Lost and Not Found

Why is it that technology seems to conspire to frustrate us at the most inconvenient time?  I wasted an inordinate amount of time this evening when trying to put together a new podcast for the Overnightscape Underground after my phone, on which I was recording the various segments, decided to lose every one of my audio files, including the three I hadn't yet backed up to my laptop.  No, I didn't inadvertently delete them - one minute they were there, the next they were gone.  Despite having a 'recycling bin' feature, the audio recorder app unhelpfully claimed that it was empty.  I tried using a file recovery app - all it 'found' were the older audio files stored in another directory, rather than the lost ones it was meant to locate.  The current audio files I'd been working on seem to have vanished without a trace. So, after arseing around trying to recover them with no success, I was forced to re-record the three I hadn't managed to back up, wasting yet more time.  It was all very frustrating.  Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the podcast was finally completed and is currently up here.   As ever, it is closely based on posts from this blog, with a few media extras.  

I often joke about it being the 'least listened to podcast on the web'.  In reality, I have no idea how many people listen to my podcasts as they aren't posted on my site.  I suspect, however, that even if only a handful of people listened to each one, they'd actually rate pretty highly on the globally 'most listened to' charts (if such a thing existed).  I'm basing this on some information I gleaned from Facebook regarding The Sleaze's page there - according to them, it is a page with 'high interaction'.  Which was news to me as the number of visits registered for each post is lucky to climb into double figures.  Yet, apparently, in the scheme of things, this rates it highly among the thousands of similar pages.  (This, it seems, was why they made me jump through hoops last year forcing me to increase the security on my account).  Consequently, I figure that despite the fact that there are various high profile, professionally produced, podcasts out there getting huge listening figures, the reality is that there are simply so many podcasts produced globally every day (hundreds of thousands, at least), that statistically, these are only a tiny minority of podcasts and that most of them are barely listened to, depressing the overall average number of listeners per podcast.  Meaning that getting even a handful of listeners will put you up above the average engagement level.  So, I'm quietly confident that every podcast published on the Overnightscape Underground counts as above average in listener engagement terms.

Flatfoot in Africa (1978)

If there is one thing you can always rely upon, it is that a Bud Spencer solo-movie will ultimately involve the big man single-handedly slapping a horde of villainous toughs into submission.  So it is with Flatfoot in Africa, (the trailer here is the US version, which re-titles the film The Knock Out Cop), a pretty typical late seventies vehicle for Spencer.  This is the third in a series of four films in which Bud Spencer played Neapolitan cop 'Flatfoot', a sort of comedic Italian 'Dirty Harry' who uses his outsize fists instead of a .44 Magnum.  Only the first is set entirely in Naples, the second takes him to Hong Kong and the fourth to Egypt.  Flatfoot in Africa has a short prologue in Naples, setting up the plot with a South African cop trying to contact Spencer about a drug smuggling racket being shot dead in front of him.  Naturally, 'Flatfoot' heads for South Africa where, conveniently, his former sidekick Caputo has relocated after retiring from the police and finds himself looking after the dead cop's now orphaned young son in-between investigating the drug smuggling case by beating up everyone in sight.

Which is pretty much the standard set-up for many of Spencer's movies of the era: tough guy hero has to juggle his brawling adventures with looking after a young kid, forcing him to get in touch with his sensitive side.  But it's a formula that works well for Spencer's regular screen persona of the grouchy big guy with the heart of gold.  The film itself is typical not just of Bud Spencer vehicles, but also of Italian comedy action/adventures films of the era, combining pratfalls and physical comedy, a travelogue to exotic locations punctuated by bursts of elaborate action sequences, including chases and fights.  Not surprisingly, Flatfoot in Africa also includes some of the sort of racial 'jokes' common in the seventies - the boy Bodo being told that he has gone white with fright, for instance, or Caputo blacking up as a disguise but, in the English language version, at least, these are pretty mild and kept to a minimum.  It's notable that in the English language version Spencer isn't dubbed with his usual voice, that of Edward Mannix, although, in the Italian original he does get to speak with his own voice, (Spencer was apparently usually dubbed by another Italian actor as his native Neapolitan accent was unpopular in many parts of the country).  In common with most films of this genre, it all goes on a little too long and starts to flag about a third of the way through, but picks up for one of those trademark climactic brawls that were always so well choreographed.  (Despite the fact that they are presented on the level of a cartoon, the UK prints often severely trimmed these sequences in Bud Spencer and Terrance Hill movies, on the pretext that young viewers might be encouraged to try some of the more violent moves themselves).

I have to admit that I have a tremendous soft spot for these movies, whether they feature Bud Spencer solo, or with Terrence Hill, (or Hill on his own).  They all tend to follow a  standard formula and are very undemanding, but they are a lot a fun if you are in the right mood and both Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill were tremendously charismatic performers.  (Hill still is, last time I checked he was still active as an actor, despite being in his eighties).

Hush-Hush ('and on the QT')

A low rent Confidential clone that would probably be completely forgotten by now had it not been featured in both Jame Ellroy's novel LA Confidential and its subsequent film adaptation.  The Hush-Hush featured in these, however, is a somewhat fictionalised version of the real scandal mag, somewhat higher up the celebrity smut and gossip food chain than the real one ever was.  Moreover, I'm pretty sure that it was never edited by 'Sid Hudgens', (played by Danny DeVito in the film).  In reality, it was owned by Myron Fass, a one-time comic book artist and  prolific publisher of pulp magazines and comic books.  He later set up Eerie Publishing to put out a range of horror comics, as low rent rivals to Warren Publishing's 'Creepy' line of comics.  Fass, like his rivals, would put out pulp magazines on any subject that was currently popular, something reflected in the content of later editions of Hush-Hush as it moved away from focusing purely on celebrity scandal.

This is the January 1961 issue, (it lasted until at least 1965 in this form) and is pretty typical of the publication.  By the early sixties it had become more dangerous to publish exposes of increasingly litigious celebrities, so the content started to edge more into standard men's magazine territory.  Hence, we have stories about much married Rex Harrison eyeing up his potential next wife, (pretty safe territory to write about), Frank Sinatra's mob connections, (again, easily defended as he regularly performed in Las Vegas venues owned by organised crime figures, therefore he couldn't help but know some gangsters-turned-'legitimate' businessmen) and 'Bedtime Secrets of the Stars' (anonymous enough to avoid legal action),  rubbing shoulders with sex changes, drugs, flying saucers and mixed racial relationships.  (The latter, particularly where it allegedly involved Hollywood stars, was something of an obsession in US scandal mags of the era).  Interestingly, while the fictional Sid Hudgens likes to describe the content of his version of the magazine as being 'All hush hush and on the QT', this is actually a conflagration of two different titles: Hush-Hush (obviously) and a rival magazine, On The QT.

