I seem to have spent a large part of today putting together another podcast for The Overnightscape Underground, to the exclusion of much else. As ever, it is based largely upon my posts here for the past month. I must admit that this one seemed to go together far more smoothly as usual - no devices unilaterally deleting recordings before they can be backed up, for instance. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that, as is often the case when I edit these things together, particularly when it happens on a Friday, I find myself with neither the inclination nor the inspiration to come up with a new post. It isn't that things haven't been happening that are post-worthy, or that I haven't watched a whole load of exploitation films this week. It's just that I don't feel like writing about them right now. I will mention, though, that I've had various streaming channels playing continuously on the TV as a background for my podcast recording and editing, mainly via an app called Rewarded.TV, which runs several live streams that carry old movies. Typically, they have three films a day, punctuated by features, shorts or old TV episodes, running on a loop for twenty four hours. One stream is crime themed (they carry some good, lesser known, film noirs from the forties and fifties), another is science fiction/conspiracy themed and shows a mix of older Italian, American, British and Japanese movies, (I saw Gorgo and Battle in Outer Space today), while the third specialises in horror movies, including many English language versions of continental films. (They've had a few fifties Hammer movies on this week).
Many are films that don't often turn up on the free streaming channels - yesterday we had The Sentinel and Burnt Offerings back-to-back) - a few are more recent direct-to-video productions, but most are surprisingly good movies to find on this sort of service. The channels also use very good quality sources for the versions they show rather than the usual fourth or fifth generation video dupes taken from scratchy and jumpy prints. So far - in the couple of weeks I've been watching, at least - there hasn't been much duplication of the films showing, something else unusual for this sort of service, which usually works with a very limited library of titles. All-in-all, it provides a pretty good, free to air (it is ad-supported) service, which usually turns up at least one film a day that I want to watch, with the rolling format meaning that I can usually catch them at times convenient to me. I should also mention that Rewarded.TV has a pretty extensive on-demand library of mainly older movies - while some of these are familiar and available elsewhere, I was able to watch Craze (1973) there, which I hadn't seen in an age and have never seen on any other service. So there you go - not really a proper post but, for those of you with a Roku box, a recommendation of somewhere else you can get to watch classic exploitation movies, (Rewarded.TV may be available on other platforms - I don't know as I only stream via Roku).
Oh, before we go, for anyone interested, the latest podcast can be found here.
Back to model railways. While I still haven't made a start on my layout extension plans, I have been gathering together the point work I'm going to need via cheap purchases at toy fairs. I've also been buying locomotives again. This is the latest, a Bachmann 'Lord Nelson' class. I sort of bought this one by accident, in that I saw it listed on eBay with a low starting price, was amazed that, fifteen minutes before the end of the auction that no-one had bid, when someone did bid. Mainly out of curiosity to see how high they had bid, ten minutes before the end of bidding, I put in my maximum bid - incredibly, it was easily higher than the other bidder. Hell, I thought, they're bound to put in another bid - it won't take much to outbid me here. But they didn't, so I won the auction without really trying. Which isn't to say I'm not pleased with my purchase - I've been looking for a 'Lord Nelson' for a while and regularly monitor prices on eBay. This is the cheapest I've seen one go for in a long time. I suspect the reason is that it came without its original box, something which puts off the collectors who put in crazy bids and send prices sky high. Also, since Hornby introduced their model of a 'Lord Nelson', the older Bachmann version has become less desirable, which has depressed prices.
Despite the cheapness, this one is in excellent condition and a very smooth runner. It is also the exact version I've been searching for, with the later version of the British Railways totem on the tender, making it perfect for my layout, which represents the Southern Region c1960-67. (The last of the 'Lord Nelson' class were withdrawn in 1962, by which time they were allocated to Eastleigh and could be found working boat trains and fast van trains). Here the model is seen posed on my rickety old Hornby turntable, (which, while temperamental, still works), which I hope to incorporate into the expanded layout, (once I've located the missing outlet tracks). The 'Lord Nelson' actually isn't the first locomotive I've bought this month. Earlier in March I picked up a very cheap Mainline Standard Class 4 from the local toy and model train fair. These are notorious for breaking - the axles were made from plastic that became brittle over time and would crack, rendering the chassis inoperable. As Mainline provided no spares, repairs were impossible, (I know, I had two I ended up scrapping back in the day). Nowadays, however, thanks to 3-D printing, various third parties produce spare axles in more durable plastic, so surviving locos can be restored. The one I bought appears to have had the axles replaced, (the wheels aren't quite quartered correctly, a sure sign that they've been removed at some point), unfortunately, in the course of this process, whoever did it appears to have lost part of the valve gear (which has to be disassembled for the axles to be replaced) on the right hand side. Nonetheless, it is a very strong runner. Luckily, I have quite a few spares salvaged from those two previous examples I owned - including the missing pieces of valve gear. I haven't yet got around to carrying out the repair, (it is very fiddly), but once I have it sorted I'll try to tone down the bad weathering job done on it by a previous owner and maybe feature it here.
In the meantime, here's another look at the 'Lord Nelson':
As noted before, the seventies were undoubtedly the 'golden age' of the US TV movie, with these cheap, frequently generic-looking, productions proliferating in order to meet US network TV's voracious demand for new films to fill slots in their schedules. While just about every genre of cinematic film was covered by these productions, network content restrictions of the time meant that these TV movies were usually pretty bland and family friendly - no sex, nudity or explicit violence. It might seem tht such restrictions would preclude their excursion into the horror genre, yet there were a surprising number of horror-themed TV movies. While many were as bland as their stablemates - Satan's School For Girls (great title but insipid film) or Good Against Evil (generic family friendly Exorcist cash in), for example - others were surprisingly effective. The best of these usually involved the participation of Dan Curtis, who had already created a cult favourite with the Gothic horror themed soap opera Dark Shadows, which regularly featured vampires, witches and werewolves. Undoubtedly his best known creation remains The Night Stalker (1972), which spawned a sequel, The Night Strangler (1973), and a TV series, Kolchak The Night Stalker. But he also gave us The Norliss Tapes (1973) - a failed pilot for a TV series on similar lines to the Kolchak TV series (which Curtis wasn't directly involved with), Scream of the Wolf (1974), Dracula (1974) and Trilogy of Terror (1975). But his weren't the only TV horror movies out there - David Lowell Rich, who had already contributed Satan's School For Girls to the genre, directed the batshit crazy The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973), where demonic forces cause mayhem aboard an airliner. Gargoyles (1972) was an effective TV monster movie starring Cornel Wilde, while Gene Roddenberry contributed Spectre (1977), another failed pilot, but nonetheless quite effective and well staged.
