The Idiot With the Digital Delusion

So, another week of techno jerk in chief Elon Musk doing his impression of a really crap super-villain.  According to some (completely unconfirmed and sketchily sourced) reports, he's now plotting how he can bring down the UK's democratically elected government - most specifically how he can somehow unseat Starmer as PM.  Well, good luck with that.  As I've noted here time and again, the UK's political system makes it extremely difficult to get rid of a government with a decently sized majority.  Bearing in mind the size of this government's majority, I don't see any prospect of it losing a confidence vote in the Commons, meaning that, regardless of any destabilising attempts by outsiders, it is likely to run the full five year term of this parliament.  (Which is why all those polls the right-wing press like to run supposedly showing how unpopular Starmer and the government - conducted exclusively amongst their own neo-Nazi readers, of course - are utterly meaningless at this point in time as we won't be going to the polls any time soon).  Even if Starmer could, somehow, be removed from Number Ten, what does Musk expect to happen?  Because all that would happen would be that he'd be replaced by another senior Labour politician, unlikely to be any more sympathetic to Musk's right-wing fantasies than Starmer.

But we shouldn't be surprised at Musk behaving in this way, as if he has the power to topple governments in foreign countries and bend their political systems to his will, regardless of local democratic processes.  What else could be expect from a man whose father was behind the smuggling ring providing South African diamonds to Ernst Stavro Blofeld back in the early seventies, in order to power his space laser, with which he held the world to ransom.  You've surely heard of that - they made a fictionalised account of it called Diamonds Are Forever (1971).  Now, I know what you are thinking - didn't Ian Fleming write the novel it was based on back in the fifties?  Well, it might have shared a title, but the film ditched the plot, replacing it with a new, ripped from the headlines, story.  Before you say it, I know that Blofeld had appeared as a character in Fleming's books back in fifties as well.  But, as was often the case, he used the name of a real would be super villain - back then Blofeld was pretty much a two-bit minor gangster, however, spurred on by the notoriety given him by Fleming's novels and his portrayal in the subsequent films, he decided to enter the big leagues and hatched his space laser plan.

His father's involvement with Blofeld obviously inspired Elon Musk to bankroll his own super villain in the form of Donald Trump.  Musk, however, has clearly concluded that he wants to be the villain himself, rather than being the shady sidekick providing the finance.  Which is why we need to be wary of all those rockets he keeps trying to launch - believe me, one day one of them is going to put a space laser into orbit.  He's obviously learned the lessons of Blofeld's failure - his new position in Trump's government will allow him to starve the US's intelligence services of finance, so that they can neither detect nor defeat his scheme, while his attacks on the UK are obviously designed to try and neutralise the threat posed by MI6's Double-O section.  Not that I'm worried that he'll succeed as I've no doubt that Musk will be every bit as crap as a super villain as he has been in his other ventures: the catastrophic mismanagement of Twitter, exploding rockets and electric cars that catch fire and/or crash when driving themselves.  Need I say more?  Most crucially, of course, he has absolutely no understanding of human beings and the fact that the majority of them neither share his own opinion of his own genius or his enthusiasm for undermining democratically elected governments.  We like being able to choose our own leaders, even if, as far as Musk is concerned, they are the 'wrong' governments.

The Invisible Ray (1936)

One of a number of vehicles devised by Universal to team up their new horror stars Karloff and Lugosi, The Invisible Ray (1936) opts for a science fiction scenario rather than the Poe-inspired Gothic horror of The Black Cat (1934) and The Raven (1935).  Surprisingly ambitious for a horror film of the era, The Invisible Ray's action takes place across the globe, encompassing locations in Africa and Paris, amongst others, although, in reality, never leaving the Universal backlot.  This constant shifting of location gives the film a rather episodic feel, almost like a serial, opening like a mad scientist picture, before becoming a jungle adventure and finally a horror-revenge movie.  (Indeed, director Lambert Hillyer would later direct the cult favourite Batman serial for Columbia in 1943).  Obviously, the film's big selling point to contemporary audiences was the teaming of Karloff and Lugosi.  Their billing on the opening titles gives an indication of the way in which their respective careers were already heading:  Karloff's name is billed above Lugosi's with the actor identified solely by his last name (the only other actor of the time afforded such billing was Garbo), with the added suffix 'The Uncanny'.  Lugosi, by contrast, is not only billed second, his name below Karloff's, but his full name is used and is in a noticeably smaller font size that his co-star's.  This marks the point at which Lugosi found himself being relegated to what were effectively supporting roles to Karloff's star turn, a pattern repeated in subsequent team ups like Son of Frankenstein (1939), Black Friday (1940) and The Body Snatcher (1945).

