Suffer the Children

It's two-tier policing, I tell you!  This persecution of Kirstie Allsop by social services for allowing her fifteen year old son go travelling around Europe, unsupervised and unaccompanied by an adult, is just another example of the way the authorities unfairly target posh people.  I mean, enough is enough!  Where will it end?  Working class kids seem to be able to run riot all summer, gathering aimlessly in shopping centres and parks, looking sullenly at passers-by without the police rounding them all up and arresting their parents for negligence - but if they were middle class, you can guarantee that we'd have riot police being called in to beat them up.  At least, that's what the likes of the Daily Mail would have you believe, conveniently ignoring the fact that, if it had been a working class mother, especially if they were from an ethnic minority, who had allowed their teenage offspring go off like this, then the paper would have been screaming 'negligence' and demanding the intervention of social services.  But while I expect this sort of nonsense from the likes of the Mail, I was somewhat surprised by the number of letters from their readers printed by The Guardian, going on about how, in 1948, at the age of fourteen, their parents had allowed them to cycle solo to Germany, or that, in the fifties, they and all of their friends were regularly allowed to travel around unaccompanied all summer holidays - and it did them no harm!  Yeah, and chimney sweeps used to send even younger children up chimneys instead of using brushes - and it did them no harm.

Quite apart from the fact that the world was a different place back then - let's face it, young people were safe in Germany post war as most perverts and child molesters had been exterminated by the Nazis on the grounds that that sort of thing should be the sole preserve of party members and those in the SS had been shot by the allies - just because you did something like that and didn't get bum-raped by some gross continental perv doesn't mean that it wasn't happening to other kids.  Thankfully, we've moved on from that bleak post war world where people were so desensitised by the carnage of World War Two that they accepted the possibility of violent sexual assaults and death for their unsupervised children as normal.  It's now generally accepted that safe-guarding your off spring is the most important aspect of parenting - trying to avoid exposing them to possible dangers because you can't be arsed to supervise them isn't the sign of us living in some kind of namby pamby woke world.  Let's face it, kids are exposed to enough potential hazards even when properly supervised, but that's the point, to teach them to recognise these risks and how to negotiate them.  Just letting them wander off and find out for themselves by trial and error isn't a sign of 'liberal' or 'enlightened' parenting - it is irresponsible negligence.  Which is where those pesky social services come in : if you won't exercise your legal obligations with regard to safe guarding your kids, then they'll intervene and exercise their legal obligations too safe guard children.  The moral of all this being is that if you are going to act irresponsibly with regard to your child's safety, then don't boast about it in the media.

The Son of Kong (1933)

The Son of Kong (1933) must rate as one of the least known sequels in cinematic history.  Rushed into production by RKO to cash in on the success of its progenitor, King Kong (1933), the film didn't do anywhere near as well at the box office.  Spurned by audiences and largely dismissed by critics, the movie has garnered a reputation as an unworthy successor and consequently isn't as screened as frequently as the original.  In truth, it was always going to be an impossible task to create a follow up to a film as sensational and phenomenal as King Kong, no matter the quality of Son of Kong, it was never going to be judged on its own merits, doomed to forever live in the shadow of his cinematic father.  The writers, too, realised the impossibility of their task, opting for a much smaller scale story that, most crucially, placed the emphasis upon humour, with the titular character effectively becoming the comic relief to his human co-stars.  Moreover, with the film's short production scale, Willis O'Brien simply didn't have time to produce the extensive stop-motion sequences of the original, something reflected in the story line, which spends some two-thirds of its length in scene-setting, skullduggery in exotic Far Eastern ports and a mutiny at sea.  The final third rushes through a new adventure on Skull Island, where the titular character, referred to by other characters as 'Little Kong', finally appears, before it all rolls to a cataclysmic and somewhat abrupt ending.

The film is notable for its fidelity to the conclusion of the original, (although, in truth, it had no choice really, as King Kong was still on release and fresh in cinema goers minds), with Carl Denham being sued for damages by everyone in sight following Kong's rampage through New York.  To escape his creditors, he sails off to he Far East with Captain Engelhorn, in search of cargoes.  Winding up in the port of Dakang, everything now stops for a musical number from the film's leading lady Hilda, the daughter of the guy who runs a performing monkey show.  The latter is killed in a fight with shady ship-less Captain Helstrom, coincidentally the man who sold Denham the charts showing Skull Island, who is forced to escape a possible investigation by sailing with Engelhorn and Denham, on the pretext that he knows of a treasure hidden on the island.  Hilda stows away on the ship and with Denham, Engelhorn, Helstrom and Charlie the cook, are cast adrift in a boat following a mutiny.  Naturally, they end up on Skull Island.  This time around, though, Skull Island doesn't seem to be quite as teeming with prehistoric life as before, but Denham and Hilda help rescue an eighteen foot tall white ape, possibly King's offspring from a swamp, earning his friendship.  Separated from the rest of the group, they and 'Little Kong' stumble on the real treasure of Skull Island, before a volcano erupts and the island sinks beneath the waves.  'Little Kong' drowns saving Denham and they all get way on their boat, (except Helstrom, who is eaten by a plesiosaur) and are picked up by a passing ship.  All of this is packed into less tan seventy minutes of running time.

Son of Kong's biggest problem is that, despite its short running time, it drags quite badly, seemingly taking forever to get to Skull Island, then hurrying through these scenes with indecent haste.  The whole first two thirds of the film are all too obviously there simply to pad out the running time until we get to Skull Island and the stop motion sequences everyone has been waiting for.  As noted, for practical reasons, these couldn't be anywhere near as extensive as those in King Kong, but what we do get are actually pretty decent.  While we don't get as many monsters as in the first film, we do get a cave bear, which 'Little Kong' fights, a Nothosaur, also fought and defeated by Kong, a rather good Styracosaurus, that chases Engelhorn, Charlie and Helstrom and the aforementioned plesiosaur.   While their screen time is limited, the standard of the animation is, if anything, some what better than in the original, with the creatures moving much more smoothly and naturally.  Clearly, the experience learned from King Kong allowed O'Brien and his team to improve their techniques.  This is especially evident in 'Little Kong', not only is he scaled far more consistently than his father had been, but his movements are less jerky and his fur doesn't constantly betray the fingermarks of the animators.  Most impressively, his face is far more emotive, allowing a far greater degree of characterisation than had been possible with Kong himself.  Clearly playing upon the fact that, despite being pitched by the studio as a villain, King Kong had been seen by audiences as a sympathetic character, the sequel goes all out to portray 'Little Kong' as a likeable, loyal and eventually heroic sidekick.  As noted, he provides most of the comic relief, with his curiosity, clumsiness and over eagerness to please resulting in a number of slapstick sequences, his face constantly registering varying degrees of shock and surprise.  (It could be argued that he is suspiciously close to the characterisation used for black comic relief characters in many films of the era - even his facial features are reminiscent of the common cartoon caricatures of black men).

All of which makes his demise somewhat jarring, putting a pall over the few remaining minutes of the film.  Indeed, this unevenness of tone is another of the film's problems, with the comedic antics of 'Little Kong' sitting uneasily alongside the other, more ferocious monsters, not to mention the murder and the mutiny, which are played straight.  While it is true that The Son of Kong is a somewhat underwhelming sequel to what is probably the greatest monster movie of all time - certainly the most influential, as it set the format for the genre - that was inevitable.  After all, how do you follow up a forty foot gorilla trashing New York and swatting biplanes from the top of the Empire State building?  By making it bigger?  Putting more monsters in the mix?  Both strategies have been tried by both the original Japanese Godzilla series and the more recent US series with, in both cases, rapidly diminishing returns.  Son of Kong's decision to instead pursue a comedic approach, with a smaller, less scary and more audience friendly version of the original's protagonist was at least innovative, if not particularly successful.  (Turning the monster protagonists more audience friendly was also a strategy adopted, with varying degrees of success by both series of Godzilla movies).  It's still a film worth watching, if only for curiosity's sake and 'Little Kong' is actually quite an engaging character, even if he isn't exactly a chip off of the old block.

Warlock Issue 2

Back to that box of old gaming magazines that I found in my spare room.  Mainly because I spent the day walking around part of the New Forest (and up to my ankles in mud at one point) which, along with the traffic around Lyndhurst, in both directions), has left me too knackered to come up with a proper post today, (plus I'm still being arsed around by Royal Mail over that parcel, sent 'first class', that they still haven't delivered to me).  Anyway, this is Issue 2 of Warlock: The Fighting Fantasy Magazine, (I also have issues 1 and 3, but I liked this cover the best).  Launched in 1984, at the height of the popularity of the 'Fighting Fantasy' role playing game books, Warlock was published quarterly and edited by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, creators of the game book series.  The magazine was intended to present revised versions of existing adventures, some entirely new, shorter, adventures and provide tips on playing the books.  This issue also includes a profile of Peter Jones, who provided many of series' covers and even some short fiction.