Curtis Harrington, who also directed a number of cinematic horror movies, including Night Tide (1961), Queen of Blood (1966) and Ruby (1977), also directed a number of TV horror movies, including How Awful About Alan (1970), The Cat Creature (1973), The Dead Don't Die (1975) and Devil Dog: The Hound From Hell (1978). The latter of these I recently saw on a streaming service. It is a curious production that illustrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of the made-for-TV horror genre. On the one hand, network restrictions mean that the film has to rely upon suspense to deliver scares rather than explicit gore - Harrington is quite effective in regularly delivering a series of suspenseful set-pieces, such as Richard Crenna battling the demonic dog's influence to try and stop himself from thrusting his hand into the spinning blades of a lawn mower, or his discovery of a Satanic shrine in the attic. The film also makes good use of the sort of generic and bland US suburban setting that TV movies usually employed for budgetary reasons, contrasting the sheer ordinariness of this environment with the devilish goings-on lurking just beneath its surface. But in the end, the sheer cheapness of the TV production undermines the film at key moments - not only is Crenna's trip to 'Ecuador' in search of a shaman clearly shot in California (probably just around the corner from the studio back lot), but the low budget robs the film's climax of the sort of special effects it needed to have any impact. The hound finally reveals its true self in a confrontation with Crenna, its true form being the same dog photographically enlarged, sporting horns and a mane, chroma keyed into the action. (With that ruff of a mane and the stick on horns, I couldn't help but be reminded of those photographically enlarged lizards decked out with horns, spines and the like, which used to masquerade as dinosaurs in old films).
To be fair, as TV movies went, Devil Dog actually looks as if it had a better than average budget. It certainly boasts an above average cast, which includes Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimieux, Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards (playing brother and sister on film for the third time), veteran character actor Victor Jory as the shaman (he spent quite a lot of his latter career playing medicine men and Native American chiefs, despite being Caucasian) and Martine Beswick (Of Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde fame), as the high priestess presiding over the black mass that invokes the devil dog. The whole seventies TV horror movie cycle - apart from the Kolchak movies and TV series - is largely forgotten now and when remembered tends to be regarded as a poorer cousin to the 'real' horror movies of the era which received theatrical releases. Which is somewhat unfair as, at their best, the makers of these TV movies did their best to find ways to surmount the broadcast restrictions placed upon them and sometimes produced some decent shocks and scares for TV audiences.
I've often used Irwin Allen's The Swarm (1978) as an example of just how badly a big budget movie can turn out - ending up so laughably bad that it makes the collected works of Ed Wood Jr look good. I have to say, though, that I've recently watched another killer bee movie that's even worse. The Bees (1978) at least has the excuse of being a cheap jack Mexican film made for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Its low budget announces itself with the cast list, which includes John Saxon and John Carradine - neither of them actually bad actors, but between them they headlined countless low-rent exploitation titles. Their names high up in the opening titles is usually a guarantee of some honest-to-goodness cinematic schlockiness. They don't disappoint here - Saxon frequently looks as if he can barely keep a straight face at the dialogue he's been given while John Carradine hams it up outrageously (even by his standards) with a German accent which wouldn't have been out of place in an episode of 'Allo 'Allo. The script throws everything into the mix: killer bee attacks, corporate conspiracies, assassins, even a love triangle of sorts. This latter element is truly eyebrow raising, as it involves three hundred year old Carradine and Saxon seemingly vying for the attentions of Carradine's niece. While the latter's interest in his niece is doubtless not intended to appear untoward, the way his apparent jealousy at her flirting with Saxon is written, makes it comes over as inappropriate. Even Saxon's character (and therefore the film-makers)seem to realise this, when he responds to a remark on the subject by Carradine with: 'That's adding incest to injury'.
Yet, despite packing all these elements into the script, the film still feels slow moving, with a meandering and repetitive story line, (the number of people who keep opening containers full of killer bees by mistake and getting stung to death is ridiculous), that seems to take an age to get anywhere. Lacking The Swarm's budget, The Bees, naturally, can't muster the same level of special effects, confining itself to numerous shots of giant clouds of bees buzzing over cities and beaches. The actual bee attacks themselves seem to involve actors running madly through swirling clouds of what look like polystyrene or foam chips being blown by a wind machine. A lot of time seems to spent watching extras slapping at their bodies and falling down as the pretend to be attacked by non-existent bees. Subsequently, the script is full of overly talky scenes to try and pad out the running time. The climax, though, is truly bonkers, with bee scientists Saxon and Carradine's niece building on Carradine's work to decipher 'bee dances', (through which the communicate), in order to negotiate with the bees, (who are apparently angry at human destruction of their environment). 'You mean you want to negotiate a peace treaty with the bees?' exclaims a senior UN person in a dodgy English accent. After insecticides prove ineffective, the bees besiege the UN building after the delegates reject Saxon's impassioned pleas for peace, smashing through the windows and forcing a bee-human settlement.
But while The Bees, with its cheap production values, overly talky script and dodgy special effects, might well be a worse killer bee movie than The Swarm, it is also far more enjoyable. It is seemingly well aware of its own ludicrousness and the bizarre denouement, which comes pretty much out of left field, seems strangely appropriate. Even before this, there are numerous pleasures to be enjoyed: an old man trying to relieve his arthritis pain with bee stings writhes in agony and hilariously back flips over a park bench; President Ford appears in stock footage while his successor President Carter is impersonated - badly - by an actor, for instance. The Bees was one of a number of 'killer bee' movies made in the late seventies, triggered both by the release of The Swarm and a slew of alarmist media reports of the dangers of African bees being cross bred with indigenous American species. Incredibly, the producers of The Swarm reportedly paid New World to delay release of The Bees so as not to threaten their film's chances at the box office. Corman exploitation regular Jack Hill was apparently slated to direct The Bees, but was replaced by producer Alfredo Zacarias (who co-wrote it with Hill). If you only ever watch one killer bee movie, I'd urge you to make it The Bees - it is a truly wild experience which you won't regret.
The cover of the January 1961 edition of Stag pretty much speaks for itself - it represents the US man's magazine in its pomp. The cover has it all - gun-toting GI, glimpses of semi-naked women, head-hunting natives and a wartime jungle setting. The story it illustrates - 'The Amazing GI Who Took Three Head-Hunting Brides' - further hints at primitive sex and wild polygamy. The rest of the contents are typical of the era - Red baiting, arduous male adventure, alliterative war heroics ('Vengeance Platoon From the Village of Violated Women') and the war at sea. This latter story, 'How I sank Britain's Biggest Battleship', requires some further explanation, It is actually a true story, although, even in this title, greatly distorted. It refers to the 1939 sinking of HMS Royal Oak at her moorings in Scapa Flow by the German submarine U-47.
In reality, Royal Oak was far from being the Royal Navy's biggest battleship. In reality, she was an obsolete World War One vintage battleship (she'd served at Jutland), which hadn't been modernised since the 1920s and, by the outbreak of World War Two, was considered unfit for front line service. The main impact of her sinking was the loss of life involved and the sheer embarrassment for the UK of having a warship sunk in what was meant to be the Royal Navy's impregnable Scottish base. It represented a major blow for morale so early in the war and a big propaganda victory for Germany. The Royal Navy subsequently responded with the sinking of one of Germany's most modern battleships, the Graf Spee, a couple of months later.