Perhaps most disconcerting, The Invisible Ray sees Lugosi cast as the sympathetic character, a reasonable scientist devoted to humanitarian research,  whereas Karloff is the paranoid, ostracised rogue scientist, who eventually succumbs to the effects of his latest discovery, goes mad and becomes a literal monster.  Karloff's initial research - which has been decried by the rest of the scientific community - actually seems perfectly reasonable: he is studying light from distant stars, believing that this will allow him to see into the past.  While demonstrating his latest experiments to a group of scientists, including Lugosi, he sees in the ancient light a meteorite striking the earth millions of years ago, landing in Africa.  Believing that such an ancient meteor might contain rare elements otherwise unknown on earth, he and the other scientists team up to find it.  Karloff discovers the meteorite, which contains a radioactive element that he calls 'Radium X'.  Not only can its energy be directed as a death ray, but it also has healing properties in small quantities.  Naturally, Karloff ends up being exposed to the meteorite's full power and ends up glowing in the dark, with his touch proving deadly to all living things.  Despite Lugosi devising a serum that, with daily doses, can return him to normal, Karloff, fuelled by the knowledge that his wife has fallen in love with another man, starts losing his mind, convinced that, with his 'Radium X' powered treatments for the sick, Lugosi is trying to steal credit for his discovery.  Inevitably, he stops taking his treatment regularly and starts using his deadly touch to kill off other members of the expedition, before eventually falling to his death and exploding.  

While not quite a top drawer Karloff/Lugosi entry, The Invisible Ray is still an above average horror/science fiction film of its era, still highly watchable.  Lambert Hillyer might have been primarily a B-movie director (especially of B westerns), but he moves the film along at a reasonable pace, despite its somewhat halting, episodic structure.  Overall, despite utilising the familiar Universal backlot sets seen in countless other of their pictures, the film has decent enough production values, well above those of the B-movies that Lugosi, in particular, would subsequently find himself embroiled in, (Karloff always managed to contrive to appear in bigger budgeted and better appointed B-movies in addition to prominent character roles in A pictures).  The film's biggest weakness, perhaps, is its lack of a truly striking monster - Karloff's glowing madman is, in its way, quite striking, but nowhere near as memorable as Frankenstein's monster or the Mummy, both of which he had recently played. 

Confidential Sources?

There's been much furor today over the announcement that Facebook was to end third party fact checking, as part of Zuckerberg's attempts to cosy up to Trump.  (Apparently, third party moderation is too open to political bias, whereas the 'community' fact checking system they are proposing as a replacement isn't - a theory which flies in the face of established facts on the subject).  The irony of this sort of reaction from the UK's media is that, increasingly, most of their reporting is barely fact based.  OK, in many cases, it is entirely fact-free.  Most of their reporting seems to based upon a journalist's access to 'confidential sources' who must always remain anonymous.  The implication being that these sources are somehow 'connected', insiders, be it in politics, business or whatever, ho have access to actual information.  Personally, I find them of highly dubious quality.  Indeed, I wonder if they exist at all.  Or, are they like those 'In-The-Know' sources endlessly referenced by football websites, who supposedly have the inside track on player transfers and managerial sackings and appointments, but are invariably wrong and usually turn out to be the assistant groundsman's sister's boyfriend's second cousin's hairdresser, who once cut the boot boy's hair.  I mean, bearing in mind that both the police and security services in the UK seem to want to rely upon the public for intelligence gathering, forever urging us to ring confidential phone lines to report on any suspicious 'foreign-looking' types we see buying the New Statesman or The Guardian, are the media now following the same model?

Could it be that the likes of The Daily Mail and Express are  down to using nosy neighbours as sources?  (Let's face it, The Sun has been doing it for decades while The Daily Star hasn't run a story that wasn't complete fiction since, well, the day it first rolled off the presses).  After all, for stories abut horrendous crimes, who could be a better source for speculation about the victims and suspected perpetrators than that bloke from down the street who spends his days peering at houses through binoculars, logging his neighbours' every movements?  "Yes, I have it on record here, that I definitely saw Mr Smith from Number Nine, regularly going in through the back door of Number Sixteen to have sex with Mrs Jones in her living room - they never drew the curtains - in the weeks leading up to her murder."  Even better, nowadays we have those voyeurs who set up cameras all all over their properties, not to protect them against burglars, but to spy on the neighbours - they have footage that could rival any surveillance operation by MI5.  Then there are those bloody doorbell cameras which are becoming ever more prevalent, again ostensibly so that you can see who is knocking on your door without opening it, or when you aren't at home, but in reality capturing footage of every passer by.  