While the 'Fighting Fantasy' books were quite a phenomenon when they appeared, putting role playing games into a cheap mass market format and thereby introducing them to younger readers, the idea of publishing a companion magazine was somewhat curious.  The books had a pretty simple game system and presented their scenarios in a very structured format, making it difficult to offer gaming strategies for them, or even rule enhancements.  The magazine did try to expand the franchise somewhat - Issue 3, for instance, included a board game based around the sames rules and game concepts.  The magazine's main purpose seemed to be to increase the profile of the book series and popularise the 'Fighting Fantasy' name.  It was also a way of maintaining interest in the series between book releases.  As published by Penguin, who also published the books, Warlock was, at least, a slickly produced magazine.  I'm not sure how long it lasted, (I'm pretty sure I have a fourth issue somewhere), but I'm guessing that it didn't out live the peak popularity of the books.  'Fighting Fantasy' books are still around, but not the phenomenon they once were - they've become part of the fabric of the role playing game scene.  But back in the day they did a sterling task in popularising the hobby and bringing it to a wider audience, providing many readers with their first experience of fantasy role playing games.

Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952)

I've watched a fair few mainstream movies this bank holiday weekend - although I did manage to fit in a double bill of The Land That Time Forgot (1974) and The People That Time Forgot (1977), not to mention a sleazy little number called The Psycho Lover (1970) - but the call of schlock is powerful and I found myself watching Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952) this evening.  It wasn't planned, it just happened to be showing a Roku channel that continuously live streams scratchy prints of creaky old movies, but it exerted a dreadful fascination over me.  Dreadful, not just because it is so poorly and cheaply made, but because it features the unique and utterly bizarre teaming of British music hall dame Old Mother Riley (Arthur Lucan) and Hollywood horror icon Bela Lugosi.  Moreover, it features both as they were nearing the ends of their tethers, both professionally and personally.  For both, the film represented something of a last chance saloon.  Lugosi was involved only because he had found himself stranded in the UK after the failure of a touring stage production of 'Dracula' left him with insufficient funds to pay his fare back to the US.  For Lucan, it was to be the last of his seventeen films as Irish washer woman Mother Riley, but the first (and as it turned out, only) film without his regular screen daughter and sidekick (and in reality wife and business partner) Kitty McShane, from whom he had separated the previous year.  Both actors show the ravages of time in the finished film: Lucan was in his mid-sixties and simply wasn't up to the physicality the role required for the various slapstick sequences, while Lugosi, despite giving his trademark over-the-top performance, looks tired and uncomfortable, with the film's lighting cruelly emphasising the evidence of the advancing years etched on his face.

Despite both leads being known for giving larger-than-life performances better, perhaps, suited to the stage, the film represents a colossal mismatch of talents, with Lucan's increasingly tired looking antics jarring badly with Lugosi's straight villainy.  The latter is, on occasion, genuinely menacing, but his attempts to bring an edge of horror to the proceedings is constantly undercut by Lucan's mugging and shrieking. Both might, at times, look as if they are playing to the stalls, but their approaches are completely different, resulting in a discordant onscreen clash of styles.  Overall, it is probably Lugosi who comes out on top as, despite the poor material he has to work with, he conducts himself with remarkable dignity, giving his lines everything he's got, delivering even the weakest with villainous relish.  In truth, it was the sort of role he could perform in his sleep (and probably did here), recalling the sort of mad scientist characters he had played for Monogram in countless B-movies during the forties.  Lucan, by contrast, simply seems desperate.  Personally, I've never been a fan, always finding his act thin and repetitious - he fell into the trap of many performers who made the jump from music hall to film, of believing that he could keep on repeating essentially the same routine in film after film, with only the settings for his antics changing.  While you could get away with this on stage for years at a time, on film, once you'd done it once, everyone had seen it.  I've always been amazed that the 'Old Mother Riley' films lasted as long as they did, as they all felt much the same to me.  The inclusion of Lugosi in Mother Riley Meets the Vampire was meant to give it something different, not to mention secure it US distribution.  But it was too little, too late.  The public appetite for Lucan, seemed to have waned, with the film performing poorly in the UK and not getting a US release until 1963, by which time both stars were long dead.

Although Mother Riley Meets the Vampire is shoddily made with threadbare production values, poorly put together action sequences and an awful script full of unspeakable dialogue, it does have some points of interest, (apart from teaming Lugosi and Lucan).  Most interestingly, we get to see several soon to be well known British actors near the beginnings of their film careers, including Dora Bryan (more or less standing in for Kitty as Lucan's comic foil), a very young Richard Wattis as a police constable and Laurence Naismith as a police sergeant.  Also present is Graham Moffat, now best remembered as one of Will Hay's main sidekicks, but also a prolific comic performer in his own right.  In the director's chair is British B-movie veteran John Gilling, who would go on to make a number of interesting films for Hammer in the sixties.  Ultimately, the film did little to help the declining careers of either Lugosi or Lucan, (apart from securing Lugosi the funds to get back home).  While Lugosi continued to make films, they quickly declined in quality as his health failed amidst his struggles with substance addictions, until he ended up working with Ed Wood.  By 1956, he was dead.  For Lucan, it proved to be his final film.  He continued to perform as Old Mother Riley on stage and died in his dressing room in 1954, just before he was due on stage for a performance.  Not that his death spelled the end for the character: his understudy Roy Rolland, who had doubled for Lucan in the more physical sequences in Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, took over the character and continued to perform as Old Mother Riley into the seventies, including some TV appearances, (which is why some people mistakenly think that they saw Lucan still performing in children's TV in the early seventies, despite the fact that he had died in 1954).  I might not have been a fan of Lucan and his act, but he was hugely popular in the thirties and forties and his act highly influential on other performers, paving the way for the likes of Danny La Rue and even Brendan O'Carroll.  Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, while a fascinatingly bizarre piece of British b-movie crud, is a poor epitaph for both Lucan and Old Mother Riley.

An Inauspicious Day

I came upon a motorcycle accident on the road to Winchester today.  Thankfully, I wasn't the first car on the scene - there were  two vehicles ahead of me and I decided to let them deal with the niceties of calling the emergency services before turning my car around and finding another route to my destination.  It wasn't so much the accident scene itself that I couldn't stomach - thankfully it seemed to be a single vehicle accident, but from what I could see looked nasty, with the motorcycle in bits in the opposite lane and the rider lying on my side of the road - but rather the number of other drivers from the queue behind me who felt the need to leave their cars and come and gawp at the scene.  As I turned the car around, I could see that quite a crowd had gathered around the prone rider, (I have no idea how badly they were hurt).  Quite why, I don't know - I decided that there was nothing I could do to help as the first driver on the scene had clearly called the emergency services , my presence would only further hinder their efforts to reach the scene.  I've never understood the need some people apparently have to ghoulishly rubberneck at accident scenes - it's bad enough when they simply slow down for a good look as the drive past, but this lot felt the need to get up close.  It put me in mind of that Ray Bradbury story 'The Crowd' about a group of people who gather at the scenes of car accidents.

Even though I didn't loiter at the scene, the whole incident left me feeling very unsettled for the rest of the afternoon.  It stirred up memories of the people I've known who perished in motorcycle accidents - far too many, sadly.  It also put all the other problems I'd been dealing with leading up to it in perspective.  Suddenly all the unexplained road closures I'd encountered and the tailbacks caused by traffic trying to get to 'Carfest', (quite why these idiots thought it necessary to drive all the way through Crapchester to get there, rather than staying on the M3, then the A303 before taking the Micheldever exit is beyond me), seemed trivial.  Likewise, the time I'd had to waste trying to get some sense out of Royal Mail about a phantom delivery and trying to find out where my parcel actually was, was suddenly put into perspective.  (I had been emailed to say that an item that had to be signed for had been delivered to my address, even though I was in the house at the time and no one had called and nothing had been left.   Plus, the Royal Mail tracking claimed first that my address was inaccessible so the item couldn't be delivered - front door opens onto the street - then that it had been signed for and provided a signature that wasn't mine.  According to Royal Mail, it was all a mistake and that the signature was that of the postman.  They couldn't explain the 'inaccessible' bit, but assured me that it was all a mistake.  When I later re-checked the tracking site, they had changed their tune - they had been unable to deliver because the address was 'inaccessible' and would try again tomorrow.  In which case, why wasn't a non-delivery card left today, giving me the option to collect it from the depot? All very suspicious.)  All-in-all, not an auspicious way to go into a bank holiday weekend. 

Frankenstein 1970 (1958)

As its title implies, Frankenstein 1970 (1958) is set in the future.  Well, the future as far as 1958 is concerned.  Not that you'd know that from watching the film - apart from the title and some references in the dialogue as to how long ago the war ended, there's little to suggest that we're twelve years into the future.  Indeed, it doesn't even look that much like 1958 - apart from the fact tat there's a TV crew at the Baron's castle and that everyone keeps making reference to Frankenstein's victimisation at the hands of the Nazis, we might be forgiven for suspecting that we're in the 1930s of Universal's early Frankenstein pictures.  The main concession to the supposedly futuristic setting is that the hard up Baron is only allowing a TV crew to make a documentary about the original Frankenstein, (yes, that one, the one who made the monster), is so that he can finance the purchase of a nuclear reactor for his experiments, (apparently, in 1970, portable reactors suitable for home use are commercially available).  His plan, of course, is to use the reactor as part of his scheme to revive his ancestor's monster, having exhumed it from the crypt.  He's already removed the corrupted flesh from its skull and his immediate concern is to find it a new brain and rebuild its features, for which he needs materials.  Unfortunately for the elderly butler, he walks into the lab at the wrong time and ends up donating his brain and other bits, although, apparently, his eyes are no good.  Naturally, the Baron goes in search of some replacement eyes, working his way through the TV crew as he attempts to find a suitable pair: one pair is rejected because their donor is 'one of those small number of people with blood group A', thus making them incompatible.  (In reality, blood group A is actually not uncommon, accounting for 30% or more of the population in most European countries).  To obtain the needed spare parts, he keeps sending out his blind and bandaged monster, who stumbles and crashes around like a particularly clumsy mummy.

