Democracy Misunderstood

Yesterday I read an extraordinary piece on the Austrian elections, from one of the UK's right-wing rags - I really can't recall whether it was the Mail or the Express.  It doesn't really matter, they are equally despicable.  Anyway, the piece itself was effectively implying that Austria is undemocratic because its new government is being formed from a coalition of the parties that came 'second' and 'third' in the recent general elections, excluding the right-wing extremists who won the most seats.  This, apparently, just went to prove the idiot J D Vance's point that Europe is inherently undemocratic because its mainstream politicians refuse to engage with neo Nazis.  Which, of course, is to misunderstand how democratic systems actually work.  The fact is that the Austrian crypto-fascists might have won the most seats, but they were still far short of the parliamentary majority required to form a government.  Moreover, they couldn't put together a coalition with other parties sufficient to form a majority.  The other, more moderate, parties could, so are able to form a government.  A government that therefore represents the electoral wishes of a majority of voters.  Which is how democracy works.  It's about the representation of the will of the people and if the will of the Austrian people was to be ruled by fascists then they surely would have given the fascists an outright majority, or at least voted for enough similarly minded extremist parties to form a coalition.  But they didn't.  Likewise, in the German elections, despite getting around 20% of the vote, the AfD won't be part of the new government, because they don't have a majority and can't form a coalition to get one.  After all, looked at another way, 80% of the German electorate didn't vote AfD, but the proposed CDU/SPD coalition will at least represent a majority of the electorate.  

But it isn't the right-wing press (or the alleged Vice President of the US) who seem to have difficulty with this fundamental concept that democracy, ultimately, means government by a consensus of those representing a majority of the electorate.  Every day, in the press, on social media, in the pub even, I am bombarded by people representing minority interests bewailing the fact that the current government isn't immediately addressing their particular interest, to the exclusion of others.  Just this week, we've had those championing the cause of overseas aid remonstrating with Keir Starmer over his cutting the budget for such aid in order to finance increases in defence spending.  None of them seem able to grasp the fact that making these kind of tough decisions, which will inevitably upset someone, is what governing is about.  In the face of the limited resources the government has at its disposal (courtesy, largely, of fourteen years of Tory misgovernment), choices have to be made.  The government has constantly to walk a tightrope between doing what is morally right, and what is right by the majority of voters.  It's a balancing act between protecting the rights of minorities, defending the UK's interests internationally, not bankrupting the economy, acting within the ruling party's philosophy, acting legally and trying to satisfy the well being of the whole population, whether they voted for you or not.  Obviously, no government, regardless of political complexion, is going to get it right all of the time.  This one certainly doesn't, but that doesn't invalidate all of its efforts.  Just because a government can't satisfy tour particular, minority, interest, doesn't mean that it is failing overall.

But many people simply don't seem to grasp that, in political terms, it is addressing the general, rather than the minority, interests is what gets votes and wins power.  Just recently, for instance, I saw someone on social media berating Democratic politicians in the US for focusing on things like the price of eggs and the cost of living generally, when trans people were already having their rights restricted.  Well, I'm afraid that the unpalatable truth here is that the majority of voters aren't LGBTQ+, don't know anyone who is LGBTQ+ and probably rarely thinks about LGBTQ+ rights.  But they undoubtedly do buy eggs and other groceries, so their prices might well affect how they vote in future (particularly as Trump, indeed, won many votes on the cost of living issue, only to shrug his shoulders over rising prices once in power).  It's the same reason why, much to the annoyance of the 'Cult of Corbyn', that the public turned against Boris Johnson not over restrictions on civil liberties such as the right to demonstrate, but instead because he had been partying during lockdown.  Most people never invoke their civil liberties or go on demos, but the majority of people did observe lockdown during the pandemic and resented the fact that Johnson, by contrast, had ignored his own rules.  Something to bear in mind next time you are getting self-righteous about the government's (or opposition's) failure to address your particular interest in a way that satisfies your Olympian moral standards.  

Yeah, I'm looking at you, US voters who wouldn't vote Democrat because Biden wouldn't bomb Israel over their invasion of Gaza, (even dismissing him as 'Genocide Joe'), thereby paving the way for a Trump victory - which is really helping Gaza, isn't it?  You see, that's the thing, if you don't want to be ruled by a fascist then simply not voting for one isn't enough - you also have to vote for the strongest non-fascist candidate.  Even if you don't like them.  Because they are probably the least worst option (and definitely preferable to a fascist).  Not voting or voting those joke minor candidates or parties (unless you have a system of proportional representation, where the latter scenario might have an impact) aren't real options - they are simply virtue signalling which denies the anti-fascists vote that could keep the fascists out.  Rant over.

I Love a Mystery (1973)

I have a weakness for seventies TV movies, particularly those made as pilots for series that never materialise.  I also retain a fascination with movies derived from old time radio series, so I approached I Love a Mystery (1973) with moderately high hopes.  Derived from an old US radio series that ran in the forties and fifties and which was subsequently used as the basis for a trio of Columbia B-movies in the late forties, my expectations for this failed pilot was very much based upon my experiences of these.  The radio series concerned a trio of private detectives, (later reduced to two, following the suicide of one of the original stars) who specialise in investigating the kind of mysteries you might find in a 'weird detective' type pulp magazine.  Macabre and off-beat, but with seemingly supernatural phenomena always given a rational explanation.  The Columbia B-movies (which only featured two of the detectives), pretty much followed that formula, with a look that closely approximated the pulpish horror B-movies that Universal had been producing.  (There was also a fourth Columbia B-movie derived from an 'I Love a Mystery' radio script but, despite having the same leading actor as the series proper, changed all of the character names and other details, while retaining the plot).  So, I was naturally expecting the TV movie to present itself in similar style.  Upon watching it, though, I was in for something of a shock.

From the off, the movie comes over as very cartoonish, with a voice over introduction trying to emulate an old-time radio announcer and failing badly, before leaping into the conclusion of the trio's latest case, which involves one of them leaping out of a large packing case at an airport customs and mowing down some gangsters with a machine gun.  It all has something to do with a diamond smuggling racket involving real diamonds hidden inside paste diamonds - the leader of the detectives, Jack, explains it, radio-style, but it still doesn't seem to make much sense.  Why none of the actual law enforcement present seem worried about the machine-gunning in a public space is more than mildly baffling.  The three then run across the runway to board the private jet from which they operate, where they get their next assignment, via a video link, from Terry-Thomas, who gives the impression that he really is drunk, rather than just acting drunk.  This involves them finding a missing millionaire, which leads them to an uncharted island where his wife, son and daughters live, along with various creepy retainers and some lions.  The script then veers off completely into comic book territory, with the wife subjecting the trio to various physical tests as part of some scheme to find the perfect man, or something.  Bits and pieces of plot from the radio series turn up, but seem very arbitrarily inserted into the action, none of which seems to make much sense.  Right at the end, Don Knotts turns up as the missing millionaire.  As noted, the whole thing comes over as a live action cartoon parody of the original source material.

