, in the real world, contemporary the film's production, the US Army found itself having to resort to issuing instruction manuals for their newly introduced M-16 rifle in comic strip form.  I've actually seen one of these - they were very crudely drawn, with the absolute minimum of text, but effectively showed users exactly how the rifle should be cleaned.  The M-16 was more complex than the M-14 it was replacing and, when first issued in Vietnam, suffered a high incidence of jamming due to soldiers, particularly draftees, not cleaning them effectively and frequently enough.  While an easy issue to rectify, the problem was that the low levels of literacy that the army found among a high proportion of its conscripts meant that a conventional written manual simply wouldn't be effective.  Hence the cartoon format.

Shocking though it might seem that, as late as the 1960s, one of the world's wealthiest countries harboured such levels of illiteracy, I doubt that it was confined to the US and I strongly suspect, from personal experience, that literacy levels remain patchy.  It isn't that the vast majority of people in the developed world can't read and write, it is just that a large proportion of them have very weak literacy skills.  Part of the problem is that, increasingly, we live in a world where this offers no disadvantage.  While the internet, for instance, might have started as a primarily text-based medium, visuals have subsequently become king.  Just look at the most popular apps: video nased You Tube and photo based Instagram.  Much social media also places a big emphasis upon posting images, with minimal text and Twitter is all about posting in the fewest number of characters and to Hell with spelling and punctuation.  Google increasingly pushes this aspect of the web in its responses to search queries - YouTube videos (YouTube being another Google property, naturally), frequently dominate the first half dozen results.  This is particularly true when searching for solutions to technical issues - the YouTube instructional video (usually made by amateurs) is now considered the 'best result'.  But it isn't just the web - in the workplace training is increasingly in the form of instructional videos or interactive, image-dominated, learning tools which can be delivered, via the workstation, at the learner's desk.  No need for those training sessions in a classroom with a live instructor and written handouts you could peruse at your leisure - just sit at your desk and follow the onscreen instructions for a set time period.

So, does this constitute a post-literate society along the lines of Fahrenheit 451?  Not quite, perhaps, but it does make the book and film seem highly prescient.  It feels more as if we're sliding back toward the pre-industrial era of literacy, where it was not universal.  Generally only the wealthy were fully literate because only they could afford the sort of education that taught it.  Most others were, at best, semi-literate, able to perform the most basic of literate functions.  With industrial revolution and its demand for more skilled workers, literacy levels had to rise, so that most workers had at least functional reading and writing skills.  But now, with work increasingly being de-skilled by technology, the functional requirements of literacy in the workplace seem to be much lower.  Of course, there is also a political dimension to all of this: literacy levels are dictated by educational standards which, in turn, are dictated by our elected governments.  The cynic in me might suspect that it is actually political policy to reduce educational levels: a less literate populace might well be easier to control - they wouldn't, for instance, be able to access those 'dangerous ideas' in books, relying instead upon the much simplified and manipulated moving wall paper of TV for information.  Could such a decline in literacy result in a revival of the oral tradition of story-telling, as posited in the climax to the film version of Fahrenheit 451,which sees the 'book people' memorising their personal choice of book, before burning them?  After all, the telling of stories and their memorisation and re-telling by other bards was, for thousands of years, the standard way of distributing fiction and knowledge.  Long before some scribe wrote them down The Odyssey and Iliad existed on this form, for example, while the Celts had no written tradition, relying instead upon oral histories, (with the result that what we know about them is frequently based upon what others, like the Romans, who had a written tradition, wrote of them).  The point being, of course, that both Ancient Greece and the various Celtic kingdoms functioned as complex societies without our extensive literary tradition.