(Image from mycomicshop.com used under 'Fair Use' or 'Fair Dealing').

Encounter With The Unknown (1973)

An incredibly tatty-looking anthology film from the early seventies, Encounter With The Unknown is, indeed, 'one of those rare films you will never forget'.  Mainly because of its cheapness and bargain basement production values.  The only 'name' i the cast is narrator Rod Serling.  Except that he doesn't narrate the whole film - a second, uncredited, narrator pops up at the beginning and end of the film.  We'll return to him later.  The film presents the viewer with three stories of the supernatural - all allegedly involving people buried in the same graveyard and all case studies of a 'respected' paranormal investigator.  The latter, of course, doesn't exist, despite the film's earnest assurances that he is some kind of leading authority on psychic phenomena.  Each story is introduced by Serling's narration, his authoritative tones giving the nonsensical gibberish he spouts a sheen of false plausibility.  The stories themselves are pretty thin and unconvincing.  The first is a rambling tale of a graveside curse placed on three students by the mother of their friend, whose death she blames on their prank-gone-wrong.  All three, apparently, will die at seven day intervals - one by land, two by sky.  One is quickly run over by a car, a second dies in a plane crash, but only after having a rambling pseudo-religious conversation about fate, superstition and the supernatural with a fellow passenger, a priest.  The priest tries to contact the third student, only to hear that he has gone skydiving... And that's it.  No twists, no surprises.

The second story, set in a small Western town in nineteen hundreds, is vaguely Lovecraftian with its plot involving a mysterious hole in the ground from which inhuman howls and screams emanate.  A farmer, whose son fears his dog might have fallen down the hole, volunteers to be lowered into it n a rope.  Of course, once he is out of sight, he screams horribly and when pulled to the surface, is found to be stark, staring mad.  Again, that's it.  There's no further development, no hints at what was in the hole, nor what the towns folk eventually did about it.  That said, it is probably the best of three episodes, making the most of its meagre resources to create a good period feel and is reasonably atmospheric.  The third and final story is a straightforward re-telling of the 'phantom hitchhiker' urban myth - motorist picks up lone woman on the road, takes her to an address she claims to live at, when he arrives, she has vanished from the car.  There are countless variations on the basic story.  The film tries to flesh it out a little by providing a back story in flashback (apparently filmed through a net curtain, involving the girl eloping with the suitor her father disapproves of, but being killed in a car accident t the very place where the motorist picks her up.  In a coda, her father, now aged, is still living at the address she wants to be taken to and makes it clear that this isn't the first time this has happened.

Both collectively and individually, the main audience reaction these stories invite is a shrug of the shoulders - they are little more than anecdotes of the sort teenagers tell each other in fumbling attempts to illicit a scare.  Despite all of the film's attempts to give them some weight and significance - the accreditation to the fake paranormal expert and Serling's portentous narration - they never rise above this level.  But the film doesn't end with the last story and Serling's closing voice over.  Instead, we get what amounts to a recap of the entire film, with scenes from the three episodes inter-cut, key scenes and dialogue repeated, as the second narrator rambles on about the existence of witchcraft, its origins in the 'old religion', Ancient Egypt and all manner of other occult nonsense.  (There's something similar, but shorter that acts as a prologue at the start of the film).  I can only assume that this was added to bring the film up to a ninety minute running time, as the three stories alone would have left it seriously under-running.  This epilogue somewhat reminded me of similar sequences often to be found in 'Mondo' movies, as the narrator tries to pull together the preceding footage's various themes, (as part of their quest to pass themselves off as serious documentaries, most 'Mondos' would proceed from some opening 'theory' which the supposedly genuine footage that followed would 'prove').  Overall, though, Encounter With The Unknown most resembles those TV series which mainly consist of dramatisations of supposedly true cases of the paranormal, but with an even lower budget that can't even muster William Shatner as a front man.  On this level, it is actually reasonably entertaining, although the best part remains that added on epilogue which touches on the surreal in the way in which cross-edits the preceding footage.

Sex, Violence and Video Piracy

The more I watch streaming channels on my Roku box, the more I wonder just how much of the content I watch is actually legal, in the sense that the channel showing it has screening rights and, even if it does, whether they are licensed to show it in my geographic location.  In a sense, of course, it doesn't really matter to me as a viewer whether they are legal or not - I'm just watching the content they are offering in good faith and these channels have all been approved by Roku for broadcast in my territory.  Roku itself seems to take the view that it is merely a publisher and approves these channels on the basis of what they are showing at the time of approval and can't actively police content on individual channels.  They will only respond to copyright violations when alerted to it by third parties. That said, it is notable that in the case of the F2VTV channels, which were redistributing free-to-air streaming channels without permission and to territories their content wasn't licenced for, these were voluntarily taken down by the owner after the situation had been highlighted by a media blogger.  Roku, as far as I'm aware, weren't directly involved.  (Their take down was a big pity as they had some pretty good stuff on those streams).  

Obviously, on the sort of free-to-air Roku channels I watch, most of the content is public domain and therefore free of copyright.  Except that it isn't always that straightforward - what might be in the public domain in the US isn't necessarily public domain in the UK and vice versa, for instance.  I've encountered several UK films whose US version might well be public domain, (often because the distributor went out of business, 'orphaning' the film), but I'm pretty sure that in the UK their ownership still lies with their distributors, producers or their successors.  Now, all of these movies are of some vintage, so it is highly doubtful that anyone is ever going to make an issue out of it, let alone know that the films are showing on some obscure streaming channel.  But there are also several free-to-air channels out there showing either recent films or older, but still in copyright, studio movies which I am sure that are offering them without permission.  On the newer films it is the frequent presence of Mandarin or other Far Eastern sub-titles on the source prints, which is a giveaway, while on the older films it is the presence of the DVD or Blu-Ray distributors' credits still intact at the beginning which suggest that they are pirated transfers.  Sometimes the films seem to come from on-air TV recordings, complete with station continuity announcements.  