While the plot of Frankenstein 1970 might be pretty much standard for such a film, (barring its 'modernistic' touches like the TV crew and nuclear reactor), its main point of interest lies in its casting of Boris Karloff, the original monster himself, as the current incarnation of Baron Frankenstein.  As far as I'm aware,not only was this the last Frankenstein film Karloff would appear in, it is also his only appearance as the monster's creator, rather than as the monster, (although he did play a Frankenstein monster reviving mad scientist in House of Frankenstein (1944), but he wasn't a member of the family).  His version of the Baron is embittered and mistrustful of authority as a result of his having been tortured and disfigured by the Nazis, due to his refusal to fully co-operate with them. Simultaneously, he is wracked with guilt at the fact that eventually was blackmailed into carrying out experiments for them on concentration camp inmates, in exchange for his now deceased wife's safety.  These two factors define Karloff's characterisation of the Baron: secretive and determined to work free of the constraints and imposed morality of authority, while at the same time seeking to redeem his reputation as a serious scientist.  His aim seems to be to emulate Peter Cushing's characterisation for Hammer, of the Baron being essentially amoral in his pursuit of knowledge.  Unfortunately, the script he is working from simply isn't strongly developed enough for Karloff' to create a performance worthy of his characterisation.  At times, he does manage to create some powerful scenes, as he recalls his past ordeals and eulogises his ancestor's work in what he sees as 'pure' science, untainted by political agendas.  But all too often, he is forced to revert to the mad scientist stereotype by the script, which is itself conflicted in the way it seeks to portray the Baron.  On the one hand, it clearly wants the audience to sympathise with him in regard to his past, yet on the other it requires him to also be the villain of the piece, sending out his monster to abduct innocent victims for vivisection.

The only other 'name' actor in the cast is veteran B-movie star Don 'Red' Barry as the hard nosed TV producer, who begins to suspect that the Baron is up to no good as people start to disappear.  His character is written as a stereotype and he performs it accordingly.  The film's low budget is evident in the fact that most of the action is confined to the interior of Frankenstein's castle, represented by sets borrowed from the Warner Brothers Diana Barrymore biopic Too Much, Too Soon (1958).  The second hand sets, along with the widescreen monochrome photography, at least lend the film, (hastily shot in eight days), the impression of higher production values than its budget might have suggested.  Far too much of this action consists of people creeping around corridors or crypts, standing around wondering where various characters have gone or being chased by the rickety monster.  It does, however, boast a couple of scenes, at each end of the movie, where director Howard W Koch and writers Richard Landau and George Worthington Yeates manage to summon up some genuine atmosphere, suspense and ingenuity.  The opening has a young girl being chased outside a castle by a monster with huge hands, that relentlessly pursues her, finally chasing her into a lake, where it tries to drown her.  The sequence is genuinely quite disturbing and scary, very moodily shot and generation some real tension.  This tension is quickly dissipated as it is revealed that this was just a sequence being shot by the TV crew for their documentary.  The film never really recovers from this sense of anti-climax.  The film climaxes with the Baron and his monster being engulfed in a cloud of radioactive steam from the reactor, killing them both.  In a surprising coda, the dead monster's face is uncovered, revealing that the Baron had modelled it on himself while, simultaneously, a recording of the Baron's voice plays, explaining that, as the last of his line, he wanted the creature to carry it on, as he had been unable to create an heir naturally, (bringing to mind his earlier remark that his torture at the hands of the Nazis had left him barely identifiable 'as a man' and implying that it wasn't just metaphorical).

Despite the presence of Karloff and his valiant attempts to transcend a weak and confused script, Frankenstein 1970 never really manages to rise above the level of being a cheaply produced independent B-movie, doubtless designed to cash in on the popularity of Hammer's recent Frankenstein films, (scenes such as Karloff spilling eyeballs all over the lab seem to be in direct imitation of them).  While these latter productions, the second of which was released the same year as Frankenstein 1970, managed to give a fresh take on the story, refreshing a concept that had become stale and laughable in its earlier iteration at Universal, Frankenstein 1970 ultimately just rehashes all the standard mad scientist cliches, albeit with a few 'modern' touches.  Although the conceit of having Frankenstein a victim of Nazi brutality, the script never manages to exploit this idea to its full potential.  As it stands, it is reasonably enjoyable, but inconsequential, B horror movie.

End of the World (1977)

 

An early production from Charles Band, End of the World (1977) gets off to an intriguing start, with Christopher Lee's confused priest Father Pergado wandering into a roadside diner mumbling about having to use the phone and warn people.  Unfortunately, not only does the pay phone explode, but so does the coffee machine, blowing the proprietor through the window.  The priest wanders back to the nunnery where he is apparently staying, only to be greeted by his double.  Which sounds as if it is the set up for what is going to be an interesting story, possibly supernatural bearing in mind the priest, his doppelganger and the title, with the promise of dark mysteries to be unraveled.  Unfortunately though, it quickly becomes apparent that these opening five minutes are just about the most interesting part of the movie, as it quickly settles into to being a slow moving investigation by a NASA scientist into what might be signals from outer space apparently predicting natural disasters.  After what seems an age and various red herrings, the scientist and his wife finally end up at that nunnery, which not only seems to be the target of the signals, but is also emanating signals itself.  It transpires that the nuns and the duplicate Christopher Lee are actually aliens who have stolen the identities of the real nuns and priest as they try to repair their space warp apparatus they have hidden in the basement.  They need to return to their planet as soon as possible as the earth, it seems, is about to destroy itself.  Of course, repairing it requires the acquisition of a crystal that the scientist just happens to have been working on at his lab and he is coerced into stealing it for the aliens.

All of which sounds as if it should be exciting and interesting.  In the execution of the plot, however, it feels as if barely anything ever happens for long stretches.  Sure, it constantly looks as if something might be about to happen - people get into cars and drive places, pages are urgently torn from teletypes, characters walk pat rocket boosters being constructed and so on - but these scenes inevitably seem to resolve themselves into yet another talky scene between two people,  Part way through, it looks as if something exciting which will progress the plot really is happening, when the scientist and his wife are wandering around an apparently abandoned and remote site, which might have been the target of the signals, at night.  For an instant it seems that they are being stalked by someone or something and they are briefly separated, before being confronted by armed men and taken to an underground complex.  But it turns out that this is a government listening station and that the scientist knows the base commander - so they end up, again, just talking and not advancing the plot at all.  While the sequence does generate some tension, it is mainly shot in pitch black, so the viewer has little idea as to what is actually going on.  It does pick up a bit when they are finally captured by the alien nuns, but even this situation proves to be relatively uneventful, dominated by the alien Father Pergado sort of explaining the plot to them and punctuated by the real Father Pergado perishing as a test subject in the still malfunctioning space warp, (the aliens have been using the real nuns as test subjects, with universally fatal results).  An escape attempt by the couple comes to nothing, except for the death of a motorist who they try to hitch a lift from, when his car explodes.  Even the scientist's raid on his own lab to get the crystal, resulting in several explosions and confrontations with security guards, is far too small scale to generate much in the way of excitement.

 It isn't as if John Hayes' direction is bad - he, after all, had a solid career in exploitation, directing a couple of cult favourites in Grave of the Vampire (1972) and Mama's Dirty Girls (1974) - with well composed shots and uses interesting setting, such as the rocket plant, to provide an interesting background to what would otherwise be static dialogue scenes.  Indeed, for a lot of the film's running time, his choice of locations helps disguise the production's woefully small budget: it is only in the when we get to see the alien base that the movie's cheapness becomes painfully obvious.  The fact that the aliens use a space warp - which looks like a flimsy plywood arch - rather than a flying saucer to travel to and from earth is the biggest giveaway.  That and the fact that all the natural disasters we keep hearing about are only ever represented by stock footage - usually seen via TV monitors rather than being experienced first hand by any of the characters.  While the low budget is doubtless part of the reason for the film's preference for talk over action, the ultimate fault lies with a script which seems to have started with an eye-catching title and an idea for a cataclysmic finale, but had no idea where to go with the concept. It's biggest problem is that never really manages to properly link up all of its ideas - it is never clear whether the aliens are actually causing the natural disasters which will culminate in the world's end, or whether they are a natural result of the 'diseased' state of the earth described by their leader.  Certainly, the fact they can apparently bring remote destruction down upon anyone trying to help first Pergado, then the scientist and his wife, implies that they have the capability.  Now, I'm very much in favour of movies that don't serve everything up to the audience on a plate and instead assume that they are smart enough to put the pieces together themselves, but it still helps to be given some clues.  The script of End of the World seems simply confused and vague on this and other issues, as if the writer himself either couldn't make up his mind, didn't know or just didn't care.

