Avoidance Tactics

Getting back to my fantasies about becoming a hermit from a few posts back, it occurred to me that the question is really one of whether I want to ignore the entire human race, or just a selected few groups and individuals.  The fact is that - apart from my relatives, who can be a real pain in the arse but I have no choice but to put up with, preferably in small doses - most of the people I have no wish to interact with are those that I used to work with.  Most specifically, those from my last full-time job, who all contributed to making my life a misery and the consequent collapse of my health, (which has taken years to restore).  Them and anyone affiliated to Reform UK, obviously.  Not to mention scousers.  But with regard to former colleagues, I've been doing pretty well since I left that employment, despite my former place of work being only a few hundred yards down the road from my house.  Thanks to my state of semi-retirement, I'm out and about during normal working hours, reducing greatly the chances of running into any of them.  That said, late afternoons and weekends are danger times for possibly running into them.  In fact, over the past month I've twice had to take evasive measures to avoid running into former colleagues during late afternoon visits to Marks and Spencer.  Ducking and diving behind the bakery shelves, I successfully managed to avoid detection.  After suffering two near misses there, I'm beginning to wonder whether I should simply boycott Marks and Spencer - I've never had such encounters in Lidl or Aldi, or Tesco and Sainsburys, either.

Quite apart from my personal issues with this particular group of former workmates, old work colleagues are always problematic to deal with regardless of how you got on with them or liked your workplace.  The amount of time one was exposed to them naturally breeds a certain degree of familiarity, resulting in a feeling of obligation to acknowledge them outside of the work environment.  The trouble is, of course, that more often than not, the only thing you ever had in common was that you both once worked in the same workplace, making conversation outside of that environment extremely difficult.  Basically, you are reduced to the sort of small talk you'd have with a complete stranger - and I'm pretty bad at small talk under any circumstances.  So, encounters of this kind are always difficult to the point of cringeworthiness, at the best of times, let alone when it is with someone from a work experience you'd rather forget.  And believe me, I've done my best to forget as much of that experience as possible, particularly names and faces.  Getting back to the hermit business, I have to say that I'm actually not doing that badly at it without moving to a cave or a hut in the woods.  Despite living near the centre of a large and busy town, I manage to keep myself to myself.   My needs have always been simple and now that I'm semi-retired, they are even simpler.  So much so that my work pensions I'm in receipt of. (I'm lucky enough to be from a generation where they pay out pretty early, while you are still young enough to enjoy them), are more than adequate to finance them.  I might not spend my days in contemplation or meditation, but I do enjoy having the freedom to simply sit on the sofa for a few hours watching old movies.  It is something that gives me immense pleasure.  Just being able to enjoy some solitude is hermit-like enough for me.

Paranoiac (1963)

Paranoiac (1963) was part of Hammer's cycle of sixties psychological thrillers, originally inspired by the success of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), but with later entries drawing inspiration variously from the likes of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Les Diaboliques.  Paranoiac comes from the early part of the cycle, which, in homage to Hitchcock, generally sported single word titles alluding to psychological disturbances and were shot in black and white.  In terms of content, however, it has far more in common with the sort of black and white British thrillers of the late forties and fifties (many of the lower budgeted of which had been produced by Hammer).  Which shouldn't be surprising as it is actually an uncredited adaptation of Josephine Tey's 1949 novel 'Brat Farrar', which Hammer had the rights to for several years, but could never come up with a satisfactory adaptation.  Jimmy Sangster's script takes the book's basic plot and reworks it into the sort of grand guignol melodrama expected from their psychological thrillers, complete with hook-wielding maniacs in grotesque masks, midnight organ playing in crypts, deep dark family secrets, murders and murky goings on in an old house.   The film retains some of the character names from the novel, along with the Dorset coast settings, but, much as his scripts for Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958) had dome, Sangster strips away sub-plots and complications, pares down the cast of characters and simplifies their relationships to create a lean, purposeful script that gets straight to the central essence of the book.  

The film is notable for giving Oliver Reed another leading role (after playing the title role in Curse of the Werewolf (1961), he had stepped back down to supporting roles in his subsequent Hammer appearances), which he clearly relishes.  Unfortunately, effective though his portrayal of Simon as an absolute bastard might be, it makes it absolutely obvious from the outset that he is the villain of the piece - obviously psychologically disturbed and prone to violent outbursts.  His utter contempt for his siblings, both living and supposedly dead, immediately marks him out not just as callous, but an obvious suspect in the disappearance of his brother when they were boys.  Not that the script doesn't do its best to throw in various red-herrings, most notably a looney aunt, but also an embezzling family lawyer, as flaky younger sister with suicidal tendencies and, of course, a mysterious stranger who might, or might not, be the missing brother grown to adulthood.  Indeed, this latter character is deployed early on to mislead the audience into believing that Paranoiac was going to be one of those thrillers about young women being driven mad (another favourite variation of Hammer's for these types of movie), as at first only the disturbed sister sees him.  But it quickly gets back on course after he rescues the girl from an attempt to drown herself in the sea, revealing himself to the rest of the family in the process.

While Paranoiac ultimately doesn't spring any real surprises, with the identity of the villain and his crime telegraphed early on, it does look reasonably stylish, although it is far from director Freddie Francis' best work for Hammer.  There aren't quite the number of interesting shots and angles one might usually expect from Francis (there is, however, an effectively shot murder by drowning from the victim's perspective), he does make good use the shadowy sets, contrasting them effectively with the open and sunny Dorset exterior locations.  Despite the obviousness of villain and outcome, Francis does manage to build some suspense and tension, even throwing in the odd jolting surprise.  Mainly, though, the script relies upon piling incident upon incident at such a frenzied pace that the viewer never has the chance to realise how absurd it all is as the film plays out.  Certainly, it packs a lot of incident into just eighty minutes of running time.  An enjoyable entry in Hammer's psychological thriller cycle, Paranoiac is lifted above the average by Reed's typically forceful performance.  With its plot hinging on buried family secrets, masked assailants and disturbed relatives, you can't help but feel that, shot in garish colour and with Italian locarions, Paranoiac might have made a great proto-giallo.

