The Devil's Rain (1975)

I remember when The Devil's Rain (1975) was released in the UK - trailers like this got heavy rotation in the commercial breaks on TV.  Of course, I was far too young to see it at the cinema, but I caught up with it when it was shown on TV a few years later.  What struck me upon watching the film was that just about all of its highlights were in those trailers.  Which is never a good thing for any film.  The other thing that struck me was the very best bit was the finale and it seemed clear that the makers had come up with the idea for it first, then worked back to try and come up with ninety minutes or so of story to lead up to it.  Unfortunately, that story was confused and confusing, with characters having to spend far too much time explaining parts of it in order to try and enlighten the audience.  The justification for the title is particularly tortuous and is clearly intended to try and keep the nature of the climax from the audience - except, of course, that everyone who had seen the trailer already knew what the ending was, so there was no surprise.

On the positive side, as one would expect from the presence of Robert Fuest in the director's chair, the film certainly looks good.  The problem, though, is that script, which bogs most of the action down in a desert ghost town, while its episodic structure gives it a stuttering pace and requires the constant introduction of new characters, disrupting the narrative flow further.  While The Devil's Rain has a strong cast, the reality is that most of them have limited screen time, with characters being introduced then vanishing for large stretches of the movie.  Ernest Borgnine is the most consistent presence in the film and is obviously having a lot of fun as a centuries old Satanist enslaving the souls of various character, turning their physical bodies into life size living waxen images.  William Shatner looks like he's going to be the hero, before succumbing to his characteristic hysterics, while Eddie Albert takes on the savant role, but keeps disappearing from the plot, reappearing with no explanation at various crucial junctures.  Interestingly, the trailer only lists Tom Skerritt and Joan Prather as 'also starring', despite the fact that they are, in effect, the film's leads.  (John Travolta, in his film debut, has a small role in the film which, supposedly, led to his conversion to Scientology via Joan Prather).  Badly flawed though the film might be, that climax is still worth sitting through it all for, featuring some excellent make up effects.  Unfortunately, the makers' felt the need to tack on one of those tiresome 'twists' to the film, (they became popular in th eseventies, despite their novelty having worn off after you'd seen the first one), which leave you thinking "Oh for God's sake, just fuck off".

Invisible Voyeurs

I was watching a film called The Invisible Maniac (1990) over the weekend and it occurred to me that, cheap sex comedy/horror crossover that it might be, the film was at least realistic in its depiction of what the average guy would do if he actually did have the power of invisibility.  In the movie, a voyeuristic kid who is caught by his mother using his telescope to watch a female neighbour getting undressed, grows up to be a mad scientist who claims that he has developed a serum which can turn living beings invisible.  When a demonstration goes awry and the top scientists observing it laugh at him, the mad scientist murders them with his bare hands and ends up incarcerated.  Inevitably, he escapes and under a new identity takes a job as a science teacher at a high school.  Perfecting his serum, he of course uses it to spy on various nubile female students (all of whom look at least twenty five) in the locker rooms and showers.  Which is the bit I find realistic because, let's face it, we'd all be tempted, wouldn't we?  Oh come on - you know you would.  It doesn't matter how enlightened and liberal you claim to be, how much a 'new man' and down with women's issues you think you are, given the opportunity to ogle some bare breasts, buttocks etc, without fear of detection, retribution or judgement, you'd take it.  For, at heart, we're all voyeur: face it, most of modern popular entertainment - film, TV, even social media - are based around the idea of living vicariously through observing the lives of others.  Don't believe me?  Just look at the rise of so called 'reality TV', surely the most nakedly voyeuristic form of entertainment.

But would you go any further, like the character in the film?  Would you be tempted to cop an invisible feel, a quick grope or a phantom slapping of the buttocks?  You wouldn't even have to be invisible in a girls' locker room or showers - it might be on a crowded bus or train.  If no-one could see you, would you risk a grope?  Because that's the point at which you cross the line from the creepy thrills of voyeurism to sexual assault.  But the point I'm making is that, no matter how deep we bury them, no matter how much we 'civilise' ourselves, certain primal urges lie deep in all of us, just waiting for some opportunity to express themselves, without fear of retribution.  The urge to look, to watch others, is one of the most basic of these - doubtless derived from our ancestors' time as hunters, looking for prey while simultaneously trying to assess potential threats.  Combined with human curiosity, we end up with voyeuristic urge.  Of course, the irony is that if you were invisible, then you wouldn't actually be able to look at anything, let alone naked women - human sight is based around the ability of light to enter the eye and be registered by the receptors there, where it is translated into nerve impulses which are sent to the brain, (a crude explanation. I know, but adequate for our purposes).  To achieve invisibility in the way usually depicted in fiction, then light would have to pass through you completely, so it wouldn't be caught by the receptors in the eye, rendering you blind.  So, in reality, the invisible maniac of the movie would have been blundering around, feeling his way by touch.  Or grope.

Getting back to the film, The Invisible Maniac, it is pretty much what you'd expect from a low budget direct to video movie of its era.  There are plenty of bared breasts and behinds on view, a number of bizarre murders involving all of the methods you'd expect an invisible man to use.  Much of the effects work is actually OK.  The performances from the cast re highly variable, with most taking a pretty broad approach, but as the whole thing is played as parody anyway, that hardly matters.  In which regard, it does succeed in raising the odd smile and even snigger.  Overall, I have to say that it is a lot more entertaining than that invisible man film they released a few years ago.  I also learned something from the finale - that two invisible guys can, apparently see each other.  We live and learn.

Killers From Space (1954)

Bad film aficionados constantly (and tediously) debate as to what the 'worst film ever made' actually was, with anything directed by Ed Wood featuring prominently.  But, by my reckoning, Killers From Space (1954) has to be up there as a strong contender. Featuring a rag bag of scrappy looking stock footage of nuclear tests, some truly atrocious process work, woeful special effects and aliens with ping pong balls for eyes, it truly encapsulates the whole concept of 'poverty road' in a single seventy minute package.  It is also, undoubtedly, hugely enjoyable in its ludicrous, ramshackle way.  Killers From Space is the work of director W. Lee Wilder, the younger, less talented, brother of Billy Wilder.  Really, he was.  The purse-maker turned producer and director turned out a number of poverty row movies, many of which can stand toe-to-toe with the output of Ed Wood or Andy Milligan for sheer awfulness.  In particular, his trio of science fiction films made in 1953 and 1954, are grindingly poor.  The first, Phantom From Space (1953), features an alien that remains conveniently (for the budget) invisible for most of the film, while The Snow Creature (1954) turns into an hilariously no budget King Kong imitation, as a captured Yeti (basically a guy in a pair of furry trousers a fur jacket and furry hat), goes on a 'rampage' in LA's drains.

