Unreformed Racists?

So, we're evidently meant to be shocked by recent revelations that many Reform UK supporters, candidates and campaign workers are actually racists, bigots and have formerly been members of things like the National Front and the BNP.  I'm not sure why - all of these press reports surely fall into the category of 'No shit, Sherlock'.  Exactly what other constituency does anyone think that Reform UK is designed to appeal to, with its anti-immigrant rhetoric?  To paraphrase Will Self, on the subject of Brexit, while it might not be true to say that everyone who votes for or supports Reform is a racist, you can be sure that all racists will support and vote for it.  Of course, this makes such people doubly stupid: not just for being racists, but for falling for the absolute scam that Reform UK actually is.  It isn't even a real political party, it is actually a limited company, with Nigel Farage as majority shareholder, (the other shareholder being some time leader Richard Tice).  Which is why Farage doesn't have to bother with such tiresome things as leadership elections when he decides to take over as leader - he just convenes a shareholders meeting where he outvotes Tice.  All of which also means that all of the membership subscriptions they collect (not to mention donations from individuals, corporations and Russia) could simply be paid out to the two shareholders as profits.  Not that I'm saying that Farage and Tice are actually doing that.  But they could do it and it would be perfectly legal.

Anyway, the specific reason I'm ranting about Reform right now is that one of the candidates it has standing in this general election that they've been forced to disown happens to be my local Reform candidate.  Incredibly, I only learned this from reading The Guardian - my local newspaper, The Crapchester Chronicle, hasn't seen fit to cover the issue.  (To be fair, they are still sulking over the fact that even local polls are now indicating that their beloved sitting Tory MP is on course to lose the seat to Labour).  This particular candidate has been cut loose because, it seems, back in the day he was a member of the BNP.  But have they actually disowned him?  Today I had the misfortune to have shoved through my letterbox a wad of election leaflets for all of the candidates contesting this seat - including one for Reform UK.  Now, this leaflet prominently featured the faces of  Farage and Tice, (which rules out even using it as toilet paper as I wouldn't sully my arse with their likenesses),not surprising  as, let's face it, Reform UK is pretty much one big ego trip for Farage, but the 'disgraced' candidate's name is still there.  So, are Reform contesting this constituency, or not?  Because if they are no longer endorsing this candidate, they can't.  In which case, why are they still canvassing for him?

Pulp Atrocities

 

I just love the way that even the panthers being set on these semi-clad captive girls are branded with Nazi symbols on this May 1963 cover of Man's Action.  I mean, why?  Not to mention, how?  Are those decals of some kind that have been slapped on their heads?  Or, perhaps they are shaved into their fur, or maybe only the circle is shaved, with the swastika tattooed?  Then again, I suppose that they could have dyed the circles into their fur, with a stencil, to keep the swastika bits black.  Whatever the answer, we're still faced with the question of why?  Were there also Allied panthers on the loose, with Union Jacks, Stars and Stripes or red stars on their heads?  After all, the Germans wouldn't want to shoot their own panthers by mistake, would they?  But whatever the hows and whys of the situation, there's no denying that setting big cats onto their victims is possibly the weirdest war crime that the Nazis have been accused of carrying out.

Which brings us to the whole business of the way these men's magazine covers depict the nastiness of the Nazis - it is always in the most bizarre manner possible, usually focusing on semi-naked women undergoing various tortures or being frozen in blocks of ice, dipped in molten gold or roasted on spits and so on.  But bearing in mind all of the real atrocities they committed - the genocides, the concentration camps, the human experiments and so on - these all seem utterly ridiculous and more than a little tasteless in their avoidance of the reality of Nazi war crimes.  It is as if, somehow, the publishers of these magazines felt that reality wasn't sensational enough, or that their adolescent readers simply wouldn't be able to comprehend the real crimes or identify with the real victims.  After all, while the real victims of Nazism were minorities, most notably the Jews, but also homosexuals, the disabled, Slavs, etc - all of their victims on these covers seem to be beautiful and very Aryan looking young women.  In truth, it probably had more to do with the fact that these magazines traded in male fantasies and real war atrocities were considered to be far too depressing to be depicted.  Which isn't to say that these covers can't be enjoyed on their own terms as pieces of pulp art, but it is important to remember that they essentially trivialise the very serious matter of Nazi war crimes, (not to mention Japanese war crimes, Soviet human rights abuses and the like, according to which conflict they were illustrating).

Election Fatigue

We must once again speak of elections - after all, this still supposedly the editorial blog of a satire site, (although, over the years, it has taken on a life of its own).  General elections really should be the lifeblood of satire, generating so many story ideas and driving interest in politics, but I have to say that this one has failed too enthuse me.  So far, I've been able to muster only one story over at The Sleaze directly linked to the election - even that was planned in advance, as an election this year was inevitable.  This inevitably is part, I think of the problem.  We've waited so long for an election date, with the government interminably stalling on it, desperately hoping that things would get better for them, that now that it has come, it just seems anti-climactic.  I really should be more excited - if the polls are to be believed then, for the first time in fourteen years, I'm going to end up on the winning side.  Even better, there's a very good chance that my local Tory MP could be unseated by the Labour candidate.  Yet, I remain apathetic, not even being bothered by the fact that I missed Keir Starmer's recent visit to the constituency, (I was at Dunelm, buying a bread bin) - thanks to the number of emails I get sent in his name, courtesy of my Labour Party membership, I've begun to think of him as a personal friend.  Like the rest of the country, I made up my mind long ago as to how I was going to vote and now I just want it all over and done with.

Of course, various political pundits would disagree with me on that last point, claiming that large numbers of voters remain undecided and could all vote Tory.  That's right, we're back to the 'shy Tories' business where Tory voters are supposedly so ashamed of their voting intentions that they won't reveal them to pollsters.  I find it fascinating that we only get this sort of speculation when opinion polls are giving large leads to Labour going into an election.   Likewise, we never seem to see the press warning of the dangers of a Tory 'super majority' when the tables are turned.  Obviously, this can't have anything to do with the fact that most of this country's press is controlled by Tory donors and supporters, could it?  While, undoubtedly, the most entertaining aspect of this election campaign, so far, was been watching the Tory campaign implode amidst allegations of candidates betting on the election date just before it was publicly announced, even this felt inevitable.  The last few years of Tory government have been utterly shambolic and corrupt, so it really comes as no surprise that their campaign to be re-elected follows a similar blueprint.  That said, I was rather worried when their campaign director had to stand down amidst these betting allegations - assuming that he had money of a big Labour win, I feared that the campaign might improve with his removal.  I needn't have worried, though, it's still been utterly dire.  Ah well, roll on 4th July.