Stag was an extraordinarily long-lived men's magazine, publishing its first issue in 1949 and continuing into the 1990s at least. Like many of its contemporaries, Stag transformed into a softcore porn magazine during the early seventies, becoming a down market Playboy or Penthouse, mixing its nudes with male-orientated articles, (many along the same lines as those published in its previous incarnation, but more explicit).
A few thoughts on Moon Zero Two (1969), which I recently saw all the way through for the first time in ages. Presumably made to capitalise upon the popularity of the recently released 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), but made on a fraction of the budget, Hammer Films' only space opera boasts surprisingly decent special effects. The space sequences are particularly well handled, with an edge of realism them, boasting reasonably accurate depiction of actual physics with regard to the motions of objects in space. The miniatures for the moonscapes are likewise very effective and realistic looking. Some of the miniatures work on the moon's surface, particularly the moon buggies, is less effective, although the full size props representing these vehicles are most impressive. Part of the sense of realism achieved in the film's depictions of space travel and lunar living derives from the fact that the technology shown is a logical extrapolation of the space technology in existence at the time of its making. Conversely, though, this is also a weakness, as it means that it depicts a future that, in its technical aspects, probably seemed dated in 1969. It might be set in the then far off future of 2021, but looks more like it is only a few years on from Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. Likewise the fashions sported by the various lunar inhabitants, much of which might have come out of a contemporary Carnaby Street boutique, but with more plastic.
While the effects work and production values might have been good, plot-wise, however, the film is on less sure ground, with its story of moon-miners, corporate claim jumpers and the villains 'rustling' a valuable asteroid seems to have been lifted from a B-Western rather than the pages of a contemporary science fiction magazine. Indeed, this western-in-space theme extends to the inclusion of such elements as a bar-room brawl, (in a lunar bar complete with western saloon-style swing doors), a face off between a heavy and the 'sheriff' to see who is quickest on the draw and dancing girls in the saloon doing routines that Wyatt Earp would have recognised. (The film was actually promoted as the first 'Space Western'). While the cast aren't exactly A-list, they are pretty solid, although James Olsen in the lead, (he also starred in Crescendo (1969) for Hammer), is a somewhat bland hero, giving a very subdued performance, Warren Mitchell's villain is suitably flamboyant. Bernard Bresslaw is effective as Mitchell's chief heavy, making the character curiously sympathetic, in spite of his villainy, while Adrienne Corri makes for an authoritative local 'sheriff' and Catherine von Schell a likeable heroine. Veteran director Roy Ward Baker, (who was becoming something of a fixture at Hammer around this time - he'd already directed Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and The Anniversary (1967) for them), moves it along at a reasonable pace, with highlights including the low gravity bar brawl and a shoot-out at a remote mining claim, although the space sequences, with their dedication to realism, tend to slow things down at crucial moments.
Panned by critics at the time of its release and a financial failure, I have to say that Moon Zero Two was actually better than I remembered it being. It still felt overly slow in places, most of the characters were unmemorable and the script far too simplistic, but the effects were, fort their era and budget, excellent. Besides, who couldn't like a film that features Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper as a moon prospector and that most prolific of character actors, Sam Kydd, as a space bartender?
Having mentioned Baron Blood (1972) in passing yesterday, I thought I'd say a few more words about it today. Coming from the latter part of his career, Baron Blood isn't the most distinctive of Mario Bava's films, lacking the visual verve of Danger: Diabolik, (1968) the dank atmospherics of Black Sunday(1960) or even the bloody inventiveness of Bay of Blood (1971), instead coming over as a fairly standard continental horror film of the era. Indeed, Bava only came aboard, somewhat reluctantly, as director after the project had already been developed by others. The whole thing has a feeling of compromise about it: the big name American lead, Joseph Cotton, has limited screen time as the title character, for instance and another actor is substituted for the Baron's appearances as a rotting walking corpse. Moreover, the horrific aspects often seem to be played down, as if the film can't quite make up its mind exactly what it wants to be: full on Gothic horror or suspenseful supernatural thriller. The fact that the plot meanders all over the place and seems to take an age to get properly started, combined with an excessive run-time, really doesn't help the pacing, (significantly, or its US release AIP cut ten minutes from the running time, presumably to try and tighten it up).
The film, nevertheless, is still enjoyable, even if the plot - evil nobleman executed centuries ago is inadvertently resurrected by his descendants and picks up where he left off with the murders and torture - is hardly original. While not as distinctive as his earlier output, the film is still very nicely shot by Bava, who makes good use of his Austrian locations and is quite stylish looking in a seventies glam sort of way. Some of the set-pieces are well handled - Elke Sommer being pursued through the fog by the shadowy figure of the Baron is very atmospheric, while Luciano Pigozzi's demise in an iron maiden is suitably gruesome, for instance. But these are surrounded by far too many talky scenes of exposition, diluting their impact. Perhaps the biggest problem holding Baron Blood back from making a real impact is that its characters are simply not very interesting. Even the titular nobleman, for all the talk of how evil and sadistic he was in his first incarnation, seems pretty restrained in his present day activities - Cotton is just too subdued in his performance as the resurrected Baron, (masquerading as a wheelchair bound millionaire restoring the old Baronial castle), to convince us of his evil, even when he drops his disguise and drags everyone down to the dungeons. Elke Sommer and Antonio Cantafore, (unusually not billed as 'Michael Coby' in the English-language version), as the leads are both decent actors who, elsewhere, have given strong lead performances, but here come over as utterly vapid. Their characters seem completely hapless, resurrecting Baron Blood pretty much by accident, then trying to ignore the situation before being completely ineffective in doing anything about it. Thomas Hummel as Cantafora's uncle does his best but, again, his character proves ineffective and seems to exist solely to provide endless exposition. The most memorable character is Hummel's strange young daughter, who seems to possess some sort of sensitivity to the supernatural, (although this is never properly explored), played by Nicoletti Elmi, who, as a child actress, was a familiar figure in seventies Italian horror films, (including Argento's Profondo Rosso (1975)).
Yet, as previously mentioned, Baron Blood remains a curiously entertaining film, despite all of these problems. It is best approached, not as a Bava film, but instead as a more generic seventies Euro-horror, on which level, technically, at least, it stands as a slightly superior example.