But Killers From Space remains the worst of the trio with its desert-based tale of a top US nuclear scientist being kidnapped by aliens, brainwashed into helping them, but finally rebelling and nuking them.  The whole thing is lacklustre, lacking any kind of suspense or tension. The script is so thin that it has trouble filling even seventy minutes of running time, padded out with lots of back projected footage of 'giant' spiders, lizards and assorted insects, supposedly created by the aliens to help them invade the earth and wipe out humanity.  Peter Graves, as the scientist, manages to get through the whole thing with a straight face - but he had plenty of practice, seemingly being a permanent feature in low budget science fiction movies in the fifties.  Before his excursion into low budget science fiction, Wilder had specialised in low budget films noir.  He later came to the UK, where he directed a number of low budget films, including The Man Without a Body (1957), a poverty stricken science fiction film possibly even worse than Killers From Space, but he only co-directed it, so he can't be held entirely responsible for its awfulness.  He wound his directorial career up with a Philippines shot low budget science fiction film, The Omegans (1968).

Cinema of Subjugation

When I was talking about Lucifer's Women (1974) the other day I mentioned how its underlying theme was that of the subjugation of women to a patriarchy, with them expected to sacrifice themselves, whether literally or figuratively, to their masters.  It's not an original observation, plenty of others have made it, not just in relation to this particular film, but to exploitation films generally.  Because that's what a lot of exploitation is about, (the clue is in the word 'exploitation'), regardless of whether the main subject matter under exploitation is violence, sex, horror or race, more often than not, the plot will lean heavily upon the subjugation of women in one way or another in order to move the story along.  Whether they are being sacrificed to pagan gods or blood cults, strapped to a rack in some sadistic sex pervert nobleman's dungeon, being menaced by a mummy/vampire/werewolf/Frankenstein monster, sacrificing their virtue to save the hero, being sold into prostitution, being probed by aliens or abducted by a biker gang, they are doing it a state of undress or, at the very least, showing a lot of cleavage and heaving bosoms, they are doing so for the pleasure, not just of the characters victimising them, but also the predominantly male audience.  This is even more true of those films, often set in prisons, where a heroine is victimised by other female inmates and warders - it's giving the guys watching even more female flesh to ogle.  Even the victimisers are themselves being made victims.

There is, of course, a small sub-genre of exploitation films that feature female protagonists, be they 'avenging angels', kick ass mercenaries, street-wise cops or hard boiled private eyes.  But even in these, the theme of female subjugation is strong.  In most of these films the female protagonist has to go through some kind of ordeal before they can triumph.  While male protagonists also generally go through various ordeals, these usually involve physical beatings, traumatic emotional losses or psychological torture, for their female equivalents, not only are they ramped up quite considerably, but they also involve sexual humiliation, sexual assault and, more often than not, rape.  The levels of brutality handed out to exploitation heroines is usual far more brutal than they are for guys.  Take, as an example, the Cherry Caffero vehicle Ginger (1971), in which, having already revealed her childhood trauma of sexual abuse, the titular private eye has to endure being stripped, tied up, shot full of drugs and raped by the villain at the film's finale.  Or Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs (1974), where the female undercover cop protagonist has to endure multiple savage beatings and rapes in order to resolve her mission.  It isn't just confined to crime and thriller orientated exploitation.  The other day I was watching Nashville Girl (1976), a tale of a young runaway who tries to break into the country music business - to achieve this she gets raped twice and has a violent sexual encounter with a juvenile detention officer.  The message is clear in all these films: even when a woman achieves a degree of emancipation she does it only by first appeasing the patriarchy and even then, her freedoms and success are still clearly defined by them.

All which brings us to the inevitable question of if these films are so sexist, why do I watch them?  Well, my relationship with exploitation is complex - while the films undoubtedly showcase some of the worst aspects of humanity - violence, sexism, racism, etc - often in the crudest manner possible, that's part of their fascination: they don't flinch from showing humanity at its basest and absolute worse.  In that sense they can have a  cathartic effect in enabling us as viewers to confront those ideas and impulses in ourselves.  Whether we like it or not, even those of us who like to consider ourselves liberal and enlightened still, in the deepest recesses of our psyches, harbour these disturbing feelings and urges.  Besides, most of these movies were made in the sixties, seventies and eighties and, well, we did things differently back then The majority of us, I hope, can put them into their historical context and appreciate that they reflect the mores of their era, even if we wouldn't approve of these attitudes now.  Most simply, of course, they are, more often than not, very entertaining, lacking the pretensions, (not to mention budgets), of  mainstream studio pictures, they are far more direct in their approach, focusing on the action.  So yeah, I can see how wrong these movies can be, particularly in respect to the treatment of women, but they are also just cheap films and it is perfectly possible to enjoy them on that level.

Under the Whip

I see they took the whip away from that Tory MP who was in the middle of yet another sex scandal.  Quite right - stopping him from getting a good thrashing is probably the most apt punishment for him.  It's interesting how the media and the Tories have tried to characterise it all as a financial scandal rather than a sex scandal.  But when you have a Tory MP ringing up a constituency worker in the middle of the night and begging for four thousand quid because 'bad men' have got him locked in a room and wouldn't let him go until he paid up, what else are we supposed to think?  It seems quite obvious that he was in some kind of sex dungeon, clapped in irons, no doubt, unable to pay his bill - he'd probably been getting his arse whipped on credit for too long and now his hosts wanted paying.  The most incredible thing is that instead of calling the police, as most of us, I'm sure, would  have done, the constituency worker apparently paid up.  Although details on exactly how the payment was made are still unclear.  Did this Tory blue-rinser go to an assignation, late at night, in a deserted supermarket car park to exchange the money for the MP - who doubtless would have been delivered chained up and naked?  There have also been all sorts of talk of missing constituency party funds and rent boys.  

Clearly, this guy was shagging and getting whipped to excess if he couldn't afford to pay for it all on an MP's salary.  Which leads me to consider an alternative scenario, in which he was touting his own arse around Soho as a part-time rent-boy, in an attempt to make up the missing funds before anyone found out.  Naturally, the local 'talent' wouldn't have been happy about him encroaching on their territory - especially if he was successfully pulling in punters - and kidnapped him, holding him hostage for money to make up for their lost earnings.  Not, obviously, that I'm saying that a serving MP sold himself as a rent-boy, frequented S&M joints for services he didn't pay for or embezzled party funds.  Well, the jury is still out on that last one, but the rest are just amusing stories told for satirical effect and are in no way libelous.  It is not, perhaps, a surprise though that the Tories and their media partners seem to be more concerned with the financial, rather than the sexual, aspects of this story.  After all, money is their sex - acquiring it, by any means, is better than an orgasm for the average Tory MP, so is it any wonder that 'abuse' of it is what shocks them?  (especially when it is party funds being abused - if it was some public body or working class oik being robbed or ripped off, then they'd applaud). 