Terror From the Year 5000 (1958)

An independently produced science fiction thriller whose lack of budget is plain to see in every murkily shot frame, Terror From the Year 5000 (1958) was released by AIP in support of either The Screaming Skull (1958) or The Brain Eaters (1958), two other, equally poverty stricken, independently made would be shockers.  Rather like The Brain Eaters, Terror From the Year 5000 has some interesting ideas (both films are also uncredited adaptations of recently published science fiction stories), but its budget precludes it from ever really doing much with them.  The Brain Eaters, though, at least manages to build up an atmosphere of fevered paranoia and has a weird, skewed, feel to it, whereas Terror From the Year 5000 mainly feels flat, with director Robert J Gurney Jr only intermittently managing to conjure any real atmosphere or feeling of strangeness.  The central conceit of scientists breaking the 'time barrier' and establishing contact with a future civilisation, starting with the exchange of objects and culminating with an actual person arriving from the future, has possibilities, but is here executed on such a small scale that it fails to have any impact.  It doesn't help that much of the 'science' on display is patently absurd: there is no way that carbon dating, which relies upon the rate of decay of radioactive elements to estimate the age of artifacts, could be used to date an object as coming from the future.

The film also falls back on the trope of associating physical deformity, particularly facial deformity, with evil, with the radiation scarred woman from the future turning out to be a murderous savage.  It also deploys another science fiction cliche of having her in search of present-day males to provide untainted DNA for breeding purposes, (it at least reverses the sexes in this iteration, as it is normally alien or mutant males seeking nubile earth women for such purposes).  But even by 1958 standards, its scenario of eccentric scientists independently pursuing radical research in their remote private laboratories must have seemed dated - like something out of a 1930s or 1940s poverty row mad scientist picture.  None of this would necessarily matter if the film moved at a decent pace, but the script instead takes forever to actually get anywhere, padding out too much of its running time with a tedious love triangle, before rushing through the most interesting part involving the woman from the future in the last few minutes.  In the final analysis, Terror From the Year 5000 isn't really that bad a movie, but it isn't that good a movie, either, committing the cardinal B-movie sin of being far too slow and uneventful.

Humiliation and Degredation at the Meat Counter?

When I come across a social media post that opens with the words "On Good Friday I experienced the most awful and humiliating experience [in a Tesco store"].  I expect to go on to find myself reading an account of how someone found themselves thrown across the deli counter, their trousers pulled down and then indecently assaulted with a large marrow.  Or at least a cucumber.  A bunch of carrots, even.  Either that, or they found themselves stripped naked, thrown on the conveyor belt at the tills and ravished by a band of nymphomaniac middle aged check out ladies.  Or perhaps tied to a trolley, head in the basket, bared arse across the handle, then pushed around the store as they were spanked with a French loaf, or a German sausage, or at the very least thrashed with a bunch of artichokes.  Bearing in mind the allusion to Good Friday, then would it be unreasonable to expect an account of how the writer was 'crucified' against the preserves shelves and pelted with eggs, perhaps?  Did I get any of those scenarios.  No, of course not.  Instead I found myself regaled with a sob story about being accused of shoplifting when the self service tills apparently didn't register a payment via a mobile phone app.  There's not even a suggestion that, as a punishment, the writer had a barcode stamped on their arse and was then forcibly scanned through every self-service checkout, with them all reading, in bold capitals: 'SHOPLIFTER!'

In terms of abject humiliation, though, that story comes pretty low on the scale.  Indeed, a part of me says 'serves you right for using your bloody phone to pay - twats doing this at regular tills hold up the queue forever as the apps never seem to work.  Just use cash or a debit card like a normal person'.  I suppose though, disappointing though this tale might be, it does illustrate the perils of using those self service checkouts.  I know that sometimes you have no choice, as the bastards have closed all the manned tills, but when I find myself in this situation, I always opt to print out a receipt, as proof of purchase, in order to avoid such situations.  You could, I suppose, ask for a receipt if any of the other scenarios I outlined happened to you, as proof of humiliation, (as I'm sure the staff would try to deny it ever happened, accusing you of having an overactive imagination if you complained).  But to get back to the original point, this post just emphasises what's wrong with social media: it constantly teases and promises all sorts of sensational content, but always falls short.  Every time a post starts off promisingly, holding out the hope of some genuine depravity, it just ends up disappointing with another whingeing, self-serving tirade against someone or something that has supposedly committed some terrible injustice against the poster.  For God's sake, when will you learn, we don't care about your opinions on immigrants, trans people, gay marriage or Islam, we just want filth and depravity.  Next time I see someone post about a humiliating experience in a supermarket, I expect to at least be treated to a tale of being 'pegged' in the hardware aisle by a shelf stacker using a sink plunger as a dildo, not to be regaled by some pissy whine about being accused of shoplifting.

A Hermit's Life For Me

Recent events have reaffirmed my ambition to be a hermit.  After being caught in the middle of another family crisis, which forced me out of bed before midday on a Bank Holiday Monday after a late night, my desire to be simply left alone by the world was greatly reinforced.  I spent a large chunk of my working life having to deal with other people's crises, caught in the middle betwixt them and the law, which left me with no interest in becoming involved with other people's problems ever again.  OK, I know that one can't help but get involved where one's own family is involved, but nonetheless, I'd still much rather stay on the periphery.  So, being a hermit has long seemed like a great idea to me, setting oneself apart from the world, keeping interactions to a minimum and engaging in a life of contemplation.  Of course, much like the British Bank Holiday and religious celebrations, (which I discussed a couple of posts ago), the whole idea of being a hermit seems to have been 'downgraded' by modern society, replaced by the more pejorative concept of the 'recluse'.  This term has entirely negative connotations, used by the media to conjure up visions of sad, probably mentally ill, bastards, living miserable lives in filth and damp infested flats or run down houses full of stacks of hoarded rubbish, newspapers and porn mags.  Preferring one's own company to that of other people nowadays sees you marked down as some kind of 'dangerous loner', (especially if you have a 'weird' hobby like building plastic kits or model railways), likely to be involved in terrorist activities, a sex offender or a serial killer.  

