There's been a lot of talk on this blog lately of various types of World War Two ordinance, so for those of you still confused, in the 'World of Men' cover above, the girl coming down on a parachute is carrying an M3 'Grease Gun', while the dude next to her is firing an M1 Thompson sub machine gun - a 'Tommy Gun' - which the M3 was designed to replace. As can be seen, the 'Grease Gun' is of greatly simplified construction compared to the 'Tommy Gun', thereby making it both lighter and cheaper and easier to manufacture, not to mention cutting down the risks of jamming or otherwise malfunctioning in combat. So there you are: correct vintage firearms identification via pulp magazine cover illustrations. At least, that's my excuse for posting this particular cover.
The story it is illustrating is 'The Lace Panty Raiders Who Clobbered Hitler's Panzer Corps', another of those fanciful men's magazine 'true' tales of how machine gun toting women in their underwear, (led, of course by a red-blooded American male), defeated entire Nazi armies. Not that I'm suggesting that the idea of armies that had committed war crimes across Europe and the Soviet Union would go weak kneed at the sight of some girls in their underwear is utterly ludicrous, but another popular subject for men's magazine covers, that of Nazi's gleefully freezing, drowning, immersing in gold and otherwise torturing underwear clad women would rather suggest the opposite. Still it was the tail end of the 'swinging sixties' (this the September 1969) issue, so the writers were probably all off of their faces on hallucinatory substances.
In fact, that 'other' type of story is seemingly referenced in another of the cover's featured stories: 'Caged Beauties in the Dungeon of the Damned' - which would probably have been the cover story if the artist hadn't had a fetish for semi-naked women toting automatic weapons. Elsewhere, it is the men's magazine mix as usual. Violence is represented by 'My Bare Hands to Rip Their Guts Out!', while another obsession of these publications - what perversions supposedly go on behind suburban front doors - is represented by 'Revealed: Suburbia's Latest Sex Practices', (probably doing it with the lights on). That other sex obsession, young people having sex, is encapsulated by 'Teen Campus Crisis - Lessons in Naked Lust'. Those were the days, eh? When the idea of college students having sex was deemed a crisis. Or maybe the crisis lay with the fact that t was apparently part of the curriculum - obviously, by the time I was a student, it had been dropped. Indeed, when I was an undergraduate there didn't seem to be much lust of the campus, naked or otherwise and if there were lessons on it, they weren't being taught in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. But hey, we're talking about the sixties here. Not the real sixties, but rather the sixties as filtered through the lens of the American men's magazines - which were predominantly edited and written by middle class, middle aged guys making public their personal fantasies.
Not an obscure P G Wodehouse novel, but rather something that always seemed to be an annual event: the sight of a cricket match being played in front of the Balmer Lawn Hotel. Which, if you don't know, is a large country hotel just outside of Brockenhurst as you approach the village from Lyndhurst on the A337. You can't miss it - it is right by the road, on the left as you go into Brockenhurst. If you take the left hand turning just after it, not only can you access the hotel - they serve cream teas in the Summer - but if you drive on past and follow the road, you'll get to Beaulieu and from there to Lepe beach. But to get back to the point, when I was a kid, there always seemed to be a cricket match going on in front of the hotel when we drove past on family outings to the beach. Later, when, as an adult, I started making my own trips to the beach and the New Forest, on at least one of my journeys in the course of the Summer I'd see a cricket match in progress. Then, suddenly, it seemed to stop. For year after year, no matter what time in the Summer I drove past the hotel, the green would be empty, devoid of any sporting activity, let alone cricket. But finally, this Summer, on my earliest trip to the coast, there they were, playing cricket in front of the hotel.
The funny thing is that I don't even like cricket, nor do I have any idea as to who the sides I see playing there are. In fact, I don't even know if that green they play on actually has anything to do with the hotel at all, or whether its location is purely coincidental. Yet I find the sight of that cricket match strangely reassuring. As long as people played cricket outside the Balmer Lawn Hotel, then all was right with the world. At least, that's what I felt as a child, a feeling that, for some unfathomable reason, persisted into adulthood. My Summers never quite felt complete if I didn't see those cricketers. But this Summer can draw to a close with me feeling irrationally content because I saw that bloody cricket match. One Summer I might just stop at the Balmer Lawn Hotel when I see that match in progress and try to find out who the teams are. Maybe I'll even drop into the hotel itself, as I've been promising myself for years that I'll do, and have a cream tea and scones while watching the cricket...
There seemed to be concerted effort in the late sixties and early seventies to turn Alex Cord into a star. Unfortunately, he was an actor devoid of any real charisma and most of his starring vehicles, (which included a remake of Stagecoach (1966) and The Last Grenade (1970)), quickly disappeared from view and remain difficult to actually see. Stiletto (1969) is no exception. It's another of those films I recall seeing in the late night TV schedules during the late seventies, but which subsequently seemed to vanish without trace. It is now available on Blu-Ray but the only copies I've seen on sale are far too expensive to tempt me into buying one. So, in the absence of either legal or illegal streaming options for the film, I have to be satisfied, for the time being, with this trailer, which encapsulates many of the film's fundamental problems.
Derived from a Harold Robbins novel, the film clearly wants to try and belie its trashy origins with a flashy production style, evoking the whole 'swinging sixties' and 'jet set' ethos. But despite its glossy presentation, it is really little more than a B-movie with a B-movie plot: playboy and secret Mafia assassin tries to get out of the business and finds himself pursued by both his former employers and the FBI. It also features a cast of second rank actors rather than any real stars. In addition to Cord, the cast features such stalwart character and supporting actors as Patrick O'Neal, Joseph Wiseman and John Dehner, with Britt Ekland and Barbara McNair as leading ladies. (Several actors soon to become famous feature in small roles, including Roy Schieder, Raul Julia and Lincoln Kilpatrick). The choice of director is also telling - Bernard L Kowalski was something of a journeyman director, making his name with a couple of low budget science fiction horror movies that later gained cult status, (Night of the Blood Beast (1958) and Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)), briefly moving onto bigger budgeted features, (most notably Krakatoa - East of Java (1969)), before disappearing back into TV movies and series episodes (where he'd spent most of the sixties working prior to Stiletto).
