Every year when Halloween comes around I think that I should do something here to mark the day. I don't know why - even when I can be bothered to do something seasonal, it is roundly ignored. Besides, Halloween just isn't a big deal these days. In truth, it never has been here in the UK. No matter how much they try to import the US vision of Halloween, it always ends up being a damp squib. Which shouldn't really be a surprise as, with Guy Fawkes Night just around the corner, who wants to be bother with some lame celebration of ghosts used as an excuse to extort confectionery from householders, when explosive devices can currently be bought across the counter in shops and shoved through letter boxes instead? 'Trick or Treat' provides only limited opportunities for kids to have fun, whereas Bonfire Night gives the opportunity for arson, terror and explosions. I know which one I preferred when I was a kid. Ah, the irresponsible things I did with fireworks back then. Actually, in truth, it continued well into adulthood - you wouldn't believe the simple fun you can have with firework rockets.
Anyway, I got to thinking what could be done to enliven Halloween these days. For one thing, kids need to get back to wearing appropriate costumes - there are just too many spacemen, cowboys and Barbies going around knocking on doors these days. Damn it, today I even saw a bloody pirate - what's that got to do with Halloween, for God's sake? Kids should be wearing something really terrifying this time of year - like a Suella Braverman mask. Imagine the fun they could have with that? Knocking on the doors of refugees and asylum seekers and shouting 'Trick or Deportation?' through the letterbox - that should scare them shitless. I did think that if any 'Trick or Treaters' were to knock on my door today, I should give them some strong hallucinogens disguised in sweet wrappers, so that they'd go on a drug fueled murder rampage after eating them. Which would be a good plot for a Halloween-themed horror film - and if one now comes out with a similar plot, I'll be expecting royalties, (I've had ideas ripped off before). Sadly, though, none came to my house. Not that I have any drugs to give them anyway, apart from prescription blood pressure medication, which might make them ill, but would be unlikely to trigger a bloody trail of mayhem. Still, there's always next year...
Horror Safari (1982) (aka Invaders of the Lost Gold), is an Italian-Filipino production boasting an impressive-looking cast of has beens, exploitation favourites and TV stars. Stuart Whitman and Edmond Purdom certainly fall into the first category, but while Purdom had long been a resident of Italian exploitation movies after the failure of his brief Hollywood career, it is sad to see a washed up Whitman, a perfectly decent second ranking leading man, reduced to appearing in these films. They are supported by exploitation regulars Laura Gemser, Woody Strode and Harold Sakata, while Glynis Barber, fresh from a stint in Blake's Seven, but prior to her starring turn in Dempsey and Makepeace, provides the glamour. Perhaps most surprising is the presence of Alan Birkinshaw in the director's chair - famous (or infamous) for directing the ultra low budget (no to mention utterly bizarre) British slasher Killer's Moon (1978). It is hard to know whether Horror Safari was a step up or step down for him, it was certainly a departure, bearing in mind that his first two features had been a sex comedy (Confessions of a Sex Maniac (1974)) and a slasher (the aforementioned Killer's Moon). In contrast to those two, Horror Safari is a jungle treasure hunt adventure, clearly taking some of its inspiration from the then popular Italian cannibal films, but without the flesh-eating natives. That said, the film's opening, with its hordes of hostile natives chasing a group of Japanese soldiers laden with gold through the Philippines jungle, spearing and decapitating various of them, is clearly intended to mislead the unwary into believing that they might just be getting some cannibal capers.
Despite this spirited 1945-set prologue, once the film flashes forward to the then present of the eighties it quickly gets bogged down in the details of the organisation of an expedition to recover the Japanese gold from the jungle. Smarmy rogue Edmond Purdom has learned the location of the gold from the only surviving Japanese soldier, (the other two committed suicide rather than speak to him - an understandable reaction to Purdom turning up on your doorstep), played by Harold Sakata, but he doesn't have the money to finance the expedition. Consequently, he's reluctantly forced to turn to wealthy Douglas Jefferson (David DeMaryn) for help. He, in turn, wants to have the expedition led by his own man, disgraced explorer Mark Forrest (Whitman), who had once tried to kill Purdom (again, entirely understandable). Yet more people join the expedition including Forrest's buddy Cal (Strode), Jefferson's daughter (Barber) and a boat captain and his other half (Gemser). The latter is also a former squeeze of Forrest's. Plus, there are a whole phalanx of porters. Unfortunately, it takes what seems like an age to assemble this lot, with the film past the half way point before we get back to that jungle, which is now seemingly bereft of crazed head-hunting natives.
Despite the lack of head-hunters, the jungle proves a perilous place to be, with various members of the expedition falling prey to hazards like crocodiles - although there's nothing graphic shown is all we get is an alternation between stock footage of a snarling crocodile intercut with a screaming actor, the camera zooming further in on his face each time, to denote the attack. The most mysterious death, though, is that of Gemser's character, who drops dead for apparent reason while bathing in a pool, (but not before having fulfilled the film's requirement for some female nudity, of course). Even Purdom vanishes along the way. Eventually, only Whitman, Barber and Sakata are left to find the cavern where the gold is hidden - except, of course, that dastardly Purdom isn't dead and turns up to try and kill them all and take the treasure for himself. The whole film is every bit as predictable as it sounds and moves at a deathly pace, to boot. Birkinshaw does his best with a turgid script that allows little room for plot or character development, let alone any action or thrills. The dialogue is clunky and delivered without conviction by most of the cast, while production values are generally poor. The jungle sequences generally look good, with Birkinshaw making the most the script will allow him of the Filipino locations. The only time he is really able to put together the sort of action sequence you'd expect in this sort of jungle adventure is in the World War Two set prologue, with its well staged and filmed chase through the jungle. Ultimately, Horror Safari is simply not exciting enough to be an action adventure film, nor is it horrific enough, offering only mild thrills, to qualify as any kind of jungle horror flick.
As a side note, a few years later Birkinshaw would direct another jungle-set film, a version Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None set on an African safari, for Harry Allan Towers. Whether it is any better than Horror Safari, I have no idea, but it dies star Frank Stallone - I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.
The archetypal Roger Corman science fiction B-movie, It Conquered the World (1956) features a typically small scale alien invasion from Venus that in noway justifies the grandiose title, (which Corman doubtless sold the film to financiers with). The film is undoubtedly most famous for its monster, a sort of perambulating giant cucumber with a face, (or rather half a cucumber as it appears cut off at the waist and has no visible legs), which is the vanguard of an alien invasion. Naturally, it immediately hides out in a cave near a small town and army base and sets in motion its plan, which involves mind control of key citizens via bat-like flying parasites. It is aided by naive and idealistic scientist Lee van Cleef (in an early role), with whom it has been in radio communication prior to its arrival. Obviously, he's the sort of dupe who, if this was a cold war propaganda movie, would fall for the commie rhetoric put out by Soviet agents.
Luckily for the earth, though, this a low budget film, so not only are there only seven more of these creatures waiting to invade from Venus, but the one already on earth can't manufacture more than eight of those parasitic mind control things. Despite the local General succumbing to Venusian mind control early on and sending the local military force off on unscheduled manouevres, they figure out something is wrong and eventually surround that cave. All ten of them, (it's a low budget movie, don't forget). But it still takes van Cleef's colleague, red blooded, two-fisted, all-American scientist Peter Graves to put paid to the giant cucumber with a blow torch. The film was allegedly shot in ten days and looks it but, like most Corman pictures, it is curiouly entertaining. At only sixty nine minutes it moves at quite a pace, leaving little time to worry too much about its absurdities while it is playing. It is also surprisingly ruthless - the characters taken over by the Venusian, including Graves' wife, are apparently beyond hope as summarily dispatched - Corman isn't interested in delivering happy endings to any character in this film, no matter how sympathetic they might be. Which gives the film something of an edge compared to other, similar, B-movies of the era.