Personally, I blame the explosion in modern personalised communications.  Thanks to the advent of mobile phones, e-mail, social media and the like, there now seems to be a general expectation that we should be available to everyone at all times - friends, family, even employers.  If you refuse to be, then you are immediately branded 'anti-social' and considered some kind of weirdo.  I found landlines were bad enough in terms of being an invasion of one's privacy, but at least with those you didn't get constant reminders that you had missed a call and you could always claim that you were out when someone called, or at least in another part of the house.  With mobile phones, though, they can get you anywhere, any time.  If they can't get through they leave voice mails, send texts, e-mails, use messenger and chat apps.  It's relentless. While I have a mobile, I've disabled the voice mail function and refuse to get involved in the likes of What's App in order to minimise my availability.  It isn't just modern technology and social attitudes that make it increasingly difficult to be a hermit.  Traditionally, hermits live in remote caves or huts in the woods or the mountains.  These days, caves are in short supply and even if you owned a remote piece of land where you could build a hut, you'd doubtless have to go through some tortuous planning permission process, with your nearest neighbours, situated a hundred miles away, undoubtedly raising a successful objection on the grounds that it blocks their view.  I have contemplated simply digging a deep hole in my back garden and living there, but again, I'd probably need planning permission for that, especially as I live in a 'conservation area'.  (Yeah, incredibly, Crapchester has 'conservation areas' - the town having demolished so much of its heritage back in the early seventies, it is now desperate to hold onto anything built prior to that).  So, I guess that I'll just have to settle for being a 'recluse', trying to keep myself to myself in the privacy of my own home.  Fat chance.

The Viking Queen (1967)

The Viking Queen (1967) is one of Hammer's pseudo-historical films that they put out in between the horror movies.  I say 'pseudo' because they present a hugely fictionalised version of history, using their period settings as backdrops for some low budget action orientated adventures.  The Viking Queen, for instance, presents the audience with a highly fictionalised fantasy version of Roman Britain and the Iceni uprising led by Queen Boudica.  The film's problems start with the catch-penny title, doubtless used because Vikings were perceived to be 'sexier' than Ancient Britons in box office terms.  In point of fact, there are no Vikings in The Viking Queen, the title justified with a single throwaway line when the heroine is told that, when she inherits the kingdom, she will be 'a Viking Queen like your mother'.  While the main part of the plot broadly follows the events of Boudica's rebellion, it is completely fictionalised, with names and relationships changed, a romance between the Boudica-substitute and a fictional Roman governor added to the mix and lots of Druidic nonsense - human sacrifices by immolation and the like - thrown in.  Whereas, in reality, Boudica was the wife of the King of the Iceni, whose will divided his kingdom between her, their two daughters and the Emperor of Rome, here Salina is one of the dying king's three daughters, who is given joint jurisdiction with Rome over the kingdom.  Obviously, by making the Boudica equivalent younger and not the widow of a king, it opens up the possibility of the romance with the 'nice' Roman, who tries to be respectful toward the customs and culture of the Iceni.  Of course, he has a jealous subordinate, the obligatory 'bad' Roman, who seizes the opportunity presented by the governor's absence in Anglesey, putting down a Druid uprising, to start getting heavy handed with the revolting Britons, flogging Salina and raping her sisters.

As can be seen, various historical events, (there were actually two Roman expeditions against Anglesey, one at the time of the real rebellion, but neither were against Druids), also including a depiction of a version of the financial penalties extracted from the Britons by the Romans, are happily mixed together to try and create a fantasy adventure story.  The problem is that while the script pays lip service to historical fidelity with their inclusion, it is otherwise apparently clueless as to most other aspects of the culture of the Ancient Britons.  For some reason, for instance, many of the Britons seem to have names ransacked from classical mythology and/or Shalespeare:  King Priam (!), Tristram, Beatrice, Benedict, Fabian and Talia, for example.  These sound all the more ridiculous as we have other, lowlier, Britons called things like Fergus and Nigel.  The depiction of the druids is quite laughable: a group of raving maniacs who, for some reason, seem to worship Zeus (an ancient Greek god and the equivalent of the Roman Jupiter).  Their influence over the Ancient Britons is hugely exaggerated - according to the script they were the main progenitors of the rebellion, but in real life it was inspired by more concrete grievances such as the Roman seizure of lands and demands for the immediate repayment of financial loans.  Yet the script does have some interesting aspects - its depiction of the Britons as actually being relatively sophisticated and civilised rather than the woad painted savages of Roman propaganda, is a welcome corrective.  (Although the film then somewhat undermines this by staging several brutal attacks on Roman columns by woad painted savages).  Ultimately, though, the script simply has no feel for Roman occupied Britain: the drama despite being derived (at some distance) from history, end up feeling generic, as though they could be taking place in any number of eras against any number of settings.

To its credit, though, The Viking Queen is remarkably well produced, (it went significantly over budget), shot against some harshly beautiful Irish locations boasts lots of extras dressed variously as Roman soldiers and Iceni warriors, lots of war chariots and battles and a surprising good cast, even if their performances are highly variable.  Finnish/French model Carita gives a surprisingly strong performance as the heroine, while Andrew Keir is suitably arrogant and bull headed as the 'bad' Roman.  Wilfrid Lawson, though, as Priam, seemed to think that he was in 'King Lear' and the character's death comes as a blessed relief.  Donald Houston, hidden behind a beard gives an absolutely rabid, wild eyed performance as the Druid High Priest, going completely over the top in his scenes, (but obviously enjoying himself immensely).  Patrick Troughton (who was offered the part of the Second Doctor while on location for this film), gives a far more restrained and effective performance as Salina's advisor, Tristram, while Niall MacGinnis is typically effective, but somewhat wasted, as his Roman equivalent.  The film's main weak point in casting terms lies with its imported US star, Don Murray, who looks deeply uncomfortable and is quite unconvincing as Justinian, the Roman governor.  His romance with Salina is never properly developed and remains unconvincing throughout the film, robbing their inevitable clash of any resonance or emotional impact. Like most Hammer films of the era, across all genres, The Viking Queen constantly teases the audience with the prospect of female nudity, frequently almost, but not quite, serving up a flash of breast.  No doubt contemporary audiences (the adolescent male component, at least), had their hopes up when we get some side boob from an apparently topless Nubian slave - but when she finally turns to face the camera, she's wearing some large tassels over her nipples, to the doubtless frustration of many teenaged boys.  Unlike most Hammer historicals, The Viking Queen, has been little seen on TV over the years, (although it has been available on DVD), doubtless due, in part, to its box office failure, particularly in the US.  Which is a pity as, if you can look past the massacring of history it represents, it is a well produced, efficiently directed (by Don Chaffey) and enjoyable enough action film.