Lucifer's Women (1974)

Back in the dark ages, before the advent of VHS and the subsequent dawn of home entertainment, films. particularly low budget independent productions, could be given limited theatrical releases, then, after a few weeks, simply vanish.  If they were lucky, they might be sold to TV and enjoy an afterlife in the late night schedules.  But for those with the sort of content that wouldn't meet network restrictions, oblivion beckoned - or sometimes something worse.  So it was with Lucifer's Women (1974) which, after a brief theatrical run under the title Svengali the Magician, reappeared under the later title for another brief run in 1977.  After which it found itself sold to producer Sam Sherman, whose frequent collaborator Al Adamson subsequently cannibalised it to provide footage for Doctor Dracula (1978).  The original was consequently considered 'lost' until it reappeared for a Blu-Ray release in 2008.  It isn't difficult to see why the original never got a TV sale - lengthy scenes of sex, subjugation and Satanic rituals, all accompanied by full frontal nudity, effectively ruled it out as far as the networks were concerned: cut those scenes and you'd basically have no movie,  The presence of this content is hardly surprising - director Paul Aratow, at this point in his career, was associated with erotica, (he later became a writer for TV).  Here, the adult content becomes somewhat problematic as it tends to feature at the expense of the film's horror and mystery aspects, something that both of the film's titles seem to want to capitalise upon.

As the original title clearly signals, the film is a loose adaptation of George Du Maurier's much filmed novel 'Trilby', updated to more contemporary times.  Or even a sequel, of sorts.  The main plot involves an academic, Dr Wainwright, who has written a book about infamous mesmerist Svengali and is now performing a magic act in the guise of Svengali - except that the various gory tricks he performs, such as a bloody sawing in half of a woman, are actually a demonstration of his power to hypnotise his audiences and manipulate them into thinking that they are seeing these acts.  According to Wainwright, his abilities are the result of having studied Svengali's techniques, however, he then confides to his publisher, Sir Stephen Philips, that he is actually the reincarnation of Svengali.  The publisher responds that he too is a reincarnation of a past soul, but his hold on his current body is weakening and he needs Svengali to sacrifice a young girl for him in seven days time in order to strengthen it.  (It transpires that both the publisher and Svengali are part of an order of immortal souls who exist by possessing the bodies of others, a process that requires regular blood sacrifices).  The girl chosen to be the sacrificial victim is a nightclub performer called Trilby, (surprise, surprise), who  Svengali goes about seducing and bringing under his influence.

There is also an intersecting sub-plot involving Trilby's flat mate, whose boyfriend/pimp has his own designs on the girl, which ultimately clash with Svengali's plans.  There are also several Satanic orgies, where young girls are deflowered and subjugated by Sir Stephen and Dr Wainwright's true personality begins to reassert itself and fights Svengali's invading soul for control of his body.  This latter development brings the latter part of the film into Jekyll-Hyde territory. with the two warring personalities confronting each other, (in scenes vaguely reminiscent of a similar situation in Hammer's Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971)).   Unfortunately, the various sub-plots give the film a listless feel, as it switches behind them, giving the impression that it has no clear idea of where it is going.  The underlying sub-text is obvious, though: the subjugation of women to a patriarchy, with the ultimate aim of them sacrificing themselves to it, whether literally, or sexually.  In fact, it it is rammed home pretty relentlessly, with even the apparently upbeat ending still implying that they are always going to lose out.  

The film actually looks pretty good for a low budget production, the whole thing having a superficial gloss that gives it a feel of faded glamour.  While director Aratow stages a lot of his set-pieces - the magic act, the nightclub performers, the Satanic rituals - reasonably well, overall the film never really seems to get going, failing to establish any pace or real sense of direction.  It just can't seem to decide what it wants to be: horror, mystery or erotica.  It has elements of all, but fails to integrate them.  Not surprisingly, the only scenes where it really sparks into life are the sex scenes, otherwise, Aratow's direction seems somewhat distanced from the action, failing to fully engage with the drama unfolding on screen.  The film's lack of identity is reflected in the fact that it pretty much fails to register that it is actually a period piece.  It is supposed to be set in 1954, but there is little to reference this fact - sets and costumes have little sense of era and the lack of references to any events outside of those occurring in the film deprives it of any historical context.  Apart from John Hankey, a prolific character actor who is still going today, in the lead as Wainwright/Svengali, the rest of the cast are pretty much unknowns, without any kind of other credits, (I suspect they were mainly adult movie performers).  While Hankey actually gives a decent enough performance, the rest of the cast are, in the main, merely OK, (although Norman Pierce - not be confused with the British character actor of the same name - is pretty damned sleazy as the publisher).

In the end, Lucifer's Women feels like something of a missed opportunity.  It has an intriguing enough premise, that could have made for an enjoyable modern day horror take on Svengali.  Unfortunately, a lack of focus and pace undermines the project.  Still, whatever the film's shortcomings, it is still better and more coherent than Al Adamson's Doctor Dracula, which recycles around half of the footage - the sex scenes are excised and new footage with a different cast, headed by John Carradine, is added, along with a completely different plot.

The Mad Bomber (1973)

The Mad Bomber (1973) - aka The Police Connection - is, in many ways, an exploitation version of Dirty Harry (1971), with its tough, rule breaking, rogue police detective hunting down an equally obsessive and ruthless adversary.  In this case, the adversary is the 'mad bomber' of the title, an embittered professional man whose daughter's death while in care has triggered him into seeking revenge against everything and everyone he feels has contributed to his troubles.  As can be seen from the trailer, this involves a lot of big explosions.  Very well staged big explosions at that,  In fact, The Mad Bomber as a whole is a pretty decently made movie which, despite a limited budget, features good production values, an excellent cast and some well staged action.  It is also fast paced with a plot that takes some interesting twists.  Which might make it somewhat surprising that it was produced and directed by Bert I Gordon, 'Mr BIG' himself, best known for his cheap monster movies with bargain basement effects in the fifties and sixties.  While his penchant for giant creatures, achieved via bad back projections, dodgy matte work and unconvincing puppets and miniatures, continued into the seventies, (Food of the Gods (1976) and Empire of the Ants (1977)), Gordon also produced a number of somewhat more conventional films.

Gordon's virtues as a director are well showcased by The Mad Bomber, but it still remains very firmly an exploitation picture.  Where Dirty Harry was tough and gritty, The Mad Bomber is tough and sleazy.  Really sleazy.  The only witnesses to the first bombing who might be able to identify the bomber are a rapist and his victim.  At which the point the film goes off into a tangential sub-plot with the police setting up decoys, both police women and policemen in drag, on the streets at night, hoping they'll be attacked and that their attacker will be the right rapist.  As it turns out, there are a lot of would be rapists on the streets of LA, most of whom find themselves getting beaten up by cops.  Eventually the 'right' rapist is apprehended and coerced into co-operating.  For his troubles, though, he gets blown up by the bomber while he's jacking off to a porn movie. Yeah, it's that sleazy.  The Mad Bomber also features three of the decade's busiest exploitation actors, with Vince Edwards as the cop, Neville Brand as the rapist and the great Chuck Connors as the bomber,  All are excellent, pulling out all the stops to deliver suitably over the top performances.  Connors is especially impressive in his role, bringing an impressive air of menace to the character, while still retaining a degree of humanity.  Interestingly, his performance calls to mind that of Michael Douglas, who played a similarly embittered character with a grudge against society in Falling Down (1993), made some twenty years after the Mad Bomber.  You can't help but wonder if the writers of Falling Down had ever seen the earlier film and Connors' performance.  Anyway, The Mad Bomber is a terrifically enjoyable slice of action packed seventies' sleaze that any exploitation lover should see.  Indeed, how could you not want to watch the whole movie after seeing that trailer?