It's a given that in a vigilante movie, the bad guys have to be utterly irredeemable scumbags in order to maintain audience sympathy for the protagonists as they slaughter them without mercy in the film's second half. Director/producer William Lustig certainly doesn't skimp in this respect - the street gang raising everybody's ire in his Vigilante (1982) really are a bunch of complete degenerates. In between their usual harassment of the elderly, stabbings, beatings, robberies, home invasions and rapes, one of them even finds time to blow away a small child with a double barrelled shotgun. You just know that the child's father, hitherto law-abiding blue collar worker Robert Forster, is going to be sent so far over the edge by this that he's going to end up joining buddy Fred Williamson's vigilante band. Indeed, in terms of content, the film is strictly by the book as far as films about street justice go: all the familiar tropes are there - greasy bent lawyers and corrupt judges ensuring that the gang's leader gets off Scot free, the hero finding himself on the wrong side of the law and ending up behind bars for contempt after an angry courtroom outburst and the escalating cycle of violence as he starts to take his revenge. What sets Vigilante apart from a thousand other low budget revenge movies, though, is its treatment of the subject matter. When Forster's character winds up in prison, still refusing to countenance Williamson's approach to justice, the plot splits into two strands, one following Forster's brutal prison experiences, the other Williamson and co as they try to eliminate a neighbourhood drug problem by tracking down and eliminating the kingpin financing it.
Naturally, Forster's experiences inside - fighting off various violent inmates who operate with the collusion of the guards - ultimately desensitise him toward the use of violence as a legitimate means of defence. In parallel, the ruthless beatings handed out by Willamson's group in their quest for information, culminating in the gunning down of a local Mafia figure, underline just how desensitised to violence that they have become on the outside, thanks to their constant exposure to violent crime. The message is clear - even if the criminals are caught and sent to jail, their experience there will ensure that they come out hardened violent offenders, but if you stay outside, even as a law-abiding citizen, the daily experience of modern urban violent crime will turn you into a violent bastard as well. A bleak perspective emphasised by subsequent plot developments, with Forster's revenge killing of the gang leader (assisted by Williamson's vigilantes), results in collateral damage, as Williamson guns down a gun-toting prostitute at the scene and the rest of the gang, wrongly believing that corrupt cops had killed their leader in a shakedown gone wrong, instigate a series of police killings. Sickened by the fact that he has killed a man, who, it turns out wasn't the one who pulled the trigger on his infant son, Forster prepares to leave town. On his way out, though, he spots the gang member who was responsible for the murder, resulting in a series of chases on foot and by car, culminating in Forster finding that having killed once, killing again isn't as difficult, especially when fueled by rage. The film ends with him completely desensitised and cold bloodedly taking out others he blames for creating the situation, starting with the crooked judge.
The message, once again, is clear: the whole system is rotten to the core and the only hope of changing anything is to tear it down. Not, perhaps, a terribly original message, but one that Vigilante expounds surprisingly well. Lustig wisely avoids anything too graphic - the child's murder, for instance, isn't shown in any detail, likewise the attack and sexual assault on his mother - but his depiction of the violence, in large part through implication, is nonetheless disturbing and effective. That said, while he avoids he graphic, the film still has plenty of satisfying action, from Williamson chasing a drug dealer on foot around a derelict site, to the climactic car chase, which is extremely well staged and very exciting. Despite a low budget, the film has good production values, with Lustig making excellent use of his New York settings - all run down urban neighbourhoods, derelict buildings and abandoned industrial facilities, with Winter shooting making them look even bleaker. The whole thing has a terrific, gritty look, with grey being the dominant colour, with the entire city seeming inhospitable: any public building, be it a court, a hospital or a prison, feels equally impersonal and unwelcoming.
The script, by Richard Vetere, handles the whole question of the legitimacy of vigilantism well, with Williamson's group initially presented to the audience as simply part of the community, offering the sort of protection to vulnerable citizens that the police and justice system seemingly cannot. But as we witness more of their activities and their ruthless and violent pursuit of those behind the local drug trade, their actions start seeming far more questionable, sinister even, as it becomes clear that their motivations might not be altogether altruistic, as they all too often seem to be getting a kick from their use of violence. Obviously, the more violence they use, the more desensitised to it they become, so it has to be escalated each time in order to get that kick. Forster, of course, follows a similar course as he navigates prison life, finding that, just as on the streets, there are no safe places - a brutal fight in the showers driving home the point as a naked Forster has to face a pair of vicious thugs. Interestingly, the script presents its plot not as a detailed narrative, but rather as a series of set-pieces - the home invasion, the court room sequences, the prison scenario, etc - with the sort of detailed expository linking scenes you'd expect largely missing. The result is a fast-paced, staccato rhythm, but never confusing, as, despite the lack of detailed exposition, it is always clear where the film is going.
As with many of his other films, Lustig doesn't let a lack of budget prevent him from putting together a pretty decent cast who can more than do the subject matter justice. Robert Forster, an actor hugely underrated for much of his career, gives a powerful performance in the lead, his character left both shell-shocked and bewildered by the violence that has been visited, out of the blue, upon his family, clinging to the idea that following the rules will bring him justice. Fred Williamson makes for a great and highly convincing urban vigilante, hardened by the constant violence he sees around him. Rutanya Alder is somewhat underused as Forster's wife, who unwittingly sparks off events by standing up to the gang leader at a gas station, but nonetheless gives a good performance in her scenes. Willie Colon and Don Blakely as the two main gang members give suitably scuzzy performances, delivering a pair of truly hateful characters. Carol Lynley has an extended cameo as a crusading Assistant DA ultimately defeated by the system, while the great Joe Spinell has a small, but memorable role as a slimy and corrupt lawyer. Woody Strode is an old prison lag who helps Forster, Richard Bright is one of Williamson's vigilantes and Vincent Beck the dodgy Judge. All give memorable performances that greatly enhance the film. I've never yet seen a William Lustig film that I didn't enjoy and Vigilante is no exception. It moves briskly, has good dialogue and performances, develops its plot with clarity and logic and delivers the goods in terms of action and incident. Most notably, it doesn't fall into the usual traps that bedevil too many other vigilante movies: it neither appears to endorse the actions of its protagonists, nor does it lecture its audience on the evils of taking the law into one's own hands, instead opting to allow them to make up their own minds.
Those God damned commies are beating us at sex too, now! Is there no end to the benefits that Marxist-Leninism can bring to the proletariat? Or do you have to be a party member to benefit, with the peasants still confined to twice yearly fumblings beneath a pile of blankets on the anniversaries of the revolution and Lenin's birthday? I'm sure that the story 'Are Russians Better Lovers' in the August 1965 edition of True Danger addressed all of these questions. I'm assuming that the cover painting illustrates 'Revenge of the Nazi Love Slaves', as it features Nazis, whips and a chained up semi-naked woman. I love the way that the Nazi (or Jap, Russki, Red Chinese, Cuban, Hell's Angel etc) brutes wielding the whips always allow the unfortunate women they are torturing to preserve their dignity by leaving, at the very least, their underwear intact. They might be bastards, but they're considerate bastards. (Even with the Fuhrer's portrait looking on, they don't go any further than cutting her bra straps). Despite this surprising display of sensitivity, you can guarantee that before the word count for that story is used up, that woman and her fellow captives will have escaped and done something terrible to those Nazi guys.