The Decline of the British Bank Holiday

It's Good Friday again, so it is time for my regular gripe about how the media constantly seems to downgrade this sort of thing.  Look, I'm not remotely religious, but the fact is that Easter is a religious holiday, so you'd think that the media would do something to acknowledge this.  I mean, today you'd have little idea from the TV schedules that this was anything other than a regular Friday.  Other than BBC2 providing an early morning double bill of King of Kings and The Robe, there has been nothing remotely Easter-related on any of the main channels.  Worse still, there seems to be next to no recognition that today and Monday are Bank Holidays.  Now, at risk of turning into one of those old bores who go on all the time about how things were better when I was young, the fact is that when I was a kid growing up in the seventies, the Easter weekend was a big thing.  Not just because of the prospect of chocolate, but because it was a four day weekend, when most people were off work and in the mood to d, well, something.  Even if that something was simply crashing out on the sofa for four days and watching TV, which had schedules full of special programming and movies.  

But, just as Christmas has gradually been eroded to a rump of barely seven days, rather than its true twelve day glory, so Easter (and Bank Holidays in general) have been progressively downgraded.  Nowadays they are barely distinguishable from any other day - certainly in terms of retail.  When I was a kid, I used to find it intensely frustrating that everything in the UK closed down on Sundays and Bank Holidays, (at one time cinemas wouldn't even show new release films on Sundays and Sunday TV schedules were full of religious programmes).  I welcomed Sunday opening and the gradual trend of bigger shops opening on Bank Holidays (often in order to launch sales).  But now, when one day is barely distinguishable from the other in commercial and media terms, I find myself missing the 'specialness' of those traditional Sundays and Bank Holidays.  The latter, in particular, gave us a shared cultural experience, in that virtually everyone was off work and looking for entertainment: heading outdoors if the weather was good, or to other events - exhibitions, concerts, sporting fixtures and the like that would be held on Bank Holiday weekends.  I know, I know, I'm turning into a boring old fart rattling on about the 'Good Old Days' that existed in some mythical past 'Golden Age'.  I'm afraid that a yearning for an idealised version of one's past - even though you know that, in reality, there was just as much shit going down in the world then as there is now - is the curse of growing older.

Battle of the Rockets

So, Jeff Bezos has sent several female celebrities into space in his penis-shaped rocket.  You can't make this shit up, can you?  OK, I know what you are going to say: surely all rockets are penis shaped?  Yes, but Bezos' rocket is the most penis-shaped ever.  I'm surprised that they didn't paint the capsule at the top purple, just to hammer home the point that it is a giant erect penis full of women.  In fact, that they are effectively entrapped in the head of a huge knob, which ultimately blows itself off and returns them to earth, ejaculating them back onto the ground.  Because that's surely the sub-text here, that the penis has mastery over women.  I'm sure that it's all part of some kind of billionaire 'cock off' between Bezos and Elon Musk, over the size of their respective 'rockets'.  The fact that Bezos' can shoot women into space with his has surely, for now, gained him bragging rights.  After all, Musk's long-term aim might be to inseminate Mars with his own jism, but Bezos has symbolically shafted multiple women simultaneously with his surrogate member - clearly a response to Musk's boasts about having impregnated multiple women.  So, how will Musk respond in this 'battle of the rockets'?  

Maybe he'll launch some kind vaginal looking space station into orbit, full of women, then personally dock one of his space rocket penises with it, in a symbolic act of cosmic copulation.  Perhaps that will be his response - to launch a whole harem of women into space, then impregnate them all in a weightless gang-bang, with the aim of conceiving a space child.  It's the kind of crazy shit these whackos with more money than sense do, isn't it?  The only question is, could he manage to muster a space station full of celebrity women to shag in space in order to outdo Bezos?  That said, I'd question the actual 'celebrity' status of some of the passengers on Bezos' rocket propelled cock.  Not exactly the front rank of celebrity.  I mean, Katy Perry?  Still, I can understand her motivation for wanting to be blasted into space - it's the surest way for her to put literal distance between her and her alleged rapist ex-husband Russell Brand.  Without prejudging Brand - after all, everyone is innocent until proven guilty - I'm pretty sure that most of the planet's female population would feel a lot safer is someone were to blast him into space.  Mind you, alleged God botherer that he now is, he probably doesn't believe in the existence of space, let alone rockets.  Doubtless he thinks that, like wi fi, it is all evil.  Still, it would be marvellous if we could launch him, Bezos and Musk into space in a giant flaming penis, wouldn't it?

The Wild, Wild World of Tabloid Hate

I swear to God that the UK's right-wing press are just getting stupider.  Just the other day I saw headline in one of that amorphous group of reactionary tabloids which, for ease of reference, we'll just refer to as the 'Daily Hate', trying to stir outrage at the idea of British down and outs sleeping rough, while immigrants were being temporarily housed in a nearby hotel.  I mean, really?  Do they honestly think that if such hotels weren't full of asylum seekers and the like, they'd be happily opening their doors to the homeless?  (Although, of course, local authorities do put up some local families in damp-ridden, cockroach infested and filthy cheap hotels).  Yeah, I'm sure if some unkempt homeless guy rocked up to reception, stinking of piss and booze, they'd be offering him the keys to the Bridal Suite.  Let's not forget that these newspapers suddenly concerned for the plight of the homeless are the self same newspapers who have spent a lot of time vilifying the poor, condemning the amount of benefits they supposedly claim.  But hey, at least they are British homeless, rather than foreign loafers come here to leech off of our system.  Because xenophobia always trumps contempt for the poor in the tabloids' hierarchy of hate.  That said, asylum seekers and immigrants are both foreign and poor, so combine both traits into one group that the right-wing press can utterly despise.  Which means, in the twisted thinking of these tabloids, everything is their fault, except of course the stuff that is the fault of the homeless, benefit claimants, students, single mothers or the Labour party.

But when it comes to right-wing media idiocy, there can be little doubt that GB News represents the ultimate distillation of their rancid, hate-driven stupidity.  Before I managed to block them as a source on the news aggregator that is the MSN homepage, I recall one of their screaming headlines being along the lines that the Labour government was planning to give away more territory in the Chagos deal than was being lost to coastal erosion in mainland Britain.  What!?  I mean, honestly, what the fuck does this even mean?  That we should somehow retain an overseas territory whose native population we evicted so that we could lease it to the US in order to compensate for coastal erosion?  How would that even work?  Perhaps they thought that those homeless people sleeping rough while asylum seekers were being put up in hospitals could be relocated to the Chagos islands?  Or that the people who saw their homes fall into the sea as the result of coastal erosion could be compensated with land in the Chagos islands?  Maybe they could all be allocated plots of land there where they could build new houses.  Either that, or we could erect entire housing estates there - albeit on a different bit of the islands to that homeless hostel.  Better still, why not just send all those asylum seekers occupying those hotels there?  Then the people who lost their homes to the sea could move into the hotels and the homeless people, well, maybe we could send them to areas where there is coastal erosion and hope that they fall into the sea.  Because, believe me, in the wild, wild world of GB News, all of these are ideas which could become the subject of serious discussions by the likes of Nigel Farage or Jacob Rees-Mogg.  Sometimes, I despair at the state of British journalism...