The same seems to be trues of the characterisation of the aliens.  On the one hand, their leader keeps extolling their virtues as basically peace loving and emphasising how their own planet is a utopia, without death and disease.  Yet, simultaneously, they are happily killing anyone who gets in the way of their scheme and sacrificing peace-loving nuns and a priest as experimental subjects.  Not to forget that they think that the earth is emanating dangerous 'disease' into the cosmos, threatening its existence, (another point that is never fully explained or explored, instead just thrown away in a line of dialogue), and may, or may not, be involved in destroying the planet and the entire human race with it.  Again, there's a chance that this might be intentional: an attempt to establish their, well, 'alienness' through their apparently contradictory nature, implying that they are beyond conventional human concepts of morality.  I strongly suspect, however, that it is simply another aspect of the script's vagueness and confusion.  To some extent the aliens feel like an afterthought and that perhaps, in an earlier draft of the script they were angels sent to 'cleanse' the earth of evil through fire and disaster (which would tie in with the nunnery setting, the apocalyptic events and their home being a heavenly-sounding utopia), but were changed to aliens when it became apparent that, in the wake of the success of Star Wars (1977), anything with a science fiction element could get financing.  

Still, the film isn't entirely bad.  As already noted, Hayes' direction is reasonably effective, at some points managing to create a sense of impending doom.  His use of TV and radio reports of real contemporary natural disasters playing in the background of many scenes, for instance, helps embed the action firmly in the real world of 1977, giving these scenes a sense of immediacy and urgency sadly absent from the script.  End of the World also boasts an above average cast for a B-movie, featuring not just Lee, but also Dean Jagger, Lew Ayres, McDonald Carey and sue Lyon, although, apart from Lee and Lyon, none of them play particularly significant roles.  Lee later claimed that he was only persuaded to do the movie because he had been assured by the producers that they had already secured the services of other name actors such as Richard Basehart, Jose Ferrer, John Carradine and Arthur Kennedy, none of whom actually appeared.  This was a common tactic (and probably still is) of producers trying to secure star names for dubious projects - most likely the other recognisable actors who did appear in End of the World were given the same false assurances as Lee had been.  At least the film lives up to its title: the world really does end at the climax, with the globe exploding after the scientist and his wife decide to accompany the aliens back to their planet.  But even that exploding globe (an effect re-used at the end of the 1982 compilation film The Best of Sex and Violence, (in which John Carradine did appear), along with a brief glimpse of the aliens' true appearance, isn't enough to save th efilm from being a dud.  As with too many low budget exploitation films, a promising scenario with some interesting ideas is fumbled in its execution through a combination of a low budget and poor script.  A missed opportunity on every level.

The Psychic (1968)

The story goes that writer James Hurley was sufficiently unhappy with Herschell Gordon Lewis' treatment of his script for Something Weird (1967), that he wrote, directed and produced The Psychic (1968) in attempt to rectify what he saw as the earlier film's faults (with Lewis on board, ostensibly as cinematographer).  The films do, indeed, have similar themes, in both a man gains psychic powers as a result of an accident and seeks to exploit them, but with unexpected consequences.  But whereas Something Weird goes off into typically bizarre Herschell Gordon Lewis territory, involving witchcraft, psychedelics and serial killers, The Psychic tries to present its subject matter in a more straightforward, mundane way.  The problem is that it is so mundane that it is dull.  Nothing much at all ever seems to happen  Sure, we're told that the title character has been using his newly acquired powers to help local people, we don't actually see any of this.  Likewise, when he leaves his wife and daughter and goes on tour with his psychic act, in search of fame and fortune, we see next to nothing of this act which is supposed to be wowing audiences to the extent that an agent signs him up and gets him TV appearances.  Even when something dramatic does happen, it is executed in such a low key way that it seems a non-event.  When the main character's young daughter is kidnapped by a child molester, there is absolutely no sense of urgency in the reaction from either her parents or the police.  Even when the child is found alive but sexually assaulted, it feels an anti-climax - nobody seems to care about the poor girl's ordeal or the trauma she has suffered.

The situation isn't helped by the film's obvious lack of resources - everything about it looks poverty stricken.  The 'studio set' where the protagonist makes  an ill-fated appearance on a TV chat show is obviously somebody's living room, for instance.  The sound quality is poor, the lighting indifferent and Lewis' cinematography is static, seemingly bereft of zooms, close ups or any other kind of camera movement.  All too often, it looks like a badly filmed amateur stage production, with two people in a room, talking stilted dialogue at each other.  Which, if nothing else, at least makes The Psychic look like a Herschell Gordon Lewis film, but without the quirky bits.  (For many years, it was routinely misidentified as one of his films).  Clearly, somebody, somewhere, felt that the film, as originally shot, was too dull to be released even to the drive in exploitation circuit.  Consequently, the finished film includes a series of apparently randomly inserted soft core porn scenes, in which the main character has sex with various women - all the time watched by a child-like blonde in a bikini, licking a lollipop.  (The latter is eventually explained as a personification of his powers).  Presumably shot by Lewis to pad the film out and add exploitation value, these sequences aren't particularly explicit or erotic, but they do reinforce the main character's fundamental dislikablity, further demonstrating his objectification of women and callousness toward them.  (In the course of the film he also leaves his wife to pursue his psychic career, abuses his female assistant and reveals, live on his talk show appearance, a female guest's lesbian past, simply as an attempt to save face after his psychic powers had earlier failed him).

The fact is, though, that writer/director Hurley's instincts were right: the material itself has considerable potential for a serious drama. The whole business of the main character basically faking his failing psychic powers to help the police find find his daughter in order to re-establish his credibility, rather than through any concern for safety, could itself provide the plot for an intriguing character study, exploring the clash between morality and selfish ambition.  Likewise, the main scenario, of an already deeply flawed and amoral character suddenly gaining psychic abilities and the question of how he would use them could have made for an interesting drama, as would his reaction to losing these powers.  Sadly though, the film opts to try and cover all of these themes, but in the shallowest way possible, doing none of them justice, never developing any of the ideas and dilemmas they create.  Hurley's lumpen, unimaginative, script, combined with a non-existent budget and production values ensure that the film is sunk before it even has a chance to get started.  Lewis' would-be erotic inserts help only in at least giving the film a mildly surreal feel, but ultimately add nothing to the plot's development.  Although, to be fair, the film overall shows little in the way of development, of any kind.  The main character starts as an insufferable jerk, unpleasant to all around and by the end of the film has learned nothing from his experiences, with the loss of his powers leaving him wallowing in self-pity.  From a viewer's perspective, watching The Psychic is an equally unedifying experience..

Dragon Magazine #133

I've been rummaging through boxes again, as I supposedly clear out the spare room, and come across yet another Role Playing Game (RPG) magazine from my youth.  I really have no idea how or why these old magazines have somehow survived the years and house moves, only to end up forgotten in a box in my spare room, but I keep coming across them.  Anyway, this is Dragon Magazine 133, from May 1988.  I have absolutely no recollection of buying this magazine and it seems that I didn't buy any others.  Judging by its near pristine condition, I couldn't have thumbed through it much after my first reading.  Like White Dwarf, which was owned by Games Workshop, Dragon was effectively a 'house' magazine, being owned and published by TSR, publishers of Dungeons and Dragons.  Consequently, it has a strong bias toward TSR products, (possibly the reason why I didn't buy it again, as I wasn't really into any of their RPGs).  

It has to be said that it is a very slickly produced publication and certainly doesn't skimp on the content - this issue weighs in at over a hundred pages.  The content is pretty much what you'd expect, covering various aspects of, mainly, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons such as additional rules, scenarios and the like. There are also all the usual regular features, including reviews and a three page fantasy comic strip.  One particularly interesting article explores the role of computers in RPGs and stands as a reminder of just how crude computer games were back in the late eighties.  Computer RPGs back then were mainly text based and involved lots of typing.  Looking through this edition of Dragon, my main criticism would be that it seems a bit, well, staid.  The 'fun' factor seems to largely absent.  Which, I think, is why I favoured White Dwarf (before become devoted entirely to Warhammer) - it just felt like it wasn't taking itself too seriously and was consequently far more enjoyable.  Moreover, despite being a 'house' publication, it seemed to cover a wider range of products than the Dungeons and Dragons focused Dragon.