'The Murderous Madame Wong'

Another edition of Wide World from my modest collection.  This, the September 1964 issue, was the last to feature a cover painting.  For the remainder of its run it would use photo covers instead.  It also features a revised interior layout, which includes the abandonment of the old contents list divided up by the country or continent where the story takes place, in favour of more generic sub-headings, such as 'Adventure' or 'Social'.  Although the classifications seem somewhat arbitrary - the sole story under 'Social' this issue could just as easily have been filed under 'Crime'.  Indeed, one of the 'Adventure' stories, about the religious rituals of South American Indians which meld Christianity with local beliefs, would more comfortably sit under the 'Social' banner.  In spite of these attempts to modernise the publication in the face of declining sales, the actual contents were very much of a familiar mix: adventure on the high seas, 'bizarre' practices of foreign cultures, big game hunting and crime.  

With story titles like 'The Murderous Madame Wong', it might seem that the magazine (like the UK in general) was having difficulty in letting go of old imperialist attitudes.  But, in what the publishers doubtless saw as a step forward, rather than focusing on 'strange goings on' in the former Empire some of the stories based on alien cultural activities are set in Europe.  We have the Pamplona bull run and Sardinian vendettas in this issue, for instance.  Interestingly, in an apparent bout of self awareness as to how some of the subject matter might be perceived by sixties readers, this issue also features an (intentionally) humourous piece parodying the whole 'great white hunter' schtick which, even in this issue, was a staple of this and other men's adventure magazines.  There's a two page spread promoting the next issue, the first of a 'new look' Wide World, promising all manner of new content.  But it was all to be in vain as, less than a year later, the magazine would fold.

Amazing Colossal Craps?

I was watching War of the Colossal Beast (1958) - Bert I Gordon's sequel to his own The Amazing Colossal Man from the previous year - and as the protagonists wandered around some Mexican mountains looking for traces of said fifty foot tall man, it occurred to me that surely the best way to track him would be via the trail of humongous turds he must be leaving behind him.  That and the pools of steaming green piss.  Maybe there's something wrong with me that my mind immediately races to the scatological while watching a B-move, but the refusal of such films to acknowledge the existence of normal bodily functions has always struck me as a weakness.  It just seems obvious to me that, without access to a shovel, let alone toilet paper, that colossal man would have to be taking huge dumps in the open and leaving them uncovered.  Sure, he could go into a cave to take a crap undetected, but would there really be any caves big enough for to get into to perform such a function.  Hell, let's face it, the stench and massive swarms of flies would surely be enough to guide his pursuers in his general direction.  Even when they finally catch up with and capture the colossal man, I was left wondering just how the authorities dealt with his bodily functions.  They have him chained up in a hangar, but I didn't see any gigantic toilet bowls in there with him.  Were teams of soldiers in gas masks taking it out using steam shovels and dump trucks, (quite literally dump trucks)?  It wasn't just the solid stuff that would have caused a problem - let's face it, one good fart on his part could have taken out half of LA.

Of course, it isn't just the colossal man whose bodily functions aren't addressed in B-movies - what about all those giant monsters that stomp around in them?  Surely the likes of Godzilla would, in reality, be leaving huge piles of dung behind them.  Probably radioactive dung that glows in the dark.  For that matter, why wasn't King Kong flinging his own crap at the planes when he was at the top of the Empire State Building?  But why confine ourselves to cinematic monsters?  What about all those 'cryptoids' that the lunatic fringe keep trying to convince us are roaming around out there?  Surely if the Loch Ness Monster was real then Loch Ness itself would be awash with huge turds and, bearing in mind that some of the alleged sightings of this creature have been ashore, the area around the loch should also be littered with steaming great stonkers.  Why aren't the Himalayas covered in Yeti dung?  Moreover, if, like King Kong, the Yeti are some kind of ape-like creature, why aren't they throwing their dung at explorers?  Much the same applies to Bigfoot - people seem to keep 'finding' lots of footprints, but no Sasquatch shit.  If that alleged footage of Bigfoot walking around instead showed him squatting down taking a crap, I might be more inclined to believe in its authenticity.  These things don't even have to be giant - just look at the lack of big cat droppings around the UK countryside, which is supposedly infested with stray big cats, (although I'd say that the lack of missing cattle is pretty conclusive evidence that they don't actually exist).  If any of these things actually existed, then surely these so called 'cryptozoologists' would be able to track them via their spoor?  (Would that make them craptozoologists?). Mind you, I have a feeling that the 'cryptozoologists' would just clam that these creatures weren't physical beings, but some kind of ethereal spirit projections (or some such cobblers) and theefore wouldn't leave physical traces behind them.  Not even monster turds.

2+5: Missione Hydra (1966)

Continuing our theme of to what extent we can truly judge movies when the only version available has been dubbed, cut and extensively re-edited, a while ago I sat down to watch what I thought was 2+5: Missione Hydra (1966), an Italian space movie, but what I actually found myself watching was the re-edited English language re-release: Star Pilot.  In this version, while the film starts interestingly enough, in its second half it descends into a fairly aimless, meandering and episodic narrative that loses all impetus, not to mention focus, before finally juddering to a halt.  It is all too clear that there have been extensive cuts made in this section of the film, with various bits of footage from other, unrelated films, (some Japanese, some American), inserted.  The dubbing of this footage reflects this version of the film's release date - it was put out in the late seventies to try and cash in on the science fiction boom kicked off by Star Wars (1977) - as it is full of terminology and jargon designed to put audiences in mind of Star Wars and Star Trek.  Not only does this inserted footage derail the film's narrative flow, but it also contradicts the film's initial premise - when it opens, we are clearly in 1966, but the new scenes of spaceships and space stations depict an earth in possession of advanced space technology (even a 'Star Fleet' according to the dialogue) on a par with the aliens the heroes encounter earlier, whose technology is supposed to be far in advance of earth's.

But is it fair to judge the film on the basis of this version?  Would the film be any better in its original form?  Well, it would certainly be longer: Italian language versions run just over ninety minutes, compared to Star Pilot's eighty minute running time, giving some indication of the amount of material cut for the English language version.  Now, I probably should watch the Italian language version to get a better idea of its quality.  But, to be frank, I just don't have the stamina.  Viewing the first half of Star Pilot, however, which is retained pretty much intact from the original, can give a good indication of its quality.  It seems to start out as a serious science fiction film, in the vein of the Hammer Quatermass adaptations, or X-The Unknown (1956), with an Italian professor and his assistants (which include his attractive daughter) investigating a mysterious fungus that has started appearing at a particular site in Sardinia.  Their investigations take them underground, where they discover an apparently abandoned alien spaceship.  The occupants of the ship, as it turns out, had been n suspended animation and now awaken.  Led by their female leader, they realise that, in order to get back to their home planet of Hydra, they will need help to repair and fly the ship.  So, of course, they co-opt the scientist and his assistants, along with a couple of foreign agents also interested in the secrets of the space ship, (but they aren't Chinese, they insist - they are Oriental).