Which left me wondering just why the makers took such an approach to an established property.   The clue lies in the date of production.  Despite finally getting a TV airing in 1973, I Love a Mystery was actually made in 1967, but was left sitting on the shelf when it was rejected as a series pilot.  It seems fairly obvious that its style was influenced by the contemporaneous Batman TV series, which had found success in taking a property of similar vintage and turning it into a campy, cartoonish, parody.  There were various attempts to repeat the formula, from the short-lived Green Hornet series spun off from Batman, to rejected pilots for camped up versions of Wonder Woman and Dick Tracy.  I Love a Mystery follows the pattern, complete with exaggerated performances from the leads that completely parody the original characters to the guest star flamboyant villain (Ida Lupino) who has a fabulous lair.  Cast in the leads were Les Crane and David Hartman (who would both subsequently become better known as talk show hosts) and the wonderfully obscure Hagan Beggs, (best known at the time for playing Lt Hansen in three episodes of Star Trek, but who later became a regular in long-running Canadian adventure series Danger Bay).  While Crane and Hartman had voices that would have been fine if this had still been a radio series, Beggs is saddled with a ridiculous ' Hollywood English' accent, (Beggs was actually from Belfast, but later went to live in Canada - either of these accents would have been preferable).  Inferior even to the Columbia B-movies - which had better scripts,direction, production values and acting - the I Love a Mystery TV movie was, for me, a major disappointment.

Psycho Nation

You know, we really shouldn't be surprised at the US's slide into low-level domestic fascism and international rogue state status, spurning traditional allies, instead consorting with dictators and trying to take advantage of the war torn state invaded by its neighbour by extorting it for access to its natural resources.  The re-election of Trump, after all, didn't come out of nowhere - you don't elect an obvious crook and psychopath as your leader by accident.  So, was he elected in spite of the fact that he is a raving psycho, or because of it?  Because the US had already had four years of Trump in power, with the country descending into chaos domestically, with numerous street protests and attempts by the government to violently suppress them, while on the international stage it found itself in danger of becoming a pariah.  Not to forget that it all culminated with Trump inciting an attempted insurrection to present the new government from being accredited by Congress, having refused to accept the electorate's narrow rejection of him.  You'd think that, after all that, only a lunatic would vote for him again.  Yet more than half of the US electorate did just that.  I'm afraid that justifications along the lines that voters felt that Joe Biden had failed economically (although the data says otherwise) just won't wash with me - with the experience of that first Trump administration still fresh in their memories (not to mention the subsequent convictions for rape, fraud etc, plus the revelations about those stolen classified documents and the election-interference cases), there was really no excuse to vote for the psycho candidate again.  As the US is finding out, stuff like higher gas prices is a small price to pay for not having a psycho in the White House.

But the fact is that they did vote for him.  They voted for him because they wanted a psychopath as president.  Why?  Because the US is a nation of psychopaths.  Just look at the evidence - their fascination with firearms, for instance.  Indeed, they fall back on their constitution as a guarantee of their right to bear arms, because it somehow makes them free.  Free to slaughter each other in massacres, that is: just look at the number of fatal school shootings they have - their bloodlust is such that they even j+kill their own children.  But do these massacres result in restrictions on gun ownership.  They do not.  Instead, they bristle at the idea of having their rights restricted, claiming that it would just be the first step toward dictatorship.  No remorse, just self-justification.  Allied to this is the wider notion of 'might being right' in just about every arena, particularly in international relations.  That might mean wielding economic might rather than military might, but it amounts to the same thing.  Of course, they justify it all by wrapping it up in self-righteous language, lecturing the rest of the world on how the 'American Way' is the best, the only way, that the peoples of the world can truly be free.  Free to buy American goods, watch American TV, worship at American churches and free to indulge in democracy, just so long as it follows the American way.  To listen to them, you'd think that nobody else enjoyed free speech and free elections, that they'd invented democracy.  Again, this sort of self-justification for committing terrible acts and self-aggrandisement is yet more evidence of their general psychopathy.

So, it is only natural that a nation of people so aggressive, deluded as to their self-importance and violent, should want a leader that reflects their own general characteristics.  So, it is reasonable to ask, why didn't they elect someone like Trump before?  Because, in the past, both main parties, whilst including their own fair share of crackpots and would-be dictators, were, in the main, run by people who recognised that to indulge their nation's psychopathic tendencies on the wider stage would, in the long run, be disastrous.  So they made out sure that the candidates they selected for office were, by and large, reasonably rational.  It's how they tamed the West - a playground for violent psychopaths - imposing law and order by gradually imposing candidates for office who were committed to civilised values, the regulation of rapacious capitalist exploiters, the appointment of judges and lawmen who weren't corrupt and so on.  But, by the end of the twentieth century, the hold of the rational on at least one of those parties began to slip as, desperate for power, they started fielding candidates - Reagan, Bush the Senior and Bush the Junior - who were, if not psyschopaths, at least less more prepared to abuse their powers to push entirely partisan agendas and to engage in reckless overseas policies.  But, in the main, they still adhered to what the rest of us would consider more or less civilised values.  Then along came Trump, a man manifestly unfit to hold public office, using money to bully his way to the Republican nomination.  But he promised the Republican leadership victor, so they debased themselves before him.  More importantly, the nation of psychopaths that the US seems, in the main, to be, suddenly had a candidate whose deranged mind-set aligned with theirs.  Which would be fine if it all remained within their own borders but, unfortunately, the rest of us also have to put up with the deranged behaviour of this psycho nation and its psycho president.