Without Warning (1980)

I actually remember seeing this film when it was first shown on UK television.  Back in the eighties ITV used to show low budget horror movies like this in late night midweek slots and caught quite a few of them, but Without Warning (1980) stuck in my memory for some reason.  Perhaps it was the above average, for this sort of production, maybe it was the surprisingly decent special effects or perhaps it was the film's wildly uneven tone, but I never forgot it.  Ignoring my normal advice to myself to never go back and revisit memorable movie experiences for fear that they won't live up to the memories and leave me disappointed, I took the opportunity to re-watch Without Warning last weekend.  I could have re-watched it many times over the years - it is easily available on many free streaming services - but for some reason it was its appearance on Tubi's new UK service that prompted me to give it another look.  I guess that I was just in the right mood.  It actually didn't disappoint me - it turned out that it had made a sufficient impression upon the younger me that it turned out that my memories of the film's details were pretty accurate.  As mentioned before, the film musters a pretty heavyweight cast for a cheap direct-to-video movie, headlining Jack Palance and Martin Landau, with veteran B-movie character actors Neville Brand, Ralph Meeker and Cameron Mitchell in support.  Of these, it is Palance and Landau who dominate and pretty much carry the film.  Cameron Mitchell, sadly, only appears for a few minutes at the beginning of the film - perhaps he simply had a spare half day in his busy filming scheduled, so was able to sandwich a couple of hours shooting for Without Warning between half a dozen other B-movies he was doubtless filming simultaneously.  While his presence is always welcome, here his character is unfortunately killed off before he can get into his stride of scenery chewing.

This deficiency is more than compensated for, though, by Palance and Landau's antics, with the two seemingly in a contest to see who can give the most over-the-top performance.  It's pretty much a dead heat, while Landau's deranged Vietnam veteran is at least meant to be disturbed, Palance's gas station owner is just full on bonkers because, well, he's played by Jack Palance, who portrayed every character he played as a raving lunatic, whether it was written that way or not.  By contrast, the younger characters are all pretty much colourless and played by unknowns - with the exception of a young David Caruso in one of his first film appearances.  They are thinly drawn characters who exist purely to act as fodder for the villain of the piece to kill horribly at regular intervals.  Said villain is an alien hunter, who kills his prey using star-shaped parasites, which he throws at his victims - when they are hit, the creatures burrow tentacles into their flesh and kill them.  The scenes with these parasites flying through the air and attaching themselves to victims are pretty well done and suitably bloody.  Naturally, Palance is so tough that he survives several attacks, bloodily cutting the parasites off with a knife.  The alien itself is also pretty well realised for such a low budget film, only glimpsed for most of the film and even at the climax filmed from a distance, giving it a certain eerie presence.  These scenes also manage some tension and even a few shocks - there are some surprising entries in the victim list, for instance.  There's also an effectively creepy, isolated back woods, feel to the film, which lends the whole thing a genuine sense of uneasiness.  Good as these aspects of the film are, it has real trouble knowing what to do between the set-pieces, with the plot resolving into meaningless chases and talky exposition, sapping the movie's pace and momentum.  There are also some curious variations i n tone: while most of the film is clearly meant as a serious science fiction horror movie, the early sequence with  group of boy scouts seems, initially, to be played for laughs, with Larry Storch's hapless scoutmaster desperately attempting to light an illicit cigarette by striking two flint stones together in hope of generating a spark.  But it then abruptly turns back to horror as he gorily falls victim to the parasites.

Overall, though, prolific B-movie director Greydon Clark delivers a pretty effective science fiction horror movie that delivers the requisite quotas of gore, tension and scares, albeit somewhat unevenly.  It's strength lies in the fact that it clearly knows its own limitations, keeping the scope of the action tightly contained, both in terms of geography and timescale, with everything happening in the course of a few hours in a single remote locale.   It has the distinction of prefiguring the bigger budgeted Predator (1987) - it even features Kevin Peter Hall, who portrayed the title character in the later film, as the alien hunter.  Re-watching Without Warning turned out to be a surprisingly pleasurable experience for me - sure, there's nothing especially original or innovative about it, but is a decently made exploitation movie.  If nothing else, it's worth watching simply to see Jack Palance and Martin Landau chewing up the scenery as they deliver, even by their standards, truly lunatic performances.

Debunking the Model Railway 'Rebels'

Another digression into model railways, I'm afraid.  I was at the local toy and train collector's fair again this evening, buying yet more tatty looking, but cheap, wagons, all in need of minor repairs and/or repainting.  As I've noted before, if you don't mind putting a bit of effort into these things, then the bargain bins of various traders represent a cost effective way of building up rolling stock.  Especially if, like me, you've become enough of a regular that you sometimes get given a discount on multiple purchases from individual traders.  Anyway, this all set me to thinking that I read and hear a lot of utter balls about model railways on the web these days.  Earlier today I watched a YouTube video about how N gauge was the 'best' scale for beginners and that 00 was too big, requiring too much space and was really about producing and collecting detailed models of real rolling stock.  Which is fine if you just want to build a tiny generic freelance layout representing nowhere in particular and running generic (not to mention fiddly due to its small size), stock, with very limited operating interest.  There seems to be a lot of similar sentiment out there on the web, particularly those operating YouTube channels highlighting their own layouts.  Even in 00 gauge, if you have the temerity to try and model an actual location or era with any degree of fidelity, you are dismissed as a 'purist' or a 'rivet counter'.  Most of these guys just run what they want, regardless of era or location.  Again, this is fine if that's what floats your boat, but to me, it just looks like a meaningless jumble of models being run by people who, despite identifying themselves as 'railway modellers', often seem to know little about the prototypes they model or have much grasp of actual railway operations.

There are, of course, exceptions and some modellers can justify their 'mix and match' approach - they either model a 'heritage railway', giving them much leeway over stock, or they are collectors who focus on the products of, say, Triang, or Trix, having examples of their production from specific periods running on their layouts.  Personally, I don't consider myself a 'purist' or a 'rivet counter', despite the fact that my aim is to represent mainline services on the Western Section of British Rail Southern Region around 1960-67.  I don't go for absolute authenticity in buildings, train formations and so on, but I do try to run stock representative of what was running in this location and era and create track formations and stations that look vaguely like actual locations on the route.  Moreover, I tend to do it using older stock: I have a nostalgic love of model railway equipment from the sixties, seventies and eighties, (although I do have one locomotive and some freight stock made in the nineties - if a more recent model is the only way to get a prototype I want, then I'll go down that route).  So I'm part collector.  Most of these models lack the detail of modern product but nonetheless capture the 'essence' of their prototypes.  Not only that, but they are far more robust than anything produced today.  So, I'm clearly not a 'purist' or a 'rivet counter' as I use these models rather than more modern, detailed and expensive stuff.  The expensive bit, in part, lies behind the rationale for that video's claims that N is better for beginners: the continental and Japanese, generic stuff is far cheaper than either its UK 00 or N equivalents.  But, to return to my original point, if you buy older, second hand stuff, especially if it needs attention, then you really can do 00 on a budget.  Moreover, all those repairs and repaints I do represent, well, the 'modelling' aspect of the hobby.

There's more to this online reaction against these mythical 'purists' and 'river counters' than just questions of cost and space, of course.  I've heard a lot of talk about them supposedly 'gate keeping' the hobby and discouraging new modellers by prescribing 'rules' about having to choose a location and era from the outset.  The established railway modelling magazines come in for a lot of flak in this respect.  While it is true that the, mainly, exhibition standard layouts featured in these publications since some when in the seventies, (sixties magazines are, by contrast, full of wondrous articles about building stuff from repurposed household items, or simply converting existing models into something else and featured actual home layouts built to standards I can relate to), can be very intimidating to average bodgers like me, nobody ever said that you had to model like this.  All they are doing is providing examples of what is possible with sufficient time money and skills.  To be fair, the magazines still do contain plenty of material on at least one aspect of freelance railway modelling not necessarily based on a real location or real prototypes in the form of narrow gauge layouts, which typically feature entirely fictitious light railways.  Less well represented, though, are freelance standard gauge model railways which were once popular - at their best these involved their creators designing and building their own locos and stock, (often by modifying existing ready to run models).  I've seen some excellent examples of this, which have clearly given their creators many hours of enjoyment.

Besides, recreating in miniature a detailed replica of the real railway isn't the only approach to 'proper' railway modellimg.  The operational layout is often neglected by both these self styled model railway rebels and what they see as the bastions of stifling traditions.  This features a representation rather than a replica of the real thing, with stations and yards featuring only those features essential to the builder's operating intentions, the idea being to run a representation of real operations, both freight and passenger, on that line.  This can involve the marshalling of trains into representative formations and matching them with appropriate motive power, the running of these services on the mainline, scheduling and sequencing trains as appropriate and breaking up the formations as appropriate upon their arrival at their destination.  Some of my favourite layouts and track plans are based around this concept of representing railway operations in a particular location and era.  Not surprisingly, it's the approach I favour.  The railway rebels, however, seem to have little idea of operations, seemingly randomly forming up stock into trains and running them around their layouts.  Not that there's anything wrong with that. It can be fun and I'm sure that we've all done it.  But I found that there came a point when I wanted it all to have some sort of logic and purpose.  It's the dismissal of anyone who seeks to create anything along these lines as a 'purist' or 'rivet counter' and the implication that by doing this we somehow stop others from doing as they please, which offends me. 