It's clear from the trailer that the producers' strategy with Stiletto was to market it on the basis of Harold Robbins' name and its glamourous-looking locations and production values, in the hope that this could overcome a lack of real stars and a bland leading man. It didn't. Nor did it make a star out of Alex Cord, who is today probably best remembered for his supporting role in the Airwolf TV series, several episodes of which were directed by Kowalski.
Everybody seems to think the most offensive thing about The Benny Hill Show for modern audiences is the sexism and it is true that the programme is guilty of the objectification of women, most of them are present only to flash lots of cleavage and wear short skirts. There are also a lot of sketches and musical numbers featuring Benny Hill and associates in drag, parodying both specific female celebrities of the time and women in general, in unflattering terms. But the thing I'd forgotten about it was the sheer amount of black face and yellow face involved in sketches. Hardly a show goes by without Benny Hill or Bob Todd blacking up, (the latter often portraying the old Southern family retainer in the various Tennessee Williams parodies, or, sporting an Afro wig, as Mark, one of the assistants of 'A Man Called Backside', an Ironside parody). The level of racism stereotyping involved is relatively mild compared to contemporary TV shows, although the sketches where Benny pretends to be a Chinaman that no-one can understand, often joined by Bob Todd blacked up as a generic Indian/Pakistani, (the two nationalities being interchangeable in seventies TV), are utterly cringe worthy. (Although, I cannot deny that back in those more innocent times, as a child, I laughed at these sketches, seeing them now, though, it is hard to understand why). To be fair, as time went on, such sketches became less prominent, as attitudes to race on TV gradually changed.
But in between all the sexism and racism you can see glimmers of some genuine satire - one of the very last shows features a parody of the then popular consumer affairs programme, The Cook Report, focusing on allegations that presenter Roger Cook deliberately provoked the often violent confrontations that were a 'highlight' of the show. Even in the earlier shows you can find some attempts to satirise such things as the hypocrisy of TV commissioning policies. one sketch features Hill as a supposedly liberal-minded TV producer for Thames TV having a telephone conversation with 'William Shakespeare' who is trying to get his new drama Othello commissioned. While the producer likes the plot, he begins to baulk at the idea of both leading male parts being black - 'Not that it bothers me, of course, but the network just isn't too keen on that sort of thing' - and finally put off when he finds that the lead female character is white - 'Just too controversial for the network'. Moreover, many of Benny hill's impersonations are very good - his Orson Welles (in 'Great Mysteries With Orson Buggy') is surprisingly effective, as were his Roger cook, Dickie Davis and various parodies of seventies newsreaders. Although, I have to say that possibly the most disturbing thing for a modern audience I've seen was an impersonation: of Rolf Harris, who nowadays, of course, is considered so disgraced that his name cannot be mentioned on TV, let alone any of his TV shows screened.
As late as January 1971, Real Men was still sporting a full-sized cover painting, rather than a detail of a recycled cover painting in danger of being crowded out by story headlines, or even a photographic cover, both of which styles were increasingly being favoured by its rivals. The mix of content is also pretty traditional for a man's magazine, albeit with even more outrageous titles than usual. 'Red-baiting' is now combined with sex in 'Wanted! One Naked Spy to Sleep Withe the Commie Murder King of Guatemala!'. In fact, this issue seems to have sex on the brain: 'For Rent! An Island - Complete With Your Own Harem!' is another popular adolescent fantasy dramatised for those with weak imaginations. Likewise 'Snowed In - The Only Man With 100 Eskimo Nymphomaniacs' - whilst I don't want to impugn Eskimo women, I have to say that from the ones I've seen, they're a pretty specialised fetish, so I'm not entirely sure who the target audience for this particular story would be. Guys who like fish and seal fur underwear, presumably.
Best of all is the headline proclaiming 'Organised Vice Has Taken Over the Nudist Camps!'. Bearing in mind that, in the UK at least, nudists tend to be saggy middle aged, middle class, exhibitionists, it is hard to imagine any kind of crime ring 'muscling in' on their action. The title conjures up visions of protection rackets, with duded in dark fedoras and nothing else extorting money from unwary would be nudists and forcibly dressing them if they don't pay up. I'm going to assume that it is all connected to the 'Nudist Blackmail Rings' reported on in another man's magazine of the era and works on the basis that people who go to nudist camps are actually ashamed of their activities and the threat of photos of them playing tennis in the buff being sent to their employers would be enough to get them to pay up. As already noted, though, the majority of naturists are exhibitionists who can't wait to tell you about their activities, (and show you their holiday snaps), whether you want to know or not. But let's not forget the question 'How Good is Your Sex Life?', for which the magazine promises a simple self test. Presumably this consists of asking yourself if you are currently having sexual relations with a real live woman, or whether you are masturbating while reading this test. The former means your sex life is great, the latter that it is non-existent. I suspect that most readers fell into the latter category.
Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1965) is, arguably, the ultimate Jerry Warren picture. Warren turned his attentions in the sixties from simply directing and producing his own low budget features to re-editing foreign language films, usually adding a few newly shot scenes of American actors to provide English dialogue scenes and often adding a voice over to explain other plot points, then releasing them to the US drive-in market under new English titles. Most famously, he took Mexican horror film La Momia Azteca (1957) and reedited it into Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1963). Not satisfied with this, Warren decided to make a few more bucks out of La Momia Azteca by re-diting it again and combining it with parts of another Mexican film he had bought - La Casa Del Terror (1959). The main attraction for Warren of the latter - a horror comedy starring Mexican comic Tin Tan - was, presumably, the presence of Lon Chaney Jr playing a mummy which, when revived by a mad scientist, turns out to be a werewolf. I'm guessing that, having cut our most of Tin Tan's role and added in some English language scenes with US actors, Warren found the resultant film running severely short, so added in some sequences from La Momia Azteca, which he already had the rights to.