Other delights trailed on the cover promise even more sleaze and sensationalism of the kind favoured by men's magazines. We've 'World's Fair Vice Rackets' (which sound a bit mundane and dated) and 'The Secret Jet Set Hell Harem', (which sounds far more up to date). Damn it, you just know those jet setters had to be up to some sort of sex-related shenanigans - turns out they have their own harems. On jet liners, no doubt. Flying around the world, delivering sex to the wealthy and privileged. Or something like that - the actual story is probably far tamer. More startling than either of these stories, though, is that 'Free Bonus Insert', which promises 'Flash-News: Dad Chains Bad Girl Full Year'. This raises all sorts of questions - was the 'bad girl' just some random young female chained up by some guy who was a father? Which sounds pretty sinister - did he keep her chained up in the basement and periodically 'punish' her? Even more disturbing though, is the thought that we should take the headline literally: that a father chained his actual daughter up for a year? Just what did this girl (be it his daughter or someone else's) do that was 'bad' enough to warrant being restrained in this way? Did she steal bubblegum from his store? Did she wear a skirt that ended above her knees? Come to think of it, just how old was she? (The accompanying photo seems to show one of those twenty eight year old 'school girls' so beloved of these publications, posing in her underwear - the height of 'badness'). This has to be one of the most troubling story titles I've ever come across on a men's magazine cover. Still, it was 1965 and those kids were starting to do all sorts of sinful and unAmerican things, like grow their hair long and wear open neck shirts...
Despite no longer being part of the world of full-time work, I still seem to do most of my film watching at weekends. Which means that I usually have to choose my viewing matter carefully, as I don't want to risk wasting my watching hours on absolute clunkers. Sometimes, however, I get it badly wrong. This past weekend, for instance, two thirds of my viewing experience was disappointing, t put it mildly. The fault was entirely mine - poor time management with regard to other activities meant that I just couldn't schedule my first choices, so I was left trawling through various low-rent streaming services looking for alternatives. To be fair, one such choice, William Lustig's Vigilante (1982) - which I'd been meaning to watch for a while, anyway - turned up trumps. The others - a poorly dubbed and edited Kung Fu film and a Canadian obscurity - turned out to be pretty much the dregs. With regard to the former, I should have learned my lesson years ago that most Hong Kong martial arts films are pretty ropey, even without the bad English dubbing and choppy editing in their export versions. They're turned out cheaply and without much care - 18 Bronze Girls of Shaolin (1983) was no exception, with a confusing story that made no sense whatsoever and poor production values. The Canadian film Title Shot (1979) looked more promising, even boasting a Hollywood A-lister in Tony Curtis, (albeit well past his prime, but nonetheless a genuine star). But it quickly became clear that Title Shot was actually something of a vanity project on the part of Richard Gabourie. Who? I hear you ask. Well, he was a Canadian actor who decided that only way he was going to get a leading role in a Canadian film was if he wrote it himself. The result was Three Card Monte (1978), which garnered some critical acclaim and won Gabourie a couple of awards, but did little at the box office.
Title Shot was his follow-up. Clearly deciding that the way to get popular success was to make a genre film, this time around Gabourie wrote himself a crime thriller, with himself in the lead as a troubled cop who finds himself caught up in a gambling conspiracy. The problem is that Gabourie simply wasn't a compelling enough actor to play this sort of lead - his screen presence is limited and his characterisation one-note. Curtis' presence in the film provides a harsh contrast: even when dealing with material as weak and inferior as Title Shot's script, he is fascinating to watch, dominating his scenes. Said script so poor that the film becomes so confusing as to be incomprehensible, with sub-plots seemingly forgotten about half way through and a main narrative so tangled that it becomes impossible to follow, unable to hold the viewer's attention. As far as I could make out, it involved Tony Curtis' character somehow trying to play the odds on boxing matches with the aid of computer analysis, before resorting to plotting to assassinate the heavyweight champion during a match. (Presumably the idea being that the other boxer - in whom Curtis had a financial interest - would then be named champion by default). Despite seemingly interminable scenes of exposition, none of these plot points ever seem to be properly explained. The film can't even provide a proper climax - while the assassination is foiled, Curtis doesn't seem to be brought to justice, his character seemingly having been forgotten about. It didn't help that the whole thing looked incredibly scuzzy, although, to be fair, the version I saw did look as if it might have been a tenth generation VHS copy. On the plus side, underneath the scuzziness, the film does have quite a gritty feel, mostly shot on some wintry looking (and feeling) Toronto locations, but ultimately that wasn't enough to compensate for a poor script and weak central performance. Still, it does feature Michael Wincott's first film appearance, as a robber, so that's something in its favour, I suppose.
Every so often I like to air an unpopular opinion about some film or TV series that seems to be beloved by many, but which I think is overrated or just plain crap. Recently, my heart sank when a streaming channel I get via my Roku box, finished its re-run of seventies/eighties cheesefest The Love Boat and replaced it with Quantum Leap. I'm sorry, but I have never understood the following that the latter has garnered. I tried watching it when it first started showing in the UK, but quickly gave up as it became evident that, despite an apparently interesting science fiction premise, this was, in reality, simply a peg to hang a series of utterly mundane, often nostalgia-driven, period dramas upon. I mean, it sets up the idea of its protagonist being able to travel through time, then confines his time-travelling span to his own lifetime. OK, I know that made it cheaper to produce as everything was set in the US of the fifties, sixties and seventies, but it immediately precluded any interesting science fictional or proper historical adventures. Then we have the problem of the apparent randomness of his jumps into different people's bodies at different times - they aren't random. Each time, he's put there for a purpose to 'set something right' in their lives (and change history in the process - but we'll come to the problems that sets up later). But who or what is guiding his jumps? Aliens? Some kind of authority that stands outside of time and is dedicated to maintaining the 'true' timeline? God? Sadly, it always seemed that the programme's makers tended toward the latter explanation - both the most boring option and one that sits diametrically opposed to its science fiction premise. Worst of all, if it really is God guiding him to solve other people's problems each week, (although, to be absolutely fair, the makers never actually deigned to give a fully coherent explanation, just strong hints), then doesn't it just reduce it all to Highway to Heaven with time travel?