Indeed, just recently I was watching what is ostensibly a respectable and legitimate US based channel that offers a number of movie and nostalgia TV streams when I came in part way through an episode of The Fall Guy - when it ended I was startled to find myself watching the complete ITV4 continuity announcement that squeezed the closing titles.  Next up, apparently, was Batman, with coverage of the African Cup of Nations following later that evening!  All highly confusing as, of course, the next show wasn't Batman and the advertised football match was from several years earlier.  This has to be the most brazen example of content theft I've yet seen.  Clearly, their advertisers don't care, as the station's own ad break popped up after the ITV4 announcements!  What all of this illustrates is just how difficult it has become to enforce copyright, particularly internationally, in the modern world of streaming.  No matter how many of these stations do get shut down for copyright violations, new ones, showing the same content, appear to replace them.  (Even the F2VTV guy has a new channel, running, so far, legit streams).  The fact is that it is relatively cheap to set up a Roku channel - you just need a reasonably reliable server and some content.  Monetising it isn't difficult: Roku has will partner you up with a service that can place ads in your programming that are localised to the viewer,  If you aren't afraid to pirate some desirable content, then you should, at the very least, be able to cover the running costs.  Right now, it seems relatively low risk - channels caught pirating content are simply removed.  So far, I haven't heard of anyone actually being prosecuted.  Sooner or later, though, I'm sure that, in the UK at least, someone in authority is going to notice all this free-to-air sex, violence and pirated material being purveyed via Roku and try to stop the fun.

False Memoirs Syndrome

Boris Johnson, the most brazenly corrupt UK Prime Minister in recent history, is threatening, sorry, promising, to bring us a political memoir 'unlike any other'.  In what way, I wonder?  Bearing in mind just how disastrous and mired in scandal his premiership was, will he, rather than giving us the facts, simply make it all up, creating a fabricated version of history in which he is the hero?  A bit like his hero Churchill did with regard to his record as Prime Minister in World War Two - in his version, which, for far too long, was uncritically accepted as 'the truth', he made no mistakes, got all the 'big calls' right and was behind every major victory of the war.  The reality was somewhat different, with numerous miscalculations and unwelcome attempts to interfere in military decision making.  Many of those victories were in spite of Churchill rather than because of him, despite his desire to credit for the efforts of others.  I strongly suspect that Johnson's memoirs will follow a similar pattern: a heroic tale of how he single-handedly fought Covid, having already got in his Spitfire and seen off the EU in the 'Battle of Brexit'.  Oh, let's not forget how he 'fought them on the beaches' - refugees landing by rubber dinghy on the Kent coast, that is.  Yes indeed, stripped to the waist so as to highlight his masculine and muscled photoshopped torso and wearing a tin hat, he posed for a photo-opportunity, kicking heavily armed asylum seekers, (actually actors), back into the sea.

Mind you, this all presupposes that he ever writes these memoirs.  Aren't his publishers still waiting for that book about Shakespeare, for which he trousered a sizeable advance?  If the prospective publishers of this proposed memoir have paid a similar advance then they should give up all hope of ever seeing a manuscript now.  Unless he employs ghost writers - Jeffrey Archer is available.  Mind you, he'd have to pay them and Johnson seems to have a resistance to spending money.  His own, that is.  Like many wealthy people, Johnson never seems to actually use his own cash,no matter how much of it he earns as an MP, Prime Minister or from speaking engagements, (which is why these people are wealthy), instead relying upon the generosity of equally wealthier admirers and supporters.  Right now, for instance, he's reportedly living, rent-free, in a London house owned by a Tory party donor.  When they aren't donating accommodation or expenses to him, they're arranging loans for him, (then, entirely coincidentally, getting appointed BBC Chairman),  Mind you, judging by the sales of other recent political memoirs, Johnson can only be writing his as the result of a generous advance, as royalties will be non-existent.  Perhaps, though, he'll surprise us all by actually telling the truth in these memoirs - if they ever appear - admitting that he is a corrupt, immoral bastard who fucked the country up the arse and is still grifting away.  But somehow, I doubt it.

Never Ask a Lone Policeman

Be wary of lone policemen, London headteacher tells pupils in the wake of the conviction of another Metropolitan Police officer for rape.  Well. no shit Sherlock.  For those of us who are keen students of schlock cinema, the fact that policemen, especially ones wandering the streets alone, are not to be trusted.  Just watch any of the Maniac Cop films, (actually, you can easily skip the last one, but the first and especially the second are worth watching).  Although, I have to say that he's still a cut above a Metropolitan Police officer as he only kills people, particularly other cops, rather than raping women.  B-movies and exploitation cinema are chock full of bent and criminal cops, abusing their positions of trust to murder, rob and intimidate, so we really shouldn't be surprised that it turns out that they do the same thing in real life.  Yes, I know, I'm back on my old rant about how we all need to be watching more movies, particularly schlocky ones, as they can teach us valuable life lessons.  Like the fact that you can't trust cops.  Even when they aren't corrupt, they're usually being incompetent, refusing to believe people reporting serial killers, vampires and werewolves.  Which, of course, is reflected in real life when women report stalkers and aren't believed until they are murdered.   The real-life police might want us to think that they aren't the fat lazy slobs depicted in many a B-movie, but sadly the real life non-doughnut munching gym going cops are just as bad.  If not worse.  They just have better muscle tone and sharper suits.

Back in the 'good old days' the police could at lest rely upon TV to promote their clean cut image.  You know the thing: good old PC George Dixon wandering around his beat on foot, being avuncular, helping old ladies across the road and the like.  Trustworthy and dependable with no hint of corruption and impropriety: George Dixon could be relied upon not to go around copping a feel of pretty young female crime victims, or beating the shit out of immigrants in back alleys.  There's absolutely no doubt that Dixon of Dock Green couldn't be made today.  Today's relatively honest TV cops are more likely to spend their time investigating corrupt colleagues, as in The Line of Duty, rather than nicking non-police villains.  Any modern day Dixon of Dock Green type of series, if it were to reflect reality, would presumably have to focus on its 'hero' spending his time raping, blackmailing and intimidating every woman who crosses his path, then attempting to cover his tracks to avoid investigation.  Doubtless, he'd have all sorts of dirt on his senior officers, cataloguing their misogyny, racism and corruption, in order coerce them into not pursuing charges against him.  But the original Dixon of Dock Green, of course, wasn't portraying the truth about the Metropolitan Police of the fifties, sixties and seventies, but rather their preferred public image.  In truth, while George Dixon was pounding his beat, finding lost dogs and children, in Soho the Obscene Publications Squad were running protection rackets on sex shops, confiscating the stock of those who wouldn't pay up and selling it to those who would.  If only George Dixon had worked out of West End Central rather than Dock Green, he's have been driving a Daimler paid for out of kickbacks, rather than plodding the streets on foot. 

Man's Life: 'Happiness is Sex With My Best Pal's Wife!'