Now, you might say, this is all very well as a source for information on news stories that involve ordinary people in ordinary neighbourhoods, but how could it ever be an effective replacement for high level sources on stories involving the great and the good?  Well, what if that nosy neighbour had been adamant that it wasn't Mr Smith going in Mrs Jones' back door before she was murdered, but Liberal Party leader Ed Davey?  Or Prince Andrew (a more likely candidate)?  Not good enough for an arrest, perhaps, (although with the current state of the UK police, you never know), but certainly good enough for the press to smear the allegation across their front pages.  What if he reckoned that it wasn't Mr Brown from Number Forty's dog shitting on Number Twenty Two's lawn, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, (presumably taking time off from covering up sex abuse cases)?  Again, I strongly suspect that that might make the front pages, too.  You can also guarantee that, if they get their observations into the papers, even anonymously, for the smaller stuff, before you know it, these nosy neighbours will get a taste for it and start expanding their operations.  They'll start hanging around parks where politicians take their afternoon strolls, in the hope of overhearing a confidential conversation on a sensitive subject, or standing on milk crates to peer through the windows of motels where some minor league celebrity (or someone who looks a bit like them) has gone for an illicit assignation.  For all we know, some of those supposed high-level political sources are actually simply the nosy neighbours of the politicians involved, busy listening at connecting walls with upturned glasses, or watching them on their security and doorbell cameras.  Who needs facts in journalism when you can have much more interesting rumours, instead?

2000 AD, Prog 227, 29 August 1981

 

Borag thungg, earthlets!  Amongst the stuff I found in that box of old magazines from the spare room that I investigated before Christmas, were a couple of issues of 2000 AD comic from the early eighties. Quite how, or why, those two issues survived, out of God only knows how many hundred I must have had at one time, I have no idea.  Anyway, this is the 29 August 1981 issue (or 'Prog' to use the publication's own nomenclature) of the weekly comic.  Like most British comics of the era, it was printed on cheap newsprint, complete with ragged edges to the pages, where they had been cut from the continuous newsprint roll they were produced on.  Also in common  with other British comics of the time, only the front and back covers and the centre spread were printed in colour.  For this issue, the cover illustrates the concluding episode of 'Meltdown Man', a strip about an eyepatch-sporting Snake Plissken-type ex-SAS guy who finds himself projected, via a nuclear explosion, into a dystopian future world, where a human elite ruled over human-animal hybrids created by genetic engineering.  The centre spread is devoted - as it usually was at this time - to the first two pages of the  'Judge Dredd' strip, in this case an episode of the 'Judge Death Lives' story, illustrated by Brian Bolland (one of the best, in my opinion, artists working in British comic strips at this time).

The rest of the issue is filled out with episodes of  'Strontium Dog', 'Nemesis the Warlock' and future sport story 'The Mean Arena'.  There was also the regular readers' letters page - 'Nerve Centre' - presided over by The Mighty Tharg, a two page feature on the TV version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was then showing on BBC2, with the back cover devoted to readers' illustrations of various 2000 AD characters.  The inside back cover is taken up with two announcements related to the comic itself: an advert for the upcoming 2000 AD Annual 1982 and an announcement that, from the next issue, 'Rogue Trooper' would be replacing 'Meltdown Man'.  Another inside page consists of adverts for two other of IPC Magazine's  publications: Roy of the Rovers and Shoot!, the former being a football-themed comic featuring the titular long-running character, the latter a football themed magazine aimed at teenagers.  'Roy of the Rovers', of course, had originally been a strip in another football comic, but became sufficiently popular that he got his own comic, something that 'Judge Dredd' was on the verge of emulating.  Indeed, such was Dredd's popularity by this time, that his name is featured on the cover, with the comic's full title being 2000 AD Featuring Judge Dredd during this period.  Whilst I loved 2000 AD in my mid-teens, I have to admit that I hadn't been reading it right from the beginning - at that time I was still an Action! reader, but jumped ship when that title was subsumed by Battle Picture Weekly.  At the end of the day, I preferred to read a comic devoted entirely to science fiction than one devoted entirely to war stories.  (Ironically, I'd shifted allegiances to Action! after Valiant had been absorbed by Battle, preferring a mix of adventure stories to war stories - and I was only reading Valiant because it had been amalgamated with TV21).  So there you have it, a fairly typical issue of 2000 AD from the early eighties.  Splundig Vur Thrigg!, as the Mighty Tharg might say.

Easing into the New Year

Well, I'm trying to ease into the new year.  I've never understood those people who simply plunge on into a new year on 2nd January, immediately packing away the festive season as if it had never happened and trying to go straight back into their regular routines.  Let's face it, this time of year is bleak and depressing enough as it is - it's cold, dark and damp - without subjecting yourself to the shock treatment of trying to pretend that you can just snap back to business-as-usual after the Christmas break.  Which is why I like to try and enjoy all twelve days of Christmas in order to ease into the new year.  I really used to resent it when employers expected me to cut short my break directly after New Year - I simply wasn't ready to go back to work, still being in festive mode.  There also used to be a backlash in the press against those of us who chose not to go directly back to work and instead use some more of annual leave to get the full twelve days off.  Thankfully, this seems to have faded away somewhat, perhaps as a result, thanks to the Covid lockdowns and working from home, reduced hours, etc., everyone's but used to the idea that more time away from the workplace, enjoying ourselves, is actually a good thing.  Of course, in my current state of semi-retirement, where work is a choice rather than a necessity, being plunged back into the workplace prematurely in early January, is no longer a concern.  Nonetheless, I find myself still clinging to the festive season for as long as possible.