Malibu High (1979)

I went into Malibu High (1979) thinking that it was going to be some kind of teen comedy, probably involving some sex and nudity, possibly drugs (to give the 'High' in the title a double meaning) and lots of bad behaviour from adolescents.  The film's poster certainly reinforces such expectations, with its clear implication of a student using her sexual favours with her teachers to avoid failing her final year.  While all of these elements are present in the film, they certainly aren't played for laughs in the conventional 'High School Comedy' way, with the humour, such as it is, instead being black as pitch.  The plot also takes several completely unexpected turns to arrive at a thoroughly nihilistic conclusion.   Also bucking the 'High School Comedy' expectations is the film's line-up of thoroughly dislikeable and self-absorbed characters, none of whom are written or played sympathetically.  Chief amongst these, of course, is leading lady Kim (Jill Lansing), an eighteen year old high schooler who is failing her grades in every class and is embittered over her father's suicide two years earlier (after he had walked out on his family), her lack of money and the fact that her boyfriend has ditched her in favour of a rich girl.  Deciding that getting a job is key to turning her life around, Kim decides to work for Tony, the local sleazebag pimp and drug dealer, turning tricks in the back of his grotty van.  While she turns out to be good at the job, she quickly falls out with Tony over the fact that he splits the fees with her 60:40 in his favour.  As a side hustle, she decides to seduce her male teachers in a sex for grades scheme - which proves surprisingly successful.

While 'high school bad girl becomes teacher seducing prostitute' might not be quite the sort of plot development you'd expect in a 'High School Comedy' - although you might see it, played out less explicitly, in one of those alleged true life 'High School Scandal' TV movies - it at least feels as if it might be grounded in real life.  The film's subsequent plot developments, however, take a turn into the absurd.  Finally ditching Tony, Kim instead hooks up with a mob-connected sugar daddy/pimp, who gets her better paid gigs with a better class of client in better venues the back of a skanky van.  But when she kills a client who attacks her, stabbing him with an ice pick, her new pimp suggests that she try her hand at being a hit woman, as she seems a natural killer, exhibiting no remorse.  Her first target is Tony, who has pissed off the mob and other targets follow, all successfully dispatched by Kim.  Along the way, she also does a bit of freelancing, offing her school principal, who is on to her sex for grades scheme, by stripping off in front of him, inducing a fatal heart attack.  Eventually Kim finds herself sent to kill the wealthy mob-connected father of her love rival.  Which she does, but is caught in the act by her rival, so shoots her as well.  Pursued along the beach by her erstwhile boyfriend, Kim is stopped from shooting him as well by a bullet fired by a police marksman.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the film is the way in which this utterly bizarre scenario plays out without a hint of irony, or the possibility that it is intended as a parody of conventional high school set movies.  There is nothing in script, direction or performances to suggest that were are meant to take as anything other than a serious melodrama.  Even the murder-by-sex of the principal is played out without any hint of humour or parody, which seems at odds with what is actually happening on screen as a patently absurd sequence plays out.  Ultimately, of course, this apparent discrepancy between tone and content comes down to a poor script, which frequently fails to properly explain characters' motivations and weak performances unable to convey any sub-text which might illuminate the characters' actions.  Particularly baffling is the whole pivot from prostitute to assassin on Kim's part.  Quite why her pimp thinks that killing a man in self defence would indicate that she was cut out to be a killer for hire?  Sure, she showed little or no remorse, but why should she?  The dude, after all, had attacked her.  While her previous conduct might well have shown her to be selfish and callous, that's still a long way from being a psychopath.  The transition to killer just seems so effortless and arbitrary that it simply can't be taken seriously by the audience, although the film seems to want you to take it seriously. 

For star Jill Lansing, this was to be her only credited appearance, disappearing, seemingly without trace, after Malibu High. (She was reportedly difficult to work with, despite this being her debut performance, which might explain why a film career never materialised).  While not the strongest of actors, there is, nonetheless, something quite fascinating and certainly memorable, about her performance as Kim.  As noted earlier, there is no attempt to make her, in any way, likeable or remotely sympathetic, yet by the end of the film, I can't deny that I was rooting for her, hoping that she'd find some way out her situation.  Sure, she's self pitying, duplicitous, frequently aggressive and violent, completely amoral and ungrateful but, there's no denying that her love rival is a total spoilt bitch, her teachers are sleazebags happy to take advantage of one of their own students, her mother is unsupportive and seemingly lacking in any maternal skills, the people she kills, by and large, are lowlifes who deserve all that they get and her ex-boyfriend is a selfish jerk.  So you can't help but feel that, in some warped way, Kim is entirely justified in her actions.  To be quite honest, there is nothing particularly distinguished about any aspect of Malibu High: it is clearly cheaply made with poor production values, flatly directed, weakly scripted and performed and looks surprisingly drab bearing in mind its setting.  it was shot in five weeks, without permission, on various locations and looks it.   Yet, as a whole, it is quite fascinating, with its bizarre and out of left field plot developments making it perversely enjoyable. 

Feeling Unsettled

I'm sorry, but I really can't be arsed to post anything remotely profound or significant today.  After yesterday's post-pub anti-Trump rant, I can't even summon enough righteous indignation at the latest Nazi antics from across the pond.  (Although I'll be returning to the subject, possibly with a more rational approach, soon).  Not only that, but aside even from the Orange Shitgibbon's outrageous behaviour, yesterday was a day of bad news which has unsettled me.  First up, it seems that Neighbours has been cancelled.  Again.  This time by Amazon.  See, I told you that Jeff Bezos wasn't to be trusted - first of all he starts bending the knee to Trump and suppressing free reporting at the newspaper he owns, now he axes my favourite Australian soap.  (That's quite apart from Amazon's anti-union stance, its refusal to pay taxes properly in the UK and its shitty treatment of its workers, of course).  Although, it has to be said, that Neighbours hasn't been nearly as good as it was in its pre-Amazon incarnation, although it was still popular, at least in the UK, where it was regularly one of Amazon's top three most-watched shows.  The upside of this, though, is that when it does end in December, I'll be able to completely sever my ties with Amazon's TV service, as it was the only thing I ever watched there.

The second unsettling thing is also Amazon-related - the news that Eon Productions had ceded creative control of the James Bond films to their production partners, MGM, which is now owned by Amazon.  Which means that we'll doubtless now see Amazon-MGM trying to squeeze everything it can out of the property, with endless spin-offs which, ultimately, dilute the whole thing.  Part of the success of Bond movies was that they didn't churn them out to a strict schedule (except in the early days, when they turned out the first four annually), meaning that each film was an event, that could be built up to, raising audience expectations.  If there are endless subscription-only TV series, without which you won't understand the next film, (in the style of Marvel), then even the most loyal of fans are quickly going to lose interest.  To employ one of my favourite analogies: modern streaming studios are simply doing the same thing that the lesser Hollywood studios used to do in the forties, taking a successful property then trying to cash in on it by grinding out ever more poverty-stricken B-movie sequels.  Ultimately, these sequels became either so repetitious that they felt like the same movie over and over, just with a variant title, or so ridiculous and far removed from the original that even diehard fans stayed away from them.  The current streaming offerings of this ilk might look glossier than the average Universal B-movie, but they are just as lacking in creative innovation and originality.