 

The end of the 'swinging sixties' was looming, but it was business as usual in the December 1969 issue of Man's Life, ('The Action Magazine for Men').  That said, the cover format illustrates a growing trend for men's magazines as the decade drew to a close of having the cover painting minimalised and more emphasis being put upon the sensationalised story titles.  I'm assuming that the voyeuristic cover is illustrating 'The Day a Madman Was Unleashed From Prison', the sort of thing that might have been equally at home in one of the 'True Crime' magazines.  Actually, voyeurism was a popular subject for men's magazine covers, which frequently featured women in various states of undress being peeped by some miscreant sat outside their bedroom window.  It's an apt subject as the publications themselves were offering their readers a form of voyeurism - an opportunity to peer into the sleazy worlds of things like vice and wife-swapping from the comfort of their own homes.

The rest of the contents is par for the course for the era: 'Happiness is: Sex With my Best Pal's Wife' presages the slide of most men's magazines into more explicit sex orientated adult material in the following decade, as is 'Malibu Beach: Where the Sex Kittens Run Amuck'.  'Miracle Escape From the Commie Killers of Cambodia' is the typical men's magazine war story updated for the Vietnam era, while 'I Was Captain of the Mafia's Ship of Vice' is another reason why I once considered pursuing a career at sea.  If I was to believe the stories in men's magazines, the oceans of the world were awash with such floating sex and sin palaces - just imagine what the Captain's Table was like on such vessels.  Man's Life held out until 1974 before it switched to photo covers rather than more traditional paintings and staggered on to at least 1975 in a new, more soft core porn orientated format.  Although this was the last regular issue of the decade, 1969 also saw an Annual published.

The Centerfold Girls (1974)

Glamour models being stalked and murdered by a puritanical maniac is hardly an original plot - in British exploitation cinema alone we have Cover Girl Killer (1959) and The Playbirds (1978).  In between these we have The Centerfold Girls (1974), a gritty and single minded piece of US exploitation.  This time around it is religious fanatic Andrew Prine harassing various models who have appeared as center folds in a men's magazine with anonymous phone calls, before following and killing them.  But while the plot might be familiar, the film's structure is quite different to the other two films mentioned, opting for an episodic format, making it an anthology film of sorts, as we follow three different girls as their paths cross that of Prine.  

First up, we meet one of the models as she travels to a rural community where she hopes to resume a career in nursing.  While Prine is stalking her, the initial threat comes from the hitch hiker she earlier picked up and her hippie friends, who rob and attempt to sexually assault her at the relative's house the model is staying at.  Escaping and seeking refuge at the local motel, she finds herself further molested by the superficially sympathetic motel owner, before encountering Prine's character, who appears to be sympathetic and respectable, in contrast to all the hippies and local sleazebags she has encountered.  Of course, having lulled her into a false sense of security, Prine murders her.  This first story effectively sets the tone for the whole movie, with the victims portrayed as naive in their interactions with others and the male characters as being universally scummy would be rapists.  To be fair most of the female characters are also portrayed in equally unflattering terms, as either bimbos, sadists or moralistic harridans.  

The second story varies the format - this time Prine manages to follow, in secret, a group of models and photographers to an island where they are to carry out a photo shoot.  He succeeds in murdering them all and escaping from the island, leaving no trace of himself, in what could almost be a parody of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.  The police, naturally, are baffled.  Once again, the male characters involved in the shoot are all utterly despicable sleaze bags, who spend their time trying to hit on the girls with promises of career advancement and the like.  The models all seem utterly oblivious as to the threat posed to them, even as the bodies pile up.  This is probably the weakest of the segments, stretching credulity as Prine pulls off his 'perfect crime'.

The final story varies the format once again: this time his prospective victim is aware of the threat to herself and attempts to evade Prine by going into hiding.  Unfortunately for her, a fellow model incredibly gives her location to a complete stranger (Prine) over the phone.  Once again, the initial threat to the victim comes not from Prine, but from various random men she encounters after her car breaks down and she is forced to hitch hike, culminating in her being drugged and raped by a pair of sailors who pick her up.  As in the first story, Prine in his respectable married man persona, appears to come to her rescue, offering her a lift, only to drive her to a remote woodland spot in order to kill her.  This time, however, he finds that his victim is prepared to fight back.  

As noted earlier, the film is single minded (and quite relentless) in its quest to portray most of humanity and men in particular, as sexually motivated predators obsessed with the degradation of women.  So depraved are most of the men the models encounter in both their work and everyday lives, that it is no wonder that Prine's character is able to win their trust simply by appearing respectable and civilised.  Besides, he only wants to kill them, not rape them.  Moreover, he at least has a coherent motivation, (coherent to him, at least), for targeting the centerfold girls - he is a puritanical religious fanatic who believes that their displaying of their bodies in men's magazines represents an attempt to corrupt decent men through sexual temptation.  The behaviour of virtually every non-pyschopathic male character in the film would seem to validate his claims.  Yet it isn't quite that simple - the film seems, in places, to be trying to explore the mind set that tries to make victims complicit in their own ordeals.  In the first story, for instance, the motel owner's wife assumes that the girl must have been 'asking for it' when she was attacked by the hippies - after all, she is a young, single and emancipated woman who takes her clothes off for money.  Likewise, the motel owner himself thinks that she is 'available' and 'easy' for the same reasons, despite the fact that the hippies had attacked her for being too repressed (she doesn't want to party with them, declines offers of drugs and alcohol and rejects their sexual advances).  Young women, it seems are damned if they appear to be too 'liberated' or if they are too 'repressed'.  They can't win.

It has to be said that The Centerfold Girls comes over as scummy in every respect, with grainy, often bleached out looking (thanks to be mainly being shot in bright California sunlight) photography, scratchy sound and sometimes choppy editing.  But the look complements the subject matter perfectly.  Nevertheless, some scenes are highly effective - the final confrontation in a burnt pout section of forest, for instance, with the protagonists surrounded by the charred and twisted remains of trees.  Overall, The Centerfold Girls is a less than subtle film in its depiction of male violence and the persecution of female sexual liberty.  Moreover, to ram home the reductive way in which Prine's character views the world, he lives in an all white apartment and wears black clothes.  But Prine could always play psychopaths well and he does so here, alternately a ranting religious fanatic and an apparently respectable, rational, middle class professional.  Aldo Ray is also suitably sleazy as the lascivious motel owner in the first story.  Of the victims, only the last, played by Tiffany Bolling, is particularly memorable.  The film actually has a lot to recommend it - not least that sub-text about victim blaming that lurks in the script, but also its structure: the episodic format and the focus on the killer and his victims rather than the police investigation, (the usual focus of such films).  Indeed, the police are shown to be spectacularly ineffective throughout the film, (as they more often than not are with regard to real life stalking cases).  The Centerfold Girls was one of only a handful of films (all low budget) directed by John Peyser, who was otherwise a prolific director of episodic television, but he succeeds in turning out a suitably gritty piece of exploitation which, despite the episodic format, moves along at a decent pace.  Satisfyingly sleazy, it is well worth a look.