The finished film - which still only runs just over an hour - is an absolute mess, rarely making any sense in plot terms, with characters appearing and vanishing at random as their respective Mexican footage is used up. Starting with an archeological expedition inspired by a psychic's visions of a past life whilst under hypnosis, the plot proceeds to the discovery of two mummies - one very much alive, the other inert. Back in the US, the professor leading the expedition is murdered and the living mummy stolen by a mad scientist who has a secret lab behind a wax museum, (where some unidentified and unexplained dude - actually Tin Tan, hero of La Casa Del Terror, seems to spend his time asleep on a sofa). In the course of the scientist carrying out some vague experiments on the living mummy, it escapes, goes on a mini-rampage, kidnapping the psychic. We're then told that they have both been killed having been run over by a car in an unseen incident! So the scientist steals the other mummy, revives it, at which point it turns into a werewolf. Eventually, the werewolf/mummy also goes on a rampage. Luckily, the dude from the wax museum wakes up long enough to beat and burn it to death, for no particular reason (or so it seems). Roll closing credits.
You can't help but feel that Warren would have been better off simply redubbing and retitling La Casa Del Terror which, in its original form, at least made a sort of sense. In the original version, Tin Tan was an attendant at the wax museum, oblivious to the fact that his boss was really a mad scientist who was secretly draining his blood (which is why he's always tired and snoozing on that sofa) for his experiments. The exhibits in the wax museum are the scientist's failed experiments, covered in wax and Tin Tan goes into action at the end because the girl Lon Chaney's werewolf kidnaps is his girlfriend. But hey, I suppose Warren's border line unintelligible version is justifiable on the grounds that it gives us two mummies instead of one. Face of the Screaming Werewolf went out on a double bill with another of Warren's creations, Curse of the Stone Hand, which he had cobbled together from two Chilean films. The great thing about Warren's films are that, regardless of whether they are reworkings of foreign language films or composed of entirely original footage, they always look as if they have been cobbled together out of footage left over from other projects. Even his last film, Frankenstein Island (1982), shot in colour on a bigger budget than usual, gives the impression that it is at least two other films stuck together, feeling as if it was assembled piece meal, as he went along. It is, rather like Face of the Screaming Werewolf, entertaining in its ramshackle way.
The Last Grenade (1970) was one of those films that used to inhabit the late night schedules on ITV in the mid to late seventies, when mid-budgeted small scale pictures like this were still promoted as 'big events' by the TV companies - distributors still jealously guarded their biggest hits, often keeping them off of TV for a decade or more after their initial releases. Consequently, The Last Grenade premiered on TV with a reasonable fanfare - it was a relatively recent release and it featured a cast of 'name' actors. Unfortunately, it was also a time when I still wasn't old enough to be allowed to stay up and watch such films, (especially violent-looking ones like Last Grenade), so watching it became a 'Moby Dick' like prospect - something to eventually be hunted down and viewed when I was an adult. Which turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, as it became one of those films which just seemed to vanish from sight completely. It was pushed out of the TV schedules by the flood of newer releases that hit UK TV screens in the eighties, as distributors relaxed their restrictions on TV showings and never seemed to have been released on home video of any kind, (there was eventually a Blu Ray release). I've also searched streaming services, both legit and dodgy in vain for The Last Grenade. I was finally able to catch up with the film recently when it turned up on YouTube.
So, was this personal white whale of a movie worth waiting for? Well, it has to be said that it is a very uneven experience, never really settling into a rhythm or style and never really seeming to know where it is going or what it wants to be about. The obvious point of comparison is another movie about mercenaries released a couple of years earlier: Dark of the Sun (aka The Mercenaries) (1968). Both films use the then recent conflict in the Congo as a background, but whereas Dark of the Sun plays out its story entirely in the Congo, with a straightforward plot involving the rescue of some rebel-held hostages, The Last Grenade uses the conflict simply as a scene setter, establishing the characters and central conflict which motivate the subsequent narrative. The opening Congo-set scene of The Last Grenade actually contain its main action set-piece, as Major Grigsby (Stanley Baker) and his mercenaries await rescue by helicopter, only to have the helicopter - under the control of Grisby's friend and fellow mercenary Thompson (Alex Cord) open fire on them. Smarting from the betrayal, Grigsby subsequently accepts a clandestine assignment from the British government to lead his surviving mercenaries in a series of raids across the borders of the New Territories in Hong Kong to try and repel Chinese insurgents being led and advised by Thompson.
At which point the film loses direction, alternating between Grigsby's (rather desultory) attempts to track and kill Thompson and his affair with the local British military commander's wife (Honor Blackman). The two plot strands eventually cross over, precipitating a final confrontation between Grigsby and Thompson. The problem is that the film constantly frustrates audience expectations - the first attempt to take Thompson ends in near disaster with Grigsby losing one of his crew and only escaping with his own life after Thompson inexplicably spurns the opportunity to kill him. Rather than hit back, Grigsby's subsequent campaign against the insurgents seems to peter out in favour of his romance with the general's wife. A confrontation between Thompson and Grigsby's remaining crew in a Hong Kong nightclub keeps the flagging action moving, but not for long. The final confrontation itself ends up feeling very anti-climactic. Aside from the slack plotting, the film also suffers badly from a lack of proper characterisation of its protagonists. In the case of Grigsby, the characterisation comes less from the writing than it does from Stanley Baker, who turns in one of his typical obsessive granite-hard military bastard performances, successfully suggesting a degree of emotional complexity to the character through his relationship with Honor Blackman's character. While Grigsby is at least a cliche, Thompson is devoid of any real characterisation, portrayed by Alex Cord as simply a sniggering and arrogant killer for hire. At least we can understand Grigsby's motivation - a desire for revenge at his betrayal and his own personal code of honour. But what is Thompson's motivation, (Other than money), for betraying his friendships and loyalties? We never know and are never offered a clue, making the whole conflict between the two characters seem empty and pointless.