The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958) - A Fuller Appreciation

 

I briefly wrote about The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958) a while ago and how evocative both the trailer and poster were for this B-movie,which I had never seen in full.  Well, I have finally caught up with the film - all sixty nine minutes of it - and have to say that it is surprisingly decent.  Even if it doesn't quite live up to the promise of the trailer and poster.  To recap, the plot involves the living severed head of a man executed for witchcraft by Sir Francis Drake four hundred years ago being dug up on a modern day ranch, after which it proceeds to possess various people as it attempts to find its headless body. It's main target is a young girl with diving powers who, the believes, will be able to locate the missing body.  Obviously, it can't get to her first - there wouldn't be much of a plot if it did - so, instead, works its way through various other cast members, starting with the ranch owner's simpleton ranch hand.  The scenes of this hulking character carrying the head by its hair, lifting it up to peer through windows and spy on its potential victims are surprisingly effective.  Indeed, the disembodied head makes for a surprisingly effective 'monster', eerily mouthing soundless commands to its cohorts, (without a body and lungs, it can't breath and therefore vocalise), when it isn't lurking inside a hat box.  Much credit here has to go to British actor Robin Hughes - who was usually to be found in small (often uncredited) supporting roles in films and on TV - who manages, using only his blazing stare, to evoke a real sense of evil surrounding the head.  He finally gets to utter a few lines at the climax, after head and body are briefly re-united, at which point, of course, the character becomes far less frightening, as he is now just an archaically dressed dude spouting the usual threats of revenge, etc.

Part of Universal's post war cycle of horror and science fiction B-movies and shot in two weeks, The Thing That Couldn't Die is largely studio-bound, utilising a ranch set that had seen service in countless westerns. But director Will Cowan uses this to good effect, using the minimalist locations to give the film a claustrophobic feel, with the characters effectively trapped within the its boundaries.  The black and white photography and sheer artificiality of the exterior scenes, adds to the air of late-night creepiness that permeates the film, aided by a borrowed musical score from Universal's library, (including part of the electronic score from This Island Earth).  Interestingly, this was the only horror film that Cowans, whose specialty seemed to be musical shorts, made.  In fact, it appears to be his last directing and producing credit.  The script, by science fiction author David Duncan - who scripted a number of Universal's fifties B-movie cycle, as well as more prestigious film's like The Time Machine (1960) - provides slightly less clunky dialogue than usual for B pictures of the era, while keeping the plot clear and straightforward.  The script's main weakness lies in its use of the deus ex machina of a 'magic amulet' that not only protects the wearer from the head's hypnotic powers, (much as a crucifix protects the wearer from a vampire), that you just know is gong to be used as a 'get out of jail free' card at the movie's climax.   Overall, the film benefits from the Universal 'house style', evident in all of their B-movies - which gives the film a slick look and feel that belies its small budget.  While I'm not making a case for The Thing That Couldn't Die being some kind of lost horror classic, but it is a well made B-movie that succeeds in making something genuinely creepy from what is, on the face of it, a pretty ludicrous story concept.  The Thing That Couldn't Die was originally released in the US as the supporting feature to Hammer's Dracula (1958).

The Old New West

I've been watching a lot of B-Westerns from the forties lately, courtesy of Roku channel that livestreams an eclectic mix of old movies from its library.  Fascinatingly, a large number of them are actually set in what was then the present day and happily mix traditional cowboys on horses with gangsters driving sedans.  This is especially true of the Roy Rogers movies made at Republic tat create a whole alternate universe where the Old West, complete with saloons, sheriffs cattle drives and single action revolvers co-exists the real 1940s - 'civilisation' is still 'back East', but has apparently advanced to the modern age, leaving the west back in the 1890s.  It's almost surreal, but surprisingly pleasing, this culture clash between old and new.  Perhaps most surreal are those films where Roy Rogers plays himself as a 'singing cowboy' star of Hollywood movies who then goes back to 'the west' for a vacation, but gets involved in some traditional western plot, complete with rustlers, claim jumpers and the like.  One in particular - made post-war in 'Trucolor' and with Andy Devine as the comic relief sidekick - opens in 'present day' Hollywood, on a film set as Roy wraps up shooting on his latest film, before he and his buddies pile into a convertible and drive off into the 'real west', where (apart from telephones and the odd car), time seems to have stood still since 1900.  

Of course, there is historical precedence for this mixing of cowboys and modern technology - prior to World War One, things like motor transport were just beginning to take root in the West, co-existing alongside horse-riding cow pokes and bandits.  That said, by then the wide open rages of the Old West had been greatly reduced by enclosure, as ranchers put up new-fangled metal fencing to make the boundaries of their land, reducing the need for so many cowboys to keep the cattle on the right spread.  So, by the 1940s, the sort of West portrayed in these B-Westerns was largely fantasy.  But an enjoyable fantasy.  Withing these 'modern day' Westerns existed a curious sub-set of 'war time' Westerns, featuring the heroes of various ongoing series suddenly thrust into assisting the US war effort - even these series were normally set in the traditional 'Old West'.  The stars of these series would, for a film or two, find themselves somehow transported to the 1940s, although the characters and their situations would remain the same.  An example I saw recently was an entry in the 'Range Busters' series, which was basically Monogram's even cheaper knock off of Republic's 'Three Mesquiteers' series, where the setting suddenly moves to the 1940s and our three heroes, still riding horses and sporting single action six guns, find themselves rounding up and herding cattle for the US Army and foiling Japanese spies and saboteurs.  Although the war is clearly going on, planes fly overhead and cars full of gangsters in modern suits abound, on the 'Range Busters' ranch, time seems to have stood still.  Oddly, both the preceding and succeeding entries in the series are set back in period, yet it didn't seem to bother contemporary audiences.