Education Anglaise (1982)

 

I first read about Education Anglaise (1982) in an article about spanking films that Ramsey Campbell wrote for one of the paperback book editions of Shock Express, (although the third and last one was titled simply Shock as a result of a dispute over who actually owned the rights to the title).  After more years than I care to think about, I finally got around to watching the film, thanks to the magic of my Roku box.  As Campbell explained in that article, Education Anglaise is a manifestation of the French belief that spanking is very British fetish, the result of all those strict public schools where beatings were de riguer, resulting in a nation of sexual perverts.  It has to be said that corporal punishment does feature very prominently in British pop culture depicting the nation's schooldays - I well remember the comic strip version of Billy Bunter, where he was forever getting a caning, for instance.  Headmasters flexing their canes weren't confined to depictions of public schools either - state school kids could also expect 'six of the best': part of the plot of Carry on Teacher, set in a Secondary Modern school. for example, involves a debate over the efficacy of corporal punishment. Despite this apparent obsession with beating the backsides of British youth on the pretext of enforcing discipline, I'm not sure that spanking fetishes are uniquely British.  After all, if that were the case, a film like Education Anglaise - which puts the chastisement of schoolgirls front and centre - wouldn't have been made in France, with a French setting.

Nonetheless, Education Anglaise follows the template of the classic British school story: orphaned girl is sent by her guardian, (in this case her decadent uncle, who sees her presence as an impediment to his shagging of his female domestic staff), to a strict boarding school for girls.  Said school prides itself on its adherence to the 'English' principles of discipline.  Which means, in practice, that the slightest infraction results in a bare-arsed spanking.  Indeed, our heroine arrives in her first class just as such a punishment is being administered.  But while it might be argued that such a disciplinary regime might well be considered par for the course in a 1930s private school, even in France, things quickly take a very sinister turn with sudden arrival of a new deputy headmistress.  To the viewer it is patently obvious that Miss Georgina is a man in drag, most specifically the escaped convict that everyone has been talking about.  Yet, none of the staff or students seem to see anything amiss.  Now, if this was a British sex comedy, the arrival of a bloke in drag, masquerading as a teacher in a girls school, would be cue for all manner of humourous shenanigans, probably culminating in him being chased around the school, semi-naked, by police, students, school governors and angry parents.  But this isn't a seventies British sex comedy - it is an eighties French sex film, so instead of farcical humour, we get a dark plot where Miss Georgina starts to dominate the school, using the girls as playthings in his increasingly sadistic games.

Rather than just handing out spankings as punishment, we now have various of the girls systematically humiliated - made to beg like a dog or made to participate in chariot races, with girls instead of horses pulling the chariots, for instance.  Most disturbingly, our heroine is gradually brainwashed by Miss Georgina and the headmistress, (who, it becomes clear, does know that Georgina is a man and is actually his lover), into becoming the instrument of their punishments, beating and caning her fellow students.  As the girl herself admits in her diary, she begins to get a thrill from the cruelty she is helping to mete out.  But it is clear that the film's makers aren't simply aiming at audience titillation here: they appear to have serious intent.  The goings on at the school, it seems, are meant to be a microcosm of the wider political situation in Europe during the thirties, namely the rise of fascism.  Miss Georgina's gradual imposition of an ever more draconian regime, on the pretext of being a legitimately appointed authority figure, endorsed by the headmistress seems to be an analogy for the rise of fascism withing the frameworks of existing democracies.  Like the populations of countries like Germany and Italy, both staff and students simply acquiesce to authority, not questioning its legitimacy until it is virtually too late.  Just to ram home the analogy, it is the Jewish student, whose family has apparently 'disappeared' in Germany, who comes in for the most brutal punishments.

It isn't just the staff and students who are shown to be blind to the potential threat: the wider community is also shown to be complacent, with various local dignitaries discussing what had been going on at the school, decrying the sordid goings on, while they continue to pursue their usual decadence at the local brothel, oblivious to the gathering political threats surrounding them.  Likewise, the uncle, who had earlier, in typical bourgeois fashion, dismissed all politicians, whether democratically elected or dictators, as being of no consequence to him, finds himself, at the film's end, under the thumb of his niece, now transformed into a full blown dominatrix, the tables turned in their relationship, forced to acquiesce to her authoritarian power.  This political sub-text - while ambitious for a sex film - is problematic, slowing down the film and for those going into it expecting some lightweight romp full of naked twenty something schoolgirls getting their behinds spanked, somewhat takes the fun out of it.  Because, the truth is that is exactly what most people watching a film titled Education Anglaise are going to expect, rather than a treatise on the rise of fascism. 

Indeed, the format of the sex film really can't bear the weight of the analogy being placed upon it, with the expectations of the genre constantly frustrated by the dark turns and often clumsy parallels being drawn between the authoritarianism of the private school and the rise of the authoritarian state, with the one indoctrinating its participants to accept and justify the latter.  As a spanking film, or even just a sex film, Education Anglaise is something of a disappointment - while there is quite a lot of nudity and spankings on display (although surprisingly little actual sex), none of it is particularly erotic, let alone titillating.  On the plus side, Education Anglaise has superb production values, with meticulous period detail, authentic looking locations, excellent cinematography and lighting and even some decent acting performances.  It just isn't very sexy, though.

Going to the Dogs

 So, yet another news story about someone being mauled to death by dogs, this time in Surrey.  The details, as reported, are vague - the victim was apparently a professional dog walker, exercising a number of pet dogs, (all of which have now been 'detained' by the police).  Whether she was attacked by one or more of her charges, or whether there's some kind of killer dog roaming the home counties is unclear.  Whatever the facts of this case, it just reinforces my belief that you can't trust dogs.  They might like to masquerade as 'man's best friend', but an alarmingly large number seem to like killing their best friend in unprovoked maulings.  But the pro-dog propaganda never stops - just you try criticising dogs for what they are, murderous four legged shitting machines, and you'll find yourself on the receiving end of all manner of hate from dog lovers.  They're so loyal, not to mention intelligent and loving, they'll tell you.  Yeah?  So loyal they'll tear your throat out (and probably shit all over your lawn) and so intelligent that they are probably plotting your death right now.  They're nothing but evil.  Not to mention that they are also snitches - just look at how those police sniffer dogs eagerly finger anyone with the slightest trace of drugs on them.  Bastards.  