Once the spaceship takes off with its unwilling crew, the film, even in the original footage from the second half, the film shifts into a different gear, with serious tone of the first half abandoned in favour of a more movie-serial like action as the two agents plot to rebel and hijack the ship, while the scientists embark on a series of attempts to put the aliens in touch with their human feelings in order to win them round.  It is tempting to think that much of the latter action is intended to be humourous, but the cast play it all straight-faced.  What clearly is meant to be humourous is the scientist's daughter's continued change of costumes, which become increasingly scanty - she exchanges clothes with the female space commander at one point in an attempt to 'humanise' her.  By the end of the film both women are wearing ridiculously revealing 'space' attire, which also includes various frills and feathers.  The rest of the original footage in this section involves the usual cliches such as encounters with ape men and abandoned drifting spaceships.  None are done with any particular flair or originality.  While the film does end on an unexpected twist, there's nothing in the original footage on view to indicate that the full length film in its original form would necessarily be any better.  Like most Italian science fiction and fantasy films from this era, 2+5: Missione Hydra features some distinctive production design but there is little in the way of the visual flair often seen in such films in the direction.  Indeed, the cinematography is distinctly mediocre.  In truth, director Pietro Fransisci was more at home directing peplum movies and seems ill at ease in the science fiction genre.  Ultimately, the film is scuppered by a script that, after a good start, seems to have no real idea of where it is going.  It's not unenjoyable, but even in the shortened Star Pilot version it oustays its welcome some time before the end.

The Skin Beneath the Claws (1975)

A lot of the films I watch these days are in formats that are less than optimal: many appear to be VHS transfers at several generations removed from the original or even transfers of VHS on air recordings of TV showings of said films.  The latter often either include ad breaks or have had them crudely edited out, resulting in additional jumpiness.  They may also be 'TV edits', where material has been excised either for reasons of censorship or simply to fit a time slot.  Now, while such recordings are nostalgic for me to watch - they recreate the fuzzy, poorly recorded pirated dupes I often watched as a teenager - they are problematic in that they make it difficult to judge the true quality of the film being watched.  A case in point in The Skin Under the Claws (1975), which I recently watched on one of those dodgy Roku channels I frequent.  An obscure giallo/horror crossover that, as far as I'm aware, has never been released officially on any form of home video, VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray, the only version currently available is the very poor quality VHS transfer I was able to watch.  Judging by the poor tracking, sound quality and definition, it appears to be an on air recording from a TV screening, a suspicion reinforced by the short, seventy five minute, running time and jumpy editing.  Judging by the fact that copious amounts of nudity and quite a bit of gore is still in evidence, I'd guess that it was edited to fit a ninety minute (including ads) slot - so anything up to fifteen minutes of footage could be absent.  I'd also hazard a guess that it was taken from an outing on Italian TV - the dialogue is in Italian, (again, as far as I know, there was no English language release - the title used for the video's showing is simply a direct translation of the Italian on screen title), with fan-sourced English sub-titles.

I have to say that these sub-titles are probably one of the best things about this version of the film - going by my extremely rudimentary knowledge of Italian, they seem to be direct translations of the dialogue, with none of the usual editing, abbreviations or Anglicisation found in official sub-titles.  Which means we get the original dialogue in all its glorious absurdity and awkwardness.  Overall, though, the poor quality of the rest of the video makes the original film very hard to judge.  On the basis of what is available, it seems to be bat-shit crazy with an extremely confusing plot and action that constantly jumps all over the place, making the plot development seem completely illogical.  It is also extremely poorly paced, the first part of the film quickly getting bogged down by a romantic sub-plot which takes over the film, leaving everything to be seemingly resolved in a flurry of action in the last fifteen minutes - except that so many loose ends are left dangling and so much remains unexplained that the viewer is left scratching their head as to what they've just seen.  What the film seems to be about is a series of murders of young women in Rome in which traces of decomposing skin is found under the nails of the victims - are they being raped and murdered by the perambulating living corpse of a sex offender?  Well, the answer seems to lie at a clinic run by a German doctor obsessed with death and the process of dying, who believes that he can reverse the process of death, keeping corpses alive.  But that would be too obvious for any self-respecting giallo, so red-herrings galore are thrown into the plot - is it the apparently mad doctor's younger colleague who is really the murderer (is he, in fat, a living corpse resuscitated by the German dude)?   Is it that artist friend of the other younger colleague (the one that the male younger doctor is bonking) who has nude models hanging around his flat and paints erotic subjects the culprit, (there seems to be no other reason for him to be in the film).

A spanner is thrown in the works when the German doctor is found dead of a heart attack, (but only after confiding to the younger doctor that he had carried out experiments on baboons, achieving successful head transplants).  Then the second victim turns up in a suitcase left at a railway station, chopped into pieces - with the taxi driver who deposited the cases there claiming he picked their owner up outside the young doctor's flat!  On top of that, the German doc's body has now vanished from the morgue!  All of which sounds as if the film is incredibly eventful, except that there occurrences seem like mere background activities, as the film is dominated by the two younger doctors' love affair and a plodding police investigation by a chain-smoking police Commissioner.  Just to confuse things even more, I'd swear that on the version I saw, some of the scenes appeared to be out of sequence. At a guess, I'd say that whoever had edited out the TV ad breaks had reassembled the video in the wrong order.  Although, to be fair, I'm not sure that it would have made much more sense if shown in the right order.  It all hurries to a conclusion when the female doctor vanishes, another corpse turns up in the boot of a dumped car, which, the coroner concludes, had been kept artificially alive for months.  The car is finally traced to a mansion in the country which, of course, belongs to the supposedly dead doctor.  Equally inevitably, he is holding the female doctor captive there because, in another completely out of left field development, she is the double of his dead wife and he means to brainwash her into becoming his wife.

It all ends with a series of seemingly arbitrarily put together sequences: the mad doctor is suddenly running around the countryside in a mask, wide brimmed hat and cloak, randomly sexually assaulting young girls, then getting chased by their scythe-weilding father.  Then we're back at the mansion, where he has the female doctor tied up in the basement, then they're watching his 'greatest hits' torture videos, then suddenly she's loose again, being chased around the house by him, then they're outside and he's about to kill her, when the cops turn up and shoot him.  There's a final twist in the story, which I won't spoil, but it still doesn't explain anything.  I think that we're meant to assume that the mad doctor was dead all along, but had kept himself going artificially, with his apparent death part way through the film part of his plan to vanish and star again, while trying to divert blame for the murders onto the other doctor.  Why was he murdering women?  Well, it is implied that he was a Nazi scientist during the war, so it obviously follows that he must have been a twisted sex psycho.  The business about head transplants?  Another red herring, (unless we are meant to assume that he somehow managed to transplant his own head onto another body).  