Thrilling Adventure

I've been able to find little out about this publication, which ran for six issues during 1970 - 71, but looking at the covers, it seems pretty certain that it was a reprint magazine, repackaging stories from fifties and sixties men's pulps, with more suggestive titles and cover synopses.  This is the last issue of Thrilling Adventure, from August 1971 (in fact, it was the only issue published that year) and, compared to previous editions, its cover is relatively restrained.  The illustrations in two of the panels look as if they are details from recycled from earlier cover paintings from other magazines, (a common cost-cutting practice at this time).  The first panel features what looks as if it could be a film still.  The story it illustrates, 'War and Women' sounds distinctly like a recycled story from a sixties war pulp, possibly slightly rewritten to 'spice it up' for the new decade.  While 'General George B Sutton' is, as far as I know, an entirely fictional character, the styling of the name and the cover synopsis indicate that this was intended to capitalise on the popularity of the popular movie biopic Patton (1970), which had been Oscar nominated and was probably still playing in some cinemas.

The featured stories present the same mix of stories - war, man-against-ferocious-wild-animals and male sexual fantasy - typical of sixties men's magazines.  But, as befitted the new decade, the synopses and titles are all far more frank.  Indeed, the language used on the covers of Thrilling Adventure in the previous five issues was even franker and the story descriptions far more lurid.  The reprint magazine phenomena flourished in the seventies as, against a background of declining sales, publishers sought ways to exploit their existing assets by producing runs of cheap magazines where they didn't have to pay contributors as they already owned the rights to the stories.  When Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing bought Amazing Stories in 1965, for instance, he also secured from previous publishers Ziff-Davis the reprint rights of all the old stories from Amazing and all of its companion magazines, both current and defunct.  Not only did he start filling Amazing with reprints (or 'classic stories'), but in the seventies started putting out a plethora of 'new' magazines consisting entirely of these stories, with most lasting only a handful of issues, (some only a single issue).  I'm guessing that something similar happened to create Thrilling Adventure - someone bought out a number of old men's magazines, securing the rights to their libraries of stories and articles and started repackaging them as 'new' magazines.  Quite literally, 'cheap thrills'.

(Thrilling Adventure seems to have no connection with and should not be confused with the earlier magazine Thrilling Adventures, which ran during the thirties and forties).

Billy Jack (1971)

Oft reviled nowadays and cited as one of the 'worst films ever', the reality is that, back on its early seventies release, Billy Jack (1971) was a big hit.  It tapped in to the whole youth counter culture of free love and peace, while also serving up generous helpings of violence.  Because that's the thing that most contemporary viewers find hardest to comprehend about Billy Jack: that the film encompasses a massive contradiction at its heart.  While, on the one hand writer/director/star Tom Laughlin seems to endorse the values of the counter-culture, with many of the main characters preaching and practicing pacifism in the face of extreme provocation and violence, he also seems to endorse the idea that, ultimately, violence can be the right way to protect these values.  Perhaps Billy Jack's defence of his use of violence might have been to argue that he was only following the principles of the martial arts he employs - to use greater force against itself.  After all, he is never the instigator of the violent confrontations he becomes involved in - he only acts to protect others from violence.  Moreover, he is invariably outnumbered and his opponents represent the wealthy vested interests who wield the power in town.

At heart, Billy Jack is a modern day western, with the bigoted townsfolk trying to run off the local Indians, sorry, progressive school for wayward kids, of which half Native American Billy Jack is self appointed protector.  That the school is located on Native American land and its pupils include several Native Americans only reinforces the western theme.  All the western tropes are there -the nasty town boss, his even nastier spoiled son (who has a thing for underage girls and rape),  the well-meaning but ineffective town sheriff, the evil deputy in the pay of the boss, the local rednecks, the virtuous school teacher, the lone hero, etc.  As a film, Billy Jack is something of a slog, with the plot frequently grinding to a halt for some singing from cute hippie kids, bouts of improv (involving Howard Hesseman in an early role as a drama teacher), Billy Jack performing tribal rituals and frequent lectures on pacifism, children's rights and racial prejudice.  The halting rhythm robs the film of any pace, never really building up a head of steam, despite the generally well-staged action sequences, which are too widely spaced to garner any momentum for the plot.  The performances, also, are very variable - Tom Laughlin might be trying for 'strong and silent' with his portrayal of Billy Jack, but what actually comes over is 'stiff and awkward'.  The villains fare rather better, with Kenneth Tobey's crooked deputy, in particular, being satisfyingly unpleasant.  