Then there's the problem with our hero's changing of history every time he 'sets something right'. Each of these would, obviously, change the very future from which he comes. Indeed, logically, back in that future, his colleagues helping him shouldn't be able to tell that history had changed, because their memories of it would have changed, as would his. Yet, every episode they are able to tell him how it has changed. While changes to one or two personal time lines might not have a huge effect on the future, cumulatively, they could well create significant alterations to history - yet this is never addressed, with his future apparently remaining constant. Then there's the very idea of 'setting things right' - who says that history didn't work out the way it should have in the first place? This brings us to the idea, embodied in Quantum Leap, that there is, somehow, a 'correct' timeline for history and that certain events in the past have 'changed history'. Which is nonsense: history isn't a river, it doesn't flow down a natural route from which it can be diverted. History is simply an accumulation of events - what happens happens and its consequences are history. There was no predetermined path. Even if there was, as Quantum Leap seems to presuppose, who or what has been derailing it to the extent that someone needs to change it? Again, the issue is never addressed in this ill-thought out series. Which is what I really resented - the pretence on Quantam Leap's part that it was some kind of science fiction show when, in reality, the science fiction premise is simply a gimmick to enable what amounts to an anthology series with a continuing central characters involved in some very mundane (and not very interesting) adventures. It never tries to properly explore any of the more interesting issues it
raises, instead opting for the laziest path possible and relying on
schmaltz and 'heart-warming' middle America values to try and build an
audience. Look, if I'd wanted to watch weekly tales of divinely inspired do-goodery then I'd have watched the aforementioned Highway to Heaven. Basically, Quantum Leap is just sentimental pap of the worst kind and, frankly, I preferred The Love Boat - that had no pretensions and knew that it was cheesy feel-good prime time fodder.
Our reactions to unfolding events can take strange forms. The grim news from Israel and Gaza, for instance, prompted me to dust off my copy of the old Avalon Hill board wargame 'Arab-Israeli Wars'.
This was the third and last of a series of tactical wargames, all based around the same game system and rules, published by Avalon Hill in the late sixties and early seventies. (This was the way we simulated combat back in the days before computer graphics and first person shooters). The earlier titles - 'Panzer Blitz' and 'Panzer Leader - simulated armoured warfare on the Eastern and Western fronts ,respectively, of World War Two in Europe. All three games provide a series of scenarios, of increasing scale and complexity, based on actual battles from their respective eras and locations. Unusually for the time, the games used a series of anamorphic boards which could be arranged in a variety of ways to represent the different battlegrounds. Obviously, this meant that the terrain was somewhat generic, but did allow for some ability to represent actual locations. Here are a couple of the 'Arab-Israeli Wars' boards, (including the Suez canal board), with some of the game counters set up, (the grey ones represent Israeli forces, the light brown, Arab forces):
Interestingly, I also have a copy of the SPI equivalent, 'October War' which, like the Avalon Hill game, was one of three tactical games based around the same game system, the others being 'Panzer 44' and 'Mech War 77'. Unlike the Avalon Hill game, my copy of 'October War' is the original magazine version, published in 'Strategy and Tactics'. (It was later published as a stand alone in a variety of different packaging).
Unlike 'Arab-Israeli Wars', the SPI game confines itself to a narrower historical period, simulating only battles from the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Another significant difference is that none of the SPI tactical games used anamorphic playing boards, instead opting for larger, more generic, single piece map boards, which obviously compromised their ability to accurately represent actual battlefields far more than the Avalon Hill boards. Again, here's the 'October War' board with some counters set up, (the colour schemes are more or less the same as those used by Avalon Hill):
For quite a while now I've been mulling over dusting off some of my old board wargames and replaying some of them. I certainly have the time to do so these days. So far, though, I've been daunted by the prospect of wading through all of those rule books again - some of the game mechanic can be pretty dense. While it might seem a bit tasteless that the current tragedy in Israel and Gaza has prompted me to get out these particular games, but they do have some of the most straightforward rules systems, making them easier to get back into. Indeed, the Avalon Hill 'Panzer Blitz' system is the one I'm most familiar with and 'Arab-Israeli Wars' the member of the series I've played the least, so it has a certain logic to it, I suppose.
Jack the Ripper (1976) is another of those European co-productions that seeks to completely fictionalise a piece of British history, filtering it through very distorted lens. To ensure that Victorian London's most notorious serial killer is well and truly distorted, this German-Swiss co-production was written and directed by Jesus Franco, with the sort of off-beat results you might expect. Beyond the fact that it features a murderer who stalks around Whitechapel murdering and dismembering prostitutes, the film bears little relationship to the actual Jack the Ripper murders of the 1880s. None of the killings resemble any of theactual murders and the number of victims is vague, with bodies piling up left, right and centre, (in actuality there are five murders attributed to the real Ripper). Perhaps most bizarrely, the film ends with the Ripper being arrested! (To be fair, he utters the words 'You'll never prove it' to the police as he's led away - despite the fact that he has been caught in the act of trying to murder another woman - presumably explaining why official records in the real world list the case as being 'unsolved' and the perpetrator as being 'unknown'). The depiction of Victorian London is likewise somewhat off the wall, with the streets looking far too clean and continental, with the murders all seemingly taking place in one small area. Indeed, the sense of geography, as in many continental films supposedly set in England, is all over the place. 'Are we going to Sherwood Forest?' asks one potential victim as the Ripper takes her on a carriage ride, ignoring the fact that Nottinghamshire is considerably to the North of London. (Unless, of course, 'Sherwood Forest' was some sort of speciality performed by prostitutes in Victorian London - 'Sherwood Forest? That'll be two shillings extra sir').
But the lack of historical (let alone geographical) veracity is irrelevant to Franco. In crafting his script, he was clearly more interested in exploring the psycho-sexual motivations of his fictional killer than he was in recreating the actual historical situation. The fact that the real Jack the Ripper's identity remains unknown provides Franco with a blank canvas on which to create his version of a Victorian psycho killer. Whereas other Jack the Ripper films and TV series have woven elaborate conspiracies involving illegitimate Royal offspring, Freemasons and deranged Royal surgeons, Franco's film provides a personal psychological explanation for his Ripper's desire to murder prostitutes. As we learn in the course of the film, his own mother was a prostitute and he had suffered abuse at her hands while a child, engendering a love-hate relationship with her memory. He seeks out prostitutes who resemble her, having sex with them before dismembering them. most, he abducts and takes to a botanical garden somewhere up the Thames, where he sexually assaults them, then cuts them up while they are still alive. With the aid of a female accomplice who works there, he then dumps their remains in the river. (In one memorable sequence, a pair of fishermen snag a dismembered hand as it floats downstream). Franco's approach means that the film is strong on character development but lighter on gore than you might expect from the subject matter. (There are, nonetheless, a couple of disturbingly bloody sequences, one showing the aftermath of the Ripper's murder of a prostitute at a brothel, the other when he cuts off the breast of his penultimate victim).
The portrayal of the Ripper is by far the film's strongest aspect, with Franco benefitting from the casting of Klaus Kinski in the role. Kinski was always reliable casting when it came to weirdos and psychos but his performance here goes beyond the regular sort of Euro-horror psycho often seen in such films, giving a somewhat nuanced characterisation of a deeply disturbed character who is a kindly doctor tending to the poor by day (Dr Orloff, no less), but a ruthless killer by night, with the lines between the two gradually blurring as the police close in and his madness reaches a crescendo. His Ripper is as much sexual predator as he is crazed killer, homing in on potential victims, setting them at ease with his gentlemanly demeanour before sexually assaulting them. Kinski's frenzied sexual assaults on his victims, clawing their clothes away and physically molesting them, are actually far more disturbing than any of the gore in the dismemberment scenes. The realism and conviction he brings to these scenes is all the more disturbing in light of what we now know about the real Klaus Kinski - a sexual predator and serial sexual abuser of female co-stars. Indeed, the sexual assaults in Jack the Ripper are uncomfortably close to those described by real-life actresses who worked with him, leaving the contemporary viewer suspecting that he wasn't so much acting a role than enacting a sexual fantasy.