All of which contrasts poorly with that other mercenary film of the era, The Dark of the Sun, which not only has a clear cut plot driving its action along, but also provides the audience with far more charismatic protagonists in Rod Taylor's mercenary leader and his sergeant, played by Jim Brown. This film also featured a conflict between fellow mercenaries, albeit as (for most of the film) a sub-plot, as Taylor clashes with a racist ex-Nazi subordinate. This conflict actually amounts to something, providing Dark of the Sun's protagonist with a climactic confrontation between his military professionalism and duty and desire for personal revenge. All of which is why Dark of the Sun is the superior film. That said, The Last Grenade isn't a total wash-out: there are the glimmerings of an intelligent drama about mercenaries and the morality of their use, but it doesn't develop any of its ideas properly. It's very well staged, though, with excellent location shooting in Spain (standing in for the Congo) and Hong Kong and Gordon Flemyng's direction is perfectly adequate, with the set pieces well mounted, but is ultimately defeated by an episodic script that never allows the film establish an even pace.. The cast is also pretty heavyweight for this sort of film and mainly deliver decent enough performances despite an inadequate script. In addition to Baker, Blackman and Cord, but also boasts Richard Attenborough as the general, Ray Brooks as a junior officer and Andrew Keir, Rafer Johnson, John Thaw and Julian Glover as Grigsby's crew.
Like Dark of the Sun, which was derived from the Wilbur Smith novel of the same name, The Last Grenade also has a literary origin, in this case John Sherlock's 1964 novel 'The Ordeal of Major Grigsby'. The source novel was set during the 1948 'Malaysian Emergency' (one of a number of post-war colonial conflicts the UK became embroiled in) - the film adaptation updated the action to the sixties, relocating the action to the Congo and Hong Kong, losing much of its political context in the process. While Sherlock co-wrote the original adaptation with Kenneth Ware, it was subsequently rewritten by James Mitchell, the number of writers involved perhaps explaining the final script's unevenness and apparent lack of direction. The Last Grenade was one of two films that Stanley Baker starred in for producer Dimitri de Grunewald in 1970, the second being the Peter Hall directed heist film Perfect Friday, which is the superior film, far better scripted, with better characterisations and smoother plot development. The Last Grenade remains worth watching, for the sight of a number of soon to household name British actors in early roles, if nothing else, but ultimately is a frustrating viewing experience, never fulfilling the early promise held out by the opening sequence.
I ended last week feeling rough as a dog's arse - it just went downhill from there. My fever broke overnight Friday into Saturday and I woke up literally drenched in sweat, but not before I'd had one hell of a fever dream. I'm not a violent man and my dreams rarely involve violence, but this one was wall-to-wall violence. As I remember it, the 'zombie apocalypse' had taken place, but the zombies weren't the problem: they were just shambling, utterly harmless wrecks who could just be pushed out of the way. The problem, so it seemed, were these religious cultists who were wandering around wearing hoods and robes - so I was mowing them down with a sub-machine gun, left, right and centre. Actually, to be accurate, it was a 'Grease Gun' - an M3 sub machine gun (it replaced the M1 Thompson SMG in US service during World War Two) - that I was using to make them eat lead, except when I was blowing them away with a pair of Colt .45 automatics. Anyway, sometimes I was massacring them solo, sometimes with a sidekick, sometimes there was a whole group of us. I don't know what sort of cult these dudes were running, just that they were bad news and had to be stopped. So, I just blew them away wherever I saw them - at one point I popped up from behind a bar (or, come to think of it, it might have been an altar) and opened fire with those forty fives. Is it any wonder that I woke up soaked in sweat?
I was left wondering what had inspired this bizarre post-apocalyptic fever dream. I thought that maybe the zombie apocalypse background might be a clue - I'd watched Zombieland again a couple of nights before, (it was on TV when I switched on when I came back from the pub, so I found myself slumped on the sofa watching it), but the problem in the dream weren't the zombies, though. It was those religious cultist weirdos. The only obvious cinematic analogy that immediately came to mind was The Omega Man, which had featured Charlton Heston gunning down nocturnal mutants - who had some crazy religious cult and dressed in hooded robes. Except that I haven't watched that movie in a couple of years. Then again, I did recently catch the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which not only features Charlton Hestion, but also some cloaked and hooded mutants who worshipped a nuclear bomb. Perhaps the sight of old Chuck doing some cultist bashing had triggered my memories of The Omega Man, with the two films combining with Zombieland in my subconscious to create my fever dream. Another clue doubtless lay with the anachronistic armoury I was using to kill those cultist bastards - Grease Guns and forty fives are very much World War Two vintage. But I'd most recently seen them, not in a World War Two movie, but in 1967's Battle Beneath the Earth (which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago), which feature them and lots of other anachronistic military equipment quite prominently, presumable because they were what the props department had to hand. Much like the way in which our sleeping minds seem to create dreams, assembling them from whatever recent memories and incidents are to hand.
The early seventies were a magical time - on the one hand they represented the beginning of the modern world, with the hard edged reality of energy shortages, oil crises and the like displacing the wild wooliness of the 'swinging sixties', on the other, they represented the last time that the world still seemed wide and exotic enough that we were prepared to accept any load of old bollocks as if it might be fact. Mondo movies were still feeding us tales of strange sexual practices in remote and unexplored parts of the world, while their literary equivalents, men's pulp magazines, were still turning out tales of macho heroism in World War Two, weird foreign sex and lustful suburban women. This September 1972 issue of Bluebook For Men is typical of this 'Indian Summer' of the exotic, before affordable international air travel opened up virtually every corner of the world - even if you didn't visit it yourself, you could see it on TV - dispelling any lingering hint of mystery.