The 'Jet Set' and the 'Jet Setting' lifestyle - remember those? If, like me, you grew up during the 1970s, they would be familiar terms. With a new generation of 'Jumbo jets' making air travel both practicable and affordable for more and more people, the idea of being part of that new class of people who could spend their time jetting between exotic foreign destinations became an aspiration pushed heavily by the media. You could find it everywhere: advertising, films, TV shows, etc. The sight of a Boeing 747 either landing or taking off at a major airport became ubiquitous visual shorthand for the 'Jet Set' lifestyle. It didn't even matter if the 'Jet Set' wasn't the central theme of a film, such sequences still turned up in order to define characters as they were introduced. I was just watching Baron Blood (1972), for instance, a film involving a perambulatory rotting corpse murdering people couldn't be further from the idea of jet-setting, but it still opens with a Pan Am 747 landing at an Austrian airport. But, of course, when Antonio Cantafore steps off that airliner, thanks to that sequence, we already know by implication that he's arriving the US, probably well-off, a professional and doubtless sophisticated because, well, he's a 'Jet Setter'. I remember that as a child, it did, indeed, all seem incredibly glamourous. We used to visit relatives in London once a year and usually drove in through West London, under the Heathrow flightpath, so that the skies seemed full of airliners arriving from or departing for far off destinations. Moreover, the route was lined with those hotels converted from old Georgian houses that catered for air travellers, all sporting glamourous sounding names, even though they were really just glorified B&Bs. That and all those advertising hoardings for the likes of Pan Am, TWA, BOAC and the like made quite an impression on my young mind.
Obviously, things have changed a lot since the seventies - international air travel is seen less as aspirational and glamourous than polluting and climate destroying. In truth, the whole concept of the 'Jet Set' as being an exclusive 'club', membership of which showed that you had 'arrived', was gradually undermined during the seventies, as cheap air travel fueled, in the UK, at least, the growth in package holidays to sunny destinations in Spain, Portugal and the Mediterranean, Everyone was 'Jet Setting'. For some reason I've been thinking a lot lately about my seventies childhood and realising that there's still a part of me that yearns for those early seventies days of 'Jet Setting' glamour. Perhaps because I grew up in a provincial market town, London at that time seemed incredibly glamourous, with its shiny glass-fronted hotels - I remember when the Inn on the Park was the London destination for sophisticated 'Jet Setters' - theatres, lights and landmarks. Everything emanated from London then: the BBC, ITN, Thames and London Weekend TV, national newspapers and so on. Conversely, there's a part of me that resents the early seventies - I was very young when the sixties ended, but the idea of it is wrapped up with many warm memories, not just of family, but also of stuff like the comforts of black and white TV, vinyl records and scratchy sounding stereo systems, my older brothers' Tri-ang train sets and Scalextric set ups. The seventies seemed, in comparison, to be something of a harsh wake up call, as flower power went out of the window and we were suddenly in the grip of strikes and oil crises. The question, of course, is whether the transition from sixties to seventies really was that jarring, or whether it was simply that, as I grew older, I became more aware of the realities of the world, making it seem jarring to my young mind, (possibly also why I sought comfort in that early seventies 'Jet Set' glamour). Whatever the case, it is all a long time ago now, so long ago, in fact, that it seems, as they say, like another country.
St Patrick's Day and Comic Relief on the same day? A truly nightmarish scenario. As someone of Irish descent, (recent enough that I'm eligible for an Irish passport), I hate St Patrick's day with its perpetuation of lazy cultural stereotypes. Not only that, but it seems to be celebrated (in the UK, at least), mainly by English people with highly dubious claims as to Irish ancestry, (having watched every episode of Father TedandMrs Brown's Boys doesn't count). This is presumably because England's own patron saint, St George, is so bloody dull and his saint's day has been hijacked by red-faced nationalists draping themselves in the English flag and shouting 'Send 'em back!' Consequently, the only way the English can have fun on a saint's day is by hi-jacking someone else's. As someone who actually does boast genuine Irish ancestry, I've never felt the urge to wear a silly hat and drink green beer every March 17 because, well, despite that heritage, I'm not Irish. Which is why all those 'Irish Americans' who like to parade through Boston every St Patrick's day and reminisce about how the English are bastards for causing the Irish potato famine etc, have always mystified me. Not only are they so far removed from any actual Irish origins as to make them meaningless, but most of them have never been to Ireland in their lives, (having watched The Quiet Man and Leprechaun every St Patrick's Day since the age of five doesn't count).
Then there's Comic Relief, that annual orgy of millionaire entertainers salving their consciences by spending an evening urging ordinary people to part with their money, (all for charity, of course), in return for them being good enough to give up their time and perform some crap sketches and routines for free. It's not that I don't think that the causes being supported are unworthy, but I can't help but feel that these celebrities actually giving up a proportion of their own money as contributions would represent a more effective form of fund raising. Otherwise, it's all so patronising - 'Look, we're giving up our valuable time - for free - so the least you can do is reach into your pockets and give up your hard earned cash. Yeah, we know that times are hard, energy prices and food prices are practically unaffordable for many, but its for charity, for God's sake, you tight-fisted bastards!' To be fair, it isn't just Comic Relief I feel this way about - I find all of these celebrity-led charity events equally dubious. Maybe a lot of those involved are sincere about what they are doing, but the cynic in me can't help but suspect that, for many, it is just another ego-trip, a performance to show us plebs how wonderful they are, rather than simply being the vacuous exhibitionists many of us suspect them of actually being. Still, I don't know what I'm complaining about as the reality is that, thanks to them being on the same day this year, I've managed to avoid both St Patrick's Day and Comic Relief at once.
Not a vintage week for schlock - a poor quality print of The Single Girls (1974), a rewatching of The Clones of Bruce Lee (1980) , (which contained more nudity than I remembered), another viewing of The Monster Club (1981) and now I find myself watching The Giant Spider Invasion (1975). It's a sign of my age and life-long obsession with low-rent movies that I actually remember when the latter was released in the UK. Incredible as it may seem now, back in those pre home video days, what amounts to a cheap, direct-to-video style B-movie was actually released to cinemas. As I recall, it was a pretty wide release, backed by a heavy campaign of TV ads. It was certainly pushed pretty hard by the distributors, but still failed top become the sort of camp cult hit they clearly hoped that it would. Although it might seem strange that, as late as 1975 such a low-budget fifties monster movie throwback would get such a release, it was, in reality, intended to be both a parody and a homage to such movies, deliberately cheesy n plot, dialogue and special effects - the giant spiders are incredibly ropy and completely non-frightening even to an arachnophobe like me. This aspect seemed to have been largely ignored on its initial UK release, with the film generally dismissed as simply a piece of cheap exploitation, Watching it today, it seems clear that it isn't intended to be taken seriously - it opens, after all, with Alan Hale as a sheriff greeting another character as his 'little buddy', a reference to his best known role as 'The skipper' in Gilligan's Island. (The fact that this series was unfamiliar to most UK viewers in the seventies probably didn't help the movie in this territory).