Look, you can build your model railway any way you like.  If you want to have a haphazard collection of locomotives and rolling stock where Pendolino units rub shoulders with seventies diesels and pre-nationalisation liveried steam engines hauling MkIII coaches, tail-chasing around your layout, then that's your prerogative.  But surely a large part of the fun of model railways is the research you put into your chosen location and era?  Just as the challenge of actually recreating a representation of that location and era is a large part of the enjoyment of the hobby?  Believe me, I've derived a lot of enjoyment from researching such things as Southampton boat train operations and trying create representations of typical boat trains using and sometimes modifying second and ready-to-run items.  I can't imagine approaching the hobby any other way.  But I'm not stopping anyone else from doing it differently and neither is anyone else.  These false narratives about 'gate keeping' or how it's just too difficult and/or expensive to create something approximating real railways and their operations, especially in 00, are really not helpful.  You can recreate mainline railway operations in model form in limited space and with limited money, even in 00.  You don't have to settle for an N gauge shunting layout in a corner of the living room. (Ironically, back in the day the 'orthodoxy' was that if you didn't have an attic, shed or large downstairs room you could commandeer, then the only possible railway in 00 gauge you could build was a branchline terminus - we seem to have come full circle).  Let's not forget that 00 was the original 'table top' railway scale in the UK, designed to be run on kitchen tables or living room floors.  Like I said, there seems to be a lot of balls being talked about model railways these days.

Chandler (1971)

The hard boiled private eye genre had, by the late sixties and early seventies, become somewhat problematic for filmmakers.  Its conventions were firmly rooted in thirties pulp magazines like Black Mask and forties film noir.  By the late sixties, these conventions seemed increasingly irrelevant, relics of an earlier age.  So how best to approach the genre?  One approach was simply to set the films in period, like the 1976 Farewell My Lovely adaptation, or Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), but also apply a contemporary perspective, which questions and subverts the traditional values and conventions of the genre.  Another approach was to modernise it completely, firmly placing the private eye in the contemporary world, even when adapting a literary source, as with Marlowe (1969) - an adaptation of Chandler's 'The Little Sister', which puts James Garner's version of Marlowe firmly and confidently in the late sixties world of television, strip clubs and even King Fu.  Garner's Marlowe seems quite comfortable there, operating in this world with ease, driving contemporary car and wearing a sixties cut suit.  The two Frank Sinatra starring 'Tony Rome' movies, made around the same time, take much the same approach, as did the Paul Newman starring adaptations of  two of Ross McDonald's Lew Archer novels, (called Lew Harper in the films but who, under either name, was a character dating back to the forties and modelled on Chandler's Marlowe).  But there was a third approach tried, most notably, by Robert Altman with his 1973 adaptation of Chandler's The Long Goodbye, which presents Elliot Gould's version of Marlowe as a relic of the past, somehow surviving into the seventies.  He drives a forties car, dresses in an out of style suit and seems constantly bewildered by the modern world, where his values and methods seem hopelessly outdated.

But Altman wasn't the first to try such and approach.  Two years earlier there had been Chandler (1971), featuring Warren Oates as a private eye turned security guard who tries to go back to being an old-style private dick.  As in The Long Goodbye, he finds his approach to the work at odds with the modern world, his belief in his clients misplaced and his personal code ineffective.  Like Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, Chandler (even the titular hero's name being a homage to one of the authors most identified with the genre and the creator of Philip Marlowe), constantly finds himself driving forties vehicles - the only truck he can commandeer from a hotel car park, for instance, is inevitable an ancient pick up truck, while it is absolutely no surprise when the taxi he hails to follow another taxi, turns out to be forties coupe, inexplicably still in service in 1971.  His attempts to follow his forties PI code of honour, of course, go seriously awry and he finds himself powerless to do anything other than reacting to events, his moves entirely dictated by others, rather than being proactive in unravelling the mystery, as in the classic forties private eye story.   In truth, he's in the wrong forties noir picture, with Chandler following another noir tradition of the hero-as-patsy.  It turns out that he was set-up to fail from the outset, employed as a decoy in his mission to follow a federal witness, forcing the bad guys to focus on his obvious moves, while his employers go about their real objective.  At least, I think that's what was going on - Chandler features a stubbornly unyielding script, which never seems willing to explain its finer points.  The central conspiracy remains, by the end, obscure, leaving the viewer shrugging in frustration.

According to the film's director, Paul Magwood, (Chandler was his only directorial credit) and producer Micheal Laughlin, the movie was re-edited by MGM without their involvement, with several scenes cut.  This is certainly reflected in the film's choppy and abrupt feel, with significant events occurring with no build-up and two actors credited whose characters were cut completely from the film as released.  Ironically, MGM supposedly edited the film to make its plot clearer and easier for audiences to follow.  Magwood and Laughlin publicly disowned the film its released form.  Indeed Magwood and star Leslie Caron tried to have their names removed from credits and publicity, but failed.  While borderline incomprehensible in plot terms, Chandler isn't a complete wash-out.  It features a pretty good cast who do their best with the material.  Warren Oates is particularly effective as the perpetually rumpled Chandler, while Caron as the witness is supposedly protecting is suitably aloof and enigmatic in the role.  Charles McGraw, a veteran of many a genuine forties noir, is also notable as Chandler's supposed buddy who gets him the gig - unlike Chandler, he has resigned himself to the fact that the forties are well and truly over and the values and codes of the era now irrelevant.  Maverick PI's are out and corporate conformists are very much in.  Perhaps best of all is the photography, catching the deceptive beauty and sunshine of the Monterey area, in contrast to the violence and machinations for which it provides a background.  This, combined with some interesting shot compositions and framing from Magwood, helps give the film pleasingly lazy quasi-noir feel, reflecting Chandler's weariness and disillusion as he realises just how out of touch with modernity he has become.  If you are a fan of the hard boiled private eye genre, then Chandler is worth a look, it's an affectionate and up to a point, effective, homage to the genre.  Just don't expect it to make too much sense or provide a particularly satisfying conclusion, just enjoy the ride.

Unreliable Narratives

It was all a hoax, probably perpetrated by lefties.  Have you noticed how the right are trying to change the narrative with regard to the recent far right anti-immigration riots?  Ever since a rumoured new wave of fascist protests failed to materialise earlier this week, with mass counter-protests instead occurring, the right, particularly the right-wing press, have been on the defensive.  Their explanation for the failure of the violent thugs to turn up was that the supposed list of protest locations seen on social media and publicised by them was, in fact, a hoax.  At first, they left it like that, but over the past couple of days it has become a 'left-wing hoax', apparently designed to rally support for the anti-fascist cause.  Plus, those counter demonstrators - at first grudgingly lauded by the right-wing press, have now become 'far left protestors'.  (Apparently, opposing fascism and violent thuggery makes you 'far left' in their eyes).  It's clearly part of an attempt to divert attention away from violence of the far right and the culpability of the likes of Nigel Farage for helping to encourage it with their inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric.  Instead, they want to somehow discredit those who opposed this thuggery and turn them into the villains.  It goes hand in glove with the attempts of all those idiots they keep wheeling onto GB News to somehow place the blame for the riots at the feet of Keir Starmer and the Labour government - in the process somehow sidestepping the fact that they've only been in power  for a month, whereas we've had fourteen years of austerity, race-baiting and immigrant bashing xenophobia from the Tories.

Obviously, a major factor in the right-wing press' attempts to change the narrative with regard to the riots is their annoyance and embarrassment at having had to run headlines after the extreme right no show praising the counter protestors for protecting democracy.  Whereas, in reality, they really wanted to run headlines along the lines of 'Hurrah for the blackshirts!'.  It's the quandary they find themselves in: in truth, many of their columnists, not to mention owners, actually sympathise with the aims of these violent mobs and support those politicians who encourage them, yet they also have to pay lip service to the idea that they support democracy and the rule of law and deplore political violence.  The evidence for this is clear: just look at the front pages of the Daily Mail and Daily Express for the past fourteen years - non-stop lies and disinformation designed to incite hatred against immigrants, legal or illegal.  But will they take responsibility for the tidal wave of hate they've whipped up?  Of course not - it's all somebody else's fault.  Most specifically, it's the left's fault.  But we shouldn't expect anything else from the right.  After all, we've already seen the abominable Nigel Farage this week trying to claim that he's absolutely shocked and appalled by the riots and that he can't be blamed for inciting them.  As ever, an utterly cowardly bastard.  To be fair, though, he at least stayed in the UK while it all kicked off, unlike 'Tommy Robinson', convicted football hooligan and mortgage fraudster, who has been hiding out in Cyprus, on the run from an arrest warrant, stirring the shit on social media.  Then there's the role played by techno jerk Elon Musk - but it's probably best that I don't get started on that weasel.  Just don't fall for this new narrative that the right is trying to spin - this is their mess and they need to start taking responsibility for it all.

In the Editing Suite of History

I see that the BBC are currently writing Huw Edwards out of their history - there is currently a Dr Who episode unavailable, for instance, while they edit out his appearance as a newsreader.  It's part of a disturbing trend in media nowadays to try and expunge from existence anyone who is deemed to have crossed certain boundaries.  In Edwards' case, the fact that he is facing well-publicised child pornography charges might seem to justify such actions, but the fact is that Edwards was employed by the BBC as a presenter and newsreader and was the face of the corporation for several major events, most recently the death of Queen Elizabeth II.  It seems perverse to try and deny this fact.  But it isn't an isolated thing: there are a large number of episodes of Top of the Pops you can't see anymore because they were fronted by Jimmy Savile and apparently It's a Knockout never happened as it was presented by Stuart Hall.  As for Cartoon Time With Rolf Harris, well, I'm afraid that you must have imagined that.  But it isn't just the BBC that does this sort of thing- remember how Kevin Spacey was edited out of that film and replaced by Christopher Plummer?  It happened in order to try and protect the box office after Spacey was accused of various instances of sexual misconduct after filming had been completed - the producers felt they couldn't risk keeping Spacey in if he was charged or went down before the film was released.  Understandable in a way, but also drastic, not to mention more than slightly sinister.