I'm assuming that all this would have been explained by the apparently missing footage, (perhaps he does transplant his own head in this footage).  I'd also like to say that it would be better film seen in its complete form, with vibrant colour, smooth editing, decent sound quality and better pacing, not to mention a more logical plot.  But I'm not really sure.  The fact is that, even through the fuzzy, dark picture of the truncated video version you can see that it obviously had a restricted budget - there are no studio sets, with everything being shot in sparsely furnished apartments and spartan offices.  There is no medical equipment in evidence at the 'clinic', for instance, the only interiors we ever see seem to be half empty offices.  Moreover, even with the missing ten to fifteen minutes of footage restored, I doubt that the film would be any better paced, with the dull romance and uninspired police investigation still dominating proceedings.  At best, it might make the film's conclusion less confusing and far more definitive.  As it stands, the version of The Skin Beneath the Claws which is currently available is an intriguing but frustrating mess probably not at all representative of the makers' original intent, and it is tempting to think that, in its complete form, it might be some sort of lost classic.  But, in truth, the direction feels rather flat and uninspired, (it is perhaps notable that director/writer Alessandro Santini only directed three other films, none of them giallos or horror), and the script confusing and under developed, with clunky dialogue.  Still, it does have a pretty mellow jazz-orientated musical score typical of its era.  Anyway, if you are at all interested in judging the film for yourself, it's currently on YouTube, (I'm assuming this is he same edit that I saw).

The Dead That Vote

Right-wing nutters really are the gift that keeps on giving, aren't they?  Just today we heard how Reform, or whatever the Hell they are calling themselves these days, (weren't they the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage's second attempt at achieving Westminster representation for Brexit, after UKIP?), sacked an inactive candidate, only for it to turn out that his inactivity was down to the fact that he was dead.  The obvious question, of course, was whether he was dead when he was first selected as their candidate, as Reform seems to be designed to appeal to the rabid pro-Brexit demographic, which includes significant numbers of mad old fogeys waving their walking sticks at European-shaped clouds.  It is entirely probable that many of them are actually dead, their embalmed corpses wheeled into polling stations on sack trucks by their equally rabid elderly friends and relatives in order to vote.  Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if the alleged increase in support for Reform registered in some dubious opinion polls is down to these corpses being unwittingly surveyed by pollsters.  So yeah, this guy could have been dead when he was selected - let's face it, as he would have stood no chance of being elected to anything under a Reform banner, it was a low risk strategy.   All he had to be was a name on a ballot paper to give the impression that Reform is a legitimate political force able to field candidates nationally in any election, at any level.

But, if he had been elected, what then?  Would they have had him strung like a life-size puppet in order for him to make public appearances and attend meetings?  Or maybe they could just have operated him from the waist up, via a stick up his arse?  Perhaps Reform should pursue a slightly different strategy: still use the corpses for voters and candidates, but try reanimating them.  Not only would a shambling corpse at least give the impression of activity, but thanks to their inevitably addled brains, they'd be easy to manipulate and would never be likely to question any of Reform's policies, no matter how extreme and reactionary they might be.  Now, I'm well aware that, as a party of the extreme right, appealing mainly to ruddy faced white idiots, it would be difficult for Reform to resort to using Voodoo witch doctors to reanimate their supporters as zombie - they're the sort of immigrants undermining British values and culture - but I'm sure that, unless low budget horror films have lied to me, there are plenty of mad scientists out there who could do the job scientifically.  Obviously, by now, it would be unlikely that any of them were Nazi war criminals and therefore likely to be sympathetic to the party's ideology, (unless they'd been conducting their longevity and revivification experiments on themselves), but I'm sure that many of the current crop trained under Nazi mad scientists.  So there you go - a possible way ahead for Reform.

Another Day, Another Sex Scandal

So, what's next in terms of Tory sex scandals?  This latest one, with Tory MP William Wragge's use of Grindr apparently ending up with blackmail attempts on lots of other MPs and others who worked in Westminster.  But hey, it could happen to anyone, couldn't it?  I mean, the natural reaction to getting contacted by a complete stranger online is to send them pictures of your genitals, isn't it?  The whole thing really does read like the sort of shit I make up over on The Sleaze.  Still, I suppose that we should think ourselves lucky that he was only using Grindr.  I hate to think of the consequences if he had been using a similar app devoted to matching up S&M enthusiasts, (are there such apps?): "One minute I was responding to a message from a complete stranger, the next thing I knew, I was having my scrotum nailed to a Welsh dresser."  Bearing in mind the number of public school educated MPs sitting on the Tory benches that, I fear, would be a scandal that could have engulfed the party.  There would inevitably be pictures of naked Tory MPs strapped to racks, being whipped, having clamps put on their bollocks - all with their faces discreetly pixellated - leaked to the tabloids.  You can just imagine the Mail and Express salivating over such things while simultaneously decrying how sick and depraved it all is and blaming it on the permissive society and 'wokeness'.  I'm sure lefty councils and the BBC would be in there somewhere, as well.  

But I'm sure that the public reaction to such a scandal would be muted - a collective shrug of the shoulders - much as it has been to the Wragge business.  It's got to the stage where we've had so many appalling scandals, sexual or otherwise, that we seem to have become desensitised to them.  On a daily basis, it seems, we have incidents of naked corruption, of public money being diverted to private interests under the guise of 'government policy', outright lies and more policies designed to make the rich richer at the expense of the poor, yet nobody seems to bat an eyelid.  Damn it, we have water companies, enabled by the government, dumping shit into our rivers!  (That's one of the 'Benefits of Brexit' apparently - the ability to swim in our own shit).  Where are the riots?  Why aren't mobs of angry villagers waving blazing torches not bearing down on water company facilities?  As if, quite literally, dumping in our rivers wasn't bad enough, these foreign owned bastards then turn around and tell us we'll have to pay higher water bills in order to clean up their mess, because all the massive profits they've made off of us and the subsidies they've received have been paid out to shareholders rather than invested in repairs and infrastructure upgrades!  Jesus Christ!  When are people going to get angry?  It's no good sitting around waiting for an election - the Tories will delay it as long as possible then do their best to rig it in their favour.  Take up your cudgels and storm Downing Street - or the nearest S&M parlour as that's probably where you are most likely to find the bastards hanging out.

Truck Turner (1974)

When talking about Blaxploitation films recently, I pomdered as to what it was that made them uniquely 'black', (which, after all, was their unique selling point compared to other exploitation movies), when many had white writers, directors, producers and crews.  Were they really capable of interpreting the 'black experience' and putting it on film?  Truck Turner (1974) is a case in point - one of the best known of Blaxploitation pictures (mainly due to the presence of Isaac Hayes in the title role), not only did it have a white director in Johnathan Kaplan, (who would go on to direct a number of high profile mainstream movies), but it didn't even start life as a Blaxploitation film.  The script was originally written with an established star like Lee Marvin or Ernest Borgnine in mind for the lead role.  The film, however, ended up being financed and distributed by AIP who knew that they couldn't afford such names, so instead decided to rewrite the script as a Blaxploitation picture, a genre they had enjoyed considerable success with.  As filmed, Truck Turner is pure Blaxploitation, with a pretty much all black cast - the most notable non-black actor in a significant role is AIP regular Dick Miller as a dodgy bail bondsman - and a distinctly black milieu.  