Through the Looking Glass...

Well, we've finally crossed over into that bizarre alternate universe where satire is redundant, because you can't possibly make up anything weirder than what's actually happening.  I mean, when you've got the US president, supposedly the leader of the free world (at least, that's how the Yanks have traditionally liked to style their leader), in a fit of pique, accuses Ukraine of starting the war with Russia (despite the fact that it was Russia that invaded Ukraine) and describes Ukraine's democratically elected leader as a 'dictator', then you know that you are no longer in Kansas.  What was Trump piqued about?  Well, it seems that the 'dictator' Zelensky had the temerity to suggest that Trump might have swallowed too much Russian propaganda and had refused to sign over half of his country's mineral rights to the US without getting any security deals in return.  On top of this, we have the US trying to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine directly with Putin's Russia, excluding Europe and Ukraine from the process.  Oh, let's not forget that matter of the US Vice President failing to read the room in Munich and attempting to scold European governments for refusing to collaborate with Nazis and restricting their freedom of speech by not letting them say Nazi things, like 'Gas the Jews', before going off and partying with Germany's neo-Nazis (who are also pals with Elon Musk).  I know that the likes of me have been busy calling the US' right-wing Nazis for a while now, in the face of their denials and dismissal of such charges, but now they've really let the mask drop.  They're in power and they don't care who knows that they are Nazis.

But let's look at the upside of all this:  at least now we in Europe don't have to pay even lip service to the US's sanctimonius self-rightousness about being the true keeper of democratic values and the last bastion of free speech.  They've knowingly elected a Nazi who consorts with war criminals like Putin, backing him over the legitimate government of Ukraine, so they've forfeited any claims to the moral leadership of the 'free world'.  Yeah, that's right, they knowingly elected the Mango Mussolini - they'd already had one taste of what government under him was like, they saw the kind of people he allies himself with and heard from his own mouth what he was going to do during his latest election campaign.  So don't feign shock at the fact he's a Nazi - you fucking knew and you voted for him anyway.  We can but hope that our own leaders show some backbone and stand up to him.  While that seems unlikely, there have been encouraging signs from Starmer and Macron, in their dismissal of the Orange Shitgibbon's description of Zelenskyy as a 'dictator' and his claims that Ukraine started the war.  That said, it's too much to hope that, in Starmer's forthcoming visit to Washington he simply walks into the Oval Office, decks Trump, then walks straight out again.  Sadly, it is also unlikely that Macron's subsequent visit will see him headbutt Trump, before kneeing Elon Musk in the groin as he leaves.  Because, right now, I think that only meaningful message that we can give America right now is that they can fuck right off.

Mansion of the Doomed (1976)

Mansion of the Doomed (1976), an early production from Charles Band's Full Moon Pictures, seems to have been inspired by those surgical horror films that flourished on the continent during the sixties and into the seventies.  This was a sub-genre centered around the attempts of mad doctors to rectify disfigurements, madness or some other ailment in some female relative, most often a wife or daughter.  This would inevitably involve large quantities of gore and organ transplants from unwilling donors.  Amongst the best known examples are Jess Franco's The Awful Dr Orlof (1962) and Georges Franju's Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960), both of which involve the attempts of scientists to restore their daughters' faces.  Mansion of the Doomed follows the same template, although this time the surgeon is trying to restore his daughter's vision via a series of eye transplants, all of which, inevitably, go wrong.  What carried the earlier films through their rather limited plots was their visual style - the Franju film, in particular, features some striking and haunting visuals - and directorial flair.  Mansion of the Doomed, by contrast, is, in the hands of director Michael Pataki, a crude shocker, jarringly edited with uninteresting visuals and no sense of style whatsoever.  In place of suspense and tension, it relies upon the sheer nastiness of its central idea of people having their eyes forcibly removed to try and shock the viewer, with repeated shots of the eyeless sockets of his various victims, (who he keeps alive, locked up in the cellar).

Unfortunately, the film's script quickly becomes repetitive, with each eye replacement failing and the doctor seeking a new donor, over and over, with too little variation in the pattern.  The only abduction attempt that generates any real tension is when the scientist tries to abduct a child, persuading her to get into his car with him.  With its distinct undertones of child molestation, (it could be one of those seventies UK public information films aimed at kids, warning of the dangers of getting into cars with strangers), the sequence is genuinely disturbing and there's a palpable sense of relief when the girl panics and manages to get away from the doctor.  Not that it is an entirely wasted effort from his perspective: trying to chase her, he collides with another car, whose two occupants become his next victims when they follow him to his house to remonstrate with him.  Ultimately, the plot unfolds entirely predictably, with no twists or surprises.  You just know that those blind people are going to escape from that cellar and enact their own version of 'an eye for an eye' on the doctor.  The main point in the film's favour is the cast - Richard Basehart stars as the doctor, while Gloria Graham is his faithful assistant, there's also an early role for Lance Henriksen as the first victim.  Basehart gives his role all that it's worth, his performance effectively charting the doctor's stumbling descent into obsession and madness, as his professional veneer gradually disintegrates and he becomes a mumbling, on;y semi-coherent, wreck, driven solely by his obsessive quest to restore his daughter's sight.  Sadly, by the time the film finally staggers to a conclusion, the audience is past caring about his plight, relieved that their ordeal is finally over.

Target: Trump

I'm guessing that many world leaders are currently looking at that asteroid that has just increased its chances of hitting the earth in ten years time, wondering whether it can be speeded up and whether it can be guided to land on the White House.  Or Mar a Lago, as there's probably a better chance of getting Trump there.  Such a project would be the inverse of the usual scenario, presented in films like Deep Impact, where governments try to keep secret the possible impact of a meteor in order to avoid public panic while they try to find a way of destroying or diverting it.  Here, of course, they'd have to keep it secret, not just to stop Trump from finding out, but to avoid premature public jubilation.  Nevertheless, I'm sure that if the world's greatest non-American scientists, mathematicians and engineers were to put their minds to it, they could calculate the course the asteroid needs to be diverted to in order to strike the East Coast of the USA and how best to speed up its arrival.  It could be the European Space Agency's (ESA) finest hour if they could come up with a rocket booster that could be attached to the asteroid's far side in order to boost its progress.  Of course, the icing on the cake would be if techno-jerk Elon Musk's Space X could be contracted to unwittingly take everything needed up into space on their rockets.  Although that could be risky, as they have a tendency to explode.  