As a footnote, I've found that you can date Roy Rogers films according to who the comic relief sidekick is: in early ones it is usually Gabby Hayes, then there's a long middle period with Smiley Burnette (previously sidekick to Gene Autry), before Andy Devine takes over for the post-war ones, (Burnette having moved over to the 'Durango Kid' series to replace Dub Taylor).  There were probably other sidekicks, but these are the main three and constitute probably the best Western comedic sidekicks in history.  Of these three, Burnette probably has to take the title of geatest sidekick by dint of the sheer number of stars he was sidekick to - he was also a successful and popular singer and composer himself, which was possibly why he ended up with the 'Durango Kid', who didn't sing himself, leaving BUrnette as the sole musical performer in the series.

Site on the Run

I've had a fun time lately, moving The Sleaze to a new host.  It's a move that's been a long time in gestation, but ended being forced on me at relatively short notice.  I've been increasingly unhappy with my previous host for a long time now - steeply increasing prices accompanied by sharply decreasing levels of reliability and support.  It's the sad story that afflicts many web hosting companies: corporate takeovers.  When I first moved to this host, they were a medium sized company relatively local to me who offered decent support for a reasonable price.  They turned out to be far more reliable that my previous host.  Inevitably, though, they were taken over by a larger company, but still maintained better than average services and support for the price.  Then they were taken over, yet, again, by a larger, pan-European hosting firm that managed brands across the continent.  Which was when things started to decline, with support pared back to a minimum and a distinct lack or reliability, all accompanied by rising prices. Unfortunately, the features offered by their hosting packages didn't increase to match their prices - much of what other hosts were offering as standard were extra.  Very expensively extra.  Then the parent company was bought by GoDaddy and things really went downhill, culminating in the announcement, last week, that a long promised upgrading and move to new servers was going to happen within seven days - but at a cost.  The cost of hosting was to double, yet still all the stuff that other hosting companies would include for standard at that price was still extra.  (They'd already just taken full payment for the next year's hosting at the old prices).  So, I was forced to finally move the site away.

The problem has been finding, at such short notice, a new host that would charge me less, but still provide decent service and offer as part of the price all the stuff that the other guys wanted extra payments for.  The reality is that moving to a new host is always a risk - you don't really know how good or bad they'll be until you are actually there.  After considering various big hosting companies - most of which wouldn't have saved me much money, but would at least have included as standard the features that I would otherwise have had to pay extra for if I'd stayed put - I eventually decided to take a gamble on a much smaller outfit with, as yet, not much of web presence or reputation, but who offered reasonably priced hosting packages which included pretty much everything I required.  They also don't mislead with those 'introductory offers' of low prices for the first year's hosting, with steep price rises after that.  Plus, as an added bonus, they claim to be eco-friendly, using green energy and supporting green charities.  

So, yesterday, the site moved to this new home.  From the point of view of visitors, the only visible difference is that the site is now served as 'https' rather than 'http' - which means, in practice, that the little padlock symbol in the browser address bar is now locked.  I have to say, that the move to force site owners to go to 'https', for which you need an SSL certificate installed by your host, is one of the biggest cons in the history of the net.  Sure, in theory, it makes sites more secure. But, if like me, you aren't selling stuff and therefore enabling financial transactions, or asking for users' details for subscriptions or memberships, it makes no difference whatsoever.  But with search engines, principally Google, threatening to not rank sites without an SSL certificate, regardless of content, most site owners feel obligated to fork out yet more money for a certificate and having it installed.  But the new host offers this service as standard, (unlike the old host), so I might as well take advantage.  

It's too early to say whether this new host is going to be a success for the site, but so far, so good.  There were some problems with the site migration, but that was mainly down to my idiocy in trying to use the wrong credentials to access the old site.  Having used cPanel for so long, the move to a different type of control panel feels somewhat daunting, but I'm getting there.  Obviously, these new guys could be bought out by some corporate giant tomorrow, putting me back to square one, but that's always the risk you take with smaller hosts.  Overall, though, there's a lot to be said for using smaller web hosting firms, particularly if, like me, you are running a small, independent site that isn't geared to e-commerce.  Not only is it more cost effective, but you generally get a more personal touch when you deal with them - something I'd come to miss with my previous hosts.

Night of the Strangler (1972)

I'd like to say that Night of the Strangler (1972) was the movie where ex-Monkee Mickey Dolenz played a mad strangler.  But the truth is that there is no strangler in this movie - despite the title, nobody gets strangled.  But Mickey Dolenz does co-star in it.  Quite what moved him to appear a low budget, misleadingly titled, exploitation film we'll probably never know, (he wasn't even the first choice for his role - he was only cast after the original actor was fired early on) - perhaps he still traumatised by the break up of 'The Monkees'.  Nevertheless, he's the closest thing to a star that Night of the Strangler can muster, the rest of the cast padded out with exploitation regulars and unknowns.  To be fair, none of them are horrendously bad and Dolenz is, at least, very energetic in his role, but none of their performances is particularly distinguished, either.  Frequently lumped in with the 'Blaxploitation' genre, Night of the Strangler does indeed try to exploit the theme of racial tension - rather crudely, in fact.  Dolenz plays the younger of two New Orleans brothers whose sister returns from New York to tell them that she's pregnant by a black man, who she intends to marry.  The older brother, a high powered lawyer and dyed-in-the-wool racist, goes ballistic, making all kinds of threats.  After the sister returns to New York, her boyfriend is shot dead by an assassin.  She loses the child and returns to New Orleans, only to be herself murdered by a mysterious figure.  Meanwhile, a young black priest, who knows the brothers, has returned to New Orleans after some time away and is assigned by the church to officiate at the older brother's wedding to Dolenz's former girlfriend, (another sign of just how big a bastard he is).  Naturally, confrontations result at the wedding, first between the two brothers, then a racially charged confrontation between the older brother and the priest.  After this, a string of murders occur, targeting the brothers and those close to them.