Taken at face value, most of the supporting cast give excruciatingly bad performances. Taken as a parody, however, it is clear that this is intentional, as is the fact that most of the characters seem to be backwoods hill billy and stereotypical small town types. The film seems to take forever to get anywhere, before stumbling through a flurry of late action to an abrupt ending. As mentioned, the special effects, particularly the various giant spiders are pretty terrible but, once again, if one accepts the film as a parody of fifties monster B-movies, it is fitting that they should be on the same level as many of the low budget monsters seen in such movies. (In point of fact, though, a number of fifties monster movies, despite their low budgets, featured excellent effects work and monsters, courtesy of the likes of Ray Harryhausen (Twenty Million Miles to Earth, It Came From Beneath the Sea, for instance) and Willis O'Brien, (Black Scorpion), not to mention the many wild and wonderful creature costumes produced by Paul Blaisdell for AIP). That said, the biggest spider seen is quite impressive, if neither convincing nor scary, being, as I recall, built to fit over a VW Beetle for locomotion and featuring waving legs. At a scant eighty minutes, it at least never really taxes the patience of the viewer and, it has to be said, is a lot more entertaining than The Monster Club...
Some great claims have been made as to the influence of Invisible Invaders (1959), with some suggestions that its scenes of pasty-faced living corpses shuffling around and besieging a tiny group of living survivors might have been the inspiration for similar scenes in Night of the Living Dead (1968). It is entirely possible that George Romero might have seen Edward L Canh's B-movie in one of its many TV outings, (it was very quickly sold to TV), I have no idea, but if he did, he only took the most superficial details from Invisible Invaders. While, like Night of the Living Dead, it features human corpses re-animated by an external source from space - aliens in Invisible Invaders, radiation in the George Romero film - which attack living people, it lacks any of the political sub-text of the later film, let alone the gore. Not that it lacks a sub-text of its own, with its scientist hero first seen resigning his government position due to his opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and eventually using the defeat of the alien invasion to call for an end to national hostilities and rivalries in favour of increased international co-operation of the kind that repelled the invaders. There is also something of a simplistic debate within the film's action as to the legitimate use of violence, with the main scientist's daughter disturbed by what she sees as the army officer escorting them's trigger happiness when he guns down an innocent but scared farmer who blocks their way. (Naturally, the farmer's corpse is later reanimated and comes back to menace them).
Setting aside comparisons to Night of the Living Dead, Invisible Invaders is, in its own right, a fascinating example of low budget film-making, with every expense spared by the producers. While the idea of aliens reanimating corpses and occupying them in order to survive long-term in earth's atmosphere was, for the time, novel, it was clearly born from expediency: walking corpses are cheaper to portray on screen than aliens. When the aliens aren't inhabiting corpses, they are, of course invisible, represented by some laboured breathing and two tracks in the dust as they shuffle across the ground. Indeed, each instance of the aliens' presence being indicated this way seems to use the same piece of footage, repeated over and over. Conveniently, the aliens' weapons don't seem to work on earth, so they are forced to use earth weapons and explosives to destroy cities and facilities, meaning that lots of stock footage of buildings collapsing and planes crashing are used to represent their invasion. Most of the film's action is confined to an underground government lab, where two scientists, the daughter of the older scientist and a soldier try to find a way of stopping the aliens. This bunker inevitably comes under siege from hordes of alien possessed corpses, co-ordinated from a locally situated flying saucer, (also conveniently invisible). There are a few excursions outside, first to capture a walking alien animated corpse, then to destroy that invisible saucer after the scientists find that concentrated sound waves can kill the aliens,
It is at this point that the aliens briefly become visible: when the corpses are hit by the sound waves, they collapse and a blurry, glowing figure emerges, before vanishing. In the name of cost-cutting, these shapes are actually the monster costume from It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958), shot out of focus. (Paul Blaisdell, who designed and built the suit apparently wasn't paid for its re-use in Invisible Invaders). All in all, an incredibly cheap way to shoot a film, using one main set, stock footage, extras in white face make-up as the monsters and a briefly glimpsed recycled monster outfit. Perhaps surprisingly, the end result is a pretty entertaining little B-picture that succeeds largely because it knows its limitations and works within them, resisting the temptation of trying to produce some kind of low budget 'spectacle', instead keeping its action localised and focused. At only sixty seven minutes the film wastes little time and gets quickly to the action. The acting is adequate for this sort of film with the film featuring genre stalwarts Robert Hutton, John Agar and John Carradine, (who gets blown up as soon as he appears, only to reappear as the first corpse reanimated by the aliens, before vanishing from the narrative again - clearly he was only booked for day or so of filming). Overall, it represents a decent piece of lower berth entertainment.
What tumultuous times we live in: in years to come people will doubtless look back and ask 'do you remember that weekend when free speech in the UK was saved by the BBC's football reporters and commentators going on strike?' Not that it really was that dramatic, but this is how legends are born. While it might not have been a vital turning point in either the protection of free speech or immigration policy in the UK, the whole Gary Lineker furore was still a satisfying exercise in watching an over reacting employer forced to back down in the face of collective employee action. It also sent a salutary message to the Tories that, despite their brazen colonisation of BBC senior management, there are limits not just to how far they can force the organisation to align with their values, but also on how much, judging by the extent of the support for Lineker, the wider public will tolerate their blatant attempts to co-opt the public broadcaster as a Tory mouthpiece. Perhaps the best thing to come out of it all though, was watching the usual right-wing bell-ends trying to justify BBC management's position and trash Gary Lineker or anyone else who had the temerity to point out just how right-wing the Tories are these days. This culminated with Peter Hitchens' ludicrous piece for the Mail, where he trotted out that old chestnut about the Nazis being left-wing because of their use of the word 'socialist' in their name, which means that it is wrong to try and draw analogies between the Tories and Nazis - and by the way, you lefties are responsible for the Holocaust.
I'm not going to rehash why Hitchens and every other idiot who comes out with this tired load of cobblers is wrong, other than to point out that the inclusion of a term in a title isn't necessarily descriptive, but instead can be deliberately deceptive - after all, the former East Germany might have called itself the 'Democratic Republic of Germany', but I think we can all agree that it was anything but democratic. But what this episode underlines, once again, is that just because someone speaks the 'right' way, went to the 'right' schools and universities and have their own byline in a national newspaper, (or a TV show), doesn't necessarily mean that they are either intelligent or honest. Indeed, just look at the headlines of the various 'star' columnists who write for the right-wing press daily - they alone reveal a surfeit of willful ignorance, bigotry, spite, contrarianism and sheer stupidity. I shudder to think what the actual content of these demented dribblings are - I long ago gave up reading them. Along with the 'Nazis were really left-wing' trope, we also had trotted out, as ever, that other idiotic homily that if you reduce your argument to comparing your opponents to Nazis, then you've lost the argument. Hmmm. So what do we do when our opponents actually are behaving in a manner comparable to the Nazi regime in Germany? The point that Gary Lineker was making was that the rhetoric and demonising of immigrants employed by the Tories in respect of their proposed immigration legislation is disturbingly reminiscent of that used in Germany in the 1930s in a similar context, (notice, he never used the word 'Nazi'). So, if we are to follow this nonsense about not making such comparisons, then we are depriving ourselves of the language required to properly critique such extremism. Which, of course, is what the extreme right want, to effectively silence any effective analysis of their policies. Fucking Nazis.