13 Frightened Girls (1963)

The most obvious problem with William Castle's 13 Frightened Girls (1963) is that there are actually fifteen of said girls, most of whom never get that frightened anyway.  In fact it was shot under the title The Candy Web and had its premiere (in Australia) under that title.  But a few years earlier Castle had had a hit with 13 Ghosts (1960), so maybe hoped that the number thirteen would prove lucky for him again.  In truth, the original title was probably more indicative of the film's actual content as it focuses mainly on only one of the titular girls - Candy - while most of others play only a background role.  Nevertheless, the film's new title and advertising try to make it seem like some kind of women (or rather girls)-in-peril type of thriller.  In reality, while it has some mild thriller elements, it is more of a teen comedy satirising espionage films - it comes from a period when many of Castle's films were becoming overtly comedic, having been immediately preceded by Zotz! (1962) and was followed by his remake of The Old Dark House (1963).  With its mix of thriller elements and comedy and its juvenile leads, the film it most closely resembles in Castle's canon is probably Let's Kill Uncle (1966), although its humour is never as dark as that of the latter film.

As noted, the central character of 13 Frightened Girls is Candy, a sixteen year old girl attending an exclusive Swiss school for the daughters of international diplomats goes, with her fourteen schoolmates, on a holiday in London, where her father is a senior diplomat at the US embassy.  Conveniently, the other girls also all seem to have relatives working as diplomats in the city.  Candy has a crush on her father's colleague, Wally, an intelligence analyst at the embassy, whose job is on the line due to a series of failures and mishaps.  In order to help Wally, Candy uses her friends' diplomatic connections to feed him intelligence, using the codename 'Kitten'.  While much of the intrigue that follows centres around the Chinese embassy (where Candy's friend Mai-Ling's uncle is a senior diplomat), the film's plot becomes rather episodic, as the 'web' Candy spins brings her encounters with a murder, blackmail attempts and a teenaged hitman, before winding up with a life-threatening encounter with a double agent back at the school.  This format means that the movie never really builds up any momentum, with each new plot strand being hurriedly wound up before the commencement of the next.  It also means that tension and suspense are minimised, with only Candy's brush with the teen hitman, where she finds herself in real peril, feeling particularly tense, culminating with a drugged Candy on the verge of being pushed off of a window ledge several floors up.  Unfortunately, like many of the film's set-pieces, it ends up being resolved in a somewhat perfunctory fashion.

In terms of production values, 13 Frightened Girls is pretty much on a par with Castle's other films of the era, it's main novelty being the use of colour film stock, rather than the director's usual monochrome.  The colour process used - Pathecolor - however gives the film a rather garish, softly focused and slightly over lit, look, making everything look artificial.  Also in common with Castle's other productions, the film is largely studio shot, adding to the sense of artificiality, with only some of the school scenes using actual exteriors: aside from establishing shots using stock footage, 'London' consists entirely of, mainly interior, studio sets.  While Candy, played by Kathy Dunn, is the main character, the film's main 'star' names are Hugh Marlowe (as her father) and Murray Hamilton (as Wally), while Khigh Dhiegh is inevitably on hand playing the Chinese diplomat, (despite seeming always to be cast as a 'wily Oriental', Dhiegh was actually an American of Egyptian and Sudanese descent).  Of the other girls, a few subsequently became recognisable faces on film and TV, most notably Alexandra Bastedo, playing the English girl, Lynne Sue Moon as Mai-Ling and Judy Pace as the Liberian girl.  Overall, the cast are perfectly adequate for what is required of them by the script, the main problem being that their characters are pretty much stock and superficial, none being given strong enough material to be truly memorable.  Dunn's Candy, in particular, comes over the sort of entirely generic middle class American teen girl you could see in countless youth orientated films and TV series of the era. If you take the film as intended - a teen comedy, (significantly, it was used as a support feature to Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) - rather than as it was marketed - as a spy thriller - then 13 Frightened Girls is a perfectly enjoyable, but typically insubstantial, William Castle presentation.

Sent Down From Paradise

So, the question that's been bothering me for a while now is what would happen if you indulged in anti-social behaviour in heaven?   Would you be expelled and is so, how would that work?  Now, I know this presupposes that the afterlife exists, that it conforms to Christian conventions with regard to its form and that any of us would qualify for entry in the first place.  But, taking all of this on board, if you were evicted, where would your immortal soul go?  I know that the obvious answer is 'the other place', but surely if you are already in heaven, then you have already been judged, on the basis of your earthly deeds, that you are good enough to avoid Hell, (and we keep getting told that it is those earthly deed that count when your fate is weighed up).  So, if Hell is out of the question, then where can you be expelled to?  Is there, perhaps, some limbo specially reserved for those kicked out of heaven where you suffer punishment, but nowhere near as severe as the ones handed out in Hell?  Or, could it be that you are just sent back to earth, back to your old body?  Which raises yet more questions - what if you were cremated, being the most obvious.  But supposing that you weren't, would you suddenly wake up in your grave?  One would suppose that you'd have to be some way of getting out of there, otherwise you'd just suffocate and find yourself back in heaven, only to be refused entry and sent back to that coffin again in order to suffocate again and - well, you get the idea.

But once resurrected, would you still be mortal, or just condemned to carry on forever in your decaying and increasingly decrepit body.  I mean, if you died at age 101, say, that would be a pretty grim prospect.  Even more so if you'd had something like Alzheimer's or a terminal illness that left you in constant pain.  What if you had been horribly mangled in an accident to the extent that you had to have a closed casket funeral?  Spending eternity as a decapitated corpse, say, doesn't sound like much fun.  But let's be optimistic and assume that you find yourself scrabbling out of your grave with a rejuvenated and fully healed body - what then?  Would your grieving relatives be glad to see you?  After all, they would probably all have moved on, to new relationships, new lives.  If they had inherited money from you, would they have to give it back?  Where would you live?  If you'd been an elderly relative living with family, would they want you back?  The questions are endless.  But, to go back to the beginning, just what is it that you'd have to do to get kicked out of heaven in the first place?  A bar room brawl with St Peter?  Racially abusing Martin Luther King?  Feeling up Jesus?  Because it would have to be pretty out there to get expelled over.  Maybe sexual desire isn't allowed up there, because of the supposed purity of ascended souls - but what if you still got the horn and started making overtures to all the deceased glamourous ladies (would that count as necrophilia)?  