Despite the vitriol often now directed at Billy Jack, it actually isn't that bad.  Tom Laughlin might not have been the auteur he clearly thought he was, but in its own clunky way, the film does at least try to explore issues such as prejudice and child abuse, as well as attempting some kind of dialectical over the issues of pacifism and what constitutes justifiable violence.  To its credit, it doesn't present the viewer with a neat ending allowing its hero to resolve all the issues and ride off into the sunset - he is forced to face the consequences of his actions.  If nothing else, the film provides a fascinating time capsule of  early seventies USA, with traditional conservatism feeling threatened and helpless in the face of the social change the school kids represent.  The film, of course, wasn't the character of Billy Jack's first outing - he had already appeared in 1967's Born Losers, facing off against a biker gang in another small town.  The success of Billy Jack ensured that it also wasn't his last outing: The Trial of Billy Jack followed in 1974 and picked up where the 1971 film left off.  A fourth film, Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977) was basically a remake of Mr Smith Goes to Washington and failed to secure widespread distribution.  A fifth film was abandoned in 1985 due to lack of finance.  These later films were even more self-indulgent on Laughlin's part and far preachier than the first two.  Billy Jack might, particularly by today's standards, be self-righteous and confused in its morality and message but, at a distance of half a century, makes for fascinating viewing with regard to the portrait of early seventies America that it presents.

Theatre of Blood (1973) Revisited

Theatre of Blood (1973), is fast becoming the theme of the week, isn't it?  Seeing it again has set me thinking about it - how my reactions to it have changed over the years and how it fit into Vincent Price's filmography.  With regard to the latter, it represents the point at which, by Price's standards, his film appearances became less prolific, particularly in terms of horror movies.  Arguably, the film represents the absolute high point of his horror career.  Certainly, its immediate successor, 1974's Madhouse, was far less accomplished and something of a disappointment.  Theatre of Blood, of course, followed two other successful horror outings for Price, The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971) and Dr Phibes Rises Again (1972), both likewise filmed in the UK and featuring him as a flamboyant presumed dead artiste seeking vengeance via a series of themed murders.  Interestingly, while a continuation of the Phibes series was mooted (not to mention expected), no further sequels appeared.  Instead, we got Theatre of Blood, featuring a very similar set up, even down to the protagonist having a young female assistant, (in this case his daughter).  In many ways, Theatre of Blood can be seen as a faux sequel to the Phibes films, although made by a different team and production company.  Most notably, Theatre of Blood's location filming places its bizarre violence in a realistic context, giving it an edge lacking in the studio filmed and stylised  Phibes films.  Consequently, Price's performance in theatre, although as blackly comic as those in the earlier films, feels far sharper and more genuinely dramatic - the knowing campness that accompanied many of his best remembered performances is largely absent here.

I could only have been in my early teens, possibly a little younger, when I first saw Theatre of Blood on one of its then frequent TV outings.  At that tender age I simply accepted it on face value: that Ian Hendry was the hero and that Price's Lionheart was a deranged ham actor who couldn't take criticism and  whose actions, while ghoulishly entertaining for the audience, were reprehensible.  But, as the years went by and I saw it a few more times, it became apparent that it wasn't that simple.  The critics who meet their doom at Lionheart's hands are portrayed as arrogant, entitled snobs, with a complete disregard for the fact that their targets are human beings - their critiques, as read back to them by Lionheart before delivering the coup de grace, are snide and excessively cruel.  Lionheart's approach to Shakespeare might be 'traditional', old fashioned even, by seventies standards, but, as we see in the course of the film, he actually isn't that bad an actor.  After all, his various disguises and their associated performances fool the critics, with none recognising him until it is too late.  Moreover, his actual performances of various soliloquies from Shakespeare are delivered with real power.  How much all of this is intentional on the part of the film makers and how much is simply down to Price's enormous screen presence and natural charisma is a moot point - the end result is that you can't help but empathise with Lionheart by film's end, a man humiliated for the entertainment of the critics' acolytes and subsequently driven to madness.  As noted earlier, the film's climax with Lionheart reciting King Lear's final soliloquy while carrying his daughter's body (echoing the death of Cordelia), on the roof of a burning theatre, is curiously poignant - a man who has lost everything due to his own folly and madness.  That Hendry's surviving critic has the last word with his glib quip that Lionheart 'knew how to make an exit', seems only fitting - all the carnage that he must take at least some responsibility for, has done nothing to blunt his sense of  smug entitlement.