There's something about the style of that cover painting that screams 'late sixties!'. Possibly it is simply the style of the clothes, but I also feel that there's something about the dynamic, not to mention the subject matter that reflects the era. It illustrates the 'Exciting Book Bonus', "Subways Are For Killing", which headlines this May 1967 issue of For Men Only. The 'Book Bonus', basically a condensed or serialised version of a recent novel, increasingly became a feature of the men's magazines during the sixties. If nothing else, they filled a lot of pages, reducing the number of original stories and articles that had to be commissioned, (or older stories that had to exhumed from the archives and reprinted). They were also a selling point, offering something unique to readers, (many of whom were unlikely to read an entire novel in book form). "Subways Are For Killing", as both the cover synopsis and cover painting indicate, about urban crime, specifically that perpetrated by youth gangs in public places, like the subway. It seems clear that story concerns vigilantism, with at least one citizen deciding to do what the authorities seemingly can't and 'take back' the streets, or subways in this case, through committing violent crimes themselves. A sort of proto-Death Wish.
The idea of out-of-control youth intimidating 'honest citizens' became something of a theme in US popular culture during this period, as young people acquired more of an identity as a distinct social group and began to 'rebel' against established values. Variations you could find in men's magazines of the era included tales of biker gangs and surf gangs terrorising communities (and inevitably tying up and menacing half naked women). The rest of the stories featured on the cover are pretty much standard fare for a men's magazine of the time: 'exotic' sexual practices of foreigners ('Foreign Love Practices They Don't Dare Tel You'), medical malpractice, ('The Scandal of Our Don't Give a Damn Hospitals') and nudity ('"Come and Get Me" Nude'). That staple of the men's magazine, the war story, is represented by 'The Quiet Heroes', at tale of 'The Daredevil Yanks of Vietnam's No Man's Land'. Which sounds like another attempt to glamourise the conflict in South East Asia, to which younger readers could doubtless expect to be drafted into at any moment.
For Men Only was, by 1967, a venerable publication, having first appeared in 1954 and was a mainstay of the men's magazine genre. It was o continue publication until the early eighties, although, by then, in common with other surviving men's magazines, it had transformed into softcore porn nudie magazine. That said, For Men Only held out until the mid seventies in retaining a version of its more traditional men's magazine format, albeit with increasingly explicit and sex orientated in its content.
Apparently, Mr B.I.G himself died recently, at the age of 100. Mr B.I.G, of course, being famed low budget film maker Bert I Gordon. Coincidentally, I was watching one of his films - Empire of the Ants (1977) - last week and had been planning to write something about it this week. Gordon built his career on a series of fifties monster movies for which he also created the special effects. It was these special effects for which he is probably best remembered - their effectiveness varied wildly and were generally based around the use of rear projection to create its monsters, which took the form of giant insects or giant mutated humans. While in films like the Amazing Colossal Man (1957) and its sequel War of the Colossal Beast (1958) these came off quite well, (mainly because the actors playing the monsters could be controlled and directed), in films like The Beginning of the End (1957) or Earth vs The Spider (1957), which respectively involved back projections of actual grasshoppers and arachnids, the technique looked utterly ludicrous. The Beginning of the End, in particular, becomes almost surreal as real grasshoppers are seen crawling over a photograph of some skyscrapers, every so often appearing to wander off into the sky. Incredibly, Gordon was still using the same techniques into the seventies, most notably on a pair of movies allegedly derived from H G Wells' stories that he produced for AIP: Food of the Gods (1976) and Empire of the Ants Both employ real, photographically enlarged, back projected animals to provide their monsters. While the various giant chickens, worms and rats (amongst other animals) of Food of the Gods re, most of the time, reasonably effective, (although never convincing), Empire of the Ants is a complete throwback to The Beginning of the End, with its back projected 'giant' ants scurrying around.
Both films supplement their back projected live animals with full-size giant mock ups for close ups: several cast members get mauled by giant puppet rat heads in Food of the Gods, while various characters in Empire of the Ants fall into the mandibles of giant rubber ants. It has to be said that in the latter film these rubber mock ups are actually more convincing than the real ants. To be fair, neither film is entirely without merit. Empire of the Ants, in particular, actually has a half decent script, containing some intriguing ideas, such as the giant ants being able to control humans via a dosage of pheromones, forcing them to serve their queen like worker ants. Being a cheap exploitation film, however, it never fully explores this idea, introducing only late into the film's running time. The fact is that Gordon, special effects aside, was a pretty solid director - his films are generally well paced, feature reasonable performances from their casts and in spite of their low budgets, look decent enough, with good production values, lighting, camera work and editing. Indeed, some of his non-monster pictures, which didn't require his wonky special effects, are pretty good - 1972' The Mad Bomber springs to mind, as an example. He was also a film-maker who never allowed a lack of resources to stand in the way of his cinematic ambitions. His The Magic Sword (1962), for instance, is an attempt at a fantasy epic on a shoestring budget (and Gordon's shaky effects work), which is remarkably enjoyable despite its shortcomings. Although associated with giant monster movies, Gordon's output was actually quite varied, including a children's film, The Boy and the Pirates (1960) and a number of horror films including Tormented (1960), Picture Mommy Dead (1966) and Necromancy (1972), a tale of modern witchcraft that starred Orson Welles. Burned at the Stake (1981) was another horror film featuring some interesting ideas, mixing together time travel, reincarnation and the Salem witch trials.
While many of his films are easy to ridicule and none were ever likely to win any awards, Bert I Gordon's output is, on the whole, at least entertaining and more often than not a cut above most of the other science fiction and horror B-movies being put out in the fifties and sixties. That said, his first directorial effort, King Dinosaur (1955), is pretty much indefensible...
Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972) is one of those exploitation movies that seems to have had a disproportionate degree of influence in comparison to its original conception as a piece of low budget exploitation. Not only has it sparked much debate on the nature and effects of cinematic violence and depictions of violence against women, but it has also spawned a host of imitations, (not to mention a an anemic and mediocre remake). Naturally, Italian exploitation producers were amongst those coming up with knock offs, with the two most prominent being Aldo Lado's Last Stop on the Night Train (1975)and Ruggero Deodato's The House on the Edge of the Park (1980). Both of these films try to address one of the biggest flaws in the plot of the Wes Craven film - that the killers crossing paths with the families of their victims is down to coincidence. In the Lado film the killings take place on the titular night train and the killers steal their victims tickets, meaning that they inevitably end up forced to get off at the stop where the father of one victim is waiting to collect his daughter and her friend. What follows still involves a degree of coincidence, in that the father is a doctor and one of the murderers is injured, so the father offers to take them back to his surgery, at his home, to treat the injury. Deodato's film, though, involves a more radical reinterpretation and restructuring of the original film's plot. In The House at the Edge of the Park, the initial rape and killing, which catalyses the ensuing action, while brutal, involves only a single victim and single killer, is confined to the opening few minutes, rather than the protracted ordeal depicted at length in the other two films.