In his second starring role after Tough Guys (1974), Issac Hayes this time doesn't have to share either top billing or too much screen time with rival leads.  Here he's tough modern day bounty hunter 'Truck' Turner who, with his partner, Jerry (Alan Weeks), is employed by Dick Miller to bring in violent pimp Gator, before he loses the bail bond he put up for him.  Much mayhem ensues.  At least, that's the first half of the film, which moves at a blistering pace, involving car chases around LA, fist fights, gun fights and lots of colourful characters and equally colourful banter between the two main characters.  It is all extremely well staged and shot against some suitably sleazy LA locations, made to seen even seedier by being photographed in brilliant California sunshine.  The problem is that it all abruptly ends and the pace slows down for some further plot development - something the film never really recovers from.  While the second half of the film, in which Gator's madam, having taken over his stable, tries to get his fellow pimps to take out a hit on Turner - with only Yaphet Kotto taking up the challenge - has a lot of incident, it just isn't as compelling as what had preceded it, feeling somewhat anti-climactic.  That said, it does include a typically sinister performance from Yaphet Kotto (fresh off of Live and Let Die (1973)) and a climactic and bloody gunfight in a hospital, but these just can't match the first half of the film.

The second half of Truck Turner also involves more character development for Hayes' character, in the form a sub-plot involving his girlfriend, newly released from jail, and their relationship which, again, slows things down, but does flesh out his character, compared to the film's first half, where he mainly beats up and shoots people.  Hayes himself is just as charismatic as he was in Tough Guys, but with the advantage that, this time, he doesn't have to compete with any stars of similar magnitude until the film's latter half, when Kotto appears.  He is, however, surrounded by an excellent supporting cast of character actors, including the afore mentioned Miller, Scatman Crothers, Paul Harris and Sam Laws.  Alan Weeks puts in a good turn as Turner's easy going sidekick, while Nichelle Nicolls puts in a memorable performance as Gator's tough as nails and foul mouthed madam.  Her profane tirade against her fellow pimps is a highlight of film.  Despite its problematic structure, which takes much of the heat out of the film, Truck Turner remains a hugely enjoyable film, particularly the breathlessly paced first half.  So, forget the uneven pacing and focus on the positives: it is the early seventies, it's California and the sun is out, there are lots of cool cars (including a '73 Dodge Charger), lot's of great dialogue and Hell, you're in good company - it's Isaac Hayes for God's sake, (who also provides a pretty cool soundtrack). 

It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)

It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) is notable for its similarities to the later Alien (1979).  It also bore a significant resemblance to an AE Van Vogt short story, first published in Astounding Science Fiction, to the extent that Van Vogt successfully took legal action against the producers  for payment for the uncredited use of his material.  He reportedly got a second payment, twenty years later, from the producers of Alien because of their film's resemblance to It! and, by extension, his story.  Both films concern a spaceship crew menaced by an predatory alien interloper which kill them, one by one.  In both films the creature hides the bodies in the ventilation system.  Moreover, both movies feature a multi-gender crew.  Obviously, It! is far less gory with far less sophisticated effects work, reflecting its era and budget.  The interior design of the ship, however, is surprisingly good and far more convincing than those seen in most contemporary low budget science fiction films.

The monster itself, while in common with other such films of the time, is a man in a suit, it is again, surprisingly well designed and menacingly portrayed.  Sensibly, it isn't seen in full until the latter stages of the film, previously being seen in glimpses and shadow.  Veteran B-movie director Edward L Chan makes the most of the claustrophobic and shadowed sets to build up a decent head of suspense and tension, resulting in what is easily one the best of his many, many films.  The film's main plot twist is that the ship is returning to earth the only survivor of the previous Mars mission, who is accused of killing his colleagues (who were, of course, killed by the monster, but nobody believes him), which gives the conflict between him and the creature a personal edge.  Heading up a cast of B-movie faces is the ever dependable Marshall Thompson, (who, for people of my age will forever be synonymous with the sixties TV series Daktari!), who, in the late fifties headed up a number of low budget science fiction movies, battling everything from blood sucking aliens to murderous disembodied brains.  He was still appearing in low budget monster movies in the late seventies.  Running less than seventy minutes, It! The Terror From Beyond Space is a briskly paced, very focused piece of low budget action hold the attention throughout its running time.

Faceless (1987)

Georges Franju's Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960) must be one of the most influential films in the history of continental horror movies.  It has inspired numerous films about the restoration of disfigured female beauty via radical skin grafts and face transplants.  Sometimes the treatments involved vary, with blood transfusions, hormone infusions and the like substituting for surgery, but they all involve the murder and dismemberment of young women and it never ends well.  Perhaps Jesus Franco was the director most influenced by Franju's film, turning out a number of films based around the same basic plot, starting with Gitos en la Noche (1962), The Awful Dr Orloff in English, which itself spawned a number of sequels featuring the title character.  Franco's main contribution to this sub-genre was the injection of plenty of sexual kinkiness and lots more gore.  He was, of course, constrained by the censorship of the era but, in the late eighties, he returned to the subject with Faceless (1987).  The film is, pretty much, a remake of Orloff, but with a contemporary setting that eschews the Gothic decadence of its progenitor in favour of a much slicker and glossy looking production.  It also ups the kink and violence quotient quite considerably, with modern special effects and make up techniques allowing him to incorporate a number of startling and, for their time, effective gore sequences.  

This version of the story incorporates incest, rape, necrophilia and chainsaw mutilations, as Franco attempts to update the story for more modern times.  This time around it is plastic surgeon Dr Flamand who is trying to restore the acid-scarred face of his sister (with whom he has an incestuous relationship), after she takes the acid intended for her brother, thrown by a disgruntled ex-patient.  Using his private clinic as a front and assisted by Nathalie, another lover who is also involved with the sister, he kidnaps young women and surgically removes their faces in order to try and transplant them onto his sister.  There's also a handyman, Gordon, who not only rapes some of the women but also disposes of their bodies by cutting them up with a chainsaw and indulging in a bit of necrophilia with the pieces.  Unfortunately for them, one of their victims is the wayward daughter of a wealthy US businessman, who sends a private eye to track her down.  Flamand eventually enlists the help of a an SS surgeon and war criminal who had achieved some success in face transpants while working in a concentration camp.  