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that the priest is behind it all - he isn't really the priest, but his identical twin, the real priest having been the one who knocked up the sister and was subsequently killed.  (The producers were clearly trying for maximum shock value here by breaking as many taboos at once as possible: a white girl knocked up not just by any black man, but one who was a Catholic priest, to boot!).  While the plot is serviceable, it unfolds very slowly, with long stretches of talky exposition scenes between the murders effectively dissipating any tension, let alone suspense.  In fact, the film is very rough hewn, with scrappy production values, grainy photography that never quite seems to know what it is meant to be focusing on in any particular scene and very clunky dialogue.  The script meanders all over the place, with a number of sub-plots brought in to little effect.  While it might be argued that the whole business involving the older brother firing the black gardener served a purpose in further establishing the brother as a racist, his liberal use of the N-word and reaction to his sister's relationship with a black man, had pretty much already established that.  It also, briefly, provides a red-herring suspect for the murders, but even this is ineffective, as the first murder pre-dates the gardener's firing and therefore his motive.  The sub-plot is clearly there simply to pad out the running time.  The film isn't a complete loss: some of the musical score is quite enjoyable, (interestingly, the opening credits lists a song which is never actually heard in the film as released), some of the murders are suitably bizarre - a snake in a bunch of flowers and crossbow-type trap concealed in a car dashboard, for instance - and some of the cop scenes are reasonably well done, with some good interplay between the main, multi racial, pair of detectives.  Moreover, the plot is quite ingenious in the way it sets up various of the protagonists to kill each other, without the real killer - who has instigated the situations - being implicated.

The title, however, remains a mystery.  In fact, Night of The Strangler was released under a number of different titles, in an apparent attempt to appeal to different sections of the exploitation audience.  Dirty Dan and Dirt Dan's Women (Dan being the name of the older brother) were doubtless designed for the sexploitation audience, while Is the Father Black Enough? was designed to play on the theme of racial tension for the 'Blaxploitation' demographic and Vengeance is Mine was for those looking for violent crime orientated exploitation.  A lot of the film's marketing, though, focused on the theme of racial violence - "A racist wind blows the dust from a black man’s grave to choke the honkies to death.”, runs the most infamous advertising slogan.  Which might seem laughable now, but back in 1972 would have seemed pretty provocative.  The film, however, simply can't live up to such slogans being, in reality, a pretty straightforward revenge thriller with a fashionable racial aspect bolted on so as to appeal to the most popular exploitation genre of the time.

The Zebra Force (1976)

So, is The Zebra Force (1976) a blaxploitation movie?  While it certainly boasts of a strong black character in a key role and addresses issues of racism within organised crime, (the Italian mob tolerate, but still look down on, their black equivalents).  But in a mildly bizarre twist,, the 'black' criminals we see ripping off a mob operation at the film's outset turn out to really be white guys in black face.  They are the 'Zebra Force' a group of Vietnam vets, led by their crippled and disfigured former officer, who have decided to hit back at the mob, whose activities blight the local community, by disrupting and robbing various of their rackets.  The black face disguises ensure that tension is generated between the mob and local black organised crime, diverting attention from their activities as the two factions descend into a racially aggravated gang war.  Arguably, it is more of a vigilante movie than anything else, except that the 'vigilantes' here are intent upon enriching themselves - they have no intention of redistributing their ill-gotten gains to the local community that the mob ripped off in the first place.  Their self-interest is central to the film's problems: it makes it extremely difficult to sympathise with the 'Zebra Force' - ultimately they are just another gang of criminals.  Compounding this issue is the fact that the members of 'Zebra Force' remain pretty much anonymous throughout the movie- there is little attempt to develop any of them, other than their leader, as individual characters.  Consequently, it is difficult to really care about what happens to any of them.

So anonymous are the title group that much of the film's focus falls upon the enforcer brought in by the local mob to try and get to the bottom of who is ripping them off.  As played by Mike Lane, (a veteran heavy who had portrayed the monster in the obscure 1958 Boris Karloff horror film Frankenstein 70), he's hardly likeable or charismatic, but he at least has a character and plenty of screen presence.  Likewise Rockne Tarkington, who plays the black gang leader and who also gets a fair amount of screen time - he makes the most of the dialogue he has and you remember his character long after the film is over.  In fact, the supporting cast is packed out with character actors you'll doubtless recognise from other exploitation films, without necessarily knowing their names, all of whom make the most of the material they are given to create actual characters.  Consequently, the scenes with the villains and the cops are far more enjoyable than those with our nominal heroes.  All of which makes the sense that there is a vacuum at the centre of the film, where a strong, sympathetic, presence should be, even keener.  One of the problems faced by the 'Zebra Force' themselves is that what dialogue they are given is bland and clunky, delivered by a bunch of pretty poor actors.  Of course, it doesn't help that for long stretches of the film they are unrecognisable in their black disguises.  Actually, they are unrecognisable because, in these scenes, they actually are played by black actors (something usually unremarked upon by reviewers).  When they return to base, we get a perfunctory scene of them peeling off 'masks', Mission Impossible style, although it is quite obvious that they aren't the same actors. For the film's 'twist' ending, this is reversed as a wiate character peels off his 'mask' to reveal that he is really black.

But is there anything good about The Zebra Force?  Well, for a film so cheaply made, (its lack of budget is evident in the poor production values, choppy direction ,scuzzy photography and sound), it does include a number of surprisingly well realised stunt sequences - mainly guys falling off of things and car chases, but nevertheless well executed.  Its cheapness also gives it a certain urban grittiness, with the action playing out against a backdrop of filthy and run down locations.  Ultimately, none of this lifts it above the level of being a cheap action picture -disappointingly, it never addresses the central issue of white guys having to 'black up' in order to successfully commit crimes - but it at least does the action reasonably well, delivering a satisfying number of heists, gunfights, chases corrupt cops, shootings and fights.  The mix was clearly successful enough that, more than ten years later, the film spawned a direct-to-video sequel, Code Name: Zebra (1987), which saw Timothy Brown and Mike Lane returning from the original cast.  To the ever-lasting confusion of posters on the IMDB, this title had also been used as a variant release title for the original.