Like I said, these are the questions that have been perplexing me of late - there just don't seem to be any answers out there.  You'd think that the God squad would have some insight into this stuff, but no, they just claim you are being blasphemous if you bring it up!  You'd think that there'd at least be a Facebook group or sub-Reddit devoted to these matters, but it is a desert out there with regard to discussion of these issues.  I just don't understant it at all...

Embassy (1972)

Embassy (1972) is a far more typical Gordon Hessler movie than The Last Shot You Hear (1970), which I looked at recently.  Whereas that film was static and slow moving, Embassy is a far freer flowing film, with a good pace and plenty of well staged action scenes and interesting dialogue.  Interestingly, the two films have a link other than Hessler's direction - Embassy was co-scripted, from a Stephen Coulter novel - by William Fairchild, whose play, 'The Sound of Murder', The Last Shot You Hear was based upon.  Embassy also boasts a decent cast, headlined by Richard Roundtree who, thanks to success of Shaft (1971), was very much in vogue at the time.  Ray Milland, Max von Sydow, Chuck Connors and Broderick Crawford also feature prominently.   It also has a relatively exotic location in Beirut, (back in the late sixties and early seventies, the then not-so-war-torn Lebanon provided locations for a number of spy thrillers and action films), which Hessler uses to good advantage, staging several chase sequences on its streets, contrasting the cosmopolitan nature of its main thoroughfares with the run down side streets and back alleys as his camera follows the action through both.  The film's main setting, though, is the US embassy in Beirut, (the source novel, apparently, was set in Paris), with the bulk of its running time taking place within its walls or precincts.  The script is very sleekly structured, rarely allowing any deviations from its main plot, which it pursues relentlessly, with a minimum of distractions for love interests or other sub-plots.

The plot itself is fairly straightforward for an espionage thriller: a high level Soviet defector, von Sydow, pursued by the KGB, seeks shelter in the US embassy in Beirut.  There CIA officer Roundtree conflicts with his superior as to whether the information von Sydow holds is valuable enough to risk a diplomatic incident over by giving him asylum.  While Roundtree wins the support of the ambassador (Milland), a KGB agent disguised as a US air force officer (Connors) is, despite the efforts of embassy security chief Broderick, already penetrating the embassy.  While Connors is detained, it isn't before he has seriously wounded von Sydow, with the rest of the plot concerned with Roundtree's efforts to keep von Sydow alive and somehow get him out of the embassy to the airport and a US military transport, while Connors makes repeated attempts to escape and finish his job.  A complicating factor arises from the fact that Connors has killed a local Lebanese embassy official and the local police, knowing only that von Sydow has entered the building, believe that he is the culprit and are waiting for him to emerge in order to arrest him.  As this is a seventies movie, it is, of course, shot through with cynicism, with Roundtree's character disillusioned with the realpolitik of the world's of intelligence and diplomacy.  He hopes that, by helping von Sydow's character defect to the west, he can restore some of his faith in the idea that he is on the 'right' side and that the west are the 'good guys' in the Cold War.  Again, being a seventies movie, it inevitably ends with a cynical twist.

To Hessler's credit, he never allows the sub-text of Roundtree's moral disillusionment to detract from the action: it serves its purpose as character motivation, but never overwhelms the plot.  Instead, he keeps the action moving from one set piece to another, with restless camera work making even static dialogue scenes feel dynamic.  Performances are uniformly good, with von Sydow's defector, constantly frustrated by the bureaucracy and paranoia he finds in the embassy, particularly memorable.  Connors also makes an impression as the utterly relentless and ruthless KGB assassin, never betraying a trace of compassion, let alone emotion.  While not being a top rank thriller, Embassy is an efficient, well made movie with an intelligent that doesn't drag and packs a lot into ninety minutes.

Monster Markets

Those Trump tariffs, eh?  Who'd have thought that slapping massive and arbitrarily calculated tariffs on each and every one of your trading partners would trigger massive stock market crashes around the globe?  Apparently, the Japanese reckon that the Tokyo exchanges have seen their biggest losses since the last time Godzilla attacked Japan.  Obviously, the rest of the world is contemplating the appropriate retaliatory action to take against the US, with Japan considering unleashing its monsters against the US West Coast.  As I understand it, this will be a staged process, with them starting off with a single giant monster, one of the lesser ones with Angorus, perhaps, sent to destroy San Diego.  If that doesn't result in a lifting of tariffs, then they are prepared to escalate, sending Godzilla and Mothra against LA, with Gidorah, Gigan and Mecha-Godzilla held ready to target San Francisco if that doesn't work.  If the Americans remain stubborn, then the Japanese are prepared to spread the monster chaos across the whole US, starting with sending Rodan to crap on Chicago and Detroit.  Ultimately, Hedorah could be sent against New York, with Ebirah already positioned off of the East Coast to disrupt incoming shipping.  The Japanese government are confident that this constitutes a potentially far more rewarding strategy than imposing counter tariffs, which the US would respond to with counter counter tariffs.  But you can't counter a monster attack in kind.  Or can you?

With all those 'tech bros' on side, could the Trump administration find a way to counter a Japanese monster attack by enlarging the president himself to giant size, in order to slug it out with the likes of Godzilla?  Perhaps they could try feeding him irradiated burgers in an attempt to mutate him to giant size, or just invent an enlarging machine, a bit like a matter transmitter, except that it reassembles the subject's molecules on a huge scale.  I mean, if Elon Musk truly is the genius he claims to be, this surely shouldn't be beyond his capabilities, should it?  But would a single giant Trump be enough to beat off hordes of giant Japanese monsters?  After all, despite being giant sized, he wouldn't have powers like Godzilla's radioactive breath, for instance.  Although, of course, if he farted in the wrong direction, he could take out the whole of Orange County.  But it would surely be prudent to also create a giant Pete Hegseth, say, to drunkenly brawl with Jet Jaguar, or a giant J D Vance to stand on the sidelines and egg giant Trump on to punch King Kong when he isn't looking.  While this could be a viable defensive strategy for the Trump administration, I can't help but feel that, even giant sized, a demented old man and his band of two faced, abusive hangers on simply wouldn't be a match for the whole pantheon of Japanese Kaiju. 