Instead, the lengthy ordeal of rape and violence now takes place in the home of the victim's family, with her family and friends becoming the focus of the killer and his sidekick's attentions. Crucially, however, the connection between that first victim and the characters at the eponymous house are concealed from both the killer and the audience until the end of the film. His meeting with the occupants of the house seems completely random, his subsequent actions seemingly triggered by his perception that they - who are all wealthy and middle class - are looking down on him and his friend. But, as revealed at the film's climax, the whole set-up has been a trap, set up by the host and his girl friend, in order to avenge the murder of his sister - the girl seen being raped and murdered at the film's start. As the host cold bloodedly shoots the killer, he explains that his plan all along was to lure the killer there, provoke him into violence and then kill him, so as to be able to claim self-defence. In a later conversation with his girl friend, the host reveals that the other guests weren't aware of the plot, so, for them, the ordeal was very real. He also observes that it didn't go entirely to plan, as it proved more difficult to get to his gun than he had anticipated, meaning that their friends had to endure far more brutality than envisaged.
This final twist, of course, puts a whole different complexion on the issue at the heart of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left - the fact that 'civilised values' are only skin deep and can easily be stripped away when triggered by trauma and a desire for revenge. Violent rage, under such circumstances, can easily erupt. But in The House on the Edge of the Park, the violent revenge is premeditated and calculating. The host and his girl friend, without any pangs of conscience it seems, are happy to manipulate their own friends, subjecting them to violence, rape and terror, in order to achieve their revenge. Their friends are as much their victims as they are victims of the killer and his friend. In involving them in their plot, the host and the girl friend ignite a murderous rage in at least one of their friends - Howard, who administers the coup de grace to the killer and has to be prevented from cold bloodedly killing the killer's wounded and helpless associate. While it might be argued that as the host's friends were also his sister's friends, then, although unwitting participants in the plot, they had some sort of stake in taking revenge on the killer. But the victim who suffers the most in the scenario is the teenaged neighbour, who is drawn in at random and, in one of the film's most harrowing scenes, has her naked body repeatedly slashed with a straight razor. The host and his girl friend are entirely culpable for her ordeal.
The moral lines are further blurred by the implication that the host and his girl friend actually derived a degree of perverse pleasure from the whole situation. At one point the girl friend had taken the killer upstairs and had sex with him in order to distract him - at the film's end there is a clear indication that she perversely enjoyed the 'thrill' of the experience, seeing the killer as a 'bit of rough'. Indeed, this class snobbery is present elsewhere, with the host's protracted killing of the murderer seeming to go beyond simply revenge, his motivation, in part, seeming to be a distaste for the 'lower classes', or 'criminal classes' the killer represents. All through the film the clash of working class and middle class values is emphasised, indicating that the killer's belief that the occupants of the house are mocking and patronising him isn't just paranoia. On every level, The House on the Edge of the Park presents a thorough interrogation of the assumptions underlying its model, Last House on the Left. Most fundamentally, of course, it asks who truly are the villains of the piece? The killer at least has the excuse of being a psychopath, whereas the host and his friends are supposedly civilised intelligentsia, yet some of them end up equally exhibiting psychopathic tendencies. It all makes for a highly unsettling conclusion to an already disturbing film.
Deaodato constantly references Craven's film, most obviously in the casting of David Hess as the killer, effectively repeating his role from the earlier film. Various scenes in House on the Edge of the Park also reference Last House on the Left: Hess pushing Howard into the pool and slashing him is a reversal of the earlier film's scene where Sadie - one of Hess' gang - is pushed into the pool and has her throat cut by Estelle, the victim's mother. Likewise, Howard's shooting Hess in the head as he flails in the pool, already mortally wounded by the host, echoes Hess' killing of Mari in a lake in the Craven film. Estelle's seduction of one of the gang in Last House is mirrored the the Deodato film by Gloria's seduction of the killer's friend, ut with very different consequences: Estelle bites off the gang member's penis, leaving him to bleed to death, while Gloria takes pity on the killer's friend, recognising that he is an easily influenced simpleton, uneasy with his friend's extreme behaviour. Gloria's approach eventually pays dividends, as the friend is finally emboldened to stand up to the killer - resulting the killer slashing him open with the razor. In Deodato's world, kindness, it seems, can sometimes be more effective than violence.
Even after more than forty years, The House on the Edge of the Park still makes for a difficult watch, (as does its progenitor) - the violence is still brutal and raw and the rape and sexual abuse as disturbing as they should be. Nevertheless, it is worth persevering with, still feeling relevant in its critique of cinematic depictions of violence, making the point that the sort of casual violence served up as entertainment, in reality, would only be perpetrated by psychopaths - whether they be villains of 'good guys'. (Arguably, it represents a continuation of the themes of Deodato's previous film, Cannibal Holocaust (1979), in its emphasis upon the ease with which violence is used by the supposedly 'civilised' in order to exploit the less sophisticated). It boasts a memorable performance from David Hess - one of exploitation cinema's greatest portrayers of scumbags and a score from Riz Ortolani which, with its emphasis on romantic, child like lyrics and melodies that contrast with the violence on screen, makes the film even more unsettling.
Long unavailable in the UK in its original form, (it was initially banned as a 'video nasty', with a heavily cut version later being issued on video in 2001, an almost full version in 2006 and a complete version released on DVD only in 2022), I finally caught it courtesy of the streaming channel NYX, which is currently showing a full, Italian language version with English sub-titles. (NYX is available via Channelbox through some Freeview receivers (not mine) or on Roku via the Distro TV app - they screen a variety of interesting horror and thriller movies, so are worth looking at).
So, I'm sat here watching a German made fairy tale themed softcore comedy porn movie showing on a staming channel and finding it decidedly non-erotic. The New Adventures of Snow White (1969) intertwines a number of classic fairy tales - Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty etc - with the main female characters spending most of the time running around topless, (usually for no good reason). Which, as far as I can see, is the only pornographic component. Nobody actually does anything else. Admittedly, what I'm watching is an English language version clearly prepared by a US distributor, so maybe something has been lost in translation and the 'good' bits excised to get a lower certificate. Perhaps the original is raunchier. (Certainly, even this dubbed version includes some of the more gruesome details usually left out of tellings of these fairy tales - the ugly sisters cutting off some of their toes so as to fit their feet into the slipper, for instance. Oh, hang on - they have included a bit where Snow White is awakened by the Prince giving her a good seeing to rather than just kissing her. Although I seem to recall that it was actually Sleeping Beauty who was awakened that way). It isn't as if the film is entirely devoid of ideas - early on we have topless Snow White running through the forest being molested and propositioned by various wild animals wanting her 'love', who are actually all princes and princesses transformed into animals by evil witches in true fairy tales, for instance. But it never really makes anything of stuff like this, (although Sleeping Beauty eventually does have sex with a 'bear', that transforms back into human form as a result), or indeed, any of the other opportunities fairy tales present for pornographic interpretation.