As well as being one of Price's best films, certainly his best horror performance, (superior, in my opinion, to his turn as Matthew Hopkins in the excellent Witchfinder General (1968) as it allowed him to demonstrate greater versatility), Theatre of Blood undoubtedly also stands as director Douglas Hickox's most accomplished film.  It was his only horror film, (unless one includes Behemoth, the Sea Monster (1959), which he co-directed with Eugene Lourie), in an eclectic career which ranged from a Joe Orton adaptation - Entertaining Mr Sloane (1970) - to episodes of Dirty Dozen - The Series.  Indeed, Theatre of Blood was sandwiched between tough Oliver Reed crime thriller Sitting Targets (1972) and John Wayne's US-cop-in-London flick Brannigan (1974).  Both, like Theatre of Blood, were largely filmed on location in London and featured a fast pace and excellently choreographed action sequences.  Neither though, have quite achieved the iconic status of the Vincent Price film.  It is well worth revisiting.

Theatre of Lost Ambitions

I've learned most of my life lessons from watching films.  No, really.  They've given me far better guidance on the major issues which have confronted me than I ever got from any of the supposed 'role models' that were meant to be my behavioural examples. I've just recently watched Theatre of Blood (1973) again, for instance, a film which, over the years has taught me much.  Not how to take bloody revenge upon my critics, obviously.  But rather of the value of kindness.  Sure, Vincent Price's Edward Lionheart is a terrible old ham actor, but ultimately it is the cruelty of the critics he eventually takes his revenge on that drove him first to attempt suicide, then then into homicidal madness.  Would it have been too much to ask for them to have moderated their criticism and used kinder words?  It has been my experience that kindness will always get you further than cruelty and the absolutely worst thing you can do to an individual is to humiliate them.  It's a curious thing, but no matter how much I might despise someone and disapprove of the actions that brought them to the point of defeat and humiliation, I can never really find it in myself to take any pleasure from their downfall.  Now, of course, I know what it is to be brought low by events, to be at the point of losing everything, so I have personal experience of how lousy it feels and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.  I'd like to think, though, that even before my personal experience, having seen the terrible consequences of Lionheart's humiliation in Theatre of Blood when young, the foundations for this refusal to revel in the misfortune of others were laid.

Of course, poor old Lionheart had fallen into the trap of believing that awards and critical acclaim actually mean something when, in reality, they don't.  They are purely subjective measures of worth, yet we have all ,at some time in our lives, allowed ourselves to believe that we are somehow defined by these things - that our 'success' and 'talent' are measured in terms of such things.  Hey, it's the capitalist way, after all: happiness, success, identity, are all to be quantified in purely material terms.  I remember that when I first entered into the world of work, more years ago than I care to recall, I bought into a lot of this - I believed that the pursuit of a 'career', which meant chasing promotions, was the way ahead.  It's what you had to do in order to be considered successful.  But to get those promotions, you have to 'play the game', to conform, to not speak up when you know something or someone higher up the line is wrong, to turn a blind eye to their transgressions.  I eventually realised that doing this was actually making me deeply unhappy as I was having to go against my own nature.  Moreover, I quickly realised that things like promotions could effectively be 'weaponised' by management and their pursuit used to 'punish' you if you didn't tow their line.  You could, by any objective criteria, be on course for promotion to the next grade up, or at the very least an opportunity to sit a promotion board, but suddenly, without warning, you'd find that, on your latest staff report, you were 'not fitted' for promotion, despite your previous managers having consistently said you were 'fitted', (as I recall, you needed three 'fitted' in a row for that board).  The difference being that this manager was borderline incompetent and you'd had to intervene several times to avoid disaster, which they resented, even though you'd done your best to keep it all from their managers.  Not getting to the board made you look as if you were incompetent - you had to watch other people, some junior to you, get promoted over you.