I could, of course, describe this sort of thing as being 'Orwellian' and reference his novel '1984', but the rewriting of history to omit historical figures deemed inconvenient long predates George Orwell.  Most totalitarian and authoritarian regimes have indulged in such practices.  Indeed, you can even go back to the Anglo-Saxons for an example: after the death of King Athelstan, in spite of the fact that he was the first ruler to unite the Anglo Saxon kingdoms and create the first iteration of what would eventually become modern England, his half-brothers who succeeded him did their best to write him out of the records and downplay his achievements.  They even ensured that his tomb was obscure, with Athelstan not interred with other Kings of Wessex.  All of this stemmed from petty jealousies resulting from this brothers' resentment that their illegitimate half-brother had been favoured over them by the Earls to succeed their father as king, rather than from any terrible misconduct on Athelstan's part.  Going back further, the successors of Akenhaton did their best to ensure that the names of this heretic ancient Egyptian Pharaoh and his descendants were erased from history - with considerable success.  (Under their religious beliefs, this erasing of them from living memory would also result in their demise in the afterlife, so it was considered just about the worst thing you could do to someone).

But this current mania for writing the inconvenient out of history just feels far creepier, motivated, I suspect, by the fact that people feel uncomfortable knowing that, for years, they had accepted these media figures at face value, that they had failed to see through them.  Because, apparently, we should know what perverts and abusers look like - they aren't supposed to be respectable, middle class newsreaders or wealthy TV personalities, they're supposed to be slavering scumbags living on council estates, or foreign sex predators coming ashore in rubber boats at dead of might.  People don't like to feel that they've been duped and that these dangerous sex offenders could be someone who looks just like us, with a good job, kids and a mortgage.  So, rather than confront these facts, we erase them from history and pretend that they never existed.  I remember seeing this Robin Williams film once, set in a near future where people are fitted from birth with chips which record their life experiences - when you die, your relatives can have it edited down into 'tribute', that includes only the 'good' bits.  I can't help but fear that's what is going on now: the selective editing of history, eliminating all the troubling bits, in order to render it nice and 'safe'.

Alabama's Ghost (1973)

Where to start with Alabama's Ghost (1973)?  One of only four films directed by artist Frederic Hobbs, it mashes together elements from a number of genres in a style that tries to evoke the feel of thirties B-movies, serials and weird pulp magazines, while at the same time encompassing the whole hippie psychedelic counter-culture.  The story encompasses magicians, ghosts, Nazis, robots, vampires, elephants and voodoo - with the voodoo witch doctor as a good guy - as the titular hero finds himself unwittingly involved in a plot to enslave the world via psychedelia, for the benefit of the vampires. Oh, he also drives around in a car that appears to be made from bones.  Incredibly, it all, sort of, makes sense.  Sort of.  Shot with what are clearly limited resources, Alabama's Ghost features a cast mostly recognisable only from appearing in Hobbs' other films, most of whom perform as if they are in an amateur dramatics production, not helped by very flat sound production and near-unspeakable dialogue.  Which, in a way, is pretty much what the film is.  The whole thing is performed in a frenzy, with the plot veering all over the place and taking frequent detours to introduce more characters.  Every so often everything stops for a long, talky scene of exposition.  Yet, somehow, it remains quite compelling while it is playing: you just have to stay with it to see where on earth it is going to next.  

It all starts innocuously enough, with hapless nightclub janitor and frustrated musician Alabama (Christopher Brooks) crashing his forklift through the wall of the club's cellar while moving stuff around, revealing a secret room.  Said room is full of the effects of long-dead magician Carter the Great.  Trying on Carter's costumes, Alabama decides he is going to find fame and fortune as a stage magician, recreating Carter's illusions.  After this, things begin to get complicated.  An opening voice over had already informed the audience that, before World War Two a Nazi scientist, Dr Caligula, had sought out Carter in Calcutta, in an attempt to secure from him the secret of his discovery of a hashish-like substance called Raw Zeta which, if introduced into the human body by acupuncture, could be transformed into Deadly Zeta, which could give the recipient the power to hypnotise people into becoming their slaves.  Or something like that.  Back to the present day and Dr Caligula is still seeking the secrets of Raw Zeta, but is now working for an international organisation of vampires, headed by media mogul Jerry Gault.  In order to learn Carter's act, Alabama goes to see Carter's sister, who is really Gault in disguise, who, in turn sends him to Carter's former assistant.  When Alabama finally masters the art of Carter's illusions, he is signed up by shady promoter Otto Kent (who speaks in what I think is meant to be a Liverpool accent), who sends him on a tour, complete with entourage of groupies, that makes him the darling of the hippie crowd.  Kent then signs Alabama up to headline a pop event which Gault is going to televise worldwide - on condition that Alabama climaxes it by revealing the secret of Carter's vanishing elephant trick, for reasons that remain unclear to me.  

All the while, Alabama is being harassed by the ghost of Carter the Great, who keeps warning him of the perils of performing his illusions for material gain.  Alabama thinks the ghost is simply a racist who doesn't want to see a black man succeed and, in a panic, flees to see his mother.  She, in turn, calls in the local voodoo witch doctor, (because all black people know one, obviously).  Anyway, Alabama ends up refusing to reveal the secrets of the elephant trick, so Gault has Caligula make a robot double of the magician, powered by Raw Zeta, to take his place, but the witch doctor gets wind of the plot to use the robot to turn the Raw Zeta into Deadly Zeta and hypnotise the hippies and all the viewers at home into becoming slaves to Gault's vampires.  The witch doctor takes control of the robot, which starts shooting beams out of a wand as the entourage turn out to be vampires, who attack the hippies and the whole thing descends into chaos, with some vampires being killed by the rays, the elephant killing others and Carter's ghost taking care of Gault.  If that bare outline of the plot sounds confusing, the film itself is even more so, with the action punctuated by a number of utterly incomprehensible illusions performed by Alabama, (one involving a sailor, a witch and a monkey) and several hallucinatory sequences experienced by the magician.  The whole thing is wrapped up with a distinct hippie vibe, anti-establishment vibe, with its crude satirising of capitalist business moguls like Gault as vampires, out to try and exploit the whole hippie counter culture for their own profit, (in this case, in blood), even turning their own psychedelics against them.

The film itself comes over like a very low budget, road company version of those films popular in the sixties and seventies, that were built around pop groups like The Beatles or The Monkees.  While Alabama's Ghost is certainly as surreal as any of those pop vehicles, it is undermined by its lack of production values, seemingly non-professional cast and, most crucially, a script that simply can't provide the sort of witty and clever dialogue that such films require.  Its set-pieces are simply not well enough staged and frequently seem to go on too long.  Moreover, Hobbs' direction just feels too static, with too many scenes framed as if they are part of a filmed stage production rather than an actual motion picture - there is none of the imaginative and innovative camera angles and movements that are required to make a surreal comedy work effectively.  Yet, despite all of its shortcomings, Alabama's Ghost is certainly an experience to watch, leaving the viewer wondering just how it ever got financed and exactly who its intended audience were.  A truly bizarre production, Alabama's Ghost remains a beguiling entertainment, by no means good, but certainly compelling in its weirdness.

The Mad Magician (1954)

Very much Columbia's answer to House of Wax (1953), Warner's opening shot in the 3-D craze of the fifties, The Mad Magician (1954) plays it safe, not only using that film's star, Vincent Price, but also its writer, Crane Wilbur, producer, Brian Foy and cinematographer, Bert Glennon.  It also utilises that film's late nineteenth century/early twentieth century setting, not to mention its basic plot device of an artist being defrauded of his most beloved creations by a ruthless business partner.  What it lacks is House of Wax's colour photography, instead being presented, like Columbia's other 3-D releases of the period, in monochrome.  This latter factor perhaps influenced the choice of John Brahm as director, who had made his name with a number of film noirs and a couple of stylish looking thrillers set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  While repeating plenty of tropes from his earlier script from House of Wax, Wilbur's script for The Mad Magician also lifts several key plot points from Brahms' historical thrillers.  Notably the sequence in which price disposes of a victim's body by disguising it as a dummy and placing on on a bonfire, (built in celebration of a local football victory), is taken directly from Hangover Square (1945), where Laird Cregar disposes of Linda Darnell's body by disguising it as a Guy and placing it on a communal November 5th bonfire.  Moreover, the whole business of the police detective's use of new-fangled fingerprint identification techniques echoes Scotland Yard inspector George Sanders' attempts to do the same thing identify Jack the Ripper (Cregar again) in Brahms' The Lodger (1944).