I keep coming back to the old science fiction film This Island Earth, where it is revealed that the planet of the aliens abducting earth scientists is being destroyed by an enemy alien race who use spaceships to guide comets to crash into it. The image of those tiny ships peeling away from the comets as they hurtle planetwards has stayed with me since I first saw that film as a child.  Couldn't we come up with something similar to guide that asteroid in on Washington DC?  Now, I know that people might well object to this plan on moral plans, pointing out that if the asteroid was to hit Washington then thousands could die in the resultant widespread destruction.  But hey, I'm afraid that collateral damage is always inevitable in such operations.  I mean, just ask the Israelis - in order to protect themselves it's necessary to bomb the whole of Gaza flat killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians with no connection whatsoever to Hamas.  Unfortunate, but you just have to see the bigger picture and accept that sacrifices of this sort are necessary for the advancement of the greater good.  So, as far as protecting ourselves, not to mention the rest of the world, from Trump, Europe just has to be brave and make the hard choices.  Like ensuring that he's wiped out by a falling asteroid.  Because if we shy away from being proactive, then we're down to hoping that Blofeld and SPECTRE steal some nuclear bombs, hide one under the White House, then we don't tell the Americans and refuse to pay Blofeld his ransom.  

Forbidden World (1982)

Ever had a feeling of déjà vu while watching a movie that you are sure you've never watched before?  Well, I had that experience while watching Forbidden World (1982) the other day.  Now, I have no conscious recollection of ever having seen this typically cheap and cheerful B-movie from Roger Corman's New World Pictures, before.  Yet, at several points in the film, I had a feeling of familiarity as scenes played out, as if I could vaguely remember them from a previous viewing.  Not the entire film - just a few scenes and snatches of dialogue.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the scenes that seemed most familiar were a sequence based around the remote space lab's solarium, which featured a lot of entirely gratuitous female nudity and a sex scene.  I just felt sure that I'd seen these exact scenes before, despite the rest of the film being unfamiliar.  Obviously, this could be down to the fact that Forbidden World is entirely derivative, clearly a knock off of Alien, but with a much, much lower budget - nothing about it is original.  But that still doesn't explain the familiarity of those particular scenes, which, to be fair, have no direct equivalent in Alien.  It could simply be that I'd, at some point, seen Dead Space 1991, which is pretty much a remake of Forbidden World, (this time for another Corman production company, Concorde), probably on one of those dodgy Roku streaming channels I frequent.  In fact, it uses more or less the same script, with a few minor tweaks and different character names, (not to mention a bit less nudity).  It also has a slightly higher profile cast, including Marc Singer and Bryan Cranston in an early role.  Not that it had a bigger budget - like Forbidden World, an opening space battle is actually re-edited footage from the Corman produced Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), (Forbidden World was actually directed by Battle Beyond the Star's editor).

To get back to the film itself, I have to say that Forbidden World is actually a pretty entertaining seventy seven minutes of low budget mayhem.  There's absolutely nothing original about it, but films don't have to be original to be enjoyable - it's what they do with their obvious source material that matters.  Forbidden World concerns an intergalactic trouble shooter sent to a research facility on a remote planet to assist them with some unspecified problems they've been having.  It turns out that in the course of their research to solve the galactic food shortage problem, the scientists at the base have inadvertently created a constantly mutating new lifeform, which has killed all of the lab's animals.  The chief scientist insists that the situation is now under control, as the creature has entered a cocoon state.  Of course, it rapidly hatches and starts eating its way through the cast as it mutates into a larger and even more vicious form.  The debt to Alien is obvious: a xenomorphic menace, a confined space and a limited cast of characters, with the plot's main mechanism simply being 'who's next on the menu?'  But the execution of these familiar elements is pretty decently done, despite the film's clear lack of resources, with the cramped looking sets (some borrowed from another Corman production, Galaxy of Terror (1981) and designed by James Cameron) and low key lighting combining to create a suitably oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere.  It also moves along at a decent pace.  Moreover, at risk of being an unreconstructed sexist pig, the sex and nudity certainly help things along.  The cast is perfectly adequate for what is required of them and the script is actually pretty decent, the dialogue not too clunky, the plot unfolds reasonably logically with plenty of well-timed revelations to keep things moving and provides a reasonably original resolution to the central menace.  Forbidden World might not tread any new ground, but it is an enjoyable B-movie and a good example of the Corman formula for low budget productions in action: cheap and cheerful, utterly unpretentious and all the better for that.

Further Adventures in AI

I've been experimenting with AI over the past few months.  No, I haven't been setting up my own Artificial Intelligence powered by multiple server farms and using the collected content of The Sleaze as a database.  Rather, I've been playing with various so-called AI tools available online in order to see if I could find any application for them or, indeed, if they were actually any good.  The earliest fruits of this dabbling were a couple of podcasts I produced where all of the voices were provided by AI based TTS services.  I've referred to these before and to recap, the main tool used was Google's Notebook LM, to which you can input sources in a variety of formats and it will produce an analysis of them, along with an AI generated conversation between two synthesised characters, going over the main points and arguments arising from the sources.  The voices and their conversation are uncannily realistic and their discussions of various old stories from The Sleaze, treating them as if they were serious news reports, is quite fascinating and invariably, unintentionally, hilarious.  The other voice tools I used required me to provide scripts for them to read, with the results being somewhat variable.  Straightforward TTS AI voices are undoubtedly far more realistic sounding nowadays, with more natural sounding intonations but nonetheless still have a tendency to sound somewhat stilted in their deliveries.