Death Mask (1998)

A low budget straight-to-video horror movie featuring the once in a lifetime pairing of James Best and Linnea Quigley, Death Mask (1998) is, surprisingly, quite entertaining.  Best, nowadays primarily remembered for playing Sheriff Roscoe P Coltrane in The Dukes of Hazzard, had, prior to that, enjoyed a number of appearances in B-movies, most notably as the lead in The Killer Shrews.  With Death Mask, which he also wrote, he goes back to his origins in a cheap and cheerful production that works in a number of popular backwoods horror tropes: carnivals, freaks, sadistic clowns and swamp witches.  The story, by the standards of the genre, is reasonably original.  Best plays a carnival side show player who carves masks from wood.  Disfigured as a child by his father, a cruel carnival clown, by pushing his face into a fire, Best's character doesn't just carve masks, he also wears a latex mask to cover his burns.  Unfortunately, his masks are no longer selling and he comes into conflict with his asshole of a boss, who threatens to drop him from the carnival.  A despondent Best strikes up a friendship with Quigley's dancer (who is involved with his boss, but unaware that the latter is cheating on her), who takes him to see a swamp witch.  The witch gives him a piece of wood from a 'hanging tree'.  Best carves a mask from it which, when he puts it on, drives anyone who looks into its eyes to kill themselves and others.  The first victim being a female carnival worker who, having inadvertently looked into the mask's eyes, runs in terror, headlong into a carnival ride, which decapitates her.  Despite Quigley's urgings to destroy the mask and the witch explaining that the mask's 'evil' wood is channelling all of his sublimated hate and resentment into a destructive psychic aura, Best succumbs to temptation and goes on a mini-rampage with the mask, destroying those he believes have wronged him.  These include a local prostitute who rejected him because of scars, the carnival owner and some other randoms who insult him.  Needless to say, it doesn't end well.

For what it is, Death Mask is reasonably well produced and director Steve Latshaw - a veteran of this sort of movie - moves it all along at a decent pace.  A large part of the action takes place after dark and this, combined with the cramped trailers and booths of the carnival, give it the sort of claustrophobic and oppressive atmosphere appropriate to the subject matter.  The mask itself is reasonably well realised, although the video effects used for when it possesses Best and projects its evil are pretty cheesy, (although back in 1998 they probably seemed quite sophisticated for a cheap direct-to-video production).  Best's script is actually pretty good, recognising the ludicrousness of its subject matter with some black humour and provides the main players with some decent dialogue.  Best himself gives a good performance as the downbeat carnival mask carver, never falling over in self pity whilst still eliciting audience sympathy and even when on a rampage, remaining likeable.  Linnea Quigley also gets to a do lot more than simply take her clothes off - her usual function in low budget horror movies - actually getting to play a sympathetic character integral to the plot.  (Don't worry, though, she still takes her clothes off for a number of entirely gratuitous shower scenes).  At the end of the day, Death Mask is simply a cheap horror film, but has a number of aspects which lift it above average, featuring some decent acting performances, dialogue that actually sounds like normal speech and a half-way decent central concept.  I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by Death Mask when I stumbled across it, with no expectations, on an obscure streaming channel.  Worth looking up, particularly if you are a fan of Best ot Quigley.

Unnecessary Remakes

For some reason last weekend I watched that remake of Assault on Precinct 13 (2005).  Why?  I really don't know.  I suppose it was mainly down to the fact that Tubi has been shoving it in my face the past few weeks, every time I opened their Roku app.  So I finally gave in, hoping that they might stop pushing to me now.  This latest viewing did nothing to change my feelings toward it from the last time I saw it, at least a decade ago (probably more).  It falls into that burgeoning cinematic category of 'unnecessary remake', doing nothing to improve upon the original, let alone find a new perspective on the source material.  It's not that it's a bad movie in itself - it's actually well made, with a good cast and some well-staged action sequences.  But whereas the John Carpenter original was a lean, minimalist movie, made on a shoestring with a largely unknown cast, yet delivering brilliantly in terms of suspense and action, the remake is plot heavy, with an over-complicated story line, weighted down by too much backstory for its characters (of which there are too many) and no real suspense.  While the essentially faceless gang attackers of the original are menacing because of the fact that we never really know who they are and know none of them as individuals, the remake's team of corrupt police officers are just too real and identifiable to be really scary.  I've no doubt that the makers of this remake thought that they were being really radical by upending audience expectations by making the villains cops, swapping the races of the two main protagonists and giving the cop hero of the first film's name to the criminal, in reality it just weakens the whole premise.  Moreover, making the criminal who ends up in the station's cells the actual target of the attackers, rather than just someone caught up in the fight by happenstance, takes away a crucial element - the sense of randomness that underlines the original.  There is no complicated conspiracy, everything that happens is the result of a series of random coincidences.

The fact is that the remake of Assault on Precinct 13 would have been a perfectly decent film if it had been released as an entity in its own right, rather than being marketed as a remake of a beloved cult movie.  Which is the same way I've always felt about another 'unnecessary remake', the Colin Farrell version of Total Recall.  While vastly inferior, not mention vastly less imaginative, to the Schwarzenegger original, it is still an enjoyable enough science fiction action film, which, if it hadn't been released as a remake, would probably have performed better, as it wouldn't have drawn unflattering comparisons with the original.  At least, though, it had some relationship to the first film, being based on the same Philip K Dick short story, 'We Can Remember it for You Wholesale'.  Its mistake was in taking the title and too many plot elements from the first adaptation, rather than trying to reinterpret the original source to make something different, but with the same basic premise.  But in both of these cases, if the new films hadn't have invoked the titles of the older movies, then they wouldn't have been able to try and exploit their reputations to try and boost their own popularity, the makers and distributors doubtless hoping to build on an established audience for the originals also.  As with so much in the creative world these days, it's all about exploiting intellectual properties owned already owned by studios and publishers.  It is seen as easier than creating something completely new - just keep reworking the old stuff that proved popular before.  As well as remakes, this manifests as the various 'sequels' which invoke the title of a successful property, despite being only loosely connected, or the spin offs, often in the form of TV series, which are ground out endlessly, diluting whatever made the original popular even further.  In truth, there's nothing new in any of this: back in its 'Golden Age', Hollywood happily ground out B-movie series, often inspired by a successful A feature, but with lower budgets and lesser stars.  The model eventually proved unsustainable, as B-movies became uneconomic to produce and audiences tired of paying to see these cheapskate productions in the cinema, when they could see similar stuff at home for free on their TV sets.  At what point the current version becomes unsustainable and what will supercede it, I have no idea.  But it is inevitable.