Once I'd decided that I didn't care any more, that I no longer valued these things or wanted to chase them, then that particular weapon was neutralised.  Eventually, of course, they'd find other ways to get at you if you were seen as some kind of non-conformist.  I learned that no matter how well you do your job, in the modern workplace, that simply isn't enough.  Indeed, actual competence no longer seems to matter - it is all about how well you can self promote and 'network'.  In the last few years of my last, horrendous, job, I saw so many people who I (and everyone else other than management) knew to be incompetent in lower positions promoted and promoted again to higher management positions, mainly on the basis that they 'played the game' and towed the party line.  Ambition was considered more important than ability.  Guess what? They were even more incompetent in their new jobs but, of course, the blame was always put on those working under them, (despite the fact that they invariably had more experience and were better qualified in the job).  Even when one of them got their comeuppance (and were moved sideways rather than being demoted, as is the modern way), I could find no pleasure in their humiliation.  After all, it wasn't their fault that they been over-promoted to a job they didn't have the ability to do - that was down to their managers.  Obviously, what we should have done was take bloody Shakespeare-inspired revenge upon these incompetents. Instead, I found it easier to walk away.  Despite being the senior, most experienced, man in my particular section, I'd found myself effectively sidelined for being a 'trouble maker', (I'd called the union in on a few issues), so just leaving seemed the only thing to do.  Not as spectacular (or poignant) as the climax of Theater of Blood, with Price's Lionheart, carrying his daughter's body, does the death of Cordelia from 'King Lear' atop a blazing theatre, I know, but a lot easier and less fatal.

Spring Update

This week has seen an unusually intense bout of creativity on my part. So much so that it has left me exhausted and in need of lying down in a darkened room.  Not only did I finally manage to come up with that long post here about Demon Witch Child (1975), which I've been prevaricating over for weeks now, but I also managed to put together a new story for The Sleaze, plus find time to record a new podcast for The Overnightscape Underground, (which incorporates a version of that Demon Witch Child piece).  I have to admit that the podcast turned into something of a slog - despite having recorded most of it earlier in the week, I still didn't manage to get it all edited together until last night, only just meeting my self-imposed deadline.  I'm not sure that I'm entirely satisfied with the finished product, it all feels a bit rough and ready to me, with no real unifying theme or style.  Not that those things are obligatory., but I do find that they help to hold things together, giving it all a unifying feel rather than being simply a random anthology of items.   

Still, with Spring in the (freezing cold) air, I feel that I should start coming out of hibernation and doing things again.  Actually, I did take advantage of the good weather last week to go out for a long walk, for the first time in months.  The deterioration in my stamina levels was quite alarming - its going to be hard work to get them back up to normal.  But, that's the price to be paid for having, in effect, sidelined myself for several months, (I heard myself explaining this 'sidelining' to someone in a dream the other night).  The fact is that I've found that all those years I spent in my last, Hellish job, took an even greater toll on me than I'd at first thought and I've felt the need to just, well, sideline myself from the usual 'hurly burly' of life in order to recover.  I've simply not felt like doing anything - when I have stirred myself into action, I've found myself unenthusiastic.

But, even I'm not immune to the imperatives of  the season and have already indulged in some tentative Spring cleaning.  (Frankly, the whole house needs a deep clean, the amount of time I've spent slobbing around in here over the past couple of years, with all those lockdowns and everything).  There are also all manner of  repairs and DIY projects outstanding.  A priority really does have to be finally clearing out the spare room so that I can finally get on with expanding the model railway.  Until I do that, I have managed to secure the parts I need for a model railway side project, to keep me occupied - hopefully more on that once it is properly underway.  Then there are those bookshelves I keep talking about putting up... Anyway, if I can ever get myself into gear, I've plenty to do, rather than just thinking about doing it.  In the meantime, I'm going to finish watching Al Adamson's Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969), which is currently streaming on Otherworlds TV.