Another TTS service I used allows you to use various celebrity voices, which can vary enormously in quality, to read your scripts.  As the free version only allows you to stynthesise a few seconds of speech at a time, a lot of editing together of these fragments is required.  The biggest problem I've found with these is that they invariably seem to speak too quickly and I've found myself having to drastically reduce their tempo during the editing process.  The results, though, can be quite effective.  I've mainly used them to produce brief inserts - usually featuring Donald Trump or Jerry Springer - which separate the main segments of my regular podcasts.  While all of the AI powered audio tools I've used so far have proven useful and have brought something new to my podcasting, they're still pretty limited in what they can do, still requiring an enormous amount of input from the user, so they can hardly be said to be time saving with regard to the creative process.  In addition to these, I've also been using AI to generate the images that accompany new stories on The Sleaze.  While these do save me time and provide unique images in some way reflecting the stories' themes, actually getting something relevant can be an uphill struggle, requiring multiple attempts using variations on the original cue.  Some of the results seem pretty wide of the mark.  Take, for example, this one, which was one of the images generated for the recent 'Rise of the Clockwork Nazis' story:

A striking image, to be sure, but not at all relevant to the simple prompt of 'clockwork Nazi'.  Now, the prompt that the AI service attaches to the picture is this:

 "A damaged clockwork Nazi dog patrols a deserted factory at night, its gears grinding as it searches for intruders in the shadows of a post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland."

Which is a long way from the actual two word prompt, which makes no mention of dogs, or post-apocalyptic landscapes (plus, to be a pedant, there is no indication in the picture that the dog is a Nazi).  So where does the additional information come from?  Is this another case of AI making stuff up?  

Anyway, while currently available AI tools are all very interesting and have their uses, it is still very limited, both in what it produces and how it interacts with humans, seemingly still having real problems in actually comprehending what is being asked of it.  But hey, I'll still go on using it, even though I feel somewhat guilty at the amount of energy it is probably using just to perform these frivolous tasks for me.  Then again, I don't fly, so I guess that more than offsets the environmental damage.

The Radioactive Chapati Conspiracy

There was a piece in The Guardian today about how scientists fed radioactive chapatis to unsuspecting Punjabi women in Coventry during the 1960s as part of an experiment on iron absorption.  While the article focused on the ethics and legality of experimenting on people without their consent, I couldn't help but feel disappointed that it didn't include commentary from any right-wing crackpots spinning conspiracy theories that it was all part of a secret plot by the then Labour government to create a race of 'Super-Asians'.  I mean, it writes itself really - a new race of Asians who can work harder and longer than any white person, for a lower hourly rate.  It would explain everything: the mass unemployment amongst the traditional working classes of the eighties wasn't the fault of Thatcher's economic policies, but rather down to the rise of the new 'Super-Asians'.  In turn, this lead to the disenfranchisement of the white working classes, resulting in them turning to the extreme right.  Race riots?  Well, they certainly weren't formented by the extreme right in this alternate reality, but rather were acts of self-defence by white workers against their super-powered Asian oppressors.  Fast forwarding to last summer, how come, despite being besieged by mobs of white rioters with firebombs, no Mosques or hotels full of asylum seekers weren't burned down?  Because they were being protected by groups of the these 'Super-Asians', using their super strong breath to blow out the flames and their super speed to snatch firebombs from the hands of rioters before they could throw them.

Doubtless, it would be claimed, these 'Super-Asians' were also more virile than white men, hence the explosion in their numbers during the seventies and eighties.  Their super powers mean that they can just outbreed white Brits, turning us into a minority in our own city.  Worse, their powers of mind control are probably why so many white women fall for them, bearing their children, further 'diluting' the race.  To the demented of the extreme right, those radioactive chapatis are the explanation for several of our cities 'falling' to the Asians, as the 'Super-Asians' forcibly took them over.  No doubt, in their warped world, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, only won by using his hypnotic superpowers to get people to vote for him.  (Ignoring the fact that the women who were secretly irradiated were of Punjabi origin, while Khan is of Pakistani descent - but hey, they're all the same, aren't they?).  Mind you, some British politicians of Asian descent are definitely not 'Super-Asians' - Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman come to mind, although supporters of Boris Johnson might argue that the only way that he could have been deposed was via Sunak using his superpowers to undermine him.  But, as noted, the article didn't include anything like this, which was very remiss of the author, as I'm sure that we would all welcome yet another crazy right-wing conspiracy theory that stokes racial divisions and reinforces culture stereotypes.  It's what we need right now, something that can explain all of the country's problems by tracing them back to some radioactive chapatis fed to Asian women in the Midlands by radical leftist scientists, who were themselves probably hippies off their faces on LSD.  I mean, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Hands of Steel (1986)

A vaguely Terminator inspired slice of Italian schlock, Hands of Steel (1986) - or, if you prefer, Vendetta del Futuro - also mixes in some of the aesthetic of the various Italian Mad Max and Escape From New York knock offs, with its lightly sketched in dystopian near-future setting.  In truth, it's a future that doesn't look too different to the present at the time the film was made, doubtless for budgetary reasons.  Pollution is the big threat in this future, with a political leader promising to take on the corporations and save the world, becomes a target for said corporations, who send a brainwashed cyborg to kill him at his headquarters in a run down hotel in an LA ghetto.  Unlike the 'Terminator', this cyborg isn't armed to the teeth with firearms, instead killing with his hands (the titular 'hands of steel').  But this time he doesn't kill, rebelling against his programming, he only injures his target, before going on the run from both his employers and the authorities.

At which point the plot shifts gears, with the cyborg holing up at a remote desert bar, where he gets involved in the local arm-wrestling scene.  Initially getting involved to protect the female bar owner from local thug George Eastman and his gang, he subsequently challenges the title holder, a big bald bearded truck driver, beating him despite Eastman's attempts to nobble him pre-contest.  Not surprisingly, all of this inevitably attracts the attention of both cops and evil corporation, who converge on the area.  In the ensuing conflagration, the cyborg gets to fight a female cyborg, has numerous shoot outs with corporation goons and is involved in several car chases involving articulated lorries and helicopters, before finally facing off against chief bad guy John Saxon.  Hands of Steel is one of those films which is good fun while it is on, but which ultimately leaves little impression, being entirely derivative of other, better budgeted, films.  What lingers in the memory are some well mounted action set pieces and Sergio Martino's pacy direction, which doesn't leave you too much time to think much about the film's short-comings while it is playing.  

Perhaps the most memorable aspect of the film is the way in which Martino manages to create a future world on what was clearly a very tight budget, sketching in details here and there to create something that, while remarkably like 1986 (people still drive third generation Camaros), still has enough differences to make it seem futuristic.  Unfortunately, the lack of budget means that the film can never really develop its scenario of a badly polluted world, where people have to dodge showers of acid rain, instead opting to go off into its desert arm-wrestling middle section, which could have come from another film entirely, in order to pad out the action.  The performances are adequate for this sort of film, with Daniel Greene suitably monosyllabic and inexpressive as the cyborg, while Eastman and Saxon, who had already made countless Italian schlock movies, go through their paces, delivering exactly the sort of villainous performances you'd expect from them.  All-in-all Hands of Steel is an enjoyable diversion, certainly more entertaining and action packed that many bigger budgeted action films of its era.