The fact is that you don't hear about cats mauling their owners to death, do you?  Sure, if you were to die in your house, they'd probably start eating you, but at least they have the decency to wait until you've turned your toes up before sinking their teeth in.  Cats are much maligned, victims of much anti-feline propaganda put out by 'dog people'.  If we are to believe these lovers of  the canine furry shit factories, the average domestic cat is responsible for decimating wildlife in a ten mile radius of its home.  Absolute bullshit - the average cat is too lazy to catch anything, not even a cold.  The fact is that you know where you are with a cat: no masquerading as 'man's best friend' - cats are their own best friends and they are friends with you only when it suits them.  Plus, they at least cover up their own shit.  The bottom line here is that dogs are clearly untrustworthy and, quite frankly, the only good dog is a dead dog.  So go out and shoot one of the homicidal bastards today, before it has a chance to tear your throat out.  Even better, beat the bastards to death with a sack full of bricks.  It's the only way the human race is going to survive because, believe me, they're infiltrating their way into our homes with the aim of wiping us out.  The bastards. 

Famous for Fifteen Episodes

Do you ever worry that TV and cinema are going to run out of content?  Or rather, run out of sources for their content?  As I've noted before, the explosion of streaming outlets has created a massive demand for original content with which to keep their subscribers loyal, but the strain is already showing in terms of their inspiration for this programming.  The exploitation of existing properties is really beginning to run out of stream, as original premises are spread ever thinner.  How many more Star Trek series can Paramount come up with, for God's sake?   We've now entered the realm of spin offs of spin offs with this particular franchise.  Over Disney we've got apparently endless expansions of the Star Wars universe being ground out, as they seize on supporting characters or locations or any loose thread they can grasp at from the original films and serve up hour after hour of their (not very interesting) adventures.  I look forward eagerly to the ten part series chronicling the adventures of Greedo before Han Solo shot him in the first film.  Then there's the whole Marvel cycle spreading itself across films and TV series, as they dredge up ever more obscure comic book heroes to base TV shows around, or find gaps in the narrative of the film series to fill in with eight part TV series.  Not to forget adaptations of video games into TV shows or the remaking of ninety minute movies from the sixties or seventies as ponderous TV series in which every nuance and subtlety of the original is made explicit and tediously explained in boring detail.

It's reminiscent of the days of Hollywood studios, when they'd grind out a whole series of B-movies, with ever lower budgets, based around a character who had originally appeared in an A-picture or mid-budget programmer, gradually coarsening and diluting the original concept.  But hey, there are original productions not based on the exploitation of existing properties - although I fear that the strain of finding new inspiration for these is already showing.  Just this evening, for instance, I saw a trailer for a new series on one of the streamers based around the creation of the Chippendales male strippers.  If I'm to believe this trailer, their origins lie in a hotbed of rivalry, deception and (hinted at) violence.  Frankly, it sounds pretty desperate to me, as if producers are clutching at any real life situation to hang a sensational drama upon.  Not that this is confined to the streaming channels, even on the terrestrial channels, just about anything is being turned into a drama now - only recently we had one based on the utterly trivial 'Wagatha Christie' trial, for God's sake.  Obviously, there are only a finite number of such stories to be dramatised - they'll soon exhaust all the sensational (or even mildly interesting) ones involving celebrities and public figures, so where next?  Perhaps Warhol's claim that one day we'll all be 'famous for fifteen minutes' will come true, with overblown TV series being based upon the lives of ordinary people, no matter how mundane those lives might be.  'Famous for fifteen episodes' maybe.  So, brace yourselves to be played by some on the skids movie star desperate for a star turn in a fictionalised version of your life which tries to sensationalise visits to the laundry or shopping in Aldi.  It's only a matter of time.

Dream World -A New Kind of Fiction?

 

Dream World, which ran for three issues in 1957, was, in effect, a spin off from another Ziff-Davis title: Fantastic.  That magazine had run a couple of issues themed around dreams and psionic powers which had proven popular, so Dream World was conceived as a new magazine specialising in such subject matter.  It shared its editor, Paul W. Fairman, not to mention most of its writers (many hiding behind house names and pseudonyms), with Ziff-Davis' science fiction titles, Fantastic and Amazing.  Despite this first, February 1957, issue boasting of stories from two non-genre authors, PG Wodehouse and Thorne Smith, the bulk of the content was provided by the Ziff-Davis stable.  Moreover, while the inclusion of material by Wodehouse and Smith might imply a degree of class and sophistication with regard to the magazine's content, the reality was that it tended toward the sleazier (by 1957 standards) end of the spectrum.

As the cover, (illustrating 'The Man With the X-Ray Eyes'), indicates, the material tended toward male wish-fulfilment and sexual fantasies.  Subsequent issues amplified this trend, with stories about men who can conjure up their 'dream women', sculptors who can bring their female sculptures to life, cameras that can photograph clothed women naked - you get the idea.  The main variations on the theme were the power fantasies about meek men getting even with their bosses via hidden powers, or using such powers to gain wealth.  Despite the masthead's claims that the magazine was delivering 'A New Kind of Fiction', the reality was that it was simply serving up age-old male fantasies.  The format was, ultimately, very limited, making the publication's cancellation after just three issues unsurprising. Another problem doubtless lay with the fact that the subject matter meant that the magazine cut across genres, at a time when pulps tended to specialise in a single genre.  Moreover, while the stories tended toward sleaze, by the late fifties readers could get it in stronger doses from men's magazines, which catered to the same male fantasies, but presented them as being real, making them seem much more accessible to their readers.  

(It should be noted that the story 'The Man With X-Ray Eyes' was not, (officially, at least), the source for the 1963 film of the same name, despite obvious similarities in concept and plot).

The Post Pub Viewing Experience

Yeah, I know, I said that I'd kick off this year's quota of schlock by writing about a Mondo movie that I was planning to re-watch.  Instead, I ended up spending the back end of last week writing about a couple of direct-to-video B-movies that I'd recently seen.  The fact is that I still haven't gotten around to re-watching that Mondo - the reason I need to re-watch it is that  my original viewing of it on a streaming channel was interrupted by temporary problems with my broadband.  I've subsequently found a version of it online.  It's just a matter of finding time to view it.  Not that I haven't been watching a fair amount of schlock lately - as witnessed by my brief overviews of Evasive Action and Jack-O.  In fact, the latter film was part of a triple bill of schlocky movies I caught last week on Otherworlds TV, (always a reliable source for the weird and off beat), which began the Australian James Herbert adaptation The Survivor (1976) and ended with seventies oddity Pets (1972).  I might write about the latter at greater length some time - it is of interest to UK viewers simply for the sight of Ed Bishop not only getting top billing, but in actual US film, in contrast to his usual role as one of UK TV and cinema's stock Americans.  To get to a point, of sorts, what struck me about the two movies I wrote about last week is that fall perfectly into the category of 'post pub' movies - the sort of direct-to-video fare you sit through while slumped on the sofa after a few pints.  Precisely what direct-to-video was originally meant to be - the ultra low budget film makers, like Manchester's Cliff Twemlow, who pioneered the direct-to-video market realised this from the outset.  