It isn't clear whether the cover is illustrating 'Mission Fantastic: Bring Out the 1,000 Condemned Maquis' - while the crashed plane looks to be of World War Two vintage, (the use of the term 'Maquis' implies a tale of the French resistance), the rifle being wielded by the topless girl freedom fighter is clearly a post war Soviet AK-47 - one of the other girls seems to have a more era appropriate 'Tommy Gun' slung over her shoulder, though. Elsewhere, it is sex, sex, sex and crime. The latter in the form of 'Lethal Tricks of the Hot Car Racketeer'. 'Exposed: Shocking Passion Rites Around the World' sounds to be pure Mondo movie subject matter and doubtless included lots of photos of topless dusky tribes women for readers to be shocked by, (not to mention lust over). Closer to home we have 'Sex Spas for Single Swingers', not to mention 'Lust Orgies of Frustrated Wives' - suburbia was, if one is to believe these magazines, a hot bed of lust and passion in the early seventies, if only you knew exactly which front door it was all going on behind. Knock on the wrong one and you's find yourself in the middle of a tupperware party rather than a swinger's party, though. Which could prove something of a disappointment.
If you recall, last week I took a brief look at a 1918 edition of the long-lived British men's magazine Wide World. Well, one thing led to another and I ended up buying a job lot of twenty three issues very cheaply on eBay. These comprise of all but the January issue for 1962 and a complete run of all twelve issues from 1964. With the magazine ceasing publication in the autumn of 1965, these represent some of the very last issues of Wide World. Above is a selection of the 1962 covers, which show it to be, in this period, a reasonable facsimile of the US equivalent, but with the covers showing slightly greater restraint than than their transatlantic cousins, with the emphasis firmly upon male adventure rather than sex and violence. Below is another selection of covers, which include three from 1962, the remainder from 1964:
As can be seen, the cover style continues into sixty four, but with emphasis switching from being action orientated to more sober character portraits 'ripped from the headlines' to illustrate the featured stories. Toward the end of 1964, though, the cover style changes radically, with a new mast head design and a switch to photographs rather than paintings, in a clear attempt to make the magazine seem more contemporary. This style continued into 1965 although, from the examples I've seen, the cover illustrations started tending toward the abstract.
So, I'm looking forward to working my way through this lot - even a brief perusal has hinted at plenty of pulp-style bizarreness within these covers. While American men's pulps can be difficult to obtain in the UK, (I have a few, but apart from special UK editions, they tended not to be sold here, meaning that few second hand copies have survived and remain available), their domestic equivalents can be obtained for surprisingly reasonable prices on the likes of eBay, (not to mention second hand bookshops and charity shops). Especially if you buy them in job lots, as I did here. Anyway, these are going to provide me with entertainment (and hopefully material for posts here) for weeks to come.
The Deadly Spawn (1983) is one of those films you go into with no expectations whatsoever - another zero budget slimy killer alien movie from the eighties with a no name cast, over familiar scenario and undistinguished looking technical credits. Yet, as it turns out, it is actually a surprisingly effective small scale horror film. From the outset, despite a less than original premise of a meteor crashing in the woods and disgorging an alien life form, it subverts audience expectations - as is usual, a couple of campers are the first to encounter the alien, but we're then spared the usual endless scenes of people being chased around the woods by something horrible and slimy, with the campers quickly dispatched. The action then moves to a remote house where, during a torrential downpour, the alien creature has taken refuge in the cellar. Which is where things start properly, with various occupants getting eaten by the large toothed alien when they venture down into the basement - their absence initially going unnoticed as everyone else assumes that, as planned, they had left early on a trip. The remainder of the film's action is confined mainly to the house, as the teenaged son, his friends and his younger, monster movie obsessed, brother, gradually become aware of the creature and its spawn (which are beginning to spread outside the house) and find a way to destroy them.
What's impressive is the way in which the film makes the most of its confined setting, which never feels as if it is simply the result of a low budget. More than anything, it gives the film a disconcerting sense of normality, as the macabre events unfold in the context of what appears to be an actual family home, (it was shot in the producer's home rather than a studio), encouraging the audience to suspend its disbelief and thereby making, for the film's duration, it all seem vaguely plausible. Moreover, the apparent normality of the setting made various of the protagonists initial refusal to accept the bizarre things going on in the cellar itself seem understandable. Establishing its milieu as utterly mundane, from the family dynamics to the torrential rain that falls throughout most of the movie, is undoubtedly the film's strongest suit. Indeed, restraint is the tone maintained throughout the film: the acting performances from an unfamiliar cast are commendably low key and naturalistic, while the musical score is atmospheric and effectively complements the onscreen action, adding to the air of growing unease which gradually builds throughout the film. While subtle in these respects, the film commendably doesn't skimp on gore and monster action. The main creature itself, although somewhat rubbery, is an impressive and effective creation for a low budget production. While the number of victims the creature and its offspring devour are kept relatively low, they are very well executed. (At least one of the victims is also somewhat surprising, resulting in the plot moving in a different direction than expected).
In fact, the plot development also shows a lot more logic than is usual for such low budget science fiction flicks. The eventual methodology for defeating the creatures flows naturally from both the characters' observations of the aliens and the younger brother's pre-established knowledge of monster movies. Realising that they are blind and respond to sound, he is able to lure the 'mother' creature into a trap (rather as the Triffids could be), where she can be electrocuted (as in The Thing From Another World (1951)). These references back to older movies is a characteristic of the film, (the final scenes, with the local cops and townspeople out killing the spawn with electric cattle prods, are somewhat reminiscent of the ending of Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), for example), but never feel laboured or jarring. Overall, I have to say that The Deadly Spawn turned out to be an unexpected pleasure - a well made and directed small scale movie that never over reaches itself and that properly understands the conventions of its genre. Interestingly, it seems to be the only directorial credit for Douglas McKeown, who apparently went back to the theatre after making The Deadly Spawn, which seems a pity as, on the evidence of this film, he might have had an interesting career in low budget film making.