Abuse on the Menu

They're really scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to celebrity cancellations now, aren't they.  I mean, Gino D'Acampo?  For fuck's sake, he's barely a celebrity, let alone a chef.  His entire 'fame' is based around the fact that he's an amusing foreigner with a funny accent and penchant for gesticulating in a 'continental' manner - something much beloved by the UK's TV programme makers.  Except, of course, according to the latest 'shocking' celebrity revelations, away from the cameras, he's anything but amusing, allegedly harassing female co-workers with sexual comments and inappropriate behaviour.  As ever, I caveat this piece by noting that, at present, these are simply allegations, nothing has been proven in a court of law and that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.  That said, I'm not quite sure why the media  thinks that we should all be shocked by the idea that Gino D'Acampo might be a wrong 'un when, as I recall, he had a previous career as a burglar.  In fact, he burgled Paul Young's house, stealing several guitars, amongst other things.  Which fact, surely, disproves all those nonsensical claims that, these days, a celebrity only has to commit a single minor misdemeanour and they find themselves cancelled for life, their career in ruins.  Clearly, this is bollocks as being a burglar is apparently no barrier to becoming a celebrity chef.  (Interestingly, D'Acampo was once George Michael's personal chef.  Maybe he used Paul Young as a reference).

But getting back to the original point, are we now at the stage where all the really well known celebrities who can be outed as bastards, nonces and abusers have been outed?  Have the rest been investigated and found to be whiter than the driven snow?  Either that or they've armed themselves with better lawyers.  Or is this Gino D'Acampo business the result of ITV feeling that it has to keep up with the BBC, who got a lot of attention when Greg Wallace was being vilified as a sex fiend, so felt that they had to reveal one of their culinary celebrities as an alleged abuser?  If so, it hasn't really worked, as the D'Acampo revelations haven't generated anywhere near the level of media hatred that the Wallace ones did.  Possibly because, even before the allegations against him, Wallace was such an easy public figure to hate - coming over as pompous, pretentious and over bearing.  Which, I suspect, has a lot to do with which public figures see their careers completely wrecked by such allegations, which can be rehabilitated and which seem to walk away unscathed.  If the public already has a poor perception of them, they don't stand a chance of coming back from such accusations.  People are already keyed up to think the worst of them - just look at Russell Brand, whose descent into conspiracy theories, extreme right-wing politics and religious lunacy simply compounded public perceptions of him as an arsehole to the point that when he was accused of abusing women, people just shrugged and said, 'Yeah, so what?'.  As far as D'Acampo is concerned, having already weathered the burglary business ('youthful indiscretions'), it might well be that his otherwise subsequent unblemished image as a 'cheeky chappie', might just be enough to save him.  For now.

Redeveloping the World

I know that everyone was saying that his second term would see Trump trying to remake the world in his image, but I doubt that they thought this would be literal.  But here we are with him apparently intent upon turning the entire planet into a real estate development, as he lobbies to take control of the Gaza Strip and redevelop it into a leisure complex for the wealthy - the 'Riviera of the Mediterranean'.  Trump's witterings about his vision for Gaza throw a new light on his apparent obsession with bullying Denmark into ceding Greenland to the US, ostensibly on defence grounds.  The reality is doubtless that, with global warming doing for the polar ice cap, moving Greenland into a more temperate zone, he sees the island as another property ripe for redevelopment into a holiday paradise for the ultra-rich.  It's probably the same with regard to Canada - annexed to become an outdoor pursuits centre for his wealthy friends.  Because that's what property developers do - they take land, whether by buying it or obtaining it by more dubious methods, then clear everyone and everything already there off of it, before turning it into something that benefits only a minority, but from which the developer can wring maximum profits.  The twist with Trump is that, in the case of Gaza, at least, the demolition of existing property has already been done for him, courtesy of Israel, just leaving those pesky Palestinians to be cleared off the land.

Perhaps that's why Trump seems so keen to seize Greenland by force - bomb the place flat so as to more easily facilitate his redevelopment plan.  Where next for his resort redevelopments?  Perhaps that's his 'peace' plan for Ukraine?  Cut off military aid to Ukraine so that Russia can bomb it into rubble, then buy the resultant wasteland from Putin to turn into a holiday resort for Eastern European oligarchs: the 'Riviera of the Black Sea'?  After all, back in the days of the USSR, the Black Sea coast of Ukraine was the favoured holiday destination of senior party functionaries.  But where do the local population go once they've been cleared off of wherever it is Trump is redeveloping?  Well, doubtless some of them will be required as domestic staff for the new hotels and condos that go up in place of their homes, accommodated in cheap and poorly constructed tied properties.  The majority, though, will have to go somewhere else - maybe that's what he wants Canada for?  There's still a lot of open spaces there, just crying out to be built on - with construction work doubtless provided by contractors owned by Trump, his family or his friends and business associates.  To be absolutely fair, this idea of using conflict as a way of making the world safe for US commerce is nothing new - the US tried it in occupied Germany after the war, for instance, giving exclusive contracts to US companies to redevelop parts of the infrastructure.  General Motors' EMD subsidiary, for example, was given exclusive rights to build and import diesel electric locomotives into the occupied German territories, which resulted in the German railways developing their own, locally produced, diesel hydraulic locomotives, instead.  More recently, there was Iraq, where, even before the Gulf War commenced, numerous US firms were given exclusive contracts to rebuild the country and operate vital parts of the infrastructure.  So, really, Trump is just continuing another American tradition.

Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (1978)

The second Emmanuelle-inspired adult movie I watched this past weekend, Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (1978) was the last of the Italian made 'Black Emanuelle' series to be directed by Joe D'Amato, who directed the bulk of the series.  In truth, beyond the similar name for the lead character, (note the slight difference in spelling, for legal reasons), these films have little in common with the original Emmanuelle series, which involved the erotic exploits of a French diplomat's wife.  By contrast, this rival series concerned the adventures of an investigative journalist played by Laura Gemser, who has the byline of 'Emanuelle' for her articles.  Over the course of the series she investigates all manner of subject matter, including snuff films and cannibals, with her globe-trotting investigations always involving her having to take her clothes off and have sex - with, men, women, herself, even a horse gets a handjob in one instalment, although not by Emanuelle herself, to be fair - at regular intervals.  The films tended to involve somewhat meandering plots, with Emanuelle spending the first part investigating one thing, gangsters, for example, which inadvertently lead her into investigating something more serious and/or exotic.  Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade kicks off in Kenya, with the titular heroine trying to get an interview with an ex-pat US gangster, which involves her and a female friend pretending to be air hostesses, running naked through the bush and having drug fuelled sex, not to mention various other sexual asides not directly related to the main plot.  In the course of all this, she spots a suspicious character at the airport, escorting a girl in a wheelchair, who later turns out to be perfectly healthy, with the gangster telling her that the man is involved in trafficking girls for the white slave trade.  Naturally, Emanuelle decides to follow him, which leads her back to the US and a brothel (which she infiltrates) catering to high level politicians and diplomats.