Cutting and Pasting

As I've mentioned before, I'm fascinated by what I refer to as 'Cut and Paste' filmmaking, whereby footage from one film is incorporated into another, or two different films are combined to create a new film, sometimes with new footage added, or even where one film is transformed into a new entity, by adding new footage.  One of the masters of this was the late Al Adamson, who regularly reworked one film into another over a period of years, (Psycho-a-Go-Go (1965), which was re-edited with added new footage into Fiend With the Electronic Brain (1969), which in turn was further re-edited and had more new footage added to become Blood of Ghastly Horror (1971), being the prime example).  Going back further, in the late forties Republic Pictures cut costs on the production of new serials by building each  new one around the action sequences from two earlier serials,matching the costumes of the new cast to those in the earlier serials.  Such practices were also common among B-movie producers.  Anyway, getting to the point, I indulged in a bit of 'cut and paste' story creation the other day, over on The Sleaze.  It's been a while since I did this but, while going through my old document files, I came across a story I didn't recall ever posting, yet still felt familiar, (not familiar in the sense that I'd written it, just that parts of it reminded me of something else I recalled posting).  After some investigation, I found that I'd incorporated a rewritten version of some of this into a new narrative framework for a story published many years ago.  

I eventually recalled that I'd abandoned the original, which was only meant to be one half of a story when I realised that I couldn't do the idea justice at such a short length and opted instead to expand the other half into a complete story.  So, being in one of those moods when really didn't feel like starting a new story for The Sleaze from scratch, (I'd been having a very frustrating week in which I'd seemed to run around a lot without actually achieving anything), I decided to finally rework this old story - after a delay of over a decade - instead.  After removing any dated references, the story ended up with a new opening, placing it in a more contemporary context, some rearranged text and some additional material which had occurred to me as i read the original version.  The end result was a pretty passable story which I was happy to publish as it was sufficiently different from the version previously posted..  It wasn't so much time that it saved me, as intellectual effort.  Whilst I'm still not the Al Adamson of vaguely satirical stories, it was still a satisfying exercise.  I used to do this more in the past, particularly when the site switched to Wordpress, taking the opportunity to rewrite and refurbish some older material to make it more contemporary.  Also, in the early days of the site, quite a lot of stories were extensively rewritten versions of stuff that had originally appeared in its short-lived and obscure print version, produced to amuse work colleagues, (circulation approximately ten). 

The Fourth Victim (1971)

I think my interest in continental films dates back to childhood.  No, I wasn't a precocious eight year old watching Fellini movies, but rather a viewer of dubbed Euro-thrillers and the like.  Back in the seventies far more of these films were shown on TV here in the UK, often in late night slots, but also sometimes in prime time, especially on BBC2.  The thing was that at the time I didn't really know that these were foreign films, they were just films to me, except that they were clearly different in subtle ways to British or American movies.  Whereas, for instance, films from the UK and US tended toward more traditional orchestral musical scores, which followed established classical music tropes, these 'other' films had wildly different music - sometimes orchestral, yes, but with unfamiliar styles of arrangements, the addition of human voices and unusual instruments.  Many, though, eschewed traditional orchestration, opting for jazz-based, electronic or zingy pop orientated scores, with catchy refrains that stayed in your head for days afterwards.  They also looked different, far more brightly lit, often employing fluid camera work and unusual perspectives.  Then there were the casts - while you could always recognise various British and American actors who were long past their prime, they were packed out with unfamiliar faces speaking English with voices that often didn't quite fit them.  These discrepancies were particularly noticeable in those films which were set in the UK - even when they were actually shot in Britain, rather than pretending that somewhere in Italy or Spain looked like the UK, they seemed to present heir locations in the same way that UK and US filmmakers depicted continental locations - from an outsider's perspective.  

All of which brings us to The Fourth Victim (1971), an Italian psycho-thriller shot in the UK.  I have no idea whether this was one of the dubbed foreign films I saw as a child - I was pretty hazy as to the titles - but it has all the hallmarks of such a film.  Directed by Spanish director Eugenio Martin, probably best known for the feverishly demented Cushing and Lee vehicle  Horror Express (1972), it's  good looking film, featuring lots of interestingly shot (and surprisingly sunny) UK locations, ranging from London to the white cliffs of Dover, which moves along at a good pace.  The cast is headed by Michael Craig, whose UK film career was beginning to wind down in favour of TV work, and Carrol Baker, who seemed to be a permanent fixture in Italian thrillers and giallos during the early seventies.  Early seventies Britain, deftly captured by Martin, who manages to avoid most of the usual visual cliches, forms a fascinating background to the plot - a country still trying to maintain tradition and established values in the face of inevitable social, political and economic change.  There might not be much in the way of hippies, drugs and free love on view, (save for a brief flashback sequence toward the film's climax), but the sense of change is ever present: the menials aren't as subservient as they used to be, the woman stronger willed and less compliant, hovercraft rather than ferries are the preferred way to drive to the continent).  Perhaps the most 'continental' aspect of the film is its plot, which is structured to continually frustrate audience expectations, leading us first in one direction, before changing track completely and finally introducing a completely new plot that cuts across the ongoing story, derailing what has come before.

While this is effective in delivering a surprise ending that is pretty much impossible to predict at the film's outset, it also means that The Fourth Victim doesn't easily fall into any single genre.  It starts out like a giallo with Craig's latest wife dead in the swimming pool and Craig and his housekeeper apparently engaging in a cover up as to the nature of her death.  It then looks as if it is going to settle into a court room drama, as Craig goes on trial for murder - not only did was his recently deceased wife heavily insured, but so were the previous two, who had also died under suspicious circumstances.  But this abruptly ends as he is acquitted, with the investigating Scotland Yard man vowing to prevent him from claiming a 'fourth victim'.  The film then veers back into giallo country with the appearance of a mysterious woman at his house who, inevitably, Craig starts to fall for, but it quickly becomes clear that she isn't all that she appears to be and is pursuing her own agenda.  From there we start wandering into Hitchcock territory, with all sorts of psychological games being played and doubts constantly being cast on the motivations and even identities of the main characters.  The ending comes out of left field - while it is obvious that the mysterious woman is really the third victim's sister, it turns out that the identity she has adopted for her schemes actually belongs to a real-life local psychopath, recently released from a mental institution and now back on her home turf.  The twists and turns often feel  bewildering, but they succeed in keeping the audience interested and on their toes.  Moreover, it is a credit to the script that, even in translation, the complexities of the plot remain reasonably clear to the viewer.