Sunburn (1979) is a prime example of a film launched with huge fanfare but crashed and burned on ots release and is now largely forgotten. I remember the intensive publicity campaign for the film's UK release. Every commercial break, it seemed, a trailer for it was run. A vehicle for Farah Fawcett Majors, it was clearly hoping to cash in on her recent popularity in Charlie's Angels, (although she was only in the first series, before being replaced by Cheryl Ladd), and establish her credentials as a movie star. Unfortunately, she simply wasn't a big enough draw. Neither was her co-star Charles Grodin who, despite having appeared in a number of successful movies, really wasn't a star capable of carrying a lead role. Moreover, bearing in mind that the late seventies had seen the box office dominated by the likes of Jaws and Star Wars, a comedy thriller about an insurance investigation was never likely to set the box office on fire.
So there you have it: another 'sure fire hit' that wasn't and consequently fell into obscurity. Both Fawcett Majors and Grodin enjoyed success in other vehicles - the former mainly on TV - but neither ever became leading actors in the cinema. Sorry for the brevity of today's post, but I'm still feeling rough as a dog's arse after my hay fever symptoms seemed to come to head overnight. While the worst of them - the raging temperature, streaming eyes and sinus congestion - have eased off significantly, it has left me feeling utterly exhausted. Hopefully, I can start to resume normal service (whatever that it) next week.
I've had a torrid couple of days. With the weather as it is, one has to seize opportunities to get out and about as they arise. So, a couple of dry, sunny days back-to-back found me out on the road, seeking venues for relaxing walks. A trip to the New Forest yesterday was, however, marred by constant encounters with bad drivers. They seemed to be relentless in their stupidity and recklessness - and most were driving BMWs. You know, I don't count myself as a brilliant driver, merely an adequate one, but when some idiot overtakes me as I'm overtaking a cyclist on a narrow country road, (just as we were entering a 30mph restriction halfway up a hill), I think I have the right to get judgemental about our comparative driving skills.
Likewise, when another idiot tail gates me for several miles on a narrow Forest road, with a 40mph restriction and the very real risk of ponies and other livestock wandering onto the road, I think I have a right to get annoyed with them when my braking and clearly indicating my intention to take a right into a clearly marked turning apparently enrages them to the extent of blaring their horn and furiously gesticulating at me. I mean, if you are driving so close to my rear bumper that my gently braking and slowing causes you problems then you are too close and at fault. (I know that my brake lights and indicators were working - I checked both before setting out). Naturally, in both cases I responded with some internationally recognised sign language of my own. It is incidents like these (and there were several more similar incidents, all involving BMW drivers) that help me understand the phenomena of road rage - even the most mild mannered of drivers would surely be moved to punch out these idiots if they could catch them.
My mood wasn't helped by constant hold ups and congestion both on my journey to the forest and back home. This seemed to be down to some mysterious 'diversions' - there were signs everywhere saying 'diversion', 'diverted traffic this way' and similar. Yet it was never clear where traffic was being diverted from or to where it was being diverted. Perhaps it was all being trapped in some endless loop, scores of vehicles forever doomed to follow those yellow signs, but never arriving at a destination. Anyway, in between all of these irritations, I did manage to fit in a couple of pleasant walks. The picture above is from the second of these. As can be seen, after all the rain that has fallen in recent weeks, the ground is still waterlogged, with ponies being forced to wade through temporary shallow pools as they graze. Today saw me stick closer to home, going out to a local country park for a lengthy walk. While there weren't any more bad driving incidents, the pollen count was back up, resulting in my hay fever symptoms - sore throat, congestion and streaming eyes - coming back with a vengeance. Which rather dampened my enjoyment of my walk. But, like I said, you have to seize these opportunities to get out and about whenever they arise.
Apparently The Wide World wasn't just 'The Magazine for Everybody', but was also 'The Magazine For Our Soldier Boys'. So I'm not sure that the cover story of this December 1918 issue would have been any comfort to 'soldier boys' who had survived to see the Armistice - having defeated the Germans, it would seem that mankind was now engaged in a war with large flightless birds. Actually, The Wide World, (of which this is an American edition), was full of supposedly true tales of chaps doing daring things - like fighting ostriches. The contents of this edition, for instance, also contains 'Hemmed in by Alligators' and 'My Lion Hunting Adventures'. Alongside these are various stirring war stories and tales of adventure in the more exotic reaches of the British Empire. Native rituals feature prominently in the latter type of stories, to simultaneously tittilate the stiff upper lips of British chaps while also reinforcing their sense of smug superiority with regard to these 'primitives'.
The Wide World was an extraordinarily long-lived British publication from George Newnes, who also published the likes of The Strand and Tit Bits, running from 1898 until 1965. In terms of content and presentation, the magazine in this period comes over as a more sedate version of the later American men's magazines, with the emphasis upon adventure and exotic travel. I've only a vague idea what the later issues were like, as examples of even the covers are difficult to find online - such is the nature of ephemeral media like print magazines: their preservation is usually accidental and quite random. Judging by the examples I've found on eBay, like similar UK magazines that survived into the sixties, The Wide World changed little in subject matter, but adopted a more populist approach in terms of presentation. Certainly, post war covers I've seen, (mainly on eBay), rebrand the publication as 'The Magazine for Men' and feature full size cover paintings, much in the style of US men's magazines, (often featuring marauding wildlife). Like its US cousins the emphasis was upon travel and adventure, but with less sex - it was aimed at British men, after all and that sort of thing is best not talked about by a chap, eh?