Which isn't to take anything away from Franco's direction which, even without this knowledge on the viewer's part, stages these assaults in such a way as to ensure maximum discomfort for the audience. The assault on the 'Sherwood Forest' girl, in which she is pinned against a tree in a fog wreathed wood, evoking memories of classic monochrome horror movies where the worst a girl could face in such a setting was a mummy or a werewolf, for instance, Kinski's frenzied sexual attack culminates in him stabbing her in the abdomen with a scalpel - a clear and twisted substitute for sexual penetration. His last attack, on a ballerina who is also the girlfriend of the chief detective on the case, is made even more disturbing through the fact that she, pf all the women he targets, most resembles his mother, with whom he explicitly identifies her as he tries to rape her.
With it being clear that Franco's focus is exploring the psyche of his
main protagonist, the film's plotting becomes perfunctory - there is no suspense as we know that every time he targets another woman, she will die horribly. Moreover, Franco's approach to the subject matter means that the Ripper's
identity is known to the audience from the outset, severely
compromising any opportunities for mystery. The
police investigation, for instance, quickly becomes repetitive as the victims stack up, with the leading police inspector bizarrely gathering together anyone connected with the victim variously in pubs or Scotland Yard, Agatha Christie-style, and asking them the same questions over and over, (bizarrely, it always seems to be exactly the same group of people called in this way each time). The only 'witness' who proves remotely helpful is a blind man, who gives cryptic comments about the killer's smell, (medical spirits and the aroma of an exotic plant not native to the UK and found only in botanical gardens). Things only pick up toward the end of the film when, the inspector having finally put together the clues, it becomes a race against time as to whether he can get to the botanical gardens in time to stop Kinski from carving up his girlfriend. While the production values are generally pretty good, with lots of
location shooting on narrow, fog-wreathed continental back streets
pretending (badly) to be Whitechapel, Franco is never able to conjure up any
real atmosphere - everything is too clean and brightly lit. This, along with the lacklustre plotting and some bland performances from the supporting cast, leaves Jack the Ripper relying upon Kinski's performance and sheer screen presence to carry the entire film. Which it almost does.
Franco's Jack the Ripper also demonstrates the difficulty of properly judging a foreign-language film when presented in an English-language version. Whoever prepared the English version I saw clearly did it as cheaply as possible. All of the dialogue has been dubbed by what sound like the cast of an amateur dramatics society doing a read-through in a village hall, (the reverberation on every voice is terrible). The delivery is universally flat, with absolutely no intonation or variation feeling completely detached from the on-screen action, exactly as if the dialogue was simply being read from a script at a table, without the benefit of the voice artist being able to see a playback of the scenes they are dubbing. Various 'Cor blimey, guv'nor' type accents being sported by the working class characters simply adds to the sense that one is watching an elaborate parody play out. The situation is made even worse by the fact that whoever prepared the English language script seemed to think that the action was taking place in Elizabethan rather than Victorian England, with the dialogue full of people sating things like 'Prithee'. Obviously, this completely undermines the film as a whole, reducing the dialogue to farce and making it extremely difficult to judge it on its own merits. (It is to Kinski's credit that his performance retains much of its power, despite some terrible dubbing). But, if one can set aside the awfulness of the voice acting and script of English language version and ignore the fact that it is meant to be based on historical events, Jack the Ripper makes for an interesting viewing experience, a period curiosity from Jess Franco with a stand out (and very disturbing) performance from Kinski.
I've long been of the opinion that Harry Allan Towers' films all too often flatter to deceive: they frequently offer up a gallery of star names, exotic locations and the promise of action and adventure, but usually fail to deliver on the latter items, instead turning out to be disappointingly flat. House of a 1,000 Dolls (1968) is no exception, never really delivering on its promise of sleazy and exotic thrills, despite its subject matter of a 'white slavery' ring based at the titular establishment. All the elements are there: the exotic location, in this case Tangiers, the name cast - Vincent Price, Martha Hyer and George Nader head it up and the bizarre touches - stage magician Price's nightclub act which acts as a front for the kidnapping of women across Europe. But it never really sparks into life. The film's fundamental problem is that it never makes good on its implicit promise of sex and sleaze - the ';House of a 1,000 Dolls' itself, the supposedly high class brothel the abducted women are forced to work in, is surprisingly peripheral to much of the action.
We see next to nothing of the actual activities going on there - there are no orgies, kinky sex or even regular sex on display, just some girls in elaborate lingerie. (Vincent Price was apparently convinced that a pornographic version of these scenes were shot when the main cast were off-set, but if such a version exists, it has never surfaced). We keep getting told of the terrible punishments which await those girls who try to escape, but the only evidence of these we see is Diane Bond being whipped, (while still wearing her underwear). Instead, the film settles down to be a pretty conventional mystery thriller as Nader and his wife investigate the murder of their friend who had been on the trail of his wife who had disappeared after being an audience participant in Price's act in Vienna. With Price and his wife's involvement in the plot being known to the audience from the outset, the main mystery centres on the identity of the 'King of Hearts', the shady figure behind the whole prostitution racket.
Despite ultimately being disappointing in terms of its subject matter, House of a 1,000 Dolls is actually pretty well made, with a slick look and good production values. During the sixties and early seventies, the majority of Towers films were directed by either Don Sharp, Jesus Franco and Jeremy Summers. The latter, who took charge of House of a 1,000 Dolls, was probably the most conventional of the three, lacking either Don Sharp's muscular focus on action to drive his films along, or Franco's quirkiness and eye for the bizarre. Nonetheless, here he makes good use of his Spanish locations (standing in for Tangiers), the sunny tourist-friendly vistas contrasting nicely with the sleazy subject matter and violent goings on. The action sequences are also well staged, (not surprising, perhaps, bearing in mind the number of episodes of The Saint that Summers had previously directed), making good use of some unusual locations - a chase and fire-bombing in a car scrap yard, for example or a fight staged against the background of rusting steam locomotives and rolling stock awaiting the cutter's torch in a railway yard, not to mention the climactic roof top confrontation between Nader and Price. Summers also has a good eye an unusual camera angle, with a chase and fight on a staircase being filmed from below, in the stairwell.
The film's trappings all add a certain frisson to the film, with Price and Hyer's act in a seedy nightclub being a highlight. Also, the kidnap victims being delivered to the brothel inside a coffin in the back of a hearse provides the film with a suitably bizarre and creepy opening. Unfortunately, these, along with summers' various directorial flourishes, all turn out to be merely window dressing, with the film as a whole never living up to the promise that they hold out to audiences. As exploitation goes, it is all pretty tame. Still, while it might be a disappointment, House of the 1,000 Dolls is at least enjoyable to look at while it is on, with the cast doing their best with towers' overly talky script. Price, in particular, is memorable as Manderville the magician, looking like Dracula in his top hat and cape, as he lurks around the streets of Tangiers and finally tries to flee across the brothel's roof. Watching it, though, you can't help but feel that it might have been more suitable subject matter for Jesus Franco, something of an expert when it came to films about captive women, who would have guaranteed some sleaze.
Let's head into the weekend with another blast of men's pulp goodness. I'm assuming that the cover of the August 1961 issue of Men Today is illustrating the story 'Handmaidens of the Lash of Lust' - after all, there's the obligatory semi-naked and bound woman who is obviously being given a bloody good lashing by the uniformed girl holding, well, a lash. Judging by the uniforms, (if you can call what the female soldier is wearing a 'uniform', as it appears to consist simply of a jacket worn over her underwear), and the beard worn by the male soldier, we're in post-revolutionary Cuba. It was, of course, the height of the Cold War and Castro's Cuba was the new communist bogeyman on America's doorstep, so naturally the men's magazines quickly promoted them to front cover villains, along the Nazis, Red Chinese and Soviets. A few years later, they'd be joined by the Viet-Cong. But don't worry, they haven't forgotten those more established villains in this issue - we've several other varieties of commies present in this month's edition.