At least I've managed to get myself back into some kind of regular posting patterns here on the blog and even managed to get my first post of the year up on The Sleaze.  I'm afraid, though, that getting back up to speed with posts about schlock movies here is going to take some time, (despite managing two such posts this week), as, over Christmas, I've been watching a lot more 'mainstream' movies than usual - many of them rewatchings of old favourites from my DVD collection.  So, it will take me a while to get back into my usual schlock-watching schedule and build up a reservoir of stuff to write about.  Hopefully, I'll be aided in this by the various dodgy Roku channels I regularly watch, (one of which has just resurrected itself after vanishing late last year, allowing me to watch a typically near-incoherent Jess Franco film yesterday), which constantly throw up all manner of obscurities.  But long sought after obscurities turn up unexpectedly in the most unlikely places - I found Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You (1970) and The Love Machine (1971) on Daily Motion and YouTube respectively last year for instance, having searched fruitlessly for the latter in any media for years.  Even terrestrial TV can turn up obscure gems - Talking Pictures TV constantly screens films, even exploitation films, that haven't seen the light of day for years.  I've also found Legend a good source of movies that seemingly vanished from regular channels decades ago.  So, there you have it, my plans for easing into 2025, in as leisurely a fashion as possible.

The Curious Female (1969)

The Curious Female (1969) is basically a typical late sixties nudie movie, except for its presentation, styling itself as a film-within-a-film.  The actual 'nudie' part is a soft core sex comedy called 'Three Virgins', which is enclosed within a futuristic framing device of having it secretly watched by a group of young underground movie enthusiasts.  In between the reels of 'Three Virgins', this future audience discuss the film and the strange twentieth century morality and sexual norms it depicts, to satirical purpose.  The whole business of low budget sex movie production is also satirised, with the young woman presenting the film telling her audience that one reel of the film, supposedly chronicling a crucial plot point, was censored at the time of its release and is lost, while confiding to her male co-host that, in reality, it was never filmed because the producers ran out of money.  The Curious Female itself was, of course, shot on a low budget, with its future world depicted in the simplest and most basic ways possible - all we really see is a whitewashed cellar with lots of futuristic curved spaces, populated by young people wearing what look like togas.  We're told that in this future world everything is controlled by a central computer, which has outlawed monogomy and ancient sex movies like 'Three Virgins'.  The dialogue elaborates this world a little more, telling us that at age thirteen girls are, by order of the computer, relieved of their virginity by an approved 'old man'.  (We aren't told if thirteen year old boys get similar treatment from either approved 'old men' or 'old women').

The 'Three Virgins', which we see episodically throughout the framing story, plays out like a regular sex movie of the era, with its college campus setting, mix of female leads, comic asides involving a computerised dating agency, (we never learn if the 1969 computer is an ancestor of the central computer of the future, but the implication seems clear - some of its assumptions while matching up dates seem just as eccentric as the rules enforced by the future machine, including matching up an adult man with a little girl).  The film-within-a-film's plot involves a client of the agency looking for virgins - there are apparently only three left on the books, although the computer later becomes confused and thinks that a woman from Virginia is a virgin.  One girl wants to remain a virgin until she is married, but her bastard of a boyfriend wants only one thing and later gets it from her mother.  When he finally relents and marries her, it turns out that he's still a selfish bastard in the bedroom.  Another is escaping a home situation where she is constantly threatened with violence from her father and rape from her uncle.  The third finds that the client looking for a virgin is a wealthy aesthete who simply wants her as an accoutrement,  reasoning that any woman still a virgin at her age isn't interested in sex and therefore won't bother him with any nasty physical demands.  Consequently, she starts having frenzied sex with a variety of men.  

Overall, The Curious Female isn't exactly a great, or even groundbreaking film, but it is quite enjoyable while its playing.  Although clearly made with limited resources, it is actually pretty decently made, not looking too threadbare, with decent photography and sound quality and direction, from Paul Rapp, which, if not inspired, is at least competent.  The cast, which includes Angelique Pettyjohn, are also decent enough, putting in more than passable performances, with the main female leads playing dual roles in both framing story and film-within-a-film.  All in all The Curious Female is an agreeably slightly offbeat take on the late sixties nudie movie.