Overall, The Fourth Victim is an enjoyable enough thriller - stylishly shot and edited, with restrained performances from the main cast and a typically Italian movie score from Piero Umiliani, a prolific composer whose best known score remains that for the Mondo Sweden: Heaven and Hell (1969), (which includes the 'Manna, manna' song popularised by The Muppets).  For once, the portrayal of Britain isn't too caricatured or eccentric although, for the UK viewer, the filmmakers' idea of British geography amuses: while the cliffs at Dover seem to be a short drive from Craig's house, the signposts in his local village clearly place it on the Berkshire-Surrey border, (judging by the proximity of Reading and Windsor), several hours drive away.  Lacking the violence, gore and sex associated with a true giallo film, while still trying to implement a twisty, giallo-type plot, The Fourth Victim seems to be aimed more at an Agatha Christie or Hitchcock style audience, which demands an intriguing mystery and complex plot combined with only moderate threat levels, something it largely succeeds in..

'I Belong to a Suburban Sin Club'

Man's Book, of which this is the cover to the May 1964 issue, boasted some of the most lurid story teasers during its twelve year run of all the men's pulps.  World War and sex were its twin obsessions right up until its end in the early seventies - it dabbled in stories about drugs, hippies, bikers and the like, but it always gravitated back to those two subjects.  If the two were combined and included sadism and the torture and rape of beautiful women, then all the better.  The cover here illustrates 'The Lust Plot of the Air Borne Harlots of Naples', which clearly involves the ladies turning the tables on the Nazis and parachuting out of planes in their underwear.  Although these Nazi-killing Italian girls are clearly the good guys (or girls) of the scenario, the their description as 'Harlots' in the title still carries an implication of moral disapproval.  But, like today's tabloids, the men's pulps liked nothing better than chronicling sex and depravity with lip-smacking relish, while at the same time decrying it all as being terribly sinful and immoral and pretending that they are presenting stories about it as cautionary tales.

The rest of the story teasers seem to be competing to see which can be most lurid and ridiculous.  'Shackled Nudes for the Emperor's Fire Monster' conjures up images of an X-rated thirties or forties cinema serial with Buster Crabbe fighting off men in bad ape suits in order to rescue chained up naked women from the bizarre sacrificial rituals of some evil emperor based in darkest Africa, probably played by Charles Middleton.  The actual story is doubtless far more mundane.  'I Belong to a Suburban Sin Club' almost makes me regret my decision, to quote Groucho Marx, to' never belong to any club that would have me as a member'.  Although I sincerely doubt that there's anything as exciting as a 'sin club' around here.  Unless the local bowls club is just some kind of cover.  Maybe I'm missing out.  I also shudder to think what 'The Sex Operation That All Young Men Fear' might be.  I mean, there surely are only a limited number of sex-related operations and I'm pretty sure that castration - most men's fear, I should imagine - isn't considered a regular surgical procedure that young men are likely to encounter.  (It certainly isn't available on the NHS - perhaps if you went private you might get it).  My favourite teaser though has to be; 'Special: The Shocking Report on the Homosexual's New World Capital', which seems to imply that homosexuality is some kind of international conspiracy.  I'm also intrigued as to where this gay capital of the world actually is: San Francisco, Bangkok, Brighton?  All quite ludicrous.  But wonderfully ludicrous.

The Land Unknown Revisited

I've written about The Land Unknown (1957) before and how, when I saw it as a child I ended up confusing it with the Irwin Allen produced version of The Lost World (1960) - a recent re-watch served to emphasise just how similar the films are.  Obviously, both are 'lot world' films with a group of contemporary people discovering a remote environment where dinosaurs and other prehistoric creature still flourish, but beyond these basic scenarios, there are remarkable similarities in plot details between the two films.  Most obviously, both movies see the protagonists access their respective lost worlds via helicopter in the Allen film by design, in The Land Unknown by accident.  They also both feature a fight between two 'dinosaurs' - played, in both cases, by photographically enlarged lizards - which endangers some of the characters, both films feature an encounter with a carnivorous plant and both feature the discovery of a survivor from a previous expedition.  In the case of The Land Unknown, the survivor proves to be belligerent, trying to force the others to exchange the only woman in their party for a spare part from his crashed plane that they need to repair their helicopter.  By contrast, in The Lost World the survivor is blind and helps the others escape from the South American Indians who live in the lost world.  Sure, there are still plenty of differences between the two movies -The Land Unknown lacks the fiery volcanic climax of The Lost World, leaving its lost world intact for sequels (that never came) for instance, but the similarities left me wondering if Irwin Allen and crew had seen The Land Unknown before embarking on their film, lifting several elements in order to update the Conan Doyle story to the present day.

Of course, the most significant difference between the two films is that while The Lost World is clearly a big budget A-picture, with a cast of stars including Claude Raines, Michael Rennie, David Hedison and Jill St John, shot in De Luxe colour, The Land Unknown is more obviously a B-pcture, shot in black and white with a decidedly second rung cast headed by Jock Mahoney.  To be absolutely fair, The Land Unknown isn't quite a B-picture - it clearly had considerably more resources lavished on it than the latter day B horror and science fiction movies being put out by Universal at the time.  Indeed, it apparently started out as an A-picture, with plans to shoot in colour with some outside location shooting for the 'lost world'.  Unfortunately, Universal's expensive science fiction epic This Island Earth (1955) had performed poorly at the box office, resulting in the studio deciding that future science fiction subjects would be produced as B-pictures.  Consequently, the still in development The Land Unknown was scaled back - but not quite to B-movie levels - many of the special effects, for instance, are far more sophisticated than one might expect from a B-movie.  But the 'lost world' itself was confined to a studio set, black and white film stock was used and B-movie veteran Virgil Vogel was assigned as director.  The result is actually quite impressive, with excellent photography, a decent pace, good production values and better than average for a B-movie performances from the cast.  

Budget cuts mean that the first part of the film utilises a lot of stock footage of the real life US Navy Antarctic expeditions which had inspired it, (mainly 1947's 'Operation High Jump' and 1956's 'Operation Deep Freeze' - both beloved of crazy conspiracy theorists who believe that their real purpose was to fight those Nazis who escaped to the hollow earth accessed from the Antarctic).  Where The Land Unknown really scores over The Lost World, though, is in having better dinosaurs.  Whereas in the later, bigger budgeted, film all of the dinosaurs are portrayed by photographically enlarged lizards with stuck on rubber fins and frills, apart from those two monitor lizards duking it out early on, The Land Unknown boasts of dinosaurs that actually look something like dinosaurs.  These include a flying model pterosaur, a man-in-a-suit tyrannosaur and a full size mechanical elasmosaurus.  While the latter might not be exactly realistic, it is very impressive. Not only are these creature better than those in Irwin Allen's film, we also get to see more of them - The Lost World always disappointed me as a kid as it short-changed us in terms of the actual amount of dinosaur action on view.  All of which goes to show that sometimes a bigger budget isn't always better.