Most obviously, we've got 'Brides of Pain for the Russian Monster', a title holding out the promise of more sex and sadism being visited on nubile young girls by Godless red bastards. Judging by the covers of men's pulps from this era, sexual sadism was a popular fantasy amongst American men. Then there's 'The Wild Escape of the Hungarian Harlots', which I'm tempted to think has something to do with the Gabor sisters, who seemed to be everywhere in US films and TV at the time, (not to mention marrying everyone). I suspect, however, that it is a tale of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, chronicling the harrowing ordeal of young women trying to escape those Russian commie animals as they put down the uprising. The fact that they are described as 'Harlots' is doubtless intended to emphasise just how depraved those reds were - they even oppressed sex workers, those brave purveyors of free of enterprise and sexual exploitation.
There's also plenty of the staples of the men's magazines on display: 'Exposed! Classroom Cheats' covers the perennial fascination with those degenerate teenagers, while 'I Pick Up the Dead' conjures up unfortunate images of a story about necrophilia, but is probably a sensational tale of the mortuary drivers who have to collect the corpses of murder victims. The best of all though is 'The Lesbian Epidemic - Our National Shame', another sensational expose of America's favourite sexual orientation. In both men's pulps and mass market sleaze paperback novels at this time there was what can only be described as an obsession with lesbianism - always claiming to condemn it as an 'unnatural practice', while simultaneously titillating potential readers with the promise of some 'disgusting' girl-on-girl action. This particular story headline is one of the more outrageous takes on the subject, effectively equating lesbianism with a sexually transmitted disease that threatens to 'infest' all those wholesome heterosexual American women. Because we all know, if you get one lesbian moving into the street, before you know it, your wife, your daughter, your mistress, probably that attractive schoolteacher who lives two doors down and even the lady from the local store, will be going at it hammer and tongs - and if you are lucky, they'll let you watch...
I try not to post about politics here any more. It is all too depressing and like almost everyone else, I'm just hanging on now until we reach that inevitable General Election and hopefully kick these corrupt bastards out of power. In the meantime, I just gird my loins and try to endure as best I can every new bit of reactionary, neo-fascist spite and bile puked up by the likes of Suella Braverman. But I do feel moved to say something about the current situation in Gaza and Israel. You know, it is perfectly possible to simultaneously condemn the recent actions of Hamas in Israel, attacking and killing civilians, while also expressing sympathy for Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are, in response, being bombed and shelled indiscriminately by the Israeli military. Neither action is justified - Hamas' actions in Israel are reprehensible, while the Israeli reaction is disproportionate and equally inhumane. neither is going to do anything to resolve the long-term problems in the region. But, if we are to go by social media and even the British press, holding such a position is tantamount to supporting terrorism and you might as well have murdered Israeli babies yourself. It is these sorts of rabid idiocies which mostly keep me off of social media these days.
But the thing that has sickened me most about the current situation in Gaza is the opportunistic way in which various figure on the right have seized upon it to pursue their usual twisted agendas. We have, for instance, the aforementioned Suella Braverman taking the opportunity to use the crisis to try and get the police to enact her repressive fantasies by arresting people for doing things like displaying a Palestinian flag. Is this really the sort of country we've become, where possession of flags can be classified as a terrorist act? But apparently, it can be - as can expressing support for Hamas. Distasteful though many might find either of these things, in a free society they surely can't be criminalised in this way - people can think and feel whatever they like. If, however, they should take it a stage further and act on this support by, perhaps, throwing a brick through the window of a Jewish owned shop, or harassing Jewish people than, yes, that would be criminal and possibly could be classified as an act of terror, (the opposite, of course, of Jewish people harassing Palestinians in the UK, would also be criminal and possibly an act of terror). Worst of all, though, is the likes of the Daily Mail and its rancid columnists using the Gaza situation as an excuse to resume its war on the BBC, with their childish calls for the corporation to call Hamas 'terrorists'.
Perhaps they should bear in mind that back in the late forties, when the Palestine was being administered by the UK on behalf of the UN, the Israelis were the 'terrorists', killing British soldiers in the name of establishing an Israeli state. (In point of fact, after one particularly brutal incident, there were anti-Jewish riots in Liverpool - where the dead soldiers came from. Another piece of British history conveniently swept under the carpet when it became expedient to treat Israel as an ally). Back then, the likes of the Mail was railing against these 'wanted terrorists' (as the UK authorities described them) - many of whom later became senior members of the Israeli government. The point I'm floundering around trying to make here is that, as Spike Milligan was fond of saying on 'The Goon Show', 'it all depends on where you are standing'. Terrorism is a relative thing: one man's evil terrorist is another's heroic freedom fighter and vice versa - history, as written by the victors, will ultimately decide which is which, so it really is pointless arguing over who calls who a terrorist in the here and now. But hey, this situation is all too depressing and a moral minefield. So, I'll be returning to the safer ground of exploitation films and video nasties - you know where you stand with them.
Mysterious hooded vigilantes stringing up criminals 'beyond the law' in London and dumping the bodies in the Thames. Scotland Yard baffled as the secret society of vigilantes keep stealing their hangman's rope for their executions. A serial killer on the loose and criminals using the vigilantes' modus operandi to cover up their own crimes. All in German and glorious monochrome - it can only be another Edgar Wallace 'Krimi'. Well, sort of - while The Mad Executioners (1963), to give the film its English language title, was originally released in Germany as being an 'Edgar Wallace' film, Rialto, who made the real Edgar Wallace 'Krimis' threatened to sue, as the film was actually based on a novel by Edgar Wallace's son: Bryan Edgar Wallace. The publicity campaign was adjusted accordingly, but didn't diminish the film's popularity.
It wasn't surprising that the success of Rialto's series of Edgar Wallace adaptations would spawn imitators and where better to find inspiration for them than with the work of his lesser known son? Hence, a series of films were produced in West Germany during the sixties carrying his name. While some were adaptations of his novels and stories, others simply featured screenplays worked on by Bryan Edgar Wallace. Produced by CCC Films, the series also crossed over with the company's series of 'Dr Mabuse' films - sequels to Fritz Lang's The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960) - with 1963's Scotland Yard vs Dr Mabuse, which puts the title character into the milieu of the German Edgar Wallace version of London and was based on a Bryan Edgar Wallace story. Following the German series of adaptations in the sixties, the early seventies saw a couple of international co-productions based on Bryan Edgar Wallace stories. Death Avenger of Soho (1971) was a German-Spanish production directed by Jesus Franco - its source novel, 'Death Packs a Suitcase' had already been adapted as part of the CCC Films series in 1962. The Dead Are Alive (1972) was an Italian-German giallo movie directed by Armando Crispino, with American lead actors in the form of Alex Cord, Samantha Eggar and John Marley and based on a Bryan Edgar Wallace short story. Since this decade-long blaze of cinematic popularity, Bryan Edgar Wallace has pretty much fallen into obscurity, even more so than his father.