Films like these don't need to be sophisticated, but they do need to be capable of holding one's attention while never being too complicated to follow for the partially inebriated audience.  Some competently staged action, a bit of nudity or, if a horror film, a spot of gore and the odd half decently staged decapitation and you are away.  If you can manage to throw a few recognisable faces, whether they be 'name' actors on their uppers, like Roy Schieder, or B-movie veterans like William Smith or Cameron Mitchell, all the better.  The secret, though, is never to patronise the audience - just because they might be drunk doesn't mean that they are bereft of all critical faculties.  The direct-to-video releases that fail are generally those that underestimate their audiences, thinking that just any slapped together nonsense with flaky effects work, a no-name cast of amateurs, poor script and incomprehensible plot will do.  Worse still are those that feel like self-indulgence on the part of their makers, as if you are watching somebody else's private joke which only they and their friends find funny.  Which is why I ended up liking both Evasive Action and Jack-O.  Neither film had any pretensions: they both knew that they were cheap direct-to-video knock offs of better known films that couldn't hope to match their inspirations.  But, within their limitations, they both delivered an enjoyable, if undemanding viewing experience - while neither movie took itself entirely seriously, they knew when to deliver the goods, whether that be some reasonably staged action or some well timed gore.  Indeed, they passed the test of still being reasonably enjoyable when seen stone cold sober.  I watch a lot of these kinds of film but many, mainly those I don't write about, are utterly desultory viewing experiences because their makers seemingly don't grasp the basics of schlock movie making (Or movie making generally), giving the viewer nothing to remember through that alcoholic haze.  The best of these films always have something in them that makes a lasting impression - whether it be the shock of seeing a onetime Hollywood A-lister slumming it, a bold plot twist, an unexpected sub-text or even just Linnea Quigley in a totally gratuitous shower scene.

Jack-O (1995)

Yesterday I was talking about low budget direct-to-video films ripping off big budget action flicks, but, in truth, a film doesn't have to be a blockbuster to get ripped off.  I recently watched Jack-O (1995), for instance, which has often been accused of ripping off the better known, but still low budget, Pumpkinhead (1988). For sure, both feature a pumpkin-headed supernatural monster on a mission of vengeance and share a small-town/backwoods setting, but, in truth, the plot details of the two movies vary considerably.  At best, one might say that Jack-O was inspired by Pumpkinhead, rather than being a direct knock off of the earlier film.  Jack-O's budget is clearly, even by low budget standards well, low.  This is evidenced in the fact that the director's son plays the main juvenile lead and many of the interiors were shot in the director's house.  The director himself actually appears, playing a cable TV installer, (who appears to be working in the middle of the night - I remember when I had NTL you couldn't get their engineers out in daylight hours, let alone any other time).  Moreover, many of the optical effects are pretty basic and the night time cinematography murky.  Yet it remains a surprisingly enjoyable film.  Not only does it muster a reasonable-looking monster, but it also features appearances from a number of low-budget icons, most prominent of whom is Linnea Quigley.  The makers could only afford her for three days of shooting and a lot of that time looks like it was spent on her first appearance - a totally gratuitous shower scene. Don't get me wrong - it was very enjoyable, but the scene has no relevance whatsoever to the rest of the film.  Quigley is far and away the most likeable character in the film and looks to be shaping up to be a Laurie Strode-type babysitting heroine.  Unfortunately, her short shooting schedule means that she vanishes for long periods and, most crucially, is absent for the climactic fight with the monster.

Also appearing are John Carradine, (in footage shot seven years earlier, presumably for a different project), and Cameron Mitchell, who appears as a horror host the young hero watches on TV.  Both would be dead by the time the film debuted.  Jack-O, unusually for such a low-budget production, also features a sub-text about tolerance and extremism.  This is mostly manifested via the ultra-conservative couple who spend their time berating trick-or-treating kids for 'wanting something for nothing' and watching a Rush Limbaugh-type extreme right wing commentator on TV, who advocates extreme violence against 'liberals'.   Clearly, we are meant to draw a parallel between their intolerance of difference and different belief systems and the historic persecution and hanging of an alleged witch which resulted in the creation of the film's monster.  The monster has been accidentally resurrected in the present, (due to the regulation graveyard antics of a bunch of teenagers early in the movie), and now seeks to fulfil a curse placed on the descendants of the witch persecutors by the long dead John Carradine.  The film eventually resolves into the usual series of chases as various characters try to evade the monster.  The Halloween setting is used to good effect, with the creature initially dismissed as just another costumed kid out trick-or-treating.  One of the film's fundamental problems, though, is that most of those actually killed by the monster are peripheral characters, with no particular connection to its main targets.  Not only does this considerably reduce the tension by meaning that the main characters never really seem to be in peril most of the time, but most of the actual victims of the monster are simply too lightly sketched in for the audience to care about them.  Nonetheless, despite its limitations, the movie is an entertaining watch, maintaining a sense of fun and keeping its tongue firmly in its cheek.

Evasive Action (1998)

Sometimes I'm watching a film and an actor turns up whose presence has you asking 'What the Hell are they doing in this shit?'.  Which is exactly what I thought when Roy Scheider turned up in a low budget direct-to-video action film called Evasive Action (1998).  It as a real shock to the system to see Scheider in such a movie - it wasn't as if it was a cameo, but rather he was playing the main villain.  Surely, I asked myself, by that stage in his career he wasn't so hard up that he found himself forced to appear in this kind of bargain basement production?  But perhaps he was.  After all, Scheider had never really been a megastar - he was principally a supporting and character actor who had had the good luck to appear in a number of hit movies during the seventies, notably The French Connecton (1971), where supported Gene Hackman and Jaws (1975), where he supported Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.  Occasionally he got a lead, but these tended to be in slightly lesser productions, such as The Seven Ups (1973), Last Embrace (1979), All That Jazz (1979), Blue Thunder (1983), 52 Pick Up (1986) or even the inevitable Jaws 2 (1978).  All decent enough films, (with the possible exception of the Jaws sequel), but only Blue Thunder was really a big box office success on release.  By the early nineties he was starring in Seaquest DSV on TV and after that it was a rapid slide into direct-to-video fare.  At first, he was at least featuring in Dolph Lundgren and Michael Madsen vehicles, but the late nineties it was down to the likes of Evasive Action, which starred Dorian Harewood, (who also wrote and performed the song over the closing titles).  I find it fascinating that only a few years previously, the biggest names you'd find in this type of production would be the likes of Cameron Mitchell or Jack Palance, (both excellent actors), but by the late nineties they could muster the likes of Roy Scheider. 