Remembrance Cinema

The question that's vexing me today is whether I'm being disrespectful and unpatriotic by having missed my annual watching of The Longest Day (1962) in this, the eightieth anniversary of D-Day?  After all, Rishi Sunak is being pilloried, even by his own party, for being disrespectful because he left the official event in Normandy early, so maybe I'm just as guilty.  In fact, I'm a serial offender: I've failed to watch The Battle of Britain (1969) during August or September the past few years and I can't remember the last time I watched The Dambusters (1954) at all, let alone on or near the anniversary of the bombing of those dams.  Actually, now I've thought about it, commemorating war anniversaries by watching films based on them is an intriguing idea.  But could we extend it beyond World War Two, which is, without doubt, the most popular cinematic war?  The 18th of June is coming up soon, so perhaps I could watch Waterloo (1970) then in order to commemorate it.  (Although, if I don't, there won't be any angry veterans to berate me for being disrespectful - that was Sunak's mistake: if he wanted to skip a D-Day commemoration, than he should have waited a couple of years when there wouldn't be anyone left to disrespect).  While we're on the subject of the Napoleonic wars, I seem to recall  that there was also one of those big international co-productions about the Battle of Austerlitz, but beyond that, I can't think of any others about specific battles from the era.

It's much the same for World War One - quite a lot of films set in the period telling fictional stories, but not much on the subject of specific battles.  Possibly because they all looked the same - thousands of guys running through mud and barbed wire being mown down by machine guns or gassed - and are all incredibly depressing.  For the Korean War, there's a movie about Inchon - starring Laurence Olivier of all people as MacArthur - but not much else.  The same for Vietnam - lots of generic pictures, but little about specific battles.  But World War Two is definitely the king of wars when it comes to film adaptations of real battles.  Dunkirk, the Battle of Bulge, Anzio, Arnhem, D-Day, Midway, the liberation of Paris, Guadalcanal - they're all there.  If you extend the net to include foreign-language productions then you can add many more, from well known ones, like Stalingrad or El Alamein, (oddly, the only two movies about this British victory are Italian made and show the battle from their perspective, portraying the British as the villains), to battles of more local interest, like Neretva (in Yugoslavia) or Kursk (in the Soviet Union - the largest tank battle of the war).  There are even Japanese war movies (with effects by the guys who did Godzilla films - lots of insanely detailed large scale model ships and planes are involved for the action scenes), portraying the war in the Pacific from their perspective.  The fact is that you could spend all year commemorating various World War Two battles by watching films, or, you could actually try to relive every year of it in real time via the medium of film.  What could be more respectful than that?

Debatable Value

What is the point of those bloody televised election debates involving the party leaders?  Do we actually learn anything from them?  I've always been dubious about their value as the participants just trot out all the sound bites we've ever heard and try to talk over each other.  They are, of course, a relatively recent innovation here in the UK - in elections of yore, broadcasters seemed to grasp the fact that we don't have a presidential system in this country, so getting the party leaders to duke it out one-on-one really wouldn't be terribly illuminating.  But, inspired by US presidential debates, the likes of Sky News decided that they wanted to emulate the format, no matter how inappropriate it might be for the UK domestic electoral system, with the other TV networks feeling that they had to follow suit.  Unfortunately, the format only serves to reinforce the notion that, somehow, prime minister's are directly elected, which they aren't.  As I never tire of reminding people, what we are electing is a new parliament, with whoever can command a majority in the newly elected Commons, (usually the leader of one the two main parties) being able to form a government.  At best, we're electing which party we want to run the country, but mot a specific prime minister.  Which is why that self-righteous outrage that idiots on social media like to expend on 'unelected prime ministers' when the PM changes mid-parliament, simply displays their ignorance.  Indeed, the point of parliamentary democracy is that we are able to change leadership without having to o through the whole rigamarole of calling another election.

But to return to the point, do these debates actually have any effect on how voters view the participants?  Well, the fact that back in 2019 Boris Johnson failed to participate in any debates, let alone allow himself to be interviewed one-on-one by any political journalists, yet the Tories were still elected, allowing him to continue as PM would seem to indicate that they don't.  His absence was a carefully calculated strategy, in order to avoid the public being exposed to his buffoonery and shambolic incompetence, - a strategy that worked as, it seems, keeping a candidate away from public scrutiny turned out to be far more effective than participating in the 'cut and thrust' of a televised debate.  It also rendered the whole of the public debate process meaningless.  It also proved, pretty conclusively, that if a candidate avoids this sort of public scrutiny then the electorate doesn't take that as evidence of their unsuitability for office.  Because the majority of voters, it seems, are well aware of the fact that we aren't directly electing the likes of Boris Johnson (unless you happen to live in his constituency, that is), but instead were voting on the issues, (which in 2019 was Brexit and the public's apparent fatigue over the apparently endless debate - they just wanted it over, one way or the other).  The fact is that no matter how inadequate as a potential PM Johnson might have looked, the Labour Party failed to present a viable alternative - Corbyn was equally shambolic and came with his own baggage -so people stuck with the devil they knew.  Five years and three prime ministers later, the Tories have lost the public trust, Starmer seems less shambolic than Sunak so, once again, these debates are utterly meaningless, people have already made up their minds.