Incredibly, in the UK The New Adventures of Snow White was, at one time, on the 'video nasties' list, making its distribution or ownership a criminal offence. A perverse decision, particularly bearing in mind some of the other examples of German 'sex comedies' that I've encountered. I'm thinking, in particular, of the long-running Schoolgirl Report series which are, in effect, about underage sex. The 'schoolgirls' are all played by actresses who look to be in their mid-twenties but, nevertheless, the fact that the characters they are portraying are as young as fourteen, the fact that their pretty graphic sexual encounters with usually older men is presented in a 'comedic' and 'light hearted' fashion, is more than a little disconcerting. Let's face it, these days they'd doubtless be condemned by moral campaigners and banned in the UK. But back in the seventies, when the series began, it was apparently OK to ogle and fantasise about schoolgirls of a certain age - something evidenced by episodes of various UK sitcoms and dramas from the era which, nowadays, are rarely shown anymore. (I well remember an episode of The Sweeney where Dennis Waterman's Sgt George Carter goes into full Sid James mode perving over some girls in scholl uniform to a more straight-laced colleague, as they drive past them. I'm pretty sure that the sequence is edited from current airings of the episode). All a far cry from what we in the UK would understand to be a sex comedy, the format for which was pretty much perfected in the seventies by the addition of sex and nudity to Carry On-style scripts. But to get back to The New Adventures of Snow White, I can't help but feel that it would have been greatly improved by the presence of Robin Askwith as an inept plumber mistaken for Prince Charming when he goes round to unblock the seven dwarves' sink...
You see, I was right, wasn't I? You all thought I was crazy when I tried to expose the pro-canine conspiracy gripping the UK that promotes dogs as 'man's best friend', despite the fact that they regularly rip peoples' throats out, while demonising cats by pumping out anti-feline propaganda. Well, now we have proof that this evil conspiracy goes right to the top with the revelations that the Tory government planned to use the pandemic as a pretext for exterminating all cats in the UK. It's absolutely true - they were trying convince us that cats could spread Covid (unlike dogs, which just maul you to death). Obviously, having been forced to destroy their beloved pets, former cat owners would have had no choice but to replace them with dogs, thereby placing more of the homicidal shitting machines in our homes. This government has been responsible for a lot of evil shit, but by revealing themselves as a bunch of psychopathic cat killers, they've gone too far. Frankly I think that the time has come -there's no choice but to kill the fuckers. By any means available. Really, we've got to make a concerted effort to purge the country of all Tories, before they can spread their hatred, bile and evil any further. We don't want their horrible infection. We need to start burning them out of their lairs - start with Downing Street and Whitehall: firebomb Number Ten and Chequers and watch them trying to scurry to safety.
Anywhere you can find the fuckers you need to be exterminating them: beat them to death with cudgels, string them up from lampposts,mow them down with your car, hit them over the head with shovels or impale them on garden forks. Smash down the doors of your local Conservative Association and run amuck with an axe. You know it makes sense. We need to be rounding the buggers up and organising mass firing squads - line them up and mow them down with a machine gun. Actually, this is what I always thought that the US should have done with those Trump traitors who stormed the US Capitol: summary execution by firing squad. Just dig a trench, line them up along it and mow them so that they fall in, then cover it up to form a mass, unmarked, grave. It would have been no more than they deserved, after all. What's that? You think that I'm going too far? Well, let's not forget that the right are forever calling for the death penalty and other extreme punishments for miscreants. They are quite happy to see minorities, 'leftists' and the like to be gunned down by 'patriots' at demonstrations and protests. They welcome a bit of police brutality. Yet, as soon as it is suggested that the same treatment should be accorded to them and their ilk if they break the law or transgress accepted bounds of decency with their behaviour, then they start throwing their hands in the air and denouncing violence, the hypocrites. It's like I've always said, we really need to start meting out the same sort of 'justice' to them as they want to apply to us, then watch them squeal.
Ah, it feels good to have a bloody good rant like that! It's been too long! As ever, for the benefit of anyone from law-enforcement who might read this, the above is offered merely as satire, not as an incitement to violence against dog loving Nazi bastards. (Though God knows, they deserve a good kicking).
The mid fifties saw Universal return to its roots and start producing low budget horror films again - a genre it had abandoned when it merged with International in the late forties to become Universal-International and tried to move upmarket. The result was a new cycle of fantastical black and white B-features, more often than not with a science fiction theme, (in accordance with the times), which included Tarantula!, The Leech Woman, The Mole People, The Land Unknown and The Creature From the Black Lagoon and its sequels. 1955's Cult of the Cobra is relatively unusual in having a supernatural theme and arguably harks back less to Universal's forties monster pictures than it does to the horror thrillers produced for RKO by Val Lewton. Indeed, while it features a 'monster' than can transform from human to animal, it is closer in style and theme to Lewton's Cat People than Universal's The Wolfman. That said, Cult of the Cobra also included a touch of the 'exotic' jungle set films that had been popular in the forties, with its far eastern cults, forbidden temples and secret rites that feature in the opening part of the film.
The scenario is straightforward and familiar - at the end of World War Two a group of US servicemen witness the dance of the Cobra Cult, something forbidden to outsiders, desecrating the cult's temple in the process. The high priest vows vengeance and, even before they can return to the US, the six servicemen start dying, apparently victims of a cobra bite. Back in the US, a mysterious woman appears and the deaths continue - is she a cultist capable of transforming into a deadly snake? The film is full of familiar faces: Faith Domergue, who around the same time could be found being menaced by the Metalunan Mutant in the more prestigious Universal science fiction film This Island Earth, is the mystery woman, while the errant servicemen include Richard Long, (The Big Valley, Nanny and the Professor), Marshall Thompson (First Man Into Space, Fiend Without a Face and Daktari!), Jack Kelly (Forbidden Planet, Maverick) and David Janssen (The Fugitive, Marooned and Harry O).
Lacking a memorable monster like most of the other films in Universal's fifties cycle of B-horrors, Cult of the Cobra instead tries for atmosphere and suspense, but ends up coming over as silly and more than slightly camp, with its 'monster' eventually being killed with a coat rack. The director, Francis D Lyon, was a former editor, who directed a number of low-budget B-movies throughout the fifties and sixties and was also a prolific director of TV episodes. While Cult of the Cobra isn't the strongest entry in Universal's fifties horror and science fiction cycle, at only eighty two minutes it at least isn't too taxing a watch.