At which point the film, as is often the case with this series, takes a somewhat darker turn than you'd ever see in a genuine 'Emmanuelle' film, or any of their many imitators, involving murder and Emanuelle herself being rouged up and sexually assaulted by a gang of heavies working for the madame running the brothel.  This section of the film is actually an attempt to cash in on another then popular sex movie, The French Woman (1977), which had been directed by Just Jaekin, who had also directed the first 'Emmanuelle' movie and was inspired by the life story of an infamous French brothel keeper Madame Claude.  Indeed, Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade even names the keeper of its brothel 'Madame Claude', just to make out sure the link is clear to the audience.  This latter part of the film underlines the fundamental difference between the 'Black Emanuelle' series and both the original series whose name it invokes and that series many other imitators.  They eschew the semi-respectable artiness of these films in favour of a much harder edged and grittier approach.  This Emanuelle has no time for wistful explorations of feminine sensuality, more often than not treating her sexuality as simply another tool to be used in her quest for the truth via her investigations.  As played by Gemser, she is no ingénue or innocent schoolgirl experiencing her sexual awakening at the hands of some experienced older man.  On the contrary, she is a capable career woman more than able to look after herself - unlike most of the heroines of contemporary sex movies, when in peril, she doesn't wait for some man to rescue her, instead falling back on her own resources to get out of the situation.  All of which makes it sound as if I'm trying to argue that Gemser's Emanuelle is some kind of symbol of female empowerment: a porno feminist icon.  Make no mistake, however, the films still objectify her as a sex object, but at least the character has some control over this objectification, using it to her own advantage.

The look of the film reflects the grittier edge of the series, with the dreamy soft focus photography and leisurely pace of the official series discarded in favour of a more realistic, hard edged approach, far more like contemporary Italian crime thrillers.  The subject matter of many of the films and its lurid presentation is reminiscent of another Italian genre, the mondo movie.  D'Amato directed films across a wide gumut of popular Italian movie genres and this is reflected in the subject matter of his 'Black Emanuelle' films.  While not, perhaps, possessed of a visual style on a par with many of his contemporaries directing Italian genre films, D'Amato's direction is nonetheless efficient and very direct, making Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (and the other films in the series that he directed) a very easy film for the audience to follow.  There's always something going on to hold your attention, even when Emanuelle is fully clothed.  Gemser, as ever, is very watchable in the lead role, bringing plenty of charisma and screen presence.  As ever, her real-life husband, Gabrielle Tinti, co-stars, (this time as the brothel's procurer).  While not the strongest, or most original, entry in the series, (prostitution of various kinds had been covered several times in earlier films), Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade is an entertaining enough piece of exploitation and, in my opinion, far more enjoyable than most other Emmanuelle cash-ins being made around the same time, which slavishly tried to copy the original's format and style,

Vanessa (1977)

Vanessa (1977) is another of those films that came out in the wake of the success of Emmanuelle (1974) and its sequels, when it briefly looked as if soft core porn was going mainstream and respectable.   A German production, Vanessa is not dissimilar to another Emmanuelle-inspired movie, the Australian made Felicity, which came out at around the same time.  Both involve young women thrust from exclusive all-girl schools into the heady (not to mention hedonistic) milieu of seventies Hong Kong.  The  titular heroine of Vanessa leaves her convent school, (staffed by teachers and nuns who still believe in corporal punishment for demeanours such as being caught looking at nudes in books about Ancient Rome), finds herself in Jong Kong after the death of her last living relative, her Uncle Richard, where she finds that she has inherited a chain of brothels and a plantation.  From there the plot follows a familiar path of the title character's sexual awakening, as she is introduced to various aspects of sex, including lesbianism (obligatory in seventies sex movies) - although she never actually loses her virginity - while various dramatic sun-plots unfold around her.  Chief of these involve the plantation's manager, who is contesting her inheritance with the claim that he is actually Uncle Richard's illegitimate son and the attempts of both said manager and another older family friend to seduce her (the friend's wife is being shagged by the plantation manager).  Along the way there's also some business involving a mystic and an attempt by the jealous girlfriend of the plantation manager to use a form of voodoo against Vanessa.  (She thrusts a knife into the groin of a doll fashioned after the girl, causing her intense vaginal pain).

Vanessa comes over like a compendium of adolescent male sexual fantasies, with its constant parade of naked young girls, who always seem to avoid actually having sex with anyone, flashbacks involving lesbianism, female masturbation and spanking.  At one point the mystic demonstrates his powers by having non-physical remote sex with Vanessa whilst they sit at opposite ends of a dining table - which of course sends the girl off into a series of orgasmic fantasies.  The film tries to emulate the visual style of Emmanuelle, with lots of soft-focus camera work and 'arty' camera angles to give the whole thing a dream-like sort of feel.  Unfortunately, though, none of this helps raise the film above the level of mediocrity, with its over-familiar plot, languid pace and not especially interesting characters.  It never really makes anything of its Hong Kong locations, let alone the fact that Vanessa is heir to a chain of bordellos,  and none of the cast seem particularly enthusiastic about any of the antics they are required to perform.  Anton Diffring, as Major Cooper, the family friend who tries to have his wicked way with Vanessa, is, in the English language version, dubbed with an English accent straight out of a thirties drama about the Raj, making his performance seem even more detached.  Olivia Pascal in the title role (in her debut) is certainly attractive enough, but never really convinces as an ingénue.  The biggest problem the film has is that comes across as just too, well, respectable, seemingly content to hint at sexual depravities and deviancies, rather than actually show them properly, for fear of offending that new mainstream porn audience it was clearly aiming for.  In truth, its Australian rival, Felicity, although itself a pretty mild sex comedy, is actually far livelier and therefore more entertaining, than Vanessa.