An Abrupt Ending

I was watching The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) again this evening and it reminded me of just how abrupt the endings to these old forties horror movies could be.  In this case, the monster goes berserk, the castle catches fire and collapses, burying him and Dr Frankenstein under the rubble before the obligatory mob of villagers with blazing torches shouting 'Kill the monster' can get to them, we get a quick shot of Frankenstein's daughter embracing the hero who has just saved her from the fire, then the credits roll.  Accompanied by a surprisingly jaunty piece of music, in view of what had preceded it.  Contrast this with the preceding film in the series - Son of Frankenstein (1939) (the titular character being the older brother of the son of Frankenstein in Ghost) - where, after the monster's demise in a sulphur pit and Bela Lugosi's Ygor being filled full of lead, we get a reasonably lengthy final scene with Frankenstein and his family catching the train out of the village, but not before giving a speech to by the now grateful villagers and police inspector, who are there to wave him off.  Here, the jaunty music over the credits seems justified as we've just witnessed a happy ending, rather than the somewhat nihilistic denouement to Ghost.

Abrupt endings, of course, were pretty much de rigeur for B-movies, due to low budgets or simply the fact that they usually had to pack their plot into a running time of just over an hour, leaving them little time for scenes that didn't move the story along.  Significantly, Ghost of Frankenstein marks the point at which Universal's Frankenstein series ceased to be A-features.  From now on, the pictures would be churned out annually, in contrast to the first three, which had appeared, widely spaced, over an eight year period.  Whereas Son of Frankenstein had a running time of around ninety minutes, the longest of the subsequent movies was seventy five minutes.  The lowering of their budgets was reflected in an increased use of recycled sets, music and stock footage.  They also combined Frankenstein's monster with other members of Universal's monster menagerie in scenarios that frantically scrambled through their running times to abrupt and apocalyptic endings that, nonetheless, always left some room for a sequel.  (The various writers' showed a commendable fidelity to the continuity of prior entries in the series).  

Of course, Ghost of Frankenstein wasn't quite a B-movie, but rather a 'second feature' that could either headline a double bill of such films in B-circuit cinemas, or act as support to a bigger feature on the A-circuit.  The studio certainly felt it prestigious enough to star Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Frankenstein's second son, perhaps to compensate for the fact that, for the first time, Karloff wasn't playing the monster.  Instead, their new horror star, Lon Chaney Jr, who had scored a hit in the title role of The Wolfman (1941) the previous year, took on the role (for the only time in the series).  Bela Lugosi, as Ygor, was retained from the previous film to help give the cast a weighty feel.  Nevertheless, the production values are noticeably lower than in the preceding films and the script thinner.  But it all felt a bit stodgy - the subsequent three films might have been closer to true B-movies, with even lower production values and budgets, but they were also a lot more fun, while still retaining those abrupt endings.

The Last Shot You Hear (1970)

My quest to catch up with obscure low budget films which used to turn up on the late night TV schedules when I was I kid continues with The Last Shot You Hear (1970).  This one was a regular part of ITV's post News at Ten schedule in the seventies.  I never saw it then, being too young to be allowed up that late, but the title always intrigued me.  By the time I was old enough to stay up that late watching TV, it had seemingly vanished from the schedules, never to return.  Information on the film also seemed scant, with many reference works seeming to think that it was in black and white, which seemed odd for a film from 1970, while others credited it as being a colour production.  None were very complimentary about it, noting that the film had actually been shot in 1967, but not released in the US until 1969 and the UK in 1970.  I finally managed to catch it the other day - the version I saw was in colour, as were all of its TV screenings, a black and white print had, however, been released to US cinemas (in 1969).  The Last Shot You Hear was based on a stage play - William Fairchild's 'The Sound of Murder' - and very much looks it, with lots of talky indoor scenes and a very static feel.  The play was first produced in 1958 and the film feels very much as if it belongs in that era rather than the sixties.  Despite the addition of some exterior scenes, the film's production feels very 'stagey', with the lighting in interior scenes seemingly always directly overhead and a lack of any fluid camera movements.  

The plot itself reinforces the feel of a time warped stage production, featuring one of those elaborate murder plots which rely on carefully timed phone calls and the like to establish alibis.  Inevitably, it all goes awry, with vanishing bodies and secret tape recordings of the main characters hatching their plot.  The whole thing goes through a number of entirely predictable plot twists before a final, equally unsurprising 'shock' denouement.  There is some attempt to update the play's scenario: whereas in the play the main antagonist is a children's author who won't release his wife from their loveless marriage for fear of a divorce damaging his image and sales, in the film he is the successful author of a series of books and newspaper columns on maintaining perfect relationships.  In both versions, the wife plots with her lover to kill him.  Unfortunately for them a third party, the author's secretary, overhears and records their plot, using the tape to blackmail them after the author has, seemingly, been murdered, with the secretary claiming to have subsequently hidden the body.  There's nothing here that the average audience wouldn't have seen countless times before, but usually better produced.

The film's limited budget is painfully apparent, with poor colour, which looks so weak that it might as well have been monochrome and minimal production values.  The film lacks any real stars, the closest it gets being American actor Hugh Marlowe, best remembered for playing the lead in fifties science fiction movies like Earth Vs the Flying Saucers as the author, in his last film appearance.  It has to be said that he does a pretty good job in making his character thoroughly dislikable, a selfish, egotistical domestic tyrant who treats his wife abominably.  The rest of the cast is made up of familiar British TV and B-movie faces, including Patricia Haines, Zena Walker, William Dysart and Thorley Walters, all of whom give decent performances in the face of an unyielding script.  Most startlingly, though, the film is directed by Gordon Hessler and it is hard to believe that this is the same man who would shortly direct Scream and Scream Again (1969), a visually far more interesting film, with lots of action, fluid camerawork, interesting angles and decor.  Indeed, Hessler was a director noted for his distinctive visual style, (most notably seen in the quartet of films he made for AIP between 1969 and 1971), incorporating lots of camera movement, so the static nature The Last Shot You Hear is quite jarring.  Sadly, he never seemed to quite fulfil his potential, eventually ending up directing TV movies in the US.

The film was the last to be produced by Robert Lippert's company for Twentieth Century Fox, an association which had produced some two hundred low-budget features, many, like this one, produced in the UK in association with British producer Jack Parsons.  The Last Shot You Hear is far from a lost classic, but watching it has at least scratched an itch that has been bothering me since I was a child.