The late sixties were a marvelous era for low budget British film-making: not only were the likes of Hammer, Amicus and Tigon knocking out small scale movies across a range of genres, but it was a time when it was still possible for independent producers to get films picked up by US distributors. It helped, of course, if they could be passed off as US productions, even if they were shot entirely in the UK. Such was the case with Battle Beneath the Earth (1967) which, despite having an American lead, in the form of Kerwin Matthews, several recognisable American character actors in support and a US setting, was actually shot at Elstree studios rather than Hollywood. A hook up with MGM meant that independent producers Charles Reynolds and Charles F Vetter got the use of MGM UK's Borehamwood studios, which helped give the film a slicker look than might usually be expected from a B-movie. Nonetheless, its UK origin is given away by the presence of Ed Bishop (Britain's favourite stock American actor) and a number of other recognisable British character actors in supporting roles, most notably Peter Arne as a US scientist, Earl Cameron as a US soldier and Martin Benson and Peter Elliot as a Chinese general and a Chines scientist, respectively. (It was still very much the norm in 1967 for white actors to play ethnic roles - both Benson and Elliot were frequently cast as Chinese, Japanese or Indian).
The low budget is betrayed by the fact the cave walls in the underground sequences look decidedly insubstantial, not to mention plastic, while the exterior of the top secret US Navy research facility looks suspiciously like a typical British office building, (probably the production offices at Elstree), their 'US' location established by the fact that the hero parks his Ford Mustang outside. Stock footage and back projection is used to create the 'Las Vegas' setting of the pre-title sequence, although it isn't too badly done, establishing the film's North American setting from the outset. Many of the military props look as if they were left over from a war movie, with US servicemen wielding all sorts of obsolescent ordinance like 'Grease Guns' and Garand rifles and driving World War two era Jeeps. The Chinese also drive around their tunnels in Second World War German Kubelwagens, for some reason, while the 'lasers' on their boring machine look suspiciously like heavy duty torches. Despite the low budget, the film moves commendably swiftly, wasting little time before we get down to our first titular conflict - an underground skirmish between US and Chinese forces that establishes most of the scenario's key points: the plot to detonate nuclear weapons under US cities and other strategic locations in tunnels cut by the Chinese using their laser borer vehicle. During the late sixties Red China replaced, for a period, the Soviet Union as filmmakers' favoured contemporary enemy of freedom, but it is notable that the makers of Battle Beneath the Earth, for some reason, seemed keen not to upset China too much, presenting its villain as a rogue Chinese general, acting without official sanction.
Battle Beneath the Earth was a great favourite of mine when it used to turn up on TV in the seventies. Something about it piqued my young imagination. Perhaps it was because it was pretty much unique amongst the science fiction B-movies of its era in its choice of setting. While other films of the genre set their action in space or underwater, or tried to create 'exotic' earth bound locations in the studio as backdrops for their action, Battle Beneath the Earth went underground. A cynic might say that this was simply a ruse to allow a location that could be created on a low budget in a studio, but I prefer to think that it represented a striving for originality on the part of the makers. Certainly, this setting gives the film a claustrophobic feel and makes the action sequences seem more intimate, forcing the protagonists into close-up, face-to-face confrontations. (It also neatly confines the action sequences to manageable proportions, thereby keeping the budget down). To my younger self it seemed an exciting experience, full of intriguing ideas, like the tracked laser boring vehicles fielded by both sides, the 'travel tubes' used by the Chinese, not to mention the very concept of an enemy building a secret network of tunnels undetected beneath our feet.
Seen again as an adult, its faults seem all too obvious. Quite apart from the phony US setting and low budget, the film is undermined by a weak script. Not only is the dialogue clunky and the characters never rise above the level of stereotypes, but the script is also poorly structured, suddenly introducing a female lead/love interest two thirds into the running time, and characters that just vanish mid-plot and are seemingly forgotten about, for instance. Moreover, some of the key sequences seem very poorly thought out - at the end, for example, the hero foils the villain's attempts to defuse the bomb he has activated by the expedient of taking the Allen key needed to open it up from its carrier's tool kit! Begging the question of why the villain doesn't simply use the tool kit from one of the other bomb carriers parked alongside? Instead, he meekly sits down and awaits his demise. There seems to be a lot of hate for this film out on the web which, I feel, is undeserved. Battle Beneath the Earth might not be the big budget epic its publicity implied that it was, but it is a pretty solid B-movie typical of its era. Moreover, it at least has a reasonably original idea at its heart and runs with it. Director Montgomery Tully (a veteran of British B-movies, including fun space opera The Terrornauts (1967) and the intriguing ghost story The House on Marsh Road (1960), for whom this was his last directorial credit, keeps things moving along at a brisk, efficient, pace, providing ninety minutes or so of undemanding entertainment.
Alien invasion as teen comedy. Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) was perfect drive-in fare, combining teenagers, cars, incompetent adult authority figures including clueless cops, bumbling military types and, of course, flying saucers. Made in the wake of successful big budget alien invasion films like The Thing (1951), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and War of the Worlds (1953), movies like Invasion of the Saucer Men were the fifties equivalent to the sort of 'mockbusters' put out nowadays by the likes of The Asylum: cheap knock offs designed to ride on the popularity of similarly themed and/or titled bigger budgeted movies. Except that they were somehow far more enjoyable. Perhaps because they weren't made with that self conscious 'Hey look, we're so bad we're good' approach employed by today's direct to video 'mockbusters', instead focusing on giving their target audiences some simple cheap thrills and/or laughs.
They also tended to display a degree of originality - Saucer Men, for instance, wanders into the realms of the surreal with the titular aliens framing the lead teenager for a hit and run death so as to cover up their presence. Their knowledge of earth traffic regulations is remarkable, as they use their ability to inject alcohol into the human bloodstream via their claws to make teenagers look like drunk drivers. It's actually pretty good fun, with some great Paul Blaisdell designed aliens, surprisingly decent day for night photography and direction from B-movie veteran Edward L Cahn that keeps the film moving through its brisk sixty nine minute running time. Probably the most recognisable cast member, (for modern audiences) is Frank Gorshin, later The Riddler on the sixties Batman TV series, although contemporary audiences would have more immediately recognised Lyn Osborn - Cadet Happy from Space Patrol. Back in the 'dark ages', when, as a kid, I first became interested in these sorts of films, I was fascinated by a still of the aliens from this film, but back then it was never shown on TV, there was no VHS, let alone DVDs for it to be released on and the internet was still a distant dream in some nerd's imagination. Nowadays, you can stream it just about anywhere.