Back to the model railway. While I still haven't made any progress in expanding the layout (due to a combination of illness, distractions and sheer laziness), I continue to accumulate various items of stock - as cheaply as possible. While most of the stuff I buy comes from a local toy and train fair, I still monitor items on eBay. While these usually end up overpriced due to crazy bidding by people there, you can occasionally still get a bargain. My latest acquisition, an ex-Southern Railway N Class mogul, was obtained for around thirty quid and can be seen below:
I suspect that one of the main reasons that it went for such a low price is that it is kit-built, running on a modified Triang-Hornby chassis. These can be of varying quality (depending upon the skill of whoever originally built them). This one is actually pretty good. I'm guessing that the body and tender are constructed from the old Wills Finecast kit, (they made a whole series of white metal body kits designed to fit on Triang-Hornby chassis - which were available as separate items back in the seventies). Certainly, the level of detail puts it on a par with the better Triang-Hornby ready-to-run locos of the early seventies, dating it to this era. The main flaw with the model, which can be seen more clearly below, is that the driving wheels are too small for the prototype, (a consequence of using a proprietary ready-to-run chassis, but which was accepted back in the seventies when there were no alternatives).
I can't say that this troubles me, as it means that the model fits in with the ethos of my layout, which is built around my existing collection of mainly sixties and seventies models, which most certainly wouldn't meet the standards of detailing expected from contemporary models.
With its heavy metal body, the loco is an excellent runner. The only modification I'm going to have to make is the fitting of some kind of coupler to the tender (at present it is fitted only with a scale three link coupling). While there appears to be provision for a Triang-style coupler to be fitted, I'm minded to instead go for the simpler solution of a piece of stiff wire across the rear buffers, (I find that paper clips provide a good source for this).
The real N Class locos were light mixed traffic engines that could be found hauling everything from semi-fast passenger trains on the mainline to branch line pick up goods services. Most lasted well into the sixties, some until 1966. The real 31407, whose number the model carries, lasted in service until 1963, so it fits perfectly within the timescale of my layout. Indeed, it fills a gap in my motive power roster, which tends toward large engines (two of which, a Lord Nelson and a Merchant Navy) can be seen in the background of these pictures.
There is a ready-to-run model of the N Class available - it was introduced by Bachmann in, I think, the early nineties. These, however, even second hand, tend to sell for high prices. The cheapest I've seen one go for on eBay of late was around £75, so mine was quite a bargain. Sure, the Bachmann model is better detailed and has the correct diameter driving wheels, but this Wills kit has the 'chunkiness' and robust feel that I like in my old Triang-Hornby, Trix and Wrenn locomotives.
Another day, another David L Hewitt movie. Journey to the Center of Time (1968) is often described as a remake of another B-movie, The Time Travelers (1964), but this is only partially correct. It is probably more correct to describe as a 'version' or 'variant' of the earlier film. The Time Travelers is a well regarded B-movie, directed and written by Ib Melchior. Hewitt, however, does receive a story credit. The story goes that the two had a falling out over the film's script, with Melchior fashioning his own version from the original story. Hewitt subsequently produced his own version of the script, adhering more closely to his original vision, which subsequently became Journey to the Center of Time. There are certainly a lot of similarities, plot-wise, between the two films. Both focus on the subject of a group of scientists researching the possibility of viewing future events, then finding that they can actually physically travel into this future. Both find a war ravaged future earth, but whereas The Time Travelers find the vestiges of humanity underground, battling mutants and building a spaceship to take them to another planet, in Journey to the Center of Time, they find a group of aliens seeking a new planet caught in the crossfire between different human factions. Their stay in the future is brief and they go careering into the past, overshoot 1968 and end up in prehistoric times, which is represented by a 'jungle' set that looks as if it could fit in my living room and a similarly cramped 'cave' set. After various shenanigans, the survivors try going back to their own time and find themselves in the same dilemma as their counterparts in The Time Travelers, in an accelerated time stream relative to everyone else, then trapped in a time loop.
The digression in the two versions, plot wise, lies in the later film's digression into the far past. But there are other significant variations, most notably that, probably due to the briefness of their stay in the future (which forms the main part of the 1964 film), Hewitt's script injects a degree of character conflict by introducing the character of the project's financier as an antagonist to the scientists, his avarice and animosity driving the plot's development. It is he who causes a paradox by destroying a time craft travelling toward them, out of the past, as they go back to prehistory, not realising that it is him, trying to escape from the past with a cache of ill-gotten precious jewels, for instance. He is also responsible for the inadvertent trip in time, having pressured the researchers into producing concrete results or face losing their funding. The result of Hewitt's changes is to move the film through its story at breakneck place at the cost of proper plot and character development. While in Ib Melchior's film, the trip to the future is the plot, as the tie travelers explore this bleak future and try to help the humans there while simultaneously trying to repair their 'time portal' in order to return to their own time, in Journey to the Center of Time, the trip to the future feels perfunctory. While the aliens warn them they must go back to the present and stop the development of a devastating laser weapon which will fuel the future wars, (presumably a development of the laser they use as part of their time travel apparatus), nothing is subsequently made of it. The trip to prehistory is even more perfunctory and feels as if exists purely to pad out the film's running time. Various talky scenes cutting back to the project control room in 1968, as the rest of the team try to bring the protagonists back to their own time, likewise feel like padding.
The biggest difference between the films, though, lies in their execution. In The Time Travelers, in spite of an incredibly low budget, Melchior succeeded in fashioning and intriguing and intelligent B-movie, that belies it lack of resources with a slick look and surprisingly good production values. Its future looks believable and is imaginatively presented. By contrast, Journey to the Center of Time, in typical Hewitt style, practically screams 'low budget' at the top of its voice. The simple elegance of the earlier film's 'time portal' is replaced by a spherical time machine with garish bright orange interior decor, (this orange theme extends to the project's control room - a set so cheaply constructed that rather than having back walls, it seems to exist in a black void, a technique Hewitt had also used in Gallery of Horrors). Despite, according to the dialogue, having already spent millions of dollars, the project's 'time viewer' screen can only show past and future in black and white - possibly because most of the stock footage used to represent other eras comes from films so old that they were made in monochrome. (The only piece of stock footage from a colour film comes, ironically, from The Time Travelers: the alien spaceship is actually footage of the spaceship the human survivors are building in the earlier film). For the prehistory sequences, the closest thing we see to a dinosaur is a bit of stock footage of a photographically enlarged lizard from One Million BC, (when the characters are on the - colour- jungle set, we also get a couple of glimpses of a non-photographically enlarged lizard peering through some miniature foliage), so there's no interaction with the humans and consequently no excitement, peril or conflict.
Which, ultimately, the film's biggest problem: despite the fast pace, nothing at all really seems to happen. Instead, the script just gives us endless talk. Unfortunately, the dialogue is largely indigestible, full of meaningless jargon, often shouted in order to give the impression that something crucial is happening. Nothing is ever explained adequately, with the script descending into gibberish every time anyone tries to explain anything technical. I still have no idea what 'The Center of Time' is or why it is apparently located in the middle of that future war. Moreover, parts of the plot make no sense whatsoever - how did the time machine return to prehistory when it had been destroyed when the project financier stole it and tried to escape to the future? It couldn't have been the version that came the other way (as the script implies), as the characters had already arrived in that before it was stolen and destroyed. Still,the cast, which includes B-movie veterans Scott Brady and Anthony Eisely (a Hewitt regular), struggle gamely with the script's inadequacies and the production's lack of budget. While Journey to the Center of Time is weirdly fascinating in the way of many of Hewitt's films, Melchior's earlier The Time Travelers is a far superior treatment of the same subject, which transcends its lack of budget through a well thought out script that takes the time to properly explore some of the ideas it raises.