Game of Death (1978)

Game of Death (1978), the posthumous Bruce Lee film, has to be the ultimate in 'Brucesploitation'.  While presented as a tribute to the late martial arts star, incorporating footage shot by Lee for his own never completed and unreleased film of the same name, in truth it is just as exploitative as other entries in the genre, which invoked Lee's name in an attempt to wring more money from fans of the star.  In reality, the film includes only eleven minutes or so of new footage of Lee, which comprises the story's climax, with doubles elsewhere standing in for Lee, (with the occasional cutaway shot of Lee taken from one of his earlier films).  Unfortunately, neither of the two doubles actually looked that much like Lee, (most of the doubles used in those cheapskate 'Brucespoitation' films were actually better matches), let alone moved or fought like him.  This issue is addressed in various ways, most notably, part way through the film the 'Lee' character fakes his own death and has plastic surgery to fix a facial wound, he then adopts a series of disguises to pursue his revenge plot against the villains.  This concept rather falls apart when, for the climax, he's suddenly the real Bruce Lee, who he was meant to look like before the surgery - we know this because in one notorious scene early on, one of the doubles is seen from behind looking into a mirror, which has a picture of Lee's face pasted onto it, covering the actor's face in his reflection.  

While the plot of Lee's version of the film involved his character leading a team of martial artists trying to retrieve a stolen treasure from the top floor of a multi-storey pagoda, with each floor guarded by hostile martial artists, the 1978 film substitutes a much more mundane plot involving a martial arts star in Hong Kong being threatened by the mob, who want to force him to sign up to their agency.  The various convolutions of this plot eventually lead to Lee's character having to fight his way past several martial arts masters guarding each floor of a restaurant (which looks remarkably like a pagoda inside) in order to reach the Mafia boss on the top floor.  As noted, this is mostly genuine Lee footage from the unfinished film, intercut with new footage toward the end to give the impression that he is fighting the mob bosses played by Hugh O'Brien and Dean Jagger.  Nothing that precedes this footage in the film has anything like the same quality, not even the immediately preceding motorcycle fight in the warehouse, where one of Lee's doubles, face hidden by a motorcycle helmet, rescues his character's girlfriend.  Amazingly, though, despite the fact that the whole film assembled from a mixture of newly shot footage with a new cast and the existing Bruce Lee footage, Robert Clouse's direction actually feels smoother than usual, with the finished product, surprisingly, lacking the rough edged and slightly scrappy look and feel of many of his other movies.

Clouse had, of course, directed Lee in Enter the Dragon (1973), the last film the actor completed before his death, (he died prior to its release), an action thriller backed by a US studio which was on a scale and with production values far in excess of his previous films.  Enter the Dragon incorporated elements of Bond-style spy thrillers alongside the martial arts, giving it a far more 'Westtern' feel and Game of Death is clearly trying to emulate its style, from an imposing John Barry musical score to some very Bond-like opening and closing credits.  But this simply emphasises the fact that it isn't really a Bruce Lee film, but rather a fairly generic action-crime-thriller movie incorporating some Bruce Lee footage.  The star's absence from the majority of the film leaves a vacuum at its centre, with his doubles proving poor substitutes for Lee's charisma and onscreen presence.  The fact that the viewer knows that the supposed star of the film had been dead some five years before its release gives the whole thing the feel of a mausoleum - dank, sombre and somewhat depressing. Such an impression isn't helped by the questionable decision to incorporate footage of Lee's actual, open casket, funeral procession for his character's fake funeral.  Seeing the film now, the whole sub-plot leading to his character's fake death - the mob tries to assassinate him in an on-set 'accident' involving a real bullet being fired at him from a prop gun - feels like an ominous foreshadowing of his son Brandon Lee's actual death on the set of The Crow.

The end credits play put over a montage of Lee's greatest fight scenes (mainly from Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon) and while this constitutes a fitting tribute, these sequences simply emphasise how inadequate most of the action in Game of Death has been.  There is something quite distinctive in the way Lee moved and conducted his action scenes that his doubles simply couldn't match.  This footage effectively proved that there really was only one Bruce Lee and that attempts to imitate or recreate him would always fall short.

The Leech Woman (1960)

The Leech Woman (1960) is a late entry in Universal's fifties cycle of science fiction and horror b-movies, shot toward the end of 1959 and released the following year, when such productions were looking ever more antiquated.  In common with al of Universal's b-movie output, the film combines better than average production values, thanks to its studio origins - it has the distinctive Universal 'look' - with a paucity of budget reflected in the familiar sets, small cast of second string studio 'talent', lack of exterior shots and hurried plot.  Lots of stock footage of wildlife is on view to represent 'Africa' in the film's middle portion, combined with an over familiar studio jungle and native village.  The most interesting aspect of the film is the way in which its direction and character focus shifts radically part way through.  The film starts off as a seemingly standard over-reaching scientist b- movie, with an unhappily married (to an older woman) endocrinologist learning from an incredibly aged patient that life can be extended and youth temporarily restored via a plant extract known only to the woman's tribe in Africa.  Seeing an opportunity to profit by learning the tribe's secrets and selling it to a pharmaceutical firm in the US, he and his wife set off for Africa, his intent being to use her as a guinea pig.  The twist comes when they find the tribe, with it being revealed that an extract of the human pineal gland, from a freshly killed victim, is also required.  At which point, the wife nominates her husband as the sacrificial victim and he is swiftly dispatched, despite, up to this point, having seemed to be the main character.

After which, the newly rejuvenated wife decides to steal the ceremonial ring used to kill the victims and extract the required fluid and the plant extract and flee the village with her guide.  To cover their escape they burn down the village.  The guide now seems to be shaping up to be the new male lead, but when the wife finds that the rejuvenation is short lived, he too has to give up his glandular secretions.  Returning to the US in the guise of her own niece, the woman continues her murder spree while also trying to seduce the family lawyer, in between her bouts of rapid aging.  She's so ruthless she even kills his fiancee, who again, had looked as if she was going to become the main sympathetic character, before the police catch up with her and it all rolls to an abrupt ending.  It's this streak of ruthlessness with regard to the fates of the supporting cast, along with the refusal to present viewers any strong sympathetic characters, which distinguishes Leech Woman not only from many similarly-themed b-movies, but also most of Universal's other b horrors of the period.  While definitely a minor entry in the horror cycle, it is, as with most studio-produced b-movies, quite slickly made, with effective, if uninspired, direction, clean looking monochrome photography, good lighting and adequate performances.  Leech Woman isn't particularly original, either in its subject or its execution, but it is surprisingly watchable.  The dated approach of the film, however, was highlighted by the decision to release it in the US as the bottom half of a double bill with Hammer's full colour Gothic horror, Brides of Dracula (1960), which served the audience a considerably more stylish dose of female vampirism, complete with undertones of sex and incest.