(Invasion of the Saucer Men was one of a number of low budget AIP B-movies which were later remade in colour by Larry Buchanan on even lower budgets for AIP TV and released directly to TV).
Back in the mid-fifties, at the height of its popularity, Stag featured dome of the more restrained covers in the men's magazine market, clearly aiming for some kind of 'respectability'. Featuring full page cover paintings with only one or two stories highlighted there, usually of the factual kind and using non-sensational language, Stag obviously saw itself as a cut above the other sex and violence obsessed men's magazines. By the late sixties, however, with magazine sales falling in the face of competition from other media, the magazine was going for broke, with cluttered covers clearly aimed at out sensationalising rival publications. Hence, the bewildering array of outrageous sounding story synopses covering the full gamut of men's magazine subject matter on this cover for the October 1969 issue.
Sex and the Red Menace combine for 'I Ran Castro's 6000-Girl Sex Ring', while we have sex and!crime in 'The Nudist Cult Blackmail Ring' and sex and bogus medical advice in 'How to Stop a Fight - Make Love!'. Jungle adventures and white explorers asserting their superiority over stereotypical 'primitive savages' feature in 'The Amazing Adventures of John Goddard', while we have more alarmist anti-Commie rhetoric in 'New Kremlin Purge: Strange Deaths of 34 Soviet Generals'. The only thing missing is a straightforward war story, although the 'Extra Book Bonus' (which is in addition to that issue's 'Exclusive Book Bonus') 'Bastard's Revenge' could fall into that category, (or just about any other with such a generic title). We also mustn't forget that there's more sex and medicine in 'My "Very Private" Nurse', (which could also be the synopsis of a seventies British sex comedy).
Crowded though this cover might seem, it is actually one of the restrained examples from the late sixties/early seventies era of Stag. This one features only two illustrations, a main one illustrating the featured story (albeit squeezed onto the cover's edge) and a subsidiary image illustrating a supporting story. Many covers from this period feature multiple paintings, (usually reduced size versions of older cover paintings), sometimes accompanied by photos, (by the latter half of 1970, photographic cover panels were starting to be favoured over paintings ). As the cover illustrations got smaller, they tended to be replaced by garishly coloured text panels carrying story titles and synopses in large sized fonts. The intent was obviously to try and make the magazine's cover and content as eye-catching as possible so as to stand out from competitors on the newsstand.
As the seventies progressed, the magazine, like many other men's magazines drifted into softcore territory, increasingly featuring photographic covers of women, at first in their underwear, later topless or fully nude, (but carefully posed so as to show nothing more than breasts and buttocks). The late seventies saw a change in ownership and a move into full on pornographic content.
I finally had the misfortune to see one of Mark IV's quartet of 'end times' themed films. Made between 1972 and 1983, these crudely made religious movies have proven popular with certain Christian denominations in the US. The one I caught was the second, A Distant Thunder (1978), which followed the first, A Thief in the Night (1972) after a gap of six years, with the continuing cast members looking correspondingly older but, sadly, no better actors. This one follows the heroine of the first film, Patty (played by Patty Dunning - most of the main cast seem to play characters with the same first name as their own), and her friends in trying to deal with the aftermath of 'The Rapture'. With all the devoted Christians - including Patty's grandmother and their husbands - having ascended to heaven, the US starts to slide into chaos as the Book of Revelations is enacted. In the makers' warped version of Christianity, converting after the event won't help: anyone who couldn't be bothered to accept Jesus into their lives and unquestioningly follow the tenets of some cracked fundamentalist theology has to suffer as Armageddon looms. 'But what about God as love?' asks Patty of her silver haired granny in a flashback. Apparently, according to grandma, that only applies before 'The Rapture' and to people who give over their lives to Kick Ass 'Take-No-Prisoners' Christ and his war on any rival belief system. Being secular, showing tolerance to the beliefs of others or merely mildly questioning the scriptures will get you condemned - first on earth during the 'End Times', then eternally in Hell.
The world view of these people is truly terrifying, rejecting out of hand science, reason and even compassion if it conflicts with their own narrow belief system. Even more scarily, though, is the fact that these beliefs seem to persist: A Distant Thunder lays out many of the fundamentals of the current conspiracy fantasies that seem to grip so many idiots. There's the whole 'World Government' created via the UN and trying to control our lives on the pretext of saving us - post 'Rapture' the United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency (UNITE) is created to govern the world during the emergency, restricting free movement and rationing food, fuel and access to vital services. If you don't comply with UNITE's edicts, you get rounded up by their armed paramilitary and taken away. Sound familiar? Then there's 'The Mark of the Beast' - if you don't agree to be stamped with it, you lose your access to food and services. Going back to Patty's grandma - the old codger makes an analogy between the mark and having to use a credit card instead of cash to buy things - both are a form of control. Another familiar refrain - only yesterday I saw on Twitter all the usual nutters fawning over Piers Corbyn, (a crackpot of such magnitude that he makes his brother, the cult leader Jeremy Corbyn, look sane and reasonable), for his 'defiance' of attempts by 'them' to impose the 'cashless' society by paying with cash at a card payment only supermarket. All the same nonsense about 'state surveillance' and the like were trotted out, (I'm pretty sure that neither MI5, GCHQ, the CIA or the WEF have any interest at all in the fact that I bought some yoghurt at Lidl yesterday and paid with a card). The 'cashless' society is the modern 'Mark of the Beast' and the WEF the new UNITE, it seems - and social media is the new Mark IV productions, spreading and sustaining this nonsense.