An update on the Tesco Metro chocolate covered peanuts situation. After my failed attempt to buy a packet of the aforementioned peanuts, with a Tesco Metro employee telling me that they couldn't be sold as they didn't exist - despite being on their shelves in their packaging - I decided to check out the current situation on this front. OK, in truth, I simply happened to be in my local Tesco Metro buying a newspaper the other day and remembered the peanuts fiasco, so decided to see if they were still on the shelves despite not existing. Anyway, the shop seems to have gone all in on their contention that the item is non-existent. They have vanished from the shelves, their place taken by a second box of packets of chocolate covered raisins. There is no mention of them anywhere. It is as if they are trying to convince shoppers that the chocolate covered peanuts never existed and anyone who claimed to have bought them in the past is suffering a delusion. This instant rewriting of history is like something out of Orwell's '1984'. Just what is it that the chocolate covered peanuts done to deserve being written out of Tesco history like this? It makes you wonder just how many other products have suffered a similar fate? Is this why I can't find anyone else who remembers various now defunct confectionery and snacks of my childhood, like the Tingle Bar or Rancheros?
As noted in my earlier post, it is entirely possible that the non-existence of the chocolate covered peanuts is confined to my local Tesco Metro and if that I went to the main Tesco on the edge of town, or to a branch in another town, I might find them still on sale. But, as ever, I just can't be arsed to do so. Plus, the fact that I can get them from Lidl for twenty pence cheaper even than the 'reduced' price Tesco were claiming that their chocolate covered peanuts could be bought for, if they existed, means that I'm not actually interested in buying them from Tesco any more. Nonetheless, the whole bizarre episode still fascinates me - I've never before had the experience of trying to pay for something and being told that it doesn't exist. Perhaps I should simply have replied 'OK then, if they don't exist, I'll just walk out with them - I can't shoplift something that doesn't exist'. I have a feeling that had I done so, alarms would have been going off, security guards trying to detain me and the police been called. I'm still intrigued by the fact that the non-existent peanuts had an on-shelf price label exclaiming 'Chocolate Peanuts - New Lower Price', implying that they must have existed prior to this to have an existing price to be reduced. Maybe it was that reduction that triggered their non-existence? Actually, I did notice that the wine gums are now labelled similarly, maybe if I tried to buy a packet of those, I'd find myself going through the same conversation at the till as to whether or not they exist. Luckily, though, I don't particularly like wine gums.
Shot back-to-back with Destination Inner Space (1966), Castle of Evil (1966) was the first of UPC's series of low budget B-movies, pre-sold to TV. (Both were shot over fourteen days. While Castle of Evil entered production first, Destination Inner Space had the earlier release date). Not only does it feature the same director, composer and crew as Destination Inner Space, but it also shares a star with it, in the form of Scott Brady. In Castle of Evil, Brady plays one of a number of people summoned to a recently deceased millionaire's remote castle for the reading of his will. The others, all of whom, like Brady, been crossed in some way by their late host, include Virginia Mayo (this as one of a number of b-movies she appeared in during the sixties, as her career tailed off) and Hugh Marlowe (veteran of a number of fifties science fiction B-movies). The twist is that their dead host believed that one of them murdered him and that they have to identify the murderer in order for the rest of them to claim their share of the inheritance. On top of this, despite his body lying in an open coffin, their host still seems to be stalking the castle, while they also have to contend with the castle's mysterious housekeeper.
all of which would seem to set up an' old dark house' scenario, incorporating elements of 'Then There Were None' and 'The Cat and the Canary'. Indeed, the whole 'one of you is a murderer' scenario alone would have been sufficient to create the basis of an intriguing small scale B-movie mystery, let alone the 'revenge from beyond the grave' aspect. Unfortunately though, these elements are undermined before they are even introduced - the opening scenes leave us in no doubt that it was actually the housekeeper who had killed her employer and who is plotting to claim the inheritance for herself by eliminating the others. It is also established early on that the millionaire's continued appearances despite his death are down to the robot double of himself that he created (complete, even, with the hideous facial disfigurement he had suffered in a lab accident) and which has now fallen under the control of the housekeeper. Of course, she can't maintain control of the robot as its programming replicates too closely the evil mind of its progenitor. setting out to fulfil his plans for revenge.
Like Destination Inner Space, Castle of Evil actually has some decent ideas for a B-movie, but never rely develops any of them properly and fails to really integrate its science fiction aspects with the rest of the film - they just feel tacked on. While this is partly down to a weak script which, as noted, gives away its twists too early, its lack of resources really don't help. In common with all of the UPC films I've seen, it looks desperately cheap. The whole thing is shot in a flat, uninvolving style, much in the manner of a TV movie, with Francis D Lyon's slack direction conjuring little atmosphere and no suspense amongst the threadbare sets and generally indifferent production values. That said, there are some effective elements - the seance like will reading at which the dead millionaire's face apparently appears and the make up for the robot's disfigurement come to mind, for example. In common with other UPC movies, much of the film's interest comes from the cast, a combination of recognisable B-movie players and faded A-listers - while Castle has Mayo and Marlowe, for instance, Destination boasts Sheree North and Gary Merrill. Originally released in the US (prior to its TV debut) on a double bill with the British made (and superior) science fiction B-movie The Night Caller,Castle of Evil, at eighty one minutes, isn't long enough to outstay its welcome and remains an enjoyable, if unmemorable, distraction. It is far from the best of the UPC series that I've seen and Destination Inner Space, shot at the same time, is definitely the superior of the two films.
So, last week I posted about Roger Moore's inter-Bond excursion into Italian crime movies, The Sicilian Cross (1976) and mentioned that a second, shorter, English language version of the film existed in the form of Street People (1976). The latter was the US release version, distributed by AIP, who, just they had done in the sixties, took a foreign film and re-edited it, cutting nearly fifteen minutes of footage, bringing the running time down to just over ninety minutes. I finally managed to catch up with Street People and have to say that the edits actually improve the film. While original was frequently confusing, with a poorly executed plot and thanks to an excessive running time, was slackly paced. With some judicious trimming of a number of too talky scenes and the rearrangement of several scenes, the plot becomes somewhat clearer, (although if you stop to think about it, still nonsensical), with the faster pace resulting from this tightening up carrying it over its many absurdities.
Most interestingly, the trailer for this version puts the emphasis firmly upon Street People being a 'buddy picture', focusing on the antics of the mismatched pairing of smoothy Roger Moore and rough and ready rogue Stacy Keach. Clearly trying to evoke memories of Roger Moore's pairing with Tony Curtis in The Persauders TV series, this contrasts sharply with the promotion of The Sicilian Cross, which presented the film primarily as a Mafia thriller and utilised a far more sombre tone in its trailer. In practice, of course, Keach lacks Curtis' street-wise charm, although he comes off slightly better than Moore here, who isn't given enough opportunities to deploy his trademark suaveness and charm. That said, the AIP re-edit presents Moore's character far better than the original had. Street People is one of those instances where cutting large parts of the narrative actually improves a film by bringing more clarity to its plot and I'd be inclined to give it the nod over The Sicilian Cross version for anyone wanting to watch a version of this Roger Moore obscurity.