Obviously enjoying a larger than usual budget, Franco delivers a surprisingly slick looking film with decent production values and lots of nicely shot Paris locations.  The film relentlessly emphasises its modernity - in stark contrast to Franco's sixties and seventies Gothic historicals - from gleaming operating theatres to neon lit streets and the gleaning interior decor of bars and nightclubs.  It also boasts an uncommonly (for a Franco film) good cast, with Helmut Berger as Dr Flamand, Brigette Lahie as his assistant, Caroline Munro as the kidnapped girl, Anto Diffring as the Nazi surgeon, Chris Mitchum as the private eye and Telly Savalas in a cameo as Munro's father.  Best of , the doctor who recommends the Nazi surgeon to Flamand is none other than Dr Orloff, played, as he was in 1962, by Howard Vernon.  Where the film falters, however, is in its poor juggling of its proliferating sub-plots some of which, such as the business of the suspicious patient threatening blackmail (played by Stephan Audran), are truncated very abruptly.  Even the main sub-plot, that of the detective's investigation, vanishes for long stretches of the film as it is made to play second fiddle to the horrible and sensational, (and therefore more easily marketable) goings on at the clinic.  While not exactly ground breaking, Faceless is, nonetheless, an entertaining enough film to watch, it moves along at a good pace, with the story developing reasonably smoothly.  Which won't necessarily please hardcore Franco fans as it lacks the characteristic sense of chaos and borderline lunacy of most of his output, (not to mention a lack of his apparently random use of the zoom lens), having a far more 'generic' eighties horror flick look and feel.  But it does have some pretty good effects, including faces being cut off, axe and chainsaw choppings and even a syringe to the eye, which will probably please fans of more convention slasher and body horror films. 

Mercenary Movies

I was watching Wild Geese (1978) on Good Friday (if ever there was a film designed for watching on bank holiday afternoons, Wild Geese was surely it), and found myself pondering on the nature of mercenary films.  What they have in common, of course, is a tendency to romanticise the whole concept of the 'Soldier of Fortune', depicting such men as heroic figures turning up in war zones to rescue beleaguered outsiders, bolster the forces of the 'good' guys and generally do what conventional, national, armed forces can't.  This idea of the flamboyant soldier for hire, merrily toting their sten guns on behalf of various 'causes', was popularised by the antics, mainly in Africa, of the likes of 'Mad' Mike Hoare, whose adventures were lapped up by newspapers in the UK, who probably saw there merecenaries as a last expression of imperial power, putting uppity natives in their place.  The reality of mercenaries was and is, of course, somewhat different - they tend to be socially maladjusted types with no moral compass, no qualms about using violence, who can find no place in a peacetime civil society, so instead ply their trade for money in the most deprived parts of the world.  (To be fair, it is generally only films about twentieth century mercenaries which paint them as romantic anti-heroes - there are a significant number of movies set in earlier eras which portray them in a far less favourable light).

Wild Geese is pretty typical of the genre - set in Africa and dominated by white men.  The scenarios of these films are more often than not informed by the long and bloody conflict in the Congo during the sixties, in which mercenaries played a prominent role.  Dark of the Sun (1965), for instance, is entirely set against the background of the conflict, while the opening scenes of The Last Grenade (1970), which set up the film's central conflict, take place there, (neither of course, was actually filmed in Congo, let alone Africa).  While the novel from which Wild Geese was derived also used the events in the Congo as its background, the film's script makes it all much less specific, substituting one of those convenient fictional African countries to be the backdrop for its action.  What's clear watching the film is that the makers of Wild Geese thought that they were being very progressive in their depiction of race and post-imperial Africa.  There's the whole dialogue between the Afrikaans mercenary and the deposed black African president they are rescuing, with the latter 'educating' the former as to benefits of integration, multi-racialism and his vision of a future Africa where black and white live in perfect harmony.  Not only that but, hey, one of the 'Wild Geese' themselves is a black guy!  And he's liked and respected by his fellow, white, soldiers!  Which just underlines one of the film's fundamental problems - in reality the majority of such a force would have been recruited locally, rather than employing geriatric-looking ex-British army types, with the white European mercenaries providing leadership and training, (something Dark of the Sun gets right).  

The portrayal of the opposing forces is also problematic, with them conforming to the usual imperialist stereotypes of bloodthirsty brutal savages who prefer to hack up their enemies with machetes rather than just shoot them.  (Indeed, at the film's climax, Richard Harris begs Richard Burton to shoot him in order to avoid such an agonising death).  Moreover, they clearly can't be trusted to act as an organised military force, requiring the command of East German and Cubn 'military advisors'.  As is often the case, the producers wanted to have their cake and eat it: on the one hand they wanted to present a progressive face to filmgoers, embracing multi-racialism, (in no small part to stave off criticism of having shot a lot of the movie in Apartheid era South Africa), while simultaneously giving audiences a 'boy's own' type adventure, complete with imperialist attitudes.  But it was a combination of elements that proved popular at the UK box office, (also in Europe and globally, with the exception of the US, where the film's release was disrupted by the distributor, Allied Artists, going out of business).  Seen today, the 'boy's own' adventure aspect is the one that works best, with the film cramming in plenty of spectacular action, even if the leads, Richard Burton and Richard Harris, look as if they should be drawing their pensions rather than jumping out of planes and mowing down hordes of enemy soldiers.  Thankfully, neither they, nor co-star Roger Moore, (who fitted this one in between Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)), seem to be taking it too seriously.

Fortean Times Autumn 1990

This Autumn 1990 issue of Fortean Times makes for an interesting comparison with the premiere issue of Fanthorpe's Quarterly Digest of the Paranormal from 2001, which I posted here a few weeks ago.  It seems clear that this was the version of Fortean Times that Fanthorpe's was trying to emulate.  Not only do they both use an A5 format, (Fortean Times varied between A4 and A5 in the eighties and nineties), but also the crowded internal layouts of the two magazines is pretty much identical.  It is notable that 2001 marked the point at which Fortean Times had started to be published by John Brown publishing, settling on the A4 format and a much glossier, professional-looking presentation and interior layout.  Which, of course, made it a more attractive proposition for potential buyers when seen on the shelves of newsagents.  It seems pretty obvious that creators of Fanthorpe's were hoping to catch those long-term readers of Fortean Times who felt put off by the new, more professional, format.

As far as the content is concerned, this issue of Fortean Times is pretty typical for the era - lots of coverage of crop circles, which were pretty big back then and would continue to have a high profile into the 2000s, a lengthy piece about evidence for the reality of the transmutation of base metals, accounts of hauntings and lots of book reviews.  The cover illustrates an in-depth look at an exotic ceremony from Madagascar - the 'waking of the dead'.   This involves the temporary exhumation of the dead from their tombs by their families, every 5-7 years for a series of ancestor worshipping rites and rituals.  These sorts of anthropological studies were often the most interesting aspect of Fortean Times in this period, shedding light on the sort of obscure (to western sensibilities) religious belief systems that you just wouldn't find covered anywhere else, outside of dry and dusty academic journals. While the later version of Fortean Times is undoubtedly more accessible to the casual reader - it looks a lot less like the sort of thing read only by cranks - there's a lot to be said for the earlier incarnation that, arguably, presented the Forteana in a 'purer' and less diluted-for-popular-consumption form.