Despite the use of so many personnel and plot elements from House of Wax, The Mad Magician fails to recreate its impact, proving a far less effective vehicle for Price.  The set up - creator of elaborate stage illusions tries to go into business as a magician himself, but finds that his employer has inveigled him into signing away the rights to all of creations - certainly has promise, but quickly runs into problems in terms of its execution.  Finally snapping and killing his employer using a dangerous buzz saw trick he has built, Price (who has already been established as a master of disguise) is then forced to impersonate him in order to cover up his crime. Which, unfortunately, leads the plot into a series of dead ends as he first perpetuates the deception, then inadvertently frames his employer for the murder of the man's wife, (Price's ex-wife, stolen from him by his employer), which forces him to ditch that impersonation.  Returning to his real identity - with nobody suspecting him of being a double murderer because one victim has seemingly vanished after murdering the second - he is then forced into a second impersonation after murdering a rival magician who is trying to steal his latest illusion.  These constant changes of identity and the sub-plots that force them effectively break up any rhythm in the film's  narrative, simultaneously killing any suspense or pace.  They also prevent much character development for Price, as he's always someone else, so his character's descent into raving lunacy at the climax seems abrupt and without sufficient build up.  Indeed, the ending, with Price falling victim to his latest illusion, a cremation furnace, not only seems perfunctory, with insufficient build up.  Despite filling up the film with proliferating sub-plots, the makers still seemed to feel a need to pad out its running time - a chase around the city in pursuit of a bag containing a severed head that Price has carelessly mislaid, for instance, should  generate suspense and tension, but instead goes nowhere and feels like padding.  

Nonetheless, The Mad Magician is a very handsome looking film, stylishly shot by Brahm and featuring another suitably flamboyant performance from Price, (despite the fact that he spends large parts of the film in disguise).  Even seen flat, you know that you are watching a 3-D movie thanks to the number of objects thrust, for no good reason, toward the camera - even that guy with the yo-yos is back from House of Wax, flicking them toward the screen. Running at just under seventy five minutes, The Mad Magician never quite outstays its welcome, but also never feels entirely satisfying.  Its biggest problem, in comparison to House of Wax, is that it never manages to recreate that film's sense of grand guignol and weird, off-kilter atmosphere.

Summer of Idiocy

Right now, this country seems to be suffering from a surfeit of stupidity.  Maybe it is the summer heat bringing the idiots out, but suddenly we have hordes of beer-bellied drunken arseholes covered in neo-Nazi tattoos out on the streets throwing bricks at the police and trying to storm mosques.  Of course, their is excuse is that they are just ordinary decent citizens who been pushed to the limits by all this immigration and that 'enough is enough'.  Their latest flashpoint has been the knife attack in Southport that left three little girls dead.  But these upright citizens, instead of waiting for official statements and accurate reports about the alleged perpetrator, instead decided to rely upon social media posts, from unverifiable sources, that claimed the attacker was a Muslim immigrant who had arrived in the UK illegally on a small boat.  Again, rather than let the law take its course, these upstanding examples of British citizenry decided to start attacking the local mosque.  Because, yeah, even if the perpetrator had been a Muslim, it is perfectly logical to then blame all Muslims.  Next time some bastard vandalises my car, I'll just assume that they are Christian and burn down the local church in retaliation.  The accused is, of course, neither a Muslim nor an immigrant - he was born in Cardiff, of Rwandan parents, true, but nonetheless a UK citizen.  But, like I said, these rioters are just plain stupid.  Obviously stupid, because they are happy to act on fake information spewed out by fake social media accounts undoubtedly controlled by outside actors attempting to destabilise the UK.  Even worse, they are happy to follow, nay worship, the likes of Nigel Farage and 'Tommy Robinson', one of whom takes Russian money while the other is a convicted violent football hooligan and mortgage fraudster.  Both spread lies and race hate in furtherance of their own murky ambitions.

The stupidity of these people is underlined when they try to blame the police and authorities for the trouble that they have caused.  Apparently, there wouldn't have been any problems if the police hadn't opposed them when they attacked Mosques. Because, you know, they never oppose those Muslim rioters, like in Leeds a few weeks ago, even though they weren't Muslims, they were Romanians.  Oh, and that Keir Starmer isn't playing fair when he condemns their actions and announces a crackdown on their activities - he's obviously a traitor, because he isn't cracking down on those Muslims on the basis that they are, well, Muslims.   They really are thick as shit.  They apparently can't discern the difference between peaceful protests and riots and the way in which each is policed.  They can't seem to grasp that when you turn up somewhere just looking for a fight, then the authorities are going to treat you differently than if you turn up and protest peacefully.  They are simply violent thugs who have latched onto a spurious cause, (and in this case, hijacked an local tragedy in order to further their agenda of starting violent drunken fights with anyone they don't like the look of), in order to justify their disregard for societal norms.  Some other idiots, of course, would say that if only we had a few more wars than all this pent up violence would be discharged.  Not peacefully or constructively, but in an orgy of death and destruction.  But so long as it happens in someone else's country, that's OK.  Like I say, we seem to be riven with stupidity.  Perhaps it is all down to fourteen years of Tory governments and the resulting reduction in educational standards.  Perhaps it is all down to the evil influence of social media, (most specifically Twitter since it was taken over by fascist-consorting uber-idiot and techno jerk Elon Musk).  Or perhaps it is simply that the UK's gene pool has degenerated so much that all we can produce now are morons.  In which case, we really do need all those immigrants to inject fresh genes into the pool.  Think on that, cretins.

Time of the Apes (1986)

I was just watching the Japanese Planet of the Apes, titled Time of the Apes, it was dated 1986, but looked as if it had been made at least a decade earlier.  Which, as it turned out, it had.  Sort of.  Cast your mind back to the seventies - with the Planet of the Apes film franchise pretty much exhausted after a series of increasingly lacklustre and cheap-looking sequels, the next logical move to squeeze some more money out of the franchise was a TV series.  Which duly appeared in 1974 and was cancelled after fourteen episodes.  Which was hardly surprising, as it was hopelessly pedestrian and made little of its initial premise, with most of the scripts pretty much interchangeable, in plot terms, with dozens of other US TV shows of the era.  But this wasn't the only Planet of the Apes inspired TV series to air in 1974.  Over in Japan, Suru no Gundan ran for twenty six hour long episodes.  While not officially connected to the Planet of the Apes franchise, the series nonetheless followed that series' premise quite closely, despite seemingly being aimed at younger audiences, (two of the main characters are children).  Rather than have its human protagonists go into an ape-dominated future via a space flight through a time warp, it instead has them accidentally cryogenically frozen in a lab accident, with their cryo capsules buried in an earthquake which destroys the lab they are visiting.  If nothing else, it saved on the budget.  Once they get dug up and thawed out, they find themselves on the run from the talking apes that now rule the earth, picking up an ape ally and a future human rebel along the way.  

Fast forward to 1986 and several episodes of the series were re-edited into a ninety minute film, dubbed into English, released as Time of the Apes.  Despite the compression of twenty six hours of running time into an hour and a half feature, it follows the basic outline of the series' story arc, concluding with the three present-say humans returning to 1974.  Most of the main story from the US film and TV series turn up in the Japanese movie, even the return to the present from Escape From the Planet of the Apes, along with the idea that the apes first started becoming more human-like when trained by humans to carry out menial and dangerous tasks, (such as fighting wars), presented in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.  The only things missing are the mutants living in the buried ruins of the cities.  Instead, we have what we'd now call an AI revealed as the main antagonist to both apes and humans.  Created, like the apes, by humans to solve their problems, it eventually decided to replace the humans with the apes.  It spends the film sending out a flying saucer to protect the human party at various points, in order to ensure that they reach the underground complex where it is housed, in order that it can make them the offer of being sent to the far future (by being frozen again) or sent to another planet, so that they are no longer a disruption to the current ape world.  While the contemporary human is sent off world, the 1974 people are frozen, but wake up, not in the far future, but back in their own time.

Being cut down from a much longer TV series, it isn't surprising that the film's narrative doesn't always run smoothly, with sub-plots suddenly appearing, seemingly from nowhere, before vanishing just as abruptly.  In particular, the main military ape's vendetta against the future human isn't explained until the last fifteen minutes of the film, then gets resolved in a pretty perfunctory manner, with the ape admitting he was wrong, then just wandering off.  Unlike either the US films or TV series, Time of the Apes makes no real effort to present the viewer with a well developed portrayal of the ape culture, opting instead to portray it as pretty much like 1974, but with apes.  Apes who drive seventies models of cars and trucks and travel on steam hauled trains, (steam haulage still being used on parts of the Japanese rail network in 1974 - it wasn't all gleaming bullet trains away from the main lines and big cities).  The ape make ups, too, seem far less sophisticated than those of the actual Planet of the Apes series, consisting of stiff-faced masks which allow next to nothing in the way of expressiveness, let alone mobility.  It isn't exactly bad, but it isn't particularly good, either.  The plot degenerates into a series of captures and escapes, with all of the explanations crammed into a final few minutes of dialogue heavy expository scenes.  I can only assume that the TV series spread all of this out over its twenty sex episodes somewhat more evenly, not to mention fleshing out the whole background of the ape civilisation a little more fully.  In this condensed film format, however, it is a somewhat less than satisfactory viewing experience.