Now, to be absolutely fair, Evasive Action isn't the worst direct-to-video action film I've ever seen.  In fact, I have considerable admiration for the fact that, despite having next to no budget, the film gamely tries to rip off the big budget Con Air (1997).  In fact, it is Con Air on a train, with jailed mob boss Scheider organising a break out when he and several other dangerous prisoners are being transferred between jails by rail.  It actually references Con Air to explain why the transfer is being made by train, with one character noting that since a plane full of prisoners had come down in Las Vegas the previous year, the FAA had banned all such flights.  Mind you, this still doesn't explain why the high security prison car is attached to the back of a regular passenger train rather than being run as part of a special train.  But hey, without the consequent hostage drama, there'd be no plot.  Harewood, of course, is the Nicholas Cage equivalent, the good guy only in prison for killing the scumbag who murdered his family, while Clint Howard plays the Steve Buscemi role of the crazy psycho-killer obsessed, in this case, with movies.  In fact, the film is full of familiar faces apparently fallen on hard times: Ray Wise as a Sheriff who looks like he's going to be the hero, before being abruptly killed off; Ed O'Ross as a crooked prison governor and even Sam 'Flash Gordon' Jones as a prisoner beaten to death by Scheider after having been on screen only two minutes.  Every other character is a cliche, from the plucky lady train bar tender to the precocious twelve year old girl travelling unaccompanied - they're just there to provide plot contrivances.

Despite packing in a number of gun fights, fights on top of the train and a helicopter crash, the film shows its paucity of budget in the way that it cuts away from various action scenes at critical moments.  When Harewood tries to get back on the train by chasing it on a motorbike and jumping aboard, for instance, we don't see him (or rather his stunt double) actually make the jump - instead we see him alongside an open carriage door, then cut to him back inside the coach.  Similarly, we don't see the explosion when one of the convicts blasts his way into the locomotive cab, only hearing the blast as the camera cuts away at the crucial moment.  Even the climactic train crash, (lifted from another low budget direct-to-video production), looks cheaply done with less than convincing miniatures work.  Nevertheless, I find it impossible to actually dislike Evasive Action - while its on it is reasonably entertaining and, if nothing else, has an above average cast for this sort of movie.  That said, it is still startling to see Roy Scheider in it - while there are plenty of other familiar faces present, in truth, none of them had ever scaled the heights in terms of the sheer quality of productions that Scheider had appeared in during the seventies and eighties.  Still, despite the fact that he is slumming it and knows that he's slumming it, he actually delivers an enjoyable performance, such was his professionalism. 

Finishing Touches

A quick update on those cheap and tatty tank wagons I've been restoring.  These are four to which I've applied new decals, (the existing decals were either missing or had been partially erased by the paint removal process when cleaning the bad 'weathering' from some of them).  These are stickers, (as were many of the original Tri-ang and Hornby decals, although later issues like the three TTAs had printed logos), from Retrodecals, which have to be cut out from a sheet before application.  Cutting close enough to eliminate any of the surrounding white paper without damaging the decal isn't easy, but the results aren't bad.  (The lighting and angle of the shot don't show the applied decals to best effect, but when seen from a normal viewing distance, they are pretty effective).

I've still got another of the short wheelbase tankers to apply decals to, but I've yet to decide whether or not to strip and repaint it first.  I might also fit a new set of ladders to it before applying any decals.  There are also a pair of Jouef manufactured tankers in this batch of cheap tankers which need Tri-ang/Hornby type couplers fitted in place of their continental-type couplings.  Once all that is done, the whole lot will be ready to roll and join my freight stock roster.  Sure, they'll still look a bit scruffy, but they will still be far more presentable than when I first acquired them via eBay.  There's also another local Toy and Train fair coming up soon, so they might be joined by a few more items of cheap freight stock, as that, of late, has proven a fruitful hunting ground for me.

Limping into the New Year

So, we limp into 2023.  At least, that's how I feel: as if I'm limping into a new year, batteries half charged and tyres flat.  Despite having shaken that pre-Christmas cold, I haven't felt entirely right over the entire festive period and spent yesterday feeling decidedly unwell.  It doesn't help that, as usual, I've lost track of what day of the week it is, leaving me feeling disorientated on top of everything else.  Today was Monday, though.  I've established that.  But it was still a bank holiday, even though the TV channels seemed reluctant to acknowledge this fact in their schedules.  The BBC, in particular, seems in an unseemly hurry to get back to its regular schedule and banish all thoughts of Christmas.  It's as if they are trying to 'acclimatise' people to the idea that many of them will be going back to work tomorrow, so don't want to over-excite them with nonsense like entertainment and seasonal novelty.  I mean, it isn't as if Christmas doesn't actually end until the 5th of January, (or the 6th, depending upon how you count the twelve days of Christmas), is it?  I bang on about this every year, I know, but I'm determined to keep up my campaign to reinstate the full twelve days of Christmas and have them observed.  Getting back to the present, I'm hoping that engaging in a bit more activity now that the festive season is drawing to a close might improve the way I feel - I've spent far too much time on the sofa eating sausage rolls and mince pies while watching TV.

Part of that activity might involve finally returning to the work place.  It's something I'd like to try and do this year, not because I need the money, but simply to bring some routine into my life and some engagement with new activities.  Obviously, I only intend going back to work part-time, whatever I end up doing.  While I've long been looking at trying to finally use my teaching qualifications properly, with all the hoops an agency I've been dealing with want me to jump through just to get registered to maybe do some part-time cover supervision, I'm not really sure that I want to pursue this.  It is just too stressful without ever having set foot in a classroom - and stress is something I try to avoid these days, work-related stress having nearly killed me once already.  I'm not sure what the alternatives are, although I have looked at a few opportunities in the charity sector - I might just end up volunteering for a local charity as a start.  Elsewhere, I really do have finally to finish clearing out my spare room and moving a whole load of stuff to the dump so that I can get on with extending the model railway.  I have various rolling stock repair and restoration projects going on, not to mention several locomotives at various stages of construction, but it would be nice to get back to the layout itself.  Then there's here, this blog: I really must get back to some pop culture stuff.  I have a notorious Mondo movie to rewatch, then hopefully I can write something about that to kick start a new year in schlock here.  For now, though, it's back to the sofa and those sausage rolls and the sofa as I see out the last days of this Christmas season.